John Myles White: Die Sudelbücher

Reading through the Perl documentation on pragmas (pragmata for the Hellenophiles) this morning, I discovered the following gem:

CAVEATS

• This probably does nothing.
• This works only on 5.10+

At least it’s backwards compatible in not doing much.¹

1. perldoc : less pragma↩

The beauty of the law is that it allows one to express one’s contempt for another in the most formal way possible.

Those who refuse to speak the truth and those who refuse to learn it are equally unworthy of our trust.

It is very rare that a mistake in reasoning cannot be traced back to a betrayal of the principle of bivalence.

One fact out of context can do as much harm to maintaining a proper perspective of everything as a thousand falsehoods.

Smith’s Hitler Comment Sparks Criticism

As if better proof were needed that the only war Americans seem to be winning is The War on Truth.

Whenever someone like Roger Penrose seeks to prop up an archaic set of philosophical beliefs using haphazard, semi-scientific theories, I think of these words of Nicolás Gómez Dávila,

En las Geisteswissenschaften las matemáticas “servent à cacher les défauts de l’esprit”.¹

I imagine that if I one day find it necessary to keep this website private, it will be easiest to encrypt my meaning by simply imposing the precondition that at least four languages must be used in every post. For the more allusive one is, the more elusive one is.

1. Nicolás Gómez Dávila : Escolios a un texto implícito : Tomo II↩

The real distinction between Eastern Europe and Western Europe is the existence in the West of definite articles.

Every time I hear the word “open-minded”, I hear these words as a sort of call-and-response:

Lots of knowledge fits into a hollow head.¹

1. Karl Kraus↩

My life is defined by the daily struggle to fit forty hours of activity into sixteen hours of wakefulness.