Skip to main content

Today is President's Day

  • For general happiness, research shows that regular, or even occasional, exercise is more important than money*.  Works for me.
  • The Yin and Yang of our lives is the conflict between chaos and order**. Which dominates your life?
  • Today is National Hug Day. Hug somebody!
  • For politicians, now mostly semi-literate, talking points is the preferred literary form. Just listen to political campaigns - all of them.
  • Do you have a favorite President?  And why?***

* https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/well/move/even-a-little-exercise-might-make-us-happier.html
** Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos  (A great book) The (symbolic) rules are
1.    Stand up straight with your shoulders back
2.    Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping
3.    Make friends with people who want the best for you
4.    Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
5.    Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them
6.    Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world
7.    Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
8.    Tell the truth – or, at least, don't lie
9.    Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don't
10. Be precise in your speech
11. Do not bother children when they are skateboarding
12. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street
*** Maybe it’s Lincoln. But did ja know he was accused of ignorance, corruption, rigidity, and bad judgment, i.e. the usual they all get. But did ja know he was a consummate and expert writer and lifelong he enjoyed Shakespeare’s plays? From Shakespeare one learns much about words, tone, power, and color.
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

No Sympathy From Me

Suicide Coming Home Many years ago, a friend hung himself in his basement.  I was a pall-bearer at his funeral. I was shocked I was so asked.  I did this.  I did not understand why a good-looking fellow, intelligent, kindly, and true could do such a thing. He did. I do not.  His family suffered greatly.  Yet he left no issue.   Thankfully. To my mind Country singer Mindy McCready, 37, showed us the very height of personal selfishness by committing suicide.  By giving birth to two offspring, she accepted the responsibility to raise her newborn and six-year old son.  She abrogated it spectacularly.  (As did the father a month ago.)  Though she may have suffered depression for any number of reasons, she has little sympathy from me for leaving behind a legacy that is now lost, is now parent-less, and may drift into problems of their own in the future.    There is shame and heartbreak in all this, but blame should be...
1 comment
Read more

UNCERTAINTY IS CERTAIN

  Uncertainty is Certain G. Donald Allen 12/12/2024 1.       Introduction . This short essay is about uncertainty in people from both secular and nonsecular viewpoints. One point that will emerge is that randomly based uncertainty can be a driver for religious structure. Many groups facing uncertainty about their future are deeply religious or rely on faith as a source of comfort, resilience, and guidance. The intersection of uncertainty and religiosity often stems from the human need to find meaning, hope, and stability in the face of unpredictable or challenging circumstances. We first take up the connections of uncertainty to religion for the first real profession, farming, noting that hunting has many similar uncertainties. Below are groups that commonly lean on religious beliefs amidst uncertainty.   This short essay is a follow-up to a previous piece on certainty (https://used-ideas.blogspot.com/2024/12/certainty-is-also-emotion.html). U...
Post a Comment
Read more