Suggested Readings
A few recommendations by Figs in Winter for your reading pleasure
Beyond the spectacle, the world of Roman theater. Roman theater took a while to take hold, but once it did, it spread across the Empire. The Romans adopted many of the Greek gods, so the mythological plays of Attica were a natural choice for the Roman theater. The Romans, however, had a bloodthirst that was unrivalled by the Greeks, and overall they preferred a violent comedy to the slower and more philosophical tragedies. That was not to say that Roman theater was void of popular tragedies. The earliest surviving tragedies by Ennius (239 – 169 BC) and Pacuvius (220 – 130BC) were widely circulated and therefore, preserved for later audiences. … (Classical Wisdom)
2+2=4. Why does 2+2=4...? The answer may not be as simple as one thinks. One should add that 2+2=4 is usually thought of as true, indeed the very paradigm of a truth, a certain necessary truth.[1] By ‘certain’ is meant that one can be sure that it is true. By ‘necessary’ is meant that the truth could not be otherwise. The matter of certainty is an epistemological one: how we know that 2+2=4. The matter of truth and of necessary truth is a metaphysical one: what makes it the case that 2+2=4. Both these aspects will form part of the discussion below, but the chief concern will be the metaphysical question of why 2+2=4. However, in the final section both matters are brought together, certainty and necessary truth. Here are some answers. One cannot pretend to cover all the complications by any means. … (Daily Philosophy)
Friends don't let friends become chiropractors. So I had a long road trip today and hit the podcasts, as usual. And I heard an ad that was new to me, and it was for a leading chiropractic school in the US. The ad hit all the points you’d expect from a medical school: It’s accredited; It’s focused on evidence-based medical care; Graduates can become board-certified; and blah blah blah. All stuff that sounds perfectly legit and impressive, and might well deceive a young person into attending in hopes of becoming a medical professional. They would be disappointed in the results. Only one of those three points is not misleading or false, and that’s that top chiropractic schools are legitimately accredited. For a long time they weren’t, and the profession had to invent their own accreditation bodies in order to self-accredit and convincingly deceive students and chiropractic patients. … (Brian's Bullshit-Free Zone)
Is there a God-shaped hole? “We are born with a yearning for the spiritual and transcendent, and the difficult truths about life that we learn about as we grow older—such as the inevitability of death and the existence of terrible injustices—further push us towards faith. Without religion, or something close enough to religion, we are unhappy and unsatisfied. Blaise Pascal was wise when he said that secular pursuits can’t quench our thirst—“the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.” As it’s sometimes put, there is a God-shaped hole that we all need to fill.” I know a lot of people who believe all this. But I’m becoming increasingly confident that all of the above sentences are false. There was always reason to be skeptical. For one thing, the idea of inborn spiritual yearning never made much evolutionary sense. There are plausible enough accounts of how we could evolve other appetites, including basic ones like hunger and thirst, and fancier ones such as a desire for respect and a curiosity about the world around us. But why would evolution lead us to be wired up for spiritual yearning? How would that lead to increased survival and reproduction? Perhaps it’s a by-product of other evolved appetites, but I’ve never seen an account of this that’s even close to convincing. … (Small Potatoes)
The paradox America can no longer sustain. For all but the chronically disengaged, it is difficult to reflect on the past year of Donald Trump’s presidency without concluding that the world order is undergoing a brutal demolition. For those of us appalled by it, it is tempting to fall back on the notion that it reflects the pathologies of one personality, and that the damage might be halted by distracting him or, time and Trump permitting, the results of an election or two. But this would be to ignore the fact that at least a sizeable minority of the American electorate either supports the president’s actions or has no beef with them—including his deposal of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro; his threats against Cuba, Colombia, Panama, Mexico, Canada, and Greenland; his scorning of NATO; his sellout of Ukraine; and his dismissal of international law more broadly. A Wall Street Journal poll finds that a rock-solid 92 percent of Trump voters approve of his performance, and 70 percent “strongly approve.” If they turn against him, it will be over rising electric bills, and not his contempt for liberal order. … (The Dispatch)
About to be--supposedly--snowed in, so stuff to read appreciated.