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Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » The Human Experience

Like Butter

You know, it's funny... the other day I just plugged in a backup hard drive that I haven't used in about 4 years. I looked at all the stuff was working on again, none of which I have thought about since and most of which I hadn't even remembered, and realized, "Wow, that was a really long time ago."

So I think the frequently-noted sensation of time seeming to pass more quickly as you get older has more to do with how often we think of something. The more often you think of something, the more recent it seems; but be reminded of something actually relatively recent but which you haven't thought back on even once since it happened, and the full weight comes to bear of just how long it's been, just how much time has passed since things that were even far more recent than long-ago things that…

Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » Futurism & Prognostication

Man’s Fate: Stone antennae waving

Link: A Geologist Investigates a Mass Extinction at the End of the Permian Period

A friend commented on the above as a warning.

Well, I do believe we need not to treat the world like an infinite resource, or to assume we can't push things past the tippng point, but the good news is, the Permian extinction event was both unusually catastrophic and very fast as these things goes... it took only about 60,000 years, or, roughly 12x as long as recorded human history. And whatever happened, it was very bad — the trilobites had ruled the world for nearly twice as long as the dinosaurs would when, in a geologic blink of an eye, they, along with 96% of the other plant and animal species living at the time, vanished forever. But despite it, 250 million years later, here we are, in full flower, and…

Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » Philosophy & Wisdom

The Advice For All Seasons

An Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be always true; in all times, and in all situations; in sadness, and in happiness; in adversity, and in prosperity.

After a lengthy period of debate amongs themselves, at last they presented him with the words:

"If you lived here, you'd be home by now."

Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » Futurism & Prognostication

Man’s Fate: The Beaked Shall Inherit The Earth

I believe after humans wipe themselves out a generation or two from now, the eventual next dominant species on earth will be descended from corvids. Most people think it'll be cockroaches, but corvids are already as intelligent in some ways as human children and comparably good at problem solving, they have the biggest brain volume per body mass on earth except for humans, and, they can fly away from danger. Sounds to me like a recipe for success once the hairless apes with the guns are out of the way.

Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » Language, Grammar, & Vocabulary

Linguistic Reminder: A Kudos For Your Many Agenda

Remember: 'Kudos' is singular. 'Agenda' and 'data' are plural, singular being 'agendum' and 'datum'. That's why 'Vodka' is plural. One is 'Vodkum'.

'Nachos' is also singular. There is no such thing as one 'nacho'.

Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » The Human Experience

The Common Sense Conundrum

It seems to me that a frequent problem with most people's talk about "common sense" is not that it isn't really so common. It's that it isn't really sense.

Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » The Human Experience

Truth is Unknowable, Truth is Apparent

Truth is unknowable, because we can only know with our minds. I mean, no, of course truth is knowable.

I'm sure, to an ant, truth is apparent: follow formic acid trails, dig in soil.

To us, probably the same—the truth of whatever is our own equivalent of formic acid and digging. Broader by comparison, of course, but equivalent in terms of being constrained by limits we know nothing about, out there on the impenetrable edge of our own capacities.

I wonder what an ant makes of the beach, the shore, the ocean. The sky.

An ant works in the daytime, but I don't think it questions where the light comes from.

What don't we do?

Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » Humor

Humor: etruscanmingle.com

Time to renew again, and I just can't decide. I really thought this was going to be the domain I sold for a million bucks.

What can I say? Everything was different before the pandemic. I thought they might be coming back.

Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » Better Mousetraps

Business Idea: The Behavioral Marketing Dance Club

This originally was posted in my blog Sloth And Dignity.

I just had a great entrepreneurial idea. With things opening up again, this might just be the jackpot.

Open a dance club. But, the twist is, there's bouncers inside. Only good dancers will be allowed to stay on the dance floor. If you're out there, and you're not a visibly good dancer, you're just bopping your head or lazily doing the white boy shuffle... you'll get a firm tap on your shoulder, and be asked to return to the bar area. Eventually, you have a dance floor full of really great dancers, and a crowd of looky-loos buying drink after drink because alcohol happens to be an efficient solution to a number of the mildly uncomfortable aspects of that situation.

Once this gets some buzz, I'm telling you, it would be hot as hell. It checks every…

Blog Posts » You Can Quote Me On That - Topical Short Takes » Faith vs. Reason

Conversation: Music And A Higher Power

via text message, 2/28/21.

Me: "Sometimes listening to Bill Evans I get a flash that those 12-step people are right, like there’s something out there much, much bigger than me."

MMcC: "Oh yeah. For sure. I have more to say about that than I can text."

MMcC: "Some things are really only knowable because of him."

Me: "It’s amazing. I’ve been listening to him on Pandora all morning, and, you know, they won’t stick to a single artist, so it’s a lot of piano jazz trios, and every time they flip from him to someone else or back it’s like a night and day difference. I was having a daydream, what if I could go back to being about 12 years old, and I thought, I’d probably ask my parents to get me a bunch of Bill Evans records. And then I thought, could 12-year-old me even begin to really…