Here’s a just published open access article in AUC Theologica.
Friendship with God as an Ultimate Ideal in the Writings of Philo of Alexandria
Hadrian the Seventh: extracts (7)
Then I began to write, simply because of the imperious necessity of expressing myself. And I had much to say. Note please that I asked nothing better than to be a humble chantry-priest, saying Mass for the dead. It was denied me. I turned to express beautiful and holy ideals on canvas. Again I was prevented. I must and will have scope, an outlet for what the President of Maryvale called my ‘talent and energy.’ Literature is the only outlet which you Catholics have left me. Blame yourselves: not me. Oh yes, I have very much to say.”
He paused. The cardinal evaded his glance; and intently gazed at the under- side of well-manicured pink-onyx finger-nails.
“And about your Vocation, Mr. Rose. What is your present opinion?”
George wrenched himself from retrospection. “My opinion, Eminency, as I already have had the honour of telling you, is the same as it always has been.”
“That is to say?”
“That I have a Divine Vocation to the Priesthood.”
“You persist?”
“Eminency, I am not one of your low Erse or pseudo Gaels, flippertigibbets of frothy flighty fervour, whom you can blow hither and thither with a sixpence for a fan. Thank The Lord I’m English, born under Cancer, tenacious, slow and sure. Naturally I persist.”
Cardinalitial eyebrows re-ascended. “The man, to whom Divine Providence vouchsafes a Vocation, is bound to prosecute it.”
“I am prosecuting it. I never for one moment have ceased from prosecuting it.”
“But now you have attained a position as an author.”
“Yes; in the teeth of you all; and no thanks to anyone but myself. However that is only the means to an end.”
“In what way?”
“In this way. When I shall have earned enough to pay certain debts, which I incurred on the strength of my faith in the honour of a parcel of archiepiscopal and episcopal and clerical sharpers, and also a sum sufficient to produce a small and certain annuity, then I shall go straight to Rome and square the rector of St. Andrew’s College.”
Heart Full of Rhythm
Finally received my copy. As I’ve come to expect from Ricky, it reads beautifully, is meticulously researched and sensitive topics are handled with aplomb.
A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (39)
As a lecturer Dr. Talc was renowned for the facile and sarcastic wit and easily digested generalizations that made him popular among the girl students and helped to conceal his lack of knowledge about almost everything in general and British history in particular.
Sleep behavior assessment via smartwatch and stigmergic receptive fields
I mentioned this paper when it first came out a few years back. As we’ve put it before, stigmergic behaviour can be found from ants to economies. As someone with an overlapping interest in both stigmergy and sleep disorder, this technology seems very promising since it’s infinitely less intrusive than the clumsy and high-priced devices that are standardly employed to monitor sleep.
Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (38)
Every morning I rediscovered in her the same touching affection and in myself the same gratitude that, if it was not love, still bore a close resemblance to it. Who could have foreseen this, when I was limping from Ada to Alberta, to arrive at Augusta? I discovered I had not been a blind fool manipulated by others, but a very clever man. And, seeing my amazement, Augusta said to me: “Why are you so surprised? Didn’t you know this is how marriage is? Even I knew it, and I’m so much more ignorant than you!”
Hadrian the Seventh: extracts (6)
A Philosopher’s Economist: Hume and the Rise Capitalism
A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (38)
We do correspond quite regularly, the usual theme of Myrna’s correspondence tending to urge me to participate in lie-ins and wade-ins and sit-ins and such. Since, however, I do not eat at lunch counters and do not swim, I have ignored her advice. The subsidiary theme in the correspondence is one urging me to come to Manhattan so that she and I may raise our banner of twin confusion in that center of mechanized horrors. If I am ever really well, I may make the trip. At the moment that little musky Minkoff minx is probably in some tunnel far beneath the streets of the Bronx speeding in a subway train from a meeting on social protest to an orgy of folk singing or worse. Some day the authorities of our society will no doubt apprehend her for simply being herself. Incarceration will finally make her life meaningful and end her frustration.
manwithoutqualities 