Electric Boy

Ardbeg

The Immutable Clive James

In his translation of the complete Divine Comedy (Liveright), James made the crucial decision to rhyme, in quatrains (in his case, abab). But, as he tells us in the introduction, end rhymes were no more important to him than rhymes or chimes within the lines: alliteration, assonance, repetition. He says that his wife, Prue Shaw, now a celebrated Dante scholar (her book “Reading Dante” will be out next year), pushed him in this direction, by teaching him, years ago, that the Divine Comedy had to be read phonetically. The great thing about it was its richness of sound, as word after word, line after line, beckoned the next and thus kept the reader moving forward. James says this is what he was intent on, above all.

All is a lot. James gave himself permission to add lines to Dante’s text and to incorporate background material. He didn’t want footnotes—nothing should stop the reader. Many things do, though. Here are Dante’s famous opening lines:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura!

And here is James’s rendering:

At the mid-point of the path through life, I found
Myself lost in a wood so dark, the way
Ahead was blotted out. The keening sound
I still make shows how hard it is to say
How harsh and bitter that place felt to me—
Merely to think of it renews the fear.
“Keening sound”? If ever there was a forced rhyme, this is it. Also, Dante didn’t say anything about wailing, only about fear, and the two are different matters.

Soon the pilgrim (as the protagonist of the poem is usually called) and his guide, Virgil, arrive at the gates of Hell, with its dread inscription:

Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l’etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perduta gente.

Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore;
fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapïenza e ’l primo amore.

Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.
James translates this as:

To enter the lost city, go through me.
Through me you go to meet a suffering
unceasing and eternal. You will be
with people who, through me, lost everything.

My maker, moved by justice, lives above.
Through him, the holy power, I was made—
made by the height of wisdom and first love,
whose laws all those in here once disobeyed.

From now on, every day feels like your last
Forever. Let that be your greatest fear.
Your future now is to regret the past.
Forget your hopes. They were what brought you here.

This shows a considerable drop in energy, partly because of a loss of compression. James has lengthened the passage by a third. But, also, he has added some confusion about what the gate is telling us. At least in the first line, it seems to think that we have a choice about whether or not to enter. We don’t, and that is what makes going to Hell a serious business.

The Return of the Prodigal Son

元芳, 你怎么看?

The Origin of Boxing

On the first day, The Brick punched the sky, cracking it open to let in the sun and the moon and the stars.

On the second day, The Brick punched the earth and created the valleys and the mountains.

On the third day, The Brick punched Himself, and from the shards that were knocked off His body He formed the plants and the animals and the People of the Land.

On the fourth day, The Brick looked down on what He had created and was happy, so He knocked off early and went to the pub.

For an Age the People of the Land lived in harmony, safe in the knowledge that The Brick was watching over them, or at least would be back by dinner time once the game had finished on Foxtel.

But after another Age had passed, the People of the Land grew anxious at the lack of reply to their prayers to The Brick. Some said this was a test of their Faith, and that The Brick helped those who helped themselves. Some said The Brick had simply passed out in the gutter and would be back in the morning. Then some People said there was no Brick at all, and that He was just a sociological construct designed to placate the masses. Then some other People said you better shut up with your pinko lefty crap or there will be Trouble. Then the other People said yeah, you and whose army bud?

So the Age of Harmony turned into the Age of Argument which turned into the Age of Pushing And Shoving which turned into the Age of Fighting.

The fighting started off mostly harmless. But one day someone discovered the forbidden art of Hitting People with Sticks. Soon after, Throwing Stones was discovered, which escalated quickly into Samurai Swords and AC10 Warthogs.

The fighting grew so loud that it woke up The Brick where He had been having forty winks a couple of dimensions over. The Brick returned to the Land and when He saw what had happened, He was Not Happy. With a mighty blow He smashed the armies of the People and yelled "Knock It Off, I've Got A Massive Headache And I Am Trying To Get Some Sleep, Alright? If You're Going To Fight, Do It Quietly, Just Use Your Fists Or Something. Jeez."

And that is why it is forbidden in the Land to start any construction work Early In The Morning.

And any fights are to be settled by boxing.

Or MMA.

The Witch of Coös

I STAID the night for shelter at a farm
Behind the mountain, with a mother and son,
Two old-believers. They did all the talking.

The Mother
Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits
She could call up to pass a winter evening,
But won’t, should be burned at the stake or something.
Summoning spirits isn’t “Button, button,
Who’s got the button,” you’re to understand.

The Son
Mother can make a common table rear
And kick with two legs like an army mule.

The Mother
And when I’ve done it, what good have I done?
Rather than tip a table for you, let me
Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me.
He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him
How that could be—I thought the dead were souls,
He broke my trance. Don’t that make you suspicious
That there’s something the dead are keeping back?
Yes, there’s something the dead are keeping back.

The Son
You wouldn’t want to tell him what we have
Up attic, mother?

The Mother
Bones—a skeleton.

The Son
But the headboard of mother’s bed is pushed
Against the attic door: the door is nailed.
It’s harmless. Mother hears it in the night
Halting perplexed behind the barrier
Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get
Is back into the cellar where it came from.

The Mother
We’ll never let them, will we, son? We’ll never!

The Son
It left the cellar forty years ago
And carried itself like a pile of dishes
Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen,
Another from the kitchen to the bedroom,
Another from the bedroom to the attic,
Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it.
Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs.
I was a baby: I don’t know where I was.

The Mother
The only fault my husband found with me—
I went to sleep before I went to bed,
Especially in winter when the bed
Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.
The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs
Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me,
But left an open door to cool the room off
So as to sort of turn me out of it.
I was just coming to myself enough
To wonder where the cold was coming from,
When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom
And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.
The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on
When there was water in the cellar in spring
Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone
Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,
The way a man with one leg and a crutch,
Or little child, comes up. It wasn’t Toffile:
It wasn’t anyone who could be there.
The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust
And swollen tight and buried under snow.
It was the bones. I knew them—and good reason.
My first impulse was to get to the knob
And hold the door. But the bones didn’t try
The door; they halted helpless on the landing,
Waiting for things to happen in their favor.
The faintest restless rustling ran all through them.
I never could have done the thing I did
If the wish hadn’t been too strong in me
To see how they were mounted for this walk.
I had a vision of them put together
Not like a man, but like a chandelier.
So suddenly I flung the door wide on him.
A moment he stood balancing with emotion,
And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire
Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth.
Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.)
Then he came at me with one hand outstretched,
The way he did in life once; but this time
I struck the hand off brittle on the floor,
And fell back from him on the floor myself.
The finger-pieces slid in all directions.
(Where did I see one of those pieces lately?
Hand me my button-box—it must be there.)

I sat up on the floor and shouted, “Toffile,
It’s coming up to you.” It had its choice
Of the door to the cellar or the hall.
It took the hall door for the novelty,
And set off briskly for so slow a thing,
Still going every which way in the joints, though,
So that it looked like lightning or a scribble,
From the slap I had just now given its hand. 90
I listened till it almost climbed the stairs
From the hall to the only finished bedroom,
Before I got up to do anything;
Then ran and shouted, “Shut the bedroom door,
Toffile, for my sake!” “Company,” he said,
“Don’t make me get up; I’m too warm in bed.”
So lying forward weakly on the handrail
I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light
(The kitchen had been dark) I had to own
I could see nothing. “Toffile, I don’t see it.
It’s with us in the room, though. It’s the bones.”
“What bones?” “The cellar bones—out of the grave.”

