AT LONG LAST

Well, after two trips to two different Orange offices, I once again have internet access in my apartment.  Orange [also known as France Telecom] is the absolutely worst Internet company in the known world. 

I have failed to respond to a number of comments.  My apologies.  David, the duck was splendid.

I was thrilled to discover that my little Parable of the Butcher and the Analytic Philosopher was anticipated, two and a half millennia ago, by none other than Plato in the Phaedrus [which I read perhaps sixty years ago and had forgotten].  Also by Bertrand Russell, with whom I have had tea.

The big news in Paris, which will no doubt of slipped past you, is that Paris St. Germain, despite being down one man, due to a red card, for ninety minutes including overtime, managed a 2-2 tie against Chelsea and thus advanced to the Quarters in the League of Champions.  The local politics are a mess, with Marine le Pen surging [a right wing fascist type] and Sarkozy positioning himself for a comeback.  Ugh.

Our own Senate Republicans have revealed themselves to be traitors as well as fools.  It really is true that Obama drives them insane.

As for the Democratic Party, we are condemned to another six, eight, ten years of the Clintons.

I am ready for an uprising from the bottom, if anyone can see any hope of that.

I have now read the papers submitted by my students the day before I flew to Paris.  I shall reserve my comments for them, at least for the moment.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

Sigh!  Here I am again in Paris, and my Internet access does not work in the apartment.  I am planning to commit suicide, just as soon as I finish making my signature cuisses de canards for my friends next Tuesday.

In the meanwhile, I can report that Jean Gabin and Yves Montand are still in their favored places on the Seine [they are batobuses, for those who are new to this blog.]

More anon. 

THE PARABLE OF THE BUTCHER AND THE ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHER

A contest was announced to see who could do the best job of carving up a side of beef.  The judge was announced as a famous chef, who had earned two Michelin stars.  Attracted by the prize money, a butcher and an analytic philosopher entered the contest.

The Analytic Philosopher went first.  A fresh side of beef was placed on a large wooden table, and he approached to begin.  He was dressed in freshly pressed chinos and a button-down shirt.  The Analytic Philosopher laid a leather case on one corner of the table and opened it, revealing a gleaming set of perfectly matched scalpels, newly sharpened.  He selected one scalpel carefully and addressed the side of beef.  After inspecting its surface carefully, he raised his hand and made the first cut, a precise slice in a perfectly straight line.  Working steadily, but with meticulous care, he proceeded to make slices and cross slices until he had completed the carving of the beef, a task that took him the better part of an hour.  When he had finished, he stepped back, wiped the scalpel clean on a piece of paper toweling, replaced it in the case, and with a bow to the judge, withdrew.

The butcher was next up.  Her side of beef was on a table next to that on which the Analytic Philosopher had been working.  She was dressed in overalls and a butcher's apron, on which one could see spots of blood and stains from her work.  She took out a cleaver, a saw, and a sharp butcher's knife, and went to work on her side of beef, wasting no time.  Bits of fat and gristle flew here and there, some ending up on her apron and even in her hair, which she had covered with a net.  She whistled as she worked at the table, until with a flourish, she put down her saw, bowed to the judge, and stepped back.

The judge examined each table for no more than a moment, and then without the slightest hesitation, handed the prize to the butcher.  The Analytic Philosopher was stunned.  "But," he protested, "there is simply no comparison between the results on the two tables.  The butcher's table is a shambles, a heap of pieces of meat, with fat and bits of bone and drops of blood all over the place.  My table is pristine -- a careful display of perfectly carved cubes of meat, all with parallel sides and exactly the same size.  Why on earth have you given the prize to the butcher?"

The Judge explained.  "The butcher has turned her side of beef into a usable array of porterhouse steaks, T-bone steaks, sirloin steaks, beef roasts, and a small pile of beef scraps ready to be ground up for chop meat.  She clearly knew where the joints were in the beef, how to cut against the grain with the tough parts, where to apply her saw.  You, on the other hand, have reduced a perfectly good grade-A side of beef to stew meat."

Moral:  When butchering a side of beef, it is best to know something about what lies beneath its surface."

 

Observation:  This is also not a bad idea when doing Philosophy

NETANYAHU

I need to say this.  If anyone wants to call me a self-hating Jew, so be it.

