I admit, I kind of miss modernism. Even if the good folks over at Scarriet keep finding silly excuses to rail against it.
Gifts For Poets And Poetry Lovers
This list actually makes sense.
The recommended gifts include subscriptions to magazines and small presses that specialize in poetry, rather than mugs and t-shirts.
Occupy & The Social Sciences
I’m came across this after doing some googling following attending a teach in at the tent city on the National Mall the other week.
An anthropology professor from Montgomery College spoke both about her own experiences as a someone self identifying as queer and as a former New York City punk and historical/anthropological perspectives on movements for social change. Cool stuff. You shoulda been there.
On Occupy And Writers In The Depression
What A Truly God Awful Liberal Straw Man
I used to work across the street from the American Enterprise Institute. It made me unclean and I took two showers a day to try and wash the scent of war mongering and crony capitalism from my skin. But you never get truly clean after that. Not ever.
And Bill Kristol, who is not only a terribly columnist, but also a fellow at the Institute, used to get his coffee at the same place as me.
You probably remember Bill Kristol as being the son of respected thinker and essayist, Irving Kristol (Bill will never be remembered as either). You might also remember Bill Kristol for being a big ol’ sycophant and for generally being wrong about everything.
But all this is leading up to offering you a glimpse of this marvelously wrought bit of straw man ridiculousness.
Because you know who the real enemy of science is? California liberals.
They’re always in the street, demanding that evolution not be taught in schools and ignoring the overwhelming body of scientific evidence supporting both the existence of global climate change and humanity being a driving factor in its acceleration.
Or am I getting them confused with someone else?
Stay Classy, Tallahassee
Where Have All The Catholic Writers Gone?
Yikes. According this article, I became Catholic at a very bad time. A couple of decades earlier and I could have already been a successful writer (I mean, someone who writes under their own name – not on behalf of clients and employers).
Happy Birthday, Edwin Abbot
My senior year of high school, back in Dunedin, Florida, I took a series of dual enrollment courses for college credit. The same professor taught all of them.
I wish I could remember his name, because he was the man who introduced me to Edwin Abbot’s mathematical/philosophical classic, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. And Edwin Abbot was born on this day in 1838.
If you haven’t read Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, well, there’s no good reason why not. It’s short. It’s an easy read. And it’s a wonderfully inventive and enjoyable way to explore epistemic and spatial concepts (the book is about two dimensional beings, their inability to truly understand three dimensionality, and about resistance to new concepts).
Finished ‘A Crown Of Swords’
I finally finished book seven of the late Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, A Crown of Swords, on the bus this morning.
This one wasn’t that bad. It might even be one of the better, but it’s still mostly sheer bloody mindedness that’s driving me to slog through this. I think I’m half way through the series.
Jordan still (can I say ‘still?’ he’s dead, after all) writes about capital R ‘Romance’ with a most irritating and unrealistic seriousness. Sort of like a teenage virgin, D&D enthusiast taking refuge in old tropes to compensate for his inability to find a real girl who will let him touch her boob (over the shirt, of course). Thankfully, he at least lacks the chauvinism of Piers Anthony (who also liked his romances to be ‘Romances’ with a capital R).
And I get to trade in the book for some store credit at Capitol Hill Books. Since I have exactly zero intention of ever wading my way through this again, I don’t need to keep them in my library. Better to trade ’em until I have enough credit to get some classic pulp from the basement.
Of course, I’m also taking the bus home again this evening and I don’t have anything to read…
Why Books Make The Best Gifts
P.S. – I bought no less than five books to give as presents this year. Each one intended as personally relevant gift to the receiver. How many books are you giving away this year?
the coffee philosopher 