So if these guys are so eager to convince us that they’re nonpartisan and equally friendly with right and left, why do they use the language of the Communist Manifesto? Is it irony or code? Anyone know what their deal is?
And While You’re At It, Tithe All Your Income Away
In Green Lantern Corps #35, a member of the GL Corps receives the order to “decimate each and every Zamaron.”
Now this is a Zamaron:
So this, presumably, is a Zamaron decimated:
Here’s hoping the economy improves so that DC can afford to invest in dictionaries for its writers. But the odds are nine to one against it.
No Doubt the Danes Also Sought Significant Quantities of Uranium from Africa
While surfing for something else, I came across a reference to a battle I’d never heard of. Did you know that the English Navy bombarded Copenhagen just over two centuries ago for, as far as I can tell, no bloody reason whatsoever? Details here.
Thomas Erskine’s quoted line “if hell did not exist before, Providence would create it now to punish ministers for that damnable measure” pretty much sums it up. (Erskine seems to have been a good guy in other respects as well.)
Kulcherel Littorasy, Part 11 (in binary)
Jason Jewell has supplemented his previous list of “100 titles from various narrative genres” with a new list of 50 “non-narrative works.” He invites me to “take some more potshots”; I can hardly refuse such an invitation!
My principal potshot: why does he call this a list of non-narrative works? It includes Plato’s narrative of Socrates’ last days, as well as historical narratives by Herodotus, Thucydides, Julius Caesar, Edward Gibbon, Shelby Foote, and others. (You might think maybe he means non-fiction works, but the original list was filled with biographies and autobiographies, so that wouldn’t make the relevant contrast either.)
A few more gripes (apart from my standing gripe about the shortchanging of non-DWEM works):
- Jason describes Hegel’s Philosophy of Right as “history proceeding through dialectic” – but although Hegel has plenty to say about history in other works, there’s in fact relatively little about history in Philosophy of Right. (It’s also a bit of an oversimplification to call Marxism “a materialistic version of Hegel’s philosophy”; the disagreements between Marx and Hegel stretch farther than just materialism versus idealism. For example, Hegel was a defender of private property and the state; Marx, not so much.)
- I don’t think Horace “invented the genre of satire”; in what genre was, e.g., Aristophanes working?
- Jason contrasts the “Aristotelian geocentric model” with the “Platonic heliocentric model.” Both Plato and Aristotle were geocentrists.
- I find it hard to believe that Castiglione’s The Courtier (which advises rulers to “reduce to bondage those who are by nature such as to deserve being made slaves”) has “defined what it is to be a ‘lady’ or a ‘gentleman’ for the last 500 years.”
As with the previous lists, though, all the books on it are worth reading. Go read them now. Yes, right now.
A Match Made in Hell
Libertarians who recognise the oppressive effects of statism everywhere – but insist that we are currently living in a society in which women have achieved effective legal and social equality, and indeed a certain degree of legally-mandated superiority.
Feminists who recognise the oppressive effects of patriarchy everywhere – but insist that we are currently living in a free market in which government intervention has been scaled back to nearly nothing.
Seduction of the Innocent
There’s an episode of the Teen Titans animated series when the Titans are trying to protect Starfire from some aliens who are attacking her (though they’re actually after Starfire’s sister – long story). At one point the aliens pull out some badges and say “You’re under arrest!” And the Titans’ immediate reaction is “oh no! – that means the aliens are the good guys!” (As indeed they turn out to be.)
Thus the show teaches two rather dubious lessons: a) cops are always good guys [even extraterrestrial cops about whose society of origin we know nothing]; and b) those who represent themselves as cops are always cops. Talk about tv shows having a bad influence on children!
I can’t recall the Timmverse DC cartoons (of which Titans wasn’t part) ever promoting attitudes quite that screwed-up.