Isn’t it irritating when your ancestral manuscript collection gets in the way of your ping-pong tournament? That was Colonel Butler-Bowden’s predicament in the early 1930s. He was so peeved by the heap of rubbishy papers cluttering up his games cupboard that he declared his intention to burn the lot. Luckily, his ping-pong companion that day happened to be a curator at the V&A, so the colonel was dissuaded from book- burning and his manuscripts were shipped instead to the museum’s London archives.Among the collection was the unique edition of the Book of Margery Kempe, often described as the first autobiography in English, a sensational account of a woman’s mystical visions, travels and tribulations. For centuries, while her book hibernated in the Butler-Bowden estate, Kempe was completely unknown.
It would have been a great tragedy if that book had been burned. One wonders how many works of great interest have been, over the years, for idle reasons or impassioned ones like Henry VIII's desire to weaken the Catholic Church by destroying its libraries.
Exit question: Would a federal assault weapons ban even be constitutional in light of the recent SCOTUS decision in Gruen? AR-15s are very much “in common use,” a key factor in the Court’s reasoning, and nearly all of them are used for “lawful purposes.” (Much more so than handguns are.) So how could Congress lawfully ban them presuming they had the votes to do so?
The Cicilline bill – which currently has 211 Democratic co-sponsors and no Republicans – would make it illegal for anyone to “import, sell, manufacture, or transfer” semi-automatic rifles that have certain “military features.” These features include a “detachable magazine” or “a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.” Semi-automatic pistols and shotguns with similar features would also be covered.
Once they have left their mythical past behind, and scored successes against neighboring peoples, they become aware of their own power, knowledge, and uniqueness.
And self-analysis requires a distancing of the self from itself, in order to view the object of study in its entirety.
As an act- and one whose very being is an act- it must be undistinguishably identical with its act: but Being and the Intellectual object are also identical with that act; therefore the Intellectual-Principle, its exercise of intellection and the object of intellection all are identical. Given its intellection identical with intellectual object and the object identical with the Principle itself, it cannot but have self-knowledge: its intellection operates by the intellectual act which is itself upon the intellectual object which similarly is itself. It possesses self-knowing, thus, on every count; the act is itself; and the object seen in that act- self, is itself.6. Thus we have shown that there exists that which in the strictest sense possesses self-knowing.
Herodotus, for his part, is happy to travel but thinks the Greek world best, especially Athens, which he seems to prefer (Histories 5.78) to his native Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, which is under tyrannical Persian sway. Thucydides has Pericles utter some of the most patriotically beautiful words imaginable on the greatness of Athens and the indomitable Athenian spirit (History of the Peloponnesian War 2.35–46). Aristotle considers it quite clear, in many different passages of his works, that his Greek compatriots are culturally superior to other peoples. So these men, and others, are able to analyze and even question their own traditions without thereby slipping into oikophobia.
The crushing naval victory at Salamis, won by poor and simple oarsmen rather than by comparatively wealthy, landed hoplites, leads the poor to demand more rights. This is why the conservative Plato views that battle in a negative light (Laws 707a–c), even though it was a Greek victory. He feels that it caused a more assertive citizenry of individuals who believe more in themselves than in the community, and he is echoed by Aristotle at Politics 1274a and 1304a.
Increasingly, the rich and the poor, the democrats and the oligarchists, come to hate each other more than either group hates the Persians. Since the common civilizational enemy has been successfully repulsed, it can no longer serve as an effective target for (and outlet of) the people’s wrath. Human psychology generally requires an adversary for the purpose of self-identification, and so a new adversary is crafted: other Greeks, and other Athenians.
[D]ependence makes people resentful and miserly, and the more they receive from the state, the less they will respect it. This is why there is often a dynamic of mutual strengthening between oikophobia and government largesse, and oikophobia and the entitlement mentality go hand in hand.... Once this sense of entitlement becomes the predominant outlook, the citizens of a state begin to compete more with each other, while the external enemy recedes into the background.
Weirdly, the suspect is both mentally incompetent and also capable of making sophisticated home-made guns. That seems an unlikely combination, but it's not impossible. As Wretchard points out, a Japanese cult once figured out how to make functional sarin gas weapons. Crazy people are not good agents, so he's unlikely to be both crazy and someone's pawn. He might be faking the crazy, I suppose.
An incredible new theory established as the “block universe” theory asserts that time does not actually “flow like a river”; rather, everything is ever-present.Dr. Bradford Skow, a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposes that if we “look down” on the cosmos as if it were a piece of paper, we would see time stretched out in all directions, just as we perceive space at any given time.
Cambridge University Press has made free four of its six books on the subject. Unfortunately the one of probably greatest interest to most of you, Early Christian Women, is not one of the four (though you can still buy a print copy, they are quite expensive). You can get a book on Pythagorean philosophers who were women, however, as a free download. If you've enjoyed the ancient philosophy commentaries here, you may well like learning about these thinkers.
The others may also be of interest especially to the feminists among you, but they are outside my area so I can't offer any useful remarks: mostly for being too contemporary, but one for being a Korean Neo-Confucian of whom I admit I've never heard before this morning.
More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs.... The flow is draining the SPR, which last month fell to the lowest since 1986....
Cargoes of SPR crude were also headed to the Netherlands and to a Reliance (RELI.NS) refinery in India, an industry source said. A third cargo headed to China, another source said.
Honestly, I can't believe I've never heard anyone suggest this before. Not only that we need the Electoral College federally, but that we should extend it to the state level to counteract the new 'big states', the megalopolis city-states that run our lives.
Razorfist's (aka Rageaholic's) shtick is to be crude and drop a lot of F-bombs- I even debated not posting the video- so be forewarned that there's more vulgarity here than you'd normally expect in the Hall- but it's too good an idea he's presenting to not post this- so I beg your indulgence this once-
I think this is an idea whose time has come, and even if we were unsuccessful in implementing it, a Democrat party/media complex would be too busy fighting this to go after the Federal Electoral College, which would itself be a win.
