Jason Cather
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I've Moved!

5/1/2021

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Not much to see here. I've shifted to another blog location. Get in touch if you're interested in more.
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A Priori Politics as a Mentalism Routine

5/13/2020

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I.

I want to discuss politics on this blog, but in order to do so I need to develop a vocabulary. I have a meta-political pet peeve which I believe I can name and explain through a discussion of the parlance of magic. In honor of Penn and Teller, I’m going to try to make the world a slightly better place by giving away a secret to a magic trick. This is a big no-no in some parts of the magic world, and so I’m sorry to magicians everywhere. It’s for the greater good...

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Auditing the Books (2019 review)

2/11/2020

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 Again, I will list the books I've read and the books I've "read" this past year. Most of these are in the audio"book" format. I spent a lot of this calendar year commuting to various universities where I was an adjunct. I also watch our youngest son, and so to get some peace and quiet, I opt to wash dishes while Megan gives the boys their baths and catches up with them. This gives me some extra time with the headphones. 

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Consider the Stars (part 1 of n)

12/3/2019

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I recently found these notes, which I wrote on 18. July, 2016

There is an ancient argument for the existence of God. For many centuries it worked to produce pious men and women. Even brilliant thinkers were swayed by its simple clarity. The argument runs thus:

Consider the stars.

This alone was enough -- once to persuade the souls of men that there was an author of sublimity. But tonight, I look upon the night sky in my city -- which I have loved -- and see the glow of growth: reddish,  and when there is fog, possessing its own beauty. 

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The Madness of Jason Cather

8/14/2019

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I recently received an e-mail from someone asking about "how to get someone to counseling." This person knows that I have a history of mental illness, and that I am open about this, and that I am interested in talking to others about it, and was hoping I could help them with someone they care deeply about. 

In the interest of sharing my thoughts with anyone whom it could help, I decided that I might share that account here. Eventually, I want to reflect on why I have chosen to be as open as possible about my experiences, even though people over-sharing online gives me the creeps, and I loathe the feeling that I'm acting self-important. 

To anonymize the content as much as possible, I've opted for "they/them" as a gender neutral, third person singular pronoun. My middle-school grammar teacher was the amazing James Goodson, and because of him I know that these words are actually plural. Unfortunately, I have no other elegant way of respecting privacy. 
​Anyway, here's the story:

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The Madness of Odysseus

2/19/2019

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He broke off and anguish gripped Achilles.
The heart in his rugged chest was pounding, torn…

Should he draw the long sharp sword slung at his hip,

Thrust through the ranks and kill Agamemnon now? --

 Or check his rage and beat his fury down? 
                                                                     -Homer (Illiad Book I; Robert Fagels, Transl.)

I'm a boss-a** b****, b****, b****, b****, b****, b****, b****
I'm a boss-a** b****, b****, b****, b****, b****, b****, b****
I'm a boss-a** b****, 
b****, b****, b****, b****, b****, b****
I'm a boss-a** b****, 
b****, b****, b****, b****, b****, b****
I'm a boss-a**...

 -Nicki Minaj

   I.
A dear friend once described the willfully ignorant to me: “It’s as though they had super-powers!” It is strange, indeed to think how one can believe what one knows not to be so. It is somewhat akin to flying. Upon reflection, it is perhaps even more to be desired. For flying is sometimes dangerous, and one must leave the comforts of home. To be able to believe oneself to be flying without leaving the living room -- why, that affords all of the delights of both! 

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Course Websites

12/13/2018

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I've been experimenting with Google Sites to make websites for my courses. Here is my first go:

sites.google.com/view/cather-religion-media

I'm still updating it, but I have to teach, so I'm on the run.
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Updates to my Auditing and a List of Book-Books

12/11/2018

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​UPDATE:
 I went on a Saul Bellow kick:
65. The Adventures of Augie March
66. Herzog
67. Mr. Sammler's Planet
68. Humboldt's Gift
and then a Michael Lewis stint:
69. The Big Short
70. The Undoing Project
71. Liar's Poker
72.* Don Quixote (Part One) -- I ran out of time before I could finish part two, and the Chicago Public Library repossessed the book. Thanksgiving break was great, but it meant less time in the car, and so less time with El Caballero de la triste figura.
73. Francine Prose: Reading Like a Writer (this is, apparently, her actual name)
74. David Brooks: The Road to Character
75. Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment

-----

The books that I read this year in actual book format were mostly for the classes I was teaching or else for bedtime reading with my son (I will let you guess which is which).


