Saturday, April 20, 2019

We Are Digging the Pit of Babel

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Kafka, by Robert Crumb, watercolor, early 1990s Crumb Prints Webpage DEN TURM VON BABEL Wenn es möglich gewesen wäre, den Turm von Ba...
Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Oedipus & the Sphinx

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Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx, 530 BCE. By Metropolitan Museum of Art - Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0 The Greek sp...
Tuesday, August 14, 2018

If a Prophet Had Come

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Plaster life cast of Black Hawk, original ca. 1830, at Black Hawk State Historic Site. Photo by Billwhittaker at English Wikipedia , C...
Sunday, August 12, 2018

The Familiar

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"Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive eithe...
Saturday, September 15, 2012

As a Man Is, So He Sees

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[To] Revd Dr Trusler, Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey 13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, August 23, 1799    [Postmark: 28 August] Revd Si...
Friday, June 24, 2011

Interlude: A Moment of Catharsis

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Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not. -- Elias Root Beadle My late paternal grandmother, An...
3 comments:
Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Lappy

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When it comes to the truth, we are lappy. We insist that the world lay the truth in our laps for us, perfectly presented, with no distractio...
Wednesday, March 09, 2011

The Content of Their Character

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"We cannot walk alone. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. "We cannot turn back. ...
1 comment:
Monday, March 07, 2011

Discrimination

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior dreamed of the day when we judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character....
2 comments:
Sunday, February 13, 2011

Cosmopolitan Crisis

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As Brian Lord wrote in his comment to Cosmopolitan , if we resolve our personal culture crisis by reorienting ourselves to a cosmopolitan wo...
Saturday, February 12, 2011

Synthesis

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Hybris or philosophy? Why did Alexander do the things he did? Certainly, like anyone else Alexander had many motivations. He did not conqu...
Monday, January 31, 2011

Far Outstripped

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"I shall instance the history of science, which I divide into two periods, one ending in 1800, the other coming down to the present. Un...
Sunday, January 30, 2011

What a Delusion Most Needs

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"Socrates, Socrates, Socrates! Yes, one may well call thy name thrice, it would not be too much to call it ten times, if that would do ...
Saturday, January 29, 2011

We are Lived by Powers We Pretend to Understand

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"In Memory of Ernst Toller (d. May 1939) "The shining neutral summer has no voice To judge America, or ask how a man dies; An...
Friday, January 28, 2011

Possessed by Them

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"[quoting from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe] Vol. i. p. 17. 'But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing cou...
Thursday, January 27, 2011

What Box?

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One way to get out of the box is to leave the box; that's what Diogenes did. The other way is to destroy the box; that's what Alexan...
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Philosophical Inheritance

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Diogenes and Alexander the Great were philosophical cousins. They each inherited some of their ideas from Socrates, their common philosophic...
2 comments:
Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Cosmopolitan

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Socrates said that he was not an Athenian or a Greek but a citizen of the world. Everything the man did made an impression. After all, he ...
1 comment:
Monday, January 24, 2011

Politic

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The biggest group the ancient Greeks could feel patriotic about was the polis, the city-state - that is, the city with its supporting countr...
Sunday, January 23, 2011

I Want It All

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A child may fixate on a hammer as the solution to all life's problems, but the adult craftsman knows it's best to use the right tool...