That made him throw his bare legs out of bed
And sit up by me and take hold of me.
I wanted to put out the light and see
If I could see it, or else mow the room,
With our arms at the level of our knees,
And bring the chalk-pile down. “I’ll tell you what—
It’s looking for another door to try.
The uncommonly deep snow has made him think
Of his old song, The Wild Colonial Boy,
He always used to sing along the tote-road.
He’s after an open door to get out-doors.
Let’s trap him with an open door up attic.”
Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough,
Almost the moment he was given an opening,
The steps began to climb the attic stairs.
I heard them. Toffile didn’t seem to hear them.
“Quick!” I slammed to the door and held the knob.
“Toffile, get nails.” I made him nail the door shut,
And push the headboard of the bed against it.

Then we asked was there anything
Up attic that we’d ever want again.
The attic was less to us than the cellar.
If the bones liked the attic, let them like it,
Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes
Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed
Behind the door and headboard of the bed,
Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,
With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter,
That’s what I sit up in the dark to say—
To no one any more since Toffile died.
Let them stay in the attic since they went there.
I promised Toffile to be cruel to them
For helping them be cruel once to him.

The Son
We think they had a grave down in the cellar.

The Mother
We know they had a grave down in the cellar.

The Son
We never could find out whose bones they were.

The Mother
Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once.
They were a man’s his father killed for me.
I mean a man he killed instead of me.
The least I could do was help dig their grave.
We were about it one night in the cellar.
Son knows the story: but ’twas not for him
To tell the truth, suppose the time had come.
Son looks surprised to see me end a lie
We’d kept up all these years between ourselves
So as to have it ready for outsiders.
But tonight I don’t care enough to lie—
I don’t remember why I ever cared.
Toffile, if he were here, I don’t believe
Could tell you why he ever cared himself….

She hadn’t found the finger-bone she wanted
Among the buttons poured out in her lap.

I verified the name next morning: Toffile.
The rural letter-box said Toffile Barre.

Poor Trigorin

And the public reads it and says: "How charming! How clever! . . . How charming, but not a patch on Tolstoy!" or "It's a delightful story, but not so good as Turgenev's 'Fathers and Sons.'" And so on, to my dying day, my writings will always be clever and charming, clever and charming, nothing more. And when I die, my friends, passing by my grave, will say: "Here lies Trigorin. He was a charming writer, but not so good as Turgenev.

Imus Map of America

Anand's Immortal

Goddamit HTC, when will you make a phone that works?

We sail tonight for Singapore

If GoT macros are wrong, I don't want to be right.

Wim T. Schippers emptying a bottle of lemonade into the North Sea near Petten, 1963

Schippers is responsible for the voices of Ernie, Kermit the Frog, Guy Smiley, and Count Von Count on Sesamstraat, the Dutch co-production of Sesame Street, since Sesamstraat's first season in 1976.

Frogs Eat Butterflies, Snakes Eat Frogs, Hogs Eat Snakes, Men Eat Hogs

It is true that the rivers went nosing like swine,
Tugging at banks, until they seemed
Bland belly-sounds in somnolent troughs,

That the air was heavy with the breath of these swine,
The breath of turgid summer, and
Heavy with thunder's rattapallax,

That the man who erected this cabin, planted
This field, and tended it awhile,
Knew not the quirks of imagery,

That the hours of his indolent, arid days,
Grotesque with this nosing in banks,
This somnolence and rattapallax,

Seemed to suckle themselves on his arid being,
As the swine-like rivers suckled themselves
While they went seaward to the sea-mouths.

Wallace Stevens

Seiko 6217

How to buy a 6217

Movement/case: 6217-8000; 6217-8001
Movement: 6217A (62MAS)
Production: 1965-1968
Case size: 37mm (42mm with the crown)
Lug width: 19mm (same as 6105-800x and 6105-811x)
Thickness: 13.5mm
Functions: 150M water proof, bi- directional rotating bezel, date

The 150m water proof 6217 "62MAS" is Seiko (and Japan´s) first true diver, and as such enjoys a position of undisputed horological significance. As Seiko´s first diver it has high collectability in its own right, and is the cornerstone of any significant collection of vintage Seiko divers, be it a collection of 150m divers, shrouded divers or Professional (Prospex) models. In short - the collectability of the 62MAS does not need any further justification; no other Seiko diver can claim to be the first!

