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THE QUOTE
“I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” — Johannes Kepler
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MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE
Happy birthday to good old Johnny Kepler, who would have been 441 years old today.
Befitting his Teutonic heritage, Kepler was the guy who essentially ordered the universe. It was his work in determining his eponymous laws of planetary motion that led to Isaac Newton’s great universal gravity breakthrough some 40 years after the German’s death.
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Too bad a brainiac like K. couldn’t have been around in today’s world. I bet he’d have been happy to tweak his verbiage a tad, perhaps including a single intelligent woman in his short list of preferred critics.
Kepler penned his own epitaph, engraved in stone at his burial spot in a churchyard in Regensburg, Bavaria. Here it is:
“Mensus eram cœlos, nunc terrae metior umbras
Mens cœlestis erat, corporis umbra iacet.”
(“I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure
Skybound was the mind, earthbound the body rests.”)
[ED: h/t to Astrid Weltz Laimins of Tampa, Florida for the heads up.]
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I’LL BE A MONKEY’S NEPHEW
Sticking with science, Mental Floss offers us 5 pieces of evidence we — Homo Sapiens sapiens — are still evolving. Here they are:
- We Drink Milk
- We’re Losing Our Wisdom Teeth
- We’re Resisting Diseases
- Our Brains Are Shrinking
- We Have Blue Eyes
Auntie Amma
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Click on the link for details.
Then ask yourself why we still have to argue this point in 21st Century America.
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NOT MY STYLE
Only three days left in this momentous year, 2012, and I’m proud to say I still haven’t seen the viral Gangnam Style vid.
Here’s another vid I haven’t seen: The Grumpy Cat (Tartar Sauce).
BTW: I still haven’t figured out that Ermahgerd chick. I ask you, who on this Earth ever talked like that?
Intentionally avoiding all these memes and rages is now an honor thing with me.
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INQUISITIVE MINDS
Have you seen this chart yet?
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If this graphic is accurate, what happened between the Aurora bloodbath and the Sandy Hook killfest that made us start taking these things seriously?
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THAT’S YOUR GOD
The author of the bestselling “A Universe from Nothing: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing,” Lawrence M. Krauss, penned a heartfelt think piece for CNN.com the other day, in which he wonders why everybody and his brother is telling us we have to lean on god as we grieve for the Sandy Hook kids.
The Prez Tells Us Our BFF, God, Will Get Us Through This
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Krauss is a theoretical physicist at Arizona State University and a noted atheist. He’s one of the hottest popular science writers around these days.
“Why,” he writes, “must it be a natural expectation that any such national tragedy will be accompanied by prayers, including from the president, to at least one version of the very god, who apparently in his infinite wisdom, decided to call 20 children between the age of 6 and 7 home by having them slaughtered by a deranged gunman in a school…?”
He wonders why TV news shows in times like these have to call out the clergy to tell us that “they have something special or caring to offer.”
Godless
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Some talking-head clerics and politician-talk show hosts have even claimed that the agnostics and atheists among us lack the ability to fully grieve, sympathize, and even process these travesties. Krauss calls this kind of thinking “offensive” and “nonsense.”
I, natch, am with Krauss on this one. All these preachers, rabbis, and imams are telling us Sandy Hook was “god’s will” and then turning around and saying non-believers lack a moral foundation.
Are you kidding me? We’re not the one’s worshipping a god that decides to let massacres happen — you are!
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GUN CRAZY, PART 1,624,583….
Gary, Indiana’s finest political writer, Monroe Anderson, has written an excruciatingly personal account of the dangers of the mentally ill toting guns around.
Monroe Anderson
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Do yourself a favor and read it. If the piece doesn’t elevate your pulse and respirations, you’re probably dead already.
What he doesn’t say is that when it comes to guns in this holy land, we’re all pretty much mentally ill.
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