capri0mni | Entries tagged with philosophy

One: Today is a sad day, when the United Kingdom will leave the European Union, and the United States Senate will grant the current President (and all presidents in the foreseeable future) the de facto power of a monarch.

2) The recent nostalgia I've been feeling for Broadway (NYC), and the theater performed there is tied up with a longing for the days of my youth (If I recall correctly, the last time I saw a play on Broadway was when I was a senior in high school, back in 1983).

To Be -- Back then, being able to go to the theater on Broadway was still an immense privilege, but not yet on the level of having to take out a loan to afford a ticket (checking Broadway.com, just now, the cheapest seats are more expensive today than the most expensive tickets were back then).

III. That said: I love Theater People. This week, I learned that the Legacy Robe is a thing that exists, and it kind of makes me teary-eyed (in a happy way) to contemplate it. From the Wikipedia article:

The Legacy Robe goes only to Broadway musicals with a chorus.
The Robe goes to a chorus member only, whoever has the largest number of Broadway Chorus credits.
The Ceremony traditionally occurs half an hour before opening night.
The new recipient must put on Robe and circle the stage counterclockwise three times, while cast members reach out and touch Robe for good luck. The new recipient then visits each dressing room while wearing the Robe.
The new recipient supervises addition of appliques from their show to the Robe. Important rules for adding mementos: for wearability, durability and longevity, add-ons must be lightweight, sturdy and reasonably sized so each Robe can represent a full season.
The opening night date and recipient's name is written on or near the memento, and cast members only sign that section of Robe.
The recipient will attend the next Broadway musical opening and will present the Robe to that show's recipient.

This is, up and up, a magic ritual of blessing. And I love that its a chorus member -- someone in the cast with the least clout in the eyes of the lay public -- who is granted the power to bestow this blessing.

D] Cole Porter's "Kiss me, Kate!" is really genius, as an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew," because people often forget that the latter is actually framed as being a play put on by a traveling acting troupe. So Cole Porter decided to write a play about an acting Troupe putting on an adaptation of "Taming of the Shrew." Very meta.

5: I appreciate how the Actors' union is called the Actors' Equity Association, because I like Equity better than Equality.

Moreover, there is an infinite number of worlds, some like this world, others unlike it. For the atoms being infinite in number, as has just been proved, are borne ever further in their course.

(The Whole Letter)

The more I contemplate both quantum physics and Epicurean philosophy (usually when I wake up, for a while, as my brain switches between dream cycles in the middle of the night), the closer I come to the the conclusion that these two ways of looking at the world (or worlds) support each other – To wit:

Epicurus taught that a good life is a pleasurable life – we are driven to, above all else, avoid pain. And that’s kinda like atoms and subatomic particles always settling into the lowest energy state possible – being at rest. (See that post I made the other day)

( Further thoughts, from me )

I know the arguments (I’ve heard them ever since Elementary School, when History Class was called “Social Studies”): that armed forces and war are unfortunate but necessary evils for a stable and functioning State, and therefore, Society.

But lately, as I wake up to news of yet another airstrike against a hospital, or a terrorist bombing of a school, or kidnappings or torture, or the burning down of villages, I only come away more baffled and more sad.

I mean, even if it were true that War is an ugly but necessary Means to a better End, I’m left asking:

A Means to What End?

Some killing, I understand.

Killing another living thing for food, or shelter -- I get that (And there’s a growing realization that plants have some form of sentience, so vegans aren’t off the hook on that point, either).
I understand using antibiotics to kill off microbes that make us sick.
And I understand the rationale behind herbicides and insecticides -- even though I think they’re used too much and that the rationale is often misguided -- I can still see the logic behind them.
Or killing lab animals so we can better understand disease and help find treatments for things like cancer; I understand that, too.
I understand when a person decides to have an abortion.

So I understand that killing is often a necessary means to better ends. I get that bit.

But War? The systematic creation and maintaining of entire sections of society dedicated to the purpose of being cannon fodder?

Killing citizens (whether soldier or civilian) because you don’t like the policies of their leaders? Or killing people because you don’t like how they pray? Or, for whatever reason, you’re squicked whenever you think about the place where their ancestors came from? Or they speak the “wrong” language? Or they have the “wrong” skin color?

I just don’t get it...

Because whatever ends the means of war is meant to achieve, I’ve never seen any of the wars in my lifetime (since the invention of the telephone, radio, and television) actually work (If wars did work for solving problems, we wouldn’t have to keep trying them over and over, and over, and over, and over...).

This is my main image. I just thought I'd share:

( description: )

Last year, RH completed their Master's degree in Information Studies, with a focus on human-centric design, identity, and privacy (And thus, I think it might be of special interest to

dialecticdreamer). This last week, they adapted it to the style of their on their online comic, broken down into five "chapters."

I was applauding inside, by the end, which was posted yesterday.

Robot Hugs is genderqueer, and so that's the primary lens through which they view the phenomenon of "Otherness." But what they say also applies to all marginalized people, probably.

Anyway, links:

Other -- One: Surveillance
Other -- Two: Categorizing
Other -- Three: Uses of "Other"
Other -- Four: Consequences of Self-Identifying
Other -- Five: Methods of Resistance

Enjoy!

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/777846.html

Last Sunday morning, I heard a radio interview with Stephen Greenblatt about his 2012 book: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (about the rediscovery, and influence, of Lucretius' six-book poem De rerum natura {on the nature of things}[written 1st C. B.C.E, rediscovered and copied 15th C. C.E.])

Lucretius' purpose was to introduce and popularize Epicurean philosophy, of which I know a smattering, and like, and want to know more fluently, so I can do like Lucretius, and wax artistic about it in a way that makes sense.

At first, I thought I'd buy Greenblatt's book. But then I realized that I'd probably get more satisfaction if I aimed a little closer to the source material before taking on a meta-discussion about it. My Latin was always marginal, my peak fluency is 35 years behind me, and Lucretius' verse is famous for being both beautiful and difficult. So I've downloaded a PDF of an 1880 English translation in prose, for free (Public Domain FTW!).

Wikipedia article on "De Rerum Natura"

So... You know: this is a warning that, when not talking about my own poetry, I'll probably talking a lot about this, here.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/775280.html

In my previous post, I wrote:

The more I see of Moffat's writing, the more I'm convinced he's an Epicurean philosopher -- and not in the "Iron Chef" sort of way. I approve.

And I realized that, although I was familiar with some of the basic ideas of Epicurean thought, it's been a long time since I've read any words actually ascribed to him or his followers. So I went a-hunting. And here are the passages that made me go: "A-Hah! Yes!" [/voice=Eleventh Doctor] in my head:

(From Letter to Menoeceus. [this is the bit that I'm reminded of most by Moffat's writings])

The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest.

( Bits that made me o_O, considering he was a contemporary of Alaxander the Great, rather than Isaac Newton )

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/752745.html

( Behind a cut, for those who don't care about *Who* )

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/752490.html

I wanted to double-check the wording of Immanuel Kant's 'second formulation of the categorical imperative,' this morning, and was struck by how much he looked, in this portrait, like William Hartnell, playing a certain iconic television role. Yes/Yes?

That wording, BTW, goes like this:

Act with reference to every rational being (whether yourself or another) so that it is an end in itself in your maxim.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/739679.html

Imagine the following lines to be swirly and curvy, rather than straight across:

I've recently realized I haven't read any fiction that was written in the last twenty years.

O_o

I think this is, in part, because I haven't done much reading on the toilet since I moved to this house 16 years ago -- I rush to the toilet having to go, without turning on the light, then I'm stuck on the toilet with no windows, and all the light switches on the farthest walls away from me... It's a drag (In the house where I grew up, in every bathroom, there was a big window over the toilet, so you could read, or do the crossword, by natural light).

Throughout my high school and college career, there were several dystopian/horror novels I was required to read as part of the curriculum:

Fahrenheit 451
The Lord of the Flies
1984
The Red and the Black (okay, technically, this is not a dystopian novel, but the whole message is society is F***ed up because people suck, and there's nothing you can do about it -- Oh, how desperately I wanted to NOT read it)

...I can't think of one Utopian novel ever discussed or assigned for class...

Why are dystopias considered more serious/realistic/worthy of study than utopias?

Why I believe dystopias are just as skewed and unrealistic as utopias:

Even in the darkest periods of human history, when life was short, and full of sickness, pain and death, people still put pretty designs on their dishes, and hair combs. If, even in the midst of the Bubonic Plague, people find value in creating art, then surely, no society could be entirely miserable.

So... yeah... Why? Why is warning against horror seen as more important and worthy of consideration than imagining what perfection might look like, if we could get there? We will never reach that spot (probably), but shouldn't we at least look in that direction, so we know where to start heading, so we can get a bit closer?

I'd also like to point out two things:

Roses come in all sorts of colors (except blue). And the slight pink tinge to these lenses I'm wearing is prescription (cuts down on eye strain from the computer monitor).

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/680498.html

One thing I learned in high school math (besides the fact that I prefer learning math outside of school), was that it takes plotting three points before you can be certain of your line. It wasn't until I finished up the third poem that I recognized the connections I'd already made between them, in the form of recurring motifs. This one starts off at the point almost at the end of the last one, right before the closing couplet ("So our identities, are fragile, caught/Between what's in our dreams and what's been filed."); I wanted to be clear that I meant the complex, shadowy dreams of our subconscious, and not the saccharine substitute for "fondest wish," So that's where I began.

THE MONSTER'S CHALLENGE OF IDENTITY

Just as a rowboat scrapes the pebbled beach
I drift back from my sleep to feel the bed.
Receding like the tide, just out of reach,
A dream slips, half-remembered, from my head.
The nightly riddle posed, always the same:
It asks me who I am, beyond my name.

The question's asked again out in the crowd
Reflected in a stranger's troubled glance,
As though I were an insult spat out loud:
A portent for the fickle whims of Chance.
Philosophers in centuries long past
Wrote cunningly and well of God's good plan:
Which creatures were the first, and which the last,
The proper rank and order meant for Man.
And creatures (like myself) who can't belong?
{We were the curly brackets of their set}
To demonstrate, by living, Right from Wrong,
So all remember God, and not forget:
A belief that's set in stone, or so it seems...
Although it cracks, a little, in my dreams.

[Edit: I bet the middle quatrain of the main part seems like a non sequitor to anyone outside my brain, huh? Let me try a fix -- How about:

Philosophers of centuries long past
Wrote cunning answers all about God's plan:
Which creatures were the First, and which the Last,
The proper rank and order meant for Man.

Better?]

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/656350.html

So, all right. Maybe not. I mean, I'm no physicist, Jim! I'm just an English Major!

But this idea popped into my head, the other day. And I think it's a pretty idea. And it makes me smile, the way it sits there, all cute-like in the corner of my brain. So I'll keep it. Even if it is utter nonsense.

Okay. So as I understand it, subatomic ... bits, such as electrons, and quarks, and nutrinos, and the like, prefer to exist as waves of probability, rather than definite particles, until the moment they're observed.

Right?

And until the moment they're observed, they can do all sorts of strange, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey ...stuff, like exist in two places at once, and communicate instantaneously with a partner thousands of light years away, and have effects happen before their causes, and stuff...

Right?

So the question is (if I understand correctly): "If subatomic particles can do all this, and everything we can see is made of subatomic particles, then how come nothing we can see is that weird?"

Right?

Well, it seems to me that the question is: What counts as "Observation"?

Does observation have to come in the form of some smarty-pants human physicist with a science lab and a notebook?

Or can one definition of "observe" allow atoms to join in this little game, too?

Say, for example, you've got a couple of hydrogen atoms, whizzing around "alone" the vast empty vacuum of space, and their electrons are being all fuzzy, and wavy, and probable (like bachelors afraid of commitment).

And then, they bump into an oxygen atom.

If the oxygen atom is allowed (in our little mind game of "definitions") to "observe" the hydrogen electrons (perhaps by the energy from a flash of lightning), then those electrons will stop being fuzzy and wavy and probable, and become solid and fixed in place in a [ta-da!] water molecule.

So the reason that everything big behaves like solid, predictable, things, is: By their very nature, they are observing themselves (if we broaden the definition of "observe" so that you don't have to be a human smarty-pants to do it).

Like I said, I may not be right. But this idea pleases me in its cute, little, simplicity.

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/627416.html

I'm a jenny¹-come-lately on this, thanks to my out-of-sync sleep cycle, and the day is almost over in my time zone, and definitely over in many other zones around the world. But I wanted to advertise my support of this, in preparation for next year.

*Nods purposefully*

I learned about this through

xjenavivix who is passing on the word from

djinni, who explains the day, its purpose and preparation here, as a sort of antidote to the shmaltz of Valentine's Day (aiui).

Since "monster" has a particular meaning to me, I am rolling the idea of "monster day" over in my mind, as I would roll a strange fruit around in my mouth, testing out the taste of it, and trying to figure out where and how it would fit into my own seasonal dance of celebrations. This will take some time. So I am declaring this to be "Monster Week" in this space right now.

