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Monthly Archives: November 2011

A Sign.

29-Nov-11

aggregate My boss sent me to the hardware store to get some fencing, and as I go out to the warehouse to pick up my order and load it into my truck, I see a sticker stuck to the door: Maybe I should take this personally.  A close-up shot: Freud: precisely what you need.

Please, no more of these ignorant Catholics.

28-Nov-11

sloppily An unusually bad essay crossed my computer screen the other day, by Peter Kreeft, who is apparently a kind of figure in Conservative Catholic circles.  To give a sense of what sort of person he is, supposedly he was asked whether a Catholic could be a liberal, and he said it was “a very challenging […]

88% of the Wealth, 86% of the Taxes.

22-Nov-11

This is painfully obvious, but I see and hear the Republican talking points in many places in our society about how high a percentage of the taxes the rich have to pay.  The car mechanic in my town has a sign about how unfair it is that the top 20% pay more than 80% of […]

Greenwald on OWS.

22-Nov-11

The grievance aired by Occupy Wall Street – that we should be upset at the current economic and political system and the consistent trends of the past decade – is great Greenwald territory in general, and no one sums it up and puts in all the links quite like he does.

Plutarch on Augustus and the Man with the Ass.

22-Nov-11

Just before the Battle of Actium: Of Caesar they relate that, leaving his tent and going round, while it was yet dark, to visit the ships, he met a man driving an ass, and asked him his name.  He answered him that his own name was Fortunatus, “and my ass,” he said, “is called Conqueror.” […]

Plutarch on Timon of Athens.

22-Nov-11

From the Life of Antony.  Antony, at the end of his life, his hopes shattered, said that he just wanted to end his days living the life of Timon of Athens.  Plutarch thus digresses: This Timon was a citizen of Athens, and lived much about the Peloponnesian War, as may be seen by the comedies […]

Seeking a true religion.

19-Nov-11

A great set of reader emails on Sullivan’s blog, proving once again how good his system is of disallowing comments but printing good reader emails.  The issues – whether the universe itself can be said to have any “relationship” with us, what is left of the old religions once our critical faculties are done dissecting […]

Leafless.

19-Nov-11

Discoverer of the Lilac, Tulip, & The Res Gestae Divi Augusti.

19-Nov-11

The name of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq has recently come to my attention, and now I’m very curious to lay my hands on a real copy of the Epistulae Turcicae in Latin.  Apparently, while de Busbecq was in Turkey he transcribed the famous Monumentum Ancyranum, which contains the text in Greek and Latin of Augustus’s […]

Demosthenes Talking to a King.

19-Nov-11

Philip, King of Macedon, in this case, who would shortly conquer Greece: It was evident, even in time of peace, what cause Demosthenes would steer in the commonwealth; for whatever was done by the Macedonian, he criticized and found fault with, and upon all occasions was stirring up the people of Athens, and inflaming them […]