{"id":13400,"date":"2016-06-03T19:38:15","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T23:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=13400"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:01","slug":"thoughts-at-large-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2016\/06\/thoughts-at-large-34\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts at Large: 34"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2022 If I want to believe something, then it must<\/em> be the truth.\u00a0 Or so everyone says.<\/p>\n

\u2022 On several occasions, I have been inspired to contact the author of a given physics or math paper and offer my thoughts or ask a follow-up question.\u00a0 I won’t namedrop, as these people are not celebrities in the usual sense, but experts in their field.\u00a0 (Besides, they would probably deny having heard of me, or from me.)\u00a0 My point is that each time, without exception, the scientist promptly, cordially and personally answered my layman’s inquiry, which I appreciate.\u00a0 It is both unfounded and outmoded to view people-of-science as having no personality or patience for social interactions and concerns.\u00a0 Quite the contrary.<\/p>\n

\u2022 By the way, one of the little treasures in my file drawer is personal correspondence from the late Martin Gardner, author of the Scientific American column Mathematical Games<\/em>.\u00a0 Sadly, Mr. Gardner is no longer in a position to deny having heard of me.<\/p>\n

\u2022 If I hear Donald Trump complain one more time about people “not being nice” to him, I’m not going to vote for him.\u00a0 Otherwise — I’m still not going to vote for him.\u00a0 He’s sick.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Now circulating on Facebook, a photo of a mossy gravestone bearing an epitaph to a cat named Dewey: “He was only a cat but he was human enough to be a great comfort in hours of loneliness and pain.”\u00a0 No matter what one thinks of cats (or how one tries to avoid it), this is a touching expression.\u00a0 But it got me thinking (always a bad sign): why should I not make gravesites for the things that were important in my life?\u00a0 For example, should I bury my copy of Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee<\/em>?\u00a0 Should I find a field to plant my vinyl single of Strawberry Fields Forever<\/em>?\u00a0 Why should I just recycle the items I once loved, when the human thing to do would be to put them in the ground and put a stone on top that tells the world how much they meant to me?\u00a0 Not narcissistic, no, not at all.<\/p>\n

\u2022 I specifically want to point this out: specifically<\/em> may be an adverb, but there is no such adjective as specifical.<\/em>\u00a0 The Lords of Linguistics have bent the rules.\u00a0 But don’t thank me.\u00a0 That’s what this blog is for — to investigate items like this, or Benghazi.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Why is self-deprecation such a surefire way to get people to like you?\u00a0 Because it tells others that you are not a threat to their superiority.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Oftentimes on this blog, I use words that The Grammarist thinks I should not use<\/a>, such as oftentimes<\/em>.\u00a0 Even more often, I will leave a train of thought decoupled or disconnected.\u00a0 While it may appear that I have invited the reader to draw her own conclusions, the reality is that I have run out of steam, leaving the reader to mop things up.\u00a0 I could cite examples, but I would rather you discover them on your own.<\/p>\n

\u2022 I find that time passes much more slowly when the television is off.\u00a0 For people-of-age, this is an important finding.<\/p>\n

\u2022 When I am dead, it is not going to matter to me how many times you visit my grave or what flowers you place upon it, which is the reason that I will not have one.\u00a0 People visit graves for their own purposes.\u00a0 If you choose to do so, make it a good one… for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2022 If I want to believe something, then it must be the truth.\u00a0 Or so everyone says. \u2022 On several occasions, I have been inspired to contact the author of a given physics or math paper and offer my thoughts … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts-at-large"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13400"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28272,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13400\/revisions\/28272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}