Skip to main content

Thanksgiving 2019


“I am grateful for what I am and have.
My thanksgiving is perpetual.”
-Henry David Thoreau

Happy Thanksgiving to all.  This is the day of the year where we often eat too much and watch too much football. It is also a day to give thanks.  So, before the turkey is served, and before the games begin, I count the many blessings in my life. 

First, comes my family.  With me or without, my family is a wonderful group of folks.  All are good people doing good things, working to be better, sacrificing for others, and helping their friends. It is my honor to be among you.   I am always grateful for my parents, both good people who helped me no end in those early years, pointing me in the directions of good works, morality, honesty, and strength of character.

The second is my life, as in I still have one. Because my dad died so young, I thought the same would be my fate.  But now decades later I’m still here, and with a detour or two have my health – which I do appreciate for which I’m most grateful.

 I’m also thankful I have sufficient resources to carry on without too much scrimping (a word taught me by my mom), knowing wealth does not make you happier. I’m still writing, thinking, reading, and generally doing, and I’m grateful I still want to. I even have some old friends wanting to take up new professional projects. Not bad!   Being passive is no way to be.  

And I’m most thankful that I have hope for the future.  Hope for myself (of course); hope for my family (of course); hope for my friends (of course). Have hope! Hope is like a tiny battery deep inside that must not fail. If it fails, you do.

Health and Family and Friends. Got ‘em. And thank you!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please Comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Human Simulation is Possible - by Humans

  Human Simulation: Agent-Based Modeling and the Computational Case for Our Reality   1.       Introduction In the essay, we introduce the notion that humanity could be a deliberate simulation based on an extremely simple single-celled organism, hardly anything more complex than that. This will allow an (apparently) new interpretation of the notion that humanity is simulated, but that there is no master engineer at a massive number of dials and switches, responsible for every twist and turn of our universe and lives. We begin with the notion that the universe exists and operates under its own laws. So, given the Earth [2] , when and where life first began, it was infused with a living agent, self-actualized, reproductive, and with other basic rules for its operations, interactions, and much of what single-celled organisms do today. The idea from this occurred some years back when writing code in ActionScript (formerly Flash), I was able to create...
2 comments
Read more

The Calculus of Ideas and Patterns

  Introduction. When dealing with ideas, patterns, intuition, and brainstorming, we need operations or rules not unlike those of arithmetic. The goal is not proof, a finished device, or a fait accompli , but rather a foundation for further investigation and study. In some cases, these operations may yield a proposition, that is, something capable of being proved. In this sense, they form a practical logic of intuition. The article concludes with a few select examples from a variety of venues. Setting. We are working with a given idea, problem, or project, or simply just thinking. Our aim is to discover pathways, patterns, or conceptual connections that may be useful. The following operations describe ways in which ideas and patterns can be generated, transformed, or refined. These also work toward understanding the imagination. Yet, this framework is distinguished from formal logic and proof. We are tempted to call them as “soft logic” because while nothing is proved, reasons...
Post a Comment
Read more

Freedom of Speech

  Think of freedom of speech as a living organism. Then think of what is required for it to survive. Coming to mind are a population agreeable to its constitution (its environment) and the institutions (its nutrients) that keep it healthy. Currently, many institutions, including some political parties, question unfettered freedom of speech and are working to deny it, claiming it is unhealthy for the body politic. Yes? No?
Post a Comment
Read more