I know a few things, but I still got a lot to learn.

The great works of Victorian England were erected by engineers who could not be sure of the properties of the materials they were using. In particular, whether by incompetence or malfeasance, the iron of the period was often not up to snuff. As a consequence, engineers erred on the side of caution, overbuilding to incorporate redundancy into their... See more

I often think of the Noah Smith quote: “Fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet.”