Thursday, February 19, 2009
Boys will be boys ...
... Hemingway’s fight club (1936).
I am inclined to take with several grains of salt Hemingway's own testimony regarding his pugilistic prowess. Canadian writer Morley Callaghan saw Papa (before he became Papa) laid out in the ring by Scott Fitzgerald, who was smaller and lighter but had boxed in college.
2,000-year-old gags ...
... What made the Greeks laugh? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The most puzzling aspect of the jokes in the Philogelos is the fact that so many of them still seem vaguely funny. Across two millennia, their hit-rate for raising a smile is better than that of most modern joke books. And unlike the impenetrably obscure cartoons in nineteenth-century editions of Punch, these seem to speak our own comic language. In fact, the stand-up comedian Jim Bowen has recently managed to get a good laugh out of twenty-first-century audiences with a show entirely based on jokes from the Philogelos (including one he claims – a little generously – to be a direct ancestor of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch).
The future of Updike ...
... Adam Begley to Write John Updike Biography.
... Run, Writer: Updike Biography in the Works.
(Hat tips, Dave Lull.)
... Run, Writer: Updike Biography in the Works.
(Hat tips, Dave Lull.)
What is labor? We cannot be satisfied with the inadequate description stating that labor is the mode of being "at" the world in which men transform nature as it is given in order to take from it what he needs to provide for his physical being. Man does not merely labor to live, to remain alive by eating and drinking. Strictly speaking, not even of eating and drinking may we say that we do these actions exclusively in order to live. What man wants is to live, and eating and drinking themselves are modes of living.
- William A. Luijpen, Existentional Phenomenology
This, it seems to me, points up the flaw at the heart of evolutionary psychology. By undertaking to explain all human activity as modes of survival it turns a means into an end and completely misses the true end. We do not live in order to survive. Those of us who do not live at a subsistence level do not even think usually in terms of survival. We are not misers of life. We do not hoard our vital powers. Instead, we spend our lives doing things, even things that put our lives our risk. Moreover, we humans are only too aware that we cannot - and do not - survive indefinitely.
Could this be ...
... liberal fascism? OKC officer pulls man over for anti-Obama sign on vehicle.
Maybe police officers should start having to carry a dictionary.
See also A Rather Expansive Definition.
Maybe police officers should start having to carry a dictionary.
See also A Rather Expansive Definition.
I've never thought much of the notion of hate speech or hate crimes. If you beat me over the head with a baseball bat I think it's pretty clear you don't much like me. Aggravated assault charges seem to cover the matter.
Stairway to heaven ...
... The Light of Christ Abounds in Oakland's New Cathedral. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Wow
... these people really go at it: In which the data back up our habitual suspicions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who observes - and I quite agree with him - that our mutual friend Henry Gee is a brave man.)
How curious ...
... Darkling. (Hat tip, Maxine Clarke.)
Well, this from Milton certainly seems prophetic of Keats:
The wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note.
Well, this from Milton certainly seems prophetic of Keats:
The wakeful bird
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid,
Tunes her nocturnal note.
We link ...
... you decide: Is a Play About Gaza Anti-Semitic? Read the Script. (Hat tip, Roger Miller.)
And he's right ...
... Poet Laureate Andrew Motion calls for all children to be taught the Bible. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Even Richard Dawkins agrees. In The God Delusion, he says that "the English Bible needs to be a part of our education," because it "includes passages of outstanding literary merit" and is "a major source of our literary culture. " He even provides nearly two pages of "biblical, or Bible-inspired, phrases and sentences that occur commonly in literary or conversational English. "
Mostly good ...
... 25 Famous Librarians Who Changed History. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mao Zedong and J. Edgar Hoover. Wouldn't want to return a book late to those guys.
Mao Zedong and J. Edgar Hoover. Wouldn't want to return a book late to those guys.
RIP ...
... Edward Upward: Writer, poet and friend of Isherwood, he was the last of the 'Auden generation'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Quote of the day ...
The main difference between Mac Lane and me, as I see it, is a matter of temperament. He is by temperament a reductionist, and I am not. He believes that the reduction of mathematical concepts to their abstract logical components is the main road of progress in understanding. I prefer to deepen my understanding of abstract components by building them up into concrete structures. I do not deny the power and the beauty of reductionist science, as exemplified in the axioms and theorems of abstract algebra or algebraic topology. But I assert the equal power and beauty of constructive science, as exemplified in Gödel's construction of an undecidable proposition or in Gentzen's construction of an enlarged domain for mathematical logic.
