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Currently at Toronto Pearson: -9. High today: -6.
I was poking around the Environment Canada website tonight to see how much damage they've done to it in the makeover launched today, and I was looking at the national map, and saw Iqaluit, and felt a pang of wanting to go there.
That's the kind of day it's been, as Uncle Lloyd says.
I have for some time been meaning to note my tentative apprehension that some weather gerbils operate under the assumption--I imagine they would know that this is false and crazy if questioned, but still--that the normal high temperature is actually a minimum. So if the normal high temperature is -2, they think that means the temperature should be at least -2. I have particularly gotten this impression from Susan Hay (who is inclined to say, if it has been colder than normal, that we'll be "back where we should be for this time ofyear" when temperatures are forecast to be normal or above). But from others as well.
A few days ago, I learned that Plato's name wasn't actually Plato. (Or Platon.) It was Aristocles. Plato was a nickname. As some of you will know, it means "broad". (Cf. "plate", "platypus", etc.) The traditional gossip has it that he got this nickname either because he was a broad-shouldered wrestler, or because he was a broad-headed dork. It's kind of embarrassing and disturbing that I did not know this before. But this is a typical sign of the severance of the science of philosophy from traditional education. No one teaches the gossip about the philosophers anymore.
A couple of weeks ago, it came to my attention--this is one of those things that has bugged me for a long time, but just beneath my attention--that "faith, hope, and charity" (that's the way to live suc-cess-full-y!) has, in recent versions of the bible, become "faith, hope, and love". It came to my attention because eros is a big deal in both the Hiero and the Republic, which I've been teaching, so I've been poking around the Greek love neighbourhood. But it took me until last night to realize that that whole homily about love that people have recited at their weddings these days--"Love is patient, love is kind," and so on--comes just before that "faith, hope, and charity" bit, which is now the "faith, hope, and love" bit, in the thirteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians--which means that it has only become a homily about love, suitable for reciting at weddings, since "agape" has been re-translated as "love". Yeesh.
(That chapter is really quite astounding. This short text comprises four separately famous parts: the "love" homily, the "putting away childish things" bit, the "through a glass darkly" bit, and the "faith, hope, and charity" bit.)
If L. and I ever get married, I want someone to read the bit about how it's better to marry than to burn.
One gets the idea, from some quarters, that agape is "Platonic love". I am becoming significantly suspicious that Plato does not ever actually use the word "agape". (From other quarters, one gets the idea that Platonic eros is to be contrasted with Christian agape, which is a whole lot more like the thing.) It would be tremendously useful to have a Plato concordance--I feel like I may have seen such a thing, in the Laurier library. One of the most useful books we have around here is Strong's bible concordance. Not so much for finding out where words are used in the bible, though I sometimes use it for that; much more for its etymologies of Greek words, which I've never found anywhere else in English.
I read this article about facebook last week when the link was posted to "The Foucault List"; it made bookforum.com today. I don't know if it really matters at all, but I do find it tremendously cute that one of the three guys running facebook is a techno-libertarian pananthropist lunatic who may regard facebook as a means for virtual humanity to fulfil its destiny of abolishing nature.
I was poking around the Environment Canada website tonight to see how much damage they've done to it in the makeover launched today, and I was looking at the national map, and saw Iqaluit, and felt a pang of wanting to go there.
That's the kind of day it's been, as Uncle Lloyd says.
I have for some time been meaning to note my tentative apprehension that some weather gerbils operate under the assumption--I imagine they would know that this is false and crazy if questioned, but still--that the normal high temperature is actually a minimum. So if the normal high temperature is -2, they think that means the temperature should be at least -2. I have particularly gotten this impression from Susan Hay (who is inclined to say, if it has been colder than normal, that we'll be "back where we should be for this time ofyear" when temperatures are forecast to be normal or above). But from others as well.
A few days ago, I learned that Plato's name wasn't actually Plato. (Or Platon.) It was Aristocles. Plato was a nickname. As some of you will know, it means "broad". (Cf. "plate", "platypus", etc.) The traditional gossip has it that he got this nickname either because he was a broad-shouldered wrestler, or because he was a broad-headed dork. It's kind of embarrassing and disturbing that I did not know this before. But this is a typical sign of the severance of the science of philosophy from traditional education. No one teaches the gossip about the philosophers anymore.
A couple of weeks ago, it came to my attention--this is one of those things that has bugged me for a long time, but just beneath my attention--that "faith, hope, and charity" (that's the way to live suc-cess-full-y!) has, in recent versions of the bible, become "faith, hope, and love". It came to my attention because eros is a big deal in both the Hiero and the Republic, which I've been teaching, so I've been poking around the Greek love neighbourhood. But it took me until last night to realize that that whole homily about love that people have recited at their weddings these days--"Love is patient, love is kind," and so on--comes just before that "faith, hope, and charity" bit, which is now the "faith, hope, and love" bit, in the thirteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians--which means that it has only become a homily about love, suitable for reciting at weddings, since "agape" has been re-translated as "love". Yeesh.
(That chapter is really quite astounding. This short text comprises four separately famous parts: the "love" homily, the "putting away childish things" bit, the "through a glass darkly" bit, and the "faith, hope, and charity" bit.)
If L. and I ever get married, I want someone to read the bit about how it's better to marry than to burn.
One gets the idea, from some quarters, that agape is "Platonic love". I am becoming significantly suspicious that Plato does not ever actually use the word "agape". (From other quarters, one gets the idea that Platonic eros is to be contrasted with Christian agape, which is a whole lot more like the thing.) It would be tremendously useful to have a Plato concordance--I feel like I may have seen such a thing, in the Laurier library. One of the most useful books we have around here is Strong's bible concordance. Not so much for finding out where words are used in the bible, though I sometimes use it for that; much more for its etymologies of Greek words, which I've never found anywhere else in English.
I read this article about facebook last week when the link was posted to "The Foucault List"; it made bookforum.com today. I don't know if it really matters at all, but I do find it tremendously cute that one of the three guys running facebook is a techno-libertarian pananthropist lunatic who may regard facebook as a means for virtual humanity to fulfil its destiny of abolishing nature.
