Now, Never, Nothing, Then, Perhaps Sometime, and Likely Never Again

On this day in 1960, what is perhaps the greatest song in recorded history was released - Elvis Presley's It's Now or Never. This is also the day he recorded his first number one hit, That's All Right, in 1954.

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Seinfeld debuted on this day in 1989. It was famously known to be a show about nothing. It was not famously known for what it was, a show about idiosyncrasies.

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George Carlin- "Why do we call it raw sewage. Do people actually cook that stuff?"

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Bill Watterson's birthday, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, born on this day in 1958. "The truth is, most of us figure out where we are headed once we arrive."

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Wait a second, Biden's plan to beat Trump is to put on orange make-up and tell us to look at how big his crowds have been? George Stephanopoulos very kindly told him that he doesn't think he wants to play the crowd number game. 

My least favorite part of the interview was when George asked him about how he will feel if Trump ends up winning. I forget the exact words, but it was the equivalent of, "At least I gave it a go."

July 5, 2024

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I'm going to take a second to reflect on the fact that Roger Federer is the greatest of all time and is somehow going into his 18th Wimbledon quarter-final. He will turn 40 next month prior to the US Open. For comparison, Andy Roddick was retired for 10 years when he was as old as Federer is now. Anytime Federer plays I make sure that my kids watch a bit. It's important to me that they witness the greatest in real time. I'm going to forget for a second about the two nipping at his heels. Who knows what the future holds, and who cares. No record stands forever. Right now he's the greatest of all-time.

July 5, 2021

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Wow, it's almost like there's a correlation between getting the vaccine and not dying of Covid. Just like science said would happen. Just a matter of time though before we all start dropping like flies by the hundreds of thousands... like some dude somewhere said would happen. 

The great thing about science is that it predicts the future. It goes out on a limb with a falsifiable claim. The nonsensical thing about non-science is that it only imagines that what was already accepted as true to begin with, just hasn't happened yet.

July 5, 2021

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Are people fundamentally good or evil? Seems like we're fundamentally evil, doesn't it? Well maybe we aren't. Excellent short interview with Rutger Bergman who wrote a book on the subject. He recounts a real-world Lord of the Flies situation, and guess what... people do sometimes pull together! Hopeful...

July 5, 2020

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The president says that 99% of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless." I literally don't know one person stupid enough to believe that. DOES he understand that it's a communicable disease... that people who die from it catch it from people who might not be bothered? If a fire erupts on the ground floor of Trump Tower, are the upper floors at risk?

Biden's gaffes seem to be slip-ups. Trump's continuous gaffes are the things he actually believes with real-world effects.

July, 5, 2020

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Larry David in a moment of carefree happiness ordering in a coffee shop, Curb Your Enthusiasm- "Some vanilla bullshit, latte-cappa thing. Whatever you got, I don't care."

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When I put a CD in the bathroom stereo it stays in for months. This led to my discovery that the perfect shower length is exactly one November Rain.

July 5, 2018

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Schopenhauer's generalization about the establishment of truth: first it is ridiculed, then it is violently opposed, finally it is accepted as self-evident.

July 5, 2016

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My favorite firework? Easy- the duds!

July 5, 2015

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Ahhh, the first locust. For ten years that sound has meant, "Thank goodness I don't have to start teaching again in August."

July 5, 2015

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If some scientist discovers some way to create a simple single-celled form of life, and then does it, that makes her god of that lifeform, right? Wouldn't it be funny if it developed the ability to evolve and after a billions of years it became much more complex than the original creator? And wouldn't it be funnier yet if our own god was just some regular scientist from some distant planet a billion years ago? It wouldn't be funny once we're dead, that much is for sure!

July 5, 2014

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Why does Wimbledon think women can't handle best of five sets? I turned on the final this morning, made some coffee, checked my email, played with the baby, looked up and it was the final game...and neither of them were even sweaty. The analysis was longer than the game.

July 5, 2014

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Dalai Lama on fear- “Long flights, those I really feared, but now I’m used to them. The fear now is that I never learnt to swim so if the plane crashes on water, I would immediately go deep under the sea and be enjoyed by a shark. That I really fear.” 

That's WISDOM, and it doesn't matter if you've leant to swim or not, btw.

July 5, 2014

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Moral Question

I was just watering my potted cactuses out front but there was too much air in the hose- it kept going back and forth between squirting them with water and then blowing them with air, squirting them with water and then blowing them with air. I decided to get rid of the air by shooting the hose full force into the front yard. Exactly as the stream was airborne, some bikini’d girl (who had been blocked from my view by a hedge) came strolling down the sidewalk and appeared just in time to get doused. If I’d tried, I couldn’t have planned it better. For a second I thought she was going to go Carrie on me. Ben- Oh my God, I’m sorry! Bikini’d Girl- It’s OK, it felt good. So my question to you- does hosing down some bikini girl count as cheating on Emma?

July 5, 2009

Postscript- No, it doesn't.

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Isaac Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica on this day in 1687. There is absolutely no telling what hour view of the world would be without that one book. My great-great-grandfather was named after him- Isaac Newton Haller.

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It's Spam's birthday, first hitting the shelves in 1937. If Spam never existed, I would have puked a few less times in my life, we would be without one of Monty Python's greatest sketches, and who knows what my high school band, Lucifer Spam, would have been called.

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Björn Borg won his fifth consecutive Wimbledon on this day in 1980.

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Jeff Bezos founded Amazon on this day in 1994, and let's admit it, it made shopping a lot better.

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Dolly the Sheep became the first mammal cloned from an adult cell on this day in 1996. She was named after Dolly Parton. Know why? Because she was cloned from a mammary cell. When Dolly Parton heard about this she said, “I’m honored. There’s no such thing as baaaaad publicity.” Haha, class act that one.

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PT Barnum joined us on this date in 1810. 

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Jean Cocteau came to live with us for a while on this day in 1889. He has this to say about that day. "The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying."

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Ted Williams left us on this day in 2002. From then on he was known as the baseball player with the most perfect swing, and the guy who's children fought in court over possession of his cryogenically frozen head.

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The Hitchens Rabbithole: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ITT3NOLJk

"We don't need better politicians, we need a better electorate."

He also offers this non-filthy limerick:

A young engine driver named Hunt

Who was given an engine to shunt

Saw a run away truck

And by yelling out duck

Saved the life of the fellow in front.

July 5, 2014

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Michael Shermer, May, 2013- Gun Science

A great, no-nonsense article chocked full of stats. A sample:

"Consider a 1998 study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery that found that “every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.” Pistol owners’ fantasy of blowing away home-invading bad guys or street toughs holding up liquor stores is a myth debunked by the data showing that a gun is 22 times more likely to be used in a criminal assault, an accidental death or injury, a suicide attempt or a homicide than it is for selfdefense. I harbored this belief for the 20 years I owned a Ruger .357 Magnum with hollow-point bullets designed to shred the body of anyone who dared to break into my home, but when I learned about these statistics, I got rid of the gun."

http://www.michaelshermer.com/2013/05/gun-science/

July 5, 2015

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Kinzinger- "When the party and party leaders talk about unity, and in the same breath say that Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, what they’re talking about isn’t unity. They’re talking about capitulation."

https://nyti.ms/3hjYO9L

July 5, 2021

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If someone's dying wish is stupid, you don't have to honor it do you? I mean come on, they're dead.

July 5, 2023

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A ridiculous play, Paul O'Neill bobbling a ball on this day in 1989, thinking he lost the game, then kicking the ball out of frustration right to the first baseman who then held Steve Jeltz to third base.

https://youtu.be/7mIqBJqPV0o

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Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha- "I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value."

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Bob Dylan- The Philosophy of Song:

I had dinner a while back with a friend of mine who had recently lost his wife. He said something to me that I had to think about for a while. He said, "The only reason any of it means anything is because it ends." Unlike diamonds and gold, his time with his wife was truly finite, and he had cherished every moment.

If you could live forever it would be like money shored up on an illusion, on a thing that was going to be there whether there was anything to pack it up or not. In 2017 Venezuela had to issue a press release that it didn't have enough money to pay for its money. But you know what, Venezuela is still here.  Because, ultimately, money doesn't matter. Nor do the things that it can buy. Because no matter how many chairs you have, you only have one ass.

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Ernest Hemingway- “The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.” -

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Ambrose Bierce- "All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."

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Elie Wiesel, Night- "Blessed be God's name? Why, but why would I bless Him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because he kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers, end up in the furnaces? Praised be Thy Holy Name, for having chosen us to be slaughtered on Thine altar?"

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Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita- "Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece."

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Plutarch- "Time is the wisest of all counselors."

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract- "In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much."

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Salman Rushdie- "Faith without doubt is addiction."

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