Today is the anniversary of Husserl’s birth in 1859.
Friday, April 08, 2022
Well, how about that …
… Shock result in particle experiment could spark physics revolution - BBC News.
The scientists at the Fermilab Collider Detector (CDF) in Illinois have found only a tiny difference in the mass of the W Boson compared with what the theory says it should be - just 0.1%. But if confirmed by other experiments, the implications are enormous. The so-called Standard Model of particle physics has predicted the behaviour and properties of sub-atomic particles with no discrepancies whatsoever for fifty years. Until now.
Appalling …
… ‘EVIL HAS NO LIMITS’.
Five Five kids among 50 dead as Russian missile with ‘for the children’ scrawled on side blitzes Ukraine train station kids as Russian missile with ‘for the children’ scrawled on the side blitzes Ukraine train station.
Putin really is a world class dirt bag. Apparently, 20,000 Russian troops have perished. Has anybody in Russia figured out yet who is responsible for that? Here’s a hint: His first name begins with V.
Remembering a neglected poet …
… ‘Your Grin Is Gone. So’s Mine'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I was unfamiliar with her work. But I’m going to familiarize myself with it. I’m so old I assumed that sack
referred to just sherry.
Something to think on …
Philosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, indeed apodictically rigorous science — the dream is over.
— Edmund Husserl, born on this date in 1859
Thursday, April 07, 2022
Sounds about right …
… ‘This is a crazy, unjust attack’: Pink Floyd re-form to support Ukraine.
The invasion of Ukraine changed Gilmour’s mind. “I hate it when people say things like ‘As a parent, I …’, but the practicalities of having an extended Ukrainian family is part of this. My grandchildren are half-Ukrainian, my daughter-in-law Janina is Ukrainian – her grandmother was in Kharkiv until three weeks ago. She’s very old, disabled, in a wheelchair and has a carer, and Janina and her family managed to get her all the way across Ukraine to the Polish border and now they’ve managed to get her to Sweden, literally last week.”
This doesn’t sound good …
… A ‘Stunning’ Level of Student Disconnection.
“Students seem to have lost their sense of connection with the university and university community, and their sense of purpose in attending,” said Stephanie Masson, who teaches English at Northwestern State University, in Louisiana. After two or more years of masking, they feel as if it’s not OK to get close and talk to someone. “It’s almost like they just prefer to sit in their little cone of silence.”
Vey interesting …
… Putin's 'lake of blood': Pond is dyed red at Russian embassy in Lithuania to condemn Ukraine war | Daily Mail Online.
I gather that Putin is nowhere near as bright as I presumed he was, but he must realize that this business hasn't gone anywhere near as well as he had presumed it would. And it seems pretty obvious that war crimes have been committed.
Good …
… Wind Energy Company Fined $8 Million for Killing 150 Eagles.
Some green activists, including California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger, have warned that some energy alternatives such as wind are no better for the environment than oil and gas, as the mass killing of birds is just as environmentally harmful.
Gee, do you think?
A must-read …
… Against Scientific Gatekeeping.
During the last two years, public health officials got a lot of things wrong, although it remains to be seen if they will ever admit it. Multiple studies, for example, have concluded that there is little or no evidence that shelter-in-place orders and other lockdown strategies had an important impact on COVID-19 infections or deaths. Other research has shown that such restrictions disproportionately harmed the young and the poor.Public health officials criticized Kuldorff et al. for stressing natural immunity's role in protecting against infection. On January 19, 2022, the CDC publicly acknowledged that during the delta wave, natural immunity had offered better protection than vaccination. The authors of the Great Barrington Declaration had been largely correct.
The author is a surgeon. This is comprehensive and detailed. You should read the whole thing.
Nice …
… To a Cat by Algernon Charles Swinburne | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Swinburne was born on April 5, 1837
Something to think on …
That best portion of a man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
— William Wordsworth, born on this date in 1770
Wednesday, April 06, 2022
Baudelaire gets his due …
… Mirror-Man: On Aaron Poochigian’s Translation of Baudelaire. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Poochigian’s Baudelaire is evidence of an ongoing Golden Age of Translation from many languages, including Italian, German, and Russian. It’s a good time to be a reader. We obdurately monolingual Americans, of course, have much to lose, especially in the work of so musical a poet as Baudelaire. Our debt to translators like Poochigian, who are comparably sensitive to both sound and sense, is enormous. In his translation note, Poochigian tells us he has attempted to replicate “the almost magical effect of the originals and to render beautiful in English Baudelaire’s nontraditional beauties — disease, vice, intoxication, and decay.”
More of the same …
… Philadelphia's Woke Arts Monoculture | City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
When plays about slavery and race came into their own in the city about a decade ago, they were welcomed. Unfortunately, Philadelphia’s arts and cultural scene today is locked into an endless repetition of these themes. It’s as if each museum and theater were in competition for a woke merit badge.
