Sunday, January 06, 2013
I think so …
… Do We Still Need Libraries? | John Palfrey. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It’s a debate because too many people think that we don’t need libraries when we have the Internet. That logic couldn’t be more faulty. We actually need libraries more (as Luis Herrera points out) now that we have the Internet, not less. But we have to craft a clear and affirmative argument to make that case to those who don’t work in libraries or focus deeply on their operations. Librarians have to make a political and public case, which is too rarely being made effectively today.
Hmm …
… Maverick Philosopher: Are the Dogmas of Catholicism Divine Revelations?
While I am inclined to agree that religion is more quest than conclusions, I have to object to the repeated appeals to the Bible. For Catholics, the Bible is only one of two sources of revelation, the other being tradition. So just because something doesn't appear explicitly in the Bible doesn't mean it isn't revealed.
Also, when I was Catholic grade school, we were taught about the baptism of desire, which meant that those outside the Church who strove to do God's will were in effect baptized by that desire. I think that extra ecclesiam nulla salus is the equivalent of what a Buddhist friend said to me a while back: "Everyone is a Buddhist."
That said, I do think that one must bring to the dogmas more imagination and less literalness than is often the case. The problem with a juridical approach to religion is that it reduces faith to something on the order of painting by numbers.
Also, when I was Catholic grade school, we were taught about the baptism of desire, which meant that those outside the Church who strove to do God's will were in effect baptized by that desire. I think that extra ecclesiam nulla salus is the equivalent of what a Buddhist friend said to me a while back: "Everyone is a Buddhist."
That said, I do think that one must bring to the dogmas more imagination and less literalness than is often the case. The problem with a juridical approach to religion is that it reduces faith to something on the order of painting by numbers.
Unintended consequences …
… I've lived through the greatest revolution in sexual mores in our history, the damage it's done appals me | Mail Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
To my mind, too.
To my mind, Lawrence’s account of how a sex-starved rich woman romps naked in the woods with her husband’s gamekeeper is risible.It is hard to read the accounts of them cavorting in the rain, and sticking wild flowers in one another’s pubic hair, without laughing.
Inquirer reviews …
… including this one by me, in which, a la Michiko Kakutani, I employ the word limn: Where quiet praise and deep grief meet.
… and here's one by Katie Haegele: Entertaining journalistic explorations.
… Cezanne in three dimensions.
… and in case you missed it: How the brilliant slacker completed a masterpiece.
… and here's one by Katie Haegele: Entertaining journalistic explorations.
… Cezanne in three dimensions.
… and in case you missed it: How the brilliant slacker completed a masterpiece.
Thought for the day …
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.
— Alan Watts, born on this date in 1915
Saturday, January 05, 2013
Fine by me …
… Let your security blanket slip | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One of the things I least understand about the contemporary world — and that I am the least sympathetic toward — is the anxiety that seems to permeate it and the corresponding preoccupation with security. God, if I had been bothered by that sort of thing, I would have missed out on some of my most interesting experiences.
So what?
… Swedish Academy reopens controversy surrounding Steinbeck's Nobel prize | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Steinbeck was certainly as worthy as Sartre — or Günter Grass.
Steinbeck was certainly as worthy as Sartre — or Günter Grass.
Check this out …
… Paul Davis On Crime: My Washington Times Review Of Philip Leonetti's 'Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family And The Bloody Fall Of La Cosa Nostra'.
“All the crimes I committed, like the murders I was involved in, were all against bad people, guys that were involved in our life, so I didn’t think anything of it,” Leonetti explained. “They were looking to kill us, and we were looking to kill them. We weren’t looking to kill no legitimate people.”Hey, the guy has standards.
Cousins in arms …
… Communism, Fascism and liberals now | TLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
An ambitious and challenging rereading of twentieth-century history, The Devil in History is most illuminating in showing that parallels between the two totalitarian experiments existed from the beginning. Tismaneanu confesses to being baffled by what he describes as “the still amazing infatuation of important intellectuals with the communist Utopia”. “It is no longer possible to maintain and defend a relatively benign Lenin”, he writes, “whose ideas were viciously distorted by the sociopath Stalin.” Unlike Stalin, Lenin showed no signs of psychopathology. Rather than being an expression of paranoia, methodical violence and pedagogic terror were integral features of Bolshevik doctrine. By their own account, Lenin and his followers acted on the basis of the belief that some human groups had to be destroyed in order to realize the potential of humanity. These facts continue to be ignored by many who consider themselves liberals, and it is worth asking why.
