Halfway to Ninety!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Today is my 45th birthday!

I will celebrate by sharing three celebrations with you:

  1. I just went upstairs to the vending machines and purchased an Almond Joy.

  2. I changed my sig line – it used to be Ockham’s Razor, in Latin. I’m switching from my cold analytical persona to my warm artistic persona.

Leo Kottke is the world’s best guitar player. If you haven’t heard him, run (don’t walk) to your nearest CD source and purchase 6- And 12-String Guitar (his first album, released in 1969!) or his latest (1999) One Guitar, No Vocals. You will be well rewarded.

  1. I will take the liberty of recommending two books which have affected the way I look at the world:

The Passion of the Western Mind by Richard Tarnas. It is subtitled “Undertanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View”. It starts with the Greeks and continues through the rise of Christianity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance up to the present day, discussing not so much the philosophers as the ideas which dominated Western thinking throughout history. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to talk about science vs. religion. Warning: It’s not a very big book but it’s a slooowwww read. Took me six months! No, I’m not a slow reader – it’s a slow book!

The Wordly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner. Not a philosophy book but a history of the science of economics, told through biography of important economists. TVeblen will enjoy the chapter entitled “The Savage World of Thorstein Veblen” if he hasn’t seen it already.

Thanks for allowing me to indulge myself. The Almond Joy was very good.

p.s. Zette, who used to be my friend, accidentally posted a celebration of Meatloaf’s birthday today (the 28th). According to my source his birthday was yesterday (the 27th). I’m not sharing my special day with anyone. It’s mine! It’s mine! It’s mine!

“Finally, consider Kottke’s voice which sounds like geese farts on a muggy day.”
Leo Kottke
6- And 12-String Guitar

2

Happy Birthday, Pluto!!

I’m definitely going to check out the albums you recommended. I’ve been wanted to get a little something like that for a while.

Veni, Vidi, Visa … I came, I saw, I bought.

3

Pluto! Does this mean we can’t hang out :frowning:
Sorry, I got my info from ZDTV, and they said “today”- must have been a re-run (although I’m a little frightened that you know that ACTUAL date- Yikes)
Happy Birthday! !! !!!

Some mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
Emo Philips (stolen from matt’s webpage)

4

Many happy returns of the day!

I know it’s your day, but I couldn’t help myself - I went to the imdb to see who else was born today: http://us.imdb.com/OnThisDay

Brigitte Bardot, Janeane Garofalo, Gwyneth Paltrow and Arnold Stang! Well, it’s better than Meatloaf.