Turn on me

You can fake it for a while,
Bite your tongue and smile,
Like every mother does an ugly child.
But the stars are leaking out,
Like spittle from a cloud,
Amassed resentment counting ounce and pound.

You're entertaining any doubt,
Because you had to know that I was fond of you,
Fond of Y-O-U,
Though I knew you masked your disdain.
I can see that change was just too hard for us,
Hard for us.
You always had to hold the reigns,
But where I'm headed, you just don't know the way.

So affections fade away,
And do adults just learn to play
The most ridiculous, repulsive games?
On the faith of ruddy sons,
And the double-barreled guns,
You better hurry,
Rabbit, run, run, run.
'Cause meeting you was fun,
And there's a lot of hungry howlers in this one cell.
We’re taking it over,
Their brittle, thorny stems,
They break before they bend,
And neither one of us is one of them.

And the tails will never mend,
‘Cause you had it in for me so long ago.
Boy, I still don't know,
I don't know why and I don't care,
You don't hide me anymore,
If you'd only seen yourself hating me.
Hating me,
When I've been so much more than fair.
But then you had to lay those feelings bare,
One thing I know still got you scared,
You're all that cold iron,
And never once aired of our dead.

You had to know that I was fond of you,
Fond of Y-O-U.
So I took your lips at the time,
And to change like that is just so hard to do,
Hard to do.
Don't let it whip-crack your life,
And bow out from the fight,
‘Cause oh, how your sisters will write.
The worst part is over,
Now, get back on that horse and ride.

Bambini d'Irlanda

Questi i nomi piu' scelti per i nuovi nati nel 2005 in Irlanda.

Maschietti

1. James
2. Daniel
3. Michael
4. Charlie
5. Jack
6. Sam
7. Patrick
8. Callum/Calum (ma incontrato qualcuno con un simile nome in vita mia)
9. Ben
10. David


Femminucce

1. Lucy
2. Grace (bel nome)
3. Sophie (ottimo per le figlie dei filosofi)
4. Kate
5. Rachel
6. Aoife (Si pronuncia Ifa ed e' l'equivalente di Eva)
7. Emily
8. Anna
9. Olivia
10. Laura


Tra i nomi piu' strani, invece, troviamo per le donne: Arwen, Zahra, Tegan, Aelfreda, Trinity, Effie, Joia, Amnest; mentre per gli uomini: Bamford, Jago, Damir e Sky.

Del visibile

Del visibile.

Ascende huc et ostendam tibi.

Discussione

E' passato un mese e devo ancora raccontarvi la discussione della mia tesi di dottorato.

Allora, la commissione era composta dal mio supervisore Gerard Casey (quello con i baffi), da Brian O'Connor, da Gerry Gaden, del dipartimento di pedagogia (assente nella foto), e da Joseph Dunne (con la barba), esaminatore esterno.

Solitamente ci sono tre membri in commissione ma poiche' il mio supervisore era anche capo del dipartimento, hanno dovuto aggiungere un ulteriore membro a rappresentare il dipartimento.
La commissione si e' prima riunita per valutare la tesi, poi sono stato invitato ad entrare e a presentare il mio lavoro. E' seguita la difesa vera e propria.
Nell'aula non c'era pubblico. Mi hanno fatto domande su ogni singolo capitolo. Il mio supervisore mi aveva avvisato: "non sara' una formalita'" e non e' stata tale.
Il ruolo principale l'aveva l'esaminatore esterno mentre il mio supervisore si limitava ad intervenire in caso di difficolta'. L'esterno e' sempre un esperto della materia ed nel mio caso, rientrava tra una rosa di nomi che io stesso avevo suggerito. Joe Dunne ha studiato nel mio college e poi con Alasdair MacIntyre. La sua migliore opera e' Back to the Rough Ground e riguarda i temi aristotelici di 'techne' e 'phronesis'. Uno dei capitoli di Back to the Rough Ground riguarda Newman.
Mi hanno fatto parlare per un'ora e 45 minuti. Sono stati molto gentili nei modi e precisi nelle domande, anche se a mio avviso non hanno colto alcuni degli elementi piu' originali della mia ricerca, ad esempio l'influenza di Cicerone su Newman.
Dopo la discussione si sono riuniti nuovamente per deliberare.
Nella mia universita' abbiamo cinque gradi di giudizio. L'ultimo e' la bocciatura, poi c'e' la promozione con il conferimento di un titolo di MLitt, ossia inferiore al dottorato, poi c'e' la promozione con cambiamenti maggiori, quindi a promozione con cambiamenti minori ed infine promozione senza cambiamenti.
A me hanno chiesto cambiamenti minori. Il supervisore ha l'incarico di verificare che i suggerimenti e le richieste della commissione siano soddisfatti, e solo allora la tesi verra' accettata dal college.
Dopo la discussione il dipartimento ha offerto un pranzo a tutti i presenti.
Il conferimento e' previsto per il 27 aprile e per l'occasione mi vedrete in toga e cappello accademico.

Resolutions

"The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven."
- G. K. Chesterton

Tra i miei buoni propositi per il nuovo anno, il puntale aggiornamento di questo trascuratissimo blog.

Buon 2007!

Christmas Preparations

Christmas, which the calendar assures me is coming, has been the crux of more controversies than most people remember when they take advantage of the fortunate fact that it has so often been saved from its enemies. But, like any other good thing, it has suffered much less from the heat of fanatical foes than from the coldness of frigid friends. Fanaticism only encouraged the devout to be defiant, and they resolutely repeated it as a ritual; it was much more in peril of death where people only repeated it as a routine. Now, a ritual is almost the opposite of a routine. It is because the modern world has missed that point that the modern world has in every other way fallen more and more into routine. The essence of real ritual is that a man does something because it signifies something; it may be stiff or slow or ceremonial in form; that depends on the nature of the artistic form that is used. But he does it because it is significant. It is the essence of routine that he does it because it is insignificant. It is the whole point of the ritualist that he knows what he is doing. It is the whole point of the routine worker that he does not know what he is doing. It may be an advantage that he should perform such dull tasks in such a detached way; it may be argued that it is better for the work or for the world that it have routine that is only routine. It may be better, for those who like it, that a man should work in this unconscious fashion; it may be better that he should be an animal; it may be better that he should be an automaton. But it is not the same thing as the man expressing some idea by performing certain acts, even if we think they are antics. It is not the same thing as a man practicing the sacred and solemn art and craft of a mummer, even if we dislike all such mummery. The principle of ancient ritual is to do certain useless things because they mean something. The principle of modern routine is to do certain useful things, but to free ourselves from that degrading slavery by doing them as if they meant nothing.

The forms of Christian festivity are often said to have begun in the old pagan world, and heaven knows they have survived into a new pagan world. But anybody, whether he is a new pagan or an old pagan or even conceivably (for you never know your luck) a Christian, is in fact observing this sort of significant mummery in observing any form of Christmas celebration at all. The professor of ethnological ethics may attribute the tradition of the mistletoe to Baldur or to the Druids. But he must recognise that certain ceremonies were performed under the mistletoe, even if ethnological ethics have permitted other professors to perform them in many places elsewhere. The musical critic, or student of the stages of harmonic development, may distinguish between the quality of a good ancient carol or a bad modern one. But he knows that, even in this timeless time, it is only somewhere about the beginning of Advent that little boys in the street begin to sing the carols attached to Christmas. Like all little boys, they are in advance of the age; but at least they do not begin to sing Christmas carols on Midsummer Day. In short, wherever anybody observes Christmas forms at all, they are still to some extent limited by the idea of a Christmas ritual, and the recurrence of times and seasons. The thing is done at a particular time so that people may be conscious of a particular truth; as is the case with all ceremonial observances, such as the Silence on Armistice Day or the signal of a salute with the guns or the sudden noise of bells for the New Year. They are all meant to fix the mind upon the fact of the feast or memorial, and suggest that a passing moment has a meaning when it would otherwise be meaningless. Behind the opposite notion of emancipation there is really the notion that we should be more normal if all moments were meaningless. The old way of liberating human life was to lift it into more intense consciousness; the new way of liberating it is to let it lapse into a sort of absence of mind. That is what is meant by saying, as many journalists actually do say, that a civilisation of robots would be more efficient and peaceful. One of the advantages of a robot is the complete absence of his mind.

