.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

I read Bostock v. Clayton County after someone recommended it as an example of a well-written Gorsuch opinion. It concerns whether or not sexual orientation is protected against discrimination by Title 7 of The Civil Rights Act of 1964.

At first blush, I would have said that Title 7 does not cover sexual orientation — that the clear meaning of “sex” was biologically male or female — and the law is intended to prevent discrimination against women.

Yet you have to concede Gorsuch’s point: that if you fire a man for having sex with men but not a woman for having sex with men, then that termination of employment is based on the employee’s sex.

I feel like the intent of the Civil Rights Act is that you ought not fire someone based on the type of person they are, but must consider them as individuals, and that the Gorsuch opinion is consistent with that.

Alito’s dissent, which I skimmed,  struck me as emotional and testy. I noticed that both Alito and Gorsuch referred to the dictionary a fair amount and was reminded this court has somewhat of a reputation for hair-splitting. 

τέλος μύθων Maybe: “the whole story”? οὐ τέλος ἵκεο μύθων = “you haven’t told the whole story”?

Thermostatic (political sense): “Reacting to change by attempting to move in the opposite direction.”

Melisma: A passage of several notes sung to one syllable of text.

Les bonheurs futurs, comme les rivages des tropiques, projettent sur l’immensité qui les précède leurs mollesses natales, une brise parfumée, et l’on s’assoupit dans cet enivrement sans même s’inquiéter de l’horizon que l’on n’aperçoit pas….(*) Bovary 2.3.132

Like this tweet: In a sense, the true “battleground state” is the human soul itself.

τὸν μέσον δάκτυλον ἐκτείνας — this totally dispenses with the old yarn about the archers at Agincourt.

Iliad 9.38-39. Diomedes to Agamemnon:

σκήπτρῳ μέν τοι δῶκε τετιμῆσθαι περὶ πάντων,
ἀλκὴν δ᾽ οὔ τοι δῶκεν, ὅ τε κράτος ἐστὶ μέγιστον.

Zeus gave you a scepter to be honored over all/ But didn’t give you courage, which is the greatest power.

Marangoni Effect — which explains what happens when you put dish soap into the greasy water of a dirty pot.

David Copperfield, chapter 48: “Having some foundation for believing by this time, that nature and accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence. Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, and bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and nothing else.”

From Olympian 5:

αἰεὶ δ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ ἀρεταῖσι πόνος δαπάνα τε μάρναται πρὸς ἔργον
κινδύνῳ κεκαλυμμένον: ἠῢ δ᾽ ἔχοντες σοφοὶ καὶ πολίταις ἔδοξαν ἔμμεν

Equipollent: having equal power or force. (Ngrams 1700-2022.)

Not sure what the deal was here but thought it was a good exercise. Good on Shapiro and those who debated him.

As to Dickens’s touted ‘greatness of the soul,’ Joyce said the compliment was just as misguided as was the accusation of ‘claptrap.’ What roused genuine enthusiasm in Joyce, as a city man, was Dickens’s unexampled command of London and its life. (Apparently from Ellmann.)

Joyce essay on Dickens here.

so much worse than you remember

Another of those dreams in which I enjoyed a thing I’d denied myself in real life, in this case, a jar of Planter’s brand peanuts I’d paused over at the supermarket.

The repetitions that seem peculiar to Iliad’s book 8 are gold, lightning and fire, so you wonder if a poetic logic can be extended between them: gold is of the gods and lightning extends from heaven to earth, a golden cord as it were, and kindles fire on the ground. Fire, threatened by Hector, is produced by lightning, which is wielded by Zeus, and all the accouterments of Zeus are made of gold, which is like lightning not yet set in motion.

q: supposing the unlikely case that this logic is correct, how do you explain the unusual detail we’re given in this book that Nestor’s shield is made of gold?

That circumstance that occurs often in dreams where, when you’re trying to read something important, it’s illegible, hopelessly blurred, and when you’re trying to hear something important it’s inaudible, an inarticulate mumbling.

I heard some of the latter last night: a friend whispering in my ear what I took to be friendly advice but I couldn’t make out one word of it. When I asked him to repeat, I still couldn’t make it out. So I said we better go outside where it was quieter, and I guess we did — for I woke.

“The blank horizon, like a rope, coiled round the whole.” (Israel Potter, Melville.)

13. (English) : ὑπὸ λυγμοῦ ἐχομένῳ πταρμοὶ ἐπιγενόμενοι λύουσι τὸν λυγμόν.

(πταρμοὶ — sneezes, λυγμόν — hiccup)