Life is the hardest teacher. It gives you the test, and then gives you the lesson.
Category: Stuff
Stars
Last night, Beta spent half an hour out on the deck. She was wearing the wool cape I got her last Christmas. She had her new noise-cancelling headphones that block so many of the sounds that bother her. She used the new family telescope to check out the Pleiades.
That was pretty awesome.
Words to Live By
I’m copying and posting this here to remind myself, from time to time, of the message.
Well hey, here’s a valuable piece of information for you.
Most things, fairly universally, you’re wrong about. Yes, it’s true. Most of the things which you believe you’re right about – you are in fact wrong about. To some degree, either by having an incomplete picture of facts but believing you’ve got a complete one, or holding differing viewpoints and not being aware of it, or making a judgement on an incorrect assumption or even bad information you’ve received…
It’s just that most of the time the amount of your inaccuracy doesn’t matter. But accepting that fact is important because it allows room for you to accept errors in your thinking on important issues.
You’re not infallible, you’re not so great, you don’t know much. But that’s OK. Because none of us are infallible, none of us are that great, none of us know all that much.
But if you’re humble enough – you’ll keep learning. Slowly decreasing the margin of our error is all we can hope to do. If you believe you’ve fully closed it…that it’s reached 0, that you’ve finally got it all figured out and there is no more error…well then you’re just flying blind now. It may take a while, but you’ll eventually crash – as any pilot with closed eyes eventually does.
Bricka_Bracka via Reddit
Even if we’re in The Matrix, does it really matter?
Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me.
“Conan the Barbarian” in the novel Queen of the Black Coast by Robert E. Howard
Epitaph
He was here just a minute ago…
- George Carlin, on his preferred epitaph
Thumbs Down
When you’re angry at another driver, don’t flip them off – you’re just giving them something to back rage at. Give them a thumbs down instead.
You weren’t a dick, and the lingering sense of disapproval will haunt them all day.
Lightning!
Driving down I-93S tonight, in the vicinity of Wilmington, I caught lightning on the dashcam that lit up half the sky
George Washington Carver’s Eight Virtues
…it is needless for me to keep saying, I hope, except for emphasis, that each one of my children will rise to the full height of your possibilities, which means the possession of these eight cardinal virtues which constitutes a lady or gentleman.
1st. Be clean both inside and out.
2nd. Neither look up to the rich or down on the poor.
3rd. Lose, if need be, without squealing.
4th. Win without bragging.
5th. Always be considerate of women, children, and older people.
6th. Be too brave to lie.
7th. Be too generous to cheat.
8th. Take your share of the world and let others take theirs.
Source, page 24
Mystery Man In My Attic
While demolishing Alpha’s bedroom last month I uncovered a photo tucked into the insulation.
It seems to have been deliberately placed, as it was deep in the attic crawlspace between two batts of insulation.
This is one of those photos that spawns more questions than it could possibly hope to answer.
- When was it taken? (there are no dates, not even a printers date on the back)
- Where was it taken?
- Who is this?
- Was this someone who used to live here?
- Why is he sitting in a rickshaw?
- Why was it in the attic?
- Who put it there?
If you know anything about this photo, please email me or leave a comment.
Mummies
The ancient Egyptians practiced consensual taxidermy