The Virtual Stoa

As everyone should know by now, today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, so please feel free to Talk Like A Pirate in the comments box here, or, indeed, elsewhere. Suggestions over here. Ah, Jim lad.

It’s also the Jour de la raison, according to the version of the French Republican Calendar installed at this site, one of the holidays that brings the old year to a close — and it is appropriate, I think, that a day celebrating human reason should fall on International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Over here [thanks, SM]

See the maps over here, and the comments for important considerations about how burning more witches may help to stop climate change. [Thanks, SM.]

When you’ve won a prestigious Ig-Nobel Prize for Literature it’s hard to know where to go next. Here’s the latest:

I wish to inform you that the New President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Alhaji Amaru Musa Yar’adua has Mandated that all money fraudulently collected by Nigeria Faudsters should be Paid to the beneficiaries not Letter than 10th of April 2008.

We are indeed happy to inform you that your email address was found among this set picked by the software companies in charge of these excersise and we have been mandated to settle you through the nominated bank by the Federal Government of Nigeria.

It has become imperative to settle you to redeem the Nigerian Image which has been tarnished abroad.

Mr. President Has also Promised the International bodies in the G8 Summit Meeting held in Germany, that he will make sure that all the Payment fraudulently collected by Nigerian fraudsters will be paid to the Foreign Beneficiary without Further Delay.

I want to also bring this to your notice that A Draft of ($2,50,000.00) two hundred and fifty thousand dollars  or ATM Card will be Made available to you, We therefore Request you to Reconfirm the  Information Bellow:

(1) YOUR FULL NAME/ADDRESS.
(2) YOUR DIRECT TEL/FAX NUMBER.
(3) YOUR NATIONALITY
(4) YOUR AGE
(5) YOUR OCCUPATION.

You should respond to this mail Immediately with the Information if you want to receive this Draft before the Closing date.

Thanks For Your Understanding,

Dr. Donald Harrison
Oceanic Bank Nigeria Plc.

[Thanks, SM]

I just googled the word “gittishness“, in order to find out what the rest of the interwebnet made of this important concept, and was pleased to see that Google asked me straightaway, Did you mean: britishness?

OK, this is old, but I hadn’t seen it before [thanks, JQ]:

Over here [thanks, SM].

Someone recently arrived at the Stoa while searching on this question. Stoa-readers! Do any of you know the answer?

Public reason may be possibly the most boring topic in contemporary political philosophy, which takes some doing, but it is also the name of a new blog by a bunch of political philosophers which looks as if it might become quite good. They’ve got a distinguished line up of contributors, not all of whom have yet contributed, and I suppose those of us with a sense of history will worry that this looks a little bit too much like the old Left2Right blog, which looked so promising at first, but never seemed to me to do that much beyond hosting some great posts by Elizabeth Anderson on Hayek and other related topics, and rather ran into the buffers. Anyway, I’m particularly pleased to see my old-friend-whom-I-haven’t-seen-in-years Alyssa Bernstein on the roster, as she’s great fun, if not a little Rawlsian.

Thinking of Rawlsians, this thread over at Brian Leiter’s place could become great fun, and possibly quite heated. In my balanced splitting-the-difference kind of way, I’m comfortable with the thought that Rawls was both a political philosopher of the first rank and that much Rawlsian thought is very possibly deep down “a generalizing [of] one’s own local prejudices and [a] repackaging [of] them as demands of reason”. And I think I’m comfortable with that thought because it seems obvious to me that much top-notch political philosophy has always been that, but the good stuff has never been just that, and one of the reasons progress gets made in philosophy, if it does, is through thinking about the extent to which this might in fact be the case and what, if anything, we might do about it. What’s funny is that philosophers sometimes get quite so defensive about the idea that their work might just be a little bit more parochial and a little less universal than they like to think it is, and that historians too often use their discipline’s own distinctive and not always attractive prejudices as a way of avoiding thinking hard about the difficult, interesting stuff.

Thanks also to this thread from Harry B at Crooked Timber, who asked the important question, “are philosophers scruffy?”, thereby reminding me of one of my favourite bits of De Civitate Dei, at the start of Book XIX, in which Augustine discusses Varro’s demonstration that there are 288 logically possible sects of philosophers, 144 of which are scruffy (”following the habits and fashions of the Cynics”), which I suppose follows naturally from our discussion of bearded philosophers from a few days ago.

Right: back to work.

It’s the International Talk Like A Pirate Day today, so if you’d like to talk like a pirate, the comments box is open. The British section is here, and I had fun last night examining the German phrasebook with a German friend, who is flying to the States today, and therefore gets an extra five hours in which to Talk Like A Pirate. Arrrrr!

Not bad, really. [From over here, via]

Here’s a handy chart from The Times showing how tall Hazel Blears is, as compared to (i) hitherto well-documented and in some cases actually-existing varieties of penguin and (ii) the Extinct Giant Tropical Penguin discussed below. [Thanks, David E.]

There’s already an internet petition, over here.

I gave 50p to a chap in the street earlier this afternoon, who followed me into the Co-op in order to spend it, and, once there, asked me whether I was a relative of Hurricane Higgins, who is, or was, I think, a snooker player. I’ve never contemplated any possible physical resemblance between the two of us, and I’m not sure anyone else has, either.

But “who else does Chris look like?” threatens to become a new year meme. A friend sent me this image, just the other day, claiming to detect a “somewhat striking” resemblance. It’s Thomas Burke’s painting, “The Student”, and it hangs in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

A couple of recent likenesses are below the fold, for people who want to engage in scientific comparisons.

(more…)

Even when Islam-free Week is declared at Harry’s Place, the contributors can’t help themselves, and yet another bloody post about Islam appears…

It was taken off the front page shortly afterwards, but it still (10.20am) exists on the site here.

Which Jane Austen Character Are You?

You are Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. You’re pretty arrogant, but that pride stems from the deep-seated knowledge that you are generally the most superior creature in any given room. The good news is that you are deeply loyal to your family, and you have a generous and charitable streak, even though most people don’t notice because you are too busy practicing a large vocabulary of stern looks.
Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

This might seem like a surprising result, but it’s actually quite scientific, in that Josephine did the quiz imagining herself to be me and got the same result, too.

I suppose this means I shall have to finish reading Pride and Prejudice. which happens to be one of those books that I’ve started several times, but never finished, which is curious, given that it’s not exactly a turgid read. [via]

Today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day, aarrrr, me hearties! So get talkin’ like a pirate in the comments box, or be walkin’ the plank like the scurvy varmints y’arr.

(It’s also my excuse to post my annual link to my favourite on-line pirate-themed joke, of which I never tire, though it is possible, gentle readers, that you do.)

I’m not sure this is an entirely scientific game, which is why I’ve felt free to express no preference, or, on occasion, a fourth option.

