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I mean this humorously and I am in no way turned off by the discussion as I find it fascinating but what's the sentence in the raw material that stands out?
"Discussion of the details of the Athenian calendar became in their hands so abstruse that for decades few other scholars have ventured into the jungle."
I have no opinions on this but reading about these details is fascinating.
We don't - can't! - see the Epicurean gods with our physical eyes. The "truth" of their existence takes place entirely in our minds by reasoning through their existence through contemplation. But through that contemplation, Epicurus asserts that their existence is εναργής "clearly discernable to us / manifest to us in our minds."
Right - I understand what you are saying, but just for purposes of this conversation the second sentence there is the conclusion you are drawing. It may make senses, but it doesn't seem to entirely jibe with the references about receiving "images" of the gods, whether with the mind as a "suprasensory" faculty as Dewitt describes it as otherwise. And it may not also account for "anticipations" depending on what we believe those to be.
And of course the next step in that positioning is to take a position whether the "gods" exist ONLY as constructs of the mind or whether they also have independent physical existence in the manner described by Velleius. At the moment I can't remember your position on that (?) I presume you are siding with what we've often described as he "idealist" position vs the "realist" position (though I am not sure i really like those labels).
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Ok I see. Bailey says "clear vision" rather than just manifest.
You have done tremendous work on this so I am the furthest away from wanting to be critical. And I don't like things that are so footnoted that the text is hard to read.
I tend to think that the best way to keep these controversies in mind is with a "list of controversies" that applies everywhere and spells out the text issues so that we don't have to rely on every edition to make the same caveats.
I dunno. Any ideas on generally keeping these issues front and center? I am glad Elli made the comment - that's the power of teamwork as I probably never would have raised this
Don you have probably answered this elsewhere but what is the source of this?
It has two primary definitions:
visible, palpable, in bodily shape, properly of gods appearing in their own forms (in Homer); so of a dream or vision; ex., ἐναργὴς ταῦρος "in visible form a bull, a very bull"
manifest to the mind's eye, distinct
I was recalling that Bailey simply said "manifest" (I need to check) so that by including the longer phrase you essentially take sides as translator with one side of the argument as to how the gods are perceived. Likewise if you used only the word "distinct" there would be similar ambiguities.
No doubt this kind of "taking sides" happens all the time. I need to read back at your text - are you footnoting to highlight this ambiguity.
This is such a recurring issue - how to thread the needle between taking sides , footnotes, etc. That in itself needs to be a regular topic of conversation.
No doubt many of the finer points that we regularly debate are colored by these issues. One of many questions is how to keep in our minds which things are clear and which are not.
Elli has made two posts in another location that are relevant to this thread. Unfortunately I can't "move" them here so that the show up under Elli's name, but I can paste them so they will be preserved in this conversation. Elli, if you decide to adjust anything I am pretty sure that as an admin you can edit this post, so please feel free to do that!
Here is the text of each:
I read in the translation that was made by Don on Epicurus letter to Menoeceus, a phrase that makes me to feel surprised:
"Gods exist, and the knowledge of them is manifest to the mind's eye". 
Sorry, but I have an objection. This phrase "to the mind's eye" as it is said, it leads to that famous NΟΥΣ/ΝOUS/MIND by Plato, and in extention it leads to the stoicicm, as this was their opinion about gods.
No, the greek gods were not be manifest with any mind's eye, BUT they were be manifest WITH SENSES and FEELINGS, as they were totally materialistic! And this is the clear big picture that Epicurus means with his phrase in the letter to Meneoceus.
Beauty and virtue and such are worthy of honor, if they bring pleasure; but if not then bid them farewell!
These were the gods as mentioned by Epicurus in his letter to Meneoceus, and in our days, as excellent are described, by Dimitris Liantinis!
What defines the difference between Greeks and Christians? A difference that from a certain point and beyond is being opposed, opposition, rift, a fight fire with water.
This which is defines the difference is something else and clear, as the olive leaf. But for this reason, exactly is ultimate and extreme.
The difference between the two is that the Greeks built a world based on observation and understanding, while the Christians built a world based on the assumption and imagination.
The observation of the Greeks is of such of a quality that always is to be ensure in practice of what is happening in Nature, and always demonstrated in tangible from the experiment in the laboratory.
