“The philosophers of Greece deduced their morals from the nature of man rather from that of God. They meditated, however, on the Divine Nature as, ah, very curious, and important speculations, and in the profound inquiry they displayed the strength and weakness of human understanding,”
'de philosphi de Graecia…repeto suum mores ex vis de vir quinymo ex ut de Deus. Theoricus, vero, et Divinus Vis ut a valde curiosus, quod maximus theoricus, quod et profundus percunctor et propono vires quod infirmitas de humanus cogitum. Vero, eram ut recipero ut divinus verum situs fabula poeta, quod institutio de priscus, vel ut adore, ut filiolus, illud trunco res quos contemptus ut homo.’
“How indeed, was it possible that a philosopher should accept as divine truths the idle tales of the poets, and the incoherent traditions of antiquity, or that he should adore, as gods, those imperfect beings whom he must have despised as men?”
I'm looking for a good online translation service, (free,) for a current project. If you have any suggestions, please post it in the comments below.
@hyperlouis (Twitter.)
.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
A humble aspiration.
When I got to a certain age, I began to reflect on some of the things that I had missed over the years. I'm convinced this is a common failing among men, but be that as it may, I came up with the proverbial 'bucket list.'
It was a time of introspection and self-examination, one not recommended for light entertainment.
Okay, so I never got married, never had kids, never had a long-term full-time job that lasted more than two or three years, and I still don't have any real prospects, and while I don't necessarily regret not being married, I do see the way parents look at their own children, with love and a kind of pride in their eyes and I sort of get it...no, really, I do.
It's just something that I'll have to get over. But there were certain things on the list. For one, I would like to get laid again before I die. Is that so bad? Seems pretty humble to me. Almost practical really, for all the guys that go postal and wind up in the news seem to be dealing with a kind of unspoken frustration, perhaps status-related.
At the top of the list, was a bicycle. That's right, a bicycle. That seems like a pretty humble aspiration, but another common failing is the longing, or the attempt to recapture lost youth.
I'll be honest with you, a bicycle is not very good for picking up chicks, but that wasn't the real purpose, although I may have joked about it from time to time. It gives people something to talk about.
In some ways it actually worked, for I did things and went places that I wouldn't have otherwise.
At about $400, to own one nice new thing, is not unreasonable. It really is better to ride a bike two blocks to the store once in a while.
On this particular day, I probably rode about twenty kilometres. I found the big tree I like, and said hello. I stayed away from the house for two or three hours, and sometimes that's important as well.
My needs are simple, and my wants are not complex.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Was haben wir diese Woche gelernt?
Monday, January 9, 2012
Block paragraphs and semi-colons.
Chapter 5 of Tom Clancy's 'Net Force,' from the 1999 volume entitled 'Hidden Agendas.'
c2012 (S)
The first thing I noticed was the first paragraph of each chapter was a block paragraph without any indents, whereas all other paragraphs whether exposition or dialogue are indented.
The other thing I noticed is that the book, which is fiction, has a few semi-colons.
Imagine my dismay, for at least one book rejection I received included the statement that I had 'too many semi-colons.' Lately I don't put any semi-colons in a story, and when I rewrite a story, I always take them out!
As far as format or layout goes, there is some variation in the way books are laid out, in the chapter titles, in the paragraph layout, etc. It's not that there are no rules, far from it, but the number one rule is clarity for the reader.
When it comes to criticism, it pays to take a moment and figure out who's talking, and whether they are competent, and what they are really saying, and why they are saying it.
Some of them might have a few hidden agendas of their own.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Long term care in crisis?
c2011 (S)
My dad has been moved from a retirement home to a long term care facility. The reasons are simple. The retirement home, while it offers certain services to the elderly, simply could not give him the level of care and attention he needed. They have two staff during the day and one at night, and he required help showering, going to the bathroom, getting to the dining room, and dressing.
The long term care facility has a lot more staff to help him and the other residents.
Still, the difference is stark. Before, he had a private suite of about 600 square feet, with a bedroom, a living room, and a bathroom of about ten feet by ten feet. Now he shares a space less than half that size.
All of this is useless to someone who is completely immobilized by Parkinson's disease, or any other serious affliction.
The long term care room is semi-private, and the bathroom is about five by six feet. It is shared by four residents. It has two doors, one on each side. There is no way I can maneuver my dad on and off the toilet, and in fact they have a lifting device not unlike a drywall lifter to get him up and down.
He hates the place, understandably enough. We are getting him a better wheelchair, as the one they found for him is downright dangerous. The thing almost fell over backwards yesterday.
"I've never been so humiliated in my life," he told me after two nurses helped him go to the bathroom.
This morning he told a nurse that my sister 'abandoned me here, and left me all alone.'
When I went in to visit, the nurse found him sleeping with his face jammed down onto his coffee cup in the dining room...
It's not good. Everything in the place seems small, cramped, and more than anything badly designed. He's on a waiting list for a bed in a more modern building, and hopefully he gets in there in the next few weeks or months.
