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.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
September 02, 2009 - 12:29 p.m.
Yesterday was another perfect weather day. So is today. This has been a bad weather year, maybe it's making up for lost time.
I didn't get much accomplished yesterday. I did remember to pick up my shirts from the cleaners a week after they were ready. For the most part they've been waiting to be cleaned since the end of school. When I brought them in I also brought in my trench coat. It was falling apart and I wanted to know if they could repair it. They couldn't. It was my father's and I wanted to keep it but I threw it out. Now I need a new one.
I didn't go shopping yesterday. Instead I just took a walk. I explored a new part of the neighborhood. I found a much nicer area not far from me. I found lots of quirky things. There were two houses that used car bench seats as outdoor furniture. I am going to have to go back with my camera.
I see plenty of Hindus but I never see Hindu temples. Yesterday I found three of them. Two were little store fronts right next to each other. The other I'm guessing was a synagogue once. It was built in neo-classical style complete with columns. I knew it was a Hindu Temple from a distance. It was painted bright orange. I need a photo of that too.
So that was my day. Not much to write about. I could just end this now but you know me better than that. If I'm healthy and have a time I have a need to write something more substantial. I was tempted to write about Obama's attempt to revive the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. I want to point it out though because I spend a lot of time criticizing the president. I don't want anyone to think that I don't know that he's indescribably better than his predecessor. The problem is that if I did it would become a diatribe against the Republicans and I'd find it difficult to keep civil discussing their actions on civil rights. Read this NY Times Editorial and this article.
So what will I write about? A look back at me as a nerd child. This is not going to be a narrative, just a list of nerdy things I did as a child. I bet many of you did many of these things.
- I would read the dictionary for fun.
- I read the Encyclopedia Britannica.
- I had memorized the career stats of Babe Ruth and other great baseball players before I ever watched a game.
- My idea of a fun time was going to the American Museum of Natural History.
- I had two chemistry sets.
- When I was in fourth grade I read a biography of Isaac Newton and found that his notebooks were in the Morgan Library in New York. I went to the Library to see them. They wouldn't let me.
- In Art Class when we had to make a clay model of the head of a famous person I chose Karl Marx.
- I read and reread Jane's All the World's Aircraft.
- I got a copy of the Almanac every year that I studied intently. Hey it's important to know the leading wheat growers in the world.
- I built science projects. I really should have kept my favorite gizmo when I moved. It created an electric arc inside a clear light bulb. It was cool. I got my first 50,000 volt shock from it.
- The walls of my bedroom were covered with maps. My favorite showed the routes of the great explorers from Leif Erikson and Marco Polo to John Glenn.
- I also had a chart of all the US Presidents on the wall.
- Dinosaurs! I lived, breath, and ate them. OK I still do.
- My idea of a fun vacation was visiting historic homes.
- I loved puzzles. Instant Insanity made me instantly happy. Well till I solved it. My favorite was Soma. This was before Rubik's cube.
Soma - When my friend and I read about using a pendulum as a psychic device we performed experiments.
- I had read all about Norse Mythology before I knew about the Thor comics.
- Star Trek was my favorite show before it ever aired. The ads called it "The first adult science fiction."
Enough nerdiness for now. I'm hungry and want to do some shopping and get some things done today. Tonight I'm seeing John Fogarty at the South Street Seaport. Anyone else going?
Idiot Story LXXXVIII - September 11, 2009
Gotta be the Shoes - September 10, 2009
Anatomy of a Murder Crohn's Disease - September 08, 2009
Party of the Second Part - September 07, 2009
Music Has Charms to Heal the Savage Ileum - September 06, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile September 02, 2009
