javadvent calendar day 25

(5 comments)
2009.12.25



http://todayspictures.slate.com/20091224/ - photo 06 is best holiday photo of year. Merry Christmas!
Homeric gods, being corporeal, can and do laugh; we are told that Zeus, after his birth, laughed continuously for seven days.
Jim Holt, Stop Me If You've Heard This, A History and Philosophy of Jokes.

The object in sexual congress, according to the Marquis de Sade, is to elicit involuntary noisemaking from your partner--which is precisely the objective of humor, even if the nature of the noisemaking is a bit different.
Jim Holt, Stop Me If You've Heard This

"Knock knock." "Who's there?" "9-11." "9-11 who?" "YOU SAID YOU'D NEVER FORGET!"
via Jim Holt, Stop Me If You've Heard This

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" "Even if there was nothing, you still wouldn't be satisfied!"
Sidney Morgenbesser

A realistic expectation also demands our acceptance that one's allotted time on earth must be limited to an allowance consistent with the continuity of our species... We die so that the world may continue to live. We have been given the miracle of life because trillions and trillions of living things have prepared the way for us and then have died--in a sense, for us. We die, in turn, so that others may live. The tragedy of a single individual becomes, in the balance of natural things, the triumph of ongoing life.
Dr. Sherwin Nuland

...if any doctor tells me, as I lie in my hospital bed, that my death will not only help others to live, but be symptomatic of the triumph of humanity, I shall watch him very carefully when next he adjust my drip.
Julian Barnes, "Nothing to be Frightened Of". Incidentally, today I got some messages from a gentleman in Greece about the Skeptics Guide to Mortality

Got my Aunt one of those Plasma Ball lamp things - so sci-fi and cool.