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New Zealand Mussels

On the lookout to bulk up my proposed spaghetti marinara I chanced upon New Zealand Greenshell Mussels in my crappy major chain supermarket. Wow! Unlike the miserable looking packs of cheaper vacuum packed mussels from China, these actually looked inviting and cooked up very nicely despite being frozen on the shell. They weren’t sinewy, they had much “melt-in-the-mouth” flesh and…

Some recent Oakeshottiana

Here’s a roundup of some recent Oakeshottiana: Rationalism and Traditionalism in Politics. The Correspondence Between Karl R. Popper and Michael Oakeshott — Spartaco Pupo in SCIENZA & POLITICA, vol. XXVIII, no. 54, anno 2016, pp. 121-14 Michael Oakeshott and Hayden White on the practical and the historical past — Jonas Ahlskog in Rethinking History: The Journal of…

It was the third of September

Some powerful social commentary from 44 years ago, possibly the greatest psychedelic soul funk song of all time and distressingly, is more salient now than ever before; then check out the Pew Report Parenting in America; and last, but by no means least, Larry Elder’s crisp assessment/diagnostic of the problem: It was the third of September…

Bayou Maharajah

Now that Bayou Maharajah has had an airing at the ultimately inconsequential bricks and mortar “vanity marketing” film festivals (good for the CV but not for the bank account) and other miscellaneous one-off showings, the broader populace can now view this documentary via the usual streaming outlets. It’s such a shame that they all have the…

Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline

Bernard Williams’ Annual Lecture, Royal Institute of Philosophy, 16 February 2000. I think Jonathan Haidt says as much (per Williams’ quote below) in his The Righteous Mind. It is not a reproach to these liberals that they cannot see beyond the outer limits of what they find acceptable: no-one can do that. But it is more of a…

Walker Percy Wednesday 99

   Men in this century are no different from the Jews at Buchenwald who did not give themselves leave to resist death. I know your name at last, he said, laughing and hooting hee hee hooooee like a pig-caller and kicking the tires, and you are not going to prevail over me. Old father of lies,…

Have the monks stopped meditating?

They all seem to be tweeting This observation by Herzog is totemic of what seems to me like a mass self-induced autism, immersed in a vortex of banality, that society has sunk into. When I observe how oblivious people are of reality when out and about with their device, it’s easy to understand why many of us refuse(d) to…

Pushing ahead of the dame

It just so happens that IMHO, the two greatest musicians of the twentieth century, have the best blogs dedicated to their remarkable work. Louis Armstrong has Ricky Riccardi batting for him — someone whose praises I have repeatedly sung. Now I know that the other artist I refer to may seem a world apart but they…