BECAUSE…
The Religion of the Greeks
Ιf we count the strong position that the gods and the religions gave birth in primarily level from the fear of human towards life, and in advanced and to a second level of this matter from the fear of human towards death, then we will find that the religion of the Greeks is an exception as occurred that differently constitutes a unique mission.
The religion of the Greeks, i.e did not come from their fear, but it came from their sorrow to overcome the pain caused by their rational view for Nature and life.
In other words, the religion of the Greeks created by their honest and brave attitude to overcome their pessimism and melancholy.
But between the fear of life and death, and the need of the Greeks to capitulate with their pain from what gave birth to their knowledge that the world is heavy, there is a little difference which gives the maximum effect.
The religion of the Greeks, i.e. is not the case and offspring of the imagination, like all other religions, but it is the aesthetic representation of the phenomena of Nature.
Thus, the gods of the Greeks are not neither secret and invisible presences. They are not ghosts of the mind, and wind’s constructions, hypothetical words and inventions of the mind, and beings of a waking sleep.
Instead, the gods of the Greeks are the images made up from the natural phenomena with slender intelligence and dexterity. They made by fluttering of a rational imagination, the whole, the simple, the non trembling, and the prosperous.
And above all this: the gods of Greeks they were attested by sensory, touching them with the hands, facing them with the eyes, there are factual and materialistic.
Apollo suddenly, is the sun and the music regularity of the Nature.
Artemis is the Moon. Both of those two sisters symbolize the light of the day and night and were born on the island of Delos, word which means the clarity and the light.
Neptune is the sea.
Hephaestus is the fire and the metals.
Athena is the intelligence of the human, for this she is the protector of the ingenious Odysseus.
Aeolus is the sixteen airs to the seas.
Demeter is the joy of the fruits, the wheat, the rhubarb, the apple trees and vines, as the verse of Artsivald Maklis says.
And Jupiter is the thunder and the rain, which is falling like sperm to fertilize bravely the thirsty land. That's why the Greeks near other things, they create him as the lover of the more magnificent mortal women. Leda, Europe, Ious, Leto, Alcmene, Semele, Olympiad of Philip.
Thus, the story goes and with the thirty thousand gods of the Greeks. Everyone is also a real, functional, indestructible, the beneficial and harmful true and a beautiful natural phenomenon.
In other words, the religion of the Greeks is an aesthetic status of Nature’s elements, and in this way it is a variant of the Greek’s art.
The Geometric evidence of this proposal is given by the fact that the religion of the Greeks is all in their art.
Beauty and virtue and such are worthy of honor, if they bring pleasure; but if not then bid them farewell!
Don, I hit the "thanks" on Elli's post but even after reading your very detailed article I don't have the Greek ability (or maybe the brainpower) to assess any of this on my own. Are the two of you together?
Laconic to the max, but welcome!
In this episode near the end Kalosyni asks a question about "wonder" - and here is the excerpt from Lucretius Book 2 that I quoted (this is Humphries translation, and I need to get the line number):
Direct your mind
To a true system. Here is something new
For ear and eye. Nothing is ever so easy
But what, at first, it is difficult to trust.
Nothing is great and marvelous, but what
All men, a little at a time, begin
To mitigate their sense of awe. Look up,
Look up at the pure bright color of the sky,
The wheeling stars, the moon, the shining sun!
If all these, all of a sudden, should arise
For the first time before our mortal sight,
What could be called more wonderful, more beyond
The heights to which aspiring mind might dare?
Nothing, I think. And yet, a sight like this,
Marvelous as it is, now draws no man
To lift his gaze to heaven's bright areas.
We are a jaded lot. But even so
Don't be too shocked by something new, too scared
To use your reasoning sense, to weigh and balance,
So that if in the end a thing seems true,
You welcome it with open arms; if false,
You do your very best to strike it down.
Welcome @Faunus !
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It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read. Feel free to join in on one or more of our conversation threads under various topics found throughout the forum, where you can to ask questions or to add in any of your insights as you study the Epicurean philosophy.
And time has also indicated to us that if you can find the time to read one book which will best explain classical Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to most modern "eclectic" interpretations of Epicurus, that book is Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy.
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Do we know that Sophron was not an Epicurean, even though he was governor?
I guess we have never discussed what that phrasing "member of the school" really means. Somehow officially enrolled, or just loosely Epicurean which might have included someone in agreement but not physically present - especially if we don't lock ourselves into thinking that everyone was living essentially in a commune.
