while socrates likely wrote nothing despite teaching the world (leading to his own death) a lot about its hypocrisy and stupidity, plato made up for it. born in the 420s bc, he is probably the most fundamental figure in early western philosophy and he’s seen as the beginning of the… Read More »plato (history of philosophy 3)

every language has patterns of vocal tone. some (mandarin, cantonese) are explicit. others (korean, french) are minimalist. english has patterns and they’re unwritten. but they’re very simple and can be almost-completely summarized by the two-word lyric from the 70s — get down. sentences in english are pitch-neutral with falling inflection… Read More »inflection for non-idiots

sometimes you just want things to be dark. and i don’t mean the middle of the night. we’re talking about wood —which we often do here. whether that means midnight-black or vague gray or something between, most wood doesn’t do neutral black tones straight off the tree and wood almost… Read More »matters of black wood

when it comes to sharpening, woodworkers fall loosely into two groups — those who aren’t getting sharp and those who spend an inordinate amount of time getting sharp far beyond what is necessary to do excellent work. let’s talk about this. it’s not woodworking’s dirty little secret. it’s its massive… Read More »fearlessly pointy

having left the pre-socratics, we come to the obvious next step — socrates. you probably already know three things about socrates. he was an ancient greek philosopher. he had an awesome beard. he was sentenced to death for his philosophy by drinking hemlock. while those are a good start, i… Read More »socrates (history of philosophy 2)