Reply #18: Don't get me started...

[NNadir]

I live now totally on the words of the British scientist (and historian of science) David Brewster:

...the keenness of his temper, his clear perception of the truth and his indistinguishable love of it, combined to exasperate and prolong the hostility of his enemies. When argument failed to enlighten their judgment and reason to dispel their prejudices, he wielded against them his powerful weapons of ridicule and sarcasm; and in his unrelenting warfare, he seems to have forgotten that Providence had withheld from his enemies those very gifts which had so liberally received...

It sounds impossibly arrogant, I know, for me to quote this in this context, and I know also that there are fundamental ways in which my mind is small and provincial, but on the other hand, although I've only seen a fraction of what I have wanted to see, and known just a mote of what I wanted to know, I feel perfectly well justified in wielding such weapons of ridicule of which Brewster speaks.

Some ignorance is deliberate and some ignorance glories in itself.

When I was young and afraid of dying, I tried to reassure myself by telling myself that to be certain of death was to understand that one will get out of whatever trouble one finds oneself in.

"...perchance to dream..."

Now, though, I have children, and it breaks my heart that the consequences of my generation's life will fall on theirs, no matter that I will personally escape it. With all the knowledge available in these times, speaking of humanity as a whole, we are as myopic as the generation that experienced the black death. It seems to me that these have been exceptionally stupid times, where we have everything from Bill O'Reilly controlling a big microphone on the right and the mirror on the left, well, never mind...

...ethically there are some things that cannot and should not be acknowledged...