The Universe in a Snowflake

I'm sad to hear that one of my favorite philosophy professors died in December, Bill Smith. I had him for a metaphysics class.

One of the first things he said in that class was that if anybody was there to learn about ghosts and UFOs, they should leave, haha.

The first day he also said that he didn't want to see anybody yawn. The reasoning was that he sees it as rude, and that we have control over it, that at any point if you were going to yawn and somebody would say they would give you a million dollars if you didn't, you would be able to not yawn, so you should be able to do it for nothing. I'll tell you, this crosses my mind all the time, it's endlessly applicable. Hmm, should I buy the Butterscotch Krimpets? Well, if somebody would give me a million dollars I could resist, so I guess I can also resist for zero dollars.

There were these dopey guys who sat up front, and he landed a zinger of all time on one of them. He called on him to give an answer, not because he thought he would have an answer, but rather to illustrate to everybody that there was no way that he did the reading. As expected, the dopey guy guffawed a stupid answer, and Professor Smith said, "You better start saying the exact opposite of what you think if you want to start making any sense."

There was a student there that I shared a bunch of classes with, and I got along with him, so it was quite a surprise one day when Professor Smith got into an argument with him over Nazis! The argument still haunts me. It was over whether or not Hitler was a great leader. Sure, he certainly led the German people, no doubt. That was the problem. We can't say that he was a good leader though, that's for sure, and great is even better than good, right? As in so much a philosophy, it was a question over the definition of words... whether "great" referred to the scale, or to the quality, but in the moment neither of them could verbalize that. After class, that student look like he was hit with a 2x4. When he went into that class that morning, I bet he didn't have any idea that he would exit having been painted as a Nazi sympathizer!

I saw my first Herzog movie because of him. I was in his office and I saw Aguirre on his shelf and asked if I could borrow it. I don't know if I was distracted or what, but I didn't like it. Several years later I saw Even Dwarfs Started Small, and that's the one that blew off the top of my head.

He wrote two books on the philosophy of film. Great titles- Plato and Popcorn, and Socrates and Subtitles.

I'm looking through my notebook:

-"Metaphysics is nonsense, the definition of metaphysics is beyond what we can sense... beyond the physical, metaphysics."

-For some reason I wrote in the margin, "a kingdom of elves in outer space." Haha!

-"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

Ah yes, perhaps the greatest question in all of philosophy and science. And religion.

-"It's good to doubt something straight up, but it's much better to have a philosophical foundation to doubt."

-I wrote a Homer Simpson quote in the margin- "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Nevermind."

-I love these mysterious notes in the margin. "Sense data fallible (three people describe a car crash) million-headed king of france." Haha! What does it mean?

-Ah, questions of identity, the Ship of Theseus. If you replace your car part by part, and at some point you've replaced every part... which is your car, the car that you drive, or the pile of broken parts? What if you fix all those broken parts in reconstruct it?

-I wrote down a snip of someone's conversation. I used to do that all the time:

"Don't ask me the relevance of this, but was she married?"

"No. What's the relevance?"

-Parsimony, I still think about that all the time, the simplest, least complicated theory to explain a phenomenon is often the best.

-African proverb- "When an old man dies, a library burns down."

-Russell's Paradox as it applies to our thoughts. There's the set of all of our thoughts, but if we think about that set, that adds a thought, so if we include that thought in the set, and think about THAT set, the set again increases, and so on.

-Ahhh. Yesss. I think this might have been my main takeaway from the entire class. I still think about it all the time. We made it to the moon, and that victory for humanity means that we do indeed know something about the world. That fact, that all thinking people can agree on, proves that there's an element of truth to science.

-People say that there's no evidence for death being the end of consciousness, but there is. We can get bumped on the head, or go under anesthesia, and lose our consciousness. It's as if we don't exist in that moment. We can conclude then that as a matter of proportion, if our head would be smashed, there would be either the same effect or a greater effect, which would both amount to nothingness. There's nothing to make us think that if our head would be hit or harder, we would end up with continuing consciousness.

-Margin notes-

"Logical?
Psychiatry
Poetry"

"Point
Line
Plane
Space
Time
Consciousness"

"I don't want to write this sentence."

"Freud sex
Marx money"

-"One page of metaphysics is equal to 10 Mad Magazines."

Haha, I wonder why I wrote this?

-"To find out what you are like, find out what you intend."

-"Instinct is a meaningless word to explain animal behavior that we don't understand."

-Sartre believe that he was responsible for World War II because he chose to fight in the French army.

(Wait, did the French army actually fight in World War II? I thought they just laid down and let the Nazis tickle their bellies. I should check more into this. It's good to have been in World War II, certainly not responsible for starting it, but for fighting to end it, definitely.)

-Here's a good note, endlessly applicable- "The feeling we understand something isn't sufficient to guarantee actual understanding."

-I found a pretty strange note to have taken in 1998. He went through the history of metaphysics through the Sophists, Socrates, Descartes, Hume, Kant, and then got to the 20th century.

I wrote, "The 20th century, conspiracy theories, blind mistrust of government, psychic phone lines, people think Clinton is a murderer, we're due for a revolution, but would people go with it?"

We didn't know it, but the answer was yes, and we were 22 years away.

-"To advance in wisdom, it's good to have our pedestal pulled out from under us."

-"When a scientist makes a judgment, they are making a judgment on how reality appears to them. That appearance is in the mind."

-Heidegger was one of the main philosophers we studied. I have a note, "Heidegger - Nazi?" It turns out he was an apologetic Nazi, a fact that Smith could not come to grips with. How could someone who understood the world so well, subscribe to an evil worldview?

-"If you stop running from death, you face your own death. (Facing it individualizes us.) Paraphrasing Nietzsche, if you're not in danger, you're not an individual."

-"TO LIVE FULLY, ADMIT THE POSSIBILITY OF THE ABSOLUTE IMPOSSIBILITY OF EXISTENCE."

-"Do you know what pisses off God? When you walk past a field of purple flowers and don't notice they're purple."

-"If Jesus would come again, they kill him." It's impossible to know whether some of these notes were from the class, or just thoughts I had.

-"Boredom maybe a type of death. There's no real living in boredom."

-"There is untruth in groups, to belong to a group you sacrifice some truth. To find authenticity you must be outside of a crowd."

-"We throw away shoes when they lose their shoe-ly essence." Haha, I can't help it, I love stuff like that.

-"Authentic relationship to being:
Americanization
Modern technology
Trivialization of life
Forgetfulness of being."

-"A number of great writers can explain how they come up with great characters. They say they just come to them."

That reminds me of what Hank Williams said, when someone asked how he comes up with his songs. Without looking up the exact quote, it's something like, "I just hold on to the pen and God sends them through."

-"There's a connection between Heidegger and Zen Buddhism. Look at archery. To be good there has to be a oneness between your fingertips, the bow, the arrow, and the target, and through our intentionality the arrow becomes one with the bullseye."

-What was I getting at with these notes in the margin? My final notes:

"Soul
Matter
Instinct
Subconscious
God
Intuition
Mind
Being
Self"

Metaphysics is about what we can know without having any sort of tangible proof. I'll tell you one thing I know with no tangible proof. I know that professor Smith would have loved this Woody Allen joke from Annie Hall:

"I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."

What a great class. I have one of his books, I think I'll read it. My thanks go out to Dr. Smith, wherever he is. (Nowhere.)

January 23, 2025

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There's a snowstorm falling on Lancaster right now. As I watch millions of snowflakes fall, I consider their composition. The one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms in every one of their water molecules used to belong to something else. The atoms exloded out of stars billions of years ago, every snowflake certainly containing molecules from the exhalations of all the humans who have ever lived- from Lucy, to Socrates, to Hitler, to Elvis, to Malala, to you and I. If even eight snowflakes fall per square inch, within the circle with a one-mile radius and you as the center, that's one snowflake for every human who ever lived, and each snowflake with a quintillion molecules, each with billions of years of stories to tell. Enjoy the snow!

January 23, 2022

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Zuzu said something to me and I told her I didn't hear her. She said it again and again I didn't hear her. I asked her to say it again and she said it wasn't important anyway. Reminded me of this Mitch Hedberg joke:

I’m a mumbler. If I’m walking with a friend and I say something, he won’t hear me, he’ll say “What?” So I’ll say it again, but once again, he doesn’t hear me, so he says “What?!” But really, it’s just some insignificant shit that I’m saying, but now I’m yelling “That tree is far away!”

January 23, 2022

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A solid wood Buddha, for $750. That price tag around his neck seems sacrilegious! But wouldn't that be a great thing to have if you had the space??? Good time to draw upon the transcendentalist Thoreau, who himself seems to be drawing upon Buddhist wisdom- "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." Life is suffering, and to end suffering, we must end desire. But now if my desire is to not buy it, I guess I should buy it to resist desire, right?

January 23, 2021

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In the spirit of unity, Biden should outlaw telemarketing car warranty phone calls. Instant 100% support.

January 23, 2021

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Here's another attempt at unity... I'm certain we can all agree that Biden should be banned from ever holding public office again, if in four years he loses 60 lawsuits to overturn an election he lost and then incites an insurrection on the Capitol to stay in power at the exact moment the Senate is confirming the results for his opponent. Is that enough of a basic foundation for us to build upon?

January 23, 2021

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Fascinating how a joke can be the most idiotic thing in human history, yet simultaneously could have only been conceived by a genius.

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Depth of character. "He wasn't just chasing a record, he was helping us chase a better version of ourselves." You see that more and more these days...

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02GvMEWXmv8AhrcTMu7UgW6u2LoNZQwt3m6TmT5TJ49hGnP8pny9FZ2KagVBVvaRsMl&id=101078858635318&sfnsn=mo&mibextid=6aamW6

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Smattering of thoughts about the previous week... 

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As a nice bookend to Trump's presidency, Google the video of him getting off the plane in Florida. When he stops for pictures, Melania walks away like she just clocked out of the worst job in history.

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I'm not generally impressed by fashion, by my God, I've never seen anybody own an event like Michelle Obama at the inauguration. I'm not sure if in my life I've ever seen somebody and thought, "holy shit!" My eyes bugged out like a cartoon character. Somehow just her body language gave the finger to Trump. Reminded me of Woody Allen's opening narration to Manhattan- "New York was his town, and it always would be." Well Washington DC is her town, and it always will be. She is the embodiment of everything good about us.

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Just as I'm not easily impressed with fashion, I've never been impressed by fireworks. Yet I found myself thinking, "wow, that's a fucking shit load of fireworks!" I was impressed by fireworks... embarrassing.

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All that God talk at the inauguration... this will be an adjustment to again having a president who believes in God. How is that not a violation of church and state, saying "so help me God" in the oath of office? I guess that's one thing you can say about Trump, he definitively broke the atheist glass ceiling. Maybe Lincoln did before him. (Correction: Trump does believe in God, he just thinks that HE is God.)

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One thing you can indeed say about Trump, and I will admit that I was wrong... I would have lost my house betting that he would start a new war. 

Related, did you know that presidential IQ is inversely proportional to battle deaths incurred while they are president? In the twentieth century, for every lower presidential IQ point, on average something like 1,000 people died in battle. I know what you're thinking, but in my opinion Trump decidedly lost the War against the Coronavirus. His decision to "play it down" might have cost 200,000 lives. So maybe his IQ is something like -70. 

I'll give him more credit though, he did win the bloodless War against Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV. That dementia test didn't even stand a chance.

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Obama and Biden said they could only govern with our help, where Trump's entire approach was what he said when he accepted the nomination in 2016, "I alone can fix it." Look where that savior complex got us. Apparently he's just a person after all.

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Many people who were behind Trump's agenda cited his prison reform initiative as a key accomplishment. Well he certainly reformed the prisons on his last day in office when he emptied them of all of his close associates who got him elected to begin with! 

Think about all of the reformed people out there, wasting away in jail for crimes, minor in scope, that they committed ages ago. Yet he pardoned all of his rich unrepentant buddies. Clinton correctly gets criticized for pardoning Marc Rich, and this is Marc Rich times a hundred. 

This, along with his subversion of international amnesty laws, and Capital Insurrection, I give him a zero out of a hundred for law and order.

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In the philosophy of science, the idea of falsifiability states that for us to even be able to gauge the truth of a conjecture, new evidence must be capable of proving it wrong. If we find rabbit footprints in cretaceous rock, Darwin is fucked. Evolution is falsifiable. Similarly, if we know that God would not let Biden be president because God willed it, that notion has just been falsified. Falsifiability is never applied to prayers though, but if someone claims to know the mind of God, why shouldn't it be? You will notice that instead of accepting evidence of their falsified conjecture, the goal posts are moved.

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I'm thinking of all those, "I love waking up knowing Trump is my president" coffee mugs that are out there. Fraud Folks are either stubbornly drinking out of them saying "well he fucking is," or keeping them in the back of the cupboard, maybe choosing Garfield instead.

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Biden- "Through the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifice, and setbacks, our "better angels" have always prevailed. In each of these moments, enough of us came together to carry all of us forward." 

"Enough," is the interesting word there. That's a loaded word. That's the reason I love watching these things, no matter who is inaugurated. I really get into the nuance of the wording. He's calling for unity, which of course is impossible, but we can be united "enough" to get stuff done.

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I'm imagining all those Fraud Folks supporting their same arguments if Biden had lost 62 court cases, and states certified the votes against him, etc, etc, yet he still pressed on. Their own arguments for Trump would seem absolutely bananas to them when applied to Biden. Bananas become ape shit, and they would go 100% ape shit. Take it from me, I've seen the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, ape shit stinks.

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A note of hope: Qanon people might be as different from regular Republicans as Republicans are different than Democrats, or as different as Antifa anarchists protesting Biden are different from Biden himself.

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The Moderna vaccine was created in a weekend before there were even any US deaths. We will never have another pandemic like this... by the time the next one hits, vaccines will be instantaneous. 

Related: Remember that Trump kept saying that vaccines were right around the corner? That was the one time he told the truth! If we had any reason to believe him, he might have won re-election. The problem was that he cried wolf 20+ thousand times. It was true, but it would have been insane for us to believe him at that point.

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Who is responsible for Trump not being in office? About 81 million of us get to split up 1% of the responsibility. The "fuck you dumbocrat" crowd gets to split up 1% for provoking us. State election officials get to split up 1% for not caving to political pressure to subvert the results. The judiciary gets to split up 1% for making 60+ just rulings. Mitch McConnell gets 1% for nearly unifying the Senate to accept the results. Mike Pence gets 1% for confirming the results. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the heads of every military branch get 1% for confirming the fact there would be a transfer of power. Joe Biden gets 3% for his steadiness in the storm. That leaves 90% of the responsibility for Trump's loss squarely on Trump for five years of being a giant asshole and not trying. The best thing Hitler ever did was kill himself, and the best thing Trump ever did was doom his re-election.

January 23, 2021

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Apparently there are senators sneaking out during the case and giving interviews, or talking during the case, one senator said she was reading a book. You know what would be funny, at the end of the case Roberts excludes those senators from voting, and then two-thirds of those allowed to vote could convict. I just mean that it would be funny until all the bullets start flying. People sure would be mad, but I guess their senators should have done their job and paid better attention!

January 23, 2020

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I'm reading a book that is so good, I don't even want to turn the pages... each one signifying one page closer to the end. It's Stephen Pinker's, The Sense of Style, a writing manual of sorts. His analysis of the opening paragraph of Richard Dawkins', Unweaving the Rainbow, made me... and I believe this is the highest compliment a writer could receive... made me want to have it read at my funeral. Here it is:

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

January 23, 2017

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I laughed so hard at this I spit all over my computer screen. It's... just... so... perfect.

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This was a gif of a guy trying to footage in the mouth and it catches the wind and you can see all of his emotions as it blows away... But I can't find it now!

January 23, 2017

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi... now that right there is a goosebump-inducing title.

