tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16031744613444791432024-03-26T17:25:45.834-07:0020011Whatever's on my mind.Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.comBlogger949125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-64110514298528314402024-03-24T13:53:00.000-07:002024-03-24T13:54:05.772-07:00Frank Ryan, RIP (Belatedly)<p> Frank Ryan, an outstanding quarterback for the Cleveland Browns in the early 1960s, died on January 1, 2024. He received respectful obituaries in the newspapers. Wikipedia has a long and detailed article on him (as on many other football players).</p><p>Ryan was unusual as earning a Ph.D. in mathematics while an NFL player. He taught at Case Institute (now part of Case Western Reserve) during some of his off-seasons in Cleveland, and later at Rice (where he studied as an undergraduate and earned his Ph.D.) and Yale. After his playing days, he oversaw the computerization voting of the House of Representatives. His wife, Joan Ryan, wrote on sports for the Washington Post in those days, as she had previously for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.<br /></p><p>In his NFL days, home games were not broadcast on TV--tickets for the games cost an unaffordable $10--so I can have seen only so many of Ryan's games. But I remember the intense satisfaction we felt when he led the Browns to the 1964 NFL championship.</p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-41761579498654347052024-03-14T16:45:00.000-07:002024-03-14T16:46:10.843-07:00Lighting<p> Today, one of the building engineers was replacing lights in fixtures in an open area near my office. The tubes looked unusually thin when I got a look at them, and I remarked on that. He told me that the tubes were not fluorescent lights, but LEDs. I had not previously seen LED lights in that shape. The connectors at the end are compatible with those for fluorescent tubes, so one need not switch out fixtures. The savings in electricity will be considerable. And the light seems to be warmer than a fluorescent's, which is all to the good.</p><p><br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-26348033430035337652024-02-26T17:21:00.000-08:002024-02-26T17:21:51.120-08:00Murdoch as Philosopher<p> Long ago, in Iris Murdoch's first novel, <i>Under the Net</i>, I read a passage that embarrassed me:</p><blockquote><p>Dave does extramural work for the university, and collects about him many youths who have a part-time interest in truth. Dave's pupils adore him, but there is a permanent fight on between him and them. They aspire like sunflowers. They are all natural metaphysicians, or so Dave says in a tone of disgust. This seems to me a wonderful thing to be, but it inspires in Dave a passion of opposition. To Dave's pupils the world is a mystery; a mystery to which it should be reasonably possible to discover a key. The key should be something of the sort that could be contained in a book of some eight hundred pages. To find the key would not necessarily be a simple matter, but Dave's pupils feel sure that the dedication of between four and ten hours a week, excluding university vacations, should suffice to find it. They do not conceive that the matter should be either more simple or more complex than that.<br /></p></blockquote><p>I found the passage uncomfortable, as depicting too clearly the attitude I then had toward philosophy. The character Dave is Dave Gellman, a philosopher, of which it is also said</p><blockquote><p>Most of our conversations consisted of me saying something and Dave's saying he didn't understand me and my saying it again and Dave's getting very impatient. It took me some time to realize that when Dave said he didn't understand, what he meant was that what I said was nonsense. <br /></p></blockquote><p>At the time, I knew that Murdoch was a philosophy don. I had not read any of her philosophy, though. The other week I found and bought a copy of <i>The Sovereignty of the Good</i>. It is a book of about 100 pages, the first forty-some of which I had to read three times. I thought her arguments in general plausible, though I have the disadvantage of not wholly knowing the case she argued against: she mentions Stuart Hampshire, though the books of his she mentions are some years early than the ones I have read.<br /></p><p> The themes I picked out included: the difficulty of goodness; freedom as the matter of many small acts of attention, rather than as an arbitrary and unmotivated act in an otherwise determined world; art as a paradigm for attention to the world, not least because there is so much more bad art than good; love as another paradigm.<br /></p><p><br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-10798584519001970002024-02-24T14:12:00.000-08:002024-02-24T14:12:44.547-08:00Counter Intelligence<p> Most adult Americans have bought a car, or been with someone who has bought one, and know the mystifications practiced by dealerships, so that one is never quite sure what the actual cost is, and by the way did you want floor mats and the underbody sealed? Every new car sold in the US has a sticker on its window stating the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP), which is something. But dealerships do their best to keep one guessing on the real price. One can leave a dealership wondering whether any transaction could be more opaque. We have have found some that can.