resignation

. . . . the stamp of maturity?

whist

Whist is, without question, the best of all our domestic games. The only other one which could lay claim to such a distinction is Chess; but this has the disadvantage of containing no element of chance in its composition—which renders it too severe a mental labour, and disqualifies it from being considered a game, in the proper sense of the word. Whist, on the contrary, while it is equal to chess in its demands on the intellect and skill of the player, involves so much chance as to give relief to the mental energies, and thus to promote, as every good game should, the amusement and relaxation of those engaged.

from William Pole, F.R.S., The Theory of the Modern Scientific Game of Whist, 1883

bhutto

We live in an age of disinformation, confusion, and mystery. Even within a single report, we see contradiction:

apparently, "there were no bullet marks on Bhutto's body"; nevertheless, "she was shot" . . . .

. . . . ?

sad clown christmas

hypocrisy

. . . on the mind each holiday season, when many set foot inside a church for the first time in 364 days. Neal Stephenson argues that the elevation of hypocrisy from minor foible to cardinal sin is a product of the rampant relativism of the 21^st century. In an age where there are no moral absolutes, the only standpoint from which one can criticize another is their own, i.e. only hypocrisy, failing by one's own lights, moral self-contradiction, remains an absolute sin.

Even if this observation is accurate, however, the question remains: pragmatically, is hypocrisy useful to society / humanity or no? Perhaps, more generally: can cognitive dissonance be a precipitous means to constructive ends? Is this an empirical question?

understanding the mind VII

from Jean-Pierre Changeux, The Physiology of Truth, 2002

an alternate perspective

We should contrast our reluctance to accept the accidents of history as arbiter of obscenity with the more thoroughgoing stubbornness characteristic of full-fledged Saxonism:

Saxonism is a name for the attempt to raise the proportion borne by the originally & etymologically English words in our speech to those that come from alien sources. The Saxonist forms new derivatives from English words to displace established words of similar meaning but Latin descent; revives obsolete or archaic English words for the same purpose; allows the genealogy of words to decide for him which is the better of two synonyms. . . . The truth is perhaps that conscious deliberate Saxonism is folly, that the choice or rejection of particular words should depend not on their descent but on considerations of expressiveness, intelligibility, brevity, euphony, or ease of handling, & yet that any writer who becomes aware that the Saxon or native English element in what he writes is small will do well to take the fact as a danger-signal. But the way to act on that signal is not to translate his Romance words into Saxon ones; it is to avoid abstract & roundabout & bookish phrasing whenever the nature of the thing to be said does not require it.

H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 1926.

There was a minor craze for [Saxon words] early in this century, giving us all manner of quaint pseudo-archaisms like skysill for horizon, but it has passed, and with it any notion of a special virtue inherent in 'native' roots. It remains broadly true that, as compared with derivatives of Latin, a decent proportion of Saxonisms in the vocabulary is a sign of a good writer, but the reader should never be allowed to suspect that this is the result of any conscious policy of choice on the writer's part. What 'a decent proportion' amounts to cannot be defined, and it seems easier and safer to approach the problem from the other end and work on the principle that a preponderance of classically derived words in what one writes, especially words denoting abstract qualities or things, especially polysyllables, especailly those ending in -tion or -sion, is a bad sign. That is Rule 1.

Rule 2 annoyingly goes back a little way and says, Never choose to write one word rather than another on the sole ground that it has an Old or Middle English pedigree and its competitor comes from a Latin, French, anyway non-English root. In particular, never choose an English-descended word like forebear when a foreign one like ancestor seems more familiar and natural.

Kingsley Amis, The King's English: A Guide to Modern Usage, 1998.

So, "avoid abstract & roundabout & bookish," but prefer "familiar and natural" terms. Yet what of questions of propriety and obscenity? These seem wholly orthogonal to matters of clarity and elegance of expression.