Mark W Tiedemann

Category: Philosophy

A Moment of Celebrity Type Stuff

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

A friend of mine, the estimable Erich Veith, came by my home a bit over a year ago and we recorded a long interview.  Erich has finally gotten around to editing it and has begun posting segments on YouTube.  Here’s the first one.  (I still haven’t figured out how to embed videos here, so bear with me.)

Erich runs the website  Dangerous Intersection, where I post opinionated blatherings from time to time and Erich graciously allows me to hold forth in my own idiosyncratic manner.  Why he thought people would also enjoy watching and hearing me as well, I can’t say, but I enjoyed the process and from the looks of the first three (which are up at Dangerous Intersection) I don’t think I came off too badly.…

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James Hogan, Troubled In His Stars

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

James P. Hogan had died.

He wrote science fiction.  The books I read, over 20 years ago, were generally pretty good.  He has the distinction for me of having written one of my favorite debut novels, Inherit the Stars.  It was a murder mystery, a science mystery, a space adventure, and a thorough-going exposition on forensics of all sorts, including, in the end, “evolutionary” forensics (if such a thing exists).

There is profound irony in that.  The plot hinges around a spacesuited corpse found on the moon at a time when it shouldn’t have been there.  The story is the series of investigations finding out where it came from. …

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Labels

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Conservative.

Liberal.

We act as if we know what these labels mean.  Conservatives are traditionalists, fiscally opposed to anything that smacks of gambling, private, often religious, and pedantic on what they consider “appropriate” in either government or personal conduct.

Liberals, on the other hand, are often taken for progressive, willing to spend social capital to repair perceived problems, tolerant, agnostic if not atheist, and overly-concerned with a definition of justice that ought to be all-encompassing rather than what they perceive as sinecure for the privileged.

Well.  Over on Facebook I posted a brief quote (my own) to boil down the actual underlying distinctions.…

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Ada Lovelace Day

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I just discovered that there is a day for this brilliant woman.

Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron, a scholar, and wrote what is arguably the very first computer program in an essay about Charles Babbage.  Of course, since she was a woman at a time when women were considered not to have either brains or rights, she would have been seen as an anomaly at best, a monster at worst.  Since she had some position, however, she has not been forgotten or dismissed.

Warning: personal opinion follows.

Women who denigrate the idea of Feminism and fail to understand how tenuous their position is vis-a-vis  history cause me heartburn. …

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Prophets, Providence, and Problems: An Observation

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

This is one of those notions I stumble on from time to time while daydreaming or free associating.  I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about religion of late—as how could many people not be, what with the state of the world (he says with tongue in his other cheek, being both ironic and absurd)?—and trying to come up with some theory of it that might bleed off the poisons that seem to bubble up from it from time to time.

Someone said something to me that triggered this idea and it’s probably not original.  But we were discussing Roman Catholicism and the observation was made that in its long history it has absorbed more than it has suppressed.…

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The Paradox of Popularity

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Over on her blog, Kelley Eskridge has a video of a “Bono Moment” in which you see two distinct types of fans interacting with U2’s lead singer.  Check it out and come back here.

Okay, the guy in the t-shirt obviously is carrying on a conversation.  he may be being a fan, but he hasn’t lost his mind.  The female is being…a groupie, I guess.  Though the groupies I’ve met in my time have been a bit more specific about what they wanted and had a better plan on how to get it.  In any event, the questions Kelley raises are interesting and relate on so many levels to so many different things. …

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Rude Behavior Redux

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

What follows is an old post from my original website, back in 2005.  I’m reposting it because of a revisitation.  Yesterday I had a knock on the door and there were a couple of people from some small church, spreading the good news.

Now, there is irony here, because I’ve just started reading Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.  I didn’t read it when it first came out because it received so much attention and there was an enormous quantity of posturing, both pro and con, regarding it, that I decided to wait till the furor died down.  Besides, it’s not like I needed convincing on this point. …

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More Doors

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

(Robin Trower is jamming on the stereo as I write this.  Just sayin’.)

I feel the urge to write something, but no one topic presents itself with sufficient weight to dominate a whole entry.  What to talk about, that is the question.  That poor guy who got tied to a tree in Kentucky was on my mind last week.

Census takers have, in certain parts of the country, been lumped in with so-called “revenooers” (to use Snuffy Smith jargon) and generally threatened, shot at, occasionally killed by folks exercising their right to be separate.  So they assume.  Appalachia, the Ozarks, parts of Tennessee and Kentucky, Texas…a lot of pockets, populated by people who have, for many reasons, acquired a sense of identity apart from the mainstream, and who feel imposed upon if the gov’ment so much as notices their existence. …

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John Adams and the Efforts of Time

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

We just watched the last episode of John Adams.  I got the DVD from the library and we went through it in one week, all seven installments.  I have to admit, the last episode brought tears.  The partnership between John and Abigail was well-portrayed and deeply moving.  The older I get, the more I find the strongest story resonance with depictions of deep, deep friendships, especially those that exist between lovers, spouses, life partners.  I cannot imagine losing Donna, who has become exactly that for me, in spite of the fact that I have friends of longer acquaintance, good friends, too.…

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