It's easier to shout than it is to sing.
It's easier to obey than it is to think.
It's easier to destroy than it is to create.

I do not seek an easy life.

May you live in interesting times.

Being Human

Life's endlessly interesting. This haphazard zone of my web-site might be accused of philosophy, but that's more grandiose than what I aim to do with it. I've written less here than in other areas; not because it's less important, but because I can't articulate my thoughts on it as fluently. The fragments that exist are:

• Lessons from Bill Watterson (author of Calvin and Hobbes, a.k.a. Tommy and the Tiger in some translations)
• My take on the age-old controversy over Free Will and determinism (or predestination).
• Incoherent ramblins trying to relate Gödel's theorem to spiritual/religious cultural behaviours.

It seems worth mentioning Arthur Clarke's three laws (far more relevant to the real world than Asimov's):

• When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
• The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

One of humanity's greatest unsung triumphs has been the defeat of leprosy. Although around a quarter million victims remain, the WHO campaign to eradicate leprosy makes steady progress. Many millions of victims of this ancient scourge have been cured. A 1991 WHO policy to reduce levels of leprosy to below one in ten thousand by 2000 was completed on schedule.

See also

Fortunately, some other folk are less incoherent.

• A sound attitude to Valentine's Day.
• The Cold Within
• The War Prayer – Mark Twain, 1905.
• T Rex and friends discuss solipsism
• Quotes from Lord Kelvin, e.g. To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.
• The moderate hedonism of Epicurus compared with results from modern psychological research.
• Where did all the kindly ones go ? (a subtle diatribe about how each of us is, in fact, part of the other; and that, in so far as we are, we are right).
• I would rather die for my convictions than live in fear any day.
• Technology, Entertainment and Design, a series of talks from conferences stretching back to 1984, spreading ideas.
• (Raytheon CEO) Bill Swanson's unwritten rules, notably the infallible: A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person.
• Links to both sides of a debate on over-population.
• An elegant tale about an artful response to a queue-jumper, culled from the real-life sections of the Crowning Moment of Awesome pages over at TV Tropes (warning: visiting this last site may lead to massive loss of time).
• Hell sells
• … higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies … (full article).
• The thirty-six strategems.
• A No-Holds-Barred Guide for the Unemployed But Not Helpless: also worthy to be heard and given due thought by any who would be in charge of their own life.
• The Green Fields of France
• A brief history of lobotomy.

You raise the blade, you make the change
you re-arrange me 'til I'm sane.

You lock the door and throw away the key –
there's someone in my head, but it's not me.

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon.

Written by Eddy.