Nov 30– From “Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation” by Jonathon Swift (1713)

Tom Swifties

Nov 30– From “Hints Towards an Essay on Conversation” by Jonathon Swift (1713)

Summary: How to win friends and influence people.

Commentary: Having read however much Tom Swift this year, he is not someone I wanted to get a ton of conversation advice from. While he's deservedly recognized as a satirist, I feel like I've read a couple of his essays and didn't find him particularly engrossing. (Upon review, this is only the second Swift essay assigned in 15MAD so I'm not sure who I'm thinking of. Keeping all the authors straight is a challenge.) 

(And then I lost most of this entry, which is a shame since it was a pretty interesting one.)

(I'm going to at least partially retype it. I'm sure it's going to be more like an awkward summary than the actual original post.)

" Nothing is more generally exploded than the folly of talking too much" SWIFT SLAMS TALKING TOO MUCH (Fun fact: The reason slams is so overused in headlines is because of how few characters it is. I'm glad it's for a practical reason, not just that newspaper writers are uncreative morons with a poor vocabulary.)

"And, to crown the business, it perhaps proveth at last a story the company hath heard fifty times before" This is my greatest conversational fear, that I will accidentally tell a story I've already told a bunch of times before.

"with the several symptoms and circumstances of them; will enumerate the hardships and injustice they have suffered in court" Good to know that people were still "happy" to just whine about their lives endlessly for hours 200 years ago. Some things never change.

" Others make a vanity of telling their faults; they are the strangest men in the world; they cannot dissemble; they own it is a folly" I like to imagine some guy struggling to take apart a jigsaw puzzle or something. "I CANNOT DISASSEMBLE!"

Of such mighty importance every man is to himself, and ready to think he is so to others; without once making this easy and obvious reflection, that his affairs can have no more weight with other men, than theirs have with him; and how little that is, he is sensible enough.

I like how this is two pieces of advice in one. 1: People don't want to hear every random thing that happened to you/popped into your head. 2: Don't worry too much about other people's lives. Very sensible and efficient, Hume. (I should put this in my quotes document, but I can't get into it right now because my work password is dumb. I should put that doc under a different account.)

" And, indeed, the worst conversation I ever remember to have heard in my life, was that at Will’s coffeehouse," I spent some time trying to figure out what the worst conversation I've ever had was. Most of the things I thought of were actually bad poetry readings or presentations or something. The best I got was the worst date I've ever been on. We went to some outdoor cover band show (I have seen exactly one good cover band in my life, this should've been the first red flag.) where she drank wine in a sippy cup. Not in some kind of age-kink way, just in and "I'm bad at byob" way.

We wound up at a Denny's, where she just kept lying about stuff in a weird attempt to connect/one up me. "Oh, you like Mystery Science Theater 3000? I saw the first season when it came out." Girl, you would've been like one year old and watching Minneapolis-Saint Paul public TV. You just told me you were from Pennsylvania, which is it?

Eventually, I invited some of my friends to come watch this train wreck. It ended with her trying to jump in my car or something to promise I'd let her know I got home safe. I (fortunately) never saw her again.

"used formerly to assemble; that is to say, five or six men, who had writ plays, or at least prologues" That's like saying you've done a 325 day long blog thing, but you wrote them all in your head. Someone told me about that for novels once, he wrote a whole epic fantasy series "in his head." He was dumb. And also probably a rapist.

I do appreciate him calling poets, "overrun with pedantry."

"it is the same vice in women, when they are over copious upon the subject of their petticoats" Complaining that women talk about their petticoats too much is the most 1700s thing I've ever read. Today it would be Stanley water bottles or something. "METHINKS THE LADY DOTH 'an i oop' too much." (Wrong water bottle.)

He talks about how some towns apparently have people whose only job is to come to tell amusing stories and such. I knew a guy whose job was to just be a runner for all the stores on main street in his town. Need someone to pick up your lunch from the deli? Call Greg. Need someone to cover your register while you ate lunch? Call Greg. Need someone to go buy toilet paper? Call Greg. It didn't pay well, but it seemed like a very interesting job at least.

Then he starts talking about "raillery" which is a kind of teasing I'd never heard of before. Like, I guess I've done it, but not in the kind of organized way he describes. It sounds like it'd be a fun little "party" game. Like a reverse, Yo Mama. "Yo Mama's so fat that they can see her from space. Which was useful when the navigational computer on the Enterprise malfunctioned and they had to bring her in manually." Or something. I don't know if I'd be very good at this game.

"The two chief ends of conversation are to entertain and improve those we are among, or to receive those benefits ourselves." One of my favorite things in T5FSOB is these snippets of why humanity does these very basic things. Most people don't think about why they talk, they just do. But knowing why you do something helps you do anything better.

Yeah, this isn't as good as the original, more of a summary. Oh well, maybe I'll come back to this later.

Nov 29– From "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" by David Hume (1748)

 It's the HUMEidity!

Nov 29– From An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume (1748)

Summary: We don't make things up entirely, instead we derive them from existing perception and knowledge.

Commentary: Yeah, I think that's a pretty fair philosophical stance, Hume. 

Nov 28– Poems by Sir William Blake

 Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Nov 28– Poems by Sir William Blake

Summary: Poems

Commentary: I'm so tired of poetry. That's it. That's all I've got to say about this reading.

Also, no Thanksgiving related reading was kind of weird. I know it's a floating date holiday, but not a one anywhere in the range. I think there have been other floaties that Eliot picked something for, so I'm surprised.

Nov 27– From "Utopia" by Sir Thomas Moore (1516) translated by Ralph Robinson

 More Like "Disturbia"

Nov 27– From Utopia by Sir Thomas Moore (1516) translated by Ralph Robinson

Summary: There's an island where everyone is an idiot.

Commentary: Utopia always read like a satire of satire to me. The Utopians hate everything for no real reason, but Moore is also sort of trying to criticize the then present English society (and not doing a particularly good job of it). It contains several examples of the dumbest part of all utopian stories (as would be expected since it coined the term), no one is allowed to like or dislike anything. Jewelry, clothing quality, social honors, hunting, food and drink. Everything other than boring, hyper-logical, super-stoicism is bad.

It reminds me of the famous (possibly apocryphal, since I've never seen the actual interview) story about an interviewer who asked Gene Rodenberry why Picard was bald in the 24th century. Rodenberry said that no one would care. Apparently in his perfect future 500 years from now, no one is allowed to have an aesthetic preference for hair. Utopias are dumb.

Nov 26– From “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare” by Charles Lamb (1811)

 God he hates (staging) Shakespeare

Nov 26– From “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare” by Charles Lamb (1811)

Summary: Staging Shakespeare is bad because his words are so pretty, and actors are all hacks.

Commentary: It's kind of weird reading an essay with a frame story that I had to research. Apparently there's a statue of an actor named David Garrick in the Westminster Abbey cemetery. Garrick was an actor who (based on my skimming of Wikipedia) really liked Shakespeare. He helped organize Shakespeare festivals, revivals, etc. in the 1700s when Willy wasn't as recognized as he was today. He also was apparently influential in refining acting (LESS OVERACTING). For context, Garrick was dead for about 30 years before Lamb wrote this essay. Lamb seems to think all actors still overact badly. It's hard to say if he has poor taste, only saw bad actors, or what. Anyway, Lamb is walking through the cemetary one day, sees the statue with this poem:

To paint fair Nature, by divine command,

Her magic pencil in his glowing hand,

A Shakespeare rose: then, to expand his fame

Wide o’er this breathing world, a Garrick came.

Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew,

The Actor’s genius made them breathe anew;

Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay,

Immortal Garrick call’d them back to day:

And till Eternity with power sublime

Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time,

Shakespeare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine,

And earth irradiate with a beam divine.

and gets all butt-hurt that people like actors and have the gall to compare one of them to Shakespeare. He rambles like an ass for a while, "It would be an insult to my readers’ understandings to attempt anything like a criticism on this farrago of false thoughts and nonsense" and, "he actor can give no more idea by his face or gesture than the [...] the muscles utter intelligible sounds. I checked, Morse Code hadn't been invented yet, but I feel like there had to be some precedent for intelligible tapping (to say nothing of the fact that you use your muscles when you talk.)

