Per a correspondent at Charles' Links it seems that in the photo essay Joel and I posted there last year, our published guesses were too charitable about a plaque we photographed in the Sierra de Alcubierre.
Bill Sinclair, a scholar of the Spanish Civil War, writes that the symbol we couldn't identify on the plaque is that of the Spanish Falange, and he suggests that the text itself quite likely would have been carved by a Republican or suspected-Republican political prisoner compelled to honor Franco's side.
Maud Newton’s discovery of Twain’s non-fiction reminded me of this short piece from his work for the Galaxy.
We shall have all these sorts of people in heaven; but, alas! in getting them we shall lose the society of Dr. Talmage. Which is to say, we shall lose the company of one who could give more real "tone" to celestial society than any other contribution Brooklyn could furnish. And what would eternal happiness be without the Doctor? Blissful, unquestionably -- we know that well enough -- but would it be distingue, would it be recherche without him? St. Matthew without stockings or sandals; St. Jerome bareheaded, and with a coarse brown blanket robe dragging the ground; St. Sebastian with scarcely any raiment at all -- these we should see, and should enjoy seeing them; but would we not miss a spike-tailed coat and kids, and turn away regretfully, and say to parties from the Orient: "These are well enough, but you ought to see Talmage of Brooklyn."
Rediscovered this September article today.
Lawrence's sweet-smelling Ulysses is unusually evocative because it "speaks" to the human sense most closely associated with memory. That association copy is truly associative, relating a story not only about Lawrence, as it turns out, but about other readers as well. Although the olfactory element is rare, most books in special collections have their tales to tell, their sweet smell of provenance.
I want to be clear about the motivation fueling my rants against our current president, specifically during the Katrina fiasco. I was driven by what I saw as Bush’s indifference or insensitivity, not his incompetence. His incompetence doesn’t offend me.
I expect incompetence. From everybody. When we suffer from the horrors of incompetence it’s usually due to our misplaced faith in our abilities. We err in our belief humankind is anything but inept.
Most of us fail to spellcheck our e-mails. We say the wrong thing to a spouse. We drive to grandma’s house and make a wrong turn.
So, no, I don’t see how it’s reasonable to assume all the levees will hold, supplies will get to where they’re needed, rescue efforts will save everyone. The best-intentioned, hardest working, sharpest-witted people will still make dumb decisions. Relief efforts will go badly. Children will remain trapped under buildings. The elderly will get abandoned.
(This is not to suggest we throw up our hands and get back to ordering kitchen appliances that match the decor; I’m pointing out that when bad things happen, bad things happen.)
Things never go as planned. Plans never plan for everything. The unexpected always lurks. The best ideas often end up being the worst.
Googling “history of human incompetence” brought me to the SDS’s Port Huron statement, which states “We oppose…the doctrine of human incompetence…” I thought, oh what a silly revolution.
I’m not saying let’s exalt the doctrine of human incompetence. I’m saying let’s acknowledged it, let’s accommodate it in the blueprints, let’s make it a serious consideration. I’m saying in our all our endeavors let us remember we are, at base, a bunch of dingbats.
Then maybe one more dam holds, one less town gets left stranded.
Perhaps we’d only march to war, as opposed to diving into it.
Surely our earthly condition can improve. I just don’t see us making serious headway until our every deliberation begins with the recognition that the human race is a cortege of boobs.
This article costs $3 but is worth the price to any Orwell reader. It describes a book written by a noted Chinese political dissident after her interrogation and release. The reviewer suggests she has undergone a forced but genuine political conversion that is not acknowledged by her Western editors. So interesting to read.
Since the beginning of my tenure as a Stay-At-Home-Dad, I've been reading William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill. Aside from the desire to reach through the book and throttle people that's the inevitable reaction to 1930's diplomacy, it's been a great read — just about the right kind of prose to wade through with a bottle in your other hand.
There's just one problem: There's no last volume.
Can anybody offer suggestions on a replacement for volume three of The Last Lion?
There's a new paper out from "The Third Way Middle Class Project." Apparently these are the folks who brought us Clintonian centrism and Democratic victories on 1992 and 1996 — or at least they're willing to take credit for it. Michael Barone summarizes the paper in his US News column, but the 71-page "Politics of Polarization" is so loaded with "executive summaries" and highlighted blurbs that you might as well go read the thing itself.
Despite my role here on Horizon as House Red-State Conservative, I'm actually a political moderate. The last few elections have been difficult decisions for me, with pros and cons of one candidate balancing pretty evenly with the other's. After the last three elections, I've followed the soul-searching of defeated Democrats very closely as they analyze reasons for their losses.
