A curious feature of Franz Kafka’s prose is that, pared down though its lexicon may be, it resists translation. There’s a good reason for that. Dictionaries supply more definitions for basic words than for those of greater complexity because simpler ones are the roots of vast family trees of words; plain language signifies promiscuously.
~ Judith Shulevitz via The Atlantic
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Satirists are famously also moralists, and Michel Houellebecq is no exception. Indeed, he’s a religious writer, even though his scabrous novels usually scoff at established religion.
~ Judith Shulevitz via The Atlantic
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Michel Houellebecq doesn’t just forecast current events; he satirizes them, dryly, with perfect pitch. His mimicry of the inflated language of marketing, bureaucratic euphemism, and hypertechnical mumbo jumbo finds the exact midpoint between amusing and appalling.
~ Judith Shulevitz via The Atlantic
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Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
~ Henri-Louis Bergson
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This is a moment of enormity for American higher education. Many of President Trump’s top advisers are the architects of Project 2025, which seeks to dismantle higher education, not reform it, and to replace what they perceive as woke Marxist ideology with their own conservative ideology.
~ Lynn Pasquerella – President of the American Association of Colleges and Universities
via Colleges Wonder if They Will Be ‘the Enemy’ Under Trump
published on November 11, 2024 in the New York Times
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Domesticated animals are said to serve three functions, sometimes called the 3 F’s: food, fiber and friends. Dogs have made the complete transition to friends. For most people, cattle remain solidly in the first two categories, but I have no doubt that they can be friends, too.
~ Gregory Berns via The New York Times
Dr. Gregory S. Berns is a member of the College of Arts and Sciences faculty at Emory University in Atlanta where he teaches psychology.
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People often say that elephants never forget, but neither do cattle. They can recognize pictures of herd mates as well as humans they know.
~ Gregory Berns via The New York Times
Dr. Gregory S. Berns is a member of the College of Arts and Sciences faculty at Emory University in Atlanta where he teaches psychology.
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