CSotD: Truth and Humor and Sometimes Both
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The timing of this morning’s Carpe Diem (KFS) got a laugh, because its commentary on computer security came hard on the heels of an article in Forbes, which said the FBI is warning people about texting from iPhones to Androids or vice-versa.
It seems Chinese intelligence has found a way to intercept these messages. Tulsi! Save us!
It’s actually okay as long as your texts are encrypted, so that’s a comfort, I guess.
But mostly it falls into my standing opinion that the more they gather, the more they have to process, and if Xi Jinping wants to know when I’m leaving for the dog park, he can intercept my text saying so and thus will fall Western Civilization and suchlike.
There are 1.43 billion people in China, and if they were all put to the task of sorting through the drivel we text to one another, they wouldn’t have time to pose any other sort of threat.
Speaking of the dog park, these canine epicures in Bliss (Tribune) are behind the times: Tennis balls have become declassé in recent years, in part because they are so easily destroyed. My little pup can skin and split a tennis ball in minutes, and will, happily.
The ball of choice today is the Chuckit, which comes in many forms which have in common that (A) they are all but indestructible and (B) dogs like them so much that they are referred to at our park as “crack balls” on the theory that the Chinese manufacturers have added an addictive drug to the rubber.
Alex always goes on about bonuses at this time of year, and I don’t know if that’s because they’re in Britain or because they’re in the financial sector, but I only had one job at which I got a Christmas bonus, a $75 gift certificate at a local jewelers.
However, the trend to get workers back into the building is apparently universal, and I admire the logic of the youngster who has figured out that it costs more for him to commute than he’d get in his bonus. I also think that, if coming in to the office is voluntary, you should be able to write off that mileage on your taxes.
Of course, I also think you should be able to write off the cost of neckties and the IRS never seemed willing to bend on that, either.
The compensation there being that what you spend on neckties to wear for Zoom meetings, you recoup by not having to purchase trousers.
Literary Alert
Macanudo (KFS) is running Jabberwocky as a daily serial. He just started Monday, so you can catch up.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I saw an Elf on the Shelf display in a store yesterday and it once again occurred to me to wonder what sort of twisted, manipulative control freak would do that to a child?
My mother was traumatized to learn that Santa wasn’t real, and her response as a parent was to let us believe but not to foster the fiction. When I asked how he got down the chimney — since we didn’t have a fireplace — her response was “Well, what do you think?”
We were a little more directive with our boys, but when they figured it out, we laughed and celebrated it as a sign that they were smart and were growing up.
The kids in Grand Avenue are right: The whole thing is creepy and goes against the other cautions parents give kids.
And that cat deserves a nice piece of fresh salmon.
Yesterday, I placed Anselm in the Dark Ages, which someone corrected in the comments, because historians place him in the high middle ages.
I think the problem is that philosophy and art were not joined at the hip and what artists and musicians were doing was well beyond what theologians and scientists (“natural philosophers”) were doing. So there were Dark Ages of Art and Dark Ages of Thought and they did not run in strict tandem.
By happenstance, Existential Comics provides a quick guide to Enlightenment metaphysics and its development and conflicts.
We studied Locke more as a political theorist, but I remember finding Spinoza refreshing in both his theories and his writing.
As for James, I get him confused with Charles Peirce, which I think is probably justifiable, but remember our seminar on one or the other degenerating into an argument about drawing cards and flipping coins.
Perhaps someone should have knocked our heads together.
Different kind of pragmatic philosophy in this Andertoons (AMS). I spent my 20s and 30s in Colorado, where most people were from somewhere else, so most people at a meeting had, at some point, thrown it all in the car and split. Solving a problem by starting all over was in their blood.
In my 40s, I moved to Northern New York, where most people were multi-generational natives. They sought to solve problems with the least change possible, because they were rooted like trees.
Both approaches can work, but, man, did I have to adapt my expectations!
Not laughin’ at this David Horsey piece, despite my general loathing of bro culture.
But bro culture seems like a case of empty wagons making the most noise and providing the best copy for reporters and commentators, though if you flog it enough, young followers will pick it up.
I was, however, in a conversation the other day about the number of young successful businesswomen who marry college boyfriends who haven’t got their acts together. They muddle along and then divorce approaching their 30s and often remarry successfully, but to someone also in mid-thirties and thus with two feet finally on the ground.
Juliet was engaged to Paris, who was considerably older and established, as was the practice in those days. I’d suggest that she’d have been more chattel than partner in the marriage, and that the point of the play is two young people head-over-heels in love. I don’t believe either is a good choice.
“Marry in haste, repent at leisure” remains a wise saying, and I honestly think that, if more couples waited until they were both grown up, there wouldn’t be so many 22-year-olds at the altar or 28-year-olds in divorce court.
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