Christian Gauss - The German Emperor

381654729

The only 9 digit number that uses all 9 numbers and each combination of numbers is divisible by the number of digits in the number.

381654729 / 9 = 42406081
38165472 / 8 = 477068
3816547 / 7 = 545221
381654 / 6 = 63609
38165 / 5 = 7633
3816 / 4 = 954
381 / 3 = 127
38 / 2 = 19
3 / 1 = 3

Montaigne - Of drunkeness

THE world is nothing but variety and dissemblance: vices are all alike, as they are vices, and peradventure the Stoic understand them so; but although they are equally vices, yet they are not at all equal vices; and he who has transgressed the ordinary bounds of a hundred paces,

"Quos ultra, citraque nequit consistere rectum,"

should not be in a worse condition than he that has advanced but ten, is not to be believed; or that sacrilege is not worse than stealing a cabbage:

"Nec vincet ratio hoc, tantumdem ut peccet, idemque, Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti, Et qui nocturnus divum sacua legerit."

There is in this as great diversity is in anything whatever. The confounding of the order and measure of sins is dangerous: murderers, traitors, and tyrants get too much by it, and it is not reasonable they should flatter their consciences, because another man is idle, lascivious, or not assiduous at his devotion. Every one lays weight upon the sin of his companions, but lightens his own. Our very instructors themselves rank them sometimes, in my opinion, very ill. As Socrates said that the principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good from evil, we, the best of whom are vicious, ought also to say the same of the science of distinguishing between vice and vice, without which, and that very exactly performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remain confounded and unrecognized.

Now, among the rest, drunkenness seems to me to be a gross and brutish vice. The soul has greater part in the rest, and there are some vices that have something, if a man may so say, of generous in them; there are vices wherein there is a mixture of knowledge, diligence, valor, prudence, dexterity and address; this one is totally corporeal and earthly. And the rudest nation this day in Europe is that alone where it is in fashion. Other vices discompose the understanding: this totally overthrows it and renders the body stupid.

"Cum vini vis penetravit... Consequitur gravitas membrorum, praepediuntur Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens, Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt."

The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and government of himself. And 'tis said, among other things upon this subject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top whatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond measure, vents the most inward secrets.

"Tu sapientium Curas et arcanum jocoso Consilium retegis Lyaeo."

Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to him his full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets. And yet, Augustus, committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than Tiberius did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we know they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain to carry both the one and the other drunk out of the senate.

"Hesterno inflatum venas, de more, Lyaeo."

And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber, though he would often be drunk, as to Cassius, who drank nothing but water. We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post, remember the word, and keep to their ranks:

"Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus."

I could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and dead a degree of drunkenness had I not read in history that Attalus, having, to put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same Pausanias, who upon the very same occasion afterward killed Philip of Macedon, a king who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient testimony of his education in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to such a pitch that he could after abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet, to the muleteers and servants of the basest office in the house. And I have been further told by a lady whom I highly honor and esteem, that near Bordeaux and about Castres where she lives, a country woman, a widow of chaste repute, perceiving in herself the first symptoms of breeding, innocently told her neighbors that if she had a husband she should think herself with child; but the causes of suspicion every day more and more increasing, and at last growing up to a manifest proof, the poor woman was reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in her parish church, that whoever had done that deed and would frankly confess it, she did not only promise to forgive, but moreover to marry him, if he liked the motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her in the quality of a laborer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared that he had one holiday found her, having taken too much of the bottle, so fast asleep by the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could conveniently do his business without waking her; and they yet live together man and wife.

It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writings even of several philosophers speak very tenderly of it, and even among the Stoics there are some who advise folks to give themselves sometimes the liberty to drink, nay, to drunkenness, to refresh the soul.
"Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine, magnum Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt."

