Favorite quotes and original musings.
Here's a nice thought:
Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. - Buddha
To Think, is the Essence of Being Human.
There is nothing worse, than causing someone to be afraid to Think For Themselves.
From Theif of Time (Pratchett):
In the Second Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised a story is written concerning one day when the apprentice Clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached Wen and spake thusly: 'Master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is taught by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?'
Wen considered this for some time, and at last said: 'A fish!'
And Clodpool went away, satisfied.
Aggie and I were in the Chantbox when he posted this and my response was "HOLY CARP!!!"
We'd like to put it on the Home Page, like an inscription over the monastery gates.
I'll ask the admins if it can be done.
"When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging."
Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for - Unkown.
"Science is the How, Religion is the why.
Science must be accepted by all to be factual, Religion must simply be accepted by yourself, and cannot be factual or non-factual." - me
still working on this, but the short version is 'Science is the how, Religion is the why'. any comments or suggestion would be greatley appreciated.
~Qwerty
Quote from: Sibling Qwertyuiopasd on October 31, 2006, 04:54:20 AM
Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for - Unkown.
"Science is the How, Religion is the why.
Science must be accepted by all to be factual, Religion must simply be accepted by yourself, and cannot be factual or non-factual." - me
still working on this, but the short version is 'Science is the how, Religion is the why'. any comments or suggestion would be greatley appreciated.
~Qwerty
Nice. I'd add: "Sometimes, Religion is Why Not"
Science is the How, Religion is the Why, Imagination is the Why Not.
Quote from: Sibling Kephra (Tansy) on October 31, 2006, 04:34:15 AM
"When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging."
TANSY!! Hi!! It makes me happy to see you here. :toadfish: :toadfish: :toadfish: :rockon:
Quote from: Quasimodo (The Meromorph) on October 31, 2006, 03:32:21 PM
Science is the How, Religion is the Why, Imagination is the Why Not.
What I meant by "Why Not" was not as in the phrase, "Why not go ahead and do that?"
But, what I meant to say (and perhaps was being too clever) is that often Religion will give us a good reason NOT to do something that Science has shown us how to do.
I knew that, I was trying to give an enhanced statement. :)
I love this...Tibetan Buddhist, Geshe Langri Thangpa
from the Eight Verses of Transforming the Mind.
Whenever I interact with someone,
May I view myself as the lowest amongst them all,
And from the very depths of my heart
Respectfully hold others as superior
It doesn't literally mean lower yourself at all costs. It means, put yourself in someone else's place, because then you can truly understand the position of others.
Seriously cool stuff!
"Walk a Mile in another's Shoes, before critisizing them."
"Then, you'll be a mile away, and you'll have their shoes ...."
For all my toadfish siblings as they all celebrate their birthdays today......
Remember......
It is not the years in one's life that matters
But
The life in one's years.
Celebrate your lives today.
It is immortal, the life that touches others.
Psst! Chatty and Aphos go look in Announcements!
Big hugs to our humbly immortal friends!
:) :D :toadfish: :D ;)
Thanks, all. It makes me miss Omnie...the other of the three birthday twins. (Hey, it works for me. I told you I was bad at math.) ;D
If it won't matter in a hundred years, it doesn't really matter.
unless you believe anything as miniscule as tapping your toes while you're alone affects the course of history.
hey, it could
~Qwerty
Here's a little thought:
A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-- Mahatma Ghandi
And another one:
It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too good either if you speak when your head is empty.
(don't know who...)
Hey- that fits right in with what we're discussing in the Interfaith Assembly Hall.
Bravo!
Instructions for use:
Help the people that help you.
Let beautiful things you see make you cry tears of joy.
Live, love, repeat.
MB
My thought of the day is Somebody Loves Me!!
I've got my new book, my warm throw tucked around my legs and a cup of yummy hot chocolate with a cookie.
I'm saving the peppermint bark until after dinner...
Thank you, Vita, so very much. :-*
A thought for today:
Get even with those who do you a good turn!
I'm trying to come up with the inspirational thought of the day I had at 2:15 this morning but was too lazy to get up and write down. Might have been incoherent, anyway. It had something to do with change. I may have been trying to psyche myself up for getting back in shape this year. That illness late last year has left me flabby. I don't mind being a bit fleshy, but getting out of breath just walking around is not good. Plus, my jeans are tighter than they should be- darn them!
I don't want to diet, since they've finally come out and said that dieting not only doesn't work but it's unhealthy. I just want to get some muscle tone and endurance back, if possible. That means I have to work my way back into morning stretches and sit-ups. I should begin walking, too. But first I have to convince my mind.
So-
Change is inevitable.
To guarantee it will be change for the better, I must direct the change myself.
(By the way, I did ten sit-ups this morning. I know not to ask for too much at once!)
It might help if you're being active for a purpose, not just for its own sake.
Maybe if you take your camera along, for instance, you can convince your body you're going on a "local photo expedition" and not a "walk". The fact that there's just as much walking in one as in the other is just a side benefit. ;)
Whoa, you're so toadily right, Lambi. I do tend to want to have a purpose. Thank you!
Hehe.... I enjoy a walk for its own sake (but I hate running); where I have troubles is slowing down to a pace which is enjoyable for others to walk with me.
What I need is something enjoyable and preferrably not requiring a big equipment purchase that will build upper body strength... I'll be hitting the pool, but blanking on all else. I'm all legs, and my favorite sports just reinforce that. :P
If you're near water, rowing would be fun. Any canoe rentals around?
Wait a minute, you're probably all iced over up in the Great White North. How about shovelling snow for invalids?
I've just read something very nice, and I decide to post it here right away. It's a part of a sermon by Kyle Lake, a pastor of the University Baptist Church and an author and leader of the Emerging Church movement.
"Live. And Live Well. BREATHE. Breathe in and Breathe deeply. Be PRESENT. Do not be past. Do not be future. Be now. On a crystal clear, breezy 70 degree day, roll down the windows and FEEL the wind against your skin. Feel the warmth of the sun. If you run, then allow those first few breaths on a cool Autumn day to FREEZE your lungs and do not just be alarmed, be ALIVE. Get knee-deep in a novel and LOSE track of time. If you bike, pedal HARD... and if you crash then crash well. Feel the SATISFACTION of a job well done - a paper well-written, a project thoroughly completed, a play well-performed. If you must wipe the snot from your 3-year old's nose, don't be disgusted if the Kleenex didn't catch it all... because soon he'll be wiping his own. If you've recently experienced loss, then GRIEVE. And Grieve well. At the table with friends and family, LAUGH. If you're eating and laughing at the same time, then might as well laugh until you puke. And if you eat, then SMELL. The aromas are not impediments to your day. Steak on the grill, coffee beans freshly ground, cookies in the oven. And TASTE. Taste every ounce of flavor. Taste every ounce of friendship. Taste every ounce of Life. Because-it-is-most-definitely-a-Gift."
Quote from: Kiyoodle the Gambrinous on January 07, 2007, 09:08:48 PM
"Live. And Live Well. BREATHE. Breathe in and Breathe deeply. Be PRESENT. Do not be past. Do not be future. Be now. On a crystal clear, breezy 70 degree day, roll down the windows and FEEL the wind against your skin. Feel the warmth of the sun. If you run, then allow those first few breaths on a cool Autumn day to FREEZE your lungs and do not just be alarmed, be ALIVE. Get knee-deep in a novel and LOSE track of time. If you bike, pedal HARD... and if you crash then crash well. Feel the SATISFACTION of a job well done - a paper well-written, a project thoroughly completed, a play well-performed. If you must wipe the snot from your 3-year old's nose, don't be disgusted if the Kleenex didn't catch it all... because soon he'll be wiping his own. If you've recently experienced loss, then GRIEVE. And Grieve well. At the table with friends and family, LAUGH. If you're eating and laughing at the same time, then might as well laugh until you puke. And if you eat, then SMELL. The aromas are not impediments to your day. Steak on the grill, coffee beans freshly ground, cookies in the oven. And TASTE. Taste every ounce of flavor. Taste every ounce of friendship. Taste every ounce of Life. Because-it-is-most-definitely-a-Gift."
:toast: *rumble* :toast:
Except for the crashing on your bike bit. If you crash, try to land on your feet. Not your face. I've tried it both ways. Landing on your feet is considered "crashing well" in my books, although there's less of an endorphin rush (or loss of consciousness, for that matter).
This leads nicely into another quote (though to do with airplanes, not bikes):
"Any landing you can walk away from is a good one." - Chuck Yeager (IIRC)
:D
There is an old Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm song from the late 1940s and early 1950s called "The A25 Song" which contains the opening lines:
They say in the Airforce a landing's OK
If the pilot gets out and can still walk away
But in the Fleet Air Arm the prospect is grim
If the landing's piss-poor and the pilot can't swim!
Sibling Bluenose
"I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things"
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I like that.
I think that I pray for similar reasons.
You can't grumble to God about the boil on your arse when you know God's simultaneously hearing from people who have starving babies.
and there's likely worse things than starving babies about that he has to deal with....
random quote that popped into my head during lunch, completely original as far as I know;
"Everything is worth something, but nothing is worth Everything"
kinda simultanious "appreciate the little things in life" and "don't give everything up for one thing"
~Qwerty
Another nice thought (don't have a source though):
"One thing you can't recycle is wasted time."
more of a feel good one...
"Smile like you've got nothing to prove"
Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
- Haile Selassie I (at the opening of a special session of the General Assembly in Addis Ababa, thus becoming the first ruler to address both the League of Nations and the UN, 4 Oct 63)
Some more email sentiments I'd like to pass on to my dear Siblings...
An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole, which she carried across her neck.
One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water, at the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.
For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.
After 2 years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house."
The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?" "That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them. For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."
Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.
SO, to all of my crackpot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path!
You certainly make me crack a smile!
:)
Thank you.
ack! the puns! it burns.
but um... yeah, great story-slash-thought.
~Qwerty
I posted this in the Land of NOMIS, but thought it appropriate to repeat here:
(http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/6726/tolerancepc6.jpg)
Ha! Too true. but at least if you know this beforehand, you're less likely to be disappointed.
In winter when the fields are white,
I sing this song for your delight -
In spring, when woods are getting green,
I'll try and tell you what I mean.
In summer, when the days are long,
Perhaps you'll understand the song;
In autumn, when the leaves are brown,
Take pen and ink and write it down.
I sent a letter to the fish,
I told them, "This is what I wish."
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes' answer was
"We cannot do it, sir, because ..."
I sent a letter back to say
It would be better to obey.
But someone came to me and said
"The little fishes are in bed."
I said to him, and I said it plain
"Then you must wake them up again."
I said it very loud and clear,
I went and shouted in his ear.
But he was very stiff and proud,
He said "You needn't shout so loud."
And he was very proud and stiff,
He said "I'll go and wake them if ..."
I took a kettle from the shelf,
I went to wake them up myself.
But when I found the door was locked
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, But ...
Lewis Carroll
I love that. It's so ...nonconclusive!
"Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming."
-- J. P. McEvoy
"There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail."
- Erich Fromm
A thought courtesy of Kurt Vonnegut, who passed away today (http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s1895823.htm):
"I've had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on earth to fart around and don't let anybody tell you any different."
:'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'( :'(
I think I've read almost every book he ever wrote!!!!!
Okay, I'm in mourning.
I see some red frogurt and I want to paint it black.
"Lucky me, lucky mud!"
-from Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"
*Kurt Vonnegut, I will miss you. ;D
We visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson last week. It was beautiful there, with the dogwoods in bloom.
Jefferson was an interesting person. He was very big on religious tolerance and the idea that religion should not interfere with government. Too bad this idea is being glossed over today in this country.
A quote:
"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Dowse, 1803. ME 10:378
That's a great quote. Here's another:
"If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Lewis, Jr., May 9, 1798
Some other quotes.
