There’s a phrase I’ve been thinking about for years, ever since I read it somewhere or other in Freud: “the moderate misery required for productive work.” It struck me as plausible; someone who isn’t miserable at all is unlikely to settle willingly into the tedious, repetitive tasks that productive work often involves, while someone who [...]
All posts for the month September, 2011
The way out of philosophy runs through philosophy
Posted by acilius on September 30, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/09/30/the-way-out-of-philosophy-runs-through-philosophy/
Some interesting comments by Michael Peachin about a new book on the Emperor Claudius
As a subscriber to Classical Journal, I regularly receive emailed reviews of new scholarly books concerning ancient Greece and Rome. The other day, for example, they sent me Michael Peachin‘s review of Claudius Caesar: Image and Power in the Early Roman Empire, by Josiah Osgood (Cambridge University Press, 2010). The only other notice I’d seen [...]
Posted by acilius on September 21, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/09/21/some-interesting-comments-by-michael-peachin-about-a-new-book-on-the-emperor-claudius/
Did astrology originate in cities?
I wonder if the first astrologers were city-dwellers. True, archeologists have found evidence that people who lived before the rise of cities paid close attention to the orbit of the Moon and identified constellations, and have argued that the orientations of temples and other religious structures from those days suggest that they attached a religious [...]
Posted by acilius on September 20, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/09/20/did-astrology-originate-in-cities/
The Atlantic, October 2011
The current issue of The Atlantic contains four pieces on which I took notes. All four of them had to do with masculinity in one way or another. Historian Taylor Branch contributes an article about college sports in the USA. Non-USA types may not be aware that colleges and universities in the United States operate [...]
Posted by acilius on September 19, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/09/19/the-atlantic-october-2011/
Friends Journal, September 2011
The September 2011 issue of Friends Journal includes a couple of brief pieces I wanted to note. Geoffrey Kaiser writes of “Three Kinds of Singing in Meeting.” Kaiser tells of an old document he found when he was visiting Quaker meetings in New England in 1980. This document was an official statement that a monthly [...]
Posted by acilius on September 17, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/09/17/friends-journal-september-2011/
“We do not believe in appointing Deputies to do what we think it wrong for ourselves to do”
This summer Mrs Acilius and I read Ryan P. Jordan‘s Slavery and the Meetinghouse, a study of the great difficulty American Quakers had in the years 1821-1861 trying to decide on an approach to take to the issue of slavery. Last night I was reminded of this passage, from pages 114 through 115 of Jordan’s [...]
Posted by acilius on September 16, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/09/16/we-do-not-believe-in-appointing-deputies-to-do-what-we-think-it-wrong-for-ourselves-to-do/
“Among the loneliest creatures in the universe”
The other day, Eve Tushnet posted a link to this post by Mark P. Shea. Shea is responding to remarks by Watergate figure Charles Colson, who was in turn discussing the question of whether puppets Bert and Ernie, of Sesame Street fame, should marry each other. Colson approvingly quotes the official statement from the producers [...]
Posted by acilius on September 16, 2011
http://losthunderlads.com/2011/09/16/among-the-loneliest-creatures-in-the-universe/
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