Recently I had conversations with two different people, both commenting that they tried to be kind in life. What struck me was how as far as I could tell this wasn’t particularly true in either case. I came away with two thoughts. One had to do with our amazing human ability to think the best of ourselves despite all the contradictory evidence. (There is, of course, also that corollary of those who can see nothing good about themselves, despite all... Read more

George Clinton was born today in 1941. Read more

The case in Juhn Ahn’s translation goes: “Baizhang revisited Mazu for a consultation. Mazu raised his fly whisk. The master [i.e., Baizhang] asked, “Is this its function or beyond its function?” Mazu hung his whisk back in its old spot. The master [remained speechless] for a while. Mazu said, “Later when you open your lips how will you instruct others?” The master thereupon snatched the whisk and raised it. Mazu said, “Is this its function or beyond its function?” The... Read more

Finding myself thinking of Robin Williams. Read more

Jan & I promised each other that a significant part of our new lives in California will include going to movies. In the past month we’ve been to two, so while more than modest, it looks to be shaping up to be an improvement on the past. The other night we saw Mr. Holmes, a small movie exploring Sherlock Holmes imagined in his old age. The amazing Ian McKellen, who I gather is in his early seventies, plays Holmes at... Read more

I see it was on this day in 1925 that Adolph Hitler’s vision for the world Mein Kampf was first published. I think of hard times, and I think of men on white horses, and those who listen to their siren songs. And I think about how these preachers of an easy solution putting the blame for all the ills we are experiencing on some other, usually people with little actual power, women, foreigners, sexual minorities just seem to reincarnate... Read more

One of the things I like about Wikipedia is their willingness to ascribe actual dates to events that took place long, long ago, and for which, the actual evidence supporting that particular date seem to me to be rather tenuous. Of course the closer we get to today, the easier it is to feel the date is the date. And so today is counted in Islamic culture marking when Mohammed and his companions fled from Medina to Mecca 622 years... Read more

It was on this day in 1838 that Ralph Waldo Emerson, who six years before had resigned as minister of the Second Church (Unitarian), was invited to speak to the graduating class at Harvard Divinity School. The now famous or infamous, your choice, Divinity School Address, as Coleen Walsh writing in the Harvard Gazette notes, “represented a turning point for Unitarianism, beginning its transformation from a liberal form of Christianity to a type of religious liberalism independent of specific historic... Read more

After a decade hurtling through space at seven forty-nine in the morning, Eastern time, space probe New Horizons should have passed less than eight thousand miles from Pluto. Assuming nothing horrible happened we will receive pictures, lots and lots of pictures around midnight on Wednesday. For more on this amazing feat go here. Read more

Forbes Magazine ranked Joaquin Guzman Loera, Mexican crime king pin, and now twice escaped prisoner, on its list of self made billionaires for four years running. On the one hand it was simply meant as a list of rich people without regard to how they made their fortunes. And when people objected they discovered reasons to not include him on the list. However, I have an abiding feeling the initial impulse of the good folk at Forbes was that in... Read more