You have to think that Danae would not fall in love with someone who didn't share her general views - although strange things happen in love, and it's hard to say what mistress or courtesan entails.
Edit: Actually I find that story confusing on first read as to the relationships so I am not sure who Danae was enamoured with!
Also I thought Sophron was a name for a character in AFDIA but now I don't see it. I was wondering if the name of the Hedonae character in AFDIA might have come from Danae cause they sound like similar personalities. If I recall in AFDIA it's not clear whose daughter Hedonae really is.
Thanks Don! Wow as to that story of Danae, it is amazing what details are preserved from antiquity when so much is also lost.
And in this case the detail seems to show that she was cut from the same mold as her illustrious parents!
A female name for the future to keep in mind as something to be proud of!
Episode 151 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week we continue to discuss early development of the Epicurean school in the chapter "The New School In Athens."
Translation by H.L. Mencken, 1918.
30:
“The instinctive hatred of reality: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that merely to be “touched” becomes unendurable, for every sensation is too profound. The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all bounds and distances in feeling: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that it senses all resistance, all compulsion to resistance, as unbearable anguish (—that is to say, as harmful, as prohibited by the instinct of self-preservation), and regards blessedness (joy) as possible only when it is no longer necessary to offer resistance to anybody or anything, however evil or dangerous—love, as the only, as the ultimate possibility of life… These are the two physiological realities upon and out of which the doctrine of salvation has sprung. I call them a sublime super-development of hedonism upon a thoroughly unsalubrious soil. What stands most closely related to them, though with a large admixture of Greek vitality and nerve-force, is epicureanism, the theory of salvation of paganism. Epicurus was a typical decadent: I was the first to recognize him.—The fear of pain, even of infinitely slight pain—the end of this can be nothing save a religion of love… ”
58. But it [Roman civilization] was not strong enough to stand up against the corruptest of all forms of corruption—against Christians… These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality—this cowardly, effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all “souls”, step by step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own pride. The sneakishness of hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica in the drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge—all that sort of thing became master of Rome: the same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent form, Epicurus had combatted. One has but to read Lucretius to know what Epicurus made war upon—not paganism, but “Christianity”, which is to say, the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and immortality.—He combatted the subterranean cults, the whole of latent Christianity—to deny immortality was already a form of genuine salvation.—Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable intellect in Rome was Epicurean—when Paul appeared… Paul, the Chandala hatred of Rome, of “the world”, in the flesh and inspired by genius—the Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence… What he saw was how, with the aid of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from Judaism, a “world conflagration” might be kindled; how, with the symbol of “God on the cross”, all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic intrigues in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power. “Salvation is of the Jews.”—Christianity is the formula for exceeding and summing up the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of Osiris, that of the GreatMother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his discernment of this fact the genius of Paul showed itself. His instinct was here so sure that, with reckless violence to the truth, he put the ideas which lent fascination to every sort of Chandala religion into the mouth of the “Saviour” as his own inventions, and not only into the mouth—he made out of him something that even a priest of Mithras could understand… This was his revelation at Damascus: he grasped the fact that he needed the belief in immortality in order to rob “the world” of its value, that the concept of “hell” would master Rome—that the notion of a “beyond” is the death of life. Nihilist and Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme.
42. Once more the priestly instinct of the Jew perpetrated the same old master crime against history—he simply struck out the yesterday and the day before yesterday of Christianity, and invented his own history of Christian beginnings. Going further, he treated the history of Israel to another falsification, so that it became a mere prologue to his achievement: all the prophets, it now appeared, had referred to his “Saviour”… Later on the church even falsified the history of man in order to make it a prologue to Christianity… The figure of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the consequences of his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing remained in even remote contact with reality. Paul simply shifted the centre of gravity of that whole life to a place behind this existence—in the lie of the “risen” Jesus. At bottom, he had no use for the life of the Saviour—what he needed was the death on the cross, and something more. To see anything honest in such aman as Paul, whose home was at the centre of the Stoical enlightenment, when he converts an hallucination into a proof of the resurrection of the Saviour, or even to believe his tale that he suffered from this hallucination himself—this would be a genuine niaiserie in a psychologist. Paul willed the end; therefore he also willed the means.—What he himself didn’t believe was swallowed readily enough by the idiots among whom he spread his teaching.—What he wanted was power; in Paul the priest once more reached out for power—he had use only for such concepts, teachings and symbols as served the purpose of tyrannizing over the masses and organizing mobs. What was the only part of Christianity that Mohammed borrowed later on? Paul’s invention, his device for establishing priestly tyranny and organizing the mob: the belief in the immortality of the soul—that is to say, the doctrine of “judgment.”
(Gutenberg edition, translated by Helen Zimmern ) Chapter 1, section 9
You desire to LIVE “according to Nature”? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live—is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, “living according to Nature,” means actually the same as “living according to life”—how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature “according to the Stoa,” and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise—and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves—Stoicism is self-tyranny—Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature?… But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to “creation of the world,” the will to the causa prima.
Beyond Good And Evil, (Gutenberg edition, translated by Helen Zimmern) Chapter 5, section 188
In contrast to laisser-aller, every system of morals is a sort of tyranny against “nature” and also against “reason”, that is, however, no objection, unless one should again decree by some system of morals, that all kinds of tyranny and unreasonableness are unlawful What is essential and invaluable in every system of morals, is that it is a long constraint. In order to understand Stoicism, or Port Royal, or Puritanism, one should remember the constraint under which every language has attained to strength and freedom—the metrical constraint, the tyranny of rhyme and rhythm.
Beyond Good And Evil, (Gutenberg edition, translated by Helen Zimmern) Chapter 5, section 198
All the systems of morals which address themselves with a view to their “happiness,” as it is called—what else are they but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of DANGER from themselves in which the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad propensities, insofar as such have the Will to Power and would like to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form—because they address themselves to “all,” because they generalize where generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously, especially of “the other world.” That is all of little value when estimated intellectually, and is far from being “science,” much less “wisdom”; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity, stupidity—whether it be the indifference and statuesque coldness towards the heated folly of the emotions, which the Stoics advised and fostered; or the no-more-laughing and no-more-weeping of Spinoza, the destruction of the emotions by their analysis and vivisection, which he recommended so naively; or the lowering of the emotions to an innocent mean at which they may be satisfied, the Aristotelianism of morals; or even morality as the enjoyment of the emotions in a voluntary attenuation and spiritualization by the symbolism of art, perhaps as music, or as love of God, and of mankind for God’s sake—for in religion the passions are once more enfranchised, provided that…; or, finally, even the complaisant and wanton surrender to the emotions, as has been taught by Hafis and Goethe, the bold letting-go of the reins, the spiritual and corporeal licentia morum in the exceptional cases of wise old codgers and drunkards, with whom it “no longer has much danger.”—This also for the chapter: “Morals as Timidity.”
One of the greatest men, inventor of an heroic-idyllic way to philosophize: Epicurus [Human, All Too Human § 295].
The «after-death» doesn’t matter to us at all! […] Again prevails Epicurus! [Sunrise § 72/34]. Yea! I’m proud to enjoy what […] I hear and read in Epicurus, the Mediterranean joy of antiquity. […] The wisdom had taken some steps forward with Epicurus, but then it went many thousand steps backward [The Joyous Science § 45].
Epicurus would have won; each respectable mind was Epicurean in the Roman Empire: and it’s done! Then Paul arrives on the scene… [The Antichrist § 58].
The reawakened sciences have been reunited point by point with Epicurus’ philosophy, while they have escaped point by point Christianity. [Human, All Too Human § 68].
Why we seem Epicurean. We modern-day men proceed warily with farthest beliefs […] a cognitive approach we would define Epicurean, which doesn’t wish to escape from many-sided appearance of things; […] a dislike for big words and moral poses [The Cheerful Science § 375].
The Epicurean man uses his higher learning to make himself independent from dominant opinions; he overlooks on these, while the Cynic confines himself to their denial. The former walks so to speak by the side of windless paths, in well-sheltered places, in the half-light, while over him, in the wind, the tops of the trees rustle and show him how much the world out there is worked up [Human, All Too Human § 275].
That’s the ataraxia state Epicurus extolled as the end-goal and gods’ condition; to be, at that moment, free from bad urge of wish […] [Moral’s Genealogy. § 6].
“A little garden, some figs, a piece of cheese, plus three or four good friends – that was the sum of Epicurus’ luxuriousness [Human, All Too Human, II, part 2, § 192].
