Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Hurry Spring

A wise but frustrated old Red Sox fan once said: baseball breaks your heart
It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. 


Then comes the long hard winter. Stories are told, the heart begins to heal, and eventually to hope. For the briefest while, it's only a game.

Bart Giamatti needed to believe something lasts forever. I just need to believe Spring Training will come again. The countdown begins. Up again, old heart.

Hail to the Red Sox. 


Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Love my dog

J-J Rousseau had his shortcomings, but he did love the most loyal species. That covers a multitude of sins, in my book. It's also why I cut some slack to Schopenhauer, Diogenes, and others whose humanly-deficient  tendencies gained partial canine correction.
A relationship with a dog, too, should not be one of ruler and subject. About the predecessor to Sultan, Rousseau wrote, “My dog himself was my friend, not my slave: we always had the same will, but it was not because he obeyed me.


Friday, October 25, 2013

Positive change

One of my favorite places, in Murfreesboro TN, lies just down the little hill beyond this point. I finally paused long enough yesterday, in transit, to notice the noble words of commemoration:
"From a tiny acorn grows a majestic oak tree. This place is in honor of Bertha Chrietzberg [OH'y] - conservationist, teacher, mentor, hero, and genuine example of the power each one of us has to make a positive change in the world."

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Atheism & Philosophy texts, updated

Coming to MTSU in January

Spring Semester-
Atheism & Philosophy
PHIL 3310 – Atheism and PhilosophyThis course examines various perspectives on atheism, understood as the belief that no transcendent creator deity exists, and that there are no supernatural causes of natural events. The course compares this belief with familiar alternatives (including theism, agnosticism, and humanism), considers the spiritual significance of atheism, and explores implications for ethics and religion.
Our central theme this semesterthe meaning of Atheism

What's the meaning of a godless existence? What gets atheists, humanists, naturalists and other godless folk out of bed in the morning? What reconciles them to belief in life non-eternal? How do they deal with their mortality? What  are their sacred texts, if not the Christian Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Book of Mormon, the collected works of L.Ron, ...? Whatare the possible "meanings of life" regarded strictly in its finitude?

Classes will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:40-4:05 pm in James Union Building (JUB) 202 beginning January 16, 2014.

Texts:
Also recommended:

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