Polytropy

Name | Topics | Organization | Typography

Name

The name of this blog comes from the Greek tagline, which is the beginning of Homer’s Odyssey. Used to describe Odysseus, the adjective polytropos means “turning many ways.” That is how the blog may be.

The blog may turn many ways, because I turned to St John’s College after high school. There are no majors at St John’s, and teachers lead classes outside their original specialties. Everybody reads Homer there, and studies Greek.

The logo of this blog is a diagram of the so-called quadratrix of Hippias. I give the code below. One can use the quadratrix to trisect angles and square circles.

I happen to be a professional mathematician (and as of November 20, 2022, I have a Mastodon account at mathstodon.xyz, and the link should have the attribute rel="me"), though this may not be clear from most of my essays, unless perhaps in a style or pattern of thought. In September and October of 2020, I did write a sequence of posts about my subject, beginning with “What Mathematics Is.” On the page “Mathematics,” I have listed and described all of the posts so categorized.

Robert Fitzgerald (1961) translates the beginning of the Odyssey with some embellishment as

Sing in me, Muse,
and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end.

More succinct is Emily Wilson (2018):

Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost …

In a famous scene in Book IX, on the Island of the Cyclopes, when making Polyphemus drunk in order to escape him, Odysseus tells his name as Οὖτις. In Latin, this is Nemo; in English, Nohbdy (Fitzgerald), Noman (Wilson), or perhaps just Anonymous. Some persons may have reason to take that name on the internet. I let mine be known as David Pierce. I have a professional or departmental homepage: I have accounts on Wikipedia and Twitter. My Facebook account still exists, but I have stopped using it, for reasons discussed in some posts here.

The ideas with which I started this blog are in the first post, “Hello world!” published May 29, 2012.

Topics

For eighteen years, I lived in Alexandria, Virginia. After that, I had addresses in Annapolis, Maryland; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Hyattsville, Maryland; Washington, DC; Toronto, Ontario; Urbana, Illinois; Berkeley, California; Ankara, Turkey; Hamilton, Ontario; and now Istanbul. I have lived in three countries and on three continents. It seems I have wandered, though this is in part just a feature of academic life. My choice of topics in this blog may wander, and so may the thread of an individual post.

In writing about a show of the work of Victor Vasarely, I recalled my own making of art in youth; I also found reason to list my favorite writers. They may write essay, fiction, or philosophy; they are, with their years of birth,

1. Charlotte Brontë (1816),

2. Henry David Thoreau (1817),

3. Somerset Maugham (1874),

4. Robin Collingwood (1889),

5. Mary Midgley (1919),

6. Robert Pirsig (1928).

I write about them here sometimes, especially Collingwood, whose New Leviathan (1942), a response to fascism and nazism, seems to have more and more value as people die who can remember World War Two.

I have written also about Homer: mainly the Iliad so far, in Chapman’s translation, book by book; I have begun, at least, to give the same treatment to the Odyssey, especially in Wilson’s translation.

I once encountered a general warning about thinking:

Not every tangent we think about is worth exploring. Not every idea that pops up is worth considering. Not every nuance needs to be given its time.

That was from an essay by Zat Rana called “The Philosopher’s Problem: When and Why Thinking Can Be Harmful” (Medium, February 15, 2017). This blog is precisely a place to explore tangents and consider ideas that pop up. Often these ideas are keyed to specific texts; my posts may then be notes on these texts. I do intend for each post to be readable, with a common thread, though it may become tangled.

Organization

If one wants to see some organization in this blog, there are “categories” and “tags.” In one metaphor, the categories are the blog’s table of contents; the tags, its index. Categories can have a hierarchy; tags cannot. Since again my posts are often a way to combine disparate ideas, I have been uncertain how to use categories. The ones I have settled on at any moment are in the left column of every page, shown as a hierarchy. An individual post can have many categories. The hierarchy itself is imprecise. My current sense is that if a person or idea is worth tagging in a sufficient number of posts—and that number can be as low as two—then the tag should become a category, so that it can be shown in the hierarchy.

Some key categories are available also from the row at the top of each page, below the tagline. With the links there, I may have provided a description, in addition to a list of posts.

