Christian Warner

“The period is come, when no engagement, remaining on the part of the public, private interest, and animal pleasure, become the sovereign objects of care. When men, being relieved from the pressure of great occasions, bestow their attention on trifles; and having carried what they are pleased to call sensibilityand delicacy, on the subject of ease or molestation, as far as real weakness or folly can go, have recourse to affectation, in order to enhance the pretended demands, and accumulate the anxieties, of a sickly fancy, and enfeebled mind. In this condition, mankind generally flatter their own imbecility under the name of politeness. They are persuaded, that the celebrated ardour, generosity, and fortitude of former ages bordered on frenzy, or were the mere effects of necessity, on men who had not the means of enjoying their ease, or their pleasure. They congratulate themselves on having escaped the storm which required the exercise of such arduous virtues; and with that vanity which accompanies the human race in their meanest condition, they boast of a scene of affectation, of languor, or of folly, as the standard of human felicity, and as furnishing the properest exercise of a rational nature.” Adam Ferguson

“The Englishman wants a good dinner, a prostitute, and comfort. Because he does not get around much, and is limited to that, once his fortune falls apart and he can no longer have that, he kills himself or turns to thievery.”—Montesquieu

Harvard, apparently, is about to adopt a new policy to combat grade inflation. I devised my own anti–grade inflation policy 25 years ago. I’ve shared it with provosts and deans, to no avail. Here it is: The Muñoz Plan Against Grade Inflation The plan has three key components:

Tom Holland as Telemachus makes me cringe. The Marvelification of the Odyssey

If you're having a bad day, here's the exact moment that Charlie Brown adopted Snoopy 75 years ago.

@KingBolingbroke Adding to this: both C.S. Lewis (abolition of man) and Nietzsche (use and abuse of history) both suggest that focusing on the “critical” is harmful to life. Bloom also says in Closing that education should be ideal before it becomes critical. Tl;dr: you right

Pretty cool note I got from a tech CEO/founder who watched NCAAs about hiring wrestlers: “I'll say this: without question my favorite hiring profile is a D3 All-American wrestler. You competed in the darkness. No lights, no crowd, sometimes literally no one watching. You showed up anyway and you figured it out. Give me 10 of those guys and they're worth 50 fancy Ivy League degrees. Every time. The mat doesn't lie.” Thoughts?

« L’enfer des femmes, c’est la vieillesse. » La Rochefoucauld

« On ne se blâme que pour être loué.» La Rochefoucauld

Spending sometime with Montaigne this weekend

@DobskiBJ They love the story

@Warner1776 They love the story or the character?

Finished classes on Harrison Bergeron. We read it together in class. The students love Harrison Bergeron.

The Japanese dwarf flying squirrel is a tiny and irresistibly charming animal native to the forests of Honshu and Kyushu in Japan

Teaching Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" today

1. The major quarrel between those of us who have learned from Strauss & the other scholars depends on the very possibility of deadly quarrels, which is still very important, even if academia is parody. (Although some have learned to fear rabid woke types, they never reason beyond their own experience because they are ashamed of their own weakness...) 2. We believe that knowing your context means also fearing what might be done to you or by you. Wise men have much to hide, they stand against their times, or they would not be able to stand for other times also--for example, for us to read today. So when we go about trying to understand the context of any writing claimant to wisdom, we want to know whether the writer took some extraordinary precautions in the preparation of his false double, i.e. in pretending that his book is himself. If you want to dance with Plato, it would be the epitome to stupidity to manhandle his puppets, it's like marrying a portrait. 3. Ordinary scholars, on the other hand, are innocent Progressives--the kind of people who would do anything to you, by you--who believe it just so happened that we ended up in possession of very old writings & who at the same time believe they themselves to be by right in possession of those writings, on the argument that they have done absolutely nothing to deserve that right, so far as the writers themselves are concerned. Scholarship in re Plato is premised on the unshakable belief that there is no such thing as Plato. Same with Shakespeare, whence the notion that somebody else wrote those plays & poems, which aren't that impressive anyway... So such scholars, knowing they have control of scholarship--jobs, publications--don't allow an upstart like Strauss to mock them for being such bad possessors. Why? Because they are afraid they would lose their students! & yes, they would.

110-year-old Turkish grandma shares her secret to a long life: "i never once used Microsoft Teams"

Cat meets ferret

Wow … the bottom part says it all

Los villanos siempre tienen doctorado. Dr. Doom, el Dr. Octopus, el Dr. Doofenshmirtz, Hannibal Lecter o el Dr. No. Incluso el Dr. Frankenstein o el Dr. Evil. En cambio, los buenos suelen quedarse en la maestría, como el maestro Yoda, el Maestro Roshi, el Maestro Splinter, el Maestro Miyagi, Shifu o el mismísimo Luke Skywalker. Los estudios de posgrado corrompen el alma.

Tom Wolfe agreed: Wealth democratizes self-obsession & can bring down entire societies. Another way to put it is that national character is more solid & more reliable than your self. nymag.com/article/tom-wo…