Tom Roper's Weblog

Simon Hoggart and Minerva's owl: '...die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug'

Simon Hoggart, in a review of the year in parliament, finds John Reid's use of a quotation of Hegel, the owl of Minerva flies at dusk, weird. Reid was answering a question about when the 'war n terror' would be concluded. It's quite probable that a politician like Reid used the quotation to obscure his meaning, rather than clarify it, as a more elaborate way of confessing that he hadn't a clue.
But Hegel's meaning is not that hard to understand. I have always taken it to mean that Minerva's owl, that is to say philosophy, Minerva being the Roman goddess of wisdom and the owl her symbol, can only understand events at their end, that is in retrospect.

Technorati Tags: hegel, minerva, waronterror, hoggart, reid

Leopardstown Festival Hurdle day: Hardy Eustace will win

Leopardstown 155: Hardy Eustace
Newbury 205: Hell's Bay
Musselburgh 220: Tucker
Leopardstown 225: Grangeclere Lark
Newbury 240: Elusive Dream
Musselburgh 325: Along the Nile

The tenth krater

As always, the BMJ turns frivolous for its Christmas issue. Greek scholars may enjoy an article examining classical Greek attitudes to sensible drinking, based on a fragment from Eubulus' Semele or Dionysus (the fragments seem not to be in the Perseus digital library)

Classically intoxicated: correlations between quantity of alcohol consumed and alcohol related problems in a classical Greek text
Christopher C H Cook, Helen Tarbet, David Ball
BMJ 2007;335:1302-1304, doi:10.1136/bmj.39420.333565.BE

Technorati Tags: drink

Kauto Star for the King George

I can't see Kauto Star losing this afternoon. Paul Nicholls kept him out of the Tingle Creek, to save him for today's King George VI Chase
Kempton 120: Joe Lively
Kempton 155: Harchibald

Kempton 230: Kauto Star

Zounds

I hope this blog will not turn into an arts review. There are plenty of people better-qualified to hold forth on the latest plays, films, books and so on, and some of them can even claim salaries for doing so. That said, I cannot let last night's Radio 3 production of  Sheridan's the Rivals pass without comment, not least because the play provides the epigraph for this blog. It was beautifully done and I had forgotten how funny the play is. The phrase 'croaking like a frog in a quinsy' has stayed with me all day.

Will Self and Ralph Steadman in Lewes

I went to the last gasp of 2007's Lewes Live Literature festival, a reading by Will Self and Ralph Steadman discussing their new book, Psychogeography.. Psychogeorgraphy, according to Self is 'a means of dissolving the mechanised matrix which compresses the space-time continuum, and decouples human from physical geography'.
Based on their columns in the Independent, the very first one, from which Self read, concerns a walk from Lewes to Eastbourne, a route I know well, and bits of which I run. Is it possible to run psychogeographically, I wonder?  He also read his account of a visit to Varanasi.
Steadman, once artist in residence at Sussex University, meditated out loud on art, and seems to have a particular devotion to Marcel Duchamp. At question time, an unfortunate member of the audience muddled him with Gerald Scarfe.

Cheltenham and Lingfield

Cheltenham 1:30: Liberate
Lingfield 1:55: Russian Invader

Lingfield 2:30: Verasi
Cheltenham 2:40: New Little Bric
Cheltenham 3:10: Katchitt
Cheltenham 3:40: Souffleur

Brilliant ideas of the 21st century

At first I was nervous about this. Secret Santa arrangements are not my sort of thing. But the more I though about Librarything's Santathing, the better I thought the idea was.
It works thus: participants register and undertake to buy a book to the value of $20 (that is to say about £9.80) to another librarything user picked at random. Amazon take care of the distribution, which is guaranteed for Christmas, and privacy is maintained.
So I've signed up. Do so too, the deadline for registering is noon on Thursday Eastern time, that is to say 5 p.m. GMT

Update" I bought a present that I hoped would please my designated recipient and was delighted to receive from my anonymous benefactor Aelian's Historical Miscellany.

Technorati Tags: librarything, secretsanta

Tingle Creek day

A friend gave me a splendid lunch the other day in exchange for my views on today's Sandown meeting. Then Kauto Star was still in the entries. Without Kauto, majority opinion favors Voy Por Ustedes, I go for Monet's Garden.
All at Sandown:
205: Moon over Miami
235: Monet's Garden
310: European Dream
340: McEvoy

CILIP Sussex Christmas quiz

Cambridge may have beaten Oxford in yesterday's varsity match,  but my team in the CILIP Sussex Christmas Quiz fared less well. I was honoured to be allowed to compete with the University of Sussex team,  Adam, Chlöe, Ellie, Mell and Simon. We scored 100% in the first picture round, but were was less successful in a round which required knowledge of the price of everything and the value of nothing.  Knowing where  Neptune's Staircase is (a flight of locks on the Caledonian canal) would have done us no harm either.
Well done to the winners, the committee team, who triumphed after a tie break.