In the meantime, the elder care crisis just gets worse, and with a recession that never seems to end, and governments tightening up all around, there is clearly no end in sight.
With a falling birthrate, and some pressure to limit immigration, we just aren't making new taxpayers fast enough. With capitalists thinking that keeping wages low is a substitute for investment in newer, more productive processes, we can't expect much help from the economy any time soon, either.
As for Canada's much-touted economic recovery, they've been telling that big lie for over three years now.
My dad has been moved from a retirement home to a long term care facility. The reasons are simple. The retirement home, while it offers certain services to the elderly, simply could not give him the level of care and attention he needed. They have two staff during the day and one at night, and he required help showering, going to the bathroom, getting to the dining room, and dressing.
The long term care facility has a lot more staff to help him and the other residents.
Still, the difference is stark. Before, he had a private suite of about 600 square feet, with a bedroom, a living room, and a bathroom of about ten feet by ten feet. Now he shares a space less than half that size.
All of this is useless to someone who is completely immobilized by Parkinson's disease, or any other serious affliction.
The long term care room is semi-private, and the bathroom is about five by six feet. It is shared by four residents. It has two doors, one on each side. There is no way I can maneuver my dad on and off the toilet, and in fact they have a lifting device not unlike a drywall lifter to get him up and down.
He hates the place, understandably enough. We are getting him a better wheelchair, as the one they found for him is downright dangerous. The thing almost fell over backwards yesterday.
"I've never been so humiliated in my life," he told me after two nurses helped him go to the bathroom.
This morning he told a nurse that my sister 'abandoned me here, and left me all alone.'
When I went in to visit, the nurse found him sleeping with his face jammed down onto his coffee cup in the dining room...
It's not good. Everything in the place seems small, cramped, and more than anything badly designed. He's on a waiting list for a bed in a more modern building, and hopefully he gets in there in the next few weeks or months.
In the meantime, the elder care crisis just gets worse, and with a recession that never seems to end, and governments tightening up all around, there is clearly no end in sight.
With a falling birthrate, and some pressure to limit immigration, we just aren't making new taxpayers fast enough. With capitalists thinking that keeping wages low is a substitute for investment in newer, more productive processes, we can't expect much help from the economy any time soon, either.
As for Canada's much-touted economic recovery, they've been telling that big lie for over three years now.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
A big snake.
c2011 (S)
About thirty years ago, a friend and I were kayaking on Lambton County's Bear Creek a couple of kilometres upstream from Wilkesport. We saw a very large snake swimming on the creek nearby. It looked to be four or five feet long, and we wondered if it might be a Timber or Massasauga Rattler. I remember the distinct markings on that snake, and it fits into the proper range, etc. One possibility would be the northern water snake, which gets up to 135-140 centimetres in length.
http://canadianbiodiversity.mcgill.ca/english/species/herps/herppages/Ner_sip.htm
The only other possibility that I am aware of, and it's an even bigger animal, would be the Grey Ratsnake.
While there are no recent or historical sightings in Lambton County, Bear Creek is only twenty or thirty miles from areas of reported sightings. It's the same Carolinian habitat, and the temperature ranges, and available prey animals are similar. So it's not entirely out of the question. The real problem with snakes is that they are often communal breeders. Once a colony has been wiped out, it could be decades or centuries before another is established. All these years later, I guess we'll never know what kind of a snake we saw, but a new species for the area was discovered a decade ago. That was some kind of poplar tree more common to the Ohio valley and elsewhere. The Gray rat snake can get up to anywhere from 1.7 to 2.0 metres in length.
http://nature.ca/notebooks/english/brsnake_p0.htm
About thirty years ago, a friend and I were kayaking on Lambton County's Bear Creek a couple of kilometres upstream from Wilkesport. We saw a very large snake swimming on the creek nearby. It looked to be four or five feet long, and we wondered if it might be a Timber or Massasauga Rattler. I remember the distinct markings on that snake, and it fits into the proper range, etc. One possibility would be the northern water snake, which gets up to 135-140 centimetres in length.
http://canadianbiodiversity.mcgill.ca/english/species/herps/herppages/Ner_sip.htm
The only other possibility that I am aware of, and it's an even bigger animal, would be the Grey Ratsnake.
While there are no recent or historical sightings in Lambton County, Bear Creek is only twenty or thirty miles from areas of reported sightings. It's the same Carolinian habitat, and the temperature ranges, and available prey animals are similar. So it's not entirely out of the question. The real problem with snakes is that they are often communal breeders. Once a colony has been wiped out, it could be decades or centuries before another is established. All these years later, I guess we'll never know what kind of a snake we saw, but a new species for the area was discovered a decade ago. That was some kind of poplar tree more common to the Ohio valley and elsewhere. The Gray rat snake can get up to anywhere from 1.7 to 2.0 metres in length.
http://nature.ca/notebooks/english/brsnake_p0.htm
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