Tuesday Hatred: Luck Loves Balls and Balls Love Luck

“Techne loves Tyche and Tyche loves Techne”

Is what a German philosopher (Gadamer) reports a Greek philosopher (Aristotle) as quoting from ‘the poet'(which I’ll suppose to be Homer on account of the definite article). Just replace Techne with ‘skill‘ and Tyche with ‘luck‘, and the saying is the received wisdom of the lucky bastards who can afford to oligopolize the popular media.

I hate it (the latter). On the former I believe Homer, Aristotle and Gadamer (whilst lucky bastards themselves) to have something more nuanced in mind than making success and merit synonymous.

But to hell with nuance: the reality is that “Luck loves Balls and Balls love Luck”. Or (to construct an anachronism) – “Testes love Tyche and Tyche loves Testes”, because testosteron still makes the world go round as those unlucky enough to be born without an overdose of it feel every month in their paycheck. And I’m not only talking about women.

So if you want follow me on some fun facts on the importance of testicles for networking, my hatred continues below the fold.

Toxicology

For this week’s reading, we get a certain amount of reveal of how Marcus’s world works, and Marcus specifies a little more clearly what he thinks his theme is; we get a long stretch –difficult for me to enjoy– when the protagonist is alone in the middle of a bureaucracy; and, by sheer chance, we stopped just as the story seems geared to move back to the question of family bonds.