The one-sentence lesson

I did what I was thinking about in my last post, and taught a whole lesson based on one sentence from Rousseau ("Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains"). To my surprise and relief, it went rather well. We did the gender thing, the absolute adjective/adverbial thing, metaphor and how active/passive verbs affect our worldview. In Turkish "to be born" is an active verb (doğmak) and we had fun speculating beyond the data about whether the fact that in English (and, I assume, other Indo-European languages) being born reflects the idea that we are hurled unwillingly into this world, with references to Augustine and Aquinas, whom we covered last semester, and Rumi, who was Turkish (sort of) but wrote in Persian: "Whoever brought me here must take me home".

The on word I didn't cover was "is". I said, "I'd like to talk about "is", but if I get going on the verb "to be", you'll be here for another two hours."

Will of the Triumph

OK, I've been a good boy today. I've met my new students and, I hope, taught them something. I've found pictures of horses for my mother-in-law (who is starting a painting course and wants a photo of horses to copy). I went and bought a new printer, compiled drivers from source code, and printed them out (OK, I was going to buy a new printer anyway - that was just the excuse). I even spent a few minutes planning tomorrow's lessons.

So now I can watch my Highlander DVD. There is nothing so soothing to a tired mind and body than vicarious violence underpinned by feel-good morality. What the überschafe (mindless Nietzsche fans) don't realise is that the ultimate alpha-male hard-on isn't to despise and trample on the weak. It is to love and protect the weak, because this gives you a reason to take on a bigger and stronger alpha-male who is oppressing them, and kick his ass!