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.
2002-09-26 - 10:45 a.m.
I had so problems in class yesterday. Half my afternoon class showed up late. I had to give them the speech about at a job the boss wouldn’t say “get here on time tomorrow” he’d say: “don’t come in tomorrow you are fired.” Lets see if it does any good. One of the students who did show up on time proceeded to put his head down and go to sleep as soon as he sat down. I stood right by him and spoke loudly and that didn’t wake him up. I then nudged his foot. He wasn’t even embarrassed when he woke up. He actually went back to sleep. Another student sat right behind a column. I gave up trying to get them not to do that. If he’d rather keep having to move his head back and forth to see the board that’s his business.
After class I called Carey for her birthday. That put me in a much better mood.
I saw one of my students from last semester yesterday and she told me that she didn’t like her math teacher this semester. That shouldn’t make me feel good but it does.
I was thinking about how many people that like me call me a creep. People who don’t like me say that too but that isn’t surprising. I was going to write about how even people who like me don’t say nice things about me but I realized it wasn’t true. People say lots of nice things about me. It is so easy to delude yourself by only remembering the bad things.
I just found out that Richard Thompson is playing nearby the day Carey and I were supposed to volunteer on Vin’s show. We’ll have to cancel. I’m not missing Richard Thompson. He only comes to the area two or three times a year. I could see him on Friday but I want to see him with Carey. I might see him both nights. I’ll see if I can get Freebies to the Friday show from WFUV. I’m going to order the tickets to the Saturday show today. I want good seats.
I was going to leave now to work on the market research but it looks like it is going to rain. It’s the effect of tropical storm Isadore. I’ll stay a bit longer and see what develops.
I haven’t written anything about the possible war with Iraq. I’m against it but not for the same reasons as most people. I don’t really have a moral objection to it. Saddam Hussein deserves to be ousted. I’d love it if all tyrants could be deposed. If the world agreed to it, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. The world doesn’t though. We can’t just decide unilaterally which governments aren’t legitimate.
I think the reasons the theory of preemptive attack is dangerous. It is the same as arresting someone because we think he’ll commit a crime. The doctrine of deterrence worked with the Soviet Union for 45 years. It worked with Iraq. He had chemical weapons at the time of the Gulf War and didn’t use them because he was afraid of the consequences.
There has been lots of speculation as to why Bush is taking this course of actions. I think one factor is that he is just afraid. Physical and moral courage have never been his hallmarks. He is afraid of being physical harm and even more afraid of being remembered as the president on whose watch the US was attacked twice.
That’s enough pontificating for the day. I hope I’m feeling more creative tomorrow.
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 2002-09-26
