Today I  found out there were successors to the Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone book.

Naturally went to Wiki and found out----some people argue that the stories have no value because they present no lessons.

The stories are FICTION. Give me an example of fiction having life changing effects.  Plus they riff on real life, and academe, so they have a value in illuminating our world. Doesn't mean you want to read them.

 

 
                       Frame your mind to mirth and merriment, 
                       Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens                             life.

                                        —The Taming of the Shrew

 

Rainer Maria Rilke —Translated by A. Poulin, Jr

Cemetery Is there an after-taste of life in these graves?  And in the flowers’ mouths do bees find the hint of a word refusing speech?  O flowers, prisoners of our instincts toward happiness, do you return to us with our dead in your veins?  Flowers, how can you escape our grip?  How can you not be our flowers?  Does the rose really use all its petals to fly away from us?  Does it want to be only a rose, nothing but a rose?  No one’s sleep beneath so many eyelids?

                                                             John Donne
                                                  (1572 – 31 March 1631)

                                                    "Death, Be Not Proud"

                            Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
                            Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
                            For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
                            Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
                            From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
                            Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
                            And soonest our best men with thee do go,
                            Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
                            Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

                            And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
                            And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
                            And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
                            One short sleep past, we wake eternally
                            And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Quoting Isaac Newton

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Because Straight UP is the shortest route

 

                                               Italo Calvino observed, 

behind the doors of the bookshop a formidable array of needy volumes is always waiting to ambush you.

A Modest Proposal

 

Assuming folks have heard the news from Texas, criminalizing abortion. What gets me is that nowadays the father could easily BE accountable (DNA tests!) also, but this is never considered.  

I propose some percentage of the father's income for the mother and child, by law, at least. 

update on Gobekli Tepe research

 

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210815-an-immense-mystery-older-than-stonehenge

Wordsworth, 1798

 

.....

Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.

.....

Reconciling Time and Eternity

citation 

....A 1946 transcription of a 1646 manuscript written by Cornelius Burges. The editor has omitted some commas....

THE

CONFESSION OF FAITH

OF THE

WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES

---

CHAPTER I.

Of the Holy Scripture.

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased....

 

Ronald Fernando Garcia Ruiz

"If the laws of physics are symmetrical as we think they are, then the Big Bang should have created matter and antimatter in the same amount. The fact that most of what we see is matter, and there is only about one part per billon of antimatter, means there is a violation of the most fundamental symmetries of physics, in a way that we can't explain with all that we know," says Ronald Fernando Garcia Ruiz, assistant professor of physics at MIT.

From the poet of "The Owl and the Pussycat"

we read Edward Lear:

Two old Bachelors were living in one house; One caught a Muffin, the other caught a Mouse. Said he who caught the Muffin to him who caught the Mouse,-- 'This happens just in time! For we've nothing in the house, 'Save a tiny slice of lemon and a teaspoonful of honey, 'And what to do for dinner -- since we haven't any money? 'And what can we expect if we haven't any dinner, 'But to loose our teeth and eyelashes and keep on growing thinner?' Said he who caught the Mouse to him who caught the Muffin,-- 'We might cook this little Mouse, if we had only some Stuffin'! 'If we had but Sage and Onion we could do extremely well, 'But how to get that Stuffin' it is difficult to tell'-- Those two old Bachelors ran quickly to the town And asked for Sage and Onions as they wandered up and down; They borrowed two large Onions, but no Sage was to be found In the Shops, or in the Market, or in all the Gardens round. But some one said, -- 'A hill there is, a little to the north, 'And to its purpledicular top a narrow way leads forth;-- 'And there among the rugged rocks abides an ancient Sage,-- 'An earnest Man, who reads all day a most perplexing page. 'Climb up, and seize him by the toes! -- all studious as he sits,-- 'And pull him down, -- and chop him into endless little bits! 'Then mix him with your Onion, (cut up likewise into Scraps,)-- 'When your Stuffin' will be ready -- and very good: perhaps.' Those two old Bachelors without loss of time The nearly purpledicular crags at once began to climb; And at the top, among the rocks, all seated in a nook, They saw that Sage, a reading of a most enormous book. 'You earnest Sage!' aloud they cried, 'your book you've read enough in!-- 'We wish to chop you into bits to mix you into Stuffin'!'-- But that old Sage looked calmly up, and with his awful book, At those two Bachelors' bald heads a certain aim he took;-- and over crag and precipice they rolled promiscuous down,-- At once they rolled, and never stopped in lane or field or town,-- And when they reached their house, they found (besides their want                                                                              of Stuffin',) The Mouse had fled; -- and, previously, had eaten up the Muffin. They left their home in silence by the once convivial door. And from that hour those Bachelors were never heard of more.

