The pond was determined to run these quotes, no matter whether our Henry, hole in the bucket man extraordinaire, turned up for his usual Friday gig, or he went MIA.
It was by way of celebrating years of our Henry talking of classical matters on a Friday, and the pond found them in a recent New Yorker interview with Mary Beard ...
The interview can be found in full here, though with auto log-in the pond can't tell if it's paywall affected ...
On the matter of Greco-Roman culture ...
On the matter of canons ...
Poor Henry, if only he was a posh white man from the UK. And then there was the matter of the classics generally ....
Oh that wretched feminist. Fancy saying there's nothing more interesting about the Greeks and the Romans than the decadent Persians ... and as for mentioning Benito and Hitler in the context of noble democratic Roman emperors, well shame on her ...
Luckily, the pond's gamble paid off. As it so happens, our Henry did front up this day, though the pond has to acknowledge it was a below par performance ... and the quotes were largely wasted because our Henry went Abrahamic ...
There's the problem from the get go ... the hole in the bucket man justifying Benny the corrupt? Talk about stepping out of the ancient history comfort zone, and into the world of the sages ...
What an epic load of bullshit, and without a singe mention of testosterone to boot ... but wait, it gets worse, at least if you happen to be a secularist that thinks of religious sages of all stripes as a rough equivalent to apologists for imaginary friends of the Santa Claus kind ...
Yep, the hole in the bucket man really did jump the ancient canonical shark on this one and nuke the sage fridge to boot ... naturally best done from the comfort of a leather armchair, or at a pinch at a keyboard, safe in a study, so that there'll be no distraction from bullets idly thudding into the wall, or a bomb blast taking out the kitchen ...
The Christian concept of the crusade faded? Oh that means there must be some other explanation for the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan - only a fifth of the hundred years war - the war in Vietnam, and sundry interventions, coups, and interferences in other states ... yes, apparently it's only the Islamics that know how to bung on a do these days ...
While respecting the obligation to pursue evictions and routinely treat a dispossessed people as second class, worthy of an apartheid gulag? Why that sounds remarkably Christian to the pond. Isn't it wonderful what a helpful imaginary friend will do for all the tribes when it comes to justifying inhumanity, cruelty, warfare and slaughter ...
And so to the bonus, and here the pond surveyed the field, and deliberately ignored a few of the reptile offerings, though no doubt there will be complaints about wilful omissions ...
Dame Groan having a go at the Victorian government? Sorry, Groaners, the pond will pass on that one.
Dimitri having a go at maintaining the war on China? Sorry, that's a pass. When it comes to war mongering, the bromancer is the pond's preferred choice ... who else can set Jimbo Moran straight about tanks?
Jimbo Paterson of the IPA doing an impression of a war monger, while still looking like a grinning young pup who knew the best dodge, the best wheeze, was to avoid the services like the IPA plague?
Sorry, Jimbo lovers, the pond has already had the best of the best of the reptiles thanks to the hole in the bucket man ... and sssh, not a mention of war crimes in Afghanistan ... it might agitate our Henry and set off another epic round of philosophical brooding on St Augustine's notion of a just war ...
No, for its bonus, the pond turned to the top of the lizard Oz page ... (well at least it was top of the page early in the morning)
Here the pond should start with a generalisation, though hard won from experience.
In a previous life, the pond used to come into contact with people in the advertising game. It was the pond's perception that the game was full of fuckwits and deadshits.
The pond came to loathe advertising, and in later times, tried to avoid advertisements like the plague, let alone explore the rocket science punditry and insights that fuelled the deadshits in the game ... and yet, here we are ...
Naturally when speaking of brands, the safe thing to do is to slag off a commercial rival. It wouldn't do to pick on an in-house brand of the reptile kind ...
Think of the howls of laughter that might be produced by talking about "We are Australia's national news brand. In a world of sound bites and spin, we keep Australians fully and accurately informed about the issues that matter. For over half a century, we have been the nation's most trusted source of news, insight, analysis and opinion..."
Yadda yadda, and so on and so forth, though the pond supposes it's true when it comes to love of coal, climate science denialism, war mongering and delivering bullshit about the woke ... not to mention the recent outburst of love for Tony Bleagh bleating about the woke, as celebrated by Rowe ...
Now there's a fully woke sight, with an honourable mention of the emperor in exile, and Faux News ...
Sorry, where was the pond? Oh that's right, off with the fuckwits and the deadshit dunderheads ...
Yep. It all came rushing back to the pond, all those days with bullshit blatherers, ready to design any sort of campaign provided they could rake in the moola ...
Simple, and compelling, and with bonus coke, so there was no need to join the men in the bathroom sniffing a line ... before emerging to deliver another great life-enhancing pitch ...
Simple but compelling. That bullshit precision, that line about it being exactly 20,679 physicians who say today is the day you too can get a healthy dose of throat cancer - sheer genius, give that man a line of coke - or indeed whatever brand of cancer you might prefer, because it's all about healthy choice and healthy competition ... and if you don't like woke talk about cancer, why not inhale a reptile brand?
Sorry, where was the pond? Oh that's right, off in the land of the wankers, talking of customer journeys ...
What a tiresome loon. Couldn't he have kept it to fifteen seconds? The pond finds it hard to concentrate beyond a short burst when it comes to bullshit ... and it's even worse when the fuckwit imagines he's producing a funny advertisement. Not funny peculiar, but elbow-breaking funny ...
Creative director? Yep, as always in advertising, they come up with really funny job titles ... and even funnier lines, like the one "In reality, woke threatens to undermine the values of Western civilisation", which as we all know from previous reptile outings featured in the pond, isn't creative at all, but a tiresome, sorry rehashing of all the crap to be found in the lizard Oz ... because as we all know, there's nothing like Western civilisation for some splendid police bashings, some excellent poofter bashing, some great tranny bashing, and some fierce slut shaming ...
And so to a chance to fart in the general direction of Sean, even if it too involves a little repetition ...
You see the immortal Rowe, Twitter here, ran a cartoon .... and certain similarities were noted ...
After gulping down that generous dose of bullshit, as supplied by Sean, the pond felt in need of a good fart ... both period and present ...
A word of explanation from the Library of Congress ...
A stout, smiling John Bull directs a blast from his rear-end toward a poster of King George III tacked to a wall. The image of the king looks surprised. On the left, the head of William Pitt exclaims, "That is Treason Johnny".
Hopefully no explanation is required for the modern version ...
Mary Beard: "I don't think there's something more interesting about the Greeks and Romans than there is about the Persians.' Oh yes there is: Euclid's 'Elements' and Roman concrete - the Persians never had anything like that. Though indeed they were the leading mathematicians of Islam, once Persia had been conquered and absorbed. Omar Khayam was, of course, Persian.
ReplyDeleteAnd also: "...the classics have been deeply debated, and because they've been deeply debated, they've been very important to the European and then the transatlantic west." Oh yes, indeed so - such that the wonderful Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation has turned them into a selective - and minutely selective at that - degree course in Great Books where one can get a university degree for reading a very few of them - and for not having the time nor the perspicacity to debate any of them.
Can you imagine a Ramsay student actually trying to 'debate' Euclid's parallel (5th) postulate and to know why it was a postulate and not an axiom and that this great understanding was justified by the geometries of Lobachevsky and Riemann. Not a snowflake in hell.
Oh here we go again, Holely Henry being just chocked with holes: "Having braved the Exodus, the Israelites were no longer slaves, they could, at last, enjoy the wheat that was the fruit of their labour." Yep, sure, Holely, sure:
ReplyDelete"The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of the Israelites, who appear instead to have formed as an entity in the central highlands of Canaan in the late second millennium BCE from the indigenous Canaanite culture. Most modern scholars believe that the story of the Exodus has some historical basis, but contains little material that is provable."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus
"Little material that is provable" - just grow up and dump the fairy stories, Henry. The Israelites were never slaves of Egypt, though some of them were indeed Babylonian indentured labour. And besides, the Israelites and the Palestinians, both being essentially of Canaan origin, are genetically inseparable.
Henry: "And it is the duty of the West, whose own survival is threatened by everything Hamas and Hezbollah stand for, to give it the support it so clearly needs and can legitimately expect."
ReplyDeleteWhat, again ? Let's just look back into a little bit of history, something that Henry has obviously wasted little or no time on learning:
The British Mandate
In 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, the overall population in Palestine was about 800,000. Among those, close to 80,000 were Jewish. When the war ended in December 1918 there was a total population of only 640,000, from whom only about 66,000 were Jewish. Jewish losses were due to the war, famine, emigration and the fact that the Turks expelled many Jews.
Nevertheless, one encouraging sign for the Jews came out of the war: the Balfour Declaration. Along with the key line declaring British support of a Jewish national home in Palestine was a provision saying that it had to be consistent with the rights and privileges of the non-Jewish population. In effect, the Jews read the first part whereas the Arabs read the second part.
https://www.jewishhistory.org/the-british-mandate/
Got it now, Henry ? A pox on both other than that the Balfour Declaration in effect dispossessed the Palestinians in order to palliate European consciences after accepting some responsibility for the holocaust. And then go read up about the Stern Gang and tell us all about ethical Jewish wars.