In the meantime, have some "monster art" that I've created over a relatively recent, but unspecified, span of time:

( Three more behind this cut, including a frog-bat one and a snail-gryphon one, in case any of those are ick-triggering for folks )

Those last three, I drew while my notions about monsters were still in their subconscious form; I'm currently working on a new one, which I might post tomorrow, along with (maybe) some follow-up thoughts on my recent post about monsters and disability (no promises, especially on that last, though)

¹A female jack-ass; a "mare" donkey -- also called a "jennet."

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/571389.html

This started in a comment thread on my LJ, which is friends-locked to reduce my exposure to Russian Phishing 'bots and random facebook linkage (facebook's nonchalant attitude toward privacy scares me).

This has been several days brewing (ever since Craig Ferguson mentioned it in his Monologue whenever-it-was) and include a hike down a trail of Wikipedia links. I wandered through:

Ophiuchus (constellation)

Ophiuchus (Astrology)

As I understand it (and I don't really understand it), the theory of how astrology effects personality is based on a geo-centric view of the universe, where the soul of each infant comes from God (who is outside the Universe) as a blank slate, and then drops down through the various celestial spheres, picking up influences of stars and planets as they pass, depending on which constellations intercept them in the journey. So that the attributes of each sphere "Stick to" the soul, and what started out as a blank slate ends up as a complex, multi-faceted person at the moment they emerge from the womb and take their first breath.

In more recent (aka 20th Century New Agey) interpretations, this has been translated to "The gravitational and magnetic influences on our sun from distant stars, and the changes in the sun effect the physical and emotional lives of everything on Earth, because it's all connected."

It's kind of messy, but the image in my head is of a person dropping down through a cosmic ice cream parfait, and getting bits of fudge sauce, marshmallow, jam, nuts and various flavors of ice cream stuck to her as she goes... Or maybe I'm just craving a sundae.

If you follow this school of thought, then, well: the actual stars that were dripping influences onto your soul had already changed between the first conception of the zodiac by the ancient Babylonians and the time you were born. It's just the labels and the names never kept up. So nothing has really changed.

But:

It could be that the power of the zodiac to influence our lives comes from the Mytho-Religious-Poetic stories we tell about them (Capricorn is the memorial Amalthea, the goat that fed the infant Zues while he was being kept hidden from Chronos, Taurus represents Zeus when he seduced Europa, etc.), and the magical energy attracted by those stories "sticks" to the child by association.

If you follow that school of thought, then, well: the stories told for you and about you in the past as you were growing up are the ones that mattered. At the time of your birth, you were born under sign ____; that's still your sign. So nothing has really changed.

Unless you want it to. If you want to reexamine the stories behind the zodiac, and decide whether or not to look at the course of your life though a slightly different lens, then this moment of heightened cultural awareness might be a good time to try that. But it's up to you.

BTW, Ophiuchus, mythologically and narratively-speaking (if you want to go that way), is linked to Asclepius -- the Greek god of medicine. According to one myth about him, he was struck down by Zeus because he accepted gold for bringing someone back to life, but put into heaven to honor the good he'd done to benefit humanity, in spite of his sins. Apparently, our complex relationship with Medicine, and the whole tangle of ethics and money that goes along with that, is nothing new.

*Eyes Andrew Wakefield on one side of the Atlantic, and Congress and the Health-care bill on the other side.*

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/566427.html

From the Vatican Sayings:

Saying number 19: "He has become an old man on the day on which he forgot his past blessings."

Saying number 35: "Don't spoil what you have by desiring what you don't have; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for."

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/554526.html

The short version:

Re: That quote I posted from William Penn, the other day:

(quote)
Children had rather be making of Tools and Instruments of Play; Shaping, Drawing, Framing, and Building, &c. than getting some Rules of Propriety of Speech by Heart: And those also would follow with more Judgment, and less Trouble and Time.
(unquote)

You know, when I moved here, 13 years ago, the neighborhood was full of little kids (now, all grown up, heh). And my Quaker-raised self got kind of creeped out by how strictly they were taught the "Propriety of Speech by Heart" -- all those "Yes Sirs" and "No Ma'ams" (trans: "Sire," and "Madam") -- the hierarchy of speach that let everyone know their Proper Place in the Proper Social Order. I was especially discomfited when they called me "Miss Ann;" I warrented the deferential "Mistress," in their eyes (and their parents' eyes) because I was older than they were. And yet, my single marital status meant that I wasn't quite an adult, and could still be addressed by my "Christian" name.

