Saturday, January 31st, 2004
Detest witch burnings, but detest even more the idea that witches ought not be burned.
Archive for January, 2004
Saturday, January 31st, 2004
I often vacation in Ossineke, Michigan at my family’s cottage on Lake Huron. Ossineke has two major attractions. The first is a swell tavern called the Wagon Wheel, a joint consisting entirely of one big room, complete with a juke box (40% Country, 20% Western, 30% old rock-n-roll, 10% “traditional” songs like “Happy Birthday”), a [...]
Friday, January 30th, 2004
I have fought my fight, I have lived my life I have drunk my share of wine;From Trier to Koln there was never a knight Had a merrier life than mine.Charles Kingsley
Thursday, January 29th, 2004
The hodag was a dreadful beast that terrorized the logging camps of the nineteenth century. It had great iron teeth, a long flat tail of bone with steel-like serrated edges. It ate bears, deer, and wildcats, but its favorite food was landlookers: those men that scouted areas for suitable logging operations. Once a landlooker was [...]
Wednesday, January 28th, 2004
Lawyer and animal rights activist Steven Wise’s book, Drawing the Line, does three things: (1) It explains what makes a person a person; (2) It provides a person-continuum of 0.0 (mere stimulus-response machines) to 1.0 (full autonomy—which is what Wise identifies as the essence of personhood); (3) It tells us that any animal with a [...]
Tuesday, January 27th, 2004
On EqualityLet’s face it, no matter what the Declaration of Independence says, men are not equal. Sure, in the eyes of God they are, and in the eyes of the law they ought to be, but other than that? Inequality reigns more powerfully than a sadistic ante-bellum plantation owner after a few drinks.
Monday, January 26th, 2004
My blog isn’t intended for poetry, and I am not a poet. Nonetheless, some might enjoy this hobby: rhymes for drinking times. Written under the pseudonym, WC Bardstool, they’ve been well-received in Gilbert Magazine. Here are two:There once was a gal from Nanu,Who used wine to create a fondoo, When men flooded her land, To win [...]
Sunday, January 25th, 2004
Alexandre Dumas once described the chains of marriage as being “so heavy that it often takes two people to carry them, and sometimes three.” That’s sinfully, even fearfully, funny stuff.
Sunday, January 25th, 2004
If something isn’t at all comprehensible or even imaginable, it’s weighty evidence that it doesn’t exist. In the words of American philosopher CS Pierce: “We cannot even talk about anything but a knowable object. . . . The absolutely unknowable is a non-existent existence.” Consider also these words by German philosopher Josef Pieper: “We [...]
Sunday, January 25th, 2004
Drinking beer and wine is a waste of time? Naw. Drinking helps us to do nothing, and when we’re doing nothing, we’re doing eternity.
Sunday, January 25th, 2004
“Why won’t you attend wedding and baby showers?”I get that question a lot. I have lots of reasons. For starters, I don’t enjoy them. I work in the office and my wife handles the domestic front, thus making much of the stuff received at baby showers something of a (boring) puzzle to me. I also [...]