No current queries for this category: I am sure I will think of
something soon.This is the page for everything that doesn't fit in any other category. It should be interesting.
This is page contains Queries, Tidbits, Quotations, and Links on just about anything. If you have any additions, suggestions or corrections on any of this, please e-mail them to me and I will include them here. Most importantly, if you are interested in swapping links, e-mail your URL to me. I am eager to exchange links with anyone with related interests.
This spot is reserved to look for information I don't have. If you know the answer, e-mail me at steve_kemp@unc.edu and I will post it here under Tidbits (or Quotes, as the case might be.) That way, the next person won't have to look so hard or so long.
No current queries for this category: I am sure I will think of
something soon.
This spot is reserved for random nonsense and the wildest of my speculations. (I will try to find room on my site for other stuff as well.) Your comments are welcome.
How to have a PC Halloween: What with the recent controversies
over Halloween, I have become concerned that
the classic spiritual figures
of that holiday are being unnecessarily defamed by the use of old-fashioned,
sexist, Euro-centric language in describing them. In response, I offer here
some examples of descriptive expressions more appropriate in this
post-Modernist age.
Consider first an extreme example: Should homogastronomical, biotically challenged individuals be referred to as "flesh-eating zombies?" Many societies eat differently than we. Not all persons are living. This is no reason to use language hurtful to those persons.
Likewise, we should, on future Halloweens, refrain from calling hematically inclined, biotically undifferentiated individuals "blood-sucking vampires." After all, the undead have feelings, too. "Mummy" is a term coined by European scientists to describe biotically enhanced northern Africans. Such Euro-centric terms should be eschewed. "Werewolf" is a pre-scientific term used by Northern Europeans to describe certain lupinely enhanced individuals common to Central and Eastern Europe. Surely, we have grown past the time when those of different lands and customs were automatically labelled with such dyslogistic names. Our own choice of religion should not blind us to the fact that "witches" are just thaumaturgically enhanced adherents of alternative belief systems. And "ghosts" are just the spiritually independent.
The situation is even worse when we consider the potential effects of such perjorative language not on groups of persons, but upon individuals. Should we call a corporeally multifarious, bio-necrotic individual, Frankenstein's "monster?" Who is more monstrous, this unfortunate victim of Western science, or we who label him? Consider next the case of the Devil. Within the Christian tradition, this axiologically marginalized former celestial executive is called by literally dozens of epithets, each less flattering than the last.
Which brings us at last to those great numbers of individuals in Satan's employ. So-called "demons" are just workers exploited by the Satanic ruling class. Even more unfortunate are the axiologically and thaumaturgically challenged individuals we refer to as "goblins."
I hope that the above can help open our eyes to the potential for great hurt found in the traditional, and now outdated, terminology of Halloween. In the coming year, let us all make an effort to make Halloween fun for everyone, not just for our children who get dressed up in costumes, but for all those individuals that those costumes allow our children to portray.
There are lots of quotations (usually defiantly called "quotes") to be found on the Web. Admittedly, many of these lists are intended to flash up on networked systems, presenting a random quote of the day when you log on. But the extraordinary thing is that virtually NONE of the quotations found anywhere on the Web have anything approaching a proper reference. And most of the ones I have checked are incorrect. The culture of the World Wide Web is still dominated by Unix-Weenies. In protest, I will not put any quotation up on any of these pages without a proper reference. When I make errors either on the content or on the reference, just e-mail any corrections to me and I will work on it.
I will put up queries as to how I might locate the sources of quotations, but other than that, nothing without a cited source.
We have some serious quotations, and some silly quotations.
The following, taken from page 34 of Lewis & Belck (1967), is my favorite Lincoln
quotation:
It is said that an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which shuld be true, and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! "And this, too, shall pass away."
Lewis, E. & Belck, J. (Eds.). (1967). The living words of Abraham Lincoln. Hallmark.
My all-time favorite quotation:
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859). Supplementary Papers.
And what would a WebSite be without a bit of Bogart:
Captain Louis Renault: What on earth brought you to Casablanca?
Rick Blaine: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Louis Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick Blaine: I was misinformed.
From the film, "Casablanca" with Claude Rains speaking to Humphrey Bogart.
And to wrap things up, here's a nice quote by
H. L Mencken that's gets a fair amount of play on the Web, though almost never
with a full citation of the source:
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
H. L. Mencken (1949) in "The Divine Afflatus," reprinted in A Mencken Chrestomathy, chapter 25, page 443. Originally published in the New York Evening Mail, Nov. 16, 1917, and reprinted in Prejudices: Second Series (1920, pp.155-171).