This Is Not School

This is not school, nor is it a formal debate, this is conversation. If both of us were to limit our contributions to things that we could prove mathematically or scientifically, we would soon run out of things to talk about. Most of our scientific knowledge is derivative anyway. We did not do the experiments or the research ourselves, we rely on the work of others. When one of them others says one thing, and another one of them others says something different, we are free to believe either one of them others, or none of them. Nobody is paying us to do this, and there will be no report cards issued at the end of the semester. Just because I tell you about something I read, saw on TV,  or overheard in the supermarket check out line doesn't mean that I expect you to swallow it whole, or that I even believe it myself. It's more like: "Have you heard about...?" or "What do you make of that?" I don't get around much anymore but, as near as I can remember, that's how people normally talk to each other in real life, so why can't we do it on the internet?

I don't know about you, but I like to talk about this stuff because I find it interesting. I'm only mildly interested in some things, and thus unwilling to spend a lot of effort on them. Sometimes our discussion leads me to become more interested in something, and then I try to find more information about it, but I can't do that with everything. If I did, I wouldn't get anything else done, and I still wouldn't know everything there is to know about everything. I try to keep an open mind about most things, but sometimes some action, like voting, is required, and then I have to make up my mind one way or the other. 

Okay, here's one like that: One of the proposals on the Michigan ballot this fall is about raising the state minimum wage, and I'm not sure what I think about that. I have heard arguments both for and against that seem reasonable to me, and I haven't yet made up my mind how I'm going to vote on the issue. Would you care to throw in your two cent's worth? I can't guarantee that your argument will sway me one way or the other, but I promise to give it a fair hearing.

You're right that the Germans wanted to kill us all and take our land but, by the end of World War II, they had given up on that idea. Then it was the Russians who wanted to kill us all and take our land. I don't think they currently harbor that ambition, but you can never tell about those sneaky Russians, so we'd better keep our eye on them just in case. Now the biggest threat seems to be the Islamic terrorists. I'm not sure if they want our land, but they do seem to want to force us to bow down to their heathen god. Of course that's not going to happen, but they can still do a lot of damage in the attempt. Then there's the Red Chinese. Nobody knows what they want because they are inscrutable but, whatever it is, they won't need to resort to violence to get it, they can just buy it with the money we gave them.

Meanwhile, life goes on in Beaglesonia. The snow is melting, the creeks are rising, and it looks like I'm going to be cutting firewood all summer. That is, if we even have a summer this year.