Duolingo; a party game; a legend dies

Karin’s Duolingo streak has surpassed 1300 days. That’s longer than 3½ years. It antedates our second-to-last address change. It antedates Samuel.

I am impressed.

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A party game. Guess which dour philosopher wrote the following.

Ten years ago I was awarded a year-long fellowship at the Humanities Institute of the University of Michigan to pursue research into narrative and its relevance to the value of a good life. I began reading the vast literature on narrative, and by the end of the first semester I was utterly lost. I decided to work on a different project, so as to have something to show for the year. This paper is an effort to make good on the project that the Institute funded; I have no illusions of its having been worth the wait.

And yet the paper (“Narrative Explanation”) was published in The Philosophical Review.

It is fitting that the philosopher should have provided a “narrative explanation” of how the paper came to be written, and of its likely deficiencies.

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R.I.P. Richard Belzer, best known as Detective John Munch of Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and other shows, e.g. Sesame Street and The X-Files. According to ranker.com, Munch is the second-best detective in the Law & Order “universe”:

Your classic … paranoid, misanthropic detective. He thrives off conspiracy theories, and a new ex-wife of his seems to pop up every other season. Munch is a huge advocate for the mentally ill, as several of his ex-wives and family members have suffered from mental disorders.

He (Munch, anyway) was a sweetheart.

January’s poem

I used to post poetry during my first year or two of blogging. I’d like to try again. However, I don’t know very many poems; I might exhaust my supply after a few entries.

This month’s selection is by Matt Berry of Toast of London.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

All men somehow pay for love
While this world turns under stars above
It’s unfair how fingers point and blame
Now I hang my head in fear and shame

Who am I to cast a stone?
I’ve enough dark demons of my own
Just a pawn in a very complex game
Now I hang my head in fear and shame

How I hang my head in fear and shame
Yes, I hang my head in fear and shame

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I think it’s very moving.

Jasper and Ziva sing: “Now we hang our heads in fur and shame.”

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A philosophic bonus: “The Genesis of Shame.”

I, Claudius, pt. 2

If you haven’t read much of I, Claudius, don’t despair. You can catch up. Stephen and I haven’t gotten very far. Not because the book isn’t good (it is!) but because Stephen’s life is very full, and so he hasn’t had time for reading; and because I lost my copy and found it only yesterday. So I’m still on Chapter V, and Stephen is on Chapter 3. (Stephen’s edition has Arabic chapter numerals; mine, more fittingly, has Roman ones.) So far, in the novel, Livia — Augustus’s wife, Claudius’s grandmother — has been poisoning many of the other characters. Just when it feels like the story is turning to something else, Gasp!, another poisoning. (This is Stephen’s summary.) I’ve also been reading some rather garish short stories by Ruth Rendell, who appears to have been, for a time, the most similar writer to Agatha Christie. And I’ve been reading a lot of other books and some philosophy articles. This was interesting and accessible, I thought (before yesterday, I’d never read it).

Also, these last weeks I’ve weighed more lbs than ever. And today I’m groggy due to illness. Still chipper, though.