Israel is far and away the militarily most powerful nation in the entire Middle East.  It has a large, fully functional nuclear arsenal with appropriate delivery systems, and a well-trained army with a large Ready Reserve.  If Israel wants to start a war with Iran, let it put its own young men and women at risk, instead of adopting a belligerant stance and inviting the United States to shed our blood and spend our treasure making good on Israel's threats.

TRANSITIONS

On Wednesday, I give my last lecture before Spring Break.  On Thursday, Susie and I fly off to Paris for a brief twelve day stay, returning just in time for me to resume lecturing.  I shall be carrying with me a set of short [ten page] papers submitted by the students, which I shall read and grade while sitting in my favorite cafe sipping a glass of wine or a "deca allonge."  [I am unable to add accents when writing in Google.]  It takes me back a good many years to the day when I sat in a cafe in Place de la Bastille composing my essay, "The Future of Socialism."

France is in turmoil politically, as a result of the weakness of the putatively socialist President, Francois Hollande, the really troubling rise of the slick, attractive right-wing fascist, Marine le Pen, and the recent murders committed by Islamic fanatics.  In Paris, as in Chapel Hill, the surrounding political ugliness has little or no effect on the felt quality of my daily life, a fact that I find both disturbing and reassuring. 

The two week hiatus in my course comes at an appropriate time.  After lecturing for several weeks about the literary interpretation of Marx's language in CAPITAL, I shall when I return pick up the thread of my analytical and mathematical reconstruction of the argument.  Since the course ranges widely across the intellectual and academic spectrum [Philosophy, Economics, History, Psychology, Sociology, Mathematics, and Literary Criticism, at a minimum], I anticipate that the papers will be extremely diverse.  Reading them should be interesting.

As we land at RDU, March Madness will be just beginning, so Susie and I shall probably O.D. on basketball for a bit.  Susie has a long-standing sentimental identification with the TarHeels and a secondary loyalty to the Blue Devils [UNC Chapel Hill and Duke, for those of you not clued up], and like any good husband I have adopted those teams as my own.  I am still in private mourning for the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers to the West Coast, a betrayal that occurred in 1957 just as I was getting my doctorate.  Despite half a lifetime in Massachusetts,  I never really took the Red Sox to my heart.

The political equivalent of Spring Training has begun, so very soon I shall have to clear the cold ashes out of the pot-bellied stove and fire it up for the first meeting of the Hot Stove League.  This year we may yet again see two Republicans running against each other for the Presidency.  Indeed, if Jeb Bush succeeds in snagging the nomination, we will be treated to the edifying spectacle of a contest between a candidate considered a RINO by true Republicans and a candidate considered a DINO by true Democrats.  I sometimes think that whoever invented democracy has a lot to answer for.

AM I ALONE?

Am I the only person who thinks that Scott Walker looks just plain weird in every photo of him that appears in the newspapers, on television, or in the Internet?  He looks like a twenty-first century version of Alfred E. Neuman.

GOLDEN OLDIES

Turner Classic Movies is devoting today to classic musicals that won or were nominated for Oscars.  At the moment, they are screening The Music Man.  This has always been one of my favorites, not only because of Robert Preston's inspired performance, but also because I have appeared with the movie's female lead, Shirley Jones.  Naturally, you will scoff.  What?  Robert Paul Wolff trod the boards with Shirley Jones?  Well, not quite "trod the boards," and certainly not "co-starred with," but she and I did appear together in a for-real theatrical production which people paid good money to see.  It happened like this.

Back in the fifties [the nineteen fifties, that is], Harvard made Sanders Theater available to a series of summer stock touring shows.  I saw Siobhan McKenna there doing a brilliant turn in Shaw's Saint Joan.  Well, in 1956, while I was hard at work writing my doctoral dissertation, Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones, recently married, came to town in a summer stock mounting of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera.  A call went out for locals to sign up to sing in the pit chorus, paying a dollar a night during the six or seven performances.  I volunteered, auditioned, and was hired.  They dressed us in rags as beggars, made us up to look disreputable, and put us down in the pit at one side of the orchestra.  When we weren't singing our numbers, we were to crouch down and make like inmates in a debtor's prison.

Shirley Jones was radiant, needless to say, but the hit of the show was a basso who sang the part of Peachum [father of Polly, one of MacHeath's several inamoratae.]  When the lights went up at the opening of the show, he was revealed to be sitting at a table with his drinking buddy, Lockit.  His very first line was a belch that could be heard throughout Sanders.  To this day, I do not know how he managed it.