Moral Courage, and Dogma For Bullies

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was published on this day in 1885. It might have one of the greatest lines in all of American literature. When Huck considers that he might go to hell for helping his friend Jim, an escaped slave, he says:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell."

He decides to accept a life of "wickedness" if that meant saving his friend.

Our morality precedes all religion.

God- "Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear." (Ephesians 6:5)

February 18, 2023

Doug- Not to get into a deep debate here, but I am pretty sure that Matthew 22:39 "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” covers Huck. If you are saying that we have innate morality even without religion, that works. If your Ephesians quote is meant to say that religion is COUNTER to morality, it is tougher territory.

Ben- I accept the comment in the intended spirit! At the time, that passage and others were used to justify slavery. That was what Huck was wrestling with, that accepting those words coming from God, he decided to do the opposite because he knew they were unjust, that God was saying something unjust. Twain's point is that we decide in ourselves what is just, so even "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," is true because we've determined it to be true, not because somebody said it. I think it illustrates the difference between moral courage and blind obedience to dogma.

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New York Post- ChatGPT AI robots writing church sermons causing hell for pastors

https://nypost.com/2023/02/17/chatgpt-ai-robots-writing-sermons-causing-hell-for-pastors/amp/

February 18, 2023

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I was pulling my kids on a sled tonight and they were yelling and having fun. When I stopped and they got off, Gretel seemed to reflect on the good time and said, "It IS Black History Month." Somehow it only dawned on me now, hours later, that she said the most bizarre thing I've ever heard. I feel like waking her up and asking her what the heck she meant.

February 18, 2021

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Gretel wanted me to take a picture of her with the poem that she wrote after school today.

And another...

February 18, 2020

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Today's commutations and pardons- they could have no other purpose other than to destigmatize corruption. Nobody disagrees that Trump holds wealth, power and appearances above all else, we've known this for decades. There's lots of wealth and power to be made through corruption, but why doesn't he care about the appearance?

February 18, 2020

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A primatologist was studying a troop of wild baboons for years and then tragedy struck, the baboon leaders got into some dumpster of poison and died. The scientist abandoned the project and decided to revisit the troop years later. Without their leaders, gone was the bullying nature of their everyday interactions, there were fewer violent interactions, they got along great, and were doing just fine. This was with several generations of new baboons cycling in. This gives me great hope for our future.

February 18, 2020

Postscript- I was foreshadowing covid, which was gaining traction in the news.

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Great TV Sundays- Homeland, 6-part Patty Hearst doc, Crashing and the return of John Oliver.

February 18, 2018

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Out with the Old Car, In with the New

Going through old stuff, just found my notes from late September when my old car broken down and I got a new one.

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Well, my car finally broke down on Gretel and I, and in grand fashion. The transmission went out near Pittsburgh- 300 miles from home and 300 miles from my destination, Fairmount, IN. 

As it went out in grand fashion, the new car entered in grand fashion. The dealer who diagnosed it had one car (of hundreds) in my price range, ten years old, the mile-range I was looking for, and I was fortunate enough to have the money earmarked for it. 

I’ll miss that car. It made me nostalgic for the times when you had lock and unlock every door manually. No small feat when you have two kids, but my maneuvers would have marveled Bruce Lee. If I was holding groceries too, I could have videotaped myself for a Cirque de Soleil audition. 

Only half of the power windows still worked. At one point three were broken but I splurged and got one fixed. One didn’t go up or down at all, and the other could only be slid up and down. It was nice to have a little extra insurance in case I ever locked my keys in my car. 

The ceiling was all in tatters held up by a hodge-podge of thumbtacks, half of a which had fallen out, a few of which resulted in yipes that caused me to check into whether or not my kids were up to date on their tetanus shots. It reinforced my belief that looks aren’t everything, and was a daily reminder to not be vain. Let the fancy people have their non-tattered ceilings. 

Alright, full disclosure, the ceiling was getting a bit much. The night before the final breakdown Gretel was in the backseat crying… she said that one part looked like an angry dog barking. I looked up and couldn’t believe how on-the-money she was. It looked exactly like the mouth of a rabid dog snapping it’s teeth, minus the foam. I jammed a thumbtack in the middle of it. Problem solved. 

The gas cap leash was broken, the least of the car’s problems… just kept me mindful each time I filled up. Without mindfulness, what are we? Animals. 

