Thoughts @ Large: 50

•  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck but it isn’t a duck, then it is an impostor.  That is, a quack.

•  People in deep thought scratch their heads or stroke their chins as if doing so will help something intelligent to emerge.  How did such behavior evolve?  I would encourage some aspiring psychology major to conduct a study that answers the question, “Do people who touch their faces make better or faster decisions than those who refrain from doing so?”

•  Online product reviews often reveal more about the reviewer than they do the product.  For example, one reviewer rated a set of wood drill bits two stars (out of five) because they were “not good for drilling into cement.”  Was he trying them out on his skull?

•  Open letter to editorial columnist Maureen Dowd of The New York Times: why not just retire and spare yourself (and the rest of us) your unending misery from having to live in the same universe as Bill and Hillary Clinton?

•  You are sitting in a church pew during a religious service, but you do not observe that faith, and then a tray is passed to you, and you just smile and hand it to the next person in the row.  If only that tray had not been handed to you, everything would have been cool!  But now you’re getting looks.  That’s just one of the prices you pay for not believing.

•  Disillusionment wasn’t invented in 1964.  I doubt there was ever a generation that did not experience disillusionment — how the establishment thwarted us, how powerless and ineffective we are, what little hope remains.  Each generation (and person) defines itself by its response to disillusionment.

•  If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times.

•  When Reince Priebus left, Donald Trump became the first president in over 100 years to not have a pet dog in the White House.

•  There are three kinds of books: the ones you’re glad you read, those that were a waste of time, and those you need to read.  Here is my three-column list of said books:

GLAD I READ
The Mind’s I
Slaughterhouse Five
The Last Temptation of Christ
Paris 1919
A Map of the World
Owl at Home
 
WASTE OF TIME
Consciousness Explained
Guns, Germs and Steel
Roger’s Version
Ivanhoe
The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922
Journey to Ixtlan
 
NEED TO READ
The Brothers Karamazov
Works of Abraham Lincoln
Fountainhead
Of Human Bondage
The Barbarians
Freedom

 

I invite you to share yours in the comments.

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4 responses to Thoughts @ Large: 50

  1. Lynn rubenson says:

    Books I’m glad I read:
    Book Thief, History of Love, a separate piece, Don pasos, anything by Maya Angelou, to kill a mockingbird, the Hobbit and Lord of Rings trilogy

    My mother put the fountainhead on my dresser at 16 and told me to read it since I was already politically interested. I hope you read it so we can discuss; in fact my 65 year old self should re-read it- I’m sure my opinion about it would change.

  2. Rob says:

    I’m thinking the thing to do when the basket is passed is pause, look thoughtful (your “deep thought” item provides good tactics), take a quick look up, then take something out of the basket, nod affirmatively and put it in your pocket. Then pass it on.

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