By volume, I think "actors are dumb" is probably the main thesis of this essay, but he eventually makes his way to his supposed point with:

It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on a stage than those of almost any other dramatist whatever. Their distinguished excellence is a reason that they should be so. There is so much in them, which comes not under the province of acting, with which eye, and tone, and gesture, have nothing to do.

It does seem like a paradox. And he never gets around to proving it. Instead he spends most of his time whining about how much he hates actors. Just before that, he has this great quote:

 I confess myself utterly unable to appreciate that celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning “To be, or not to be,” or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, it has been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in the play, till it is become to me a perfect dead member.

"I can't tell what's good or not," is a choice when your entire essay is ranting about how to properly perform something, but Lamb is here for it.

Also, Hamlet is good because it's didactic. Poe was like three years old at the time, so he wasn't able to rise from his grave to slap Lamb around, unfortunately.

"All the passions and changes of passion might remain; for those are much less difficult to write or act than is thought; it is a trick easy to be attained." Acting is easy, everyone. Lamb would be that guy who whines about theatre majors, says actors are overpaid, and then says waiting tables is unskilled labor and it should be paid $1 an hour with no tips.

"It is common for people to talk of Shakespeare’s plays being so natural, that everybody can understand him." I'm curious if this is just Lamb (still) being an idiot, or if Shakespeare was considered easier 200 odd years ago. It'd be closer to when the plays were written, so I guess it makes sense.

He rags on actors for a couple more paragraphs before he starts trying to interpret the sonnets to also be anti-actor. I disagree with his interpretation of Sonnet 111 being against acting in general, but just against acting it crappy productions. "That did not better for my life provide/Than public means which public manners breeds—/Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;"

I feel like Lamb would have a job as a shouty right wing TV-host today. "ACTORS ARE TURNING THE KIDS TRANSGAY! THEY NEED SOME GOOD WHOLESOME SUPER CISHET SHAKESPEARE! BUT NOT ACTED!"

 

 

 

Nov 25– From "The Shoemaker’s Holiday" by Thomas Dekker (1600)

 My wife went to BU

Nov 25– From The Shoemaker’s Holiday by Thomas Dekker (1600)

Summary: Forbidden romance, crossdressing, bawdy jokes!

Commentary: This felt very much like a standard (if not terribly polished) comedy of the era, based on other plays I've seen from around the same time. Kind of hard to follow, not sure if that's the play, the production, or my fault.

Nov 23– Blaise Pascal’s "Thoughts" (1670) translated by W F Trotter

 Blaise Pascal loves Owlman

Nov 23– Blaise Pascal’s Thoughts (1670) translated by W F Trotter

Summary: Pascal interrupts his version of Meditations for a villain monologue about how we're all insignificant and know nothing. Also, he hates imagination.

Commentary: This was a trip and a half. It starts out with a couple Mediations style chunks (which makes sense, since the title is Thoughts) that definitely lean in the "snobbish asshole" directions (NO ONE TEACHES YOU HOW TO BE A GENTLEMAN BUT EVERYONE THINKS THEY'RE ONE! Apparently etiquette classes/books [or philosophy/ethics in that context] don't exist in the Pascal-verse). I wasn't thrilled with most of them, but they were easy reading. I did like:

71. Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

Very Ben Franklin.

Then, I got to thought 72, which is the focus of this selection. It's a six page rant about how we can't know anything, we're pointlessly insignificant, even knowing we don't know things is itself a form of self-deception, etc. I'll circle back to my own personal philosophical take on this, but I'll do a couple quote pulls first.

 Let him lose himself in wonders as amazing in their littleness as the others in their vastness. For who will not be astounded at the fact that our body, which a little while ago was imperceptible in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, in respect of the nothingness which we cannot reach? He who regards himself in this light will be afraid of himself, and observing himself sustained in the body given him by nature between those two abysses of the Infinite and Nothing, will tremble at the sight of these marvels; and I think that, as his curiosity changes into admiration, he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than to examine them with presumption.

Thank you for your cliché nihilistic villain speech, Pascal. Without you, T5FSOB and 15MAD would be under the requisite emo/edgelord quota. Even better that the next line is: "For, in fact, what is man in nature?"

