Why not? And Other Miscellany

Birthday of Christopher Hitchens, born on this day in 1949. Some guiding advice for parents who want to raise thinking children.

"It matters not what you think, but how you think.”

"Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence."

"To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid."

Has there ever been anyone who's had more courage than Hitchens? He is the number one voice that we have been missing since he left us.

It wasn't all serious though.

Dirty limericks with Christopher hitchens

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvnjwz

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Stolen from Christopher Hitchens Appreciation Society:

The erudite Christopher Hitchens

Had naught but contempt for relitchens.

Far too empirical

To fall for a miracle,

He branded them all superstitchens.

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Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was also born on this day in 1743. Both famous and infamous for writing the words that helped guide us to be better than we were, although they failed to guide him. We do not need to whitewash the past, and nor do we need to hold those of other errors to the same standards we apply to ourselves. If that were good general guiding principle, our descendants would certainly be justified in knocking over our tombstones, perhaps for eating meat, or for any less than total dedication to ending needless wars.

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Good thing I looked in the mirror this morning before work. I still had a rhinestone stuck in the center of my forehead. Gretel put it there last night and I'd forgotten about it.

April 13, 2018

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Fun with my two monkey-faces at the park. They opened up a donut shop again but they didn't have my favorite flavor- alien beard. They did have alien beard slime ice cream though, so that's good. And they had small rock donuts, and beetle toenail donuts. They also had a very good flavor, grass house shoe donuts. So it was pretty good day at the donut shop.

April 13, 2018

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I think this display at the Natural History Museum just called me a chicken. No, wait, it said I'm 75% genetically similar to a chicken. (It's still an insult.)

People used to be flabbergasted that we descended from monkeys. That's nothing- go back far enough and we're descended from CHEMISTRY! If that doesn't flabber you gast, nothing will.

April 13, 2013

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Through a ghastly error I might have unwittingly agreed to pay Emma thousands of dollars for doing our taxes... I said she could have the difference between what I'd get if I claimed our mortgage and if I didn't. Oopsy.

April 13, 2009

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Viola Davis said today that casting directors told her that she wasn't "classically beautiful" enough to play a romantic lead. And? How many romantic leads are there in the planet, 50 or 60?

April 13, 2022

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Dan Rather used to sign off the news with one word- Courage. 

"Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow."

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On this day in 1934, in Warsaw, Indiana, Dillinger and Van Meter looted a police station for guns and ammunition.

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On this day in 1953, CIA director Allen Dulles launched the mind-control program Project MKUltra which illegally experimented on humans with LSD and torture. Hey let's honor that guy with an airport!

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This day in 1963 Pete Rose recorded his first hit, and on this day in 1984 he recorded his 4000th.

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The Violent Femmes released their eponymous album this day in 1983, as I sat in my third grade class learning cursive and multiplication. I wonder how many hundred times I've listened to that album. Very strange how your tastes change over time. I still love that album but what used to be my least favorite song has become my favorite.

"Good feeling, won't you stay with me just a little longer?"

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Gretel and I had first row tickets to a Phillies game, right behind the dugout on this day in 2016. People were holding their babies up to the Phillie Phanatic for him to kiss them, like he was the Pope of the Galapagos Islands or something.

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On this day in 2017, an example of swagger, the opposite of courage- the US dropped the largest ever non-nuclear weapon, on Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. 

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Happy National Scrabble Day, to those who celebrate. Scrabble inventor Alfred Butts was born on this day in 1899.

For two decades, he couldn't market it. It was mostly just played by Alfred, his wife Nina, and their friends. When Macy's finally started carrying it in 1952, they hired 35 workers and turned out 6,000 sets a week, but they couldn't meet demand.

Apparently, Nina was better than Alfred. Once, after she scored 234 by playing QUIXOTIC across two triple-words, he quipped that she beat him at his own game. 

That crosses my mind often! Do you know how much Scrabble you have to play to even get the Q and the X in your rack at the same time, let alone the other letters, let alone a letter placed between two triple words, let alone it being the right letter in the right place to let you spell that word? That's mind-scrabbling.

At the time of his death in 1993, it had sold about a hundred million boards. He got three cents per board in royalties, and said, "One-third went to taxes, I gave one-third away, and the other third enabled me to have an enjoyable life."

He deserved it! He invented a perfect game.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/07/obituaries/alfred-m-butts-93-is-dead-inventor-of-scrabble.html

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Samuel Beckett was born on this day in 1906.

“When you’re in the shit up to your neck, there’s nothing left to do but sing."

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Short story writer Eudory Welty was born on this day in 1909. "Write about what you don't know about what you know."

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Russian chess player and dissident, Garry Kasparov, was born on this day in 1963. Before him, humans were best at chess. After him, computers were. For as long as I can remember, one of my mantras is to avoid change for the sake of change. It turns out he believes it too, and that it's also good chess advice. And I'll end on this whopper:

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it guarantees all others.”

Kasparov believes we should institute a no-fly zone over Ukraine and blow the Russians out of the air.

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Is an atheist some who believes there is no god, or someone who doesn't believe in god? It's the difference between atheists making up 1.5% or 19% of the population.

http://news.yahoo.com/rise-atheism-america-110700315.html

April 13, 2012

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The Onion- FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United States

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The Onion- New Bomb Capable Of Creating 1,500 New Terrorists In Single Blast

April 13, 2017

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Vice- This Indie Space Network Launched the ‘First Protest in Space’ Targeting Trump

Edgar Mitchell's full quote:

"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.'"

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/first-space-protest-trump-video

April 13, 2017

Postscript- Ironic!

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Rolling Stone- Reports: Trump Promises Acting DHS Secretary Pardon If He Breaks Immigration Law

If this isn't an impeachable abuse of his office and a failure to uphold the Constitution, nothing is. It's authoritarianism over democracy, which might sound like hyperbole. I'd bet everything I own that this joker couldn't give a semi-literate explanation of how the three branches hold each other accountable.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-pardon-kevin-mcaleenan-822053/

April 13, 2019

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Alternet- 'You know you're a fake!': Trump's temper flares when a reporter nails his key coronavirus failure

What did he do in February with the time he bought with the China travel ban? I remember him downplaying every day, pretending everyone could get tested, trying to win the news cycle each day vs facing hard truths, being honest and planning longer term. Is this the type of person who can lead us into the future?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/you-know-youre-a-fake-trumps-temper-flares-when-a-reporter-nails-his-key-coronavirus-failure/

April 13, 2020

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Stolen from somewhere:

Normal people: "The moon is beautiful tonight."

Novelist: "Tonight, the moon casts its shimmering veil upon the earth, a celestial dancer adorning the night sky with its ethereal grace, weaving tales of romance and mystery under the velvet canopy of darkness."

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Andy Warhol- “You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things.” 

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Fridtjof Nansen- "I demolish my bridges behind me...then there is no choice but to move forward."

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Christopher Hitchens- “The gods that we've made are exactly the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.”

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Muhammad Ali- "The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.'

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Robert Heinlein, The Number of the Beast- "At least once every human should have to run for his life, to teach him that milk does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that 'news' is not something that happens to other people. He might learn how his ancestors lived and that he himself is no different--in the crunch his life depends on his agility, alertness, and personal resourcefulness."

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Kinison- "We should have a holiday dedicated to the brave men and women who died trying to kill Hitler."

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Sam Harris, Free Will- "You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm."

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Edward R. Murrow's This I Believe- "A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."

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Richard Dawkins- "So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?"

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Steven Wright- "The doctor said he has to amputate all of me."

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Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

- Why me?

- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?

- Yes.

- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.

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Or as Hitchens said it:

“To the dumb question ‘Why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?”