It still raises my hackles when filling out online forms (to join mailing lists, and the like) when my application is rejected because I failed to choose a "Title" for myself (Mister, Ms., Mrs., Dr., etc). Why to I have to pigeonhole myself by rank and gender in order to join a volunteer organization, or get a damned seed catalog? Why can't I opt out of giving myself a title?

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/551194.html

Why today, of all days in the year? It's William Penn's birthday. And it's United Nations Day.

Since (most) Quakers today speak like (most) other people today, and since I'm not in any position to engage in Three-Dee Space Dialog, I'd thought I'd share some actual quotes from William Penn, so you could get a taste of how real Quakers really did talk (or at least, write).

Because my brain is currently steeped in a story centering on a child, this quote speaks particularly clearly to me, today:

(quote)
Children had rather be making of Tools and Instruments of Play; Shaping, Drawing, Framing, and Building, &c. than getting some Rules of Propriety of Speech by Heart: And those also would follow with more Judgment, and less Trouble and Time.
(unquote)

And this passage, too, speaks to me, having recently been engaged (actively as well as lurkingly) in various discussions on the strengths of online friendships, and friendships across "unconventional spaces":

(quote)
Friendship is the next Pleasure we may hope for: And where we find it not at home, or have no home to find it in, we may seek it abroad. It is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.
(unquote)

Both of these passages are from The Fruits of Solitude (1693)

(BTW, the image in my icon was painted by a Quaker -- Edward Hicks -- back in his day, Quakers generally frowned on decorative arts, because those arts are often used as a means to flaunt privilege and inequality. But the people in his community realized that painting was the way he spoke his truth most clearly, so he was not censured for it the way some others might have been [except by those who disagreed with his truth])

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/550882.html

I've been going to bed in the wee hours, lately, and waking near noon (cue M. Goose rhyme "A dillar, a dollar"), and today, as I emerged from my bedroom, I saw my house flooded with late September sun. And I, at once, thought of Mr. Feynman's ruminations on the subject of light:

"The inconceivable nature of Nature!"

Crossposts: http://capriuni.livejournal.com/545357.html

Numbers are an illusion; ordered lists are an even greater illusion. But they're still fun.

Today's Thursday, isn't it? For some bizzare reason, for the last six hours, or so, I've been thinking it was Saturday, in half of my brain. The other half knew it wasn't, because otherwise, I'd've posted my first prompt to what_if. So... Isn't it weird that you can hold two completely contradictory bits of "knowledge" at the same time, without totally tripping over your own feet?

That's one reason why I've come to believe that so-called "multiple personality" is actually the default condition, and the singular, unified "I" is a cognitive illusion (akin to an optical illusion, but about how we think the world around us, rather than see it... if that makes any sense). Otherwise, none of us would be able to talk to ourselves.
Speaking of writing prompt comms on DW, the latest DW news update included a Comm Rec-O-Matic, and I found several writers' comms that looked interesting. I joined a couple (dailyprompt and writerstorm), and there are a couple others in my maybe-I'll-join-later pile (fiction_transitions -- for help transforming fanfic into original fics, and parthenon -- a writers' challenge comm built around the idea of dedicating ten individual works [Fiction, art, what-have-you] to one of the nine muses of Classical Greece).
I've been thinking about why it's still considered socially acceptible* in polite society to use ableist language as a slur, or for stand-up comics to make jokes about the disabled on terrestrial television without so much as a batted eyelid from the program's sponsers, or protest groups...

Remember old-time cartoons from Warner Bros. et alia, where a bully character would pick on, or try to beat up, a puny character until the puny character's giant and powerful parant would show up, and threaten the bully, so the bully would back off?

Well, on the whole, disabled people are minorities even within our own families, so we're not viewed as a "demographic" worth taking note of. We don't have a giant and powerful parent/identity to back us up when we're under attack.

I don't know what we're supposed to do about that... that's just what it feels like.
My cat, Trixie, is standing on the back of my chair right now, purring in my ear. ^_^
Random philosophical thought: In general, it's assumed that non-belief in God(s) is tied to non-belief in ghosts, souls and the afterlife. But I don't see why it has to be. I see no absolute, logical, reason why disbelief in one must be connected to disbelief in the other. And maybe someday I'll write a story in a god-less world that is nonetheless full of ghosts.

*"Politically correct" is a politically loaded (and inaccurate) term.

And I'll try to keep this brief.

(Icon description: An abstract falling leaf pattern in dark green; the overlyaing caption reads: "A tree will fall in the forest and the forest will hear.")