That censor and reprover of others, Cato, was reproached that he was a hard drinker.

"Narratur et prisci Catonis Saepe mero caluisse virtus."

Cyrus, that so renowned king, among the other qualities by which he claimed to be preferred before his brother Artaxerxes, urged this excellence, that he could drink a great deal more than he. And in the best governed nations this trial of skill in drinking is very much in use. I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not amiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest they should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the Persians used to consult about their most important affairs after being well warmed with wine.

My taste and constitution are greater enemies to this vice than I am; for besides that I easily submit my belief to the authority of ancient opinions, I look upon it indeed as an unmanly and stupid vice, but less malicious and hurtful than the others, which, almost all, more directly jostle public society. And if we cannot please ourselves but it must cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs a man's conscience less than the others, besides that it is of no difficult preparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to be despised. A man well advanced both in dignity and age, among three principal commodities that he said remained to him of life, reckoned to me this for one, and where would a man more justly find it than among the natural conveniences? But he did not take it right, for delicacy and the curious choice of wines is therein to be avoided. If you found your pleasure upon drinking of the best, you condemn yourself to the penance of drinking of the worst. Your taste must be more indifferent and free; so delicate a palate is not required to make a good toper. The Germans drink almost indifferently of all wines with delight: their business is to pour down and not to taste; and it's so much the better for them; their pleasure is so much the more plentiful and nearer at hand. Secondly, to drink, after the French fashion, but at two meals, and then very moderately, is to be too sparing of the favors of the god. There is more time and constancy required than so. The ancients spent whole nights in this exercise, and ofttimes added the day following to eke it out, and therefore we are to take greater liberty and stick closer to our work. I have seen a great lord of my time, a man of high enterprise and famous success, that without setting himself to it, and after his ordinary rate of drinking at meals, drank not much less than five quarts of wine, and at his going away appeared but too wise and discreet, to the detriment of our affairs. The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should, like shop-boys and laborers, refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds. Methinks we every day abridge and curtail the use of wine, and that the after breakfasts, dinner snatches, and collations I used to see in my father's house, when I was a boy, were more usual and frequent then than now.

Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no.; but it may be we are more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigor. Lechery weakens our stomach on the one side, and on the other, sobriety renders us more spruce and amorous for the exercise of love.

'Tis not to be imagined what strange stories I have heard my father tell of the chastity of that age wherein he lived. It was for him to say it, being both by art and nature cut out and finished for the service of ladies. He spoke well and little; ever mixing his language with some illustration out of authors most in use, especially in Spanish. Marcus Aurelius was very frequent in his mouth. His behavior was grave, humble, and very modest; he was very solicitous of neatness and propriety both in his person and clothes, whether on horseback or afoot; he was monstrously punctual of his word; and of a conscience and religion generally tending rather toward superstition than otherwise. For a man of little stature, very strong, well proportioned, and well knit; of a pleasing countenance, inclining to brown, and very adroit in all noble exercises. I have yet in the house to be seen canes poured full of lead, with which they say he exercised his arms for throwing the bar or the stone, or in fencing; and shoes with leaden soles to make him lighter for running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has left little miracles behind him; I have seen him when past three score laugh at our exercises, and throw himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make the tour of a table upon his thumbs, and scarce ever mount the stairs into his chamber without taking three or four steps at a time. But as to what I was speaking of before, he said there was scarce one woman of quality of ill fame in a whole province: he would tell of strange privacies, and some of them his own, with virtuous women, free from any manner of suspicion of ill; and for his own part solemnly swore he was a virgin at his marriage; and yet it was after a long practice of arms beyond the mountains, of which wars he left us a journal under his own hand, wherein he has given a precise account from point to point of all passages, both relating to the public and to himself. And he was, moreover, married at a well advanced maturity, in the year 1528, the three-and-thirtieth year of his age, upon his way home from Italy. But let us return to our bottle.