Thus I will admit anything against old customs, except the idea that they are dead and meaningless. It is the society without customs that becomes dead and meaningless. If the professor says to me frankly: "I do not want to kiss a girl under the mistletoe because it makes me think what I am doing, whereas I can now kiss any number of other girls anywhere without thinking what I am doing," then I think he is an honest fellow, and I can debate with him about the real facts of ethnological ethics. If the little boy in the street says: "I like bawling at any time of the year, and I don't see why I shouldn't bawl all the year round," then I am quite ready to admit that it is the nature of boys to bawl, and that there is a certain sympathy between us, because I have been a boy myself. But if either of them say that there is less significance in ritual salutes or ritual songs than in the hearty human instinct to kiss anybody or bawl anything, then I disagree with them upon a purely intellectual issue. It seems to me that human life tends of itself to become much too monotonous and mechanical; and that this is just as true of lax social habits as of stricter ones. If the object is to make life more intense and intelligent, to increase imagination, which is a sense of the meaning of things, then I think it can be done much better by keeping dates and seasons and symbolic actions, than by letting everybody and everything drift.

G. K. Chesterton, 21 Dec 1935 (his last Christmas on earth).

PhD

E anche questa e' fatta.

Youth hostel

Cari amici, per ragioni che non sto qui' a spiegarvi, fino al 20 dicembre posso mettere a vostra disposizione una camera singola arredata, con tanto di cucina e servizi, a 5 minuti a piedi dal centro di Dublino.
Se volete farmi visita, posso ospitarvi senza problemi.
First come, first served.

Catster

Sempre a proposito di gatti, eccovi Catster, il social networking felino.
Make your cat a free webpage now! Share cat photos, tell cat stories, make cat friends!

Quello che vedete nella foto di chiama Angelo e ha pure gli occhi azzurri.

What Philosophy Can Tell You About Your Cat

Call for Abstracts

What Philosophy Can Tell You About Your Cat

Please circulate and post widely.

Steven Hales, Editor (hales@bloomu.edu)

To be published by Open Court Publishing Co.

Submissions should be aimed at the intelligent pet owner, someone who cares about cats and is interested in what philosophy can say about it. This is not the place for piles of footnotes and citations, but for insights and reflections on pets that will prompt a reader to think. The essays should be written for the readers of Harpers, TLS, and Atlantic Monthly, not the readers of Mind and Nous. Original argumentation is good but not essential. The application to cats of classic arguments, positions, and theories, or the thoughts of canonical philosophers, is perfectly fine.



Here are some possible themes and topics. This is not an exhaustive list, however, and creativity is welcomed:

1. Does your cat really love you, or is it just stimulus-response?

2. Do you own your cat, or is the human-pet relationship one of guardianship, like that of parent to child?

3. Anthropomorphizing.

4. The thoughts of the great historical philosophers on whether animals are ensouled or mere automata.

5. Animal companionship and the possibility of being friends with your cat.

6. Cat euthanasia: is it morally preferable to human euthanasia?

7. The ethics of domestication.

8. Will cloning bring back Ginger? Identity of cats through time.

9. Philosophical issues in animal training/obedience.

10. What can cats teach us about love and friendship?

11. Is animal communication a language, and if not, what kinds of thoughts and beliefs can your cat have?

12. Would it be morally acceptable to clone cat breeds that are endangered due to inbreeding?

13. Cat worship and the nature of the divine.

14. Is there an appropriate ethic of cat breeding?

15. Philosophical issues involving training and showing cats for agility, beauty, temperament.

16. A presentation of theories of vagueness using cat breeds as the key example.



Contributor guidelines:

1. Abstract of paper (approx. 150 words), submission deadline: December 1, 2006.

2. CV or résumé for each author and co-author

3. Submission deadline for first drafts of accepted papers: May 1, 2007

4. Submission deadline for final papers: September 1, 2007

5. Final papers should be between 3500-5000 words

6. Abstracts should be submitted by e-mail (Word attachment).

7. Accepted contributors will receive an honorarium upon modest sales of the book.



Two books will be simultaneously published: one on dogs and one on cats. Please make clear in your abstract which book you are submitting for.

Send by e-mail to: Steven Hales (hales@bloomu.edu)