How like the beating of a heart the bass when it's played the way it's supposed to be played when you're chest is so tight and you can hear every lub dub every stick tap on the skin of the drum and when you try to take flight you fall short not of breath but because of broken wings or some other subtle pressure you sin which is the same as falling short so wrote Aristotle of phronesis in his Nichomachean and neither is the man who aims at the target an archer worth his salt unless he actually hits the mark not once or twice but all the time consistently and with a certain ease that befits a master one adept at this or that craft with technique beyond skill and practical wisdom in the fingers that lock the arrow and draw the bow he is an archer who hits the mark bull's eye through the straw and doesn't think twice about his aim or the tension on his bow or the crook of her elbow or of her knee ...

Cropsey on natural slavery Cropsey wore street clothes and changed into a blue pinstripe suit in his office before giving his lectures.  He kept his socks in the bottom drawer of his desk.  On top of his steel filing cabinet , which contained Leo Strauss' private papers,  was an 18th Century leather bound folio volume from Pierre Bayle's  Dictionary , which contained Leo Strauss' private papers.  I don't think these smelled of socks.  The Bayle volume contained Bayle's article on Spinoza.  Cropsey espoused his own brand of scepticism, so the Bayle was not surprising, nor was his reluctance to let non-Straussians peruse Strauss' correspondence.  Cropsey had us read Aristotle's  Politics , Plato's  Meno , and  Heidegger's Basic Problems of Phenomenology . The translation we used for Aristotle's  Politics  was translated by Straussian Carnes Lord--we called it the Lord edition.  One of the essay questions Cropsey set ...

Everyone of a certain generation knows the Life cereal television commercial, in which Mikey, who hates everything, seems to relish Life cereal, so that must mean it's good. I wonder whether the Mikey Likes It commercial was an early form of the Debbie Proof ?  And what is the Debbie Proof , you ask?  A retired professor friend of mine recently remarked upon a curious feature of articles by journalist and amateur sociologist James Fallows, published in the The Atlantic's Politics & Policies Daily, which the magazine describes as "a roundup of ideas and events in American politics." The Fallows on how America is already becoming great again Fallows is in  the habit of invoking the name of his wife Deb when punctuating his own political opinions.  Just as with Mikey in the Life cereal commercial, if Deb agrees or nods approvingly or is in any sympathetic or supportive, Fallows must be right! In the case of Fallows' recent contribution to The A...