Stoic and Epicurean. […] The one who envisage that the external necessity enables oneself to ‘spin out a long thread’ acts well to arrange for an Epicurean way of life; all men fond of intellectual work have done so! Sure enough it would be for them the worst loss the one of ruining their subtle feeling and getting the skin of the Stoics in return, with all the quills of a sea urchin [The Cheerful Science § 306].
Four are the pairs which, for me the follower, did not turn out alien: Epicurus and Montaigne, Goethe and Spinoza, Plato and Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer. With them I must debate, when I have wandered alone for a long time, by them I want to be approved and amended […] [Human, All too Human, II 408, The Journey in Hades].
Is there any more dangerous seduction that might tempt one to renounce one’s faith in the gods of Epicurus who have no care and are unknown, and to believe instead in some petty deity who is full of care and personally knows every little hair on our head and finds nothing nauseous in the most miserable small service? [The Gay Science § 2771].
The following are not explicit references to Epicurus, but highly consistent with the Epicurean perspective:
Thus Spake Zarathustra, Walter Kaufman translation
“I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth…”
Someone coming across this thread would probably also be interested in:
1 - He definitely has a "dark" side. On the other hand, darkness does exist and we have to come to terms with it in order to really be in touch with reality. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, I think someone once said
2 - We definitely want to avoid too much eclecticism here. Discussion of Nietzsche or anyone else needs to be centered on "Do these arguments assist in understanding or presentation of Epicurean philosophy?"
3 - We need a thread on living like the gods - while at the same time acknowledging that unless we perfect the ability to regenerate and maintain our own atomic structure we're not going to achieve it ourselves 
At some point a thread on the science of life extension would be appropriate too!
Passing note while editing: We make comments in this episode as to how far to carry the analogy of a "garden" and I made the comment that Diogenes Laertius says that Epicurus held that the wise man will be fond of "the country." It occurs to me that I may have that wrong in thinking that this is an urban vs rural reference, and that this is saying that the wise man will be fond of "HIS country" almost in a patriotic way. That latter interpretation might actually be supported by other comments such as calling someone (the Cynics ?) an "enemy of Hellas." I am not sure which is the right meaning so this is something to clarify.
As this thread is now very old let's post new comments on organizational issues in this thread: General Thoughts On Organizational Methods - 2022 Edition
Setting up this thread as a possible place to discuss thoughts on organizational options as an update to the 2019 thread of similar topic.
Pacatus I figured you would get a reaction from Don in that exchange!
I agree with most everything that Don said, including this, but I will comment further:
P.S. In some sense, we are *all* neo-Epicureans.
Because we do have a regular flow in and out of the forum it's good to cover this regularly. The main reason for the "Not-Neo" list and associated posting guidelines and other rules is that while there are many places on the internet to discuss philosophy in general, and especially to promote Stoicism, there are not many devoted to Epicurus. The experience I and others had at Facebook is that the sheer numbers and loudness of the Stoics quickly drives out and even "intimidates" people who are honestly interested in Epicurean philosophy from pursuing it. As a result this forum is first and foremost a place where people interested in an environment supportive of Epicurus will have an opportunity to talk in a supportive atmosphere without have to deal with overbearing opponents of the philosophy.
Don also mentioned the difficulties of agreeing on anything, and he's surely right about that. Luckily no one here is trying to be a guru or go for world domination or anything like that, so as for our rules, all they are geared toward is maintaining a friendly pro-Epicurean environment for discussion. If you are interested in reading the details of a discussion we had several years ago on ideas to set up more of an umbrella organization, you might be interested in this thread. Those discussions did more to illuminate the difficulties more than to come to any agreements, but I am sure that over time the "organizational" question will come up again and again. For now, I've limited myself to the still difficult but more attainable goal of "herding cats" in a discussion forum.
But you will be comforted to know that I take the subject of this thread to heart. I would like to meet my end like Epicurus surrounded by friends, but I am not sure I will attain that in real life. Unless I meet my end in a totally unexpected accident, I commit to taking steps before I follow Atticus and Cassius L. and Diodorus (many many years from now, hopefully) to be sure that there's a smooth organizational transition into the future for this forum.
PS - Pacatus due to the length of that older thread most people don't take the time to wade through it. If you happen to find it interesting enough to do so, please feel free to comment.