<br /></p><p>We are renovating our kitchen, and have discovered that the price of countertop materials is a secret between the vendors, fabricators, and contractors. It would be something to have at least a rule of thumb ratio, giving the price of Corian compared to the price of granite, etc. Even that does not seem to be available through the vendors. I would not care if a) I suspected the prices to be reasonable, and b) the stores where the unpriced goods are on display were nearer than a thirty minute drive. But neither condition holds.<br /></p><p>The whole business of home design and decoration seems to run on the principle that if you have to ask, you can't afford it. Large cities in the US have "design centers", which do not admit civilians unless accompanied by a designer. I gather also that companies can be stiff about sending samples to those who are not designers. Clearly some customers don't have to ask the prices, and the design magazines are full of their residences. Yet there are some not positively rich who want better than "builder grade", and would like to improve their dwellings, within their means, if only they could discover how far those means would go.<br /></p><p>My wife considers that the practices of the design centers have dampened sales, and that the bad condition of American design magazines is evidence of this. Comparable English businesses seem to have no such restrictions, and their magazines, she says, continue to flourish.<br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-21062930170921533882024-02-18T09:31:00.000-08:002024-02-18T09:31:50.864-08:00Books and Covers<p> Twenty-five or thirty years ago, probably at an in-law's, I pulled a copy of <i>The Rector of Justin</i> by Louis Auchincloss from the shelves. I looked into it, evidently at Chapter 2, and put it back on the shelf. The scene of a callow teacher failing to dominate a class of boys simply did not interest me. I wonder now whether the form of the book, a small Modern Library hardback (as I recall it) had some effect.<br /></p><p>I wonder this because I bought a paperback copy at Carpe Librum on Friday at lunch time, and finished it yesterday evening. The setting is curiously foreign--set all but entirely in America, among persons speaking recognizably American English--but largely in Episcopalian boarding schools, or among rich families who would send their sons to one. A fair number fall into the category of those one is glad not to have met. The narrator, a man aspiring to and eventually joining the Episcopalian clergy, is not prepossessing. Yet the novel carries one along.</p><p> Auchincloss wrote a memoir, which I read through at least once well before this. In the memoir he states that Frank Prescott, the rector, is based on the judge Learned Hand, not as some might have supposed Endicott Peabody, the founder of Groton. Peabody does make a cameo appearance in the novel, and gets a slighting mention. Clearly Peabody made a great impression on Auchincloss in his school days, but Auchincloss names Hand as the greatest man he had ever known.</p><p> <br /></p><p><br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-2683118306932805802024-02-03T07:51:00.000-08:002024-02-03T07:51:51.557-08:00German<p> The last chapter in Gordon Craig's <i>The Germans</i>, "The Awful German Language" begins</p><blockquote><p>In the days when Bismarck was the greatest man in Europe, an American visitor to Berlin, anxious to hear the Chancellor speak, procured two tickets to the visitors' gallery of the Reichstag and hired an interpreter to accompany her there. They were fortunate enough to arrive just before Bismarck intervened in a debate on a matter of social legislation, and the American pressed close to her interpreter's side so as to miss nothing of the translation. But although Bismarck spoke with considerable force and at some length, the interpreter's lips remained closed, and he was unresponsive to his employer's nudges. Unable to contain herself, she finally blurted, "What is he saying?" "Patience, madam," the interpreter answered, "I am waiting for the verb."<br /></p></blockquote><p>Craig of course quotes from the essay of Mark Twain's from which he took the title. More seriously, he traces the history of the language from the days when Charles V said that German was fit only for speaking to horses and Martin Luther proved him wrong, up through Enlightenment clarity to Hegelian obscurity and beyond.<br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-53596889049609393262024-01-31T17:35:00.000-08:002024-01-31T17:35:00.706-08:00Not the API I Had in Mind<p> For years, I have wished that there were a website that could tell me who is demonstrating which day near the White House. Some group often is, and anyone without an encyclopedic knowledge of flags must sometimes walk over to the edge and ask someone what the group, and perhaps the grievance, is. I have to think that most of the groups have a permit. I suppose that the two or three fellows I see with East Turkmenistan flags on Pennsylvania Avenue don't have or really need one, nor probably does the bagpiper who is often there. But the people who march for blocks to get to Lafayette Square or set up stands and sound systems must have one.