A MISERABLE LITTLE PILE OF SECRETS!

He goes on in this general manner for several pages, eventually revealing that he turned to villainy when he failed middle school math: 

Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tend to obscurity; too much truth is paralysing (I know some who cannot understand that to take four from nothing leaves nothing).

By the end, he's gone full Owlman and started musing about how pointless life is in the face of the multiverse:

In comparison with these Infinites, all finites are equal, and I see no reason for fixing our imagination on one more than on another. The only comparison which we make of ourselves to the finite is painful to us.

He asks, "How can a part know the whole?" and I feel like I read something about that recently in an eastern philosophy article. That everything is made up of parts, but those parts also contain the whole. The example they gave was the human body, which is made of cells, which contain the DNA of the body.

After another page or so he starts ranting about how much he hates imagination, figurative language, etc.: "Instead of receiving the ideas of these things in their purity, we colour them with our own qualities, and stamp with our composite being all the simple things which we contemplate." In this case, he's referring to the idea that we personify physics by saying things like, "objects are attracted to each other by gravity." It's not totally wrong, but is pointlessly pedantic and unreasonable. Pascal is that guy who refuses to believe that there can be more than one definition for a word.

Pascal also hates education:

80. How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but that a fool does? Because a cripple recognises that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly; if it were not so, we should feel pity and not anger.

I think we generally think of a "cripple" as someone with an uncurable physical ailment. You got polio as a kid, got your arm run over by a train, etc. A "fool" implies that you're just dumb. I guess it could also mean someone with some kind of mental disability. I could be generous and assume it's a time/translation issue, not Pascal just saying people can't learn stuff. I'm not.

The remainder is more yelling about imagination:

82. Imagination.—It is that deceitful part in man, that mistress of error and falsity, the more deceptive that she is not always so; for she would be an infallible rule of truth, if she were an infallible rule of falsehood. But being most generally false, she gives no sign of her nature, impressing the same character on the true and the false.

[...]

Those who have a lively imagination are a great deal more pleased with themselves than the wise can reasonably be. They look down upon men with haughtiness; they argue with boldness and confidence, others with fear and diffidence; and this gaiety of countenance often gives them the advantage in the opinion of the hearers, such favour have the imaginary wise in the eyes of judges of like nature. 

He's now shifted from nihilistic villain to autistic supervillain. Honestly, I think a lot of villains are spectrum-coded.

I wonder if Pascal literally thinks people who write fantasy novels and stuff are crazy. 

So, circling back to why I decided to write one of the longest posts of the year about this, two things:

1. I'm pretty sure you could have taken my entire undergrad philosophy course and compressed it down to Plato's Allegory of the Cave and this reading. "You're all idiots, no one knows anything, and you're not even smart enough not to know anything," was basically all my professor ever said, in between whining about hating his job and telling us stories about his bong collection. He literally walked out of the room for the final exam to go polish it or something. He was completely nuts (in a very Pascal-esque way) and certainly one of the worst professors I'd ever had. (The fact that he's only one of is a fairly damning indictment of my undergrad, but he didn't spend all of geology class talking about street fighting and bigfoot, or teach us that vaccines caused autism, or any number of other literally batshit things that some of the others did.)

2. I think it's very easy to arrive at (and I think I've written in this blog before about) some variation of, "nothing matters because we're insignificant, free will isn't real, etc." And you can be a Pascal and get there and just decide that everything is pointless and you hate everything, but I don't think that's a productive way to get through life. Also, why make all these mathematical discoveries and stuff if you think they're pointless and not really knowable? There are basically four responses at that point:

1. Nothing matters, so nothing matters. 

2. Talk yourself into some kind of "God of The Gaps" version of free will like some Compatibilists.

(I don't have a picture for this one.)

3. Post cringey memes like this:

to attempt to compensate.

4. Post slightly less cringey memes like this:

I like number four. At a minimum, going and doing stuff makes me feel better. Even if nothing I do ever matters to anyone or anything else (I like to think I at least occasionally improve the life of someone else) I still would rather enjoy my life than sit around wallowing in the pointlessness of it all.

