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This Space
39 Books: 2011 How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
7 months ago
54
7 months ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
Ben Borgers
Web of Thoughts
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Learned to Love Books' “Though most of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable, Montaigne...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
“Though most of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable, Montaigne considers himself fortunate to have avoided getting 'nothing out of school but a hatred of books, as do nearly all our noblemen,’” writes Donald Frame in his 1965 biography of the...
The Marginalian
The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife "Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and...
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Last of All Last Words Spoken Is, Good-bye' Memory is often an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of course,...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Memory is often an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of course, especially with age, and it pays to double-check the important things if you intend to share the memories with others. I’ve just learned that a guy I haven’t seen in half a...
Ben Borgers
How /swipes Works
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be Made Out of Emotions, Colors, Life Itself' “[Robert Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved their...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
“[Robert Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved their vocation by playing the games with language and perception that poets play, three Musketeers at a time when not much else was disturbing the quiet little cemetery of English...
The Marginalian
Love Anyway You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the...
9 months ago
55
9 months ago
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love anyway...
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest... "We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
3 months ago
ribbonfarm
Truth-Seeking Modes Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This...
4 months ago
2
4 months ago
Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This one summarizes an idea I’ve long been noodling on: The healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the goal is to continue playing, not arrive...
This Space
"When now?" Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
50
over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
I Keep Rewriting My Personal Website
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Diana Steads Him Nothing, He Must Stay' For earned emotional intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you...
a year ago
13
a year ago
For earned emotional intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you can hardly outdo A.E. Housman, as recounted by one of his students in Richard Perceval Graves’ A. E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet (1979):   “One morning in May, 1914, when the trees in...
Ben Borgers
Waking up Early
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Till Love and Fame to Nothingness Do Sink' Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us...
a month ago
19
a month ago
Dr. Johnson thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use.” The reader reads the life of another, reflects on it and applies the lessons he deduces to himself. In the early pages of his...
Josh Thompson
Cancel Your Cable. Seriously. No one likes to waste money, right? There are two things that are even worse to...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
No one likes to waste money, right? There are two things that are even worse to waste. Time Energy Money can be earned, and if more is needed, you can spend less or earn more. Energy is what you need to bring ideas to fruition. Unlimited time with no energy gets you nowhere, as...
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 2 Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Josh Thompson
Switching to Jekyll Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog post. So, I put it in a gist on Github. I’m an advocate of writing publicly, and making it a habit, so why was I putting it in a gist, instead of here, on my website, where I...
Josh Thompson
Denver.rb meetup notes Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup @WeWork, Feb 12, 2018 We talked about performance profiling! Here’s the slides, on Dropbox I’m working on going deeper on the topic of Rails performance. I’ve got a lot more on the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Never Settle Down' A reader has happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine...
a week ago
11
a week ago
A reader has happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500-1453 (1971), one he finds “especially amusing”:  “Cosmas [Indicopleustes] tells us of monks who, ignoring their vows, live unchastely, engage in trade and...
The Marginalian
How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old "Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being."
Ben Borgers
First Name Usernames
over a year ago
The Marginalian
I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light “One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives...
a year ago
36
a year ago
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest, least known essays. In his exquisite memoir of the search for inner light, the blind resistance hero...
The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith “Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
The American Scholar
Under a Spell Everlasting Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from...
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war The post Under a Spell Everlasting appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Mythical Creatures: Refactoring wizard.rb Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
sbensu
Twitter's Sith and Jedi In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can reach. But when they lean into hate, they lose their soul to it. Twitter offers the same bargain as the Force.
The American Scholar
“Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'One's Lucidity Is Shaken' “This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
“This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors piled up, the twentieth century taught us to accept such expressions as useful and accurate, not hyperbole, though the events defied belief and understanding, and often still do. The...
Wuthering...
The sophists and their rehabilitation - they clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their... I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for...
a year ago
32
a year ago
I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for centuries in the history of philosophy as, following Plato (but not Socrates), hucksters, they, or some of them, are now taken seriously as an intermediate step between the cosmological...
The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about... The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
3 weeks ago
11
3 weeks ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo' A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
6 months ago
48
6 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
Josh Thompson
Learning Spanish: Conversation connectors I’m learning Spanish right now,  as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’m learning Spanish right now,  as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state of learning spanish for the better part of the last 15 years. My mom’s parents came here from Paraguay, and so she and her siblings are all native Spanish speakers, plus their spouses....
The Marginalian
Between Encyclopedia and Fairy Tale: The Wondrous Birds and Reptiles of 18th-Century Artist Dorothea... Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
Imagine a world of constant wars and deadly plagues, a world without eyeglasses, bicycles, or sanitation. Imagine being a gifted child in that world, knowing you are born into a body that will never be granted the basic rights of citizenship in any country, into a mind that will...
sbensu
Lieutenants are the limiting reagent Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do we mean when we say "this company lacks focus"?
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection “To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike' I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Live Missing Something' Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories (Knopf, 2020), a Chekhov translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I ordered the collection early in the COVID-19 lockdown and will always associate it with the other...
The Marginalian
Don’t Waste Your Wildness "What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable,...
2 months ago
35
2 months ago
"What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary. In...
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
4 months ago
1
4 months ago
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Living Through Radical Change' Ten years ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:  “I have myself long ago put...
8 months ago
49
8 months ago
Ten years ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:  “I have myself long ago put aside any thought about writing an autobiography. . . . When I became, almost without conscious decision, a bookish and a scribbling man, the larger sense of adventure went out of my...
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
5 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love “Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a week ago
10
a week ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson sighed in one of her love letters to Susan an epoch before Kurt Vonnegut, in a short and lovely poem, distilled happiness to the knowledge that you have enough. It is not an...
Astral Codex Ten
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ...
3 weeks ago
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual + reading recommendations
10 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Claude Fights Back ...
3 days ago
The Marginalian
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate "It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
Wuthering...
Paradoxes and epistemology - early Greek philosophy as conceptual innovation - "Zeno argues... The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off...
a year ago
35
a year ago
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off other conceptual innovations.  A real conceptual innovation does not require a book or even an argument.  You say there are many gods?  But what if there were one? Or none? ...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Feel With Melancholy Wonder' I was introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies by...
5 months ago
26
5 months ago
I was introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies by Edward Dahlberg, a difficult man who furthered my education. Collected in Epitaphs for Our Time: The Letters of Edward Dahlberg (George Braziller, 1967) are five letters to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Butterflies Have Nothing to Do With Butter' Call me an aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his...
4 months ago
39
4 months ago
Call me an aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary: “A beautiful insect, so named because it first appears at the beginning of the season for butter.” Their seemingly gratuitous beauty, coupled with not stinging like...
Ben Borgers
Software Seems Resilient
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Wonderful to Be a Writer' I met the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
I met the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia Ozick. I had read Appelfeld’s first novel, Badenheim 1939 (1978; trans. 1980), several years earlier and found it disturbing in a novel way. The action takes place on the cusp of...
Wuthering...
Lucian's satires - Frankly he's a blamed nuisance The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to me at one point, twenty-five years ago...
a year ago
8
a year ago
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to me at one point, twenty-five years ago when I got serious about classical literature.  I had never heard of him, partly because of the odd historical artifact where what he writes is called “Menippean satire” even though...
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life "The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
a month ago
The American Scholar
“water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He's Not Pulling It Out of Thin Air' A friend tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone posted a...
8 months ago
26
8 months ago
A friend tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone posted a fair-sized sign on the store’s ‘Community Board’ reading, ‘From The River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.’” There’s a naïvely childish part of me that finds the obscenity...
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
June trip to the New River Gorge The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until Friday, near-certain thunderstorms. Typical of the New, the weather proved unpredictable, and we had glorious sun the entire trip. I was eager to get out to the New, since my last...
The Elysian
Week 4: One pitch several places
8 months ago
The Elysian
Is America about to fall? Or flourish? That depends on us.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Seeing Means Going Over the Details' Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by...
a year ago
43
a year ago
Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by Émile-Auguste Chartier (1868-1951), the French proto-blogger better known as Alain. He was a professor of philosophy whose students included Raymond Aron and Simone Weil. Both excerpts are taken from...
The American Scholar
Divided Providence Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War The post Divided Providence appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 3: Moar Mythical Creatures Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Only Little People Frightened By the Long Night' The calendar and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the people in our...
a year ago
12
a year ago
The calendar and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the people in our neighborhood as expressed through the “group chat” I have never looked at moved the celebration to October 29. The reasons are unclear. What this means in practical terms is two...
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr....
6 months ago
16
6 months ago
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr. Washington appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Understand Our Fellow Creatures a Little Better' Edwin Arlington Robinson, not the sunniest of poets, writes to his friend Harry de Forest Smith on...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
Edwin Arlington Robinson, not the sunniest of poets, writes to his friend Harry de Forest Smith on May 13, 1896:  “If printed lines are good for anything, they are bound to be picked up some time; and then, if some poor devil of a man or woman feels any better or any stronger...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beyond the Language of the Living' “After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as...
3 months ago
42
3 months ago
“After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as if it was a final obliteration.”  I didn’t know others felt this way, and dismissed it as my indulgence in sentimentality. Rabbi David Wolpe’s admission comes as reassurance. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Known to All But Themselves' Suddenly, there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment of the...
5 months ago
25
5 months ago
Suddenly, there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment of the bigger culture. There’s so much I don’t know or understand, and that knowledge of my ignorance no longer bothers me very much. I still like learning things but there was a time when...
Josh Thompson
Corollas and U-Hauls These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a lot, and a lot of work went into it. When moving across the country, you have a few options. You could higher a moving company, who comes and boxes up your house, packs a truck,...
Ben Borgers
Portal
over a year ago
sbensu
How to avoid breaking APIs The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
a year ago
2
a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
The Marginalian
How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of... "We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
a year ago
The Marginalian
On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to... "Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to allow for the passing of time, and the revisions it brings."
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 13, 2022
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
The Web is a Superpower
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which... “Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
a month ago
23
a month ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
The American Scholar
On Book August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Disadvantages of Wine' An offhand recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:  “He has great virtue, in not drinking...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
An offhand recounting of a conversation with Dr. Johnson:  “He has great virtue, in not drinking wine or any fermented liquor, because, as he acknowledged to us, he could not do it in moderation. Lady M’Leod would hardly believe him, and said, ‘I am sure, sir, you would not carry...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Flow, Like Waters After Summer Show’rs' “As two men sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It is...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
“As two men sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It is very fine weather,’ and the other says, ‘Yes;’—one blows his nose, and the other rubs his eye-brows; (by the way, this is very much in Homer’s manner;) such seems to be the case...
sbensu
The battlefield where arguments fight A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
10 months ago
This Space
A loss of problems Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being talked about on television and in newspapers. Money was the first quickly followed by each and every one that preceded it, including the journalism in The Moronic Inferno, which I...
