What's the Deal with the Middle East?
A straight take on what people miss about Middle Eastern civilization - from military slavery to might makes right, political fragmentation to linguistic consolidation.
Blog
Thoughts on technology, software development, and life.
The Count, the Don, and the Pasha: Mozart's Class Anxiety
Three of Mozart's greatest operas share the same plot: a powerful man tries to take your wife. The pattern reveals an artist working through his own anxieties about power and class.
Peace on Earth and the Shepherding of Mankind: A Syriac Reading of Luke 2:14
The familiar Christmas verse hides a textual problem in Greek - but the Old Syriac may preserve an Aramaic wordplay that makes perfect sense of the context.
Lizard Brain + Soul: A Hybrid AI Architecture for Game NPCs
How I built Minecraft villagers controlled by Claude AI using a two-tier architecture that separates strategic reasoning from moment-to-moment execution.
When Your Software Becomes a Job Requirement
Dominus Estate is hiring a Vineyard Operations Manager. Among the required technical skills: proficiency with Sentinel.
Did the Islamic Republic of Iran Plagiarize My Undergrad Thesis?
In June 2017, I submitted my thesis on China's Middle East strategy. Two months later, an Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs scholar published a paper with the same argument.
A Place for Scattered Leaves
Launching this blog as a collection of varied thoughts - on languages, technology, music, history, and whatever else catches my attention.