Nov 24– From "The Origin of Species" (1859) by Charles Darwin

 I wonder if you could evolve Avatar proof cabbages.

Nov 24– From The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin

Summary: Stuff evolves differently in captivity. Sometimes seemingly unrelated traits change in sync.

Commentary: As I've said on a couple of the other Darwin excerpts, it's fascinating to see him supporting Lamarckism:

With animals the increased use or disuse of parts has had a more marked influence; thus I find in the domestic duck that the bones of the wing weigh less and the bones of the leg more, in proportion to the whole skeleton, than do the same bones in the wild duck; and this change may be safely attributed to the domestic duck flying much less, and walking more, than its wild parents. The great and inherited development of the udders in cows and goats in countries where they are habitually milked, in comparison with these organs in other countries, is probably another instance of the effects of use. Not one of our domestic animals can be named which has not in some country drooping ears; and the view which has been suggested that the drooping is due to disuse of the muscles of the ear, from the animals being seldom much alarmed, seems probable.

While it's possible that some of this is due to cows with bigger udders being bred more, the leg and ear parts are clearly more related to the life to life exercise of the individual animal and its parts, not something we'd identify as inheritable. 

Nov 22– From The "Aeneid" by Virgin (19 BC) translated by John Dryden

 Is suicide painless, Dido?

Nov 22– From The Aeneid by Virgin (19 BC) translated by John Dryden

Summary: Dido kills herself.

Commentary: It's really weird reading this after going through Fitzgerald's Odyssey, such a totally different style. Definitely less readable. I'm guessing it's a 1:1 line translation, which I think makes it harder to get a good flow.

Having only read a few dozen pages of The Aeneid total, I don't really know who Dido is, the full reasons behind her suicide, etc. It's decent enough poetry, but I don't think I got the full impact.

First aid note: If someone is impaled with something, it's almost always best to leave it in to restrict bleeding and prevent further damage.

Nov 21– “Letter XI: On Inoculation” by François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1733)

 (Mostly) no more Smallpox

Nov 21– “Letter XI: On Inoculation” by François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1733)

Summary: Smallpox inoculation was invented so harem slaves would have good skin.

Commentary: This one was weird. Jenner's much more interesting first hand account of his research went over much of the same info earlier in the year. I don't think there's been any other repeats like this. A lot of the reading is spent detailing how inoculation comes from the Circassians, who are a poor people with no economy other than selling their women to be harem slaves, and you can't have a pox marked harem slave, obviously. 

The big thing here is the claim that this was literally the entire economy of Circassia. First, how do you have literally zero economic options, as an entire country/region/people, in the 1700s than selling your women into slavery. Couldn't you go be a poor farmer or something? Voltaire makes it sound like this was just a widespread standard transaction. I could see maybe selling your first daughter (sort of an inverse of the first son inheritance tradition) but no one minded that all their sisters, daughters, etc. were just getting shipped off? How do you even maintain your population? Did you just keep the ugly women? Doesn't that mean that you have an artificially high man to woman ratio?

It does appear to have been a real thing but I think Voltaire is probably exaggerating substantially.

On the other hand, anytime someone talks about the "hot alien slave species" trope in sci-fi, I can now say that, historically, it's not totally bullshit. Learning.

Nov 20– “The Valiant Little Tailor” by The Brothers Grimm (1812) translated by Margaret Hunt

 Perhaps even a brave little tailor.

Nov 20– “The Valiant Little Tailor” by The Brothers Grimm (1812) translated by Margaret Hunt

Summary: A tailor kills seven flies in one blow (honestly an impressive feat) and then fakes that he killed seven men, completes a bunch of quests, and becomes king.

Commentary: This one is just goofy. It's a fun story seeing how the tailor will scam his way through each quest (while the king tries to scam him into doing more and more for the promised reward of his daughter). Just a fun, light, easy read.

Nov 19– “Morte D’Arthur” by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1912)

 The Poem

Nov 19– “Morte D’Arthur” by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1912)

Summary: It takes Sir Bedivere three tries to chuck Excalibur back into the lake.

Commentary: I'm going to be honest, as soon as Bedivere showed up I lost the ability to take this poem seriously and just thought about Monty Python quotes.

It is a good poem though. Stuff happens, the poetic language is played up in places where it fits and down in places where it doesn't. And, as is hypothetically the point of this whole exercise, I learned something. When Arthur finally dies (he's not dead yet from a head wound for most of the poem) he's put on a boat with three queens. They are apparently (I think it comes from Malory) Morgan le Fay, an unnamed queen of Northgalis (Northern Wales), and maybe the Lady in the Lake or maybe a Queen of the Wastelands. I'm seeing both listed in various places, and the version of Malory I can find doesn't explicitly identify them.

Nov 18– From "Wilhelm Tell" by Johann Christopher Friedrich Von Schiller (1804) translated by Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B., LL.D

 The sketch

Nov 18– From Wilhelm Tell by Johann Christopher Friedrich Von Schiller (1804) translated by Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B., LL.D

Summary: Wilhelm Tell shoots the apple off his son's head, while the evil Lord Gessler hams it up.

Commentary: Gessler is crazy evil in the best way. About the only people I can imagine playing him are Brian Blessed or Maurice LaMarche. It's a nice contrast with Tell, who is properly horrified at the order to shoot at his son. I feel like characters in plays like these often don't get upset enough about that kind of order.

More importantly, let's talk about Tell's crossbow which, until about 20 years ago, decorated the tang stamp of most Swiss Army Knives until about 20 years ago. 

https://www.sakwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=Victorinox+Tang+Stamp+Guide

https://leaf-vics.com/usefull-materials/wenger-tang-stamps-and-scale-crosses

Some are more crossbow-esque:

While others are more like umbrellas:

Feels weird to take off such a recognizable and interesting logo element.

Nov 17– From Thomas Carylye’s introduction to "Sir Walter Scott" (1838)

 He was a great Scott

Nov 17– From Thomas Carylye’s introduction to Sir Walter Scott (1838)

Summary: Walter Scott had a great childhood. With a very minor sickness: Polio. NBD.

Commentary: This is just wild and all over the place. A bunch of random stories about Scott that don't really go anywhere, a lot of rambling about Rob Burns (I guess there's no other Scottish writers you can discuss. Seems like an insult to Scott.) Not really sure what the point of most of it was.

It starts off with this absolutely garbage paragraph:

Till towards the age of thirty, Scott’s life has nothing in it decisively pointing towards Literature, or indeed towards distinction of any kind; he is wedded, settled, and has gone through all his preliminary steps, without symptom of renown as yet. It is the life of every other Edinburgh youth of his station and time. Fortunate we must name it, in many ways. Parents in easy or wealthy circumstances, yet unencumbered with the cares and perversions of aristocracy; nothing eminent in place, in faculty or culture, yet nothing deficient; all around is methodic regulation, prudence, prosperity, kindheartedness; an element of warmth and light, of affection, industry, and burgherly comfort, heightened into elegance; in which the young heart can wholesomely grow. A vigorous health seems to have been given by Nature; yet, as if Nature had said withal, “Let it be a health to express itself by mind, not by body,” a lameness is added in childhood; the brave little boy, instead of romping and bickering, must learn to think; or at lowest, what is a great matter, to sit still. No rackets and trundling-hoops for this young Walter; but ballads, history-books and a world of legendary stuff, which his mother and those near him are copiously able to furnish. Disease, which is but superficial, and issues in outward lameness, does not cloud the young existence; rather forwards it towards the expansion it is fitted for. The miserable disease had been one of the internal nobler parts, marring the general organisation; under which no Walter Scott could have been forwarded, or with all his other endowments could have been producible or possible. ‘Nature gives healthy children much; how much! Wise education is a wise unfolding of this; often it unfolds itself better of its own accord.’

1. Scott showed no sign of interest in Literature. Except for reading a lot.

2. He was very healthy. Except that minor illness. Polio.

    This is the kind of paragraph that I have seen make people literally have a breakdown in a workshop if you brought it.