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Make Memory Speak so Volubly' A reader shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First,...
a year ago
13
a year ago
A reader shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First, Kipling’s Kim: “I was twelve. I was very interested in ‘spiritual’ things. It was the Beatles and the Maharishi, you know. I got it from the library and it was love at first sight. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Test of a Reader' “. . . to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it,...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
“. . . to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call it—by which a man rises to understand...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'm Not a Funny Man' “All writers that are worth anything are humorists.”  It’s one of those preposterously broad...
12 months ago
16
12 months ago
“All writers that are worth anything are humorists.”  It’s one of those preposterously broad observations you want to immediately endorse or dismiss, but if “humor” is defined liberally and we accept it as a spectrum ranging from the driest wit to slapstick, farce and bawdy,...
The American Scholar
“Hymn” by A. R. Ammons Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Trash Bags in the Laundry Room
over a year ago
This Space
At home he’s a tourist: The Moment by Peter Holm Jensen Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday...
over a year ago
48
over a year ago
Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday speech, a word or two is usually added to supplement the weedy noun: people say “At this moment in time”, which is when I ask: can a moment be in anything else; a moment in lampposts...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing' I have no musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and not always...
7 months ago
31
7 months ago
I have no musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting earworm. Much of this...
Josh Thompson
Two Critical Books and Two Critical Articles (For 'Software People') I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a program like the Flatiron School or the Turing School). I’m a graduate of the Turing School, and have written a lot about the program, like: My reflections on Turing an 8-part guide to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools' “Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
“Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded... Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
a year ago
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,... I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
41
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries.  I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred "Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish That He’d Arrived Much Sooner' I offended a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.” Let’s...
a year ago
6
a year ago
I offended a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.” Let’s consider each part of the epithet. “Brilliant”? Without question. He wrote three incontestably good poems but Coleridge is an early specimen of the “public intellectual,” bristling...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
11 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Could Take Part in This Savouring of the World' One of the ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is motility....
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
One of the ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is motility. Life moves independently, under its own power. Stasis suggests the end of life. Travel is especially prized by those unable to do so, whether confined to bed or a Soviet Bloc regime....
The American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Josh Thompson
The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the...
a year ago
1
a year ago
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC. This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap...
Josh Thompson
Primitive Obsession & Exceptional Values I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the topics was using “whole values”, instead of being “primative obsessed”. The example Avdi gave was clear as day. He used a course with a duration attribute to show the...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Friend Unseen, Unborn, Unknown' Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,”...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,” by a poet I knew only by name: James Elroy Flecker. “I've always been moved,” David said, “especially by the penultimate stanza”:  “O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,     Student of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dark But Festive' I grew up in the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at various...
7 months ago
55
7 months ago
I grew up in the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at various times to Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Time, Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post and National Geographic, not to mention those periodicals subscribed to by my mother (McCall’s,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Comfort, Solace, Inspiration' “A few books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we regularly turn...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“A few books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we regularly turn to for comfort, solace, inspiration.” The reviewer identifies a slightly different category, “the books we find ourselves crazy about and hope to revisit someday,” as distinguished,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Express It As Nearly As I Can' Over the weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures into the...
3 weeks ago
14
3 weeks ago
Over the weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures into the blogosphere. This would be around 2006, the year I launched Anecdotal Evidence. The proprietor and I exchanged a few emails. He was a reader though his blog was not exclusively devoted...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise' A thought that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:  “In the course of a reading...
4 months ago
42
4 months ago
A thought that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:  “In the course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry. First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
The Marginalian
The Porcupine Dilemma: Schopenhauer’s Parable about Negotiating the Optimal Distance in Love This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with...
a year ago
24
a year ago
This is the supreme challenge of intimacy — how to reconcile the aching yearning for closeness with the painful pressures of actually being close, how to forge a bond tight enough to feel the warmth of connection but spacious enough to feel free. Kahlil Gibran knew this when he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Simply Bad Prose' “It is not simply bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.” Gilbert Highet (1906-78)...
10 months ago
32
10 months ago
“It is not simply bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.” Gilbert Highet (1906-78) was a Scottish-born, Oxford-educated American classicist who taught at Columbia for thirty-three years and managed to become a bona fide pop-culture “celebrity.” In 1952 he was...
sbensu
Risk-takers decide faster Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
a month ago
Ben Borgers
3blue1brown.elk.sh
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Maintaining a Stable and Orderly Civilization' On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves...
6 months ago
49
6 months ago
On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves and reorganized the volumes, one of our cats leaped into an open cupboard in the kitchen. One of the four pegs supporting the middle shelf was missing and Trane’s weight tipped it enough so a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Important Medium'' I grew up in a place I’ve been told for most of my life should embarrass me. When I went to college...
2 months ago
15
2 months ago
I grew up in a place I’ve been told for most of my life should embarrass me. When I went to college and someone asked where I came from, invariably I said “Cleveland” not “Parma Heights,” a suburb on the West Side of that city. By age seventeen I was already sensitive to the...
The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone "An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls... A peace for gods; a divine emptiness."
Josh Thompson
Quick Dive into React As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir,...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir, and need to sharpen my React knowledge along the way. After working through part 1 of a slack clone in Elixir/Phoenix tutorial, I ran into some errors getting the React app up and...
The American Scholar
The Given Child To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village? The...
6 months ago
18
6 months ago
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village? The post The Given Child appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem "I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context' An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls...
3 months ago
23
3 months ago
An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls “a very faint ghost of Hart Crane at times.” It’s not a connection I have ever made but I recognize a certain lushness of diction in both of them.  “[I]t's a similar sense of...
The Marginalian
No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life "We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
7 months ago
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"* I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Principle Is Growth' I remember learning as a kid the word dendrology while reading about maple trees (we had seven in...
9 months ago
26
9 months ago
I remember learning as a kid the word dendrology while reading about maple trees (we had seven in our front yard – all are gone, one carried away by a tornado) in a field guide: the study of trees. From the Greek for “tree.” A close synonym is silvics, this time from the Latin. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Liked to Hold Ideas Up to the Light' The single most influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not...
11 months ago
13
11 months ago
The single most influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not just what I think, is Guy’s Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination (North Point Press, 1981). I bought it that year in a lesbian bookstore in Manhattan. Over the previous decade...
Josh Thompson
Three Android Apps I Use Every Day (and maybe you'll use them too) I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that make my life better, and might do the same for you. (If you’re an iPhone user, just Google for the iOS version of the following tools. They’re all out there) Rewire App:...
The Marginalian
The Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith "There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Soothe the Soul and Nurture the Imagination' “Among the lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic, climate crisis...
a year ago
15
a year ago
“Among the lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic, climate crisis and political discord is that beauty and nature matter more than ever, and that if our homes are to be sanctuaries from an often harsh outside world, then we should fill them with...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Smart Dinner Jacket and Patent Leather Pumps' I was never strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat, which...
a year ago
11
a year ago
I was never strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat, which was more genteel and less interesting than it sounds. Reading the police blotter each morning or scanning new filings in the county clerk’s office left this reporter feeling less...
Josh Thompson
Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title) Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs I’ve ever read at Smart Like How. Please click over there, and read a few of his posts. He talks about being data savy even if you’re not a data scientist. He covers how to suceed...
Wuthering...
Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth. Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so...
a year ago
64
a year ago
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so I knocked off Greater Hippiaslast night.  The early dialogues are generally short; the three in the “death of Socrates” group are only fifty pages total, for example. Hippias is...
The American Scholar
“Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American...
a month ago
23
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
2015: The year I didn't think much? I generally think that if I write what I am thinking about, I can think about it a lot better....
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I generally think that if I write what I am thinking about, I can think about it a lot better. Writing has a clarifying effect (or is it affect?) on thought.  If that’s the case, I just didn’t think much in 2015: I wrote about 45 things in 2013 and 2014. I wrote 8 in 2015. I’m...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Then Came the Barbarians' “Prose poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll kill him or at...
3 months ago
37
3 months ago
“Prose poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll kill him or at least make him sick. When I confront a prose poem I run, though sometimes I pause to laugh and then run. The question becomes, which is worse: the poet’s ineptness or his...
The Elysian
The Cooperatist Manifesto that inspired Mondragon Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
2 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5 ...
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
2019 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find value in writing my own. Previous reviews: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 My review breaks down into a few broad categories: Travel Relationships & Community Leadville Trail...
Wuthering...
Thales, the first philosopher - what is philosophy, anyways? He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world...
a year ago
50
a year ago
He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world is animate and full of deities.  They say he discovered the seasons of the year, and divided the day into 365 days.  (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, p. 12,...
Ben Borgers
Hands Occupied
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Am I a Gym Bro Now?
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Talking to part of a friend Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
a year ago
The Perry Bible...
The Hare and the Tortoise The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
Steven Scrawls
Doomr Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the website for this one.
ben-mini
Buying a House Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of...
3 months ago
1
3 months ago
Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of 2025. Why are you buying a house? To make money. I see this as an opportunity in a space that many friends and family consider a safe, high-return bet (if done right). When...
Ben Borgers
Are My Technical Posts Worth It?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Little Towns Should Have Had Their Chroniclers' Every St. Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green and white...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
Every St. Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green and white knitted shamrock and reminded me of the origin of my first name. Her father was born in County Cork, as were her mother’s parents. I waited until the third grade to rebel against...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A General Effect of Pleasing Impression' Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of which roughly coincided with the arrival of...
a year ago
27
a year ago
Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of which roughly coincided with the arrival of Anecdotal Evidence in 2006, literary memes were far more popular. Some were trivial parlor games, a way for certain readers to safely show off without having ever opened a book....
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Highest Kind of Verbal Exercise' John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (1963):  “Rexroth and Patchen and Fearing—their mothers Perhaps could distinguish their sons from the others, But I am unable. My inner eye...
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details. Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
46
a year ago
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit, clarify, and puzzle over the texts that will take us to the end of the project, now that I have given the matter a little more...
Ben Borgers
3:00 a.m. Radio
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Friday, January 21, 2022
over a year ago
The Elysian
Week 3: The dream pitch
9 months ago
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
a year ago
53
a year ago
I’m still catching up with myself.  I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a philosopher, independent from Plato’s use of him, to the extent that it is possible.  The Socrates of Aristophanes in The Clouds is not much help.  But luckily we have Xenophon, a close...
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Itself and Forever Shipwreck' I’ve just finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in...
a year ago
11
a year ago
I’ve just finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in two issues of The New Yorker in 1979 and as a book the following year. I read it in the magazine and I’ve since read the book – Maxwell’s finest, written when he was seventy years...
The Marginalian
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
a year ago
The American Scholar
Snow! The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Red Tide Warning Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and neighbors who don’t always believe what they see The post Red Tide Warning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
6 months ago
2
6 months ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it. From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
Josh Thompson
The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want someone to download and read, sometimes it’s text from a book I’ve read, and cannot otherwise get a sharable format of. So, I laboriously take photos of pages, use an optical character...
Anecdotal Evidence
'She Exhibits the Unrepentant Bad Taste Which Belongs to Good Taste in Its Good Sense' “Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often...
6 months ago
49
6 months ago
“Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often so aggressively, so conceitedly poor and undistinguished that readers cannot be altogether blamed for not bothering with the new books as they come out, and I am always hesitant to make them...
The Marginalian
The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We...
4 months ago
51
4 months ago
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Tomorrow I Propose to Regulate My Room' A reader in Columbus, Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December...
a week ago
13
a week ago
A reader in Columbus, Ohio reports a “Samuel Johnson sighting in Ogden Nash.” In the December 21, 1968 issue of The New Yorker he found the poem “Is There a Dr. Johnson in the House.” It’s a typical irregularly lined, jokily rhymed production by Nash that begins:  “Do you...
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day Earlier this year, I read The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here): If you do these...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here): If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met. OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit' “A 21-year old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team — kept a cool...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
“A 21-year old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team — kept a cool head in a tight situation.”  Long before he was a poet and publisher, R.L. Barth in 1968-69 was a Marine serving as a patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam....
The Elysian
Do we still want the future desired by the past? Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison "We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,...
8 months ago
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses Cantos IV and V - gore, Pyramus and Thisbe, and a rap battle Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses by turning three sisters who...
11 months ago
59
11 months ago
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses by turning three sisters who refuse to believe in his divinity into what “we in English language Backes or Reermice call the same” (Golding, 99) “[Or, as we say, bats.]” (Martin, 140).  How sad that we lost the...
The Marginalian
The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of...
9 months ago
19
9 months ago
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of stars, is made meaningful entirely inside the self, but the self is a mirage of the mind, a figment of cohesion that makes the chaos and transience bearable. A few times a lifetime, if...
The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain "Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
8 months ago
61
8 months ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
Blog -...
Book Review - Iron John Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of ardent fans, but I...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of ardent fans, but I reluctantly admit I am not one of the more zealous. Although the book has high points – the classic story of Iron John as put down by the Grimm brothers stands out to me, as well as an...
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Echo of a Song a Stranger Sang' I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some...
2 months ago
16
2 months ago
I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some other courtesy. I was returning to my car from the university library, carrying a canvas tote bag of books, walking with the aid of my cane, as usual, when a young man asked if he...
The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected... I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
33
a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024 The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
VCR's debug_logger and `git diff` I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API. One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it. I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before,...
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The...
2 weeks ago
6
2 weeks ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War Had Won' “The war had taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the destined...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“The war had taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the destined anguish’ - revealed itself gradually and became a presence in his poetry for the rest of his life.”  Margi Blunden, speaking in 2014, is remembering her father, the poet and Great...
The American Scholar
Ground Truth A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
15
3 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Successfully Pretend I Am a Human Being' A longtime reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she writes, “I...
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
A longtime reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she writes, “I see clichés taking over. Obviously in public life with politicians and journalists. That’s nothing new but in the arts too, music and writing. It’s as though AI created them.” No...
The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and... A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
9 months ago
51
9 months ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No' The professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
4 weeks ago
14
4 weeks ago
The professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
Ben Borgers
gerp
over a year ago
sbensu
Math intuitions on variance This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different...
a year ago
1
a year ago
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different probability distributions involved.
The Marginalian
Little Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion. Someday it will swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Whom They Were Framed in Words' Louis MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Louis MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations (1957):  “When books have all seized up like the books in graveyards And reading and even speaking have been replaced By other, less difficult, media, we wonder if you Will find...
Josh Thompson
About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted the entire article here below. When Josh Thompson wanted to move out to rural Colorado with his family to be closer to the mountains he loves to climb, he knew finding a company...
The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative... The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
39
a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
The American Scholar
This Woman’s Work Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential... "To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Persistence Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an unlimited amount of money, because an unlimited amount of money would complicate my life (and probably yours) far more than we can possibly imagine. Persistence. I keep trying to...
The American Scholar
The Writer in the Family The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero The post The Writer in the Family appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Rules for Fighting Fair When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty,...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty, funny, and kind”, or “he is handsome, funny, and cares for me”. Obviously. Have you ever wanted to date someone because they are ugly, boring, and mean? So, rather than asking more...
The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of... “I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024 For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
11 months ago
40
11 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the available energy and concentration.  Now, though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again. Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
The Marginalian
Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm "A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be...
a year ago
12
a year ago
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be deeply felt, deeply believed, dominant even in dreams."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poet's Hope' Erica Light is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and Melville...
7 months ago
31
7 months ago
Erica Light is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and Melville scholar. We exchange emails several times each year, usually devoted to what we are reading. This week she reported reading some of the writers and books I’ve mentioned recently at...
The Marginalian
How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into motion the Rube Goldberg machine of events that turned atoms born in the first stars into you — into this temporary clump of borrowed stardust that, for the brief interlude between...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Thinking This May Be My Last Summer' I never encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets of the first...
6 months ago
20
6 months ago
I never encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets of the first war – Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon – but the second seemed a blank. On my own, I learned of the Americans – Karl Shapiro, Anthony Hecht, Howard Nemerov. Only...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity to Inquire Into All Things' “Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter every possible situation. Montaigne.”  I could have signed my name to that when I was twenty. I wanted to visit every country in the world, even the most dangerous. I made plans to move to...
The Elysian
It's ok to live in a fantasyland That's the joy of being a writer.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Such a Touchy, Testy, Pleasant Fellow' One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
One of the curses of a good memory is the inability to forget stupid, hurtful things we said in the past, and sometimes last week. Years ago I wrecked a friendship with a glib remark, a wisecrack that I didn’t even believe but had convinced myself was funny (it was, in fact, but...
sbensu
Incentives as selection effects When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
6 months ago
The American Scholar
The March Down Main The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels...
a year ago
40
a year ago
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals,...
Wuthering...
Daryl Hine's Ovid's Heroines - I, who could a dragon hypnotize An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides (25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of...
10 months ago
21
10 months ago
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides (25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of fictional letters in verse written by mythical heroines to their no-good boyfriends and husbands.  Many end in suicide.  Dido castigating Aeneas, Phaedra mourning...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Off to Welter and Waste' The Russian-Jewish poet Boris Slutsky (1919-86) was thirty-three years old on the Night of the...
a year ago
10
a year ago
The Russian-Jewish poet Boris Slutsky (1919-86) was thirty-three years old on the Night of the Murdered Poets, and he wasn’t among them. In the final stanza of his poem “About the Jews” (trans. G.S. Smith), dating from the 1950s, Slutsky writes:  “From the war I came back safe So...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A University Education, Uncorrupted' A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process...
a week ago
15
a week ago
A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.” Aristotle didn't get it quite right when he thought we could be defined by our capacity for speech and even, on occasion, rational discourse. No, it’s learning that makes us...
This Space
The end of literature, part three On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there ever since. At that time a mild alternative to barbarism was being put to death. Back in 2015 when, against all odds, a lifelong socialist and campaigner against racism and...
Josh Thompson
Twenties vs. Thirties (from a feeling-behind-the-curve 27 year old.) Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve scoured everywhere that I stick notes and interesting reads, and cannot, for the life of me, find the article. The internet is littered with tons of fluff pieces talking about sex...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Noble Unconsciousness Is in Him' A reader asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes, and that’s...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
A reader asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes, and that’s correct. “I think people are too cynical to have heroes today,” she continues. “They’re embarrassed to say someone is a hero. Nobody’s good enough. Everybody wants to look for failure...
Wuthering...
Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer - an adventure is merely a bit of bad planning One last book for Norwegian November, Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer (1927), a memoir...
2 weeks ago
15
2 weeks ago
One last book for Norwegian November, Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer (1927), a memoir covering the polar explorer’s entire career.  It’s a good book, full of adventure. To the explorer, however, adventure is merely an unwelcome interruption of his serious labours. ...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture' “Books are friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“Books are friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our minds.” Understandably, Lance Marrow gets a little sentimental about books and their needless destruction. We resist soft-headed fetishism but for some of us, discarding or destroying books, even...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Wagon-Load of Monkeys' “It is not an accident that Gulliver has become a child’s book; only a child could be so...
a year ago
30
a year ago
“It is not an accident that Gulliver has become a child’s book; only a child could be so destructive, so irresponsible and so cruel.”  And only a parent could acknowledge the potential for raw nastiness in the heart of a child. V.S. Pritchett had two children and few illusions...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Leave Him Something to Imagine' “I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable strait line.”  By the time a persevering reader has reached Book...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Courage to Face Reality Squarely' I’m flying to Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has already...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
I’m flying to Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has already metastasized and he’s in the Cleveland Clinic, waiting to be admitted to their hospice program. Ken turned sixty-nine in April and is two and a half years younger than me. My...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Cello of Shared Grief' With the deaths of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
5 days ago
10
5 days ago
With the deaths of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
11
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Read the Wild Wallpaper of My Heart' Meade Harwell, Gordon H. Felton, M.J.A. McGittigan, Jess H. Cloud, Byron Vazakas, Ellis Foote, Myron...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Meade Harwell, Gordon H. Felton, M.J.A. McGittigan, Jess H. Cloud, Byron Vazakas, Ellis Foote, Myron H. Broomell, Celeste Turner Wright.  Who are these strangers? What brings them together? They recall a walk in the cemetery, reading on the stones the names of people we have...
The American Scholar
Échame la Culpa The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The American Scholar
The Source The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be an Owl: The Strange Science of Seeing with Sound “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature...
12 months ago
13
12 months ago
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature writer Henry Beston wrote in his lovely century-old meditation on otherness and the web of life. “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted...
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
RealMoji
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Prejudice Against Humor?' “What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the...
10 months ago
11
10 months ago
“What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life...
Blog -...
Welcome to Anchor Point Blog I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that self-discovery does not have to be...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that self-discovery does not have to be a solo journey. Through this blog men can connect to resources that will help to enhance their personal development. Many of these resources have deeply impacted my growth, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Than Documentary' “Literariness, as I understand it, does not necessarily entail any particular set of...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
“Literariness, as I understand it, does not necessarily entail any particular set of formal qualities. What makes a work literary is the ability to be understood and appreciated outside the context of its origin. That is why a literary work, however valuable as a document of its...
The Marginalian
From Cells to Souls: The Poetic Science of How the Brain Became The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself "What is happiness but growth in peace."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Last Laugh The post Last Laugh appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Kind of Things I Love' At the end of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little...
11 months ago
16
11 months ago
At the end of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little White Attic appends a bookish cri de coeur, one I have echoed many times:  “I increasingly feel at odds with modern culture,” she begins. “I’m indifferent to contemporary music,...
This Space
39 Books: 2023 This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
6 months ago
71
6 months ago
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a return to the short-form of the early days of blogging. And it started off well, with each entry written in no time, sometimes stirring up the sediment of initial enchantment. As I got...
The American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives The post Turning the World to Powder...
