tags: agnosticism
2006
November
- 2006 Nov 7
- human nature
It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation. — Rudolf Virchow
· Read more…
2007
April
- 2007 Apr 21
- weariness
It’s been a long while since I’ve had to work seven days in a row. In of itself, that kind of schedule makes me cranky. Add to it the fact that this included two overnight calls, and that’s approximately 120 hours of work. Fun times.
· Read more…
December
- 2007 Dec 26
- truth, truthiness, and authentic fiction
In the Western model of education, there is an operational distinction between physics and metaphysics. The former gets you grants from the Department of Defense, and opens doors to working at NASA or JPL. You get to work with nuclear reactors and supercolliders and fusion bombs and Einstein-Bose condensates. The latter is stereotyped as the demesne of hippies trapped in the 1960s and undergrads who have no idea what they want to do with their lives. Generally, the discipline is called philosophy and not metaphysics, but a rose is a rose. You know you're pretty marginal when even the social science and humanities people look at you with that "What the hell do you do?" look in their eyes.
· Read more…
2008
January
- 2008 Jan 5
- remembering my ties to the body of christ
Since 2001, I've been struggling with a crisis of faith. I was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church as a baby, participated in the Eucharist, and was Confirmed. I went to a parochial elementary school and junior high. I went to a high school that is run by the Jesuits. In college, and in the beginning of med school, I participated in the Catholic Community.
· Read more…
2012
December
- 2012 Dec 3
- more things in heaven and earth
I just finished reading Ken Liu's short story "The Waves" this morning about human interstellar travelers who are presented with, progressively, the choice of biological immortality, the choice of machine immortality and the Singularity, and the choice of transforming into pure energy life forms, interspersed with retellings of the creation myths of various cultures.
· Read more…