Some little boys grew up idolizing Capt. Kirk and Spock. All well and good. But some of them have since aged into their 50s and love science and technology and hold positions of serious influence and have retained about the same degree of social sophistication, compassion and insight as they had in 6th grade. That’s a problem.
Apologies in advance, but against my better judgement sometimes, I feel impelled to indicate how repulsive certain holier-than-thou religious blog posts make me feel. How many blows on their noggins does it require to wake up to the message that we should be, above all, entered into an era of social and spiritual tolerance by now? Above all we should be respectful of individualized spiritual pathways…
University life, in America, actually used to be about rampant curiosity once. And the opposite sex. Not too much at all really, about jobs or money. Parents didn’t know this. Bless their forever selfless hearts…
Close your eyes, figuratively. If I ask you to picture the word green, do you imagine this or perhaps this, or something closer to this? How does your typical green image differ from mine or that of your daughter or a business colleague who lives in Costa Rica? Assuming we could develop a statistical norm for what speakers of American English generally mean by the word (and some studies have tackled this question), it only opens the door to further more interesting psycholinguistic puzzles. For example: has the concept ‘green’ changed subtly since the days of Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare, or William the Conqueror? Do children conceive ‘green’ differently than senior citizens (perhaps even the same individual at different ages)? How does this compare with a Brazilian person who is thinking of verde? Or a Mongolian pondering ногоон?
First day of 10th grade Geometry class, true story, teacher walked up and down the aisles handing out the textbooks to everyone. Eccentric guy, liked him right away. As chance unfolded my copy was partially ripped in the binding. He noted this a moment and looked at me, and I read his thought somewhat: “Oh well, thus crumbleth thy cookie.” And then he moved on. But directly he’d gotten two desks away he turned and rethought things. Made eye contact and said “Actually, Why suffer?” Then he trundled off to the back closet and got a brand new book to replace it. Little did I know this question would morph into a lifelong philosophical riddle touching all areas of my life. And everyone else’s.
||skirmishes|| ||with|| ||reality|| 