Oh dear, reading Sean Masters it suddenly dawned that a 'woke' campaign describes the Catholic Church of not so very long ago. All those items of catholic faith that had to be believed and rigorously acted upon, and the fabulous 'cancel culture' that was employed if you "sinned":
ReplyDelete"In the Old Testament the Mosaic Law specifies no less than thirty-six capital offenses calling for execution by stoning, burning, decapitation, or strangulation. Included in the list are idolatry, magic, blasphemy, violation of the sabbath, murder, adultery, bestiality, pederasty, and incest."
https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/social-justice/catholicism-amp-capital-punishment.html
Oh wau, a whole "woke religion" with billions of believing followers.
[Sorry folks, but I just had my first astra-zeneca jab yesterday with zero side effects so far so I'm feeling just a bit frisky. I'll stop now.]
DP - while I have been interested in how GrueBleen has tried to grapple with the Henry, I agree with you that wheeling up Mary Beard was sufficient response to the Henry’s most recent meanderings, like a dilettante silverfish, among the leaves of deservedly obscure books.
ReplyDeleteI have certainly enjoyed Prof. Beard’s writings much more than most of any recent output from the Henry, although he could write well those years back, when the audience was more likely working economists.
But, if I may, a small reference to the Dame Groan. Yes, apparently it was wise to pass over almost all of her contribution of this day, if only because of her choice of a rhetorical ‘holy moly’, in preference to the worn-out ‘give me a break.’
My Source alerted me to the particular sentence. Having groaned about the dreadful condition of Victoria, the Dame said ‘That (the Victorian economy) had bounced back strongly is basically the result of the depth of the recession induced by government bungling.’
The Source and I have been discussing the almost total lack of plausible explanations for why the Australian economy is registering so well with conventional numeric indicators. Then - up pops a real discovery, and by the Dame. In a few years, will there be a Sloan’s Law, much like the one attributed to Jean-Baptiste Say, perhaps rephrased to ‘The greater the government bungling, the stronger the economic bounce back.’?
Alas - the Dame chooses not to discuss this concept further - at least, not this day.
We did wonder from whence this might have been derived. Is it a more economic take on ‘What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.’ ? That would be consistent with some of ‘Killer’ Creighton’s reasoning on attempts by some governments to protect the population from Covid, and would also be consistent with the times when a certain Treasury Secretary was known to advocate a ‘short, sharp, shock’ to whip the populace into economic line.
Or it could mean that the Dame has been sorting her books, has come across Mancur Olson’s ‘The Rise and Decline of Nations’, had a quick scan, noted that it came out 40 years ago, so - worth a reminder.
Or perhaps the Dame, counting the years, has realised that, within the trade, she is not likely to be remembered for anything.
Whatever the inspiration - I am sure the Source will keep watch.
Can't disagree about the relative merits of Prof Beard vs The Henry, Chad, but just conducting my apparently lone campaign to have Euclid's 'Elements' recognised as one of the single most important books ever written. Without the mathematical developments that flowed from it - with some significant help from the Persians, eg Algebra and algorithms and some geometry - then we wouldn't have anything like the science that we have.
DeleteThere's not a single book about philosophy written anywhere, anytime by anyone that is even remotely so important.
But as for the Groany, well, who would remember her for what, exactly ?
Just one last one for the Angus beef:
ReplyDelete"Fart lighting also known as pyroflatulence flatus ignition or fire breathing dragon is the practice of igniting the gases produced by human flatulence often producing a flame of a blue hue hence the act being known colloquially as a "blue angel", "blue dart" or in Australia, a "blue flame""
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fart_lighting
It's all due to the methane and hydrogen sulphide, you see.
GB - sorry you feel that your promotion of Euclid seems a lonely occupation. I had tried to comment yesterday, but the site was having one of its coy days. You are not alone.
ReplyDeleteI still think it remarkable that the Disney corporation produced 'Donald Duck in Machmagic Land', back in the 50s. OK - more Pythagoras than Euclid, but a noble attempt. And - they did no more - presumably it had tepid reception at the time.
Very glad you are there too, Chad. Mathematics is very much an acquired taste, and acquired by so very few. As I just may have said at least once previously: "For those who will go on to a career in mathematics, the school teaching is too little, too late. For everyone else, it's too much, too soon."
DeleteAnd I forgot to credit the Persians with their greatest contribution to mathematics - apart from some very good original work - which was finding and resuscitating so much of the mostly Greek work that had been done and all but lost in the passage of time by unappreciative audiences. Who knows how long it might have taken to recreate all that work, or whether it could be.