YOUR LATIN EPIGRAM FOR THE DAY: From a friend who just finished prelims:

" Melior est finis quam principium..."

...which just seems very funny to me. That's probably a side-effect of the repression.

LINK: I have no actual evidence or anything, but I assume Dara is in some way responsible for this.

WHEW: Okay, so that hurdle's been cleared. It was really grim for the last 36 hours or so--the end of a writing project always seems to be the most difficult time, as though the really complicated issues have been lying in wait until you think you're done. We won't even get into the time we spent figuring out what goes in this version of the bibliography and what doesn't (we're learning endnote as soon as possible).* But the prospectus is to my advisor, which means a few days of peace until I'm told to rewrite it entirely (I doubt this will happen). I can now turn my focus to other things, like the paper for my Philosophy of International Law class, which is on... part of my dissertation. Oh well.

*We also won't get into how I moved from first-person to second-person to third-person in the space of two sentences. It's for, uh, stylistic effect.

UPDATE: I also have everyone I need signed on to my committee now. Woot.

NOW THERE'S AN IDEA: Suggested to me (kind of) by a friend: break-up songs for men vs. break-up songs for women. The women's list would be, for example, "Needle in a Haystack" by the Velvelettes, "Tainted Love" by Gloria Jones, or "Divorce Song" by Liz Phair. The men's list might have James Brown's "Think," "Train in Vain" by the Clash, or Marvin Gaye's "Can I Get a Witness."

Suggestions?

OH, WHY NOT: Inspired in part by a conversation that involved quoting from the following:

SATURDAY EVENING POST: Dead Flowers's 10-Song Introduction to the Libertines is quite excellent--check it out.

GAH (LIT REVIEW EDITION): Political theorists with an interest in Hugo Grotius have a very peculiar relationship to Richard Tuck (who's probably written more about Grotius than anyone else in the recent past). Any attention paid to Grotius is good, but, well...

Tuck quotes the following from Grotius (in The Rights of War and Peace104-105):

"And if there be any waste or barren land within our dominions, that also is to be given to strangers, at their request, or may be lawfully possessed by them, because whatever remains uncultivated, is not to be esteemed a property, only so far as concerns jurisdiction, which always continues the right of the antient people. And Servius remarks, that seven hundred acres of bad, unmanured land were granted to the Trojans, by the original Latins: So we read Dion Prusaeensis, that they commit no crime who cultivate and manure the untilled part of a country. Thus the Ansibarians formerly cried, that as the Gods have Heaven, so the earth was given to mankind, and what is possessed by none, belongs to every one. And then looking up to the sun and stars as if present, and within hearing, they asked them, whether they could bear to look on those uninhabited lands, and whether they would not rather pour in the sea upon those who hindered others to settle on them." (JBP II.II.XVII)

Which makes it look as though Locke gets his principles straight from Grotius: if no one is cultivating a piece of land, just anyone can come along and start doing so. A more perfect pretext for colonization could hardly be imagined.

But, uh, the rest of that section:

"But these general maxims were ill applied by them to the present case; for those lands were not waste and desolate, but were employed in the feeding of their soldiers cattle; which was a just reason that the Romans should refuse them. Neither was it less just what the Romans formerly inquired of the Galli Senones, what right any one had to demand a country from the lawful owners, and, in case of refusal, to threaten them with war?"

So even if land appears to be unused, there may still be a valid claim to have property in it; and, moreover, one can't just go around demanding whatever territory one wants; hence the line at the beginning of the passage Tuck cites about giving land to strangers at their request. It's not a straightforward repudiation of colonization (Grotius likes the idea of custom generated from interaction too much to insist people just stay where they are), but it's not a simple apology for whatever Dutch behavior at the time was, either.

LANGUAGE GAMES:

* I was working on my prospectus yesterday, searching for a properly evocative adjective, and landed on 'maleficent.' At first I wasn't thrilled with the word choice (it's a little too evocative), but it then occurred to me that maleficio is the Latin word Grotius gives as an equivalent for 'delict' in the Jurisprudence of Holland,** so I actually chose the best possible word for what I meant.

* I went to the last of my responsible conduct of research seminars last evening, a particular form of torment the graduate school has seen fit. The seminar was on managing conflict between mentors and grad students; I kept myself amused by remembering a line from 30 Rock: "The manatee has become the mento"

**yes, delicto is a better Latin equivalent, but it's the word Grotius gives as the best match for the Dutch word for 'delict'

I'LL BE, UH, A LITTLE BUSIER THAN NORMAL: I may have just said I'd have a final version of my prospectus by the end of the week.

UPDATE (Wed. afternoon): I just heard this line in the song on my ipod, and it seems about right:

"These two sides of my brain need to have a meeting"

Taken slightly out of context, you say? How very Grotian!

WE'RE EVERYWHERE: Or at least we're in North Carolina. Tonight at Bible Study, one of the guys was sharing his life story, and mentioned that he went to school at Northwood University. Is Midland, Michigan, the center of the universe? Quite possibly.

LINK: It's at a time like this that the Jane Galt Tax Plan looks like a sound policy option.

MASSIVE ATTACK? Why not?

