January 2013
1 January 2013 – Probaway – Person of the Year 2013 – Plague Inc. These are potentially long-term-memorable events which happened the previous year.
2 January 2013 – “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” James Bond pursues a biological warfare virus. Evil lives in the hearts of men, and women too.
3 January 2013 – Exploiting personal freedom is the great goal of life. Be bold when there is no risk and be averse when there is possibility of loss.
4 January 2013 – How much contradiction should we tolerate? Tolerance is to be given to those who deserve it. Who is that? Those who will give it.
5 January 2013 – What is the most important thing for humanity to do? Humanity’s ultimate goal is to avoid extinction for as long as possible.
6 January 2013 – Fear is a good thing sometimes and sometimes not. Right action requires the right thoughts, right training and right opportunity.
7 January 2013 – Steven Colbert is a Tolkien character. Steven plays many people but under the skin he is pure Tolkien.
8 January 2013 – Make a 3×5 notebook, using duct tape across a 3×5 plastic card over the loose paper and stuck to the back. Date the edge.
9 January 2013 – Sudden change is what wreaks havoc. Sudden change is what wreaks havoc. Spend as little as possible to lock in benefits from rare events.
10 January 2013 – Oooooooo the new dollars are beautiful. Okay. When the trivial thing is soon to be the most viewed signature in the world it isn’t toooo trivial.
11 January 2013 – You can’t step in the same river twice. The definitions of words ultimately depend upon understandings of the moment for their meaning.
12 January 2013 – What is the meaning of your life? It’s using your time and attention to survive and reproduce. It’s no different from a worms.
13 January 2013 – How to saran wrap a brownie with a half twist. The twist makes it easy to find an edge and unwrap the brownie.
14 January 2013 – The Million Death Quake. Istanbul, Tehran, Kabul, Kathmandu, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Earthquakes don’t kill people, their buildings do.
15 January 2013 – A way out of the sad state of the world. Poor self-identity is associated with non-separation from one’s mother, and that’s now common.
16 January 2013 – A categorical imperative – To maximize humanity’s happiness. It would seem that people want fantasy above everything else put together.
17 January 2013 – In one group everyone but me is sick with the flu. There was no crossover between this group and a similar one but me, and none had the flu.
18 January 2013 – Love is everywhere if you look, pay attention and listen. That’s true but there is an abundance of self love too.
19 January 2013 – The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt made me realize how very much Lucretius had influenced people whom I valued greatly since my youth.
20 January 2013 – Oxytocin to the rescue. I may not have as much of this as women, but sometimes I feel a sentimental warmth surging through my chest.
21 January 2013 – “Antifragile”, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This method of design makes things more functional because it prepares for unexpected change.
22 January 2013 – Part of the new UU fellowship hall is to be an exemplar of Meaningful Sustainability, as well as Warm, Inviting and Welcoming.
23 January 2013 – I need nine simple improvements to my standard spell checker.
24 January 2013 – Popular Science magazine is usually on top of breaking events, but their current revelation was about something I posted fourteen years ago.
25 January 2013 – What is the greatest evil ever created by humanity? The belief that our God is the only god and all other gods and believers in them must die.
26 January 2013 – Walking on ice would have been safe if I had on my crampons, but they were inconvenient to use on constantly changing surfaces.
27 January 2013 –3D Printing in zero gravity. Currently impossible things might be created by 3D printing in zero gravity.
28 January 2013 – I’m feeling better sooner from vomiting, diarrhea, norovirus. Treat diarrhea with 1 teaspoon salt, 8 teaspoons sugar in 1 liter clean water.
29 January 2013 – The threat of hell is punishment in itself and generates acceptance of authorities’ teaching, and that’s hells function.
30 January 2013 – Guiding a Doomsday asteroid away from an Earth collision. A Doomsday asteroid might become a huge asset to humanity.
31 January 2013 – The idea of the World Sustainability date is reminiscent of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock.
February 2013
1 February – Personalities develop through a natural trajectory throughout life. Find and help our local sages grow. You will know them by their universal goals.
2 February – “Plato and a Platypus,” is a great book for part-time philosophers. It makes them sound good at a party of drunken intellectuals who haven’t read it.
3 February – The world is filled with problems, so there hasn’t been a lack of something to write about, but there is always a brain lag in seeing problems.
4 February – “Act in a way to maximize the total moments of happiness of humanity’s total life.”
5 February – Grabbing onto a near Earth asteroid is an opportunity for a sun orbit space station.
6 February – Protected: Comparing some chalices for beauty, utility and discussion. I was sending these to selected people for discussion.
6 February – A path that will bring more satisfaction is taking big chances, that will make you happier, healthier, wiser and wealthier. The choice is yours.
7 February – The organizing principle of most groups is defining the in-group and out-group, but if all humanity is one entity, who or what will be the enemy?
8 February – Yawn your way to sagehood and beyond, as you finish your voluntary yawn practice the desired behavior for the next half minute.
