The Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal): December 2016

December 31, 2016

Our Nobel Laureate Sings Stephen Foster To See Out The Year

December 29, 2016

A Few Last-Minute Hopes to End the Year

December 22, 2016

Bated Breath

There is a summit meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in the foreseeable future.

December 18, 2016

Morning Comes West

Seabright Beach State Park, Santa Cruz CA, December 15, 2016

December 13, 2016

Should Trump expect a fee for facilitating, by his nomination of Exxon's Rex Tillerson to be Secretary of State, the Arctic petro deal Russia and Exxon want to make? Just a taste, a little something to wet the beak? Inquiring minds want to know. 5% would be so sweet.

December 12, 2016

The Republican Creed Prayed Out Loud

I have very high hopes that the new administration will lead the nation to greater strength, prosperity and peace.
—Mitt Romney, circa Dec 10, 2016 on Facebook

The tacit conventions on which the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated.

Thanks, Mitt.

December 04, 2016

Gulled!

December 01, 2016

Wily Blend

Coyote in the pasture, Arana Gulch, November 2016

For some years now I've travelled bumptiously about the internet commenting on other people's blogs under the pseudonym "peter ramus," pointedly and I regret to say at times heatedly disclosing the general shape my own intricately devised misapprehension of current events in contradistinction to the remarkable torrent of misapprehensions made known daily on that medium by everyone else.

Nominally I associate myself as much as possible with the views of those who seem to know what they're talking about, but often enough I find myself obliged, like so many others, to go on about things I'm not in the least qualified to address simply because it is my way when the opportunity presents itself. I find this shortcoming as personally irritating as it is to those I've favored it with over the years, an as yet irrepressible feature of my discourse. Thus the admittedly defensive assumption of the nom de blog, "peter ramus."

"peter ramus" isn't to be confused with Peter Ramus, another fellow entirely, who lived and died a long time ago around the sad times leading up to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France, an event which saw his own undoing in the chaotic days that followed.

He was a zeolot, Peter Ramus was. He had a particular bone to pick with Aristotle over the stuff and substance of rhetoric, which led him to propose revolutionary changes in the subject and manner of teaching which prevailed in higher education in those times. A quaestio was convened, a solemn gathering of all the branches of civil society, to see what was to be done about him. The King sent a man, and the Church sent a man, and of course the University of Paris couldn't help but send one, too. Unsurprisingly, they found overwhelmingly in favor of Aristotle and against Peter Ramus. In addition, it pleased the members of the assembled body to pronounce Peter Ramus personally disagreeable and notably ugly to boot. Strictly as an aside.

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The ideas expressed here, and the words used to express them here, are the ideas and words of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), which is to say "peter ramus," which is to say, me. Naturally, given their ultimate source, the ideas are half-formed at times, provisional always, and subject on mature reflection to substantial revision and, often enough, to outright repudiation by the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), by "peter ramus," and by me.

The words themselves, however, in the precise carnival train order in which they appear, and such original images which may from time to time be displayed here, excepting of course for those attributed materials the provenance of which, as duly noted, originate elsewhere, are owned by and are the property of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," or me, and are subject to the terms of Creative Commons License 2.5 , by which license (in the unlikely event that such words and original images appearing here are taken up and displayed elsewhere) clear attribution must be attached to those words or images indicating their ownership, to wit: the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," but not me.