I'm on!!

This is my 1st time on here!!

For Macrina

Because she thinks
that the arrangement
of words on a page
makes a poem


I suppose it ought to include some exclamation points. And fragments! Oh, fragments!
(To read more about Macrina, click here.)

Pre-order yours today!

My book, available at Amazon, with the correct title and (at last!) a picture of the cover; Target has also updated, but BiggerBooks still has Fritz as the coauthor.
Note the low, low price! Get copies for everyone in your family!
(Can you tell I'm excited!)
For those of you who might not remember the New Bohemians, "Philosophy is the talk on a cereal box" (and "religion" is similarly defined as "the smile on a dog").

Undignified.

"Where's the Muskrat?" Moominmamma suddenly asked in a horrified voice.

"He wouldn't come," answered Moominpappa. "He said it was unnecessary and undignified for a philosopher to rush about like this. I had to leave him, but I let him keep the hammock."

"Oh, well," sighed Moominmamma. "It's difficult to understand philosophers."

-from Comet in Moominland, by Tove Jansson, trans Elizabeth Portch.

Undiginified indeed.... I never let anything like that stop me.

It is finished.

WWHD?

"What Would Homer Do?" might be a good question for me to ask once in a while...
Homer thinks a lot of things seem like a good idea at the time.

"Nevertheless!"

The greatest weight-
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your live will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence--even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!' Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change, you as you are or perhaps crush you.

~Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science 341
trans. Walter Kaufmann

This is not my favorite translation, and I have a very long commentary about this passage and its relation to the eternal recurrence, but it's perhaps the best place to start. The "greatest weight" is the thought of the eternal recurrence, and it seems to suggest something along the lines of determinism combined with a circular notion of time. (I think both are slightly mistaken. The important part--in a much-too-small nutshell--is the affirmation of the whole cosmos, despite all the things we might like to change.)

[Speaking of things we might like to change, this post's readability was labelled "elementary school." I concur with B'Yo!'s assessment: I don't understand their heuristic.]

Elementary School?

After taking the "blog readability test," I've decided to post the opening paragraph of the second chapter of my forthcoming book to see if that raises the readability at all.
If not, you'll be seeing more.

Nietzsche proudly proclaims himself teacher of the eternal recurrence, yet the few references to the doctrine of eternal recurrence in his writings have resulted in decades-long debates on the proper understanding of this obscure idea. If the eternal recurrence is a coherent idea, it has serious implications for his positive ethical theory. A variety of tacks have been taken on this issue, but they tend to coalesce around two poles: either the eternal recurrence is a statement of determinism, or it serves as a test akin to Kant’s Categorical Imperative. If we follow the former interpretation, all of our actions (as well as our attitude towards those actions) would be unalterable, making the question of responsibility moot and effectively eliminating anything that could pass for “ethics.” The latter interpretation recognizes the inevitability of all actions implied by the apparently circularity of time, but nevertheless suggests we have the ability to alter our attitudes towards our lives and the universe as a whole. In either case, the significance of the eternal recurrence is central to the understanding of Nietzsche's ethical views; however, both tacks fail to recognize that, throughout his writings, Nietzsche attempts to dispense with the traditional free will/determinism dichotomy altogether. Using the traditional framework to interpret the eternal recurrence is thus mistaken.

Wiped out

I'm tired and have miles to go before I sleep, but it occurred to me that I haven't posted any cartoons in over two weeks.
Given the latest brouhaha over here in Wonderland, this seems appropriate.

Mai on Parade

It's Saturday night, and although I got to talk to my friend Steve, I haven't been as productive as I would have liked tonight.
So I'm sleepy and a bit cranky. And to top it off, I don't really have much to say.
So I thought I would post a bunch of cartoons featuring Mai. I'm always surprised by her evolution, even over the past few months.
Enjoy!

Doug, get back to work!

This is a public service announcement.
You should probably get back to work, too!

Common Meal at ESR

Today's topics at Common Meal were the conversion of narrative evaluations to letter grades, and the consideration of the effectiveness of having different emphases within the MDiv program. These cartoons reflect those conversations.

I'm sure that none of our illustrious professors would actually use a dartboard to determine a grade (although it's already been confirmed by the Associate Dean that the process isn't a whole lot better than this).
I say, if the narrative evaluations want to stay heathens and burn in hell forever, they should have that right. I'm not much on conversion.

The second cartoon reflects the call for an emphasis on "Humanism and..." well, quite frankly I stopped listening. I think it was, "Humanism and comparative religions," or something like that. I was reminded of a typo I had made earlier in the week, which is reflected in the cartoon. The Dean's response was to note that the discussion was turning into more of a Christmas wish list; hence the other suggestion for a new emphasis.
And Earlham has stables, so the infrastructure cost wouldn't be as much as you might think.

I like to draw cartoons...

and I guess it's okay if the government wants to read them.

Fastest Post Ever!

Usually I draw cartoons in my notebook, take them home and let them ripen for a few weeks, then eventually (sometimes months later) transfer them into a different book, bring them back to school and scan them, at which point they cue up to be posted.
In honor of Matt's flu, however, I'm posting a cartoon from today's class, which concluded just over an hour ago.

