2014
● 1-1-2014: Desert ride. I explored a new route, traveling north on the 5 freeway, and taking the 138 freeway to the 14 freeway. A very pleasant outing.
● 1-2-2014: If you wanted to describe the difficulty of getting someone to undergo a dental procedure, would you say it was like pulling teeth?
● 1-8-2014: I have a cold this week.
● 1-12-2014: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Does the universe have a purpose?”
● Does the universe have a purpose? For the definitive answer, see my essay of the same title in RichardEisner.com! (The exclamation point is not part of the Web address.)
● Natural teleology, devoid of a consciously guiding will, collapses to materialism.
● If the universe could not have been otherwise, could it have a purpose?
[Later note (2021): I think that the universe has no purpose. But having a purpose is not ruled out by the inability to be otherwise: After all, I have a purpose, for myself, but causal determination precludes my having done differently.]
● A few months later, but in response to the item I eventually posted on this topic, another Philosophy Club member (who calls himself “Nobody”) posted this: “To claim intrinsic value is impossible is a relativist presupposition.”
Here’s my reply:
Does relativism presuppose the impossibility of intrinsic value? I think not. The possibility or impossibility of intrinsic value is objective (intrinsic value is either possible, or not, regardless of our opinion about it). Whereas, relativism is a theory about moral values. A moral value is a (felt, or perceived) obligation to act in a certain way, which is subjective. You can’t reach a conclusion about the latter from a supposition about the former—you can’t get an ought from an is. And you could believe in relativism even if you believed in intrinsic value.
And yet, in a sense, Nobody is right. Although moral values don’t depend on intrinsic value necessarily, they do so intuitively, and the connection is affirmed by many philosophers. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Value” puts it:
“Intrinsic value has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart of ethics. . . . Many philosophers take intrinsic value to be crucial to a variety of moral judgments. For example, according to a fundamental form of consequentialism, whether an action is morally right or wrong has exclusively to do with whether its consequences are intrinsically better than those of any other action one can perform under the circumstances. Many other theories also hold that what [conduct] is right or wrong . . . has at least in part to do with the intrinsic value of the consequences. . . .”
[Later note (10-6-2023): There’s a confusion on my part in that first paragraph. I contrast the objectivity of (the question of) intrinsic value with the subjectivity of moral values, or moral obligations, and I conclude that therefore the first doesn’t affect the second (because you can’t get an ought from an is). But what we’re talking about is, not moral obligations, but relativism (the proposition that moral obligations are subjective). And that moral obligations are subjective is itself objectively true. The subjectivity of moral obligations has nothing to do with intrinsic value. The connection between the two, rather, is that belief in intrinsic value conduces to feeling a certain moral obligation (the obligation to bring about, or to maximize, intrinsic value). It worked that way with me. And my discovery, or at least my conclusion, that intrinsic value is impossible caused me to stop feeling strict moral obligations.]
[Later note (10-6-2023): My error seems obvious now. What amazes me is how many times I reread that entry without seeing it.]
● I had a cold all last week.
● 1-13-2014: Did God create man in His image? Yes and no. God created great and good minds in His image; weak and bad minds were created by the Devil in the Devil’s image. Likewise a product of the Devil are men’s intestines and excrement.
● 1-14-2014: A yaptogenerian is someone who has reached the age of yap.
● I just watched an episode of the Dexter television show wherein the main character says, “Life doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be lived.” Which I thought was rather profound. Its weakness is that, strictly speaking, it’s not true: life doesn’t have to be lived: you have a choice about that. I would vary the epigram this way: “If you wait for conditions to be perfect, you’ll never really live.”
● Friday, 1-17-2014: Haircut today.
● 1-18-2014: It has been a little more than a week since I last revised my piece “Eternal Recurrence.” This is always a dubious pronouncement, but I feel as if it’s finally finished. Which feeling prompts me to make this little retrospective summary: I wrote the first draft of the work about ten years ago; it sat dormant for ten years; then, over the past five months, I’ve engaged in an intense and sustained process of editing and polishing it.
● Sunday, 1-19-2014: I had planned to go for a long drive today, my usual Mojave trip. But I decided against it, because I felt a renewed sense of desperation about my lack of income/employment, and thought it best to yield to my sense of urgency in that regard and to spend the day working on possible remedies for that situation, instead of having fun (or trying to).
● 1-24-2014: Here’s a word I would like to add to my meager vocabulary: Captious 1. Marked by a disposition to find and point out trivial faults. 2. Intended to entrap or confuse, as in an argument: a captious question.
The word (in the second sense) describes well the aggressive style of questioning of some attorneys in depositions.
● Sunday, 1-26-2014: Desert ride.
● 1-30-2014: I’ve just made a considerable number of new revisions to both “Why the Left Should Vote” and “Eternal Recurrence.” I did so after I read the entry on Elegant Variation in H.W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. I had been an ardent elegant-variationist, but Fowler has convinced me of my error. I realize that Bryan Garner is right that becoming a better writer is a lifelong task and that the good writer is largely self-taught. I’m ambivalent about this new awareness. On one hand, I’m gratified to find that I can improve my writing by reading books on writing. On the other hand, I’m depressed to learn that my writing has so much room for improvement. I think the latter mood predominates.
