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Category Archives: Philosophy

Fundamentalism in Religion…and in Dick Cheney

The prophet is often unloved

There is great comfort in absolutes. It is the gray that wobbles us.
So we yearn for truth, the absolute truth. And if we find such sapphire clarity, it flattens our doubts. This is the great attraction of fundamentalism. Whether Hasidic, Shiite, or Evangelical, the acceptor has been presented with a revealed [...]

Subprime Thinking

“It is the private trading of complex instruments that lurk in the financial shadows that worries regulators and Wall Street and that [has] created stresses in the broader economy. Economic downturns and panics have occurred before, of course. Few, however, have posed such a serious threat to the entire financial system that regulators have responded [...]

Craft vs. Creativity

“With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, craftsmanship dissolved miserably into creativity.” Thus spoke the cooper in his shop beside the flour mill, with no correction possible.

Flowers Bugged Me

Everything grew easily where I grew up. In the long Southern California seasons of sun and moderate warmth, there was no challenge.
I suspect, looking back, that such gardening ease actually produced a glory of flowering plants, but there are only two in my childhood memory: zinnias and nasturiums. When I was eight, I planted [...]

Mount St. Helena

Aristotle

I have, in my dotage, become a Peripatetic (derived from Greek… literally “ones walking around”). The Peripatetic School was founded by Aristotle in 335 BC, so I am far from a charter member, but as with philosophy, striding about—especially to high places—affords one a wider view of the world.