I heard it at the UUCR

An inspirational quote:

"What need has a free spirit for a rock on which to stand when it has wings with which to fly?"

I'm a fan of the whole "free spirit"-thing, particularly in its Nietzschean form, but it seems to me that one's wings get tired at some point.

And then it would be nice to have a safe place to land.

A Poem

A curious thing
about the ontological problem
is its simplicity.

It can be put
into three
Anglo-Saxon monosyllables:
'What is there?'

It can be answered,
moreover,
in a word--
'Everything'--
and everyone will accept
this answer
as true.
-WVO Quine, "On What There Is"

I didn't come up with the idea of "Quine as Poet," but I like the idea; and I like Quine better than Weiderkehr in any case.
I'm even more pleased to learn that Quine is a noun.

Defining terms

I think this cartoon could serve as a lesson for today... except that it was the lesson for last week, too.
Sometimes being essentially relational beings sucks.