Two worlds

Many people inhabit two worlds. The everyday world, which we all take for granted, is full of amazing things made possible by science: Modern medicine, air travel, cell phones, automobiles, satellite TV. And scientists are constantly building on existing knowledge, and finding out more and more new things. They are using a tool that works: The scientific method. They take it for granted. We take it for granted.

Some of the people who take the results of science for granted, however, also inhabit a second world: A world of supernatural belief. Their religious convictions cause them to disbelieve many of the scientific principles that make the everyday world possible. This puzzles me.

The world they believe in is not the world they live in. What a piece of work is man.

Evanescence

Most of us don't wind up in our dream jobs, and although the things we do might be important at the time we do them, if we look back, their impermanence diminishes them.

Really, the things we remember most, and care most about, seem to be what we might describe as trivial: Games and other idle pleasures.

Perhaps the most important thing we do in our lives is to entertain ourselves and others. That is what seems to last.

Friends don't let friends vote for kindergarteners

I am going to take back--no, merely modify--something I said about the Republican attempt to wreck the Obama presidency. Oh, they're trying to do that for sure, but I had blamed their racism, and their racism only, for that. I'm still convinced of their racism, but now it's clear to me that they would do the same to any Democratic president. For the radical right, it's a long term strategy.

In a recent op-ed, Deval Patrick recounts a meeting in which Grover Norquist was expounding on the "permanent Republican majority." When challenged that, surely, there would be Democratic presidents in the future, Norquist replied that Republicans would simply not allow them to rule as Democrats.

We can see the strategy at work in the current House of Representatives. They simply say no to any Democratic ideas. If they have to ruin the economy to get the spending cuts they want, they are willing to do so. One wonders (if he or she is a reasonable adult) why the radical right refuses to accept very generous offers from the Democrats, any offers that come to less than 100% of what they want. One shouldn't wonder. These are emotional three-year-olds. My calling them kindergarteners gives them too much credit.

And the hubristic "permanent Republican majority?" The "thousand year Reich" lasted less than twenty. This, too, shall pass.