</p> A couple of weeks ago, I saw a post on Hacker News that linked to the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/digital/nps-data-api.htm">page for an API</a> offered by the US Park Service. This, I thought, was just the thing, for the US Park Police is in charge of Lafayette Square, among other areas around the White House. With the free API key and the clear documentation, it took little time to put together a script to retrieve and print information about sites in the District of Columbia. It took not much more to write a script to retrieve and print out information about all of the week's events at the White House and President's Park. But there were no such events. A closer look said that the events listed would be those arranged by Park Service. I thought perhaps alerts would serve me better than events. They did not--the only alert told of masking status at the White House.Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-21674683545826649612024-01-28T10:15:00.000-08:002024-01-28T10:15:21.044-08:00French<p> One recalls that <i>War and Peace</i> begins with paragraphs of "that accurate French in which our grandparents spoke and even thought". I had not perhaps realized how far French served, until yesterday I encountered a paragraph by Peter Demetz on Maria Theresa:</p><blockquote><p>The dynasty was her nation; she corresponded with her children in French; as for her German, she spoke it with the sophistication of a plebeian Vienna wet nurse, as a popular ditty of her time suggested, and wrote the language of Klopstock and Lessing quirkily and according to French syntactical rules (only Frederick of Prussia's German was worse, but he was, after all, a French writer of note).<br /></p></blockquote><p> (<i>Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City</i>, chapter 6, "Mozart in Prague")<br /></p><p>I had read that Frederick preferred French. I have not encountered his writings, and would be no judge of his French if I had, but Samuel Johnson thought poorly of his work:</p><blockquote><p> Sir Thomas [Robinson] said, that the king of Prussia valued himself upon<br />three things;--upon being a hero, a musician, and an authour. JOHNSON.<br />'Pretty well, Sir, for one man. As to his being an authour, I have not<br />looked at his poetry; but his prose is poor stuff. He writes just as you<br />might suppose Voltaire's footboy to do, who has been his amanuensis.<br />He has such parts as the valet might have, and about as much of the<br />colouring of the style as might be got by transcribing his works.'<br /></p></blockquote><p> (<i>Life of Johnson</i>, entry for July 18, 1763)</p><p> <br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-29653090294793846142024-01-19T15:13:00.000-08:002024-01-19T15:55:44.670-08:00A Long CareerToday's Washington Post carries a story about Louis Kokonis, a math teacher at Alexandria City High School who died on January 4. He was 91, and had checked in at the school on January 3. He spent more than 60 years teaching in Alexandria, Virginia--if the statement that he began teaching during Eisenhower's administration is correct, he likely had 65 or more years teaching there.<br /><br />It was always my impression that Latin teachers were born 50, and remained 50 until their first students had retired from the workforce. But evidently math teachers can compete.Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-58144473803474204212023-12-30T15:10:00.000-08:002023-12-30T15:10:50.797-08:00The End of An Era<p> It is now almost impossible to buy incandescent light bulbs. We have a dwindling stock in the basement, which we know we cannot replenish. On the whole, I'm happy that LEDs have superseded them. The great advantage of LEDs, of course, is the huge savings in electricity. And though the light can be a bit blue, I prefer it to the dead light of fluorescents. Some we have bought recently have a warm color nearer that of incandescents.<br /></p><p> On the other hand, what about 25-watt bulbs for sconces or chandeliers? What if these are on a rheostat? I gather from a recent visit to the store that the manufacturers have largely taken care of that. Yet I hear that some LEDs behave better than others.<br /></p><p>My parents didn't know a time before incandescent light bulbs. I grew up with them. But the toddlers in my neighborhood may be the last generation to know them, if their parents haven't already switched to LEDs.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-77255771259862143332023-12-29T15:09:00.000-08:002023-12-29T15:10:37.563-08:00Authors' Names<p> I have been looking at the websites of a couple of local bookstores, for there are still a few presents to buy. At least three of the authors I looked for were pushed well down the list by more prolific or more popular authors.</p><p>The historian of late antiquity Peter Brown shares a name with an illustrator. The latter Peter Brown is wholly or partly responsible for a couple of series, "A Creepy Pair of Underwear" and "Killer Robots" that apparently became very popular with the young. It is not impossible to find the historian's memoirs, or his biography of St. Augustine, but depending on the bookstore it can take some clicking. The first time I tried this, I had reached a Spanish translation of one of the killer robot series before I found a history.<br /></p><p>Gordon Craig, who wrote excellent books on aspects of German history, suffers from the popularity of Edward Gordon Craig, an English actor and director. There is also a novel, <i>Gordon Craig, Soldier of Fortune</i> that you might encounter before you find any histories of Germany. It is fair to say that the search would have gone better had I supplied Craig's middle initial and searched for Gordon A. Craig.<br /></p><p>If you are looking for a novel or work of criticism by W.M. Spackman, you will discover quite a few books, I suppose novels, by one Anne Spackman. At the store I last checked, I never found the Spackman I had in mind, the search trailing off to books with multiple authors, one having a given name starting with W, the other surnamed Spackman.</p><p> One store efficiently offered several titles by the author I had in mind when I searched for Stuart Hampshire. The eight by the philosopher were unfortunately "not in stock at your store". The ninth title offered was lagniappe, thrown in to remind me of the chances of search, <i>Filthy Hampshire Limericks</i>; the Hampshire here was a county, not a surname. As I recall that also was not in stock at my store. <br /></p><p><br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-54474229679842435192023-12-26T15:47:00.000-08:002023-12-26T15:47:11.025-08:00Thinking About the Roman Empire<p> A piece in the business section of Sunday's New York Times mentioned in passing that social media had shown this year that men spend a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire. I had no idea what this meant. Our son, home for Christmas, explained that there was a Tik-Tok meme or fad in which women would ask men how often they thought about the Roman Empire. I must have looked puzzled, for he then asked me how often I do.</p><p>Quite a bit, it seems. He is in part to blame, for he gave me a copy of Adrian Goldsworthy's <i>Rome and Persia</i> for my birthday this fall: the Rome of the title is almost entirely the empire, for the republic had only a few years left when Rome and the Parthians first confronted each other. And then I did pick up a volume of Tacitus to look something up the other week. Also I have been reading Newman's <i>Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine</i>, which intermittently involves emperors pagan and Christian, Gothic invasions, and so on.<br /></p><p> I wonder whether this is simply an unusual stretch of preoccupation. But I can't observe myself not thinking of the Roman Empire, can I? And I wonder how many men, who hadn't thought about the Roman Empire since high school history class, found it impossible to avoid such thoughts after they were asked.<br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-91589020868957758512023-12-22T08:31:00.000-08:002023-12-22T08:31:05.275-08:00Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days<p> The website of at least one bookstore I know lists some books with the status "usually ships in 1 to 5 days". I long ago lost confidence in the assertion, and have recently been reminded why: it has been about three weeks since I ordered a book said to be in that status, and I have heard nothing back. My suggested emendation:</p><blockquote><p>It is not impossible that we shall be able to find you this book before you forget its name, or why you wished to buy it.<br /></p></blockquote>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-6077909329089914272023-12-21T06:45:00.000-08:002023-12-21T06:45:01.952-08:00J.G.A. Pocock, RIP<p> Today's New York Times carries an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/books/jga-pocock-dead.html">obituary</a> of the historian J.G.A. Pocock. The writer considers the most notable among Pocock's work to be the six-volume <i>Barbarism and Religion</i>, a study of the life and times of Edward Gibbon. The last volume of this work came out in 2015, when Pocock was ninety or ninety-one.<br /></p><p>Of Pocock's works, I have read only <i>The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition</i>. This was recommended by a friend who I think took a class from Pocock at Washington University. <i>The Machiavellian Moment</i> made interesting reading in the 2008 election season, when questions of <i>virtù</i> and prudence, <i>ottimati</i> and <i>popolo</i> came to one's attention. (That may be why I remember the Italian chapters better than the Atlantic chapters.)<br /></p><p>I don't think that I will be reading<i> </i>the six<i> </i>volumes of <i>Barbarism and History.</i> For one thing, this would require sitting down and reading all of Gibbon with close attention before I started. But perhaps I will track down a copy of <i>Political Thought and History.</i><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-21991872300382332322023-11-23T14:28:00.000-08:002023-11-23T14:28:35.597-08:00COVID<p>COVID--in whatever variant is out now, after the initial vaccinations of 2021 and repeated boosters--is not enjoyable, but in my perception not that different from the sort of wintertime crud that one often gets in the US--a night or two of fever, runny nose followed by a deep cough, general lack of energy. Over the years, I have a number of times gone to see a physician with just these symptoms, to be told, Well, it's probably viral, but here's some Keflex just in case. It would not have occurred to me that I had COVID, but my wife was feeling rotten also, and our son bought some tests. He does not have COVID, we do or did. A fortnight after the initial symptoms, I don't feel bad, but I am not energetic and do have a cough.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-20692911535893106542023-11-21T13:43:00.000-08:002023-11-21T13:43:54.333-08:00Book Recommendations<p> In leaving an airplane at Schiphol a couple of weeks ago, I left behind the book I had brought to read while on vacation. It was certainly my own fault, though it did occur to me that KLM a) certainly knew that I had been riding in the seat where the book was, and b) knew the next flight I was booked on, ergo c) could have managed to get the book to me at the departure gate.</p><p>We arrived in Florence with no book for me to read. Fortunately, we were staying about a five minute walk from the Paperback Exchange. We stopped by, and I spotted <i>After Virtue</i> by Alasdair McIntyre. When I told my wife that I would be buying the book later in the day, when I wouldn't have to carry it about, a woman sitting on the floor looked up and said that she loved the book. So far, I can see why.</p><p>Some days later in Montecatini Terme, we looked into a Mondadori bookstore while killing time before dinner. There were some children of about ten in the store wearing red hats. One such boy walked up and addressed me in English hardly superior to my Italian. He let me know that the students were there to request that books be purchased for their school library. I agreed to buy one, and he pointed out the table from which one might choose. I was not impressed by the choices, and thought there were better ones on the shelves--stories by Joseph Conrad that probably could be read as straight adventure, <i>Kidnapped</i> by Robert Louis Stevenson, no doubt others. But I picked what looked most promising on the table, and bought the school a hardback adventure story for sixteen Euros. In return, we got a couple of small scrolls of paper with quotations about reading, one of them from Umberto Eco.</p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-43936847834198054452023-10-27T15:27:00.002-07:002023-10-27T15:27:21.544-07:00Words Reclaimed<p> For about fifteen years centered on 2003, I often encountered the word "emblematic" in newspapers. The first time it appeared to mean "exemplary". Other times it might have meant "symbolic". I came to think that there must be a tool called "an emblematic" to provide a filler for tired journalists. The OED acknowledges the word, but I hadn't encountered a case I thought it suited.</p><p>Last weekend, in <i>Morality and Conflict</i> by Stuart Hampshire, I read</p><blockquote><p>Certain minutiae of behaviour, as they strike a stranger, may be emblematic and have the right or wrong emotional significance for those who understand the behaviour, 'understand' in the sense that one understands an idiom in a spoken language.</p></blockquote><p>That use of "emblematic" strikes me as just right.</p><p>More recently, one encounters the term "iconic" everywhere. Usually it means "famous", I think. I would be happy to restrict it to a form of ecclesiastical art, to researches into the ancient city of Iconium, or to code written in the Icon programming language. But those who write for the public are more liberal with it.</p><p> Also last weekend, I encountered a case where "iconic" seemed to fit. In the chapter "Early Latin Trinitarian Theology" of <i>Augustine and Nicene Theology</i>, Michel Barnes classifies Faustinus's "Nicene" Trinitarian theology as having a</p><blockquote><p>logic that is neither power-based nor substance based but <i>iconic.</i></p></blockquote><p>That is to say, Faustinus relies on</p><blockquote><p>Scriptural descriptions of the Son's iconic or visual relationship to the Father</p></blockquote><p> </p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-78695819047807940372023-10-22T12:42:00.000-07:002023-10-22T12:42:06.824-07:00Split Infinitives<p> In section 6 of the essay "Morality and Convention" of <i>Morality and Conflict</i> by Stuart Hampshire, there appears the sentence</p><blockquote><p>The kind of 'must not' that arises within this [local] area of morality can be compared with a linguistic prohibition, for example that you must not split an infinitive: a particular rule of a particular language, which is not made less binding by the fact that it is not a general rule in language.<br /></p></blockquote><p><i>Morality and Conflict</i> was published in 1983. In Alison Lurie's <i>Foreign Affairs</i>, published in 1984, an American professor reflects on the conversation of a man who says that he "[used] to really enjoy baseball" with</p><blockquote><p>A person without inner resources who splits infinitives ...</p></blockquote><p>The first edition of H.W. Fowler's <i>Modern English Usage</i>, published in 1927, gives almost three pages to the question of split infinitives, and sorts writers by attitude into five divisions. Clearly Fowler is with the fifth:</p><blockquote><p>5. The attitude of those who know and distinguish is something like this: We admit that the separation of <i>to</i> from its infinitive .. is not in itself desirable ... We maintain however that a real [split infinitive], though not desirable in itself, is preferable to either of two things, to real ambiguity, & to patent artificiality.<br /></p></blockquote><p> Presumably Lurie's character belonged to Fowler's division 1, "those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is".</p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-74033256624271973512023-10-08T14:37:00.000-07:002023-10-08T14:37:00.408-07:00Arbiters<p> A footnote late in the chapter "My Station and Its Duties" of F.H. Bradley's <i>Ethical Studies</i> runs</p><blockquote><p>It is worth while in this connexion to refer to the custom some persons have (and find useful) of calling before the mind, when in doubt, a known person of high character and quick judgment, and thinking what they would have done. This no doubt both delivers the mind from private considerations and also is to act in the spirit of the other person (so far as we know it), i. e. from the general basis of his acts (certainly <i>not</i> the mere memory of his particular acts, or such memory plus inference.<br /></p></blockquote><p> The footnote attaches to a sentence beginning "Precept is good, but example is better".</p><p> The note reminded me of one in Sydney Smith's "Letters to Archdeacon Singleton", a work more playfully written but serious even so:</p><blockquote><p>Mr. Fox very often used to say, "I wonder what Lord B. will think of this!" Lord B. happened to be a very stupid person, and the curiosity of Mr. Fox's friends was naturally excited to know why he attached such importance to the opinion of such an ordinary common-place person. "His opinion," said Mr. Fox, "is of much more importance than you are aware. He is an exact representative of all common-pace English prejudices, and what Lord B. thinks of any measure, the great majority of of English people will think of it." It would be a good thing if every Cabinet of philosophers had a Lord B. among them.</p></blockquote><p>This is attached to a passage likewise explicit:</p><blockquote><p>I am astonished that these Ministers neglect the common precaution of a foolometer, with which no public man should be unprovided: I mean, the acquaintance and society of three or four regular British fools as a test of public opinion. Every Cabinet minister should judge of all his measures by his foolometer, as a navigator crowds or shortens sail by the barometer in his cabin. I have a very valuable instrument of that kind myself, which I have used for many years; and I would be bound to predict, with the utmost nicety, the precise effect which any measure would produce on public opinion.<br /></p></blockquote><p> Would or did Bradley think of Smith's application of "example is better" as frivolous? Smith wrote about 40 years before Bradley.<br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-41747853593810504022023-09-30T15:23:00.000-07:002023-09-30T15:23:51.725-07:00Booting<p> Last weekend, I walked up to the first stand in the self-checkout area of store nearby, and found that the screen displayed not a menu but a console window showing the output of a startup sequence:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKqSeSzgkMKktkqFDXcBpbyuc5ZvODAknn-QdfG8EtDBX2fLewb7mrhIFh6qIhyphenhyphen0K3dMXE4CanDpMisp8XdQfhpw4FlFEdSA8OQHwJz-NhB3qd2Gn2Sapxp0bCQ9P5UhfmjRZjxYj5BRwL6Pn02oFS122K26J7QkakMhDpzv3Gdm33oZg3wzIyDk8zSML07-BLhnXw/s4032/IMG_3879.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKqSeSzgkMKktkqFDXcBpbyuc5ZvODAknn-QdfG8EtDBX2fLewb7mrhIFh6qIhyphenhyphen0K3dMXE4CanDpMisp8XdQfhpw4FlFEdSA8OQHwJz-NhB3qd2Gn2Sapxp0bCQ9P5UhfmjRZjxYj5BRwL6Pn02oFS122K26J7QkakMhDpzv3Gdm33oZg3wzIyDk8zSML07-BLhnXw/s320/IMG_3879.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><br /></div>A friend noted the "Clonezilla" line, fourth from the bottom, and said that this might be a re-installation of the software. We agreed that frequent reinstallation of software on a machine that a) handles money, and b) is open to the touch of any and all, might be a good idea, and that the machine might be set to reinstall its software on every power cycle.<div><br /></div><div>The screen shortly scrolled off all lines but one, which indicated that the machine was waiting on something. By then I had checked out at the next station.<br /><p><br /></p></div>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-949734723926222542023-09-28T15:56:00.002-07:002023-09-28T15:56:53.366-07:00Reflection<p>I happened to pull <i>Ethical Studies</i> by F.H. Bradley from the shelves today. A few pages in, I noticed</p><blockquote><p>It is not so easy to say what the people mean by their ordinary words, for this reason, that the question is not answered until it is asked; that asking is reflection, and that we reflect in general not to find the facts, but to prove our theories at the expense of them.