| (no subject) |
[Feb. 6th, 2010|09:32 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Elvis Presley, Always on My Mind | ] |
Today in research for The Book: Lucian says in 2 amusing sentences something it took me much of last summer, and much tedious reading about philosophy, to learn.
Moral: Always read Lucian first. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 4th, 2010|02:54 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Rufus, feat. Chaka Khan, You Got the Love | ] |
In Lucian today, the eternal question: Which is worse, cock-sucking or bad grammar? And doesn't one inevitably lead to the other? |
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| What I did with my 24 hours of unmitigated vacation |
[Dec. 24th, 2009|10:23 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Lenox Avenue, Little Drummer Boy | ] |
• Finished Christmas shopping
• Wrapped presents
• Caught up on journals & facebook
• Watched brain-melting TV with cat asleep on my lap
• Watched slightly less brain-melting TV with sweetie
• Slept in
That's should hold me for the next few months. Time to get back to work! |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|08:12 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | One Blood, Be Thankful for What You've Got | ] |
What we like at the end of a week of too many 15-hour days and too much grading:
nap with warm, sleepy cat
meatball subs
homemade chocolate chip cookies
someone else to do all the cooking
good podcast to listen to while washing dishes
mind-rotting TV
early bedtime
Tomorrow: Bob Dylan! |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|04:18 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Big Sambo and the Housewreckers, The Rains Came | ] |
Imaginary shiny silver dollar to anyone who can provide a backstory that makes sense of this sentence (from today's Latin homework):
Part of the citizens seized the riches and ran through the city toward the sea. |
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| Yes, this is a Classics thing. |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|02:26 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The Library, Tomorrow is Better | ] |
Which of the following do you think is closer to the truth? Why?
1. The best way for an imperial state (or a hegemonic power, which isn't quite the same thing) to retain its power is to punish infractions swiftly and harshly. Mild treatment of rebellious subjects/allies doesn't win any friends, and just invites further rebellion by making the empire look weak.
2. The best way for an imperial/hegemonic state to retain its power is to overlook some infractions rather than alienate loyal subjects/allies by indiscriminately harsh treatment of offenders (e.g. by punishing ordinary citizens of an revolting ally as harshly as its leaders). |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 24th, 2009|01:48 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Jimmy Castor Bunch, Potential | ] |
It's that time of term: stupid tired and no prospect of relief any time soon. Spending the morning reading Herodotus with a sleepy, purring cat on my stomach does help to ease the pain, though. |
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| Grading scorecard, updated & emended |
[Oct. 16th, 2009|05:05 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Willard Burton & the Pacifiers, Warm the Pot | ] |
25 Latin quizzes down, 0 to go
0 Latin homeworks down, 25 to go
c. 45% of 38 Greek midterms graded, c. 55% to go
0 Greek history lectures written, 1 to go
c. 11 hours of grading & lecture-writing time left |
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| Grading scorecard |
[Oct. 16th, 2009|01:41 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The Paper Raincoat, Right Angles | ] |
0 Latin homeworks down, 25 to go
0 Latin quizzes down, 25 to go
0 Greek history midterms down, 38 to go
c. 15 hours of grading time left |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 24th, 2009|10:02 am] |
| [ | music |
| | The Delays, Hey Girl | ] |
This part didn't seem right to include with my trivial ramblings before:
We've been having good vacation luck, but yesterday turned tragic for another family on the island. I can't imagine the shock and grief of a losing a child on what you thought would be a joyous family vacation. |
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| Acadia Day 2 |
[Aug. 24th, 2009|09:52 am] |
| [ | music |
| | The Delays, No Ending | ] |
Raw milk does seem to have a deeper and more complex flavor than the milk I'm used to; thumbs up! My palate isn't sensitive enough to taste the sun and grass, though.
After a night of torrential rain, the sky seems to be brightening. Perhaps this will be a day for biking? |
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| Acadia Day 1 |
[Aug. 23rd, 2009|06:37 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Wilco, Hate It Here | ] |
After a damp start, Acadia Day 1 turned out to be quite lovely: Farmers' Market, hurricane-swollen waves at Seal's Cove, stroll around Jordan Pond, ending with popovers and jam, every bit as good as remembered. As long as j7y returns intact from his solo hike, it will have been a most satisfactory day.
Meanwhile, I am secretly absurdly excited about the fact that I found a stand at the Farmers' Market that sells raw milk, which I've never had before. I have a pint of it in the fridge even now. What will it be like? I can't wait to find out! |
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| Bad people should be punished |
[Aug. 16th, 2009|10:03 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The Cake, Baby That's Me | ] |
My question about this notion was inspired not by ancient malfeasance, for once, but by a This American Life episode about the post-9/11 policy of pre-emptive policing in terrorism cases. We have always punished people for certain kinds of intentions, in advance of action: conspiracy to commit treason or murder, for example, or threatening the life of the president. This policy went a step further, though, to look for people who might be willing to engage in, or abet, terrorism if given the opportunity, and give them that opportunity so that they could incriminate themselves and be arrested before they got involved in a real conspiracy. In this particular case, the defendant was certainly guilty of being willing to sell arms to a man who represented himself as a terrorist, but — at least as depicted in the story — was not actually able to do so, nor is it clear that he ever would have come up with the idea on his own.
