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.
2002-01-04 - 2:16 a.m.
My blehs are slowing dampening. I'm feeling a lot better today. I wish I could have seen Rod Picott tonight with My Lord and Savior and My Beloved Brain. The problem is I'd have had to make the 4 hour drive down there this morning then made the 4 hour trip home tomorrow at 9. That or spend $130 on the train. I didn't have the energy for the first or the money for the second. The other thing that Carey and I discussed was me taking the train down there then both of us driving back here on Saturday to see Loudon Wainwright III and Maggie and Suzzy Roche. She would then have to drive back home on Sunday. She didn't have the energy for that. Good thing too, it might snow on Sunday.
So what did I do instead? I visited my father in the hospital as usual and went to the Knick game. This was the first time I've seen my friend Larry in a long time. I first met him at bridge but he used to go to lots of games with Alan and myself. Alan and Larry have the most degrees of separation of any pair of friends I know. This is how they know each other. Alan is friend with Aubrey, who is friends with me; I'm friends with Andrew, who is friends with Larry. Now Alan and Larry will do things together without any of the intervening people. Andrew and Larry are the best bridge players that I'm really close too. They are also fun people. They are in some ways like techy batnoses without the passion for music.
Larry has a way of going to really good games. Alan and I both thought the Knicks would lose tonight. They were playing one of the best teams, Dallas, who was on a 10-game-winning-streak. The Knicks true to form got off to a big lead then blew it. They went from being up by 13 to being down by 8. The fought there way back to a six point lead, lost that, and came back to tie it in regulation. They won the game fairly easily in overtime.
There was an interesting example of expectations altering perceptions in the people behind us. For some reason they hated my favorite player Mark Jackson. All game they were saying how horrible he was, to get the ball out his hands, to take him out of the game. I finally couldn't take it and pointed out that the Knicks were up 18 points when he was in the game and down by 19 when he was out. Jackson was having a great game. After I pointed that out they were a bit better but said, "I don't know what he is doing, he has missed all his shots and doesn't have any assists." I had counted 7 plays where he had made exceptional passes for assists at that point. After he got a few more they said, "OK now he has 2 assists." When the game was over and the showed the stats Jackson's line was 5 points, (not great obviously) 8 rebounds, 4 steals, and 17 assists. They were watching the same game as I was and missed all of that. To put some perspective on those numbers, the leader in assists averages about 10 a game. Maybe 4 players will have any games of 17 assists in any game all season. Jackson plays point guard and 8 rebounds is tremendous for that position, the average is closer to 4. The leader in steals averages about 2 a game.
Have I lost all my readers with all this sports and stats talk? I hope not. My point is really psychological. It shows how unreliable people's observations are when they aren't done scientifically. I'm sure I do things just as bad. I do try to check my gut feelings though by testing them empirically.
A little something in praise of sports. Dan Bern sings and talks a lot about sports. When I saw him last week he said, "watching sports is as beautiful as listening to music or looking at great art." It is true. It is an aesthetic that has to be learned like so many others. I'm not sure that all or even most sports fans see it that way but many do. It is why Mark Jackson is my favorite player. He isn't someone who makes thunderous slam-dunks. He isn't someone who overpowers his opponents. He isn't big, he isn't fast, as a matter of fact he is very slow for his position. What he can do is see the entire court and make good decisions in an instant. If a player is free for an instant, Jackson can make the pass to get him the ball. He is a consummate team player, and a thinking player. Those are the traits that I love. I'll take a Magic Johnson over Michael Jordan any day. It is what I enjoy watching. The Knicks haven't had a player that could do that since they traded him away 10 years ago. It also helps of course that he is from Queens and went to my intermediate school.
His sub, Charlie Ward, is not only an inferior player, who can't see the court; he is also something more serious, an anti-Semite. I wish the Knicks would get rid of him. He said terrible things last season in an interview and wouldn't really retract them. What was his defence against the charges of anti-Semitism? "One of my best friends is Jewish, Jesus." Talk about missing the point. Here is a sample of what he said, for more follow the link.
Ward, a Christian who regularly attends team prayer meetings, told THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE last week that Jews persecute Christians "Every day," and also said it was the Jews who were responsible for killing Jesus Christ. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League immediately condemned the remarks.
Rather than backing down, however, Ward told THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS on Saturday, "If you want to read about it, it's in the Book of John or any of the Gospels...I'm just the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger."
Wow so I started with a Paean to sports and ended up with a political rant, pretty good huh?
I decided that as long as I'm reading LOTR that I'm going to end with a quote from what I read that day in my entry and title the entry after the chapter I'm up to. One of my favorite things about LOTR is that the heroes don't all look like heroes. They include fat little hobbits, an old man, a dwarf, and Strider who looks totally disreputable when you first meet him. This poem is about Strider aka Aragorn, aka Elessar.
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
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 2002-01-04
