Andrew Lang

I finally had a reason to dig up Andrew Lang's Homer and the Study of Greek when I was asked if I was familiar with him.

In the past, I would have said 'Isn't that the Fairy Tale Book Guy, where all of the books are a different color?' But this time, I had the good fortune of having read his opinions on Greek, and was able to sound a bit more scholarly than I usually am.

When I found that essay online (instead of in my textbook where I had originally read it) I was doubly fortunate to find piles of his work online, and excavating that pile for nuggets of good reading has occupied a small amount of my time which wasn't devoted to video games or watching football.

Good stuff.

Something anyway

Here is an interesting look at Free will.

Enjoy!

In Which I Review My Barnes & Noble Nook

Sadly, I'm doing this review for free. If Barnes & Noble want to send me a designer cover for my nook, I will accept it. Until then, this is how I think of my nook:





As I am only an honorary geek, I'm not going into the specs. I don't like those pesky details. However, I love pretty much everything about this ereader. I love the size and weight, for starters. I have actually damaged my neck joints in the past from lugging around Tom Clancy paperbacks. Cross my heart. (This is why our sensible ancestors published larger books in multiple volumes. I have an Everyman edition of The Three Musketeers from c.1908, and the two slim hardbacks are delightful. Unlike the special editions the thickness and weight of cinder blocks that Barnes & Noble publishes.*)

The design of the nook is not merely easy to use, it's addictive. It's fun to turn the pages with the buttons on the sides, and it's fun to add bookmarks and then go back to them. And yes, I have finished reading several whole books on mine. I don't just punch shiny buttons, honestly.

Now I am not really any booksellers target demographic because I prefer dead authors to living ones. (Except Adrian Plass. And Mel Gilden.) So most books that I want to own are either public domain or will be in the next few years. This works great for an ereader- I can download free electronic stacks of books that would smother me in the non-electronic world. So, for me, the selection available is almost perfect. If I just wanted to keep up with the latest bestsellers, I'd be paying less than for physical books, but I'd still be paying out.




One thing I'll have to report on later is the interaction of the nook with the Barnes & Noble website. See, you have to get access to wifi to register the nook at the B &N site, only after which you can download free screen savers and such. I live in Possum Crossing, so there are very few wifi sites in my neighborhood. But I am eager to get rid of the default screen saver, consisting of those creepy writer pictures that Barnes & Noble uses on its shopping bags and to decorate the cafes.

Husband: That looks like Erma Bombeck on your nook. Except... it's a guy. An old guy who looks like Erma Bombeck.

Me: That's Kurt Vonnegut.

So no real drawbacks, and unlimited bookworm bliss is about how I'd sum up.

*Now Barnes & Noble won't want to send me any freebies. Now you know how committed I am to bringing my readers the unvarnished truth.

Eagle Eyes

I've recently discovered the BBC Program Churches: How to Read Them. In one part, the host, Richard Taylor, mentions that there is a lot of cryptic animal sculpture and art in medieval churches that can be better understood with a trip to medieval 'bestiaries'. These are medieval books about animals, filled with allegorical stories, fables and myths about animals to help teach us important lessons.

Fortunately for me, a quick search turned up The Medieval Bestiary, a valuable and extensive online resource filled with these stories, image galleries, and even links to original manuscripts.

These bestiaries naturally bring to my mind these Character Sketches, published by the IBLP; neither is very concerned with actual science, but as animal-based life lessons, have some value.

The artwork is likewise entertaining, though apparently, medieval artists didn't always have National Geographic photos of exotic creatures to work from, so their interpretations of animals are wonderfully bonkers.

To my mind, these stories are wonderful, and can still be useful tools for education, but while doing so, it's incredibly important to point out that these stories are almost entirely fictional, and should encourage further research, into both actual science, and ancient history.

I Bet You All Are Wondering, Who Is This Young Unknown...

Now that sufficient time has elapsed since the announcement of a new contributor, and anticipation has reached it's highest pitch, I feel it is time to emerge from the shadows and introduce myself. Hi. I am "Portia", and I will be posting here from time to time, as other factors allow- which means so much time will elapse between my posts that you will forget my very existence. Then you will be blindsided by huge, dense posts that will cause your eyes to glaze over.

Stay tuned for Jane Austen, a nook review, and stuff about robots.

Ford Shrugged

Here is a great piece on some of the different metaphysical assumptions made by varying camps of libertarians. This explains somewhat why, given that their language appears common, the ideas contained therein are not.

Enjoy.

Ignore this bit, it's introspective

I can never tell which bloggo to post on, this one isn't supposed to be a comedy one, but I guess I can't help disguising my bile as humor.

Scattershot Justice

I was pondering whilst driving earlier today, and began considering the practice of 'shotgun' justice, in which some poor bastard is assaulted with numerous charges, ranging from 'misdemeanor looking at a policeman' to 'felony possession of a deadly weapon with intent to sell it to a guy who might use it in the commission of a federal crime in Zimbabwe' in an effort to make sure that something, anything, might stick.It's not difficult to see the attractiveness of this stratagem, because we know evil-doers are slippery little fish and we hate them*, but the truth is, this is an incredibly vindictive, hateful, and despicable practice**.

Let me elaborate.

If you place a sniveling, home-burning, little rapist murderer into a school-bus full of 4th graders***, and given a choice of weapons with which to dispatch the blighter, what sort of weapon would you choose?

If you chose a shotgun, then you are either incredibly stupid, or a horribly insensitive clod, because you just shot a handful of kids in the face in your effort to eviscerate the aforementioned sinner.

The Magic School Bus of Death

What's my point, you ask, slightly bewildered? I'll tell you, after I take another swig from this bottle.

Ahhh.

Ok, so my point is, in the words of Blackstone: "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer,".

The truth of this statement is, of course, debatable, but the reasonableness is unassailable. If a terrorist took refuge in a hospital, no reasonable man would drop a tactical nuke on the roof.

Harry Blackstone

There are plenty of reasons to ignore this, (notably in war)**** but in all honesty, it takes a remarkably insensitive person to damn the innocent in an effort to crush the guilty.

With that said, the main problem with scattershot justice is one of hitting innocent bystanders with stray pellets. The other problem, is that vindictive police or prosecutors are free to use stray pellets on a whim to pursue personal vendettas.

Just one example of our misguided efforts to legislate ourselves into oblivion would be drunk driving, as reckless driving and killing people is presumably already illegal.***** Drunk drivers are a problem, no doubt, but standard laws are already sufficient in this regard.

Drunk driving laws serve several purposes:

1. Raises awareness that it's bad (little more than a TV commercial)

2. Severely punishes people for relatively minor infractions.

3. Tacks on another penalty on top of an already existing one.

4. Puts innocent people in jail.

5. Generates publicity for Billy Joel.

Enough to get raped in prison

Laws which prohibit open containers of alcohol in vehicles are even worse.

I'm not trying to defend drunken slobs, certainly not the worthless scum who ran over your baby a year ago, but simply making new crimes for which to punish him, is simply unreasonable.

This concept applies to Al Capone as well, that famous example of legal ingenuity also becomes an example of a horrible legal environment in which any persnickety bugger with a badge or persistent DA can put anyone in jail at any moment no matter what.

I agree wholeheartedly that some offenses are particularly awful, and the desire to 'get that guy' can be overwhelming. But poor Justice should never be kicked to the curb and bloodied just because someone is really hurt or angry; thanks to our penchant to over-legislate, our nightmarish legal landscape is fast becoming impossible to navigate, we are all criminals, and the government is free to prosecute the everliving dookie out of any citizen it (dis)likes.

~~

If you found this rant interesting, inflammatory, defamatory, derogatory, negatory, or own the rights to any images (which I stole), jokes, footnotes, etc. contained in this post (which I probably stole), then I guess you can fill out the proper form and send it to one of our committees dedicated to helping me evade capture by the Federal Marshals hot on my trail.

Also, I'm not a lawyer, this post is unlikely to help you in any sort of court case, unless it's directed against me.

~~

* Boy, do we hate them!

** By otherwise nice people.

*** Not a good idea, but I saw it in a movie once.

**** Or video games.

***** In most states.

Yeaarr

Check out, it's infinity, and that thing which Buzz Lightyear says!

Visualizing infinity

Honour Killings.

On a horribly serious note, I found this article, on 'honour killings' by Robert Fisk recently, and my mood darkened.