Toward the end of the episode, the prosecutor is defending his conviction of this man, and says: "He is a bad person. Bad people do bad things, and they need to be punished." That's when I started yelling at the podcast.
On the theoretical question of whether there is such a thing as a bad person, independent of bad actions, I have no settled opinion. The sentence I am a good person, although I've never done anything good sounds ludicrous, but I'm not sure that the same holds for the other end of the moral spectrum. Is it not evil to yearn to commit mass murder, even if you haven't actually done it yet?
The notion that we should punish people not only for evil actions, or for seriously planning evil deeds, but for having evil thoughts or being morally capable of evil, though, seems incredible to me, and I was amazed to hear someone say it out loud on the radio.[1]
On the other hand, we are talking about terrorism here. Does that make you feel differently about the question?
[1] The prosecutor's view, to be fair, is that the defendant was like a time bomb who would inevitably have exploded into evil action sooner or later, had he not been defused by the government's operation. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 15th, 2009|09:47 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The Herbaliser Band, Geddim | ] |
Agree or disagree: "Bad people should be punished — whether or not they've actually done anything bad." |
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| One year |
[Jul. 26th, 2009|10:11 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Steve Earle, Days Aren't Long Enough (feat. Allison Moorer) | ] |
I promise to be a loving and faithful partner to you,
to seek to understand you, keenly and patiently, to help you understand me,
and to be on your side even when we disagree.
I promise to keep you grounded and to lift you up,
to follow where you go and never to go where you can't follow.
I promise that you will be the firm, fixed axis in my life - that making us work will always come first.
And I promise to love, honor, and cherish you as long as we both shall live.
So far, so good. |
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| Division of labor |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|06:32 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Lattimore Brown, Darlin' Dear | ] |
On the road, I handle language and knowing historical stuff. He handles directions, knowing about scientific instruments, and appearing to be interested in historical information. We make a good team. |
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| Italy MVPs |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|09:09 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Lee Fields and the Dap-Kings, Give Me a Chance Pt. 1 | ] |
• Rough Guide map of Rome: comprehensive street index, major sites of interest labelled, reliable restaurant recommendations. By the end of day 5 in Rome, I think ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jere7my was ready to propose to it.
• Blue Guide to Rome: What's that pile of ancient rubble over there? When was that church built? Who painted that? When is that museum open? The Blue Guide knows (almost) all. We missed it when we left Rome for Florence.
• New turquoise cardigan: bright, pretty, and light, easy to stuff into a shoulder bag when not needed and whip out for churches or cool evenings in Trastevere, went with practically everything I'd packed. No tarp of shame for me as long as I have this handy garment on hand!
• iPod: Roughly 15 hours of soothing NPR podcasts let me sleep on the plane going and coming, and smoothed the way through those inevitable 4 AM wake-ups; Never Mind the Buzzcocks episodes whiled away some boring hours when the in-flight movies were too dreadful to bear. |
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| Day 1: Benvenuto a Roma! |
[Jul. 8th, 2009|07:58 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Lorraine Ellison, Stay with Me | ] |
Just across the bridge from where we're staying in Trastevere is the Forum Boarium, the riverside market of ancient Rome. Rising up to greet you is the 1st cen. BCE Temple of Portunus, whose unblemished boringness makes it perfect for teaching the basics of Roman temple design. To the right of Portunus is the little round Temple of Hercules Victor, a classic example of the architectural experimentation that characterized the 3rd cen. BCE, before the conservative retrenchment of the 2nd. A little beyond that to the south, those jumbled ruins in front of the church of Sant' Ombono are the remains of, inter alia, the 6th cen. BCE Temple of Mater Matuta, traditionally attributed to Servius Tullius. Its acroterial sculptures of Minerva conducting Hercules to Olympus, on display in the Capitoline Museum, are a fine illustration of the principle that there is no pre-Greek period in Roman religion.
Or go the other way, and soon you're walking around the Theater of Marcellus (heu, miserande puer) and the Porticus of Octavia ("I married a two-timing alcoholic lout to advance my brother's career, and all I got was this lousy porticus!"). And that's just the beginning...
My point: Virtually every street in Rome is a frickin' museum; if it's not antiquity, it's medieval Christianity, or the Renaissance, or the unification of Italy. When I was here as a student, 15 years ago, all these things were new and exciting to me. Now, this is the landscape which I spend much of my professional life traversing in my imagination. To walk through it in person almost makes my head explode. |
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| Day 12: Rome to Boston |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|05:44 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Martin Solveig, I'm a Good Man | ] |
The morning started with our Amazing Race moment of the trip: sprinting across Fiumicino Airport armed only with passports and a confirmation number (would an American airport let you through security on such slender documentation?), to arrive at the gate just in time to walk onto the plane (mercifully delayed, or we'd never haver made it). After being dead certain that we were going to miss the flight, any on-board privation would have seemed trivial, but in fact we got an entire spacious center row to ourselves, and everything ran smoothly from there. It was a wonderful trip (more about that presently), but I'm very glad to be back home. |
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