. . . I’m feeling a little better now. Having read over the pieces with this last set of revisions, I’m very pleased with them. Learning is a very worthwhile struggle, at least for me in this instance.
● Today the management posted a note to residents at the apartment complex, saying that residents who smoke should take care to avoid littering common areas with their cigarette butts. I was angry about the note, since it implied (or at least suggested) that smoking was permitted in those areas. So I rewrote it, mimicking the original typography, but saying that the house rules forbid littering or smoking; I took down the original and posted mine in its place. I was proud of my handiwork.
● 1-31-2014: My time-wasting and complacency will be my ruination!
● It seems to me that the U.S. Army’s intolerance of soldiers’ personal expression, such as their wearing beards or religious head coverings, conflicts with its own recruitment advertising slogan, “An army of one,” which implies a celebration or at least a valuing of the soldier’s individuality.
● Sef, the attorney who hires me to handle many of his workers’ compensation depositions, asked me to wear a suit and tie to his depositions, instead of my usual blue-jeans and Hawaiian shirt. I find this upsetting, as it means a significant loss of comfort. But I have no choice; I need the work. (I mean, I need the money.)
● Saturday, 2-1-2014: Desert ride.
● 2-2-2014: I’m thinking of writing a grand essay for the proposition that we should not impose capital punishment for the crime of jaywalking.
● On depression: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. But what when there’s no will?
● 2-3-2014: The sound of a revving two-stroke motorcycle engine: Shing-a-ling, ring-bing, wing-ding.
● 2-7-2014: If I can’t write an argument using only argument, and I must resort to factual evidence, I abandon the effort, as then the work would not be pure philosophy, but would descend to the level of mere sociology or science, which I’m uninterested in doing. . . . When I first wrote the foregoing sentence, I thought it was an exaggeration; but, now that I ponder it, I think it’s probably accurate.
[Later note (2021): . . . or perhaps it’s rationalization or sour grapes, in that my lack of knowledge of science or sociology means that I must rely exclusively on my own inward reasoning. But perhaps the converse is true as well: my greater interest in reasoning led me to study logic and philosophy instead of science and sociology.]
● Sunday, 2-9-2014: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “economic inequality.” I wrote a short essay in record time; I tried using the free-writing technique that John Trimble recommends in Writing with Style. After cogitating about the subject for a few days, I wrote two paragraphs without pausing much. In half an hour or so, I had the essay’s basics. I switched the order of the two paragraphs, wielded the scalpel, and—voilà—there it is! The principle on which the technique works is that it’s easier to take away material than to come up with it from scratch. The free-writing gives you the approximate form of the sculpture, to which you can then (the easier process) take the chisel . . . Of course, I was also lucky. Things just happened to fall into place on this one. And we’ll see how long this lasts as a “final” draft. But at least the process reduced the length of the “constipation period,” that time in which I carry the ideas around in my head, frustratingly trying to figure out a way to get them down on paper.
[Later note (11-11-2023): That it’s easier to remove material than to add it, applies to writing, but not to sculpture, where the truth may, indeed, be just the opposite.]
● Tuesday, 2-11-2014: This is a red-letter day. I finally sent four writing samples to Bryan A. Garner at LawProse.org, for review: a letter to Girardi, Keese; “Why the Left Should Vote”; “Eternal Recurrence”; and “Mark Twain Ghost Speech.”
[Later note (2020): If I had a nickel for every development in the last few decades that I’ve proclaimed was a red-letter event, but which never amounted to anything, I’d be a rich man!]
● 2-15-2014: Here’s a neologism: land reef: an object or group of objects, originally intended for another purpose, that comes to be used to attach another object to or set it upon. Typically, the thing’s use in this way is initially casual, even haphazard, but in time, after continual use for the same purpose, comes to seem necessary. It’s a little like an idiom: its meaning is completely different from the individual words that make it up.
● 2-21-2014: Driving in my car one day recently I thought I heard a strange noise coming from the engine. So I drove slowly on a quiet street, and rolled down a window. I didn’t hear a strange engine-noise, but I heard another significant noise: a steady, dunk-dunk-dunk-dunk. I had heard a similar noise several times before, and it turned out to be some object stuck to the tread of one of the tires. When I remembered to do it some days later, I began inspecting my tires for such a possible foreign object. And I found it—a metal screw embedded all the way into the right rear tire, the face of the screw flush with the tire tread. I brought the car to the tire shop for repair. With the screw in, the tire was not leaking, but when they pulled it out, the tire began to leak. They fixed it while I waited.
● 2-23-2014: Last Thursday, 23 February 2014, I got a major piece of bad news: my application for a trademark on 1-888-SU-ABOGADO was denied. I say “major” bad news only in a technical way. It doesn’t feel like major bad news; I took it with equanimity (it occurred to me only just now—several days later—to write about it). I know that it’s major only because I know that the opposite event (the granting of the trademark) would have been major good news. I would have taken it as a red-letter, life-altering event. [Later note (2020): Maybe I should say “scarlet” letter—I’ve pretty much ruined “red letter” by overusing it, for so many events, almost all of which amounted to nothing!] I think the reason this doesn’t feel major is that I was expecting it. If you buy a lottery ticket and don’t win, you’re not devastated, because you understood that your winning was extremely unlikely, though winning would have changed your life.
● Is fishing immoral, as cruel to the fish? I think not—not at least for smaller fish. Most fish die a violent, premature, and unpleasant death, anyway, as by predation, or by illness or injury without medical care to alleviate the suffering.
[Later note (2021): As I’ve argued elsewhere in this Journal, in the ethics of killing a lower animal, all that’s relevant is its possible pain. Other than preservation of that species (which is important just to man), an individual lower animal’s longevity is of no particular concern.]
● 3-8-2014: It seems to me that most prayer is selfish. People ask God to grant their own wishes, to enhance their own welfare—not everyone’s wishes, or everyone’s welfare. Also, since God is omniscient and already knows, without your bringing it to His attention, each creature’s deserts, I wonder why someone would think God should specially help him because he prayed for it.
● 3-9-2014: Last Thursday night and Friday (2-27- and 28-2014), there was a big rainstorm after a prolonged drought. That night (Thursday) I had muscle aches, especially in the back, a headache, and an unusually frequent urge to urinate (and an elevated volume of urine). These symptoms continued into the next day (Friday), and I developed a very unpleasant new urinary discomfort—a constant acute feeling of having to urinate, with a peculiar (and uncomfortable) quality of feeling. The body aches and the headaches were mostly gone by Saturday morning, but the urinary problems persisted. I was quite worried about them. Increasingly as you get older, you can’t know immediately whether a new or newly worsened symptom will be permanent or only temporary. I feel greatly relieved that this newly worsened symptom (the urinary discomfort) seems to be returning to normal (normal for me, that is, with which, given the sudden worsening, I’m now content).
● 3-12-2014: A tick bomb is a container full of ticks that’s suddenly opened to release the ticks, used as a weapon. If a timer is added to the device, it becomes a timing tick bomb.
● 3-14-2014: For the last month and a half I’ve deliberately suspended taking medication to combat headaches. Instead, I just endure the pain. I reckoned that I was getting a rebound effect, and that the medication was bringing on further headaches. The strategy seems to have worked; my headaches now are less frequent and less severe.
● 3-15-2014: I must snap out of my complacency now!
● Are men good? I like to think of myself as special, unique. But my uniqueness is in my mind (meaning that I think my mind is what’s unique about me, not that I’m merely imagining that I’m unique). Other aspects of my personality and character are, I think, typical. If so, then, based on what I know of myself, I would say that men are basically selfish, with some fellow feeling that manifests itself in certain circumstances, but only after selfish needs have been met.
[Later note (2021): That’s simplistic.]
● Sunday, 3-16-2014: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Non-cognitivism.”
● Ronald Dworkin writes: “Non-cognitivism and related views should disappear from the philosophical landscape. We have enough to worry about. We want to live well and to behave decently; we want our communities to be fair and good and our laws to be wise and just. These are very difficult goals, in part because the issues at stake are complex. . . . When we are told whatever convictions we do struggle to reach cannot in any case be true or false, or objective, or part of what we know . . . or that they stem from the turbines of our emotions . . . we should reply that these observations are all pointless distractions from the real challenges at hand.”
My response to Dworkin is this: The same objection could be made against philosophy generally. But philosophy is about truth, not about usefulness. Useful fictions may have their place—perhaps in law and politics—but not in philosophy. Non-cognitivism (or at least subjectivism) is strictly true, which, in philosophy, we must admit. We can still construct moral arguments in more or less traditional ways. We simply acknowledge that we’re using certain premises, like “slavery is wrong,” just as argumentative starting points—assumptions—justified by our mutual assent to them, our sharing the sentiment, but understanding that they’re not objectively true. Further, it’s all well and good to discard non-cognitivism for the sake of living well, etc., but it wouldn’t particularly help philosophers to live better, since it would deprive them of part of their subject matter.
● 3-23-2014: Ironically, man will perhaps have used the remains of the dinosaurs to make himself extinct.
● An impediment to the redistribution of wealth toward greater equality in this country lies in our legal property rights—people’s rights to keep what they already have.
● 3-26-2014: When the price of a donut goes above a dollar, we’ll have to reverse the familiar phrase to “donuts to dollars.”
● 3-28-2014: A good rule for philosophers: Before attacking another man’s argument, consider the possibility that he’s right. Which is part of a more general rule for writers: To write well, you must know what you’re talking about.
● 3-29-2014: I’ve “always” had (and still have) trichotillomania.
● Sunday, 4-6-2014: Desert ride today—very pleasant. I realized why I’ve been so relatively unhappy the last few months. It’s largely because I haven’t written any significant pieces of work. It’s also because I’m worried about my future, my career. But now I have a new twist on an old plan: to approach Attorney David Berns with a partnership on my 1-888-SU-ABOGADO. If Attorney Juan Dominguez turns me down, I’ll go to David. . . . Juan turned me down, and I went to David. He said he’s still interested in working with me on advertising, and we’re to set a meeting.
● 4-10-2014: It’s sometimes said that a person is better off after he dies because he’s then with God. But are we not “with God” when we’re alive? Similarly, we’re urged to look forward to reuniting with our loved ones in the afterlife. But why should we expect to have a better relationship with them there than we had with them here?
● For me, writing a piece (a significant one) is not like a sprint, sometimes not even like a marathon; it’s an odyssey.