9 February – What is the difference between overconfidence and arrogance? “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
10 February – John Chard, the hero of Rorke’s Drift and me. Great heroes are probably a little nuts, but they do respond to opportunities.
11 February – Sometimes a bad thing turns out to be good or the reverse. There is no replay so it is impossible to know. We just live as best we can.
12 February – ???
13 February – My personal response to my WordPress blog going down for a day. Thankfully, the good people at WordPress were able to fix the problem.
14 February – Use a person’s name when acknowledging and supporting their ongoing work. Using a person’s name can be a kind act.
15 February – The Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013 02 15, was a perfect asteroid opportunity missed because it would take a year to prepare.
16 February – I witnessed an apparent dilation of my perceived time when I noticed an apparent speeding up and then slowing down of some passing clouds.
17 February – The usefulness of a room depends on its qualities. Here are functions I could think of, but with antifragile concepts they should be combined.
18 February – A meeting with Oregon’s United States Senator Jeff Merkley, I talk briefly to him about the coming alcohol crisis, caused by too much promotion.
19 February – Shakespeare had an impostor personality like Ferdinand Demara. Going from family celebrity to outcast sets a youth on a path to imposture.
20 February – I choose to believe our journey has just begun, and we need to build with permanent materials, and with antifragile qualities.
21 February – A few years after graduation the personal employment record will be more important than a degree for holding a well-paying job.
22 February – A new possible categorical imperative. The totality of humanity’s life and choices as may be seen in retrospect by people now living.
23 February – Read “Curious Behavior” and you will have a new and better relationship with your body and everyone else’s.
24 February – What to do when you are dying and don’t want to. Take a few aspirin tablets, call for help, pump blood by pulsing your abdominal muscles.
25 February – The Art of War by Sun Tzu – 1 – Revisited in 2013 by Charles Scamahorn. My one day off per month posting my book, Tao and War.
26 February – How to avoid falling out of a bathtub or shower. Have hand grips every step of the way, and friction surfaces where you step.
27 February – The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris got wiped out when I hit SAVE. This has happen before, so I have been Control A + C, first, but forgot.
28 February – Humans are naturally moral beings. Morality goes much deeper than philosophy; it goes to the very core of our genetic makeup.
March 2013
1 March 2013 – March 2013 – COSMO – Central Oregon Student Medical Outreach. Kindness in actions is the highest form of being.
2 March 2013 – Seeing problems? There is a naked feeling when looking at one’s own faults. That’s soon followed by grief and guilt and hoped-for clothing.
3 March 2013 – We humans need variety to our problems to thrive, and some experience and guideposts to help us along our chosen way.
4 March 2013 – Choose to make the right choices in your life trajectory! Just decide, I’m going to do the right thing, and start doing it.
5 March 2013 – The Humanist Manifesto — The Universe is self-existing and not created, we are a part of the Universe, and our mind exists within our body.
6 March 2013 – “Will in the World – Shakespeare” – Steven Greenblatt – Elizabethan England was a wonderful time to have lived through.
7 March 2013 – What, where and when were the times to LIVE! At the moment, whatever it is, seems to be happening everywhere.
8 March 2013 – We and people like us will be using this building, so we are the ones who must identify the problems before they happen, and fix them.
9 March 2013 – Humanity is not as stupid as it might be, because of a very few people lifting the veil to enlightenment.
10 March 2013 – We are conscious beings questing towards our self-generated reason for our actions; it is not a concept drawing us toward it.
11 March 2013 – Do the right thing, but what is the right thing? To maximum others personal choice, and let them pursue their own self-interest.
12 March 2013 – Take away the protection of a US aircraft carrier over the horizon and those idyllic Greek islands would soon be stripped of their valuables.
13 March 2013 – Epiphanies are just ordinary thoughts, and are obviously so after they are clearly stated.
14 March 2013 – My belief in karma helps me to be a kinder and more contented person.
15 March 2013 – The horrid new diseases that have come to humanity are traced to their sources by boots-on-the-ground scientists, not armchair dreamers.
16 March 2013 – North America was saved for English-speaking people by Symon Schermerhorn in 1690, warning Albany of the destruction of Schenectady.
17 March 2013 – Triumphs of Experience by George Vaillant — Longitudinal studies discover what works and what doesn’t. It isn’t obvious.
18 March 2013 – David McCandless brings Shakespeare to Bend, and as far as Bend is from the center of the Earth, it hasn’t fallen off, yet.
19 March 2013 – Paranoia can be a useful concept. Accumulated experience conveys a simple fact of when the risk isn’t worth the exposure.
20 March 2013 – Hope versus optimism. Choose to be optimistic about known processes, and reject fantastic unnatural hopes.
21 March 2013 – Would our economy collapse if people only bought what they needed? Live frugally and have money for what you really need.
22 March 2013 – Kate learns to dominate Petruchio by voluntary submission to his whims. “The Taming of the Shrew,” lays out her subtle techniques.
23 March 2013 – This study of evil and war is of vital importance to the peace of the world. Its subject is the life or death of entire peoples.
