You try it. Gaze. Stare into the face...
March 20, 2017
"Once you've gazed upon and contemplated 150 million years of mostly Mesozoic-aged sedimentation, uplift, and subsequent erosion, it's hard to take seriously the self-important emotional expressions on the faces of Jake Tapper and guests."
Says Meade, commenting on my post "I think I've been cured of my interest in watching the Sunday morning talk shows/Was it just that after skipping them for 3 weeks — when I was off on a road trip — I'd lost the momentum of routine...."
You try it. Gaze. Stare into the face...
You try it. Gaze. Stare into the face...
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I forgot all about them yesterday and then saw Fox News Sunday last night on a repeat.
Why in the world they would invite an advocate like Emmanuel to be on a panel discussing Obamacare is a mystery.
Fox is losing me.
Meade: :-D Big thumbs up!
This is why liberals usually win, they would rather engage in perpetual trench warfare politics 24/7 than do anything else with their lives.
In general, most of us who are more conservatively inclined or even moderate to slightly Democrat would rather engage in something far more positive with our lives.
Life is wonderful, feel free to enjoy it, rather than think it is always a oppression and crisis.
Best of the weekend and just pips Jake Tapper:
"Dear Europeans: What our president said is literally true. He watches
things on Fox News and repeats them. He's the Manchurian Couch Potato."
Exactly Meade. This is also why it is difficult to take seriously the breathless hysterics that the use of some incandescent light bulbs is going to send us all into a global warming melt down.
They have no perspective.
When I contemplate the 4.6 billion year old earth and sun, present to me daily, it's hard to take seriously anything breathlessly reported as important in the news.
Beauty is truth, and thus offers a helpful perspective on what is being said. I think if there was a hint of truth in the Sunday shows, you'd appreciate them.
But, in light of your marvelous experience, you see the wan theater of puppetry for what it is. No one is interested in truth on those shows. Everyone has a paid part to play. The topics are worth discussing, the format is covered in warts and boils.
Truth is beauty, and the Sunday shows are quite ugly.
Inga/Unknown is our window on the mentality of the left.
Thank you, Inga.
The thing about most habits and addictions is that they have a completely artificial power over you. They satisfy a need, but usually one created out nothing. You realize this once you get off the wheel. You no longer see what the attraction was, becuase there wasn't really anything there. That said, there are very positive habits that a person can choose to adopt, and which you allow yourself to fall into with good results.
All rocks are offspring through fission of the same enormous forebear. All one can say about this fabulous body is once outside of limbo it did not remain standing.
Francis Ponge, "The Pebble."
I spend a lot of time gazing at things millions and billions of years old and find it difficult to take anything about mankind seriously. I make an exception for impressive engineering accomplishments, but human culture? Meh.
(BTW, the Baraboo Hills are a lot older, to name just one local example.)
150 million years of sedimentation, uplift and erosion--but enough about John Kerry.
"Beauty is truth, and truth beauty-- That is all/ Ye know on earth and all ye need to know."-- Keats
The notion of more and more Tappers chasing fewer and fewer watchers is delightful.
"That said, there are very positive habits that a person can choose to adopt, and which you allow yourself to fall into with good results."
Which is why it is better to pursue positive habits than spend all your focus just fighting bad habits. Even if a bad habit is broken, without having something else there to feel the time and mental space, it's easy to return.
This is why legalism is so ultimately self-defeating.
And a good reminder for me today.
Is a Rock more interesting than Jack tapper?
I thought that was a given.
I find the discussion on those show to be completely worthless. Nothing anyone says is surprising or novel, because that is usually the goal of the guests: to avoid saying anything important or unexpected. The are coached and practiced on doing exactly that. They concentrate on avoiding saying things, but with lots of words, other words, words that lead you away, cover the trail, and generally fog up the very understanding you imagine you will get by watching. It's as close as you can get to gibberish while still sounding intelligent.
The problem is that bad habits are much more pleasurable then good habits.
"You try it. Gaze. Stare into the face..."
All the liberals will see is Trump. With that hair! And orange skin! Tweeting out obnoxious lies!
"I find the discussion on those show to be completely worthless."
Meet the Press was useful in the early days as it provided a serious forum for reporters, who were really reporters, to ask questions on TV which was a new medium.
The same was true for other similar programs but that was then. Now, the "reporters" seem to consider their own opinions more important.
