Doctor J’s Winter Fund Drive

Normally, around this time of year, we’d be fishing for our checkbooks to contribute to NPR.   (In past years, I have made mine in the name of The Big Broadcast -- the only program on NPR that was specifically aimed at my demographic.  But now Ed Walker has moved on to that big radio up in the sky …)  

Now, however, that The Don has moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, some of you may be wondering whether that would be … as the senior George Bush used to put it …   prudent, to contribute to any of the more virulently Donophobic of the MSM.
Because The Don does not like you should defy The Don.   To do that, might be to seriously annoy him.   Wouldn’t be prudent.

So -- what to do with those extra dollars, rattling around in your piggy bank, which otherwise would have been wasted on a bunch of liberal low-lifes? -- Perfect solution:  Donate big-time to The World of Doctor Justice  -- your one-stop shopping for monostichs, truthitude, penguin lore, and Trinitarian Minimalism!  All the best people are doing that this year!

Give generously --  Give often !

Unfortunately, unlike contributions to NPR or other barely-worthy causes, through some administrative glitch, cash envelopes to this site are not yet tax deductible.  But that hardly matters, since once The Don takes things in hand, there should be no more taxes anyway.   Anyway not for Winner people like you & me.

Direct all tithings to this site  care of

      Buy_Doctor_Justice_a_Yacht.con

Gold bullion and Schweizer Franken only, please;  no bitcoins, dollars, or second-party food-stamps.

*

For further musings from this pen,

check here:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

*

Doctor J’s Winter Fund Drive

Normally, around this time of year, we’d be fishing for our checkbooks to contribute to NPR.   (In past years, I have made mine in the name of The Big Broadcast -- the only program on NPR that was specifically aimed at my demographic.  But now Ed Walker has moved on to that big radio up in the sky …)  

Now, however, that The Don is moving to Pennsylvania Avenue (or at least sending some of his kids and minions -- he might not wish personally to move downmarket from his own fabulous properties), some of you may be wondering whether that would be … as the senior George Bush used to put it …   prudent, to contribute to the most virulently Donophobic of the MSM.
Because The Don does not like you should defy The Don.   To do that, might be to seriously annoy him.   Wouldn’t be prudent.

So -- what to do with those extra dollars, rattling around in your piggy bank, which otherwise would have been wasted on a bunch of liberal low-lifes? -- Perfect solution:  Donate big-time to The World of Doctor Justice  -- your one-stop shopping for monostichs, truthitude, penguin lore, and Trinitarian Minimalism!  All the best people are doing that this year!

Give generously --  Give often !

Unfortunately, unlike contributions to NPR or other barely-worthy causes, through some administrative glitch, cash envelopes to this site are not yet tax deductible.  But that hardly matters, since once The Don takes things in hand, there should be no more taxes anyway.   Anyway not for Winner people like you & me.

Direct all tithings to this site  care of

      Buy_Doctor_Justice_a_Yacht.con

Gold bullion and Schweizer Franken only, please;  no bitcoins, dollars, or second-party food-stamps.

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

For a thrilling mini-movie, try this:

The Penitent and the Impenitent Thief

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

In the temporary interests of total financial disclosure (such measures will become obsolete as of January 20, but in the meantime), here is an accounting for the proceeds of last’s year’s WDJ fund-drive.

Loot:

Contributions from people who wanted favors: $78,996.
Joke contribution from some cheapskate:  $1.

Total:  $78,997.

Expenditures:

Booze: $4,176.
Broads: $10,888.
Smokes: $400.
Unaccounted-for:  (Whatever’s left over.  You do the math.  What am I an accountant??)

*

For further musings from this pen,

check here:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

*

Theological themata

The following are snippets from posts of some religious import; click on the link for the full essay.

Rejecting our appointed time of circa threescore and ten, he arranges for his brain to be kept alive in a beaker:  thus seeking eternal life, not on God’s terms, but on Satan’s.  (These deals usually do not turn out well.)

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/10/brains-in-vat.html

I am not saying that numbers are ideas.  Or if they are that, they are that in addition, where they keep such scruffy company as the Idea of a Unicorn and the Idea of a Ham Sandwich. They are, rather, facts as hard as baseballs, packing quite as much wallop. (Also, admittedly, we are interested in the Pitcher …)

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/02/existence-and-use.html

Now Solly got thoughtful.   “Y’know… Just indulge me here, okay?  Because I heard a rumor there’s this, some kind of Church doctrine, in this general area -- I won’t even try to quote it, I’d just screw it up:   but something along the lines of, like, a woman and a man, yadda yadda, and they get hitched up by God, in just the right way:  and from then on,  it’s like trying to yank a horseshoe loose from the hoof -- or no:  more like, trying to yank the blue right out of the sky.”

            Murphy raised a respectful eyebrow.  “That’s pretty much it, Solly.  That’s very well put.”   He nodded again, and savored.  The blue, right out of the sky.

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/2014/03/murphy-on-meaning-of-belief.html

Sober orthodoxy of each camp would doubtless concede that the others “believe in” the “same” God (whatever it means to “believe in” something ultimately unknowable  this side the grave, and whatever “same” means  when comparing finitely described infinites); adding simply, that they worship Him amiss.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/topological-theology.html

But now here is the key -- and it is a key to Christianity as well, that faith that embraces paradox …

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/01/orthoepy-of-doxology.html

Sidenote on theologoumenon.  It is not every day that Dr. J. learns a new word;  this one’s a doozer. 

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/07/parsing-trinitarian-minimalism.html

Sin has a certain dignity, as only upon a foundation of Morality can it raise its head.  Chimps in their lubricious oestrus cannot be considered “adulterers”.  In this sense, we are not certain that M. Hollande has actually committed any “sin”.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/01/in-further-defense-of-m-fr-hollande.html

Such creatures are needful, lest the scala naturae  wane at its base.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/07/infimae-scala-naturae.html

Age-old Theological Conundra cheerfully solved by Dr J

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/07/age-old-theological-conundra-cheerfully.html

We are sweaty, dust-caked survival machines -- that has been shown -- much like the cockroach and the rat.  Are we anything else as well ?

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-challenge-of-darwinism-updated-for.html

This frame of clay which Thou hast shaped

and quickened with Thine inblown Word,

a cloak about my spirit draped:

Mold it a little longer, Lord.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/04/linguist-contemplates-afterlife.html

I may well have much more free time after I die.  (No more dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles!  Free at last, Lord -- Free at last !!!)

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/02/wissbegierde.html

“Gödel turned out to be an unadulterated Platonist, and apparently believed that an eternal ‘not’ was laid up in heaven, where virtuous logicians might hope to meet it hereafter.”

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/03/mathematicians-contemplate-afterlife.html

Tares planted in the Endarkenment (humorously known as the Enlightenment) have sprouted to weeds that choke the vacant lots where atheists briefly couple and depart …

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/10/duet-at-distance.html

I believe I have successfully defended C.S.Lewis against any suggestions that he was either a prude or a scold;  but what of his original suggestion that the sexual instinct in modern man has somehow gone wrong?  That is indeed a startling thesis -- and utterly at variance with the  contemporary climate of right-thinking opinion that anything goes and that’s just dandy.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/on-sex-and-c-s-lewis-updated.html

Whether the evidence of the Apostles for all that they saw and sensed and heard, was indeed no greater than that whereby we announce, “Hullo!  A penny-bun upon the table.” -- the testimony of the senses, the notoriously wayward senses -- I cannot say.   Wasn’t there; only read the book. 

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-miracles.html

On this Landscape question, Hawking notwithstanding, I’ll go with the Pope.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-is-there-something-rather-than.html

Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht …

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/theologia-mathematica-i.html

We know, on scientific grounds, that penguins cannot exist.  How, then, to explain the persistence, among the unlettered, of a belief in these fanciful creatures?

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-existence-of-penguins.html

Desecrating a sacrament is, no doubt, protected “speech”, in the greatly and sometimes grievously distended sense that that simple word has gradually acquired in secular law;  but that doesn’t mean the Church has to put up with it.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/de-logica-ecclesiae_10.html

Erdős sees the Deity, not exactly through a glass darkly, but under some distortion -- perhaps a projective transformation.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-theometry-of-paul-erdos.html

That God is simply the sum of All that Is, is mere pantheism.  We shall posit rather, that He is its Stone–Čech compactification.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/04/internal-external-universal.html