January 23, 2017

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I bet those MASH surgeons would have saved a lot more lives if they weren't cracking jokes through all of the operations.

January 23, 2016

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Ben sure picked a fine time to not have the use of one arm. A nice added touch is him laughing at me as I wade through hip-level snow to shovel and knock the snow off our tree branches.

January 23, 2016

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Best one:

LIFE STINKS

WE HAVE A PEW FOR YOU

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Woke up, made coffee, went upstairs, brushed my teeth, came back down... how did that take 45 minutes?

January 23, 2011

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On this day in 971, using crossbows, Song dynasty troops defeated a war elephant corps of the Southern Han at Shao. And you thought you had a bad day.

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Tragedy on this day in 1556 when an estimated 830,000 people lost their lives in the deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, which hit Shaanxi province, China.

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Blaise Pascal published the first of his Lettres provinciales on this day in 1656.

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In Montana on this day in 1870, cavalrymen killed 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in what became known as the Marias Massacre.

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Charles Lindbergh testified before the Congress on this day in 1941, recommending that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler. If the Nazis won World War II, would he be viewed as being on the right side of history?

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The frisbee I was born on this day in 1957 when inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sold the rights to Wham-O.

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On this day in1968, The USS Pueblo was attacked and seized by the Korean People's Navy. And thank goodness too! This is why my dad got sent to North Korea instead of Vietnam. 

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The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted its first members on this day in 1986: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley.

Pretty good round of inductions!

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Jeanne Moreau joined us on this day in 1928.

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French engraver and illustrator Gustave Doré left us on this day in 1883. 

Marginalian- Gustave Doré’s Hauntingly Beautiful Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno

https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/10/02/gustave-dore-dante-inferno/

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Edvard Munch left us on this day in 1944.

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity."

Whoa!

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Salvador Dalí left us on this day in 1989.

"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since."

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Johnny Carson left us on this day in 2005.

"The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money."

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Other notable birthdays - Ernie Banks (2015), Larry King (2021)

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The Conversation- Woody Guthrie, ‘Old Man Trump’ and a real estate empire’s racist foundations

Huh!

http://theconversation.com/woody-guthrie-old-man-trump-and-a-real-estate-empires-racist-foundations-53026

January 23, 2016

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BBC- The man who studies the spread of ignorance

Good word!

Agnotology- the willful spread of ignorance.

“This ‘balance routine’ has allowed the cigarette men, or climate deniers today, to claim that there are two sides to every story, that ‘experts disagree’ – creating a false picture of the truth, hence ignorance.”

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160105-the-man-who-studies-the-spread-of-ignorance

January 23, 2016

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New York Times- Aziz Ansari’s Monologue on ‘Saturday Night Live’: Transcript

This was such a perfect monologue. In part:

So, look. We’re divided. It’s O.K. We’ve always been divided by some of these big political issues. It’s fine. As long as we treat each other with respect and remember that ultimately we’re all Americans, we’ll be fine.

But the problem is —

[APPLAUSE]

The problem is, there’s a new group. I’m talking about this tiny slice of people that have gotten way too fired up about the Trump thing for the wrong reasons. I’m talking about these people that, as soon as Trump won, they’re like, “We don’t have to pretend like we’re not racist anymore! We don’t have to pretend anymore! We can be racist again! Whoo!”

[MR. ANSARI PUMPS HIS FIST, THEN LOWERS IT INTO A NAZI SALUTE]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! No, no! If you’re one of these people, please go back to pretending. You’ve got to go back to pretending. I’m so sorry we never thanked you for your service. We never realized how much effort you were putting into the pretending. But you gotta go back to pretending.

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/22/arts/aziz-ansari-monologue-transcript-snl.html

January 23, 2017

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More Aziz, from SNL:

Now George Bush, George W. Bush made a speech after 9/11, and it really helped. Things changed. This what he said in his speech, and I’m paraphrasing slightly. He said, “Islam is peace. The perpetrators of these attacks, they don’t represent Islam. They represent war and violence. Our enemies are not our Muslim brothers and sisters. Our enemies are a network of radical terrorists.” And everyone applauded. Democrats, Republicans, it didn’t matter. Because it’s not about politics. It’s about basic human decency and remembering why the country was founded in the first place.

And I was sitting there and I’m watching this speech and I’m like, “What the hell has happened? I’m sitting here wistfully watching old George W. Bush speeches?” Just sitting there like, “What a leader he was!” Sixteen years ago, I was certain this dude was a dildo. Now, I’m sitting there like, “He guided us with his eloquence!”

Jan 23, 2017

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Dangerous Minds- SOME OF THE BEST (TRUST ME, THEY ARE TREMENDOUS) PROTEST SIGNS FROM THE WOMEN’S MARCH

I know links. I post the best links. Trust me, they are terrific. Everyone agrees.

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/some_of_the_best_trust_me_they_are_tremendous_protest_signs_from_the_womens

January 23, 2017

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A reference at the end of this article caught my eye:

Bueno, . M. B., & Smith, A. (2011). The dictator's handbook: Why bad behavior is almost always good politics. New York: PublicAffairs.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/psychological-condition-best-explains-donald-trumps-twisted-worldview

January 23, 2017

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Al Jazeera- Small hands big missiles: Trump’s dangerous adolescence

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/01/small-hands-big-missiles-trump-dangerous-adolescence-170109061803090.html

From the article:

Can Trump change now that he's become president? Strangely enough, a good number of people in Washington reckon the presidency could change him. They at least hope so.

But is that realistic, at 70? Or, is it wishful thinking? Besides, hasn't he gotten worse with each and every win since the primaries began?

He seems to feel vindicated, even empowered, by his own excesses, like a rowdy teenager who considers any sign of approval a licence to get rowdier and brasher.

This behaviour should worry everyone in and outside America.

January 23, 2017

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Monty Python foreseeing Trump's impeachment...

https://youtu.be/plZRe1kPWZw

January 23, 2020

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Yahoo News- Lindsey Graham Bizarrely Defends Trump: 'He Did Nothing Wrong In His Mind'

Attention psychopaths, as long as you're not doing anything wrong in YOUR MIND, don't worry about it!

(What would society look like if we all held to this general principle- "No harm as long as someone else doesn't think they are doing anything wrong.")

https://news.yahoo.com/lindsey-graham-trump-defense-twitter-202353476.html

January 23, 2020

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Reuters- Let them speak: Most Americans want witnesses in Trump impeachment trial - Reuters/Ipsos poll

So there are still 30% us who want no witnesses, huh? That's the grown-up equivalent putting your hands over your ears and screaming, "LALALALALALALALALALA!!!"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-impeachment-poll/let-them-speak-most-americans-want-witnesses-in-trump-impeachment-trial-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1ZL33O

January 23, 2020

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For the first time in your life, you get to see Uranus without looking in the mirror.

https://www.space.com/uranus-mars-moon-conjunction-january-2021

January 23, 2021

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You might want to do yourself a favor and read this!

http://www.cobbsfuneralhome.ca/obituaries/151483

January 23, 2021

*Text below in addendum

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Lata Mangeshkar is in the ICU battling Covid at 92. Thoughts are with her. This song is one for all-time. 210 million views... I'm sure a million are mine.

https://youtu.be/TFr6G5zveS8

January 23, 2022

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Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: 

Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension. If we want to study a profession, the government’s schools are there to teach us. If we want to open a business, the bank loans us money. If we want to build a house, a construction company builds it and the bank gives us a mortgage, in some cases subsidised or insured by the state. If violence flares up, the police protect us. If we are sick for a few days, our health insurance takes care of us. If we are debilitated for months, social security steps in. If we need around-the-clock assistance, we can go to the market and hire a nurse – usually some stranger from the other side of the world who takes care of us with the kind of devotion that we no longer expect from our own children. If we have the means, we can spend our golden years at a senior citizens’ home. The tax authorities treat us as individuals, and do not expect us to pay the neighbours’ taxes. The courts, too, see us as individuals, and never punish us for the crimes of our cousins.

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From the Hagakure- "It is a good viewpoint to see the world as a dream. When you have something like a nightmare, you will wake up and tell yourself that it was only a dream. It is said that the world we live in is not a bit different from this."

Also...

"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.”

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Muhammad Ali- "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see."

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George Burns- "You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there."

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Hawking- It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

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Orwell- "Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."

(But sometimes true!)

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Isaac Asimov, The Secret of the Universe- "Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run."

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If you see a man running down the street cock-flapping, you run with that man. 'Cause there is some scary shit coming the other way.

Addendum

Margaret Marilyn DeAdder, professional clipper of coupons, baker of cookies, terror behind the wheel, champion of the underdog, ruthless card player, and self-described Queen Bitch, died on Tuesday, January 19, 2021. Marilyn, the oldest of four siblings, was born Marilyn Joyce in 1942, to parents Hannah and Edgar Joyce, in New Glasgow, NS. She grew up in a modest home, which still stands on the top of a hill where the Westville Rd. forks to the Town of Westville in one direction and the old drive-in in the other. Growing up with very little taught her how to turn a dime into a dollar, a skill at which she’d excel her whole life.

Marilyn loved all children who weren’t her own and loved her own children relative to how clean-shaven they were. She excelled at giving the finger, taking no sh!t and laughing at jokes, preferably in the shade of blue. She did not excel at suffering fools, hiding her disdain, and putting her car in reverse. A voracious reader, she loved true crime, romance novels and the odd political book. Trained as a hairdresser before she was married, she was always doing somebody's hair in her kitchen, so much so her kitchen smelled of baking and perm solution. Marilyn had a busy life, but no matter what she was doing she always made time to run her kids’ lives as well. Her lifelong hobbies included painting, quilting, baking, gardening, hiking and arson. Marilyn loved tea and toast. The one thing she loved more than tea and toast was reheated tea and toast. She reheated tea by simply turning on the burner often forgetting about it. She burned many a teapot and caused smoke damage countless times, leaving her kids with the impression that fanning the smoke alarm was a step in brewing tea.

Marilyn liked to volunteer and give back to the community. She was a lifelong volunteer at the Capital Theatre in downtown Moncton, which her sons suspected was her way of seeing all the shows for free. For all of Marilyn’s success in life, her crowning achievement occurred in the mid-to-late eighties, when, left with mounting debt, no job, no car, and no driver’s license, she turned it all around to the point in the early nineties that she had paid down her house, paid cash for all her cars, and got her three boys through university.

Marilyn is survived by her three ungrateful sons Michael (Gail), Paul and David (Trudy), whose names she never got completely right, and whose jokes she didn’t completely understand. She loved them very much, even though at least one of them would ruin Christmas every year by coming home with facial hair, and never forgot that one disastrous Christmas in which all three sons showed up with beards. Everything she did, she did for her sons.

Marilyn is survived by her three granddaughters Meaghan (19), Bridget (16) and Madelyn (5). While her sons committed unspeakable crimes against humanity, her granddaughters could do no wrong. While her sons grew up on root vegetables and powdered milk (funneled directly into the bag to hide the fact that it was powdered, fooling nobody), her granddaughters were fed mountains of sugary snacks as far as the eye could see, including her world-famous cookies and cinnamon rolls. Her love for them was unmatched.

Marilyn is survived by her sisters, Melda and Linda, and her brother, Lloyd, who still owes her $600* (*inside family joke – sorry, Lloyd). Marilyn is also survived by an incredible number of close friends, who cannot be named for fear of missing somebody.

Marilyn, ever the penny-pincher, decided to leave this world on the day Moncton went into red-alert, her sons believe, to avoid paying for a funeral. But, on the other hand, she always said that she didn’t want a funeral, she wanted an Irish wake. She didn’t want everybody moping around, she wanted a party. Marilyn will get her celebration of life when COVID-19 is over. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you do something nice for somebody else unexpectedly, and without explanation. We love you, mom, a bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.

Her arrangements have been entrusted to Cobb’s Funeral Home and Cremation Center, 330 Whitepine Road, Riverview (869-2007). Online condolences may be expressed at www.cobbsfuneralhome.ca