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Thomas_Jefferson/
I wonder what he would think about the world of today?
Ah, there are some great ones. Thank you, MB.
If TJ were alive today, he'd still be speaking up.
"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day."
-Thomas Jefferson
"Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST..."
Frank Zappa - Packard Goose
"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked."
Bernard Meltzer
"Let the streams of life flow in peace. Turn away from violence. learn to think for a long time how to change the world. How to make it better to live in."
-Quetzalcoatl
I think people should walk barefoot. It's much more healthier. For example, every time I wake up with my shoes on, I have a terrible headache all day long, not to forget the terrible thirst...
I am barefoot as often as possible. Recently I've discovered those "Croc" shoes, which are uglier than home-made sin, but are the next best thing to being unshod short of flip-flops.
When I wear them to the grocery store I feel like I'm breaking the rules. ;D
Heh, it's been a while since I was barefoot in a grocery store - about 7 years, I think...
When a woman behaves like a man why doesn't she behave like a nice man?
Dame Edith Evans
I found a thought for the day this morning but forgot to bookmark it. Searchin reveals nothing.
Beagle has probably come across it. It's something about mass and matter along the lines of if mass doesn't matter, matters less - or more -, that's the style of it, it was much cleverer and convoluted than that. It was word play not science but only if you know science....
I have been backwards googling for ages; giving up. But if anyone has a hint, I'd love to find it again.
Meanwhile here is an Eisteinian web site for the Day http://www.juliantrubin.com/einsteinjokes.html
Two made me chuckle aloud, and there's "Anything that doesn't matter has no mass. " - but the other one I'm looking for is better.
Quote from: Griffin NoName The Watson of Sherlock on June 09, 2007, 01:46:18 AM
Beagle has probably come across it. It's something about mass and matter along the lines of if mass doesn't matter, matters less - or more -, that's the style of it, it was much cleverer and convoluted than that. It was word play not science but only if you know science....
I have been backwards googling for ages; giving up. But if anyone has a hint, I'd love to find it again.
Well this one is from Bishop Berkeley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley), (though sometimes wrongly attributed to Homer Simpson):
"What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind!"
There's also the interesting philosophical question posed by Hawkwind's "Quark, Strangeness, and Charm":
"We got sick of chat chat chatter and the
look upon everybody's face
But all that does not anti-matter now
We've found ourselves a black hole in space
And we're talking about Quark, Strangeness and Charm"
If something doesn't matter does that mean it does anti-matter?
The considered opinion of the best philosophers in the area is currently "Heavy, dude".
Nice one but not the one I can't find.
Just checked my Keynotes in Philosophy - can't seem to locate the "Heavy Dude" quote ;)
I wonder if you really understood Philosophy the key notes would turn out to be blank? Just a thought crossing (what it amuses me to call) my mind.
Not much related to what you've been talking about, but here's another nice though, I've just came across:
"Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine."
-- Anthony J. D'Angelo
EDIT: And another good one:
Invest your money in alcohol. Where else do you get 40%?
Quote from: Kiyoodle the Gambrinous on June 09, 2007, 10:16:19 AM
EDIT: And another good one:
Invest your money in alcohol. Where else do you get 40%?
Heh! If Sapporo hadn't taken the blighters over, I'd be buying ALE stock (Sleeman Unibroue).
Another thought, this time some good things you should know about partys:
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ...
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
I have one of those, too! ;)
The difference between a boy and a man is the price of his toys.
(I don't know who said that first)
Here's a thought that suits today:
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
(don't know who said it, but I like the thought)
"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."
- Sun Tzu, the Art of War
If you are a Simpsons fan go on the Simpsons Movie Site and you can create yourselves a Simpsons Avatar:
(http://web.mac.com/antonyroberts/iWeb/twerps_dwyle_flonking/Photos_files/graphics_springfield.jpg)
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Jack London (1876 - 1916)
Action Movies on Symbolism
"People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can't do that ... [omitted] ... as a man I'm flesh and blood I can be ignored I can be destroyed but as a symbol, as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting." - Bruce Wayne in "Batman Begins"
"A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world." - V in "V for Vendetta"
~Qwerty
"Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world."
-- Buddha.
Someone once said "All good things must come to an end".
... what a load of crap.
I mean yeah, sure, the good things have to end, but the bad things end too. And then they all start over again. That's just life. And you can spend your time worrying about the bad things. But it'll kind of keep you from noticing the good things, so I wouldn't recommend it.
I don't really know what I'd recommend, come to think of it.
Really, the only time things END is when you die. That's pretty final - but not always.
People say they're trying to make their mark on the world before they die - that's another kind of silly thing to say. You can't make your mark on the WORLD unless you've got a bulldozer or know the secret of making crop circles when no one's looking.
I figure, if you're going to leave your mark somewhere, you should leave it with people, rather than inanimate things.
Leave it by the words you say, or the things you do. The good things, and the bad things. They go hand in hand. I don't think there's a 'big mark' you leave, so much as little ones, all over the place. Here and there, people repeat something you said, because it was a good idea. Or you made them think something differently. Or you just loved them, is all.
All those little marks you leave, they'll add up to a big one, someday. And in the meantime, you should just live your life the best you can with what you've got to work with, and call it good.
I guess that's what I'd recommend. And while you're at it, try not to take the world too seriously, because sooner or later you're going to end up its punchline. And you can choose to be pissed off about it - or you can choose, instead, to laugh.
- - - - - - taken from the webcomic Queen of Wands (http://www.queenofwands.net/)
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well the sea than a fool can from a mountain top.
;) ;) ;)
"The Presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman." - Mitt Rommey
Frosty was asking questions to the president? (about what, global warming? ;) )
Probably. ask Mitt Rommey.
Does he take questions from an inmigrant? :o ::)
Well, if the immigrant is willing to serve this country like a soldier, i.e. campaign for Romney, sure.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may
not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Excellent one for here, Kiyo. I can't remember where it came from. It might make a good quote for the home page.
In the words of Robert G. Ingersoll:
"Did it ever occur to them that a cancer is as beautiful in its development as is the reddest rose? That what they are pleased to call the adaptation of means to ends, is as apparent in the cancer as in the April rain? How beautiful the process of digestion! By what ingenious methods the blood is poisoned so that the cancer shall have food! By what wonderful contrivances the entire system of man is made to pay tribute to this divine and charming cancer! See by what admirable instrumentalities it feeds itself from the surrounding quivering, dainty flesh! See how it gradually but surely expands and grows! By what marvelous mechanism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life! What beautiful colors it presents! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of thought it must have required to invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to produce one cancer? Is it possible to look upon it and doubt that there is design in the universe, and that the inventor of this wonderful cancer must be infinitely powerful, ingenious and good?"
from wikiLeak's front page:
News is what someone doesn't want you to know--everything else is advertising.
Quote from: The Meromorph on December 15, 2007, 09:21:58 PM
In the words of Robert G. Ingersoll:
"Did it ever occur to them that a cancer is as beautiful in its development as is the reddest rose? That what they are pleased to call the adaptation of means to ends, is as apparent in the cancer as in the April rain? How beautiful the process of digestion! By what ingenious methods the blood is poisoned so that the cancer shall have food! By what wonderful contrivances the entire system of man is made to pay tribute to this divine and charming cancer! See by what admirable instrumentalities it feeds itself from the surrounding quivering, dainty flesh! See how it gradually but surely expands and grows! By what marvelous mechanism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life! What beautiful colors it presents! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of thought it must have required to invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to produce one cancer? Is it possible to look upon it and doubt that there is design in the universe, and that the inventor of this wonderful cancer must be infinitely powerful, ingenious and good?"
Remind me to track him down and kick his butt... :kickbutt:
I unnerstan' it, but I don' gotta like it... :nono: :soapbox:
Quote from: The Meromorph on December 15, 2007, 09:21:58 PM
In the words of Robert G. Ingersoll:
"Did it ever occur to them that a cancer is as beautiful in its development as is the reddest rose? That what they are pleased to call the adaptation of means to ends, is as apparent in the cancer as in the April rain? How beautiful the process of digestion! By what ingenious methods the blood is poisoned so that the cancer shall have food! By what wonderful contrivances the entire system of man is made to pay tribute to this divine and charming cancer! See by what admirable instrumentalities it feeds itself from the surrounding quivering, dainty flesh! See how it gradually but surely expands and grows! By what marvelous mechanism it is supplied with long and slender roots that reach out to the most secret nerves of pain for sustenance and life! What beautiful colors it presents! Seen through the microscope it is a miracle of order and beauty. All the ingenuity of man cannot stop its growth. Think of the amount of thought it must have required to invent a way by which the life of one man might be given to produce one cancer? Is it possible to look upon it and doubt that there is design in the universe, and that the inventor of this wonderful cancer must be infinitely powerful, ingenious and good?"
IMHO not that taddy... I actually find it a quite careless and ignorant reasoning. :taz:
I can see how it could be written with irony like when Jonathan Swift wrote that the English aristocracy should be eating Irish babies and thereby solve two problems in one move... The problem is Cancer do not understand irony (the question is still out whether politicians do it or not) and you can't make cancer sway on it'd decisions by forming an intellectual opposition. I also see who the irony is aimed at, but it's lost on me. Cancer is simply not the tool to use when trying to making fun of Born Again Christians and alike. Go find a better tool!
I think his way of reasoning diminishes the suffering and pain cancer causes.
And it never impress me when someone makes defective conclusions because they haven't cared to check his facts or the facts doesn't fit in to their arguments. Cancer cells are not more orderly than normal cells and those pretty colours... Those are the results on contrast fluids added the lab technician added do be able do see which cell are what in the microscope!
Sorry for the :stick: fit.
:-[
Neurons (Nerve cells) are BTW a thing of beauty.
Before a fight breaks out let's all be upstanding and sing Monty Python's All Things Dull and Ugly (http://www.geocities.com/fang_club/All_things_dull.html)
*sings All Things Dull and Ugly*
;D
QuoteCancer is simply not the tool to use when trying to making fun of Born Again Christians and alike. Go find a better tool!
I think his way of reasoning diminishes the suffering and pain cancer causes.
Thank you.
It's a flaw, this attribution of whatever you want to make your point.
And it's no prettier when non-believers do it than when believers do it. There's no moral high ground to be had here.
The same "Goddess" or "Spirit" whoever you might believe in made the canker as sure as the rose.
I am not commenting on the quote or the responses themselves.
I am just wondering if you realised that Robert Green Ingersoll lived from 1833 to 1889. Reading other things he wrote (http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/) before responding was why I didn't respond. I'd never heard of him. Maybe I lead a sheltered life.
Actually, the time of the author isn't what bothers me.
Doubleposting on purpose.
Toadfish though of the day?
QuoteThe Toadfish Monastery has no religious affiliation but represents a group of individuals who, for open discussion's sake, agree to be tolerant and respectful of one another's views.
We are more interested in finding common ground than trumpeting our differences
Mission Statement
The Toadfish Monastery is a visionary community that shares a common goal of better worldwide communication through the use of tolerance, humility, understanding and mutual respect for all humankind.
My bad. :-[
I did not check my sources, thereby committing the mistake I accused Mr Ingersoll of. I apologize.
Still cells have no colour themselves and never had and they are not better organized than other cells the fact that cancer are mutating cell structures has be known for quite a while.
And my statement still stands: Go find another tool for discussing if God exist or not, cancer is not an appropriate one. I suppose Mr Ingersoll has to take that advice Post Mortem. ;) :P
Chatty, Darlica, I don't disagree with you at all. You made perfectly valid points from my perspective. I had no doubt that the date of the writing was not what concerned you Chatty and I would hope I have written enough at various times for you to know that.
From my own thoughts, what interested me was the date (given how familiar I am with the idea of cancer as a gift which we debate over and over on the cancer forums..... amidst cries of outrage as you would expect - someone ALWAYS brings it up). That's why I was asking if anyone else was interested in it datewise.
Knowing Mero, but not obviously wishing to speak for him, I made an assumption that he must have posted the quote to provoke some thought other than the one that he would know (again an assumption) we would have. However, I was making assumptions and I may be wrong. Given this is the Reef, it's private, so again, I assumed a lot.
If anyone wants a debate on writings of this man, other than this one quote, in the context of inquiry of various aspects at that date in time, I'll start another thread. I don't want to debate with myself and I don't know much about it. I quite understand if having written this, you don't want to know any more about him.
Another aspect I find I have some interest in is how cancer has been viewed at various times in the past. I've never thought about that other than in twentieth century terms. (except in Shakespeare and I think I am muddling that up with cankers ;)).
Mero I am sure can speak for himself and I expect he will.
*** sings All Things Dull and Ugly***** three times and waves the cleansing wand in the air !!!
I am familiar with some of Ingersoll's writings, studied them (not in depth, more as adjunct materials) in college. A selection of them were also in the text for the homiletics classes for which I was a teaching assistant.
I have always found him to be inflexible, self-congratulatory, and less clever by half (at least) that he thought himself to be. Very much the 'spiritual' (to coin a stupid phrase) predecessor of some writers today.
Then again, according to Ingersoll, I suffer from a disease of the mind, a leprosy of the soul--and, no I don't mean the cancer quote.
I've got a suggestion, but this one is far less serious (shocker there)
It's more of a dialog quote that illustrates a point.
Villain: On your tombstone it should say "Always in the wrong place at the wrong time".
John McClane: How about "Yippi-ki-yay, motherf***er"
~Qwerty
Ah yes, the Should Infidels Send Their Children to Sunday School?. That was one I glanced over.
This particular unbeliever did; well to Chaida. It didn't seem to Strangle the serpent of superstition that crawls and hisses about the cradle. Far as I know it helped with the Let us do all we can to make them intelligent which goes right against Ingersolls belief. I wonder how big his sample size was - admittedly mine was only 2 - and what were his double-blind random controls ? :ROFL:
EDIT
Qwerty - did anyone ever tell you that you are an angel?
Quote"Yippi-ki-yay, motherf***er"
An all purpose quote for the ages...
:mrgreen:
Appropriate uses: shooting eurotrash, throwing bombs down elevator shafts, and driving cars into helicopters
~Qwerty
Worked nicely when I fired a doctor a few months back, too.
The Chatty is not a nice person if you treat her like she's stupid, no... :mrgreen:
I just wanted to add: no hurt feelings whatsoever on my side neither do I want to hurt anyone else's.
Remember discussions are interesting and fun, we learn from them, that's why most of us are here.
:hug:
also "Yippi-ki-yay, motherf***er" is a very useful sentence, as is "I'll be back" and "Does this seem right to you"*.
:mrgreen:
* Geek points to anyone who knows where that line comes from! ;)
Quote from: Sibling Qwertyuiopasd on December 17, 2007, 04:51:20 AM
Appropriate uses: shooting eurotrash, throwing bombs down elevator shafts, and driving cars into helicopters
~Qwerty
Inappropriate uses: Declining more tea at a vicarage garden party , in a Nobel prize acceptance speech, when admiring your fiance's parents' garden.
Quotein a Nobel prize acceptance speech
I dunno...that might have been an appropriate one for Gore, for a given value of 'motherf***er' equaling Shrubito.
Sorry, I've been otherwise occupied since I posted that. I did hope to stimulate a discussion (actually there several discussions I envisaged being generated), but I don't think I anticipated the responses it did provoke.
I thought it an unusually eloquent and very focused rendition of a point that is indeed often used today in arguments with the more naive 'fundies'.
So, why did I post it there?
1. Partly for it's actual point. I had noticed, and grown slightly uncomfortable with, a tendency in our siblinghood to display a 'warm and fuzzy' attitude toward a basic idea of 'a great everything'. I didn't, and don't, expect to provoke a discussion of whether such a 'thing' 'exists', or even whether it's a useful 'mental model'. I did want to use this particularly eloquent statement (which I had just encountered elsewhere) to suggest that 'warm and fuzzy' might not be an especially appropriate attitude. I thought that might be an interesting discussion.
2. Partly because Robert Ingersoll was a 19th century prominent speaker etc. I don't endorse all of his thinking, I haven't read much of it yet, and only 'see his point' in some of what I have read. But I do find it interesting that many of the topics he addressed over a hundred years ago, are basically still 'bones of contention' today, at least in America.
I suggest reading his (short) Wiki Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll Just because you or I don't agree with him, doesn't mean it wouldn't be an interesting discussion... :)
3. Expecting a rational and deepening discussion (shows how accurate my judgement is :o), I could see this leading to another interesting discussion that we've kind of danced around before. If we are entitled to kill cancer wherever we find it (and I personally endorse that view), but not entitled to kill humans (ditto), where do we draw the line?
I intended to send your mind 'skittering sideways', not to provoke you to beating me with a stick! ::) :P
Re-reading your posts (while on the fourth draft of this response :D ), it is obvious that I am missing something basic (humanity? ???). Why is this piece of Ingersoll's offensive? I truly don't understand the tenor of your responses here...
I read the quote as an ironic tongue in cheek statement and it placed a smile in my face the first time I read it, but then again I consider my self more agnostic than theist and I do not believe possible nor comforted by the existence of a being with the 5*. I do understand why the quote may be taken as something offensive by some, but then again we are dealing with what I believe are flaws of creationism.
Given that cancer as we understand it now, is the apparent result of a type of random mutations, the thought intersects with a reasoning I had the other day about the implications of omniscience and the existence of chance: an omniscient being by definition will know (among other things) the future. The implication is that there is no chance, the future is written (destiny), and that we have no real free will.
My conclusion is that the absolute characteristics of God (as traditionally defined) create too many problems to allow his existence, and that if there is a god he mustn't have the 5. That obviously goes against everything a strict theist believes and may be offensive to them. Is it offensive here?
* the 5 are: omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, omni benevolence, and eternity.
Sometimes, when there's an elephant standing on your jugular vein, the general discussion of elephants can make you touchy.
My particular elephant is stomping my liver and lymph nodes, and there's something that COULD be done, but...elephants don't get removed in convenient places.
Even if you substitute
Nature, red in tooth and claw--it's still an elephant standing on my jugular vein.
Then again, maybe I'm just an ignorant Fundie...
RE: Tennyson's
In Memoriam. I find that there's no place for "freethinkers" to accept those who don't think freely like them--sorta like Tennyson did. A quote from an analysis--
Quotethe poem is also a deeply philosophical reflection on religion, science, and the promise of immortality. Tennyson was deeply troubled by the proliferation of scientific knowledge about the origins of life and human progress: while he was writing this poem, Sir Charles Lyell published his Principles of Geology, which undermined the biblical creation story, and Robert Chambers published his early evolutionary tract, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. In "In Memoriam," Tennyson insisted that we hold fast to our faith in a higher power in spite of our inability to prove God's existence: "Believing where we cannot prove." He reflects early evolutionary theories in his faith that man, through a process lasting millions of years, is developing into something greater. In the end, Tennyson replaces the doctrine of the immortality of the soul with the immortality of mankind through evolution, thereby achieving a synthesis between his profound religious faith and the new scientific ideas of his day.
Current Progressive political thought is pointing toward the idea that any such synthesis is an anomaly and should be banished. Current "tolerance" based communities may be going the same way?? Fine.
==================
As to the "great everything" concept...Mero, either you're reading MUCH more theistic intent into it than I can feature, or else, I'm just out on a limb thinking that WE, as a part of that 'great everything that is', are here to try to be more "warm and fuzzy". 'S--OK. I'm not feeling too warm or to fuzzy recently anyway.
Quote from: beagle on December 17, 2007, 11:14:04 AM
Quote from: Sibling Qwertyuiopasd on December 17, 2007, 04:51:20 AM
Appropriate uses: shooting eurotrash, throwing bombs down elevator shafts, and driving cars into helicopters
~Qwerty
Inappropriate uses: Declining more tea at a vicarage garden party , in a Nobel prize acceptance speech, when admiring your fiance's parents' garden.
Disagrees. Doris Lessing used it admirably for the Nobel. ;)
Quote from: Sibling Qwertyuiopasd on December 17, 2007, 04:51:20 AM
Appropriate uses: shooting eurotrash, throwing bombs down elevator shafts, and driving cars into helicopters
It is very useful for the shooting sports. The phrase enables one to hit an inch-thick cable with a revolver at ~200 feet, and increases the magazine capacity of automatic pistols to at least 30 or 40 rounds.
Quote from: beagle on December 17, 2007, 11:14:04 AM
Inappropriate uses: Declining more tea at a vicarage garden party , in a Nobel prize acceptance speech, when admiring your fiance's parents' garden.
In your fiancee's parents' garden, re-enacting the "how much for your women?" restaurant scene in
The Blues Brothers is much more appropriate, especially if said fiancee has an almost-of-age younger sister.
Quote from: The Meromorph on December 17, 2007, 04:10:33 PM
I intended to send your mind 'skittering sideways', not to provoke you to beating me with a stick! ::) :P
*drops stick* But I thought I was flogging a dead philosopher... ??? :P
On a more serious note, I'll try to answer you using your numbered arguments as a starting point. Of cause the answers just my point of view but since I reacted strongly I feel that I might owe you that.
Quote from: The Meromorph on December 17, 2007, 04:10:33 PM1. Partly for it's actual point. I had noticed, and grown slightly uncomfortable with, a tendency in our siblinghood to display a 'warm and fuzzy' attitude toward a basic idea of 'a great everything'. I didn't, and don't, expect to provoke a discussion of whether such a 'thing' 'exists', or even whether it's a useful 'mental model'. I did want to use this particularly eloquent statement (which I had just encountered elsewhere) to suggest that 'warm and fuzzy' might not be an especially appropriate attitude. I thought that might be an interesting discussion.
When I read this thread (not the forum in general) I've come to expect little positive nuggets of thoughts and sometime wisdom. It's a
puts a smile on my face thread for me, I didn't expected a text such as this here (I'll explain how I reacted to the text it self and why later). I can, after reading your last post understand that you wanted to create an discussion and I'd love to see that discussion and where it might lead but I do think you should have started a independent thread and explained your thoughts about it, giving the text some context some context so to say.
Quote from: The Meromorph on December 17, 2007, 04:10:33 PM2. Partly because Robert Ingersoll was a 19th century prominent speaker etc. I don't endorse all of his thinking, I haven't read much of it yet, and only 'see his point' in some of what I have read. But I do find it interesting that many of the topics he addressed over a hundred years ago, are basically still 'bones of contention' today, at least in America.
I suggest reading his (short) Wiki Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll Just because you or I don't agree with him, doesn't mean it wouldn't be an interesting discussion... Smiley
I had no idea of who this person was or when he lived when I wrote my first reply, and I have apologized for not doing a proper research before I answered. Had I known when he lived I would probably written another first reply. I read as if it was a modern text and a, in my point of view, badly executed tongue in cheek text trying to parody born again Christians/American religious right wing.
It turns out I was very wrong. It was a 100 years old and not a parody.
Quote from: The Meromorph on December 17, 2007, 04:10:33 PM
3. Expecting a rational and deepening discussion (shows how accurate my judgement is Shocked), I could see this leading to another interesting discussion that we've kind of danced around before. If we are entitled to kill cancer wherever we find it (and I personally endorse that view), but not entitled to kill humans (ditto), where do we draw the line?
You are absolutely right when you say that just because we don't agree with him, it doesn't mean that his point of view wouldn't be an interesting base for a discussion.
This discussion seems very interesting and I look forward to read it but as I said before posting it in this thread especially without comments might have been what triggered the negative response.
Now why do I find this piece of Ingersoll's offensive? I think I answered that in my first post. I think it diminishes the suffering and pain cancer causes both in those who have been diagnosed and lived or died with cancer and their family and kin who seen what this disease have done with their loved ones.
I didn't find anything offensive about Mero's original post, but then, so far I've had the luxury of bracketing cancer with any number of other "bad things" that undermine my view of universal benevolence, rather than contemplating it on a daily basis. Ingersoll's comments seem a suitable rejoinder to the simplistic "All things bright and beautiful" white picket fence view of the world that some (emphasize some) theists insist on projecting. Maybe I'm just reacting badly to being made to sing endless hymns as a kid about how wonderful God was and what a great world he'd made (and then made to sing them again if we didn't sing loudly enough).
Quote from: The Meromorph on December 17, 2007, 04:10:33 PM
1. Partly for it's actual point. I had noticed, and grown slightly uncomfortable with, a tendency in our siblinghood to display a 'warm and fuzzy' attitude toward a basic idea of 'a great everything'. I didn't, and don't, expect to provoke a discussion of whether such a 'thing' 'exists', or even whether it's a useful 'mental model'. I did want to use this particularly eloquent statement (which I had just encountered elsewhere) to suggest that 'warm and fuzzy' might not be an especially appropriate attitude. I thought that might be an interesting discussion.
Well, the "Great Everything" has been a bit too vaguely defined for me to be sure quite how warm and fuzzy it is. With a suitable definition that supposes that part of embracing the G.E. (also known as the Universe) is a realisation of how puny and insignificant we are, it's possible to see no conflict. Most of us struggle to achieve that level of detachment though.
Personally I think it is a useful model, in the sense of accepting that "That's just the way it is" is every bit as useful a model as constructing a pantheon of gods and demons. It's the model that seems to serve other advanced animals rather well.
Quote
3. Expecting a rational and deepening discussion (shows how accurate my judgement is :o), I could see this leading to another interesting discussion that we've kind of danced around before. If we are entitled to kill cancer wherever we find it (and I personally endorse that view), but not entitled to kill humans (ditto), where do we draw the line?
I suspect we'll draw it where we always have. We are "entitled" to kill someone, some animal, something, if sufficiently unlike us for us not to think the we're setting a precedent that could rebound and cause trouble to us.
Quote
Re-reading your posts (while on the fourth draft of this response :D ), it is obvious that I am missing something basic (humanity? ???). Why is this piece of Ingersoll's offensive? I truly don't understand the tenor of your responses here...
I don't get it either. Suspect you'd have "got away with it" if the article had been about the structural beauty of a particular killer virus that hadn't affected anyone here (not likely given the date, but you know what I mean...). Probably just too close to home. Also atheistic tone articles are judged by different standards. A person who is sure God exists is a regular religious person, an atheist who is sure God doesn't is an absolutist.
Extracting the notion of beauty alone, without the message, if one looked through a microscope at cancer cells growing, without knowing what they were, could they be described as beautiful?
An allied thought, did Ingersoll actually see what he describes, or was it guess work?
I hear some axe murders et al think the process of mutilation is beautiful.
Some thoughts on why you wouldn't get away with it, not specific to anyone here:
Cancer patients are encouraged to visualise pacman gobbling up their cancer cells. Cancer is evil; pacman is good. Is evil ever beautiful?
Is the beauty in tidal waves meaningful to a community who have just been wiped out by one?
Cancer takes over. Is the tirent master's beauty meaningful to the slave (apart from Jane Eyre)?
Perhaps this all needs a thread called Thoughts for Several Days.
Volcanoes are beautiful until ash falls on one's village. :mrgreen:
I suppose cancer might be thought of as sublime, but more of a micro-sublime, as volcanoes and mountains and oceans are sublime in large part because of their size and force.
~Qwerty
Quote from: Griffin NoName on December 18, 2007, 12:02:17 AM
Is evil ever beautiful?
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell. ;)
Quote from: Sibling Qwertyuiopasd on December 18, 2007, 12:28:25 AM
I suppose cancer might be thought of as sublime, but more of a micro-sublime, as volcanoes and mountains and oceans are sublime in large part because of their size and force.
Good point. Beautiful is a "too eye of the beholder" word to use.
Darlica,
I didn't post my thoughts on it originally, because I was wanting a discussion of the piece, not of my thoughts on it. (that's intended just as information, not justification or excuse).
Everyone,
I still don't quite get it, and I accept that's probably a failing in me, should we not post anything except 'hate mail' about any disease that affects anyone here? or anyone anyone here knows? or is it just about cancer(s)? or is quoting an agnostic about his beliefs somehow a criticism of others who hold different beliefs?
What I got from the piece was essentially 'be consequent' (a view forcefully expressed by others here before now), as in 'if you want to claim your deity of choice is responsible for everything, then it has to take responsibility for everything...'.
I had more or less this conversation, about 16 years ago, with a definitive 'naive fundie' (she sent most of her money to the PTL Club). I spent just about a whole day (15 hours or more) producing and recording a demo of her gospel song, for free, and when we were done, she spent about ten minutes of continuous speech thanking her god, and said not a word of thanks to me. I smiled and said "You're welcome.' She responded that she "expected God to thank me". (I wasn't greatly surprised,and not at all annoyed, but I was amused.) I said "Well thank you for that thought, but, by the way, that's not my god, it's yours." She didn't even blink, but started telling me it was my god, it was everybody and every thing's god. We progressed into a discussion of that and I pointed out at one stage that her statement implied her god was the god of cockroaches, axe-murderers, and loathsome diseases, as well as beautiful things, and I didn't expect she really meant to say that ... She thought about it for a while and decided that yes, it had to mean that, so she did mean that... We parted amicably at that point. She did have a thoughtful expression as she drove off. :)
[edited for syntax and spelling]
QuoteA person who is sure God exists is a regular religious person, an atheist who is sure God doesn't is an absolutist.
OH, OK.
Got it.
Ooops, gotta read Mero's post.
Quote'if you want to claim your deity of choice is responsible for everything, then it has to take responsibility for everything...
Anybody in the Toadfish, actual Toadfish believe that?
Anyone? Bueller?
No...
OK, let's discuss it.
I don't anymore attribute everything about the universe to the God I do happen to believe in than I attribute everything evil about any one human or any group to The Devvviiiillllll.
Now, since we're essentially "preaching to the choir" by saying that the attribution of Everything To God is a fallacy...ummmm. What.
My bad. My baggage.
Hhhm. Qwerty might make that statement about the FSM... :P
But I don't think he has a problem being consequent... :)
Was I preaching at the choir (rather than to the choir)? Was that why I was annoying?
Confused.
Say what exactly about the FSM? you're probably right, just wanted to check :P
~Qwerty
QuoteA person who is sure God exists is a regular religious person, an atheist who is sure God doesn't is an absolutist.
I guess it depends on what you mean by
sure.
I am sure that god does not exist, but I use the word
sure in this context as shorthand for
not at all likely, or
of dimishingly small probability. I am absolutely not absolute about god's existence or nonexistence.
I doubt that many of those who are sure that God exists, however, make a similar distinction or concession.
The thing is that I do not believe in perfect knowledge. IMHO, you can never be
completely sure of anything at all with the sole exception of some branches of mathematics.
Quote from: Sibling Qwertyuiopasd on December 18, 2007, 03:31:42 AM
Confused.
Say what exactly about the FSM? you're probably right, just wanted to check :P
~Qwerty
is responsible for
everything... :)
A person who is, in their own objective opinion, sure that a god of some sort exists is a person of some sort of faith. A person who is quite sure no gods exist is an atheist.
Let's at least define the terms properly.
Unfortunately, in the atheist/agnostic playbook, the speaking of the "opposition" as superstitious, ignorant children listening to fairytales is considered fair.
I think it sucks. And it sure isn't very 'taddy'.
I'm not at all comfortable with the concept that any one person has the right (or responsibility, in the Fundamentalist POV) to tell any other person that they are WRONG WRONG WRONG for their beliefs.
===================
Now, as to the beauty of cancer cells.
Without the dyes to aid in their visualization, they're really usually not very pretty.
What you have is a misprinted piece of information that tells a cell to become a raging cannibal. It starts killing all the other cells around it, destroying them.
It's a little Jeffrey Dahmer inside your body.
Yep, really pretty...
Mero, here, in the Reef--where we're prone to touchy, feely, warmandfuzzy thoughts toward our Siblings, and sharing our lives and toughts with one another--it's just not the place where I want to encounter anyone telling me that If I think there's a god of any sort complicit in my life, then I have to believe that my deity is all about Jeffrey Dahmer as well.
Hmmm, I think that the operative words are faith and belief. These words convey much the same sort of meaning as that I intend when I used the word sure in my previous post. Belief and faith by definition allow an element, however small, of doubt. The intelligent religious person, I guess, takes that doubt into account but chooses his or her belief or faith despite it. It may even be a virtue, I have certainly seen it described as such in some writings.
In a similar way my "sureness" about any god's or gods' nonexistence has a finite limit. I allow that I may be wrong, I just think the chances of that are as close to zero as makes no nevermind.
I agree that the paternalistic depiction of believers Chatty describes is inappropriate, although some types of believers only have themselves to blame for such characterisation, nevertheless I agree that as Toadfish we should avoid that wherever possible. However, the same point needs to be made in the other direction. It annoys me intensely when certain, usually fundamentalist Christians, try to tell me that I don't really believe in the nonexistence of God, that it is just my childish rebellious nature and that if only I "opened my heart to Jesus" I would "see the light". The arrogance of this is no less than that used by some to describe those of faith. Both are wrong and indeed wrong headed - one will never convince anyone of anything with these approaches.
Perhaps if I have a deep conversation with someone face to face, or in a forum such as this, where tolerance and acceptance is the rule, a person may begin to think about some of the ideas I might raise. However, whether that happens or not is not why I am here, and I am not trying to proselytise atheism. Neither will I hide my atheism, just as I would not expect others to hide their beliefs whatever they may be, I will I continue to argue my point where appropriate and I just hope that I do not cause offence to any Sibling. If I do, please let me know so that I may make amends.
Edit: fix spelling and other typos
Bluenose, you're "the same kind" of atheist Dan is. I 'get' what you're saying because that's the same set of words and concepts he uses in explaining his 'lack of belief'.
:hug:
I'm not a believer. I lost my ability to believe when I was about 13 years old, that was when I realised how many atrocity had been done in the name of religion and that religion is politics and politics is religion, I'm 33 now I still haven't recovered the ability to faith. I need to see it to believe it, I'm a very science oriented person.
Every summer in my youth I went sailing with my parents, I loved to sit in shelter of a tree watching the waves crash with enormous and force into the rocks beneath me during a storm, I thought and still think it's a magnificent scenery. When back in the boat, hearing an SOS call from another family in distress did that change my view on the waves I just been watching? In a way yes, I could relate to their fear. But I was warm and dry sitting in a boat mooring in a calm cove where the only reminder of the storm was the rain on the deck and the wind howling in the mast.
I had the luxury to watch the storm from a safe spot, that's why I could find beautiful, I highly doubt the family that sent the distress call found the storm as beautiful as I did, because they where in the middle of it facing the risk of loosing their life's to the storm.
The meaning of a word as well of a occurrence is in IMHO in the context around it.
I doubt any one that survived the Big tsunami in the Indian Ocean almost three years ago would (or Katrina for that matter) describe those waves as beautiful. I might think waves are mesmerizing and beautiful in general but that particular wave has lost all allure due to the pain and suffering it caused.
I think of cancer as a personal tsunami which strike one person at the time affecting this persons family and friends.
