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.
2002-09-10 - 1:12 a.m.
I just read Stacey’s entry about her school making team sports mandatory. We had talked about it the night before. I’m against it because I’m against one-size fit all rules. Team sports are an especially bad thing to make mandatory on a competitive level. It is no fun to lose. That makes teammates get on those who contribute to losing. In other words the poor athletes get picked on. I myself am a very poor athlete. I’ve suffered the ridicule. Does that mean I hate team sports? No on the contrary I love them. I never was on a competitive team but I went out of my way to play in recreational games.
I’m a terrible athlete but I had my moments. I’ve hit key baskets in basketball games. I’ve gotten the big hits in softball. I even made a few good plays in the field. They were total flukes but I still made them. I can’t think of catching a rifle shot line drive right at me by pure reflex when I was pitching without it making me smile.
I went out of my way to participate in semi-organized sport. I would never join a league but I played in regular games that met every week. In junior high school and high school I played basketball at the YM-YWHA (Young Men’s-Young Women’s Hebrew Association). In college I helped organize a game between the math lab and the English lab, math geeks. This evolved into a regular weekly game that we played for years. The sides changed, we’d just choose up sides most weeks. We never kept records. We just went out every week and played our hearts out. I was perhaps the second worse player. I couldn’t field but I could hit. I was also the slowest player in the game. I was once thrown out when I hit a line drive to right field. I loved it. I’d be moved around looking for the place where I’d do the least damage. I ended up usually pitching, catching, or playing right field. I was actually a decent pitcher and that was my favorite.
I also organized the math department teacher/student game. I played as both a student then a teacher. One of my proudest moments was when Lauren got a hit in the game. I had worked with her as her hitting instructor.
I used to play totally unorganized games of Ultimate Frisbee, which was a fairly new sport then. If they had teams when I was in high school or college I would have tried out for them. I wouldn’t have made them because I was too slow but I could throw a Frisbee quickly and accurately
I wish I had more talent. If I could play major league baseball I would. I have imagined so many times what it would be like to hit a home run in a major league game. What it would feel like to be able to throw a ball 95mph past a hitter. I can’t do it but that never stopped me from dreaming.
I’m a geek and I’m proud of it but I’d like to be a jock too. Nothing says you can’t be both. Here’s a good trivia question for you. Who is the only person to both win a Nobel Prize and be an Olympian? The answer is Neils Bohr. He won the 1922 Nobel Prize in physics for "for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them". He was also on the Danish Olympic football (soccer) team. They are seriously discussing making bridge and Olympic event maybe there is hope for me yet. OK not really, I’m not that good in bridge either J
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 2002-09-10
