Thursday, September 23, 2010

Grub-Love


Grub-Love, originally uploaded by Spritzfellow.

Julia Gfroerer and Theo Ellsworth 2009

Friday, July 20, 2007

Julia and Elvis have left the building

Monday, June 11, 2007

Peevish and turquoise


Peevish and turquoise, originally uploaded by the partisan.

Monday, June 4, 2007

5th level parking garage


5th level parking garage, originally uploaded by .scarlet..

Friday, June 1, 2007

Julia: sleepy Brodie in green_pencil


Monday, May 28, 2007

Martin Gardner, pt 1

SI: How have you managed to retain such a phenomenal breadth of interest and knowledge?

Gardner: Philosophy gives one an excuse to dabble in everything. Although my interests are broad, they seldom get beyond elementary levels. I give the impression of knowing far more than I do because I work hard on research, write glibly, and keep extensive files of clippings on everything that interests me.

There are big gaps in my knowledge, one of the largest of which is classical music. I have a poor ear. My tastes run to Dixieland jazz and melodies I am able to hum and play on a musical saw (one of my minor self-amusements). I know nothing about sports other than baseball. I have never played a game of golf or seen a horse race. I never watch football or basketball. I think boxing should be outlawed as too primitive and cruel. Ditto for Spanish bullfighting.

In high school I was on the gymnastic team (specializing in the horizontal bar), and I played lots of tennis. I would enjoy tennis today except that I had cataract surgery early in life. Without eye lenses, one cannot continually alter one's focus, so there is no way to anticipate exactly where the ball is as it comes toward you.

[...]

Carnap had a major influence on me. He persuaded me that all metaphysical questions are "meaningless" in the sense that they cannot be answered empirically or by reason. They can be defended only on emotive grounds. Carnap was an atheist, but I managed to retain my youthful theism in the form of what is called "fideism." I like to call it "theological positivism," a play on Carnap's "logical positivism."

Shortly before he died, Carl Sagan wrote to say he had reread my Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener and was it fair to say that I believed in God solely because it made me "feel good." I replied that this was exactly right, though the emotion was deeper than the way one feels good after three drinks. It is a way of escaping from a deep-seated despair. William James's essay "The Will to Believe" is the classic defense of the right to make such an emotional "leap of faith." My theism is independent of any religious movement, and in the tradition that starts with Plato and includes Kant, and a raft of later philosophers, down to Charles Peirce, William James, and Miguel de Unamuno. I defend it ad nauseam in my Whys.

from the Skeptical Inquirer's interview of Martin Gardner