An important distinction (lost on a great deal of the West)* is that 'honour killing' is largely cultural, tradition, rather than religion. One might be able to make the argument, that, if their religion can't, or doesn't, change this culture, then it is either insufficient in itself, or not taken seriously enough**, but I don't know if many are prepared to argue this one way or the other.*** It would be easy enough to point out atrocities in any religion, and to likewise dismiss them as being perpetrated by nutjob heretics.

The most depressing statement in the article is when American soldiers are accused of raping and therefore causing the 'honour**** killing' of a number of women. Does this mean that the culture we bring over there is one in which we do not value women as much as they do? It's possible.

The main lesson anyone can take away from this whole sordid business is that it is extremely easy to separate ourselves from the unspeakably vile actions of our soldiers as they are presumably extremely rare***** and therefore not representative of our culture as a whole, while condemning an entire people because of the actions of a relative few.

~~

* I know, I said I'd stopped this sort of parenthesis, but a few will inevitably escape my iron grasp.

** I think Chesterton did, but I can't seem to find it anywhere now that I need it.

*** I'm certainly not going to.

**** I'm spelling 'honour' with a 'u', no matter what this spellcheck says.

***** Not nearly rare enough, it's disgustingly common-place, I'm afraid.

Since I've notice other people refuse to let this blog languish in peace

I've decided to quit my parenthetical ways, which have always bothered me, but which I had unfortunately found inescapable, and somewhat computer code-y*. I attribute this new venture to Got Medieval, a blog which I am starting to feel I should stop pimping before I end up like Harvey Keitel in Taxi Driver**.

Other than that, I have nothing super smart to report today, other than the fact that we have a new contributor***, so either updates will be more infrequent, or if the math works out right, this blog will be neglected 30% more now.****

~~

Here is a handful of links to keep you busy while you eagerly forget this blog exists*****:

Civilization V Review

The Voice******

Extreme Theology*******

~~

*(while Most of my online correspondence(like this)=0, i=i++); etc.

**dead

***Portia Somethingorother

****tired of this yet? I'm not, now I can insert jokes where ever I like!

*****somewhat like myself

******you might like this version, I certainly don't

*******I was going to remark on this link, but since you are down here, how's it going?

Just found a wonderful resource regarding medieval history, Got Medieval, it's wonderful, check out this post for instance, on the Tyranny of the Scribe, where he discusses the stupidity of quotes like this one from Douglas Rushkoff:

"[These] are the stages that our civilization has moved through in successive stages of media. We went from people who just lived in a world that had rules that we don't even know what they are. Maybe it's going to rain, maybe it's not. Maybe if I sacrifice my kid to Moloch I'll get some plants this year, maybe I won't--people just randomly trying to find some predictability. Then we get texts. We get the 22-letter alphabet. So now instead of relying on priests to read everything for us and hieroglyphs now we can make our own words. Then we get the printing press which in theory lets us instead of depending on a few scribes now anyone can write. And then we get the computer which of course means now anyone can program reality.".

It's sad how many otherwise intelligent people are stuck in the muck of twisted medieval history which is lamentably overlooked and often taken for granted.

Photogen and Nycteris

I enjoyed this story so much, I thought I'd go ahead and post some thoughts on it here, where things of importance are supposedly posted.

Go ahead and read it, and then come back to class for discussion. I'll wait, it's fairly short.

Ok, back already?

My language skills are laughable at best, and better than nothing at worst, but 'Photogen', I believe, (aside from being a chemical something quite like kerosene), it means 'born of light', 'lightborn' (roughly, please correct if I'm wrong). 'Nycteris', as far as I can tell, is a bat. 'Nycteris', I believe, is two words, one of which is 'night', and the other, I haven't been able to figure out, because I lack a good Greek dictionary, and searching for Greek words online is a huge pain.

Interestingly, the names of the mothers are Latin (Aurora, and Vesper) as opposed to their children's names, which appear to be Greek. Might we expect that phenomenon to work chronologically (Greek to Latin), or does this method reflect an increasingly philosophic or scientific direction the tale takes? I don't know. Also, I didn't bother to research any other names in the tale, so feel free to do so and blow my thesis out of the water with your amazing new insights.

