A life in words

  • ¿Y México? ¡Se fue!

    Some seemingly bad news: my trip to Mexico has been canceled on account of insufficient applicants. Not enough people going means the trip would have been prohibitively expensive. Sad, huh! Now what do I do? I don’t know. Do I look for a different program out of the country? Or try to find some classes…

  • Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    I just listened to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge while reading along. An impressive poem! Download the audio book and view the complete text with notes if you want to. Here’s a notable little excerpt: O sweeter than the marriage-feast, ‘Tis sweeter far to me, To walk together to the…

  • What did you do today?

    Today… sitting sleeping showering eating reading thinking imagining dreaming programming eating sniffling breathing playing sighing reading listening watching talking wondering hugging tickling eating plotting planning checking worrying hoping praying being

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty