That is a small part of a long post in the “early days” of this blog.
Xenophanes, about 2500 years ago:
The certain truth there is no man who knows, nor ever shall be, about the gods and all the things whereof I speak. Yea, even if a man should chance to say something utterly right, still he himself knows it not — there is nowhere anything but guessing.
quoted in A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, page 40
This Surviving the World uses the quote from Picasso “Everything you can imagine is real”.
When I saw that I had just read this in the last day or two:
The thing that can be thought and that for the sake of which the thought exists is the same; for you cannot find thought without something that is, as to which it is uttered.*
Everything you can imagine is real.
You cannot find thought without something that is
*Parmenides (fifth century BC), quoted in A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, page 49
Every once in awhile the question comes up, “If you could live at the time and place of your choosing, where and when”.
There are people who claim that they would rather have lived at an earlier time.
My answer has always been here and now. By here I mean the US. I could easily see myself living many other places over Indiana.
TPM posted a video recently that clearly explains the primary reasons why I choose here and now.
More evidence that Mike Pence is thinking of running for president. He contributed money to Republicans running for state office in Iowa.
I think he would have a better shot at governor of Indiana (since the current gov is term limited and might run for pres himself) than he would have at president. Still not getting my vote, though.
About seven months ago I posted that Sarah Palin was not going about things properly if she was planning to run for president.
Now she admits she is considering running for president (are you not shocked?), but she still avoids ad lib discussions of policy.
I have been contemplating the recent election and what the shellacking of Democrats by Republicans “means” if anything.
The first point is that it means it was a mid-term election. I have already pointed this out back in January.
The second point is that the economy is weak and the unemployment rate is high. So the election result can be construed to reflect the voters frustration with that situation. The problem with this is that the election results did not give us a government that is likely to do much, if anything, about the economy. So to say that the voters were voting the economy is to say that the voters voted against their own interest.
There are those who say the voters delivered a mandate to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. But again, the government the voters created is not going to repeal the act (at best the House will have a vote on this), so it makes no sense to claim the electorate wanted repeal when the electorate didn’t come close to voting for a government that could deliver such a thing.
Some voters were voting for fiscal responsibility. Most of those were voting for the party that was less likely to deliver that, but this is not relevant to our discussion.
Sure, there were plenty of individual voters who were voting the economy or voting repeal of health care reform, but I am looking for the meaning of the election result, not the motives of individual voters.
What did the voters give us? They gave (we gave ourselves) a divided government. It sure looks like we will have gridlock for the next two years on everything but the most banal legislation.
Why did the voters give us this? Legislation fatigue. Are we not all (those of us paying any attention at all) just a bit exhausted from the last two years of congress? I was ready for more, but I concede that I could use a break. Now we all have a chance to catch our breath.
A couple of weeks ago I had to go to a restaurant to watch the Packers play the Redskins since the game was not on any of the cable channels I get. During the second half a Redskin fan sat down at the table next to mine. It was not too long before we exchanged a couple of comments on the game. Soon after that he started complaining about the officiating. I about lost it (only about though). In the first place, I can’t stand it when people blame the refs. In the second place, the refs in that Packer/Redskin game were not doing any favors for the Packers any more than favors for the Redskins.
When I got home I checked the blogs and, sure enough, there was no shortage of Packer fans complaining about the refs.
The refereeing in the NFL is simply bad. The only virtue it has is that all plays are called equally badly and all teams get their turn at being screwed over. Still, good refereeing would be better than bad.
Tonight I am watching the Phils and Giants play for the National League penant. The game is on Fox. On replays of pitches, Fox has the graphic of the strike zone showing exactly where the pitch was located. It is amusing to listen to the announcer, Tim McCarver, when the umpire calls the pitch a strike and the graphic shows the pitch was clearly a ball. McCarver just ignores the graphic completely and, as the replay of the pitch is shown, talks about how the pitch caught the outside of the plate. The replay clearly looks like it was outside and the graphic confirms it, but we don’t want to show up the umpires.
Umpiring in baseball is slightly better than what goes on in the NFL, but the ball and strike calling is a joke. The rest of the calls are usually correct, but there are still plenty of errors.
I wonder how long it will be before sports really embraces technology to help call the games.
Have you seen or heard Prudential’s new ad campaign?
This rock has never stood still.
Although I do not recall the exact phrase that was used, I am certain that once upon a time their advertising conveyed the idea of stability with that rock. Solid, never changing.
Now we know better I guess.
It is clear even to me that I have not been posting with much frequency, so I thought I would give my loyal reader an explanation (assuming I have a loyal reader).
I simply do not have as much time to waste as before. Why? Because I’m trying to learn how to play the piano. I’m sure my posting frequency will increase again once I’ve mastered the instrument.
:)
The Westboro Baptist Church is the group that protested at the funeral of the Marine. The issue at hand, whether the protest is protected speech, seems difficult, but I’m inclined to think that it is protected speech.
But that is not the subject of this post. I am interested in the logic of the protest message “If you want them to stop dying, stop sinning”
Seriously?! If we became a 100% Christian nation and sinless then none of us would die? Or none of us would die in war? Or we would know no war?
I thought that in Christianity all people are, almost by definition, sinners. So how could we be sinles
It is just absurd to think that our soldiers would suddenly become unkillable.
It must be that they mean we would know no war. Certainly if we were all sinless Christians we would never attack anyone and no one would ever attack us. Yeah, that must be it.