5 months ago
50
5 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Plato's Symposium - philosophy as realist fiction - pick up something to tickle your nose with, and... Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with...
over a year ago
32
over a year ago
Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with an anxiety-deflating observation:  Symposium is fiction, a long story.  It is fiction in that at least some of it is invented, but mostly in that it uses the techniques of fiction:...
The American Scholar
Aging Out Many of us do not go gentle into that good night The post Aging Out appeared first on The American...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night The post Aging Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Five Days to Inbox Zero: How to Get Control of your Email Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100%...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100% ineffective. I discussed with a friend the other day why they should switch from Yahoo to Gmail, and how to reduce the useless emails they receive. Below is how I suggested they move from...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Uneven, Irregular, and Multiform Movement' “There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
“There are readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of intoxications.”   Driving while reading is discouraged. Once, in Bellevue, Wash., while stopped at a red light, I was intoxicated by the book propped against the wheel until a cop pulled up, rolled...
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023 Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry' “[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
“[O]ne is tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”  Things get sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling species of serious...
The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life "If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year ago
The American Scholar
“À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read a Little, Listen to a Little Music' “To tend the world: read a little, listen to a little music.”  I was slow to warm to the late Adam...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“To tend the world: read a little, listen to a little music.”  I was slow to warm to the late Adam Zagajewski. I still prefer his essays to his poems, which often seem sentimental and formless, as though he demanded too little of himself when writing poetry. Only in the five...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stood There and Stared at Silence, Silent Too' St. Augustine observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:   “When he...
10 months ago
13
10 months ago
St. Augustine observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:   “When he was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. . . . Very often when we were there, we saw him silently reading and never...
Josh Thompson
Notes on, and quotes from: The Politics of Jesus (Yoder, 1972, 1994) As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books. In the...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books. In the modern world, we’re loath to read long, complicated passeges of text. I hope to get some of you to eventually order your own copy of The Politics of Jesus. On my website you can...
The Marginalian
The New Science of Plant Intelligence and the Mystery of What Makes a Mind "Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
7 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Time Is Tight' My brother is dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is...
4 months ago
27
4 months ago
My brother is dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is failing incrementally. On Monday we were swapping memories and he stopped talking on Tuesday, the same day he stopped eating. He lies on his back on the hospice bed, mouth open, eyes staring...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pure Essay' “A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says,...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
“A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says, ‘not to instruct or edify but only to produce aesthetic satisfaction.’ I do not know why it should be so, but today the ‘pure’ essay is a literary genre to which no reader under sixty...
The Marginalian
There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the... “Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese...
5 months ago
39
5 months ago
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese classic In Praise of Shadows. As a physical phenomenon, shadows are one of the most beguiling phenomena of nature, emissaries of the entwined history of light and consciousness; as...
This Space
Kevin Hart and the outside There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading...
a year ago
57
a year ago
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading his new collection and The Dark Gaze for the second time, has helped me to recognise what I have forgotten, missed, misconstrued or misunderstood in Maurice Blanchot's writing or,...
The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression "This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
ben-mini
Building FirstMover I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly...
3 months ago
1
3 months ago
I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly all of them pointed me to StreetEasy, the Zillow-owned NYC real estate search platform. Some of my more Type-A friends gave me extra helpful advice: Narrow your search to 2-4...
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas... Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
2 days ago
4
2 days ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
Ben Borgers
Half a Slice of Apple Pie
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Pristine Caldera of Consonants' The subject of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger but I...
5 months ago
42
5 months ago
The subject of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger but I got to explain its etymology. The word for the subatomic particle was coined by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who borrowed it from Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark!”...
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
2
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Treated Us Like Adults' I grew up thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my neighborhood....
11 months ago
29
11 months ago
I grew up thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my neighborhood. I never saw writers on television. My parents never talked about them, as they might actors and politicians, who also were unreal. Without thinking too deeply about it, I put...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection' Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council, might represent our nation (and species, for that matter)? I nominate Louis Armstrong. Other names come to mind: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Ellison, perhaps...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Is Called an Amateur' I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor...
a year ago
48
a year ago
I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers, adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries to disguise his snottiness or treat it as a joke but in this case the prima donna was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Passions and Perturbations of the Mind' In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s...
11 months ago
30
11 months ago
In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): addle, colly, costard, doter, to filch, to fleer, giddyheaded, griper, hotspur, to macerate, muckhill, mutter, oligarchy, quacksalver and squalor....
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'd Walk in Heaven With My Feet on Earth' “If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The...
12 months ago
14
12 months ago
“If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The late Terry Teachout once described himself as a “Midwestern aesthete,” an identification I have happily claimed. I sense that a love of beauty has grown scarce and too often earns contempt...
Josh Thompson
Anarchy (or, less provocatively, Mutuality and Co-Creation) In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the...
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey; everything and nothing changed. Lots changed because all of I sudden, I could clearly label a dynamic that had always irked me. I could see that some people would avoid...
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Steven Scrawls
You Are Not Incompressible You Are Not Incompressible can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting...
6 months ago
2
6 months ago
You Are Not Incompressible can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting with orcs, walking, walking, walking, anguish, walking, walking, walking, bit more fighting with orcs, walking, walking, walking. —Goodreads review of “The Lord of the Rings” Im returning...
The Marginalian
The Power of Being a Heretic: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Critical Thinking,... "If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of...
a year ago
29
a year ago
"If we are to be true and worthy heretics, we need not only new heads, but new hearts, and, most of all, that new emotional imagination... begotten of enlarged sympathies and a more sensitive habit of feeling."
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ill-Assorted Collection' A friend has broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty emails in...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
A friend has broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty emails in her direction. As prose they are better than average. There have been no threats of violence and little profanity. The ex’s weapon of choice is a detailed critique of every aspect...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my... Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
9 months ago
65
9 months ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are, because of Metamorphoses.  Venus and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion.  Icarus –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Half-Buried Sense for Poetry' It’s easy to mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or...
6 days ago
8
6 days ago
It’s easy to mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or naively unprofessional, a mask worn to conceal the shark within, especially among literary types. Of course, critics are born to be severe, nobody’s pal. How many critics can you name whose...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Stand for the Unacademic' “I stand for the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.” As do most of the better sort among writers and...
9 months ago
16
9 months ago
“I stand for the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.” As do most of the better sort among writers and readers. Something vital was lost when the profs colonized and laid claim to literature. John Gross puts it like this in The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters (1969; rev. ed....
The Marginalian
Octavio Paz on Freedom "Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Change The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that. Sometimes change is for...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that. Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes its for the worse. I don’t know if there’s always a difference. Recently, Kristi and I have seen lots of change; I’d say its for the better, but it’s not...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make a Friend or Sonnet' Some deny that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust and...
10 months ago
15
10 months ago
Some deny that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust and affection thrive only in the physical world. I was once sympathetic to this idea, which was more revealing of my own digital backwardness than of the nature of friendship. My thinking...
Ben Borgers
Date Picker Details
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness "Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only...
a year ago
78
a year ago
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only unconditional surrender leads to real emptiness, and from that place of emptiness I can be prolific and free."
Josh Thompson
Change your MAC address with a shell script For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am using a wifi connection that limits me to thirty minutes or an hour or whatever, I can “spoof” a new MAC address, and when I re-connect to the wifi, the access point thinks I’m on...
This Space
39 Books: 1992 Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
7 months ago
37
7 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.* Many of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Talkative But Less Writative' Lately I’ve been reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Lately I’ve been reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s Travels as the most useful model for prose style in English. It’s not the only way to write but it’s the best if we judge clarity the supreme virtue. Sloppy prose, unless...
The Elysian
Hint #1 I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
The Marginalian
bell hooks on Love "We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until...
a year ago
10
a year ago
"We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago... All awakening to love is spiritual awakening."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thoughts Wait Here for Future Readers' In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh, 2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater,...
a year ago
9
a year ago
In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh, 2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater, the Jagiellonka Library in Kraków, and calls it a “botanical garden of ideas,” a metaphor worthy of the librarian Borges. I briefly visited the Jagiellonka, as it’s known, in 2012...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Its Super-Ego Has Gone AWOL' The American philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the University of...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
The American philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the University of Arizona in 1962. It was published that year as a twenty-three-page pamphlet titled “On Sanity in Thought and Art.” For much of the text Blanshard reviews various twentieth-century...
Josh Thompson
Fred Roger's Method For Writing Scripts Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script for his show. The rules aren’t fully applicable to presentations, but the attention to detail and to the Interpretation of the audience is. Don’t use any words carelessly. I...
Ben Borgers
Best Type of Bathroom Lock
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever' Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I have seen in person,...
Ben Borgers
Good Software Has a Clear Geography
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where I Went and Cannot Come Again' A brief return to the Russian word toska mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in...
8 months ago
38
8 months ago
A brief return to the Russian word toska mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in reference to Chekhov. Dave Lull alerted me to Nabokov’s explication of the word in his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. In the second of the four volumes, Nabokov writes:  “No...
The Marginalian
The Majesty and Mystery of Night Migration, in a Stunning Poem Turned to Music “Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in his love letter to the hours of darkness, composed while flying alone over the Sahara Desert. No aliveness animates the nocturne with more grandeur than the migration of birds....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Shadow Cabinet of Writers' “All of us, probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority taste can be...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
“All of us, probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority taste can be powerful enough to make for some isolated masterpiece a small niche in literary history -- Henry Green’s Loving and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Mr. Fortune's Maggot have both...
This Space
39 Books: 2000 In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick up a copy of the new translation of Peter Handke's My Year in the No-man's Bay, not available over here. He was the first to tell me about this new website called Amazon. This is...
Ben Borgers
Meaningful Conversation
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right? I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build: I should have done the following...
Ben Borgers
What is JumboCode?
a year ago
This Space
Atheism of the novel "Here it comes: the information dumping..." From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest...
a year ago
35
a year ago
"Here it comes: the information dumping..." From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest novel, the part that is commentary on his attempt to destroy a commercially successful novel emulating "the style that The Guardian liked and promoted": The narrator is a young...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Hallmark of What Is Truly Priceless' “. . . what literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”  A bit melodramatic, no?...
10 months ago
16
10 months ago
“. . . what literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”  A bit melodramatic, no? Grandiose? Perhaps expressed by a writer worried about sales or a reader boosting his self-esteem? Could be. But there’s something to it. Maybe it amounts to more than...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Humour Is Reason Itself' The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the...
4 days ago
6
4 days ago
The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the reliably funny guy at the party. The sadness derives from his inability to say or do anything even modestly amusing. People will laugh aloud at something he says out of pity and an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Its Masters’ Love Is' The late D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according to some...
6 months ago
41
6 months ago
The late D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according to some aspect of their subject matter. Melville is your go-to cetology guy and Edith Wharton took care of sleds. Or, as Nabokov said of Hemingway’s books: “something about bells, balls and...
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
50
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
a week ago
18
a week ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest... “All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
a month ago
17
a month ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...