The purpose of war has to be peace. Augustine, in Chapter 12 of Book 19 of City of God put it well: “For even they who intentionally interrupt the peace in which they are living have no hatred of peace, but only wish it changed into a peace that suits them better.” Continue reading “Choosing War Because We Love Peace?”
In my efforts to further develop their economy, I proposed to the elders a system by which rack space in the village’s grape drying house could be bought and sold among the residents. By doing it this way, various permutations would stabilize the economy. For example, if someone suffered a crop loss, then at least he could rent out his unneeded rack space to his more fortunate neighbors and get a little income. The elders saw merit in this idea, but there was one insurmountable problem to it, and that problem stopped us dead. Continue reading “If You Can Read This, Then Perhaps We Can Work Together”
Descartes described man as a combination of body and soul, or body and spirit (the two words are used interchangeably)– we have a material part, and an immaterial part. The idea precedes Descartes, and goes way, way back in the history of Western thought. Body/ spirit duality has been around for a long time, and most of us are very comfortable with the idea.
I want to bounce a different idea off of you, because body/ spirit might be a bit too simple. A dualist body/ soul structure to man invites the question, do all dogs go to heaven? Continue reading “Dogs in Heaven or the Human Trinity?”
I sometimes hear it said that humans lack the natural defenses that other animals possess. We have no claws or fangs, no thick fur or armored skin, we are not particularly strong, and so on. Our senses are poor, compared to animals, and it is only our extreme intelligence and ability to communicate in sophisticated ways that has enabled us to survive.
I would like to demolish this myth. Continue reading “The Myth of Human Frailty”
Hey, quick question– what time is it right now, I mean as you start reading this? Obviously, the time for you is quite a bit later than when I am writing, and if you return (please do!), it will be later still. When you send your friends here, “now” will be even more later still. Continue reading “I Mean Right NOW, You Mindless Pile of Molecules!”
I probably don’t need to tell you who I have in mind. In certain countries that have a rich coffee culture– Australia, Italy– the company has little or no presence, but elsewhere, they are the McDonald’s of coffee. And I probably don’t need to tell you who I am talking about. Continue reading “Dark Roast Leads by the Nose”
At the dinner, I was seated next to a 18-month-old. She slid her hand under a napkin and pulled it out again. Strangely, her hand was still there. She repeated this action many times, puzzled as to why her hand wasn’t vanishing. A few times, I pressed her hand from above the napkin to demonstrate that, not only did the hand still exist, but it retained all tactile functionality. This mystery of object permanence was baffling, and she concluded that future research was going to be necessary. First, though, there were cookies to eat. Continue reading “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics”
When students are first introduced to trigonometry, they are often shown a diagram like this one as a way of explaining the sine and cosine functions:
See, theta is an angle of a right triangle, and if the hypotenuse equals one then cosine and sine give us the lengths of the adjacent and opposite legs, respectively. As theta changes, the triangle changes, and sine and cosine return different values. All of this is correct and pretty easy to grasp. The problem is, as a conceptual aid, it starts crumbling the moment theta exceeds 90 degrees. Continue reading “Understanding Trigonometry: A Matter of Complex Circles”
I met her maybe a week before she was murdered. We hit it off well, and I was looking forward to talking to her again. Continue reading “Survivor’s Guilt, Outwitted”
If you are reading this post on the internet, then you live in abject poverty. It is doubtful that these words will ever reach a rich person. Why do I say this? Because every last person living on Earth today lives worse than a peasant, and by the time people start accumulating measurable wealth, the internet will be ancient history. Don’t envy guys like Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos; they’re so poor, their combined wealth wouldn’t amount to the rounding error on a normal person’s bank account. Continue reading “Even the Rich People Are Poor”
Of a Sphinx Athwart the Evening Sky 