When I wrote about new podcaſts two months ago (!) somehow I missed the best of the bunch: Philosophize This!
Stephen West’s style is very similar to Mike Duncan’s, both in pacing and in humour. This is a good thing. If you’re not well versed in philosophy, and perhaps even if you are, you should listen.
That is all.
This has it all: cricket, internationalism, legacies of colonialism, Saqlain Mushtaq, bamboozled batsmen, obvious Indoeuropean roots, all wonderful.
I bought an Off Yer Bike Brompton handle recently.
When the Brompton is in folded position, it is indeed much easier to carry with the handle. This is especially so if you’ve replaced the original saddle with an aftermarket one. It’s such an improvement that it outweighs the two non-negligible negative points.
First, when the Brompton is extended, it is slightly more difficult to carry. This is definitely the case if you’ve got front-loaded luggage, such as a C Bag. It might not be the case if you’ve got no luggage as well as the stock saddle, but I can’t easily test this.
Second, the Off Yer Bike seriously interferes with the fold. If the rear wheel is properly inflated, it doesn’t swing forward as far as it should (a half cm of difference can really matter sometimes), which makes it difficult to push the seat tube down; if the tube isn’t all the way down, the fold isn’t secure and the bike will come apart when you lift it. This is a not inconsiderable design flaw.
The best workaround I’ve found so far is this:
Once you get the hang of this it isn’t much more difficult or slower than than folding an offyerbikeless Brompton.
It stands for I Don’t Understand Economics. A strangely chosen acronym. Don’t trust anyone who disagrees with this assessment: that it could stand for Internet Protocol Version 6 is crazy talk.
I listen to a lot of podcaſts: when commuting (when I bother to commute), when walking the dog, when doing chores. Here are several new ones, without institutional backing, that I like.
Revolutions started a few weeks ago and is, as they say, self-recommending.
At thirty-odd episodes in, Kevin Stroud’s the History of English has been going for longer, but is also a recent discovery.
I’m impressed with the thoroughness so far. The narrative of the history of English, as I remember it from high school, roughly runs “the Angles and Saxons and the Jutes (but we don’t really know who the Jutes were) came to England and Beowulf (we can’t read that) and then the French came (we certainly can’t read that) and everyone spoke French and then for reasons not clearly explained everyone started speaking English again and Chaucer (we can’t really read that either [except, of course, that you can -ed]) and Shakespeare (we can read this) and then America and now here we are, top of the world.”
First, how many ridiculous things can you spot here? Second, I should mention that I didn’t grow up in a community of great travelers, and I don’t remember the ‘everyone speaks English’ trope getting much play.
Stroud, in any event, does better. If his coverage is a bit easy-listening for this wannabe philologist, he certainly can’t be accused of skipping anything important. I’m almost fifteen eps in and he still hasn’t really tackled Old English head on: this is great.
Two others that I’ve listened to a bit, but not enough to form much of an opinion about are the History of Byzantium and the History of the Crusades, and one I learned about while polishing off this very post is the Egyptian History Podcaſt.
Finally, I hope you will join me in writing podcaſt with a ſ whenever possible.
This is how we like our heroes until we tear them down in disappointment. Finally, a savior! She won’t be flawed like those who came before her. She’ll be the One […], a steady hand on the tiller.
We’d do well if other public intellectuals, of all ideological stripes, were half as honest as he is, and one tenth as civilized.
We have the bad habit of giving Taquito bits and pieces of food from the table. But ever since we got Alfalfa I made a point of never sharing our food with her. If it falls on the floor due to a genuine accident it’s fair game, but we won’t reward begging.
So, at dinner the other night we were eating chicken. Taquito likes chicken, and Alma wanted to give her some. We do this by cutting it into small pieces and putting them next to Taquito. She’s usually on a chair when we do this, well within Alfalfa’s range.
Time to put the training Alfalfa’s received to the test. “Sit!” and she sat. “Stay!” …and she stayed! The cat could eat her chicken in peace. And I was proud of the dog.
(As a mostly irrelevant aside, we learned last night that the Taquito will eat pieces of tlacoyo de frijol. Weird cat.)
… you make virusade, of course.
This is a not-very-funny way to say that Alma is sick. We’re not sure what she has, yet. She’s been in for several tests which, due both to the fact that these tests do indeed take time and also due to negligence which would be lawsuit worthy in a litigious country with a functioning legal system, haven’t yet yielded conclusive results.
So much for the bad news.
In an attempt to keep Alma entertained, I’ve been reading to her. On her request, we started with Borges.
I think she chose “El inmortal,” which I’d read it two or three times before. Although short, it rewards rereading. Certainly in my case: since the first time I read it, six or seven years ago, I’ve become a wannabe classicist. Much detail that is lost on someone without a grounding in the classics contributes a lot to the story. I’d call my grounding very shaky still, to be sure, but it is better than it was; my appreciation of “El inmortal” has risen accordingly.
The next night, I read her several poems and short stories from El hacedor. We started with “Borges y yo,” Alma’s choice. What struck me about this piece—is it a story?—was how much better it is when read aloud. “El inmortal,” although fantastic in both senses of the word, is no better or worse when read aloud. Not so with “Borges y yo”; it is difficult to overstate just how much it—again, I ask: is it a story? an essay? a poem?—is improved by being read aloud. You should try it, whether at home alone, with a reading partner, or anywhere where talking to yourself is accepted.
(I would be interested to learn whether the translations are similarly improved. I also don’t know whether there’s a volume equivalent to El hacedor in other langauges.)
After “Borges y yo” we skipped around a bit. I hadn’t remembered (if I’d ever noticed in the first place) just how similar “Un diálogo sobre un diálogo” is to “Borges y yo.” But if both pieces are short (and they are, just over and just under a single page) the themes and questions underlying both are surely worth revisiting. Certainly a careful reading of one should be followed by a careful reading of the other.
What other authors have written on similar themes in fictional format and at length? I’d like to read them.
Last night we started “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote.” This is probably Borges’ funniest work. Unfortunately, Alma was too zonked to really appreciate it. We’ll pick up where we left off some other time when she’s more alert.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by slovenliness.
gmail’s “social” “features” make it rather unsuitable for business use. This is unfortunate.
(I’m assuming, here, that they can’t be disabled when you pay.)