Saturday, October 31, 2009
Cool, steady rule-breaker ...
In defense of ...
The ancient distinction ...
... despair is not a feeling, but an attitude, a posture towards ourselves.
9/11 and fiction ...
Because the novel “allows for no proper mourning or working through,” you write, there’s a danger that “it can serve as a prelude to, or be used as an excuse for, wholesale, reactionary and even totalitarian movements of redress and moral restoration.”
Thought for the day ...
Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.- John Keats, born on this date in 1795
Friday, October 30, 2009
This week's batch ...
Civilized debate ...
Inequity of circumstance ...
Life with father ...
Such glimpses of this other side of his nature prove that he didn’t lack empathy, only that he deliberately chose not to express it. I find these instances of tenderness almost unforgivable.
Thought for the day ...
To love someone means to see him as God intended him.- Fyodor Dostoevsky, born on this date in 1821
Thursday, October 29, 2009
John Berger, "G."
Distinguishing ...
The common practice of allowing newspaper staffers to write unedited blogs for online readers annoys [Foreman]."I detest that," he says with understated vehemence that is as close as he comes to swearing. "I've read arguments written by intelligent people who say, 'Let's let the readers be our editors, that if we get something wrong, they call us, we check it out, and we put up a correction.' Now, this is really, really bad because harm can be done by erroneous information getting online."
DEAD, DEAD ...
Oh, Jack ...
‘Use my name’, Kerouac told her. ‘Write a book.’
Thought for the day ...
What an insignificant life is this which I am now leading!- James Boswell, born on this dare in 1740
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Let us now praise ...
This sounds a lot like retirement ...
It isn't just me then ...
This weekend I realized how much my reading habits have come to resemble my Internet-surfing. I skip from book to book, dipping in, skimming and grazing, as if each book were an article I was reading online. If the book isn't amazing, I rarely get past the first quarter -- let alone finish it.
There was little opportunity, at Soligorsk, for Alice to discuss her developing ideas because everyone was too busy, particularly Alice herself. In this respect, she missed the company of Baron Rettenberg; she would have liked to have confronted him with her doubts. Tatyana and Sophie showed no interest in such philosophical speculations, and Vera, though she qualified as a member of Russia's intelligentsia, showed all the shortcomings of that intelligentsia - fixed positions based upon emotion rather than reason.
Beckett: Dystopian Fantasy?
Not as irreverent ...
... if God wants to be irrational, that’s his business. Rationality is a human concept. Consistency and being reasonable, those are all human concepts, and we can’t impose those on the creator.
You can't have one ...
... it’s living a life of faith that confirms religious convictions, not the convictions that must first be proven before the living can begin.
Once again, I recommed Mark's book After Atheism, which I read on vacation this past summer and think is not only cogent, but wise.
Allopathic reading ...
... it was published in early 1944, when the war, though going far better than it had been a few years before, was still a long way from being over.
Scrap it ...
Thought for the day ...
I put the words down and push them a bit.- Evelyn Waugh, born on this date in 1903
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Indeed ...
Time and again human pictures of deity prove to be idols that are shattered under the impact of divine reality.- John Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion
That's me ...
The view ...
Dante also described Purgatory. It had very little scriptural warrant but which greatly increased the spiritual influence of the Roman Catholic Church (because one's fate was not settled at death) and gave rise to many abuses, since the soul's time in Purgatory could supposedly be shortened by the earthly sale of "indulgences."
America's master painter ...
Just as his society portraits give faces to characters seemingly plucked from the pages of Henry James (his fellow American expatriate and future sitter), Sargent's depictions of sailcloth and rigging, of vessels safely moored and battling the furious ocean, offer visual counterparts to the finest descriptive passages of his contemporary Joseph Conrad.
Thought for the day ...
In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.- Enid Bagnold, born on this day in 1889Surely the best reason for citizens of the United Kingdom to vote for David Cameron in the next election has to be that he is married to Enid Bagnold's granddaughter. I know I shouldn't interfere in another nation's political, but God knows there was emough opining from England about our last presidential election.
Monday, October 26, 2009
You can be sure of one thing ...
A livelier spirit ...
"... Blackmur, as close to a genius as American criticism ever produced (excepting only Poe) ... "
Kindness, decency ...
It may be possible to be a great chess master, or logician, or mathematician, without being a half-way decent human being, but it’s certainly not so for novelists. While many novelists have been monsters, i feel that even with a narcissist like Thomas Mann there is some fineness of character – even if it was only deployed in his novels.
Good sports column ...
The last time I really liked a sports column was when Larry Merchant wrote for the Daily News (a long, long time ago). There's something refeshingly straightforward about this one.
Religion of peace ...
A chat ...
Chesterton and Dr. Johnson ...
Companions ...
Good for her ...
Thought for the day ...
The famous saying 'God is love', it is generally assumed, means that God is like our immediate emotional indulgence, not that the meaning of love ought to have something of the 'otherness' and terror of God.- Charles Williams
Sunday, October 25, 2009
I should have posted this ...
A chat ...
I still get melancholy when the weather changes a bit in late summer and I am reminded of what it felt like as a child and vacation was drawing to close and school would soon begin.
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
Thought for the day ...
Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.- Max Stirner, born on this date in 1806
Saturday, October 24, 2009
On the difference ...
... the fact that Bill is blogging is made true by the fact of Bill's blogging.
Thought for the day ...
You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night.- Denise Levertov, born on this date in 1923
Friday, October 23, 2009
Keeping science in sync ...
No need to despair ...
Without healthy newspapers, we’re just Myanmar with better department stores and less stylish military uniforms.
That’s the rallying cry of the newspaper industry’s saviors, anyway. As Jack Shafer memorably put it in Slate, this narrative reduces newspapers to a “compulsory cheat sheet for democracy.” They deserve better than that. Throughout the 20th century, our daily broadsheets and tabloids played a far richer role in our culture. They deepened our spiritual lives with horoscopes. They kept our minds sharp with crossword puzzles and the Jumble. They helped us track our favorite TV shows and paid for themselves by offering great deals on detergent. In their lighter moments, they delighted us with the cartoon antics of lasagna-loving cats.
Bringer of jollity ...
Thought for the day ...
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.- Michael Crichton, born on this date in 1942
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The trouble with search engines ...
A very thoughtful piece ...
Postmodern Bryan ...
Gold into lead ...
If there's a lesson from this sudden dead author revival, it's that you should immediately start burning anything you don't want released instead of waiting for the ones who follow to start cashing in.
Philosophical food fight ...
Thought for the day ...
Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words.- Franz Liszt, born on this date in 1811
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
HALLELUJAH!!!
A city and its newspaper ...
Mind on mind ...
... I am a non-Cartesian atheist who just can’t help noticing that however hard you look, you will not find sensations, affections and reasons in bits of the brain, or even distributed throughout the brain. So although a functioning brain is necessary for every aspect of consciousness, from the simplest twinge of sensation to the most exquisitely constructed sense of self, it is not sufficient for consciousness – and certainly not for the kind of consciousness you and I enjoy.