Three Rights Make a Left

I had just read an op-ed piece in the New York Times from John Tierney and sat down to ingest a small breakfast topped with this statement: “Hence his famous warning (Adam Smith’s) not to rely on the kindness of strangers outside your family: if you want bread, it's better to count on the baker's self-interest rather than his generosity.” If one accepts Webster’s definition of cynic, “…one who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest”, then this is a purely cynical statement. However, this thought has become tantamount to an axiom of neo-conservative logic – once the conservative debater, masquerading as a libertarian, reduces the argument to this point, he cries, “QED” and the discussion ends, at least in their minds. Like many dangerous statements, the error of Smith’s admonition, propagated by Tierney, is subtle and elusive. Certainly, if not too much is put in this bucket, it will hold water. Let’s look at a simple thought experiment to see how the p...

Late in the 19th century, the great thinker, Thomas Henry Huxley, eloquently coined the word, agnostic, and proposed an agnostic philosophy. He was attacked by both atheist and theist. One outraged Anglican cleric suggested Huxley should be called by his true name, “infidel.” Perhaps this simply shows that fundamentalism has remained unchanged through the intervening years. From the other side, atheists accused Huxley of indecision and lack of commitment. However, Huxley had at least one avid young reader who not only found his writing intellectually stimulating, but spiritually deep – an outline for an examined life. I still return to my little blue Huxley book as a reminder or to bolster my “faith” as some would their Bible or Koran. How can I consider agnosticism a faith? After all, the very word comes from Greek roots which mean “without belief.” Like that sorry-assed country song says, “You’ve got to believe in something or you’ll fall for anything.” Right? Wrong!!! Agnosticism as...

There are several things you need to consider about bathrooms and the need for these facilities. It may seem trivial to those who have not delved into the subject sufficiently, but I hope this discussion will help launch lavatorial learners on a path to a deeper understanding. This discussion will deal only with "Number One" since Number Two is more complex and the mathematics would likely involve functional analysis. We can examine numero uno  using only simple arithmetic, and at most, basic differential calculus which, in this case, is math related, but could also refer to a mineral deposit in a pitiful powder room. There are three items that I'll attempt to quantify in this article: 1) the urgency, rated on a scale from 0-10 (even though only 1-10 have practical use); 2) the rate of change of urgency also scaled from zero to infinity; 3) the acceptability of a restroom (public or private) also an integer from 0 to 10. So, let's dive in. Er... maybe not the right te...