LINK: For those interested (possibly no one but me), here's the PDF of Sam Wells' Easter sermon. The text is a little different from what he spoke, but all the essentials are correct. For me, at least, it was a number of things I needed particularly to hear.

ONLY IN GRAD SCHOOL: Today's TA meeting (the professor was late) consisted mostly in reading aloud from the wikipedia entry on avocados.

LYRICS OF THE EVENING: the Rolling Stones, from Exile on Main Street (and Mick at his most inscrutible):

That's all right, that's all right, that's all right.
Sometimes you feel like trouble, sometimes you feel down.
Let this music relax you mind, let this music relax you mind.
Stand up and be counted, can't get a witness.
Sometimes you need somebody, if you have somebody to love.
Sometimes you ain't got nobody and you want somebody to love.
Then you don't want to walk and talk about Jesus,
You just want to see his face.
You don't want to walk and talk about Jesus,
Just want to see his face
Just want to see his face
Just want to see his face
Just want to see his face
Just want to see his face

THEY OBVIOUSLY DIDN'T MEAN 'FASCIST' IN THE POSITIVE SENSE, or SATURDAY EVENING POST: Staying in this evening because two of my very good friends convinced me to go to the full slate of Duke Chapel's Easter services tomorrow. Thus we begin with the sunrise service at 6:30 (my best guess is that the temperature should be right around freezing then), and proceed to brunch (though I believe the technical term for a brunch held at 8:00 a.m. is 'breakfast'), and then the regular service, which will afford another chance to hear Sam Wells in action (I've been impressed every other time I've heard him speak*).

But there should be something youtube-y here, so Oasis, with some amusing chatter at the beginning.

And, uh, watching Barcelona again (hence the title of the post), after The Great McGinty a little earlier in the evening.

*I take this to be an unusual position for an evangelical to take with respect to a Anglican Reverend attached to a university chapel, but that's Duke for you

UPDATE: It was 28° when the service began. That's pretty cold.

NOT QUITE AS AWESOME AS IT COULD BE, BUT STILL PRETTY GOOD: Leon Trotsky on the new baseball season.

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING: Hilary Bok's Freedom and Responsibility is to philosophy what Hein Goeman's War and Punishment is to empirical IR, at least for me: one of the very few books I've read that convinces me that its central claims are correct. I first read parts of it in my senior philosophy seminar at Michigan, and it remains the framework I use to think about questions of free will and moral responsibility. Indeed, it makes possible the almost-but-not-quite Calvinist theological views that I have ('it all makes sense, once you sort of theoretical and practical reason!'). One of my favorite parts, from the "Excursus on Guilt":

"Changing our character for the better is rarely amusing. It is long, slow, and often tedious work, which requires, moreover, that we actually give up our vices, whether or not we find it easy or pleasant to do so. If we want to avoid giving them up while reassuring ourselves that our failure to do so does not reflect moral insensitivity or a lack of concern with the wrongness of our actions, self-flagellation is an obvious solution. Tormenting ourselves can be, in a peculiar way, more gratifying than the hard work and unpleasant sacrifices that any sort of serious attempt to change our character involves. It is certainly easier. And precisely because it involves punishing ourselves for our wrongdoing and torturing ourselves with the idea of our own iniquity and unworthiness, it allows us to reassure ourselves that we are genuinely concerned with morality while relieving us of the need to actually become good."

THIS IS NOT THE BEST WAY OF REMEMBERING THINGS, I REALIZE:

I've tried post-it notes and palm pilots (among other systems) to remember when I'm supposed to be doing various things; I tend to misplace the post-its (or forget which paper I wrote on) and never have the palm pilot when it'd do me good. So, when my laptop's not handy, I write notes to myself on the back of my hand. I find this to be a particularly good system when I have to email a large number of people (like the half-dozen or so today). Just now, I was looking at something I had written. or several minutes, it looked more like 'rafter wort,' which sounds like it should be in an herbal tea of some kind. I eventually figured out that it was a note reminding me that the next meeting I have with the other grad student working on Grotius was 'F(riday) after next.'

Suggestions for a better system of remembering to-do items would be appreciated.

I'M A LITTLE GEEKED ABOUT THIS, I'M NOT GONNA LIE:

I just found out the proposal I wrote up for this conference was accepted. This being the first proposal I've written, and the conference being small-ish, I'm excited.

The downside is that I have to go back and read Richard Rorty again. But it'll be worth it.

LINKS: Send Me Dead Flowers has quickly become one of my favorite mp3 blogs (a list containing two members, but no less prestigious for that). Anyone who dedicates their energy toward British popular music will pique my interest--they had a post on the Libertines a few weeks ago featuring a pair of songs that sound nothing like the Libertines I know.*

Also, Matthew Fluxblog has started a project to write each song from R.E.M.'s albums. I can't think of a better use for the internet.

Oh yes, and congratulations to Chris Lawrence on his new appointment. I hear the methodologists** have the only coffeemaker in the department, which I'm sure is what convinced Chris to overcome his preference for a small, teaching-intensive professorship.

*There's a joke in here somewhere, right?

**'Methodists,' if you're Sheldon Wolin