Alive

How do you want to retire?

And kicking with my teeth intact.

How else do people retire though? Or is the question asking how I want to retire to bed? When I am very sleepy but not too tired to sleep well.

In this world

What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily?

Of forced obsolescence it’s hard to think of things being so old. We buy new electronics before the current one dies. Clothes we outgrow very quickly. Shoes also.

And no, we don’t have family heirloom passed on from great grandfather down to present generation. But I have a wrist watch from 2014 and a water bottle from 2007 before people made them a fashion statement. And a brain as old as the universe which is still serving me good.

Happy father’s Day weekend

What’s in a name

This is a big bird

While riding today I started to ask myself, is the egg the egg or a representation of the egg. If we called an egg oval would its eggness diminish? What is it about the word egg allows us to have an idea of the egg?

I woke up

What notable things happened today?

And had breakfast. Then sat down to read.

Nobody famous was born on June 13th. All their parents were busy.

But deaths, that is something else. Greek Premier Theodros Delyannis murdered. Osamu Dazai, Japanese novelist dies by suicide, Ben Chifley dies of heart attack, Max Pulver dies.

English King Charles I married french princess Henrietta Maria, Martin Luther in defiance of the celibacy rule, weds ex nun Katharina Von Bora and Maureen O’Hara secretly marries George h Brown.

Simon Bolivar proclamation as dictator of Colombia. The Sicilian vespers premieres at the Paris Opera (1855). In 1868 Oscar Dunn became the first African American to be elected a Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana then the whole country went back to slavery and systematic racism for a century plus.

Christopher Latham Sholes’ version of the typewriter received a patent in 1868.

I tried to find ordinary people born or killed on this day and Google didn’t recognise such a query. So maybe we can stop here and have a happy 13th.

Good things

What are the most important things needed to live a good life?

Good friends.

Good food.

Good family.

Good books though I know someone will disagree.

Good health.

I don’t know whether the teacher who said we should act but not give thought to the result is right. That we should not renounce ourselves but be indifferent to the dog or the man who eats the dog. Maybe this is the formula to a good life.

And good sex.

We don’t give ourselves names

If you had to change your name, what would your new name be?

And I don’t know whether it is a good thing or not. What we are known by is what others decided to call us. Some had very creative parents who named them after mathematical or chemical formulas, you know like Na Chi or Pi Lee or Hillman jagot. Other people were given names at the height of a soap opera – Alejandro or Jesus.

And what is in a name? Does it matter what name you go by unless for extreme cases where you need a new identity? Say you have been running a pyramid scheme in one area and want to start a new one in a different locale, should you start the business under your old name or new name? Will this be good for business?

My new name would be like my old name, maybe just shorter.

It is

Describe your dream chocolate bar.

White

Expensive

And has been delivered by my enemy as a peace deal or there is no point in having a dream chocolate bar.

But who dreams about chocolate bars when you can just walk into a shop and ask a for a chic bar infused with liqueur. And depending on your feelings about milk and dairy products, you can ask if it is an almond bar or something of the sort.

Can you have a chocolate dream if you don’t like chocolate or sweet things? That is, can we desire what we don’t know? How would we describe this desire in a way that would make sense to our audience?

Anyway, if you want to buy me chocolate, white it is.

Our idea of the world

And the world are different but this is our problem not one of the world. The idea is to be cognisant of the limit of our understanding and to admit what we don’t know and what we can know.

I am not sure

List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?

I could list three books that have an impact overriding the many others. Most likely, there have been books for different occasions or moods that have hit me differently.

Say, for example, The world as will and idea and essay of freedom of the will by Schopenhauer which have had such an impact on my thinking on freewill. Though it would be a mistake to think of only these two works because  at the time I was interested in this topic, I did read diverse books.

There’s Robert Cussell’s work on miracles. A work that I know many people haven’t heard or read but which should be highly regarded in the Jesus literature together with works such as by Bauer, and other pioneers.

In Ecce Homo, how a man becomes what he is, I see myself (sometimes).