not even melon juice

Not even melon juice can keep me going on 2.5 hours of sleep with another big day tomorrow (only meetings, since I’m done teaching for the year).

So, I’m checking out. c u tmrw.

reader submission #2

Cameron:

Your comment on Laurent “Corpulent Despot” Kabila reminded me of another classic example of a journalistic epithet like that, also bestowed on an African dictator. That was back in the ’70s when either Time (or Newsweek, one of them . . .) referred to Idi Amin as a “strutting martinet”. When an epithet like that is so apt that people remember it 30 years later, you’ve probably earned it.

I also like the line about the Franks being driven “back into their morasses”. I agree that it’d be hard to work that entire line into normal conversation, but there are metaphoric morasses around, into which people could be described as “driven back”. That’s certainly a rhetorical flourish, and literary reference, that can be used and re-used. One just has to leave the Franks aside.

reader submission #1

Michelle:

Hey, I just came across this in Slate, I hope this really is a Niels Bohr quote, no time to look it up properly today:

“There are trivial truths and great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”

Good one! Bohr is right!

sincerity of the day

This has actually been going on for 10-14 days since a tip from my friend Casey… Cairo has many juice places. But there’s a specific one on 26th of July Street, just around the corner, that sells green melon juice in emptied water bottles. A bit pricey by Egyptian standards, but about as refreshing as a substance can be. I have a bottle right here. The old man who owns the place is hilarious, always trying to talk me into another flavor or a second bottle of melon.

Actually, he talked me into a bottle of peach last week, and it was so incredible I’m not sure why I haven’t gotten another one since. The peach juice is purely juiced peaches– no sugar, and not even any water. It’s still liquid enough to drink, though very thick. And yeah, it was good.

Watermelon not yet available. I realize June is a better season, but I’ve already seen ripe watermelon for sale, and want some of it in juice form!

comically easy last day

It was the last day of teaching for the year. It was also the last Senate meeting of the year. I had authored two resolutions, and both passed with 100% (!) majorities, which was completely unexpected. Then, I was elected to be Chair of the Senate Faculty Affairs Committee. That means four administrative jobs in all, but they synergize perfectly and can all be combined into a single job.

Some correspondents sent in some remarks that I want to post, and I will do after sleeping for a bit.

two kinds of snobbery

This is a restatement of something I said on Levi’s blog lately.

Snobbery must be vigorously opposed when it is a matter of class, education, background, and the like. No external set of credentials really means that much in the end.

However, I am completely in favor of snobbery in the assessment of motives. Some people make objections because they are trying to move the ball forward. Others make objections because they don’t want anyone to move the ball anywhere, as an alibi for their own lack of initiative. It is true that even such people may occasionally make objections that are of intrinsic value. But one can process those objections at one’s own leisure; we are not obliged to respond in any way to nitpicking contrarianism and pettifogging “devil’s advocate” maneuvers. The medium is the message, and valid propositional content is overshadowed by the tonality in which it is uttered.

“uncomfortable outside”

The runaway most popular post for the last two days was the referred to in quotation marks above. Was it the ominous flying ant, or the remarks on faculty and administrators?

I suppose I could put up a few more flying ant posts as a control.

another short one

Sorry, but I always marvel at Gibbon’s ability to say so much in so few words:

“He was slain at Cologne, by a conspiracy of jealous husbands…”

This reminds me of when Laurent Kabila of the Congo was killed a few years ago and The Economist referred to him as “the corpulent despot.” These are the sorts of phrases where, if they appear in your obituary, then you have taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

Gibbon quote(s) of the day. May 20.

The first one is merely part of a sentence– but I love it, wish I could use it, and can’t foresee any situation in life in which I might be able to say it:

“He drove back the Franks into their morasses…”

Here’s a passage of more standard length, on the emperor Gallienus, with a history-of-philosophy twist:

“In every act that he attempted his lively genius enabled him to succeed; and, as his genius was destitute of judgment, he attempted every art, except the important ones of war and government. He was a master of several curious but useless sciences, a ready orator, an elegant poet, a skillful gardener, an excellent cook, and most contemptible prince. When the great emergencies of the state required his presence and attention, he was engaged in conversation with the philosopher Plotinus…”