Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Provision for the intellect

According to poet A. E. Housman, the purpose of liberal study is to awaken the joy of learning.
The pleasure of learning and knowing, though not the keenest, is yet the least perishable of pleasures; the least subject to external things, and the play of chance, and the wear of time. And as a prudent man puts money by to serve as a provision for the material wants of his old age, so too he needs to lay up against the end of his days provision for the intellect.

But I'm not sure.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Playful hyphen


This hyphen (play-acting a bracket) is apparently untroubled by its turd-like appearance – or the fact that its closest mark is a dash.

Separated at 'birth'

Monday, August 18, 2008

Sunday, August 17, 2008

A Wiki survey

Adam Smith

b. 1723 (Kirkcaldy), d. 1790 (Edinburgh)

Age: 67

Right


Known for his explanation of how rational self-interest and competition, operating in a social framework which ultimately depends on adherence to moral obligations, can lead to economic well-being and prosperity.

Notable publication: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).


John Maynard Keynes

b. 1883 (Cambridge), d. 1946 (Tilton)

Age: 62

Left


Advocated interventionist government policy, by which the government would use fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions, depressions and booms.

Notable publication: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936).


Friedrich August von Hayek

b. 1889 (Vienna), d. 1992 (Freiburg)

Age: 92

Right


Known for his defence of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought.

Notable publication: The Road to Serfdom (1944).


John Kenneth Galbraith

b. 1908 (Iona Station), d. 2006 (Cambridge, Mass.)

Age: 97

Left


Believed that economic activity could not be distilled into inviolable laws, but rather was a complex product of the cultural and political milieu in which it occurs.

Notable publication: American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power (1952).


Milton Friedman

b. 1912 (Brooklyn), d. 2006 (San Francisco)

Age: 94

Right


Argued that if capitalism, or economic freedom, is introduced into countries governed by totalitarian regimes, political freedom would tend to result.

Notable publication: Capitalism and Freedom (1962).


The Swedish Chef

b. 1937 (Jokkmokk, Lapland), d. 1981 (London)

Age: 44

North


Known to have waved kitchen utensils while singing a "signature song", the lyrics of which varied but always ended with "bort, bort, bort" (meaning, literally, "away, away, away").

Notable publication: Ginger-free Pepparkakor Cookies (1962).

Saturday, August 16, 2008

A poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Christmas at Sea

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could
       stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go
       about.
All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and
       the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further
       forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race
       roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close
       aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running
       high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his
       eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore
       home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed
       out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial
       cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the
       year)
This day of our adversity was blessèd Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where
       I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the
       shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to
       sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessèd Christmas
       Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
'All hands to loose topgallant sails,' I heard the captain call.
'By the Lord, she'll never stand it,' our first mate, Jackson,
       cried.
... 'It's the one way or the other, Mr Jackson,' he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and
       good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as thought she
       understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but
       me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were
       growing old.


Suspending my anxiety about rhyming poetry in ballad metre (where tweeness gathers ripe, like a load of fresh cut tripe), I read this poem several times through. Just now I read it aloud to myself. Twice. And I must say it really is quite beautiful.

Here are four things I like about it:

1. The grand and effortless way it moves between different settings: from the epic immensity of a ship on a storm-tossed sea to the folksy familiarity of a coastguard in his garden to the intimacy of a fire-lit living room ... and back again.

2. Its tantalising 'gaps': Why did the narrator go to sea?; Why was he a 'shadow on the household'?; What business did the (presumably) merchant vessel have so close to his birthplace?; Why Christmas day?; Did any of the other seamen know of his familial connection?

3. Its slightly unexpected metaphors - such as in "the ship smelt up to windward", "the chimneys volleyed out" and "cleared the weary headland".

4. Its melancholic atmosphere. At last light and sailing clear of the heads, the other seamen were relieved to be free, finally, of the day's toil and peril. But the narrator was thinking only of the little village where he was born - that he passed on this Christmas morn so close he could hear it and smell it. Of leaving home and of his parents growing old.

Window on the 370

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Urban ablution

Riding home the other night, I passed a man on Redfern street squared up to a shop door. It was very late and there was no one else around. His belt was undone and his pants were loose at the rear. A stream of urine was hosing out from his front side, drenching the lower part of the door and running down frothily past his shoes to the gutter. I couldn't help but admire the sheer animalism of the situation. Bladder to brain: GO. Brain to hands: GO.

(I think he might've had a couple.)

Mondrian Jellyfish


m

.

j

.

Falling gracefully


A reprisal of Window on the 461 II

Friday, August 08, 2008

Window on the 438 II

Window on the 438 I


But

t

h

e

real

p

r

o

b

l

e

m

with

t

h

i

s

man

Is he says he can't when he can.


(From Sitting on a Fence - The Housemartins.)

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Preternatural public transport

What are you looking at, she asked.

A window. But not at it. We're on the bus, so I'm clearly looking through it. But I mean the window's in me, and together we're checking out what's going on outside. In the street.

What do you see?

Oh, that question is less philosophical than you might think. Crowds. Cars. Neon lights. Mashed paper. Shop front awnings. Shoes. A kaleidoscope of hoods and hands. The city is lively tonight, don't you think?

(Her stop had come.)

Window on the 399