Below is a list of all of my posts, in chronological order. In order to number and date them, I have had to break up the entire list; I have done this by year. In WordPress lingo, although the “archives” shortcode would list all posts, it would not do so with the extra information I want (namely their dates); “display-posts” does, but has a length limit of one hundred, which (so far) I do not exceed in a year.

2012

1. Hello world! (May 29, 2012)
2. Basil II (May 30, 2012)
3. The swift (June 4, 2012)
4. Aristotle on Heraclitus (June 6, 2012)
5. Logic (notes on the finger-wagging Cratylus) (June 8, 2012)
6. Strunk and White (June 19, 2012)
7. Michael Psellus on learning (November 6, 2012)
8. Science and anti-science (November 21, 2012)
9. On reading too much into words (November 22, 2012)
10. The Point of Teaching Mathematics (December 26, 2012)

2013

1. Similar images of different saints (March 1, 2013)
2. The von Neumann natural numbers: a fractal-like image (April 10, 2013)
3. Self-similarity (April 12, 2013)
4. Limits (May 4, 2013)
5. Learning mathematics (May 14, 2013)
6. Occupy Istanbul Taksim Gezi Parkı (May 30, 2013)
7. Police against all (May 31, 2013)
8. May Day One Month Late (June 3, 2013)
9. Books hung out with (June 25, 2013)
10. Pairing of paintings (July 9, 2013)
11. More pairings (July 23, 2013)
12. Psychology (August 28, 2013)
13. The Tradition of Western Philosophy (September 10, 2013)

2014

1. A personal overview of Collingwood’s New Leviathan (January 7, 2014)
2. NL I: “Body and Mind” (January 13, 2014)
3. Give childhood back to children (January 15, 2014)
4. Copyright (January 15, 2014)
5. Hrant Dink assassination: 7th anniversary (January 19, 2014)
6. NL II: “The Relation Between Body and Mind” (January 20, 2014)
7. Self-similarity again (January 21, 2014)
8. On the NL (New Leviathan) Posts (January 23, 2014)
9. NL III: “Body As Mind” (January 25, 2014)
10. Freedom of will (January 26, 2014)
11. NL IV: “Feeling” (February 3, 2014)
12. Burgazada (February 14, 2014)
13. NL V: “The Ambiguity of Feeling” (February 17, 2014)
14. NL VI: “Language” (February 27, 2014)
15. Funeral march for Berkin Elvan (March 13, 2014)
16. NL VI: “Language,” again (March 31, 2014)
17. An afterbirthday message (March 31, 2014)
18. Cogito ne demek? (April 11, 2014)
19. Madness, stupidity, or evil? (May 2, 2014)
20. NL VII: “Appetite” (May 5, 2014)
21. June in the New World (June 20, 2014)
22. NL VIII: “Hunger and Love” (June 30, 2014)
23. Interconnectedness (June 30, 2014)
24. Two women (June 30, 2014)
25. Şirince 2014 (July 19, 2014)
26. Facts (NL IX, ‘Retrospect,’ first 6 paragraphs) (August 1, 2014)
27. Istanbul, August 1, 2014 (August 1, 2014)
28. Freedom (August 4, 2014)
29. Cosmopolitanism (August 14, 2014)
30. Precautions (September 8, 2014)
31. Graffiti grammar (September 15, 2014)
32. The Parabola (October 8, 2014)
33. The Hyperbola (October 10, 2014)
34. Latest rise of the old moon (October 22, 2014)
35. Hands on ≠ Minds on (November 19, 2014)
36. Uniformity (November 21, 2014)
37. The Istanbul Seaside (December 3, 2014)
38. Mîna Urgan on alphabets & Atatürk (December 9, 2014)
39. Taksim in Limbo (December 10, 2014)
40. Istanbul in the Sun (December 12, 2014)
41. Bosphorus Sky (December 19, 2014)
42. Interview with Mustafa Kemal (December 26, 2014)

2015

1. The Peace of Liberal Education (January 13, 2015)
2. Inurement (January 15, 2015)
3. Body and Mind (January 20, 2015)
4. The Academic Battery Cage (January 22, 2015)
5. Equality Is Not Identity (January 26, 2015)
6. The Writer and the Persona (January 27, 2015)
7. Liberation (February 5, 2015)
8. Art on the Bosphorus (March 9, 2015)
9. The Facebook Algorithm (March 17, 2015)
10. Visit to the Garbage Museum (March 23, 2015)
11. Teos (May 19, 2015)
12. Impressionism (June 17, 2015)
13. Joan Baez in Istanbul (July 2, 2015)
14. Thoreau by the Aegean (August 29, 2015)
15. Nicole at the Golden Horn (October 7, 2015)
16. Pictures (October 13, 2015)
17. Turks of 1071 and Today (December 1, 2015)

2016

1. Nesin Matematik Köyü, Ocak (January) 2016 (January 26, 2016)
2. What I loath about Facebook (February 16, 2016)
3. Art on Büyükada (March 5, 2016)
4. Early Tulips (March 14, 2016)
5. Kıvanç fêted in absentia (March 22, 2016)
6. Academic Freedom (March 25, 2016)
7. On trial for pacifism (March 30, 2016)
8. Free Sevan Nişanyan (April 8, 2016)
9. 35th Istanbul Film Festival, 2016 (April 20, 2016)
10. 35th Istanbul Film Festival, 2016, part 2 (April 22, 2016)
11. 35th Istanbul Film Festival, 2016, part 3 (April 25, 2016)
12. Rock & Roll (June 1, 2016)
13. Surgery & Recovery (June 13, 2016)
14. One & Many (June 20, 2016)
15. Narnia (June 22, 2016)
16. Life in Wartime (June 29, 2016)
17. War Continues (July 16, 2016)
18. Thinking & Feeling (July 20, 2016)
19. All You Need Is Love (August 2, 2016)
20. Pyrgos Island (August 12, 2016)
21. Beykoz, Istanbul (August 16, 2016)
22. Happiness (November 3, 2016)
23. What Now (November 12, 2016)
24. How to Learn about People (November 13, 2016)
25. Attribution of Fascism (December 11, 2016)
26. Smarts and Intelligence (December 12, 2016)
27. Thales of Miletus (December 24, 2016)

2017

1. The geometry of numbers in Euclid (January 2, 2017)
2. Confessions (January 4, 2017)
3. Şirince January 2017 (January 17, 2017)
4. Writing, Typography, and Nature (January 22, 2017)
5. NL IX: “Retrospect” (February 8, 2017)
6. NL X: “Passion” (February 9, 2017)
7. NL XI: “Desire” (February 10, 2017)
8. NL XII: “Happiness” (February 11, 2017)
9. NL XIII: “Choice” (February 12, 2017)
10. NL XIV: “Reason” (February 13, 2017)
11. NL XV: “Utility” (February 14, 2017)
12. NL XVI: “Right” (February 15, 2017)
13. NL XVII: “Duty” (February 16, 2017)
14. NL XVIII: Theoretical Reason (February 17, 2017)
15. Freedom to Listen (February 26, 2017)
16. Duty to Nature (February 28, 2017)
17. Community (March 9, 2017)
18. Nature and Death (March 10, 2017)
19. Feyhaman Duran (March 19, 2017)
20. Victor Vasarely (March 26, 2017)
21. The Hands of an Angry Deity (April 2, 2017)
22. Homer for the Civilian (April 8, 2017)
23. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book I (April 14, 2017)
24. 36th Istanbul Film Festival, 2017 (April 18, 2017)
25. Thinking in the age of cyborgs (April 19, 2017)
26. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book II (April 24, 2017)
27. Edirne (May 6, 2017)
28. The Private, Unskilled One (May 19, 2017)
29. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book III (June 5, 2017)
30. War and Talk (June 18, 2017)
31. Hypomnesis (July 30, 2017)
32. Ahtamar Island (August 30, 2017)
33. NL XIX: Two Senses of the Word “Society” (September 1, 2017)
34. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book IV (September 2, 2017)
35. NL XX: Society and Community (September 5, 2017)
36. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book V (September 7, 2017)
37. NL XXI: Society as Joint Will (September 9, 2017)
38. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book VI (September 11, 2017)
39. NL XXII: The Family As a Mixed Community (September 12, 2017)
40. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book VII (September 13, 2017)
41. NL XXIII: The Family As a Society (September 15, 2017)
42. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book VIII (September 16, 2017)
43. NL XXIV: The Body Politic, Social and Non-Social (September 17, 2017)
44. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book IX (September 23, 2017)
45. NL XXV: The Three Laws of Politics (September 28, 2017)
46. Romance (October 8, 2017)
47. Fascism As Abetted by Realism (October 10, 2017)
48. Women and Men (October 11, 2017)
49. Some Say Poetry (November 6, 2017)
50. What Philosophy Is (November 21, 2017)

2018

1. Şirince January 2018 (February 4, 2018)
2. The Tree of Life (February 12, 2018)
3. On Knowing Ourselves (March 3, 2018)
4. Boolean Arithmetic (May 5, 2018)
5. Effectiveness (May 17, 2018)
6. What It Takes (May 26, 2018)
7. Re-enactment (June 4, 2018)
8. Çarşamba Tour, April 2018 (July 2, 2018)
9. Samatya Tour, July 2018 (July 5, 2018)
10. A New Kind of Science (July 10, 2018)
11. Writing and Inversion (July 14, 2018)
12. Writing Rules (July 15, 2018)
13. Şişli Tour, July 2018 (July 19, 2018)
14. An Indictment (July 20, 2018)
15. Eastern Black Sea Yayla Tour (August 5, 2018)
16. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book X (August 28, 2018)
17. NL XXVI: Democracy and Aristocracy (August 29, 2018)
18. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XI (August 31, 2018)
19. NL XXVII: Force in Politics (September 1, 2018)
20. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XII (September 1, 2018)
21. NL XXVIII: The Forms of Political Action (September 2, 2018)
22. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XIII (September 3, 2018)
23. NL XXIX: External Politics (September 4, 2018)
24. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XIV (September 5, 2018)
25. NL XXX: War As the Breakdown of Policy (September 6, 2018)
26. NL XXXI: Classical Physics and Classical Politics (September 8, 2018)
27. NL XXXII: Society and Nature in the Classical Politics (September 9, 2018)
28. NL XXXIII: Decline of the Classical Politics (September 10, 2018)
29. NL XXXIV: What Civilization Means Generically (September 14, 2018)
30. NL XXXV: What Civilization Means Specifically (September 17, 2018)
31. NL XXXVI: The Essence of Civilization (September 18, 2018)
32. NL XXXVII: Civilization As Education (September 20, 2018)
33. NL XXXVIII: Civilization and Wealth (September 21, 2018)
34. NL XXXIX: Law and Order (September 23, 2018)
35. NL XL: Peace and Plenty (September 25, 2018)
36. NL XLI: What Barbarism Is (September 27, 2018)
37. NL XLII: The First Barbarism: The Saracens (October 1, 2018)
38. NL XLIII: The Second Barbarism: The ‘Albigensian Heresy’ (October 13, 2018)
39. Antitheses (December 13, 2018)
40. On Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (December 15, 2018)

2019

1. Logic of Elliptic Curves (January 6, 2019)
2. A Defense (January 12, 2019)
3. NL XLIV: The Turks (February 20, 2019)
4. NL XLV: The Germans (February 21, 2019)
5. Piety (March 14, 2019)
6. We the Pears of the Wild Coyote Tree (April 15, 2019)
7. Elliptical Affinity (April 17, 2019)
8. NL I: “Body and Mind” Again (August 17, 2019)
9. On Causation (August 20, 2019)
10. On Being Given to Know (August 24, 2019)
11. Math, Maugham, and Man (September 1, 2019)
12. A Final Statement (September 16, 2019)
13. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XV (September 17, 2019)
14. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XVI (September 18, 2019)
15. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XVII (September 19, 2019)
16. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XVIII (September 20, 2019)
17. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XIX (September 21, 2019)
18. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XX (September 22, 2019)
19. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XXI (September 23, 2019)
20. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XXII (September 24, 2019)
21. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XXIII (September 25, 2019)
22. On Chapman’s Homer’s Iliad, Book XXIV (September 26, 2019)
23. On Translation (October 6, 2019)
24. Anthropology of Mathematics (October 13, 2019)
25. On the Idea of History (October 20, 2019)
26. Computer Recovery (November 2, 2019)
27. On the Odyssey, Book I (November 9, 2019)
28. Ordinals (November 16, 2019)
29. On the Odyssey, Book II (November 24, 2019)
30. Sex and Gender (December 30, 2019)

