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Sort of a quiet Friday...
Oct. 15th, 2010 06:55 pmGot a rush job first thing this morning, which got the juices flowing until I had to book out the door to the amateur radio breakfast. (Well, I didn't have to go, but I wanted to.)
I finished the job once I got back, then sent it off, then took a look at the Twitter background I had come up with yesterday evening and decided it was awful, so I redid the whole thing pretty much from scratch.
Whereupon Galina and I headed over to Durango, a trip made slower by road crews resurfacing the highway thanks to - say the signs - the stimulus. This work reminded me of the tale told by Frederic Bastiat in his series of essays on What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, on the difference in utility between spending money to replace something you already had and spending money on something new.
While driving home, it occurred to me that one of the assertions I made a while back about the prospects of getting back in touch with people I knew a long time ago - I said it would not happen - is likely wrong. Life has a way of "coming around again on the guitar" from time to time. It won't be the first time I've been wrong, nor likely the last.
In other news, I got into a short discussion on Facebook on the nature of heroism with a fellow who asked: "How does being unlucky enough to be in the wrong place in the wrong time make someone a hero?" (This was a comment to an assertion by one of my FB friends that the Chilean miners were heroes because of the way they stayed positive under pressure.) In the commenter's view, a hero was someone who had to place himself or herself in harm's way to help someone and to do so with no idea of gain.
I maintained that it wasn't circumstances per se that made one a hero, but one's reaction to them, and suggested that a hero is a person whose behavior in a given situation is praiseworthy, noteworthy, and worth emulating.
When I read my interlocutor's response, it was as if he had completely ignored what I said: "So being in the wrong place at the wrong time is 'worthy of note and emulation'?" I noted that "being in a place" is not what I had in mind when I spoke of "behavior," and rephrased my point, stating that how one deals with the situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - or in any place at any time - was what potentially makes one a hero.
Based on his response, I disengaged from the discussion, "agreeing to disagree," as it were. And while I stand by my initial definition of "hero," 'tis a rough and ready thing, and prompts consideration of the question: What is a hero? (and perhaps of the secondary question: Why is that important?)
But not now. :-)
Cheers...
I finished the job once I got back, then sent it off, then took a look at the Twitter background I had come up with yesterday evening and decided it was awful, so I redid the whole thing pretty much from scratch.
Whereupon Galina and I headed over to Durango, a trip made slower by road crews resurfacing the highway thanks to - say the signs - the stimulus. This work reminded me of the tale told by Frederic Bastiat in his series of essays on What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen, on the difference in utility between spending money to replace something you already had and spending money on something new.
While driving home, it occurred to me that one of the assertions I made a while back about the prospects of getting back in touch with people I knew a long time ago - I said it would not happen - is likely wrong. Life has a way of "coming around again on the guitar" from time to time. It won't be the first time I've been wrong, nor likely the last.
In other news, I got into a short discussion on Facebook on the nature of heroism with a fellow who asked: "How does being unlucky enough to be in the wrong place in the wrong time make someone a hero?" (This was a comment to an assertion by one of my FB friends that the Chilean miners were heroes because of the way they stayed positive under pressure.) In the commenter's view, a hero was someone who had to place himself or herself in harm's way to help someone and to do so with no idea of gain.
I maintained that it wasn't circumstances per se that made one a hero, but one's reaction to them, and suggested that a hero is a person whose behavior in a given situation is praiseworthy, noteworthy, and worth emulating.
When I read my interlocutor's response, it was as if he had completely ignored what I said: "So being in the wrong place at the wrong time is 'worthy of note and emulation'?" I noted that "being in a place" is not what I had in mind when I spoke of "behavior," and rephrased my point, stating that how one deals with the situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - or in any place at any time - was what potentially makes one a hero.
Based on his response, I disengaged from the discussion, "agreeing to disagree," as it were. And while I stand by my initial definition of "hero," 'tis a rough and ready thing, and prompts consideration of the question: What is a hero? (and perhaps of the secondary question: Why is that important?)
But not now. :-)
Cheers...