What makes a movie moral  is by no means that the ultimate verdict of Judgment Day shall be anticipated here in this life -- as it so manifestly is not, despite the hype and come-ons from certain motivational evangelists outside the discipline of the Historical Church.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/01/on-movies-and-moral-anchors.html

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion” does not come from this world.  It’s less a traditional film than a passion play, a ritual re-enactment.  If you weren’t well versed in the Gospels, most of it wouldn’t even make sense

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/02/passion.html

There is something prelapsarian about the penguins, a thing that indeed tugs at us  like a magnet  the filings, we in our fallen state.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/penguin-passion.html

“La pornographie de la banalité”

For reasons which our researchers are still trying to figure out (busy at work in the bustling bomb-proof underground laboratories beneath the WDC headquarters in Geneva), whenever I put up a post with “porn” in the title, the essay gets more hits than those with say, “ontology” or “monostich” or “Trinitarian minimalism”;  even though, in no case  is there the least hint of anything  that would bring a blush to a maiden’s cheek (though it might cause a Nominalist  to flush beet-red).   Go figure.

Anyhow:  I just listened to another delightful causerie by our favorite Franco-Maghrebo-Netherlandish radio journalist, al-sayyid Fouad Laroui.   In the course of a highly entertaining rant, he comes up with the phrase that headlines this note.  You can enjoy his perceptive artistry here:

     La tyrannie de la non-information

And for those lost souls who, slaves to their own libido, wound up at this page under the false hope that they might wind up beholding the considerable charms of, say Mlle. Aurélie Delvaux (which, en revanche, you may savor here and here), we offer this bagatelle as a consolation prize:

   Hotcha hotcha:  Dames, dames, dames !

 
.

Pining for “Pinterest”

“This case presents certain features of pinterest.”

-- Psherlock Pholmes

As mentioned here,  a young friend has just informed me that, if I want anyone at all to so much as glance at my blog, who doesn’t have a beard as white as mine (quite becoming, though, she told me the other day), I absolutely have to gear uP and get with the Program  and begin seeking Pinnings on something called “ “ “Pinterest” “ “.  (Additional quotation marks added for hazmat security.   The thing has gone viral, in ways reminiscent of ebola.)   And that is essential because, only in that fashion will thousands of milling visitors throng my site, and, no doubt charmed, ask themselves “Hmm!  Wonder whether this fellow has published any exciting mysteries??”   And upon learning (to their surprise and delight) that he has indeed, they rush out to rid themselves of their surplus dollars, here and here and here.   (Remember, you can’t take it with you. -- Of course, you’re a little young for that thought.)   Whereupon I take the resulting royalty money to the neighborhood bank, and retire and buy a yacht and sail around the oceans in a sailor suit, on a deck bustling with penguins and pangolins.  That’s the plan.

The only price you must pay, to get Pinned to, is to chuck out your old preoccupation with the dusty print culture (logic and history and ideas and reasoning and like that) and focus on images.  Eye-candy.  Pictures.  

Well, sure, whatever.   Why not.  For an old guy, I’m pretty “hep”, you dig?

But I am still enough of a philologist  that this bizarre coinage and novel vocable, 

“Pinterest”

(of all things), has got me scratching my snowy-locked head.  Whatever can be the derivation of this strange-looking word?

Well, let’s start with the root. Morphologically, we have:  Pint|er|est.  Pint (rhymes with mint) is German slang for ‘penis’; so far so good.  Now -er can be either the masculine (natch) adjective ending, or else a comparative suffix:  thus,  something like ‘he-penis’ or ‘more-penissy’.  Finally, -est is, in German just as in English, the mark of the superlative;  hence the word as a whole means, etymologically, ‘most-more-penissy’ or perhaps ‘superlatively penissy’ or perhaps ‘so penissy you could spread it on toast’.

Checking with Wikipedia to confirm this hypothesis, I learned that the site “is managed by Cold Brew Labs” -- evidently a beer laboratory.   Awesome. This has got to be a total guy thing.

Such, youngsters, are the teachings of philology.

~

Curiosity by now aroused, I  for the first time  visited their website -- carefully typing in the word, P - I - N - T - E - R - E - S -T (can that be right?  It reads like a typo) -- blushing a bit that the all-seeing Google (which probably spies on the enn ess ay, rather than the other way around), drawing the conclusion that I have a fascination with, um, superlative images of ‘Pint’s, no doubt will start pimpling the response-pages with image ads for Viagra and masculine enhancement and whatnot, rather than penguin-grooming products as they normally do now;  but bit my lip and proceeded anyway:  I’ve got to get that yacht!

So it landed me at www.pinterest.com, and … I felt as though I had accidentally wandered into the wrong restroom.    Not only do more than four times as many women as men use the site (or so we're told), but to say that its design and presentation were expressive “principally” of women, would be an understatement;  it is positively estrogenic.   So, looks like the proposed German etymology  is refuted by the old method of Wörter und Sachen.

Having now looked around there a bit, it remains obscure to me how anybody is ever going to find my most important posts via that site -- essays on Theologia Mathematica, or Trinitarian Minimalism, or Eliminative Materialism -- or etymology, for that matter.   I didn’t spot any pictures of the Riemann hypothesis, nor the Poincaré conjecture neither; no hint of Indo-European roots.   Just … weird hairdos and stuff.  True, there was one image of some guy doing woodworking;  but in context, I suspect it’s intended to be ironic.

So, I may have to settle for a rowboat, and retirement at ninety-five.

As it is, half the visitors to my site these days seem to be horny guys over in Belgium  searching on images for “Aurélie Delvaulx” (la divine Aurélie) -- whose portrait we here reproduce, for research purposes:

To rotate this image:

using your free hand,

manipulate the mouse;

double-click to remove the panties.

.

Just the logic, ma’am (Chapter 1)

There are, as ever, several stories in the news, that seem to cry out for comment.  However:

(1)  There is no particular reason that readers should care about my personal opinions about such things -- even if they happen to value my analyses (and opinions) concerning, say, Cantorian Realism, or Trinitarian Minimalism, or Humble Woodchucks, since expertise in one area need by no means carry over to expertise (or even common sense) in another.  (So, indeed, I have argued, in satires directed against physicists or neuroscientists who come out with philosophical/theological absurdities.)

(2)  Even if, for some reason, you did care (say, if you were my mother), it’s still just an opinion:  and its appreciation-worthiness is not, so to speak, transitive -- it is not the case that everyone who knows my (let us say) mother, and everyone who  in turn  knows them, will in consequence care about said opinion.  So soon as you proceed, even so far as two degrees of separation, the thing goes pffht.

(3)  In any case, for reasons mentioned here, I have resolved to refrain from ever publically expressing an opinion about anything anywhere to anyone -- the political climate in this country is just too toxic.   There is really nothing in it for anyone thus sticking his neck out, other than flame wars and death threats.  Taceo igitur.

I do, however, have a certain (indeed, certified) knack for linguistic and logical/rhetorical analysis.  (Confer  the peer-reviewed volume,  The Semantics of Form in Arabic, for illustration.)  And,  within these strict bounds, staying not straying, certain observations may be made.

Thus, from earlier today:

When Jessica Kern gave evidence to lawmakers in Washington, DC, last summer opposing the legalization of surrogacy in the district, she was pointedly asked why she wasn’t grateful for the procedure that created her.

“The question was so simple and dismissive,” she recalls. “Like I would choose this for myself? When the only reason you’re in this world is a big fat paycheck, it’s degrading.”

Kern, 30, of Culpepper, Va., is among a number of donor-conceived children in the US who are campaigning for tighter controls on the law governing assisted reproduction.

“You can’t sell your kidney for profit but you can purchase an egg or sell a child,” she says. “There needs to be more checks and balances.

“Most of the consideration within surrogacy is toward the adults and what they want. Often, it’s not in the best interests of the children.”

Kern discovered the true story behind her birth after finding her medical records at the age of 17 which included details of the surrogacy arrangement.

“My biological mother was paid $10,000 for her services,” she says. “I was devastated.”

Kern, who is no longer in touch with her adoptive mother, tracked down her biological mother, but the two are now estranged because of her outspoken stance against surrogacy.

http://nypost.com/2014/06/16/children-of-surrogacy-campaign-to-outlaw-the-practice/

As regards the ethical pros and cons of all this, taceo.  (... Eppur’ si muove …)  But let us offer this purely logical observation:

There is no more a logical contradiction(**) between someone born by surrogacy  coming (upon mature reflection) to condemn the practice, than in the analogous case of someone born by rape, or prostitution, or incest, or bigamy, or A.I.D., or fructification by Zeus in the form of a swan, objecting to (as a general practice) rape, or prostitution, or incest, or bigamy, or A.I.D., or extra-Olympian dalliances by randy deities sub specie cygni.  In every such case, one would not have been born otherwise.   Ms. Kern has evidently progressed beyond that primitive stage of self-involved special-caseness, blind to all wider implications, which the Greeks called that of an ἰδιώτης, and has risen to a more nearly Kantian-level generalism.  (That does not guarantee that her enlarged and enlightened stance is quite correct, of course;  merely, that it is in the running -- that she is dining with the grownups now.)  Whereas those who “pointedly” ask her (the adverb here is comical, better befitting an insightful inquiry  than the sort of unreflective grandstanding involved here) why she personally should not be the measure of all things, rather than God or Man, have not so progressed, but are flailing about in blinkered sentimentalism.

Leda and her gentleman-friend

[**Footnote:  By the same token, neither is the contradiction less;  though in this case, it is not a logical contradiction, so much as a psychological disconnect.  Thus, it is entirely possible that, statistically, more of those born via incest  support incest, than those born by other means.  (Indeed, in pharaonic Egypt, that was almost certainly the case.)  Quite possibly such offspring would maintain that they like having just a single eye in the middle of the forehead;  quite attractive, really, once you get used to it.

In considering the testimony of such witnesses, the ethicist will consider what is known technically as their personal equation.   Its value may be compared to that of a witness who swears up and down that Sluggo could not possibly have murdered all those people, when the witness in question is Sluggo’s mother.   Such witnesses are treated gently in court, though their testimony is discounted.]

Srsly, swans make really great dads.

-- Polydeuces

[Note:  The above is, once again, a purely logical exercise.  No personal opinions have been expressed upon any controversial subject whatsoever.   In particular, my remarks should not be interpreted as either celebrating or condemning impregnation via shape-shifting Hellenic godlings, whether in the form of a swan, or a shower of gold.   

A.I.S.

Consequently please direct all hate-mail to the Dead Letter Office.]

[Footnote:  For more hot Greek swan-action, check this out:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-power-of-intransigence.html ]

~

So much, then, for the mere logic of the thing.   As my professional credentials amount to no more than a Bachelor’s in math and a doctorate in linguistics, rather than a Doctor of Divinity, I am in no particular position to comment upon fundamental matters of morals;  they are above my pay-grade.   Accordingly I refer you to the appropriate authorities;  Article 2376 of the Catechism:

Technicae artes, quae parentum provocant dissociationem per interventum personae a matrimonio alienae (spermatis vel ovocyti donum, uteri commodatum) graviter sunt inhonestae. Hae technicae artes (inseminatio vel fecundatio artificiales heterologae) filii laedunt ius nascendi e patre et matre ab ipso cognitis et inter se matrimonio coniunctis. Ius produnt « ad hoc ut alter pater aut mater fiat solummodo per alterum »

[Footnote on delicacy of expression]

You cannot make sense of any of those paintings above, nor hundreds of others like them, if you don’t know that Zeus had coitus with Leto in the form of a swan.  It’s the single thing anyone would want to know about Leto, in terms of cultural literacy, whatever else there might be to know;  just like “Hercules was strong” and “Ananias told lies”.   Yet The Oxford Companion to English Literature (third edition, 1946),  p. 447, makes no mention of this, identifying Leto simply as “the daughter of a Titan, and beloved by Zeus”.  That makes it sound as though Zeus worshiped her from afar; but the very next sentence says “Hera, jealous of her, sent the serpent Python to persecute her during her pregnancy.”  This is comically reticent.  When they mention “pregnancy”, you feel as though the film has skipped a reel.

Theological theses

The following are snippets from posts of some religious import; click on the link for the full essay.

I am not saying that numbers are ideas.  Or if they are that, they are that in addition, where they keep such scruffy company as the Idea of a Unicorn and the Idea of a Ham Sandwich. They are, rather, facts as hard as baseballs, packing quite as much wallop. (Also, admittedly, we are interested in the Pitcher …)

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/02/existence-and-use.html

Now Solly got thoughtful.   “Y’know… Just indulge me here, okay?  Because I heard a rumor there’s this, some kind of Church doctrine, in this general area -- I won’t even try to quote it, I’d just screw it up:   but something along the lines of, like, a woman and a man, yadda yadda, and they get hitched up by God, in just the right way:  and from then on,  it’s like trying to yank a horseshoe loose from the hoof -- or no:  more like, trying to yank the blue right out of the sky.”

            Murphy raised a respectful eyebrow.  “That’s pretty much it, Solly.  That’s very well put.”   He nodded again, and savored.  The blue, right out of the sky.

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/2014/03/murphy-on-meaning-of-belief.html

Sober orthodoxy of each camp would doubtless concede that the others “believe in” the “same” God (whatever it means to “believe in” something ultimately unknowable  this side the grave, and whatever “same” means  when comparing finitely described infinites); adding simply, that they worship Him amiss.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/topological-theology.html

But now here is the key -- and it is a key to Christianity as well, that faith that embraces paradox …

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/01/orthoepy-of-doxology.html

Sidenote on theologoumenon.  It is not every day that Dr. J. learns a new word;  this one’s a doozer. 

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/07/parsing-trinitarian-minimalism.html

Sin has a certain dignity, as only upon a foundation of Morality can it raise its head.  Chimps in their lubricious oestrus cannot be considered “adulterers”.  In this sense, we are not certain that M. Hollande has actually committed any “sin”.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/01/in-further-defense-of-m-fr-hollande.html

Such creatures are needful, lest the scala naturae  wane at its base.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/07/infimae-scala-naturae.html

Age-old Theological Conundra cheerfully solved by Dr J

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/07/age-old-theological-conundra-cheerfully.html

We are sweaty, dust-caked survival machines -- that has been shown -- much like the cockroach and the rat.  Are we anything else as well ?

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-challenge-of-darwinism-updated-for.html

This frame of clay which Thou hast shaped

and quickened with Thine inblown Word,

a cloak about my spirit draped:

Mold it a little longer, Lord.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/04/linguist-contemplates-afterlife.html

I may well have much more free time after I die.  (No more dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles!  Free at last, Lord -- Free at last !!!)

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/02/wissbegierde.html

“Gödel turned out to be an unadulterated Platonist, and apparently believed that an eternal ‘not’ was laid up in heaven, where virtuous logicians might hope to meet it hereafter.”

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/03/mathematicians-contemplate-afterlife.html

Tares planted in the Endarkenment (humorously known as the Enlightenment) have sprouted to weeds that choke the vacant lots where atheists briefly couple and depart …

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/10/duet-at-distance.html

I believe I have successfully defended C.S.Lewis against any suggestions that he was either a prude or a scold;  but what of his original suggestion that the sexual instinct in modern man has somehow gone wrong?  That is indeed a startling thesis -- and utterly at variance with the  contemporary climate of right-thinking opinion that anything goes and that’s just dandy.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/01/on-sex-and-c-s-lewis-updated.html

Whether the evidence of the Apostles for all that they saw and sensed and heard, was indeed no greater than that whereby we announce, “Hullo!  A penny-bun upon the table.” -- the testimony of the senses, the notoriously wayward senses -- I cannot say.   Wasn’t there; only read the book. 

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-miracles.html

On this Landscape question, Hawking notwithstanding, I’ll go with the Pope.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-is-there-something-rather-than.html

Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht …

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/theologia-mathematica-i.html

We know, on scientific grounds, that penguins cannot exist.  How, then, to explain the persistence, among the unlettered, of a belief in these fanciful creatures?

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/on-existence-of-penguins.html

Desecrating a sacrament is, no doubt, protected “speech”, in the greatly and sometimes grievously distended sense that that simple word has gradually acquired in secular law;  but that doesn’t mean the Church has to put up with it.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/de-logica-ecclesiae_10.html

Erdős sees the Deity, not exactly through a glass darkly, but under some distortion -- perhaps a projective transformation.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-theometry-of-paul-erdos.html

That God is simply the sum of All that Is, is mere pantheism.  We shall posit rather, that He is its Stone–Čech compactification.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/04/internal-external-universal.html

What makes a movie moral  is by no means that the ultimate verdict of Judgment Day shall be anticipated here in this life -- as it so manifestly is not, despite the hype and come-ons from certain motivational evangelists outside the discipline of the Historical Church.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/01/on-movies-and-moral-anchors.html

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion” does not come from this world.  It’s less a traditional film than a passion play, a ritual re-enactment.  If you weren’t well versed in the Gospels, most of it wouldn’t even make sense

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/02/passion.html

There is something prelapsarian about the penguins, a thing that indeed tugs at us  like a magnet  the filings, we in our fallen state.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2010/12/penguin-passion.html

The Red Thread

Since its foundation a couple of years ago as a minbar for essays about Cantorian Realism and Trinitarian minimalism,  this blog has wandered rather far afield:  philosophy of science, sensational discoveries of Latin incunabula, prehistoric penguins, cinematic Freudianism, only hemi-demi-satirical celebrations of our former teacher the late and dearly lamented Professor Willard “Van” Orman Quine, blood-pumping revelations about the Riemann Conspiracy (exclusive to this site), one-line poems, and yes, occasionally, malgré nous, dépit oblige, politics.   But through all this  there runs one constant, like a red thread:   Humor.

Earlier today, we updated our tip-of-the-hat to the President’s diplomatic strategy on Syria, with a Tom Toles cartoon presenting a contrary view, mainly because it’s so funny.   And in a similar spirit, we here salute today’s WaPo essay by Alexandra Petri (among our favorite columnists in general), who takes on an often lip-pinched/atrabilious subject-matter with both humor and logic (the twin principles of this site -- never forget logic):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/09/11/feminism-is-dead-long-live-feminism/

Although actually, now that I re-read it, it isn’t exactly a contrary view -- more like a parallactic perspective, thus inherently valuable for conceiving the whole.  In fact, I concur with every line of it;  and shook with Falstaffian laughter reading such lines as

Susan B. Anthony didn’t die fighting in the snows of Mount Rushmore so you can complain about being whistled at on the way to Work in your Important Job, where you have yet to encounter any glass ceilings whatsoever! Look at you, achieving things! Feminism complains that it has no shoes, but remember, it used to have no feet!

Fair. But now it has no shoes. This is still a problem.

And

"The patriarchy" is one of those terms that makes you cringe and carries a potent whiff of burning bras.

and

I don’t think so little of today’s feminism as to assume that if the problems it confronts went away, it would continue to find ever-more-specific and tinier things to complain about. I think it would heave a sigh of relief and get back to its, er, whatever the opposite of knitting is.

[Excerpts reprinted, um, without permission.  Sry, my bad.]

So, all told, Ms Petri might not even be too offended by my vitriolic diatribe (still funny, though!) here:

            Manhunt

 

Ah!  Vive la différence quand-même.

 ~

~  ~

The enigma of a woman’s heart,

finally espied  by a Private Eye,

for less than the price  of a Valentine …

This Rose

[Kindle]  [Nook]

Also available in hardcopy, as one of the stories in this collection of previously published and unpublished detective stories:

I Don't Do Divorce Cases

How Would U Like 2 B a Poet?

It’s E-Z, using Dr J’s patented Poet’s Starter Kit ®,  only $200 at selected stores!

Here is a sample. 

The following words rhyme:

            goombah

            Roomba

            zoomba

The poem  practically writes itself !
So -- roll up your sleeves and get to work !!


For further fi-ine, fine, superfine
poems,
click

ri- i - ight ....

HERE.

[update 7 VII]  Omigosh! A friend just apprised me of a neat new word:

"derp"

It rhymes with:  twerp; slurp; burp; perp ... (and probably some other things  best left unmentioned ...)

OK so -- Not 2 useful if U R trying to write a poem about
=>  Cantorian realism;
=>  Trinitarian minimalism
or even
=>  symplectic manifolds.

Still.
A potentially useful addition to the poetaster's kit-bag ...

Th-th-that’s Entertainment

“All work   and no play

 makes  Jack  a dull boy.”

So it’s not all Cantorian Realism and Trinitarian Minimalism here at the World of Doctor Justice --  not by a long shot!    Here for your reading pleasure  are our pieces on popular entertainment:

Movies  (see especially Take Shelter,  Memento, and March of the Penguins)

Plus our own mini-movie here:

The Penitent and the Impenitent Thief

Television (particularly Dollhouse, Rubicon, and The Prisoner)

Music  (e.g. Skeeter Davis, , Glenn Gould)