Something to think on …
We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death
— Alexander Herzen, born on this date in 1812
Anniversary …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'We Had a Drop Together. Welcome Home!' (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Edwin Arlington Robinson died on this date, April 6, in 1935, at age sixty-five..
Tuesday, April 05, 2022
A poet’s letter …
… Berryman at letters by William Logan | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Letters, if not literature themselves, are servants to literature. They give the public face the texture of the private world. Depressively entertaining as Berryman’s are, they are unlikely to provide a future audience more than those of Dickens, or Shaw, or Elizabeth Bishop. They of course cannot answer the question that will always be asked: were Berryman’s poems any good? That raises a second question. Without the flaws and addictions, would we have had those poems at all? Had Berryman died at thirty-eight, as Dylan Thomas did, there would be no career to discuss.
Something to think on …
I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.
— Saul Bellow, who died on this date in 2005
Monday, April 04, 2022
Blogging note …
Once again, I have to go out early and run some errands. Blogging will get going again when I get back.
Something to think on …
Hope and fear cannot occupy the same space. Invite one to stay.
— Maya Angelou, born on this date in 1928
Sunday, April 03, 2022
Maybe it’s time …
… they excised the word Catholic from their name: Catholic university speaker: ‘crucify whiteness,’ embrace ‘hopelessness,’ ‘ethically lie’.
Blogging note …
I must get ready to head out to Mass, after which I will be having lunch with a friend. Blogging will resume some time later today.
Some heavy-duty philosophy …
… David Bentley Hart’s Post-Christian Pantheism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hart pretends that he is simply laying out the consequences of the Christian teaching that human beings can come to know God’s very essence. In fact he completely misses precisely what is distinctive about Christianity, what makes it a middle ground between the erroneous extremes we find in other religious traditions. On the one side we have the idea of God as a remote and standoffish first principle, to be contemplated and worshiped, but with whom we can never have an intimate relationship. On the other side we have the view that we can attain perfect union with God, but only because God is all there really is in the first place, and we are merely his manifestations. One side says that because God and man are distinct, the latter can never know the essence of the former. The other side says that because we can know the essence of God, God and man must not really be distinct.
Christianity says that this is a false choice. It teaches that though God and man are by nature truly distinct, we can via supernatural assistance nevertheless attain to a communion with him that is so deep that we will know his very essence, his inner Trinitarian life. We can, by adoption, thereby become sons of God—not mere servants, as the one view holds, though also not identical with God, as the other view claims. Hart essentially chooses one of the erroneous extremes—the pantheist one that collapses the distinction between God and his creatures—rather than opting for the authentically Christian middle ground.
Something to think on …
There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother for a son that transcends all other affections of the heart.
— Washington Irving, born on this date in 1783
Saturday, April 02, 2022
A backward glance …
I’ve walked many, many miles throughout my life. When I was in high school, I’d routinely walk through Pennypack Park, from the Frankford Avenue Bridge to Pine Road and back, an easy 20 miles. That Frankford Avenue Bridge, by the way, was built in 1697 and is, according to Wikipedia, the oldest surviving roadway bridge in the U.S. Back in colonial times, it was an installment on what was then called the King’s Highway.
Anyway, walking has always been my favorite mode of transportation. After all, it’s just you making your way through the world. You and the world in harmony. And you’re walking at the world’s pace. What can beat that?
And you notice things. Over time you get to know the buildings, corners, statues, restaurants. Thinking about them now, so many years later, you remember how you felt, as you walked past them, dreaming of your future.
Sounds reasonable to me …
… Former UN chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte calls for international arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin | Daily Mail Online.
Putin has, after all, targeted civilians. I believe that is a violation of international law. He deserves some payback.
Anniversary edition …
… Hunger of Memory - GODINE. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This new edition includes an introduction by Phillip Lopate and an afterword by Richard Rodriguez. Still as provocative as the year it was first published, Hunger of Memory is both a profound meditation on the price of education the working class must pay for its great benefit and a poetic self-portrait of a “scholarship boy.” Any reader moved by the power of words, including their power to change lives, needs to discover—or re-discover—Hunger of Memory.
The way of faith …
… Christopher Beha left the Catholic church and then came back. Now he’s writing a book about why. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I was curious how being Catholic factored into the challenges Beha faces as a writer. “I work at a mainstream magazine. I write for mainstream magazines. I also publish much of my work in the mainstream press,” he said. “I don’t think that atheist literary novelists have it any easier than Catholic ones. I do think there are things in my work that are important to me in what I’m doing, that get recognized in reviews by religious outlets, that don’t seem to get recognized in reviews by secular outlets. But that’s okay for me. I don’t feel like I’m misunderstood.” At the same time, he does feel that “there’s much in the culture at large that’s alienating”—a feeling he had even when he was not a practicing Catholic.