Freeman Dyson, reply in the NYRB to a letter from Saunders Mac Lane: 'A Matter of Temperament'.
By the sea (again) ...
... `The Eternal Note of Sadness'.
"Dover Beach" is routinely cited for its comment regarding faith, but what has always struck me about the poem is how uncannily prophetic of the Great War the last two lines - "Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, /Where ignorant armies clash by night" - seem.
Poe wars (cont'd.) ...
... Gothic literature that made Quaker City quake.
N.B. (Edward Pettit, the La Salle University teacher more commonly known as "the Philly Poe Guy," will speak at the Library Company on Thursday at 5:30 p.m.)
N.B. (Edward Pettit, the La Salle University teacher more commonly known as "the Philly Poe Guy," will speak at the Library Company on Thursday at 5:30 p.m.)
Literary support ...
... The trusted friends who steer novelists away from cliche.
I should think a good, old-fashioned cold-hearted editor would be a safer choice than people fro your own social circle who may, in fact, unknowingly share the same cliches.
I should think a good, old-fashioned cold-hearted editor would be a safer choice than people fro your own social circle who may, in fact, unknowingly share the same cliches.
No nonsense ...
... Interview with Len Deighton. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Now that's an unusual way to encourage a child to read.
“My mother was a cook and my father was a chauffeur … One day he said to me, ‘I won’t punish you for the terrible reports you bring home from school if I see you reading.’ That really did push me into reading books. I played truant all the time and I usually went to the Marylebone Reference library and I would just sit there all day long and read. A terrible kind of sedentary childhood I had, when I think about it.
Thanks to elberry ...
... for Griff takes a stand, which introduced me to the Traditio et Virtus blog. How resist a "reformed wizard and Roman Catholic"?
Check out Boswell’s footnotes also.
Check out Boswell’s footnotes also.
Spiritus ...
... THE EARTH EXHALES. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"... there is no reasonable doubt that greenhouse gases released by industrialisation, together with the destruction of forest for farming and more recently bio-fuels, are at the back of global warming today." Professor Gray should acquaint himself with Climate Debate Daily. So should everyone.
I would not describe myself as a global warming denier, but I am skeptical enough - given the inconsistent and contradictory evidence - to consider myself agnostic.
I also do not see that the Gaia theory is a theory in the same scientific sense that Darwin's theory is. But I do find this interesting:
"... there is no reasonable doubt that greenhouse gases released by industrialisation, together with the destruction of forest for farming and more recently bio-fuels, are at the back of global warming today." Professor Gray should acquaint himself with Climate Debate Daily. So should everyone.
I would not describe myself as a global warming denier, but I am skeptical enough - given the inconsistent and contradictory evidence - to consider myself agnostic.
I also do not see that the Gaia theory is a theory in the same scientific sense that Darwin's theory is. But I do find this interesting:
Lovelock is generous to a fault in his response to defenders of neo-Darwinian orthodoxy such as Richard Dawkins, who attacked the theory because of its seeming reintroduction of purpose into biology - an objection Lovelock was able to rebut when he developed a model of a self-regulating planetary system, Daisyworld, that functions in neo-Darwinian terms. Gaia theory may yet suggest that the currently dominant version of Darwinism needs to be revised, but the theory can be formulated in terms that are consistent with the highly reductive accounts of evolution favoured by most biologists.This gives me the distinct impression that, for some people, what is of utmost importance is that evolution conform to certain reductionist presuppositions, as distinct from going wherever the evidence leads.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Resurrection ...
... Louis Riel rises again.
Riel led two resistance movements against the Canadian. Hence, the treason charges.
Riel led two resistance movements against the Canadian. Hence, the treason charges.
The Coen brothers ...
... of poetry: Northwest writers at work: The poetry posse. (Hat tip, Jim Carmin.)
Whitey doggerel ...
... Richard Stilgoe in da house. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Apropos of nothing: I have been spending the day writing something about Gaston Bachelard, author of The Poetics of Space, the introduction to which is by one John Stilgoe.
Apropos of nothing: I have been spending the day writing something about Gaston Bachelard, author of The Poetics of Space, the introduction to which is by one John Stilgoe.
Show time ...
