The Most Unnecessary Hypothesis
French mathematician and astronomer, Pierre-Simon Laplace, left us on this day in 1827. He had one of the greatest quotes in the history of science.
Napoleon like to catch people off guard and when he met with Laplace he said, "M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its creator."
Laplace responded, "I had no need of that hypothesis."
Simple perfection! Word has it that Napoleon was amused.
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In my experience, moments of great clarity have come immediately after moments of extreme physical exhaustion.
I left racquetball tonight with a face that looked like a boiled lobster that had only ever eaten boiled lobsters. The Japanese flag could have served as an accurate self portrait. It was so red that if it were any redder only hummingbirds could have seen it. So red that Joseph McCarthy would have hauled it before a Senate panel. You get the point. People were looking; I didn't mind.
I was on another planet. The gym was playing Rihanna's We Found Love- a song that's so perfect, I was trying to figure out how it was made by humans. It reminded me of Kepler's idea that the planets make music as they're moving along their ellipses- The Music of the Spheres. What nonsense! Except in that moment it suddenly seemed undeniably true, poetically. I'm generally not a guy who likes pop songs, but that one is otherworldly.
I’ve been drinking a tea each morning made from five types of mushrooms, wheat grass powder, turmeric, ginger, beet powder and maple syrup. Was this ecstatic realization really the result of physical exhaustion or the tea? I guess one can never truly know how the physiological interacts with the mental.
After tripping on psilocybin mushrooms, Bill Hicks had the realization that we're just on a ride. He made it into a whole bit. I simultaneously love that and hate it. I love it because it's true- we are indeed on a planet, hurtling through space, tending to get caught up in trivialities while our lives pass us by. I hate it because it has the connotation that we can't affect anything- and there are big things that need some affecting.
The seeming contradiction between the two fades away though when one is completely physically exhausted. It’s not either/or. It's both.
The song was a strange point of light in contrast to the TV's, all set to Ukraine coverage. As I had played, I was glancing at the coverage between points, looking for the impending headline announcing Zelensky's death. It hasn't happened yet though. We could be on the precipice of World War III, or maybe this is it- but at this moment in time, we're all here.
We Found Love would be a good soundtrack to the nuclear bombs raining down on us. When the bombs are on their way, we should forget the sirens and just blast that song. Until then, let's just continue along on our ellipse and try to chart the best course.
March 5, 2022
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Emma- I don't know how she does it, but this kid's always been so much cooler than either of her parents! How about those purple eyebrows?!? (Make-up, hair, and styling by Zuzu)
March 5, 2022
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If I were Pete Davidson, I'd be 100% convinced we're living in a simulation. I can't shake the thought of 2012 Pete looking 10 years into future where he's Kim Kardashian's boyfriend and Kanye West's arch-nemesis. He's living in what he would have considered to be an impossible future.
Eighteenth century Scottish philosopher David Hume's argument against miracles is that it's always more likely that you were somehow deceived or mistaken than that the miracle in question actually occurred. It's arguably somehow rational for Pete to distrust his self-evident reality, ridden with circumstances that have to be less likely than a simulation masquerading as reality!
March 5, 2022
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Let's just hope that whether someone supports Biden or they supports Sanders, that they support them SOOOOO much that they follow their lead and endorse whichever one is still standing at the end of this.
March 5, 2020
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One thing I don't care about is the variety of genitalia on the next president. It just doesn't matter to me. You might think that's easy for me to say, but I identify as a bald, Flying Spaghetti Monster worshiping, hermit crab enthusiast. You might agree that we're the least represented of all the groups. We could never even be elected dog catcher, as they say. (Do they still say that???) Also, none of us have ever had as many good plans as Elizabeth Warren. I guess this is my way of saying I think she'd be an excellent pick for vice president for either Sanders (obviously) or Biden (to unite the party, and hold his feet to the fire.) I was perusing actuarial charts today, and you can draw your own conclusions...
March 5, 2020
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A nice luxury for the president- once he's forced out, or resigns, or is impeached, or has his power stripped in another way, he'll be able to forever remain the victim in his mind, by making up some nonsense and believing it.
March 5, 2017
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Thomas Friedman on Meet the Press- "The president has formal authority but has no moral authority." True, and I'd add that the further it erodes, the more dangerous the world becomes. (It's weird, it always seems like he's at the bottom.)
March 5, 2017
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Time for my bi-yearly car cleaning. I hope you don't think that means I only throw out all the trash every six months. Nope I do it every other year.
March 5, 2017
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The president says that his claimed Obama wiretap "is Nixon/Watergate." Not really, the stuff that got Nixon in trouble, this president says out loud... no wiretap even necessary.
March 5, 2017
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The president plans to increase military spending and decrease the state department budget, but here's the thing- he's increasing the military more than the ENTIRE budget for the state department. Who could have guessed from his primary and general election campaign styles that he'd value combat over diplomacy? Everybody!
But does everyone want to risk the lives of their children and grandchildren for his self-indulgent conflict-obsessed megalomania?
March 5, 2017
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Republicans approval of Putin increased from 12% before the election to 32% now. Odd...
March 5, 2017
Postscript- Seems like an important detail! Democrats disapproval remained the same, but I forget though numbers.
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Zuzu's chilling out in a tree. (With Emma holding her from behind.)
March 5, 2017
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John Oliver had the Trump quote of all-time last weekend. "There is a part of me that even likes this guy. It's a part of me I hate, but it is a part of me."
March 5, 2016
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Bangs are like eyelashes for the face.
March 5, 2015
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Screech owl in my backyard in Lancaster city. Neat!
March 5, 2014
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Going to miss Chavez and his anti-colonial-bringing-half-of-Venezuela-out-of-poverty ways. Some of his other ways I won't miss so much. If you have Netflix there are three good docs on him, the best of which is South of the Border directed by Oliver Stone.
March 5, 2013
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World Baseball Classic. I always route for the same team- Cuba. I like to think a communist baseball team (with an emphasis on teamwork and cooperation) will beat capitalist-minded teams (with an emphasis on personal success.) Watch Cuba's biggest sluggers bunt when the situation calls for it.
March 5, 2013
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I don't know what picture you sent your Rwandan penpal, but he commented to me about your "big muscles."
March 5, 2010
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Nicolaus Copernicus's book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, was added to the Index of Forbidden Books on this day in 1616, 73 years after it was first published.
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The Nazi Party received 43.9% at the Reichstag elections on this day in 1933, allowing the Nazis to later pass the Enabling Act, establishing Hitler's dictatorship.
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On this day in 1940, six high-ranking members of the Soviet politburo, including Joseph Stalin, signed an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, in what will become known as the Katyn massacre. Thirteen years to the day later, Joseph Stalin died after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.
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More tragedy on this day in 1963, when American country music stars Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas and their pilot Randy Hughes were killed in a plane crash in Camden, Tennessee. One of my favorites- Pick Me Up On Your Way Down
https://youtu.be/rUu8hDD2ezU
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On this day in 1970, one of the most important advancements of humankind- The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons went into effect after being ratified by 43 nations.
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Pier Paolo Pasolini joined us on this day in 1922.
"When I make a film I'm always in reality among the trees, and among the people like yourselves. There's no symbolic or conventional filter between me and reality as there is in literature. The cinema is an explosion of my love for reality."
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Israeli-American economist, psychologist, and Nobel Prize laureate, Daniel Kahneman, joined us on this day in 1934. Thinking, Fast and Slow is must-read for anybody wondering how our brains work.
"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact."
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Dean Stockwell joined us on this day in 1936, and ended up looking like a different Dean.
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Columnist Scott Ostler in Baseball Digest, December 1978:
"Picture a tall, extremely skinny guy skipping stones across a lake with that full sidearm delivery so necessary for stone skipping. Put a Pittsburgh Pirate uniform on the guy, substitute a baseball for the flat stones, and move him from the lakeshore to the pitcher's mound at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh and you have Kent Tekulve, relief pitcher."
Kent Tekulve was born on this day in 1947.
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Penn Jillette joined us on this day in 1955. From God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales:
"There is no god, and that's the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again."
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Other notable birthdays- Mark E. Smith (1957), John Frusciante (1970), Kyle Schwarber (1994)
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John Belushi left us on this day in 1982.
Tony Hendry- "He was a very American life-force. I felt that what made you laugh about John was peculiarly American. The raw energy of this country was summed up in the way he hit the stage. At the same time I've always felt that there's an enormous void at the center of America, a void that has to do with promise and disappointment, and impossible expectations. Behind all this energy comes what? The American dream is ultimately just a dream. When you finally get where you're going, what then?"
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Richard Kuklinski, The Iceman, died on this day in 2006. He was convicted of six murders and claimed to have killed over a hundred more as a Hitman for the mafia. He claimed to have been involved in the death of Jimmy Hoffa. he got his nickname because he kept his victims frozen to disguise their time of death.
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From 2021:
Oh no, Albert Maysles died! Salesman and Gray Gardens are two of my favorite films of all-time. Can't even imagine what documentaries would be like without him and his brother David.
Friends, if you're considering watching a film on four manipulative late-1960's Bible salesmen, well the choice is obvious- watch Salesman!
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/albert-maysles-award-winning-filmmaker-documentary-pioneer-dies-8
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Other notable deathdays- Crispus Attacks (1770)
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NPR- Virus Locked In Siberian Ice For 30,000 Years Is Revived In Lab
Does this sound like a setup to a horror movie to anybody else? "It isn't dangerous to humans, but it's reanimation raises questions about what else might be lurking under the ice."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/03/04/285752072/virus-locked-in-siberian-ice-for-30-000-years-is-revived-in-lab
March 5, 2014
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New York Times- My Own Life, by Oliver Sacks
"Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html
March 5, 2015
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Variety- Louis C.K. Compares Donald Trump to Hitler: ‘He’s an Insane Bigot’
"Trump is a messed up guy with a hole in his heart that he tries to fill with money and attention. He can never ever have enough of either and he’ll never stop trying. He’s sick. Which makes him really really interesting. And he pulls you towards him which somehow feels good or fascinatingly bad. He’s not a monster. He’s a sad man. But all this makes him horribly dangerous if he becomes president. Give him another TV show. Let him pay to put his name on buildings. But please stop voting for him."
http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/louis-c-k-donald-trump-insane-bigot-dangerous-1201723679/
March 5, 2016
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New York Times- Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claim
To break this down- the president says it's a fact that it happened, the media asks for proof, the spin is "if it happened, it's a huge story," a shift from certainty to hypothetical, the president asks for a congressional investigation, but he has the power to release his proof himself.
What's the old saying, where there's a smokescreen they're trying to hide the fire's smoke? Something like that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/05/us/politics/trump-seeks-inquiry-into-allegations-that-obama-tapped-his-phones.html
March 5, 2017
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The Atlantic- Jane Eyre and the Invention of the Self
Fascinating. Feels like focus on the self is innate to human nature. Doesn't it? At least that's what I think, what do you think? Or do you want to tall more about what I think?
"The broader cultural implications of the story—its insistence on the value of conscience and will—were such that one critic fretted some years after its publication that the “most alarming revolution of modern times has followed the invasion of Jane Eyre.” Before the Reformation and the Enlightenment that followed, before Rene Descartes’s cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”), when the sources of authority were external and objective, the aspects of the self so central to today’s understanding mattered little because they didn’t really affect the course of an individual’s life. The Reformation empowered believers to read and interpret the scriptures for themselves, rather than relying on the help of clergy; by extension, this seemed to give people permission to read and interpret their own interior world."
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/how-jane-eyre-created-the-modern-self/460461/
March 5, 2017
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Vanity Fair- BEN CARSON, RETIRED BRAIN SURGEON, HAS LOBOTOMIZED HUD
Headline of the day. I knew he'd be terrible, when he initially said he'd be terrible. It was a quaint time... back when Trump and Bannon picked all the department heads with the intent of "deconstruction of the administrative state," i.e. destruction of the departments they were chosen to lead.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/how-ben-carson-hobbled-hud
March 5, 2018
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Jobsanger- British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I've Read
I've been waiting for an article like this. I don't say this often... I consider it required reading. In part...
"And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead."
Yeah, why does he do that???
https://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2019/02/british-writer-pens-best-description-of.html?fbclid=IwAR1kaZYJKg0czMsjGorYLjZ06PxHMMrh1G46c1X7uyFnnJnhZM4bSsZQKi0
March 5, 2019
Full post in addendum since these sites occasionally become defunct.
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Something just hit me... something about me being me, or us being us. I've always wondered if one atom was different, or if I was born a second before, or if I had an extra neuron since birth, or if there was a slight alteration to my genetic code, would I be the same person with the same consciousness? The truth is that my consciousness is defined by what I've been, and that's because my consciousness is somehow integrally linked to my actual experience. It's not like my consciousness was next in line after the 100 billion who came before me and my consciousness was just jumping into whoever was next. My consciousness is my memories and current experiences, I don't think there's anything more beyond it. It's not an original thought, but it just hit me very clearly tonight.
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Do you know the guy's name in ZZ Top who doesn't have a beard? Frank Beard!
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Word Fun:
Great palindrome, and average medicinal plant- kinnikinnick.
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Apparently Bruce Lee could throw up a grain of rice and catch it with chopsticks.
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John Updike- "It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you."
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Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything- "It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours—arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don't. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment's additional existence. Life, in short, just wants to be."
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Chris Rock- "Republicans lie, and Democrats leave out key pieces of the truth."
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Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity- "The future is a concept—it doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be because time is always now. That’s one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now."
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn- "Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength."
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Errol Morris:
I took my son on this trip to the Canadian Rockies to meet this paleontologist, Jack Horner. We were down in the basement looking at fossils and I was sticking my finger in the brain cavity of a triceratops. I said, "You think somebody might be doing this to me someday?" And he said, "You should be so lucky."
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Ricky Gervais, making my knees weak:
Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China…
You say you’re woke, but the companies you work for [run sweatshops] in China - unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service, you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?
So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public, about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So, if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your god, and fuck off.
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Mitch Hedberg- "You know when you go to concerts, and the kids get on stage and they jump into the crowd, stage diving? People think that's dangerous, but not me. Because humans are made out of 95% water. So the audience is 5% away from a pool."
Addendum:
Jobsanger- British Writer Pens The Best Description Of Trump I've Read
Someone on Quora asked “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
A few things spring to mind.
Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.
I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.
Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.
He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.
That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.
He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:
‘My God… what… have… I… created?
If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
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