'sTruth!

The untergang of the abendlandes is earmarked by terminological confusion.  That is, it would be if untergangen had ears.  At least it is in terminological ferment, and ferment might make good beer, though usually it is dark and skunky.  (Skunky being a technical term in brewing that means....  Well, you can easily imagine what it means.  However, the good news, should you be desperate enough, is that no organism harmful to man can survive in beer, so while skunky beer may stink like a politician's promise, it won't make you sick.  Well, not physically.  Psychosomatically, who can say.  You can, however, hold your nose and quaff.)

Where was I?

At Last It Can Be Revealed!

Lunacon 2013, reduced to desperation and barrel-bottom scraping, has persuaded TOF to be their Author Guest of Honor, in lieu of a more honorable author-guest. TOF will of course do his darnedest, and is pleased as Hubert Humphrey's punch, as well as tickled pink.  (Thus demonstrating his masterful command of the English tongue.) 

An Invitation

I have received an invitation from some circum-cupa fundum-strigilians.  Details to follow. 

Potpouri

Kateri Tekakwitha
painted from life, 1690

The Lily of the Mohawks

Kateri Tekakwitha will be formally canonized next Sunday.   

There is a certain nonchalance on the part of Catholics regarding their saints.  René Goupil, killed by Mohawks with a blow to the head, is today the patron saint of anesthetists. St. Lawrence, roasted on a griddle, is the patron of short-order cooks.  St. Barbara, whose father was struck by lightning after he had beheaded her, became the patron saint of artillerymen.  (When I was in Artillery ROTC, the corps paraded each year down Broad St. to St. Barbara's Church for the annual Artillerymen's Mass.)

Pithy Quotes

By 1960 the price of a good 1900 reproduction of, say, a Louis XVI table had risen, sometimes to fantastic heights -- probably because people knew that with the disappearance of craftsmanship even such reproductions were no longer reproducible.

-- John Lukacs, The Passing of the Modern Age

A blogger yclept

A blogger yclept Adam Gropnik at The New Yorker has averred, relative to that topic, that "It is conscious, thinking life that counts." It is not the lives of all members of the species radically endowed with the capacity for conscious, thinking life–it is all those actually presently enjoying the conscious life.  

Were I he, I should be wary of falling asleep and thereby not counting.  
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An Algebraical Conundrum

Alcibiades: I approve of A.
Socrates: But then surely you have a reason for your approval?
Alc.: Certes.  I approve of A because it lacks property X!
Soc.: But then you must also approve of B, because B also lacks property X.
Alc.: What?  No!  That is awful.  A is worthy because of... because of condition Y.

Clearing the Tabs

Yes, it's time to clear the tabs once more.

1. What does the Catholic Church call a medieval woman

who was a herbalist and wrote books about it?