... Geert Wilders Is a Test for Western Civilization. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Gordon Brown's government seems to have flunked.
Gordon Brown's government seems to have flunked.
Moving on ...
... Some of the things I have done to get over you.
This is described in an email as "a project gathering first person testimony for a theatre installation. We want people to write to us with some of the things they have done to get over someone. We post a selection of contributions on the blog. Names and email addresses remain confidential."
I am not sure if I have ever managed to get over anyone I have truly cared about, though the evidence is overwhelming that they have managed to get over me.
I am not sure if I have ever managed to get over anyone I have truly cared about, though the evidence is overwhelming that they have managed to get over me.
The consolations of philosophy ...
... or the lack thereof: Stabs in the Dark.
Well, one of the things I got from my Catholic upbringing is that life is, among other things, a preparation for death. I find I often skip to the end of a biography to see how the hero has met his end. But then, when reading a collected poems, I often read the last ones first, and composers' late music is often more interesting than their youthful works. "In my end is my beginning."
See also the post elberry links to here: superb and obscure. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
See also the post elberry links to here: superb and obscure. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One tough lamb ...
... Baa Thump.
The extent to which Nige and I think alike is astounding. I have frequently remarked that the only reason so many birds congregate on certain key dates at the Cape May Bird Observatory is that they know those dates are when the humans gather in great numbers and can be easily observed close-up. (I avoid such gatherings. I like to encounter birds on my own. I like solitary walks.)
Important gestures ...
... Flailing kids have bigger vocabulary.
Gee, I've been flailing about for most of my life. And I have a pretty good vocabulary.
Gee, I've been flailing about for most of my life. And I have a pretty good vocabulary.
My latest column ...
... is up: Listening to the aural magic.
We are used to seeing an object in terms of the articulable sound by which we designate it, but imagine what it must have been like when humans could make the sounds but hadn’t yet come to designate any objects by means of them.
Substance and form ...
... More on faith and reason. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Another problem with current understandings of reason is that they are overly analytical. They look for elementary properties of elementary particles, while human life mostly involves dealing with enduring functional patterns in complex systems. Our knowledge of the latter is more like recognizing essences than noting measurements, and current views of reason can't make much of essences.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Thanks to Bryan ...
... a good many more people are stopping by. So I thought I would bring to their attention these to posts: Promising ... and The Better Maker ...
Oh, goody ...
... When authors go on attack - it's probably smart to get out of the way. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Ponderables ...
Materialism actually lives by virtue of a hidden contradiction. For it is entirely impossible for a materialist, as a materialist philosopher, to account for his own being if he continues to hold fast to the conception that there is only one type of being - namely, the being of a thing. The contradiction consists in this that the materialist, on the one hand, admits that tables and chairs, geological layers, and rain showers are incapable of creating a philosophy while, on the other, as a materialistic philosopher, he wants to explain his own being by means of the same categories through which he expresses the being of chairs and tables, geological layers and rain showers.
- William A. Luijpen, Existential Phenomenology
We have become accustomed to considering the nature of reality solely in terms of what is "out there." But the relation between what is actually "out there" and what we perceive to be "out there" is tenuous at best. For example, the frequency of a sound-stimulus that strikes the cochlea and the electrical response this causes to take place in the auditory cortex are entirely dissimilar. Strictly speaking, the so-called "objective" world, the world of things-in-themselves, is unknown to us. So perhaps the sounder approach to the nature of reality is by way of the only portal open to us: our own consciousness. And consciousness involves more than responses to external stimuli. The myths that rise from its depths are every bit as real as the bricks and mortar, clouds and tempests we encounter "out there."
About time ...
... Beautiful work, long neglected, is given its due.
I became a Tooker fan when I was in high school (odd kid, eh?), but I've never found the paintings disturbing actually. I react to them the way I do to Beckett's ohio impromptu: I find them somehow exhilarating. Aquinas says somewhere that truth is the conformity of the mind to reality. That's what thse paintings - and Beckett's little play - do for me. And truth can be exhilarating.
... paintings like Government Bureau, Ward, and the chilling Landscape With Figures - humans imprisoned in a warren of tiny cubicles - not only still resonate but can also even be mildly frightening."humans imprisoned in a warren of tiny cubicles"? Sounds like the Inquirer newsroom.
Take note ...
... Prairie Mary on the air: GEORGE COLE'S "REAL TIME". (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who adds - and I agree - "I'll bet this'll be an interesting interview.")