● My goal in argument is not mere persuasion, or conviction, but also truth, or proof. I view an argument of mine as a work of art, and, for me to be satisfied with it, I must feel that it’s sound. The point, for me, is not that others think I’m right, but rather that I think I’m right. I wouldn’t care to be able to induce others to think that twice two is three, since I don’t believe it.
● 4-13-2014: To draw nice distinctions about something that’s impossible, is to put too fine a point on it.
● 4-17-2014: Today I had my last appointment with Dr. David Walker, the psychiatrist at Kaiser whom I’ve seen for almost 30 years. It was our last appointment because he’s retiring.
● 4-20-2014: Desert drive today.
● I had seafood for lunch today, because I heard someone on the radio say this is Oyster Sunday.
● 4-22-2014: I met with Attorney David C. Berns, regarding working together on 1-888-SU-ABOGADO. The meeting went well, I thought.
● 4-27-2014: Desert drive today. Had the idea for four new lawyer-related trademarks. (The general idea for further such trademarks was inspired by my meetings with David Berns.)
● 4-28-2014: A note about my daily (paper) calendars: The circling of a listed event or to-do item means that I completed it. A crossing-out of an item means the event was canceled or that I left the item undone (or, not-done). If a calendar item is not marked at all, it generally means that I completed it (sometimes, when only a few items remain on the list, I check them off only mentally, so as to leave the calendar page as clean as possible). But an unmarked item was probably not done if it appears on the next day’s calendar. For the calendar sheets, I use reams of my old law-office stationery, which I have the print shop cut in half for me (the calendar sheets are 5 1⁄2 inches by 8 1⁄2 inches). When I’ve used up all of that supply, I’ll buy more fancy paper; I like the feel of it.
[Later note (12-30-2023): Now I circle every item on the calendar that I complete, except for the depositions, which I leave un-circled.]
● 5-2-2014: I’m reading Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. There’s much wisdom in it. I should have read it decades ago. Here are the main points (as I’ve summarized them): [omitted]
● 5-5-2014: Today I brought a $1,435 billing error in my favor to the attention of my trademark attorney, Robert Berliner.
● 5-7-2014: I’ve said, almost with a certain perverse pride in my self-awareness and honesty, that I’m utterly selfish. And yet it occurs to me that I also passionately advocate economic equality, on the principle of fairness. How could I be passionate about fairness to others if I weren’t concerned about their welfare? Perhaps to expect consistency in feelings is a category error. Strictly speaking, consistency pertains just to logic, not to feelings. Or perhaps in addition to being selfish (in many contexts), I’m (in some other contexts) inconsistent. Let’s see . . . I suppose I can still claim at least to be self-aware and honest.
● 5-12-2014: I’ve heard various commercial promoters promise that (if you take the recommended action) “this will be the best day of your life.” Why would you want this to be the best day of your life (thus precluding your ever having a day better than this one)?! . . . unless they mean only, the best day of your life—so far.
● 5-15-2014: I suppose it was just a matter of time before the greatest living physicist, Steven Hawking, would become a part of popular culture. Just today, I used a parking-lot cashier robot, which announced, in a voice imitating Professor Hawking’s: “Remember to take your change. If you would like a receipt, press the blue button. Have a nice day.”
● 5-18-2014: Philosophy Club meeting today. Topic: “Is your life valuable if all humans die shortly after you die?”
● Saturday, 5-24-2014: Since I started going to Hands to Hold manicure salon in late 2003, I’ve been leaving a $2.00 tip. Today I increased it to $3.00. (I get a manicure every two weeks.)
● 5-25-2014: Desert ride today. Two days ago, Friday, 23 May 2014, I went for a drive to the store, and, for about an hour’s time, for some reason, the day seemed magical; I felt wonderful. I had the same feeling today for about an hour in the early part of my desert drive, which took six or seven hours total. I felt good during the rest of the drive, but that intense magical feeling didn’t last. I shouldn’t make it sound negative. It was a very positive overall experience.
● For the last several months, I’ve had some mild pain in my left hip or buttock, which symptom has been worsening. My theory is this. For the last five to seven years, or so, I’ve compensated for right foot pain while I drive a car by using my left foot instead to operate the throttle and brake pedals. This requires me to reach my left leg to the right, which awkward position has caught up with me, so to speak. In the last few weeks, I’ve stopped the practice, and now I use my right foot exclusively for it. Since yesterday, I’ve also noticed that twisting my body at the left hip aggravates the discomfort, and have experimented with avoiding that movement, by keeping my left leg and foot straight ahead. Today I’ve had noticeably less discomfort in the left hip, which improvement, given my worry about the symptom, is very encouraging.
● I would like to characterize each year of my life by the most prominent event in it. I recall only the last few years now, which are as follows:
○ 2011 was the year of living with my father and taking care of him.
○ 2012 was the year of my father’s death, and my inheritance.
○ 2013 was the year of completing my (self-) study of workers’ compensation law, and my essay “Eternal Recurrence.”
○ 2014 was . . . the year of the plan (to acquire additional domain names for and trademarks on several other of my law-related vanity telephone numbers, several others of which will work for advertising).
● 5-31-2014: Life is not complicated—it’s simple: We’re born, we live briefly, and we die.
