Past Postings

Previous William Thomas Sherman Info Page postings, quotes, observations, etc.

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Earlier today I succeeded in finishing watching the complete 52 program series "The Western Tradition" with Eugen Weber, and my (to me) obvious reaction was it's a wonder anyone could account for and begin to understand all that without taking into account the role of spirit people, for either bad or good, in great events. And sure enough Weber's summation was a bit schizophrenic and contradictory; being both fatalistically deterministic (quoting Ecclesiastes) and hopefully heroic (Wordsworth.) Now what I would like to see is a new version of the same series but with all the patently recognizable instances of diabolical, gross, and inexcusable evil edited out.

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"Being as truth and non-being as falsity refer to and rest upon combination and division of the elementary parts of thought. For truth and falsity have no significance when applied to things, but only to the connection of thought which is dominated by the one principle of non-contradiction. Nay, thinking has not even immediate and direct reference to being as such, but only to being as the existent, as qualified, or quantified, or modified in some other way (i.e., according to the categories), and is in its very essence the conjunction or unifying of elements. What cannot be conjoined, as, e.g., the notions of elementary facts themselves, are not either true or false, and are not matters of thought. Thought thus moves in a definite sphere, that of the combinable or separable, the correspondence of conceptions with real relations, and has its limits on the one hand in the elementary data apprehended by intellect, and on the other hand in the infinite sea of particular, accidental qualifications of things. The possibility of contradictory assertions (for true and false judgments together make up the contradiction) is the distinguishing mark of thought."
~ Robert Adamson (1852-1902), A Short History of Logic, p. 35.

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Just as no table or chair can stand on only one or two legs, you need at least two other things to realize or make any one thing properly.

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Insurance

People tend
to disappoint:
either they didn’t
do much of anything;
or if they did,
we blame them for
not doing as well
as they did before.

Meantime, those
we did not even
want to meet in life
are killing us.
So we study facts
and wage war
to vanquish
the custodians
of present wealth
and future salvation.

But how does
one vanquish
the dead?

I wouldn't
be cynical.
It's just
I don't want
any trouble.
That's all.
Oh, how wicked a heart
must that be
that doesn't pity
the child
born to all this,
or the good people
who loved and raised us
to do right.

Come the day,
we can't bury
ourselves.
So hopefully
someone will
do it for us.
And mayhap
things then
will make
more sense.

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If we say the validity of causation fails in the absolute sense, then yes Hume is right. But if we impartially scrutinize possibilities -- if not with hyper-speculative mathematical precision necessarily but with round probabilistic estimates, then we usually (though not always) can rely upon causal identification at a rate of (roughly) 75%-99% success rate or something like practical certainty. In this way, it is possible for experience to process, confirm and graduate theories into assumptions of reasonably measurable degrees of correctness and reliability. This, of course, not a few will recognize as just plain old common sense. Yet how remarkable it is, even so, that many, even so, still fly and act contrary to in the face of it; by, for example, assuming a position of wisdom while emphatically refusing to discuss a matter and issues logically and honestly.

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["The Gap Band - You Dropped A Bomb On Me" -- orig. video]

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Talkin' about my generation (well, pretty close at any rate.)

["Duran Duran - The Reflex" -- orig. video]

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["Karate Killers film trailer"]

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["Who loves ya, baby? by Telly Savalas" -- sung by the man himself]

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If he implicitly or explicitly rejects the Light (that is, the Word and honest, logical truth) then he must as a matter of course be of darkness, musn't he? And if he is decidely of darkness, then that would put him at a disadvantage in some respects, now wouldn't it?

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Unlike others, and who did not even attempt to fight, I know him because I beat him (many times.)

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It was funny (in its way.) Last night watching one of the installments to Eugen Weber's "Western Tradition" program, he described Hitler's beliefs for society as a form of Social Darwinism.

As well, he lauged (at him) when he said Hitler decided to invade Russia (instead of defeating England.) But don't people understand yet that Hitler also wanted to be loved -- just liked anyone else? (Despite his ultra phenomenal power?)

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