A life in words

  • On the War

    [Note: this article is a reposting of something I wrote for my family-only blog. It seems to be appropriate for general circulation, though, and I now present it with only the slightest editing.] I sort of think fighting over politics is like Bible bashing: totally unproductive. Why fight over the Good News? Why start a…

  • Life

    I recently had a debate with my roommate about a very significant issue: how do we as a society decide whether and for how long individuals in a “permanent vegetative state” (deliberate scare quotes) are kept on life support. Who decides the matter of the prolongation of their lives? There are a few possibilities: The…

  • Did you know…

    That one of the main themes in the soundtrack from The Hudsucker Proxy comes from the adagio from Spartacus? Neither did I.

The Master said, ‘Yu, shall I tell you what it is to know[?] To say you know when you know, and to say you do not when you do not, that is knowledge.’Confucius, The Analects, II.17, trans. D. C. Lau, Penguin 1979