● Sunday, 6-1-2014: It just so happens that a new turn in the road of my life/career strategy coincides with the birthday edition of my semiannual retrospective. Three major reference points for this note are the 1-1-2013 and 5-27-2013 entries, above, and my 3-11-2014 email to Lyle Mink. For some time I’ve been in a quandary. I could immediately start making significant money by forming a law (or business) partnership with Attorney David Berns, but that would necessitate my sharing ownership with him of my 1-800-SUE-THEM, and I’ve been, and continue to be, loathe to give up any ownership of the mark. At some point, it occurred to me that I could use another mark for that purpose, my 1-888-SU-ABOGADO—I concluded that, psychologically, I could sacrifice it, as long as I could keep my best one (1-800-SUE-THEM) in reserve for myself. At length, I decided not to wait until the status of my trademark application for it (1-888-SU-ABOGADO) was resolved (we’ve appealed an adverse decision by the U.S. Trademark Office), and I approached Berns. He was very interested, and we had two meetings to discuss it. Our last meeting was on May 2nd, and I believe we left it, in effect, this way: he’s mentally conflicted whether to partner with me on 1-888-SU-ABOGADO if I don’t own the trademark on it, and we would wait to see whether I acquired it.
The rub is the unlikelihood of my prevailing on the appeal on the 1-888-SU-ABOGADO trademark. But here’s the new turn in the road. At my earlier meeting with Berns this year, on April 22nd, we discussed his previous failed endeavor with another advertising mark, “Mi Abogado” (Spanish for My Lawyer). Because of some foul play by the owner of the mark, he had to stop using it, but while he (Berns) was using it, it was very successful for him. But the Mi Abogado was just a name; it wasn’t even part of a vanity telephone number or web address. Within a few days of that meeting, it occurred to me that I had some other law-related vanity telephone numbers, ones I hadn’t used, which are as good as Mi Abogado; namely, 1-888-ACE-ATTY; 1-877-THE-ATTY; 1-877-BRILLIANT; and 1-877-HELL-YES. Within seven days (by April 29) I had bought various of the domain names for those numbers and begun the trademark application process for them. My trademark lawyer, Robert Berliner, told me that, based on his initial checking, the prospects were good for my getting the trademarks on three of the four (the questionable one being “BRILLIANT”). I should have the results of the 1-888-SU-ABOGADO appeal and of the trademark applications on the other four by the end of the Summer; and I figure that I’ll get a trademark on at least one of them, any one of which will allow me to form a partnership with Attorney Berns, while keeping 1-800-SUE-THEM in reserve. This prospect also relieves me of the burden of having to find employment in Workers’ Compensation, which was proving extremely hard. Since the time I applied for those other trademarks (in late April), I’ve felt that my problem is virtually solved; my anxiety and insomnia have vanished; and my existence has been almost carefree, at times euphoric.
[Later note (2-25-2022): That was a significant juncture: my anxiety, which had been frequent and very unpleasant, never came back . . . at least it hasn’t so far.]
● Sunday, 6-8-2014: Desert ride today. It was very pleasant. I think my good mood was largely a result of my having posted another good work to the Philosophy Club website (my feeling of creative productivity).
● I explore human nature by introspection.
● Thursday, 6-12-2014: Today, I just got a new “job” as a contract lawyer to handle workers’ compensation depositions for another lawyer. I’ve been doing this for one lawyer, but he’s been giving me little work. This new job will involve a considerably higher volume, and perhaps a bit higher fee. Maybe now I’ll be able to start accumulating money, rather than continuing to dig into my savings and seeing them constantly dwindle. So this is a very good development; it will bridge the gap until I acquire the additional trademark or trademarks that will turn the tide for me in a much more substantial way (a business partnership with yet another attorney).
● Saturday, 6-14-2014: It seems that, now, for me, everything’s coming up roses. I’m pleased with my body of work, which I’m confident will ultimately make me famous. My general health is excellent. I own extremely valuable intellectual property, my stock of which appears about to increase even further, and the prospect exists of my soon using it to start a lucrative business. I have a tidy little sum of money to live on until that event materializes, and now a good job to enable me to augment my capital in the meantime, while I wait for my ship to come in.
● Tuesday, 6-17-2014: I thought I had a urinary infection today, and I went to the Urgent Care for it. I didn’t have a urinary infection. So the diagnosis is a mystery.
● 6-19-2014: Man is a miracle.
● 6-20-2014: I reduce the percentage of the bill that I leave as a tip for the server at a restaurant if I think the meal is over-priced (the tip should be, not a percentage of the bill, per se, but a compensation for the service—which doesn’t increase just because the cost of the meal increases). . . . Well (now, in March 2015) I’ve reconsidered that idea. Generally, it makes sense to gear the size of the tip to the price of the meal. For the service can “make or break” your dining experience, and the more expensive the meal, the greater the investment that you have at risk with the quality of the service, and hence the more important the service. If you spend a thousand dollars for a meal, you’ll want to spend more to ensure that your high investment isn’t dashed.
● 6-21-2014: In the last few days, my left buttock discomfort, which worried me almost the whole (or the first half) of 2014, has so far all but gone. It seems that my own diagnosis was right, and I got the problem to resolve by avoiding movements like the one that I thought caused it. I think it resolved suddenly now because just within the last week I found the last of those similar movements and eliminated it. . . . another rose!