The incommodities of old age, that stand in need of some refreshment and support, might with reason beget in me a desire of this faculty, it being as it were the last pleasure the course of years deprives us of. The natural heat, say the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet: that concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it makes a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; toward the end, like a vapor that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress. I do not, nevertheless, understand how a man can extend the pleasure of drinking beyond thirst, and forge in his imagination an appetite artificial and against nature; my stomach would not proceed so far; it has enough to do to deal with what it takes in for its necessity. My constitution is not to care for drink but as following eating and washing down my meat, and for that reason my last draught is always the greatest. And seeing that in old age we have our palate furred with phlegms or depraved by some other ill constitution, the wine tastes better to us as the pores are cleaner washed and laid more open. At least, I seldom taste the first glass well. Anacharsis wondered that the Greeks drank in greater glasses toward the end of a meal than at the beginning; which was, I suppose, for the same reason the Germans do the same, who then begin the battle of drink.

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that good deity who restores to younger men their gayety, and to old men their youth; who mollifies the passions of the soul, as iron is softened by fire; and in his laws allows such merry meetings, provided they have a discreet chief to govern and keep them in order, as good and of great utility; drunkenness being, he says, a true and certain trial of every one's nature, and, withal, fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare not attempt when sober. He, moreover, says that wine is able to supply the soul with temperance and the body with health. Nevertheless, these restrictions, in part borrowed from the Carthaginians, please him: that men forbear excesses in the expeditions of war; that every judge and magistrate abstain from it when about the administrations of his place or the consultations of the public affairs; that the day is not to be employed with it, that being a time due to other occupations, nor the night on which a man intends to get children.

'Tis said that the philosopher Stilpo, when oppressed with age, purposely hastened his end by drinking pure wine. The same thing, but not designed by him, dispatched also the philosopher Arcesilaus.

But, 'tis an old and pleasant question, whether the soul of a wise man can be overcome by the strength of wine?

"Si munitae adhibet vim sapientiae."

To what vanity does the good opinion we have of ourselves push us? The most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to keep itself upright, and from being overthrown by its own weakness. There is not one of a thousand that is right and settled so much as one minute in a whole life, and that may not very well doubt, whether according to her natural condition she ever can be; but to join constancy to it is her utmost perfection; I mean when nothing should jostle and discompose her, which a thousand accidents may do. 'Tis to much purpose that the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy, when, behold! he goes mad with a love philter. Is it to be imagined that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter? Some men have forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slight wound has turned the judgment of others topsey-turvey. Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man; and than that what is there more frail, more miserable, or more nothing? Wisdom does not force our natural dispositions.

"Sudores itaque, et pallorem exsistere toto Corpore, et infringi linguam, vocemque aboriri, Caligare oculos, sonere aures, succidere artus, Denique concidere, ex animi terrore, videmus:"

he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must tremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature having reserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our reason and the stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness; he turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if not with desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice:


"Humani a se nihil alienum putet."

The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their greatest heroes of tears:

"Sic fatur lacrymans, classique immittit habenas."

'Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for totally to suppress them is not in him to do. Even our great Plutarch, that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when be sees Brutus and Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could proceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather been stimulated by some other passion. All actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to sinister interpretation, forasmuch as our liking no more holds with what is above than with what is below it.

Let us leave that other sect, that sets up an express profession of scornful superiority; but when even in that sect, reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of Metrodorus: "Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos interclusi ut ad me aspirare non possess;" when Anaxarchus, by command of Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was put into a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say, "Strike, batter, break, 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that you pound and bray so;" when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant in the middle of the flame: "This side is roasted enough, fall to and eat, it is enough done; fall to work with the other;" when we hear the child in Josephus torn piece-meal with pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying out with a constant and assured voice: "Tyrant, thou losest thy labor, I am still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with which thou didst so threaten me? Is this all thou canst do? My constancy torments thee more than thy cruelty does me. Oh, pitiful coward, thou faintest, and I grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make me yield if thou canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners; see, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur them up;" truly, a man must confess that there is some frenzy, some fury, how holy soever, that at that time possesses those souls. When we come to these Stoical sallies: "I had rather be mad than voluptuous," a saying of Antisthenes; Maneien mallon e estheien. When Sextius tells us, "he had rather be fettered with affliction than pleasure;" when Epicurus takes upon him to play with his gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all torments, and despising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets and calls out for others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him;

"Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem."

who but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed on by a courage that has broken loose from its place? Our soul cannot from her own seat reach so high; 'tis necessary she must leave it, raise herself up, and, taking the bridle in her teeth, transport her man so far that he shall afterward himself be astonished at what he has done; as, in war the heat of battle impels generous soldiers to perform things of so infinite danger, as afterward, recollecting them they themselves are the first to wonder at; as it also fares with the poets, who are often rapt with admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the track through which they performed so fine a career; which also is in them called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, 'tis no purpose for a sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reason to call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our own judgment and understanding, madness; forasmuch as wisdom is a regular government of the soul, which is carried on with measure and proportion, and for which she is to herself responsible. Plato argues thus, that the faculty of the prophesying is so far above us, that we must be out of ourselves when we meddle with it, and our prudence must either be obstructed by sleep or sickness, or lifted from her place by some celestial rapture.

Tim Rogers reads Gatsby

Timba Smits

http://www.timbasmits.com

Noguchi

Fuck your hat branch

#THICKE

Frozen horses

In physics what is known as a "phase shift" is like when water turns to ice. And at the beginning of the universe, there was a phase shift from pure energy to matter. A way of looking at matter is that it is frozen energy–energy that has spun in on itself like an ice crystal and become solid. And the Higgs mechanism is the thing that allows that to happen. I can talk about it but it's hard to write about unless you have an image

And the same things happen in an instant under certain states in nature. If you have water that is below the temperature of freezing it can still remain water if it's very pure and very still; it kind of forgets that it should be frozen. So 31 degrees, 30 degrees, 29 degrees, it's still water, but it's in an increasingly supercooled state. There is a great deal of tension because it is just waiting to freeze--the slightest thing will set it off.

So this lake is sitting here and there was the Nazi bombardment of the forest adjacent to Leningrad that started a forest fire. A herd of Soviet artillery horses panicked at the forest fire and burst out of the stables and ran through the forest trying to find some safe place. They ran through the flames to get to the lake and they dove into the water. The act of hitting the water instantly turned this supercooled lake to ice and it trapped them. Malaparte was a journalist with the Finnish army and they came out the next day and saw that the lake that had froze overnight. And they walked out onto the ice and found themselves in a sculpture garden of dead horses caught in this moment of being flash frozen. It's a very compelling image.

On the third day a huge fire flared in the Raikkola forest. Men, horses and trees clutched within the circle of fire sent out awful cries. . . . Mad with terror, the horses of the Soviet artillery—there were almost a thousand of them—hurled themselves into the furnace and broke through the besieging flames and machine guns. Many perished within the flames, but most of them succeeded in reaching the shores of the lake and threw themselves into the water. . .

The lake is not deep there, not more than six feet; but a hundred yards from the shore the bottom suddenly drops. Pressed within the narrow space (the lakeshore curves inward there forming a small bay) between the deeper water and the barrier of fire, the horses clustered, shuddering with cold and fear, their heads stretched out above the surface of the water. Those nearer to land were scorched by the flames and reared and struggled to hoist themselves onto the backs of the others, tried to push a way open by biting and kicking. And while still madly struggling, the ice gripped them.

The north wind swooped down during the night. (The north wind blows from the Murmansk Sea, like an angel of doom, crying aloud, and the land suddenly dies.) The cold became frightful. Suddenly, with the peculiar vibrating noise of breaking glass, the water froze. The heat balance was suddenly broken, and the sea, the lakes, the rivers froze. In such instances, even sea waves are gripped in mid-air and become rounded ice waves suspended in the void.

