The influence of philological Anglo-Saxonism on Tolkien

The influence of philological Anglo-Saxonism on Tolkien is clearly visible in his depiction of the Riders of Rohan who “resemble the ancient English down to minute detail.”42 Tolkien had access to the culture of the Anglo-Saxons through his professional work, and drew on their literature extensively. Yet that access was not direct, a jump from the twentieth century to the first millennium, rather, his medievalism was coloured by that of earlier philologists who conceived of them in racial...

 Magruder’s Principle

1-42. Magruder’s principle states that it is generally easier to induce the deception target to maintain a preexisting belief than to deceive the deception target for the purpose of changing that belief. Magruder’s principle exploits target biases and the human tendency to confirm exiting beliefs. Magruder’s principle alludes to two paths. A path of the deceiver changing the belief of a target and a path of maintaining a present belief. The principle then advises the better of the two p...

 Pension-Fraud Correlated with Longevity

Regions where people most often reach 100-110 years old are the ones where there’s the most pressure to commit pension fraud, and they also have the worst records. For example, the best place to reach 105 in England is Tower Hamlets. It has more 105-year-olds than all of the rich places in England put together. It’s closely followed by downtown Manchester, Liverpool and Hull. Yet these places have the lowest frequency of 90-year-olds and are rated by the UK as the worst places to be an ol...

 Juridification is the Enemy of Legality

Modern governments, their hands increasingly tied by the robber-barons of global finance, often try to assert their power with their feet: by kicking out at another high-profile social problem, real or imagined, with another big policy initiative. Usually they come up with an accompanying raft of new laws. Legislative incontinence prevails. Not only is much of the legislation futile and even counterproductive from the start, we are also left with ever more relics of now-forgotten reforms. Bet...

 Phonetic Orthography in Spain and Italy

Fonetic spelling, in one form or another, has been, and is now, used by progressiv teachers in England and America as an introduction and an aid to the study of the current orthografy. Their experience is that children can spel correctly that is, fonetically the words they ar able to pronounce, as soon as they hav learnd the alfabet employd, and the principle of combining letters into sillables. In languages such as Italian and Spanish, that hav approximately fonetic alfabets, appro...