I write this in a mood of deep introspection and uncharacteristic melancholy.
You may want to re-read Curve Ball, No Fun Anymore and Terminal Thoughts first to save me a lengthy exposition of my current mood.
Done? Then we’ll continue. Read more
Category: Deep Thoughts
Genetic Slavery
From GeekWithA.45, commenting at this post:
One of my old friends, a scholar of Talmud and Kaballah, once opined that there was a really important reason $DEITY lead Moses and the Israelites around the desert for 40 years between their deliverance from slavery and arrival at the promised land, and it had little to do with petty Divine annoyance on the subject of golden calves. It was, he explained, to give that society time to let the slave generation die off and train the new generation to conditions of self reliance, to become people fit to determine their own fate. I think there’s a lot to that. Slave instincts of servility are pernicious, and difficult for even the hardiest to shake off.
There’s more than a lot to that. There is so much truth in that brief summation that I’m mortified that I’ve never put it into words.
2D/3D
From the Comments to yesterday’s post about the two- vs. three dimension concepts came this, from Reader Harry (no relation):
Vertical projects (buildings, towers) do have 3 dimensions. They are described as vertical projects, even though their height does not always exceed their length or width.
Horizontal projects (roads, airfields) also have 3 dimensions. They are described as horizontal projects, even though their length does not always exceed their height or width.
I understand that perfectly, especially when viewed in Platonic terms. You may call a table a “quadripod eating-surface”, but that does not negate its “table-ness”, which exists outside any definition.
A road, almost by definition, needs no thickness — it is a line that connects a starting point and a destination, and thus requires no third dimension. (This is not true in Britishland, however, where a road can start in the middle of nowhere, meander all over the countryside and then just expire — probably out of sheer exhaustion — never having reached an actual destination. And one may still encounter traffic jams on said roads because while they are theoretically bi-directional, their width is usually less than that of a single car — thus proving the statement that a line may have length but not width.)
Because buildings have no ending point (projecting upwards into thin air), they must have a third dimension. A wall cannot exist without thickness — even when joined to the ceiling. (Just because you need only two of its dimensions when hanging a picture, for example, doesn’t mean it needn’t have a third, as a moment’s thought will show.)
And now I need to quit, because I’m starting to get a headache.
Oxi Day
From Longtime Reader Brad:
You tell of your Grandfather on a yearly basis… his quiet determination to live his life, support and protect his family, etc.
Perhaps you recall columnist John Kass from The Trib — he’s indie now — he bailed earlier this year immediately after lefty vulture “capitalists” bought The Trib.
I give you this …
I always liked to read John Kass back when I lived in Daley City, and this ranks up there with his best. Wonderful, and humbling.
Thanks, Brad.
Choices, Choices
Found this at Knuckledragger’s place, and it got me thinking:
If the next meteorite was going to strike a U.S. city, which one would get your vote?
Suggestions in Comments, with a BRIEF rationale.
Unless you nominate Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle or Portland. Then no explanation is necessary
Out Of Touch
One of the besetting problems of getting older is that much of what passes for the modern-day zeitgeist simply passes one by, either unnoticed or else rejected without even attempting to follow.
I must have been getting old when I was still young, because:
- I have never watched a single minute of Dr. Who
- …or the Kardashian women’s show
- …or any of the “competition” shows like Dancing With The Stars
- I never watched any of the Rocky shows after Rocky II
- I’ve only ever watched the first three Star Wars movies, and even The Return Of The Jedi sucked
- I pretty much stopped listening to “new” popular music when grunge appeared (at age 40-ish)
- I have never played an online computer game, of any description
- and so on.
At some point, therefore, I must have started looking at new trends, and decided, “Best not” (in the words of Lord Salisbury, circa 1894).
Don’t even ask me about politics, cars or clothing. (Longtime Readers will know all about my antipathy towards those modernistic monstrosities anyway.)
I know that everyone gets this way in their later years, but it seems mine started long before I actually reached my seniority, way sooner than when this happened to my friends of like age.
If I’d owned a house at that time, I’d probably have been yelling at the kids to get off my lawn when I was in my late twenties.
None of this means that I reject all things new, of course, just that I am extraordinarily picky about adopting any of them. This is being typed on a laptop that is hundreds or times more powerful than the corporate IBM 360/40 I worked on as an operator in the mid-1970s, and I love the cord-free existence of Bluetooth and wi-fi. But if I had to, I could easily revert to an earlier generation of comm technology.
I’m even getting bored of writing about this topic right now, so I think I’ll quit. There are a couple of books that need reading — paper books, not that Kindle nonsense.