Platypus of Truth

I've written before on the role "The Legend of Zelda" series played in my childhood.  It was link with his little 8-bit shield that first awoke the call to adventure within me.  Role playing through his world of simple good and evil began to build a certain mindset: when there's a wrong to be righted, we must stand up and right it no matter the personal cost.  In the midst of all the puzzle solving and button mashing, I was learning what it meant to be a hero.  Maybe that sounds like an impoverished childhood, but it never stopped me from reading or going outside and playing too.  In fact, the one fed the other.  The stories in our video games gave us something to play outside, and our childish attempts at adventure in the forests of New England brought us a new appreciation for the sub-created worlds of "The Legend of Zelda," "Secret of Mana," "Final Fantasy," and "Dragon Warrior." All this came back to my mind when I ...

Is Utnapishtim an ape?  Does he dance before you in the manner of an ape?  Laugh then.  Laugh at the dancing of Utnapishtim; he will not resent you.  Laugh until your sides crack and your head breaks; for through the gap may come Wisdom! Thus Spoke Utnapishtim

I teach a course called "Humanities" at a classical school.  Humanities is a rather amorphous course that's something like a combination of History, Ethics, and Literature (you might think of it as "History and Moral Philosophy"  Oops!)  It can be a little difficult to teach since you're always caught on the horns of a dilemma: do I focus on the Literature end or do I focus on the History end; there isn't enough time for both. That said, I have found one thing that Humanities excels at: serving as a safety valve for other courses.  Have an argument break out in Anatomy and Physiology about cannibalism in survival situations?  Shift it to Humanities.  Have a rash of questions about Satan in Bible class?  Shift it to Humanities.  Kids want to talk about the decline of pop-music as copyright laws gets ever tighter? You guessed it: bring it up in Humanities.  What I'm saying is the very amorphous nature of the Humanities course becomes a huge a...

My wife and I have been reading "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun" edited by Christopher Tolkien.  If we had picked up the book when it came out, we would have payed a pretty penny.  As it is, we got it for less than three dollars at Amazon.  So far, my wife and I are enjoying the book, especially academic material.  However, the reason it's selling for such a low price has also become abundantly obvious: the book is esoteric, technical, and has no direct connection with Middle Earth.  So esoteric is the work, that you really need to have read "The Volsunga Saga," know a fair bit about the history of the Northern European Dark Age and both Eddas to enjoy it.  I have all those prerequisites, hence my enjoyment.  This leads to the question, however, of why Christopher brought out and published this work.  Surely he must have known that it would be a commercial failure; that it was bringing out his father's "scripta minora" in the strongest sense? ...