Tag Archives: Kenneth Gale Crawford

Artificial Language

September 6, 2025 – 8:29 am

TL;DR: AI writing is like human writing. Of course it is, since its model is human writing. But then what AI produces is like bad human writing.

My sources include Plato, Wendell Berry, George Orwell, E. B. White, William Deresiewicz, Hadley Freeman, Andrew Kay, Kenneth G. Crawford, Hollis Robbins, Yuval Noah Harari, William Egginton, Megan Fritts, and Vi Hart.

About preparing certain seeds for human consumption in an infusion:

For sensory attributes, I’m admittedly Platonic and believe that since coffee is a fruit, it should taste something like a fruit. (And it’s not just any fruit – it’s a cherry!) My roasting philosophy comes from the same conviction. Generally, I’m after bright, juicy, fruity, syrupy goodness.

Thus Caleb Bilgen, founder of Ánimo Coffee Roasters in Asheville, North Carolina.

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From a terrace beneath an awning, a low wall obscured by ivy, oleander, and quince; on the other side, a lawn with a jungle gym; beyond this, a weeping willow and a small white house beneath umbrella pines

What I see as the sun rises
Altınova, Ayvalik, Balıkesir
September 5, 2025

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By David Pierce | Posted in Language, Pirsig, Plato | Also tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (5)

Law and History

December 29, 2020 – 3:17 pm

I learned about Peter Turchin recently through his profile in the Atlantic by Graeme Wood. I had learned about the Atlantic article from historians on Twitter such as James Ryan, who does “Turkish history and other stuff,” according to his own Twitter profile, and who tweeted in response to Wood’s article,

This is really interesting research, but, uh, it is only history in the way that a particle physicist does history.

In response to that, a thread began:

Needless to say, no historian would find this “approach” acceptable. There’s a reason we spend so much time on historiography when new historians are trained; we have complex, rich debates that have continued for longer than any field except philosophy on how to approach history.

That was by Axel Çorlu, living in the US, but “Born in Izmir, Turkey, to a Levantine (Italian/Greek/French/Armenian) family” according to his Academia page.

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By David Pierce | Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged , , , | Comments (10)

Reading shallow and deep

April 21, 2020 – 6:07 pm

Executive summary (added July 28, 2020): I read an article praising so-called deep reading, one of whose exponents is Henry Kissinger. The world is apparently being corrupted by people who do not read deeply; and this includes ourselves, if we allow ourselves to be distracted by social media. I myself find the article corrupted by references to neuroscience, and I am sorry that the writer, Adam Garfinkle, does not tell us about his own experience of reading. His article comes recommended by George Will, whose tenure at the Washington Post can be blamed on my grandfather. I reminisce about him and about my own deep or at least long reading, in college and more recently. I take a hedonistic view of this reading.

Seeing a tweet condemning the superficiality of Twitter, I could not pass up the challenge. I read the linked essay, “What we lost when we stopped reading” (The Washington Post, April 17, 2020). That was by George Will, summarizing and recommending a longer essay, by Adam Garfinkle, “The Erosion of Deep Literacy” (National Affairs, number 43, spring 2020). I read that, yesterday evening and this morning (April 21, 2020).

My computer showing two pages of text in front of a window

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By David Pierce | Posted in dialectic, Hitchens, Prose | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XII

September 1, 2018 – 6:33 pm

Index to this series | Text of Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad

Both first and last place may be prominent in a narrative.

So may be the middle – perhaps I meant that to be implicit when first posting this review on September 1, 2018. Then I wrote an impressionistic account, as I did again in “Monism (Iliad Book XII)” in February, 2023. Or it is a moralistic account, looking mainly at the lesson taught by Sarpedon – also the severely monotheistic lesson of Hector, in the 2023 account. Below I add a systematic review of the action. Note added August 28, 2024.

Occurring three-quarters of the way into Book XII of the Iliad, but presented last below, Sarpedon’s great speech on leadership ought to be known by everybody with authority and power.

A child’s sand shovels on the beach; calm sea beyond

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By David Pierce | Posted in Homer | Also tagged , , , | Comments (7)