24 March 2013 – How to make a permanent human society. Be content with the world you live within and live your life as you see fit.
25 March 2013 – Think ahead how enemies will spring up to exploit your difficulties. Then no man, however wise, can prevent disasters that will come.
26 March 2013 – A new computational view of evolution in progress using a shrinking blob computer algorithm.
27 March 2013 – There are obviously an infinity of experiences, thoughts and emotions which we haven’t had before, that are outside of our comfortable box.
28 March 2013 – How can I help you? Practice being instantly ready to see another person’s need and help them to their goal.
29 March 2013 – I was personally shocked by “The world Until Yesterday,” because so much of my childhood was called a primitive lifestyle.
30 March 2013 – How to heat your building forever for almost nothing. Heat the soil beneath the slab to about 70° F. using solar water panels on the roof.
31 March 2013 – I need to tell more stories. People understand narrative stories and are suspicious of abstractions.
April 2013
1 April 2013 – Improvisation standup is for everyone, including you. Improv is for everyone, because everyone needs to be flexible sometimes.
2 April 2013 – Place your confidence in what is knowable, and avoid blind faith in the unknowable.
3 April 2013 – Religious arguments must be upgraded to match the problems that modern scientific experiments have created.
4 April 2013 – Hope is a good thing sometimes and sometimes bad. The world needs a new hope that is based on an achievable stable reality.
5 April 2013 – If you don’t like this suggestion, please offer something better, but just saying no means disastrous deaths to huge populations of living people.
6 April 2013 – Humans are all under similar evolutionary pressures and there are developing a large number of different genes giving similar results.
7 April 2013 – On secure personal wealth it would seem the best advice is to own the place you live, no matter how modest, and avoid all debt.
8 April 2013 – Now, in our times of abundance, is the time to solve the population problem.
9 April 2013 – Spiritual Evolution by George Vaillant, Ben Franklin wrote, “Drink does not drown Care, but waters it, and makes it grow faster.”
10 April 2013 – If God doesn’t deliver it is your fault. God wants you to have everything you can conjure up in your imagination and state in your prayers.
11 April 2013 – Lab scientists say they can’t find evidence for success for John Perry’s methods, but he says, “… but I say … who cares what they say.”
12 April 2013 – A modern approach to Othello, by Shakespeare – This week Debbie and I watched six productions of Othello the Fool, (my title).
13 April 2013 – My motivation is to discover problems, define them and then offer a solution that is workable, and post it.
14 April 2013 – Personal experiments on happiness. I discovered that I couldn’t fake happiness very long, but that I could sustain cheering others for a hour.
15 April 2013 – Approaching alcohol like it’s a cure is pain looking for a companion in personal disaster. Avoid people who like being drunk.
16 April 2013 – There are an infinity of paths that go wrong, but Lucretius back in 60 BC set us on a good one, but it was ignored for a millennium.
17 April 2013 – Italians have a slightly different sense of morality than typical Americans, and perhaps the folktales, learned in childhood, is the cause.
18 April 2013 – Current human morality isn’t facing our problems. We must have a new morality or die back to what is in balance with the wild animals.
19 April 2013 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is unlikely that 100 years will pass without needing stuff from the EarthArk.
20 April 2013 – To become a brutal killer typically involves several stages. 1. Brutalization Stage, 2. Belligerency Stage, 3. Violent Performances, 4. Virulency.
21 April 2013 – Humanity must do something to control population, and it will be something we all presently think of as drastic, because it must be enforced.
22 April 2013 – “HOWL” by Allen Ginsberg is claimed was written in the Med, but I don’t know personally if that’s true, but both Marty and Julia probably know.
23 April 2013 – Which way do I jump when I see a tiger in a mirror behind me? How would a mother chimp react seeing her child in danger, in a reflection.
24 April 2013 – Some talk about books, never talk about the ideas in books. If they understood the ideas they would be eager to talk about the ideas.
25 April 2013 – If you don’t know your self and don’t know your enemy every battle will bring disaster.
26 April 2013 – A fully functioning Newray, an artificial Ray Kurzweil, may be decades away, but a basic one is almost here, one we might think is Ray.
27 April 2013 – I started off with the idea, “I am conscious but I have doubts about you,” and ended with serious doubts about most of my consciousness.
28 April 2013 – The current human situation is wonderful, but collapse isn’t. A 95 year old said, “Don’t worry those future people will take care of themselves.”
29 April 2013 – A news headline such as 205,479 died of the usual causes today, (=57,000,000/365) gives some perspective to the 3 who died in Boston.
30 April 2013 – Living people will consume everything they possibly can, and will let the dead and the unborn fend for themselves.
May 2013
1 May 2013 – Population growth has no limit, but land supply is limited and so is water, even so elected politicians refuse to consider population control.
2 May 2013 – The concept accepted by many people, and promoted in popular culture, is that if you can imagine something, and ask for it, you can have it.
3 May 2013 – The world was too perfect for me today. Then I started shrieking! Living too close to sybaritic perfection kills the soul’s need to grow.