Despite its overmarketing, "The Politics of Polarization" is an important contribution to that discussion. It suggests that Democrats will continue to lose national elections unless they broaden their appeal to swing voters, regardless of how much effort they put into get-out-the-vote drives. Their conclusions imply that many prominent left-wing bloggers (as well as some friends of mine) are leading the party towards further marginalization by trying to push its positions and rhetoric further left.
From where I sit, this seems obvious: which strategy is more likely to get my vote? The problem with my analysis is that as a moderate, it's in my interest to encourage either party to move to the center, since that means their positions would be closer to mine. Perhaps this is why I haven't been able to convince many Democrats.
The opening paragraph of the preface to On the Apostolic Tradition by Hippolytus (saint and antipope) has really got me pondering:
To do justice to this text, the translator and commentator should be an expert not in liturgiology alone, but should have expertise in textual criticism and in the social and legal history of third century Rome, together with facility in six ancient languages. The intense specialization of the modern academy prevents the raising up of the needed polymath, so a generalist and country parson has foolishly stepped into a breach, the existence of which he had not recognized when he agreed to undertake a simple translation.
I wonder how true Stewart-Sykes's observation on the modern academy is. A Semiticist could easily be familiar with all of the languages involved (Sahidic Coptic, Bohairic Coptic, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Latin). Given the crossover between lingustics and religious studies, our hypothetical semiticist might already have the necessary liturgiology, and would certainly know textual criticism.
Perhaps the overspecialization he describes is more structural — it's not that our polymath doesn't exist, it's that their location within the academy prevents them from doing this sort of important cross-disciplinary work. Or perhaps Stewart-Sykes is simply wrong.
I'd welcome comments from anyone who's in the academy.
I suppose everyone has heard the old saw about Eskimos having n words for snow, where "n" is a number between unusually large and absurdly large. I've heard it range from 9 to well into the hundreds.
I'm not sure how widespread this tale is these days, but my suspicion is it will never really die out. It seems to go along (or even prove, though it wouldn't even if it were true) various ideas that are too fascinating to go away. The idea that language determines how we see the world, that different cultures are extremely different from each other (and its corollary that there is no human nature), among others, just exert too much hold on us. It's like when people used to nod with a kind of knowing severity after pointing out that someday water may be more valuable than gold. "After all, if you're lost in the desert, what are you going to drink? Oil?" and everyone nods thoughtfully, solemnly. It's these little things, these little inversions that fascinate us. At some point we come to believe that the truth sometimes makes no sense (or at least goes against common sense, which is certainly true), but a side effect of understanding this is a certain gullibility.
Then again, people are just fascinated by the bizarre, after all.
All of this is only to say that I think this is really funny.
There's a strange phrase in a Times editorial today: "There is another, Godzilla from hell kind of correction that generally requires lengthy explanation and often appears under the heading of Editor's Note."
Shouldn't the phrase "Godzilla from hell" be hyphenated when it's used as a modifier? Seems like that would get rid of the comma that seems to be indicating a pause instead of a clause.
Readers here probably could have predicted that the favorite author of my teenage years was Robert A. Heinlein. I discovered his short stories through a next-door-neighbor, and they were my introduction to science fiction and also to serious book buying. On one trip to San Antonio — perhaps the best city in Texas for used book lovers — I came away with fourteen of his books, which made the largest book purchase I'd ever made.
M. G. Lord has a fun essay about Heinlein in the Times today. Apparently there's a big conference scheduled for Heinlein's centennial. "The celebration, set for July 7, 2007, Heinlein's birthday, will consist of three separate sections: one for fans, one for academics and a third for a group not usually associated with fiction, genre or otherwise - aerospace professionals."
This segregation between fans and academics seems very wise indeed. Fans tend to interact poorly with academics analyzing their favorite authors. I've seen an alumni lecture on Tolkien descend into shouting, wailing chaos because of this clash. (In fact, I had to leave the room after a furious argument broke out between the lecturer and several members of the audience over whether Sam knew that Elbereth was Varda on Weathertop, and I realized that I actually had an opinion on the subject.)
I think that one of the main reasons for this conflict is that fans have different standards of authenticity than critics do. Any argument about a work is judged based on its conformance to the text, rather than the argument itself. Speakers are more privileged than others not by their credentials, but because of their familiarity with the material — sometimes as demonstrated in obscure trivia contests.
Perhaps this isn't such a bad metric. I rarely shout at my CD player, but a lecture on Science Fiction managed to offend me enough to actually stop my laundry folding. Dr. Rabkin had really won me over with his theories about science fiction as an outgrowth of the western, as well as the analysis of teenage power fantasies in both genres. I was just getting into his lecture of Heinlein's father figures as two different halves of the Oedipal father, when he slipped up: "Halfway through Starship Troopers we actually find out that this stern drill sergeant really is Johnny Rico's father." What? Suddenly nothing else he had to say carried any weight.