The segment where Chris Wallace was asking Ryan about the health care bill was useful since he made the excellent point that this was how legislation worked. We haven't seen legislation in 8 years.
When Wallace turned to the Russia hobby horse, I lost interest.
"Baraboo Hills are a lot older"
But only half as dusty.
Rob said...
150 million years of sedimentation, uplift and erosion--but enough about John Kerry.
*rimshot*
One alternate to gazing at the rocks might be being 250 miles West of Point Arena in a 26 foot rowboat out of sight of the mother ship with 7 miles of water under you . It was a drill. The guys on the ship knew right where we were, but boy did this 18 year old feel small.
"The problem is that bad habits are much more pleasurable then good habits."
Because the bad habits are habits. It's not just changing the habit, one changes what brings pleasure. I liked this explanation by Penn Jillette.
That's why moral discussions are often so useless. People think it's about cutting off pleasure and then having a deficient experience of life. Which is what legalism does. Good habits create the same pleasure but in ways that contribute to overall well-being.
The transition can be brutal though, as it does involve a loss of the experience of pleasure in faith that such loss won't be permanent but rather re-directed. Which our brain won't let us believe.
Thus I spend time writing comments when I should be going out running.
I find the panels on the Sunday shows a lot more informative than the invited guests. It's how I learn the current lefty arguments. Lately, however, I can get them directly from the horse's mouth (Hi, Inga!).
I haven't watched a Sunday talk show for years, but I've caught snippets of them from time to time when I was't paying attention to what was on. It's remarkable to me that anyone could sit for an hour and listen to a set of smug, self important, D.C. bubble denizens pontificate about partisan topics that are of little import more than fifteen miles in any direction from the Washington Monument. Can anyone who follows those programs honestly say he has ever heard one of the hostitutes ask a probing question of a lefty or a polite question of a Republican? Does it ever take more than a few minutes to understand the agenda being pursued through the line of questioning? Has anyone ever listened to one of the panelists and thought "wow, that person is completely unbiased and has keen insight into the discussion topic?" It's nothing more than political pornography with a lot of mutual masturbation among the panelists. Real pornography would be a better use of one's time.
In view of his biased Trump coverage, I've come to despise Tapper's very handsome face. Feel same way about Chuck Todd, another promising news head who's lost all credibility. Lou Dobbs fails for the very opposite reason.
In fact is there a single major news personality who has come out of this admittedly strange presidential moment still looking good? Perhaps Ann should apply for the job?
I think there is a certain helpless futility inherent in such polarized, strange times. I've thought for a while that more and more, people will turn away from external events and inward towards more personal and immediate experiences like home, family and Mesozoic sedimentation.
If you sit on the south rim of Grand Canyon and look down you may see a narrow black stripe on each side of the river below. That is original continental shield rock, estimated to be 3½ billion years old. Everything above it is sedimentary deposits.
Tapper was on Bill Maher Friday night. It's funny - he was wearing brown shoes with a blue suit and I immediately thought of Althouse commenters critiquing this when Justin Trudeau went to Washington.
Meade, that'w why we geologists are skeptical about a lot of stuff. A million years is pocket lint. Ten million years is minor pocket change.
Here's a bit to contemplate ... *we* are closer in time to the Tyrannosaurus (by millions of years) than it was to the Stegosaurus. And a mere 60 million years ago the Arctic Ocean was essentially a Louisiana bayou, replete with cypress and crocs (instead of gators). Most of what is now the Canadian Arctic was a gigantic redwood forest.
I used to do geological age dating and for some years had as a paperweight what was then the oldest known rock in the world, as some 3,950 million years.
I just bought a meteorite for my wife. Your comment reminded me I was going to do it earlier then got distracted.
You helped me remember. Thanks.
"3,950 million years"
Old as life itself.
"You helped me remember. Thanks."
Anytime, Michael K. And happy meteoriteday from me to you and your lovely wife.
Meteorites are one of her passions. I read that a famous meteorite hunter lives in Tucson and she got all excited.
Sh has programs I never heard of that are favorites on such topics.
"I used to do geological age dating and for some years had as a paperweight what was then the oldest known rock in the world, as some 3,950 million years."
THAT would be cool.
It occurs to me that 150M light-years is within the light grasp of my 15" scope. I should take it to Meade's strata and acquaint the Mesozoic sediments to their photon cousins.
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