Whatever's on my mind.
Sunday's New York Times Book Review included a review by Clancy Martin of Emily Eakin's The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory , a book on the French postmodernists. I was interested to read Martin's personal take. He had dropped out of a graduate program in philosophy at the University of Texas, defeated by the emphasis on the postmodernists. After a few years away, having done his best to read…
In Chapter XXIX of Two Years Before the Mast Dana wrote of a time of hard physical labor, packing a ship with hides to be carried around Cape Horn to Boston, that During all this time,--which would have startled Dr. Graham--we lived upon almost nothing but fresh beef; fried beefsteaks three times a day,--morning, noon, and night. At morning and night we had a quart of tea to each man; and an…
I have read of the discipline of a nightly "twenty lines of Homer", which I suppose to include construing, perhaps after copying out, twenty (Greek) lines of The Iliad or The Odyssey every night. At the moment, the only citation I can give is to one of Flann O'Brien's Keats and Chapman stories. One could not in some ways ask for a finer source than O'Brien; one could certainly ask for a more…
On Tuesday, I happened to look at the University of Toronto's Representative Poetry Online (RPO) site. I did not find what I was looking for (something short and pithy for ESL students to recite). I did see, though, that the Random Poem of the Day was "Hereux qui, comme Ulysse" by Joachim Du Bellay, Given that the new movie The Odyssey is just out, this struck me as a curious coincidence. A niece…
The preface to Descartes's Principles of Philosophy includes I would suggest reading it all the way through, like a romance, without greatly straining one's attention, or being held up by any difficulties one encounters, so as simply to get a general idea of the subjects discussed. Afterwards, if one decides that these are worthy of them, it can be read a second time, so as to follow the sequence…
Noticed today in The Strange Death of Liberal England by George Dangerfield: Important writing, strange to say, seldom gives the exact flavor of its period; if it is successful, it presents you with the soul of man, undated. Very minor literature, on the other hand, is the Baedeker of the soul, and will guide you through the curious relics, the tumble-down buildings, the flimsy palaces, the false…
My brother sent me a link to an article in The Denver Post to the effect that the University of Denver is shutting down two departments, of Religious Studies and of Electrical and Computer Engineering. I thought this curious in part because DU had closed the entire College of Engineering about 1975, then revived it. (In this part of Colorado, the 'U' goes last in the abbreviation, wherever it…
In 1992, a number of academic philosophers signed a letter to The Times of London, suggesting that the electors at Cambridge University vote against granting an honorary degree to Jacques Derrida. One of the matters alleged to the discredit of his writings was that Their influence, however, has been to a striking degree almost entirely in fields outside philosophy in departments of film studies,…
The New York Times says that some young playwright's career is moving at warp speed. I was never particularly a Trekkie, but couldn't avoid knowing that in Star Trek warp speeds are beyond the speed of light. (And therefore beyond possibility, but never mind that.) Given that I don't think much about Star Trek, "warp" first recalled accounts of ships that were warped here and there, either towed,…
According to The New York Times , two businesses are starting newspapers in Washington, one to be called The Star, one The Washington Star. The latter is suing the former for trademark infringement. It is hard for me to see that the name is worth much. The old Washington Star went out of business in 1981.The youngest person to have read it would have to be about 50; the youngest to have subscribed…
A while ago, a friend gave me a copy of The Neo-Kantian Reader . As time allows, I have been reading in it. Of the neo-Kantians included, some were only names to me: Hermann Cohen, Ernst Cassirer, Wilhelm Windelband, Hans Vaihinger. Others--Lask, Lotze, Natorp, etc.--I don't remember ever hearing of. It is only in the "responses" section where more familiar names come in. So far as I have read, it…
Happening to look at the Little Free Library at Midgely Corner today, I saw a hardbound book, VB6 by Mark Bittman. Had I not known of Mark Bittman as a food writer for the New York Times, I might have supposed this was a book on the programming language Visual Basic 6, which commonly is known as VB6. No doubt Bittman has interests beyond food, but VB6 has been out of support since 2008, and the…
The New York Times has an obituary of Peter G. Neumann online, though not yet, I think, in print. Neumann worked for many years as editor of the Association for Computing Machinery Risks in Computing news group. The Times says that he started this in 1985. The last comp.risks digest in my inbox is from April 12 this year: Neumann edited it, at the age of 93. Neumann also played a considerable role…
In Roughing It , Mark Twain writes of a mining companion, Mr. Ballou: Although he was more than twice as old as the eldest of us, he never gave himself any airs, privileges, or exemptions on that account. He did a young man’s share of the work; and did his share of conversing and entertaining from the general stand-point of any age—not from the arrogant, overawing summit-height of sixty years. His…
Last week, the The Washington Post reported that Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala was elevated from auxiliary bishop of the Washington Archdiocese to Bishop of West Virginia. This surprised me a little, not because Bishop Menjivar-Ayala has been promoted, but because I had never heard of a Roman Catholic diocese named after a state. The Episcopalian Church (the Protestant Episcopal Church of the…
I thought the expression "a university the football team can be proud of" came from the Marx Brothers' movie Horsefeathers. I was wrong. The expression (which I didn't get quite right) did not come from screenwriters at a studio, but from a university president in a state senate hearing. ESPN gives a concise account: Movies are not real life, although they might have been in February 1951.…
I have now and then complained about the sloppy practices of businesses that specialize in printing works that are in the public domain. But this week I noticed again that the books even of quite reputable publishers are subject to accidents. I happened to open The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806, about a quarter of the way in, where I encountered But, as the full gravity…
On 30 September 1645, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia wrote to René Descartes a letter including To benefit from the particular truths you mention, we would need an exact knowledge of all these passions and preconceptions, of which most people are unaware. When we observe the customs and values of the country we are in, we sometimes discover extremely irrational ones, which we have to conform…
The New York Times crossword puzzle for Sunday, March 29, included the clue "Odd-numbered page" for the word "recto". This came to mind on Saturday when I was re-reading Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects by Peter Geach. It is not that Geach touches on the terms of publishing and printing, rather that I became aware that the odd-numbered page I was reading was on the verso of the…
The Gutenberg project this week feature among other books Volume II of Alexander Herzen's My Life and Thoughts . Looking into it, I noticed Who is entitled to write his reminiscences? Every one. Because no one is obliged to read them In order to write one’s reminiscences it is not at all necessary to be a great man, nor a notorious criminal, nor a celebrated artist, nor a statesman—it is quite…
About forty years ago, The Washington Post published a review of a biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton, I suppose the one by Edward Rice. The reviewer was Anthony Burgess, the review was informative and readable. Presently the Post's book section carried a letter praising the quality of Burgess's sketch of Burton's life, and remarking on his graciousness in making a passing mention of Rice's…
Noticed in the essay "Philosophy in a New Century", collected in the book of that name by John Searle: If by "modernism" is meant the period of systematic rationality and intelligence that began with the Renaissance and reached a high point of self-conscious articulation in the European Enlightenment, then we are not in a post-modern era. On the contrary, modernism has just begun. We are, however,…
For the first time in many years, we went on a trip without bringing a computer. We did not have, that is, a computer with a keyboard and a fair-sized display. We did have mobile phones, which have computational power beyond what some of those computers in the past did. Only a few times did I think that it would have been well to have a computer. Those were times that I wished to write something…
At the end of February, the American runner Jess McLain and the two runners behind her followed a lead bike off course at the American half-marathon championship at about mile 13. They turned around to rejoin the course, finishing ninth, twelfth, and thirteenth. They filed protests, of course, but their protests were denied. About 1985, a leader in the DC Marathon (a much less important race) was…
About a dozen years ago, our washing machine ceased to spin properly. A check on the internet suggested that this was caused by a failed ratchet on the agitator, a part that as I recall you could hide under a quarter and that cost about $2.50. It cost that if you could find one, that is. The internet takes away as efficiently as the internet gives, and it appeared that there was no store within…