1. Genesis
2. The Gospel of Mark
3. The Acts of the Apostles
4. Job
5. Augustine: Enchiridion (the Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love)
6. Plato: Apology
7. Crito
8. Euthryphro
9. Machiavelli: The Prince
10. Robert Bolt: A Man for All Seasons
11. Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics
12. Cicero: On Obligations
13. Kant: Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals
14. Mill: Utilitarianism
15. Aquinas: Treatise on the One God (Which is really just a longer section of his Summa)
16. Alice in Wonderland
17. The Invention of Hugo Cabret
18. The Wind in the Willows
19. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (the CORRECT way to begin the Narnia series)
20. Prince Caspian
21. Voyage o
the f Dawn Treader
22. The Silver Chair
23. A Horse and His Boy
24. The Magician's Nephew
25. The Last Battle


 


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Auditing the Books

10/20/2018

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My Audible account says that I've been using it since October of 2016. It feels like less time than that, but as one gets older, one's sense of time speeds up. I started listening because a YouTube channel I follow was sponsored by Audible. I thought it would be cool to support the channel, and at the same time I could possibly better myself in some regards. A few months ago, I discovered that I could also borrow audio-"books" from the Chicago Public Library. Things were almost in place for the listening binge I've been on for  the past two years. The next puzzle piece came during a party where a friend of a friend who studied economics talked about listening to podcasts at double-speed (hey, it doubles the ROI of your time!). The final piece has been my lowly adjunct lifestyle, in which I spend at least five hours per week in the car. This gives me lots of time to listen, and I've been going through my list at something more closely approximating the pace some of my friends do their actual reading. 

So in an effort to keep track, I'm putting together a list of the "books" I've been auditing (I just can't bring myself to call it reading, so maybe this will catch on). I had a short chat with my wife's grandmother, who has also discovered the wonderful world of audiobooks, and we agreed to send each other our respective lists. Of course I had her list in my hands three days later, which was sometime in August? Here, then (finally) is my list:

In the last months of 2016, I listened to three audiobooks:
  1. Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita: The Dictator's Handbook
  2. Nick Bostrom: Superintelligence
  3. Some other popular nonfiction book that made so little impression on me that I don't even care about looking it up. I later traded it, once I learned that you could do that. I traded it for:
  4. Ernest Cline: Ready Player One

2017:
  1. Ernest Cline: Ready Player One (again)
  2. Neal Stephenson: Anathem,
  3. Quicksilver (Baroque Cycle),
  4. King of the Vagabonds,
  5. Odalisque
  6. The Confusion,
  7. Solomon's Gold,
  8. Currency,
  9. The System of the World,
  10. Diamond Age,
  11. Cryptonomicon, 
  12. Reamde, 
  13. Seveneves, 
  14. Zodiac
  15. Hesse: Glass Bead Game
  16. Tolstoy: War and Peace
  17. Octavia Butler: Blood Child and Other Stories
  18. Cixin Liu: Three Body Problem, 
  19. Dark Forest, 
  20. Death's End
  21. Brahm Stoker: Dracula