The wave might be beautiful but the trail of human suffering in it's wake takes the beauty away for me. And I would never ever say in the presence of a tsunami (or Katarina) survivor or someone who have lost a family member to these waves, that I found those waves beautiful, not to provoke, not to discuss the existent of any deity, not even if I sincerely thought so. I guess one can chalk that up to either good manners or a sense of empathy, it doesn't really matter to me you just don't go around and poke at peoples most painful scars. :)
Nature in my point of view isn't good or bad in it self, but that doesn't mean that it can't do bad or good things to an individual person, and I think we should respect that.
Response after 'sleeping on it'...
Quote from: Sibling Chatty on December 18, 2007, 04:10:31 AM
Unfortunately, in the atheist/agnostic playbook, the speaking of the "opposition" as superstitious, ignorant children listening to fairytales is considered fair.
I think it sucks. And it sure isn't very 'taddy'.
I've re-read this thread looking specifically for anyone saying that. I can't find anything even close...
Quote from: Sibling Chatty on December 18, 2007, 04:10:31 AM
Mero, here, in the Reef--where we're prone to touchy, feely, warmandfuzzy thoughts toward our Siblings, and sharing our lives and toughts with one another--it's just not the place where I want to encounter anyone telling me that If I think there's a god of any sort complicit in my life, then I have to believe that my deity is all about Jeffrey Dahmer as well.
'if you want to claim your deity of choice is responsible for everything, then it has to take responsibility for everything..."
I quoted from a 16 years ago conversation with a person who actually said she believed that, and she agreed with that response when I made it.
If it matters, I'd probably say the same thing to you
if you made that statement to me. I don't think you ever have, I don't think you ever would. When you quoted it in responding after I quoted it, you, in fact, said you didn't believe that! And the conversation in my view,
and that of the person I had it with, was an elucidation of her beliefs for my understanding, not an attack on her beliefs.
How does my quotation from a sixteen year old conversation with someone else turn into an attack on your beliefs?Meh! I'm out of here. I'll probably be back when I've cooled down - it might be a while...
Okay, I've finally read this whole thing and what I'm seeing is a very interesting outline of what one of the big problems of spirituality: namely- what does it mean? Is spirituality religion? Is religion strictly about God? Is God strictly omniscient?
Believe me, I don't know what the answers are, but I am beginning to see through this very fiery discussion that there are places where we're not seeing eye to eye. And perhaps we don't have to.
Here's how I feel:
Firstly, that Darlica is right, this may have been the wrong thread for this discussion, mostly because is not a discussion thread. It is a thread for displaying quotes that seem to fit the general Toadfish ideas. No huge deal, we can always bust it off and move it elsewhere.
Secondly, maybe we need to understand that physical beauty is different from spiritual beauty. I do not believe cancer to be beautiful because it is destructive. A tsunami is also not beautiful when it is destructive. Jefffery Daumer is not beautiful because he was destructive. All cells are not cancerous though, nor are all waves tsunamis or all human beings Jeffrey Daumer. We as human beings have minds that ought to be able to differentiate between things like that. Just because Daumer was FUBAR doesn't mean we are all that way. That's where the line between what is good and what is bad should be drawn. Yes, we should kill cancer because it has been proven to be destructive millions of times. If someone suddenly discovers that it is somehow beneficial, then I may have to change my mind about that, but right now, all I see is destruction. To kill cancer is to save lives.
I am completely confounded about how generalized people seem to view religion. To me, it's shocking, but revealing and maybe we need to work on this in orfder to be more tolerant of eachother's views. Here are my current views, see if you can tolerate them:
Religion is not God! To me this seems completely obvious, but I am seeing that this is not so for others. My sister quite rightly sees religion as causing a lot of problems, so she doesn't belive in God, but religion and God are not the same, in my mind. Religion is an invention of man to organize worship of God. God may be an invention of man as well, but if so, God must be as individual as every mind that has a concept of God. I am very upset with some religions which allow their followers to behave in ways that seem to lack compassion. However, I do not in any way equate these religions with God.
The Great Everything is not necessarily God. It is only everything. It is not omniscient and whatever else the five attributes that Zono mentioned were. It is simply all, right now. It is not rigid, it is not "warm and fuzzy" (I gotta say, the tone of that comment rubbed me the wrong way, but I understand that that was only my interpretation of it), and it doesn't need your belief to exist, it just is. That I wish to explore the p[ossibility of tapping into it to sort of feel my place and try to understand where I can be of help may look like form of religion to some people, but since it is personal and not an organized group I say it isn't. Maybe it's spiritual, but that word is just another inaccurate tool that doesn't express what I mean.
I am seeking something beautiful that is not destructive. I am looking to the Great Everything for connections to something good. I am glad for the connections I've made with everyone here. I am also glad to have spotted a bald eagle the other day. It was beautiful too. It may be a terror for the rodents around here, but in the great scheme, it is also balancing the population of rodents. Also, for decades we didn't see any in these parts. That they've returned is a reason to be glad. I feel like we ought to have a right to be glad (warm and fuzzy, even ::) ) whenever we can manage it. There are enough reasons to be upset. We need to balance them with reasons to be glad in order to find any equilibrium.
That's just my stupid opinion and does not reflect the opinions of anyone else unless by accident. I love you, Meri and hope you will come back soon.
One quick comment on my previous comment. Re-reading it and the posts that followed, I want to clarify that it wasn't my intention by any measure to suggest that you have to be agnostic or atheist to 'enjoy'/validate the quote, much less that there is anything wrong with the theist position. I agree with Darlica's point that the quote itself isn't a nice one, in fact I would say that (in a similar way as the barber email somewhere else) it is a sneaky one: it seems to invalidate theist beliefs without saying so explicitly (in more or less the same way the barber thing seems to invalidate agnosticism/atheism without saying so explicitly).
In any case I offer my apologies if my previous comment offended anyone.
will someone please tell Mero to come back.
I'm the one out of step.
I'm the one to leave.
Please don't leave! It's only a discussion. It's okay. It's what we're here for.
Quote from: The Meromorph on December 18, 2007, 03:50:33 PM
Response after 'sleeping on it'...
Quote from: Sibling Chatty on December 18, 2007, 04:10:31 AM
Unfortunately, in the atheist/agnostic playbook, the speaking of the "opposition" as superstitious, ignorant children listening to fairytales is considered fair.
I think it sucks. And it sure isn't very 'taddy'.
I've re-read this thread looking specifically for anyone saying that. I can't find anything even close...
Quote from: Sibling Chatty on December 18, 2007, 04:10:31 AM
Mero, here, in the Reef--where we're prone to touchy, feely, warmandfuzzy thoughts toward our Siblings, and sharing our lives and toughts with one another--it's just not the place where I want to encounter anyone telling me that If I think there's a god of any sort complicit in my life, then I have to believe that my deity is all about Jeffrey Dahmer as well.
'if you want to claim your deity of choice is responsible for everything, then it has to take responsibility for everything..."
I quoted from a 16 years ago conversation with a person who actually said she believed that, and she agreed with that response when I made it.
If it matters, I'd probably say the same thing to you if you made that statement to me. I don't think you ever have, I don't think you ever would. When you quoted it in responding after I quoted it, you, in fact, said you didn't believe that! And the conversation in my view, and that of the person I had it with, was an elucidation of her beliefs for my understanding, not an attack on her beliefs.
How does my quotation from a sixteen year old conversation with someone else turn into an attack on your beliefs?
Meh! I'm out of here. I'll probably be back when I've cooled down - it might be a while...
OK, I'm the one out of step.
After years of this same conversation, over and over and over, I jumped to the inevitable end.
Ingersoll's precis is that the believer is all those things.
The inevitable end of this discussion is ALWAYS the same. As the <ignorant, implied> person who persists in my beliefs, I am, for the purposes of this discussion--wrong.
I never realized until now HOW wrong I get to be.
someone tell Mero to come back.
I'm the one not in step, I'm the one to go.
Quote from: Kiyoodle the Gambrinous on October 29, 2007, 08:33:30 PM
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may
not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Quote from: Opsanus tau on August 27, 2007, 04:00:35 PM
"Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world."
-- Buddha.
I don't care how many times you double-post, I still don't want you to leave.
I don't want anyone to feel like they have to be in step here, anyway. I'm a piss-poor marcher. They'd just show me up.
I do not fit.
My desire for peace in a place of tolerance is evidently against the grain, I am the one that is the problem here, I will fade out. I'm just too...stupid to do it quietly like some other people.
Life will go on.
It's not an either/or thing, I know that. It's my inability to understand.
Ack. Nobody leave, please. There's a place here for all of you.
FWIW, almost exactly two years ago today, my Mom, sister and I were facing the decision of whether to end the care that my father was receiving and have him die quickly, or artificially sustain his bodily functions long enough for them to be ended by his lymphoma within a few weeks.
I hate all cancer generally. Specifically, I hate the cancers that killed people close to me, and I hate the cancers that have made people close to me suffer (including yours, Chatty).
Even with this in the back of my mind (which tends to be in the back of my mind quite often at Christmastime now), all I personally took from Mero's quote is that the "argument from design" for the existence of God works just as well for complex, bad things as it does for complex, good things.
Seeing how I think the argument from design is a rather poor argument anyhow, I think that really, this just means that it applies equally badly to both cases.
Really, I think it points out the folly of those who would try to use logical chicanery and sleight-of-hand to convince people that their point of view must be the only acceptable one. The fact that it's theistic chicanery being highlighted doesn't mean that atheistic chicanery doesn't exist, and it doesn't mean that all theists engage in logical chicanery.
To me, it's saying to the evangelist, "you want to use this logic to convert others? Okay... let's see where it leads. If you're not comfortable with the result, then maybe you should abandon this line of reasoning and leave the atheists to believe what they want." In that spirit, I think it resonates somewhat with Toadfish sensibilities.
At least, that's how I took it.
The why doesn't really matter to anyone but YOU.
As a unitarian (not to speak for all UUs, but for me, anyway) I don't care what you believe, only what you do, really.
If you brainwash children any way, that's not good. If you actively discrimminate against someone else based on gender/religion/the usual, that's not good.
However, everyone here is a good person in my book, so whatever makes you that way... I don't care. Sure it's interesting to know, and there can be some multi-cultural learnign experiences, but It's in your mind, and can't get to me, and doesn't say anything about what you ARE going to do.
I may be a bit off the mark, but whatever.
People get so uptight about insulting people. Just calm down, say what you want to say, and understand that you don't mean malice, and if anyone thinks you do, that can easily be corrected.
Oi. and mero was just leaving this thread, if I'm not mistaken. I don't blame him.
~Qwerty
Chatty, please don't get worked up. These things happen from time to time, and we can work through them. I've already mentioned that I think that if we talk about it, it'll work itself out. Please give us a chance to work it out. We love you too much to willingly loose you.
If my inability to deal with a quotation that is, in my opinion, in the wrong place, outdated and, across the board, an EXACT repudiation (leaving no avenues of discussion other than "I think Ingersoll sucks" or else I'm still wrong) of the principles of tolerance that we espouse--if I am the problem, then I am out of step.
The FIRST response to Mero's posting was mine. And I said WHAT??
QuoteRemind me to track him down and kick his butt...
I unnerstan' it, but I don' gotta like it...
A joke...I know Ingersoll's era. And a semi-joke. I understand the thesis of the piece, but the actual topic is not among my top 10,000 or so favorites.
And then I went on...
Now, as to an attack an my beliefs??
Who the hell said that was the problem? No, what I am having problems with is...actually irrelevant.
If I'm gonna spend my time here trying to avoid upsetting people, why am I here? And that's what's happening, I am having to defend my NOT being that damn defensive about something, just being unimpressed with the thing.
When it invokes the words "I'm outta here" and the phrase "cool down" then I'm definitely the one that needs to be gone. Unless you grew up in a dysfunctional, abusive situation, you won't know why those are scary words, but they are.
They can be scary words, indeed.
Chatty, I still don't think this is reason enough to leave.
http://www.alternet.org/story/70342/
I can't afford the stress, the energy or the anxiety.
Those beautiful cells are kicking my butt. They don't need help.
I'm still not sure if I totally understand what caused this whole issue.
And I didn't know you were THAT stressed about it.
If you're reallllllllly sure you want to leave, that of course is your prerogative. We'll miss you, but the choice is yours.
It seems that I am the cause of the problem.
If I can't manage my illness without being an irritant here, then I am the one that needs to NOT be an irritant.
Obviously, Mero's irritated. At me. That is what the post says to me.
By extrapolating to the end of the 'same old' argument that I forsaw, even though I had pretty much say "Yes, I see what he's saying", I was irritating. By questioning in any way his 16 years ago story that he told, I was irritating.
I don't have the energy. I just don't. Hell, I'm too stupid to remember to turn off e-mail notifications, so it's time to back away.
Chatty, I really think that this is simply one of those moments that will pass soon enough. I've always thought that you were one of the core members of our Siblinghood, and I don't think that loosing you over this makes sense.
One irritation, one time. After, what, two years of siblinghood? It happens, you know?
But, as I said, its your choice.
If someone wants to explain to me what I could have done differently...
I have an illness that is horrid, devastating, and quite honestly, actively killing me right now.
In an area where we're 'at home' with one another, I respond as honestly as possible to a short article that literally filled me with loathing and dread.
My responses are inadequate. They cause a problem. I'm 55 years old, and I have not outgrown the need to clear the air if I can and then get the hell out. If I can't clear the air, I can at least get the hell out.
And it seems I can't clear the air.
-------------------
Still waiting.
Someone tell me, please. What do I do differently? I responded to the thing, trying to use humor, trying to NOT be unkind or needlessly, abruptly cruel, and here I am again, at fault for being what I am.
Now I'm getting really confused. I did not think anything you said, Chatty, was over the top or offensive. In fact your comments made me think about that quote in a way that I had not done so before. Of course given what cancer is doing to you now you are sensitive to the use of it in that manner and I do not blame you one bit if it upsets you.
OTOH, I don't think you did anything to hurt anyone, I thought Mero was bailing out of this thread because he did not want to cause what he saw as more offense to others, probably you.
It is like we are all trying to avoid offending each other and saying "mea culpa", but if we go on like this soon there will be none of us.
I feel it is time to revert to the default condition of assuming no malice and realising that we can all get it back to front at times. Let us not hit ourselves over the head with a wet noodle to avoid giving offense to others when none is intended nor is it taken.
I don't think you should have done anything differently. I wouldn't worry about it.
The statement Ingersoll made was callous and it got a well deserved callous response. I thought it was an interesting point of view, bizarre but interesting.
We aren't all perfectly tolerant. If perfect tolerance was a requirement none of us could be here as we are all human. We're just practicing tolerance the way doctors practice medicine I think. If doctors were required to perform perfect practice there would be no doctors.
And Chatty, lets assume (and it isn't a clear assumption, he was surprised by the general response to the quote) for a second that Mero is irritated at you. I am not irritated and it is fair to say that the majority of us aren't irritated at your posts.
More so, if someone is irritated it is perfectly normal, this isn't utopia and we are no angels, and we are here to learn how to live with each other, and -as with marriage- irritations need to be voiced to fix what needs to be fixed.
Indeed, Zono. I think a few of us are a little baffled by this whole thing, actually.
Ok, going back the very first post-Ingersoll post.
Pages six and seven, there's nothing but intelligent discussion and some reasonable irritation with the speaker, which is understandable since the man seems like an ass.
Shifts to a fascinating discussion of "Yippi-ki-yay motherf**ker."
Shifts back with the reappearance of da Mero. (just a note, Sibling-mine, they weren't beating YOU with a stick, at least I didn't see that, unless you are secretly Robert Ingersoll and didn't tell us)
I see where the theistic discussion came from, but not sure why it blossomed into what it did. I was more annoyed by his callous view of cancer than anything else, and was surprised that this other thing became the focal point of discussion, even if that's to some extent, what Mero wanted.
Which is perfectly valid discussion, but I'm not sure this was the best quote, based on the fact we have two cancer patients en residence.
I think it started to shift when Mero thought he was being attacked, so to speak.
I'm going to say that there was some misinterpretations. I WILL have to come back to this in a minute, since my computer is acting up, and I have to figure out what on EARTH is going on with my mouse.
I'm stopping in briefly to explain what's going on with me. I'll be back properly soon, maybe much sooner than I thought...
Most importantly I apologise to my beloved sibling Chatty. I love you very much and I was no help to you at all, at a time of your great distress..
It seems I am experiencing severe Depression. I and my ever-loving spouse went to our trusted family doctor this morning, and while he is (very properly) still running lots of test to eliminate several disease processes which mimic Depression, we are all fairly sure it is in fact Depression. Since the only real Diagnostic test for Depression is whether it responds to anti-depressants, I started taking Zoloft this morning. After an hour or two, the changes were fairly dramatic. There's still some way to go, but I feel very much better already.
This may explain, but doesn't excuse, my recent behavior. I apologize to you all.
Lovingly,
Mero :grouphug:
:hug:
And welcome back.
Mero, you know I love you.
The cancer quote just struck way too close to home. Other than that, there's the crazy that always comes with this season, and one of MY beasties, Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Depression is a whole 'nother beast. I hope the meds can help, and that the first one is the right one. There are so many that even the best doctor is going to be operating on a "best guess" basis.
The chemical level disturbances that cause depression are, thank whoever (or nobody), able to be righted with the correct stuff. I'm familiar with every SSRI and all the other reuptake inhibitors out there. Serotonin is the 'good' one, and if it's working already, yay!
Feel better--or, maybe just feel.
I love you.
DD
Chatty
I am going to answer your questions in the reverese order of asking because I believe that is order of the process you've been going through.
First I want to say initially you did not overreact, your first post was fine. Perhaps if I hadn't replied the whole thing would have stopped after Darlica's post.
Quote from: Sibling Chatty on December 19, 2007, 06:02:09 AM
If someone wants to explain to me what I could have done differently...
I have an illness that is horrid, devastating, and quite honestly, actively killing me right now.
In an area where we're 'at home' with one another, I respond as honestly as possible to a short article that literally filled me with loathing and dread.
My responses are inadequate. They cause a problem. I'm 55 years old, and I have not outgrown the need to clear the air if I can and then get the hell out. If I can't clear the air, I can at least get the hell out.
And it seems I can't clear the air.
-------------------
Still waiting.
Someone tell me, please. What do I do differently? I responded to the thing, trying to use humor, trying to NOT be unkind or needlessly, abruptly cruel, and here I am again, at fault for being what I am.
You did respond with humour.
You are going through a "horrid, devastation" and reality is it is "actively killing you". Short and brutal, but I know that is how it is. I cannot think of anything more likely to cause a desperate response than something which links the thing that is killing you with a question of faith when right now faith, I know, will be one of the deepest issues for you, because of what is happening to you.
It doesn't matter what our faith is, and we all have faith whether it has a name that anyone recognises or is a concept purely known to ourselves, and it is the only thing that in the final hour has any meaning for us. Way I see it is, we know that in the moment we are face to face with our own mortality and when that has passed we lapse back a bit from the precipice and all that it means to us. But I remember very well the feeling of that moment, because it went on for a very long time for me, and it is only as far away as the next pain I have in my body. I know that I may wake up tomorrow with the "symptom" of the "end".
Unless one really really lives with that hour by hour day by day it is hard to truly understand what it is like. Even if we have lived with that, the temptation is - get on with living - and we do. But we all have different ways of managing the underneath feeling. And for you right now it is anywhere but underneath. It's not an elephant in the room. It is the room.
In case anyone is in any doubt, Chatty is (I still hope) hoping to go on a trial drug (in Jan? Feb?). She has to live that long. She has to be well enough still to go on it. And if and when she does, it's anyone's guess whether it will be tolerable. And if it is tolerable, it's anyone's guess if it will do anything. Anything at all. It may seem like a few steps along the road, living that long, being well enough still.....etc, but they aren't really even steps. She cannot do anything to make them more likely to happen. She has no control over this process which is destroying her. I cannot over-emphasise the sheer helplessness this process engenders. The feeling that it is engulfing and obliterating.
Chatty, I hope I haven't offended you by saying that. I think it needs saying.
Quote from: Sibling Chatty on December 19, 2007, 05:09:07 AM
It seems that I am the cause of the problem.
If I can't manage my illness without being an irritant here, then I am the one that needs to NOT be an irritant.
Obviously, Mero's irritated. At me. That is what the post says to me.
By extrapolating to the end of the 'same old' argument that I forsaw, even though I had pretty much say "Yes, I see what he's saying", I was irritating. By questioning in any way his 16 years ago story that he told, I was irritating.
I don't have the energy. I just don't. Hell, I'm too stupid to remember to turn off e-mail notifications, so it's time to back away.
Yes. You don't have the energy. You cannot afford to be stressed. Anything which is stressful has to be dumped. This is the time to totally blot out anything that takes anything away from survival. I have the T-Shirt and if I'd let certain people anywhere near me at certain times it would have nasty gravy stains. I had to say NO over and over again. I know just how important it is to avoid wasting an ounce of energy. And stress takes more energy than many other things.
I don't know how, but part of what I managed to learn to do, was to cut off from certain things. Some things for months on end, other things for days or weeks. It is the only way. When I fail it is awful. I am still practicing.
What you could have done differently is not looked at that thread again until the Thought of That Day was long gone. Or not logged on at all for a few days. Or however long it took to feel calmer about it.
What you could have done is say, that's upset me because.....
But it's not about what ifs. You explode when you need to. That is You. It's who you are. It's what we all know about you. We haven't spent all these months (years) not knowing it. And we love you all the same.
So, no, I am afraid, you do fit in here. You fit exactly. You fit in your way. We fit in ours.
Mero, if wounded, which is by no means certain, will lick his wounds. He will think about it all. He will know that you are you and he is him and we all knew very well what each other were like. If he is cross, he will calm down. If he's wanting to throw the baby out with bathwater, he'll do that.
Trust, Dee Dee, trust.
EDIT
WOOPS
I just wrote all that without realising Mero and Chatty had posted...... I used the "back" key", didn't look at the thread as I'd only read it a few minutes before, whipped straight back to Chatty's posts and quoted.....
I am damned if I am deleting it all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mero I am so sad for you; will post more on that elsewhere.
Hey, I guess Trust works :)
Once again my Siblings awe me. You have said things so much more eloquently than I have and I look at my poor attempts to help and wonder whether I have been any. I hope I have, but I wish I had written what you did.
Dearest mero--- sorry you are having a depressed time-- hang in there and I'm so glad you have spousal support- it makes a world of difference.
My Auntie Dee-Dee--- I just love you--- you are you and that is exactly who you should be-- it's not so much about tolerance (one can tolerate something negative) but about acceptance-- I like acceptance more than simple tolerance--- you are you and I'd change nothing about you and you are welcome to be you at all times-- if I ever lead you to feel otherwise- you may smack me and set me straight-- I try to live by this rule, I'm human and I fail often-- but it is what I mean and I mean what I say-- thank you for continuing to help me on this journey through life and learning the Toadfish way(aka Humanity)
Griffin,
Trial looks likely to be March or April.
Just depends on lining up a way to spend 3 weeks at the trial site. Medical costs are covered, living expenses are not.
Thank you.
Quote from: Sibling Chatty on December 20, 2007, 10:21:48 PM
Trial looks likely to be March or April.
FFS excuse my French.
Dan just started his part-time job. It'll take a month or so to catch up the taxes (not enough set aside to match the new tax rate), get both vehicles running so that I can have transportation while having the trial, then pull together expense money...and so on.
