Thursday, September 21, 2023
And the winner is …
… Astronomy Photographer of the Year: Huge plasma arc wins - BBC News. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden,)
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
I’ll be joining …
… so should you:St. Therese Novena - Pray More Novenas - Novena Prayers & Catholic Devotion.
I’m very attached to the Little Flowerr. Her authobiigraphy, The Story of a Soul is a masterwork.
Something to think on …
An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.
— Charles Williams, born on this date in 1886
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
No lie there …
… It's normal for parents to object to graphic sex in kids' books.
Via Nellie Bowles on The Free Press, who adds: "If you can't read the sexy kids' book in Congress without grossing people out and having them tell you to please stop, Dad, maybe children shouldn’t read it."
Begging to differ …
… Finally incoherent? | Helen Vendler on Dickinson’s Poem 243. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I kept asking myself: Pier? Granite? Bell? Face of Steel? A nail or drill? Where might all these things be found? On a 19th century locomotive passing through Concord! That’s where. (And Concord was a railroad town.)
Hmm …
… Squires: CNN thinks black conservatives who don’t support abortion and ‘Pride’ are race traitors.
Planned Parenthood may now be an abortion factory, but that is not what its founder Margaret Sanger intended. Here is what she had to say on the matter:
When you ask me the question "How can I bring myself around; I am pregnant two months," you are asking for abortion. Please understand that Birth Control, as I understand it, is never abortion. I do not approve of abortion, nor can I give the address of anyone who will perform this operation... The object of this movement is to help women avoid abortion and the dangers attending it.You can read more here.
Something to think on …
My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder
— William Golding, born on this date in 1911
Monday, September 18, 2023
Ouch …
… I’ve Been Thinking by Daniel C Dennett review: a masterclass in vanity. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… perhaps the most wince-inducing moment was his meeting with “a charming and beautiful young philosopher” in Prague. “I later learned that Roger Scruton . . . was extremely irritated by the fact that on his next visit to Prague, all she could talk about was Dan Dennett! A small ignoble pleasure for me.”
Something to think on …
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
— Samuel Johnson, born on this date in 1709
Sunday, September 17, 2023
Just so you know …
… Consensus Doesn't Equal Science | Newsmax.com.
“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 … “Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. … The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”
Q&A …
… Paris Review - The Art of Theater No. 14.
In 1968, during the Black Power movement, when black Americans were, as one sociologist put it, “seeking ways to alter their relationship to the society and the shared expectations of themselves as a community of people.” As a twenty-three-year-old poet concerned about the world and struggling to find a place in it, I felt it a duty and an honor to participate in that search. With my good friend Rob Penny, I founded the Black Horizons Theater in Pittsburgh with the idea of using the theater to politicize the community or, as we said in those days, to raise the consciousness of the people.
Something to think on …
The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
— Ken Kesey, born on this date in 1935
Saturday, September 16, 2023
Something to think on …
Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise - that which is common to you, me, and everybody.
— T. E. Hulme, born on this date in 1884
Read and listen …
… Discussing the New Tom Wolfe Documentary: 10 Blocks podacst | City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Friday, September 15, 2023
These people really are crazy …
… Expert sparks fury after claiming that references to darkness in Macbeth are attempts to reinforce ideas of white supremacy | Daily Mail Online
Why woukd that have been on Shakespesre’s mind?
Something to think on …
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
— Robert Benchley, born on this date in 1889
The creative imagination …
… In the Personal Library of Vladimir Nabokov Are Clues to the Esoteric Obsessions of the Supreme Esthete. | Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… perhaps the single most thrilling object in the collection, one of the single most thrilling graven images I’ve encountered, the one book in the collection that most seemed to speak from beyond the grave and the graven realms, was a unique Nabokov book, one he created himself by hand, one never before seen by the world, and one that I believe discloses an important secret about his esoteric passion.
Thursday, September 14, 2023
A true master …
… Review of Radical Wolfe | City Journal.
