tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23042008.post6978850249306777819..comments2024-03-28T03:13:15.831-04:00Comments on Remarkable: Whatever Happened to the Commonplace BookGeoff Klockhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09080580776997273785noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23042008.post-90818296236882447392009-04-26T08:53:00.000-04:002009-04-26T08:53:00.000-04:00I'll think of something...in the meantime, Mr, Fre...I'll think of something...in the meantime, Mr, Freidrich:<br /><br />"Beware those in whom the urge to punish is strong."plokhttp://circumstantial.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23042008.post-3563455730632913682009-04-25T23:54:00.000-04:002009-04-25T23:54:00.000-04:00How about something like this:
Bob Dylan on relig...How about something like this:<br /><br />Bob Dylan on religion:<br />Here's the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don't find it anywhere else. Songs like "Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain" or "I Saw the Light"—that's my religion. I don't adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I've learned more from the songs than I've learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songsscott91777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23042008.post-21524453903047299762009-04-25T12:32:00.000-04:002009-04-25T12:32:00.000-04:00Hah, if you want hard science or buddhism, go thro...Hah, if you want hard science or buddhism, go through my bookshelf.<br /><br />This is better than any existential musing, I submit:<br /><br />Only about one bone in a billion, it is thought, ever becomes fossilized. If that is so, it means that the complete fossil legacy of all the Americans alive today - that's 270 million people with 206 bones each - will only be about fifty bones, one quarter of a complete skeleton. That's not to say of course that any of these bones will actually be found. Bearing in mind that they can be buried anywhere within an area of slightly over 3.6 million square miles, little of which will ever be turned over, much less examined, it would be something of a miracle if they were. Fossils are in every sense vanishingly rare. Most of what has lived on Earth has left behind no record at all. It has been estimated that less than one species in 10,000 has made it into the fossil record. That in itself is a stunningly infinitesimal proportion. However, if you accept the common estimate that the Earth has produced 30 billion species of creature in its time, and Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin's statement (in The Sixth Extinction) that there are 250,000 species of creature in the fossil record, that reduces the proportion to just one in 120,000. Either way, what we possess is the merest sampling of all life that Earth has ever spawned.<br /><br />"A Short History of Nearly Everything," by Bill Bryson.bahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14892528094367274617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23042008.post-37443035614808071582009-04-24T18:21:00.000-04:002009-04-24T18:21:00.000-04:00I have a few ideas but Chuck Klosterman has these ...I have a few ideas but Chuck Klosterman has these fun rhetorical questions that he poses in both Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Klosterman IV.<br /><br />Here's an example:<br />"Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks--he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can't learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he's doing these five tricks with real magic. It's not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He's legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence.<br /><br />Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein?"<br /><br /><br />Would something like this work? I have to say, I use Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs in my 101 course and, for an assigment, I let them go through and choose any one of these questions (there are 23 in all in the book) and write a brief paper in response to it and, quite often, it results in the best paper they do all semester.<br />Also, as most of the questions require a choice of some sort, they're great for generating some good-natured debate in the class (and since they're all rather silly topics it's nothing that anyone can get too upset/offended about but it still teaches them to really analyze a question).scott91777noreply@blogger.com