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For a number of years now, I have been going down to the Farmers’ Market two or three Saturdays out of every four. I’d buy fresh fruits, vegetables, and some deli meat, and pick up some flowers that would last me a week, ten days, or even two weeks at a time.

I’ve just come back from the Market. No flowers in hand. I, however, have caught myself eying some potted plants.

At my place of “work,” we have a public outreach program where we frequently invite visitors to come in for laboratory tours, overview lectures, etc. A couple of days ago, there was a group of high-school teachers hanging about in our building on one of those tours, and one of them happened to wander into the open lounge area where I was sitting.

There I was, having a snack, flipping through a magazine, and throwing half an ear to the involved discussion –on the adjacent couch– between an older professor (let’s call him AL) and one of his students. I was of course throwing only half an ear because I am unable to do three things at the same time, not because the discussion was too technical and way above my head.

At any rate, thus was the scene when Mr Lost walked in and –shockingly– interrupted the discussion to ask Prof AL for directions to the men’s room. Prof AL then excused himself from the discussion, stepped out of the lounge area, and walked Mr Lost around the corner where he could easily point to the men’s room. He then walked back, excused himself again, and continued his discussion with the student.

This apparently mundane event is slightly less so in my mind due to the fact that Sir Prof AL is a British knight who also happens to be a Nobel Laureate.

Dear diary, I wonder how often he thinks of himself in those terms, and I wonder how that affects what he does.

I’ve been feeling this pain in my right arm for a while now. It is faint most of the time, but once a day it ramps into this sharp piercing pain.

All evidence points to a pinched nerve, which shouldn’t be a problem once I get time to visit a massage therapist and, more importantly, replace my shoulder bag.

This morning, I received –what I will choose to interpret as– another sign that the shoulder bag should go. A three-year-old girl turned to her mom as I passed them by and asked, “Mommy, is he a mailman?”

Tagged by N; Five things you don’t know about me:

1)

This happens to me very often — which is something I can say about a number of other xkcd comics as well.

2)

I haven’t missed a postsecret post in almost two years. Every Sunday I browse the postcards and save those that resonate with me on some level. My collection to date is 128 secrets strong.

3)

Uh huh — that’s right!

4)

My memory has not been the best of late. (Or is it that it has always been crappy, and I’m only falsely remembering that it was better before?) For instance, at one point I used to know a third of the quran by heart; now, I’m lucky if I remember anything beside surat alra3d.

5)

I am a firm believer in the church of 80% sincerity, but I am a little lacking in practice.

FreeHugs.

كل عام
و الأيام
و الأحلام
ورديه
و مستحميه
و ميه ميه

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.

This is the opening paragraph of an essay titled “On Bullshit” by Harry Frankfurt; Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University, which was written back in 1985, and most recently (Jan 2005) published by Princeton Press as a book.

If you want to know more, check out Prof Frankfurt’s appearance on the daily show, where I -incidently- first heard about the book; or his Princeton Press interview. (A quick google search will link to other videos including lectures on love and ethics.)

The book is a quick and fascinating read, and rings appropriate and true. Mostly, it is about the distinguishing charactersitics of bullshit, and how it’s different from humbug and lying. It also touches upon the dangers of bullshit, before ending with an attempt to answer the question: “Why is there so much bullshit?” (– almost every word in it is worth quoting, but let me only quote this last part:)

The contemporary peoliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These “antirealistic” doctorines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.
But it is proposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at alll without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgement that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not perculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the nature of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.

This digs deep, and potentially renders most of my words and deeds under the umbrella of bullshit — not that otherwise was ever implied. Now that that’s recognized, I have no desire to say anymore, so expect this silence to last for sometime, maybe ever — even this implication of concern for the truth might be labelled as bullshit.

Yes, Marcus, this confirms it; it’s all bullshit anyways.

Update:
Ok, so maybe that was more than a tad overly melodramatic. What can I say, it was late at night, and I had had a difficult day, which amplified the resonance of certain ideas from the book with certain feelings I’ve been toying with. Plus, you have to remember that (if we have learned anything from Cosmo Kramer is that) 94% of our communication is nonverbal; i.e. I’m only using 6% of my skills here. See.

This morning marked the survival of some of “my” constituent cells for three deca-Earth’s-orbital-cycles-around-the-Sun. Only a few cells have subsisted for more, while most have existed for less.

So what’s the big deal, you ask? Good question; not much for now… No deep reflections of the present… No genuine regrets of the past… And no serious considerations of the future… Nothing! (I must say; your timing is very arbitrary anyway…)

And I’ve developed some scar-tissue… and some memories of good fortune, physically manifested as electric charge… so what? What if I shed them all; in a process of rejuvination? What would remain of “me”? Who would “I” be? Some surviving cells in a cerebral cortex? And when “I” look in the mirror, what do “I” see? The same crisis you think you see? How shallow, and how vain.

Hand “me” a cigarette and a drink, and let “me” go out on the balcony to be by “myself” for now.

Later, however, I shall be listening repeatedly to surat al-raa’d [Quran 13:*] — savoring
سَوَاء مِّنكُم مَّنْ أَسَرَّ الْقَوْلَ وَمَن جَهَرَ بِهِ وَمَنْ هُوَ مُسْتَخْفٍ بِاللَّيْلِ وَسَارِبٌ بِالنَّهَارِ#
لَهُ مُعَقِّبَاتٌ مِّن بَيْنِ يَدَيْهِ وَمِنْ خَلْفِهِ يَحْفَظُونَهُ مِنْ أَمْرِ اللّهِ إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ وَإِذَا أَرَادَ اللّهُ بِقَوْمٍ سُوءًا فَلاَ مَرَدَّ لَهُ وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِ مِن وَالٍ
[Quran 13:10-11] —
for, after all, it is in it that it is set that [Quran 13:28] أَلاَ بِذِكْرِ اللّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ

As for you; take what you take of this, leave what you leave of it, and leave what you leave on it.

أَنزَلَ مِنَ السَّمَاء مَاء فَسَالَتْ أَوْدِيَةٌ بِقَدَرِهَا فَاحْتَمَلَ السَّيْلُ زَبَدًا رَّابِيًا وَمِمَّا يُوقِدُونَ عَلَيْهِ فِي النَّارِ ابْتِغَاء حِلْيَةٍ أَوْ مَتَاعٍ زَبَدٌ مِّثْلُهُ كَذَلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللّهُ الْحَقَّ وَالْبَاطِلَ فَأَمَّا الزَّبَدُ فَيَذْهَبُ جُفَاء وَأَمَّا مَا يَنفَعُ النَّاسَ فَيَمْكُثُ فِي الأَرْضِ كَذَلِكَ يَضْرِبُ اللّهُ الأَمْثَالَ
[Quran 13:17]

(below are quotes and anecdotes concerning consistency, or, rather, lack there of. If you know, or at some point in the future you hear or read, a related incident or quote, please remember this post and don’t hesitate to share.)
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