In memory of Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. who alerted me that Man is God at Yale.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
* Dog Due
The development of breed standards in the late nineteenth century was an explicit attempt to give dog show judges a basis for awarding places. It was an implicit attempt to create dog fancy as a sort of connoisseurship in which extremely fine points bore great significance to those in the know. There is of course a certain phoniness to any sort of connoisseurship, whether it is in wine tasting or the cultivated admiration of fine painting, but the highly arbitrary nature of dog breed standards --- and their tendency to change every few years --- carried with it the frank implication that this was phonier, or at least more arbitrary, than most. (p.223)
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