Captain Absurd

icarian task: when you have a task you know you’re going to fail at anyways, so why not have some fun with it before it all comes crashing down

cassandrean task: when you have to deal with people you KNOW won’t listen to you, despite having accurate information, and having to watch them fumble about when you told them the solution from the start (most often witnessed in customer service)

"Murder is bad. In the time period discussed, people sometimes committed murders (2 citations). And most people agreed that murder was bad, but it was widely known that murders still happened."

And your advisor goes, "Did most people agree, though? Was it widely known?"

And you go (sigh.). Okay. And do twelve hours of going back through your readings. And rewrite.

"Murder is bad (4 citations). In this time, people sometimes committed murders (6 citations). People did not all agree that it was bad (2 citations). There was disagreement about exactly how bad (3 citations)."

And you look at your draft. And you go. But. But we all — I mean, the archival sources from the time are in fact QUITE CLEAR about how widely known it was! Like–! I've read hundreds of letters and a third of them mention murder! I've talked to so many historians of this time and place and we ALL talk about the murder thing!

And you look at the twelve goddamned hours of searching you did. And you write several increadingly desperate emails to colleagues. And after another few days, you come to the agonizing realization that, in fact, there are no citations of published work establishing that people knew murders occurred despite them being bad and against the law. And then you spend another week looking up those archival sources. And you rewrite again.

"Everyone knows that [reaction A] works like this and [reaction B] works like that". Very common way to start a paper or thesis in this field. Everybody knows this, we can carry on with the more interesting stuff about [reaction C].

Huh. These 73 citations all cite each other in a ouroboros and the only original source in the lot is a popular science book which is indeed worth citing, but it's a memoir, which I have read repeatedly, and the author of the memoir just threw this out there as another example of "things everyone just knew in those days".

So I sat there thinking ‘you want me to prove that the Ancient Egyptians knew what shame was, that very human emotion, using their own words in a culture for which we have very few examples of personal/private correspondence or notations that don’t suffer from strict formalities that are present in 98% of non literary texts? Okay then’ and went through hundreds of fragments over weeks to find this:

P.Bologna 1094 3, 5-10

sS m-H n pA xpS n pr-aA a.w.s. Dd n sS pA-wHm r-nty in.tw n=k sS pn n Dd Hna Dd r-nty m ir s iwty HAty=f iw bn n=f sbAy(t) ir sDr.tw iw.tw Hr mtr=k wrS.tw iw.tw Hr sbA=k iw bw sDm=k mtr nb iw i-ir=k pAy=k sxr pA kry Hr sDm mdt in.tw=f Hr kS tw.tw Hr irt sbAyt n mAi tw.tw Hr q-H ssmt Hrw-r=k bw rx.tw qi=k m-Xnw tA-tmm ix rx=k sw

Mahu, Scribe of the Armoury of Pharaoh l.p.h. speaks to the Scribe Pewehem. This letter is brought to you to the following effect: Do not be a senseless man who has no education. One spends the whole night teaching you and passes the whole day instructing you, without your listening to any teaching, but you act after your own fashion. The ape understands words, and it is brought to you from Kush. Lions are trained and Horses tamed: but as for you, one does not discern the like of you within all mankind. Take note of this.

(Caminos, 1954: 13, cf [Redacted], 2016: 59)

I think I sufficiently provided an example of someone (Scribe Mahu) enacting shame and impoliteness onto his student (Scribe Pewehem). 'Prove these humans had the concept of shame' was a wild task that required a wild citation.

You don't see that every day. Pretty big night for hockey. And listen to that crowd! They're loving this! Good for him! Good for Scott Hunter!