An East German Advent Calendar from 1980
In central Java, Ridwan Sururi and Luna are the Kudapustaka -- the Horse Library.
I do miss Christopher Hitchens:
It is all there to emphasize the one central and polar and critical point that Dickens wishes to enjoin on us all: whatever you do — hang on to your childhood! He was true to this in his fashion, both in ways that delight me and in ways that do not. He loved the idea of a birthday celebration, being lavish about it, reminding people that they were once unborn and are now launched. This is bighearted, and we might all do a bit more of it. It would help me to forgive, perhaps just a little, the man who helped generate the Hallmark birthday industry and who, with some of his less imposing and more moistly sentimental prose scenes in A Christmas Carol, took the Greatest Birthday Ever Told and helped make it into the near Ramadan of protracted obligatory celebration now darkening our Decembers.
Witty atheists are the best atheists.
I love the fact the centipawn is a unit of measurement in chess statistics.
I wrote a brief reflection on Turing tests and the principle of charity.
I just returned from a visit to my old haunts at the University of Virginia, and I took some photos.
A not-especially Christmassy but still lovely woodcut by Eric Ravilious, for the Redfern Gallery’s Christmas card in 1933.