“When we move from word to referent, we think we are leaping from crag to crag, across and abyss below. If we slip, we have had it. But this description is itself dependent upon a metaphor, as though meaning has to get increasingly smudgy every time we make a xerox copy of it. But suppose …
With Only One of Them Drooling
The other day I was—what is the past participle of tweet?—I was twooting about the election, and commented on two possibly inconsistent emotions that were jostling beneath my sternum. You see, I want Hillary to lose in a fireball one hundred yards across, and I want Trump to lose in a fireball fifty yards across. …
What to Read First
“Wodehouse was merciless to pretentiousness, and aspiring writers are the most pretentious fellows on the planet. So there’s that spiritual benefit” (Writers to Read, p. 50).
In the Pot Nine Days Old
Introduction: Let us talk for a moment about the way appeasement usually goes, and begin by citing Churchill in his trenchant response to Chamberlain. “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.” Appeasement Shows Up Everywhere: The emotional makeup of the appeaser is consistent, regardless of …
Review: Piers the Ploughman
Piers the Ploughman by William Langland My rating: 4 of 5 stars Fascinating glimpse of a very different mental world. I was particularly struck by this very medieval assumption that the Antichrist was going to form in the papacy. View all my reviews
Review: The Kingdom of Speech
The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe My rating: 4 of 5 stars A great entertaining read. Wolfe gets off some magnificent and irreverent lines, aimed at the neo-Darwinian hand-wavers. Moreover, he is largely invulnerable to any counter attack from them because the one place he does his own hand-waving is a place where none …
Captured Him Perfectly
Not a Quantitative Thing
“True, there is an occasional stray hell or damn, and this is unfortunate, because many modern Christians do all their worldview analysis through the simple process of counting them” (Writers to Read, p. 48).
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money
An old Warren Zevon song sums up the severity of our situation nicely—somebody needs to send Lawyers, Guns and Money. I hasten to add that I am of course speaking metaphorically. We have gotten to levels of brazenness that are hard to comprehend. Before a particular lie is exposed, we still have enough of the …
Ready to Wreck
I know that some of my readers come in and out, and I know that others are regulars, checking in on some kind of schedule. For those who drop in occasionally, depending on what publishing event draws them, it is possible for you to get wildly disparate ideas of what is going on here. I …