For a long time, I've been trying to spend less time mindlessly surfing the web. This blog has some of the projects I've occupied myself with instead. Most of them are book reviews. I'm particularly happy with this book review of Addiction by Design and this commentary on the mythical man-month.

Ketchup Duck

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Latest Microblog Post:A haunted house for adults: A perfectly normal two-story house, but the staircase that connects the two stories is missing.

Book Review: On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

6 September 2021

The original free speech extremist

The US patent office should cite more non-patent literature

6 September 2021

A humble plea to a fantastic government agency

What I've learned from celebrity news

5 August 2021

Notes on fame and media

The Proposal: A one act play by Anton Chekhov

15 July 2021

...acted by virtual puppets

Postmortem of 'Book Review: Addiction by Design'

9 July 2021

An annotated version of my book review

The Great Brutish Bakeoff

29 June 2021

Recaps from a fictional reality TV show

The Mythical Man-Moth

31 March 2021

A critical look at Fred Brooks’s seminal essay

Words that go together like mac and cheese

22 March 2021

Become acutely aware of absorbingly interesting encyclopedic knowledge

Book Review: Mick Herron's Slow Horses

31 January 2021

In anticipation of Book 7, a look back at Book 1

Book Review: Jeremy Bentham's A Fragment on Government

14 January 2021

In the length of four Gettysburg Addresses

Beating Bobby Flay

14 January 2021

Why does Bobby Flay win so much on Beat Bobby Flay?

Talk less, smile more

7 December 2020

A hypothetical advice column

Learning Esperanto on Duolingo

15 November 2020

Reflections on the easiest language I've ever learned

Book (?) Reviews (??): Vanity Fair and GQ

12 October 2020

Judging magazines by their covers

Book Reviews: Big Little Lies and Truly Madly Guilty

9 June 2020

Of these two very similar books, why was one successful and the other a failure?

Blame Game

8 March 2020

When does the government get sued for car accidents?

US Tax Loopholes

2 February 2020

Switcheroo Contrarian Quotes

12 January 2020

Why are these quotes so convincing?

Yaksha Prashna

8 December 2019

A King and a computer answer life questions

Calibration

1 December 2019

I learn something surprising about myself

Rousseau

18 June 2019

Reading and "translating" Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality

Wodehouse

18 April 2019

P.G. Wodehouse’s writing delights me