write a song

Chris sent this YouTube George Jones video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JTztFLMqq8, the reason being that it is relevant to recent discussions on this blog.

Billy Ray, not the others, is the one you want to emulate here:

“Well, we left home for anywhere me and Billy Ray
He was going to be going, and I was running away
Now, we were broke when we started and it got worse later on
I wrote home for money and Billy Ray wrote a song

Now, the people sure get picky when it comes to giving a ride
It didn’t take long, us leaving, but I thought we’d never arrive
Now, we did more hike than hitchin’ as we hitchhiked along
I got sore feet and blisters and Billy Ray wrote a song

Billy Ray wrote a song about everything we did
I was finding fault, he was finding rhymes that fit
Well we did a lot of thinking—most of my thoughts were wrong
I wanted to write a bad check, but Billy Ray wrote a song

Well, we got into Nashville tired, hungry and cold
If we had a dime between us we’d have called everybody we know
We found a bar still open a little band was picking away
And I sat in to drinking, Billy Ray sat in to play

He was an overnight sensation I heard the radio say
Somehow they failed to mention the miles all along the way
Anyway, that’s how it happened, and it sure happened strong
They wrote about it happening, Billy Ray wrote a song

Billy Ray wrote a song about everything he knew
If I’d-a known what I know now, I’d-a been writing too
Billy Ray sure has it made and I’m still tagging along
I’m writing home for money, Billy Ray’s still writing songs.”

on the naiveté of philosophers

Gibbon on how to fool Marcus Aurelius:

“The mildness of Marcus, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics was unable to eradicate, formed, at the same time, he most amiable, and the only defective, part of his character. His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart. Artful men, who study the passions of princes and conceal their own, approached his person in the disguise of philosophic sanctity, and acquired riches and honours by affecting to despise them.”

legal prank

I’d love to go into a court in Iowa next time I’m home and insist that I want to change my name to Hans-Ulrich Schaffgotsch gennant Semperfrei von und zu Kynast und Greiffenstein.

What do his friends call him?

one of the best Wikipedia articles

I refer to the “Line of Succession to the British Throne” article.

These sorts of lists are amusing enough even when they’re made up merely of the 15 or so people in the line of succession to the U.S. Presidency, but the British Crown is well-set to endure anything short of a massive asteroid impact. Consider #1579-#1599 in the line of succession, with the promise of “more still to be listed.” And there seem to be hundreds more who are banned from the list for religious reasons.

It may seem pointless, but I somehow find it heartwarming that there are people on salary somewhere to keep track of the fluctuations in this list.

“Count Maximilian von Wuthenau-Hohenthurm (b. 1927)
Count Albrecht von Wuthenau-Hohenthurm (b. 1929)
Countess Walburga von Wuthenau-Hohenthurm (b. 1923)
Count Hans-Ulrich Schaffgotsch gennant Semperfrei von und zu Kynast und Greiffenstein (b. 1950)
Count Hans-Ulrich Schaffgotsch gennant Semperfrei von und zu Kynast und Greiffenstein (b. 1980)
Count Alexander Schaffgotsch gennant Semperfrei von und zu Kynast und Greiffenstein (b. 1984)
Count Karl Friedrich Schaffgotsch gennant Semperfrie von und zu Kynast und Greiffenstein (b. 1951)
Countess Sofia Schaffgotsch gennant Semperfrie von und zu Kynast und Greiffenstein (b. 1988)
Countess Anna Luisa Schaffgotsch gennant Semperfrie von und zu Kynast und Greiffenstein (b. 1989)
Countess Sophie Schaffgotsch gennant Semperfrie von und zu Kynast und Greiffenstein (b. 1952)
Count Johan Jakob von und zu Eltz gennant Faust von Stromberg (b. 1979)
Count Anselm Kasimir von und zu Eltz gennant Faust von Stromberg (b. 1981)
Count Philipp Carl von und zu Eltz gennant Faust von Stromberg (b. 1991)
Countess Antoinette von und zu Eltz gennant Faust von Stromberg (b. 1976)
Countess Desiree Schaffgotsch gennant Semperfrie von und zu Kynast und Greiffenstein (b. 1962)
Immanuel Jebsen (b. 1990)
Caspar Sophus Jebsen (b. 1991)
Marie Sidone Jebsen (b. 1993)
Clara Ludmilla Juliane Walpirgis Jebsen (b. 1999)
Filipa Amalaswintha Jebsen (b. 2003)
Countess Wilhelmine von Wuthenau-Hohenthurm (b. 1925)”

Gibbon on olives

Again pushing his luck, and again pulling it off:

“The olive, in the western world, followed the progress of peace, of which it was considered the symbol. Two centuries after the foundation of Rome, both Italy and Africa were strangers to that useful plant; it was naturalized in those countries; and at length carried into the heart of Spain and Gaul. The timid errors of the ancients, that it required a certain degree of heat, and could only flourish in the neighbourhood of the sea, were insensibly exploded by industry and experience.”

With that last sentence I can’t help bursting into laughter; it’s almost too much.

I’m starting to wonder if Poe’s occasional hostility to Gibbon’s style isn’t of the order of “the anxiety of influence,” since this sort of allusiveness is precisely what Poe does so well in stylistic terms. (Lovecraft, obviously under Poe’s influence, sometimes does it even better.)

I’d like to know the history of this allusive style, which I doubt can be found in ancient authors. It’s something that English seems to do much more easily than other languages, and it’s a safe bet that Shakespeare is the central figure in its development.

Translate this passage on olives into French (I should check the French version of Gibbon) and I doubt it would come across the same way. French does different things well, such as wryly stating preposterous things as though they were ordinary. (All throughout Bataille’s Story of the Eye, for instance, and everywhere in Sade.)

But for the sort of allusiveness found in Gibbon, you need the massive vocabulary of synonyms in which English is so especially rich. Gibbon is closer to Shakespeare than to most other historians.

Gibbon supplement B

Here he is almost pushing his luck in stylistic terms, but the result is a thing of beauty:

“It would be almost impossible to enumerate all the articles, either of the animal or the vegetable reign, which were successively imported into Europe from Asia and Egypt; but it will not be unworthy of the dignity, and much less of the utility, of an historical work, slightly to touch on a few of the principal heads. Almost all the flowers, the herbs, and the fruits that grow in our European gardens are of foreign extraction, which, in many cases, is betrayed even by their names: the apple was a native of Italy, and when the Romans had tasted the richer flavour of the apricot, the peach, the pomegranate, the citron, and the orange, they contented themselves with applying to all the new fruits the common denomination of apple, discriminating them from each other by the additional epithet of their country.”

(Bonus points for Gibbon if “lemon” was already the usual English word by then and “citron” was chosen purposely as an allusive alternative. I don’t know the answer to that.)

My favorite feature of at least some Egyptian supermarkets is their tendency to group apples not by type, but by nationality. At the Metro Market a few blocks from here, I regularly choose between “American,” “Syrian,” “Iranian,” and “Chinese” apples. The Syrian ones are generally my favorite.

Gibbon supplement A

Though it would be almost impossible to pull off this style today without sounding affected, one can only admire what he is able to do in nearly every paragraph of this massive history:

“Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire, the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind; and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements, of social life. In the more remote ages of antiquity, the world was unequally divided. The east was in the immemorial possession of arts and luxury; whilst the west was inhabited by rude and warlike barbarians, who either disdained agriculture, or to whom it was totally unknown.”

sincerity of the day

That was maybe the most efficient paper-grading day of all time, and is worthy of a nice break. I think I’m going to walk the 45 minutes down the Nile and across the bridge to Koshury El-Tahrir near the old AUC campus.

I used to eat their koshury twice a day when they were next to campus and maybe 6 minutes from my classic downtown flat on Sherif Street. Now it’s quite a haul, but I’m willing to go down there from time to time because: (a) Zamalek is not a very good koshury neighborhood; you need a heavy working class element for that; (b) the koshury at the new AUC campus, though a reasonable facsimile of the real thing, has soggy rather than al dente pasta, which sort of ruins it.

The picture below is pretty good, though I’m a “no dried onions” man myself. Otherwise, it’s:

*rice
*pasta
*chick peas
*lentils
*tomato sauce
*optional hot sauce and vinegar

I’m indifferent on the latter two ingredients. If the cook happens to dump them on my koshury, fine; if not, I don’t ask for it. But I can’t stand the taste or smell of the dried onions– “badoon bassal” (“without onion”) is practically my nickname at these places.

Koshury is tasty, filling, and cheap. Despite recent steep price increases in rice and pasta, which do harm the working class target market of the food, if you’re living on a semi-Western income here then it may as well be free. In the old days it was 40 American cents for a bowl, and now maybe 90 cents at a typical place. That’s for a bowl that satisfies your hunger for half a day.

time management question

From a reader:

“It is clear from your many web postings that you are capable of steady production (of ideas, arguments, and books–in considerable number) and so, it seems, administrative chores. You must be capable of considerable discipline and focus. (And relatively little sleep?!)”

This one will go in the bundle of advice posts, in case any of this gives someone good ideas. The old principle of “many ways to skin a cat” should always be remembered; different formulae will work for different people.

I sleep 5-6 hours on weeknights, with a couple of catnaps in the office each day (painfully harder at the new campus, since my nice old campus couch was not allowed to make the move with me; now I just have to nap with my head down on the table while sitting in the chair). I catch up on sleep on the weekends. It’s also possible to sleep on the long bus rides to and from campus, though usually I’ll run into someone I know or an interesting stranger (such as yesterday morning) and that will make sleep either impossible or unappealing.

My surplus work time probably comes from these factors:

*no television. I have no moralizing objections to television, but have essentially zero interest in watching anything on TV other than key sporting events. And living in Egypt means that most of the key sporting events that interest me (those held in the USA) take place at 3 or 4 A.M., which gives me a good excuse not to watch any of them.

*low level of casual socializing. I like my socializing to be intense interactions within a small circle. Just going and hanging out with fringe acquaintances over light chatter for 3 hours is perfectly respectable and nice, but just doesn’t interest me much, and with age I’m finding it more and more important to do the things you want to do and not do the things you don’t want to do (other than genuine duties, of course).

This is actually a bit odd, because since moving to Egypt everyone has been calling me things like “classic extrovert,” “friendliest and most outgoing person they ever met,” etc., though I still see myself as a brooding lone wolf. These sorts of disconnects are always interesting puzzles, and I haven’t figured that one out yet. Especially odd is that the population of Egyptian students, possibly the most outgoing population group I have ever encountered on earth, ask me things like “how can you know so many people?” But it doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels like I hang out with just a handful.

*eating out a lot. Cooking takes time; I live alone; it’s boring to cook for yourself; it saves time to eat out.

Another thing is an important acquired skill… the ability to put things in words quickly, so that thoughts are put into action immediately as needed. In my student years I was a bit tongue-tied, nervous about speaking in class, and to this day I read with sympathy of the struggles of Hegel and Bohr to formulate their thoughts in intelligible public sentences, because that’s sort of where I was at age 19 or so.

turnitin.com: the end of the line?

For the past 5 or 6 years we’ve been using turnitin.com at AUC to curtail what was once a severe plagiarism problem here. There was some grumbling from the established faculty at the time (having to learn a new if very simple website) but I thought it was a brilliant solution. It enabled me to make a major crackdown early on, and in recent semesters the students seemed to be so terrified by it that they didn’t even try anything funny.

But now the students are slowly learning tricks to beat it. Not all of them are good tricks, but they’re becoming more sophisticated suddenly.

One problem many of us have is a disagreement with the writing faculty about the purpose of the software. They see it as a way to teach students what plagiarism is (not enough of that in the Egyptian high schools; plagiarism is rampant in this country), whereas the rest of the faculty (including me) sees it as a way to nail lawbreakers and send them to the dungeon.

As a result, some of these students are figuring out ways to run their philosophy papers through some sort of writing class access and jimmy the highlighted sentences just enough so that either: (a) the computer won’t catch it, or (b) they’ll have plausible deniability if it does.

In short, I think these intro classes are going to need to have all in-class essays now, which is most unfortunate. They’re starting to beat the key detection tool.