Fact Paradox and Random Musings

[midcan5]

The birth of time and space occurred some 15 billion years ago.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton when asked about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Dick Cheney, a four time draft dodger justified the Iraq invasion, claiming 'Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).'
If opinions are only opinions what are opinions.
There is only one Matriarchal society in the world, the Mosuo.
Thousands of Americans and it is estimated over a million Iraqis have died so far over these WMD.
Japan invaded the United States on December 7th, 1941. Today American flags adorn Japanese cars in America.
Do politicians wake up thinking about poverty in America or the world.
Recently I noticed a shirt made in Vietnam. Fifty six thousand Americans died in Vietnam fighting the spread of Communism.
Seinfeld was about nothing, John Cage once said he was saying nothing.
All industrial nations have universal healthcare except for the United States
'Semper Fi' stickers have been seen on Japanese and German cars.
The earth is four and one half billion years old.
What is a picture really worth. Robert Musil said pictures on the wall soon disappear.
The life span of elephants is 70 years.
George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.
Our language of nouns, things, divorced from context, makes for easy classification but little thought.
John Kerry served in Vietnam; Dick Cheney obtained four deferments.
Each weekend at Mass, we prayed for the conversion of Russia from Communism.
During the week we hid under our school desks preparing for nuclear holocaust.
All religions have as a central tenet the Golden Rule - none follow it.
George Tenet claimed WMD were a slam dunk; he received the Freedom Medal.
There are a hundred billion synapses in the brain.
All debate should be enthymematic; 98 percent of all Internet debate is ad hominem.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Do American boys still work on cars.
Do dreams mean anything. Do nightmares
The Iraq invasion has cost over 700 billion dollars and counting.
In just ten generations you have 2048 grandparents.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
Fossil fuels are the result of life death and time.
Does birth order matter.
Colin Powell provided complex testimony at the UN for WMD.
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, 1945. Approximately eleven more ovulations occurred before the egg dropped that became me.
George W. Bush praised Michael Brown after Katrina struck New Orleans.
Movies mirror our dream world, Hollywood movies often mirror nightmares of individual revenge and widespread catastrophe.
L. Paul Bremer was awarded a Freedom medal. So was Rosa Parks.
Photo Postcards of lynchings in America from 1883 till 1960 were displayed in February, 2000 in New York.
There are over four million porn websites in the world.
Evolution was never controversial in Asian; Asians never considered themselves top dog.
Tobacco kills approximately 400,000 people each year. Alcohol about 80,000, illegal drugs kills only a few thousand.
While Satan still lingers in the minds of people, Government has replaced him in America.
What if there were no affirmative action.
Ronald Reagan had the highest peace time tax increase in America history.
The earth has had two deep freezes that killed most life on earth.
Laughter is an evolutionary tool for it's OK.
Does anyone diagram sentences or practice Palmer penmanship.
The Romans used roads for soldiers and communications.
What is the need and appeal of speed, of music.
Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system because of war.
The Black Plague killed 25 million people.
Mornings make me high, is that consciousness or dopamine.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed over twenty million.
How do we know we are thinking.
It is estimated that 110 million died in wars in the 20th century. Some place the estimate as high as 140 million.
The first victim of war is truth.
At one time the sun never set on the British empire.
Communist Russia was an ally during the second world war.
There are 80 Wal-Marts in Communist China.
I am therefore I think.
The world didn't end at the first millennium. Nor the second.
In 1999, manual apparatus sold well because of fear electricity would not work in the new millennium.
Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, was probably the greatest athlete of all time.
Among our closet relatives in the animal kingdom are the peaceful Bonobo.
The universe is flat. The end point of the universe is estimated but not known.
Humans date back 150,000 years.
Edit to Bible: money is the root of most evil, or much evil. Fear, insecurity are big factors too.
A British newspaper marveled at the number of stupid people in America after W won the second time. No testing to confirm 'stupid' was conducted.
Fascism is of the right, Communism of the left, Dictatorship personal.
Hitler was a Catholic, so was Timothy McVeigh, so is Antonin Scalia.
A child dies of preventable causes every 15 seconds in the world.
The time circumstances and accomplishments make Franklin Delano Roosevelt our greatest president.
Jonas Salk took no profit from his team's development of the Polio vaccine.
Between 2003 and 2007 the profits of the nation's largest medical insurers rose 170.2 percent to $12.6 billion.
Experts and throwing darts are equally reliable prognosticators.
America ranks 37th in the world in healthcare, right next to Costa Rica.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, is ugliness.
In geologic time, human history is a few seconds.
If Think Tanks are only about partisan and corporate ideology, why are they called think tanks.
Coffee sex books and the open road, all I need.
The richest 1 percent in America saw their wealth triple from 1980 to 2006. The bottom 90% went down 20 percent.
If free will exists how do we justify our politics in a world of poverty and disease.
Sixty percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.
Liberalism and conservatism equiponderate tao.
Corporate tax amounted to just 7.4 percent of total federal tax revenue in 2003.
The sun is middle age in sun time and should burn out in roughly another 5 billion years.
I had a much stronger fantasy life young.
The war on drugs was started in 1969 and is still in progress.
Beckett wrote I can't go on, I'll go on.
The war on terrorism, a noun, started during the Bush administration.
I do not understand cults.
Has the debate over nature versus nurture been resolved.
Combined taxes consume 21 percent of the poor person's earnings, but only 7 percent of the earnings of the rich.
Each breath is a million billion billion atoms of oxygen.
I find honest people interesting but rare.
If all conceptions are children, when and where do they grow up.
Somethings are givens, our parents.
Sartre thought other people were hell.
The majority of drug offenders are white, but blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison.
Being guillotined was for the privileged during the religious heresies. Being burned alive for the common people. People arrived early at both for a good view.
Wal-mart insures its workers and designates the corporation the beneficiary.
The individual with inherent rights was created in the 18th century, but suffrage didn't happen till the 20th.
Wittgenstein thought all problems, problems of language.
Maybe life on earth is a first draft or one of many.
When asked a stupid question Obama smiles nicely, I cannot do that.
It could be said that Indulgences brought down the Holy Roman Empire.
If all work is outsourced how will we know. Suppose robots do the rest.
Is America the first working plutocracy.
There are approximately 3.5 million homeless in America.
If actions are additive, how can we ever tell if any action is the right action.
Neither marriage nor God is mentioned in the US Constitution.
Consider how much corporations could funnel back into the community if they outsourced executives and their boards.
Kafka said the meaning of life is death.
Will humankind ever attain immortality on earth.
Which would you choose, great beauty, intelligence or long life.
It is only the journey that matters. I'll go on....

>

 

[midcan5]

The birth of time and space occurred some 15 billion years ago.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton when asked about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Dick Cheney, a four time draft dodger justified the Iraq invasion, claiming 'Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).'
If opinions are only opinions what are opinions.
There is only one Matriarchal society in the world, the Mosuo.
Thousands of Americans and it is estimated over a million Iraqis have died so far over these WMD.
Japan invaded the United States on December 7th, 1941. Today American flags adorn Japanese cars in America.
Do politicians ever wake up thinking about poverty in America or the world.
Recently I noticed a shirt made in Vietnam. Fifty six thousand Americans died in Vietnam fighting the spread of Communism.
A human would not be a human outside society.
Seinfeld was about nothing, John Cage once said he was saying nothing.
All industrial nations have universal healthcare except for the United States
'Semper Fi' stickers have been seen on Japanese and German cars.
The earth is four and one half billion years old.
What is a picture really worth. Robert Musil said pictures on the wall soon disappear.
The life span of elephants is 70 years.
George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.
Our language of nouns divorced from context, makes for easy classification but little thought.
John Kerry served in Vietnam; Dick Cheney obtained four deferments.
Music and art make us human.
Each weekend at Mass, we prayed for the conversion of Russia from Communism.
Evil is the reason hell is required.
During the week we hid under our school desks preparing for nuclear holocaust.
All religions have as a central tenet the Golden Rule - none follow it.
George Tenet claimed WMD were a slam dunk; he received the Freedom Medal.
There are a hundred billion synapses in the brain.
All debate should be enthymematic; 98 percent of all Internet debate is ad hominem.
Gossip is universal, so is the blame game.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Do American boys still work on cars.
Try to think without words.
Do dreams mean anything. Do nightmares.
The Iraq invasion has cost over 700 billion dollars and counting.
In just ten generations you have 2048 grandparents.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
Fossil fuels are the result of life death and time.
Does birth order matter.
Colin Powell provided complex testimony at the UN for WMD.
Are cynicism and conspiracy close relatives.
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, 1945. Approximately eleven more ovulations occurred before the egg dropped that became me.
My mother says my first love was a car, a 1955 Chevy.
Fiction often serves as conscience.
George W. Bush praised Michael Brown after Katrina struck New Orleans.
Movies mirror our dream world, Hollywood movies often mirror nightmares of individual revenge and widespread catastrophe.
L. Paul Bremer was awarded a Freedom medal. So was Rosa Parks.
Photo Postcards of lynchings in America from 1883 till 1960 were displayed in February, 2000 in New York.
There are over four million porn websites in the world.
Empathy is missing in so many Americans, why.
Evolution was never controversial in Asian; Asians never considered themselves top dog.
While Satan still lingers in the minds of people, Government has replaced him in America.
If you do nothing you cannot be criticized, if good happens great, if bad it is always those who acted.
What if there were no affirmative action.
Sarah Palin is the right wing Chauncey Gardiner.
The Bo language is now extinct.
Ronald Reagan had the highest peace time tax increase in America history.
The earth has had two deep freezes that killed most life on earth.
Laughter is an evolutionary tool for it's OK.
Does anyone diagram sentences or practice Palmer penmanship.
The Romans used roads for soldiers and communications.
What is the need and appeal of speed.
Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system because of war.
The Black Plague killed 25 million people.
Mornings make me high, is that consciousness or dopamine.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed over twenty million.
How do we know we are thinking.
It is estimated that 110 million died in wars in the 20th century. Some place the estimate as high as 140 million.
The first victim of war is truth.
Propaganda regardless of truth works if it fits a worldview.
At one time the sun never set on the British empire.
In Asia silence is a demonstration of knowledge.
Communist Russia was an ally during the second world war.
There are 80 Wal-Marts in Communist China.
I am therefore I think.
The world didn't end at the first millennium. Nor the second.
In 1999, manual apparatus sold well because of fear electricity would not work in the new millennium.
Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, was probably the greatest athlete of all time.
Among our closet relatives in the animal kingdom are the peaceful Bonobo.
The universe is flat. The end point of the universe is estimated but not known.
Humans date back 150,000 years.
Edit to Bible: money is the root of most evil, or much evil. Fear, insecurity are big factors too.
Schopenhauer said reading was thinking with the mind of another.
A British newspaper marveled at the number of stupid people in America after W won the second time. No testing to confirm 'stupid' was conducted.
Fascism is of the right, Communism of the left, Dictatorship personal.
Hitler was a Catholic, so was Timothy McVeigh, so is Antonin Scalia.
A child dies of preventable causes every 15 seconds in the world.
Is the primitive mind the source of conspiracy thinking.
The time circumstances and accomplishments make Franklin Delano Roosevelt our greatest president.
Jonas Salk took no profit from his team's development of the Polio vaccine.
Wittgenstein said if all science problems were solved it would not touch any of life's problems.
Between 2003 and 2007 the profits of the nation's largest medical insurers rose 170.2 percent to $12.6 billion.
Experts and throwing darts are equally reliable prognosticators.
America ranks 37th in the world in healthcare, right next to Costa Rica.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, is ugliness.
In geologic time, human history is a few seconds, our life less.
If Think Tanks are only about partisan and corporate ideology, why are they called think tanks.
Coffee sex books and the open road all I need.
The richest 1 percent in America saw their wealth triple from 1980 to 2006. The bottom 90% went down 20 percent.
If free will exists how do we justify our politics in a world of poverty and disease.
Sixty percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.
Liberalism and conservatism equiponderate Tao.
Corporate tax amounted to just 7.4 percent of total federal tax revenue in 2003.
The sun is middle age in sun time and should burn out in roughly another 5 billion years.
I had a much stronger fantasy life young.
The war on drugs was started in 1969 and is still in progress.
Tobacco kills approximately 400,000 people each year. Alcohol about 80,000, illegal drugs kills only a few thousand.
Beckett wrote I can't go on, I'll go on.
The war on terrorism, a noun, started during the Bush administration.
I do not understand cults, nor the Tea Party.
Only two chromosomes separate us from the great apes.
Has the debate over nature versus nurture been resolved.
Combined taxes consume 21 percent of the poor person's earnings, but only 7 percent of the earnings of the rich.
Each breath is a million billion billion atoms of oxygen.
I find honest people interesting but so rare.
If all conceptions are children, when and where do they grow up.
Do birds think as they fly south, then north.
Somethings are givens, our parents.
Sartre thought other people were hell.
The majority of drug offenders are white, but blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison.
Humans are distinct from animals because we know we are animals.
Being guillotined was for the privileged during the religious heresies. Being burned alive for the common people. People arrived early at both for a good view.
Wal-mart insures its workers and designates the corporation the beneficiary.
The individual with inherent rights was created in the 18th century, but suffrage didn't happen till the 20th.
Wittgenstein thought all problems, problems of language.
Maybe life on earth is a first draft or one of many.
When asked a stupid question Obama smiles nicely, I cannot do that.
Language is the reason we know that we know.
It could be said that Indulgences brought down the Holy Roman Empire.
If all work is outsourced how will we know. Suppose robots do the rest.
Is America the first working plutocracy.
There are approximately 3.5 million homeless in America.
If actions are additive, how can we ever tell if any action is the right action.
Neither marriage nor God is mentioned in the US Constitution.
Consider how much money corporations could funnel back into the community if they outsourced executives and their boards.
Kafka said the meaning of life is death.
Money is worshiped most in America, next comes sport.
Will humankind ever attain immortality on earth.
Which would you choose, great beauty, intelligence or long life.
Sometimes the best you can do is live long.
I am a liberal, a progressive, a democratic socialist, an economic democrat, a radical conservative, a neo-capitalist, a social democrat, an economic humanist, wrote Martin Gardner, me too.
It is the journey that matters.
I'll go on....

>

 

[midcan5]

Fact Paradox and Random Musings

The birth of time and space occurred some 15 billion years ago.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton when asked about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Dick Cheney, a four time draft dodger justified the Iraq invasion, claiming 'Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).'
If opinions are only opinions what are opinions.
There is only one Matriarchal society in the world, the Mosuo.
Thousands of Americans and it is estimated over a million Iraqis have died so far over these WMD.
Japan invaded the United States on December 7th, 1941. Today American flags adorn Japanese cars in America.
Free will is an essential myth, is it.
Do politicians ever wake up thinking about poverty in America or the world.
Recently I noticed a shirt made in Vietnam. Fifty six thousand Americans died in Vietnam fighting the spread of Communism.
A human would not be a human outside society.
Seinfeld was about nothing, John Cage once said he was saying nothing.
All industrial nations have universal healthcare except for the United States
'Semper Fi' stickers have been seen on Japanese and German cars.
The earth is four and one half billion years old.
What is a picture really worth. Robert Musil said pictures on the wall soon disappear.
The life span of elephants is 70 years.
Drawing came first then writing then reading so humans could understand what they drew what they wrote.
George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.
Our language of nouns divorced from context, makes for easy classification but little thought.
John Kerry served in Vietnam; Dick Cheney obtained four deferments.
Music and art make us human.
Each weekend at Mass, we prayed for the conversion of Russia from Communism.
Evil is the reason hell is required.
During the week we hid under our school desks preparing for nuclear holocaust.
All religions have as a central tenet the Golden Rule - none follow it.
George Tenet claimed WMD were a slam dunk; he received the Freedom Medal.
There are a hundred billion synapses in the brain.
The earth does not require humans.
Is language essential to dreams, I think no.
All debate should be enthymematic; 98 percent of all Internet debate is ad hominem.
Gossip is universal, so is the blame game.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Do American boys still work on cars.
Try to think without words.
Do dreams mean anything. Do nightmares.
The Iraq invasion has cost over 700 billion dollars and counting.
In just ten generations you have 2048 grandparents.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
Fossil fuels are the result of life death and time.
Does birth order matter.
Labels or categories isms are often only meaningful to the speaker.
Colin Powell provided complex testimony at the UN for WMD.
Many Americans believe in an America that never existed.
Are cynicism and conspiracy close relatives.
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, 1945. Approximately eleven more ovulations occurred before the egg dropped that became me.
My mother says my first love was a car, a 1955 Chevy.
Fiction often serves as conscience.
George W. Bush praised Michael Brown after Katrina struck New Orleans.
Movies mirror our dream world, Hollywood movies often mirror nightmares of individual revenge and widespread catastrophe.
L. Paul Bremer was awarded a Freedom medal. So was Rosa Parks.
Photo Postcards of lynchings in America from 1883 till 1960 were displayed in February, 2000 in New York.
There are over four million porn websites in the world.
Empathy is missing in so many Americans, why.
Evolution was never controversial in Asian; Asians never considered themselves top dog.
While Satan still lingers in the minds of people, Government has replaced him in America.
If you do nothing you cannot be criticized, if good happens great, if bad it is always those who acted.
What if there were no affirmative action.
Sarah Palin is the right wing Chauncey Gardiner.
Or is that the political Anna Nicole Smith.
I love a new book.
The Bo language is now extinct.
Ronald Reagan had the highest peace time tax increase in America history.
The earth has had two deep freezes that killed most life on earth.
Laughter is an evolutionary tool for it's OK.
Does anyone diagram sentences or practice Palmer penmanship.
The Romans used roads for soldiers and communications.
What is the need and appeal of speed.
Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system because of war.
The Black Plague killed 25 million people.
Mornings make me high, is that consciousness or dopamine.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed over twenty million.
How do we know we are thinking.
It is estimated that 110 million died in wars in the 20th century. Some place the estimate as high as 140 million.
The first victim of war is truth.
Propaganda regardless of truth works if it fits a worldview.
At one time the sun never set on the British empire.
In Asia silence is a demonstration of knowledge.
Communist Russia was an ally during the second world war.
There are 80 Wal-Marts in Communist China.
I am therefore I think.
The world didn't end at the first millennium. Nor the second.
In 1999, manual apparatus sold well because of fear electricity would not work in the new millennium.
Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, was probably the greatest athlete of all time.
Among our closet relatives in the animal kingdom are the peaceful Bonobo.
The universe is flat. The end point of the universe is estimated but not known.
Humans date back 150,000 years.
Edit to Bible: money is the root of most evil, or much evil. Fear, insecurity are big factors too.
Schopenhauer said reading was thinking with the mind of another.
A British newspaper marveled at the number of stupid people in America after W won the second time. No testing to confirm 'stupid' was conducted.
In reading we converse with the dead.
Fascism is of the right, Communism of the left, Dictatorship personal.
Hitler was a Catholic, so was Timothy McVeigh, so is Antonin Scalia.
A child dies of preventable causes every 15 seconds in the world.
Is the primitive mind the source of conspiracy thinking.
The time circumstances and accomplishments make Franklin Delano Roosevelt our greatest president.
Jonas Salk took no profit from his team's development of the Polio vaccine.
Wittgenstein said if all science problems were solved it would not touch any of life's problems.
Between 2003 and 2007 the profits of the nation's largest medical insurers rose 170.2 percent to $12.6 billion.
Experts and throwing darts are equally reliable prognosticators.
America ranks 37th in the world in healthcare, right next to Costa Rica.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, is ugliness.
In geologic time, human history is a few seconds, our life less.
If Think Tanks are only about partisan and corporate ideology, why are they called think tanks.
Coffee sex books and the open road all I need.
The richest 1 percent in America saw their wealth triple from 1980 to 2006. The bottom 90% went down 20 percent.
If free will exists how do we justify our politics in a world of poverty and disease.
Sixty percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.
Liberalism and conservatism equiponderate Tao.
Corporate tax amounted to just 7.4 percent of total federal tax revenue in 2003.
The sun is middle age in sun time and should burn out in roughly another 5 billion years.
I had a much stronger fantasy life young.
The war on drugs was started in 1969 and is still in progress.
Tobacco kills approximately 400,000 people each year. Alcohol about 80,000, illegal drugs kills only a few thousand.
Beckett wrote I can't go on, I'll go on.
The war on terrorism, a noun, started during the Bush administration.
I do not understand cults, nor the Tea Party.
Only two chromosomes separate us from the great apes.
Has the debate over nature versus nurture been resolved.
Combined taxes consume 21 percent of the poor person's earnings, but only 7 percent of the earnings of the rich.
Each breath is a million billion billion atoms of oxygen.
I find honest people interesting but so very rare.
If all conceptions are children, when and where do they grow up.
Do birds think as they fly south, then north.
Somethings are givens, our parents.
Do animals have nightmares.
Sartre thought other people were hell.
The majority of drug offenders are white, but blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison.
Humans are distinct from animals because we know we are animals.
Why do no religions preach being good.
Being guillotined was for the privileged during the religious heresies. Being burned alive for the common people. People arrived early at both for a good view.
What part of ourselves do we see in our children.
Wal-mart insures its workers and designates the corporation the beneficiary.
The individual with inherent rights was created in the 18th century, but suffrage didn't happen till the 20th.
Wittgenstein thought all problems, problems of language.
Maybe life on earth is a first draft or one of many.
When asked a stupid question Obama smiles nicely, I cannot do that.
Language is the reason we know that we know.
It could be said that Indulgences brought down the Holy Roman Empire.
If all work is outsourced how will we know. Suppose robots do the rest.
Is America the first working plutocracy.
Humans share 110 genes with bacteria.
There are approximately 3.5 million homeless in America.
If actions are additive, how can we ever tell if any action is the right action.
Is America just a meritocracy and the working citizens the stage hands.
Neither marriage nor God is mentioned in the US Constitution.
Consider how much money corporations could funnel back into the community if they outsourced executives and their boards.
Kafka said the meaning of life is death.
Debate is useless, people do not think, they react.
Money is worshipped most in America, next comes sport.
Will humankind ever attain immortality on earth.
Which would you choose, great beauty, intelligence or long life.
Sometimes the best you can do is live long.
In the end it is what we value that creates complexity.
I am a liberal, a progressive, a democratic socialist, an economic democrat, a radical conservative, a social democrat, an economic humanist, wrote Martin Gardner, me too.
It is the journey that matters.
I'll go on....

