the art of writing is discovering what you believe
TunesTracker: e-mail alerts for iTunes Music Store addicts:
TunesTracker is a tool for iTunes Music Store addicts. It will search the iTunes Music Store daily for your favorite artists, and send you an e-mail when there are new songs by those artists.
Looking for better earbuds for your iPod or laptop? Don’t run out and buy these — Sony Fontopia MDR-EX71SL — unless you don’t mind replacing them in a year or so. Just got ’em in April.
I just found the left channel on mine is all but dead. So back to the loud but not-too-good-on-bass-response stock earbuds.
Flatland: Section 14 How I vainly tried to explain the nature of Flatland
Thinking that it was time to bring down the Monarch from his raptures
to the level of common sense, I determined to endeavour to open up
to him some glimpses of the truth, that is to say of the nature
of things in Flatland. So I began thus: “How does your Royal Highness
distinguish the shapes and positions of his subjects? I for my part
noticed by the sense of sight, before I entered your Kingdom,
that some of your people are lines and others Points;
and that some of the lines are larger –” “You speak of an impossibility,”
interrupted the King; “you must have seen a vision; for to detect the difference
between a Line and a Point by the sense of sight is, as every one knows,
in the nature of things, impossible; but it can be detected by the sense
of hearing, and by the same means my shape can be exactly ascertained.
Behold me–I am a Line, the longest in Lineland, over six inches of Space –”
“Of Length,” I ventured to suggest. “Fool,” said he, “Space is Length.
Interrupt me again, and I have done.”
I apologized; but he continued scornfully, “Since you are impervious
to argument, you shall hear with your ears how by means of my two voices
I reveal my shape to my Wives, who are at this moment six thousand miles
seventy yards two feet eight inches away, the one to the North,
the other to the South. Listen, I call to them.”
He chirruped, and then complacently continued: “My wives at this
moment receiving the sound of one of my voice, closely followed
by the other, and perceiving that the latter reaches them after an interval
in which sound can traverse 6.457 inches, infer that one of my mouths
is 6.457 inches further from them than the other, and accordingly know
my shape to be 6.457 inches. But you will of course understand that
my wives do not make this calculation every time they hear my two voices.
They made it, once for all, before we were married. But they COULD
make it at any time. And in the same way I can estimate the shape
of any of my Male subjects by the sense of sound.”
“But how,” said I, “if a Man feigns a Woman’s voice with one of his
two voices, or so disguises his Southern voice that it cannot
be recognized as the echo of the Northern? May not such deceptions
cause great inconvenience? And have you no means of checking frauds
of this kind by commanding your neighbouring subjects to feel one another?”
This of course was a very stupid question, for feeling could not have
answered the purpose; but I asked with the view of irritating the Monarch,
and I succeeded perfectly.
“What!” cried he in horror, “explain your meaning.” “Feel, touch,
come into contact,” I replied. “If you mean by FEELING,” said the
King, “approaching so close as to leave no space between two individuals,
know, Stranger, that this offence is punishable in my dominions by death.
And the reason is obvious. The frail form of a Woman, being liable
to be shattered by such an approximation, must be preserved by the State;
but since Women cannot be distinguished by the sense of sight from Men,
the Law ordains universally that neither Man nor Woman shall be
approached so closely as to destroy the interval between the approximator
and the approximated.
“And indeed what possible purpose would be served by this illegal
and unnatural excess of approximation which you call TOUCHING,
when all the ends of so brutal and course a process are attained
at once more easily and more exactly by the sense of hearing?
As to your suggested danger of deception, it is non-existent:
for the Voice, being the essence of one’s Being, cannot be
thus changed at will. But come, suppose that I had the power
of passing through solid things, so that I could penetrate my subjects,
one after another, even to the number of a billion, verifying the size
and distance of each by the sense of FEELING: How much time and energy
would be wasted in this clumsy and inaccurate method! Whereas now,
in one moment of audition, I take as it were the census and statistics,
local, corporeal, mental and spiritual, of every living being in Lineland.
Hark, only hark!”
So saying he paused and listened, as if in an ecstasy, to a sound
which seemed to me no better than a tiny chirping from an innumerable
multitude of lilliputian grasshoppers.
“Truly,” replied I, “your sense of hearing serves you in good stead,
and fills up many of your deficiencies. But permit me to point out
that your life in Lineland must be deplorably dull. To see nothing
but a Point! Not even to be able to contemplate a Straight Line!
Nay, not even to know what a Straight Line is! To see, yet to be cut
off from those Linear prospects which are vouchsafed to us in Flatland!
Better surely to have no sense of sight at all than to see so little!
I grant you I have not your discriminative faculty of hearing;
for the concert of all Lineland which gives you such intense pleasure,
is to me no better than a multitudinous twittering or chirping.
But at least I can discern, by sight, a Line from a Point.
And let me prove it. Just before I came into your kingdom,
I saw you dancing from left to right, and then from right to left,
with Seven Men and a Woman in your immediate proximity on the left,
and eight Men and two Women on your right. Is not this correct?”
“It is correct,” said the King, “so far as the numbers and sexes
are concerned, though I know not what you mean by `right’ and `left.’
But I deny that you saw these things. For how could you see the Line,
that is to say the inside, of any Man? But you must have heard these
things, and then dreamed that you saw them. And let me ask what you
mean by those words `left’ and `right.’ I suppose it is your way
of saying Northward and Southward.”
“Not so,” replied I; “besides your motion of Northward and Southward,
there is another motion which I call from right to left.”
King. Exhibit to me, if you please, this motion from left to right.
I. Nay, that I cannot do, unless you could step out of your Line altogether.
King. Out of my Line? Do you mean out of the world? Out of Space?
I. Well, yes. Out of YOUR world. Out of YOUR Space. For your
Space is not the true Space. True Space is a Plane; but your
Space is only a Line.
King. If you cannot indicate this motion from left to right by yourself
moving in it, then I beg you to describe it to me in words.
I. If you cannot tell your right side from your left, I fear
that no words of mine can make my meaning clearer to you.
But surely you cannot be ignorant of so simple a distinction.
King. I do not in the least understand you.
I. Alas! How shall I make it clear? When you move straight on,
does it not sometimes occur to you that you COULD move in some other way,
turning your eye round so as to look in the direction towards which your
side is now fronting? In other words, instead of always moving
in the direction of one of your extremities, do you never feel
a desire to move in the direction, so to speak, of your side?
King. Never. And what do you mean? How can a man’s inside “front”
in any direction? Or how can a man move in the direction of his inside?
I. Well then, since words cannot explain the matter, I will try deeds,
and will move gradually out of Lineland in the direction which I desire
to indicate to you.
At the word I began to move my body out of Lineland. As long
as any part of me remained in his dominion and in his view, the King
kept exclaiming, “I see you, I see you still; you are not moving.”
But when I had at last moved myself out of his Line, he cried in his
shrillest voice, “She is vanished; she is dead.” “I am not dead,”
replied I; “I am simply out of Lineland, that is to say, out of the
Straight Line which you call Space, and in the true Space, where I can
see things as they are. And at this moment I can see your Line,
or side–or inside as you are pleased to call it; and I can see also
the Men and Women on the North and South of you, whom I will now enumerate,
describing their order, their size, and the interval between each.”
When I had done this at great length, I cried triumphantly,
“Does that at last convince you?” And, with that, I once more
entered Lineland, taking up the same position as before.
But the Monarch replied, “If you were a Man of sense–though, as
you appear to have only one voice I have little doubt you are not a
Man but a Woman–but, if you had a particle of sense, you would
listen to reason. You ask me to believe that there is another Line
besides that which my senses indicate, and another motion besides that
of which I am daily conscious. I, in return, ask you to describe
in words or indicate by motion that other Line of which you speak.
Instead of moving, you merely exercise some magic art of vanishing
and returning to sight; and instead of any lucid description of your
new World, you simply tell me the numbers and sizes of some forty
of my retinue, facts known to any child in my capital. Can anything
be more irrational or audacious? Acknowledge your folly or depart
from my dominions.”
Furious at his perversity, and especially indignant that he professed
to be ignorant of my sex, I retorted in no measured terms, “Besotted Being!
You think yourself the perfection of existence, while you are in reality
the most imperfect and imbecile. You profess to see, whereas you see
nothing but a Point! You plume yourself on inferring the existence
of a Straight Line; but I CAN SEE Straight Lines, and infer the existence
of Angles, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and even Circles.
Why waste more words? Suffice it that I am the completion of your
incomplete self. You are a Line, but I am a Line of Lines called
in my country a Square: and even I, infinitely superior though
I am to you, am of little account among the great nobles of Flatland,
whence I have come to visit you, in the hope of enlightening your ignorance.”
Hearing these words the King advanced towards me with a menacing cry
as if to pierce me through the diagonal; and in that same movement
there arose from myriads of his subjects a multitudinous war-cry,
increasing in vehemence till at last methought it rivalled the roar
of an army of a hundred thousand Isosceles, and the artillery
of a thousand Pentagons. Spell-bound and motionless, I could
neither speak nor move to avert the impending destruction;
and still the noise grew louder, and the King came closer,
when I awoke to find the breakfast-bell recalling me
to the realities of Flatland.
I tried making these tonight as a simple rustic meal: we went to a 7 year old’s birthday party (@ McDonald’s) and we all need something solid to settle us down.
A book I’m reading — “Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet” (Frances Moore Lappe, Anna Lappe) — has a lot of simple whole food-base recipes between the chapters and at the end of the text. So I tried these, and they were a success, even though I realized I had much to learn before I could call them good.
They are little pastries, about the size of a fried fruit pie, filled with seasoned vegetables or meat, and baked for 15 – 20 minutes. I filled mine with potato chunks, peas, scallions, cheese and some cumin.
The recipe will come later when I have experimented a bit more. The dough was unlike any other pastry — more forgiving and malleable — and I need to get a better sense of quantities for the filling.
But in the meantime, here are some other variants.
{food}
Someone remarked that something I did the other way was genius. I’ll concede that it was mildly clever, I’ll let you decide.
I took something off someone’s hands in the LowEnd Mac swap meet (a mailing list where people horse trade stuff for old Macs, some not so old), and to save hassle on both ends, I created a postage paid mailing label at the USPS website, previewed it so I could save it as a PDF, and emailed that as an attachment. All he had to do was print and stick . . . .
Unexpectedly, the java applet that makes this work was fine in Safari but not in FireFox . . . so I could create the labels, just not render them.
OTHER WORLDS
“O brave new worlds,
That have such people in them!”
Flatland: Section 13 How I had a Vision of Lineland
It was the last day but one of the 1999th year of our era, and the
first day of the Long Vacation. Having amused myself till a late hour
with my favourite recreation of Geometry, I had retired to rest
with an unsolved problem in my mind. In the night I had a dream.
I saw before me a vast multitude of small Straight Lines
(which I naturally assumed to be Women) interspersed with other Beings
still smaller and of the nature of lustrous points–all moving to and fro
in one and the same Straight Line, and, as nearly as I could judge,
with the same velocity.
A noise of confused, multitudinous chirping or twittering issued
from them at intervals as long as they were moving; but sometimes
they ceased from motion, and then all was silence.
Approaching one of the largest of what I thought to be Women,
I accosted her, but received no answer. A second and third appeal
on my part were equally ineffectual. Losing patience at what appeared
to me intolerable rudeness, I brought my mouth to a position full
in front of her mouth so as to intercept her motion, and loudly repeated
my question, “Woman, what signifies this concourse, and this strange
and confused chirping, and this monotonous motion to and fro in one
and the same Straight Line?”
“I am no Woman,” replied the small Line: “I am the Monarch of the world.
But thou, whence intrudest thou into my realm of Lineland?”
Receiving this abrupt reply, I begged pardon if I had in any way
startled or molested his Royal Highness; and describing myself
as a stranger I besought the King to give me some account of his dominions.
But I had the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining any information
on points that really interested me; for the Monarch could not refrain
from constantly assuming that whatever was familiar to him must also
be known to me and that I was simulating ignorance in jest.
However, by preserving questions I elicited the following facts:
It seemed that this poor ignorant Monarch–as he called himself–
was persuaded that the Straight Line which he called his Kingdom,
and in which he passed his existence, constituted the whole of the world,
and indeed the whole of Space. Not being able either to move or to see,
save in his Straight Line, he had no conception of anything out of it.
Though he had heard my voice when I first addressed him, the sounds
had come to him in a manner so contrary to his experience that he had
made no answer, “seeing no man,” as he expressed it, “and hearing
a voice as it were from my own intestines.” Until the moment when
I placed my mouth in his World, he had neither seen me, nor heard
anything except confused sounds beating against, what I called his side,
but what he called his INSIDE or STOMACH; nor had he even now the least
conception of the region from which I had come. Outside his World,
or Line, all was a blank to him; nay, not even a blank, for a blank
implies Space; say, rather, all was non-existent.
His subjects–of whom the small Lines were men and the Points Women–
were all alike confined in motion and eyesight to that single Straight Line,
which was their World. It need scarcely be added that the whole of their
horizon was limited to a Point; nor could any one ever see anything
but a Point. Man, woman, child, thing–each as a Point to the eye
of a Linelander. Only by the sound of the voice could sex or age
be distinguished. Moreover, as each individual occupied the whole
of the narrow path, so to speak, which constituted his Universe,
and no one could move to the right or left to make way for passers by,
it followed that no Linelander could ever pass another. Once neighbours,
always neighbours. Neighbourhood with them was like marriage with us.
Neighbours remained neighbours till death did them part.
Such a life, with all vision limited to a Point, and all motion
to a Straight Line, seemed to me inexpressibly dreary; and I was
surprised to note that vivacity and cheerfulness of the King.
Wondering whether it was possible, amid circumstances so unfavourable
to domestic relations, to enjoy the pleasures of conjugal union,
I hesitated for some time to question his Royal Highness on so delicate
a subject; but at last I plunged into it by abruptly inquiring
as to the health of his family. “My wives and children,” he replied,
“are well and happy.”
Staggered at this answer–for in the immediate proximity of the Monarch
(as I had noted in my dream before I entered Lineland) there were none
but Men–I ventured to reply, “Pardon me, but I cannot imagine how your
Royal Highness can at any time either see or approach their Majesties,
when there at least half a dozen intervening individuals, whom you can
neither see through, nor pass by? Is it possible that in Lineland
proximity is not necessary for marriage and for the generation of children?”
“How can you ask so absurd a question?” replied the Monarch. “If it were
indeed as you suggest, the Universe would soon be depopulated. No, no;
neighbourhood is needless for the union of hearts; and the birth
of children is too important a matter to have been allowed to depend
upon such an accident as proximity. You cannot be ignorant of this.
Yet since you are pleased to affect ignorance, I will instruct you
as if you were the veriest baby in Lineland. Know, then, that marriages
are consummated by means of the faculty of sound and the sense of hearing.
“You are of course aware that every Man has two mouths or voices–
as well as two eyes–a bass at one and a tenor at the other of his
extremities. I should not mention this, but that I have been
unable to distinguish your tenor in the course of our conversation.”
I replied that I had but one voice, and that I had not been aware
that his Royal Highness had two. “That confirms my impression,”
said the King, “that you are not a Man, but a feminine Monstrosity
with a bass voice, and an utterly uneducated ear. But to continue.
“Nature having herself ordained that every Man should wed two wives–”
“Why two?” asked I. “You carry your affected simplicity too far,”
he cried. “How can there be a completely harmonious union without
the combination of the Four in One, viz. the Bass and Tenor of the Man
and the Soprano and Contralto of the two Women?” “But supposing,”
said I, “that a man should prefer one wife or three?” “It is impossible,”
he said; “it is as inconceivable as that two and one should make five,
or that the human eye should see a Straight Line.” I would have
interrupted him; but he proceeded as follows:
“Once in the middle of each week a Law of Nature compels us to move
to and fro with a rhythmic motion of more than usual violence,
which continues for the time you would take to count a hundred and one.
In the midst of this choral dance, at the fifty-first pulsation,
the inhabitants of the Universe pause in full career, and each
individual sends forth his richest, fullest, sweetest strain.
It is in this decisive moment that all our marriages are made.
So exquisite is the adaptation of Bass and Treble, of Tenor to Contralto,
that oftentimes the Loved Ones, though twenty thousand leagues away,
recognize at once the responsive note of their destined Lover; and,
penetrating the paltry obstacles of distance, Love unites the three.
The marriage in that instance consummated results in a threefold Male
and Female offspring which takes its place in Lineland.”
“What! Always threefold?” said I. “Must one wife then always have twins?”
“Bass-voice Monstrosity! yes,” replied the King. “How else could
the balance of the Sexes be maintained, if two girls were not born
for every boy? Would you ignore the very Alphabet of Nature?”
He ceased, speechless for fury; and some time elapsed before
I could induce him to resume his narrative.
“You will not, of course, suppose that every bachelor among us finds
his mates at the first wooing in this universal Marriage Chorus.
On the contrary, the process is by most of us many times repeated.
Few are the hearts whose happy lot is at once to recognize in each
other’s voice the partner intended for them by Providence, and to fly
into a reciprocal and perfectly harmonious embrace. With most of us
the courtship is of long duration. The Wooer’s voices may perhaps
accord with one of the future wives, but not with both; or not,
at first, with either; or the Soprano and Contralto may not quite
harmonize. In such cases Nature has provided that every weekly Chorus
shall bring the three Lovers into closer harmony. Each trial of voice,
each fresh discovery of discord, almost imperceptibly induces the less
perfect to modify his or her vocal utterance so as to approximate
to the more perfect. And after many trials and many approximations,
the result is at last achieved. There comes a day at last when,
while the wonted Marriage Chorus goes forth from universal Lineland,
the three far-off Lovers suddenly find themselves in exact harmony,
and, before they are aware, the wedded Triplet is rapt vocally into
a duplicate embrace; and Nature rejoices over one more marriage
and over three more births.”
A debate between two friends of differing opinions on the music downloading issue. One of them’s skivvies are bit too tight, if you ask me . . .
The Big Picture: Debate on Downloading
And as someone pointed out on in the Interesting People list (I’m not, but they are), the example of EMI as a record company fighting for life against evil downloaders, their financial woes are tied to their biggest artists pushing their release dates til after the company’s year-end. So if they do boffo business next year, will we hear that downloading is no threat, after all?
I have a mailing list for my school run by what was a one-man shop.
The one man died on Tuesday, of complications from an earlier heart attack. He had been quiet for a while then surfaced about 10 days ago to explain his long silence. Today, a note from a surviving brother to tell his customers what happened.
He was always very candid and dedicated to his customers, never afraid to explain what was happening in ongoing war with spammers and their offspring, the blacklist.
RIP, Paul.
Flatland: Section 12 Of the Doctrine of our Priests
As to the doctrine of the Circles it may briefly be summed up in a single maxim, “Attend to your Configuration.” Whether political, ecclesiastical, or moral, all their teaching has for its object the improvement of individual and collective Configuration — with special reference of course to the Configuration of the Circles, to which all other objects are subordinated.
It is the merit of the Circles that they have effectually suppressed those ancient heresies which led men to waste energy and sympathy in the vain belief that conduct depends upon will, effort, training, encouragement, praise, or anything else but Configuration. It was Pantocyclus — the illustrious Circle mentioned above, as the queller of the Colour Revolt — who first convinced mankind that Configuration makes the man; that if, for example, you are born an Isosceles with two uneven sides, you will assuredly go wrong unless you have them made even — for which purpose you must go to the Isosceles Hospital; similarly, if you are a Triangle, or Square, or even a Polygon, born with any Irregularity, you must be taken to one of the Regular Hospitals to have your disease cured; otherwise you will end your days in the State Prison or by the angle of the State Executioner.
All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles, when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides?
Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed — and there’s an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, when the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one of my own Hexagonal Grandsons pleads as an excuse for his disobedience that a sudden change of temperature has been too much for his Perimeter, and that I ought to lay the blame not on him but on his Configuration, which can only be strengthened by abundance of the choicest sweetmeats, I neither see my way logically to reject, nor practically to accept, his conclusions.
For my own part, I find it best to assume that a good sound scolding or castigation has some latent and strengthening influence on my Grandson’s Configuration; though I own that I have no grounds for thinking so. At all events I am not alone in my way of extricating myself from this dilemma; for I find that many of the highest Circles, sitting as Judges in law courts, use praise and blame towards Regular and Irregular Figures; and in their homes I know by experience that, when scolding their children, they speak about “right” and “wrong” as vehemently and passionately as if they believe that these names represented real existence, and that a human Figure is really capable of choosing between them.
Constantly carrying out their policy of making Configuration the leading idea in every mind, the Circles reverse the nature of that Commandment which in Spaceland regulates the relations between parents and children. With you, children are taught to honour their parents; with us — next to the Circles, who are the chief object of universal homage — a man is taught to honour his Grandson, if he has one; or, if not, his Son. By “honour,” however, is by no means mean “indulgence,” but a reverent regard for their highest interests: and the Circles teach that the duty of fathers is to subordinate their own interests to those of posterity, thereby advancing the welfare of the whole State as well as that of their own immediate descendants.
The weak point in the system of the Circles — if a humble Square may venture to speak of anything Circular as containing any element of weakness — appears to me to be found in their relations with Women.
As it is of the utmost importance for Society that Irregular births should be discouraged, it follows that no Woman who has any Irregularities in her ancestry is a fit partner for one who desires that his posterity should rise by regular degrees in the social scale.
Now the Irregularity of a Male is a matter of measurement; but as all Women are straight, and therefore visibly Regular so to speak, one has to device some other means of ascertaining what I may call their invisible Irregularity, that is to say their potential Irregularities as regards possible offspring. This is effected by carefully-kept pedigrees, which are preserved and supervised by the State; and without a certified pedigree no Woman is allowed to marry.
Now it might have been supposed the a Circle — proud of his ancestry and regardful for a posterity which might possibly issue hereafter in a Chief Circle — would be more careful than any other to choose a wife who had no blot on her escutcheon. But it is not so. The care in choosing a Regular wife appears to diminish as one rises in the social scale. Nothing would induce an aspiring Isosceles, who has hopes of generating an Equilateral Son, to take a wife who reckoned a single Irregularity among her Ancestors; a Square or Pentagon, who is confident that his family is steadily on the rise, does not inquire above the five-hundredth generation; a Hexagon or Dodecagon is even more careless of the wife’s pedigree; but a Circle has been known deliberately to take a wife who has had an Irregular Great-Grandfather, and all because of some slight superiority of lustre, or because of the charms of a low voice — which, with us, even more than with you, is thought “an excellent thing in a Woman.”
Such ill-judged marriages are, as might be expected, barren, if they do not result in positive Irregularity or in diminution of sides; but none of these evils have hitherto provided sufficiently deterrent. The loss of a few sides in a highly-developed Polygon is not easily noticed, and is sometimes compensated by a successful operation in the Neo-Therapeutic Gymnasium, as I have described above; and the Circles are too much disposed to acquiesce in infecundity as a law of the superior development. Yet, if this evil be not arrested, the gradual diminution of the Circular class may soon become more rapid, and the time may not be far distant when, the race being no longer able to produce a Chief Circle, the Constitution of Flatland must fall.
One other word of warning suggest itself to me, though I cannot so easily mention a remedy; and this also refers to our relations with Women. About three hundred years ago, it was decreed by the Chief Circle that, since women are deficient in Reason but abundant in Emotion, they ought no longer to be treated as rational, nor receive any mental education. The consequence was that they were no longer taught to read, nor even to master Arithmetic enough to enable them to count the angles of their husband or children; and hence they sensibly declined during each generation in intellectual power. And this system of female non-education or quietism still prevails.
My fear is that, with the best intentions, this policy has been carried so far as to react injuriously on the Male Sex.
For the consequence is that, as things now are, we Males have to lead a kind of bi-lingual, and I may almost say bimental, existence. With Women, we speak of “love,” “duty,” “right,” “wrong,” “pity,” “hope,” and other irrational and emotional conceptions, which have no existence, and the fiction of which has no object except to control feminine exuberances; but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary and I may also say, idiom. “Love” them becomes “the anticipation of benefits” “duty” becomes “necessity” or “fitness” and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover, among Women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their Sex; and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is not more devoutly adored by us than they are: but behind their backs they are both regarded and spoken of — by all but the very young — as being little better than “mindless organisms.”
Our Theology also in the Women’s chambers is entirely different from our Theology elsewhere.
Now my humble fear is that this double training, in language as well as in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon the young, especially when, at the age of three years old, they are taken from the maternal care and taught to unlearn the old language — except for the purpose of repeating it in the presence of the Mothers and Nurses — and to learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. Already methinks I discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical truth at the present time as compared with the more robust intellect of our ancestors three hundred years ago. I say nothing of the possible danger if a Woman should ever surreptitiously learn to read and convey to her Sex the result of her perusal of a single popular volume; nor of the possibility that the indiscretion or disobedience of some infant Male might reveal to a Mother the secrets of the logical dialect. On the simple ground of the enfeebling of the male intellect, I rest this humble appeal to the highest Authorities to reconsider the regulations of Female education.