Revised and edited …
… The cult of Stalin the intellectual - New Statesman. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Why so many intellectuals glorified Stalin is a nice question. Part of the reason must be that Stalin was himself an intellectual. During the Second World War he enjoyed mass popularity in Britain, where he was feted as “good old Joe”. But the cult of Stalin in the West was the work of intellectuals who saw in him what they would like to be themselves: leaders with the power to reconstruct society on the basis of their ideas. HG Wells, Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and others revered Stalin for this reason. Writing in the Thirties, the French poet and essayist Paul Valéry observed that “the mere notion that the life of men could be organised on a collective plan is enough to give birth to the idea of dictatorship”. More than communism, it was the dream of overseeing a social order they had constructed that attracted intellectuals to Stalin
Blogging note …
I must go out shortly to do some shopping. I will start blogging again when I get back.
Something to think on …
Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers.
— Hans Christian Anderson, born on this date in 1895
Friday, April 01, 2022
Oh, I can’t wait …
… Greta Thunberg to publish 'The Climate Book' in October - UPI.com.
This is the biggest story in the world, and it must be spoken as far and wide as our voices can carry, and much further still," Thunberg said in a statement to The Bookseller. "That's why I have decided to use my platform to create this book, which is based on the best science currently available …
Exactly what qualifies to make a judgment regarding what is the best science?
She ain’t the only one …
…Disney is boasting about pushing 'gender theory' to kids.
Until wokeness overtook it, Disney could be counted on for safely age-appropriate entertainment. But why should parents continue to trust a company that is putting this kind of brainwashing into children’s entertainment? Why should kids be getting any sort of gender-identity lesson in school or at a theme park?
And why should Disney be in the business of sexualizing kids in any direction?
RIP …
… Their Pleas by Kelly Cherry | Poetry Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Kelly Cherry passed away on March 18.
Back in the day …
… A Slap, Followed by a Duel - JSTOR Daily. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Duels didn’t necessarily end in death, but that threat was certainly there. Both the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and the American politician Alexander Hamilton were already well known when they were killed in duels. (Three years before he was killed by Aaron Burr, Hamilton’s son Philip had been killed in a duel.) Before he became President, Andrew Jackson seems to have dueled at the drop of a slight, with one estimate suggesting he dueled over a hundred times, killing at least one person and taking a couple bullets himself in the process.
RIP …
… Richard Howard, Acclaimed Poet and Translator, Is Dead at 92 - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.
— Joseph de Maistre, born on this date in 1753
Thursday, March 31, 2022
Good question …
… Why Can't We Be Friends? - The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… we should take as our models those who understand that politics must always be subordinated to friendship. I think of Henry Clay Owen, the staunch Hoosier Republican editor of the Terre Haute Post, who in 1920 endorsed for president the admirable Socialist Party standard-bearer Eugene V. Debs because Debs—recently sprung from the federal hoosegow, where he’d been caged for “sedition”—was such a good “neighbor and friend.”
Makes sense to me …
… Education Declined When We Stopped Searching for God.
Scholars likewise studied religious topics. Medieval historian Lynn White, Jr. notes: “Every major scientist from about 1250 to about 1650, four hundred years during which our present scientific movement was taking form, considered himself also a theologian: Leibnitz and Newton are notable examples. The importance to science of the religious devotion which these men gave their work cannot be exaggerated.”
Life on wheels …
… Hitler, his driver and other stories - This captivating history of the motorcar is full of rich detail. We'll miss them when they're gone. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Towards the end the tone turns elegiac. Because the future is electric, and it is autonomous. Appleyard rightly loathes the idea that we will become "passive spectators" in our own journeys. Autonomous vehicles, for him, "represent a freedom-destroying victory over the driver's experience of serendipity, contingency, and faith and joy in their own competence". They also present serious legal and philosophical problems, which he summarises in a brilliantly offhand way: "Getting killed or maimed by a robot somehow feels a good deal more annoying than by a human."
It seems we just may …
… The big idea: do we still need religion? | Religion | The Guardian.
There are at least two reasons, however, why religions persist. One is the fact that, on average, religious people are generally happier, healthier and live longer. For better or for worse, they also have easier deaths when the time comes. The other is that religious people are more likely to feel that they belong to a community. In a survey I ran, those who reported attending religious services were depressed less frequently, felt their lives were more worthwhile, were more engaged with their local community, and felt greater trust towards others. These enormous benefits mean not only that religion has enduring appeal, but that religious practices make you “fit” in the evolutionary sense – and thus they tend to stick around.
Something to think on …
There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.
— John Fowles, born on this date in 1926
Wednesday, March 30, 2022
In case you wondered …
… How Compulsive Conformity Can Get People Killed:.
Everybody needs to learn about the dynamics of conformity. Blatant censorship, hostility to free speech, and campaigns to demonize mainstream American views were all unthinkable scenarios for most Americans just a few years ago.
I’m not given to conformity. I’m 80 years old. Why the hell should I be?
Our new commissars …
… Hedges: On Being Disappeared.
I received no inquiry or notice from YouTube. I vanished. In totalitarian systems you exist, then you don’t. I suppose this was done in the name of censoring Russian propaganda, although I have a hard time seeing how a detailed discussion of “Ulysses” or the biographies of Susan Sontag and J. Robert Oppenheimer had any connection in the eyes of the most obtuse censors in Silicon Valley with Vladimir Putin. Indeed, there is not one show that dealt with Russia.
I don’t agree with Hedges on everything — I certainly don”t support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel — but I don’t think he should be canceled.
Something to think on …
From the time we began to build houses and cities, since we invented the wheel, we have not advanced one step toward happiness. We have always been in halves. As long as we invent and progress in mechanical things and not in love, we shall not achieve happiness.
— Jean Giono, born on this date in 1896
In praise of Aaron Poochigian …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'It Can Also Do Nothing Beautifully'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Quite remarkable …
I am old enough to remember watching every Tuesday night. He was opposite Milton Berle. Berle’s ratings became noticeably after Sheen’s half-hour show ended. Sheen actually won an Emmy. And he and Berle were friends
Made-up history …
… The Bright Ages - The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I could go on (and on and on) about all the strange, needless errors in this strange, needless book. But I’d rather not. Actually, I try to avoid writing negative book reviews. I only made an exception this time because, at some level, the authors must know this is a bad book.
In case you wondered …
… WHAT KILLED CULTURAL ASPIRATION. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sooner or later one imagines that widespread antipathy to highbrow aspiration will have serious consequences for cultural engagement at any level. It may even have done so already. A reticence about being negative manifests itself in the familiar calls for a supposedly “objective” criticism that would in practice amount to something like advertising copy.
Something to think on …
Logic of itself cannot give anyone the answer to any questions of substance; but without logic we often do not know the import of what we know and often fall into fallacy and inconsistency.
— Peter Geach, born on this date in 1916
Monday, March 28, 2022
Another phony tough guy …
… Penn State comms professor calls for assassination of Trump: 'Should've been Lincoln'd' | The Post Millennial.
These people who go around wanting people they don’t like dead have probably never been anywhere near some of the places I’ve been very late at night that even I found scary. And bear in mind, some years ago, when a guy started walking toward me while opening a switchblade, I positioned my walking stick — then a fashion statement, not (as it is now) a utility — in a peculiar way and said to him in my best Clint Eastwood voice, “Go ahead, make my day.” He figured out that I wasn’t going to hit him in the head with my stick. I was going to deprive him of one of his eyeballs. He folded up his knife and walked away. I actually know how to use my walking stick — I have several — as a weapon. I wonder what “tough guy” Professor Zack would have done.
Another phony tough guy …
… Penn State professor called for death of Trump, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro - TheBlaze.
My old man was a genuine tough guy. You would never have known it, though, unless the situation called for him to be such. These guys shooting off their mouths are like this guy:
Something to think on …
We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.
— Mario Vargas Llosa, born on this date in 1936
Sounds like our media …
… Canadian media ignores scolding of Trudeau while rest of world reports it | True North.
Trudeau was treated to scathing condemnation by several Members of European Parliament (MEP) after giving a speech to the European Union on Wednesday.
Which he richly deserved.
Though there is this: Rex Murphy: Justin Trudeau has become a punchline on the world stage — for good reason.
To defend democracy, you should adhere to its principles. Don’t go to Brussels to preach what you skip over in Ottawa.
Mysterious ways …
… ‘Keep the Faith': How A Hostile Encounter With Yale Law Students Emboldened Me To Speak The Truth With Kindness.
… I witnessed a room full of our future lawyers, jurists, legislators, and corporate executives who would … rather bang on walls and engage in name-calling and physical intimidation than have to engage with people and ideas they dislike. What makes it worse is that their future profession requires them to interact with opponents regularly. Even the American Bar Association recognizes civility “as a foundation for democracy and the rule of law” and urges lawyers “to set a high standard for civil discourse as an example for others. …”…
Sounds promising …
… Elon Musk 'Giving Serious Thought to Creating Social Media Platform - Headline USA.
I canceled my Twitter account quite awhile ago, precisely because of its selective censorship (though I had not been a victim of it).
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