It's All Hypothetical

Okay, so Phineas is a fictional character. I just used him as a hypothetical example. The stoning in Afghanistan is also hypothetical, since it's unlikely that you or I will ever go there. Apu in Beaglesonia is hypothetical too. For one thing, there aren't any Jains around here. If one did pass through as a tourist or something it's unlikely that he would come by Beaglesonia. My road dead ends in a junk yard just past my driveway, and there's nothing else on that road to attract the attention of a tourist. Nevertheless, I think I get the point you are trying to make that one culture is not intrinsically superior to any other culture.

I guess I agree with you in theory but, in practice, my culture is my culture, and I intend to keep living in it until someone shows me one that I like better. Come to think of it, that's also hypothetical because I don't think I actually have a culture, unless two crazy old people living in the swamp constitutes a culture. When I go to town I don't join the local culture, I'm just visiting. Maybe we need to define the word "culture" for the purposes of this discussion. It's like society, there is really no society with a capital "S", there are just all these little societies that each think they are the main one. Is culture like that?

When I wrote about those people taking videos it wasn't just about Fergusson. I don't know how many times I've seen on the news where there's some kind of disaster going on, maybe an auto accident or a fire, and you can see several people holding their cell phones up over the crowd so they can get a photo or video of it. Shouldn't they be trying to help, or at least staying out of the way? Then there's those idiots who film themselves committing some kind of crime and then put it on the internet. Whatever are they thinking? Now that I think of it, I think it all started with Richard Nixon making those audio tapes of the Watergate conspiracy. Why would anybody who is dong something wrong deliberately produce evidence that could be used against him in court? Isn't a conspiracy, by definition, supposed to be done in secret?

One thing that is no secret is this weather we've been having lately. I guess I shouldn't complain because we don't have nearly as much snow on the ground as we did last year at this time. I just have this thing about below zero temperatures. I mean, why do they call it "zero" if it routinely goes below that? I guess that's no more illogical than the way they used to count the years back in the BC days. No wonder people thought the Apocalypse was imminent when the years got down to the single digits. Funny though, I don't think there ever was a Year Zero. It is generally believed that Jesus Himself was born around 4 AD, so at what point did they stop counting down and start counting up? I'll have to look that up on Wiki one of these days, but right now I have to go put more wood in the stove.