What is a Perfect Piece of Knowledge?
An allegory, of sorts
Topic
Books
A collection of 331 issues
How to Become a Great Man or Woman
For starters, read about the great men and women
Merely by thinking about certain sorts of people at all . . . we become objectively, measurably, more like them, in how we behave, think and feel. Iain McGilchrist
Ask a college professor this question:
“Did Moses write the Torah or did the Torah
Seeking Transcendentals
Why Did I Order a Two-Volume History of Economic Thought?
Fun, improvement, and volunteerism. That's how we might use current catchwords to answer the primordial question, “How ought we to live our lives?”
That question hit me hard a few summers ago when I opened up a
Odysseus’s Dumbest Moments
“Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways…”
So opens The Odyssey (Richard Lattimore Translation).
“The man of many ways” is Odysseus.
In all Greek myth, only Athena and (perhaps) Theseus are more known for wisdom.
His wisdom resume is impressive: he made peace among all the Greek rulers
One Vicious Author
You remember the 1987 movie, Throw Mama from the Train?
I learned last night that it was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 movie, Strangers on a Train, which was in turn based on the novel by the same name.
The author of the novel?
Patricia Highsmith, a nasty
How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today
Peter Jones at Classics for All
Infinite Jest
Bill Burr has a great bit where he describes parenting as a 25-30 year sentence. You're sucked into a bubble, cut off from the outside world as you try to raise your kids. When you come out, you're stuck in, say, 1993 but it'
Henry Fowler and Ernest Gowers
Henry Fowler (1858-1933) wrote A Dictionary of Modern English Usage after a career of pretty much nothing. He worked hard; he was honest and honorable, but he had never amounted to much: teacher, journalist, soldier (lying about his 57 years so he could fight), and editor.
But then, in
Stop Being So Serious: Ten Hints
Shortly before he was martyred with others in 203, St. Saturus related a vision he had of heaven. He said he and the other martyrs were carried eastward to a garden, where a handful of angels started exclaiming, “Here they are! Here they are!” The martyrs were taken to a
Hate the River-Rat!
I gotta say, I'm really enjoying Will Percy's 1941 autobiography, Lanterns of the Levee. I'd heard of it for years but never bothered to buy it, much less read it.
The prose is beautiful, if a bit ornate by today's standard, and