Simon Paynton

@ Enco  – If I were using a hard copy dictionary…..I did and my parents made me eat it!  We used to get a new or uncommon word to learn every few days. I am addicted to cryptic crosswords and have done at least one but usually 2 or 3 every week since I was 18. I average about 35 books a year. So I am very good at sophisticated blasphemy 🙂

Funny, before I looked it up, I thought jejune was when SeSummer began.

Enco, please take a seat at the front of the class 🙂

Reg, you’ve confused me with Enco…

Apologies to you both…..I was thinking that you Jake, would appreciate the word when you read it.  Not quite a mondegreen though. Mrs. Malaprop, you have a rival in Lisa Simpson, but don’t worry Lisa, iconoclasts are very welcome here 🙂

Right now, christian nationalism is the #1 immediate threat to our nation and democracy on this planet. Not Islamists, not trans athletes, not antisemitic  Harvard, not China, not Ukranian Nazis, not even climate change. Anyone fighting this shit, I am gonna root for them. When the threat is over, then back to the regularly scheduled program.…[Read more]

Here is one of the reasons that Jews were discriminated against at Harvard and many elite American institutions in the early 20th century.

Jewish enrollment at elite colleges in the U.S. began to rise significantly due to merit-based admissions (which emphasized academic achievement). By the 1925, Jewish students made up more than 25% of the…[Read more]

Permit me Jake the indulgence of extending my most effulgent approbation for your recent prolix perambulations through the luxuriant lexicon of our beloved English tongue. Your sesquipedalian predilections, far from being an impediment to intelligibility, represent a salubrious balm upon the oft-diminished art of articulate articulation.

Indeed,…[Read more]

Empathy is informed sympathy

Someone has told me they are an Empath. What is an Empath? Is there a Sympath as well?

Try explaining what water is to a fish.

In Wittgenstein’s famous discussion of pain and private language he points out that there is no way to know what someone else senses. If you and I coincidentally stub our toes at the same time and react simultaneously in a similar fashion, is this sufficient to declare that we both feel the same thing? No, and there’s no way to verify the not…[Read more]

This new London Tube map is excellent!  Article.

But if I see you stub your toe, and I am at all sympathetic with you, then I will feel your pain by empathy. We’ve evolved that as part of the human suite of cooperative abilities.

What is it like to be a Bat?

@Unseen you made the exact point that I also thought. Empathy is the feeling when you can relate to an injury or event because you have been through similar events and you  feel knowledgable sympathy. You do not feel anyone else’s experience.

You hear people all the time saying their empathy forces them to feel everything (usually bad things) fr…[Read more]

I read this article this morning. In my head, I can’t trace the route from cell consciousness as described, to the almost non-sequitur of changing reality.

Basically they’re proposing that our cells have a consciousness and actually make decisions – and then somehow that affects reality and we’re reshaping our future.

Opinions would be super…[Read more]

Thanks Reg!!

Have a great week!

Once MAGA replace all the State Library boards, the mess will be cleaned up. But the range of books will be all under the same section. The Dewey Decimal system will become redundant. They will probably have hundreds of copies of the same book. Any other books will require crayons.

Another embed test.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
The last times I went to a library, it had loud, noisy kids who chased each other in the library and librarians and “security” who didn’t have the brass to throw them out, and the fleas from someone’s comfort/familiar animal attacked me and practically chased me out. One library had signs telling people not to bring f…

[Read more]

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of…[Read more]