The news that Jack Vance has passed away reminded me of an unsolved lexicographical mystery which now seems further than ever from resolution: the source of the word libram for a grimoire or more generically a book, which has turned up in various works of fantasy and for which Vance is thought to be the earliest …

As summer approaches, many of the heritage sites much loved by day-trippers are facing problems because of a shortage in coal and the resulting increase in costs.
B.B.C. News, three days ago

When jumping on a bandwagon in support of what will not work, and especially when exploiting a tragic death to do so, it’s useful to choose one’s words carefully. Alan Johnson could have said that he wanted us under broader surveillance ‘within two years’, say, or ‘by mid-2015’. So, so much less obviously a ploy to …

I don’t recall the Miners’ Strike; I was busy in the womb for most of it. So it’s a strange experience when I see people a decade younger than I commenting on Margaret Thatcher’s passing with as much vigour as if they’d been on the picket lines.

One of the reasons why scholarly self-publication is supposed to be dubious or bad, and self-archiving only a supplementary good, is that material posted to one’s personal website lasts until one stops paying the server bills, having died or vanished in foreign jungles or simply lost interest. One online repository of scholarly articles which seems unlikely …

I’m currently reading Appropriating the Past, the second essay collection linked to the Centre for the Ethics of Cultural Heritage. One of the essays, by Cornelius Holtorf (who’ll be one of the editors of the third collection), talks about cases like

There were only a couple of times when I spotted plagiarism during teaching/marking stints, though no doubt there were others I missed. Both students had been apparently optimistic that so long as a source was listed in the bibliography, lifting from it would be given the benefit of the doubt; one even found an essay answering …

An exciting discovery: a forthcoming publication of the Philosophical Essays of Fernando Pessoa.After last year’s Metaphysical Courier (another book still to get hold of), perhaps it seemed timely. I don’t know offhand how many of the essays were written in Portuguese and whether any were in Pessoa’s sort-of-native English (no translator being named), but judging by …

I remember an undergrad. who did his final year dissertation on the practicality of Utilitarianism:His original plan was to attempt a comparative experimental study of Utilitarianism and Kantianism, before he scaled down his ambitions. his idea was that he would live for a week as a Utilitarian and then report on his experiences. He happened to …

There’s a saying to the effect that leadership consists of working out where the people are heading and then marching in front of them. This is presumably the notion of spiritual, ecclesiastical and indeed political leadership endorsed by the M.P. in whose judgment the ‘Church of England now stands to be left behind by the society …

From the Telegraph, which in turn credits the Mail, so we shall see how things come to pass...

In the small ads. section of Private Eye #1327, just under an advert for a book of ‘witty toilet graffiti’, is an unusual entry:

I’m looking forward to the forthcoming translation of Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone, but this description (though entrancing) gave me pause:

He said: “I think the point about the discussion of different diplomacies was the sense that French diplomacy is very good at a single-minded pursuit of a perception of the national interest.

A question that crosses quite a few minds from time to time, given that academic jobs are (1) fewer than the people qualified to do them and (2) haunted by bureaucracy and political interference: what are the prospects for living a life of philosophical dialogue and enquiring research without institutional affiliation? In early 2010 Justine Johnstone …