Please don't take it amiss if I fail to respond to your missives or do so in a cursory manner. I must be selective.
Philosophia longa, vita brevis.
The clock is running, and I have a lot to finish before the flag falls.
Category: Varia
Madonna to Portugal
Dale Tuggy’s Letter to a Former Student
A remarkable document.
A former student is fixing to swim the Tiber, and Dale is "mildly discouraged."
Note to Professor Tuggy's students: you are lucky to have such a sharp philosopher and good man as a teacher.
The Big Unplug 2018
The 2018 Big Unplug starts now.
I hope to be back in about three weeks. I will be incommunicado during this period so please don't send me any e-mail or leave any comments.
Bang on the link below for a little of the 'theory' of the Big Unplug.
Sick of politics? Take a gander at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.
All the best to my readers!
As I Have Been Saying For Years . . .
The Philosophy of Furniture
Edgar Allan Poe, 1840.
No Day Without Cultural Appropriation
Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
From the Pretty to the Pedestrian
Philippa Foot's maiden name was 'Bosanquet.' Her grounding of the normative in the natural, however, is decidedly Aristotelian, and thus peripatetic, and therefore pedestrian, in keeping with her married name.
Running with the pun, my Foot notes are accessible here.
Beware the Ides of March
"They are come, but not yet gone."
Thus spoke the soothsayer to Caesar when the dictator perpetuus said to the soothsayer that the Ides of March had come and he was still alive.
Dictator perpetuus has an overly confident ring to it much like tausendjähriges Reich.
Some history here.
The Death of Caesar (1798) by Vincenzo Camuccini
The House Mate from Hell
The moral of the story: never let anyone into your life whom you haven't vetted. It seems that all the people Jamison Bachmann tormented were liberal do-gooders. So a little blaming of the victim is in order here.
I can't expect a liberal to understand it, but one has a moral obligation, to oneself and to others, to do one's level best to not allow oneself to be anyone's victim.
More on this topic to tee off liberal knuckleheads in On Blaming the Victim.
Age Quod Agis
Age quod agis is a well-known saying which is a sort of Latin call to mindfulness: do what you are doing. Be here now in the activity at hand.
Legend has it that Johnny Ringo was an educated man. (Not so: a story for later.) But so he is depicted over and over. In this scene from Tombstone, the best of the movies about Doc Holliday and the shoot-out at the O. K. Corral, Ringo trades Latinisms with the gun-totin' dentist, who was indeed an educated man and a fearless and deadly gunslinger to boot, his fearlessness a function of his 'consumption.'
I don't mean his consumption of spirits, but his tuberculosis. His was the courage of an embittered man, close to death.
The translations in the video clip leave something to be desired. Age quod agis gets translated as 'do what you do best'; the literal meaning, however, is do what you are doing. Age is in the imperative mood; quod is 'what'; agis is the second person singular present tense of agere and means: 'you do' or 'you are doing.'
Curiously, Doc Holliday did not die with his boots on. He died in bed.
Examples of Outfits Not to Join
"Study everything, join nothing." I am sometimes asked for examples. Here are some from Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary under the entry Regalia. (Borrowed from Gilleland the Erudite):
. . . Knights of Adam; Visionaries of Detectable Bosh; the Ancient Order of Modern Troglodytes; the League of Holy Humbug; the Golden Phalanx of Phalangers; the Genteel Society of Expurgated Hoodlums; the Mystic Alliances of Gorgeous Regalians; Knights and Ladies of the Yellow Dog; the Oriental Order of Sons of the West; the Blatherhood of Insufferable Stuff; Warriors of the Long Bow; Guardians of the Great Horn Spoon; the Band of Brutes; the Impenitent Order of Wife-Beaters; the Sublime Legion of Flamboyant Conspicuants; Worshipers at the Electroplated Shrine; Shining Inaccessibles; Fee-Faw-Fummers of the Inimitable Grip; Jannissaries of the Broad-Blown Peacock; Plumed Increscencies of the Magic Temple; the Grand Cabal of Able-Bodied Sedentarians; Associated Deities of the Butter Trade; the Garden of Galoots; the Affectionate Fraternity of Men Similarly Warted; the Flashing Astonishers; Ladies of Horror; Cooperative Association for Breaking into the Spotlight; Dukes of Eden; Disciples Militant of the Hidden Faith; Knights-Champions of the Domestic Dog; the Holy Gregarians; the Resolute Optimists; the Ancient Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs; Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity; Dukes-Guardian of the Mystic Cess-Pool; the Society for Prevention of Prevalence; Kings of Drink; Polite Federation of Gents-Consequential; the Mysterious Order of the Undecipherable Scroll; Uniformed Rank of Lousy Cats; Monarchs of Worth and Hunger; Sons of the South Star; Prelates of the Tub-and-Sword.
I hereby nominate Hillary Clinton for membership in Associated Sovereigns of Mendacity and Harvey Weinstein for The Ancient Sodality of Inhospitable Hogs.
As for myself, I would not join any club that would have me as a member, to cop a line from Groucho Marx.
Woody Guthrie’s 1943 New Year’s Resolutions
Here. #3: "Wash teeth if any."
Last year a man asked me what my resolutions were. "I don't need any," was my joking reply.
Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality
'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings.
Impersonality in the minimalist style typically takes the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better is the nowadays common family picture with handwritten name but no message.
The maximalist style is far worse. Now we are in for a lengthy litany of the manifold accomplishments of the sender and his family which litany may run to a page or two of single-spaced text.
One size fits all. No attempt to address any one person as a person.
"It's humbug, I tell you, humbug!"
Are You an Introvert?
One of the tough tasks we introverts face during a holiday season is to find plausible excuses for nonattendance at all the endless and pointless parties that extroverts cannot help but organize.