A life in words

  • This Wonderful World

    This Wonderful World

    Do yourself a huge favor and perform the following steps: Click here. Click on this button  in the upper right. Spend hours gawking. TIP: You can get another batch of photos by clicking  at the bottom. You may have noticed that hardly a post on this blog goes by without some sort of beautiful nature photo being…

  • Too Whatever

    A few weeks ago with some friends I watched a Finnish movie called “Äideistä parhain” (Mother of Mine). It tells the story of a young Finnish boy named Eero. Eero has a bit of a rough time through the course of the film. His father is killed in an air raid during fighting between the Soviet…

  • Phil’s Lesson

    In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors (Bill Murray’s character) lives February 2nd over and over and over again. Such an experience would be maddening—no relationship you built would persist, no accomplishment would be lasting. Yet it would also be liberating—a chance to live life without permanent consequences aside from the learning you take with you. You could…

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty