Most current-events-related conversations are just people...

“Because it helps you participate in everyday conversations!” is a weak but at least meaningful answer to the “What is accomplished” question. But when you quit playing the current events game, and observe others talking about them, you might notice that almost nobody really knows what they’re talking about. There is an extraordinary gulf between having a functional understanding of an issue, and the cursory glance you get from the news. If you ever come across a water-cooler conve...

 Concepts Represent the Complex of Our Experiences

The only justification for our concepts is that they serve to represent thc complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy. I am convinced that the philosophers had a harmful effect upon the progress of scientific thinking in removing certain fundamental concepts from the domain of empiricism, where they are under control, to the intangible heights of the a priori—the universe of ideas is just as little independent of the nature of our experiences as clothes are of the form...

 Lyrics to David Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things"

Wake up you sleepy head Put on some clothes, shake up your bed Put another log on the fire for me Ive made some breakfast and coffee Look out my window what do I see A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me All the nightmares came today And it looks as though they're here to stay What are we coming to No room for me, no fun for you I think about a world to come Where the books were found by the golden ones Written in pain, written in awe By a puzzled man who questioned What we were ...

 The Efforts and Rewards of Naturalism

One day I buried myself, prone, in the muck of a muskrat house. While my clothes absorbed local color, my eyes absorbed the lore of the marsh. A hen redhead cruised by with her convoy of ducklings, pink-billed fluffs of greenish-golden down. A Virginia rail nearly brushed my nose. The shadow of a pelican sailed over a pool in which a yellow-leg alighted with warbling whistle; it occurred to me that whereas I write a poem by dint of mighty cerebration, the yellow-leg walks a better one just by...