# 30 May 2005, 09:35AM: Much Of The Essay I Couldn't Excerpt For Reasons Of Profanity:
The Poor Man encapsulates modern US political thought (the second half of the essay).
If people say they are going to do something, and then they do it, and then they say they're going to do something else, and they do that, too, and on and on, you should assume they're going to do what they say they're going to do. Even if they aren't looking at you when they say it.
# 30 May 2005, 09:38AM: Here Come The Oysters!:
Mike Popovic's poem that he wrote for his daughter Zoe. I recall that he also illustrated it - where are the pictures, Mike?
# 30 May 2005, 02:00PM: C.S. Lewis in Boulder, Colorado:
Celestial Seasonings rooibos tea features, on the box, a very calm lion drinking drom a teacup. Leonard observed, "So he is a tame lion."
# 30 May 2005, 02:03PM: Does It?:
Last night I dreamed that Alton Brown had adopted a disabled child that biologically belonged to the British royal family, and that therefore princes and princesses came over to his house all the time. "That explains a lot," I thought.
# 30 May 2005, 07:47PM: Mt. Doom, Elev. A Billion Kajilion Feet:
Found a bit of a 2001 article about Lord of the Rings and the problem of evil. Not theodicy, but the more pragmatic question of how we can and should fight evil. SPOILERS AHEAD!But even the hobbits are not immune, and Frodo himself fails, finally, in his quest. He cannot relinquish the ring of power in the ultimate moment. "I will not do this deed," he cries on the brink of the volcano. "The ring is mine." And so there is not finally in Middle-earth an absolute good to counteract its absolute evil. Tolkien writes expressly about this in his letters. "The power of Evil in the world is not finally resistible by incarnate creatures," he notes, "however 'good.'"
Does the irresistible power of evil then make the hero's quest futile? No -- the hero's effort is necessary but not sufficient. Tolkien's other insight is that evil itself will take evil down....
In the end, it is the greed of Gollum, not the virtue of Frodo, that casts the ring to its destruction. One might even say that the ring annihilates itself, as Gollum's consuming desire is one effect of its evil power over him.
That makes the end make more sense. I always thought it made more sense for either Frodo or Sam to die, taking the ring into Mt. Doom's pit.
