Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"So for the study of human life forty years are as good as ten thousand: what more will you see?" - well, no: reading this convinces me otherwise. I'm shocked at how sometimes MA's views are Christian, and sometimes modern. Homer had no conception of providence, MA did, I don't. MA didn't put the Earth at the centre of the universe, the Medieval Church did, I don't. If anything, culture is a kaleidoscope.

"But bear in mind that a person's worth is measured by the worth of what he values." - sounds great, but ultimately tautologous?

"But if we determine that only what lies in our own power is good or evil, there is no reason left us either to charge a god or to take a hostile stance to man." - easy if you are an emperor, but if you are a slave?

"Either a stew, an intricate web and dispersal into atoms: or unity, order, and providence. - MA know reminds me of Leibniz: I didn't expect that.

Draw a grid - use a hidden crossword instead of hidden figures, and you intensify their use of the alphabet.

Spot the mistakes and correct - still trying to find a way to get my students to actively listen to songs using OneNote, could this be it?

Track the pitch - I should know more about pitch and tone groups before I try to use this.

Critical listening - this is as they says elaborate; how do imagine that 16 kids in class room trying to listen to individual recordings will play out? But it seems a very useful exercise. Might try in on myself reading Hungarian.

Letters on the board - looks like a good exercise to help Hungarians to spell in English

"What is not harmful to the city does not harm the citizen either." - definitely not a Liberal.

"...and so welcome all that happens to you, even if it seems rather cruel, because its purpose leads to the health of the universe and the prosperity and success of Zeus." - a God's providence, more Christian than Homeric.

"I travel on by nature's path...the earth which bears my tread and all the ways in which I abuse her" - again, strikingly modern in his conception of nature; cf 'Wilderness and the American Mind'.

"The whole earth is a mere point in space." - obviously, Ptolemy wasn't a big influence.

"If dementia sets in, there will be no failure of such faculties as breathing, feeding..." - not just a modern dilemna then.

"not to leap on [linguistic] mistakes..., but neatly to introduce the correct form of that particular expression by way of answer, confirmation, or discussion of the matter itself rather its phrasing..." - i.e. reformulation, shocked to discover that language teachers have been discussing this for 2,000 years.

Ineubilable (226) incapable of being cleared of clouds; scholium (233) a marginal or explanatory note - rather like this; mammate (233) having breasts.

"What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable..."

Perlustration (201) a thorough inspection; ephemerides (216) tables of future planetary positions; pointillé (218) a subtle distinction - English now omits the accent; acanthus (225) carved leaf decorating Corinthian columns; architrave (225) beam that rests on the columns.

"...the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of 'resemblers'" - and there was I thinking it was a corruption of Zenda, as in "Prisoner of..."

Enciente (181) French for pregnant - not italicised; revanched (182) NID; chignon (188) coil or knot of hair; erkling (188) sinister elf; supernal (192) relating to the sky or heavens.

"...but that was a different Russia - a Russia that hated tyrants and Philistines, injustice and cruelty, the Russia of ladies and gentlemen and liberal aspirations." - the Russia of Oblomov? The one that ignored 38% of population.

Botkin (175) a dagger; metastatistics (179) NID; psychopompos (179) a guide of souls to the place of the dead.

"Confession with us..." - I suppose an Orthodox writer might fail to appreciate that the key difference between Prostestant and Catholic is that a Protestant doesn't need a priest to confess.

Antiphonal (161) of music played alternately by two groups; culm (167) the hollow stem of a grass that bears the flower; houghmagandy (169) Scottish literary word for sexual intercourse; glycines (169) French for wisteria - not sure this counts.

'A beautiful woman should be like a compass rose of ivory with four parts of ebony'

mujik (147) a russian peasant; izba (147) his log dwelling - not sure if not italicising foreign words should count; goetic (147) relating to necromancy; carnelian (148) brownish-red gemstone; marrowsky (149) spoonerism; hoyden (149) a boisterous girl

Chroma (129) purity or intensity of colour - not sure it makes sense in this context; architectronics (133) musical, literary or artistic structure - Kant used it differently; monocerous (138) one horned rhinoceros; lambent (140) glowing; fustian (142) pompous pretentious language.

"If she is Croat or Serb or Bosniak I shall be able to make her understand," he promised himself. "If she is Magyar, heaven help me! We shall have to converse entirely by signs."

Tintarron (117) NID; tessallated (119) formed in mosaic; fatidic (123) relating to phrophecy; skoramis (126) chamber pot, Anc. Grk. - see, fewer and further between.

"'A unicursal bicircular quartic' says my weary old dictionary' - Nabokov is still enjoying the joke.