2018: (Which started in roughly the order I listened to them, but then became a mishmash because I'm using multiple platforms)
  1. Neal Stephenson: Anathem (again), 
  2. Quicksilver (again),
  3. King of the Vagabonds (again),
  4. Odalisque (again),
  5. The Confusion (again),
  6. Solomon's Gold (again),
  7. Currency (again),
  8. The System of the World (again),
  9. Snow Crash (this was actually my first exposure to Stephenson, and I actually read the book-book, but I wanted to round out my audio collection of Stephenson's oeuvre), 
  10. The Big U, 
  11. Rise &Fall of D.O.D.O. (coauthored with Nicole Galland), 
  12. The Mongoliad, Book 1 (coauthored with Greg Bear and Friends)
  13. The Mongoliad, Books 2 (coauthored with Greg Bear and Friends)
  14. The Mongoliad, Book 3 (coauthored with Greg Bear and Friends)
  15. Cixin Liu: Three Body Problem, (again)
  16. Dark Forest, (again)
  17. Death's End (again)
  18. Phillip K. Dick: Man in the High Castle, 
  19. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
  20. Dostoevsky: Poor People, 
  21. The Brothers Karamazov
  22. Paul Strathern: Dostoevsky in 90 minutes
  23. Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener and Other Stories, 
  24. Moby Dick
  25. Austen: Mansfield Park,
  26. Emma, 
  27. Northanger Abbey, 
  28. Pride and Prejudice
  29. Chesterton: Orthodoxy (I finished it as I was pulling out of the parking lot for a long commute, so I immediately started it again and re-listened!)
  30. Homer: Iliad, 
  31. Odyssey
  32. Dante: The Divine Comedy
  33. Milton: Paradise Lost
  34. Shelly: Frankenstein
  35. Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
  36. Cather (Willa - i.e., the famous one -- possibly related): My Antonia
  37. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: The Mote in God's Eye
  38. Arthur C. Clarke: Rendezvous With Rama
  39. Richard K. Morgan: Altered Carbon
  40. Annalee Newitz: Autonomous
  41. William Gibson: The Peripheral
  42. Isaac Asimov: I, Robot
  43. Gene Wolfe: The Shadow of the Torturer
  44. The Claw of the Conciliator
  45. The Sword of the Lictor
  46. The Citadel of the Autarch
  47. The Urth of the New Sun
  48. Gary K. Wolfe: How Great Science Fiction Works
  49. Arthur Conan Doyle: The Complete Sherlock Holmes (technically, this includes four novels, so in those moments when I admit to myself that I feel like I'm keeping score, my ego wants the acknowledgment that this was more of an investment than a single episode. 
  50. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris
  51. Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land
  52. Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
  53. China Mieville: Kraken
  54. The City & The City
  55. The Last Days of New Paris
  56. Embassytown
  57. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw
  58. James Joyce: Dubliners
  59. The Song of Roland
  60. Graham Greene: The Quiet American
  61. Robert Louis Stephenson: Treasure Island
  62. Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
  63. Malcom Gladwell: David and Goliath
  64. Rudyard Kipling: The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories

Audiobooks I haven't finished (currently in the process of auditing, or that I've already checked out), but plan to finish before the year's end:
  1. Phillip K. DIck: Ubik
  2.  ̶S̶a̶u̶l̶ ̶B̶e̶l̶l̶o̶w̶:̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶A̶d̶v̶e̶n̶t̶u̶r̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶A̶u̶g̶g̶i̶e̶ ̶M̶a̶r̶c̶h̶ (finished! see update below! about which, I hope to have something to say in a while)
  3. Herman Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (again)
  4. Whatever the last two audible credits get me this year (recommendations appreciated).

Audiobooks I was unable to finish for various reasons:
  1. Graham Greene: The Heart of the Matter
  2. The Power and the Glory (I have The End of the Affair in paperback, and I'll be reading it once the semester ends. I just couldn't get into these two with the same interest as The Quiet American.)
  3. James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  4. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (I'm about half way through, and while I haven't given up on it yet, it keeps getting pushed further down my list)
  5. David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest (I don't get what the deal is. I like his non-fiction. I've audited War and Peace, and Moby Dick, for crying out loud. I just couldn't do it). 
  6. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend and Other Stories
  7. Cather: Oh, Pioneers! (This was a timing thing. I checked this out at the same time as My Antonia, which I finished, but I didn't have enough time to finish this too, and I've been involved with other things, so I just haven't gone back to it.)
  8. A Bunch of Shakespeare Plays (They were meant for reading or for watching, but the audiobook format doesn't do it for me here. Maybe I'll try again later).

My resolution for the end of the year is to come back and list the book-books that I've actually read, and perhaps provide some commentary on the lot of them, since, as it turns out, I have opinions!

UPDATE:
 I went on a Saul Bellow kick:
65. The Adventures of Augie March
66. Herzog
67. Mr. Sammler's Planet
68. Humboldt's Gift
and then a Michael Lewis stint:
69. The Big Short
70. The Undoing Project
71.* Don Quixote (Part One) -- I ran out of time before I could finish part two, and the Chicago Public Library repossessed the book. Thanksgiving break was great, but it meant less time in the car, and so less time with El Caballero de la triste figura.
 


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