Martin Heidegger’s poetic line from his later “Letter on Humanism” (1947): “Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells.” Variations: For those of modest means: “Man dwells in the bungalow of Being.” For those on the road a lot: “Man dwells in the Holiday Inn of Being.” For rustic campers: “Man dwells […]
Heidegger’s “House of Being” takes Read More »
Caption humor challenge: My suggestions: “We’re lucky that Al Gore invented garages!” “*Exactly* why we need more government subsidies for garage construction.” “Possible — but only before global warning made garages too hot.” More?
Garage captions for entrepreneurs Read More »
The comic genius of Aristophanes, in which “Socrates” the sacrilegious philosopher explains to the not-too-bright Strepsiades where rain and thunder come from. Potty humor ensues. Socrates: That is because these are the only goddesses; all the rest are pure myth. Strepsiades: But by the Earth! is our father, Zeus, the Olympian, not a god? Socrates: Zeus!
The Clouds and “Socrates” Read More »
Love Is a Fallacy By Max Shulman Max Shulman (1919–1988) was an American humorist. He graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1942 and served in the military in World War II. His writing career included several collections of short stories and a Broadway play, “The Tender Trap,” which was later made into a movie.
Love Is a Fallacy (by Max Shulman) Read More »
I want to start a “Thanks to the X …” series. A classic example: “We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.” (Robert Silensky) And: “We’ve been taught that all men are
Starting a “Thanks to the X …” humor series Read More »
Mockumentarian Philomena Cunk the spirit or something of the holiday season:
Philomena Cunk on the true-ish meaning of Christmas Read More »
Notes on Punctuation by Lewis Thomas* There are no precise rules about punctuation (Fowler lays out some general advice (as best he can under the complex circumstances of English prose (he points out, for example, that we possess only four stops (the comma, the semicolon, the colon and the period (the question mark and exclamation
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1. Socrates deletes his account. 2. Plato posts screenshots of Socrates. 3. Aristotle unfollows Plato. 4. Aquinas retweets Jesus. 5. Descartes mutes Aquinas. 6. Locke mutes Descartes. 7. Kant unfollows Locke and Descartes. 8. Hegel subtweets Kant. 9. Schopenhauer blocks Hegel. 10. Marx likes Hegel. 11. Nietzsche gets hacked. 12. Heidegger DMs Arendt. 13. Adorno
A Brief History of Philosophy — social-media version Read More »