“In dealing with another person everyone should know where to place himself with regard to that person, should be sure of the reaction the other person’s presence inspires…”
~Italo Calvino, “The Universe as a Mirror,” from Mr. Palomar
I’ve written about this before: the importance of a sense of proportion, of knowing what is big and what [...]

I don’t know whether others have noticed this, but a certain over-polite tendency seems clear to me in everyday discourse. It is the tendency to balance a criticism. “He works slowly” is usually followed by “but he does a good job.” “I’m not good at math” is usually followed by “I like art better” or [...]

“For who gives himself up to looking for proofs of something he does not believe in or the predication of what he does not care about?” ~Jorge Luis Borges, “Three Versions of Judas”
The quote above is interesting because it really is true. I dimly recall reading a similar statement in Mark Twain: that a person [...]

“…he proclaimed himself in reaction to the nineties.”
~Samuel Beckett, “A Wet Night”
This semester I’m taking a class on globalism, and one term that keeps turning up is “backlash.” Most economists of our day favor economic integration, and “backlash” is the word applied to the protesters of it. I find backlash interesting because it is such [...]

Really, epistemology is the key to everything. You can’t do anything unless you know what to do, and you can’t know anything until you know how to know.
Sometimes we don’t give much thought to epistemology (the science of knowing). After all, it’s pretty obvious that some actions or ideas are illogical, and somethings make sense. [...]

[In a little notebook that I carry around, I find the following entry from February 26, 2007. ~Matthew]
Why are stars used to measure quality? Why is a movie or a hotel given five stars, instead of five moons?
In fact, stars are used extensively as metaphors. They are compared to a person’s eyes - or rather, [...]