Long ago I wrote that my formula for happiness was to make certain that each year was better than the last. I’ve certainly done my part to live by those words this last year and I hope that everyone else has as well or at least will in this coming year.
Here’s to what 2006 may bring.
[Before I begin I feel like I should note that I've been both too busy and too sick the past few days to write on this site, but I do have notes and nearly complete entries from the recently past days that I will edit soon and place online in the chronology. The following, being an open question, is something I wanted to get online as soon as possible without concern for careful editing.]
What do people think of the idea of using a wiki to manage a database of translations of classic works? I’m disposed to believe that the literary task for which the wiki is best suited is exactly translating as it is the area of literature where colloborabation and second opinions are most valuable and least detrimental.
That said, I have a translation of San Manuel Bueno, Martir that I’ve been debating putting online and asking for comments and suggestions for improvements. And after just installing Mediawiki for use with The Reading List (see some previous proposals for more information on The Reading List), I’m tempted to put the translation online using Mediawiki as well. So, opinions?
I told ‘em: “if you go near those pumps smoking, I’ll kick you in the nads.” And they went near the pumps smoking. So you know what I did? I kicked ‘em in the nads.1
Mike Depinto’s favorite mechanic explaining his daily life to us yesterday after we got a flat tire in Hoboken.
At a very early age we know better, but maturing is the gradual process of doing better.
Looking back at the pictures I took in Rome I can only think, “God, what a place!” The feeling of being there is perpetually one of being dwarfed — by the immensity of time, by the grandeur and by the sheer size of all that is around you. To walk along the Via Foro and to envision the history that has taken place there is truly to feel that is one in the presence of what is truly sacred: the human spirit. And to stand within Saint Peter’s Basilica is to feel true humility and to know the littleness of one’s being. Those who have never been inside cannot imagine its immensity nor the seeming defiance of physical law that allows it to stand. And that it comes from such antiquity!
One’s time in Rome, regardless of the amount, is too small. I took several pictures of the Trevi Fountains, but I think that I could easily spend months taking pictures of it until I had truly captured its myriad-faceted beauty.
The process of adding photos to this site is now underway. I’ve found that the open source photogallery management system Gallery 2 (go here for more information) does nearly all that I need and can be well integrated with Wordpress. There’s theme hacking to be done yet to make everything look nice, but I’ve already gotten a lot of initial work done and, as such, there are now some basic galleries up. If you’re interested, feel free to look through the gallery of photos I took in Rome or a smaller set of pictures I took of the Palacio De Crisal here in Madrid. You’ll find the galleries for Rome and the Palacio De Cristal located here and here respectively.
Both newfound success and constant failure are dangerous to our development: success makes us forget how much further we have yet to go and failure makes us feel that our actions are inefficacious.
The veneer of science makes ugly much that should have been without fault: Freud’s writings might have been flawless if he had simply seen himself as a philosopher continuing on the tradition of disillusioned moralists who believed that man’s motives are always far more complex than the motives he attributes to himself.
His place was among Bruyère, Rochefoucauld and Nietzsche — and not among the pseudoscientists. The methods of science are of the greatest value to the psychologist who would follow in this moralist tradition, but to make of it a science cripples it. Science crawls and cannot allow introspection as evidence, but the study of man is built upon introspection and leaps of intuition.