August 2026
waste not
6 August 2026, around 16.18.
Decomissioning of the Zigzag Mountain lookout, circa 1965, by the US Forest Service
André Fraigneau. — Parmi ces objets il y en a bien certains auxquels vous tenez particulièrement? Si par exemple, je ne sais pas, enfin, s’il y avait le feu chez vous, quel est l’objet que vous préféreriez et que vous emporteriez ?
Jean Cocteau. — S’il y avait le feu chez moi ?
AF. — Oui.
JC. — Je crois que j’emporterais le feu. 1
- Relatively well known bit from the end of the seventh interview in a collection of interviews. [↩]
lookout outlook
16 August 2026, around 11.36.
It is not easy to put the right interpretation on Spinoza’s desire for independence. He wished to think and to live nothing other than the truth […] He was not concerned with his own person. This man, who was so entirely himself, was without self-seeking. He was free from pride and violence and seemed never to think of himself. He wished his Ethics to appear only after his death and without his name. For the truth is impersonal. It does not matter who first formulated its propositions. He did not claim to possess the truth (it is a very different matter with scientists and mathematicians who justifiably claim priority for their achievements as mere achievements).
Adversaria (41)
31 August 2026, around 4.43.
‘Accurate information and better technology are important in promoting discover, but so are excessively optimistic, unrealistic, even flat-out false anticipations. The marvelous is more important than the scientific in the initial and most risky stages of innovation’ —Paul Freedman (Out of the East, p. 142)
‘Eating too much cabbage may be a form of gluttony, but it doesn’t carry much moral opprobrium or significance beyond that’ —Paul Freedman (Out of the East, p. 159)
‘It isn’t necessarily the great and famous beauty spots that we fall in love with. As with people, so with places: love is unforeseen, and we can all find ourselves affectionately attached to the minor and the less obvious’ —Muriel Spark (‘Tuscany by Chance’, in The Informed Air, p. 63)