On the following day, when the first ranger patrols, their hair singed, their faces blackened by smoke, cautiously stepped over the warm ashes in the charred forest and reached the lakeshore, a horrible and amazing sight met their eyes. The lake looked like a vast sheet of white marble on which rested hundreds upon hundreds of horses’ heads. They appeared to have been chopped off cleanly with an ax. Only the heads stuck out of the crust of ice. And they were all facing the shore. The white flames of terror still burnt in their wide-open eyes. Close to the shore a tangle of wildly rearing horses rose from the prison of ice.

Brautigan

Brautigan fastidiously controlled each novel’s jacket, typography, layout, and even promotional materials. Such powers, rarely bestowed on any author, resulted in the Brautigan brand, arguably more famous than anything in the books themselves. The cover photo for Trout Fishing in America is exemplary: in front of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco’s Washington Square Park, Brautigan appears like a Gold Rush prospector, his girlfriend at his side in style. For his friend Keith Abbott, the photo displays “His open, cheerful, confident expression . . . characteristic of his belief in his prospects, while his blue work shirt displays the uniform of artistic poverty”. The increasingly beautiful girlfriends, who always joined the author on his covers, were integral to his mystique.

Elaine made good

Book of Experiments

The Woman Who Spoke to God.

The outer glove of the spacesuit clicked into place with a sharp snap. Teresia flexed and rotated her hand to test the connection.

‘Locked in, good to go,’ she said.

Marius floated around Teresia’s white bulk, double checking then triple checking the fragile envelope that protected her from the vacuum of space.

‘All systems green,’ Marius said. He floated back around to the front of the suit.

‘How is He going?’ Teresia said.

‘Readings a bit higher this morning at 1.45 GEV’s. He’s feeling frisky.'

Marius floated up to the viewing cupola and watched as the white suit fell away into the endless void. Three minutes and forty seconds later the small white dot stopped against the large, grey-metal wall of the Temple. Teresia’s voice radioed across.

‘Log begins. Oh four hundred hours. Session number 278. I am entering the airlock.’

Marius pushed back to the console, grabbing a coffee tube and listening to the background chatter over the comms as Teresia logged her mission.

‘Readings were higher prior to mission, but I’m not seeing any. Wait, what’s th-‘

Static hissed over the comms. Marius’ head whipped around and he hit down microphone switch.

‘Teresia, repeat. Teresia, what’s going on?’

He released the button and static filled the cabin. Another buzzer came on adding to the cacophony. Marius glanced at the flashing red light, the GEV metre had spiked to over 200.

Another voice cut through the white noise ‘Outpost239, what’s going on?’

Marius swum back up to the viewing window, staring at the grey box hovering three kilometres away. He opened the comm.

‘Teresia cut sir’ he said. ‘I’m going to check it out’.

‘Permission denied captain. Only authorised personnel may enter Temples.’

‘Something’s happened to Teresia sir. I’m going.’

‘You are not –‘ Marius cut the mike. He struggled into the spare suit like a butterfly retreating back into its chrysalis. These things were not designed to be put on solo.

He stepped into the airlock. No one to check his seals. Well, he would find out soon enough if they worked. He hit the airlock release. The suit held. Grabbing the rappel cord, he pushed forward, eyes focused on the wall of the Temple, willing it move forward towards him.

At last he reached the entrance, releasing the cable and stepping inside. The outer doors shut as atmosphere filled the small room. The inner doors opened and Marius removed his helmet, stepping through.

The inside of the Temple was simply a large square box, about 100 yards wide and the same high, the same dimensions as the outside. The only furniture inside was a normal sized bed, in the exact middle of the floor, with a chair next to it.

Marius looked around. The Temple was empty.

Badgers

Nope

FYI

Arial lowercase t is slanted. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.