Books Bygone

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

I was doing some research--

well, if you can call skimming through a crappy old book, "doing research"-- and I happened upon a photo I thought Plykers especially might be interested in seeing.

Remember John von Neumann, one of Tony's Guests at the Dinner Party Conversation Game? John said, "Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."

Humph. What's the dog's name, I wonder?
Four pages later there's this:

"The twelve disciples from the granite cross at Moore, County Kildare, Eire."
Both photos are from The Ascent of Man by J. Bronowski, Little Brown and Comapny, Boston, 1973 (pages 409 and 413, respectively).

I was prompted to pick up that crappy old book because I read today that some of mankind has become "civilizationally illiterate." If you'd like to read what led to that wonderful turn of phrase, go to:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/344469/ascent-man-mark-steyn

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