"String Theory" of Thought

Many years ago I got to thinking… how is it that we are capable of speaking? If you break it down logically, it shouldn’t work. When I start speaking a sentence, I don’t know what the words at the end will be. I haven’t planned the whole thing out word by word. And yet I’m able to construct it in such a way that the word choices at the beginning of the sentence work with...
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On Cats and Trust

As I find myself closer and closer to the inevitable time when my cat, Ding, will die, and the possibility that I may have to have her put to sleep, I find myself repeating an inner argument about the nature of trust.

I got Ding as an 8 week old kitten in the spring of 1990, when I was 18 years old. She was a skittish and nervous kitten. Nervous to the point of being...
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The Nature of "God"

I’m going to open this can of worms. Politics and religion are the two topics you’re never supposed to bring up because it’s too easy to offend somebody or get into big arguments, but I’m going to do it anyway. I generally refer to myself as “pagan” for simplicity’s sake, but my actual beliefs are more philosophical and vague than that, in reality.

One thing I do not believe in is a god (I will be...
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Is Free Will Compatible with Determinism?

The question of whether or not individuals have free will is one that has been debated for thousands of years. One argument claims that we cannot have free will because our actions are by necessity caused by their circumstances and therefore are predetermined. That is to say, “if our brain states determine our mental states, and the external environment plus the laws determine our brain states, it seems to follow that our mental states are...
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Adam and Eve and the Argument from Evil

One of the primary arguments against the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-benevolent god¹ is the existence of evil in the world. How could such a god allow horrible things to happen to innocent people? If this god loves humanity, how can he let children die of cancer, or hundreds of thousands of people die in the wake of a tsunami?

One of the answers sometimes given to this question lies in the idea that...
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College for Dummies

Returning to college has been an interesting experience in many ways, but one of the things that has been a constant source of bewilderment for me is how some of the other students manage to do so poorly in what are, by my estimation, fairly easy classes. I understand the completely unmotivated party kids who never show up for class—well, no I don’t understand them but I understand why they are getting Ds and Fs....
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Computer Kids

I am the mother of a wonderful little boy who will be 4 years old in a couple of weeks. Raising a child these days is such a different process than it was in my parents’ time. The biggest difference is the presence of computers. For better or for worse, computers are here. They are there. They are nearly everywhere, from the library to the school to McDonald’s to the DMV.

As fairly hardcore...
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