Fragmenta Philosophica

Macarena Monkey Madness

Today is a dark day.

Having returned from a quick lunch-run with some colleagues, I proceeded to my desk to discover that our team's - for want of a better word -  mascot had disappeared, having been replaced with a sinister note that raised as many questions as provided answers. Later in the day, an anonymous message was sent to one of our company-wide email aliases. The text is as follows.

[Company Employees]. A new day is upon thee.

Have you noticed that a new peace has settled on our digs? No? Maybe you don’t sit in the general vicinity of engineering. If you did, you might have noticed. Noticed what, you ask? You would have noticed that you have been enjoying a day blissfully devoid of the soaringly inelegant voices of Los del Rio. Who? Los del Rio.

The Macarena.

Yes. Yes. Yes. It is true. The moment that some of us have dreamed about has finally, joyfully come to pass. Specifically, Paul Craddick’s clap-activated, gyrating, singing-the-Macarena-every-10-minutes-all-flippin’-day monkey has been kidnapped.

By the time you read this the monkey will already be on a plane. Fear not, he is being treated with utmost care. However, as he is clearly a dangerous threat to society, his rendition to another geographic location was deemed necessary.

Paul Craddick. We have your monkey. Updates and proof of your monkey’s health can be found here.

http://wehaveyourmonkey.com/

We will notify you of our demands shortly,

Dr. Zaius

Collective Micropsuchia

The West is again paralyzed by a morally confused political debate over whose fault it is that our enemies hate us so much and are growing stronger. (Mario Loyola)

Worldview on a dustjacket

The back cover of Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos, by Joseph Cropsey, in part summarizes the book's unorthodox thesis in the following terms.

The cosmos Plato depicts ... is haunted by the irrational, populated by human beings unaided by gods, and dealt with equivocally by nature.

Plato's World -- our world.

Day of Rest

My Dad has been gone for nearly a decade now. Criticize him any day of the year - for he would not be undeserving of it -  except that of his death, October 6th. 

In a somewhat similar vein, I'll join you in debate on the demerits of the US from the first of January until September 10th, and from September 12th through year's end. But not today.

Is that "irrational"? Perhaps, if by that we mean "incapable of being given a full (rational) accounting".  However, one of the things that I come to believe, as I grow older, is how rationally tenuous many of our most cherished beliefs are. No, I won't dive headlong into moral and intellectual anarchy; there is still a fundamental difference between intellectual circumspection and its opposite, no matter how provisional our views must be.

But on October 6th, when I become uncharacteristically filial, as today, when I indulge in uncharacteristic fatherlandishness, I go a bit easy on myself - giving my "reason" a day of rest. Such is my taste.