How do I stir up the Cambridge Philosophy budget scoffers?

Ah, spendius.

Happy Birthday

I have a friend who chairs the department. I'll see what I can do. If that fails, perhaps George Bush can get you a slot at Harvard.

Hello Letty,
Thanks for greetings.
Hold the Harvard thingy.I'd have to fly.Perish the thought.A philosopher in flight is contradicting Nietzche's dictum.Didn't Mailer go to Harvard?He's had 8 wives I heard. Veblen would have.
We are on an efficiency drive here in the Yookay.Our noses are being pressed harder into the grindstone by our worker's party leaders.'Cept for the Cambridge Philosophy Department and it's NOT FAIR!Performance tables don't apply to the CPD.Fat cheques, cornucopias of perks and a fresh bunch of eager female students every year is what the CPD get and nobody knows what they do outside of the usual biologics and if they did they wouldn't know what to do with it.Ask your pal for me.Set my mind at rest.I'm seething with aggravated discontent and am gagging on the gall and wormwood of injustice.


Best wishes. spendius.

spendius, you do realize that I was joshing, no? Everything that I said was a load of old toff, with the exception of the birthday greeting.

You write well, however, and I realize how you must feel. My only advice is to be a squeaky wheel.

Jeeze Letty,I feel a right turnip.American irony eh?Here's me thinking I'd hit on a big cheese first time up.Aw shucks.
There's an old English proverb;a wheel that doesn't squeak never gets any oil and oil is the active ingredient of modern philosophy.Now I know that you don't know any philosophers I understand why you wouldn't be aware of that.
How do I know that you're not joshing about joshing?That's one of the specialities of the CPD.
I'd better be careful.I don't wish "joshing" into my word-store.We have better ones here.Taking the piss for example.You took the piss out of me.What sort of man would refuse a squeaky wheel a drop of oil preferring instead to take the piss.You could end up laughing at plane crashes if you bend that bent away from the sitting ducks.


Best wishes spendius

UhOh. I thought you were a girl. Sorry. I'm always confusing genders.

I did send an SOS to a friend who knows stuff. Hey, I'm learning Britese. Just give me time. You Brits are good with onomatopoeias.

God I love you kayers...keep on talking

Letty love.Whoever heard of a girl called spendius.You obviously are unfamiliar with Latin suffix technology.When you send an SOS you are supposed to include your co-ordinates.I'm trying to wind up the CPD not join in with them.I would like to see them pulling on the oars in direct proportion to the resources they are disposing of.Some of my pals are in the sweaty galleys.The CPD are having it off.

Best wishes

spendius.

My second wife was named Spendius, no wait, it was Spendforbothofus. Never mind.

puer est pulchra.
peulla est pulchra.
Joe est pulchra.

spendius et Joe et stuh et Letty.

Morning all.

Cambridge have poked out.Maths Dep't.
According to Jonathan Leake in Sunday times.
Wait for it.It's worth it.
"-the universe has a degree of fine tuning that makes it safe for living organisms."
Just like my electric blanket.
A budget eater called Barrow produced that little gem.And he isn't finished either."Such fine tuning could be taken as evidence for some kind of intelligent designer being at work." It could be taken also,along with a good number of other "coulds, that semi-comatose budget scoffing
softens those parts of the brain associated with clarity of thinking.
According to the feechewer in the ST this budget scoffing dates back at least as far as 295 BC to one ChuangTzu who is reported to have wondered,an activity often concomitant with the combination of a full belly and waking lethargy,whether his entire life might be no more than a dream.He obviously never had lettuce for supper.Or rich cheese.
A galley slave never wonders about crap like that.His life IS a nightmare.
There's no might about it.
Incidentally, the art of budget eating is explained fairly comprehensively in Stendahl's Lucien Leuwen although it hadn't reached the rareified refinements of modern times in his days.
What a pleasant change it is to find Seth Lloyd of M.I.T. using such an unusual word as "would".
Quality Control Exam.Assess bullshit quotient in article on a scale 0-100. It's on http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1358588,00.html
Imagine how that might expand in the hands of two-bit delettantes.

You can't buck the market.

spendius.

Letty has nearly 9000 posts.It might be more by now.
I wonder,as a biologically satiated organism,a temporary philosopher in other words,whether anybody out there feels qualified to deliniate and describe Letty's general structures of feeling using his gigantic corpus of spur of the moment utterances as a field of observation.As a mere well-evolved microbe I don't feel qualified for such a difficult task but I would be interested in how I can adapt my own infantile structures so that I might become as famous as Letty is in the terrestial paradise of philosophy.I've read through a few dozen of Letty's posts and I can't make moss nor sand of them.Is he just bored like me?Has he got a bad case of Tall Poppy Syndrome(TPS)?Is he a guru I should follow?What would he be like in the pub after six pints of fun juice?What's his game? Is he having us all on?Am I heading in the same direction?If I am will it do me any good?

spendius.

and that would be Lady Letty, spendius. Philosophy is supposed to be esoteric. <smile>

That sounds about right. In fact, several weeks ago, I met wife number two, the one Norm stabbed with a pair of scissors.

Blatham,

Welcome aboard.We're only engaged in some desultory skirmishing so far.
The lady was let off lightly.Marduk forced a few tempests down Tiamet's throat and when she blew up he made heaven from her top half and earth from the other,as you might have guessed.Then he knocked off her evil consort and from his blood he made us lot.
Just shows what a kind and gentle bloke old Norm was.But Tiamet was a much bigger nuisance than any of these feminists.She was the real thing.

Best wishes

spendius.

Nah Letty,
Philosophy is universal.Esoteric sects usually implode from narcissistic infighting.That's one of the main reasons priests are celibate.
I suppose philosophy is esoteric in that it is an activity confined to men.Women,fortunately,are preoccupied with what might be signified by the term "unexamined subjectivity" and the most that can be expected from them,from the philosophical point of view, are what Ted Hughes called "supernatural gleams".These evidences are more apparent in emporia dedicated to the dispensing of alcoholic beverages than in those zones of social intercourse where they are on their best behaviour such as PTA meetings and religious services.
Are we meant to assume that Letty has a double aspect?That there's an admixture of matronising and patronising.
The CPD relies on that sort of thing."While everybody knelt to pray the drifter did escape."

I did smile!

spendius.

Perhaps you should have gone to Oxford.

I'm trying to decide if spendius is sine noblesse or noblesse oblige. Whichever, I don't have a dicky bird of what he speaks. That's what I get for choosing UVA.

It's only because he doesn't seem capable of making a clear point, not that I mind the filigree he shrouds his argument in. It's quite entertaining.

I remember, back in university, attending a party for students hosted by my Literary Criticism professor, who also taught Kant. After a lot of sherry and beer, he confessed to his affair with our Gothic Literature professor, and how it shattered him. Then he started crying a bit. One brave female tried to comfort him, and he verbally lashed her, and had to make a public apology once he was sober. He was actually a brilliant thinker, but was thereon tortured by our running joke "Teacher Kant get laid."

So what life lesson did we learn that night? Basically, that everyone is a freak, especially if they consider themselves a thinker.

Dis Chuang Tzu spendius? Why I oughtta...

"Teacher Kant get laid?" ....What brats you beasties be. Love it!