RANDOM THOUGHTS #37
Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself.
1. Over my lifetime, I have become intrigued by numerous questions and subjects, great and small. Some are political (e.g., affirmative action, supply-side economics, big vs. small government), some are religious or philosophical (e.g., creation vs. evolution, is there a God, was Jesus married), and others are historical (e.g., was Hitler an idiot, did Robert E. Lee make a dumb decision about Pickett's Charge). Some are about SFU (do I really want to publish X3 rules, do I really like that story a certain author sent in, which way to I decide on some rules question). As each arises, I study the issue as thoroughly as possible, come to a conclusion which thereafter forms a part of my worldview, and move on to another issue or subject. Often, over the years, I come to forget most of the details of each subject. This gets me into trouble when I encounter someone who is new to the issue (or who only cares about one issue for his lifetime). They're up-to-date on details, while for me the answer is clear but he details of how I reached that answer are murky. I rarely have the time to revisit the entire issue and reconstruct the thought processes that came to my decision. Given the pressures of limited time and limitless other things to do, I often just give my answer and decline or refuse to discuss it further. (Trust me. I looked into it, and that's the answer, and I don't really have time to go through it again every time somebody new stops by.) This can result in various reactions. Some are angry that I won't give them a hearing. Some do not believe that I ever studied the issue at all. One friend demanded that I either stop everything and do a month of work to refute his position, or publicly renounce my own and accept his. (That didn't happen. I may not have time to look it all up again but I know he's wrong on everything.) In a similar vein, I sometimes have local political friends who get fired up about something (the Fair Tax, rumors about people moving money around just before the Fall 2008 crash, the secret Swiss bank accounts of this or that president). More than a few of these have asked for a meeting, handed me 50 pages of stuff they copied from the Internet, and demanded that I not only read the material immediately, but that I either publicly accept their theory or instantly produce proof that they're wrong. (I have some very strange political friends, locally.)
2. Shouldn't beheaded be deheaded?
3. Why is it that things are served on a silver platter, not a golden platter? For that matter, I'd rather have my dinner on a stainless steel platter, or maybe a ceramic platter. And why is no one born with a golden spoon in their mouth, while many are born with silver spoons in their mouths? Wouldn't a stainless steel spoon or a plastic spoon be just as hygienic? Gold and silver have not always been first and second, in that order. In the ancient world (e.g., Egypt's New Kingdom and earlier) silver was far more valuable than gold (and meteoric iron was more valuable than that). Silver was just not as easy to find in old Egypt. In the US military, the rank insignia for a 2nd lieutenant is a gold bar, while the rank insignia for a higher 1st lieutenant is a silver bar. (The gold oak leaf of a major is lower than the identically shaped silver oak leaf of a lieutenant colonel.) Why? Because silver symbolizes the self-made American man, while gold symbolized inherited European wealth. Thus, to the US military, the man who earned his position is better than a man of the same rank who inherited it, or, said another way, America is better than Europe.
4. Bucky Katt says that half of the people want to wipe out the Fralli because they're ugly, half of the people want to wipe out the Fralli because they're useless, and the final half want to wipe out the Fralli to use their hides to make cheap hats.
5. Boulevard is the French word for "bulwark" or "defensive wall." Paris had such walls, which advancing technology made obsolete. When that happened, the city fathers decided that the old walls, being wide, flat on top, solid (centuries old), and in a circle around the city, would make a wonderful new place for citizens to walk around (and excellent new retail frontage). This gigantic 50-mile long strip mall was known locally as "the boulevard" and (a few decades later) that term began to be applied to wide streets in new parts of the city. Eventually, the word came to America, not as the word for a defensive rampart, but as the word for a wide and pleasant street (with or without lots of retail space).
1. Over my lifetime, I have become intrigued by numerous questions and subjects, great and small. Some are political (e.g., affirmative action, supply-side economics, big vs. small government), some are religious or philosophical (e.g., creation vs. evolution, is there a God, was Jesus married), and others are historical (e.g., was Hitler an idiot, did Robert E. Lee make a dumb decision about Pickett's Charge). Some are about SFU (do I really want to publish X3 rules, do I really like that story a certain author sent in, which way to I decide on some rules question). As each arises, I study the issue as thoroughly as possible, come to a conclusion which thereafter forms a part of my worldview, and move on to another issue or subject. Often, over the years, I come to forget most of the details of each subject. This gets me into trouble when I encounter someone who is new to the issue (or who only cares about one issue for his lifetime). They're up-to-date on details, while for me the answer is clear but he details of how I reached that answer are murky. I rarely have the time to revisit the entire issue and reconstruct the thought processes that came to my decision. Given the pressures of limited time and limitless other things to do, I often just give my answer and decline or refuse to discuss it further. (Trust me. I looked into it, and that's the answer, and I don't really have time to go through it again every time somebody new stops by.) This can result in various reactions. Some are angry that I won't give them a hearing. Some do not believe that I ever studied the issue at all. One friend demanded that I either stop everything and do a month of work to refute his position, or publicly renounce my own and accept his. (That didn't happen. I may not have time to look it all up again but I know he's wrong on everything.) In a similar vein, I sometimes have local political friends who get fired up about something (the Fair Tax, rumors about people moving money around just before the Fall 2008 crash, the secret Swiss bank accounts of this or that president). More than a few of these have asked for a meeting, handed me 50 pages of stuff they copied from the Internet, and demanded that I not only read the material immediately, but that I either publicly accept their theory or instantly produce proof that they're wrong. (I have some very strange political friends, locally.)
2. Shouldn't beheaded be deheaded?
3. Why is it that things are served on a silver platter, not a golden platter? For that matter, I'd rather have my dinner on a stainless steel platter, or maybe a ceramic platter. And why is no one born with a golden spoon in their mouth, while many are born with silver spoons in their mouths? Wouldn't a stainless steel spoon or a plastic spoon be just as hygienic? Gold and silver have not always been first and second, in that order. In the ancient world (e.g., Egypt's New Kingdom and earlier) silver was far more valuable than gold (and meteoric iron was more valuable than that). Silver was just not as easy to find in old Egypt. In the US military, the rank insignia for a 2nd lieutenant is a gold bar, while the rank insignia for a higher 1st lieutenant is a silver bar. (The gold oak leaf of a major is lower than the identically shaped silver oak leaf of a lieutenant colonel.) Why? Because silver symbolizes the self-made American man, while gold symbolized inherited European wealth. Thus, to the US military, the man who earned his position is better than a man of the same rank who inherited it, or, said another way, America is better than Europe.
4. Bucky Katt says that half of the people want to wipe out the Fralli because they're ugly, half of the people want to wipe out the Fralli because they're useless, and the final half want to wipe out the Fralli to use their hides to make cheap hats.
5. Boulevard is the French word for "bulwark" or "defensive wall." Paris had such walls, which advancing technology made obsolete. When that happened, the city fathers decided that the old walls, being wide, flat on top, solid (centuries old), and in a circle around the city, would make a wonderful new place for citizens to walk around (and excellent new retail frontage). This gigantic 50-mile long strip mall was known locally as "the boulevard" and (a few decades later) that term began to be applied to wide streets in new parts of the city. Eventually, the word came to America, not as the word for a defensive rampart, but as the word for a wide and pleasant street (with or without lots of retail space).
posted by Federation Commander at 8:21 AM
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