10.29.2004
An Elegy
To your shadow, these flowers,
these flowers pure and bright,
For flowers are beauty and light.
To your heartbeat now quelled,
to your gaze now suppressed,
For flowers are softness and rest.
To your voice, but a whisper
in the darkness of space,
For flowers are silence and grace.
Anonymous,
As translated from the French by Douglas Hofstadter.
--Posted by s. on Friday, October 29, 2004.
10.28.2004
"I've been walking down memory lane, without a ding-dong thing on my mind."
My goodness, it's nice that October is almost over.
In honor of the month, I present this story, by a man who does honor the month, Ray Bradbury.
The October Game
Take a few minutes (15-20) to read the story, beginning to end, and then smile sort of uncomfortably, and be glad that we live in a world where terror really does still exist (even though there's a war on it.) And remember the value of fear. Remember WHAT to fear, WHO to fear. . .And don't be afraid of the little things.
--Posted by s. on Thursday, October 28, 2004.
10.27.2004
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
- Groucho Marx
--Posted by s. on Wednesday, October 27, 2004.
10.26.2004
Because 2004 is 20 years too late
--Posted by s. on Tuesday, October 26, 2004.
10.25.2004
Pre-election week! Bumper Stickers, T-shirts, Posters, Signs, etc. . . Are Back!
q. what's the difference between iraq and vietnam?
a. Êgeorge bush had a plan to get out of vietnam.
--Posted by s. on Monday, October 25, 2004.
If people ask me,
I always tell them:
"Quite well, thank you, I'm very glad to say."
If people ask me,
I always answer,
"Quite well, thank you, how are you to-day?"
I always answer,
I always tell them,
If they ask me
Politely.....
BUT SOMETIMES
I wish
That they wouldn't.
-Alan Alexander Milne
--Posted by s. on Monday, October 25, 2004.
10.22.2004
Are you scared yet?
--Posted by s. on Friday, October 22, 2004.
10.21.2004
What's happening to society
22. I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
23. I have never let my schooling interfer with my education.
24. I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
25. I thoroughly disapproveof deuls. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly by the hand and lead himto a quiet place and kill him.
26. I was gratifiedto be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.
27. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man.
28. If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
--Posted by a. on Thursday, October 21, 2004.
10.14.2004
21.I did not attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
--Posted by a. on Thursday, October 14, 2004.
I have a very nice mind
It shows me many things
All of which are wondrous
Like Fish and Queens and Kings.
But when my mind stays idle
Not doing all its tricks
It shows thing of a scary sort
That is, of politics.
--Posted by a. on Thursday, October 14, 2004.
10.13.2004
Alan Alda's First and Second Laws of Laws:
(from kottke.org)
1. All laws are local.
2. A law does not know how local it is.
--Posted by s. on Wednesday, October 13, 2004.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . .
a collection of notable first lines
- It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
- When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
- Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckooÉ
- Once there was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
- Call me Ishmael
- Far out in the unchartered backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
--Posted by s. on Wednesday, October 13, 2004.
10.12.2004
20. I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me th position.
--Posted by a. on Tuesday, October 12, 2004.
10.11.2004
19 Humor is the great thing,the saving thing. the minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirits takes their place.
--Posted by a. on Monday, October 11, 2004.
10.10.2004
Torah! Torah! Torah!
-War cry of the kamikazi rabbi.
--Posted by s. on Sunday, October 10, 2004.
10.09.2004
18 Honesty is the best policy- when there is money in it.
--Posted by a. on Saturday, October 09, 2004.
10.08.2004
11. Thou shalt not steal elections
--Posted by s. on Friday, October 08, 2004.
America- land of opportunity
Now coming to India
--Posted by a. on Friday, October 08, 2004.
17 Habit is habit and not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time
--Posted by a. on Friday, October 08, 2004.
10.07.2004
16. Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
--Posted by a. on Thursday, October 07, 2004.
10.06.2004
While pre-caucuses we made the statement that now-"presumptious nominee" John Kerry slightly resembles Paul McCartney, a statment we only slightly regret and don't really still believe in, (And what's wrong with a few flip-flops, every once in a while?), and recently posted a picture of him alongside Arnold J. Rimmer, we wish to move our celebrity/politico comparisons to his candidate, the incredibly young-looking 51 year old, John Edwards, who reminds us very strongly of the late John Ritter.
And also, the VP debate, we hear from people who know, was sort of the Darth Vader / Luke Skywalker matchup of the 04 race.
--Posted by s. on Wednesday, October 06, 2004.
10.05.2004
15. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
--Posted by a. on Tuesday, October 05, 2004.
10.04.2004
14. Fiction is obligated to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
--Posted by a. on Monday, October 04, 2004.
Martha's going to prision,
Get ready for pretty license plates.
--Posted by a. on Monday, October 04, 2004.
10.03.2004
Imagination spins the thread that the mind uses to weave life
Okay so I don't know what it mean, but it sounds good anyway
--Posted by a. on Sunday, October 03, 2004.
13. Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
--Posted by a. on Sunday, October 03, 2004.
10.02.2004
- Aristotle: It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.
- Isaac Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest, chickens in motion tend to cross roads.
- Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends on your frame of reference.
- Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
- Wolfgang Pauli: There already was a chicken on this side of the road.
--Posted by s. on Saturday, October 02, 2004.
I always wanted to meet the party of the first part. What does he eat for breakfast? I wonder if he wears boxer shorts.
--Posted by a. on Saturday, October 02, 2004.
12. Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
--Posted by a. on Saturday, October 02, 2004.
10.01.2004
Life is short,
Wear your party pants.
submitted by Winemiller Motors
--Posted by a. on Friday, October 01, 2004.
10. Courage is resistance of fear,mastery of fear not- absence of fear
11. Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
--Posted by a. on Friday, October 01, 2004.
And now for something completely different
The presented argument: The existence of God is proven by analogy. As a watch must have a designer, the universe (being a similar machine) must also have a designer. This designer we call "God", although one must be careful not to assume anything about the designer's nature - that is, the anthropomorphic attribute of said "being", beyond merely existance.
To push on it: To what extent can we (or do we want to) create the analogy that the universe - all of reality as we know it - is "like a watch". That is, the two entities have very different aspects, different modes of being, different charactaristics.
Start with a very simple analogy: Past experience has been had with a cup of coffee. You've noticed a cause/effect relationship, as such, in that when you drink a cup of coffee, you become more alert. And this is an experience you have had many times - not only once, but, say, every morning for most of your life, since you were maybe seven. And each time, you observe through experience that when you drink coffee, you wake up.
Suddenly, a cup of coffee appears in front of you (ignore apparent physical impossibilities associated with such an occurance).. You look at it. It looks like coffee. You smell it. It smells like coffee. All physical evidence seems to point to the reality of the coffee. You assume it is safe to map your previous experiences with mugs of coffee onto this new cup of coffee - that if you drink it, you will remain awake, neh? Of course - according to your experience, there is no evidence that it should be any different. So you drink it, fall asleep driving home at 3 in the morning, cause a major accident, although at this point you don't care about that, because you're dead.
What was different? Perhaps the coffee was decaf. Perhaps someone spiked it with an odorless sleeping potion. The point is, even in two seemingly very similar objects, the analogy didn't work. So how can we claim any "logical certainty" when we are comparing the universe - whatever that is - with a watch. At best, it is drastic oversimplification of a very complex issue.
But then, is it ever safe to make analogies? If we are essentially deceiving ourselves by doing so? How in the world can we think WITHOUT making analogies? Actually, a pretty strong argument could be made that human thought is composed entirely of analogies. . that we gain new ideas by comparisons and contrasts with old ideas.
Perhaps a return to the old spirit of d-con? More philosophy, less politics. Man, I hate politics.
--Posted by s. on Friday, October 01, 2004.
|
