Wit & Whim

Do not ask me to believe in the rational human. No society took to the enlightenment with the same vigor as the Germans. Granted, the French butchered each other and regularly overthrew their republican governments in their illuminated fervor, but they do not compare to the Germans when it comes to how deeply the enlightenment took in the middle and professional classes. One might question what drove this exceedingly advanced attitude--and unusual stability--I do not know quite enough to say, but I intend to find out. This advanced society continued to flourish as the most progressive and cultivated society of the middle 19th and early 20th centuries. None equaled them in the field of academics, in the sciences or humanities. Yet all know that this great society went on to wage war against most of the world, and to kill off large segments of its own people, many of whom were the best and brightest of German progress. They held the single most evil belief which has ever infiltrate...

I enjoy receiving gifts and, even more so, giving them. But it is with a certain antipathy that I consider the feeding frenzy of the Christmas shopping season. Every night the mall is packed, and on the weekends it is hard for someone like me to move without nearly mowing someone over. But it is not their poor sense in cramming themselves like sardines into the stores that irks me. I am frustrated, rather, by their frustration. Many of them are buying their presents without any pleasure; they expect little gratefulness. Christmas gifts, instead of being recognized as an act of generosity and sacrifice on behalf of the giver for the sake of their love of the recipient, are seen as due by the receiver; these gifts are what they are owed, by right of merely existing. So much the worse for the giver, should their offering be found wanting, because scorn certainly waits in the wings to belittle their efforts. Parents, friends, grandparents are held to ransom by expectations, and not by ...

A little bit too much of an unfortunate happenstance. I spent my entire day yesterday, and the majority of my night, working on a paper, which was due this evening. I failed to make satisfactory progress yesterday, so I wound up calling off of work this morning, so that I might actually turn something in before the deadline which was not the literary equivalent of a heaping mound of organic waste product. I spent my morning, and a decent part of my afternoon, hammering out something which I would not blush to own, only to discover upon arriving at class, that the professor had pushed the deadline to the end of the school year, to give us time to get him something polished. Gratefulness and rage mingled momentarily, giving way to maniacal laughter. I found the email telling us that he was giving the extension in my spam folder. How it got there, I know not. He was not offering us any used cars, or massages we wouldn't forget, so I could not fathom what gmail was thinking; I be...