So: Late in May, I made a mid-year resolution to return to a daily writing practice.

After six weeks and a bit of this, I've discovered something:

I can not write a scene (no matter how small) with "no one" in it.

Even in a scene as brief as:

"The sun shone brightly on the ocean waves."

There's someone there to see that. That someone is unnamed, and undescribed. But someone is there. The moment I go into any further detail is the moment that someone's character begins to be revealed. If I describe the color of the water as: "the color of tarnished copper" (for example), then the scene is being witnessed by someone who knows the color of tarnished copper. Or, as the scene unfolds from my imagination, I might start to realize that I'm writing it from the p.o.v. of a personified rock on the shore, or maybe a fish being dropped on the deck of the fishing boat, or maybe the boat itself.

But every scene has a witness.

That is what has always bothered me about that old philolosophical riddle: "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it -- Does it make a sound?"

If the tree is in a forest,
Then
Someone is there to hear it.

Even if the other forest's other vegetation can't hear (as we understand hearing), I can't imagine a forest without birds, and bugs, and mammals, and reptiles, and -- on and on. Forests are crowded places, by definition, and they're crowded with many creatures with ears.

But the whole question presupposes that humans are the only "Someones" -- the only real inhabitants in the world -- that, Matrix-like, the rest of existance is generated only by our own minds. It's a perspective that leads to a callous disregard for other living things, and also a willingness to trash our objects, and things we've created.

That presupposition might come from the premise that in order to be a "someone," who can perceive, and feel, and understand, you have to have a soul. And only humans have souls, because we are made in God's image, and God gave us souls....

Maybe that's why so many* Fundamentalist Christians can't understand how an atheist can have any morals at all, and think we must all be self-centered and callous.

...I don't know... just a thought that rises in my head, now and then.

Then again, I've held some sort of Animist beliefs since as long as I can remember having a sense of "me-ness". So add salt to taste...

*Or at least, it seems like "many," based on the comments I've encountered from self-Proclaimed Fundamentalist Christians.

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Ann

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Page Summary

Thoughts I've had this week (mostly about theater, again)
A quote from "Letter to Herodotus" by Epicurus
I just don’t get it (War -- Huh! What is it good for?!)
So, I updated my desktop wallpaper
Comic recommendation: "Robot Hugs" comics five-part series: "Other"
Latest (ongoing, running-in-the-background) project: digest "De Rerum Natura"
Tidbits from Epicurus's own 'readers' digest version of his philosophy of science:
Five "Doctor Who" things make a post: (Contains spoilers for "Deep Breath" and another Moffat story)
Vaguely (in the extreme) Doctor Who themed post:
Thoughts what been swirling in my head like motes of dust:
The Monster Poem Cycle: #4: "Identity"
This conflict between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. I think I've figured it out.
It's MONSTER DAY!!
So -- the "New Zodiac" question. (kind of long and musey)
On this Day of American Epicurian Delights, quotes from Epicurus (or philosphers in his school):
This entry almost failed to make it here, for tl;d(w)r syndrome
As a balance to "Talk like a Pirate Day," Today is "Talk like a Quaker Day"
This is for my friend, Gordon:
Random post is random.
"When a tree falls in the forest..." (The entry for which this icon was made)

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Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

The songs that are stuck in my head

Entries tagged with philosophy

Thoughts I've had this week (mostly about theater, again)

A quote from "Letter to Herodotus" by Epicurus

I just don’t get it (War -- Huh! What is it good for?!)

So, I updated my desktop wallpaper

Comic recommendation: "Robot Hugs" comics five-part series: "Other"

Latest (ongoing, running-in-the-background) project: digest "De Rerum Natura"

Tidbits from Epicurus's own 'readers' digest version of his philosophy of science:

Five "Doctor Who" things make a post: (Contains spoilers for "Deep Breath" and another Moffat story)

Vaguely (in the extreme) Doctor Who themed post:

Thoughts what been swirling in my head like motes of dust:

The Monster Poem Cycle: #4: "Identity"

This conflict between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. I think I've figured it out.

It's MONSTER DAY!!

So -- the "New Zodiac" question. (kind of long and musey)

On this Day of American Epicurian Delights, quotes from Epicurus (or philosphers in his school):

This entry almost failed to make it here, for tl;d(w)r syndrome

As a balance to "Talk like a Pirate Day," Today is "Talk like a Quaker Day"

This is for my friend, Gordon:

Random post is random.

"When a tree falls in the forest..." (The entry for which this icon was made)