Hello, Bradycardia.

WebMD has an easy to read introduction to "bradycardia" and the article's links bring one quickly up to spead in a simple way about what can be a symptom of "an aging heart."  "Brady" comes from the Greek word bradys  for "slow" and "cardia" from the Gr. word kardia for "heart."  So an aging heart can be a slow heart, slow in the sense that it beats slower than the normal 60 beats per minute or 60 bpm.  Symptoms of a slow and aging heart include fatigue and "syncope," a word used by Greeks for a "fainting spell or swoon."

(I have these derivations of medical terms from a helpful little book at hand by William S. Haubrich, M.D., entitled Medical Meanings: A Glossary of Word Origins (Second Edition 1997)  I found it  in the bookstore at the UR medical school, when Mary moved there from Byrn Mawr.  We were first in that store because that is where the med school kept its sales inventory of new white coats for its first year students, and there Mary tried her's on for the first time.  But I digress.)

A slow heart can be a sign of a very fit heart.  But in my case, we surely have an aging heart.  It may be a relatively fit heart, but aging trumps fit sometimes, and it does in my case.  So, hello, aging heart bradycardia.

"11 Picks from Warent Buffett's Bookshelf."

The man is a reader!  The WSJ has a blog this week with the title given above.  Here's the link.

"The Professors' Bookshelf" from the UC College Magazine, the Core

I love articles where readers name their favorite books.  Here's a good one from University of Chicago professors. Among the books they named are:

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian Wars.

The Bible, "especially the New Testament."

Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, a title given by a senior lecturer in Economics who"had the honor of studying under [Friedman] and [who] became lifelong friends with [him], for his argumentation, logic, take-no-prisoners attitude, and willingness to tackle tough issues and take unpopular stands." The senior lecturer also likes Stephen King, whom he views "as the contemporary equivalent to Mary Shelley or Edgar Allen Poe."

Lolita - " the novel [that] taught me how to read anew  And it does so every time I read it."  This teacher also names Bohumil Hrabal's novel I Served the King of England, which he describes as "irredeemably beautiful."  Odd description:  Why would you want to redeem something beautiful, anyway?  Is that a sort of oxymoron?

Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, from another professor.  He also names Giorgia Agamben's Homo Sacer.  He said the book he "most enjoys teaching" is Dante's Inferno.  I much enjoyed being taught it at Duke.

Alex Kotlowitz' There Are No Children Here.

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. 

Another Book List

I like them, and here is one on the AbeBooks website, entitled "50 Classic Books and Why You Should Read Them", by Richard Davies.

New On the Nightstand

Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, quoted by Felipe Assis, the Crossbridge Senior pastor, in a recent sermon.  (Felipe's sermons are extraordinarily good.  Here is a link to podcasts of them.  The one yesterday, Keep Calm, the best Easter sermon in my memory, was vintage Assis.)

Bainton, Roland H., Erasmus of Christendom.  More Reformation reading.  And because Bainton wrote it.  From Bainton's preface:

             I have long been drawn to Erasmus on a number of counts. I share his aversion to contention, his abhorrence of war, his wistful skepticism with respect to that which transcends the verifiable; at the same time I am warmed by the glow of his piety. I am convinced of the soundness of the place assigned by him to the classical alongside of the Judaeo-Christian in the heritage of the Western world. I relish his whimsicality and satire. I endorse his conviction that language is still the best medium for the transmission of thought, language not merely read but heard with cadence and rhythm as well as clarity and precision.

            Yet I should probably never have undertaken this assignment were Erasmus lacking in contemporary relevance. He is important for the dialogue which he desired never to see closed between Catholics and Protestants. He is important for the strategy of reform, violent or non-violent. He was resolved to abstain from violence alike of word and deed, but was not sure that significant reform could be achieved sine tumultu. He would neither incite nor abet it. The more intolerant grew the contenders, the more he recoiled and strove to mediate. He ended as the battered liberal. Can it ever be otherwise? This is precisely the problem of our time.

A New Book; an Old Book; Mere Christianity

A new book is still on trial, and the amateur is not in a position to judge it.... The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity ("mere Christianity" as [Richard] Baxter [the 17th Century pastor] called it), which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can only be acquired from old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.

-C.S. Lewis, God is in the Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), pp. 201-20s, as quoted in Foster and Smith, Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals & Groups (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1993) p. 2.

As to "mere Christianity" and C.S. Lewis, go here.

Sowell's New Book: Intellectuals and Race

There is a two-part interview of the author.  The first part is here and the second here. 

Intellectuals and Race is at Amazon here.

I particularly liked Sowell's discussion of David Hume and the Scots, which is held in the context of a larger discussion about the dogma of "multiculturalism" and how it holds people back.  (This is in the second half of the interview):

"AmSpec: Let’s talk about the example of David Hume and the Scots and the path they followed.

"Sowell: The role Hume played was one diametrically opposed by that played by most intellectuals as regards ethnic groups that are lagging behind. He wanted the Scots to master the English language. And that’s what they did. There were places all over Scotland that were giving lessons in English. The Scots learned that and it greatly expanded their cultural universe. I don’t know if there were any books in Gaelic in Scotland, and you were unlikely to learn chemistry or anything like that in Gaelic. The Scots came out of nowhere. They were very backward at one point. But from the middle of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century many of the leading British intellectuals came from Scottish ancestry, including John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith."

Esquire's The 75 Books Every Man Should Read

Here.

Oops! Sorry, Boomers, about Medicare.

Having had it so good growing up in the post-war boom times (Viet-Nam for some, but certainly not all of us, being the exception), we've been looking forward to our pensions (if we've had government jobs for governments still able to pay them), Social Security, and, finally, Medicare.  Medicare is a biggie, and whatever gaps there might be in it would be filled up by our buying supplemental insurance, something called "Medicare Advantage."  None of that is going to happen, however, as we may have counted upon it happening.

According to the recently published, ObamaCare Survival Guide: the Affordable Care Act and What it Means for You and Your Healthcare, by Nick J. Tate:

• "[H]undreds of billions of dollars in funding for ObamaCare will be generated by cuts in Medicare's budget over the next decade."  (What?! Ryan was right??!!)
• A  "reduced number of plans [will be] available and reduced benefits [will be provided] in the Medicare Advantage program."
• "[R]educed payment rates [will be paid] to doctors who care for Medicare patients."  Tate notes that "If doctors, hospitals, and other providers react negatively when they are paid less, some may refuse to see Medicare patients, making it more difficult for some to find a doctor or see the one they're accustomed to using."  Ya think?
• Cost controls will be imposed on what Medicare will pay for, controls to be imposed in January 2018 by "a new presidential commission called the Independent Payment Advisory Board or IPAB.  .  .  This board will be given significant power to cut Medicare spending in the future because its decisions will automatically take effect unless counteracted by Congress.  That will be hard to do as it will require a three-fifths 'super-majority' vote in the U.S. Senate."

On page 48 of Tate's book, he writes this:

The biggest losers under ObamaCare are Medicare recipients.  Senior citizens are thrown a bone with the closure of the "donut hole" in the program's prescription drug plan, but that will not offset the hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts over the next decade.  And once the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) beings to operate, additional cuts seem likely.

A healthy diet, exercise, and other good health habits, then, are really not optional.  If one has been thinking that several visits a month to this health provider or that will help one pass the time during one's golden retirement years, then it is high time to change that thinking.   We have a Brave New World here.  Acts have consequences after all.

Thanks, Glenn

Links from Instapundit:

Combat reads.

Strength to Strength.  Introducing (to me at least), Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength website.  The first link is to a speech in which statements are made along these lines by an expert not (yet) familiar to me, John Sullivan:

• Aerobic exercise builds conditioning, quickly established once one begins, and quickly diminishing, once one leaves a program built on it.  Strength exercise, on the other hand, builds "architecture," an enduring result.
• Doing strength exercise is like a deposit in one's health 401(k) plan.
• It is important not only for the individual, but also the community for one to build his strength: less morbidity in the future (that part of the future near to Carol and me), less demand on the community for medical and other support services related to bad health. (As to the community, I not only think of demands for government services, but certainly I think of demands on the healthier people in one's family.) I want my death to be a good one, far distant but, when the time comes with very short ramp up, very cheap, and then quickly out of here.  

We know this, we vegan/Crossfitters.  We know what we are up to.  Sullivan however, while not exactly Winston Churchill (but who is?), says it well.

Reading Longman and Dillard on the Train

Today when I rode in on MetroRail, the train was crowded and I had to stand up the entire way, about 15 minutes. I always have a book in my briefcase to read, and the one I am reading now is Longman and Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament (2d Ed. 2006). The book is used as a seminary textbook and is fascinating. It is a large hardback with a colorful cover and the title writ large. I had my nose in the book for the entire ride.

At the stop just before my last stop, however, as people were getting off the train (I was near the door), someone put her hand on my arm. I looked up into the brown eyes of a middle aged Latin woman looking straight me. She said, “God bless you.” It surprised me. I did not know her. However, I recovered quickly to smile, say thank you, and “the same to you,” and she exited. She had obviously noticed what I was reading, and how lost I was in my reading. (I have sometimes missed my stop because of my MetroRail reading.)

Unwittingly I was an encouragement. It made my day. Maybe it made her day too.

Biblical Imagery not Exactly Featured in My Experience with Bible Studies

Song of Songs 1:9: 

I liken you, my darling, to a mare

    among Pharaoh’s chariot horses.

In this verse the speaker draws a comparison between two things: his beloved and a mare harnessed to a chariot of Pharoah.  The difference between the two objects in the comparison draws our attention and set us thinking.  The next step is to identify the comparison.  In this particular case, some historical background is necessary to understand the impact of the compliment.  Research makes it clear that the chariots of Egypt used stallions, not mares.  The presence of a mare would sexually excite the stallions.  Pope points out in his commentary (1977, 336-41) that Israel knew of a battle tactic that called for the release of a mare among the enemy’s chariot horses to divert their attention.

-from Longman and Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament (Zondervan 2d Ed. 2006), at page 28, where the authors discuss biblical imagery.

The commentary to which they refer is Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs: a New Translation with Introdution and Commentary (The Anchor Bible 1966).

"Ten Classics to Read"

From HKH?, "Appendix: When All We Can Do is Read" at page 259:

[The] private acquisition of Greek wisdom relies more than ever on the individual's self-taught education – the reading of the Greeks themselves and general books on Classical Greece.  .   .   .  [T]he following 10 primary works serve as well as any as an introduction to Greek thought and includes a fascinating literature mostly unknown to the reading public.

Here are the "10 primary works" (pp. 259 - 266), but without Hanson and Heath's annotations:

Homer, Iliad, translated by Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961).  This is the Iliad I read in translation at Duke in a sort of "great books" course taught by the president of the university.  The link, however, is to a 2011 edition on Amazon that has the same translation but a lot of supplementary material by another writer.  Abe's Books is where to find a used 1961 edition.  The Lattimore translation is also part of Great Books of the Western World and we have a set.  However, I want to read the Iliad again.  When I read something like this, I like to pencil small checkmarks and brackets and now and then a note.  I don't want to do that in The Great Books hardback, so I'm getting a used paperback from Abe's to take around with me.

Hesiod, Works and Days, translated by M.L. West in Theogony: Works and Days (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).  The link is to that very translation on Amazon, an inexpensive paperback that, with a Prime membership, gets you a brand new copy for about the same as a used copy on Half.com or Abe's.  I always check Amazon first, and then go to the used booksellers.

Archilochus, Poems, translated by Richmond Lattimore, in Greek Lyrics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960)

Sophocles, Ajax, translated by John Moore in Sophocles II, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957)

Euripides, Bacchae, translated by W. Aerosmith, in Euripides V, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959).

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, translated by Richard Crawley as The Landmark Thucydides, edited by Robert Strassler (New York: The Free Press, 1996)

Old Oligarch (Pseudo-Xenophon), The Constitution of the Athenians, in John Moore, Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)

Aristophanes, Lysistrata, edited by W. Aerosmith in Four Comedies by Aristophanes (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1969)

Plato, Apology, translated by G.M.A. Grube, in The Trial and Death of Socrates (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1975)

Demosthenes, First Philippic, in Greek Political Oratory, edited and translated by A. N. Sanders (New York: Penguin, 1980)

(Note: One might ask, did I laboriously keyboard each and every one of those citations?  No.  With book in hand, and the Dragon software engaged, I dictated the list.  I'm getting pretty good at it.)

Affirmative Action Disaffirmative

There is now increasing evidence that students who receive large preferences of any kind—whether based on race, athletic ability, alumni connections or other considerations—experience some clear negative effects: Students end up with poor grades (usually in the bottom fifth of their class), lower graduation rates, extremely high attrition rates from science and engineering majors, substantial self-segregation on campus, lower self-esteem and far greater difficulty passing licensing tests (such as bar exams for lawyers). 

The most encouraging part of this research is the parallel finding that these same students have dramatically better outcomes if they go to schools where their level of academic preparation is much closer to that of the median student. That is, black and Hispanic students—as well as the smaller numbers of preferentially admitted athletes and children of donors—excel when they avoid the problem of what has come to be called "mismatch."

-from today's WSJ and its Saturday Essay by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., entitled "The Unraveling of Affirmative Action". 

Those authors have just published Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It.

A New Appreciation for My Classics Progeny

I'm reading Hanson and Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom.  The authors write a devastating critique of the Classics industry in colleges and universities in the US during the late 1990s.  In the process, they mount a persuasive defense of Classical values and present the case for learning Greek and Latin so that students can read "the Canon" in the original tongues, texts that reflect the development of those values.  The chapter "Teaching Greek is Not Easy" describes the difficulties students must grapple in order to learn those languages and that their teachers must confront as they seek to keep their students interested.

I understand better the challenge that the classics student in our family confronted at Davidson College.  Perhaps his rock solid character can be attributed at least in part to that major.  I'm sure Hanson and Heath would think so, if they knew him and what he did, as he learned both languages absolutely from scratch and then took the Davidson Classics trip in the company of mainly other students and an occasional appearance by the professor (which appearances were completely adequate, as I understand it, and appropriate).  I attribute W's willingness to go just about anywhere in this world and his fearlessness to do, should he need to go, at least in part both to the reading and the touring he got at DC.

(Thanks, Dean Rusk, for the Kourion photo.)

"The Author Who Saved Britain"

Winston Churchill, of course.  A review on Abe's of a new book on Churchill by Peter Clarke, entitled "Mr. Churchill's Profession," and a selection of well-priced books by the great man himself.  I had no idea that there are so many more books that Churchill wrote than I had read!  What treats lie ahead! 

Teach Yourself Ancient Greek?

The best way to teach yourself ancient Greek is to purchase A Reading Course in Homeric Greek (Focus Publishing). If you already know Latin, then you will also want to buy Clyde Pharr's Homeric Greek. As you gain confidence, pick up Autenrieth's A Homeric Dictionary and the two-volume Iliad in the Loeb Classical Library. The other option is to begin with John's Gospel, which has the advantage of being familiar in translation. Then add Smyth's Greek Grammar and the abridged version of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. (Liddell's daughter was the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland.) Eventually, you will want to invest in the unabridged Greek-English Lexicon (LSJ, ninth edition). All of these books are readily available from online booksellers.

-from Ancient Greek Online.  

Taking the plunge.

As to knowing Latin, I had three years of it, Latin 1 in eighth grade, 2 in ninth grade, and 3 in tenth grade. I don't recall that Hialeah High School had 4th and 5th year Latin courses.  I don't believe it did.  (I started Spanish in tenth grade, continued Spanish until I graduated from high school, and studied it during the first two years in college.)  I didn't get back to Latin at Duke.  I can't say that I "know" Latin, but the junior high and high school courses were a great help to me.  I had really fine Latin teachers.  I can picture them both clearly.  I can recall right now the name of my teacher in tenth grade, Mrs. Joyce Horacek, but not the name of my Miami Springs Junior High teacher.  All "the brains" back then took the Latin courses.

Cool Bookcase

More here.

And a book about building bookcases (also from Abe's).

"Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy "

For ages 12 and up, according to the publisher.  Or, according to the School Library Journal, grades 6 - 8.

No matter.  I really enjoyed the book.

Victor Davis Hanson, Agrarian Conservative, Democrat

Well worth reading is "Profiles in Classics: Victor Davis Hanson," by Emily Esfahani Smith in the September 13, 2012, Hoover Institution Journal Defining Ideas.

Though today, [Smith writes,] Hanson is known as a conservative polemicist published by National Review, City Journal, and The Weekly Standard, among others, he originally came into the public spotlight as an agrarian writer in the Nineties. His 1997 book Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea is a powerful memoir and eulogy for the agrarian way of life.

*   *   *

“The Greeks of the ancient world [lived in an agrarian culture and therefore] understood human nature,” Hanson says. “They knew that people want freedom and affluence, but that when you combine the two, you can have decadence.” The ancient Greeks knew that virtue required a strong moral order that protected people from themselves—from their own follies and vices. Hanson specifically cites the importance of a “shame culture” in checking human behavior.

*   *   *

“Agrarian wisdom requires self-reliance. If you’re sick, there is no sick leave. If you have the flu, you still have to irrigate. You don’t have a guaranteed income. There is no retirement, no health care. You can’t blame anyone for your failures. If you decide to plan 20 acres of almonds, you have to decide whether to risk the $80,000. If it goes bad because of the weather, you can’t blame the economy. It was your choice.”

*   *   *

To Hanson, the point is that nature runs the family farm like a tyrant, and it does not grant any bailouts of the kind Greece or the big U.S. banks received. Farmers know all about nature’s cruel absolutism, its metronome relentlessly ticking toward the end that we are all destined to meet. This instills a tragic sense in farmers—a sense that the ancient Greek poets captured beautifully in their verses, which few students are required to read anymore, a fact that Hanson laments in his 2001 book, Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom.

*   *   *
  
Classical wisdom, formed on the farm and on the battlefield, is not only the basis of democratic governance, but it is also central to good citizenship.  .  .  

He counts the principles of ancient Greek citizenship off on his fingers: “First, beware of success. Success can lead to self-destruction and divine retribution. When things are going well for you, be modest, because it’s not necessarily always from your talent, but also from your luck.” That’s a lesson Greek heroes learned the hard way.

Second, “Don’t have inflated expectations of human nature. Humans are not born, as Rousseau thought, as good people who need to be liberated. Rather, they need to be civilized. Thucydides knew that civilization was very thin. You need to preserve it. We are one blink away from savagery.” He sharpens his point by citing Occupy Wall Street. “Did you see all of the feces and debris on their campgrounds? Is this what 2,500 years of democratization and science have led to?”

“The point is that human nature is capable of doing as much damage as good if it’s not carefully embedded within civilization.” The 2008 Greek riots show how quickly order can dissemble in chaos and violence.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, a citizen of ancient Greece had more responsibilities than rights. Fulfilling those duties embodied civic virtue: “You, as the ancient Greek,  must participate in government and vote. You must raise a family. You must not break the laws. You should own land and produce food for the country. You must be in the militia. In exchange, the ancient Greek received freedom and protection.” 

*   *   *

Finally, the ancient Greeks were skeptical of utopianism. “They didn’t think education can really change human nature. They knew that we are simply human beings with appetites and that what a person says is not necessarily what he does or how he lives.”