Means and ends …
… Book review: Reason and Imagination - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… the letters in "Reason and Imagination" offer a narrative arc: Hand adopted a firm philosophy of judicial restraint early in life, as a means toward progressive political ends—and stuck with the philosophy, as the years passed, as an end in itself. Decades later, as FDR replaced the conservative Supreme Court of Hand's youth with a court stocked with liberals and progressives, Hand was unwilling to rethink his views, even if the court's decisions were likely to be more in line with his political outlook.
Compression and extension …
… The Germans have a word for it – and it's a very long one. (Hat tip, Emily Lull.)
Q & A …
… Exclusive: Christian Wiman Discusses Faith as He Leaves Wor... | Christianity Today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
— Umberto Eco, born on this date in 1932
Beware of the obvious...
...The dead of night: how to write the perfect ghost story
A colleague of James’s once said, perjoratively, that his was a life untroubled – a smooth progression from Eton to Cambridge and then back to Eton. He never experienced real life; it was in every sense academic. Nothing rippled the surface except these things we now know about. So why did he choose to write ghost stories? It’s a fascinating question.
Friday, January 04, 2013
The contenders...
...The Oscars: Films possibly in line for cinema’s most prestigious award
I think Argo deserves every award that comes its way. It is taut, extremely important as America battles forces in the Middle East, and a clarion call for democracy and freedom.
Indeed …
… RealClearReligion - The Rise of Latin Youth. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I've noticed this at my parish, where the traditional Mass is celebrated evert Sunday. Easily half of those in attendance are people much younger than I.
The secular press covers youth interest in the traditional Latin mass far more respectfully.The Economist recently reported on the "traditionalist avant-garde." The old mass, it found, isn't petering out but picking up some speed: "The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, started in 1965, now has over 5,000 members. The weekly number of Latin masses is up from 26 in 2007 to 157 now. In America it is up from 60 in 1991 to 420. At Brompton Oratory, a hotspot of London traditionalism, 440 flock to the main Sunday Latin mass. That is twice the figure for the main English one."
I've noticed this at my parish, where the traditional Mass is celebrated evert Sunday. Easily half of those in attendance are people much younger than I.
Overreaching …
… and bad sex to boot: When Falls the Coliseum — Lisa reads Those in Peril by Wilbur Smith.
Amateurs …
… A Commonplace Blog: It’s not my New Year. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Blogging is not merely an amateur’s medium. It is a dissent from the professionalization of literature, where professionalization is represented by English departments and creative writing workshops and print magazines and large publishing houses which are subsidiaries of even larger conglomerates. What Jacques Barzun calls the professional’s fallacy (namely, the superstition that understanding is identical with professional practice) has transformed the institutions of literacy into closed shops. If you’re not employed in the literature racket, you might as well, in literary terms, not exist.Many years ago (and I've mentioned this before), Van Wyck Brooks deplored the disappearance of amateurism in literature. He pointed out that the amateur does what he does con amore — for the love of it.
Maybe …
… The Mind Outside My Head by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It does not follow from this, however, that there are no images. And just because a robot stores digital data, not images, doesn't mean that we do as robots do. There is at this link an image of rainbow. An image may not be what we have traditionally thought it to be, but t whatever it, it is there.
Everything we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, Manzotti argues, involves the same creation of a physical unity—the moment of consciousness—sustained by processes within and without the head. The room, or part of a room, that you see now, including the screen on which you’re reading this blog, becomes, in combination with your faculties, a whole; this is consciousness. It happens in time, and it takes time (consciousness of visual phenomena seems to require at least 100 milliseconds to occur), and it changes constantly.
It does not follow from this, however, that there are no images. And just because a robot stores digital data, not images, doesn't mean that we do as robots do. There is at this link an image of rainbow. An image may not be what we have traditionally thought it to be, but t whatever it, it is there.
Thought for the day …
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
— T.S. Eliot, who died on this date in 1965
Depth of thinking...
...Study the Panther!
For Rilke, life and the world are all potential. In an extraordinary passage in a letter to Kappus from Rome in December 1903, the poet responds to what must have been an expression of religious doubt by the young man, chiding him for saying that he had lost God—“Is it rather,” he asks, “that you never possessed him?” The God Rilke speaks of is “one who has been coming, the one imminent for an eternity,” and therefore we must live our lives “as a painful and beautiful day in the history of a great pregnancy.”
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Superstar …
… Before the Beatles There Was Sam Weller: Concluding The Year of Dickens and England | Town Topics. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
Inquirer review …
… How the brilliant slacker completed a masterpiece.
The Last Supper commission was not one that Leonardo sought; he may not even have wanted it. He had been working on a giant equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, father of the reigning duke of Milan, Lodovico Sforza, Leonardo's principal patron. That project effectively ended in 1494 when Lodovico took the 75 tons of bronze destined for the monument and used it to make three urgently needed cannon instead - "a sad irony," King writes, given Leonardo's "dreams of constructing instruments of war."
Q & A …
… Harold Bloom Talks About Literature, Judaism, and the Almighty – Tablet Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, born on this date in 1892
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Hmm …
… Anti-Fragile Book: Why We Should Eat Like Cavemen, Embrace Religion, and Hate Bankers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Methinks the operative word here is believes. I am myself very skeptical of belief. Faith is something else altogether. People have a tendency to believe in what they think up on their own. I would caution against that.
He also genuinely believes that aging, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s result from a lack of stressors on the body. In addition to randomizing his diet and exercise, Taleb does the same with sleep. As of the Brooklyn launch, he had not sleep for three days, but then planned sleep for 12 hours. Like the fact that staying in bed all day actually makes you more tired, much of Taleb’s prescriptions engage this type of counterintuitive thinking.
Methinks the operative word here is believes. I am myself very skeptical of belief. Faith is something else altogether. People have a tendency to believe in what they think up on their own. I would caution against that.
Be a doer not a thinker.Uh, what went into writing this book? A good bit of thinking, I suspect.
No being outside the fiction …
… A Commonplace Blog: On the existence of fictional characters. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Enough already …
… The Mozart Delusion | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It's worth remembering that Mozart was only 35 when he died. His late studying of Bach suggests he might have gone on to be quite adventurous in his later years.
Compare and contrast …
… Book Shops in Britain and France — New English Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A worthy enterprise …
… Seeking the truth about Jesus - CNN.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It's really about a way of life — and metanoia.
Too many Christians regard their religion as a list of boxes that need checking. To belong, you must subscribe to a particular set of beliefs. It's dogma, pure and simple.
It's really about a way of life — and metanoia.
The problem with opacity …
… Nassim Nicholas Taleb | The age of black swans - Livemint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The old ways are best.
The ancients were fully aware of this incentive to hide risks, and implemented very simple but potent heuristics. About 3,800 years ago, the Code of Hammurabi specified that if a house collapses and causes the death of its owner, the house’s builder shall be put to death. This simple tenet is at the origin of “an eye for an eye” and the Golden Rule in ethics (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”). But, beyond ethics, this was simply the best risk-management rule ever.
The old ways are best.
Interesting …
… Orwell’s Deathbed Misreading of Evelyn Waugh | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I certainly don't think that anyone who read Waugh's early books should have been surprised by his conversion.
I certainly don't think that anyone who read Waugh's early books should have been surprised by his conversion.
And the winners are …
… 2013: Out with the old, in with the new – and not a moment too soon. | The Book Haven.
This was my first encounter with YOLO.
This was my first encounter with YOLO.
Thought for the day …
Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world.
— William Lyon Phelps, born on this date in 1865
More Zadie...
...THE RUMPUS INTERVIEW WITH ZADIE SMITH
There’s a kind of personal writing that argues for this kind of subjective experience that says, “I don’t have children and so it’s really important not to have children.” Or, “I do have children so it’s really important to have children.” Or, “I like cheese, so it’s really important to like cheese.” I never understand the point of that kind of writing. To me, you’re trying to find some objective position on your own experience, you know? Just because we felt it doesn’t mean that it matters at all. That’s my feeling.
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
Writers' diagnoses …
… Book Review: Shakespeare's Tremor and Orwell's Cough - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Unsurprisingly, infectious diseases dominate Dr. Ross's literary ward round as they dominated all eras in which the germs that cause them were not understood and antibiotics not available. The usual suspects, syphilis (Shakespeare), gonorrhea (Joyce) and tuberculosis (the Brontës, Orwell), are joined by more exotic transmissible misfortunes such as yaws, a tropical disease that causes dreadful ulcers (London), and relapsing fever, or Brucellosis (Yeats). Bipolar disorder—in which frenzied productivity alternates with increasingly frequent crashes into depression—is plausibly ascribed to Melville, Hawthorne and London. Some of Dr. Ross's subjects seem also to have had mild autism, which made ordinary relationships agonizingly difficult. Their medical troubles were frequently compounded by heroic alcohol consumption, intended to mitigate their symptoms. Downwardly mobile parents and other childhood traumas also loom large in the literary C.V.
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