The one backdoor could only be opened from the outside, but how often was someone back there anyway? Maybe 5 people over the last ten years? If you think I’m going to pay $100 to fix something like that, you don’t know me too well. I would have more readily handed each of those 5 people a $20 bill and thanked them for their hardship. 

Sure, the air conditioning would go out every once in a while, but air conditioning is a relatively modern phenomenon anyway. Our species has been dealing with no air conditioning few hundreds of thousands of years. It just put me in communion with the past. 

The seat bent my spine, probably just needed to do more situps anyway, or maybe just some. 

There were Pepper puke stains on both seats. Once she was sitting in my lap at the bank drive-through and I ended up with a warm puddle in my lap. Cherished memories. 

You know it’s bad when you don’t even have to clean it when you trade it in. Whoever gets the job of crushing up the car could get busted for desecration of a graveyard. Sure, it’s an ancient banana peel graveyard under the front seat, but as I figure it, a graveyard is a graveyard. 

Back in the spare tire compartment I found several inches of leaves, remembered when Emma used the car for a few months. Those were its dark days. There were various stages of decay all through the car, and fortunately the car cared as much as I did. 

It was such a good car. After the 14 years I had it and the 170,000 miles I put on it, it only let me sit a small handful of times. I had a copy of 100 Years of Solitude in it for all the time, my breakdown book, and had only made it 62 pages in. 

Surreal experience buying a new car spur of the moment like that. I thought there was no possibility, then decided there was, and the next thing I know I’m at the bank with thousands of dollars in my hand. 

Gretel and I are heading west once again- thankful for a lifetime of service from an old car, and a hopeful future for my new one. It will have a lot to live up to.

February 18, 2018

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Posing with someone else's snowman at the park.

February 18, 2018

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I love the absurdity of some people thinking their right to express an opinion means they have a right to express it without being criticized. I'm even kind of thankful there's an absurd element to people's thoughts, so long as they are harmless.

February 18, 2018

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The more McCain opposes Trump, the more mad I get at Sloth for blasting that fart the time he was alone with him in an elevator at the Capital.

February 18, 2017

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Ironically, as more and more Republicans recognize Trump as the unhinged authoritarian he is, the country becomes more and more united.

February 18, 2017

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If you're ever looking for moral clarity, ask yourself WWDTD? Then do the opposite. Exception- when criticizing the failing, overrated, sad, inept, fearful Donald Trump, do exactly as he would do.

February 18, 2017

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John Fugelsang- "Donald Trump is so incredibly not racist that all major racist groups endorsed him purely out of ironic spite."

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I have an obsessive personality... not sure if you've noticed. I've been moderately obsessed with the mass murder from the tower on the Austin, TX campus in 1966 since I first heard about it. (I even visited it with a guy who I later saved from quicksand.) I just watched Tower on PBS's Independent Lens... best film I've seen in ages. They didn't even touch on the aspect I find the most fascinating- Charles Whitman's note saying he couldn't explain why he felt so strangely compelled to do what he did. He donated his body to science so that maybe they could figure it out, and they discovered a tumor in the judgement center of his brain. (So where does responsibility lie, the person or the tumor?) They did focus on the personal stories. Simply unbelievable. One person mentioned the inscription on an entranceway to the main building- "Ye shall known the truth and the truth shall make you free." The film was a catharsis for those involved who had not spoken about it. Maximum stars.

February 18, 2017

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Gretel just spoke her first 4-word sentence. I got home from work and she told me, "Mommy ate my lollipop." Huh.

February 18, 2016

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For Lent I gave up faith!

February 18, 2015

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I woke up and it was 2 degrees but now it's 10, so it's 5 times warmer. Good thing it wasn't zero when I woke up, because if it became 5 times warmer it would still be zero. Check my math. I'll be damned if 2 degrees with no wind and the sun shining doesn't almost feel warm.

February 18, 2015

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Had a dream last night that I had to sleep next to my dog, because she might sleep talk the solution to the Israel/Palestine problem.

February 18, 2013

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The word antidisestablishmentarianism popped up in a book I was reading. Beat that.

February 18, 2012

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Headline: "Rick Santorum questions Obama's Christian Values." Well then I'll question Rick Santorum's Christian values- unlike Abraham, I'll bet Rick Santorum is reasonable enough to seek medical attention if he believed God commanded him to sacrifice one of his children.

February 18, 2012

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Accidentally answered the door in my camouflage long underwear, and then had to stand there signing for a package hoping no neighbors would see.

