I am reminded of the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. What are my three principal concerns today?
1. Do I need to wash the Food Lion grapes with soap as well as water after antiseptically removing them from their plastic bags and carefully discarding the bags?
2. Do I need to quarentine the medicines delivered to my door by the local pharmacy for 3 days or 4 before unpacking them?
3.. Which passages shall I read and comment on from chapters XI-XIII of CAPITAL when I meet my class on Monday via zoom,com using my newly acquired microphone headset?
This is not exactly like wandering down to the Agora to meet Glaucon and Adeimantus for a chat.
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4 comments:
I do hope that there's at least a bit of wine where your'e staying. A nip now and then, so they say, has certain medicinal, not to mention mood enlivening, properties. Anyway, these seem to be extraordinary times. Palliatives we find where we can---and your'e blog continues to be one of them.
In the beginning of the dialogue named after him, we learn that Theaetetus is dying. He was wounded in battle, but dysentery is a greater enemy. Your concerns today may be not be so distant from Plato's world as you imagine.
Always wash the grapes from Food Lion.
There's an actual food safety professor who did a twitter thread on this: he says wash with water, by all means, but washing with soap is hazardous.
https://twitter.com/bugcounter/status/1243319180851580929
btw, I wanted to repeat something I said here a few months ago in hopes it'd help your spirits. I had the pleasure of attending one summer course you taught at Harvard University decades ago. It is not an exaggeration to say that you changed the course of my mental life. When I'm explaining my decision-making style to a new group of people, I refer back to "this amazing professor I had once who told us that he'd grade us poorly if we didn't argue with him." You showed me how to ground anti-totalitarian principles in solid philosophy.
I'm eternally grateful.
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