All articles filed in Ars Magica

So, fans of Westworld can skip this next 15 seconds, but when discussing philosophy and Mythic Europe, I need to lay out the ground.  In 1976 Jaynes published a book called The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. It was popular in the science fiction community. The core premise is that before…

Wittgenstein is one of my favorite philosophers, regardless of what his philosophy actually was. At one point, he thought the primary task of philosophers was to stand in the corner of other people’s lectures and yell ‘Semantics!”at them whenever they suggested  metaphysics was worth considering. Maybe you need to be me to think that’s really,…

Phyllo pastry (or Filo to our American friends) has a disputed origin. The name means “leaf” pastry, which I’ll come back to later. If you accept that the earliest modern dish using it is baklava, it first appears in the Thirteenth Century, in the the Eastern Roman Empire. Baklava is basically interlayered flaky pastry and nuts,…

Let’s just jump into it:   Despite the advertisements of rival firms, it is probable that every tradesman knows that nobody in business at the present time has a position equal to that of Mr. Nuth. To those outside the magic circle of business, his name is scarcely known; he does not need to advertise,…