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In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the question at issue, but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

Mark Twain

Defeat is an orphan; victory has many fathers.

The strength of women is their illusion of weakness. The weakness of men is their illusion of strength.

I think I have a short-term memory problem..










I think I have a short-term memory problem..

I've heard it said that music is the greatest of the arts. But is that assertion absolutely true? It can't be true for people who are completely deaf, or even just tone deaf. When such people consider the arts, or the effect of the arts upon their lives, music surely cannot come into the equation, because for them music cannot exist, at least to a degree sufficient for them to make a judgement as to its greatness. Similarly, for blind or visually impaired people, the visual arts would not be considered the greatest of the arts. But, of course, they know that music does exist, or that the visual arts do exist, if only for other people.

So an assertion that this or that is the greatest or the best cannot be taken as an absolute truth, right? It's all subjective, all relative to the observer or the experiencer. Indeed the observer or the experiencer, by the mere act of observing or experiencing, may have an effect upon what is observed or experienced, and thus change the truth, as happens in experiments in physics at the sub-atomic level, where the mere act of observing affects what happens to what is being observed. Similarly, a musician may perform perfectly with an instrument in solitary practice, but in the presence of an audience may be reduced to a nervous wreck producing an error-laden performance, or may be inspired to divine heights of even greater degrees of perfection.

So what is perfection, what is the best, the greatest, what is truth? All relative? All subjective? A championship-winning football team may be regarded as the best, but only insofar as it won more points than other teams, and only for a certain period in time; in some other respects perhaps it may not be the best team. In Akira Kurosawa's classic Japanese film Rashomon, witnesses to a crime gave different versions of the incident. Each version was the truth as the witness perceived it, but no version was the complete or absolute truth. So what we regard as the truth can only be a subjective relative version of the truth. The absolute, perfect truth must be outside our line of sight, our own particular individual perspective, beyond the range of our sensory capabilities, beyond our understanding.

Anybody who is deaf knows that music exists, sufficient evidence is available for them to know that. And even if they are incapable of appreciating music themselves, sufficient evidence may be available for them to deduce that music may well be the greatest of the arts, even perhaps allowing for the fact that what is the greatest (or what is the truth) in one set of circumstances may not be seen to be so in a different situation. So if the truth is the truth no matter what, the problem lies in how we perceive it, and in whether we are able to perceive it. And perhaps the same goes for wisdom. As Walter Lipmann said, it requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the listener is deaf.

Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
The Buddha

The price of the Presumption of Innocence in a criminal court is that from time to time murderers and thieves and rapists and muggers get away with their crimes.

But the price of Guilty Until Proven Innocent is even higher.

Get a family holiday for half price!!

Simply take your child out of school for a week in June, go on a caravan holiday to Exmouth and then pay the £120 fine when you get back!

A total of about £350 BUT STILL saving about £350 off the rip off price that it would be if you went in July/August!

Back of the net!

Good thinking Andy. Now what do I do with the cat..??

It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house.
Solomon

A feminist discovers feminist logic is an oxymoron:

“What is feminist logic is a question I’ve spent the past six months thinking about and researching. There are not a lot of women in philosophy, and there are definitely not a lot of feminist philosophers, so I don’t have a good answer for this question.” Arielle Schlesinger: http://www.hastac.org/blogs/ari-schlesi ... -languages

No shit, Sherlock..!! =D

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.

Agnes Pharo

PC Christmas madness..?? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/chris ... -knee.html

The price for my speech was my passport, but I would pay it again: I will not be the one to ignore criminality for the sake of political comfort. I would rather be without a state than without a voice.
Edward Snowden

'Where there's law there's injustice.'
Platon Karataev in War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy