Tuesday, August 31, 2010

A startling mobility of views

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The Search for Truths , an essay by Jacques Barzun in The Jacques Barzun Reader by Michael Murray. An essay worth quoting at length. Much ...
Monday, August 30, 2010

Getting better and more equal

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The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. Page 19. In another respect, too, inequality has been retreating. The spread of IQ scores has been ...

Die Ente

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I once spoke German with some fluency - more correctly, I once passed a fluency exam in German. An interesting language of a fascinating an...
Sunday, August 29, 2010

Such immortal vermin

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There is nobody like Mencken to put an argument so robustly that even if you agree with him to a point, you still shrink back from his artic...

Re-establishing our former ignorance

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) Today we are trying to spread knowledge everywhere. Who knows if in centuries to come there will no...

define: Amphigoric

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From Unnatural Causes by P.D. James. The snippets of information, most of which changed subtly in the telling and some of which were founde...

Not because men will become better

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From Anatole France in Sur la Pierre blanche : Universal peace will come about one day, not because men will become better (one cannot hope...
Saturday, August 28, 2010

A story is a doorway

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By Richard Peck? From his Ezra Jack Keats Lecture : A story is a doorway That opens on a wider place; A story is a mirror To reflect...

A shore alien, eerie, and utterly desolate

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From Unnatural Causes by P.D. James. A marvelous description of the North Sea along England's East Anglia, a region where I have visite...

As long as we cannot prophesy

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From Jacques Barzun's Teacher in America : As long as we cannot prophesy who will turn out a winner, we have no right to question initia...