At Stanford, historian Caroline Winterer is heading up a computer-powered effort to trace the interconnections—what we in the era of Facebook recognize as social networks—that would eventually link Franklin to the most prominent intellectuals and public figures of his day. The study is part of a larger endeavor at Stanford, the Republic of Letters project, to map the interactions of the Enlightenment’s leading thinkers, among them Voltaire, philosopher John Locke and astronomer William Herschel.
Friday, December 06, 2013
Ben's Networks
Hmm …
… Pop Culture's Limits - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I agree almost entirely with this. I don't agree that Elmore Leonard was over-praised. I think he was usually mis-praised. Leonard's art lay precisely in the writing qua writing, the seamlessness of dialogue and narrative, the timing, the rhythm, the beat. Reading Leonard at his best gives a pleasure similar to listening to a well-made fugue. The repetitiousness is definitely there, to be sure, but you only need the same 12 notes to write a great fugue. Of course, you have to know how to.
Heaven was his destination …
… Agony of Spirit | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hopkins’s delight in words is everywhere in his letters. He lived in the great age of philology and shared its fascination for what Matthew Prior called the “idiom of words.” In fact, he was taught by the same headmaster who had taught the etymologist Walter Skeat, who, with James Murray, launched the Oxford English Dictionary in 1879. “I am going to write to Skeat about scope,” Hopkins says in one letter. “I have doubts about Skeat’s treatment of scope, cope, scoop, scape, cap.”
Bonding over words …
… Orange Crate Art: Review: Wallace and Garner, Quack This Way. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Food fight continues …
… More Meddling In Inky Newsroom | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog.
There may be many legitimate reasons for both Inky writers not to mention Katz's interest. Maybe the writers put it in the story and some editor took it out. But if the Inky is going to be advocating for more development and more resources to be poured into East Market Street, and one of their owners stands to benefit, it just looks bad not to disclose that interest.
In case you wondered …
… Umberto Eco and why we still dream of utopia. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… humans have an invincible need to believe in their fictions. So they turn them into legends, which they anxiously defend from doubt – even to the point of attacking and killing those who do not share them.
Forgotten words …
… 18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style | Death and Taxes. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Yearning …
… Taking Back the Beaches: Restoration, a Poem for Heritage Month - ICTMN.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
A thought for today …
I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.
— Joyce Cary, born on this date in 1888
Listen in …
… Richard Rodriguez On Modern Spiritual Identity | On Point with Tom Ashbrook. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Word of the Year
The tally is in, the vote has been counted: the word of the year is..."selfie" (Yes, that's the word of the year.)
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Hmm …
… Why Was Orwell A Socialist? � The Dish. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I don’t share Orwell’s socialism a bit, even though it is much more understandable from the viewpoint of someone surviving the 1930s and the war than it would be today. But I love him despite that … Because he was so much more than ideology. And so much more than just a writer.I feel much the same way, and I enjoyed an advantage he didn't: I was born and raised poor.
The man behind the shades …
… Roy Orbison: 'My voice is a gift'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"If you have faith, then your whole life is put in a new perspective. You get to work, but enjoy the work at the same time. If you grow spiritually, you do what's in front of you and let the results speak for themselves."
The light beneath the bushel …
… Dana Gioia: The Catholic Writer Today | First Things.
There is no singular and uniform Catholic worldview, but nevertheless it is possible to describe some general characteristics that encompass both the faithful and the renegade among the literati. Catholic writers tend to see humanity struggling in a fallen world. They combine a longing for grace and redemption with a deep sense of human imperfection and sin. Evil exists, but the physical world is not evil. Nature is sacramental, shimmering with signs of sacred things. Indeed, all reality is mysteriously charged with the invisible presence of God. Catholics perceive suffering as redemptive, at least when borne in emulation of Christ’s passion and death. Catholics also generally take the long view of things—looking back to the time of Christ and the Caesars while also gazing forward toward eternity. (The Latinity of the pre-Vatican II Church sustained a meaningful continuity with the ancient Roman world, reaching even into working-class Los Angeles of the 1960s, where I was raised and educated.) Catholicism is also intrinsically communal, a notion that goes far beyond sitting at Mass with the local congregation, extending to a mystical sense of continuity between the living and the dead. Finally, there is a habit of spiritual self-scrutiny and moral examination of conscience—one source ofsoi-disant Catholic guilt.
