...And I'm Back.

So! Hope everyone's new years have been progressing nicely...mine has been full of snow...but I've taken a good little January hiatus, and will be resuming here with the occasional post, starting with this quote:

“All truth is one. In this light may science and religion labor here together for the steady evolution of mankind from darkness to light; from prejudice to tolerance; from narrowness to broadmindedness.”
Cuthbert W. Pound

Christmas

Yesterday's midnight mass featured a stanza from a poem by John Donne...here's the thing in its entirety: 

Wilt thou love God, as he thee? Then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation, 
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on 
In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy breast. 
The Father having begot a Son most blest, 
And still begetting, (for he ne'er be gone) 
Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption, 
Co-heir t' his glory, and Sabbath' endless rest. 
And as a robbed man, which by search doth find 
His stol'n stuff sold, must lose or buy 't again:
The Son of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom he'd made, and Satan stol'n, to unbind.
'Twas much that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.

Monumental

If you seek his monument, look around you.

...That's the inscription (loosely-translated from Latin) found on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  As Wren was the architect of this cathedral, it's definitely accurate.  I think it's somewhat poetic, too...I'd like to go out like that (although I mayyy be in the wrong profession).

In addition to St. Paul's, he designed a chapel in Cambridge, the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, the Royal Observatory, and 51 churches in London after the Great Fire of 1666.  He also did some extensive renovations of Hampton Court and Kensington Palace.

Sir Christopher Wren was a real Renaissance man - in addition to these architectural feats, he studied medicine, mechanics, magnetism, astronomy, agriculture, ballistics, and bees (to name a few).

Touché

"...But if one fears or despises so much the philosophical foundations of a book, and if one demands so insistently the right to understand nothing about them and to say nothing on the subject, why become critic?  To understand, to enlighten, that is your profession, isn't it?  You can of course judge philosophy according to common sense; the trouble is that while 'common sense' and 'feeling' understand nothing about philosophy, philosophy, on the other hand, understands them perfectly.  You don't explain philosophers, but they explain you."

Roland Barthes, Mythologies

Dear Sir...

SIR – I swear that if I hear Ride of the Valkyries again on Classic FM, I may not be responsible for my actions.

This and more unpublished letters to the editor of the Telegraph at the link.

Souviens-toi

From the diary of an Allied soldier, upon entering a Nazi death camp:

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women and children collapse as you walked by them . . . One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diphtheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it. One saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves . . . [a] dysentery tank in which the remains of a child floated.
...
It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Something less serious tomorrow.

Semanticizing

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
Sun Tzu

Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it.
Frank Muir

So I remember reading somewhere some witty and informative remark discriminating these two concepts...but these two clearly weren't it.  I personally find the first one less than illuminating, while the latter quote is, while more colorful (and probably a better illustration) vaguely insulting.  However, essentially:

Strategy is the overarching and often long-range plan, framework, or set of decisions that has been laid in place in order to accomplish a large or complex goal.

Tactics, meanwhile, are the individual and distinct maneuvers, procedures, or events that work for the benefit of the strategist and towards the ultimate intended result by taking advantage of opportunities provided by the overall strategic configuration.

The rather more brief notion that [s]trategy requires thought, [while] tactics require observation (Max Euwe) is probably not untrue, but I feel that most often the reverse is true as well.

And of course, the outcome - pragmatically speaking - is the most important bit of this whole lesson: However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results (Winston Churchill).

???

“Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.”
     Marston Bates

...and so, quite possibly, is looking for a research job.  Suppose I've just got to keep on keeping on! Summer is becoming a bit boring - it will be good to nail down something interesting to do for the next year or two.

How Long?

Strictly speaking, this belongs in my Oxford series...but I've only just now discovered it, and think it's suitably witty - and true - that it deserves a mention somewhere.

So apparently the difference between me and my Brit friends is that Britons think 100 miles is a long way, while Americans think 100 years is a long time.

Ha ha ha...well anyway, mildly entertaining.  That's all I ever promised you from the beginning. 

Right, so this comes from my burrowing through the blogsphere; I encountered a bit about the differences between Americans and the English that seemed worth reading at the time.  For all the similarities - I've said it before - the UK is not merely Ye-Olde-USA...little funny disparities are likely to crop up when you least expect it.  This one is not the most striking, I don't think, or the most useful, or even the most correct, but there you have it.  Perhaps it will put some things into perspective next time you have some friends from Scotland over for vacation and decide to take them on an hour-long drive out to look at some historical site (as you see it) from the Roaring Twenties.  Forewarned is forearmed.

Some Random Inspiration

It's not October...and there's no battle...

But since when did a little Shakespeare (via Mr K. Brannaugh) not help?



These wounds I had on Crispin's Day!

Idle Dogs

…He somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working. (from The Wind in the Willows)

Is it true?  I'm so close to finding out!

Happy Easter!

Christ has not only spoken to us by his life but has also spoken for us by his death.
Soren Kierkegaard

¹After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
²There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. ⁴The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
⁵The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you."
⁸So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."
Matthew 28:1-10

A Simple (Albeit Comical) Argument for Christian Theology

I read this the other evening and thought it thought-provoking.  It's originally from CS Lewis' Miracles.  I added some paragraph breaks to make it less scary.

Almost the whole of Christian theology could perhaps be deduced from the two facts (a) That men make coarse jokes, and (b) That they feel the dead to be uncanny.   

The coarse joke proclaims that we have here an animal which finds its own animality either objectionable or funny.  Unless there had been a quarrel between the spirit and the organism I do not see how this could be: it is the very mark of the two not being ‘at home’ together.  But it is very difficult to imagine such a state of affairs as original - to suppose a creature which from the very first was half shocked and half tickled to death at the mere fact of being the creature it is.  I do not perceive that dogs see anything funny about being dogs: I suspect that angels see nothing funny about being angels.  

Our feeling about the dead is equally odd.  It is idle to say that we dislike corpses because we are afraid of ghosts.  You might say with equal truth that we fear ghosts because we dislike corpses - for the ghost owes much of its horror to the associated ideas of pallor, decay, coffins, shrouds, and worms.  In reality we hate the division which makes possible the conception of either corpse or ghost.  Because the thing ought not to be divided, each of the halves into which it falls by division is detestable.   

The explanations which Naturalism gives both of bodily shame and of our feeling about the dead are not satisfactory.  It refers us to primitive taboos and superstitions - as if these themselves were not obviously results of the thing to be explained.  But once accept the Christian doctrine that man was originally a unity and that the present division is unnatural, and all the phenomena fall into place. 

Anyway.  Discuss.

Marching Orders

Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.

Marcus Aurelius

Must...Pass...

Gam zeh ya'avor.

Which is a Jewish proverb meaning "this too shall pass"...the story the proverb comes from is quite interesting, actually.  A great king, wishing to teach one of his courtiers a lesson, told him to find a thing that would cheer a sad man and make a happy man miserable.  After a year of searching, the courtier was returning through the royal city and stopped to bemoan his failure to a local tradesman.  The man, however, was not dismayed, and, taking a simple gold ring, scratched the above engraving.  The king, once presented with the saying, was humbled, for he realized that, just as hard times may pass, so too all his wealth and power was a transient thing.

Abraham Lincoln also used this maxim in one of his speeches.

Back Home

It's spring break, and so today I've driven back to the wintry North.  Never better.

Here's a little quote from David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) about traveling to new places and returning to old ones.

I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don't notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is.

We'll meet againnn...

In years gone by I would have made some off-color VD jokes while glowering at couples under heavy eyeliner, but this Valentine's Day, I am merely going to dream of black hair and blue eyes...and leave you with this terribly romantic letter from the Civil War.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me - perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar - that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have oftentimes been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night - amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours - always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

Grammar and Register

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
- The Oxford University Press

For more insights, head to your local library for Grammar Can Be Fun, reviewed here.

Time for another...

QUOTE!
/ SNOW-RELATED POST!

From Anne of Green Gables to you:

The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them.

I thought, what with the massive blizzard raging all along the East Coast, I couldn't let the last snow-related item on RecAnth be about how it's never too cold to snow and how (despite this fact) brave British men are willing to walk out into it on frostbitten, not to mention gangrenous, feet and nobly die in vain for their Arctic expedition. Anne has a more serene outlook on even the most bitter of snowy nights.

Tonight is Ring Dance (the traditionally romantic if vaguely creepy debutantesque ball traditionally held at the Jefferson Hotel by the junior Westhampton women of the University of Richmond). I missed last year's due to Oxford, but if the weather lets up, I suppose I'll be heading out this time around...so it's good to know that evening snow isn't always sinister, especially as I'll likely be bare-legged.

Monday, Monday

Here's a little quotie to start your week off right:

"And a thousand slimy things lived on; and so did I."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

...What, you don't like that one??? Okay fine. An alternative quote for all you "normals"...But I will have to put it in the original French. You can't get it all your way.

“Le hasard favorise les esprits prepares [Chance favors the prepared mind].”
Louis Pasteur