Everybody has a hard job. All real work is hard. My work happened also to be undoable. Morning after morning for 50 years, I faced the next page defenceless and unprepared. Writing for me was a feat of self-preservation. If I did not do it, I would die. So I did it. Obstinacy, not talent, saved my life. It was also my good luck that happiness didn’t matter to me and I had no compassion for myself. Though why such a task should have fallen to me I have no idea. Maybe writing protected me against even worse menace.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Q&A …
… Philip Roth interview: 'The horror of being caged has lost its thrill' - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Second thoughts …
… James Lovelock: environmentalism has become a religion | Environment | The Guardian.
… Lovelock said of the warnings of climate catastrophe in his 2006 book, Revenge of Gaia: "I was a little too certain in that book. You just can’t tell what’s going to happen."Yes, as Niels Bohr observed, "Predicting is difficult, especially the future." But science, as its history demonstrates, has frequently fallen for fortune-telling. It's one thing to postulate something and see if it works out in the event. It's quite another to prophesy.
Medicine ... in mice ....
The failure of experimental drugs that had once looked promising could have been prevented with better animal studies, according to a re-examination of past clinical trials.
...
[W]ork to discover how relevant animal models are to human disease — such as Perrin’s studies on TDP43 mice — is expensive and unrewarding for researchers and their teams. Perrin argues that they must be funded specifically, perhaps by private–public collaborations.
“Somebody has to do this, or else we're wasting precious resources,” says Perrin.
Amen ...
Environmentalism has "become a religion" and does not pay enough attention to facts, according to James Lovelock.
The 94 year-old scientist, famous for his Gaia hypothesis that Earth is a self-regulating, single organism, also said that he had been too certain about the rate of global warming in his past book, that "it’s just as silly to be a [climate] denier as it is to be a believer” and that fracking and nuclear power should power the UK, not renewable sources such as windfarms.
In case you wondered …
… Poynter. � Why these are the ‘Ten Best Sentences’. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, they are certainly good sentences. But the best? Ever? Come on.
Well, they are certainly good sentences. But the best? Ever? Come on.
Where nature helps you keep fit …
… Minnesota Workout: Shoveling Snow in Duluth, MN 3/27/2014 | Perfect Duluth Day | Duluth News Events Music and More.
Well, we had a good bit of snow in Philly this season, but nothing like that.
Well, we had a good bit of snow in Philly this season, but nothing like that.
A thought for today …
In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
— John Fowles, born on this date in 1926
Correlation, causation, and data sets …
… Four years after the original Nature paper was... - more than 95 theses. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… a theory-free analysis of mere correlations is inevitably fragile. If you have no idea what is behind a correlation, you have no idea what might cause that correlation to break down.
Owls, hysteria, and the miracle of sound …
… Dabbler Diary – For the birds � The Dabbler. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So books haven't been banned from English prisons after all. Hell, even the ones The Inquirer ships to Philadelphia's prisons are sorted. No need to pass along a how-to on gun construction. The authors in high dudgeon come off rather poorly:
So books haven't been banned from English prisons after all. Hell, even the ones The Inquirer ships to Philadelphia's prisons are sorted. No need to pass along a how-to on gun construction. The authors in high dudgeon come off rather poorly:
By the time the Howard League had pushed the banned-books meme up the ladder from the Twitterati via the Chatterati to the Literati (Salman Rushie! Carol Anne Duffy the Poet Laureate!), half the celebs and authors tweeting their ‘shelfies’ or standing proudly to declaim poems outside Pentonville would have convinced even themselves that prior to this ban they were constantly in the habit of sending improving literature to various prison lags for the good of society.Of course, few of them have probably ever got to know a certified criminal.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Q&A …
… Conversation — The Black-Eyed Blonde, by Benjamin Black | Harper's Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Matching words games with collage …
… Finnegans Wake — in pictures | Culture | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Inquirer reviews …
… 'Little Demon in the City of Light': riveting story of murder by hypnosis.
… 'The Sixth Extinction': Species are quickly disappearing.
… 'Clever Girl': A voluptuously written, vivid tale of history and a girl's life.
… 'The Sixth Extinction': Species are quickly disappearing.
Yeah, and it is estimated that more that 99 percent of all species that have ever existed are extinct. Extinction would seem to be Gaia's way.
How to be ebook platform agnostic
The trouble with ebook lock-in is that if your whole library is on the Kindle, you won't want to buy a book from another store. This is silly. We'll show you how to share books between libraries in a minute, but first you need books to start with!
Ebook search site Luzme is a handy tool for comparing book pricing among various stores. In addition to showing you prices for a given title across several services (including Kindle, Google Play, iTunes, Nook, Sony, and others), it also shows you how the price has changed over time so you can see if it's at a particular low point or if it it's likely to fluctuate at all.
A thought for today …
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
— Sean O'Casey, born on this date in 1880
Saturday, March 29, 2014
As every flâneur knows …
…Review of Frederic Gros, 'A Philosophy of Walking' | Inside Higher Ed. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
"Basically, walking is always the same, putting one foot in front of the other. But the secret of that monotony is that it constitutes a remedy for boredom. Boredom is immobility of the body confronted with emptiness of mind. The repetitiveness of walking eliminates boredom, for, with the body active, the mind is no longer affected by its lassitude, no longer drawn from its inertia the vague vertigo in an endless spiral.… The body's monotonous duty liberates thought. While walking, one is not obliged to think, to think this or that. During that continuous but automatic effort of the body, the mind is placed at one's disposal. It is then that thoughts can arise, surface or take shape."
Hmm …
Searle: it upsets me when I read the nonsense written by my contemporaries | New Philosopher. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Consciousness is a biological property like digestion or photosynthesis. Now why isn’t that screamingly obvious to anybody who’s had any education? And I think the answer is these twin traditions. On the one hand there’s God, the soul and immortality that says it’s really not part of the physical world, and then there is the almost as bad tradition of scientific materialism that says it’s not a part of the physical world. They both make the same mistake, they refuse to take consciousness on its own terms as a biological phenomenon like digestion, or photosynthesis, or mitosis, or miosis, or any other biological phenomenon.
To say that consciousness is a biological phenomenon is pretty much the same as saying that a telephone conversation is an electronic phenomenon. It is that, of course. But the content of the conversation has nothing to do with the nature of its transmission.
Who cares?
… Leading authors axed from Prospect magazine's list of top 50 thinkers | Culture | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This seems to be just another academic circle-jerk. More than a third of these "top thinkers" are economists. They're kidding, right?
This seems to be just another academic circle-jerk. More than a third of these "top thinkers" are economists. They're kidding, right?
A thought for today …
I'm obviously not orthodox, I don't know how many real poets have ever been orthodox.
— R. S. Thomas, born on this date in 1913
Friday, March 28, 2014
Taking stock …
From Memory's Album
Some eminent Victorian's photo, and you,
Adorned in peach fuzz, think you wouldn't mind
Looking like that some day. And now the day is
This one. And you really could pass
For an eminent Victorian, minus
The industry, accomplishment, elegance,
And, yes, the eminence. Which is fine. It was only
Ever meant to keep up appearances.
Ever meant to keep up appearances.
And the nominees are …
… National Magazine Awards 2014 Finalists Announced | ASME. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The tolling of the bell …
… Geoff Dyer — Diary: Why Can’t I See You? — LRB 3 April 2014. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
All the test results so far were negative, he said. Apart from the small matter of the stroke I was in great shape. This was as expected: I played tennis and ping-pong all the time, cycled everywhere, was as thin as a rake. I loved soy milk. My favourite meat was tofu. ‘I even take the skin off chicken!’ I told him.Well, that'll do it.
...And Poets and the Spring
Michael Bruce has a purchase on the springtime. He was born on March 27, 1746, just as spring was coming to Scotland, and his most enduring poem is “Elegy—Written in Spring.” The guy knows greenery....
...
‘Tis past: the iron North has spent his rage;
Stern Winter now resigns the length’ning day;
The stormy howlings of the winds assuage,
And warm o’er ether western breezes play.
Reviewers and Editors ...
Empathy goes a long way. You wouldn’t appreciate if someone very publicly defamed your children. An author’s book IS one of their children.
TM: Can you describe your typical work week at Little, Brown? What exactly do editors do?
AS: Lots of reading! There are always tons of manuscripts and proposals on submission, and a huge part of the job is getting through the reading pile. It’s all worth it, though, to find the books you love and will get to publish on your list.
A thought for today …
No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.
— Mario Vargas Llosa, born on this date in 1936
Thursday, March 27, 2014
What are we to make of this?
… 45 Hilariously Ridiculous Gwyneth Paltrow Quotes That Will Make You Want To Punch Something | Thought Catalog.
However well you can pretend to be someone else — which is what actors get paid to do — it does not follow that you yourself are in any way profound. But apart from the astounding lack of insight implied by the initial quote — practically everything she says is premised on being rich, famous, and well-connected — Ms. Paltrow comes off as earnest to a fault, desperate to be on the right side of everything. And, what is worse, thinking she is.
Literary judgments …
… Anecdotal Evidence: `A Stern and Gloomy One Certainly'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What Seward says of Dr. Johnson — that "the faults of his disposition have disgraced much of his fine writings" — could be said of Yvor Winters as well. Both Winters and Johnson sometimes sound like the Pope speaking ex cathedra. I think better of Thomas Gray than Johnson did, and better of Herbert than Winters did. Still, I think both Winters and Johnson are to be applauded for appreciating deeply work by writers whose sensibilities they did not fundamentally share. That is why their criticism rises above the limitations of their own sensibilities.
The genuine article …
… A Math Puzzle Worthy of Freeman Dyson | Simons Foundation.
… I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all.
Indeed …
… The Architectural Spirit Of The Liturgy | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The so-called liturgical reform was inspired by lack of faith. The point of tradition is to incorporate the passing moment into a larger timescape. The "reformers" were embarrassed to seem out of step with the times.
Gotta brush up on that Greek ... or is this mere σκύβαλον
For some years now, I have found it hard to read the New Testament in English alone. Now, don’t think I’m showing off there. My Greek is no better than OK, and a parallel text is really, really, useful. The problem is that, the more you read the text in the Greek original, you realize just how much you are missing in even the very best translations by the world’s greatest scholars.
A thought for today …
But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.
— Alfred de Vigny, born on this date in 1797
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Worldly wise …
… The Intellectual of The Masses | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… [Carey] describes in detail his non-bookish activities — beekeeping, gardening, eating. He sticks up for "ordinary life" against its enemies, as he has before. The Intellectuals and the Masses suggested that if you wanted to find the very model of a modernist-era intellectual — with his rigorously highbrow tastes, his contempt for materialistic values, his quasi-religious veneration of the artist, his fear of mass culture — you could scarcely do better than Adolf Hitler.Touché.
Just a thought …
Until it happens, about the only thing we know for sure about death is that it is sure to happen. You figure this out pretty early in life, but pay increasing attention to it the longer you stay in the game. If you think there's a Someone behind it all, you may be inclined to cry for help. And even if you don't think there's a Someone, you may still feel an urge to wish there was, and might even cast out a cry just to make sure there isn't. It makes no difference, because there's something else about death we can probably be sure of: When it happens — by yourself or with others, with pain or in bliss, expected or not, quickly or not — it will involve a custom-made fitting. Like any fitting, it will largely depend on faith and judgment.
A thought for today …
The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
— Joseph Campbell, born on this date in 1904
Faith without God .
… Nietzsche and Death of God: New books by Peter Watson, Terry Eagleton | New Republic. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
In The Antichrist, which I read one Easter Sunday many years ago, Nietzsche interestingly alternates between the first person singular and first person plural. The most blasphemous statements are in the plural. Those in the singular seem to be a critical commentary on those who utter the statements in the plural. This makes the book more ambiguous than is usually noted.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Dream and reality …
… Unmanageable dreams: Salmon canning in Alaska � The Dabbler. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Book ban …
… Mark Haddon helps launch online petition against prisoner's book ban | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As the person who still arranges donations of books from The Inquirer to the Philadelphia Prison System, I find this prohibition odd, to say the least.
As the person who still arranges donations of books from The Inquirer to the Philadelphia Prison System, I find this prohibition odd, to say the least.
People who eat people …
… It Takes a Village to Eat a Rockefeller — Taki's Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hear, hear …
… America Needs A Healthy Dose Of Elitism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
According to Ortega, the “characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.” The “mass men,” as Ortega calls them, are “those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection.” In the past, such men never made any pretension to leadership, recognizing perfectly well that they lacked the necessary virtues and taste to occupy any such position.It is important to note, though, that this has nothing to do with class or economic status. Ortega is quite clear that the mind of a person with an impeccable pedigree may be utterly commonplace. The same may prove so of someone who has amassed great wealth.
… market forces (take note, conservatives!) worked equally baneful ruin upon academic standards. A college education became transformed into a form of vocational training, and schools began discarding the ideals of liberal learning and replacing them with the crassest utilitarianism, evincing the same vulgar disdain for intellectual cultivation which prevailed throughout the majority of the public. Since a degree was now seen as a prerequisite for employment, greater numbers of young people sought enrollment in college, and the schools themselves, recognizing the profits to be gleaned from this expanded pool of applicants, did all they could to accommodate their matriculation – ie, dumbing down their curriculum even more.This was pointed out more than 80 years ago by Albert Jay Nock in The Theory of Education in the United States.
A thought for today …
When a book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry is to take over God's business.
— Flannery O'Connor, born on this date in 1925
To each his own …
… The American Scholar: Ten Best Sentences - Our editors. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I do like the Toni Morrison one a lot.
I do like the Toni Morrison one a lot.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Not at all …
… Tolkien's The Notion Club Papers: Is it immature to regard Tolkien as a great writer? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Nor would it be immature to regard Sir Terry as great writer. It would just be wrong.
Nor would it be immature to regard Sir Terry as great writer. It would just be wrong.
No kidding …
… Risen: Obama administration is this generation’s ‘greatest enemy of press freedom’ | Poynter.
If Obama were a Republican, they would have figured this out sooner.
If Obama were a Republican, they would have figured this out sooner.
Consolatory bleakness …
… The tragi-comedy of A. E. Housman by Anthony Daniels —The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Though academically brilliant, he failed to graduate (in Classics) because he had devoted far too much time and attention to authors who were not on the syllabus. But this part of the story had a triumphant ending. After leaving Oxford without a degree, he went to work for ten years as a clerk in the Patent Office, devoting his evenings to classical researches. He then published academic studies of such quality that, at the age of thirty-three, without a degree or any experience whatever of university teaching, he was appointed Professor of Latin at University College, London, later moving to Cambridge. He was acknowledged to be one of the finest classical scholars of his time. One stands in admiration of an academic system that was flexible and honest enough to value scholarly worth over the possession of diplomas and qualifications.