 

[Si modo]

My eyes hurt.

 

[California Girl]

My eyes hurt.

What? You actually tried to read that shit?

 

[Si modo]

My eyes hurt.

What? You actually tried to read that shit?

"Tried' is the operative word. I gave up after I saw that there was no relief anytime soon for my eyes. I got through two lines, scrolled down, and said 'fuckit'.

I had to slice a few cucumbers for my eyes after only two lines.

 

[editec]

Yeah, okay, I admit it. I had to look it up.

en·thy·meme (en′t̸hi mēm′)
noun
Logic a syllogism in which one of the premises or the conclusion is not expressed but implied
Origin: L enthymema < Gr enthym&#275;ma < enthymeisthai, to consider, reflect upon < en-, in + thymos, mind < IE *dh&#363;mos < base *dheu- > dull

I'm reasonably sure I still don't entirely understand this word's real meaning.

 

[editec]

Jonas Salk took no profit from his team's development of the Polio vaccine.

IN the words of the late Lenny Bruce?

"Remember, without Polio Jonas Salk ain't shit!"

 

[midcan5]

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle

My eyes hurt.

Ah, metaphor, the mind aches. So short a piece, after a rest read on.

What? You actually tried to read that shit?

Ah, but how would you know!

I'm reasonably sure I still don't entirely understand this word's real meaning.

I am not sure what I was reading when that word fit ?

Enthymematic Arguments

"I An enthymeme is an argument in which one proposition is suppressed—i.e., it's missing for one reason or another.

In some cases, the missing proposition is not stated because it is obvious.

E.g., "You'll be fine, just follow your heart." The missing premiss is "All persons who follow their heart are persons who do fine." (Note that the explicit statement of the missing premiss makes the argument somewhat dubious.)"


"The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other." Neil Postman

 

[Si modo]

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle

My eyes hurt.

Ah, metaphor, the mind aches. So short a piece, after a rest read on.

No metaphor. My eyes hurt.

Or, do you fancy yourself having amazing mind reading powers? If so, you need to recalibrate.

 

[midcan5]

I wish I had keep this piece updated, so many interesting things have passed before my mind since writing it. So recently I added a few lines randomly. Only read if your mind is open to ambiguity in life and thought.

Fact Paradox and Random Musings

The birth of time and space occurred some 15 billion years ago.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton when asked about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Dick Cheney, a four time draft dodger justified the Iraq invasion, claiming 'Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).'
If opinions are only opinions what are opinions.
There is only one matriarchal society in the world, the Mosuo.
Thousands of Americans and it is estimated over a million Iraqis have died so far over these imaginary WMD.
Japan invaded the United States on December 7Th, 1941. Today American flags adorn Japanese cars in America.
Free will is an essential myth.
Do politicians ever think about poverty in America or the world.
Recently I noticed a shirt made in Vietnam. Fifty six thousand Americans died in Vietnam fighting the spread of Communism.
A human would not be a human outside society.
Seinfeld claimed to be about nothing
John Cage once said he was saying nothing but still saying it.
All industrial nations have universal healthcare except for the United States.
'Semper Fi' stickers have been seen on Japanese and German cars.
The earth is four and one half billion years old.
What is a picture really worth.
Robert Musil said pictures on the wall soon disappear.
Republicans hated Clinton in 2000 and love him in 2011.
The life span of elephants is 70 years.
Drawing came first then writing then reading so humans could understand what they drew.
Maybe grunting cam first.
George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.
Our language of nouns divorced from context, makes for easy classification but little thought.
John Kerry served in Vietnam; Dick Cheney obtained four deferments.
Music and art make us human.
Each weekend at Mass, we prayed for the conversion of Russia from Communism.
Alaska was discovered in 1732.
Evil is the reason hell is required.
During the week we hid under our school desks preparing for nuclear holocaust.
All religions have as a central tenet the Golden Rule - none follow it.
George Tenet claimed WMD were a slam dunk; he received the Freedom Medal.
There are a hundred billion synapses in the brain.
Why do Americans have so little regard for education.
The earth does not require humans.
The universe does not require living things nor thought.
Is language essential to dreams, I think no.
America is not in the Bible.
All debate should be enthymematic; 98 percent of all Internet debate is ad hominem.
Low taxes and deregulation have failed the majority of America's people.
Gossip is universal, so is the blame.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The nuns knew how to inflict guilt, mention omission.
Do American boys still work on cars.
Try to think without words.
David Deutsch claims conjecture is the origin of all knowledge.
George W. Bush a draft dodger painted both McCain and Kerry as bad soldiers.
Do dreams mean anything. Do nightmares.
The Iraq invasion has cost over 700 billion dollars and counting.
Wealth is a creation of society.
In just ten generations you have 2048 grandparents.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
Fossil fuels are the result of life death and time.
Does birth order matter.
Sometimes I think the bicycle is the greatest invention.
Labels or categories isms are often only meaningful to the speaker.
Colin Powell provided complex testimony at the UN for WMD.
Many Americans believe in an America that never existed.
Often my dreams seem creations of my mind.
Are cynicism and conspiracy close relatives.
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6Th, 1945.
Approximately eleven more ovulations occurred before the egg dropped that became me.
My mother says my first love was a car, a 1955 Chevy.
Fiction often serves as conscience.
George W. Bush praised Michael Brown after Katrina struck New Orleans.
Movies mirror our dream world, Hollywood movies often mirror nightmares of individual revenge and widespread catastrophe.
L. Paul Bremer was awarded a Freedom medal. So was Rosa Parks.
Photo Postcards of lynchings in America from 1883 till 1960 were displayed in February, 2000 in New York.
There are over four million porn websites in the world.
Empathy is missing in so many Americans, why.
Evolution was never controversial in Asian; Asians never considered themselves top dog.
While Satan still lingers in the minds of people, Government has replaced him in America.
If you do nothing you cannot be criticized, if good happens great, if bad it is always those who acted.
What if there were no affirmative action.
Sarah Palin is the right wing Chauncey Gardiner.
Or is that the political Anna Nicole Smith.
Argument is not rational.
Borges thought mirrors and sex were abominable as they both multiplied man.
I love to hold a new book.
The Bo language is now extinct.
Ronald Reagan had the highest peace time tax increase in America history.
The earth has had two deep freezes that killed most life on earth.
Laughter is an evolutionary tool for it's OK.
Death doesn't bother us when it is someone else.
Does anyone still diagram sentences or practice Palmer penmanship.
The Romans used roads for soldiers and communications.
What is the need and appeal of speed.
FDR started minimum wage at 25 cents.
Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system because of war.
The Black Plague killed 25 million people.
Mornings make me high, is that consciousness or dopamine.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed over twenty million.
Do you ever wish Santa was real.
How do we know we are thinking.
It is estimated that 110 million died in wars in the 20Th century. Some place the estimate as high as 140 million.
The first victim of war is truth.
Why do children find bodily functions funny. Adults too.
Propaganda regardless of truth works if it fits a worldview.
At one time the sun never set on the British empire.
In Asia silence is a demonstration of knowledge.
Communist Russia was our ally during the second world war.
There are 80 Wal-Marts in Communist China.
Americans in the 18Th century lived to 45 Europeans to 32.
I am therefore I think.
Americans buy more communist made items than American made.
The world didn't end at the first millennium. Nor the second.
In 1999, manual apparatus sold well because of fear electricity would not work in the new millennium.
Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, was probably the greatest athlete of all time.
Among our closet relatives in the animal kingdom are the peaceful Bonobo.
The universe is flat. The end point of the universe is estimated but not known.
Humans date back 150,000 years.
Edit to Bible: money is the root of most evil, or much evil. Fear, insecurity are big factors too.
Schopenhauer said reading was thinking with the mind of another.
A British newspaper marveled at the number of stupid people in America after W won the second time. No testing to confirm 'stupid' was conducted.
In reading we converse with the dead.
Fascism is of the right, Communism of the left, Dictatorship personal.
Hitler was a Catholic, so was Timothy McVeigh, so is Antonin Scalia.
A child dies of preventable causes every 15 seconds in the world.
Is progress a realistic ideal.
Is the primitive mind the source of conspiracy thinking.
The time circumstances and accomplishments make Franklin Delano Roosevelt our greatest president.
Jonas Salk took no profit from his team's development of the Polio vaccine.
Wittgenstein said if all science problems were solved it would not touch any of life's problems.
Between 2003 and 2007 the profits of the nation's largest medical insurers rose 170.2 percent to $12.6 billion.
Experts and throwing darts are equally reliable prognosticators.
America ranks 37Th in the world in healthcare, right next to Costa Rica.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, is ugliness.
In geologic time, human history is a few seconds, our life less.
If Think Tanks are only about partisan and corporate ideology, why are they called think tanks.
Coffee sex books and the open road all I need.
The richest 1 percent in America saw their wealth triple from 1980 to 2006. The bottom 90% went down 20 percent.
If free will exists how do we justify our politics in a world of poverty and disease.
Sixty percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.
Liberalism and conservatism equiponderate Tao.
Corporate taxes amounted to just 7.4 percent of total federal tax revenue in 2003.
The sun is middle age in sun time and should burn out in roughly another 5 billion years.
I had a much stronger fantasy life young.
The rich are bailed out the poor thrown out.
The rich get their drugs prescribed, the poor from the corner pusher.
The war on drugs was started in 1969 and is still in progress.
Tobacco kills approximately 400,000 people each year. Alcohol about 80,000, illegal drugs kills only a few thousand.
Beckett wrote I can't go on, I'll go on.
The war on terrorism, a noun, started during the Bush administration.
I do not understand cults, nor the Tea Party.
Only two chromosomes separate us from the great apes.
Has the debate over nature versus nurture been resolved.
Combined taxes consume 21 percent of the poor person's earnings, but only 7 percent of the earnings of the rich.
Each breath is a million billion billion atoms of oxygen.
I find honest people interesting but so very rare.
If all conceptions are children, when and where do they grow up.
Do birds think as they fly south, then north.
Somethings are given, our parents, our genes.
Do animals have nightmares.
Sartre thought other people were hell.
The majority of drug offenders are white, but blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison.
Humans are distinct from animals because we know we are animals.
Why do no religions preach being good.
Being guillotined was for the privileged during the religious heresies. Being burned alive for the common people. People arrived early at both for a good view.
What part of ourselves do we see in our children.
Wal-mart insures its workers and designates the corporation the beneficiary.
The individual with inherent rights was created in the 18Th century, but suffrage didn't happen till the 20Th.
Wittgenstein thought all problems, problems of language.
Maybe life on earth is a first draft or one of many.
Capgras is an excellent way to avoid your mother in law.
When asked a stupid question Obama smiles nicely, I cannot do that.
Language is the reason we know that we know.
It could be said that Indulgences brought down the Holy Roman Empire.
If all work is outsourced how will we know. Suppose robots do the rest.
Is America the first working plutocracy.
Kant thought native Americans incapable of civilization.
Cymotrichous was the final word in the 2011 spelling bee.
Humans share 110 genes with bacteria.
There are approximately 3.5 million homeless in America.
I love roads that stretch to infinity.
DNA has so far exonerated 273 wrongly convicted Americans.
Only 5 to 10% of criminal cases involve DNA.
The top 1% of Americans possess more of the wealth of America than the bottom 50%.
If actions are additive, how can we ever tell if any action is the right action.
Is America just a meritocracy and the working citizens the stage hands.
Neither marriage nor God is mentioned in the US Constitution.
Consider how much money corporations could funnel back into the community if they outsourced executives and their boards.
Kafka said the meaning of life is death.
Does infinity apply to good, to bad.
Debate is useless, people do not think, they react.
Money is worshipped most in America, next comes sport.
In Finland children want to be teachers, in America they want to be athletes.
Will humankind ever attain immortality on earth.
It is still the 'pudding' that matters.
Which would you choose, great beauty, intelligence or long life.
Sometimes the best you can do is live long.
In the end it is what we value that creates complexity.
I am a liberal, a progressive, a democratic socialist, an economic democrat, a radical conservative, a social democrat, an economic humanist, wrote Martin Gardner, me too.
It is the journey that matters.
I'll go on....

rev 09/2011

 

[editec]

Seriously...you expect people to wade though that post?

Just a helpful hint: breaks between lines would help your readers a LOT..

 

[SuperDave]

I wish I had keep this piece updated, so many interesting things have passed before my mind since writing it. So recently I added a few lines randomly. Only read if your mind is open to ambiguity in life and thought.

Fact Paradox and Random Musings

The birth of time and space occurred some 15 billion years ago.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton when asked about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Dick Cheney, a four time draft dodger justified the Iraq invasion, claiming 'Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).'Draft Dogers are people who did not report when drafted, V.P. Cheney applied for and received deferments as tens of thousands of others did.
If opinions are only opinions what are opinions.
There is only one matriarchal society in the world, the Mosuo.
Thousands of Americans and it is estimated over a million Iraqis have died so far over these imaginary WMD.WMD's are missing not imaginary. Hussein used them on the Kurdish people killing tens of thousands and every major intelligence agency in the world believed he still had them so the question isn't whether or not they existed but how did he get rid of them and who has them now
Japan invaded the United States on December 7Th, 1941. Today American flags adorn Japanese cars in America.Aint Capitalism great
Free will is an essential myth.
Do politicians ever think about poverty in America or the world.
Recently I noticed a shirt made in Vietnam. Fifty six thousand Americans died in Vietnam fighting the spread of Communism.
A human would not be a human outside society.
Seinfeld claimed to be about nothing
John Cage once said he was saying nothing but still saying it.
All industrial nations have universal healthcare except for the United States.
'Semper Fi' stickers have been seen on Japanese and German cars.
The earth is four and one half billion years old.
What is a picture really worth.
Robert Musil said pictures on the wall soon disappear.
Republicans hated Clinton in 2000 and love him in 2011.Really, I don't know a lot of people who hated the man just many of the policies he tried to enact, especially before he moved toward the center and apparently many of us didn't get the memo about loving him now either
The life span of elephants is 70 years.
Drawing came first then writing then reading so humans could understand what they drew.
Maybe grunting cam first.
George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.Not a single day, simply a false statement no matter what Dan Rather's doctored documents say.
Our language of nouns divorced from context, makes for easy classification but little thought.
John Kerry served in Vietnam; Dick Cheney obtained four deferments.And Kerry managed to get 3X as many Purple Hearts in 4 months as any of the thousands of other Swift Boat Operators managed in even a full 13 month tour, luckily for him though not a single one required him to stay in a hospital even overnight for observation and with 3 Purple Hearts he was automatically discharged. But at least you got the Deferment/Draft Dodger thing worked out with VP Cheney
Music and art make us human.
Each weekend at Mass, we prayed for the conversion of Russia from Communism.
Alaska was discovered in 1732.
Evil is the reason hell is required.
During the week we hid under our school desks preparing for nuclear holocaust.
All religions have as a central tenet the Golden Rule - none follow it.
George Tenet claimed WMD were a slam dunk; he received the Freedom Medal.
There are a hundred billion synapses in the brain.
Why do Americans have so little regard for education.Why do you believe this? Considering we spend the 2nd most money per student in the world I would have to say we hold it in pretty high regard
The earth does not require humans.
The universe does not require living things nor thought.
Is language essential to dreams, I think no.
America is not in the Bible.But the Bible is in America
All debate should be enthymematic; 98 percent of all Internet debate is ad hominem.I agree there is far too much ad hominem but why should all debate be enthymematic?
Low taxes and deregulation have failed the majority of America's people. Low taxes and less burdensome regulation allowed a nation less than 200 years old to become the dominant economic power in the world. Loss of that position or even a closing of the gap can be directly attributed to the exponential growth in size, power and economic interference of the U.S. Federal Government
Gossip is universal, so is the blame.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The nuns knew how to inflict guilt, mention omission.
Do American boys still work on cars.
Try to think without words.
David Deutsch claims conjecture is the origin of all knowledge.
George W. Bush a draft dodger painted both McCain and Kerry as bad soldiers.
Do dreams mean anything. Do nightmares.
The Iraq invasion has cost over 700 billion dollars and counting.
Wealth is a creation of society.
In just ten generations you have 2048 grandparents.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
Fossil fuels are the result of life death and time.
Does birth order matter.
Sometimes I think the bicycle is the greatest invention.
Labels or categories isms are often only meaningful to the speaker.
Colin Powell provided complex testimony at the UN for WMD.
Many Americans believe in an America that never existed.
Often my dreams seem creations of my mind.
Are cynicism and conspiracy close relatives.
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6Th, 1945.
Approximately eleven more ovulations occurred before the egg dropped that became me.
My mother says my first love was a car, a 1955 Chevy.
Fiction often serves as conscience.
George W. Bush praised Michael Brown after Katrina struck New Orleans.
Movies mirror our dream world, Hollywood movies often mirror nightmares of individual revenge and widespread catastrophe.
L. Paul Bremer was awarded a Freedom medal. So was Rosa Parks.
Photo Postcards of lynchings in America from 1883 till 1960 were displayed in February, 2000 in New York.
There are over four million porn websites in the world.
Empathy is missing in so many Americans, why.Again I'm curious to know on what you base this belief. When there is a disaster anywhere in the world no nation comes close to providing the support in every category, manpower, money, supplies, etc...that the U.S. does.
Evolution was never controversial in Asian; Asians never considered themselves top dog.Halfway through the 20th Century many of them thought their rulers were gods
While Satan still lingers in the minds of people, Government has replaced him in America.
If you do nothing you cannot be criticized, if good happens great, if bad it is always those who acted.
What if there were no affirmative action.
Sarah Palin is the right wing Chauncey Gardiner.
Or is that the political Anna Nicole Smith.
Argument is not rational.
Borges thought mirrors and sex were abominable as they both multiplied man.
I love to hold a new book.As do I. I love my Kindle and other technology available today but there is little like holding a new book or an old leather bound volume.
The Bo language is now extinct.
Ronald Reagan had the highest peace time tax increase in America history.
The earth has had two deep freezes that killed most life on earth.
Laughter is an evolutionary tool for it's OK.
Death doesn't bother us when it is someone else.
Does anyone still diagram sentences or practice Palmer penmanship.
The Romans used roads for soldiers and communications.
What is the need and appeal of speed.
FDR started minimum wage at 25 cents.
Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system because of war.
The Black Plague killed 25 million people.
Mornings make me high, is that consciousness or dopamine.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed over twenty million.
Do you ever wish Santa was real.
How do we know we are thinking.
It is estimated that 110 million died in wars in the 20Th century. Some place the estimate as high as 140 million.
The first victim of war is truth.
Why do children find bodily functions funny. Adults too.
Propaganda regardless of truth works if it fits a worldview.
At one time the sun never set on the British empire.
In Asia silence is a demonstration of knowledge.
Communist Russia was our ally during the second world war.Communist Russia was at war with the same country we were at war with, a fine distinction but an important one
There are 80 Wal-Marts in Communist China.
Americans in the 18Th century lived to 45 Europeans to 32.
I am therefore I think.
Americans buy more communist made items than American made.
The world didn't end at the first millennium. Nor the second.
In 1999, manual apparatus sold well because of fear electricity would not work in the new millennium.
Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, was probably the greatest athlete of all time.
Among our closet relatives in the animal kingdom are the peaceful Bonobo.
The universe is flat. The end point of the universe is estimated but not known.
Humans date back 150,000 years.
Edit to Bible: money is the root of most evil, or much evil. Fear, insecurity are big factors too.Edit: Lack of money is the root and you are right about the others though much fear and insecurity comes from a lack of money
Schopenhauer said reading was thinking with the mind of another.
A British newspaper marveled at the number of stupid people in America after W won the second time. No testing to confirm 'stupid' was conducted.Was this before or after college students threw bricks and trash cans at the motorcade of a member of the Royal Family because the students wanted more free stuff
In reading we converse with the dead.
Fascism is of the right, Communism of the left, Dictatorship personal.
Hitler was a Catholic, so was Timothy McVeigh, so is Antonin Scalia.So was Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II
A child dies of preventable causes every 15 seconds in the world.Millions of which came from actions by the EPA in the early 70's based on hysteria created by a work of fiction
Is progress a realistic ideal.
Is the primitive mind the source of conspiracy thinking.
The time circumstances and accomplishments make Franklin Delano Roosevelt our greatest president.
Jonas Salk took no profit from his team's development of the Polio vaccine.
Wittgenstein said if all science problems were solved it would not touch any of life's problems.
Between 2003 and 2007 the profits of the nation's largest medical insurers rose 170.2 percent to $12.6 billion.
Experts and throwing darts are equally reliable prognosticators.
America ranks 37Th in the world in healthcare, right next to Costa Rica.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, is ugliness.
In geologic time, human history is a few seconds, our life less.
If Think Tanks are only about partisan and corporate ideology, why are they called think tanks.
Coffee sex books and the open road all I need.
The richest 1 percent in America saw their wealth triple from 1980 to 2006. The bottom 90% went down 20 percent.
If free will exists how do we justify our politics in a world of poverty and disease.
Sixty percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.
Liberalism and conservatism equiponderate Tao.
Corporate taxes amounted to just 7.4 percent of total federal tax revenue in 2003.
The sun is middle age in sun time and should burn out in roughly another 5 billion years.
I had a much stronger fantasy life young.
The rich are bailed out the poor thrown out.
The rich get their drugs prescribed, the poor from the corner pusher.
The war on drugs was started in 1969 and is still in progress.
Tobacco kills approximately 400,000 people each year. Alcohol about 80,000, illegal drugs kills only a few thousand.
Beckett wrote I can't go on, I'll go on.
The war on terrorism, a noun, started during the Bush administration.
I do not understand cults, nor the Tea Party.
Only two chromosomes separate us from the great apes.
Has the debate over nature versus nurture been resolved.
Combined taxes consume 21 percent of the poor person's earnings, but only 7 percent of the earnings of the rich.
Each breath is a million billion billion atoms of oxygen.
I find honest people interesting but so very rare.
If all conceptions are children, when and where do they grow up.
Do birds think as they fly south, then north.
Somethings are given, our parents, our genes.
Do animals have nightmares.
Sartre thought other people were hell.
The majority of drug offenders are white, but blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison.
Humans are distinct from animals because we know we are animals.
Why do no religions preach being good.
Being guillotined was for the privileged during the religious heresies. Being burned alive for the common people. People arrived early at both for a good view.
What part of ourselves do we see in our children.
Wal-mart insures its workers and designates the corporation the beneficiary.
The individual with inherent rights was created in the 18Th century, but suffrage didn't happen till the 20Th.
Wittgenstein thought all problems, problems of language.
Maybe life on earth is a first draft or one of many.
Capgras is an excellent way to avoid your mother in law.
When asked a stupid question Obama smiles nicely, I cannot do that.
Language is the reason we know that we know.
It could be said that Indulgences brought down the Holy Roman Empire.
If all work is outsourced how will we know. Suppose robots do the rest.
Is America the first working plutocracy.
Kant thought native Americans incapable of civilization.
Cymotrichous was the final word in the 2011 spelling bee.
Humans share 110 genes with bacteria.
There are approximately 3.5 million homeless in America.
I love roads that stretch to infinity.
DNA has so far exonerated 273 wrongly convicted Americans.
Only 5 to 10% of criminal cases involve DNA.
The top 1% of Americans possess more of the wealth of America than the bottom 50%.
If actions are additive, how can we ever tell if any action is the right action.
Is America just a meritocracy and the working citizens the stage hands.
Neither marriage nor God is mentioned in the US Constitution.Nor is Seperation of Church and State
Consider how much money corporations could funnel back into the community if they outsourced executives and their boards.
Kafka said the meaning of life is death.
Does infinity apply to good, to bad.
Debate is useless, people do not think, they react.
Money is worshipped most in America, next comes sport. Funny because all I hear from the media is how the country is full of crackpots who worship an imaginary being they call God
In Finland children want to be teachers, in America they want to be athletes.
Will humankind ever attain immortality on earth.
It is still the 'pudding' that matters.
Which would you choose, great beauty, intelligence or long life.
Sometimes the best you can do is live long.
In the end it is what we value that creates complexity.
I am a liberal, a progressive, a democratic socialist, an economic democrat, a radical conservative, a social democrat, an economic humanist, wrote Martin Gardner, me too.
It is the journey that matters.
I'll go on....

rev 09/2011

Have to go but you made some interesting observations.

 

[midcan5]

Have to go but you made some interesting observations.

My musings were just musings, but since you took the time, I'll take the time to reply.

Draft dodgers came in all sizes and shapes, consider if the draft still existed and America's youth were called up for duty? To my generation, or maybe social class, Bush and Cheney were draft dodgers. Many wanted out of it and used whatever means they could. Today I know only one man who honestly admits he was a draft dodger (doctor's letter), the rest ignore the topic or have revised the past in their memories. Connections matter in life - you will learn that if you pay attention.

If no WMDs have been found none exist, the gas used on the Kurds may have come from us. Remember the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Iran was our enemy then and now. Iraq was our friend.

No, capitalism is not great, any reading of history makes that clear. Is it the best there is? No again, a mixed economy of strong rules regulations and law is the best. No 'ism' is great, we make it better or worse. We have to find a name for this?

Hate is a strong word but today merely a rhetorical device. Clinton was hounded and Hillary made the devil incarnate, call it what you like, I was there. Obama has received the same demonizing from the right, check the posters and comments sometime.

Everything I have read about Bush confirms Rather's conclusion, nothing challenges it except this argument about fonts and the forms. In those days selective service notifications were printed forms with lots of fonts, I still have mine.

I didn't mention Kerry, and he served and every soldier who served deserves our respect regardless of blind partisan emotion. Cheney chickened out, as we used to say.

Education is a paradox in America, we spend money but we hardly admire the occupation. I have been married to a teacher for over forty years, thus my 'feeling.' 'In Finland children want to be teachers, in America they want to be athletes.'

'All debate should be enthymematic,' today I would revise that but I still think there are things that should be givens. I'll go out on a limb here and note two: Heathcare and Social Security.

Our nation had its best years, golden years according to some historians, when taxes were highest. Tax cuts spur economic growth

Empathy was criticized by the right when Obama picked Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme court. Let me know when you hear speeches from our politicians about a fair wage, healthcare for all, and poverty in America. You may find finger pointing but empathy, nah.

The Japanese did consider their emperor a gawd, but Confucianism is also a powerful force, as is Buddhism. This is something I have read and can only take it on faith. Americans have this odd repulsion to the idea of evolution, one wonders if they ever stood nude in front of a mirror or contemplated dinosaur fossils while on the toilet.

We agree on books.

Russia, see above, the enemy.... I have been watching 'the World at War' recently and it is fascinating stuff, had Hitler limited his grandiose insanity what could have happened over time?

The majority of deaths are health elated and have nothing to do with the corporate revisionist propaganda over Rachel Carson's book. Move down wind from a chemical plant if you doubt the effect. We have a few in Philly.

"Nor is Seperation of Church and State" See first amendment.

I'll stick with money, as Christianity, in its true form, is too difficult for most mere humans.

 

[midcan5]

I enjoy going back and seeing where I have changed or what I would change. April revision below. I doubt the lines will put you to sleep but who knows. I notice common themes in my own thought which makes the exercise kinda fascinating.

Wingnuts beware, thoughts may contradict your implanted wingnut receiver and cause physical pain.