Wolfe was politically deft. He championed conservative notions of patriotism and morality, but avoided partisan politics, which he considered a boring backwater. (His editor at the Washington Post was amazed that, unlike the other reporters, he had no ambition to cover the White House and Capitol Hill.) In footage from “Firing Line,” when William F. Buckley Jr. asked him to describe his political views, Wolfe quoted Balzac’s description of the politics in his novels: “I belong to the party of the opposition.
I had the privilege of meeting him once — at the White House. Laura Bush had invited him and me to an event D. C. schoolkids. Classy guy.
Sad and true …
… Whatever Happened to Culture? - Joseph Epstein, Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Today, party politics is of all-consuming interest. A new class has emerged, the punditocracy, members of which, also known as public intellectuals, who are without any notable culture of their own, are defined chiefly by their politics, and sport their political opinions on endless panels on cable television.
I must say, though, that when I stood in front of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, I was very impressed. But I’m from an earlier generation. And I once managed an art gallery.
Something to think on …
Ours is the age of substitutes: Instead of language we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; and instead of genuine ideas, bright suggestions.
— Eric Bentley, born on this date in 1916
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Something to think on …
The more we elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
— J. B. Priestley, born on this date in 1894
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Good news …
… Earth’s atmosphere can clean itself, breakthrough study finds.
“OH is a key player in the story of atmospheric chemistry. It initiates the reactions that break down airborne pollutants and helps to remove noxious chemicals such as sulfur dioxide and nitric oxide, which are poisonous gases, from the atmosphere.”
Something to think on …
After all is said and done, a hell lot of a lot more is said than done.
— H. L. Mencken, born on this date in 1880
Monday, September 11, 2023
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I know it borders on blasphemous, but I'll say it anyway: Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground is an inconsistent, unbalanced work. I know, I know: it's celebrated, and acclaimed, and serves as a starting point of sorts for existentialism. But for me, the novella didn't hold together. At least part of this might be attributed to its structure: the first third of the book, which proceeds as a monologue, introduces a set of philosophies. These, in turn, are explored in the remainder of the novella, which functions as a more traditional work of fiction: with character, dialogue, and narrative arc. I will say that while the first portion of the novella frustrated me, the second section delivered a blow: a number of the concepts explored here are evocative not only of existentialism, but also of the fractured modernism which emerged around the First World War. Ideas of suffering, spite, and intellectualism dominate the final portion of Notes, and they read as an existentialist tract might: without action we are nothing and cannot generate meaning; and yet, with infinite freedom comes an inability to act. There are a number of powerful aphorisms from the latter stages of the book, and they will remain with me. But all told, I am not sure that this experiment hangs together entirely: without the first portion -- focused, rather heavy handedly on philosophy -- the novella still might have succeeded, and it would have done so without the scripted quality introduced during the first section. All of that said, it would be hard to beat a line like this: "You took your cowardice for prudence, and thus found consolation in self-deception."
Finding words for The Word …
… A Work of Biblical Proportions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Barton declares his summary position early: "While there can be translations that are simply wrong, there cannot be one that is uniquely right." Rather, The Word is a thorough mapping (to use the author’s cartographic image) of the translators’ terrain. And that complex landscape is, to simplify, defined by two promontories.
Something to think on …
Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it.
— D. H. Lawrence, born on this date in 1885
Words and the Word …
… Reading as a Spiritual Practice | The Russell Kirk Center. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What is so bad about spending all this time on computer screens? More interestingly, do people read less because they spend time on a computer? After all, right this moment, you are looking at a screen and reading a review of a book about reading. Wilson’s book is available on Kindle and those lectures I encouraged for viewing are on a screen. Yet, Wilson empathically says, “[W]e have to be aggressive in turning off the screens… After you remove the time wasted on technology, you may find more time available for reading. You can bring a book with you wherever you go.”
Books these days tend to have small type. I am an old man with cataracts that have yet to ripen. So I use my Kindle a lot.
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