<br /></p></blockquote><p>Are we then necessarily asking leading questions? I suppose that reflection must require a high degree of scrupulousness to avoid that.<br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-39054526613366279402023-09-24T15:12:00.002-07:002023-09-24T15:12:39.479-07:00Fiction and Philosophy<p> In reading <i><a href="https://www.powells.com/book/innocence-experience-9780674454491">Innocence and Experience</a></i> by Stuart Hampshire, I noticed this passage early on:</p><blockquote><p>I have difficulty in imagining that purity of intention and undivided purposes can be the normal case in politics. I believe that very many people feel divided between openness and concealment, between innocence and experience; and, outside politics, they often find themselves divided between love and hatred of their own homes and of their own habits. The evidence for this belief of mine comes rather from fiction than from moral philosophy, which always presents a tidier picture in the interest of some prevailing epistemology.<br /></p></blockquote><p> Of course, <i>Innocence and Experience</i> is precisely a work of moral philosophy. It does aim to acknowledge the breadth of the available evidence.<br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-57631601739178771722023-09-23T15:14:00.000-07:002023-09-23T15:14:00.994-07:00The Australian Embassy<p> Shortly before we all went home for the pandemic, I noticed that the Australian Embassy had rented space in the National Geographic Society building at the corner of M and 17th Streets NW. I had already seen the demolition, or the beginnings of demolition of the old embassy building at Scott Circle, a couple of blocks away. After that, it was a while before I was downtown much.</p><p>I did see work going on the new building, but observed it with half an eye. Then, a month or so ago, I noticed backups on Massachusetts Avenue, as construction equipment was loaded onto trucks for removal. I supposed that the construction was mostly done. The other week, I saw the flag in front of the building, and understood that it was completed.</p><p>The new building is modernist, as the old one had been, but modernist of the 2020s rather than the 1960s. No doubt it is more efficient in its heating, cooling, and lighting. It will not require soon require draping with heavy fabric to prevent bits from falling on pedestrians, as the old one did for a while.</p><p>Meanwhile, the National Geographic building is now closed for renovations, which should be completed by 2026. It seems to be only partially closed, for I saw persons with building badges leaving it the other day. It could be that only the public areas, not the offices, will be renovated.</p><p><br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-20161569084304680062023-08-29T18:06:00.001-07:002023-08-29T18:06:57.106-07:00Dry<p> In the early 1980s, when I ran a lot, I knew all the water fountains along Rock Creek from Peirce Mill to above Knowles Avenue in Kensington. During the months that they were working, I suppose May through September, I often stopped to drink.</p><p>By the time we moved into the District in 2004, and I started to run often in Rock Creek Park again, I no longer ran distances that called for water stops. I did see a fair number of runners with water supplies--"camelbacks" or belts with half-pint bottles. This amused me, for I thought that at least in the warm months they could have spared the weight, and drunk from the public fountains.</p><p>Then this past weekend, I found myself very thirsty while running. On Saturday, I stopped at the water fountains at picnic groves 10 and 6, and found that they produced just a little dribble of water. One can, given time, fill up a water bottle from the fountain, for I saw some young women doing so. But one can't conveniently drink. I may look into the status of other fountains, but if so I will wait until the weather is cooler and I am not very thirsty.<br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1603174461344479143.post-89058314770310967792023-08-26T15:16:00.000-07:002023-08-26T15:16:16.104-07:00You Rock, Alfred!<p> One afternoon last week, I was sitting in one of my preferred seats on the S2 bus, facing across the aisle in the back. I was reading Alfred North Whitehead's <i>Process and Reality</i> with a pen in my right hand, and probably jotting more question marks than brackets or underlines. The book makes for very slow reading, for me.</p><p>About Irving Street, a man who had been sitting on far back seat stood up to leave. He asked me what I was reading, and I turned the book over so that he could see the cover. He smiled in approval, and held out a fist, which after a second's confusion I bumped with my own.</p><p> I have been riding the 16th Street buses regularly for seventeen years now, and in that time probably fewer than ten persons have remarked on anything I was reading. A few have expressed approval, but this is the first who offered a fist bump.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Georgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com0