further musings

the oldest is first but for blog writing time is reversed....ie the the first is the last or latest, the most recent.

When the miracle flows, it flows both ways. With each gift the threads of benevolence are knotted, snaring both giver and recipient. I've only slowly come to realize that good givers are those who learn to receive with grace as well. They radiate a sense of being indebted and a state of being thankful. As a matter of fact, we are all at the receiving end of a huge gift simply by being alive. (Kevin Kelly)


Pasteur once said, chance favors only a mind prepared.

sesquipedalian (characterized by the use of long words)
(said of the prose of WF Buckley)

Narrative is the quality of story telling. Story is a fundamental prism through which we as human beings can look at ourselves and derive meaning, purpose and direction in our living. Our lives are stories, and stories resonate with our primal approach to integration with our environment. Bringing a sense of story-telling, or narrative, to our conscious self-dialogue or our social interaction is a basic tool for framing meaning within a context of particulars that apply to ourselves in time and space, i.e. reality. And Meaning is the meat our brains need to grow.

"The harvest of old age is the recollection and abundance of blessings previously secured" (Cicero)

What's it for or about anyway, when you, alone, is all that's at risk
Temporal for sure, foreclosure assured, consider it done.
If you hear things that still the storm for you, or find the stillness within the storm,
There's nothing that can rob what's bequeathed to you
It's out of reach for all the cosmos except you
And if you let it go
It won't slip away.

"We find ourselves facing a version of the paradox of the Cretan liar: (if) all beliefs, including this one, are the products of evolution, and all beliefs that are products of evolution cannot be known to be true....But how can reality have any moral quality without having an immanent or transcendent purpose? ... The last of the atheist's Ten Commandments ends with the following:"Question everything." Everything? Including the need to question everything, and so on ad infinitum?
(Theodore Dalrymple)

Aristotle noted, "That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it."

cultural, political dribbles and threads

James Taranto writes the blog Online Journal: Best of the web" for the WSJ. He's a master of irony and turning the tables on the uncunning of the culturally bourgeois pc status quo:

"The New York Times, meanwhile, reports on some good news: Americans' life expectancy has increased. But wait! Actually, this is bad news! The headline reads, "Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation."

So the rich are getting older while the poor are getting younger? Not quite. Everyone is living longer, but "affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap":

In 1980-82, Dr. [Gopal] Singh [of the Department of Health and Human Services] said, people in the most affluent group could expect to live 2.8 years longer than people in the most deprived group (75.8 versus 73 years). By 1998-2000, the difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus 74.7 years), and it continues to grow, he said.
The Times notes that "the Democratic candidates for president, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, have championed legislation to reduce such disparities." This sounds a bit too "Logan's Run" for our liking.

But maybe the folks in Massachusetts have the solution to this vexing problem. After all, there are lots of euphemisms for death. Instead of saying that richer people live longer, why not say that poorer people "go to a better place" faster? That sounds nicer."