Chance and reality …
… the improbability principle: why coincidences, rare events, and miracles happen everyday by david j. hand - bookforum.com / daily review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Accidents, miracles and coincidences interrupt the predictable, mathematical flow of existence. They give us a sense that anything is possible, that life doesn't move along determinate, numerical paths. The fact that The Improbability Principle is so counterintuitive proves that we're hardwired to think this way. We believe in coincidences not because we are ignorant; we believe in them because it's in our nature. A case in point: All good stories hinge, to some extent, on the premise of chance. When something improbable produces a negative outcome, we call it a tragedy. Irony—as Hand points out, a kind of coincidence—is a pillar of comedy. When something unlikely produces a positive result, we call it a miracle. We have developed these mechanisms because the mathematical explanation can't always satisfy our appetite for meaning.
Perhaps more or less unlikely events perform the function that stress does in verse, giving life its rhythm. That it is in our nature to believe in coincidences tells us only that we have that our nature gives insight into, well, the nature of things. Perhaps mathematical explanations are meant to satisfy, not our appetite for meaning, but simply our curiosity.
A thought for today …
Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.
— Malcolm Muggeridge, born on this date in 1903
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Simply wonderful …
… Undernews: Country & Western song titles. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I still feel lousy, but Dave sent these along to cheer me up, an I thought I'd share.
I still feel lousy, but Dave sent these along to cheer me up, an I thought I'd share.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Idealsm vs. empiricism …
… Everything That Rises - History With a Moral. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… there is plenty to learn along the way. Take the chapter on Aristotle’s greatest exponent. He was a nobleman, the son of a count. He was of German, not Italian, origin. He was a Benedictine before he was a Dominican. He was offered the abbacy of Monte Cassino outside Rome, but turned it down. He was named by the pope to head up a council exploring Catholic-Orthodox reunion. He was the author of “a seminal treatise on the nature of evil and another on building aqueducts and military siege operations.” He was Tommaso d’Aquino, a k a St. Thomas Aquinas – a philosopher I thought I knew something about, but who appears as new in Herman’s vivid, incisive portrait.
In case you've wondered …
… Phil Bradley's weblog: Inaccurate results from Google; tweeted question. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Google doesn't actually care about the number of results - it's simply a rough estimate. Google is, in effect, bone idle, and doesn't carry out a proper search for you.
Baseball and the tragic sense of life …
… Book Review: 'A Nice Little Place on the North Side' by George F. Will - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Although he does not mention it in his book, Mr. Will once told me that the reason he could not be a Cardinals fan was that the announcer for the Cardinals when he was growing up was the bilious Harry Caray, whose depression the congenitally optimistic George Will could not abide. (Such is the bitter lot of the Cubs fan, Caray would in later years become the principal, and still depressive, TV announcer for Cubs games.)
Zombies with nuance …
… Zealotry of Guerin: The Jikininki (Heian Period Scroll), Sonnet #169.
This poem really grabbed me.
This poem really grabbed me.
A thought for today …
Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles
— Paul Fussell, born on this date in 1924
Hie thee to Princeton …
… The Annual Sale | Bryn Mawr-Wellesley Book Sale. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
Friday, March 21, 2014
Temples of learning …
… Slide Show: American Public Libraries Great and Small : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is funny …
… Instapundit — HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE: So my USA Today column generates this comment over at Reddit.
"… who has had to of known this …"
… had to have known this, perhaps?
"… who has had to of known this …"
… had to have known this, perhaps?
When Men were Men ...
Spend half an hour in Franklin Brooke-Hitching’s library and you’ll go around the world twice. The titles that line the bookshelves of his Berkshire home are wonderfully evocative: Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque; The Sperm Whale and the South Sea Voyage. And my favourite, if only for the image it conjures: Through Persia By Caravan.Brooke-Hitching has spent the past 46 years collecting these volumes and others chronicling the exploits of British explorers. By last year, he had amassed 1,400 books charting the voyages of adventurers such as Charles Darwin, Francis Drake and David Livingstone.
Remarkably, he claims only half a dozen people have seen his collection. “If you want a real conversation killer,” he says, “you tell people you buy and sell old books.”
Next week , however, anyone who wants to will be able to inspect the tomes when the library goes up for sale at Sotheby’s. Every volume will go under the hammer in a series of four auctions, which are expected to raise £5 million.
Hating on the Murals
Those
murals will be painted on the concrete piers that hold up the Girard
Avenue Bridge - one on the east bank of the Schuylkill, the other on the
west, both facing the water. Given the program's penchant for depicting
the obvious, it should surprise no one that the theme is the city's
rowing history, and that the imagery makes a big head-tilt to
Philadelphia's most famous painter of rowers, Thomas Eakins. Anyone who
walks, jogs, roller-blades, or bikes along the lush river trails will
encounter the 100-foot-long paintings by Jon Laidacker, one of the
program's regulars.
Whether you love murals or, like me, had your fill long ago, their incursion into Philadelphia's beloved beauty spot should be a call to attention.
While the Schuylkill greenways may not be on the same level as,
say, the Grand Canyon wilderness - and the murals may not be the
equivalent of painting a cliff wall - these spaces serve as
Philadelphia's front door to the natural world. The park is where we go
to escape the constant static of our frenetic urban lives, to forget our
devices and lose ourselves amid the trees. Do we really need more
manufactured images?Whether you love murals or, like me, had your fill long ago, their incursion into Philadelphia's beloved beauty spot should be a call to attention.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140321_Changing_Skyline__Mural_Arts_Program_s_entry_into_Fairmount_Park_crosses_boundaries.html#kqOLf7MLfUPrMHoh.99
ose
murals will be painted on the concrete piers that hold up the Girard
Avenue Bridge - one on the east bank of the Schuylkill, the other on the
west, both facing the water. Given the program's penchant for depicting
the obvious, it should surprise no one that the theme is the city's
rowing history, and that the imagery makes a big head-tilt to
Philadelphia's most famous painter of rowers, Thomas Eakins. Anyone who
walks, jogs, roller-blades, or bikes along the lush river trails will
encounter the 100-foot-long paintings by Jon Laidacker, one of the
program's regulars.
Whether you love murals or, like me, had your fill long ago, their incursion into Philadelphia's beloved beauty spot should be a call to attention.
While the Schuylkill greenways may not be on the same level as,
say, the Grand Canyon wilderness - and the murals may not be the
equivalent of painting a cliff wall - these spaces serve as
Philadelphia's front door to the natural world. The park is where we go
to escape the constant static of our frenetic urban lives, to forget our
devices and lose ourselves amid the trees. Do we really need more
manufactured images?Whether you love murals or, like me, had your fill long ago, their incursion into Philadelphia's beloved beauty spot should be a call to attention.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/home/20140321_Changing_Skyline__Mural_Arts_Program_s_entry_into_Fairmount_Park_crosses_boundaries.html#kqOLf7MLfUPrMHoh.99
Those murals will be painted on the concrete piers that hold up the Girard Avenue Bridge - one on the east bank of the Schuylkill, the other on the west, both facing the water. Given the program's penchant for depicting the obvious, it should surprise no one that the theme is the city's rowing history, and that the imagery makes a big head-tilt to Philadelphia's most famous painter of rowers, Thomas Eakins. Anyone who walks, jogs, roller-blades, or bikes along the lush river trails will encounter the 100-foot-long paintings by Jon Laidacker, one of the program's regulars.While the Schuylkill greenways may not be on the same level as, say, the Grand Canyon wilderness - and the murals may not be the equivalent of painting a cliff wall - these spaces serve as Philadelphia's front door to the natural world. The park is where we go to escape the constant static of our frenetic urban lives, to forget our devices and lose ourselves amid the trees. Do we really need more manufactured images?
In defense of honest speech …
… An Academic Barred | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Far from serving as a radical, “outsider’s” critique of political power, the modern academy’s obsession with diversity, cultural relativism, and theory has rendered two generations of students intellectually impotent and aesthetically numb. When the power of beauty is dismissed as ideology, truth comes into contempt as well.
Thought leaders at work …
… A Misguided Manual for Civilization. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There is little in the spiritual dimension … and the only way to make that worse would be by asking them to add spirituality.
A thought for today
Suffering is the ancient law of love; there is no quest without pain; there is no lover who is not also a martyr.
— Henry Suso, born on this date in 1300
Finding himself …
… Paul Davis On Crime: The Bohemians: How Mark Twain Became Mark Twain By Going To California.
This was 10 years after he spent some time in Philadelphia working as a typesetter at The Inquirer.
This was 10 years after he spent some time in Philadelphia working as a typesetter at The Inquirer.
Extraordinary …
… Margaret Spufford loved truth, loved people, loved to laugh – despite it all | Andrew Brown | Comment is free | theguardian.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don't know that she believed in an afterlife in any well-defined sense: but she believed this world was interfused with another, perhaps with an eternity, and that this might at any moment break through into ours. This faith enabled her to face, without flinching, cruelties that make ordinary people writhe and hide.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Just a thought …
… rather a half-thought, actually, since there will be a follow-up.
It's a couple of thousand years ago, and you're having a drink at an inn in Alexandria, and get to talking with a guy at the table next to yours. He tells you about this other guy who a few years earlier went preaching around Palestine and ended up being arrested and put to death in a most unbecoming manner. Then, the guy tells you — we'll call him Paul — why this is important. It turns out that guy was the son of God — the Big God, creator of the universe and all that. That business Adam and Eve got us into, it seems, was a mistake that couldn't be corrected. It had to be undone. And that could happen only if the creator got inside his creation and let his creatures do to do him what Adam and Eve had wanted to — kill him. The two of them had never minded being. They rather liked it, in fact. What they didn't like, and liked less and less, was being creatures. Being on their own meant getting rid of God. Thanks to being sacrificed to himself God managed to put everything back the way it was before it went off the track.Back then, this might well have sounded to you every bit as likely as global warming does to a lot of people these days. So off you go with your new friend Paul, who takes you to this big house, where there are a lot of people who think as Paul does. They're all there for a ritual meal. Bread and wine will be blessed and passed around, though after the blessing, Paul explains, it isn't bread and wine anymore. It's the body and blood of that Palestinian preacher he told you about, who was God. Eating God means that, like the Palestinian preacher, death for these people will only be an interruption. They will rise from the grave just as he did and never die again.
The surly village atheist will grumble that this is prima facie nonsense. No one in his right mind could take it seriously. Which is to miss the point. For millions upon millions have taken it seriously and millions still do. That is a matter worth investigating, but you're not going to get anywhere by presuming that most people are and always have been damn fools. There has to be a better explanation than that. If it really were patent nonsense, most people would have noticed. But most have seen it altogether differently. So there is either something wrong with them or there is something to what they profess.Of course, if you were a citizen of Alexandria two millennia ago, you would not have seen things as we do today, just as we do not see them as you would have then. Though the differences may not be as sharp as we like to think. If a physician tells us to pay attention our dreams, we become as attentive to them as Calpurnia. Many of us think we should farm the way our ancestors did and eat only the grains they raised. Many others observe what look a lot like a direct descendent of ancient dietary laws and exercise with an intensity that brings to mind the mortification of the flesh monks and nuns once engaged in.But however different the sense and sensibility of our distant ancestors may have been from ours, there is no reason to think they were stupider than we are. They can lay claim to some heavy-duty achievements: agriculture, domestication of animals, fire, cities, language, art — the list goes on and on. Without what they did, we'd be back where they were.This article in Nature makes it plain that a 13th-century monk named Robert Grosseteste could probably still hold his own and more at MIT. Back in old Alexandria, the entertainment on offer probably included works by guys named Aeschylus and Sophocles. Plato was widely taught. Everybody knew Homer. We turn out movies about vampires and zombies, wizards and superheroes.
So maybe we should try to figure out what made our forebears think the world could be saved through a peculiar act of divine expiation. We can start with their rhetorical algebra, the equations they constructed out of metaphor.
Local Arts ...
Andrea Clearfield's Music Salon, performers will include: singer/songwriter Chana Rothman; Bill Koutsouros and Animus; The Perseverance Jazz Band; soprano Melissa Shippen and concert pianist Yu Xi Wang; Wanamaker Lewis and the Zazous Swing Band; and Mobious Percussion Quartet. Sunday, March 23, 2014, 3 pm, Main Line Reform Temple, 10 Montgomery Avenue, Wynnewood, PA 19096. More here.
Red Sofa Reading Series, poetry reading workshop, readings with Rich Villar, Leah Umansky and Kasey Jueds, Hosted by Hila Ratzabi. Friday May 9th, 7pm, The Red Sofa Reading Series @ Indy Hall, 22 North 3rd Street Philadelphia, PA 19106. More here.
Main Line Writers Group, Critique Night, Wednesday, April 16, 2014, 7 pm, Michael's Restaurant 130 Town Center Rd, King of Prussia, PA. More here.
Tuaregs rock hard …
… Tinariwen merges sounds of the desert and guitar jams.
This group of Tuareg musicians from northern Mali sing in their native language of Tamashek, dress in long flowing robes and taguelmoust headscarves, and use traditional African percussion instruments in creating their trance-inducing sound.
What would Randa Jarrar, who still hates "white" belly dancers, have to say about this? (I put white in quotes because modern Egyptians are classified as caucasian.)
Getting to know what words do …
… English teaching: Johnson: Talking past each other | The Economist. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… English departments should require an interdisciplinary class with linguistics on the grammar of the English language. Literature departments should cultivate more scholars who focus on language itself rather than literature alone. (Their academic research could focus on historical changes in English; how literary writers employ grammar devices; data-driven analysis of great English writing; the use of dialect and non-standard English; and so on.) In exchange, linguistics departments should require their students to take an English department class, to let those scientifically minded students broaden their horizons with the close reading of literary texts.Not a bad idea, but teaching grammar in grade school the old-fashioned way would be better. There are some things you learn better when you are younger. The value of something like The Elements of Style, which I read right after I graduated from high school, is not that it's the last word on the subject — it isn't — but that it puts the subject into focus, so you can find your way around. As Robertson Davies said, it teaches you how to make the verbal equivalent of a chicken coop. But if you aim to build a house some day, starting with a chicken coop isn't such a bad idea.
A true wonder …
… Nigeness: Oil Drum Cello. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I linked to the video a couple of years ago, but gladly do so again, because Nige is right. It is intensely moving.
I linked to the video a couple of years ago, but gladly do so again, because Nige is right. It is intensely moving.
Among other things …
… AWP 2014: When Book Reviews Also Tell Stories | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog.
Meet the deadline and the space constraints.
Meet the deadline and the space constraints.
Reading habits …
… Where I’m Reading From by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… I’ve been thinking how useful it might be if all of us “professionals” were to put on record—some dedicated website perhaps—a brief account of how we came to hold the views we do on books, or at least how we think we came to hold them. If each of us stated where we were coming from, perhaps some light could be thrown on our disagreements.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Old-time religion still around …
… The Rise of Secular Religion - The American Interest. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I haven't read Jody's book yet, but the pessimism the review notes may derive from the realization that, however fervent the brand of secularism may be, it remains secular, of this world and no other, and is in fact a grotesque parody of the genuine article, retaining for the most part its worst characteristics, the self-righteousness and urge to persecute and prohibit. "They are, for the most part, politically liberal, preferring that government rather than private associations (such as intact families or the churches they left behind) address social concerns." So much for charity.
I haven't read Jody's book yet, but the pessimism the review notes may derive from the realization that, however fervent the brand of secularism may be, it remains secular, of this world and no other, and is in fact a grotesque parody of the genuine article, retaining for the most part its worst characteristics, the self-righteousness and urge to persecute and prohibit. "They are, for the most part, politically liberal, preferring that government rather than private associations (such as intact families or the churches they left behind) address social concerns." So much for charity.
Bukowski: "So You Want to be a Writer?"
Released in a posthumously published collection in 2003, the Bukowski poem “So You Want to be a Writer?” (above) warns the reader:From Open Culture. Here is more Bukowski from Open Culture: A Reading of Charles Bukowski’s First Published Story, “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip” (1944)
if you have to sit for hoursLater, the poem continues:
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die
or it dies in you.
Educated beyond his intelligence …
… Former NSA Official Thinks A Blog Containing Nothing But His Own Tweets Is 'Defamatory' | Techdirt.
One has to wonder if someone so taken with his own credentials has any capacity for realizing when he's made a fool of himself.
One has to wonder if someone so taken with his own credentials has any capacity for realizing when he's made a fool of himself.
Conviction-averse …
… Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight: The Emptiness of Data Journalism | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The intellectual predispositions that Silver ridicules as “priors” are nothing more than beliefs. What is so sinister about beliefs? He should be a little more wary of scorning them, even in degraded form: without beliefs we are nothing but data, himself included, and we deserve to be considered not only from the standpoint of our manipulability. I am sorry that he finds George Will and Paul Krugman repetitious, but should they revise their beliefs so as not to bore him? Repetition is one of the essential instruments of persuasion, and persuasion is one of the essential activities of a democracy. I do not expect Silver to relinquish his positivism—a prior if ever there was one—because I find it tedious.
Runaway Government ...
“I salute Sen. Feinstein,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference of the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I’ll tell you, you take on the intelligence community, you’re a person of courage, and she does not do that lightly. Not without evidence, and when I say evidence, documentation of what it is that she is putting forth.”
Pelosi added that she has always fought for checks and balances on CIA activity and its interactions with Congress: “You don’t fight it without a price because they come after you and they don’t always tell the truth."
Sounds like a real hero …
… TaxProf Blog: Death of Former IRS Commissioner Randolph Thrower; Was Fired for Refusing President's Request to Audit His Enemies.
Randolph Thrower, who died last week at age 100, had the rare courage to resist a sitting U.S. president, at the cost of his job.
Just a thought …
Something added. Post bumped.Fervent rationalists notwithstanding, there are other ways of getting at the truth besides reason. The reason the skilled craftsman knows how to do what needs to be done is that he is a virtuoso of tools. A wood-carver is an aficionado of chisels, keen to the nuance of their differences. He also knows the limits of his art, for it is there that he must do his best work. Above all, he knows where it belongs and never let's it intrude elsewhere.Science has taught us much about the mechanics of reality. But there is much more to reality than the mechanics of it. A thorough knowledge of the biochemistry of the carrot will not you make you a better cook, or even a good one. A cook approaches a carrot from a different direction on the way to another destination.We are blessed with a variety of tools for use in apprehending truth. The trick is to make the best use of them in consort — the proper tools at their proper tasks. Perhaps we should think of ourselves not as machines, but as instruments.
"Something unknown …
… is doing we don't know what." Bryan Appleyard — God the Teapot. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The quote is from Sir Arthur Eddington — a far more accomplished scientist than Richard Dawkins — and I think it is as true a statement as one is likely to encounter. Anything humans get involved with can be put to a bad use — religion, science, a hammer. At their best religion and science in their quite different ways can help us come to terms with the mystery of being. At their worst, they nourish some humans' bottomless appetite for self-righteous aggression.
Russell as a thinker has seemed over-rated to me since I was 16 and read Why I Am Not a Christian in the Holmesburg Library. His attempt to rebut Aquinas's argument from cause was that he could easily imagine an infinite series of causes. Even at 16 I could see that the question did not have anything to do with what he or anyone else could imagine, since I could easily imagine that Russell had not written that sentence. Moreover, I didn't think that he or anyone else could imagine an infinite anything, infinity being beyond the capacity of a finite mind.
The quote is from Sir Arthur Eddington — a far more accomplished scientist than Richard Dawkins — and I think it is as true a statement as one is likely to encounter. Anything humans get involved with can be put to a bad use — religion, science, a hammer. At their best religion and science in their quite different ways can help us come to terms with the mystery of being. At their worst, they nourish some humans' bottomless appetite for self-righteous aggression.
Russell as a thinker has seemed over-rated to me since I was 16 and read Why I Am Not a Christian in the Holmesburg Library. His attempt to rebut Aquinas's argument from cause was that he could easily imagine an infinite series of causes. Even at 16 I could see that the question did not have anything to do with what he or anyone else could imagine, since I could easily imagine that Russell had not written that sentence. Moreover, I didn't think that he or anyone else could imagine an infinite anything, infinity being beyond the capacity of a finite mind.
We can only hope …
Will Americans Ever Appreciate Max Beerbohm’s Very English Dandy Wit? – Flavorwire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I love Zuleika, if only because it contains my all-time favorite periodic sentence ("Last of all leapt Mr. Trent-Garby, who, catching his foot in the ruined flower box, fell head-long, and was, I regret to say, killed."). But it is not my favorite Beerbohm. That would be Seven Men.
A thought for today …
Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.
— Tobias Smollett, born on this date in 1721
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Attention, philly-area poets …
Poet Leonard Gotarek forwarded to me the following email, which he said I could post here.
Laughter in the dark …
… Uncensored John Simon: On Losers and Laughers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The customary explanation is that people who spent a lot of money for a good time will imagine they are having fun no matter what. There may even be a more depressing reason though: that because they themselves have no conversation and wit to speak of, they are impressed by whatever seems like cleverness to them. And compared to their ineptitude, it may even be witty. And so they laugh at almost anything. But because the actors expect no laughter there, they rightly do not pause for any, and so lines get lost, which justifiably annoys those who know better. It is the sort of thing that can make one despair of the human race.Some years ago, when Debbie and I went to see About Schmidt — a perfectly dreadful film, to be sure — some people in the audience apparently thought it was a comedy and kept laughing at things that were meant to evoke pathos. So far as I could tell, they enjoyed the film a good deal more than I did.
Giving his profession a bad name …
… Instapundit � Blog Archive � PHILOSOPHY PROFESSORS SOMETIMES WONDER WHY THEIR PROFESSION HAS LOST PUBLIC RESPECT. THIS GUY’S A PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR.
I mentioned recently how during the dark ages of television an NBC program called Wisdom broadcast a few interviews with philosopher William Ernest Hocking, who was also an emeritus professor of philosophy. That would suggest a certain measure of public respect, though I think by that time Hocking was passé in philosophy departments.
This fellow seems not have grasped how important freedom of thought and expression are to his profession, which is not supposed to penalize opposing views, but to engage them. He could well be an entertaining teacher, but he is a dreadful professor of philosophy.
Historical Jesus, and other Biblical Resources ...
Video and audio of leading scholars such as James D.G. Dunn, Sean Frayne, John P. Meier, Albert Schweitzer (!), Gaza Vermes. And the less scholarly like John Dominic Crossan. At Biblical Studies Online here
I read John P. Meier's A Marginal Jew, Vol. I, years ago ('92?) soon after it came out. It was in the local Borders (that was a bookstore chain for those of a more recent age. No iPads back then. No Amazon yet either.)
I picked it up because I was going on a suddenly scheduled trip, and it's over 700 pages with copious footnotes. I read every single page, even the footnotes, over the next month or so because Meier introduced me to a level of honest, intelligent research that was outside of anything I had encountered in the religious world up till then. Meier's book received the imprimatur of the Church as well, he is a RC priest and now a professor at Notre Dame, and has released four volumes over the past 20 years in his Marginal Jew accomplishment, with a fifth and final coming so.
The site has Meier and the others lecturing on various Historical Jesus topics, as well as more general Biblical study resources, listed on the home page here, and really seems to be one of those marvelous things that the Internet makes possible.
I read John P. Meier's A Marginal Jew, Vol. I, years ago ('92?) soon after it came out. It was in the local Borders (that was a bookstore chain for those of a more recent age. No iPads back then. No Amazon yet either.)
I picked it up because I was going on a suddenly scheduled trip, and it's over 700 pages with copious footnotes. I read every single page, even the footnotes, over the next month or so because Meier introduced me to a level of honest, intelligent research that was outside of anything I had encountered in the religious world up till then. Meier's book received the imprimatur of the Church as well, he is a RC priest and now a professor at Notre Dame, and has released four volumes over the past 20 years in his Marginal Jew accomplishment, with a fifth and final coming so.
The site has Meier and the others lecturing on various Historical Jesus topics, as well as more general Biblical study resources, listed on the home page here, and really seems to be one of those marvelous things that the Internet makes possible.
Vintage cosmology proves impressive …
… History: A medieval multiverse : Nature News & Comment.
De Luce (On Light), written in 1225 in Latin and dense with mathematical thinking, explores the nature of matter and the cosmos. Four centuries before Isaac Newton proposed gravity and seven centuries before the Big Bang theory, Grosseteste describes the birth of the Universe in an explosion and the crystallization of matter to form stars and planets in a set of nested spheres around Earth. … Grosseteste's thesis demonstrates how advanced natural philosophy was in the thirteenth century — it was no dark age.Well, the so-called Dark Ages were a few centuries earlier. Grosseteste lived during the High Middle Ages.
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