2020

1. Evolution of Reality (February 17, 2020)
2. Salvation (February 24, 2020)
3. Doing and Suffering (March 2, 2020)
4. Mood (March 10, 2020)
5. Donne’s Undertaking (April 10, 2020)
6. Reading shallow and deep (April 21, 2020)
7. Thoreau and Anacreon (May 9, 2020)
8. Return to Narnia (May 23, 2020)
9. Poetry and Mathematics (July 5, 2020)
10. Be Sex Binary, We Are Not (July 7, 2020)
11. An Exercise in Analytic Geometry (August 5, 2020)
12. Discrete Logarithms (August 14, 2020)
13. Map of Art (September 1, 2020)
14. LaTeX to HTML (September 9, 2020)
15. What Mathematics Is (September 15, 2020)
16. More of What It Is (September 21, 2020)
17. Knottedness (September 24, 2020)
18. Why It Works (September 26, 2020)
19. Multiplicity of Mathematics (October 8, 2020)
20. Mathematics and Logic (October 13, 2020)
21. Articles on Collingwood (October 17, 2020)
22. Directory (October 26, 2020)
23. Pacifism (October 29, 2020)
24. Automatia (December 15, 2020)
25. The Asıl of the Iliad (December 20, 2020)
26. Law and History (December 29, 2020)

2021

1. Words (January 9, 2021)
2. Feminist Epistemology (January 29, 2021)
3. Reason in Pascal (February 23, 2021)
4. Pascal, Pensées, S 115–182 (February 23, 2021)
5. Pascal, Pensées, S 183–254 (February 25, 2021)
6. Pascal, Pensées, S 1–114 (March 2, 2021)
7. Pascal, Pensées, S 254–328 (March 4, 2021)
8. Pascal, Pensées, S 329–414 (March 11, 2021)
9. Pascal, Pensées, S 415–437 (March 18, 2021)
10. Pascal, Pensées, S 438–451 (March 24, 2021)
11. Pascal, Pensées, S 452–90 (March 31, 2021)
12. Abraham and Gideon (March 31, 2021)
13. Pascal, Pensées, S 491–611 (April 8, 2021)
14. Pascal, Pensées, S 612–650 (April 14, 2021)
15. Pascal, Pensées, S 651–679 (April 21, 2021)
16. Pascal, Pensées, S 680–687 (May 2, 2021)
17. Pascal, Pensées, S 688–719 (May 8, 2021)
18. Judaism for Pascal (May 13, 2021)
19. Pascal, Pensées, S 720–738 (May 18, 2021)
20. Pascal, Pensées, S 739–754 (May 25, 2021)
21. To Be Civilized (May 27, 2021)
22. Pascal, Pensées, S 755–790 (June 1, 2021)
23. Pascal, Pensées, S 791–813 (June 6, 2021)
24. Hostility and Hospitality (June 15, 2021)
25. Chaucer, CT, Prologue (July 6, 2021)
26. Chaucer, CT, Knight’s Tale (July 13, 2021)
27. Chaucer, CT, Miller’s and Reeve’s Tales (July 20, 2021)
28. Chaucer, CT, Man of Law’s Tale (July 28, 2021)
29. Summer YILDIZ Park Tour (August 1, 2021)
30. Chaucer, CT, Wife of Bath’s Tale (August 3, 2021)
31. On Being Human in the Age of Humanity (August 9, 2021)
32. Chaucer, CT, Tales of the Friar and the Clerk (August 10, 2021)
33. On Plato’s Republic, 1 (August 15, 2021)
34. Chaucer, CT, Franklin’s Tale (August 17, 2021)
35. On Plato’s Republic, 2 (August 30, 2021)
36. Chaucer, CT, Tales of the Prioress and the Monk (August 31, 2021)
37. On Plato’s Republic, 3 (September 5, 2021)
38. On Plato’s Republic, 4 (September 12, 2021)
39. Chaucer, CT, Tales of the Nun’s Priest and the Nun (September 14, 2021)
40. Badiou, Bloom, Ryle, Shorey (September 19, 2021)
41. Politics (September 24, 2021)
42. On Plato’s Republic, 5 (September 26, 2021)
43. On Plato’s Republic, 6 (October 3, 2021)
44. Nature (October 8, 2021)
45. On Plato’s Republic, 7 (October 10, 2021)
46. On Plato’s Republic, 8 (October 18, 2021)
47. On Plato’s Republic, 9 (October 24, 2021)
48. The Divided Line (October 31, 2021)
49. On Plato’s Republic, 10 (November 7, 2021)
50. On Plato’s Republic, 11 (November 14, 2021)
51. Figs (November 16, 2021)
52. On Plato’s Republic, 12 (November 22, 2021)
53. Imagination (December 3, 2021)
54. On Plato’s Republic, 13 (December 5, 2021)
55. On Plato’s Republic, 14 (December 13, 2021)
56. On Reading Plato’s Republic (December 28, 2021)

