I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
November 02, 2011 - 10:25 a.m.
I just fought off the chronoklepts and started writing this. It was a bloody battle. I pretty much lost to them all day yesterday. I've been doing that a lot.
I had a Jamaican dinner last night, Jerk chicken and a plantain. I bet I eat more jerk chicken and plantain than any of My Gentle Readers. They are both in my regular cooking rotation. I grew up not liking the chicken that wasn't grilled and only found out when I was older it was because my mother put paprika on it and I don't like paprika. I make chicken more than I make anything.
Remind me that I need to get a highlighter. I'm all out. Where did that come from? I finished reading Snuff, Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld book and I am now searching for passages I want to quote. That is not very easy especially when the chapters aren't named. They are both on religion. I found the second one.
No, the world of next worlds, afterlives, and purgatorial destinations simply did not fit into his head. Whether you wanted ot or not, you were born, you did the best you could, and then whether you really wanted to or not, you died. They were the only certainties ...
Now I'll search for the other. I can't find it and if I keep looking I won't have time to write. I'll try and find it later today. Maybe it will end up at the top of the page tomorrow.
Every time I read another book by Pratchett I fall in love again. He fits into the same niche as James Branch Cabell. I read them and get the feeling, "I'm not the only one; somebody else gets it." One of the things they get is the distinction between social convention and truth; the things that exist in our heads and objective reality. It's a rare gift, at least to be able to express it so well. Listen or read to anyone discussing politics and you'll see what I mean. Listen to Ron Paul discussing money and gold. Yes gold is real but Paul can't see that the value we put on it is not. Both Cabell and Pratchett demolish that notion; Pratchett wrote an entire book on it, Making Money. It should be required reading for anyone discussing monetary policy. No I'm not nuts. It's a fun weird fantasy story that explains what money really is. I fantasized about discussing the book with Paul Krugman. I have odd fantasies.
The theme of Snuff is bigotry. One of the things that Pratchett gets is that silliness can be used to discuss serious things. It's about what makes a person a person, even if she's a goblin. Legally Goblins were vermin. That's social convention. The reality was that they were people. It's about murder and slavery and greed and yet it's still funny. It helps that it's also about poo.
Looking back I'm amazed at how the Discworld Series evolved. In the beginning it was about the world. There were adventures but the world itself was the focus of interest. Eventually the readers knew Discworld and didn't need that any more. It could be taken as background and it became a vehicle for Pratchett to write about whatever he wanted to write. Snuff is a Sam Vimes story. Sam Vimes is a cop. Yes he's the chief of the Watch and a Duke but that's just social convention. He's a cop. He solves crimes and fights for justice. He's described as wearing armor but I always see him in a trench coat and hat like Philip Marlowe. He'd be perfectly happy in the middle of any film noir.
Through Tiffany Aching Pratchett used Discworld as a setting of coming of age books. He uses them to explore politics, religion, economics, and metaphysics. It's a fantasy with technology and discussions of information theory. Discworld is his and Pratchett learned he could use it any way he damn well pleased.
One of the things I didn't do yesterday was go to the library. Now I have nothing to read. I have to have something to read when I'm commuting to school. It's a necessity. I'll see what I have around the house. I still have the magazine from the Sunday Times so I can at least do the crossword. I have some books in the house that I want to read but I don't know what I did with them. That's sad when you have a one bedroom apartment.
Now it's late and I have to eat and get to school. I have to get there early enough to prepare a lesson on integration by parts for Calculus. I have to come up with good problems. I know how to teach it.
Something odd happened last class. A student asked me, "How come we didn't do integration by parts?" I haven't done any methods of integration yet. We aren't up to it yet. Why would he ask that? It wasn't like we skipped it. In fact I'm going to be skipping several chapters go get to it today. He might as well have asked about any of the topics we haven't gotten to yet. Why not ask about the method of partial fractions or trigonometric substitution? Was he trying to impress me by showing that he's heard of it?" I found it hard to not be totally dismissive when I answered him. It was simply a distraction from what we were learning and was totally pointless. I counted to three and simply said that we'd get to it. Sometimes the hardest part of teaching is keeping myself under control.
Now breakfast beckons.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
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creative commons
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Horvendile November 02, 2011
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