February 18, 2012

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Four ways to end poverty in the world: 1) forgive debt to third world countries, 2) shift tax structure away from consumption and wages, put more of the burden on land ownership, 3) agrarian reform, give land to the poor who are using it, and 4) restore the idea of "the commons" where the people share in the revenue gained from natural resources. Justice, not charity.

February 18, 2011

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It wasn't me who said, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

February 18, 2011

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Joseph Goebbels delivered his Sportpalast speech on this day in 1943. It was his most famous speech, and the first admission that tide had turned against the Nazis. He accidentally used the word "extermination" instead of "exclusion" when talking about the Holocaust.

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The first Church of Scientology was established in Los Angeles on this day in 1954.

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On this day in 1983, thirteen people died in the Wah Mee massacre in Seattle, the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in U.S. history.

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On this day in 2009, air hockey was played.

https://youtu.be/p8McfDQgI1

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Armed robbers stole a haul of diamonds worth $50 million, on this day in 2013, during a raid at Brussels Airport in Belgium.

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Cybill Shepherd joined us on this day in 1950...

Then Matt Dillon on her 14th birthday in 1964...

And Molly Ringwald on his 4th birthday in 1968...

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Other notable birthdays- Toni Morrison (1931), Milos Forman (1932), Yoko Ono (1933)

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Martin Luther left us on this day in 1546.

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."

Wow.

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Michelangelo left us on this day in 1564.

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

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Robert Oppenheimer left us on this day in 1967.

"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

https://youtu.be/lb13ynu3Iac

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Tony "Leave the Kid Alone" Ganios left us on this day in 2024.

The Wanderers might be a perfect film in my book.

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And I thought I drank too much coffee...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6jluj_le-cafe-oldelaf-english-subtitles_music

February 18, 2009

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https://youtube.com/shorts/vYud9sZ91Mc

They ripped off Ken!!!

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Politico- The never-before-told backstory of Pence's Jan. 6 argument

Wow, that's a pretty thrilling story... the race to get a retired federal judge with the most clout among Republicans to put out a public legal analysis as to why vice president can't overturn elections, i.e. take part in a coup attempt. He had to learn how to use Twitter in the moment and threatened to cut his son out of his will if he didn't explain it to him, haha.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/18/former-judge-beat-trump-january-6-00010056

February 18, 2022

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Vivian Maier

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Steven Pinker, on some of the winning entries of the World's Worst Analogy contest:

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.

The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

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Lincoln, Letters- "The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."

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Christopher Hitchens- "For most of human history, religion and bigotry have been different sides of the same coin, and it still shows."

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One night, at a party at his family estate, Churchill apparently got quite boisterous and irked American socialite Nancy Astor. At her wit's end, Astor stated, "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee." Churchill replied:

"Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."

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From Theft By Finding by David Sedaris: 

"Amy and I went to Hoffritz to find Dad a Father’s Day gift. Our original idea was to buy him a knife, but in the end we spent $72 on a vibrator. It’s a Panasonic with a long stem and a thickish disk on top, designed so you can reach behind yourself and work out the kinks in your back and shoulders. We also figured he’ll use it on his dog. “Our father’s going to love this,” Amy said to the saleswoman as we laid the vibrator on the counter. The woman smiled. “The next time we see him, though, I bet his front teeth are all chipped.” The smile faded.

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Henry Miller, Sexus- "Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there."

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You might want to know that it's National Drink Wine Day. From the physicist Richard Feynman: 

“A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine.' We will probably never know in what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflection in the glass; and our imagination adds atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization; all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts -- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on -- remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure; drink it and forget it all!"

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Galileo- "Wine is sunlight, held together by water."

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Unknown- "My girlfriend’s dog died, so I bought her another, identical one. She just screamed at me and said: “What am I meant to do with two dead dogs?!?”"

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Gilbert Gottfried- “A man goes to the doctor for a check-up, and the doctor exams him and says ‘I've got bad news, you've got cancer and Alzheimers.’ The man goes ‘Thank God I don't have cancer!’”

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Jim Jefferies- "The Bible’s too wordy. The 10 Commandments are a load of shit. You don’t need all these things. The Bible should be one sheet of paper, and on that sheet of paper it should say: ‘Try not to be a cunt.’"

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Kant- "Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment."

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H.L. Mencken, Minority Report- "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts."

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Steinbeck, East of Eden- "The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels."

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Lincoln again- "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion."