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Posts Tagged ‘Facts’

Another Explanation For Why #47:DonTheLoser Can’t Understand Reality

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 14, 2026| 2 Comments »

If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened.
    —     Robert M. Pirsig
From: “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:  An Inquiry Into Values“
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Click here (14 March) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Why some MAGA Can Be Well Educated And Still Stupid

Posted in Education, General Comments, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Someone asked the other day, “Why do we go to school?”  Pat, with vigor unusual in her, said, “So when we grow up we won’t be stupid.”  These children equate stupidity with ignorance.  Is this what they mean when they call themselves stupid?  Is this one of the reasons why they are so ashamed of not knowing something?  If so, have we, perhaps unknowingly, taught them to feel this way?  We should clear up this distinction, show them that it is possible to know very few facts, but make very good use of them.
Conversely, one can know many facts and still act stupidly.  The learned fool is by no means rare in this country.
    ―     John C. Holt
From his book:  “How Children Fail“
[Ignorance can come from what you are taught incorrectly and as well as what you are not taught at all.  In particular, ignorance can come from frequent and prolonged exposure to the intentional skewing of limited facts to promote ideology over truth.  Finally, to quote Upton Sinclair:  “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”  In our polarized political times, we have to substitute “social paradigm” for “salary”.  If you are willing to punish the same people they dislike / hate, then some folks don’t really care if you are also a liar, a convicted criminal and consistently working to undermine their economic well being.    —    kmab]
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Click here (15 February) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Four Changes

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
    ―     William O. Douglas
Awareness is the greatest agent for change.
    ―     Eckhart Tolle
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.
    ―    Albert Einstein
Things do not change;  we change.
    ―     Henry David Thoreau
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Click here (8 May) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Stored Up In The Attic

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , on January 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.  A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.  Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic.  He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.  It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.  Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.  It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
    —     Sherlock Holmes
From:  “A Study in Scarlet“
Written by:  Arthur Conan Doyle
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Click here (22 January) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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#45:DonTheCon

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Facts mean nothing when they are preempted by appearance.  Do not underestimate the power of impression over reality.
    ―    Brian Herbert
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
    ―     Abraham Lincoln
[A good conman can create the perception of reality – but not indefinitely.    —    kmab]
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Click here (5 December) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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I Yam What I Yam*

Posted in Humor, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , on November 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are — that is the fact.
    —     Jean-Paul Sartre
[*Says “Popeye the Sailor Man”, whom I believe wants more spinach.     —     kmab]
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Click here (19 November) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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A Way Of Thinking, An Essential Tool

Posted in Education, Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 5, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Science is much more than a body of knowledge.  It is a way of thinking.  This is central to its success.  Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions.  It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts.  It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom.  We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking.  It works.  It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change.  Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science.
    —    Carl Sagan
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Click here (5 November) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Faux “News”: Why Wait? We’re Entertainment, Not News

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged , , , , on August 12, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
    —     Mark Twain
[Why do viewers watch a channel that’s been demonstrated to lie to them.  Oh yeah…  Because they (the viewers) want to believe the lies.  Why does Faux do it?  …To laugh all the way to the bank.    —    kmab]
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Click here (12 August) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Too Bad Politics And Greed Get In The Way

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »

There is no other species on the Earth that does science.  It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason:  it works.  It is not perfect.  It can be misused.  It is only a tool.  But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything.  It has two rules.  First:  there are no sacred truths;  all assumptions must be critically examined;  arguments from authority are worthless.  Second:  whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised.  We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.
     —    Carl Sagan
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Click here (19 November) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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These Days Rather Loosely Held

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on November 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »

“Without facts, you can’t have truth.  Without truth, you can’t have trust,”  [Maria] Ressa told editor at large Karl Vick hours after she was awarded the [Nobel Peace] prize.  “This is the fabric that hold us together:  shared reality.”
    —    Edward Felsenthal
From his article:  “Shining The Light“
Appearing in:  Time Magazine;  dtd:  25 Oct / 1 Nov 2021
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Click here (15 November) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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The Heart Of Science

Posted in Environment, Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on April 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »

We have found that scientific laws pervade all of nature, that the same rules apply on Earth as in the skies, that we can find a resonance, a harmony, between the way we think and the way the world works…
As a boy Kepler had been captured by a vision of cosmic splendor, a harmony of the worlds which he sought so tirelessly all his life.  Harmony in this world eluded him.  His three laws of planetary motion represent, we now know, a real harmony of the worlds, but to Kepler they were only incidental to his quest for a cosmic system based on the Perfect Solids, a system which, it turns out, existed only in his mind.  Yet from his work, we have found that scientific laws pervade all of nature, that the same rules apply on Earth as in the skies, that we can find a resonance, a harmony, between the way we think and the way the world works.
When he found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts, he preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions.  That is the heart of science.
    —    Carl Sagan
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Click here (18 April) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Kinda Like Posting To A Blog About My Day

Posted in History, Quotes, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 7, 2020| Leave a Comment »

The historian always oversimplifies, and hastily selects a manageable minority of facts and faces out of a crowd of souls and events whose multitudinous complexity he can never quite embrace or comprehend.
    —    Will Durant
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Click here (7 December) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Like Belief In Truth And Facts

Posted in Faith, Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 20, 2020| 2 Comments »

America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments.  Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.
     —    John W. Gardner
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Click here (20 November) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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The Tragedy Of Trump Republicanism

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark;  the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
    ―    Socrates
[I would say today’s Republicans fear light – AND – specifically the light which comes from science, truth and facts.  —  kmab]
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Click here (1 July) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Foundational Pillar Of Civilized Discourse

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »

The Enlightenment sought to establish reason as the foundational pillar of civilized discourse.  In this conception, logical argument matters, and the truth of a statement is tested by examination of values, assumptions, and facts, not by how many people believe it.  Cyber-enabled information warfare threatens to replace these pillars of logic and truth with fantasy and rage.
     —    Herbert Lin
As quoted by:  Virginia Heffernan
In her article:  “Clock Watchers: The Beautiful Benefits of Contemplating Doom“
Appearing in:  Wired Magazine, dtd:  Apr 2019
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Click here (22 December) to see the posts of prior years.  I started this blog in late 2009.  Daily posting began in late January 2011.  Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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