Hold My Calls
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Misc. Hate
A Mustiphino has been spotted wandering the halls of Congress. The deranged babblings of an SPLC apparatchik inspired me to coin the word hatefact . Hatefacts are unquestionable facts about immigrants , blacks , women , homosexualists , et al., that the SPLC and those sharing its ideological inclinations deem “hate” or “hateful” to mention. UPDATE: It seems I unwittingly stole the idea for the word hatefact from Peter Brimelow, who used the term “hate facts” in a speech last November .
Christmas Books
The Illustrious House of Ramires , by Eça de Queirós. A novel about an ineffectual nobleman writing an historical novel about his heroic ancestors. Queirós has been called the Portuguese Flaubert. Large Fees and How to Get Them : a book for the private use of physicians , by Albert V. Harmon, M.D. If you practice early 20th medicine and want large fees, this book is essential reading. If you don’t, there are still lessons in its amusing and unsentimental discussion of various topics, like in the chapter “The Bugbear of Ethics”, where Harmon advises “ethics in its place is a good thing...But there is such a thing as overdoing the ethical proposition”. Histrionics: Three Plays and Over All the Mountain Tops , by Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard once said “I despise actors, indeed I hate them, for they ally themselves at the least sign of danger with the audience and betray the author and completely identify with stupidity and feeble-mindedness. Actors are the destroyers and exte...
Why do people in 16th-17th century woodcuts and engravings always look like villains and rogues. I'm assuming that this pair are actually perfectly respectable patients.
ReplyDeleteNo one looks good under that sort of treatment. I would like to imagine that as soon as it was done, they went right back to dancing in their Pointy Boots. Ole'!
ReplyDeleteInteresting observation. The ones that don't really stand out. Disease burden, and maybe people were in general uglier back then (see also this).
ReplyDeleteAmong other things, I think the guy on the left has scrofula.
Have to disagree with Anonymous. A Vermeer portrait of a young woman being trepanned would merely look like Scarlett Johansson with a slight eye strain. The same girl in a woodcut, however, would resemble a deranged street hag willing to sell her body for a few dirty Gilders. But I do agree with his or her point about the rehabilitation potential of pointy boots
ReplyDeleteFez, his pointy boot reference was to a video I linked to in a comment on another site.
ReplyDelete