esrosedotblog

I have no doubt that Matthew McConaughey is a guru.

Apparently I am not alone in this belief.

The Tao of Matthew McConaughey

And as this NYTimes article points out, he ain't so bad looking either. Pecs like "toasted buns". Really.

I have not seen all the movies but a few of them, more than once.

The thing about Matthew is that he always appears in films with people who are as interesting as he is.

Now he is selling Lincoln cars and some kind of whiskey using his aura and charisma.

What next?

Seriously, I have always believed, true or not but probably true, that he was just being himself in all the films and the best lines were the ones he made up in the act.

It is a good day when at middle age you get a main page in the NYTimes op-ed.

This is a great video of his transformation over the years. Watch this.

Labels: movies, philosophy

Labels: aphorisms, philosophy

STICKING YOUR LOGICAL HEAD UP YOUR ILLOGICAL ASS

A new term. Epistemic Closure.

It is everywhere. And used mostly to describe conservative Republicans. Here is a long, tedious explanation of what it means.

Will the Real Epistemic Closure Please Stand Up

I love terms like this. I will probably not use the term but I love the discussion.

This article tells on and on what it is NOT and what it is. After lines and lines of blather it comes up with this.

You may not want to wander into this deep grass but let's say that this term, epistemic closure, can describe the right's view of climate change, evolution, the effects of taxation (trickle down), and many other issues which now have been so thoroughly drained of actual logic that they are walking in a thoughtless desert.

The latest example is the case where the Republican leadership actually thought that the public would like the Ryan budget proposal which tampered with Medicaire. They even believed it despite strong data from their own polling people.

What GOP Leaders Were Thinking on Medicare

You will note that this argues that epistemic closure was not to blame in this case but the articles argument illuminates the point.

Deeper grass.

Labels: philosophy, politics, republican whack jobs

ROLE MODEL

I do not know when it was but, when I read Montaigne's Essays, it was a turning point in my intellectual life.

It is amusing to see that some call him the "first blogger" today. Here I am, blogging about him.

I was, as a kid, a reader. I scoured out the local lending library. All the kids stuff first and then the young adults. All the Oz,s, all the Tarzans, and then it was on to the adult novels. The detective novels. The librarian was a neighbor and never blinked when I took the grown up sexy stuff.

But I let most of the non-fiction on the shelf. I dipped in when I had a school assignment. Then I found Montaigne.

He was accessible. He had a life, which is what he wrote about. He had a point of view. It was not auto biography, it was talk. Thought on paper. Wonderful.

Clear, lucid. I suppose his critics meant that when they called him superficial.

Where did I find him? In the Random House series of great books? Perhaps. I read all of those that I could get. They were in the local, county seat, department store.

Maybe freshman year at MIT in the survey, required, Humanites Courses.

But I think before that. When I was in college, everything affected me all at once.

Montaigne came to me quietly and with stealth.

He was widely read. So, his quotes and citations led me to other reading. I became an autodidact.

He was a role model for me for that very reason. He was a magistrate who informed himself. Widely read and independent thinker.

I am grateful for that important breakthrough and happy that the old man still shakes people up enough to write about him, even if they are being snide and snobby.

Labels: life, philosophy