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.
2001-11-14 - 12:39 a.m.
I gave my classes back the test today. They weren't as happy about it as I had hoped. I noticed something interesting. Six students missed the test in my second class. Three of them missed it because of the plane crash, one said that he was sick (my diagnosis is testitis) and two didn't show up today either. I told everyone that if they were going to miss a test that they had to contact me that day. Only one of these students did. She is the one that did the best on the first test. That is no coincidence. She is the only one that takes the class seriously.
After class I called up Roy and made plans to play bridge with him tonight. I then talked to Carey and Leah online. I ended up spending so much time in my office that I could only get home just in time to make a pit stop before going out to play bridge. Good thing I made that pit stop. I had a message from Alan in which he mentioned the Knick game tonight. I totally forgot about it. I had to call up Roy and cancel the bridge. I felt really bad about that. We may play tomorrow night.
I got to stay at home longer but still forgot to set up my VCR to record Buffy. This is two weeks in a row. I'm going through withdrawal.
Getting to the Knick game on time is a bit of a challenge now. There is heightened security at MSG. Every person entering is checked with a metal detector. Today they even gave me a full body frisk. They could at least have had one of the Knick City Dancers doing the frisk. I think this is one of those things that seems like a good idea at the time but is really a bad one. If someone was determined to kill people at the Garden I'm sure they still could. They don't frisk most people and even the way I was frisked I could have smuggled a gun or some explosives in my pants. These security measures make it a madhouse getting into the Garden. There is a real danger that someone will get trampled. If there were an emergency I'd say it would be a certainty. If I were a terrorist the mob out front would be a much more inviting target than anything inside. The people are packed so much closer together. Someone with an automatic weapon would kill far more people out there than he could inside and wouldn't have to go through security.
I managed to make it to my seat in time for the national anthem. Alan who I guess wasn't as aggressive dealing with the mob barely made it in time for the opening tip-off. It wasn't a great game but the Knicks won 89-82. Alan and I predict the scores of every game we go to and keep track of our wins and losses. Alan predicted the Knicks losing by 10 so I won today. We are now 1-1.
The Knicks' record is 3-5, I've been to two of the three victories and I've only been to two games. The Knicks should hire me to go to games. I'm just kidding but that is a great example of superstitious thinking. There is obviously no causal connection between my being at the game and the Knicks winning but people often believe similar things. Athletes will often repeat certain actions every day before the game during a streak. Yogi Berra once wouldn't change his underwear during a hitting streak. People do the same type of thing in all sorts of situation. There is a good reason for it. It is pretty much hard wired into our brains. Rats and pigeons show the same kind of behavior. If you give them food pellets at random they will come to associate certain behaviors with the arrival of the pellets and repeatedly perform them. There is a good reason this evolved. Yes it leads to many false associations but it also leads to true ones. Superstition and science have the same root cause. The difference is that science doesn't just accept the associations but tests them. People seem to hate randomness. They much prefer that there is a cause for everything. Lots of people would feel better knowing that yesterday's plane crash was a terrorist act rather than a random accident. It's something to think about. Observe how other people deal with things out of the ordinary. They want to put a pattern on them. Observe yourself; you'll find the same thing. If you start doubting your guesses then you are being scientific.
Nice paragraph there I went from basketball to psychology to the philosophy of science. I think that paragraph shows more about how my mind work than most things I write here. That is a typical thread of my thoughts.
I have not written my poem for today so I have to write it now. I kept waiting for inspiration and it never came. The whole idea of writing a poem a day was to force myself to write whether I'm inspired or not so here goes nothing:
I have not found my true love.
Some days I hardly think about it.
On others it is the only thing on my mind.
Some days I'll do anything to find her.
On others I just leave it to chance.
Whatever I do, it doesn't matter.
She never enters my life.
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 2001-11-14