 Even without the questionable first paragraph I find these random prologue, introduction, etc.* sections are usually hard to follow and don't feel very worthwhile. (The fact that Eliot chose to devote an entire book to "Famous Prefaces" is a strange choice. Better than a second book of Burns at least.) I read an article last year that says you should often skip them and read them at the end of the book, and I have found they make more sense. They often reference the content of the book, and it usually works better if you know those events. "In book XII Odysseus does X and meets Y, here's a line with minimal context." Before reading the book: Mmmhmm, yeah, sure. After: Ohhhh, that part makes more sense now. Obviously applies best to Forewords (by definition, they can't be essential to the book) but usually works for Prefaces and often for Introductions.

Prologues just shouldn't exist 90% of the time. If it's important and where the book starts, make it a Chapter 1 or something. Special shout out to the "bait and switch" prologue. For example, Game of Thrones sounds like it'll be about the Night's Watch fighting zombies. And then instead it's the War of The Roses with extra incest.

* Preface: Why you wrote the book. What made you interested. (usually nonfic)

Prologue: What happened before the book. (usually fic)

Introduction: Provides context on the rest of the book. (fic or nonfic)

Foreword: Written by someone else. (fic or nonfic)

Nov 16– From "Two Years Before the Mast" by Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1840)

 Sherwood Forest, California, same difference.

Nov 16– From Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1840)

Summary: California is a savage country, but great farmland and harbors.

Commentary: This reading starts with explaining the "discovery" of California. I think that makes it sound like it was hiding. You just keep going west and get there! (Apparently it was discovered by sea. That makes sense, no one was exploring across that far west for a couple hundred years as far as I can tell.) California seems pretty terrible. And very conservative compared to today. Plenty of semi-random killing, only sort of a functional government:

In their domestic relations, these people are no better than in their public. The men are thriftless, proud, and extravagant, and very much given to gaming; and the women have but little education, and a good deal of beauty, and their morality, of course, is none of the best; yet the instances of infidelity are much less frequent than one would at first suppose. In fact, one vice is set over against another; and thus, something like a balance is obtained. The women have but little virtue, but then the jealousy of their husbands is extreme, and their revenge deadly and almost certain

Very Heinlein.

And of course, the Indians are abused, as was common at the time. 

Nov 15– From "I Promessi Sposi" (The Betrothed) by Allessandro Manzoni (1827)

 Biblical Proportions!

Nov 15– From I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Allessandro Manzoni (1827)

Summary: Price gouging! Society in chaos! Dogs and cats living together!

Commentary: At one point, selections from this were coming up every week or two, and it felt like I could mostly follow the plot. I've forgotten like ninety percent of it now. There's a good couple and an evil rich noble who wants the girl, I think. 

I have no idea what this section has to do with the rest of the story, which is a romance/drama. This is an account of a historical event. There's not even any named characters in the first two thirdsish. Greedy people suck.

Nov 14– From “Uniformity of Change” by Sir Charles Lyell (1830)

Changes

Nov 14– From “Uniformity of Change” by Sir Charles Lyell (1830)

Summary: Stuff moves in different ways. Some of that helps show evolution. Some explains earthquakes. (Honestly a bit of a grab bag tonight.)

Commentary: This is the second Lyell reading (I think these are from the same book, but not the same lecture) and I'm colder on him than the other science bits in 15MAD. He's less accessible, these very much feel like geology lectures for geologists, compared to the more layman/student perspective of some of the others. He makes a lot of references to other books/lectures that I haven't read, unlike the mostly stand alone other selections. Geology is also just less interesting. Gravity, electricity, vaccinations, these are all things that effect our day to day life in a very concrete way. Yes, the shapes of land masses and stuff effect us, but you don't actually see it happening (there's a reason they call them geologic time scales). 

There is some evolution in here. As always, it's interesting to see how much people had figured out about evolution pre-Darwin. He was kind of more of a Steve Jobs than a Steve Woz (not that that doesn't have value).

Nov 13– From "The Confessions of Saint Augustine" translated by E. B. Pusey (~400)

 Smol Hippo

Nov 13– From The Confessions of Saint Augustine translated by E. B. Pusey (~400)

Summary: Sometimes you just want to wallow. But you have to be careful not to let it turn into bitterness.

Commentary: There's a lot of sadness in the world today. Two of my friends are in some stage or another for divorce. A good chunk of the country is mourning the election. Gaza. Ukraine. The million and one smaller sadnesses that seem to never go away.

As I've said however many times, I'm generally not a fan of most of the super Christian authors in T5FSOB, who tend to fall into the "HUMANITY IS LITERAL SHIT!" track over and over again. Augustine quite never gets there (fortunately) and the front half of this is a beautiful contemplation on dealing with sorrow and how we deal with it in other people (and how other people deal with us). He makes his way back to Christian navel gazing by the end.

Nov 12– From "Paradise Lost" by John Milton (1667)

 This song should take about the same amount of time to read as the selection.

Nov 12– From Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667)

Summary: The fruit makes Adam and Eve bone and then feel guilty about being naked. Also, Milton loves ribs.

Commentary: This is the section of Paradise Lost that deals with Eve eating the fruit (I included the end of the snake convincing her), sharing it with Adam, the two of them screwing, and then being embarrassed about being naked.

I've always found the tree/fruit's existence one of the most bizarre parts of the entire Bible. God (all knowing, powerful, good, etc.) appears to make humanity without the knowledge of good and evil (maybe they only know good?) which makes them either completely amoral or "perfect" automatons. Kind of boring either way. But, he chooses, for whatever reason, to make a tree/fruit that will ruin everything, knowing they'll eat it, and doesn't prevent them from doing so. All of humanity is literally set up for failure, because God chooses to create the tree/fruit, decides it will doom us, and then doesn't do anything to prevent them from eating it. It's fabulously shitty. If you put a toddler in a room with poison, and then told them not to eat it but they did, everyone would say you were a shitty parent. But it's the entire basis of Christianity.

Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat!

Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat,

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,

That all was lost.

I thought this part was weird originally, since I thought animals could die, but not man. This appears to not be the consensus (all animals ate "green things") so I guess it makes sense.

Adam talks about losing another rib, which would make him symmetrical at least.

Adam and Eve get horny for the first time, but, "And elegant, of sapience no small part" at least Adam likes that Eve is smart.

There's a reference to Samson and Delilah, does that count as foreshadowing?

I think it's interesting that the first two things the fruit is depicted as doing is making Adam and Eve fuck (I always assumed they had before hand, just not in a horny way) and then be ashamed of their nakedness. Pre-Fall sex appears to be up in the air (in the traditional Christian way of sex being good in a small set of very specific circumstances and bad in others). The sex doesn't appear at all in the Bible (Genesis 3:6- Adam and Eve eat, 3:7- fig leaves) which means the literal first "bad" thing they do after eating the fruit is realizing they were naked and making clothes.

Does that make being ashamed of being naked Sin #1 (eating the fruit is #0)? That means that, technically, being naked isn't the issue, but being ashamed of it is. The implication is that humanity is now stupid-horny teenagers who need a dress code, but it's interesting that I think a lot of modern Christians would treat nudity itself as a sin, rather than the resulting lust or whatever.

The selection ends with: 

She first his weak indulgence will accuse.

Thus they in mutual accusation spent

The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning;

And of their vain contest appeared no end.

The real evil is turning into a judgey douchebag. You know, like God.

Nov 11– Poems by Walt Whitman

Probably not very accurate to the poem.

Nov 11– Poems by Walt Whitman

Summary: Ethiopians are barely human, poems about medics, here comes the sun, DEMOCRACY, beat the drum, a vigil, pioneers...march!

Commentary: I think Whitman is the poet whose high esteem is closest to how my personal judgement. I like some less respected poets, and I hate some "great" ones, but Whitman is interesting, lyrical, and easy to appreciate.

Nov 10– “The Deserted Village” by Oliver Goldsmith (1770)

 This guy just seems so happy about the poem.

Nov 10– “The Deserted Village” by Oliver Goldsmith (1770)

Summary: It's a poem about a creepy abandoned village.

Commentary: 

"The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,

The matron's glance that would those looks reprove;" is a fun couple of lines.

I don't think I've ever had anything so heavily illustrated. The ones in the edition I pulled from Gutenberg are great, nice and creepy. Really contributes to the Resident Evil/Silent Hill/PSX horror vibe of the poem.

It does make formatting a pain. I'll have to reread it again now that I fixed all the breaks and stuff, but it's late tonight.