Leap year

We need more nuance in this phrase. Some years leap from the 28th Feb to the 1st March. Some stumble, or collapse. This one, for me, is struggling over the steeplechase-hurdle, panting and gasping.

On whimsy

In the middle of a discussion at Crooked Timber, on the prevalence of whimsical examples in certain schools of philosophy, I wondered whether what was being discussed was actually a valence of Englishness, more specifically:

I wonder if you’re putting your finger on something in the cultural DNA of certain sorts of thought-experimenting. Salman Rushdie has an essay on the difference between US and English comedy in which he characterises the former as ‘isn’t it funny that’-style humour (Friends et al) and the latter as ‘wouldn’t it be funny if-style (Monty Python and so on). I wouldn’t want to stick my neck out, but I suppose it might have something to do with living within more restrctive, though largely unwritten, codes of proper behaviour, and having mild eccentricity—whimsy—as the socially acceptable pressure valve. And being English I’m perhaps likely to think more positively of whimsy for that reason.

Actually I don't mean 'English'; I think I'm referring to something more narrowly class defined. This morning I happen to be re-reading Tolkien's 'The Monsters and the Critics' essay, and the tone of it is very erudite-whimsical, within certain precise boundaries.

Grendl the Green Man

I have to assume that somebody, somewhere has made this argument before (because it seems to obvious to me); but Google isn't helping me find priors, and I'll jot my notion down here.

In a nutshell: Beowulf is a John Barleycorn narrative; or its first third is. Beowulf fights a humanoid creature called Grendl, who has come into the hall and drunk the blood of one of his warriors; he rips his arm off, and the creature runs away. We do not see him die; but Beowulf pins his arm to the wall like a lucky branch. Then everybody gets drunk and sings songs.

This is the evidence I'd constellate to make the theory, had I time.

1. Grendl's name is the OE for 'Green man'. Really, it is.

2. The 'Beow' in Beowulf means 'barley'. ('Scholar Kathleen Herbert draws a link between Beowa, a mythical figure stemming from Anglo-Saxon paganism that appears in early Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies whose name means "barley", and the figure of John Barleycorn. Herbert says that Beowa and Barleycorn are one and the same, noting that the folksong details the suffering, death and resurrection of Barleycorn, yet also celebrates the "reviving effects of drinking his blood."')

3. As in the ancient ballad, Grendl has one of his limbs uprooted; and seems to die; but he comes back to life (in the form of his mother). The whole thing is a symbolic narrative of the seasons and fertility.

Two Ainsworthy murders

Here are two violent murders from Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard (1839-40). Mrs Wood is murdered in a burglary:

And seizing her by the hair, he pulled back her head, and drew the knife with all his force across her throat. There was a dreadful stifled groan, and she fell heavily upon the landing.

The wealthy Sir Rowland is wrapped around with a sheet and murdered for money:

Jonathan, rushing upon him in front, struck him several quick and violent blows in the face with the bludgeon. The white cloth was instantly dyed with crimson; but, regardless of this, Jonathan continued his murderous assault. The struggles of the wounded man were desperate – so desperate, that in his agony he overset the table, and in the confusion, tore off the cloth, and disclosed a face horribly mutilated, and streaming with blood. So appalling was the sight, that even the murderers – familiar as they were with scenes of slaughter – looked aghast at it.

This second is of a different order of writing, I think:  The first is more shocking; death as disposal. The second is like a sort of malign conjuring-trick, death as unveiling ...

A-Time and B-Time

The philosophy of perceptual time is clearly a huge field. I came across a review of some recent essays [Adrian Bardon (ed.), The Future of the Philosophy of Time (Routledge, 2012)] in which the reviewer, Meghan Sullivan, says some fascinating things.

There are two basic stances one might take on the metaphysical structure of time: the A-theory and the B-theory. A-theorists contend there is an important, objective distinction between the present and other times. They typically add to this a thesis about time "flowing" from past, to present, to future. B-theorists deny this package -- they think of time as "spread out" the way we ordinarily think of space as spread out. They deny there is a fundamental directionality to time, at least any directionality beyond some times being earlier or later than others in the manifold. B-theorists are often thought to have a special challenge in explaining why we experience an asymmetry in time if none is actually there.

Naturally this knocks sciencefictional sparks from the flint of my mind. I think of Herbert's prophet, in Dune Messiah, who is blind, but who can 'see' the world around him by remembering the very detailed visions he had of the then-future, now-present, in the past. Herbert makes no larger philosophical claims for this notion (surprisingly, perhaps, given how crammed with second-hand philosophy the Dune novels are) but I wonder if it mightn't be an illuminating way of thinking about perceptual time?

Or again: 'why do we seem to experience time passing, if in fact we inhabit a directionless manifold?' Taking up the 'if', here, and suggesting an answer to the question: presumably for the same reasons we experience motion in space. Presumably there is a time-gravity, and we are being accelerated (hence the sensation of motion) towards a very massive temporal 'object' located in a particular direction of the manifold. Presumably again there is no upper limit to our absolute 'speed' through time -- unlike space -- although the acceleration is constant and enough to give us a sense of one day passing every day (it must be temporal acceleration, or we wouldn't have the sensation of moving forward at all, of course). But what happens when we collectively arrive at the temporally supermassive object that is drawing us? And what if there were a temporal equivalent to 'c'?

This last notion gives me an idea for a story.

On-pun

Thank heavens I archive these, here! Think of the loss to humankind if I didn't.

I really believe Duct-tape is better than Sellotape. I tried to make my case on the BBC but they said they didn't allow pro-Duct placement.

As Beckett said when the aluminium foil he was using to wrap his chicken broke: foil again. Foil better.

Religion. Or as I like to call it, ‘The Origin of Specious’.

‘Knock. [25 second pause] Knock.’ ‘Who's there?’ ’Harold.’ ‘Harold Who!’ [Very lengthy pause] ‘Pinter.’

Timothy Leary: LSD guru, quest-master and the topic of the famous song ‘I Can Seek Leary Now’.

After a great deal of thought I've come to the conclusion that the least savoury children's book is: Flatus Stanley.

The strangest surname I ever heard is probably the guy in the Hendrix song: A. Joe Whereyougoinwiththatguninyourhand.

Are we human, or just the housepets of our gas-guzzling cars? Each of us needs to ask: am I a man? or am I Hummer pet?

By my Latin reckoning, 'Rick Santorum' means 'Rick of the Santas (plural)'. There are many Father Christmas clones, and they own him.

Judging by his middle name, that old painter Leonardo ‘Dave’ Inci wasn't as highfalutin as some people imply.

Judging by his middle name, that old painter Leonardo ‘Dave’ Inci wasn't as highfalutin as some people imply.

Who is this lout loitering in the Greek bay, and why don't they get rid of him?

Ooh, topical!

The Em-Bayeux Strikes Back

Just on account of its awesomeosity, this image: