The John's Penance
One thing from Chapter 11 of Tom Holland's excellent Dominion:
A clerical disciple of Abelard argued that, when determining the severity of penance for patronizing a prostitute, the woman's hotness should be taken into account.
Briefly
Traveling with Your Left Hemisphere
In The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton describes traveling to an island paradise. The first morning, he sat on the beach, coconut trees leaning toward the sea, jungle-covered hills behind him. He then began to think about
a sore throat I had developed during the flight, worry over not
Introducing the Non-Story
I've been noticing a new type of Internet article: Sites making podcast episodes into news stories.
The gimmick's approach: A flashy "news-like" headline, followed by a story about the podcast's content, sprinkled with quotes, which give it the feel of a journalist
Hemisphere Video
You don't want to read the 500-page Master and his Emissary? You don't want to read the 1,500 pages that flush it all out? Try The Divided Brain. You can rent it for $1.99. In just 80 minutes, you'll understand the Hemisphere
Everlasting GKC for Advent
Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote "Sweet Home Alabama" as a rejoinder to Neil Young's smug "Southern Man. Likewise, GKC wrote The Everlasting Man as a rejoinder to H.G. Wells' Outline of History.
In both cases, the rejoinders won.
The Everlasting Man explains history as part
Personal Computer and Personal Choice
In 1968, Carver Mead, professor at California Institute of Technology, began to demonstrate the possibilities of placing an entire computer on one chip at a cost of just a few dollars. He also began to preach the possibilities of the innovation, asserting it would end the burdensome and expensive computer
Has the Rabble Breached Another Wall in the Castle of High Culture?
The New Criterion properly considers itself an urbane journal of the arts. With this, comes a commitment to first-rate style, without regard to the Idiocracy that is overwhelming our culture.
But I saw something interesting (or disturbing, depending on whether one cheers this cultural secular bear market or condemns it)
Picture Books for Adults
This is a delightful piece from Public Books. I especially liked this observation about how medieval monks would read:
This form of reading, de Hamel says, is one reason why so many medieval manuscripts have richly decorated pages. The decorations “helped impress a page visually in the reader’s memory,
Gothic Realism: Right Hemispheric?
The macabre might, in part, be a rejection of the Enlightenment and yet another route to re-energize the right hemisphere and its embrace of the trans-rational, much as the occult is a rejection of rationalism and its left hemispheric overlord.
The Gothic genre is particularly suited to depicting these elements.
Repair Culture on the Rise?
The new issue of Plough magazine pushes for a return to repairing things. The thrust of this new movement: "throwaway culture" is creating all sorts of problems, from landfills to euthanasia. And big business is the reason. Starting in 1923, it stopped making products intended to last for