With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
I enjoy paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
October 19, 2007 - 12:24 p.m.
As all too often happens I did not leave enough time to write this update. I'll see what I can do.
As also happens all too often I did not spend my time yesterday wisely. I did not come close to finishing grading my tests. I got about halfway through grading one class. I have a very busy weekend so I am going to be pressed to finish them by Monday. I'll find a way. The one good thing is that I always grade the tests progressively faster so even though I've graded only one quarter of the tests that might be half the total time needed for grading.
So as I expected the grades weren't good. I knew the first class hadn't been doing all their homework and it shows. Some students didn't even know what the questions meant. This gets very frustrating and it happens almost every semester. How can I make the students understand how much work is necessary to pass the course? They either don’t believe me when I tell them or they just can't get themselves to do all the work. A big part of the problem is that they are all forced to take my class. There are no math majors, mine are required courses. They would all rather spend their time on the courses they wanted to take.
Contractors were at the house yesterday fixing problems before we sell it. I didn't even see them. I spent the whole day in my room with my tests. So some good came of that.
I made my first breakfast in over a week since I had been spending my days off at WFUV. I still get so much pleasure at eating my own omelets. Yesterday's had smoked sausage and Monterey Jack cheese with jalapeño peppers. That is amazingly good. To make it even better I beat hot sauce into the eggs before I make it. That has a far subtler taste than putting the hot sauce on after I cook it.
Time for some politics; there are a lot of hot topics but I want to talk about the nominee for Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey. His nomination is almost assured but it shouldn’t be. The Senate Democrats are so relieved that he unlike his predecessor Gonzalez he understands that the Department of Justice must be apolitical, that it is supposed to promote the interests of the nation, not the Republican Party. That is all well and good but it is like saying that somebody is qualified to be a teacher because he isn't a child molester. That should just be a given. I find Mr. Mukasey's responses to questions about torture deeply disturbing. He says he is against torture but won't define it. He was asked specifically about water boarding and said; "“I don’t know what is involved in the technique, if waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”This is the entire heart of the issue and one that has been in the news. I find it hard to believe that he is ignorant of the facts. If he is I'm disturbed that he paid so little interest on the question of if the US is torturing people. I should point out that for 100 years the American government defined waterboarding as torture. Mr Mukasey in his testimony made clear that he believes that the President in his powers as commander and chief is above legislated law. The president's is the only opinion that decides if it torture. He believes that the constitution gives the president unchecked powers. The entire point of the constitution is setting up a system of checks and balances and he, and those who believe in the imperial presidency simply don't accept that .They believe that once you elect a president he has absolute power when it comes to national security issues. They believe that we elect a tyrant with no limits on his power. Part of the power is the power to declare thing secret and hide them from the people so he doesn't even have to face political consequences. Who is it that hates democracy?
OK that's today's rant.
You'll notice that the link to Save Darfur is back at the bottom of the entry. It was never gone but the image I used was no longer on their website. People are still being killed, raped, and driven from their homes there. Follow the link and see what you can do.
The International Jewish Banking Conspiracy - October 07, 2008
On the Road to Westchester County - October 06, 2008
Inside the Madison Square Studio - October 05, 2008
I'm a Bosniac and I'm debating like I've never debated before - October 03, 2008
Islands in the Stream of Consciousness - October 02, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile October 19, 2007
