Polymathism: it never (and always) goes out of style

This blog now has a gold standard to live up to: Brendan I. Koerner’s Microkhan, subtitled: “your daily dose of polymathism”. Microkhan’s topics have the appearance of being randomly chosen through some Google algorithm, but Koerner brings amazing analysis to each one of them.

In the past 36 hours, posts have ranged from an Indiana Jones-type banker, the end of Polish conscription and the economic ramifications of such, and fighting fire ants with specifically-bred phlorid flies. When I saw the April 2 post on the Taliban’s prohibition on music, I almost fell off my seat. Not because the Taliban-hates-fun story is anything new, but that it engages with the issue on the level of hadith – how Islamic scholars on either side would approach this debate  – and still retains a level of objectivity.

It is my new favorite update to refresh in my RSS reader.