The Grave of Plato
Automatic Disbarment
She told us, ‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.'
In point of fact, deprivation of rights under color of law is a Federal crime. The statute is confusing in its wording, so perhaps she has a defense in claiming that she was not motivated by prejudice (but would equally deny that right to everyone, under color of law). She ought to be arrested and charged, though, and obligated to make that defense as a former judge to a jury of her peers— her fellow citizens, I mean, not legal elites.
Hawaii is trying the same thing. It’s a sort of small scale secession, refusing to be bound by the parts of the Constitution that they disapprove of existing.
A Modest Proposal
All higher-education courses could be done online via bots with no need for expensive classrooms, dorm rooms and other physical facilities.Instead of paying college costs currently approaching $100,000 a year, students could earn their degrees conveniently and inexpensively from the comfort of their own homes. Moreover, they would be given access to bots that they can use to take tests and write any essays required by the instructor bots. The students’ test answers would no doubt be perfect, and their essays would be persuasive and error-free, which would allow all students to be given A grades without having to disrupt their lives by attending classes, listening to lectures or reading.
It's a clever idea, which we are likely to adopt more completely than we like to admit.
Rodeo Songs
Duty to Protect Yourself
Infinity and the Divine
There’s a lot to be said about the use of the concept of infinity in theology, which I will write about once I’m not traveling. Different major theologians have thought that it was a wonderful way to think about God; others have disliked the usage for various reasons. Nicholas of Cusa, one of the fans, had diagrams meant to convey the impossibility of finite minds grasping God. Others thought other things.
Rodeo Riding
From under a black felt cowboy hat, hair blacker than coffee runs to the collar of his black shirt. The impression of severity is relieved by blue eyes the color of his jeans and a smile crease from the habit of grinning around a Marlboro. It’s an arresting face, burnished by years of outdoor chores, smoke, roistering humor and pain soothed by shots of Jägermeister. It befits arguably the greatest rodeo bull rider who ever lived and certainly the hardest-bodied, a man who never conceded to any power. Until a bull broke his neck.“I always knew something like this was going to have to happen,” he says.
Indeed. Every rodeo rider knows something like this is a constant danger.
The Post deserves some credit for this one. It's a pretty good piece. There is some fulminating in the middle about whether or not rodeo is cruel or should be allowed to exist, given that there is no practical reason for anyone to ride bulls -- and limited need, these days, to break horses. Ultimately, though, raising that concern probably just lets readers of that persuasion feel like their perspective is understood, and allows them to engage with a moving story about a courageous man who loved to ride hard and now has to leave it behind.
Except for the bull, that is. He took the bull home, where it lives a life befitting a retired rodeo star.
Petra
Who Are You?
At least four famous, not-often-enough-repeated Aristotelian questions can be asked of any given thing when we try to figure out what and why it is. They are: 1) “What is it?” – a tree, a rabbit, a planet? 2) “Is it?” That is, does it exist rather than not exist? Does it stand outside of nothingness? 3) Who or what put it into motion or into being? 4) “Why is it in existence?” What is the reason for which it now exists?Of human beings, we can add a further question: “Who are you?” That is, each of us has a particular, singular, unrepeatable existence unlike any other being that ever existed, but we are still human. Each human “what” is a “you.”
The Army has a Navy?
What this exercise attempting to cross the Atlantic has proven is that we may not need tankers. Our poorly maintained and continually neglected naval vessels, be they Navy or Army, may not be capable of making it to the conflict to begin with.
If someone watching this circus unfold wakes the hell up realizing we are in one hell of a self-inflicted hurt locker and starts to yank chains to immediately effect change?
Then, this crackpot pier idea will be that blessing in disguise.
Home on the Mountain
They Sure Have Pretty Sunsets
The one thing that isn’t fake in this town is the beautiful Mojave sky. This was taken by the roller coaster in the same casino with the bar mentioned below.