Inveterate (adj.)

I've taken drawing cartoons in class to a new level: it's one thing to draw them as a student, quite another to draw them as the teacher.

(thanks to William for the photo!)

More Cartoons

I don't have much to say today (well, that's not really true--I always have something to say, but today I don't have the time to write a bunch, at least not on my blog), so here are some cartoons. The first and second are loosely related: the character "Nobody" was inspired by the Odysseus' encounter with the Cyclops.




I've been told that Monkey McMiro has a character of the same name, but I haven't seen him yet.

Just cartoons

I haven't updated in a while, and today isn't the day for deep thought... so here are some cartoons.
Have a good weekend!

Plato sucks.

I've come to that time in the semester where even the students should be able to recognize my impatience with Plato. Not necessarily with Socrates mind you, and I spend way too much time in class explaining exactly what that means, particularly when we're not reading the Republic. I'm so tired of Plato that now I'm eager to get to Kant; that will give some of you an indication of exactly how tired I am.

The rest of you will just have to take my word for it: Kant is boring. I found this quote online about Kant, the notoriously dull and predictable citizen of Königsberg:


"Legend has it that he interrupted his routine only twice: once when he was so excited by reading Rousseau’s Emile that he could not bring himself to leave his house, and once when he paused during his walk, during a summer’s day in 1789, to read a newspaper billboard which announced that there had been a revolution in France."


Imagine that: the hausfraus of Königsberg couldn't set their clocks because of a revolution on the other side of the continent. Oy!

In case you haven't heard...

The manuscript is in London. Further updates to follow as I hear anything.

I still haven't really caught up on my sleep, though: now I need to catch up on everything I let go over the past few weeks. Or, in the case of the office floor, months.
(If this were a cartoon, Mai would be asking, "What office floor?")

"Do I look like I would listen to ZZ Top?"

I like the No Budget Puppets. You should check them out.



That's all for now, unless you want to hear my extended analogy about Nietzsche's Genealogy and a piano.





Or about BPD!

Nietzsche Quote

"The path to one's own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one's own hell."
The Gay Science § 338

So Sleepy...

Just a cartoon this evening.
And now, time for bed, before somebody shoots me with a double-barrelled Bible.

Just for Fun-

Some people have gotten lost while looking for the temple; just so there is no question, the path to the left of the church is both the shortest route to Parkway, and is next to the temple.
(I don't usually mind people coming by, but NO ONE does it by accident.)

On a completely different note: I received a joyous welcome to campus today, much as Bush anticipated for the troops entering Baghdad. A very nice way to begin the semester--much nicer than IEDs!

"Where Would Jesus Park?"

It has been remarked that, unlike most college campuses, parking is not usually a problem around here. However, there have been complaints from people living across from the seminary about people parking in "their" spots on the street. They haven't talked to me personally about it (as Matthew 18:15-17 directs people to do), so I'm not sure what specific issues there may be. However, this being a seminary, the initial question is not as hypothetical as they may have intended; Jesus didn't just tell us to play nice, after all.

So: where would Jesus park? Or rather, where wouldn't he park? He seems to have accepted all invitations, particularly the ones that should have been at best awkward. He would have parked in front of the prostitute's house. He would have probably parked in front of the house of the Islamic militants' house as well, as long as he was invited.

What troubles me about the asking of the question, "where would Jesus park," is the implication that we--the recipients of the email--should be more considerate of... whom? It's not clear who we would benefit, other than the people who live across the street. Jesus' response is clear with regard to people who aren't welcoming:

"But whenever you park on the street and they do not welcome you, pull away from the curb and say, ¹¹‘Even the dust of your parking place that clings to our tires, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ ¹²I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for the people living across from the seminary." (Matt 10:10-12)

But then, people have commented that my translation of the Bible takes undue liberties with the Greek.

Dreams

Sometimes I can tell that my dreams aren't real; for instance, if I'm talking to Gene.
Particularly since I was telling him about a heated inkwell--with a miniature elephant that walked around the leather desktop the inkwell was sitting on--that my friend Steve had recently purchased.

Have I mentioned that I'm less productive when I'm working on a computer with an internet connection?

Poetry Corner: Longfellow!

There was a little girl, who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good, she was very good indeed,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


It occurs to me that the curl in the middle of Mai's forehead isn't usually visible, but there's no denying that she has very curly hair!



The book is going slowly right now: the words are tumbling around as if in a bingo-cage, waiting to drop out on the page one at a time. Sometimes they all come at once, and other times nothing comes out at all.

Humid evening

I was trying to work at home this evening, but it's just too humid (and the fans are blowing my papers around).
The flip side is, of course, that I almost never get any work done in the computer lab.

I'm frustrated by people's inability to distinguish between fatalism and determinism (which is a separate rant from faulty defenses of "free will").

Hm. If that's what I'm thinking about blogging about, I guess it's time to get back to work.

Rodent Cartoons

Here are some cartoons, with a rodent theme, for some reason. Most of my cartoons don't have rodents in them.

Friday evening

I'm restless this evening, when I should be crouching down on my living room floor, looking at bits of my manuscript.

Maybe tomorrow.