Though Mark Twain wrote ....

...that if a man had a dog with a conscience, the kind thing to do would be to shoot the poor dog, I think Mr Twain was not altogether serious.

Guilt is the measure of one's sense of connection with those he has ill served.

The feel of truth

Through genes and upbringing, this world has made me who I am. Through those I happen to love and the ways and constancy with which I love them , I now finish making me who I am.

And as love produces and bridges the generations, I begin making some tiny part of the world what it will be.

The ring of truth

If you find yourself torn between being honest or being attractive, you are seeing the wrong choices. The choice that will live longer is between being honest or backing away from the situation. There is nothing less attractive than a liar for when we hear him, we must depend on sore and uncharitable imagination to supply the parts of the picture he covers or leaves out.

Belief and Psi

Your browser might not be up to showing Greek symbols. Capitol Psi, in a modern physics context, stands for the wave equation. It says in effect that if you know how much energy the particle is carrying and the disposition of forces that may act on a particle [e.g. in the case of an electron, where the nucleus is and that it exerts electrical attraction, where other electrons swarm and that they exert repulsion] then you can describe the shape of a "cloud" of probable presence for the particle. That is, a shaped region of space is defined by the equation allowing you to say for points within the shape that there is such-and-such a chance of detecting the particle at (x1,y1,z1) and much less chance of finding it at (x2,y2,z2) etc. If you actually make a measurement, stick an antenna or a thermometer or shoot a laser beam through the atom, you may detect the electron but having done so, you are, at that instant able to say the electron is 100% HERE and not smeared all around the space taken up by the atom...you touched it and the wave equation collapsed or became momentarily meaningless. Likewise, absent any particular context or trying events, who the hell can say what they really believe? I certainly can't. It is so much slipperier than you dare admit. Todays installment is uncharitable as there are also good reasons and good effects for which we have invented gods. But those most riled by this idea will be those who are most scared of what truth it may be digging for:

Men invented gods so they could be at peace with a world they did not understand. They invented devils so they could be at war without taxing their conscience. Women invented the goddess out of loneliness.

What we learn from our students...

My technically inclined son is also inclined to play and to treat organization and time management as if they were merely talking exercises unconnected in any way to what one actually works by or accomplishes. So now he is fixing up his transcript at a lesser university than the one that had to tell him to leave. Painful lesson that. But I think he's getting it. He sent me a link to a little parable. Well I guess I could have noted long ago that a different approach was needed in his case. When you yell at a kid for 10 years to clean up his room, you are doing a pretty dumb job of parenting. That's just a symptom and I should have looked for a cause.

The great teachers know the student as well as they know the subject.

Here, you can have my advice...I'm not using it.

Do not put on more sophistication than you truely own. The best and final consequence of such fraud is to draw yourself into the company of folks who can see right through you. Are you ready for that?

And now a word from our sponsor.

We are mortal, whence much abiding grief
And damn good reason to keep things brief.