mental confetti

Falling with the solid rain that has broken the back of a recent heat wave today ...

-- I wonder what the origins are of the expression, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." It seems an odd configuration of words. Simultaneously, I'm not quite sure whether having the question or finding the answer is more enjoyable.

-- On the British TV series "Foyle's War," which is set during World War II, many of those being questioned by Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle and his sidekick, Detective Sergeant Paul Milner often address their inquisitors as "mister." The honorific is polite but not subservient and depicts a kind of equality that is appealing and adult. I wonder if it is true to life.

-- In schools, evolution as I understand it is a theory and framework that invites empirical investigation and varying degrees of proof -- the kind of critical thinking that schools might reasonably try to instill in their young charges. Creationism, as I understand it, offers a theory and framework which does not invite empirical investigation but rather posits a certainty into which all subsequent fact is forced to conform. While it may be useful in later life to know that people are more convinced by belief than they are by fact, still, as a matter of schooling, I think critical thinking might be accorded a temporary place in the sun.

-- BS'ing with my son on the porch last night, I was interested that he noticed the comfort he acknowledged in living a definitively formatted lifestyle (he was talking about basic military training). There were no immediately-apparent if's and's or but's about it. And that led me to think: "The bad news is that you are completely, edgelessly and terrifyingly free. The good news is that you can make lemonade out of lemons."

-- When it comes to the sometimes galling "haphazard" nature of things, the only serious and important question I can think of is, "Who says so?" The question is too often glossed over in the attempt to maintain status and control. Terrifying? Sure. But sometimes the only recourse is through the terror.

-- My mother once observed that the "unconscious" is called "the unconscious" because it is "unconscious" -- not because it is something anyone could be conscious of. For all the educated inferences, I think she had a point.