4 May 2013 – Probaway’s list of existential risks to humanity, with search terms that will help you see the problems and potential answers.
5 May 2013 – Atheism is the luxury granted to people who feel comfortable living within this Universe.
6 May 2013 – What are the unknown unknowns? Albert Einstein told Yuan Lee his ideas were foolish, but Lee got a Nobel Prize when he developed them.
7 May 2013 – These days to be fully human a person must be interconnected to all the world, and the more limited their free speech the less human they are.
8 May 2013 – Is it truth, truthiness, lies or spin? There are subtle judgments we humans must make, but how can we learn to make them well? Experience!
9 May 2013 – Ray Kurzweil thinks ahead and suggests what longer term problems, those over the next few decades, we should be preparing for.
10 May 2013 – Capitalism serves well the human desire for infinite growth, but how can we learn to strive mightily and be contented at the same time?
11 May 2013 – In a world of unlimited desire getting what you think you want doesn’t satisfy, but only sharpens a desire for more.
12 May 2013 – People of The Book will learn parallel lessons from Seneca, and without the overlay of later organizational doctrine.
13 May 2013 – What a sorry fate we humans are compelled to live with. We can’t prevent population collapse, but we can support The Earth Ark.
14 May 2013 – My personal reminiscence of Berkeley’s People’s Park was of people were willing to stand up and demand their legal rights.
15 May 2013 – SARS, H5N9 and AIDS are the nasty things menacing us, but, one thing is certain, humanity can’t keep doubling its population much longer.
16 May 2013 – I am in part an Epicurean, and helping people achieve happiness is my happiness, and their contentment is my contentment.
17 May 2013 – Most adults would probably feel comfortable with level HAP~5 Socialism, with a secure status within a group that itself has a meaningful purpose.
18 May 2013 – How to develop a new habit might seem simple, but it requires laying the book or other task aside, thinking and practicing.
19 May 2013 – This chart is intended as an outline for an objective measure of how good and bad a person’s behavior may have been in the recent past.
20 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared – Imhotep is presently known for building the first pyramid in Egypt, being Socrates’ dying words, and proverbs.
21 May 2013 – All we can hope for at present is moderation, but even that is impossible because in a world filled with advertising people’s desires are infinite.
22 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared – Zeno of Elea. Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are; and the reason by which the world goes on.
23 May 2013 – The examined life that doesn’t result in a change of habitual behavior wasn’t worth the effort of the examination.
24 May 2013 – How to stop itching now! I published years ago, it works well but it is impossible to find with a google search. I am the world’s worst salesman!
25 May 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 4. A good general first puts his army beyond the possibility of defeat and then makes the enemy to defeat himself.
26 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared — Introduction, and how I came to creating this set of philosophical quotations, pictures, and comments.
27 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared — Socrates — Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
28 May 2013 – Philosophers Squared — The Pictures — Audacity and brevity is the soul of this enterprise.
29 May 2013 – Guiding principles for success in life. 1. Show up on time. The departure time is when preparations must be started for departure.
30 May 2013 – I try to be as positive as possible, especially in my relationship with people, and optimistic about the future, and find things that work.
31 May 2013 – MERS-CoV may or may not be the deadly pandemic, but it is wise now to prepare the right flu fighting habits. Links to my list.
June 2013
1 June 2013 – The techniques of improv free up one’s natural hesitance for quick thinking on one’s feet, especially when in front of an audience.
2 June 2013 – Copernicus — To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
3 June 2013 – Xenophanes — One must be a sage to recognize a sage. — No man knows distinctly anything, and no man ever will.
4 June 2013 – Philo — Learning is by nature curiosity… prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained.
5 June 2013 – Occam – Nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident or known by experience or proved by Sacred Scripture.
6 June 2013 – Schlick – Only in the hours when life smiles at him without the stern frown of purpose, is he really a man.
7 June 2013 – Philosophers Squared Off In Quotations – Alphabetical Index of Philosophers
8 June 2013 – One billion hungry – by Gordon Conway – Meaningful prediction is based on causal factors and not on past trends.
9 June 2013 – Ayn Rand – All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it – walk.
10 June 2013 – Anaxagoras – It is natural for beginners in philosophy to lose heart? For to seek the truth is to pursue a flying fox.
11 June 2013 – Albert Camus – We are all sentenced to death, and if not today it will come tomorrow.
12 June 2013 – Rene Descartes – I think, therefore I am. – Amplify the verifiable assumptions until a working solution can be demonstrated.
13 June 2013 – A. J. Ayer – But it is not sensible to cry for what is logically impossible. – No moral system can rest solely on authority.
14 June 2013 – Adam Smith – By pursuing his own interest he often promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
15 June 2013 – Alfred E. Newman – Yes we can’t! – What, Me Worry? – Most people don’t act stupid: it’s the real thing!
16 June 2013 – Immanuel Kant – Human freedom is realized in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself. – To be is to do. – Your acts should illustrate Law.
17 June 2013 – Philosophers Squared – What is PHILOSOPHY ? Philosophy is exploring the alternate paths to human contentment.
18 June 2013 – Heraclitus – You can not step in the same river twice. The water has changed and you too have changed. Everything flows, nothing stands still.
19 June 2013 – Anselm – Wisdom will increase your understanding, but belief will shrink it. – Unless I believe, I will not understand.
20 June 2013 – Parmenides – The steeds that bear me carried me as far as ever my heart desired, since they brought me and set me on the renowned Way.
21 June 2013 – Ambrose Bierce – I think that I think, therefore I think that I am; is as close a statement to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
22 June 2013 – William B. Irvine – Happiness is always beyond the grasp of a consumer, but tranquility is within easy reach of a stoic.
23 June 2013 – Epictetus – Since it is my reason which shapes and regulates all my being, it ought not itself be left to chance learning of habits.
24 June 2013 – Erasmus – ~In the land of the blind even a one-eyed man is a leader. – I accept what is offered and proceed with optimistic enthusiasm.
25 June 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu, 5 – Select men capable of love, honor and duty so they may be bound together at critical moments.
26 June 2013 – David Hume – Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.
27 June 2013 – Chrysippus – Don’t worry over that over which you have no control.
28 June 2013 – Karl Marx – From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! – To be radical is to grasp things by the root.
29 June 2013 – Human origins based on throwing rocks. – Throwing hard and accurately, give safety and food, it was a driving force in human evolution.
30 June 2013 – Marcus Aurelius – Guard your thoughts, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and a reasonable nature.
July 2013
1 July 2013 – Philosophers Squared – Seneca – No man was ever wise by chance. – Associate with people who are likely to improve you.
2 July 2013 – Alfred Russel Wallace – Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.
3 July 2013 – Thomas Reid – There is an external world whose laws do not change, is not effected by reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception.
4 July 2013 – Machiavelli – Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose they do just as they please.
5 July 2013 – Friedrich Nietzsche – All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.
6 July 2013 – Mary Wollstonecraft – No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
7 July 2013 – Zeno of Citium – The goal of life is living in agreement with all nature. – Happiness is a good flow of life.
8 July 2013 – Plutarch – They that are serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs. – KNOW THYSELF and AVOID EXTREMES.
9 July 2013 – Hypatia – Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. A civilization based on lies will be one of suffering.
10 July 2013 – Feyerabend – All methodologies have their limitations and the only ‘rule’ that survives is ‘anything goes’.
11 July 2013 – Michel Foucault – Everything I do, I do in order that it may be of use. – Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.
12 July 2013 – Martin Heidegger – Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. – Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?
13 July 2013 – Turing – Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. We will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.
14 July 2013 – Ray Kurzweil – A successful person’s pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.
15 July 2013 – Cicero – To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.
16 July 2013 – Einstein – Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts. – A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.
17 July 2013 – Alfred Tarski – “Snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white.
18 July 2013 – Karl Popper – No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
19 July 2013 – Jean-Paul Sartre – Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.
20 July 2013 – Simone de Beauvoir – Instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic.
21 July 2013 – Epicurus – Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth. – Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
22 July 2013 – Ludwig Wittgenstein – My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.
23 July 2013 – Diogenes – I ask of you, to stand to the side, that you may not, by blocking the sunshine, take from me that which you cannot give.
24 July 2013 – Cosimo de Medici – We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends.
25 July 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 6. By spying out the enemy’s plans and keeping ours hidden we may concentrate our forces and divide his.
26 July 2013 – Spinoza – Every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks. – When one falsity has been let in, an infinity of others follow.
27 July 2013 – Charles Scamahorn – Modern humans were created and are maintained by gossiping women. They choose the best and reject the rest.
28 July 2013 – Empedocles – The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere
29 July 2013 – Plotinus – The world is knowable, harmonious, and good.
30 July 2013 – Kierkegaard – There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
31 July 2013 – Anaxagoras – The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock.
August 2013
1 August 2013 – Friedrich Engels – What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.
2 August 2013 – Alfred North Whitehead – There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
3 August 2013 – Galileo Galilei – All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
4 August 2013 – Democritus – Moderation multiplies pleasures, and increases pleasure.
5 August 2013 – William James – It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
6 August 2013 – Émile Durkheim – To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.
7 August 2013 – Lev Vygotsky – All human perception consists of categorized rather than isolated perceptions.
8 August 2013 – Scarcity – Why Having Too Little Means So Much
9 August 2013 – Voltaire – I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.
10 August 2013 – W. V. O. Quine – The edge of the system must be kept squared with experience.
11 August 2013 – Garrett Hardin – The optimum population is less than the maximum. That is a new idea, and new is always alarming.
12 August 2013 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau – Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself.
13 August 2013 – Alan Watts – We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.
14 August 2013 – Isaac Newton – We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
15 August 2013 – Mark Twain – Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities. All generalizations are false, including this one.
16 August 2013 – Antisthenes – Unlearn what is untrue. – It is a royal privilege to do good and be ill spoken of.
17 August 2013 – Thales – Hope is the only good which is common to all men; those who have nothing more still possess hope.
18 August 2013 – B. F. Skinner – The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.
19 August 2013 – Duns Scotus – Those who deny the existence of contingency should be tortured until they admit that it is possible for them not to be tortured.
20 August 2013 – 147 Delphic maxims 1-Pursue goodness. 2-Obey all laws. 3-Praise goodness. 4-Obey your parents. 5-Honor justice. 6-Use your proven wisdom…
21 August 2013 – Friedrich Schiller – Folly, you may conquer, and it must yield! Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.
22 August 2013 – Thomas Aquinas – For those with faith, no evidence is necessary; for those without it, no evidence will suffice.
23 August 2013 – Theophrastus – We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology.
24 August 2013 – Antoine Arnauld – Rest, rest, shall I have not all eternity to rest.
25 August 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 7 – Amid the clamor of battle no one can hear clearly and you must devise efficient telecommunications.
26 August 2013 – Arthur Schopenhauer – Our world is driven by a continually dissatisfied will, continually seeking satisfaction.
27 August 2013 – Aristotle – Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution.
28 August 2013 – St. Augustine – Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of faith is to see what you believe. My life is meaningless without God.
29 August 2013 – J. L. Austin – Ordinary language blinkers the already feeble imagination. – Sentences are not as such either true or false.
30 August 2013 – Francis Bacon – Truth and utility are the very same thing. The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
31August 2013 – Jeremy Bentham – It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.
September 2013
1 September 2013 – George Berkeley – All those bodies which compose the frame of the world – have not any subsistence without a mind.
2 September 2013 – Plato – Man is a speaking being in search of spoken meaning. – When a tyrant first appears, he is in the role of a protector.
3 September 2013 – Protagoras – Man [ I ] is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.
4 September 2013 – Thomas Hobbes – When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war.
5 September 2013 – Denis Diderot – All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.
6 September 2013 – Pericles – Freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it.
7 September 2013 – Henri Bergson – I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.
8 September 2013 – Friedrich Schelling – All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create.
9 September 2013 – John Stuart Mill – The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.
10 September 2013 – Ferdinand de Saussure – Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula.
11 September 2013 – Bertrand Russell – Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth. – Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
12 September 2013 – John Locke – The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
13 September 2013 – Rudolf Carnap – The principal task of the logical analysis of a given proposition is to find out the method of verification for that proposition.
14 September 2013 – It’s vacation time for me at the South Lake Tahoe cabin my friends and I have rented the second week of September for 28 years.
15 September 2013 – Sunset photos over Lake Tahoe, taken with the HDR (High Dynamic Range) setting, from the Upper Truckee meadows.
16 September 2013 – Last week I attended my 60th high-school reunion, and it was quite an experience – highly to be recommended, especially the 60th.
17 September 2013 – Every year I raised a toast to our close friend Don Davis who died in 1985. Thank You, for providing a refuge for us wandering souls.
18 September 2013 – Replace the impossible, “Make your every action suitable for a Universal Law,” with, “Avoid things that harm your body or mind.”
19 September 2013 – Yet how could it be anything but the most shameful ignorance to think one knows when one does not know?
20 September 2013 – I rebel at a poster – “BOOZE – Better than Therpy!” – Drinking booze to solve personal problems is a path to personal disaster.
21 September 2013 – We have methods to prove certain ideas more valid than others, and a method for pruning off those ideas which were less effective.
22 September 2013 – The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1, Plato by Karl R. Popper warns of governments based on excessive concentration of power.
23 September 2013 – To maintain personal liberty a living balance is needed between the effective power of many independent systems.
24 September 2013 – Every place is a destination when you’re there, and I photograph my shoes taking me to several destinations.
25 September 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 8 – Avoid – recklessness, cowardice, quick temper, sensitivity to shame, and excess empathy.
26 September 2013 – It seems reasonable to ask our linguists to explore new methods for expanding our language to access new forms of reality.
27 September 2013 – Why did humans acquire so many unusual traits so very quickly? Modern man was created by ancient women selecting our traits.
28 September 2013 – Jacques Derrida – To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.
29 September 2013 – Montesquieu – To prevent abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
30 September 2013 – Noam Chomsky – It’s the intellectual elites role, as a secular priesthood, to really believe the nonsense that they put forth.
October 2013
1 October 2013 – An experiment, dissolving plaque from my arteries by raising my body temperature to 102°F and drinking 2½ ounces of whiskey.
2 October 2013 – Auguste Comte – The sacred formula of positivism: love as the principle, order as the foundation, and progress as the goal.
3 October 2013 – Charles Darwin – I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.
4 October 2013 – <emJohn Dewey – We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience. – A problem well put is half solved.
5 October 2013 – Gottlob Frege – Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.
6 October 2013 – Daniel Dennett – That’s enough. I’ve considered this matter enough, and now I’m going to act.
7 October 2013 – Sigmund Freud – I have not yet been able to answer, “What does a woman want?” – The best man she can get, to improve her condition.
