Proselytes, Proseldarks, Proselmarketers

     The other day, two nice ladies of the Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on my door.  This was, in fact, their third visit.  On the previous two, they had spoken with my wife, who was polite and nice and somehow left them with the idea that they had a potential convert here.  They had left literature and apparently decided to return.  This time, they got me.
     I don’t like proselytes.  I don’t like telemarketers either.  I see them as essentially of the same species of intrusive “you don’t know what you want because you don’t know what I’ve got to sell you” school of bullying.  I don’t like aggressive salesmen.  If I’m wandering through a store, and someone approaches with a polite “Are you finding everything okay?  My name’s Mike, if you have any questions…”  That’s fine.  If I have questions, I’ll go find Mike or whoever and ask.  If I don’t, and he approaches again, my inclination is to leave.  He’s stepped over the line as far as I’m concerned.  Telemarketing is worse–I’m not even in their showroom–and religious proselytes are from one of the circles of hell.
     Here’s the deal: to knock on your door and present you with salvation, they have to make a basic assumption–that you have no clue about the nature of reality and even if you think you do, you’re wrong, because they know the skinny on god’s plan.  In other words, they have to assume you’re stupid, ignorant, or tacitly in league with evil.
     If …

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How to have good ideas

Having good ideas is a quest with which all writers struggle.  And all non-writers too.

How does one develop good ideas?  Have them, recognize them and hone them, it would seem.  But only the first of these three tasks (having raw ideas pop into one’s head) is easy.  For the most part, good ideas are developed (not found) and this requires hard work.  Developing good ideas is rarely like it is portrayed on television, where fully formed ideas drop down from the sky with little effort.

I am not suggesting (by writing this post) that I have more original ideas than the average person.  I plainly admit that almost every worthy idea I’ve ever expressed was not original to me.  In fact, I’d be surprised if I had more than a couple dozen original, substantial and worthy ideas in my entire life.  I assume that most of my ideas have been plagiarized (though usually not intentionally) or that they were simply a modified versions of someone elses’ ideas (modified by stretching them, inverting them or combining them with other borrowed ideas).

How does one have good new ideas?  When Linus Pauling was asked how he was able to make so many discoveries, he replied: “You must have lots of ideas and just throw away the bad ones.”

Those who don’t have many ideas of their own (for instance, those who watch lots of mind-numbing television) don’t have many good ideas of their own.  For most of my life, I have …

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Sticks, Stones, and Prayer Mats

Many years ago, a fellow employee and I got into political and philosophic discourse weekly, sometimes daily. One of our basic disagreements had to do with abortion. She was Irish Catholic, and a very bright woman. Her position was consistent with her church. But she was not so dogmatic as to be incapable of engaging the debate without getting so defensive as to shut off her brain.

One day we both heard a news report about a statutory rape case in England. The girl–14–was pregnant. The judge ordered her to have an abortion. The circumstances were bizarre and extreme. Naturally, though, the debate at work that day was about abortion.

“I suppose,” she said to me, “you agree with the judge’s order.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. She blinked, dismayed, and asked why. “Because it’s supposed to be a matter of choice, for Pete’s sake. Choice. Why is it so hard for you to get that? It’s not the court’s decision, it’s her decision, whether to keep it or get rid of it.”

She had a hard time with that–with both aspects. The idea of abortion and my support of a woman’s right to keep her fetus.

An earlier post elicited some responses dealing with the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, one of which asserted that there is no explicit statement in the Constitution separating church and state. As far as it goes, no, there isn’t, but the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment lays a logical basis for first …

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Wiki vs. Britannica: Evolution vs. Design

I just finally got around to reading my June 2006 Communications of the ACM (an academic computer journal) and spotted a little news brief about Britannica trying to sue Nature magazine for this December 2005 Article that noted that the error rate in science entries of Wikipedia is comparable to…

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Disney vs. History

The Walt Disney Studios, and its divisions and subsidiaries, have always upheld a very loose relationship between well-established historical fact, and their productions. One case in point would be The Prince of Egypt, a delightful tale of Moses growing up. It clearly shows Moses playing around the slaves building the…

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