Where Did I Put My "Where Did I Put My T-Shirt?" T-Shirt?

My own personal design for the Threadless World Alzheimer's Month T-Shirt Design Challenge. I seriously don't think I ever had much of a chance winning with a wearable statement like that one.

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They say "all monkeys are funny." I don't think so. There's one in my pants and he's not funny at all; it's rather serious, actually.

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We've all met at least one person like this: they cannot keep to agreements. Promises mean nothing to them. An alarming number of such people seem not to be psychopaths. They're just regular folks not much different from you or me. But they do not bother to make certain distinctions that many of us regard as routine. For example, they lie a lot. No big deal. It's part of their nature.

So I'll cut them some slack.

"I'm sorry I'm late. There was a giant laser-eyed squid on the highway and it was blocking a lane." Okay, so maybe a little less obvious, but a casual lie nonetheless. Probably a lie told despite the fact that a truth would have served just as well and at no extra cost. It makes no difference to them. When I myself have privately exposed such a lie I have often incurred anger, misunderstanding, and outright denial in the face of facts. I hardly bother anymore. Water off a duck's back and all that. People deserve some privacy, yes?

Not all lies are even, actually, lies. They may just be boundry markers. I can respect that. No need to probe further.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein:

"Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie."

"Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language."

(Oh I like that one.)

"One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.' "

Though I would enjoy doing that all day, that fine quote will have to be Wittgenstein's closer.

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I was listening to a recording of violist Robin Ireland playing Bach transcriptions. During the Gavottes (from the Cello Suite #6 originally in the key of D-major,) I was inspired by the mathematical elegance and transparent lyricism of the suggestive lines; suggestive, that is, of other musical lines by implication.

Creationists, I have found, often have so little respect for intellectual curiosity. The simplest things; why, why make these seem like impossibilities? This question is one of their favorites: "How can something come from nothing?" They toss this out as if it were a daisy-cutter. It's not.

It's a good question. That's the problem. They don't see it that way.

Well, her it is: the plain fact of the matter is that something does indeed come from nothing. Where else is it going to have come from? Tell me, Sherlock. Besides, there have been observations. Vacuum fluctuations through Casimir plates.

Bach created several strands of counterpoint by suggesting various melodic lines rather than stating these implicitly, which the cello cannot always do by itself. Same thing with particle pairs. Like the virtual counterpoint in the Bach cello suites which just "appears out of nowhere," so do particles.

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So hoist up the John B. sails. See how the mainsail sets. Maybe the captain will let you go home.



Guitarist/composer Mauro Giuliani.