● I’m proud of the elegance of my writings; I’m somewhat chagrined about what seems to be the very inelegant process by which I achieve the final product. But it occurs to me that this contrast is to be expected. My final draft expresses a solution to a problem, perhaps to both a philosophical and a compositional problem. The rough drafts are struggles with the problem: attempts at solution, but not yet the solution. And, by their nature, solutions are elegant; incomplete struggles toward solution are inelegant—certainly less elegant than the solution.
● Monday, 6-23-2014: Today I handled the first deposition for the Law Offices of Jon M. Woods.
● Sunday, 6-29-2014: Philosophy Club: topic: “A right to healthcare.”
● Perhaps the question should be, not whether we have an obligation to provide healthcare (yes-or-no, black-or-white), but rather as a position on a graded scale, perhaps like this: the greater a certain medical service’s potential benefit to a person, and the less the cost of giving it, the stronger our obligation to provide it.
● 6-30-2014: When I told Sef Krell, Esq., that I’m giving another attorney priority in handling depositions, and that my availability to handle his (Krell’s) depositions would be limited, he offered to double what he’s been paying me (from $30 an hour, to $60 an hour). I told him I’d do what I could.
● Moral hazard can be explained very simply, thus: People tend to decrease conduct when it has negative consequences for them. Conversely (and this is moral hazard), removing the negative consequences increases the conduct. In other words, actions are affected by consequences for the actor.
● Saturday, 7-5-2014: I got a foot massage today.
● Sunday, 7-6-2014: I took my desert ride again today. In the course of which, I had several revelations, or breakthroughs. First, I had a very slight headache and mild pain in my upper back. I was tempted to take a small amount of narcotic analgesic, because I thought that only the narcotic would be truly effective with the muscle ache, though I knew it might worsen the headache. Instead, I took two over-the-counter (non-narcotic) Naproxen tablets. Shortly thereafter, and for the rest of the day, both the headache and the back pain were totally gone. So I discovered that I can take non-narcotic medicine for mild muscle aches and avoid all the adverse side-effects of the narcotics! The other breakthrough was with music. On my pleasure drives I always listen to music. For the first time (since one isolated instance where I did the same on my violin as a teenager), I was able, consistently, to whistle along so that my whistling both horizontally (melodically) and vertically (harmonically) integrated with the music playing on the recording.
● Heaven and Hell are here on Earth. We all get a taste of each. But our sojourn in them is but brief.
● Saturday, 7-12-2014: Traffic school today. Teacher was Paul Roach.
● Tuesday, 7-15-2014: Today I purchased at the music store a “wood block” percussion instrument, something with which to make noise to retaliate against the neighbors. I’m accumulating a veritable orchestra full of such noisemakers. The aim is to create a leitmotif array, with specific sounds assigned to specific neighbors, so I can individualize the attack. If one person attacks me, I can retaliate against him, without antagonizing others. It’s like using a sniper instead of a bomb.
● Sunday, 7-20-2014: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Postmodernism.”
● I have a slight cold.
● 7-31-2014: If there were a very powerful, very knowledgeable god, able, willing, and disposed to intimately intervene in the affairs of men, this would be an evil universe, because the many harms that befall man, which now seem to be merely accidental, would instead be deliberately and maliciously caused or allowed to occur.
● 8-7-2014: I got very good news today. Apparently, it’s all but certain that I’ll get trademarks on 1-877-The-Atty and 1-888-Ace-Atty.
● 8-9-2014: A penny in time saves four! (If the charge is for one extra penny, but you don’t have a penny, you have to give a higher sum, and you’ll get back four pennies.)
● Sunday, 8-17-2014: Philosophy Cub meeting. Topic: “Nothingness.” (I did not go, because I had a serious backache.)
● The notion of varying amounts of nothingness is a strange one; it seems contradictory, or incoherent, or unintelligible. Different amounts suggests a substance, which is something. Could two empty universes differ by containing different amounts of nothing?
● Disliking certain Jews does not, of itself, make one anti-Semitic. (That includes Jewish ministers of the government, even of the government of Israel.)
● I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a commentary on nothingness. I’m at a point where I’m tempted to cut my losses and stop trying. Finding nothing intelligent to say on the subject, it seems anything I do say is likely to be silly. When you can’t find something intelligent to say on a subject, it’s best to say nothing. (That may be as close as I’ll come to an intelligent statement about nothing.) (But knowing me, I’ll probably eventually come up with something!) . . .
● Sunday, 8-31-2014: Desert ride—aborted because of car trouble.
● 9-1-2014: In January 2001 I wrote this, jokingly: “And, man, when you got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose!” It now occurs to me that it’s not quite true. Usually when a person says he has nothing, he still has himself—his body, his mind, his talents. And that’s something indeed. Given that, he also has hope for an improvement in his life circumstances. The only time you truly have nothing to lose is when you’re dead . . . or, during life, when you’ve irretrievably lost your mind.
[Later note (6-12-2022): No, it’s not true that, as long as you’re alive and you have your mind and talents, you have something to lose. You might not value your mind or talents. One might yet argue that, even if you don’t value your mind or talents, you still have something to lose in your potential to experience pain. Pain is worse than nothing. But, practically, you could always kill yourself to avoid pain. So it is true, after all, that when you have nothing (that you value), you have nothing to lose.]
● Wednesday, 9-3-2014: I went for a desert drive today, in a rented car. It was unenjoyable. I felt empty.
● 9-12-2014: For almost a day now (24 hours) I’ve had a fairly severe sore throat. I’m hoping against hope that it will just go away, and that it’s not the usual prelude to (or start of) a cold.
● We’re in an intense heat wave. It feels as if Summer is going out shaking its fist.
● 9-13-2014: I have a cold—again! This one, though, was unusually mild and short.
● Sunday, 9-14-2014: I drove to Santa Barbara today, rather than to the (Mojave) desert, for variety. I had intended to eat breakfast at a certain fancy restaurant. But I found it too expensive, and ate at Denny’s instead. I’ll have to find a better restaurant in Santa Barbara.
[Later note (2021): That’s an interesting expectation: of a reasonably priced fancy restaurant!]
● 9-17-2014: Regarding the British slang word tosser, before I looked it up in the dictionary, I knew it was an insult, but figured it meant the opposite of keeper, in that, when you catch it, you don’t keep it, but rather toss it back.
● Sunday, 9-21-2014: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Science and Pseudo-Science.”
● Thursday, 9-25-2014: Desert ride! Old car, new engine—it runs fine!
● Saturday, 9-27-2014: I finally posted my piece “Eternal Recurrence” on the Philosophy Club website.
● 9-30-2014: I feel chully farged!
● 10-4-2014: It seems to me that the quality of creative work is a function of creativity and technical proficiency. Like intelligence, creativity is innate, a capacity; it can’t be increased, but it can perhaps be dulled or inhibited. Technical facility, in contrast, is learned and developed. Also important is the match between the creativity and the facility. Had Mozart been born into the family, not of musicians, but of painters, it’s unlikely that he would have been as great a painter as he was a composer. (And, surely, he would not have been a great composer.)
● 10-14-2014: John Rawls’s Veil-of-Ignorance argument for egalitarianism is flawed, as follows. Different persons behind a veil of ignorance could choose different social arrangements. In which event, one would resort to supporting certain voters’ choices. Hence procedure collapses to result. The result that Rawls’s procedure seems to be getting at is an equal distribution of opportunity or good among people. But Rawls’s Difference Principle—that social and economic inequalities must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged class in society—is faulty, in precluding a widespread improvement that has no (or a very small adverse) effect on the poor—a flaw not present in average utilitarianism: Allocate resources so as to effect the greatest average well-being.
[Later note (2-19-2024): There’s an even more basic problem with Rawls’s Difference Principle: it’s contradictory; an inequality of wealth is to the benefit of the one(s) with greater wealth. When is my having less wealth than someone else to my benefit?! Exceptions are so minor as to be practically irrelevant.]
● 10-21-2014: The crimes of Muslim terrorists are no more attributable to Islam than the crimes of Israel against the Palestinians are attributable to Judaism.
● 10-24-2014: Monday or Tuesday of this week I received the good news that I’d gotten the trademark on one of the marks I applied for: 1-877-THE-ATTY. I eagerly await the trademarks on the other three, and the court decision on the fifth, 1-888-SU-ABOGADO.
● Saturday, 10-25-2014: Haircut.
● I just got notification of the trademark registration of another one of my marks: 1-888-ACE-ATTY. (Hurrah!)
● 10-30-2014: The beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard for conviction of a criminal defendant may need to be relaxed in certain cases. Suppose that two persons are accused of terrorism. We know that one of them is guilty, the other innocent. But we don’t know which is which, and we have no way to find out. We also know that the terrorist, if released, will detonate a bomb so powerful as to virtually end civilization. Because we don’t have proof beyond a reasonable doubt of either man’s guilt, the traditional rule would compel us to release both of them. Our doing so, however, would spell our doom. Therefore, we must either follow the traditional rule and bring about the end of the world, or violate the rule and imprison an innocent man, but save the world. My preference: violate the rule. We could mitigate the harm to the innocent man by giving him especially good conditions of confinement, even though we would have to give them as well to the terrorist.
● 10-31-2014: Today was an extraordinarily good day. No particular good news; but for some reason my energy and my mood were marvelously good.
● 11-1-2014: I know I dream in color (at least sometimes), because I just awoke from a dream in which I was a painter, and, in painting a portrait, I vividly remember applying blue paint (among other colors).
● Sunday, 11-9-2014: Desert ride. I had breakfast in Tehachapi, for the first time (at the Village Grill Family Restaurant; I had a patty melt with a side-salad).
● 11-10-2014: This evening I got more good news on my trademark applications: two others of my applications will be granted: 1-877-BRILLIANT and 1-877-HELL-YES. Also (no connection), tonight I broke my nearly yearlong abstinence from eating salad. I had been eating it for dinner almost exclusively, and I just got tired of it. But the salad I ate tonight tasted good, which is a relief. I hope I’m back to eating it regularly.
● 11-14-2014: If you don’t vote, don’t complain. And if you refuse to vote for the lesser evil, don’t complain about getting the greater evil.
● Sunday, 11-16-2014: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “government.”
● Circumstances may justify different kinds of government, even non-democratic ones.
● 11-22-2014: People can change . . . but don’t count on it.
