Did Laius obey Apollo? Did he not go away in his drunken stupor and dismiss the oracle from his mind? What then? Did Apollo withhold the truth from him for that reason? Indeed I do not know whether you will obey me or not, but Apollo knew most certainly that Laius would not obey, and yet he spoke. Why did he speak? Nay, why is he Apollo, why does he give oracles, why has he set himself in this position, to be a Prophet and a Fountain of truth, so that men from all the world come to him? Why is “Know thyself” written up over his shrine, though no one understands it? — Epictetus, Discourses, Book III, Ch. 1 Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Aside
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no end to suffering, no path to follow. There is no attainment of wisdom, and no wisdom to attain. Byeeeeeeee
Top 5 Creepy and Sexist Christmas Songs
Maybe you can use them as a way to engage in a conversation about sexism with your friends and family over the holidays! For example, it is NOT okay to suggest that all a woman wants for Christmas is a man (I’m looking at you, Mariah Carey). Or that women are materialistic and shallow and want lots of accoutrements. Except earrings, obviously. Read more →
Two Things I Noticed
Our boy is home for winter break . . . he’s been driving the car that I usually drive. When I drove that car today, the second thing I noticed was that he’d run the gas tank down to empty. The first thing I noticed like a bomb detonation is that he’d left the radio turned on at full volume . . . Read more →
New Years Resolutions
To expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour . . . Read more →
A Little Castle Comedy
Someone asks one of the Hearst Castle tour guides, “What’s the difference between the evening tour and the regular tour?” “Oh, it’s night and day,” he replies. Read more →
Merry Christmas, Everybody!
We had a few friends over to celebrate. Nothing fancy . . . Read more →
Hearst Castle is Really a Lot Like Our House
As we’re touring the gardens at Hearst Castle, my wife points out a plant that’s just like one we have at home. “Yeah, this place a has a lot of similarities to our house,” I say. “We have a plant, we have a pool . . .” “We don’t have a pool,” the boy says. “Well, we have access to a pool.” Read more →
Overheard at Hearst Castle
“Here’s your wristband for the tour.” “What do I do with it?” Read more →
Turbinado Sugar = Crack Cocaine
Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before unknown men. — Proverbs 22:29
UCLA Hires Jim Mora
ROSE Bowl?! Are you kiddin’ me? ROSE Bowl? We’re just trying to win a GAME! Okay, I know it’s not that Jim Mora. First I want to say for the record that the firing of Rick Neuheisel was a bad move. Despite the naysayers, he had the program moving in the right direction. Pac-12 Southern Division champions. He closed the gap with USC. Yeah, I know they lost to USC 50-0 but just imagine what the score would have been if he hadn’t closed the gap. I heard Coach Mora on the radio this afternoon. I wasn’t impressed. I’m not as elated as I was about the Neuheisel or Karl Dorrell hirings, but I just don’t think UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero has any idea about how to hire a football coach. He’s tried to copy the Pete Carroll model, first by hiring Carroll assistants as coordinators, and now by… Read more →
Celebrity Breakups
Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard Have Separated — msn.com, Dec. 19, 2011 The story was posted this week but it turns out they actually separated two years ago. Normally, with celebrity breakups, the couple sends out a press release asking for privacy “in this difficult time.” That always seemed to me like one of the stupidest ideas in a world full of stupid ideas: sending out a press release requesting privacy. It turns out if you just keep your mouth shut about it, you can split up and no one will know or care. You can have all the privacy you want . . . P.S. Why do people split up in their late 60s after 30 years together? DO THEY WANT TO DIE ALONE?! Read more →
Aside
If something is worth doing, it’s worth taking to an extreme . . .
Velvety
Why is it good for chocolate to be “velvety”? Do you really want a mouth full of velvet? Read more →
We Need Better Parents
Kids can’t do well in school unless their family has a lot of money, according to an op-ed in the New York Times, which goes on to argue that massive intervention by “policy makers” is needed to confront this issue head-on. The authors, Helen Ladd and Edward Fiske, are a husband-and-wife team of academic researchers. Education reform in a nutshell: First thing, let’s kill all the academic researchers. Helen and Ed cherry-picked the results of a Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study to show that students with lower economic and social status had far lower test scores than their more advantaged counterparts. But they didn’t actually link to the PISA results, because if they had, people would see that Helen and Ed just ignored the three main findings, which are: Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher… Read more →
Airline Pilots No Longer Know How to Fly the Planes
Over the decades, airliners have been built with increasingly automated flight-control functions. These have the potential to remove a great deal of uncertainty and danger from aviation. But they also remove important information from the attention of the flight crew. While the airplane’s avionics track crucial parameters such as location, speed, and heading, the human beings can pay attention to something else. But when trouble suddenly springs up and the computer decides that it can no longer cope—on a dark night, perhaps, in turbulence, far from land—the humans might find themselves with a very incomplete notion of what’s going on. They’ll wonder: What instruments are reliable, and which can’t be trusted? What’s the most pressing threat? What’s going on? Unfortunately, the vast majority of pilots will have little experience in finding the answers. — Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript – What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 – Popular… Read more →
Aside
Jaime Flinchbaugh: 4 myths about the principle of “Respect for People”