“The mark of superior people, in Ortega’s sense, is that they consider themselves inferior to what they may become. Self-improvement, for all that it smacks of the self-help shelf at Barnes & Noble, is also, in this way, the rallying cry of the only kind of elite worth having.
…
The resentful right, under the banner — hoisted alike by Beck, Huckabee, and Palin — of common sense, flatters deprivation as wisdom by implying to the uneducated that an education isn’t worth having. The violence this bigoted proposition has done to the talents and capacities of millions of people is incalculable, unforgivable.”
Here were grounds for abundance of savage elation. But there was also the deep-seated hatred of half a life of mutual and persistent aggression and revilings; and Handsome Charlie was capable of nursing a grudge, and enjoying a revenge with his whole heart.
Sheridan Le Fanu, Squire Toby’s Will
final space shuttle mission launches June 20
(via Aqua-Velvet)
Early maps of “Nova Zembla” and Brazil
Vocabulary: I Am Errour Edition
metonymy: figure of speech in which a concept is replaced by a related object (“the crown”)
synteresis: innate moral knowledge. In Christianity, the part of the soul connected with god
ecpyrosis: the periodic destruction and recreation of the universe (ancient Greek belief)
pother: a commotion, heated discussion, or suffocating cloud (as of dust or ash)
defalcation: misappropriation of property (or the property so misappropriated)
simoniacal: guilty of practicing simony (profiting from ecclesiastical matters)
ascesis: self-discipline, often for religious purposes (var. askesis)
chasuble: a Catholic, sleeveless liturgical garment
ydrad: the state of being dreaded (middle English)
furze: “any spiny shrub of the genus Ulex.” Gorse.
hebetude: lazy or lethargic in mind or affect
inanation: exhaustion; lack of vigor or spirit
jape: a joke or mockery (v./n.)
ambulant: itinerant or shifting
brume: mist or fog
I have trouted, when the brook was so low, and the sky so hot, that I might as well have thrown my fly upon the turnpike; and I have hunted hare at noon, and woodcock in snowtime—never despairing, scarce doubting; but for a poor hunter of his kind, without traps or snares, or any aid of police or constabulary, to traverse the world, where are swarming, on a moderate computation, some three hundred and odd millions of unmarried women, for a single capture—irremediable, unchangeable—and yet a capture which by strange metonymy, not laid down in the books, is very apt to turn captor into captive and make game of hunter—all this, surely, surely may make a man shrug with doubt!
Reveries Of A Bachelor
DNTEL – “Why I’m So Unhappy”
Life Is Full Of Possibilities
A beautiful track from a very interesting album. Most know DNTEL now as one half of The Postal Service, and indeed, “The Dream of Evan and Chan” from this album was the first (and best) of that fruitful collaboration. But “Why I’m So Unhappy” is more delicate and understated, allowing time for both the tripping beats and noise-play that mark earlier DNTEL to show at their own pace. (insound)
She had a cousin in the Life Guards, with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon shadow of somebody else.
David Copperfield