July 12, 2023

A miracle.

45 comments:

Owen said...

Genius. It's genetic.

rhhardin said...

If it weren't for misunderstanding we'd never agree on anything.

RideSpaceMountain said...

Considering his Japanese ancestry, he should be thinking of Tokyo when he's probably thinking of the busy streets of New York.

Tokyo is an ant colony masquerading as a human city. The deftness with which the Japanese can telepathically avoid contact within millimeters of each other while walking at 4.5mph and looking at their phones amazes me to this day. Even with all the time I've spent there I never mastered this and probably couldn't if it took a hundred years.

Buckwheathikes said...

"AARYYCCHHH_HHHHHHWE__RRSOIIEKKKSIDIII!!!!!!!!" - Yoko Ono Lennon

Buckwheathikes said...

"AARYYCCHHHHHHHHHWERRSOIIEKKKSIDIII!!!!!!!!" - Yoko Ono Lennon

farmgirl said...

I’m sticking my neck out, here:
I’ve always loved Sean.

Enigma said...

We can't even walk down the street. 75% are staring at their phones and walk straight into you.

Paul said...

Well then I guess he should believe in God since these miracles happen every minute of every day.

tim in vermont said...

The deftness with which the Japanese can telepathically avoid contact within millimeters of each other while walking at 4.5mph and looking at their phones amazes me to this day.

You should read "Notes from Underground" on the subject of the avoidance of sidewalk collisions, or not, or maybe you shouldn't. I can't really recommend it as a "read," and it was written by a Russian, not a Ukrainian.

wild chicken said...

Back in the day, the answer to all this discord was Education. Swear that's what everyone said. So finally I asked one prof, what does that mean - when we're "educated" we'll all come to the same conclusions? which seemed unlikely. And he just shrugged, like who tf knows.

It was just something everyone said.

gspencer said...

Jack Handey, move over. Sean Lennon has come up with some really deep stuff.

Wonder if he took the silver spoon out of his mouth to sip his latte while typing.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Help people avoid walking on the street is what I do. Last night I picked up a couple girls from a bar to take them to their hotel just a few short blocks away. They felt they needed to tell me that at the bar they were told it’s not safe for women to walk past midnight in Atlanta.

Quaestor said...

Put your neck right here on this block, farmgirl.

Kind regards,
Quaestor the Headsman

Seán Ono Lennon. That affected Gaelic spelling ought to make him unlovable, not to mention his mock profundities. He's 49 years old and he gives forth insights worthy of a middle schooler with aspirations. Come on...

stutefish said...

Counterpoint: The fact that we can walk down the street without smashing into each other should tell Sean Lennon that we don't see things so differently after all.

Will Cate said...

Haters gonna hate, but Sean is my favorite child-of-a-Beatle.

gilbar said...

Lem the misspeller said...
Help people avoid walking on the street is what I do. Last night I picked up a couple girls from a bar to take them to their hotel just a few short blocks away

sounds like you enjoyed a couple of delicious girl dinners! hope so!

wild chicken said...

"The answer," they said, "is education."

Sean Gleeson said...

That affected Gaelic spelling ought to make him unlovable, not to mention his mock profundities."
Upvote.

I know a few Seans who use the á glyph, but they were all born in Ireland. A Sean born in the USA (e.g. Sean Lennon and me) should just use an honest unadorned a.

tommyesq said...

So finally I asked one prof, what does that mean - when we're "educated" we'll all come to the same conclusions?

Seems like higher education is doing everything in their power to make this happen.

MB said...

The only "seeing things differently" that comes into play here is that some people see themselves as the main character. They are the ones not looking where they are going. The rest of us are watching for them and step aside when we see them coming. Occasionally they run into inanimate objects. Then they want to be reimbursed for the damage caused by their own lack of attention.

gilbar said...

FYI,
Kamala Harris has SOLVED, the Whole "transportation" thing.. She gave it some thought and decided:
'this issue of transportation is fundamentally about just making sure that people have the ability to get where they need to go! Heh! Heh!'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12288687/Kamala-Harris-solves-transportation-crisis.html

See? People thought it was ALL a miracle or something.. BUT! it's fundamentally about just making sure that people have the ability to get where they need to go!'

Humperdink said...

Why that's just one of the most brilliant observations I've read in a awhile. Worthy of The View. He'll need to be ready in the on-deck circle as Geraldo is slated as the next celeb guest.

Molly said...

(Eaglebeak)

Sean Lennon is far more tolerable than either of his parents.

Iman said...

Wow… this fellow has often expressed some interesting, common sense opinions.

Why the dismissal? Some of you remind me of the Flo n’ Eddie groupie characters from Zappa’s “200 Motels”, sizing up the rockers:

“Eight inches or less…”

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"Jack Handey, move over. Sean Lennon has come up with some really deep stuff."

I used to work at a nonprofit organization that used art to help homeless youth deal with all that they were experiencing. The group went to see Yoko Ono. I was unable to attend. One of the things she did as art in her performance was to ask people to come up to her and start cutting away pieces of her clothing using a scissors. And people did. I don't recall how far it went.

And it made me wonder, what if someone, instead of cutting off bits of her clothing, took off their coat and covered her with it. Would that person be viewed as empathetic or prudish? Or maybe even a desecrater of art? How would Yoko have reacted to the gesture? And did anyone at any of the venues she performed this at ever try doing that?

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Well, yes, and even more amazing that with the complete vulnerability we have to each other on the street there are not frequent efflorescence of lots of us suddenly stabbing each other, shoving each other into traffic, or shooting each other - even if we are carrying guns! He might reflect on what it is about human (or divine) nature that makes this so.

re Pete said...


"Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

Carrying a dead man’s shield"

Skeptical Voter said...

Potty mouth; it's what yo do when you lack clarity of thought.

farmgirl said...

AVIdiot: that’s a Peterson point.

PM said...

Hay, take it easy. He's only 47.

Narr said...

I'm more impressed with our driving skills.

PJ57 said...

He is obviously not a Kantian!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Windows is supposed to regularly defrag the hard drive.

I don’t know where to take that right now.

traditionalguy said...

It probably is a miracle that we pass thousands of 4,000 lb steel motor vehicles with both of us going 60. mph only 3 feet away from each other going in opposite lanes without a second thought. That’s civilization.

And then there is the TiJUANA TAXIS getting drunk crowds to the Bull Fights on time while yelling at the other drivers weaving in and out. And those Mexicans get blind drunk on our streets every Friday night.

Jamie said...

Back in the day, the answer to all this discord was Education.

On the face of it, my side's aphorism "The solution to bad speech is more speech" sounds similar - a suggestion that the truth will (eventually) out if we just allow everyone always to speak, and that the "good" or "true" speech will (eventually) overwhelm the "bad" or "untrue" speech, resulting in True Speech Harmony (or True-Speech Harmony).

But of course it goes beyond that interpretation - an interpretation that sounds very feminine to me. I dislike conflict as much as or more than the 50th Percentile Woman, but even I can acknowledge that discord is not always something to be avoided, nor harmony always something to be sought, much less enforced.

Do kids read A Wrinkle In Time any more? Or is L'Engle too much like C.S. Lewis in her unapologetic Christian apologetics?

That said, I do worry about the "two movies" problem. While our era hews much closer to many of the ideals of the Founders than past eras did, at least in the past we all agreed that those ideals were at least theoretically... ideal.

Side note, maybe: It's interesting that it's the left-leaning who have failed to make the leap from theoretical founding ideals to their actualization. You'd think it would be conservatives who, forced to live in a world in which - gasp - non-white people have equal rights with white people and gay people can be "out" and women can vote, would dig in their heels and want to go back to racial and ethnic segregation and women cooking in their pearls and heels. But it's the leftists.

Kay said...

I’m deeply skeptical about the meme that’s been going around since 2016, that this country is more divided than ever before. I think it’s probably the same as it always has been.

Zavier Onasses said...

No. Not a fucking miracle.

Consider if a man. following orchiectomy, penectomy, and vaginoplasty, were to have "sexual" intercourse with a woman who had previously undergone hysterectomy and phalloplasty, and as a result became pregnant. THAT would be a fucking miracle.

Please be more accurate in your use of language.

Rabel said...

It's just a different metaphor for the "two movies, one screen" expression that many here have voiced.

NMObjectivist said...

We mostly see objects the same way. We rarely run into other vehicles because we see them in the same way.

But there's a different meaning of "see" and that is we grasp ideas differently. We understand politics differently. We have different world views. We have differences in "seeing" things things like freedom, equality, gender, fairness .... Those are high level abstractions and there is much disagreement on those. We "see" those differently.

Ampersand said...

Sean Lennon seems to have survived a strange childhood and adolescence. His wide exposure to unconventional ways of processing the world gives him some authority on this topic.

Mikey NTH said...

Perceiving abstractions is one thing.
Perceiving the crosstown bus that'll knock you into the next world is another thing.

Sort of points out which is the more immediately important to the sidewalk stroller.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"I’m deeply skeptical about the meme that’s been going around since 2016, that this country is more divided than ever before. I think it’s probably the same as it always has been."

Since 2016 I have spoken with hundreds of men in my professional and social circles as well as those I served with and every single one of them is preparing for war...even the ones you'd have never clocked as preppers...even the left/liberal-leaning ones (granted they are very few). That preparation takes many forms, from home security, to movement of financial assets, to getting Austrian passports (the best).

I disagree with this, albeit anecdotally. The country is massively divided. People on both sides are preparing for something 'unpleasant', and rightfully so. It is not abating. It will not abate. No one is voting their way out of this, as if voting for any one candidate or group of candidates could possibly turn this Titanic in enough time to miss the iceberg it's already hit.

MadTownGuy said...

Lennon's statement exemplifies the fallacy in 'perception is reality.'

Narr said...

I have some Left-Lib friends (they vote D) who speak of impending, dare I say irrepressible conflict with a little too much relish for my taste.

My non-Left-Lib friends either don't feel that way about it, or have sense enough to stay quiet.



farmgirl said...

“You'd think it would be conservatives who, forced to live in a world in which - gasp - non-white people have equal rights with white people and gay people can be "out" and women can vote, would dig in their heels and want to go back to racial and ethnic segregation and women cooking in their pearls and heels.”

I’m pretty sure these were never conservative values to begin w/, Jamie. It was the Dems who were the bigger bigots- they were pro slave.