● Sunday, 11-23-2014: Desert ride. (The Sunday before Thanksgiving.) This was a particularly quiet and peaceful time at my historical “Four Oaks” stopping place in Mojave. I invented the name Four Oaks. It’s in Mojave, at the corner of . . . hmm . . . I’m not going to say.
● 11-25-2014: To help discourage the (unnecessary) use of deadly force by police, it may help to institute a program of awards for policemen who avoid using deadly force in circumstances where it might have been used.
● 11-26-2014: Today, I reread the examining attorney’s opposition brief (opposing our appeal of the Trademark Office’s denial of registration of 1-888-SU-ABOGADO), and I came up with what I think is a powerful argument, which I’ve sent to my trademark attorney, who’s preparing a reply brief in the case. I’m very pleased with my argument, and very pleased.
● 11-27-2014: What’s it all about? We live while we’re alive. Today, I drove a rented car to Bakersfield, then (via Highway 58) to Mojave.
● 12-2-2014: I just awoke from the most frightening nightmare I’ve ever had, which consisted of a simple thought experiment: Imagine you’re in a four-cubic-meter-large universe, and that every hour it becomes one cubic foot larger. Now (and here’s the frightening part) imagine, instead, that every hour it becomes one cubic foot smaller . . ..
● 12-6-2014: It seems to me that man is unique, not so much qualitatively, but quantitatively, specifically in being Earth’s most intelligent animal.
[Later note (2021): Maybe not. We’re certainly one of Earth’s most intelligent creatures. But what enables us to create technology and culture is, not our intelligence alone, but also our living on land and having hands, which combination of traits is a qualitative difference. No matter how intelligent, say, dolphins might be, living in the ocean with no hands, they lack the physical ability to manifest their intelligence in the ways we humans can. If they were even more intelligent than we are, or even if their intelligence abruptly doubled, we would never know it; they’d be stuck doing pretty much what they do now.]
● Sunday, 12-14-2014: Philosophy Club. Topic: “What technologies and scientific questions, if any, shouldn’t be pursued?”
There are some. Imagine you could invent a simple (but ingenious) handheld device that anyone could use, with which, by pushing a button, you would make the world disappear. It seems to me you should squelch the idea, because, if created, it would be just a matter of (a short) time before it was used to end the world.
In The Proactionary Principle, 2004, the Extropy Institute criticizes the precautionary principle. It seems to me that the flaw in the argument is the assumption that we apply the precautionary principle mechanically, blindly, arbitrarily, to resist progress. On the contrary, we use it when we have serious misgivings about certain technological practices. And I think our intuitions in that regard are often sound. Given that; and the technologies’ promotion by powerful corporations whose primary or sole motive is their own profit; and the heads-they (the corporations)-win/tails-we (the public)-lose structure of the use of such technologies, it’s indeed prudent to require that certain potentially harmful technologies be proven safe before they’re deployed.
● Thursday, 12-18-2014: I got my desktop computer back today, repaired. I was without it for a week, and I felt the loss keenly.
● Wednesday, 12-24-2014: In a way, the idea of God has the reverse effect to what may have been intended. Instead of giving the universe and humanity meaning and value, it makes humans worthless. That is, God is so grand and worthy, so much more so than humans, it would matter little if mankind were lost, as the supremely magnificent God would still be. If I lose one of my possessions, the significance to me of the loss depends on the perceived worth of the remaining ones. If I lose my most valuable possession, I’ll be devastated; if I lose the least valuable, I’ll accept it serenely. In fact, sometimes I delete my worst pieces of work, to improve the general quality of my body of work. Likewise, removing humanity might improve the overall quality of the universe, which would then be imbued only with the intense, pure wonderfulness of God.
● 12-25-2014: Desert ride. These rides to the desert are getting less and less exciting and satisfying. I think I’ve worn it out, by doing it too often.
● 12-26-2014: For the last two days, a very worrisome problem has developed: not pressure sores, but probably their precursor: pressure sensitivity, my skin’s sensitivity to contact with the bed when I lie down. The only position left to me in which I can avoid the sensitivity is lying on my back, a very unnatural sleep position for me. But I slept adequately in that position for the first half of my bed cycle tonight. I’ll try to stay out of bed as much as possible, as one way to counter the problem. And I’ll wash the bed sheets, which I haven’t done for probably at least two years.
● 12-27-2014: The pressure-sensitivity problem seems to have resolved. I was afraid that, if I washed the bed sheets, a resolution of the problem might create a superstition in me, by causing me to assume a cause-and-effect relationship where none existed (if changing the sheets made no difference). But in the end, I thought that I’d rather that the problem resolve and not know exactly why, than that it not resolve and wonder if taking the action in question might have done the trick. And it was good to change the sheets and rotate the memory-foam mattress topper; it was quite overdue. In two years, the memory foam at the other end of the rectangle regained its shape and so now I’m no longer lying in a valley. And having clean sheets feels good, if only psychologically.
● 12-29-2014: Well, I don’t have to worry about forming a superstition about the bed sheets—the pressure sensitivity has come back, with a vengeance. I’m in a crisis.
● 12-31-2014: The pressure-sensitivity crisis went away as suddenly as it came (if it did come suddenly, and if it really has gone).
● Wealth and hellness.