A phrase suggested by last night's New York Times obituaries—
From Milton to Milton (click to enlarge)
The "green fields" is from Shakespeare.
The above author, Vinton Adams Dearing, died* on April 6, 2005. From this journal on that date, some babbling.
"Have your people call my people." — George Carlin
* See Dearing's page 34 —
on a joke by George Carlin,
a passage by Kierkegaard,
and the death on this date
12 years ago
of actor James Stewart
“Thank you, Mr. Twain. Have your people call my people.” –George Carlin on learning he had won the Mark Twain award. Twain’s people were Protestant, Carlin’s Catholic.
The Protestant Kierkegaard:
“… the moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity. It is the first reflection of eternity in time, its first attempt, as it were, at stopping time….
Once here in Copenhagen there were two actors who probably never thought that their performance could have a deeper significance. They stepped forth onto the stage, placed themselves opposite each other, and then began the mimical representation of one or another passionate conflict. When the mimical act was in full swing and the spectators’ eyes followed the story with expectation of what was to follow, they suddenly stopped and remained motionless as though petrified in the mimical expression of the moment. The effect of this can he exceedingly comical, for the moment in an accidental way becomes commensurable with the eternal.”
Catholic tableau
(with Vivien Leigh
representing the Church)
of Salvation by Works —
Protestant tableau
(with James Stewart
as Protestant Pilgrim)
of Salvation by Grace —
Click on either tableau
for a (much) larger image.
“An unscrupulous jeweler will swap diamonds for cheaper ones when jewelry is dropped off to be sized or repaired, he said.
‘It happens all the time,’ Martin said. ‘Nobody’s watching.'”
“Have your people
call my people.“
— George Carlin
— Sade, quoted here on
Lincoln’s Birthday, 2003
This is perhaps suitable
for the soundtrack of
the film “Blockheads“
(currently in development)–
“Uta Frith, in her book Autism: Explaining the Enigma,[5] addresses the superior performance of autistic individuals on the block design [link not in Wikipedia] test. This was also addressed in [an] earlier paper.[6] A particularly interesting article demonstrates the differences in construction time in the performance of the block design task by Asperger syndrome individuals and non-Asperger’s individuals. An essential point here is that in an unsegmented version of the task, Asperger’s individuals performed dramatically faster than non-Asperger’s individuals: [7].”
5. Frith, Uta (2003). Autism: explaining the enigma (2nd ed. ). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Pub. ISBN 0-631-22901-9.
6. Shah A, Frith U (Nov 1993). “Why do autistic individuals show superior performance on the block design task?”. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 34 (8): 1351–64. PMID 8294523.
7. Caron MJ, Mottron L, Berthiaume C, Dawson M (Jul 2006). “Cognitive mechanisms, specificity and neural underpinnings of visuospatial peaks in autism”. Brain 129 (Pt 7): 1789–802. doi:. PMID 16597652. “Fig 3”.
For the relevance of this maxim to autism, see Markoff Process (March 4, 2009).
From the current
issue of TIME:
“Religions are hardy. ‘Many a time
we have gotten all ready for the
funeral’ of one faith or another,
‘and found it postponed again,
on account of
the weather or something.'”
— Mark Twain
Twain was raised
as a Presbyterian
(the Calvinist tradition).
This year’s Twain award
for humor went to
George Carlin,
raised in
the Catholic tradition.
On learning he had won
the Twain award,
Carlin said,
“Thank you, Mr. Twain.
Have your people
call my people.”
Today’s Birthdays:
Born July 10, 1509 —
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