Contingent Logicalism

I believe that each of us has the right and possibly the duty to found our own school of philosophy and give it a cool name and then argue in its defense until our inevitable demise. We should seek acolytes in the full knowledge that they will fall out with us over some arcane point and repudiate our teachings when founding their own school. Everything we accomplish in our lives will then be consigned to the ash heap of history, where old ideas can be scrounged up for free and hot-glued together in the form of new and startling insights.

A terrible thing to waste

We don’t need to add states. We need to subtract or rather consolidate them. Like, fold up Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin into one. If Rustbeltiana was a single state, it would be about 248,000 square miles in area, comparable to Texas (around 268,000). And it would have a lot more people than the Lone Star state, maybe 49 vs. 39 million. (It would also have 7 Major League Baseball teams.) Then, for neatness, we should simply give Michigan to Canada. In general, I have found Michiganders to be very polite and cautious people who would fit right in.

Trying times

The way I see it, a human life can be divided into four stages. Stage one is where you try to get your bearings and figure out what the hell is going on here. Failing that, you move on to stage two as you try to prove to an uncaring world how very very special you are. During stage three you try to make yourself useful. Stage four you try to make yourself comfortable. An extended attachment to stage one has produced some of the most wonderful things our species has ever done. Too long in stage two makes monsters.

Merciless

A news headline from the BBC: “Roof of historic Ming Dynasty tower collapses in China.” It’s a historic site, nobody was injured, repairs will be made, and so on. I just need to point out that if the roof of a historic Ming Dynasty tower is going to collapse anywhere in the world, all indications are that said collapse will occur in China. That should go without saying, yet they went ahead and said it, being redundant as I too have also done as well, but they lack my excuse of needing to stretch this to exactly 100 words...long.

The Smart Money

So okay. So your toast might could land on the kitchen floor with the butter side up. There is a possibility that the person behind the wheel of that BMW is not a total douche, as well as non-zero chance that the 62-year-old millionaire investment banker and the 26-year-old stripper really truly love each other in a way that is not icky at all. Your trousers might actually have shrunk quite a bit since the last time you wore them and that’s maybe just a freckle. It turns out there’s a broad gray area between highly unlikely and absolutely impossible.

Aw shucks

I was cleaning up the house and it occurred to me that to really get all this dog hair off the floor I should use a pair of black dress pants. Then I was sprinkling some baby powder down the front of my shorts and I looked at the label and it said to store it in a cool dry place and I thought to myself if I had access to a cool dry place I wouldn’t be sprinkling baby powder down the front of my shorts. Kind of a folksy avuncular eye twinkly ain’t life funny rant this week.

You will enjoy this

Most stories are written in the past tense, which makes sense because most stories are written in the past, at least long enough ago to get the words from the writer’s brain to the reader’s eye. Mostly in third person (he ate his sandwich), some in first person (he ate my sandwich). Other stories are written in present tense, second person for a certain immediacy, like, “You look up from your battered desk as the blonde dame walks into your crummy office.” Note also that this approach demands adjectives. My question is why isn’t science fiction written in future tense?