via
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Can I get an Amen..............?
"We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works."
-Douglas Adams (with more cool quotes found by following this link)
Fifty years ago............................
Led Zeppelin......................................................You Shook Me
Friday, May 24, 2019
Fifty years ago.........................
Led Zeppelin.......................................Babe I'm Gonna Leave You
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Fifty years ago.......................
Led Zeppelin.............................................Good Times Bad Times
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Adding and subtracting....................
Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.
-Jeremy Bentham
On love........................................
Love and relationships are the ends—everything else is just the means. We, as a species, segment love. When we are young, we take in love—our parents', teachers', caregivers'. When we enter adulthood, we find transactional love; we love others in exchange for something in return—their love, security, or intimacy. Then there's complete love, surrendering to loving someone regardless of whether they love you back, or whether you get anything in return, for that matter. No conditions, no exchange, just a decision to love this person and focus solely on their well-being.
Love received is comforting, love reciprocated is rewarding, and love given completely is eternal.
-Scott Gallowy, The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning
Fifty years ago.......................
The Allman Brothers Band.....................Black Hearted Woman
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
On truth.............................
"A truth is a useful, reliable statement of how the world is. You can ignore it, but it will cost you, because the world won’t work the way you hope it will. You can dislike the truth, but pretending it isn’t true isn’t an effective way to accomplish your goals or to further our culture."
-Seth Godin
Fred Reed, bless his heart.................
....................................gives some thought to Darwin and the state of our universities. A few wee excerpts:
As an interested layman of lukewarm but engaged intelligence, I would say thusly to the Department of Biology: “If you want to discredit Mr. Behe and persuade the thoughtful public of your views, perhaps you should go beyond assertions of virtue and actually answer some of Mr. Behi’s questions. And mine. The best way to quash dissent is to show it to be wrong. Please do so.”
---------------------------------------------------
Abiogenesis? The fact is (tell me why it is not a fact) that the Biology Department does not know of what the ancient seas consisted, does not know what seas would be necessary for life to appear, bearing in mind that reactions depend crucially on concentrations, pH, reducing or oxidizing atmosphere, temperature, half-life of intermediates, and so on; cannot reproduce the event in the laboratory; cannot draw a reproducing, metabolizing molecule on paper; and cannot show the event to be mathematically probable. What reason, really, is there to believe that it happened, other than that the Biology Department cannot think of another acceptable explanation?
The response of the orthodox is usually “billions and billions of years,” and “lots and lots of seawater.” This is so vague as to embarrass a football player majoring in Breathing for Credit.
-----------------------------------------------At no risk of making friends in the Department: Darwin’s idea was less scientific than metaphysical, more akin to the elan vital or the will to power than to the Principia Mathematica. Like Communism, Christianity, Islam, and Freudian psychiatry, it was an overarching explanation of vast tracts of existence. These have emotional appeal and attract ardent adherents. Evolution inevitably was interpreted by the common run of men as a sort of biological Coueism, “Every day in every way, we are getting better and better.” as a human progression toward the more advanced and admirable. Of course it said no such thing, but few noticed.
Does this strike you as ironic...................?
Every time Democrats look at a problem, they think of a program. And while those programs often point the way forward, they need to focus their energy on convincing the middle class that they share their values more than just their economic interests. There is more to voters than their wallets. To do that, Democrats need to prove to them that they know the difference between right and wrong, and that begins with owning the terms accountability and responsibility. No matter how privileged, Democrats need to be the ones demanding that those who fall short be made to answer for their own decisions. Every one of us should have to live by the same moral and ethical codes. The nation’s elite shouldn’t have any special license to take the easy way out.
-Rahm Emanuel, as extracted from here
via
in the familiar fabric of dawn...............
You can
die for it—
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
Of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
-Mary Oliver, Sunrise
Fifty years ago.........................
The Allman Brothers Band...................................Whipping Post
Monday, May 20, 2019
Tougher than it looks........................
Most people will get much more out of destroying their own wrong ideas than trying to come up with new ones all the time. Once you get rid of the clutter, all that's left will be the good stuff that you can use to improve your results.
-Ben Carlson, from A Wealth of Common Sense
Checking in with............................
...........................................................Baruch Spinoza:
“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”
“Happiness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself; nor do we delight in happiness because we restrain from our lusts; but on the contrary, because we delight in it, therefore we are able to restrain them.”
“No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.”
“He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.”
“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”
"He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity."
“When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master.”
“The greatest secret of monarchic rule...is to keep men deceived and to cloak in the specious name of religion the fear by which they must be checked, so that they will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting.”
According to the counting thing...........
...................................on this blog, this is post number 22,222. Sorry for littering all over the Intertunnel floor. Hope you've found something of value.
What a country....................................
Madison's genius was to understand that the best bulwark against tyranny was not virtue—virtue helps, but should never be relied upon—but ambition countering ambition, faction countering faction.
You see it even in the confirmation process for Neil Gorsuch, Trump's supremely qualified and measured Supreme Court nominee. He's a slam dunk, yet some factions have scraped together a campaign to block him. Their ads are plaintive and pathetic. Yet I find them warmly reassuring. What a country—where even the vacuous have a voice.
The anti-Trump opposition flatters itself as "the resistance." As if this is Vichy France. It's not. It's 21st-century America. And the good news is that the checks and balances are working just fine.
-Charles Krauthammer, from his 3/24/17 essay found in this book
Fifty years ago......................
The Allman Brothers..............................Every Hungry Woman
Sunday, May 19, 2019
The question is often...................
.....................................more important than the answer:
Several of the readers with whom I correspond are under the immovable impression that I am against making money, or improvements in technology, per se. In fact my outlook is cutting-edge mediaeval Catholic. The moral questions are instead such as, How is the money made? And, for what are the improvements to be used? As I must remind e.g. my Chief Texas Correspondent, I am not against electricity or indoor plumbing. But I am against worshipping such things, or making them the criteria for high civilization.
“Progress” in this kind is an empty achievement. Every supposed “advance” requires the sacrifice of something, that ought to be carefully examined. The real question is not who makes the decisions, but whether the decisions are good. We get lost in technicalities. The ultimate human decision, whether to opt for Heaven or Hell, does not involve statistical analysis.
-David Warren, from this blog post
About the Constitution.......................
The makers of the Constitution earned in a manner the full praise that has ever since been bestowed on them. But they did not, as it has often been suggested they did, create a sort of archetype and pattern for all governments that may hereafter partake of a federal character. Nor has the curious machine which they devised—the balanced opposition between two legislative chambers, between the whole Legislature and the independent executive power of the President, between the governing power of the moment and the permanent expression of the people's will embodied in certain almost unalterable laws—worked conspicuously better than other political constitutions. The American Constitution owes its particularities partly to the form which the State governments had naturally taken, and partly to sheer misunderstanding of the British Constitution, but much more to the want at the time of any strong sense of national unity and to the existence of a good deal of dislike to all governments whatsoever. The sufficient merit of its founders was of patient and skillful diplomatists, who, undeterred by difficulties, found out the most satisfactory settlement that had a chance of being accepted by the States.
-Lord Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln: A Complete Biography
A canary in the coal mine...............?
"We now worship at the altar of innovation and youth, versus character or kindness."
-Scott Galloway, The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning
the actual thing..........................
Our society is very result-oriented, that’s why we are so competitive. That’s why we are always stressed, because we are always looking at something in the distance. If you are always looking at the top of the mountain you are climbing, you cannot be aware of the grass and flowers growing at your feet. We are always looking ahead, aren’t we? And then the actual thing, the actual living, passes us by. We are locked inside our brains, cut off from the present moment, always centered on something beyond our reach. We are imagining this mirage of happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment which will magically appear once this and this and this happens. But what’s happening right now is “it” and it’s the only “it” we have. The rest is just fabrication.
Fifty years ago.............................
The Allman Brothers Band...............................Trouble No More
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