Don't be too sure ...
... Literary certainty.
Certainty about anything is largely unattainable. I usually write because I have to - not because of any inner compulsion, but because of a looming deadline, which, like the prospect of hanging, remarkably focuses the mind.
For Presidents Day ...
... The Good, the Bad, and William Henry Harrison. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My own favorite remains James K. Polk.
My own favorite remains James K. Polk.
The future of reading ...
... according to the NYT, anyway: In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Why doesn't somebody write an article about Dave?
Why doesn't somebody write an article about Dave?
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Indeed ...
... Noel Perrin on Charles Williams: A Universe Charged With Meaning.
I mostly agree with what Art says about C.S. Lewis's fiction. The one exception, I think, is Till We Have Faces, which is also not like anything else Lewis wrote. I reviewed Williams's All Hallows' Eve last year for Halloween, but the review doesn't seem to have survived online. I would also recommend his Descent Into Hell, which has as frightening a climax as I know of.
The intrepid Dave has found My review of All Hallows' Eve.
The intrepid Dave has found My review of All Hallows' Eve.
It's time again ...
... for Sunday Salon: Norman's icy challenge.
I notice that Maxine has given Petrona a new look. I like it.
I notice that Maxine has given Petrona a new look. I like it.
And a note of thanks ...
... to Dave Lull. If it weren't for Dave, not only would this blog have a paucity of things to link to, but I doubt if it would be anywhere near as well known as it has become. The OWL keeps careful watch over the proceedings here. So thank you very much, Mr. Lull.
(And of course I'm not the only person who blogs here. Judith will be returning soon and will bring an idiosyncratic liveliness that I could never match. And John and Katie and Eliza all drop in from time to time as well.)
(And of course I'm not the only person who blogs here. Judith will be returning soon and will bring an idiosyncratic liveliness that I could never match. And John and Katie and Eliza all drop in from time to time as well.)
Those 100 best blogs ...
... some reaction: Faith, Philosophy, Controversy and Understanding, `100 Best Blogs', Top 100 blogs.
As readers of the blog well know, Mark's, Patrick's and David's blogs are also among my favorites. So is Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher.
As readers of the blog well know, Mark's, Patrick's and David's blogs are also among my favorites. So is Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher.
A lovely post ...
... from Maxine: True confessions of a blogger. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Reading about pain, and experiencing its sharp pangs, when you are not expecting it is unsettling and quite dramatically affecting. It comes at you out of left field. This has happened to me before when reading blogs - I've suddenly come across a post that raises old, buried wounds and have been unable to read on. But this cluster in the past few days has been unprecedented. Would I write on my blog if I'd been rejected in some way, or was suffering from some particular cause? Probably not. I suppose that makes me a repressed coward in some respects.No, Maxine, you're neither repressed nor a coward. I wouldn't write about that sort of thing on this blog, either. We're just not the sort of people who would do that. I'd write to you instead.
From the Observer ...
... of all places: A right hook to the left.
Interesting that this book is being reviewed in England. It was largely ignored here.
Interesting that this book is being reviewed in England. It was largely ignored here.
Nige has been busy ...
... even having a brief, Kate Winslet moment:
... Sunday Miscellaneous.
... he also leaps to Cheeta's defense: Cheeta Latest.
... Sydney in Sonnets.
... Sunday Miscellaneous.
... he also leaps to Cheeta's defense: Cheeta Latest.
... Sydney in Sonnets.
Thank you Nannette ..
... Getting to Know Us: Frank Wilson.
Obviously, I'm having a good day. I think I'd better go an put a compress on my ego.
Obviously, I'm having a good day. I think I'd better go an put a compress on my ego.
Bryan compiles ...
... A guide to the 100 best blogs - part I. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
My thanks to Bryan for including this blog.
My thanks to Bryan for including this blog.
The prime of Miss Spark ...
... Brock Clarke on Muriel Spark’s genuine artifice. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Maybe ...
... Yes, we can — so we do.
I'm very selective when it comes to technology. Obviously, I am fond of the computer. But I don't have an iPod and am unlikely to get one. I have a Kindle. I think it's extremely useful for traveling or commuting. I also like it that I can get books I am somewhat interested in, but not interested in enough to pay the full price for, at a lower Kindle price. I don't have a cell phone, but my wife does. I have become accustomed to reading newspaper and magazine articles online.
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