A hoary plot line of melodrama reduces the hero and heroine to dire straits; they’ve tried everything in their power to escape doom; the soundtrack crescendos in a minor key. “Pray,” he says. “It’s in God’s hands. Only a miracle … Continue reading →
*Scruple dictates that I confess to having added to the fog of blather by blatantly erring in my attempt to run the numbers in the original post. A bright lad has shown me the light, and the revised numbers do indeed bear out Ms. Tufecki’s example of the imposing power of exponentiality.
Zeynep Tufecki’s NYTimes guest essay asserts the mathematical essence of the E-word being slung portentously by the credentialed Covid commentariat:
Increased transmissibility is an exponential threat. If a virus that could previously infect three people on average can now infect four, it looks like a small increase. Yet if you start with just two infected people in both scenarios, just 10 iterations later, the former will have caused about 40,000 cases while the latter will be more than 524,000, a nearly 13-fold difference.
(Zeynep Tufecki, “Covid’s Deadliest Phase May Be Here Soon,” NYTimes, 5-28-21)
Tufecki’s instantiation has a touch of the abstruse to it. Here’s how I run her numbers:
Along comes more NYTimes torqued and taut art talk of the sort that sweeps me up.
Darrel Ellis, “Untitled (Self-Portrait),” circa 1990-91, ink and wash on paper. Credit… Darrel Ellis Estate and Candice Madey.
… Several gorgeous self-portraits made toward the end of his life. Their precision is astonishing… It’s clear that what most interested Ellis about ink was the tones it offered, from glittering black to smokey gray. WILL HEINRICH
Kunle Martins’s “SoiL,” from 2021, graphite and charcoal on found cardboard. Credit… Kunle Martins, Bortolami and 56 Henry; Kristian Laudrup.
… Delicate graphite and charcoal portraits of friends, often on found cardboard, creating an intimate assembly of a downtown demimonde… Tender evocations, attentive but unidealized, like an especially faithful frottage, or a Tom of Finland given a cold shower. MAX LAKIN
Keltie Ferris’s “s=t=r=e=a=m=s” (2020-21), oil and vinyl paint on canvas in the artist’s frame. Credit… Keltie Ferris.
Ferris’s paean to the transportive possibilities offered by drawing… showcases how a sense of movement can be conveyed through artistic restraint. Rejecting a hard disciplinary line between drawing and painting, Ferris revels in that more exhilarating space that emerges between mediums, which allows instinct and intuition to take the lead. TAUSIF NOOR
(“5 Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now,” NYTimes, 5-20-21)
When I was able to sign off the final proofs … I literally wept with joy’ … Professor James Diggle, holding the Cambridge Greek Lexicon. Photograph: Sir Cam.
“My English is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.” (Edward Gibbon)
In the Middle Ages, several women poets of Arab Spain (al-Andalus) were known for their erotic and satiric verses composed with explicit diction in classical Arabic meters. Western scholars who took notice at all of these texts often quoted the explicit passages in Latin. Gibbon’s chasteness lived on in the twentieth century, I discovered as I, a striving scholar, strove to translate the verses.
Change is blowing in the winds of classicism. Led by Cambridge professor James Diggle, a team of intrepid lexicographers has updated HG Liddell and Robert Scott’s 1889 “Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon.”
The new dictionary’s editors “spare no blushes”, Diggle said, when it comes to the words that “brought a blush to Victorian cheeks”. The verb χέζω (chezo), translated by Liddell and Scott as “ease oneself, do one’s need”, is defined in the new dictionary as “to defecate” and translated as “to shit”; βίνέω (bineo) is no longer “inire, coire, of illicit intercourse”, but “fuck”; λαικάζω (laikazo), in the 19th-century dictionary translated as “to wench”, is now defined as “perform fellatio” and translated as “suck cocks”.
Antiquated and offensive language also gets a makeover. While Liddell and Scott defined βλαύτη (blaute) as “a kind of slipper worn by fops”, in the Cambridge Greek Lexicon it is described as “a kind of simple footwear, slipper”; κροκωτός (krokotos) is no longer defined as “a saffron-coloured robe worn by gay women”, but as a “saffron gown (worn by women)”.
(Alison Flood, “First English dictionary of ancient Greek since Victorian era ‘spares no blushes,’” theguardian.com, 5-27-21)
The Cambridge team’s massive achievement helps the uproarious ancients break free of stodgy and queenish taint.
A fisherman holds up a trout he caught. Contributed photo by Bink Grimes. [Victoria Advocate]
El hijo de su madre has stumbled upon an El Dorado of found poetry in the “Outdoors” fishing column of a local newspaper. Bink Grimes’s lavish rundown of the piscatory scene pulses with staccato verve, inside lingo, and riptide granularity. I’ve cherrypicked it for its sparkle. The title “Gone Fishing” is my contribution, but the catch is Bink’s.
GONE FISHING The topwater bite has been good early over sand and grass. Back lake areas are holding good numbers of trout on soft plastics and scented baits under corks.
A mixture of mud, shell and grass has been even better along the south shoreline with the stiff winds.
Sand and grass humps are holding lots of little minnows, and being about to work the moon and tide has led to good catches. Big trout have been caught and released while drifting. Tides have ushered in streaky green water on the east end and the fish have been hanging on the color change.
Wading back lakes with gold spoons and small topwaters has paid off for reds. The stirred-up, off-colored water actually gets reds going. Anglers anchored on the edges of flats have caught reds on cut shad or skip jacks.
It’s hard to talk about anything but red snapper. Kingfish are just about everywhere. The jetty out to 200 feet of water is holding kings while drifting ribbon eels and trolling divers.
Cobia continue to impress around rigs or any other shady structure. Lots of ling have followed red snapper to the surface around wrecks. Captains have had a rod ready to pitch to a fat ling when it appears.
Please enjoy yourself on the water while treating our bays and estuaries like the upmost respect.
(Bink Grimes, “Good catches despite rains and high tides,” Victoria Advocate, 5-24-21)
This passage from a fellow blogger (cap doff to) caught my eye:
Reality? Well it starts to mock back at your face, you get surrounded by the clouds of regret, cry on the ashes of your pretentious bliss and feel agitated on being abandoned by the people you highly think of.
(Shubhi Rawat, “The City Dwellers,” Perception, shubhangirawat.wordpress.com, May 2, 2021)
The passage dances with an out-of-kilter vivacity that mocks back at my face. I like it, and it made me rise from the ashes of my pretentious bliss to ponder adverbs.
What’s exotic about “highly think of” versus “think highly of”? No obvious rule leaps to mind.
Most adverbs are flexible as to where they may occur in the sentence: “I think deeply about the problem”; “I think about the problem deeply”; etc.
What’s in play, as I see it, is that in the formula “think highly of” the adverb is a cloaked adjective. It confers the attribute of being estimable on the object of the preposition rather than commenting on the nature of the thinking. It says, sneakily, “In my thoughts I attribute to the following entity an elevated status.” That message is puckishly flustered in “highly think of.”
Where they’re actually being themselves, adverbs almost always weaken an argument. They’re the Angostura Bitters ™ of style; use them by the drop, if at all.
Quedo de Vds. S.S.S.Q.E.S.M.
~ “Write beautifully what people don’t want to hear.” (Frederick Seidel)
Use a semicolon to separate two independent clauses — i.e., two sentences that work on their own — which are closely sequential:
“I finished a painting today; it went better than I thought it would.”
Or in order to separate items in a series that would be particularly unwieldy with only commas, often because the items contain commas:
“Today I ate three desserts: a tiny cookie, which was free with my espresso; a bigger cookie, which was unfortunately a little dry; and a milkshake, which maybe took things too far.”
(Adapted from Lauren Oyler, “The Case for Semicolons,” NYTimes, 2-9-21)
“Write beautifully what people don’t want to hear.” (Frederick Seidel)
For fanfaronnish, pharaonic, peerlessly peeraged personnages kitted, kilted, severely coiffed and balconic in presence, shod and booted in besotted opulence, blackamoorian brooched, got up in splendid headgear, lorded lads and ladied dames garbed in emblazoned berobement, none…
For sherlockian, sherwoodian, agathonian, haddlepudlian, level-uppity, ‘ello gaffer, day at the races, should I make a cheeky bet, dear olde — you know — not to make a fuss about but, end of, if-I’m-being-honesty, none…
For acid, Mr. Speaker-ish, his-honourable-gentlemanly annunciatory promulgations, retortive denouncements huffed in receivedly syllabic oratory bespoken to bewigged and vested Etonians lounged and draped and clubbed in hoary, leathery chambers and halls amongst antique appurtenances and shafty lighting, none…
[Translator’s note: The blog of Andrés Cifuentes — Eco Social…Ojo Crítico (doff of cap to) led me to this poem by Miguel Hernández. It doesn’t soar as poetry, but it does register a raw and memorable cri de coeur. All translations fail, and mine does so by indulging in flights of paraphrase to offset the flatness of affect of the literal English. JMN]
Cowards Men I see who of manliness have none but what they flaunt, the look and the Marlboro, the britches and the beard.