2022

1. Plato and Christianity (January 11, 2022)
2. The Society of Mathematics (January 22, 2022)
3. The Society of Mathematics 2 (January 24, 2022)
4. Gödel, Grammar, and Mathematics (February 14, 2022)
5. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 1 (February 24, 2022)
6. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 2 (February 28, 2022)
7. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 3 (March 3, 2022)
8. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 4 (March 10, 2022)
9. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 5 (March 16, 2022)
10. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 6 (March 24, 2022)
11. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 7 (March 31, 2022)
12. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 8 (April 6, 2022)
13. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 9 (April 14, 2022)
14. On The Human Condition of Hannah Arendt 10 (April 21, 2022)
15. Cumberland Tour 1994 (May 12, 2022)
16. On Playing Zpordle (May 28, 2022)
17. Creativity (June 6, 2022)
18. Charles Bell’s Axiomatic Drama (June 21, 2022)
19. Miracles (June 30, 2022)
20. Ways of Thinking (August 28, 2022)
21. Sacrifice and Simulation (September 26, 2022)
22. “It Was Good” (October 31, 2022)
23. The Ideal (November 12, 2022)
24. On Homer’s Iliad Book I (November 29, 2022)
25. On Homer’s Iliad Book II (December 4, 2022)
26. On Homer’s Iliad Book III (December 12, 2022)
27. On Homer’s Iliad Book IV (December 19, 2022)
28. Parenthood and Sex (December 22, 2022)
29. On Homer’s Iliad Book V (December 26, 2022)

2023

1. On Homer’s Iliad Book VI (January 2, 2023)
2. Biological History (January 9, 2023)
3. On Homer’s Iliad Book VII (January 14, 2023)
4. Emotional Contagion (Iliad VIII) (January 19, 2023)
5. Loneliness (Iliad Book IX) (January 24, 2023)
6. Verity (Iliad Book X) (February 1, 2023)
7. Points of an Ellipse (February 3, 2023)
8. Soap (Iliad Book XI) (February 8, 2023)
9. Monism (Iliad Book XII) (February 17, 2023)
10. Potential (Iliad Book XIII) (February 21, 2023)
11. Femininity (Iliad Book XIV) (March 3, 2023)
12. Masculinity (Iliad Book XV) (March 9, 2023)
13. Focus (Iliad Book XVI) (March 17, 2023)
14. Mind (Iliad Book XVII) (March 24, 2023)
15. Reflection (Iliad Book XVIII) (March 30, 2023)
16. Responsibility (Iliad Book XIX) (April 6, 2023)
17. Words (Iliad Book XX) (April 13, 2023)
18. Fishes (Iliad Book XXI) (April 19, 2023)
19. Grief (Iliad Book XXII) (April 27, 2023)
20. History (Iliad Book XXIII) (May 4, 2023)
21. Dawn (Iliad Book XXIV) (May 12, 2023)
22. Seventh Hill, March, 2013 (May 19, 2023)
23. On Religion and Philosophy (May 23, 2023)
24. Why the Polity (June 5, 2023)
25. Drone (June 13, 2023)
26. On Dialectic (June 20, 2023)
27. More on Dialectic (June 30, 2023)
28. Even More on Dialectic (July 11, 2023)
29. Eudemony (July 30, 2023)
30. Manliness (August 29, 2023)
31. Cavafy in Istanbul (September 10, 2023)
32. Excuses (September 19, 2023)
33. Valor (September 26, 2023)
34. Sanity (October 7, 2023)
35. Freeness (October 18, 2023)
36. Coolness (October 25, 2023)
37. Truth (November 5, 2023)
38. Dicaeology (November 15, 2023)
39. Symmetry (November 22, 2023)
40. Fire (November 29, 2023)
41. Righteousness (December 11, 2023)

