Fire and Knowledge

Do you use a Linux or Mac system and need to decompress .tgz files through the command line? I can never remember the correct command (which, by the way, is “tar -zxvf”). So I created this alias. Add it to your ~/.bash_profile :

# Decompress .tar.gz or .tgz files
# Usage: untar [filename]
alias untar='tar -zxvf'

You can then easily decompress .tgz files through “untar [filename]“. Be sure to restart bash in order for it to take effect.

We long ago gave up the wish to have things that were adequate or even excellent; we have preferred instead to have things that were up-to-date.

–Wendell Berry, “Living in the Future: The ‘Modern’ Agricultural Ideal” in The Unsettling of America (1972), pp. 57-58

When I write, I prefer to do without the company and remembrance of books, for fear they may interfere with my style. Also because, in truth, the good authors humble me and dishearten me too much.

–Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), “On Some Verses of Virgil” in The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate (1994), p. 91

[A] Briton, when he wants to sup ale, must find his way to the Dog and Duck, the Goose and Firkin, the Flying Spoon, or the Spotted Dog. The names of Britain’s 70,000 or so pubs cover a broad range, running from the inspired to the improbable, from the deft to the daft. Almost any name will do so long as it is at least faintly absurd, unconnected with the name of the owner, and entirely lacking in any suggestion of drinking, conversing, and enjoying oneself. At a minimum the name should puzzle foreigners—this is a basic requirement for most British institutions—and ideally it should excite long and inconclusive debate, defy all logical explanation, and evoke images that border on the surreal. Among the pubs that meet, and indeed exceed, these exacting standards are the Frog and Nightgown, the Bull and Spectacles, the Flying Monk, and the Crab and Gumboil.

–Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way (1990), p. 198

If a culture is to hope for any considerable longevity, then the relationships within it must, in recognition of their interdependence, be predominately cooperative rather than competitive. A people cannot live long at each other’s expense or at the expense of their cultural birthright—just as an agriculture cannot live long at the expense of its soil or its work force, and just as in a natural system the competitions among species must be limited if all are to survive.

–Wendell Berry, “The Agricultural Crisis as a Crisis of Culture” in The Unsettling of America (1972), p. 47

There are more people learning English in China than there are people in the United States.

–Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way (1990), p. 182-3

The household that prepares its own meals in its own kitchen with some intelligent regard for nutritional value, and thus depends on the grocer only for selected raw materials, exercises an influence on the food industry that reaches from the store all the way back to the seedsman. The household that produces some or all of its own food will have a proportionally greater influence. The household that can provide some of its own pleasures will not be helplessly dependent on the entertainment industry, will influence it by not being helplessly dependent on it, and will not support it thoughtlessly out of boredom.

–Wendell Berry, “The Ecological Crisis as a Crisis of Character” in The Unsettling of America (1972), p. 24-25

When a church nursery can’t function without internet access and computers, what is the world coming to?