At heart they are bunnies, chickens in their guts, hounds quick at crapping, barkers in peace time who in cannon season vanish from the map.
These macho cottontails, commissars of retreat, hearing miles away the thunder of bullets, like matchless heroes cut and run for the hills, shitting explosively, hair standing on end. Bravely they take cover, gallantly abandon the blast radius, these turds on the run who’ve kicked for ages my soul in the balls.
Where will you end up that’s not dead, paleface rabbits, untrustworthy curs with extra paws? Aren’t you ashamed to see to this extent in Spain so many steady women under so much threat? A bullet for every tooth is what your life deserves, cowards wearing coward hides with reeds for hearts. You tremble as if gripped by a century’s worth of frost and fade from sun to shadow quaking in your boots. For you a basement’s undefended by its house.
Your yellow streak begs everyone for battalions of walls and lead barriers rimming cliffs and trenches, saving our threadbare lives mired in gore and dread. Not enough for you, defense by showers of noble blood shed unstintingly abundant and warm day in, day out, onto Castilian clod. You’re senseless to the calling of the splattered lives. To keep your pelts intact burrows and dens won’t do, not rabbit holes, not toilets even, nothing will. You flinch and flee, which gives the people you turn tail on just cause to drill your disappearing backs with lead.
Only men alone remain in the heat of battle, and you, from far away, try to rouge your infamy, but the pallor of cowardice will not wipe off your faces.
Keep standing your pathetic posts over your pathetic cobwebs. Swap your weapon for a broom, and sweep with your ass cheeks the caca you leave behind wherever you set foot.
Wind of the People, 1937 Miguel Hernández English version by JMN
Los cobardes Hombres veo que de hombres solo tienen, solo gastan el parecer y el cigarro, el pantalón y la barba.
En el corazón son liebres, gallinas en las entrañas, galgos de rápido vientre, que en épocas de paz ladran y en épocas de cañones desaparecen del mapa.
Estos hombres, estas liebres, comisarios de la alarma, cuando escuchan a cien leguas el estruendo de las balas, con singular heroísmo a la carrera se lanzan, se les alborota el ano, el pelo se les espanta. Valientemente se esconden, gallardamente se escapan del campo de los peligros estas fugitivas cacas, que me duelen hace tiempo en los cojones del alma.
¿Dónde iréis que no vayáis a la muerte, liebres pálidas, podencos de poca fe y de demasiadas patas? ¿No os avergüenza mirar en tanto lugar de España a tanta mujer serena bajo tantas amenazas? Un tiro por cada diente vuestra existencia reclama, cobardes de piel cobarde y de corazón de caña. Tembláis como poseídos de todo un siglo de escarcha y vais del sol a la sombra llenos de desconfianza. Halláis los sótanos poco defendidos por las casas.
Vuestro miedo exige al mundo batallones de murallas, barreras de plomo a orillas de precipicios y zanjas para nuestra pobre vida, mezquina de sangre y ansias. No os basta estar defendidos por lluvias de sangre hidalga, que no cesa de caer, generosamente cálida, un día tras otro día a la gleba castellana. No sentís el llamamiento de las vidas derramadas. Para salvar vuestra piel las madrigueras no os bastan, no os bastan los agujeros, ni los retretes ni nada. Huis y huis, dando al pueblo, mientras bebéis la distancia, motivos para mataros por las corridas espaldas.
Solos se quedan los hombres al calor de las batallas, y vosotros, lejos de ellas, queréis ocultar la infamia, pero el color de cobardes no se os irá de la cara.
Ocupad los tristes puestos de la triste telaraña. Sustituid a la escoba, y barred con vuestras nalgas la mierda que vais dejando donde colocáis la planta.
EthicalDative 
Adoration of the Cat
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A hoary plot line of melodrama reduces the hero and heroine to dire straits; they’ve tried everything in their power to escape doom; the soundtrack crescendos in a minor key. “Pray,” he says. “It’s in God’s hands. Only a miracle … Continue reading →