Chris > Recent Status Updates

"... imaginary futures are always, regardless of what the author might think, about the day in which they're written. Orwell knew it, writing Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1948, and I knew it, writing Neuromancer, my first novel, which was published in 1984"

"Toughness has been rather out of fashion, as a masculine virtue, and Takeshi simultaneously radiates it and suggests its wounded core. There can in fact be no depiction of genuine toughness ... without this concomitant indication of that wound, else the piece becomes simply the pornography of fascism"

"God of the dear old Mastodon’s morasses Whose love pervaded pre-diluvial mud, Grant us the power to prove, by poison gases, The needlessness of shedding human blood."

On Spinoza, "No one has any difficulty, he said, in understanding that a person has a passionate love of nature, yet we should consider such a person mad if he wanted nature to love him back. Now because nature and God are one and the same, the same thing is true about God. It is conducive to our happiness to love God, but meaningless and absurd for us to expect God to love us."

"Ollamh Foola, in contrast, the eighteenth High King, supposedly acceded in 714 BC and is credited with giving the country its first law code. He is said to be buried at Tailltin. And Ollamh was the highest of the seven grades of bards. The real significance of this shadowy figure maybe that he illustrates the High King’s dual role as ruler and chief poet"

Zwicky taking top points for abrasiveness: "A Reminder to the High Priests of American Astronomy and to their Sycophants: 'The scholar's mission requires the study ... of unpopular ideas, of ideas considered abhorrent ... Timidity must not lead the scholar to stand silent when he ought to speak... when he has the truth to proclaim the scholar has no obligation to be silent in the face of popular disapproval.' "

Bernard Williams on Descartes. Interesting notes on the post-reformation intellectual environment that permitted Descartes to mould his philosophy. Bernard acknowledges that Descartes was a true believer in God, self-evident in his writings, whilst still being a critic of the church. Whilst Galileo ignorantly incurred the wrath of the church, Descartes was still revered and respected up to his death

I haven't read any Auster before except the graphic novel adaptation of City of Glass. Beginning to think this may not be the best introduction.

"Without justice, goodness is not goodness - indeed, [goodness] is truly concordant with justice"

"Most European nations are aware that their present territory was once ruled by foreign powers, dominated by different cultures, or inhabited by alien people's."

"Generally speaking historians keep their distance from mythology. They demand reliable sources, and much prefer digs and documents to oral traditions. As a result, they are capable of writing books on prehistory which lack any sense of the human condition"

Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia

'You smug faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go', Suicide in the trenches

'Clear cock-crow airs across some valley dim With whispering trees. While dawn along the rim Of night's horizon flows in lakes of fire, Come down from heaven's bright hill, my song's desire', Invocation

"He pants to see You, but Your face is too far removed from him. He desires to approach You, but Your dwelling place is inaccessible. He desires to find You but does not know Your abode. He longs to seek You but does not know Your countenance" Woah Anselm, this comes across a bit like an internet stalker. And don't try and blame it all on the translation.

Anthony Kenny on Medieval Philosophy, particularly the works of St Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Links with 20th century logicians are explore; B. Russell is accused of dismissing Aquinas for 'searching for reasons for what he believed', despite his careful separation of Theologian and Philosopher roles. St Anselm's ontological argument is also covered, an 'abnormally disconterting argument' according to Magee.

'He's a cheery old card', grunted Hurry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

"Any extreme is liable to produce a violent reaction; this is as true of the weather and plants and animals as of political societies"

‘I think you’ve a really high-class idea of the study Of “higher things" , I replied. ‘Perhaps you think that anyone who puts his head back and gazes at a painted ceiling learns something and is using his mind and not his eyes.'

First two chapters, Plato and Aristotle, complete. The accompanying TV series, available on YouTube, has exactly the same content but is worth watching to see the passions and emphasis of the panellists. Still prefer the book for absorbing the message at your own pace.