Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
If I have one piece of advice for you this year, it’s that you better do something for Valentine’s Day. It’s been a hard year for everyone and we could all use a pick me up this month. Obviously those of you with significant others should do something for each other but don’t forget about […]
In the face of complicated events, bewildering new technologies, and sometimes contradictory information, the explanatory power of some occult yet totalizing narrative easily overmasters more prosaic explanations of the world. To those in thrall to such conspiracy beliefs, observable reality conceals plots that are hatched in secret by powerful people and organizations with malevolent purpose—to control, harm, or kill us. – New York Review of Books
The immense force of Western institutions – capitalism, democracy, Christianity – stamped itself on other parts of the globe, creating independent democratic nations committed to freedom, end of story. Or is it the end of the story? If 21st-century world trends are any indication, we might have badly overstated Westernisation’s influence and achievement. – Aeon
“Books are now published in numbers so vast that the writing of one can no longer be presumed to be an act of communication between writer and reader. Yet even books that aren’t read, and stand little chance of ever being read, can have their value.” – LitHub
Legal Research Reports: Most Viewed Reports of the Decade
In Custodia Legis Law Library Blog – “The Law Library of Congress’ Global Legal Research Directorate specializes in U.S. and foreign law, producing legal research reportsthat explain how countries around the world approach the regulation of particular topics. In the past decade, the Law Library of Congress has published dozens of reports. Millions of views later, we are recapping our most popular reports of these past 10 years. Here are our top-ten most viewed reports in this past decade with their summaries… ”
'Word-peckers, Paper-rats, Book-scorpions'
“The air’s already tainted with the swarms / Of insects, which against you rise in arms. / Word-peckers, paper-rats, book-scorpions, / Of wit corrupted, the unfashioned sons.”
For connoisseurs of invective, this is fairly tame stuff, but I like it. One writer, Andrew Marvell, is defending another writer, the poet Richard Lovelace, against still more writers. The source is “To His Noble Friend, Mr. Richard Lovelace, Upon His Poems” (1649), a Royalist-favoring poem in a contentious age. Here Marvell is father to Dryden, grandfather to Pope and Swift. It’s the third line I’ll remember. I doubt “word-pecker” carries our smut-minded connotations. The OEDclarifies things: “[perhaps punningly after woodpecker n.] chiefly humorous a person who trifles or plays with, or quibbles over, words.” We know the type.
Francis Grose in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) gives a more benign definition: “a punster, one who plays upon words.” Which brings us to Charles Lamb. The OED cites his usage in a letter to his friend Charles Lloyd, who had just sent Lamb his translation of the Odyssey. On March 10, 1810, Lamb writes:
“I have picked out what I think blemishes, but they are but a score of words (I am a mere word pecker) in six times as many pages. The rest all gave me pleasure . . .”
Lamb gracefully apologizes for presuming to criticize Lloyd’s gift: “I am ashamed to carp at words, but I did it in obedience to your desires, and the plain reason why I did not acknowledge your kind present sooner was that I had no criticisms of value to make.”
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