Journalist W.R. “Titterton tells of an interview with the Aga Khan, in which His Highness said that if a wall fell and crushed his foot he would exclaim: ‘This is the best thing that could have happened to me.’ To which Chesterton responded, ‘Then I feel inclined to retort that the Persian language must be singularly deficient in expletives.’”
An author whose name I failed to record in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 2 #6 Issue 15 (April-May, 1999)
“More than 1,500 pieces of graffiti were preserved in Pompeii when that Roman city was buried in volcanic ash 1,922 years ago. They include: ‘Aufidius was here.’ ‘Marcus loves Spendusa.’ ‘I am amazed, O wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers.’ Source: The Washington Post.”
Globe & Mail July 12, 2001 p. A16
On Monday I spoke to the Royal Canadian Military Institute about a number of surprises regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some of which should not have been surprising.
“principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas and so forth.”
Jonathan Swift quoted by Rondi Adamson in Ottawa Citizen December 16, 2001
“The physics of fire ant rafts could help engineers design swarming robots”
Headline on post at Watts Up With That March 6, 2022 [https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/03/06/the-physics-of-fire-ant-rafts-could-help-engineers-design-swarming-robots/] and press release on EurekAlert! March 2, 2022 [https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/945224] – I quote it not because I doubt it but because to me in conjures up images not of a bright future but of “Leiningen Versus the Ants”.
IIn my latest Loonie Politics column I urge everyone to consider the long-term consequences for our political culture if the authorities get away with smirking their way through an inquiry and a national security scandal.
“Over the centuries, historians and philosophers have put together a certain idea about how Western civilization developed. It began in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Arabs developed our numbers, the Phoenicians the first phonetic alphabet, the Greeks democracy, the Romans large-scale government, the Hebrews a single god and a system of morals, and the Christians a spirituality based on redemption and grounded in a vast international church. The Roman Empire fell and the Dark Ages descended, until the arrival of the Renaissance, then the Age if Science and the Enlightenment, colonialism, the romantic era, modernity, and perhaps something we now call the postmodern age. In this sketchy account, humanity passes civilization down the centuries like a baton in a relay race…. This account remains, up the present, the essential background to all discussions of western culture, even for those who dispute it. Critics may argue with this or that part of it, or rewrite bits of it: still, the master narrative remains, because we have not concocted a credible substitute.”
Robert Fulford The Triumph of Narrative
“As modern words are actually used, there is hardly a shade of difference left between meaning well and meaning nothing.”
G.K. Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly October 25, 1934, quoted in “Chesterton for Today” in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 # 4 March-April 1922 [and if you’re thinking wow, someone who could describe current conditions so exactly nearly a hundred years ago must have understood the underlying processes at work very well, I couldn’t agree more].