History

This year we're celebrating *fifty years* since the discovery of the fossil ancestor known as Lucy. Can you believe it? pic.twitter.com/SjVNHFcPx5

— Paige Madison (@FossilHistory) March 11, 2024

 

Tristitia de bonis alienis

From Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Page 427.

For, to speak in a word, envy is naught else but tristitia de bonis alienis, sorrow for other men’s good, be it present, past, or to come: and gaudium de adversis, and joy at their harms… Tis a common disease, and almost natural to us, as Tacitus holds, to envy another man’s prosperity.

   

From Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton.  

An Insight

To anyone who played sports, did a sales job, or considered the Army during this period, the un-necessary regression we've seen since is insane. https://t.co/K5vUnCnQ4Q

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) March 9, 2024

 

I see wonderful things

Perfection.......👌
pic.twitter.com/0zxAwcXaQg

— Mahatma Gandhi (Parody) (@GandhiAOC) March 10, 2024

 

Offbeat Humor

This is gonna be even more quotable than “after all this time?” “always.” pic.twitter.com/e2TD7fLeYz

— Hazel Appleyard (@HazelAppleyard_) March 11, 2024

 

Data Talks

"An empirical study by Professor Arthur C. Brooks of Syracuse University, to test the extent to which liberals and conservatives in America donated money, blood, and time to philanthropic endeavors, found that conservatives donated on average both a larger amount of money and a…

— Thomas Sowell, The Genius of... (@AlanWolan) March 11, 2024

 

Flowers in the Field by Francis Luis Mora (Uruguayan-American, 1874 – 1940)

Flowers in the Field by Francis Luis Mora (Uruguayan-American, 1874 – 1940)

Click to enlarge.

History

@Lucius_Gellius @DimitriTilloi @Archeonationale @museesgallo @RAeliusVictor @RomanBinchester https://t.co/Duj5ttPlGl

— T S P (@morangles) March 11, 2024

 

An Insight

International Women's Day where elite women go on TV or write op-eds and ordinary women clock into their nine-to-fives reminds me of when Trump was elected and elite students and profs stayed at home and cried while custodial staff still came in to mop floors and clean gutters.

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 8, 2024

 

If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention.

From Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.  Page 373.  A discussion which seems strangely pertinent to our current academia where DEI appointees plagiarize like it is going out of fashion and 70% or more of research papers in some fields fail to replicate.  

“I’ve no objection to scientific pot-boilers,” said Miss Edwards. “I mean, a popular book isn’t necessarily unscientific.”

“So long,” said Wimsey, “as it doesn’t falsify the facts. But it might be a different kind of thing. To take a concrete instance-somebody wrote a novel called The Search-”

      

“C. P. Snow,” said Miss Burrows. “It’s funny you should mention that. It was the book that the-”

     

“I know,” said Peter. “That’s possibly why it was in my mind.”

 

“I never read the book,” said the Warden.

“Oh, I did,” said the Dean. “It’s about a man who starts out to be a scientist and gets on very well till, just as he’s going to be appointed to an important executive post, he finds he’s made a careless error in a scientific paper. He didn’t check his assistant’s results, or something. Somebody finds out, and he doesn’t get the job. So he decides he doesn’t really care about science after all.”

“Obviously not,” said Miss Edwards. “He only cared about the post.”

“But,” said Miss Chilperic, “if it was only a mistake-”

“The point about it,” said Wimsey, “is what an elderly scientist says to him. He tells “him: ‘The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.’ Words to that effect. I may not be quoting quite correctly.”

“Well, that’s true, of course. Nothing could possibly excuse deliberate falsification.”

“There’s no sense in deliberate falsification, anyhow,” said the Bursar. “What could anybody gain by it?”

“It has been done”, said Miss Hillyard, “frequently. To get the better of an argument. Or out of ambition.”

“Ambition to be what?” cried Miss Lydgate. “What satisfaction could one possibly get out of a reputation one knew one didn’t deserve? It would be horrible.”

      

Her innocent indignation upset everybody’s gravity.

Academia, in its treatment of Claudine Gray and others of her ilk, are demonstrating plagiarism and data falsification are no longer the sins they once were and that the pursuit of Truth is no longer the mission of academia.  Committing the right sins, or committing them in the name of the right cause, will get you appointments rather than dismissal.