Good articles...
by Kbyrnes (2024-04-16 12:02:02)

In reply to: For true believers in liberal education, the new Atlantic  posted by sorin69


...I re-subscribed to Atlantic on your recommendation a while ago, after some years away.

Grammar, rhetoric, and logic--the "trivium." We are a verbal species, and our interpersonal relations rely greatly on words--expressed as sounds, written symbols, or signed gestures.

Arithemetic, astronomy, music, geometry--the "quadrivium." We understand our world largely through numbers and their relationships, whether tuning a keyboard to just temperament, analyzing petabytes of galactic spectrographic data, parsing genetic codes, or solving optimization problems in economics.

I can't try to calculate an ROI on being good at words and numbers, but I would err on the side of understanding versus ignorance. The 51 volumes of the Harvard Classics mentioned in the story about David Shribman would have been a good world to explore, even if now a bit dated.


There something poignant about this young sailor and
by sorin69  (2024-04-16 15:21:22)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Reply to Post

college grad paying tribute to his education before giving the last full measure of devotion. And about his parents' recognition of his death by funding someone else's chance for the same education.

As for the clash between Moscow and Constantinople (how archaic is that?), I will send you and the other member of our triumvirate a link to a horrifying bit of Christian ethno-nationalism issuing from the Moscow patriarchate.