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.
May 11, 2006 - 1:19 a.m.
Let’s start with the positives. I graded all my tests today and made up the Calculus 2 final. I still have to type that up but I can do that tomorrow night then go in on Monday to run off copies.
Now lets go back and fill in the details.
I made a bad typo on the calculus 2 test. It made one problem much more difficult than it should have been. I didn’t even catch it when I did the problem. The students complained about how hard it was and then I finally noticed it. I hate doing things like that. The finished the test in plenty of time and did fine so no harm no foul.
The calculus 1 class didn’t do badly on their test either. This despite the fact that not one of them could use the quadratic equation to show that x²+2x+2=0 has no solutions. Everyone who got to that point factored it, which is of course impossible. Yes an entire class of calculus students couldn’t do a problem I teach in remedial math.
The room I teach calc 1 in has a dry erase board. I went to erase it before the test and had a problem. Someone had written on it with a permanent marker. This led me to come up with Gordon’s law of stupidity. For any stupid action S, there exists a person P that is stupid enough to do S. Feel free to quote me.
I won’t go into details but it isn’t easy taking care of my mother. She just did something with her sheet and I can’t find it anywhere. I had to get out another set of sheets and make her bed again. I knew something was up because I heard a door close. I can’t figure out which one she opened though. She has no idea herself and I was down there seconds after it closed.
Now for something completely different.
Here is a question I’ve been wondering about. How come artists so often do their best work when they work with either self-imposed or cultural restrictions on its form? Just think about it, Shakespeare wrote his 5 act plays in free verse; Three hours of iambic pentameter with rhymed couplets at the end of each scene. The result instead of feeling constricted is the masterpiece of English literature.
Pre-twentieth century classical music was put in even tighter straightjackets. A classical symphony had 4 movements. The first movement was always a Sonata Allegro, the third a minuet or scherzo. There was some freedom of which strict form to follow on movements 2 and 4. The different forms of movement followed an exacting template. Yet operating in these limits Mozart and Beethoven made timeless music that appeals to people that have no idea of the rigid rules they follow.
This even happens in cartoons. While it wasn’t his best work Chuck Jones set very rigid rules for the roadrunner cartoons.
- Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going "Beep! Beep!"
- No outside force can harm the Coyote -- only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products.
- The Coyote could stop anytime -- IF he was not a fanatic. (Repeat: "A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim." - George Santayana)
- No dialogue ever, except "Beep! Beep!"
- Road Runner must stay on the road - for no other reason than that he's a roadrunner.
- All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters -- the southwest American desert.
- All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.
- Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.
- The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
- The audience's sympathy must remain with the Coyote.
The theme of 20th century art was freedom from these restrictions but that led to art that never gained popular appeal. Schoenberg came up with his own arbitrary rule to follow, 12-tone music, but it was somehow too arbitrary. It never developed a wide appeal.
So what is it about people that allow them express their creativity better when there are restrictions on how they can do so? I don’t have a clue as to the answer. Do you? The greatest composer, playwright/poet, and animator all felt the need for these constrictions. There must be something to it.
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 May 11, 2006
