Whatever, in connection with my professional service, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.
They really should've found a way to make HIPAA be HIPPO. Health Insurance Portability-Privacy Ordinance?
Oct 15– Amerigo Vespucci’s account of his first voyage, translated by “MK”
Summary: Amerigo Vespucci meets American Indians.
Commentary: Eliot is all in on "discovering" America lately. Amerigo describes the Indians as "very well proportioned" but "not very good-looking: because they have broad faces," which seems contradictory. Should've face width be part of proportions? He gives an account of all the ways they're barbarians and all the things their society lacks (seems like it'd be hard to figure that much out for people who speak another language in one visit). He brings up cannibalism very matter-of-factly. He condemns it later, but pretty dry at the first pass. He talks about "serpents" without wings. Alligators or something maybe. Not sure why serpents would have wings.
Remember when computer games came in big boxes to hold the discs and manuals?
Oct 14– From The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776) edited by C. J. Bullock PHD
Summary: The history of colonization.
Commentary: Eliot really loved Columbus, apparently. He had a Columbus reading towards the end of last week, and now an about Columbus reading. I know it's around Columbus Day, but there weren't several readings clustered around President's Day/Washington's Birthday or something.
The most interesting part is here:
But, among the ancient Romans, the lands of the rich were all cultivated by slaves, who wrought under an overseer, who was likewise a slave; so that a poor freeman had little chance of being employed either as a farmer or as a labourer. All trades and manufactures too, even the retail trade, were carried on by the slaves of the rich for the benefit of their masters, whose wealth, authority, and protection made it difficult for a poor freeman to maintain the competition against them. The citizens, therefore, who had no land, had scarce any other means of subsistence but the bounties of the candidates at the annual elections. The tribunes, when they had a mind to animate the people against the rich and the great, put them in mind of the ancient division of lands, and represented that law which restricted this sort of private property as the fundamental law of the republic.
Smith explains one of the primary complaints about modern capitalism (it's easy for a rich corporation to crowd out small businesses) and a version of one of the most popular modern solutions (tax them to provide for poor people). He doesn't comment strongly on how correct/effective it is, but it's interesting that he gets there a century before Marx and Engels.
Oct 13– Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George Long
Summary: Marcus Aurelius is a good person because of all the people who taught him things along the way.
Commentary: The first half of this is mostly a list of all of people Aurelius looks up to, and fairly vague versions of what they taught him (eg a manly character). The later part is very rambly (more so than the usually somewhat pithy style of most of meditations). I wish it'd just average out in the first place.
Summary: Columbus sails around claiming stuff.
Commentary: The most interesting part of this is the idea that, 450 years ago, you could just sail around and say, "Don't see any white people here," drop a flag, and you (or the people you work for) owned an island now.
Oct 11– From The Aeneid by Virgil (~25BC) translated by John Dryden
Summary: Aeneas has funeral games for his father.
Commentary: The Aeneid (or at least this translation) is the most "poemy" of the epics I read recently. It actually rhymes, has a real propulsive rhythm, etc.
I think the most interesting part of tonight's was the names of the ships in the races. You have Dolphin a mundane animal, next to Centaur. It's a weird juxtaposition. It's also interesting to see Romans using mythological beings to name things. We do that today, but they're not "current" mythology. There's not a USS Babadook or Slenderman or anything.
I didn't realize this song was from MoLM, but it makes sense.
Oct 10– From Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Thomas Shelton
Summary: A woman has been wronged! (And will presumably be avenged by DQ)
Commentary: This one feels kind of out of place (granted I've only got 3 or 4 other chapters). DQ is there at the beginning, but then we get a long story about a girl wronged by a man. Presumably he will go defend her honor or something, but he kind of disappears from his own story for a while.
