“It says in the Scriptures that if you have as much as a grain of faith and if you ask a mountain to move into the sea. it will do so at once and without delay, the second you ask it. So, Mr. Gregory, since you’re a believer and I’m an unbeliever — for which you keep reproaching me — why don’t you try asking the mountain to slide not even all the way into the sea (because there’s no sea anywhere near here) but just down into our stinking little river, the one that runs behind our garden. If you do, you’ll see for yourself that nothing will move, that everything will remain where it is, even though you shout all you want, and that should prove that you too, Mr. Gregory, do not have the true faith, which you like to reproach others for lacking.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky,… Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
LinkedIn Recommendation
Even though sin and injustice and temptation are all around us, we know that there is on this earth a holy man, a saint who is just and knows the truth, and this means that truth and justice have not vanished from the earth and so will come to us too and rule over all the world as has been promised. Read more →
I Twisted Things a Little
ctually, I believe that, in telling you all about the struggle that took place in me, I twisted things a little, to make myself look a little better. But I don’t care if I did. The hell with all this spying on the human heart! — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov Read more →
Aside
unch-and-learn today on Developing a Positive Attitude. Was going to sign up but then thought, “What the heck good would that do?”
Thomas Jefferson’s Election 2012 Wrapup: Tired of the Bulls**t
My fellow Americans — The first headline I saw this morning was Obama Victory Speech Urges Unity in Facing Challenges. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s an ad run by President Obama in Ohio in the closing days of the campaign: A few days ago, it was Us vs. Them, whoever you imagine Us and Them to be. Now it’s Obama Urges Unity. “Not one of us” is an ugly sentiment in itself, but coming from a man who not long ago promised us Hope and Change and Inclusiveness, it betrays a complete absence of character. Four years ago, I said what I thought I needed to say to get elected, and I’m doing the same thing now, even though what I’m saying now is the exact opposite of what I said then. Obama has been nothing if not divisive. On class and income, he speaks contemptuously of “millionaires”… Read more →
The Good Society
Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government. — Walter Lippmann, The Good Society Read more →
Politicians Making Things Happen
Now, if we want people to do certain things and if we are indifferent as to why they do them, then no affective appeals need be excluded. Some political candidates want us to vote for them regardless of our reasons for doing so. Therefore, if we hate the rich, they will snarl at the rich for us; if we dislike strikers, they will snarl at the strikers; if we like clambakes, they will throw clambakes; if the majority of us like hillbilly music, they may say nothing about the problems of government, but travel among their constituencies with hillbilly bands. — S.I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action Read more →
Mencken on Politicians
The one aim of all such persons is to butter their own parsnips. They have no concept of the public good that can be differentiated from their concept of their own good. They get into office by making all sorts of fantastic promises, few of which they ever try to keep, and they maintain themselves there by fooling the people further. They are supported in their business by the factitious importance which goes with high public position. The great majority of folk are far too stupid to see through a politician’s tinsel. Because he is talked of in the newspapers all the time, and applauded when he appears in public, they mistake him for a really eminent man. But he is seldom anything of the sort. — H.L. Mencken Read more →
Summary of Campaign Spending on California Ballot Propositions
I found this table from Ballotpedia rather interesting. It shows how much money has been donated to each side of the California ballot propositions. Proposition Donations in favor Donations against Proposition 30 $67,100,000 $53,400,000 Proposition 31 $4,400,000 $573,700 Proposition 32 $60,500,000 $73,300,000 Proposition 33 $17,100,000 $275,700 Proposition 34 $7,400,000 $391,900 Proposition 35 $3,700,000 $0 Proposition 36 $2,700,000 $119,900 Proposition 37 $8,700,000 $45,600,000 Proposition 38 $47,800,000 $42,300 Proposition 39 $31,400,000 $45,000 Proposition 40 $601,100 $2,300,000 Read more →
Worst Case Scenarios on Demand
If you’re in the market for a worst case scenario, you need to talk to my wife . . . I got an Amazon Local deal via email — a one-hour horseback riding lesson for $35. “Do you want to take a horseback riding lesson?” I asked her. “No,” she said. “It’s dangerous. I’m not going to do it and you’re not going to do it. Remember that guy . . . what’s his name? Christopher Reeve.” Read more →
EppsNet Restaurant Reviews: Gulliver’s
The smoked salmon appetizer was superb, as was the prime rib entree. Attentive service is provided by busty waitresses in the Brobdingnagian tradition. “Did you notice all the waitresses had big tits?” my wife asked. Highly recommended! Read more →
At the Dentist
Favorite Poem of the Week
My favorite poem of the week — again from Modern & Contemporary American Poetry — was “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” by Bernadette Mayer, especially the final image of the stressed-out new mother reading The Wild Boy of Aveyron, about a feral child raised by wolves. Read more →
Overheard
“We’ve got to stop kicking ourselves in the foot.” Read more →
Visualizing Social Networks
I’m taking a Social Network Analysis class on Coursera. These weren’t assignments for the class (well, the Facebook one sort of was), just some experiments I wanted to share. Facebook You can use netvizz to download a gdf file of your Facebook network, i.e., all of your Facebook friends and all of the connections between them. You can then use your favorite graph analysis software (I used Gephi, which is open-source and free) to look for patterns. My Facebook network is in the image below. Of the four main clusters, two consist of co-workers, one is family and one is people I know from roller hockey. Twitter This is the network of people I follow on Twitter. I used NodeXL (a free, open-source template for Excel) to download and lay out the data. I labeled the nodes in this one. With a few exceptions, the light blue nodes are people… Read more →
Sleeping Pugs
Poems I’ve Read Recently and Liked
I’ve been reading a lot of poetry as part of the Modern & Contemporary American Poetry class on Coursera. One of the things I like about the class is that the video lessons are done a little differently than other Coursera classes I’ve taken. Rather than recorded lectures, the videos consist of the instructor, Al Filreis, leading a small group of Penn students in close readings of selected poems. Anyway, here are a few of my favorites so far: I dwell in Possibility by Emily Dickinson Tell all the Truth but tell it slant by Emily Dickinson The Brain within its Groove by Emily Dickinson Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams This Is Just To Say by Willim Carlos Williams A Supermarket in California by Allen Ginsburg Lines for an Abortionist’s Office by Ruth Lechlitner Incident by Countee Cullen These next two, both by Richard Wilbur, I want to single out as being particularly… Read more →
Status
A colleague says, “Are you talkin’ to ME?” Oh, and he showed up at work this morning with a shaved head. Time to worry?
Status
RT @HarveyMackay: Once the mistake is recognized, what’s lost is lost#Mistakes
Status
RT @dwangelo: Remember to vote! So it can be cancelled out by 50 million adults who enjoy Harry Potter books.