Now, some have proposed that this story takes aim at the Lockian 'blank slate' sort of theory, that someone born with a blank mind develops eventually or whatever the kids believe now, but I've decided to take a different tack.

What if we view this as a tale of spirituality?

``But who knows,'' Nycteris would say to Photogen, ``that when we go out, we shall not go into a day as much greater than your day as your day is greater than my night?''

What if you find that what you thought was brilliant doctrine was exposed as being as poor a reflection of the truth as the moon is of the sun?

So, in this light, perhaps Photogen could represent the sons of God, and Nycteris, the secular world. In this more theological view, I suppose that Watho would be the devil, instead of merely a heartless scientist, who destroys lives in search of knowledge.

The light would represent spiritual truth, and life, into which the children of God are born, and Photogen, as Christians ought (don't run off just because you are Buddhist or something, please, we need an accurate headcount at the end), knows and cares for nothing but the light, but is ultimately curious to the point of wandering into darkness.

Nycteris, then, as the rest of the world, is thirsty for knowledge, and manages to find the light of truth, even in the darkness in which she is imprisoned. She also is curious, and searches diligently for more, and finds solace in the moon, which merely reflects dimly the light of the sun. God has not left the world without light, and many find spirituality, oddly warped reflections, which establish wrong viewpoints, no matter how well reasoned. Fear, however, drives her back inside before she can discover how wrong she is.

Without the light, Photogen is crippled. Without God, so are we. However, Nycteris comforts Photogen in his hour of need, by showing him that the light still shines:

``I may be a creature of the darkness,'' she replied. ``I hardly know what you mean. But I do not love the night. I love the day -- with all my heart; and I sleep all the night long.''

With this, the author beautifully illustrates how we might look down on other people (Buddhists) for living in darkness, but we forget that they are not always, not naturally, devils in darkness, but love truth as much as anyone, only are kept from it by something, perhaps their own Watho. Though many people don't bother with light (atheists? the servants?), and have no desire to do so, however, they presumably live by some light at least (light is inescapable).

Photogen, once the sun returns, forgets Nycteris, as we might turn our backs on fellow sinners, and does his best to forget his cowardice, as we our sin.

In the end, Watho sends poor Nycteris out to suffer the righteous judgement of the sun, but instead, the sun reveals more truth to Nycteris, and she sees the error of her way.

Nycteris exhibits great selflessness, and her own unique qualities developed in darkness which aid both her and Photogen as they flee the clutches of Watho. Free, married, and united with the parents of Photogen (not Nycteris, her parents are a mystery!) Aurora wonders "how even the wicked themselves may be a link to join together the good."

This could be interpreted as pure universalism (seeing as how it is MacDonald), but I believe certain truths can be healthily gleaned from this story, and it can be enjoyed on multiple levels.

Feel free to improve on my poorly constructed sham of an allegory, or bask in the light of my brilliance, either way is fine with me.

The Other Guy Posts All the Good Stuff

It's really not my fault. Seriously. Except for the part I am responsible for like the lack of effort into quality and creative imagining.

Here's something quality:

Of course I didn't find this, a friend did. Of course I didn't create this, some other sap did.

Of course the vid was primarily humorous through simplifying everything ad nausueam, ironically making people feel smugly good about themselves or angry at the perspicacious portraitization. We have surprisingly high tolerance today for unreal bs.

My mission here is really just a passer-oner of incredibly insipid video clips which really don't quantifiably improve your life.

Science and Being Real Sure of Stuff

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/science/28harvard.html?_r=1&hp

According to this article at the New York Times, Marc Hauser, researcher and author of a book exploring the evolutionary basis of morality, apparently fabricated data on his research project looking into the cognitive abilities of a bunch of monkeys.

Now, he may be vindicated, only having screwed up somehow, and not stupidly cheating and falsifying his work, but the irony is crushingly astounding.

The title of his book: “Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.” is hilarious now.

Even if he is vindicated, or if his experiments can be recreated with similar results, I find this to be a great example of why healthy skepticism or at least, admitting the universe is a generally unsolvable conundrum, is a fun and wise course.

Gravity you say? Magic.

Light? Magic.

Electricity? Little particles.

Bacteria? Tiny universes.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

The Hand With the Dry-Erase Marker