Wit & Whim

This is the third straight meeting where at least half of my com group has skipped. It is no surprise that it is the same people who are skipping over and over. The anger stems mostly from the fact that they guarantee their presence when I speak with them after class, only to ignore all attempts to get a hold of them outside class (text, email, etc). I wrote the previous blog post while talking to the one member of the group who has deemed our meetings worth attending, and she is but a high-school student with limited time to devote to college pursuits. I do not know what to do. I could have the presentation done in two days if it was left in my hands, but no; it has to be cooperative. Since we need to do it in some form other than just having each member give their spiel, it is impossible for me to write it for the whole group. The others wanted to do it as a skit. Do they realize that the preparation for a twenty-five to thirty minute skit takes time? If that little Aryan mentions dr...

Re-reading some of his works through much more mature eyes, I am of the opinion that Machiavelli gets a very bum rap. Machiavellian is a term for that which is self-serving in a particularly evil way and I don't think it fits. Something more concerned with result than substance. This comes partially from the fact that his work The Prince was used by the protestant French as an evidence of the evils of Catholicism. The Prince, when seen in the absence of his other work, would certainly not speak well of Machiavelli. It is a work commissioned by the Borgias and deals with how to gain and keep power. He has, however, a theme that repeats throughout this and his art of war is the idea--in order for Italy to maintain itself as a power in the world--that the princes need to allow the populace armaments and to have a unity amongst the Italian states. What is that supposed to mean? Taken with his voluntary and un-commissioned discourses, we realize that his goal is an Italian democratic re...

Tonight is the Easter Vigil. Tomorrow we will process in to the strong strain of Jesus Christ is Risen Today. Both of these services will be well attended and absolutely gorgeous. I, however, will feel a little sorry for many of those who attend these services because this is just the rejoicing that follows the climax. Yesterday, Holy Friday--the best Friday--saw our victory. The end of the Holy Thursday leaves the church dark, mournful, and eerily silent. The altar is bare and the crucifix is gone. Our lord is departed from our sight and only he knows what the morning brings. The sight of the dark and empty chancel is a reminder like unto the removal of the Glorias, only to a much greater degree. Something is missing and it is unsettling. The Service of Catechumens begins with pleading and lamentations. The hymns to this point are dirges, terribly beautiful and poetic dirges, but dirges none the less. Our Lord is dead and it is our own hands which have done this. The Service of Holy C...

Last night was a pleasant little affair. I sat for four hours listening to Rogers and Hammerstein--which I am hardly nuts about--in tones so flat that I could almost swear that the bulldog painted on the wall behind me started baying. Out came Jonathan; a dazzling bright spot complete with rich and room filling voice. Jonathan and his charming Lisle, however, quickly faded away to allow more time for the weak male lead and the painfully gay and tonedeaf max; poor max, who had no sense of comedic timing. I still keep going back to the one energetic and acceptably well acted scene of the whole performance; that made the whole thing worth it. Casanova the Hun did a masterful job. (Nine or ten hours elapse) I had a fantastic morning, which included me discovering a baby that really likes me, a beautiful service complete with insightful sermon that confirms that Holiness can read my mind (will have to concentrate on throwing up walls), and lunch with excellent company. The plans for that af...

So. I was at the library today, helping some good comrades with their prep for our upcoming Bartky exam. While doing this, a rather loud pair sat right behind me. I used my incredible hearing (which functions even better when you are speaking in full voice five feet from my ear) and ability to split focus, and I listened shamelessly to a conversation between the chick with a cool accent and the guy that appeared to be the epitome of stupid in Abercrombie. The word that caught my ear was Pushkin. Not something college students are likely to talk about. For the few the few brief minutes that I listened it was rather painful. She turned out to be a Russian. She was asking him questions and trying to find if he knew anything about Russian culture or history. He, working his very hardest to shame the American peoples, admitted to never having heard of, Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the ...

In my com class there have been a couple things I have disagreed...make that many, but none rubbed me quite like these two. The claim that slippery slope and bandwagon appeal are not valid reasoning tools is ridiculous. Sure, no argument can stand on these alone, but to say that they are not a valid part of one's repertoire is absurd. The slippery slope is the single most prominent pattern in history. The order in which governments come and go in Socrates and Aristotle is just a progression of slippery slopes, one after the other. Every time it is a case of one event setting off a whole slide of them. The slippery slope has a huge place in the Socratic method and is used throughout the republic. Patterns are powerful predictive tools, so why would you rule out the most regular pattern in history as a legitimate tool? And what is bandwagon appeal if it is not social acceptability? Since when does the approval of society count for nothing in the actions and beliefs of the individual?...

"You don't remember the best times of your life because the best times of your life happen while you are drunk." Those are the last words a young man said to me. He did not die--no, worse--he was arrested for rape two days after he said that to me. He destroyed another life and made an animal of himself. Apparently, from those who had seen him earlier that night, he was--hold your breath--drunk. I am working through research on alcohol consumption amongst minors and the disasters it breeds. The little academics and I have some slight differences in opinion on the way it needs to be handled. They all realize that there will always be underage drinking; this is no surprise. The vast majority, however, still think that protection is the way to go and that the best thing parents can do to stop their children from drinking themselves to death is give them sex talk: special alcohol addition. These jejune philosophers think that a small contingent of words, and an even smaller c...