Great post from Ezra. I even looked up "irenic" -- it's not a misspelling of "ironic" it means "tending to promote peace; conciliatory" from the Greek "eirene," meaning "peace."
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The Pundit Purge of 2007
11 Dec 2006 10:23 am
Comments (15)
And it's the source of the name 'Irene'-- which I know because it was my mom's name, although she wasn't always concilatory wrt her temperament. But she made liberals out of her three kids, mostly by never, ever allowing us to treat others dismissively.
Anybody who does crosswords a lot will know "irenic," which is one of those words that's overrepresented in puzzles because the letters it contains (cenri) are useful in constructing crosses.
"Irenic" is also one of William F. Buckley's favorite words. He uses it 2 or 3 times in every book.
I looked it up too. I had seen it used somewhere in the blogosphere in the last week, but can't remember where. For some reason, I was reminded of "oneiric" which is also a fun word. You could use both in a Iraq-relevant post.
You see? Other bloggers can spell.
ditto brian and bob.
Umm... No offence, I think you're one of the best bloogers out there, but what did you learn at Harvard? I studied philosophy for one year before switching to law (because I'm a coward), but I still had time to learn enough Greek to know what irenic means.
PEG, I don't know whether "bloogers" is intentional or not, but I intend to steal it.
I want to go on record as saying I totally knew what irenic meant, and feel great that a high profile blogger didn't.
"what did you learn at Harvard?"
This question is one of the burdens of being a Harvard grad, I'm sure. A similar thing happens in my field of academia--since Harvard PhDs live a charmed life on the job market, some of the rest of us like to take pot shots where we can find them (e.g.: "I guess for all his Harvard education he still can't avoid basic errors about Rawls.")--which I suppose makes up a bit for the injustice of the situation, but is petty nonetheless.
Everyone's coverage of knowledge (despite the vast differences in the amount of it which people have) has holes in it which might be embarrassing if they were exposed. "You are a great teacher in Israel, and you don't know this?" is a question that can be asked of almost all great teachers.
ajay's comment wins
Someone reposted brook's essay here Check out the comments, these are investors talking about bush the idiot and so on. Pretty funny.
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Comments closed December 25, 2006.
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Heads in the Sand
heh. i looked it up too.
Posted by brian | December 11, 2006 10:27 AM