September 14, 2007
Ry

Eventually, all the aggressive cuddling and the invitations to the disco got to me. When I wasn’t sled racing, I started hanging out on the iceberg, a spot in the middle of the ocean that attracted loners. Penguins would show up, walk to the edge, and then stare out at the water. Sometimes another penguin would ask, “What’s wrong?” but often it was quiet. I took to lobbing snowballs in the same place over and over again. On one occasion, I started typing lines from Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner–“Alone on a wide sea!”–and another penguin corrected my quote: “Alone on a wide, wide sea.” I’m guessing she wasn’t 12.

March 18, 2006
Finn

Social software is the experimental wing of political philosophy, a discipline that doesn’t realize it has an experimental wing.

Shirky on moderation systems