2024

1. The Miraculous (January 3, 2024)
2. Memory (January 11, 2024)
3. Sources (January 16, 2024)
4. Foresight (January 29, 2024)
5. Anarchy (February 11, 2024)
6. Necessity (February 18, 2024)
7. Tulips of Istanbul (February 24, 2024)
8. Discipline (February 27, 2024)
9. Sweetness (March 3, 2024)
10. Affiliation (March 12, 2024)
11. Equality (March 19, 2024)
12. Sourdough Einkorn Bread (March 20, 2024)
13. Family (March 28, 2024)
14. Occultation 2006 (April 9, 2024)
15. Paternity (April 11, 2024)
16. Impermanence (April 19, 2024)
17. Benefaction (April 24, 2024)
18. Solipsism (May 1, 2024)

Typography

I created my logo using LaTeX and PSTricks. If it is displayed properly, here is code that will make the picture.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pstricks,pst-plot}
\begin{document}
\centering
\psset{unit=12cm}
\begin{pspicture}(1,1)
\psset{linewidth=0.05}
\pspolygon(0,0)(1,0)(1,1)(0,1)
\parametricplot{0.001}{1}{t 90 t mul tan div t}
\psarc(0,0){1}{0}{90}
\psline(0,0)(! 1 3 sqrt div 1)
\psline(! 0 2 3 div)(! 1 2 3 div)
\end{pspicture}
\end{document}

I write my posts and pages in html, using what WordPress now (late 2020) calls its “Classic Editor.” I generally don’t use the editor as anything more than a place to upload the html files that I have already composed.

Since writing “LaTeX to HTML,” I have started composing my posts and pages as plain text, that is, as txt files; then I convert them to html using the pandoc program. I try to let the “Markdown” formatting of the txt file be sufficient to achieve what I want in html; however, there seem to be two things I must handle by hand.

1. I have to remember to insert <!--more--> to keep the whole of a post from being displayed in a list of posts.

2. To put “Word” in small caps, I need

   <span style="font-variant:small-caps;">Word</span>

   in the html file; but pandoc converts that to

   [Word]{.smallcaps}

   in the txt file, and converts that to

   <span class="smallcaps">Word</span>

   in the html file, and this won’t do the job in WordPress.

To increase physical readability, I narrow the text of articles by beginning each one with the code,

<div style="text-align:justify;
            margin-left:10%;
            margin-right:10%;">

and ending with </div>. When I forget the end tag, the sidebars don’t display properly. In the txt file, the code for the style information is

::: {style="..."}

at the beginning, and ::: at the end.

One of the more elaborate WordPress themes would put margins on my text; but as far as I can tell, the theme would also set block quotations in italics, and I do not want this. Italics are already used to emphasize words and phrases within a text; to emphasize that an extended passage is a quotation, well, that it was what the indentation of a “block quotation” is for.

I prefer that block quotations have a smaller font size than the main text. I can do this in html with

<blockquote style="font-size:90%;">

and </blockquote> at the end. However, in the conversion to txt, pandoc does not preserve the style information here. For that, I should use

<blockquote><div style="font-size:90%;">

at the beginning, which is equivalent to

> ::: {style="font-size:90%;"}

in the txt file.

In preparing these very notes, I originally had difficulty displaying code as code. First I tried just using the tag

<code>

but then this stopped working as expected. I found some explanation of the problem in an article, “Writing Code in Your Posts,” but following the advice here was not enough either. Finally, from “Posting Source Code,” I learned to replace the angle brackets with square brackets.

Now it seems I can just use what pandoc gives me for code:

• <code> for inline code,

• <pre><code> for displayed code.

Apparently this is because the “Classic Editor” now automatically converts

• < to <

• > to >

• " to "

when they are within a <code> element.

For centering poetry horizontally, I have learned to use the style information

margin-left:auto;
margin-right:auto;
display:table;

as described at the end of the article “Some Say Poetry.”