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.
2002-01-22 - 1:31 a.m.
I was talking to Waldo today and we decided that we are going to call everyone Waldo. Now this might be a bit confusing for some of you. We also decided that everyone's nickname was Gregory, I don't think that will clear things up any though.
His morning my mother, Waldo, went to volunteer at the Thrift Shop. I'm not sure I've talked about that before. My mother works at the National Council of Jewish Women Thrift Shop. At one point she was the president. When there is a decision to be made she is still the one that has to make it. A few years back she was the NCJW "Woman of the Year."
As she was out I had to look out for my father. Timing was a bit close today as I was going to the Knick game with Waldo and it was a 1:00 game. My sister, Waldo, came down from New Paltz to take my father to dialysis. She was getting here after I had to leave though. Luckily my father had physical therapy and the therapist, Waldo, came just as I was leaving and was going to stay till my sister arrived.
I cut my timing for the train very close. I arrived at the train station just as the train was due. It virtually will never run for a train but today I made an exception. There was no need though. I saw that the train wasn't pulling in so I took my time going down to the platform. It isn't unusual for the train to be a few minutes late. After about 5 minutes I started wondering when it would arrive. After another 3 minutes they announced that it was going to be 15 minutes late. I wish they had said that before, I would have grabbed something to eat.
At the Flushing station, about half way there Waldo joined me. I didn't understand why he got on in Flushing. He got on the station before mine but just noticed me then. At his station they never announced that the train was going to be late. The LIRR has problems with customer communications.
We made it to Penn Station on time, Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks play is built right over Penn Station. I had to rush to get something to eat though. I ended up going to Nathan's, which is always good.
I got to my seat right before the national anthem. We wrote our predictions for the game and the game started off OK. The Knicks were leading 7-6. That was their last lead of the game. They were down by 20 quarter and ended up losing the game 111-68. It was their worst home loss in history. Waldo and I still managed to have a good time though. During halftime we made one of our usual lists. Today's was the greatest athletes with the names, Martin, or Luther, or King. Neither one of us thought of a Luther though. We left the game with 5 minute to go to make a train. Neither one of us thought it was worth staying to the end.
I got home and didn't do much till my sister and father got back from dialysis. My directions there were fine but my sister missed a turn on the ride home. I'll have to work on them before I give my mother a copy. She has to take my father on Wednesday.
My sister asked me to explain a famous puzzler today, one of the all-time best. She got the right idea but wanted it quantified and explained better. Here is the problem:
A contestant is on Let's Make a Deal. He is told that a car is behind one of three doors and he has to pick which one. He picks door number 2. Waldo "Gregory" Hall then shows him that it isn't behind door number 2. He is then given the option of sticking with door 1 or switching to door 3. What should he do? Does it make any difference if he switches or not? I'll give you the answer later. Think about if first.
My sister, Waldo, ate with my parents while I had slimfast. I realize that I've forgotten to give you my weight recently. Last count, which was yesterday I was 170.5 lbs. I seem to have stalled for a bit. I have to get tougher on myself.
Waldo left after dinner and when I got to my answering machine I saw that I had just missed a call from Waldo. I called him back and had one of our usual bad neuroworld conversations. He spent 20 minutes talking about A Beautiful Mind then asked me if I had seen any movies. I said that I had seen LOTR right the day it opened at 12:05 AM and was about to talk about how Sir Waldo McKellen was there but he didn't let me get that far. He changed the subject as I was talking.
I then listened to his problems at work and his lawsuit; he had been in a car accident. I didn't get to talk about anything about myself as so often happens.
As soon as I got off the phone I called Waldo in Maryland so I could talk to someone who I knew would listen to me. We had our usual good neuro conversation including discussing how I was going to call everyone Waldo in my entry. She then went off to call her parents and I watched Angel I usually like Angel better than Buffy the last few years. This episode seemed to suffer a bit from the problem that Buffy has been having, lack of focus.
Now for the solution to the puzzler: The contestant should switch to door number 3. The probability that it is the winner is 2/3. It is anti-intuitive but correct. The way I explained it was that after the contestant pics door 1, Waldo can always show that one of the other too doors doesn't have the car. So that tells you nothing about door 1. The odds of door 1 being the correct door was 1/3 before he exposed door 2 and it remains 1/3 afterwards. The probability of it being door 2 is zero so that makes the probability of it being door 3 2/3. Waldo had trouble buying this so we tried it out. I picked a number from 1-3 and then told her that one of the other two was not the answer. While going through this the solution became clearer. The only time switching doesn't win is when she picked correctly originally, which of course happens 1/3 the time.
Now it's time for the LOTR quote of the day. I'm now up to The Steward and the King This is a quote by the Lady Waldo of Rohan, the slayer of the King of the Nazgūl, a classically depressed personality.
'But I do not desire healing,' she said. I wish to ride to war like my brother Waldo, or better like Waldo the king, for he died and has both honour and peace.'
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 2002-01-22