8 October 2013 – Kurt Gödel – The notion of existence is one of the primitive concepts with which we must begin as given.
9 October 2013 – Georg Hegel- Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.
10 October 2013 – Christopher Hitchens – Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.
11 October 2013 – Edmund Husserl – Philosophers are all too fond of offering criticism from on high instead of studying and understanding things from within.
12 October 2013 – Carl Jung – Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.
13 October 2013 – John Maynard Keynes – The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.
14 October 2013 – Thomas Kuhn – The success of the paradigm… is at the start largely a promise of success.
15 October 2013 – Gottfried Leibniz – A possibility can be proved, either by proving its cause, or when experience teaches us that it is a fact in nature.
16 October 2013 – Claude Levi-Strauss – The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.
17 October 2013 – Ernst Mach – Where neither confirmation nor refutation is possible, science is not concerned.
18 October 2013 – Vladimir Lenin – The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
19 October 2013 – Malebranche – Our soul is not united to our body in the ordinary sense of these terms. It is immediately and directly united to God alone.
20 October 2013 – Thomas More – If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.
21 October 2013 – G. E. Moore – Everything is what it is and not another thing.
22 October 2013 – Thomas Paine – The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.
23 October 2013 – John Searle – Accept that consciousness is a biological phenomenon like photosynthesis, digestion, mitosis, and problems vanish.
24 October 2013 – David Chalmers – There’s certainly nothing original about the observation that conscious experience poses a hard problem.
25 October 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 9 – Awards and punishments given before accomplishments will not encourage cooperation.
26 October 2013 – Blaise Pascal – Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is a fool. If you win, you win all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Fool?
27 October 2013 – A typical Sunday. UU church, coffee shop conversation, a short walk, I took some HDR enhanced photos, and some Graphic outline ones too.
28 October 2013 – Gilbert Ryle – Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine.
29 October 2013 – Michael Sandel – To argue about justice is unavoidably to argue about virtues, about substantive moral and even spiritual questions.
30 October 2013 – James Bond Stockdale – You’ve got to get it straight! You are in charge of you.
31 October 2013 – Charles Peirce – Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any questions.
November 2013
1 November 2013 – Alfred Thayer Mahan – Organized force enables the weak to go about their business, and to sleep securely, safe from the violence.
2 November 2013 – A chronological Index of 128 Philosophers Squared – To assume a fighting stance and be prepared to fight for a philosophical idea.
3 November 2013 – When does a strategy of overshoot work better? You can speed up a little at a time, but you can generally slow more quickly.
4 November 2013 – Forced-air home heating is noisy, cold and drafty. The air at the vent may be warm, but by the time it gets across a room it’s a cold draft.
5 November 2013 – If no one knows a thing can be discovered or even exists, there is no successful preexisting search strategy to find it. Or is there?
6 November 2013 – Starting the search for Probaway Person of the year 2013? It looks like Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley is a top contender.
7 November 2013 – A journey into the unknown unknowns. Off we go into the search for the unknown but hopefully knowable unknowns.
8 November 2013 – Camouflage has been a part of living systems for hiding from predators, and prey since near the beginning of life here on Earth.
9 November 2013 – The Inner Citadel, and Courage Under Fire. The thing that brings down a man is not pain but shame!
10 November 2013 – The Evolution of Cooperation is being nice, provocable, forgiving, and clear, and cheat only in the final play of the game.
11 November 2013 – Our sick Ponderosa pine tree comes down. It was a seed in 1829 when Peter Ogden led an early fur trapping expedition near my home.
12 November 2013 – Camouflage – The methods of visual hiding and for perceiving through it to symmetry, continuity, groupiness, closure.
13 November 2013 – To create or see past camouflage we will need to control… a list of 20 things like, Figure versus ground, Symmetry versus chaos…
14 November 2013 – Seeing through camouflage into simple unknown unknowns. Tens of billions of humans had used Newton’s Laws without seeing them.
15 November 2013 – Sometimes a thing confused everyone, until someone an observation, and that after that everyone thought it was obvious.
16 November 2013 – What unknown unknowns should we avoid? Nonexistent unknowns are infinite in number, and believing in one doesn’t make it real.
17 November 2013 – Gallup Poll that 78% of people believe in angels. Another Gallup Poll found only 15% of Americans believe that human beings evolved.
18 November 2013 – How accurate must information be before we act on it? My dog farted, “I stink therefore I… hum … I think I’ll go back to my reveries.”
19 November 2013 – What is the right action given the reality we must cope with? Seeing through data, information, and facts to get actions right.
20 November 2013 – To eat chocolate, warm your mouth, hold the chocolate and chew and message it slowly, add a little butter and honey and avoid bananas.
21 November 2013 – Learn the techniques of detection of unusual data points in any realm of obscuring factors such as, Camouflage, Crypsis, Mimesis
22 November 2013 – 21 possible ways to make the unknown unknowns into new and useful things by finding alternate uses, and supporting others who search.
23 November 2013 – Start looking for the unknown unknowns! Carry a notebook with you at all times, and write down unusual ideas or they are forgotten.
24 November 2013 – I read “A Thanksgiving tribute to women.” at the UU service, thanking women for making humanity what it has become.
25 November 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu 10. The causes of 18 calamities and how to avoid them.
26 November 2013 – Seeking the unknown unknowns behind veils is different from seeing camouflage, they cling to things, but can be easily penetrated.
27 November 2013 – Augustine laid the foundations for the doctrines that ended any form of serious inquiry into the nature of the world.
28 November 2013 – Seeking the unknown unknowns behind walls, that require great effort to remove physical objects, but once removed they stay gone.
29 November 2013 – Seeking the unknown unknowns – expanding the search to other ways of perceiving and hiding, and finding of things that are really there.
30 November 2013 – Camouflage in practice isn’t usually evil. In iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma games, positive behavior almost always wins the games.
December 2013
1 December 2013 – An photographic example of camouflage in the forest. Bilateral symmetry is a give away of camouflage in all known animal species.
2 December 2013 – An example of discovering an unknown. Women accelerated human evolution by discussing with their friends which men to marry. Obvious?
3 December 2013 – Photographic examples of failures of camouflage – Symmetry. Bilateral symmetry is a camouflage giveaway.
4 December 2013 – Failure to see known knowns is voluntary blindness. Our daily lives are loaded with information, like advertising, and most of it is best ignored.
5 December 2013 – Cuttlefish are ideal for searching into the theory of unknown unknowns, because they evolved to be voluntarily hidden in various situations.
6 December 2013 – Natural selection is far too slow to create some of the specialized phenomena they we are observing, that doesn’t appear adaptive.
7 December 2013 – Within Natural Selection, is Sexual Selection, and within it is Eveish Selection. The mate is selected for a complex of behavioral qualities.
8 December 2013 – TIME’s Person of the Year 100 list? Xi Jinping, the President of China, during the greatest economic expansion in history is memorable.
9 December 2013 – How my forethought saved a disaster at -21°F. Always have backup on critical systems, and some slack in the backup.
10 December 2013 – It is the removal of obfuscations and the layering of clear perceptions that bring on a gestalt realization of unseen but real facts.
11 December 2013 – TIME Person of the Year 2013 is Pope Francis. It is strange that TIME Satanized Snowden. They are having trouble with the NSA spying.
12 December 2013 – Life at the speed of light to distant planets by J. Craig Venter; send how to build the appropriate machines then send the DNA code.
13 December 2013 – A Brief History of Thought was loaded with deepity, and truthiness. ie. The French Revolution was the foundation of modern liberty.
14 December 2013 – Bilateral symmetry and standard longitudinal arrangement are deep in living DNA, and are giveaways of life and food to predators.
15 December 2013 – Once a bilateral symmetry is seen project a perpendicular line between them, to other symmetrics, and to the head and tail of that line.
16 December 2013 – Sometimes, a partial solution to a whole system of problems is better than whole solutions to each of its parts taken separately.
17 December 2013 – Six types of mimicry have evolved, Partial, Batesian, Mullerian, Wasmannian, Vertebrate, Auto, but I suspect there are more.
18 December 2013 – Lakoff’s book gives illustrations of metaphors, it doesn’t give much in techniques for developing new metaphors, or perhaps it does.
19 December 2013 – When there are synonyms there is possibly of a core idea, that isn’t quite covered by any word or phrase; that needs exposing.
20 December 2013 – Why aren’t all living things nasty to prevent predation. The answer is, it doesn’t maximize a species DNA or they would be nasty.
21 December 2013 – Will the day come when we have technical perfection in everything imaginable, but we don’t have any food; nobody does.
22 December 2013 – Our hundred year oil splurge will leave only a narrow band in the geological strata of the four billion years of life. Then what?
23 December 2013 – There are millions of insect species and each of them has approached passing on its own genes in its own idiosyncratic way.
24 December 2013 – Will I, our world be better off a year from now if I apply these words, and concepts they imply, to my present decisions for action?
25 December 2013 – The Art of War by Sun Tzu, 11. Walk timidly, appear simple, even stupid, until you can fight desperately and achieve a decisive victory.
26 December 2013 – It wasn’t until 2008 that Google even attempted what I had published in 1999, and ignore flu, poison oak, and heart attack cures of 1994.
27 December 2013 – When you encounter someone purveying hope and asking for money, it’s time to quietly say no, and walk away, as they are lost.
28 December 2013 – What’s wrong with corporate charity? Charity is an eternal thing and must benefit everyone and not just the corporate entity.
29 December 2013 – New names for the non-visible wavelengths of light, based on a tag to their higher or lower frequency. red becomes, low-red, or high-red
30 December 2013 – Surround your unknowns with known facts. The Trustworthiness Scale is just expanded definitions in different dimensions.
31 December 2013 – Creating slack around things like time, money, space and people makes for easy flexibility, and a more contented life.
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