Some Pieces From My Part of the Cosmos

Within the last week, I stepped on a rake that bashed me in the face, I knocked my head so hard on a branch while I was running that my hat flew off, and twisted my ankle in half while carrying two bags of mulch. I came out unscathed each time, but in a few decades any one of these antics could end with me in the grave. In the meantime I'm going to sell my life story to Hanna-Barbera.

April 24, 2022

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Here's a foundationally good thing about the cops that I think everybody can agree on. When cops break the law, it's great that the cops arrest them.

April 24, 2021 (in the wake of the Floyd verdict)

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All people should obey just laws, but an unjust law is no law at all. -MLK

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The rate of violent crime in the US has halved in the last 20 years, inversely proportional to the rise in 1st person shooter video games and increasingly realistic film violence.

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So get this...a study showed that inmates who were given fish oil had 35% fewer incidents of violence in prison. It's interesting that a "choice to commit violence" can be managed by nutrition. Murderers have distinctly less frontal lobe activity (which controls impulse control and judgment) than non-murderers, and fish oil could help. To what extent are we responsible for our decisions, and to what extent is our physiology? No easy answer.

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I know what Birx is thinking. "Stable genius is right. A stable is full of horseshit, and this guy is the world's leading expert."

April 24, 2020

Postscript- If it needs to be said, don't inject disinfectant.

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Secret Up Room School tonight.

First point of order, we decided to rename Daddy School. Zuzu suggested Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah, and Gretel suggested The Secret Up Room School. Zuzu decided Gretel's name was better. 

Second point of order, everybody's favorite- PRESIDENTS! Somehow Gretel named every president! I gave two tiny hints... she couldn't get the two so I said their last names started with G and T. In like a minute she got them- Garfield and Taft. Wow.

Next, astronomy.

Daddy- "Who was the first person to step on the moon?" 

Gretel- "Armstrong."

Daddy- "What's his first name?

Gretel- "Nooyour."

Daddy- "What?"

Gretel- "Nooyour."

Daddy- "How do you spell it?

Gretel- "N-O-O-Y-O-U-R."

Daddy- "Full credit, but it's Neil."

Then I showed them that "NEIL A" spelled backwards is "ALIEN" which makes sense for the first person walk on a heavenly body.

Gretel- "That's weird."

Sure is! 

Next- geography. I have the set of 50 miniature license plates that I got out of Honeycomb when I was in maybe third grade. I had Gretel read through them. Not easy- those are some strange words. Could I even read any words when I was in kindergarten?

Great job, now Star Wars.

April 24, 2020

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I just had an unsettling thought... look the world today versus the world of 1920 and ponder how much the world has changed. Now imagine the world of 2120, and tell me that any school kid wouldn't have the ability to create a virus tenfold more contagious and deadly as what we're dealing with now. People will look back at humanity's halcyon days when we could just stay inside to escape a virus.

April 24, 2020

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If the ship of Theseus has its components replaced throughout its journey, does it at any point become a different ship?

April 24, 2012

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Is it insane that I feel guilty for watching BookTV while I'm supposed to be reading?

April 24, 2011

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Our bodies are of nature but our thoughts are not. Is that why I have unnatural thoughts, like this one?

April 24, 2011

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Robert Pirsig died on this day in 2017. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance is a quality book. But how do you define quality? Tough question.

"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt."

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Siamese twins count as two people, right? Yes. But what if they share a brain? Less than 50% and they have to share their self with the other person? Do half of their thoughts overlap? We have conflicting systems in our own brains, would it just be an extra dimension for them? Are they a fraction of an individual self in proportion to how much of their own brain they have? If they share 1%, you can see pretty clearly that they would have individual selves. If they share 99%, they have to be the same self, right? If so, where's the tipping point? Reminds me of the "one big soul" speech from the Grapes of Wrath. If we're all just part of one big soul, maybe the question is meaningless. Any answers out there? It's possible that I've spent a little bit too much time in my life thinking about Siamese twins sharing the same brain. Nah, that's crazy.

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I'm terrified of sharks, and I also love them. How is that possible? Maybe it's something similar to how people say they fear God why they simultaneously love him.

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The United States Library of Congress was established on this day in 1800 when President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress". My screenplay, Ghosts of the Old Road resides there somewhere. Anytime you get a copyright you have to send a book to the library of congress.

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This day 2004, Chase Utley's first hit, a grand slam.

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John Waters' film godfather, William Castle, was born on this day in 1914. Here's a list of gimmicks that William Castle used to get his movies into the public consciousness:

-For The House on Haunted Hill, some theaters had a skeleton that would fly through the air on a string.

-Macabre was said to be so scary that he sold life insurance policies to the audience.

-For The Tingler, he rigged up something to shock some people in their seats! How is that not illegal???

For Polyester, John Waters made a scratch and sniff card, and the film was billed to be in Odorama. The audience smelled the scents in this order: roses, flatulence, model building glue, pizza, gasoline, skunk, natural gas, new car smell, smelly shoes, air freshener. 

Castle- "You have to believe in yourself. And you have to, down deep within the bottom of your soul, feel that you can do the job that you've set out to do."

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Hall of Famer Warren Spahn joined us on this day in 1921. How about these stats!

-Won 363 games in his career, 63 of them via shutout.

-Won 20 or more games 13 times, leading the league 8 times.

-Cy Young in 1957

-17-time All Star

-2 no-hitter

-Hit also 35 home runs!

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Superman director, Richard Donner, was born on this day in 1930.

"I had life threats, because people accused me of approaching Brando as God and his son was Jesus. I literally had people saying my blood would run in the streets for doing that."

If he should be killed for anything it should be, "It's all for you, Damien." He directed The Omen too. 

He said, "With The Omen, I really felt I wasn't in control. It was panic." That's a direct contradiction of Castle.

It's just like The Goonies say though, "never say die." He directed The Goonies too.

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There are not a lot of silver screen actresses still with us, but Shirley MacLaine is, born on this day in 1934. I would put her performance in The Apartment in the highest echelon, and I'm not sure if there's ever been anyone more adorable.

"The person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused."

Barbra Streisand was born on this day too, in 1942.

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Novelist and short story writer, Willa Cather, left us on this day in 1947.

"Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years."

I love that. What are the two or three stories? Human versus human, human versus nature, human versus supernatural?

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Comedian, activist, and presidential candidate, Pat Paulsen left us on this day in 1997. 

"All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian."

That's one way to look at it.

I think I know why he was never elected president.

"It's tough campaigning, kissing hands and shaking babies."

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Thanks to Cosmos for reminding me that we never really see the moon as it is. We see it as it was one second ago... that's when the light reflected off of it reaches us. So I suppose this computer screen is slightly in the past too, and my fingertips that are typing this.

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Fascinating panel discussion on the origins of violence.

https://youtu.be/vxMP4IAkgpU

April 24, 2016

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Taste of Cinema- The 40 greatest movie endings in film history

40 Spoiler Alerts. Great list.

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2014/the-40-greatest-movie-endings-in-film-history/

April 24, 2017

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God, so ridiculous, and it busts me up each time. Woody Allen's greatest ad-libbed line.

https://youtu.be/b_J2Yn34I_k

April 24, 2020

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Daniel Dennett- "If we turn this wonderful technology we have for knowledge into a weapon for disinformation, we are in deep trouble." 

Why? 

"Because we won't know what we know, and we won't know who to trust, and we won't know whether we're informed or misinformed. We may become either paranoid and hyper-sceptical, or just apathetic and unmoved. Both of those are very dangerous avenues. And they're upon us."

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Roger Sterling- “A wooden leg…They’re so cheap they can’t even afford a whole reporter."

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Alan Watts & Al Chung-liang Huang, Tao: The Watercourse Way- “Is a long life such a good thing if it is lived in daily dread of death or in constant search for satisfaction in a tomorrow which never comes?”

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W.C. Fields- "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I’m so indebted to her for."

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Richard Feynman- "I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer.”

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Sam Harris- "The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation."

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Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea- "I do not think, therefore I am a moustache."

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Einstein- "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible."

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John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir- "Most people are on the world, not in it — have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them — undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate."

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John Waters- "I'd take LSD and say, "Let's go watch Bergman movies.'"

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The Best Things in Life Are Free

by Robert Morse, Mad Men

The stars in the sky

The moon on high

The best things in life are free

The moon belongs to everyone

The best things in life are free

The stars belong to everyone

They gleam there for you and me

The flowers in spring

And the robins that sing

The sunbeams that shine

They're yours, they're mine

And love can come to anyone

The best things in life are free.