Fact Paradox and Random Musings

The birth of time and space occurred some 15 billion years ago.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton when asked about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Dick Cheney, a four time draft dodger justified the Iraq invasion, claiming 'Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).'
If opinions are only opinions what are opinions.
Certainty is unscientific.
Imagine bacteria from a space probe starting life on another planet.
Some scientists claim humanity has a 50/50 chance of surviving this century.
There is only one matriarchal society in the world, the Mosuo.
Thousands of Americans and it is estimated over a million Iraqis have died so far over these imaginary WMD.
Japan invaded the United States on December 7Th, 1941. Today American flags adorn Japanese cars in America.
Free will is an essential myth.
You can understand how a neuron works but it doesn't help understanding.
Do politicians ever think about poverty in America or the world.
Recently I noticed a shirt made in Vietnam.
Fifty six thousand Americans died in Vietnam fighting the spread of Communism.
A human would not be a human outside society.
People believe having freedom to do something means you can.
Americans today buy more communist made items than American made.
Freedom is the chance to be better thought Camus.
Have you ever met someone whose smile or voice alone made you like them.
What was the first question.
What will be the last.
One hundred trillion microbes exist on each of us.
Do social memes exist.
Is the mediocrity principle true.
It is estimated there are 100 thousand possible earths in our galaxy alone.
Seinfeld claimed to be about nothing.
John Cage once said he was saying nothing but still saying it.
Do we ever grow up.
How much real world experience do Judges have.
All industrial nations have universal healthcare except for the United States.
'Semper Fi' stickers have been seen on Japanese and German cars.
The earth is four and one half billion years old.
What is a picture really worth.
Robert Musil said pictures on the wall soon disappear.
Republicans hated Clinton in 2000 and love him in 2011.
The life span of elephants is 70 years.
One teaspoon of sea water contains five billion bacteria.
When watching another perform a task, our brain's neurons imitate the activity.
A quarter of all Americans believe their president was born outside the US.
Drawing came first then writing then reading so humans could understand what they drew.
Maybe grunting came first.
I love to listen and watch my granddaughter babble in what appears to be meaningful conversation.
George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.
John Kerry served in Vietnam; Dick Cheney obtained four deferments.
Music and art make us human.
Zola thought you cannot see something until you photograph it.
Each weekend at Mass, we prayed for the conversion of Russia from Communism.
Alaska was discovered in 1732.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend leads to nothing good.
Evil is the reason hell is required.
During the week we hid under our school desks preparing for nuclear holocaust.
All religions have as a central tenet the Golden Rule - none follow it.
George Tenet claimed WMD were a slam dunk; he received the Freedom Medal.
There are a hundred billion synapses in the brain.
How do we explain blindsight.
Why do Americans have so little regard for education.
The earth does not require humans.
The meaning of freedom requires context.
The universe does not require living things nor thought.
Liberty only exists where there is law.
Is language essential to dreams, I think no.
America is not in the Bible.
All debate should be enthymematic; 98 percent of all Internet debate is ad hominem.
Low taxes and deregulation have failed the majority of America's people.
Gossip is universal, so is the blame.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The nuns knew how to inflict guilt, mention omission.
Do American boys still work on cars.
Try to think without words.
David Deutsch claims conjecture is the origin of all knowledge.
George W. Bush a draft dodger painted both McCain and Kerry as bad soldiers.
Do dreams mean anything. Do nightmares.
The Iraq invasion has cost over 700 billion dollars and counting.
Wealth is a creation of society.
In just ten generations you have 2048 grandparents.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
Fossil fuels are the result of life death and time.
Does birth order matter.
Sometimes I think the bicycle is the greatest invention.
Labels or categories or isms are only meaningful to the speaker.
Colin Powell provided complex testimony at the UN for WMD.
Many Americans believe in an America that never existed.
Dreams are creations of the mind.
Humans are inconsistently hypocritical.
Are cynicism and conspiracy close relatives.
TV's easy solutions give comfort to many.
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6Th, 1945.
Approximately eleven more ovulations occurred before the egg dropped that became me.
My mother says my first love was a car, a 1955 Chevy.
Fiction serves as conscience.
George W. Bush praised Michael Brown after Katrina struck New Orleans.
Movies mirror our dream world, Hollywood movies mirror nightmares of individual revenge and widespread catastrophe.
L. Paul Bremer was awarded a Freedom medal. So was Rosa Parks.
Photo Postcards of lynchings in America from 1883 till 1960 were displayed in February, 2000 in New York.
There are over four million porn websites in the world.
Empathy is missing in so many Americans, why.
How can we explain extreme narcissism.
Evolution was never controversial in Asian; Asians never considered themselves top dog.
While Satan still lingers in the minds of people, Government has replaced him in America.
If you do nothing you cannot be criticized, if good happens great, if bad it is always those who acted.
What if there were no affirmative action.
Sarah Palin is the right wing Chauncey Gardiner.
Or is that the political Anna Nicole Smith.
Argument is not rational.
Borges thought mirrors and sex were abominable as they both multiplied man.
I love to hold a new book.
The Bo language is now extinct.
Ronald Reagan had the highest peace time tax increase in America history.
The earth has had two deep freezes that killed most life on earth.
Laughter is an evolutionary tool for it's OK.
Death doesn't bother us when it is someone else.
Does anyone still diagram sentences or practice Palmer penmanship.
The Romans used roads for soldiers and communications.
What is the need and appeal of speed.
FDR started minimum wage at 25 cents.
How do you define drudgery.
Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system because of war.
The Internet was created by government due to security concerns.
The Black Plague killed 25 million people.
Mornings make me high, is that consciousness or dopamine.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed over twenty million.
Do you ever wish Santa was real.
How do we know we are thinking.
It is estimated that 110 million died in wars in the 20Th century.
Some place the estimate as high as 140 million.
The first victim of war is truth.
Why do children find bodily functions funny. Adults too.
Propaganda regardless of truth works if it fits a worldview.
At one time the sun never set on the British empire.
In Asia silence is a demonstration of knowledge.
Communist Russia was our ally during the second world war.
There are 80 Walmarts in Communist China.
Americans in the 18Th century lived to 45 Europeans to 32.
I am therefore I think.
Are there really laws in nature.
Why does gravity work.
People argue to convince themselves.
In America government has replaced the devil for partisans.
Is objectivity possible in writing about hard topics.
The world didn't end at the first millennium. Nor the second.
In 1999, manual apparatus sold well because of fear electricity would not work in the new millennium.
Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, was probably the greatest athlete of all time.
Among our closet relatives in the animal kingdom are the peaceful Bonobo.
The universe is flat. The end point of the universe is estimated but not known.
Humans date back 150,000 years.
Government is now the witch of the past.
Eisenhower described his administration as progressive.
How do we know what we think we know.
Edit to Bible: the love of money is the root of most evil, or much evil.
Fear and insecurity are big factors too.
Schopenhauer said reading was thinking with the mind of another.
A British newspaper marveled at the number of stupid people in America after Bush won the second time.
No testing to confirm 'stupid' was conducted.
In reading we often converse with the dead.
Fascism is of the right, Communism of the left, Dictatorship personal.
Hitler was a Catholic, so was Timothy McVeigh, so is Antonin Scalia.
Is progress a realistic idea.
Fox media has been shown to make people stupid.
Was Sisyphus happy.
Is the primitive mind the source of conspiracy thinking.
The time circumstances and accomplishments make Franklin Delano Roosevelt our greatest president.
Jonas Salk took no profit from his team's development of the Polio vaccine.
Wittgenstein said if all science problems were solved it would not touch any of life's problems.
Between 2003 and 2007 the profits of the nation's largest medical insurers rose 170.2 percent to $12.6 billion.
Experts and throwing darts are equally reliable prognosticators.
America ranks 37Th in the world in healthcare, right next to Costa Rica.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, is ugliness.
Where does emotion originate in music.
Meaning is found in the use of words, Wittgenstein thought.
One can say anything.
Citizens in America have become consumers.
Global warming deniers suffer from shifting baseline syndrome.
In geologic time, human history is a second, our life less.
If Think Tanks are only about partisan and corporate ideology, why are they called think tanks.
Coffee sex books and the open road all I need.
Channel surfing is a male sport.
The richest 1 percent in America saw their wealth triple from 1980 to 2006. The bottom 90% went down 20 percent.
If free will exists how can we justify our politics in a world of poverty and disease.
Sixty percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.
A child dies of preventable causes every 15 seconds in the world.
Pro-life is an easy position, nothing substantive is required.
Liberalism and conservatism equiponderate Tao.
Even beauty becomes boring.
Corporate taxes amounted to just 7.4 percent of total federal tax revenue in 2003.
The sun is middle age in sun time and should burn out in roughly another 5 billion years.
I had a much stronger fantasy life young.
The rich are bailed out, the poor thrown out.
The rich get their drugs prescribed, the poor from the corner pusher.
The war on drugs was started in 1969 and is still in progress.
Tobacco kills approximately 400,000 people each year.
Alcohol about 80,000, illegal drugs kill only a few thousand.
Beckett wrote I can't go on, I'll go on.
The war on terrorism, a noun, started during the Bush administration.
Terrorism is a method.
I do not understand cults, nor the Tea Party.
Every racist has reasons for their racism.
Every racist thinks the other is the racist.
Only two chromosomes separate us from the great apes.
Has the debate over nature versus nurture been resolved.
How many acknowledge their biases.
Empathy grows too often from experience alone.
Political opinions are not truths.
Why does life seem worse than in some past time to so many.
Some never have enough, why.
What is the appeal of dystopian horror in a near future.
Since we abandon old theories of science why do we cling to old theories of politics or economics.
Combined taxes consume 21 percent of the poor person's earnings, but only 7 percent of the earnings of the rich.
Each breath is a million billion billion atoms of oxygen.
I find honest people interesting but very rare.
I love a complex thought experiment.
Convince me I am not from another planet.
Why do we so often lose contact with our friends.
Lived life contradicts all conspiracies.
Exceptions never prove anything.
Why is Gawd not a She.
Why don't men wear dresses.
Repeated untruths become truths.
Misogynists cross all spheres of thought.
Research is what we call what we don't know, thought Einstein.
Many believe in a deterministic economics.
I write and talk in order to find out what I think, Sontag said.
If all conceptions are children, when and where do they grow up.
Do birds think as they fly south, then north.
Somethings are given, our parents, our genes.
Do animals have nightmares.
Sartre thought other people were hell.
Wealth is worshipped in America, morality not so much.
How would one subject their ideas to a double blind test or even a single blind.
If you already agree with me, you will agree with me, said Stanley Fish.
TV is pure fantasy, when it isn't, it doesn't seem real.
Guns and people kill people.
Why are so may things in life addictive.
I think better in the morning.
Only death is shared by all.
Infants are not a blank slate.
Prejudice is taught.
The majority of drug offenders are white, but blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison.
Humans are distinct from animals because we know we are animals.
Humans are distinct from animals because we take ourselves seriously.
Why do no religions preach being good.
Being guillotined was for the privileged during the religious heresies. Being burned alive for the common people.
People arrived early at both for a good view.
What part of ourselves do we see in our children.
Some say there is no such thing as a free lunch.
What does the Flynn Effect say about so many assumptions.
Success is work, talent and luck, most forget luck.
In a single stone is all of time.
Where is that level playing field.
Walmart insures its workers and designates the corporation the beneficiary.
American corporations build data centers in India while laying off Americans.
The individual with inherent rights was created in the 18Th century.
Suffrage didn't happen till the 20Th century.
Wittgenstein thought all problems, problems of language.
Worlds are made in our head thought Nelson Goodman.
Maybe life on earth is a first draft or one of many.
Capgras is an excellent way to avoid your mother in law.
Rape in marriage was legal in all states until 1980.
Unfettered markets are the dream of the naive.
Narrative fallacies are accepted as truth.
When asked a stupid question Obama smiles nicely.
I am trying to learn that skill.
Language is the reason we know that we know.
It could be said that Indulgences brought down the Holy Roman Empire.
Camus thought judgement took place everyday.
If all work is outsourced who will inform us.
Is America the first working plutocracy.
Kant thought native Americans incapable of civilization.
I've read tobacco is the Indian's revenge.
Cymotrichous was the final word in the 2011 spelling bee.
Stromuhr was last in 2010.
Humans share 110 genes with bacteria.
Haitians burned twelve witches in 2010.
Conservatism can be summed up in one word: whining.
Ninety two percent of Afghans in 2010 didn't know of the 911 attack.
Should society demand restitution if the victim does not.
The beauty of our constitution is its broad vagueness.
Counter intuitive ideas are.
There are approximately 3.5 million homeless in America.
Guilty consciences often talk.
I love roads that stretch to infinity.
Time and space are beyond human comprehension.
The universe does not require thought.
Everything we think we know comes from the limits of our social life.
What would a pygmy think of quantum physics.
What could a quantum physicist learn from a pygmy.
Is explanation necessary.
DNA has so far exonerated 273 wrongly convicted Americans.
Only 5 to 10% of criminal cases involve DNA.
The top 1% of Americans possess more of the wealth of America than the bottom 50%.
If actions are additive, how can we ever tell if any action is the right action.
Is America a meritocracy of the privileged.
Why is buy American so rarely spoken in America.
Unfettered capitalism is the driving force of regulation.
Our language of nouns divorced from context, makes for easy classification but little thought.
Does anyone know what causes heterosexuality.
Eyewitness accounts are often wrong.
Libertarians are the final Marxists.
Labels come to be thought in American politics.
Irony is Ayn Rand on medicare.
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death, said Montesquieu.
Neither marriage nor God is mentioned in the US Constitution.
Consider how much money corporations could funnel back into the community if they outsourced executives and their boards.
Kafka said the meaning of life is death.
Beckett said what he didn't like about death was he couldn't enjoy it.
Does infinity apply to good, to bad.
Stupid ideas are stupid, they can not be dressed up.
Wall street and political criminals imagine conspiracies aimed at them from media or ideology.
People who worship markets blame our president for the actions of those same markets.
Debate is useless, people do not think, they react.
Pointing fingers is the most used debate strategy in America.
Money is worshipped most in America, next comes sport.
In Finland children want to be teachers, in America they want to be athletes.
Will humankind ever attain immortality on earth.
It is still the 'pudding' that matters.
Mitt Romney obtained a religious deferment from military duty.
Which would you choose, great beauty, intelligence or long life.
Sometimes the best you can do is live long.
In the end it is what we value that creates complexity.
I am a liberal, a progressive, a democratic socialist, an economic democrat, a radical conservative, a social democrat, an economic humanist, wrote Martin Gardner, me too.
It is the journey that matters.
I'll go on....

 

[midcan5]

A few revisions. I was impressed by SuperDave's comments. For thought only. Check later for changes.

Fact Paradox and Random Musings

The birth of time and space occurred some 15 billion years ago.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton when asked about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Dick Cheney, a four time draft dodger justified the Iraq invasion, claiming 'Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDS).'
If opinions are only opinions what are opinions.
Certainty is unscientific.
Imagine bacteria from a space probe starting life on another planet.
Some scientists claim humanity has a 50/50 chance of surviving this century.
There is only one matriarchal society in the world, the Mosuo.
Thousands of Americans and it is estimated over a million Iraqis have died so far over these imaginary WMDS.
Japan invaded the United States on December 7Th, 1941. Today American flags adorn Japanese cars in America.
Free will is an essential myth.
You can understand how a neuron works but it doesn't help understanding.
Do politicians ever think about poverty in America or the world.
Recently I noticed a shirt made in Vietnam.
Fifty six thousand Americans died in Vietnam fighting the spread of Communism.
A human would not be a human outside society.
People believe having freedom to do something means you can.
Americans today buy more communist made items than American made.
Freedom is the chance to be better thought Camus.
Have you ever met someone whose smile or voice alone made you like them.
What was the first question.
What will be the last.
One hundred trillion microbes exist on each of us.
Do social memes exist.
Is the mediocrity principle true.
It is estimated there are 100 thousand possible earths in our galaxy alone.
Seinfeld claimed to be about nothing.
John Cage once said he was saying nothing but still saying it.
Do we ever grow up.
How much real world experience do Judges have.
All industrial nations have universal healthcare except for the United States.
'Semper Fi' stickers have been seen on Japanese and German cars.
The earth is four and one half billion years old.
What is a picture really worth.
Robert Musil said pictures on the wall soon disappear.
Republicans hated Clinton in 2000 and love him in 2011.
The life span of elephants is 70 years.
One teaspoon of sea water contains five billion bacteria.
Some Americans are too proud to buy American.
When watching another perform a task, our brain's neurons imitate the activity.
A quarter of all Americans believe their president was born outside the US.
Drawing came first then writing then reading so humans could understand what they drew.
Maybe grunting came first.
I love to listen and watch my granddaughter babble in what appears to be meaningful conversation.
George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.
John Kerry served in Vietnam; Dick Cheney obtained four deferments.
Music and art make us human.
Zola thought you cannot see something until you photograph it.
Each weekend at Mass, we prayed for the conversion of Russia from Communism.
Alaska was discovered in 1732.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend leads to nothing good.
Evil is the reason hell is required.
During the week we hid under our school desks preparing for nuclear holocaust.
All religions have as a central tenet the Golden Rule - none follow it.
George Tenet claimed WMD were a slam dunk; he received the Freedom Medal.
There are a hundred billion synapses in the brain.
How do we explain blindsight.
Why do Americans have so little regard for education.
The earth does not require humans.
The meaning of freedom requires context.
The universe does not require living things nor thought.
Liberty only exists where there is law.
Is language essential to dreams, I think no.
America is not in the Bible.
Dolphins call each by name.
I drive an ad for America not....
All debate should be enthymematic; 98 percent of all Internet debate is ad hominem.
Low taxes and deregulation have failed the majority of America's people.
Gossip is universal, so is the blame.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The nuns knew how to inflict guilt, mention omission.
Do American boys still work on cars.
Try to think without words.
If man kills himself off maybe Dolphins will replace us.
Americans love fantasy shows about spirit intervention, why.
David Deutsch claims conjecture is the origin of all knowledge.
George W. Bush a draft dodger painted both McCain and Kerry as bad soldiers.
Do dreams mean anything. Do nightmares.
The Iraq invasion has cost over 700 billion dollars and counting.
We only see the world as we are.
Wealth is a creation of society.
In just ten generations you have 2048 grandparents.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
Carbon fuels are the result of life death and time.
Mitochondrial Eve is our evolutionary mom, Adam lived nearby we hear.
Does birth order matter.
Sometimes I think the bicycle is the greatest invention.
Labels or categories or isms are only meaningful to the speaker.
Colin Powell provided complex testimony at the UN for WMD.
Many Americans believe in an America that never existed.
Dreams are creations of the mind.
Humans are inconsistently hypocritical.
Are cynicism and conspiracy close relatives.
Is conspiracy thinking an evolutionary tactic of survival.
TV's easy solutions give comfort to many.
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6Th, 1945.
Approximately eleven more ovulations occurred before the egg dropped that became me.
My mother says my first love was a car, a 1955 Chevy.
Fiction serves as conscience.
Why are boobs so interesting and desired.
George W. Bush praised Michael Brown after Katrina struck New Orleans.
Movies mirror our dream world, Hollywood movies mirror nightmares of individual revenge and widespread catastrophe.
L. Paul Bremer was awarded a Freedom medal. So was Rosa Parks.
Photo Postcards of lynchings in America from 1883 till 1960 were displayed in February, 2000 in New York.
There are over four million porn websites in the world.
Empathy is missing in so many Americans, why.
How can we explain extreme narcissism.
Evolution was never controversial in Asian; Asians never considered themselves top dog.
While Satan still lingers in the minds of people, Government has replaced him in America.
If you do nothing you cannot be criticized, if good happens great, if bad it is always those who acted.
What if there were no affirmative action.
Sarah Palin is the right wing Chauncey Gardiner.
Or is that the political Anna Nicole Smith.
Argument is not rational.
Borges wrote mirrors and sex were abominable as they both multiplied man.
Life is only possible because of other life.
I love to hold a new book.
The Bo language is now extinct.
Ronald Reagan had the highest peace time tax increase in America history.
The earth has had two deep freezes that killed most life on earth.
Laughter is an evolutionary tool for it's OK.
Death doesn't bother us when it is someone else.
Does anyone still diagram sentences or practice Palmer penmanship.
The Romans used roads for soldiers and communications.
What is the need and appeal of speed.
FDR started minimum wage at 25 cents.
How do you define drudgery.
Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system because of war.
The Internet was created by government due to security concerns.
The Black Plague killed 25 million people.
Mornings make me high, is that consciousness or dopamine.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed over twenty million.
Do you ever wish Santa was real.
America used to be a can-do-nation, it is becoming a won't do nation.
How do we know we are thinking.
It is estimated that 110 million died in wars in the 20Th century.
Some place the estimate as high as 140 million.
The first victim of war is truth.
Why do children find bodily functions funny. Adults too.
Propaganda regardless of truth works if it fits a worldview.
At one time the sun never set on the British empire.
In Asia silence is a demonstration of knowledge.
Communist Russia was our ally during the second world war.
There are 80 Walmarts in Communist China.
Americans in the 18Th century lived to 45 Europeans to 32.
I am therefore I think.
Are there really laws in nature.
Why does gravity work.
People argue to convince themselves.
Gun deaths may soon exceed automobile deaths.
In America government has replaced the devil for partisans.
Is objectivity possible in writing about complex topics.
The world didn't end at the first millennium. Nor the second.
In 1999, manual apparatus sold well because of fear electricity would not work in the new millennium.
Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, was probably the greatest athlete of all time.
Among our closet relatives in the animal kingdom are the peaceful Bonobo.
The universe is flat.
The end point of the universe is estimated but not known.
Humans date back 150,000 years.
Government is now the witch of the past.
Reality TV has little reality.
Eisenhower described his administration as progressive.
How do we know what we think we know.
Edit to Bible: the love of money is the root of most evil, or much evil.
Fear and insecurity are big factors too.
Schopenhauer said reading was thinking with the mind of another.
A British newspaper marveled at the number of stupid people in America after Bush won the second time.
No testing to confirm 'stupid' was conducted.
In reading we often converse with the dead.
Fascism is of the right, Communism of the left, Dictatorship personal.
Hitler was a Catholic, so was Timothy McVeigh, so is Antonin Scalia.
Is progress a realistic idea.
Fox media has been shown to make people stupid.
Was Sisyphus happy.
Is the primitive mind the source of conspiracy thinking.
The time circumstances and accomplishments make Franklin Delano Roosevelt our greatest president.
Jonas Salk took no profit from his team's development of the Polio vaccine.
Wittgenstein said if all science problems were solved it would not touch any of life's problems.
Between 2003 and 2007 the profits of the nation's largest medical insurers rose 170.2 percent to $12.6 billion.
Experts and throwing darts are equally reliable prognosticators.
America ranks 37Th in the world in healthcare, right next to Costa Rica.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, is ugliness.
Where does emotion originate in music.
Meaning is found in the use of words, Wittgenstein thought.
One can say anything.
Citizens in America have become consumers.
Global warming deniers suffer from shifting baseline syndrome.
In geologic time, human history is a second, our life less.
If Think Tanks are only about partisan and corporate ideology, why are they called think tanks.
Coffee sex books and the open road all I need.
Channel surfing is a male sport.
The richest 1 percent in America saw their wealth triple from 1980 to 2006. The bottom 90% went down 20 percent.
If free will exists how can we justify our politics in a world of poverty and disease.
Sixty percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.
A child dies of preventable causes every 15 seconds in the world.
Pro-life is an easy position, nothing substantive is required.
Liberalism and conservatism equiponderate Tao.
Even beauty becomes boring.
Corporate taxes amounted to just 7.4 percent of total federal tax revenue in 2003.
The sun is middle age in sun time and should burn out in roughly another 5 billion years.
I had a much stronger fantasy life young.
The rich are bailed out, the poor thrown out.
The rich get their drugs prescribed, the poor from the corner pusher.
The war on drugs was started in 1969 and is still in progress.
Tobacco kills approximately 400,000 people each year.
Alcohol about 80,000, illegal drugs kill only a few thousand.
Beckett wrote I can't go on, I'll go on.
The war on terrorism, a noun, started during the Bush administration.
Terrorism is a method.
I do not understand cults, nor the Tea Party cult.
Every racist has reasons for their racism.
Every racist thinks the other is the racist.
Only two chromosomes separate us from the great apes.
Why is pink associated with women and blue men.
Has the debate over nature versus nurture been resolved.
How many acknowledge their biases.
Empathy grows too often from experience alone.
What does Honey Boo Boo say about American tastes in TV and life.
Political opinions are not truths.
Why does life seem worse than in some past time to so many.
Some never have enough, why.
What is the appeal of dystopian horror in a near future.
Since we abandon old theories of science why do we cling to old theories of politics or economics.
Combined taxes consume 21 percent of the poor person's earnings, but only 7 percent of the earnings of the rich.
Each breath is a million billion billion atoms of oxygen.
I find honest people interesting but very rare.
I love a complex thought experiment.
Convince me I am not from another planet.
Why do we so often lose contact with our friends.
Lived life contradicts all conspiracies.
Exceptions never prove anything.
Why is God not a She.
Why don't men wear dresses.
Little girls dressed like mannequins with overweight moms, what is that.
Abortion is often the hypocrite's crutch, how much care is there for the living.
Repeated untruths become truths.
Misogynists cross all spheres of thought.
Research is what we call what we don't know, thought Einstein.
Many believe in a deterministic economics.
Corporations outsource American jobs and then whine about the bottom line.
I write and talk in order to find out what I think, Sontag said.
If all conceptions are children, when and where do they grow up.
Do birds think as they fly south, then north.
Somethings are given, our parents, our genes.
Do animals have nightmares.
Sartre thought other people were hell.
Wealth is worshipped in America, morality not so much.
How would one subject their ideas to a double blind test or even a single blind.
If you already agree with me, you will agree with me, said Stanley Fish.
TV is pure fantasy, when it isn't, it doesn't seem real.
Guns and people kill people.
Why are so may things in life addictive.
I think better in the morning.
Only death is shared by all.
Infants are not a blank slate.
Prejudice is taught.
The majority of drug offenders are white, but blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison.
Humans are distinct from animals because we know we are animals.
Humans are distinct from animals because we take ourselves seriously.
Why do no religions preach being good acts.
Being guillotined was for the privileged during the religious heresies. Being burned alive for the common people.
People arrived early at both for a good view.
What part of ourselves do we see in our children.
Some say there is no such thing as a free lunch.
What does the Flynn Effect say about so many assumptions.
Success is work, talent and luck, most forget luck.
In a single stone is all of time.
Where is that level playing field.
Walmart insures its workers and designates the corporation the beneficiary.
American corporations build data centers in India while laying off Americans.
The individual with inherent rights was created in the 18Th century.
Suffrage didn't happen till the 20Th century.
Churches are everywhere in America, one would conclude Americans were religious.
Wittgenstein thought all problems, problems of language.
Worlds are made in our head thought Nelson Goodman.
Maybe life on earth is a first draft or one of many.
Capgras is an excellent way to avoid your mother in law.
Rape in marriage was legal in all states until 1980.
Unfettered markets are the dream of the naive.
Narrative fallacies are accepted as truth.
When asked a stupid question Obama smiles nicely.
I am trying to learn that skill.
Language is the reason we know that we know.
It could be said that Indulgences brought down the Holy Roman Empire.
Camus thought judgement took place everyday.
If all work is outsourced who will inform us.
Is America the first working plutocracy.
Kant thought native Americans incapable of civilization.
I've read tobacco is the Indian's revenge.
Cymotrichous was the final word in the 2011 spelling bee.
Stromuhr was last in 2010.
Humans share 110 genes with bacteria.
If minimum wage is a good wage why does congress not use it as their pay scale.
Haitians burned twelve witches in 2010.
Conservatism can be summed up in one word: whining.
Ninety two percent of Afghans in 2010 didn't know of the 911 attack.
Should society demand restitution if the victim does not.
The beauty of our constitution is its broad vagueness.
Counter intuitive ideas are.
There are approximately 3.5 million homeless in America.
Guilty consciences often talk.
I love roads that stretch to infinity.
Time and space are beyond human comprehension.
The universe does not require thought.
Everything we think we know comes from the limits of our social life.
What would a pygmy think of quantum physics.
What could a quantum physicist learn from a pygmy.
Is explanation necessary or useful in debate.
DNA has so far exonerated 273 wrongly convicted Americans.
Only 5 to 10% of criminal cases involve DNA.
The top 1% of Americans possess more of the wealth of America than the bottom 50%.
If actions are additive, how can we ever tell if any action is the right action.
America today is a meritocracy of the privileged.
Why is buy American made so rarely spoken in America.
The Sun flips its polarity every 11 years.
Unfettered capitalism is the driving force for regulation.
Our language of nouns divorced from context, makes for easy classification but little thought.
Does anyone know what causes heterosexuality.
Eyewitness accounts are often wrong.
Are Libertarians the final communists.
If you compare BBC to Fox you may lose hope for the America mind.
I never believed in the unconscious mind till I realized it answered questions.
Labels in American politics are a substitute for thought.
Irony is Ayn Rand on Medicare.
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death, said Montesquieu.
Neither marriage nor God is mentioned in the US Constitution.
Consider how much money corporations could funnel back into the community if they outsourced executives and their boards.
Kafka said the meaning of life is death.
Beckett said what he didn't like about death was he couldn't enjoy it.
Does infinity apply to good, to bad.
America seen from space during rush hour is a picture of scurrying ants.
Stupid ideas are stupid, they can not be dressed up.
Ted Cruz proves intelligence alone doesn't make you a human.
Wall street and political criminals imagine conspiracies aimed at them from media or ideology.
People who worship markets blame our president for the actions of those same markets.
Debate is useless, people do not think, they react.
Pointing fingers is the most used debate strategy in America.
Money is worshipped most in America, next comes sport.
Often the best answer is none.
In Finland children want to be teachers, in America they want to be athletes.
Will humankind ever attain immortality on earth.
It is still the 'pudding' that matters.
Mitt Romney obtained a religious deferment from military duty.
Cocoa helps memories work better, so some think.
Which would you choose, great beauty, intelligence, or long life, pick two.
Sometimes the best you can do is live long.
In the end it is what we value that creates complexity.
I am a liberal, a progressive, a democratic socialist, an economic democrat, a radical conservative, a social democrat, an economic humanist, wrote Martin Gardner, me too.
It is the journey that matters.
I'll go on....

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Do you ever get tired of being wrong?

Re: Matriarchal societies.

 

[midcan5]

Do you ever get tired of being wrong?

Re: Matriarchal societies.

Thanks for that I have to look into how they define matriarchal. The fault here is with 'Discovery' or 'Nat Geo' where I heard the item mentioned and studied as I am not an anthropologist or student of every known society on earth.

"...40,000-strong Mosuo, one of the world&#8217;s last matrilineal societies. As befits a culture with no word for &#8216;father&#8217; or &#8216;husband&#8217;, Mosuo women do not marry. Instead, they take as many lovers as they wish, cherry-picking them from within the tribe and inviting them for secret evening trysts (usually after the men have spent all day slaughtering pigs, while females sort out household finances). Property is handed down through the female line and there&#8217;s no stigma in not knowing who a child&#8217;s father is." (from QW link)

This is a constant work in progress, so thanks again. Mostly for thought and bemusement over what we (I) think we know.

The Mosou are the only known matriarchal society of any significance. (I'll need a later edit.)

Edit: The site originally linked was not of a quality worth linking to. mc5

Another piece worth a look. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/21/chinas-mosuo-tribe-the-wo_n_799621.html

http://www.ted.com/conversations/13708/would_a_matriarchal_society_of.html

 

[midcan5]

"Another standard misconception is that there is a single form of reading in question, and a single future for it. Current debates are overwhelmingly premised on the false idea that “reading” in its highest or best form means reading books, most often the realist novels of the middle-class condition that have dominated the modern age. But reading has always offered us a host of experiences, from the mundane to the spiritual, including the dipping, skimming, and hyperlinking that now seem to worry people so. The specific concern for the future of the bound book should be seen for what it is: a form of special pleading whereby a particular (how I like to read) masquerades as a universal (reading!)." Mark Kingwell, Harper's August 2013

Reality has an odd way of being missing in American media today. One can watch any media format and while some are worse than others, none are about the actual world. Occasinally though bits and pieces of the real shine through the muck. Instead of placing this piece in 'Review' I thought why not add it to my 'musings.' Kingwell quoted above is worth a read too. A bit of the real below.

"HARPER’S INDEX"

Excerpt from August 2013 Harper's magazine.

"Average annual cost of detaining an inmate at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay : $900,000
At a supermax prison in the United States : $65,000

Number of terrorist attacks made against diplomatic targets worldwide since 1970 : 2,865
Number of those attacks made against American targets : 520

Percentage of all petitions to hear a case the Supreme Court has granted in the past three years : 1
Percentage of petitions it has granted that were supported by an amicus brief from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce : 32

Factor by which the average white U.S. family was wealthier than the average non-white U.S. family before the recession : 4
Factor by which it is now : 6

Net amount contributed to Medicare by immigrants between 2002 and 2009 : $115,000,000,000
Net amount drawn out by native-born citizens over the same period : $28,000,000,000

Average amount a Water Valley, Mississippi, hospital bills Medicare for treating pneumonia with no complications : $4,552
Average amount a Philadelphia hospital does : $79,007

Percentage of authorized U.S. firearms dealers the ATF hasn’t inspected in the past five years : 58
Chance a U.S. youth considered at risk for suicide lives in a home with a gun : 1 in 5
Portion of young people attempting suicide without a gun who die from the attempt : 1/10
Of those attempting suicide with a gun who do : 9/10

Number of Americans who died in motor-vehicle accidents in 2010 : 33,687
Who died of suicide : 38,364

Percentage of men in dual-income marriages who said they struggled with work-family confiict in 1977 : 35
Who say they do today : 60
Portion of live-in domestic workers who make less than minimum wage : 2/3

Percentage change in the number of Walmart stores nationwide since 2008 : +13
In the size of Walmart’s retail workforce : 0
Estimated number of homeowners whose foreclosure-abuse settlements were affected in May by a “clerical error” : 96,000
Amount these homeowners were underpaid : $44,600,000

Number of applicants for 350 investment-banking internships Goldman Sachs offered to undergraduates this summer : 17,000

Average cost after financial aid to attend NYU for a freshman from a family making $30,000 a year or less : $25,462

Percentage of American cats that are overweight : 58"

Sources are listed in magazine.

Check out one of the best magazines in America. Harper's Magazine

The looks interesting too.

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