Vera Mont

Yes, that, too. But also, these big successes don't happen in a vacuum. There is one star on top of a great heap of thinkers and innovators, in charge...

You mean aristocratic generals are more likely to have their statues erected in public squares than the middle-class colonels and captains and lower c...

Or if he had not served on the Western Front in WWI. Or if the post-war atmosphere in Germany had been less oppressive and resentful. Or, if someone m...

It would improve nothing for most people and add a huge burden - with concomitant increased funding, expansion of powers and invasive practice to law-...

Hardly dare intrude on such exalted company. I've been vegging out with my new Britbox subscription on Prime. All the old BBC murder series - several ...

The latter, obviously. Nothing begins with the conception of a child; it is simply a new shoot on the evolutionary tree. When a human dies, whatever e...

So... all the sources I cited are wrong, while all your anecdotes are right, and schoolchildren stopped reading nice stories in 1958. People disagree,...

I think William James is a tad out of date. In the 20th century, I guess the US was eager enough to collect as many of those German research morons as...

It's about the partisanship of US politics, I assume. He has a degree in communication, which is fine for a career politician. Seems like a nice guy, ...

So, you've never been in a relationship?

That may be so as infatuation, but I've never known it to be true in a lasting relationship.

I suspect most philosophers wouldn't touch the subject, because it's so closely associated with *pth! pth!* icky girls. Beyond sexual attraction, one ...

Nonsense! You have made no case whatever - in all these pages - for why sound knowledge and useful skills are incompatible with virtuous character and...

If they don't learn to read and count in the early grades, higher education is off the table before they can even think about whether they want it. Se...

I call it November weather. Ah, but we have beautiful Aprils!

They each decide what they themselves value. The DoE imposes some conditions on the allocation of federal funds, but individual institutions of higher...

In our case, tall pine trees. In late September sometimes, that enormous harvest moon rises up out of the forest, quite slowly at first, majestically,...

:starstruck: Mind you, some parts of rural Ontario are none too shabby, either. There is a little observatory north of Wiarton, where some great summe...

Just as I certainly will never see Cumbria. Or Oceania, where some of my last novel took place. The satellite images are priceless!

Are you studying pathology? The sky is never the same on a small photograph. On a cinema screen, not bad. You kind of reminded me to give more play to...

Any question that requires you to put yourself in another person's situation and decide what you would you do in their place. This is a game we someti...

I know it's been going around in circles. I know that Athena has an idee fixe, which is not exactly wrong, but neither is it fact based. I don't reall...

Educators, not politicians, and not clergy.

Really? Then why did it conquer everything in sight? Indeed - some of them. That didn't stop forays into Latin America and the Pacific. European disea...

You achieved world domination, miltarily, politically and economically. That's not nothing: that's wealth and power and exceptionality. And no, you di...

Yes. William James has rather harsh and simplistic opinions about other cultures. As for the Jefferson thing... Sure, he wanted educated white middle-...

Yes, but it's a bittersweet suffering. I've lived in many places and had many different lives, so I have lots of colourful memories for my old age. Yo...

That would save time, effort, money and a possible health risk, depending on the age of the building. Anything before 1977-80 is likely to contain asb...

Not surprising, then, they figure so largely in painting and literature.

I do like those; very delicate and sheer. Bright mornings will be like a cool forest glade; gloomy ones, like a melancholy reflection. That would work...

Two small projects done today: I sealed the front door. Have to do it every winter, because both the outer and inner door fit poorly into the frame. W...

Not here, I think. Only let me observe that taking good ideas from other developed or developing nations does not logically require that you also foll...

I have two big books of astronomy photos that I've used as models for paintings for my SO's office wall. (He's a physicist and big fan of Carl Sagan)....

Quite an undertaking! I never quite mastered the list of 19th century novelists when I was younger: after Turgenev, when I input another one, a previo...

It's not a sunset, but worth looking at: today's astronomy picture. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Don't get too cocky; it slides down to 23rd when scores are adjusted for GDP. Some smaller, poorer countries (Estonia being at the top) deliver servic...

First, it would help to define a "moral fact". It is a fact that the concept of morality is a human human concept. It is a fact that a human infant ha...

No country's actual history lives up to its mythology, never mind its patriotic hype. If it's any consolation, the US civil service ranks 11th in effe...

Great oaks from little acorns grow. Before the war of independence, the only army was Britain's. Having convinced Britain that it was too costly to wa...

Maybe so. But since high Anglicans, Methodists, Catholics and all sorts appreciate wealth accumulation, they all preyed on the New World one way or an...

Well, that would solve the human problem.

Do you mean that violence is the only appropriate response to all stimuli?

There was a traveling exhibit of Turner paintings at our local art gallery some years ago. It lasted a month and we went into town five or six times, ...

There's no smilie for that. I'm shocked and appalled! All the same, I'm rooting for you.

She might have very little poetry in her soul... or perhaps she's just very young and earnest and has not yet discovered that you can have both scient...

I had an inkling from that story I liked so much. We have some elms in the fence-line of our property, but they're all dying. We've had to cut two dow...

All moods are artistically interesting (even anger, but I don't much like those colours) Melancholy has certainly given a good deal of material to poe...

Because it is. It has borders - a configuration you can find on a map. It has laws, an economy, a social structure, institutions, trade and diplomatic...

Yes: we were going into town one morning. Larches are my favourite tree and they're magnificent in October. Almost bare now.

I find each season adds its own mood and ... melody of colour, if that makes sense. The long gentle pink-mauve-lilac-purple-indigo twilight of spring ...