Ilya Somin on how Rome fell.

Following an article and comments on Pope Benedict's beatification of Pius XII.

In her second post on 'deadbeats' at Atlantic Monthly for December, Megan Mcardle led me to Google gratitude and enter it into the results in comments:

In Hobbes' Leviathin, gratitude is considered to be the fourth law of nature, following the laws seeking of seeking peace, contracting for peace, and performing one's contracts (that is following the rules of justice). As Hobbes explained the fourth law of nature, "That a man which receiveth Benefit from another of mere Grace, Endeavor that he which giveth it, have no reasonable cause to repent of his good will."
- RE Emmons and ME McCullough

I hate ingratitude more in a man
than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness
Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption
Inhabits our frail blood.
- Shakespeare Twelfth Night

'Gratitude is for dogs.' - Stalin

Reply

...Max... (Replying to: Michael) December 16, 2009 3:08 PM
To be precise, "gratitude is a disease of dogs".

Emphasis and choice of translation are mine. Unfortunately 2 minutes of googling did not yield a solid quote to the original [response to Zinov'ev].

It is amazing how normative for our culture Shakespeare is; wise as well. In Totem and Taboo, Freud looked at religion as the reaction to guilt for killing the primal father because he kept the women. But a father naturally loves his children and religion is the repository of our gratitude for our lives in spite of our errors and ingratitude. Shalom.

Was told this week about the Peach Bellini. From instructions on how you make it:

Pour 2-3 tablespoons of peach puree in the bottom of a wine glass or tall champagne flute.

Serving glass: Tall champagne flutes

Step 2

Add several drops of raspberry puree on top of the peaches in the glass.

Step 3

Pour Italian sparkling wine into the glass until nearly full. Garnish with peach slice if desired.

Many women, my mother included, have/had several sets of service, dinnerware to include silver, some cut glass, etc. The nicest thing I thought she had were some tall glasses , frosted with a color replacing the frosting swirling around the glass, making them in a geometric way exactly like a barber pole. I remember a blue, a green, a raspberry, perhaps a yellow. I don't believe we ever commented on these glasses really. In some sense they didn't count as they weren't something, with some variation, that other women had. They were, though, the prettiest things she had. I never knew what they were called. They were champagne flutes, and she was a young lady when I first remember her in Champagne, Illinois.

Megan McArdle links to a review, reflecting currently a widely held view in Jewish circles, of the four source documents of the Hebrew Bible. Extending this spirit of inquiry into our Testament, I commented:

God who who was the father of Adam...Abraham begot Isaac'...Jesse begot David, the king, and David, the king, begot Solomon and Solomon begot...and Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ...
So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations. (Matthew Chapter 1)

However, St. Paul says somewhere 'let's not talk about genealogy.' Why, perhaps because in that genealogy from David to Jesus there is an individual to whom a prophet gives the curse 'neither you nor any of your descendants will be king of Israel.' Ignatius of Antioch, possibly a student of John the Apostle, writes in the first century against those who say Christians must follow Jewish law, and touts the lineage of Mary, whose characterization in Hebrew is of a young or nubile woman, a virgin in the sense that Sir Richard Branson might mean.

One recalls General Pershing and those inspirational words - "Lafayette, we are at a conference!" says Tom Maguire at the end of a recent post.