It will happen, it will just take time.
*sigh*
I just caught up with things on this thread.
I am in awe at reading the various words, phrases, thoughts and sentiments of people who dare to expose themselves to each other.
I cannot add anything to what was already said, I think, except to state that I agree with the others, that if a person cannot express what they really feel here, without too much worry how it'll be received, then where?
We've all made a pact to practice tolerance, and I think that also should include being tolerant of someone's very personal and very strong feelings about a subject close to their heart. (I'm deliberately being non-specific, because I am intending to address this to everyone who expressed strong feelings.)
I am cheered that no one actually left for good, as result; that would be a sad thing, for me, to loose anyone.
again, *happy sigh*.
(deliberate double-post to separate the two)
One of my favorite Nietzsche quotes:
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
-Nietzsche
And two from Ben Franklin, a serious one, and a lighter note, for a humorous finish:
As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
-Benjamin Franklin
Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
-Benjamin Franklin
"I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird."
-Paul McCartney
"Installation is the reverse of removal."
- Haynes manual mantra
"Don't hate yourself on the morning - sleep till noon"
Quote from: Sibling Lambicus the Toluous on March 11, 2008, 02:13:35 PM
"Installation is the reverse of removal."
- Haynes manual mantra
LOL!
That works, IF you remember the orientation when you took it out.... and IF you didn't break something in the taking-it-out step and IF you didn't loose some of the parts when it finally DID release from it's moorings....!
My Brake Job mantra:
Jack up BOTH SIDES at the same time. Remove BOTH wheels (on each side). Expose the parts for both (remove both drums, etc) But NOTHING MORE THAN THAT.
Then, when inevitably you have it all apart, and are going for the reassemble, you have a nice model to work on-- it may be in mirror image, but it's a good template to how it
ought to go back together... :)
Nothing like an actual 3-D example of how it should look to assist you.
Of course, I always got complete spring kits, and there was always extra (duplicate) bits for doing that. Used to bother me to no end..... it would LOOK correct, but all these leftover bits....?
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
-Albert Einstein
Evil is not the absence of righteousness but of empathy.
Mohsin Hamid
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
-- Philip K. Dick
A paragraph should be like a lady's skirt: long enough to cover the essentials but short enough to keep it interesting.
"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace."
- - Milan Kundera
I'll be half a century old this Sunday and this morning these words came to me. They are nothing new. They've probably been said a million times, but here they are again:
I choose not to be a victim of life but rather an instigator for good.
I am grateful for all the good medicine in my life- among others, this means YOU!
"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from out children." - Native American saying.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx
Chocolate slows down aging! It may not be true, but dare I take the risk?
Todays thought is for Sibling Chatty (aka Auntie Dee Dee)
a kiss :-*
may the wind be always warm on your face
wherever you may be--keep giving them hell! Don't let 'em slack!
Rest and be free from the worries and troubles.
There is a hole in the world.
Quote from: anthrobabe on June 22, 2009, 07:10:22 AM
There is a hole in the world.
Aye, and a pair of empty shoes too big to fill.
The shoes will remain empty, but we might mend the hole gradually with brightly colored yarns.
Indeed, we shall mend the hole with brightly coloured yarns woven in with our memories.
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark Twain
I got to play Anna Leonowens in a community theater production of "The King and I" this past summer, and here's my favorite line:
"The Bible was not written by men of science, but by men of faith. It was their explanation of the miracle of creation- which is the same miracle, whether it took place in six days, or many centuries."
Yoo hoo! I think that Aggie was mentioning this thread up in the new question by Bob 0'Q. (http://toadfishmonastery.com/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=32&action=post;topic=2459.0;num_replies=1)
The man who first placed a fence around a piece of land and said to his neighbours "This is mine" and had them believe him. That man created our modern society.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
When you come to a fork in the road, take it!
Yogi Berra.
A little thread necromancy here... this was worth passing along, I thought.
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
"One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey.
He invited all his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he quieted down.
A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.
As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!
MORAL :
Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and take a step up.
A million thanks, dear Sibling Bob! I needed to hear this. :-*
As kibg as life is just shoveling *dirt*... ;)
Good one, Bob.
Quote from: pieces o nine on November 15, 2012, 06:25:56 PM
As kibg as life is just shoveling *dirt*... ;)
Alignment error; check position of right hand. ;)
k
Li
Ob
NG
...clearly, i was channeling a Klingon... ^ ;)
Aggie, you are brilliant. I thought P09 was channeling a Klingon too.
:)
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
--Douglas Adams
"We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys."
Douglas Adams
Quote from: Pachyderm on November 17, 2012, 10:02:00 PM
"We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys."
Douglas Adams
LOL! :ape_dancing:
"If I had a large amount of money I should certainly found a hospital for those whose grip upon the world is so tenuous that they can be severely offended by words and phrases and yet remain all unoffended by the injustice, violence and oppression that howls daily about our ears."
― Stephen Fry, Paperweight
^ very nice choice. I had not read that one from him before. :)
In the age of Information
Ignorance is a Choice
-- anon
"Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
-- Mark Twain
"You can't be a scientist, if you are uncomfortable with ignorance. Because we [as scientists] live at the boundaries of what is known and unknown in the universe."
-- Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSJElZwEI8o&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSJElZwEI8o&feature=related)
But don't we all, really?
Quote from: Opsa on November 28, 2012, 03:30:29 PM
But don't we all, really?
Indeed we do-- but you must be paying attention to realize it. :)
The majority of people ignore their own blind-spots in awareness and/or knowledge. I suspect this is because they seldom are challenged by the limits of what they do know; they exist comfortably within the borders of what they know, never pushing to the edge. Unfortunately, we are all standing right
at the edge of what is known, and a blind misstep can take us right over. It seems quite an easy thing to do, too.... witness all the examples of people who have made really stupid decisions and ended up injured or worse.
The really horrible thing about that, is
even then, these people fail to recognize why their decision was stupid. It was stupid because it was made in ignorance; ignorance of the consequences, ignorance of what could go wrong, ignorance of the limits of whatever technology they were trusting to be perfect or to be constructed in a perfect way ... things like that.
Most often, they blame things and/or people who are really not at fault at all!
As I said: one must pay attention to the boundaries of what is known and what is unknown, for we are standing on the edge pretty much all the time. Safety is at best, an illusion.
I agree. And for that matter, how much of what we know is actually fact and not theory? For all we know it's all unknown, except that which we think we know from our own personal experience. Ya know?
Oh, Opsa, you're not inadvertantly channeling Mr. Known-Knowns, Known-Unknowns, Unknown-Knowns, Unknown-Unkowns, are you.....
;)
Also, after one types "known" 2 or 3 times it cease to look like a word!
I know... right?!? ;)
:)
Actually, this is a serious subject that does not often get discussed or thought about. I would put it this way. In fact most of what we "know" is not so. Our knowledge is for the most part just a lot of rules of thumb, approximations and, as the authors of The Science of Discworld put it, "lies to children". I would say that all knowledge is at best tentative and if we are being brutally honest with ourselves, we cannot be absolutely certain about anything. However, you cannot live your life forever contemplating the great mysteries of existence so we use our rules of thumb in our day to day world, but I think it behoves us occasionally to stop and realise that all this we see around us and which we think we understand so well, may not really be quite the way we think it is, or even very close to what we think. Just my 2c, of course.
^^ Bluenose
Quote from: Bluenose on November 29, 2012, 04:40:05 AM
Actually, this is a serious subject that does not often get discussed or thought about. I would put it this way. In fact most of what we "know" is not so. Our knowledge is for the most part just a lot of rules of thumb, approximations and, as the authors of The Science of Discworld put it, "lies to children". I would say that all knowledge is at best tentative and if we are being brutally honest with ourselves, we cannot be absolutely certain about anything. However, you cannot live your life forever contemplating the great mysteries of existence so we use our rules of thumb in our day to day world, but I think it behoves us occasionally to stop and realise that all this we see around us and which we think we understand so well, may not really be quite the way we think it is, or even very close to what we think. Just my 2c, of course.
:thumbsup: Human knowledge, although pretty coarse-grained, is fairly reliable. However, it's primarily word-of-mouth and there's no way for an individual to really
know firsthand the bits of knowledge that we can learn and store over a lifetime. Our oral tradition (teaching, discussions with friends, television and radio factoids) keeps a certain cloud of knowledge alive (and often out-of-date); one generally needs to go to written material to access the remainder. Neither of these is firsthand understanding in the way that the scientists responsible for the facts understand and know it. Our group knowledge often depends on the firsthand experience of an individual, verified by a very small group (who are often prone to fashions in thinking*).
It's worth emphasizing that science gets out of date. When theory gets refined, the old "right" version of How Things Happened gets thrown out and the new "right" version is adopted. This is one of the strengths of human knowledge and scientific inquiry, but leads to the rather odd situation in which some bits of knowledge are only temporally correct. Some remain "correct" but get a big fat asterisk added to them, like Newtonian mechanics.
Plus, as Bluenose alludes to, we experience the world as human beings using our sense organs to gather data and our brain to process it into our experience of reality. I am willing to wager that our way of thinking about the world around us is not the only way of thinking that exists in the universe (on this planet, for that matter). There are modes of thinking that our brains simply are not biologically equipped to handle. Computers mesh so well with the human brain precisely because they are designed to think in a different way than we are. Computer-assisted thinking and drawing has allowed us to visualize knowledge about subjects that we may otherwise not have been able to visualize. Anything approaching omniscience is impossible unless one can access all possible points of view.
*Hey, if people who get by on their appearance are often preoccupied in following stylistic fashion, what do you think people who get by on their thinking ability follow?
Quote from: Aggie on November 29, 2012, 05:36:24 AMComputers mesh so well with the human brain precisely because they are designed to think in a different way than we are.
I don;t think they do think in a different way to us. When we are thinking certain things, different bits of our brain light up. ie. brain cell off or on. Computers think in terms of off or on. 1 or 0. Yes or No.
Quote from: Griffin NoName on November 29, 2012, 08:07:03 PM
Quote from: Aggie on November 29, 2012, 05:36:24 AMComputers mesh so well with the human brain precisely because they are designed to think in a different way than we are.
I don;t think they do think in a different way to us. When we are thinking certain things, different bits of our brain light up. ie. brain cell off or on. Computers think in terms of off or on. 1 or 0. Yes or No.
Perhaps so. But, it is also quite clear that our neurons, or more accurately, the interconnection between various neurons are analog, not digital. That is to say, each connection varies in intensity--sometimes a great deal of difference between the weakest and the strongest signal. This permits near-infinite variation at every given neuronic connection point, which adds up to an amazing capacity.
Contrast with digital computers, who only experience a single intensity on or off at each transistor connection point.
In an interesting side note, Iaasic Asimov predicted that
analog computers would be the choice made by engineers, rather than digital.
If engineers ever do decide to create analog computers, then perhaps they can be similar to human neurons.
Actually, analogue computers have been made. The static (no motion) Grumman Tracker simulator I was trained in when I was learning anti-submarine warfare was an analogue computer. It was a wondrous Heath-Robinson affair with all manner of weird looking devices, push-rods and bell-cranks, variable speed motors, screw jacks, carefully calibrated linear amplifiers, and so on. It actually worked remarkable well, but the digital six-axis full motion simulator for the Sea King helos was actually far more capable (even apart from the motion) and the controllers were able to do a great deal more to simulate real world situations. Of course this was in the early 1980s and the computers used would have been both incredibly expensive and not very high performance by today's standard, but nevertheless it worked very well.
For some specialised tasks hybrid computers are still in use. But the Achilles heel is always the analogue digital converter.
Indeed. I've seen even earlier dabbling with analog computers. Probably the most famous, was Babbington's mechanical one, which is often used in steampunk fiction. I also remember reading about a cold war era Russian computer that was built around base 10. The details escape me, but it was essentially a digital machine, but instead of binary/hexadecimal it was base 10. I seem to recall it was entirely BCD, which would've been a waste of capacity.
I've also read of experimental trinary computers, or ones based on a base-3 system. There really is no reason why engineers couldn't create base 3 or base 4 machines, apart from the memory issue-- transistors can easily be constructed to be analog (and in fact, they often are used in analog circuitry, such as audio amplifiers). But memory is an issue-- currently, there are two basic memory types in common use, magnetic and capacitive. Magnetic is those spinning metal disks commonly referred to as "hard drives". Capacitive is everything else memory-electronic. For a 1, the single memory cell (a single microscopic capacitor) has a measurable charge, a positive voltage. For a zero, the capacitor is discharged. This is how electronic memory works. To make it other than 0 or 1, you'd have to develop a 3rd state that is both stable and easy to measure (to read it back out). A varying level of charge won't do-- as all capacitors leak a bit of charge over time, so it would be very difficult (if not impossible) to know for sure, if the remaining charge was supposed to be a 1, or a 2, or whatever-- as over time, 2's leak down to 1's and so on. This limitation is also why dynamic ram has to have a refresh rate-- to re-up the charges of the 1's. And reading D-ram is destructive: you have to immediately "re-write" a 1 after "reading" it (seeing if it's a 1 and not a 0).
So, if engineers can come up with something other than capacitors for memory cells? It appears we are stuck with binary computers. There does appear to be some promise using organic molecules, by copying what evolution has created over the millinea.
Some things cannot be calculated efficiently with digital means but are open to swift analogue solutions. A hybrid computer will delegate such stuff to the analogue part and do all the other stuff digitally. One area where a very simple form of this is still in use (to my knowledge) is weapon guidance systems. Sensory data is sent first through a 'mixer' and thus pre-processed before it gets digitized an analyzed. At least in older models the 'output' too goes through an analogue unit before it goes to the actuators.
A classic case is the fingerprint database search system. Until a few years ago it was impossible to find matching fingerprints in large libraries by algorithmic picture comparision within an acceptable timeframe. The trick to process the data in reasonable time was to use an analogue optical interference unit. This allowed to throw out obvious mismatches more or less instantly, so the algorithmic (digital) system could concentrate on the small set of remaining cases.
The fingerprints were not stored as data files but as physical images* (I guess on some kind of microfiche or film that could be quickly moved through the optical analyzer).
*iirc optically preprocessed, so they did not necssarily look like images of fingerprints
That is an excellent observation, Swato. Using weighted sensor data can seriously improve the final results. I do remember a number of years ago, when the buzzword was "fuzzy logic", or as I like to think of it, weighted decisions.
I remember all they hype that "fuzzy logic" had in the media, but once I explored just what it was, it boiled down to weighting your inputs commiserate to how valid (or which ones, or how important, etc) in order to make a decision.
Or to put it in statistical terms, some inputs have only 0.50 rating, whereas others could have 0.75 or 0.10. This weights the various inputs for the final decision.
Some sorts of information does not digitize well, and so analog analysis would be better.
Ain't science fun?
:D
Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on November 30, 2012, 07:54:27 PM
currently, there are two basic memory types in common use, magnetic and capacitive.
I imagine that from a very macro perspective, flash memory is capacitive, but we are talking electrons trapped in a semiconductor for
years, no need to inject energy to keep it alive (like RAM) and not necessarily requiring to delete the cell in order to read its state.
Quote from: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on December 01, 2012, 05:37:19 PM
Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on November 30, 2012, 07:54:27 PM
currently, there are two basic memory types in common use, magnetic and capacitive.
I imagine that from a very macro perspective, flash memory is capacitive, but we are talking electrons trapped in a semiconductor for years, no need to inject energy to keep it alive (like RAM) and not necessarily requiring to delete the cell in order to read its state.
Actually? As far as I can find out, flash memory is electrically alive, and has in each module some sort of stored power. I do not know if that is true, but that's what I read from years ago about the subject. I suppose I should have been more comprehensive, as I did not cover ROM memory nor PROM memory. These two memory types use a "burn in" method to permanently modify the electronics (the exact details I have forgotten) using over-voltages as needed. The zeros are represented by intact links, and the ones are represented by links who have been burnt out by over-voltages. This is necessarily a one-off thing, but once written, do not require any sort of electricity to maintain.
A very primitive model of this could be built, using simple automotive fuses-- with a fuse holder representing each bit of information. Applying over-current (in this case) would "blow" a particular fuse, changing it's value. Then, so long as the voltages used to read the memory were low enough, you would have a permanent information representation.
In the case of ROM memory, however, the information is encoded during the actual creation of the electronics in question, a bit different from the "programmable" sort. As far as I know, however, there is no longer any pure ROM being made, as PROM is much more general, and simple enough to make and program.
Finally, there is the EPROM, or for
Erasable
Programmable
Read-Only
Memory The "spiritual" ancestor to EEPROM for
Electronically EPROM. These were the first of the so-called FLASH ROMs.
Incidentally, as far as I can find out, FLASH goes back to how you could erase the original EPROM modules: you would expose it to UV light (usually after removing a little black-out cover). This process was commonly called "FLASHING" the memory. The UV light reset the links which were broken during the programming stage, which still used over-voltages to write.
Eventually engineers figured out how to create memory cells that could be reset by using even higher voltages (in some cases) or reverse voltages (in other cases), and the so-called EEPROM was born.
For the modern flash ram, such as the ever-ubiquitous USB sticks, I do know that higher voltages are used for the write cycle, but lower voltages are used for reading. In this way, the flash memory has a limited life: there is a strict limit to the number of times you can write to these things, but reading them is unlimited. So, if you want to use one of these as a storage media? Flip it's little "write enable" switch, if it has one-- it will preserve it far longer, if you don't let Windoze write it's usual crap every time you insert it. Re-enable writing
only if you need to add or change it's contents.
But even then, or so I've been told (I'd love to be proven wrong, here, actually) after about 10 years or so, it will become essentially dead anyway, as it's internal "keep alive" power cell runs dry. It'd be nice if I was wrong about that, as I do know that CD-ROM, and CD-RW discs have an average shelf life of about 5 years. Less if they are exposed to even mild temperature fluctuations, or harsh lighting (such as what CFLs emit-- it's probably the UV that does it).
:)
Who'd a thunk it? A thread about Thoughts For The Day drifts into electronic memory models .... ::)
(and yeah, I shoulda also mentioned how CD's, CD-ROM and CD-RW's work as a memory model, to be complete-- the don't use electronic anything to record 1's and 0's. In the case of original CDs and DVDs (and original BluRay too) they use aluminum foil... yes, I said aluminum foil. This is in the form of aluminum vapor vacuum deposited onto plastic, to make it reflective to the reading laser. For a zero, the little pit is smooth like a mirror. For a one, the little pit is rough, such that the laser beam does not bounce back to the sensor, but is scattered. (at least I think I got the order correct here--I may have it backwards) Anyway, original manufactured CDs & DVDs can theoretically last forever, so long as the physical thing is in good condition. But not so for the ones you can make yourself: they use a dye instead of aluminum, to create those bumps. Either the write-once versions or the erasable ones, both use a dye suspended in a viscous liquid (think stiff grease or non-hardening glue) as a minute layer between the aluminum layer which acts as a back-plane. To "record" a zero, the laser does nothing. To record a 1, the laser's energy (usually voltage) is increased, and it heats the dye--melting it, rendering it not-smooth-- a 1. In the case of RW discs, an even higher energy pulse re-melts it yet again, to smooth it out back to a zero. The fault is in this dye layer, which is extremely sensitive to temperature changes, which can smooth out the 1's or even wrinkle the 0's, scrambling the data over time. UV light has a similar randomizing effect. So, the lesson is: do not depend on CDRs or DVDRs for long-term storage of your valuable data--
don't do it!. Use actual hard drives, which seem to have a nice 10-15 year shelf life, if stored in a cool, dry environment-- dry being essential to avoid gumming up the bearings, and cool to avoid heat-scrambling of the magnetic bits inside. The only real worry about old hard disks is having the supporting electronics around long enough to get at the data it contains. Flash memory suffers from this last problem too-- obsolescence of the reading-electronic capability. ... meh... interesting times, no?)
Flash memory is either NAND or NOR where the distinction is how fast you can write a block (NAND) and how fast you can read a bit (NOR), so that the former is used for USB Drives/SD cards/etc, and the latter for computer BIOS. Life depends on write cycles, and the electrical state (0/1) is determined at a practical quantum level (electrons trapped in the semiconductor). I don't know if they actually die after X years even if not used, but I'm inclined to think that they may last more than a single decade. The data stored may get corrupted (leakage) but that doesn't mean that the device itself becomes unusable.
---
If you want a more long term form of storage, why not use a laser on a hard glass (like the one used for those tridimensional portraits that you can find on malls lately). I'm sure data stored that way could last for centuries.
Quote from: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on December 02, 2012, 03:16:36 AM
Flash memory is either NAND or NOR where the distinction is how fast you can write a block (NAND) and how fast you can read a bit (NOR), so that the former is used for USB Drives/SD cards/etc, and the latter for computer BIOS. Life depends on write cycles, and the electrical state (0/1) is determined at a practical quantum level (electrons trapped in the semiconductor). I don't know if they actually die after X years even if not used, but I'm inclined to think that they may last more than a single decade. The data stored may get corrupted (leakage) but that doesn't mean that the device itself becomes unusable.
---
If you want a more long term form of storage, why not use a laser on a hard glass (like the one used for those tridimensional portraits that you can find on malls lately). I'm sure data stored that way could last for centuries.
Cool! Thanks. It's been too long since I looked into these things, so I suppose I'm rather behind the curve here. If I felt better, I'd go dig around and learn... meh.
I agree with you about the laser-etched glass, though. Glass can conceivably last millions of years unchanged. The only problem I could see, would be a decoding method once encoded. I suppose you could use a set of macro instructions written in several languages... on how the microscopic data was encoded (big endian or little endian, 8 bits, 16bits, 32 and so on)
You could even etch in multiple "layers" within the glass, if you used the right sort of laser beam. This could theoretically let you have thousands of layers in a given section of glass. You'd read them back, by varying the focal point...
Just write in pictograms for easy reading. My garndaughter can already read simple Japanese, way behind progress in English, although in that respect she is fine on phonetics.
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ~ Nietzsche
I like that one. I feel like that sometimes.
It may sometimes be, that - given the prevailing Zeitgeist of non-Nietzschian apocoptalism - the philosopher may stumble within the ambit of his intra-personalistic ratiocinations or proto-logical formulatory deliberations and put the custard on the baby and the cat in the freezer.
Prof. Dr. Erwin Lüttschwanz
Quote from: Sibling DavidH on December 16, 2012, 10:07:09 AM
It may sometimes be, that - given the prevailing Zeitgeist of non-Nietzschian apocoptalism - the philosopher may stumble within the ambit of his intra-personalistic ratiocinations or proto-logical formulatory deliberations and put the custard on the baby and the cat in the freezer.
Prof. Dr. Erwin Lüttschwanz
:ROFL:
Quote from: Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith on December 14, 2012, 07:30:06 PM
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ~ Nietzsche
My life *sigh*
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
H. L. Mencken
I had occasion to use the following on facebook today. Enjoy!
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
~ George Santayana
"Humans have bad memories ."
~Anonymous elephant
I try to forget the bad memories.
Take a moment to give those peeps in your life, a hug if however brief. Not because of the season, nor because of world event. And definitely not because you haven't in a bit.
No, make the reason for the hugs just because you and they are in the same place at the same time, and are both able to hug each other.
Isn't that reason enough?
Hug someone simply because you can.
~ (me)