Some doubt

Carnap catnapped;

not me

.

 

Napkin Rings

The world of man is all

Napkin Rings

SKEPTICISM

 

                                                 SKEPTICISM:

                                  A glorious method, if applied consistently and rigorously, 

                                           and avoiding the cow patties of conclusions

                                                                  which is to say

 

         Every silver lining has a ....

Scientists realize they cannot explain man's mental dimension.

A new picture can't hurt:

the mental is a parachute, 

Death the ground.

The pub time for the above was 10:39 am (April 24, 2021). While watching a rerun of 3rd Rock from the Sun, episode 9 (January 11, 2000), I heard this line, the text of a fortune cookie: "Your life is a kite." The time was 12:15 pm. Same day. Next day awoke with picture of words as icebergs.

How Filippo Morghen, in 1776, pictured the moon

Lunar Life

 

Astronomers in Hawaii have updated measurements of the 

Yarkovsky effect 

- a minuscule push imparted by sunlight - for asteroid Apophis

 

Chameleon Discovered in Madagascar May Be World's Smallest Reptile

 

Lion who was rescued from a cruel circus roams free in the African bush Jan 31st 2021, 22:23 Sasha the lioness is fighting fit again and free to roam the African bush. The nine-year-old was among five lions and 12 tigers saved from circuses in Guatemala.

 

Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872 to 1906)

 

                                                                                                                                                       

Come when the year's first blossom blows,

Come when the summer gleams and glows,

Come with the winter's drifting snows,

And you are welcome, welcome

John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, (1647-1680)

 

John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, wrote poetry, including  "My Lord All-Pride" from which we excerpt:

...

...so lewd a scribbler... writes,

....his brain... so weak

... his starved fancy is compelled to rake

Among the excrements of others' wit,

To make a stinking meal of what they shit.

....

Quoting Wikipedia is announcing one's ignorance

 

As for example this  Wikipedia article:

Hauntology (a portmanteau of haunting and ontology) is a neologism introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1993 book Spectres of Marx. The concept refers to the return or persistence of elements from the past, as in the manner of a ghost.

I feel quite comfortable citing Wikipedia here, since, afterwards, I STILL don't know what the word "hauntology" means.

Alice Walker

"Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding."

Lucille Clifton "the poet is thirty two"

 

she has such knowledges as

rats have,

the sound of cat

the smell of cheese

where the holes are,

she is comfortable

hugging the walls

she trembles over herself

in the light

and she will leave disaster

when she can.

John Donne's "Anatomy of the World" excerpt

 

....

And now the springs and summers which we see

Like sons of women over fifty be

And new philosophy calls all in doubt,

The element of fire is quite put out:

...

'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;

All just supply, and all relation:

Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot

For every man alone thinks he hath got

To be a phoenix, and that there can be

None of that kind, of which he is, but he,

.....

Cascading capitals

 

I can't remember if Jan Cox was the first to say that "as within so without" was the same as "as above so below." But here is a good example. This link is to an article talking about the significance of the Orpheus and Eurydice Greek myth. Read the article if you need to. 

https://interestingliterature.com/2021/01/orpheus-eurydice-myth-summary-analysis/?

An interesting thing is a really paramount point of the story, beyond anything in normal literature, is that "looking back" refers to all mechanical thought."  NOT looking back, the trick to achieving anything fresh, original, informative, is what Fourth Way schools call self-observation. 

Then, millenia ago, as our next moment, you have to keep your ass off the asphalt.

William Blake's Jerusalem

Excerpt from "Jerusalem" (1804-1820)

....to labor in knowledge is to  build up Jerusalem: and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her builders...he who ...mocks a Mental Gift in another calling it pride and selfishness and sin; mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrite as Sins, but that which is a Sin in the eyes of cruel Man, is not so in the eyes of our kind God.

Let every Christian as much as in him lies engage himself...publicly before all the World in some Mental pursuit for the building up of Jerusalem.