1. Beatles, Stones or Beach Boys? Beatles, though less than I used to.
2. Kant, Hegel, Marx? Hegel, in a three-way photo-finish. (I enjoy lecturing on Hegel more than on Marx, though I’ll concede that Kant was, in fact, the Greatest Philosopher Ever.)
3. Cluedo, Monopoly, Scrabble? Scrabble
4. Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford? Jack Nicholson, for Chinatown
5. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart? Beethoven, I think, though The Magic Flute is something special.
6. Australia, Canada, New Zealand? New Zealand (filial piety).
7. Groucho, Chico, Harpo? Harpo.
8. Morning, afternoon, evening? Evening.
9. Bridge, Canasta, Poker? Bridge.
10. Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? OBWAT. Didn’t think a great deal of Fargo, and haven’t seen TBL.
11. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau? Rousseau, though Hobbes is, of course, fabulous.
12. Cricket, football, rugby? Cricket. Test Match Cricket.
13. Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte? Whichever one of the B’s wrote Wuthering Heights.
14. Parker, Gillespie, Monk? No preference.
15. Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham? Arsenal, I think, because Thierry Henry is so much fun to watch when he’s on form.
16. Cheers, Friends, Seinfeld? Seinfeld (but only because I’ve seen an episode which I enjoyed, which is more than I can say for the other two)
17. Henry Fonda, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart? Jimmy Stewart.
18. France, Germany, Italy? Italy.
19. Apple, orange, banana? Banana.
20. Statham, Tyson, Trueman? Too young, I’m afraid. Larwood.
21. Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Rio Lobo? Are these films?
22. Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Ingrid Bergman? No preference.
23. Chinese, Indian, Thai? Indian.
24. Handel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi? Handel.
25. Oasis, Radiohead, Blur? No preference.
26. Fawlty Towers, The Young Ones, Yes Minister? Yes, Minister.
27. Chekhov, Ibsen, Shaw? Ibsen.
28. American football, baseball, basketball? Baseball.
29. FDR, JFK, Bill Clinton? FDR.
30. Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky? Luxemburg.
31. Paris, Rome, New York? Rome.
32. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck? Raymond Chandler.
33. Blue, green, red? Red.
34. Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, West Side Story? Oklahoma!
35. J.S. Mill, John Rawls, Robert Nozick? John Rawls.
36. Armstrong, Ellington, Goodman? Goodman.
37. Ireland, Scotland, Wales (at rugby)? Wales.
38. The Sopranos, 24, Six Feet Under? No knowledge.
39. Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Saturday.
40. Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear? Macbeth.
41. Fried, boiled, scrambled (eggs)? Fried.
42. Paths of Glory, Cross of Iron, Saving Private Ryan? N/A
43. England, Australia, West Indies (at cricket)? Not Australia. Otherwise, it depends. I’ve certainly cheered for the West Indies against England in my time.
44. Chabrol, Godard, Truffaut? N/A
45. Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks? John Wesley Harding
46. Trains, planes, automobiles? Trains.
47. North By Northwest, Psycho, Vertigo? Vertigo.
48. Third, Fourth, Fifth (Beethoven Piano Concerto)? Third (Eroica Symphony).
49. Coffee, tea, chocolate? Coffee.
50. Cardiff, Edinburgh, Dublin? Dublin.

What Monty Python Sketch Character are you? [via]

Over at the BBC Magazine. [Thanks, K.]

UPDATE [3.20pm]: regardless of how many people have heard of them, do we have any reliable stats about the relative numbers of bloggers and doggers in the UK? Or about the percentages of doggers who blog and bloggers who dog? Enquiring minds want to know.

Who do you think the world’s “top thinker” is? Is it Robert Cooper? Christopher Hitchens? Yusuf al-Qaradawi? Naomi Klein? Tom Friedman? Anthony Giddens? Bernard Lewis, perhaps?

Go over here, goggle a bit at the names on the list, giggle a bit at the mind-set of the people who produced the list (Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines), and, if you have a mind, cast your vote…

Apologies for forgetting to Talk Like A Pirate yesterday, on international Talk Like A Pirate day. I won’t do that again.

As readers know, we at the Virtual Stoa take the naming of cats very seriously. So does Kieran Healy, bard.

I’m sitting in the Bodleian Lower Reading Room reading Hans W. Blom’s Morality and Causality in Politics: The Rise of Naturalism in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Political Thought when I see that Sarah has dug a hole for me and passed me the spade. Where better to think about books than in the LRR of the B? OK then, very quickly:

1) Total number of books I’ve owned: Thousands, I’m afraid. I don’t spend much money on anything else, and it’d take me too long to make a sensible estimate, especially if it involves books I used to own but don’t any more, for whatever reason.

2) The last book I bought: Probably a critical edition of Paradise Lost, which I’m enjoying (though haven’t got especially far yet).

3) The last book I read: Making Sense of Suicide Missions, ed. Diego Gambetta. Good book.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me (no particular order): Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue; Njal’s Saga; Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose; Arnold Lobell, Owl at Home; Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900.

5) People to Tag: No-one in particular. Sorry if you should have liked to have been tagged by me.