by John Holbo on December 18, 2008
I know, I know: it’s been two days since my last Haeckel post. Well, worry no longer! My X-Mas cards got a link from the University of Chicago Press! They just put out a new biography of Haeckel that is, I gather, more of a general intellectual history of the reception of evolutionary theory in the second half of the 19th Century, doubling as an attempt to burnish a somewhat tarnished reputation: The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought
[amazon]. Here’s a TLS review – or rather, a longer version of one – that is, effectively, a thumbnail biography in itself.
All well and good, you agree: but surely there is more to life than German X-Mas jellyfish imagery? Yes, indeed! ASIFA has posted a wonderful series of Einar Norelius illustrations from a 1929 Bland Tomtar Och Troll (a Swedish x-mas annual of fairy and folktales). For example, here’s some sort of Aquatomten admiring a bunch of jellyfish. (Or maybe the guy’s just drowning.)
You see: there’s also Swedish X-Mas jellyfish imagery. So I added another card image to my flickr set, to add variety. (Not my best work, admittedly. But I only have so much 100-year old Swedish holiday card stock in my ephemera file.)
by John Holbo on December 16, 2008
by John Holbo on November 28, 2008
Victor Davis Hanson: “George Bush is neither the source of all our ills nor the “worst” president in our history.”
It says something that even Bush’s die-hard defenders implicitly concede that assessing his legacy is going to be a matter of wrangling over the semantics of ‘worst’.
Full disclosure: I’m married to a woman who is descended from James Buchanan, so it may be that I am over-eager to see the mantle of ‘worst’ pass to another family line, freeing my offspring from the stain of shame.
by John Holbo on August 29, 2008
I have a suggestion regarding this whole ‘you have to be very careful about criticizing McCain because of the POW thing‘ thing. The next time someone suggests it is inappropriate to say McCain messed up/is confused about X, because this is a man who etc. etc., someone ought to ask whether this will continue to apply in McCain’s Presidency, if he is elected. If he exhibits bad judgment, if we lurch from foreign policy crisis to crisis, if unwise domestic policies are pursued, will there continue to be an unusually high bar against holding McCain responsible for his words and actions? It’s hard to know how to refute a ‘yes, all is excused’ answer, if people really believe he’s got that much credit in the bank, going forward. But if it is ‘yes’, then that seems like a good reason not to vote for McCain. Because we obviously don’t want a President who can’t be held to account for any potential failings or weaknesses.
What this shows up is the rather significant difference between ‘because of what happened to him then, he must be right now’ and ‘because of what happened to him then, we can’t blame him for what’s happening now’. Obviously I’m being all elaborate about it, but it’s the sort of thing that would be easy to implement in sound-bit sized pieces. Just ask Brokaw what he’s actually saying. That McCain must be right? Or that McCain can’t be held responsible for being wrong? If Brokaw responds, as he probably will, that he thinks he’s just commenting on public sentiment – the public will react badly to criticism of McCain – then ask again: does Brokaw think the public thinks McCain must be right? Or that McCain can’t be held responsible?