Beyond the media hype …
… Getting in a Tangle Over Men's and Women's Brain Wiring - Wired Science.
The way Verma and her colleagues have arrived at the idea that their results support gender stereotypes about map reading, and so on, is via a logical mistake known as “reverse inference”. They looked at where in the brain they found wiring differences and then they’ve made assumptions about the functional meaning of those differences based on what other studies have suggested those brain regions are for. Unfortunately, Verma and co did this in an unsophisticated way. They dredged up old ideas about the left brain hemisphere being for analytical thought and the right hemisphere being intuitive. And the one brain region where men supposedly had more cross-hemisphere interconnectivity than women – the cerebellum – the researchers linked purely with motor function, which they said supports the idea that men are wired for action. Maybe they don’t realise, but modern research has shown that the cerebellum is involved in lots of other functions too. Writing an authoritative review in 2009, Peter Strick and his colleagues explained: “The range of tasks associated with cerebellar activation is remarkable and includes tasks designed to assess attention, executive control, language, working memory, learning, pain, emotion, and addiction.”Of course, it would be nice if reporters would do some homework before they go running with stuff like this.
Genes, genes, young and alive...
The selfish gene is one of the most successful science metaphors ever invented. Unfortunately, it’s wrongThis is all very interesting...And I think Dawkins' concept fails for a different reason as I wrote here a little while ago:
...
[The] bug’s DNA — the genetic book with millions of letters that form the instructions for building and operating a grasshopper — gets reread so that the very same book becomes the instructions for operating a locust. Even as one animal becomes the other, as Jekyll becomes Hyde, its genome stays unchanged. Same genome, same individual, but, I think we can all agree, quite a different beast.
...
Dawkin's [sic] therefore somehow posits an ability -- free will -- that he would say we have never exercised to date. Moreover, his entire premise is based on a metaphysical extraction of an emergent property (“selfishness” of a gene) to an organism. Emergent properties of course are something reductionism of Dawkins sort would not countenance, yet are the basis for his micro theory and his expansion to macro theory.(I'm gonna quote myself more often...It's easy and since I am always right...(Self quoting makes me feel like Al Gore too! Now if Al Jazeera would just kick out 500 million for Books Inq. and I could persuade Frank to give me a large cut I'd really be in Gore-land! Hmm...but I guess I need that 10,000 sq. ft mansion and personal jet and "concern" about everyone else having too big of a carbon footprint too.))
Snowbound …
… The View From Your Window � The Dish. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who lives right across the bridge from Duluth.)
Getting to know them …
… Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the NSA's Secrets | Politics News | Rolling Stone. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
To the likes of [David] Brooks, Snowden was a disconcerting mystery; Glenn Greenwald, though, got him right away. "He had no power, no prestige, he grew up in a lower-middle-class family, totally obscure, totally ordinary," Greenwald says. "He didn't even have a high school diploma. But he was going to change the world – and I knew that." And, Greenwald also believed, so would he. "In all kinds of ways, my whole life has been in preparation for this moment," he says.
It's the Denisovans! Again! This time in Spain!
[S]cientists reported Wednesday that they had retrieved ancient human DNA from a fossil dating back about 400,000 years, shattering the previous record of 100,000 years.
The fossil, a thigh bone found in Spain, had previously seemed to many experts to belong to a forerunner of Neanderthals. But its DNA tells a very different story. It most closely resembles DNA from an enigmatic lineage of humans known as Denisovans. Until now, Denisovans were known only from DNA retrieved from 80,000-year-old remains in Siberia, 4,000 miles east of where the new DNA was found.
The Hands of Google …
… The Art of Google Books Scans : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The obsession with digital errors in Google Books arises from the sense that these mistakes are permanent, on the record. Earlier this month, Judge Denny Chin ruled that Google’s scanning, en masse, of millions of books to make them searchable is legal. In the future, more and more people will consult Google’s scans. Because of the speed and volume with which Google is executing the project, the company can’t possibly identify and correct all of the disturbances in what is supposed to be a seamless interface. There’s little doubt that generations to come will be stuck with both these antique stains and workers’ hands.
