{"id":528,"date":"2011-02-03T23:54:55","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T04:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=528"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:25","slug":"thoughts-at-large","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2011\/02\/thoughts-at-large\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts at Large"},"content":{"rendered":"

The title is a tribute of sorts to Sydney J. Harris<\/a>, a syndicated newspaper columnist in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.\u00a0 His column, “Strictly Personal”, appeared in my hometown paper, one of the rare signs of intelligent life in my town.\u00a0 I am surprised how little about this writer can now be found on the internet — the link above provides only a taste.<\/p>\n

Once a week, Mr. Harris would title his column “Thoughts at Large”, an assortment of one-sentence commentaries on human behavior.\u00a0\u00a0 One of my junior-high-school teachers (whose name is now lost to me) made this a reading assignment — and I’m glad she did.\u00a0 Sydney J. Harris made me think about writing and think about thinking.<\/p>\n

He would often couch an observation in the form, “I do X, you do Y, and he does Z”, where X is exceptional, Y inferior, and Z contemptible — and of course all refer to the same trait.\u00a0 Example (by me): “I make careful choices; you leave your options open; he is indecisive.”\u00a0\u00a0 I liked these formulations on a number of levels.<\/p>\n

I was originally going to add my own “Thoughts at Large” but I think I’ll leave it at that.\u00a0 Does anyone else have thoughts of Sydney J. Harris?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The title is a tribute of sorts to Sydney J. Harris, a syndicated newspaper columnist in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.\u00a0 His column, “Strictly Personal”, appeared in my hometown paper, one of the rare signs of intelligent life in my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-at-large"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3707,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions\/3707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}