I swore when I heard this that it was older than 2023 (guess that shows how much I know). pleasant!
Posts Categorized: Shared
Wasabi
A week ago, researchers published findings (doi:10.3390/nu15214608) from a double-blind RCT in the journal Nutrients concluding that wasabi improves memory performance in older adults. Previous studies over the last few years have shown the spice provides anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, as well as improves neuroinflammation and cognitive function. It made me think of this nice… Read more »
Humanism
The humanities, rightly pursued and rightly ordered, can do things, teach things, preserve things, and reveal things that no other discipline can. They provide us with a lamp of illumination and a mirror of self-recognition. It is the humanities that instruct us in the range and depth of human possibility, including our immense capacity for… Read more »
Platonists and Aristotelians
Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that any one born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist and I am sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are the two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a… Read more »
Calamity Tourism
Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience, the cumulative offering by more than a century and a half’s worth of those professional, specialized tourists known as journalists. –Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
You taught me Waiting with Myself
You taught me Waiting with Myself —Appointment strictly kept —You taught me fortitude of Fate —This — also — I have learnt — An Altitude of Death, that couldNo bitterer debarThan Life — had done — before it —Yet — there is a Science more — The Heaven you know — to understandThat you be… Read more »
On Marriage
I delivered the following remarks during a wedding I officiated for two of my good friends and former roommates: Some make marriage out to be a big challenge, like the Olympics of relationships, this huge, intimidating Herculean task. They say “marriage is hard” but I think it’s actually life that’s hard and marriage is a part… Read more »
The Realism and Formalism Spectrum in Film
Don’t have time to complete a Film Studies class? This video by Patrick Willems gives one a better overview in 11 minutes than your average academic lecture could. (You can disregard everything about the Marvel movies and color grading in the beginning.) Bonus? Check out this video essay by Kogonada for the BFI’s Sight &… Read more »
Confessio
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! 1500 years ago, Patrick wrote an autobiography, telling the story of how he was kidnapped by the Irish in his own words. You can read it here.
Focus on Others
Love is the pleasure of focusing on the virtues of another. –Noah Weinberg, Orthodox Jewish rabbi and Torah scholar
Amusing Cynicism
We learn to tolerate, like a low flame on the fire or like a low fever in the body, a “reasonable temperature-level of admitted cynicism.” We learn to feel that it is not intolerable to “be” self-compromised if one is open and amusing in discussion of that matter; or, again, that cynicism, charmingly admitted-to and… Read more »
Avoidance of Thought
“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them…. Read more »
For the Widows and Orphans
10 years ago my friend Shahab shared this song with me and I still count it among my very favorites ever. love ya Sufjan!
Rejoice always, give thanks in all circumstances
Try to praise the mutilated world.Remember June’s long days,and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.The nettles that methodically overgrowthe abandoned homesteads of exiles.You must praise the mutilated world.You watched the stylish yachts and ships;one of them had a long trip ahead of it,while salty oblivion awaited others.You’ve seen the refugees going nowhere,you’ve heard the executioners… Read more »
Ben Woolf Remembered
My friend Ben Woolf, an accomplished actor, was tragically killed this week so the boys got the group chat going and assembled some of our photos of the fun times we had together around town and beyond. See the photos of our adventures here on Exposure: Ben Woolf – Small Guy, Big Heart