The force field that is freedom …
… Shards | Bill Whittle.
The history of mankind has been to rule and to be ruled. For reasons that you and I will never understand, there exists in some people an insatiable desire to tell other people what to do; to bend others to their will. I suspect that every single one of those hearts is filled with a dread, a genuine horror, at the wasteland of their own emptiness, and so the bombast and the narcissism and the arrogance; the legions of fainting faithful and the roar of the applause; the reflections, the logos, the insertion of themselves into every event in history; the mind-numbing obsession with power – all of these, I think, are just shovels full of coal being pitched into the bottomless furnace of their own self-hatred.
Q&A …
… Sam Shepard: 'The good guy and bad guy stuff just doesn't interest me' | Stage | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I'm a great believer in chaos. I don't believe that you start with a formula and then you fulfil the formula. Chaos is a much better instigator, because we live in chaos – we don't live in a rigorous form.
A thought for today …
Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.
— Werner Heisenberg, born on this date in 1901
The vital quest for meaning...
Once the book was out in the public domain, however, Catton grew out of her authorial proprietorship. “I like the idea that a novel teaches you how to write it as you go along: when you begin writing a book, you don’t yet have the skills you are going to need to finish it, and perhaps, you aren’t even the person who is capable of finishing it,” she says.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Spufford's Apologetic ...
Spufford’s defense of Christianity is aimed primarily at what he calls “godless Europeans,” the post-Enlightenment elites who tend to regard religion with bemusement as a silly fairy tale, if not with open hostility as a dangerous superstition.
I was going to mention frogs …
… but someone might take offense: Bob Dylan Charged in France Over Croatian Remark - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The wonders of sour cream and schmaltz …
… The Millions : A Year in Reading: Gary Shteyngart. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A thought for today …
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
— Samuel Butler, born on this date in 1835
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
So which is it?
“The loneliness of [celibacy] I think, can drive [priests] crazy."
Maybe it would have been helpful to look at some actual data. Sure, there is some loneliness in the priesthood--and there are problems in married life too. But the picture that Mr. Keller paints [in the link above] is ridiculous.
Better late, I guess …
… Stoner wins Waterstones Book of the Year 2013 - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
God, the Devil, George Eliot …
… The American Scholar: Godless Art - Paula Marantz Cohen. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Versions at odds …
… Broken Hierarchies: Precursor to a Variorum? | Poetry & Contingency. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The vantage point of faith …
… No Apologies | Books and Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ladies and gentlemen! A spectacle never before attempted on any stage! Before your very eyes, I shall build up from first principles the simple and unsurprising structure of faith. Nothing up my left sleeve, nothing up my right sleeve, except the entire material of everyday experience. No tricks, no traps, ladies and gentlemen; no misdirection and no cheap rhetoric. You can easily look up what Christians believe in. You can read any number of defenses of Christian ideas. This, however, is a defense of Christian emotions—of their intelligibility, of their grown-up dignity. The book is called Unapologetic because it isn't giving an "apologia," the technical term for a defense of the ideas.
And also because I'm not sorry.
A thought for today …
In order to move others deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond the bounds of our normal sensibility.
— Joseph Conrad, born on this date in 1857
Monday, December 02, 2013
Classical music and late capitalism …
… The Last Symphony | Jacobin. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This has to be one of the more bizarre defenses of classical music. I mean the capitalism part, since otherwise it's quite sound.I think that classical music is its own best defense. Anyone willing to become acquainted with it will find that it provides deeper and longer lasting satisfaction than other music.
A book we need to read …
… Oscar Hijuelos & Mr. Ives | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
"What do you do when you’ve been given a vision?"
From the O.W. L. himself …
… Introducing O.W.L.S. | Waterstones Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, Omnipresent Wisconsin Librarian.)
An act only …
… Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life, by Beryl Lang, reviewed | New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I LOVE our government!!!
For nearly 20 years, the secret code to authorize launching U.S. nuclear missiles, and starting World War III, was terrifyingly simple and even noted down on a checklist.
From 1962, when John F Kennedy instituted PAL encoding on nuclear weapons, until 1977, the combination to fire the devastating missiles at the height of the Cold War was just 00000000.
Now I bet it at least includes a capital letter and a special character like @,#,$,%,&
Leftovers …
… Patrick Kurp reviews Uncollected Poems by R.S. Thomas | Quarterly Conversation. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Moral Dilemma ...
A week ago was a season ending event for a flag football I
captained, and played for, 53 years old and I am still running around on a field
in South Philadelphia with a (mostly) much younger group of kids and I am still
coaching them too, or as I explained to a ref who got on me for yelling too
much at my team: “I can change my gender but not the fact that I coached high
school football.”
After the event, which was upstairs at a bar, we went to ... the downstairs part of the
bar, and sitting at a table in a corner there was a middle aged man, who had a
suitcase and other bags and looked forlorn.
I, doing my best to help my fellow human, ignored him completely of
course, and went on to drinking with my team.
Finally though, we got up to leave and he was still sitting there, still looking so sad that I reached out to him, talked to him, gave him
my card.
And yesterday, I got this email from
him, and I’ve reproduced it verbatim with the exception of some information I’ve
redacted from it for reasons that will become clear.
----
On Sunday,
December 1, 2013 3:53 PM, <XXXXX> wrote:
Julie,
It was such a
pleasure to meet you at <YYY> last Sun nite (11/24)
I believe it
was a literal "Divine Appointment"
I desperately
need help with getting settled asap/meaning a place to live
I could use
your services as a liason/advocate with my brother who is trustee of my
inheritance monies$$$ & having difficulty working out my needed draws of
funds
I am homeless
now
If you have a
friend who needs a roommate here in center city/university city &
could hook me up to move in asap I could get monies within about 72 hrs
I am honest a
management accountant of 16 yrs/hon dischare air force vet 1975-1979
air force
academy 3 yrs/bs business univ denver 1981/& ba biblical studies 1986
father of 2,
grandfather of 2/married 16 yrs/divorced since 1996
re:lgbt: I am
"b" (Bi)
sorry if i get
sloppy
limited
computer time
can also use
you to help me incorporate my nonprofit orgn "<AAAA>":
Julie,
hope to hear
from you asap by email
else ill call
you mon or tues
when i get
cell phone access
can meet you
at <YYY> with notice
thanks for
your love & warmth
<XXXXX>
-----
Something about the email seemed a little … odd (“I am a Nicaraguan prince waiting for my kingdom
please wire me $500,000 immediately so I can give you millions you seem like a
nice lady”) so I Google the fellow and on the first page of Google, someone
with a name like his – I am not of course saying it was him – had been convicted
of child molestation in Orlando FL as well as, more recently, criminal activity
in Philadelphia.
Recently I posted here the experience of a Mormon bishop who
disguised himself as homeless, visited his church, and was pretty much cast
aside. And we don’t know how angels
come, and Christ condemned those who walked by the man in the ditch, so I have
done my best to try to help all.
On the other hand, there are creeps out there.
A thought for today …
You must believe me when I believe, and not when I doubt.
— Edmond Rostand, who died on this date in 1918
Sunday, December 01, 2013
Less than poetic …
… The University Bookman: An Aesthetic Vision on West 43rd Street. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One might ask why the words of Cavafy in and of themselves apparently were not enough for the program. Do the words require biography, visual effects, or external linkage to make them accessible?
Good luck …
… Caveat Emptor: Lovers of Latin Try to Sell a Dead Tongue - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Inquirer reviews …
Google's Newstand
Offering free and pay per view websites, magazines and newspapers (wait, electronically is there a difference?) for Android
A thought for today …
I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.
— Rex Stout, born on this date in 1886
FYI...
...The Bookstores are Not Dead
"Hang merchandise from the ceiling, because people long to buy whatever requires a ladder to cut down. The children's section should always be in a back corner of the store, so that when parents inevitably wandered off and started reading, their offspring could be caught before they busted out of the store."
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