Truth Or Dare Ain't A Kid's Game

Tucson Weather Today

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I am still trying to straighten out my thoughts on the subject of truth and honesty. Clarifying one's thoughts about telling the truth is not easy.

If you are a candidate for public office (such as U.S. Senator) you damn well better not even hint at the truth about how you feel toward some touchy subject (such as abortion) if you expect to be elected. In the case that, if you believe that abortion is wrong (a sin) in any and all cases, even if pregnancy arises from rape, then you had better keep your true feelings to yourself. In other words, lie about it.

Then you might become an elected official, with power over the people.

But as I stated above, I am trying to sort out my own thoughts and feelings about the subject, not of abortion, but on telling the truth or lying.

Maybe I will soon come to a definite conclusion. If so, I will reveal it to my blog readers.

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WORD FOR TODAY

 cis  [sis]
   
Short for "cisgender" (opposite of "transgender"), used to describe someone whose gender identity matches their anatomical gender at birth.

Cisgender is explained fully by Wikipedia HERE

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY


Cindy Williams


Born Aug 22, 1947
Age: 64 years old.

Cynthia Jane "Cindy" Williams is an American actress best known for starring in the television situation-comedy series Laverne & Shirley, in the role of "Shirley Feeney", and for her role as Laurie Henderson in the classic film American Graffiti.

Ray Bradbury


Born Aug 22, 1920
Died June 6, 2012

Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction writer. Best known for his dystopian novel titled Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction and horror stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into television shows or films.

Valerie Harper


Born Aug 22, 1939
Age: 72 years old.

Valerie Harper is an American actress, known for her role as Rhoda Morgenstern on the 1970s television show The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and for her starring roles on the sitcoms Rhoda (a spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show) and Valerie.

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I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
--Stephen Hawking

Ray Bradbury Dies

Ray Bradbury Dies

Science fiction author Ray Bradbury, whose imagination yielded classic books such as "Fahrenheit 451," "The Martian Chronicles" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes," has died at 91, his publisher said Wednesday.

Titles Are For Suckers...

Announcement --

John McCain Defeated J.D. Hayworth in yesterday's Arizona GOP Senate Primary election.

. . .

Howard Zinn was born August 24, 1922 and died January 27, 2010. Among a multitude of published writings, he wrote the following:

"I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country. Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism."

Yes, Howard Zinn wrote that.

Okay. While I applaud those who would grant 'power to the people' one cannot help but take into account the instinctual nature of the human animal, which is first and foremost survival -- continuation of self, family, tribe, nation, and species. Socialism, as I understand it, is loosely defined as authority-enforced absolute equality for all citizens,and so is not amenable to the above mentioned self-perpetuating basic force of nature.

And that is my short and succinct opinion on the subject.

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It seems impossible for one human being to communicate an imaginative and speculative radical 'concept' to another human being. For example: it is hilarious to watch the confused incredulity appear on the face of a scientist or an engineer when I say, "What if mathematics turns out to be a dead end? What if math is nothing more than the result of Emergent Thinking Man taking an initial mental 'wrong turn' in the formulation of human understanding?"

Well, to tell the truth, I have seen more than one well-educated and recognizably intelligent person shake his head in perplexity and walk away, seemingly astounded at how I could possibly ask such a ludicrous question.

But I have often mused upon the possibility that the entire field of mathematics is a flawed and limited discipline, and will eventually be abandoned and replaced by an alternative and more reliable method of arriving at workable conclusions (such as astronomical inter-dimensional navigation) -- a method based neither on numbers (calculational symbols) nor on words (communicational symbols) but instead upon absolutes gained from using intuition-derived unmistakable certainties.

That is how I see it.

And no, I can't express the thought in simpler terms.

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Ray Bradbury is 90 years old

Click PZ Myers' blog if you are not prudish and then you can view both the above picture and a naughty YouTube video (you've been warned) plus a great many comments regarding same.

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In an article about planting potatoes (enclosed in a cocoon of leaf mulch for warmth) in the fall instead of in the spring, I noticed the following: "...noted that the tops of the plant were dieing and so it was time to harvest!"

The spelling of "dieing" stopped me. Is not 'dying' the correct spelling of that word? Dying, as in approaching death? Or is this one of those instances in which either way is correct?

Growing curiouser and curiouser, I did a little research. According to an online forum wherein students asked teachers questions and the teacher posts an answer, I found the following. . .

Question: I saw that both "dieing" and "dying" can be used as the present continuous of "to die". What is the most common one ? And why is "dying" also correct?

Answer: There is no such word as "dieing". www.websters.com which is a great source for spelling of English words returned no word with the "dieing" spelling entered. The correct spelling is "dying" which is 100% used.

That satisfied me and I searched no more.

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Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
--Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)