A is for Average

Don't take this entirely too seriously.  I saw the chart at Wm. Briggs, Statistician to the Stars! and followed it back to Gradeinflation.com but I did not dig into the data.

The average grades given for each year by a sample of 79 colleges over the past near-century. Data for the 1930s is sparse, being only about 8 colleges.  So it may also be that not all schools are present in all years, esp. in the early part of the graph.

A Warning to Air-Ship Investors!

Freight haulage?  We think not?

Ir's amazing how incisive rational thinking is when applied to new possibilities. 

Good old Paleofuture delights with these excepts an editorial in the December 10, 1908 Engineering News on the future of air transportation (as reprinted in the January 2, 1909, issue of Literary Digest*)

So far as the possibilities of freight transportation are concerned, it may be passed with a word. Wherever ordinary methods of transportation on land are available, it will be absurd to carry goods of any sort through the air. The cost of such transport would be measured not in mills per ton mile, as in rail or water carriage, or cents per ton mile, as in wagon haulage, but in dollars or hundreds of dollars per ton.

Quote ot the Day

James Chastek at Just Thomism took note of an comment by Thomas Aquinas, aka Da Man, regarding when sex is sinful even in marriage.  He writes:

Brandon digs out a fantastic text from STA’s commentary on Corinthians:

…that the conjugal act is sometimes meritorious and without any mortal or venial sin, as when it is directed to the good of procreation and education of a child for the worship of God; for then it is an act of religion; or when it is performed for the sake of rendering the debt, it is an act of justice. But every virtuous act is meritorious, if it is performed with charity. But sometimes it is accompanied with venial sin, namely, when one is excited to the matrimonial act by concupiscence, which nevertheless stays within the limits of the marriage, namely, that he is content with his wife only. But sometimes it is performed with mortal sin, as when…

So guess: what is he going to say? Is sexual activity a mortal sin when “it is not open to procreation” (an answer that is at hand from what he says at the head of the quotation) or when “it is performed in an unnatural way”? Don’t we expect St. Thomas to mention some obvious perversion? Yet, in the casual way that he says all his revolutionary things, he says that sexual activity is a mortal sin when…

Stop the Presses

Science™ has proven that college boys like to look at sexy women!

And you thought you already knew that?  That was only Anecdotal Evidence© and had not been vetted in a really-truly Scientificalistic Experiment™ and statistically analyzed by people who took a whole semester of cookbook Stats for Psychs course back in undergrad!  Woo, as they say, hoo! 

Res gestae Arturi britanni

TOF amidst his books thinking
seriously of writing something

One of the peculiarities of writing, and for some a fun part, is researching and creating the background.  It is TOF's custom to weave any real history into the fictional narrative as closely as possible, so if any reader is insane enough to research some reference, he will actually find something at the other end.  Usually.  Well, sometimes. 

In the current work-in-progress, The Shipwrecks of Time, fellows at a small private historical research institute are conducting various studies.  Francis Xavier Delacorte (aka Frank) is off in the Rhineland searching for evidences of "Lost Books," tomes known only by reference to their titles, like Shakespeare's play Cardenio, or Francois Villon's The Devil's Fart.  Most of the books are "cover," since his real interest (or rather, the Institute Director's real interest) is in the lost Peruzzi Manuscript, allegedly written by one Henry of Regensburg in the 14th century and supposedly cursed.  Everybody who gets close to finding it dies.  (A good reason not to look for it, sez TOF; but then a) some folks don't believe in curses and b) there wouldn't be a book then.)

Getting Personal

A most peculiar book.
Highly recommended

On another site there is an on-going dialogue of the deaf regarding the nature of person and when this personhood comes into existence.  By this I mean not that various commentators are arguing with one another, or even arguing past one another; but that most commentators are content to post their own opinion and then ignore anything else that gets said.  This peculiar reluctance to engage is related I think to what John Lukacs once called the Philadelphia cult of safety. 

Just as the cult of Boston was respectability and that of New York was success, Late Modern Philadelphians were concerned with avoiding risk.  Thus, one simply did not chuck it all and head off to California but stayed with the tried-and-true.  There is much to recommend this attitude.  Cutting Edge fails far more often than State-of-the-Art, and one need only say the words "Experimental Literature" or "Progressive Education" to understand the risks involved.  But to be safe includes being safe in one's own opinions, and that makes contrary speech an intolerable threat to one's safety.  We can see that the wider Kulture today has been largely Philadelphianized.  Disagreement is treated as if it were aggression. 

But we digress.  My larger point, aside from the one under my hat, is that there are several common tropes in the discussion of person that bear examination. 

Congratulations

are in order for the Son of Flynn,(*) who has been inducted into the ΑΦΣ National Criminal Justice Honor Society, ΩΞ Chapter.

Son of Flynn is in the center with the Alaska shirt.

 To be selected for this honor, each student had to maintain a 3.2 overall cumulative GPA and 3.2 GPA in their Justice major. Alpha Phi Sigma is the only National Criminal Justice Honor Society for Criminal Justice majors. The society recognizes academic excellence of undergraduate and graduate students of criminal justice.

 He has been acclimating to Alaska, meaning mainly getting used to darkness and moose.  Here he is hiking in the wilds.  You can see he is almost as tall as the mountains behind him.

(*) To wit: Dennis Michael, son of Michael Francis, the son of Joseph Francis, the son of Francis Thomas, the son of Daniel Joseph, the son of John Thomas, the son of Martin Flynn of Loughrea, in the County Galway, descended of the O Floinns of Sil Maelruain.