razors

 As that Greek guy who invented the razor used to say, the most obvious explanation is usually the correct one. 

Occam, the guy who laid down the dictum that the simplest answer is most likely the true one: Occam's razor, Ockham's razor, Ocham's razor (Latin: novacula Occami) or law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae) is the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied without necessity." The idea is attributed to English Franciscan friar William of Ockham was not Greek nor did he invent the instrument that removes stubble from our faces in the morning.  I'm sure the razor for the purpose of removing stubble was invented long before the Greeks entered the scene.  Egyptians often portrayed themselves as clean-shaven and certainly some citizens of Ur began their day by drawing a lethal weapon across their faces.  The question in my mind is not so much when as why.  Who thought this up, and why did everybody else think it was a good idea?

We grew up in a very smooth-shaven era for the US.  I remember thinking when I went to college that I would now see people with beards. Beards were rather exotic then, the sort of thing only offbeat intellectuals would sport.  Less than four years later I would be sporting one, and so was everybody else I knew.  When I was down in Herrin I was in the habit of buying beer for minors, paying it back for all the years when I was a minor and older guys would buy it for me.  One time a group of minors knowing I drank in a certain Carbondale bar sent one of their own into it to seek me out and came out empty-handed.  Couldn't you find Ken, they asked him, and he replied, they all look like Ken.

And here's a fun fact, who was the last president with facial hair?  I will give you pause to think of this, and the answer is Taft who left office with his mustache in 1913.  Offhand I can't even think a presidential candidate who had even a mustache in my lifetime.


I think early on in the primary there was some talk of the dems having a brokered convention and the thought of it had the ink-stained wretches dancing in the streets.  Oh the drama of the great state of North Dakota proudly casting its votes for whoever while crowds of fully grown adults paraded up and down the aisles with all kind of banners like high school kids at a pep rally, while somewhere in a warren deep inside the hall cigar-chomping party bosses in their shirt-sleeves pounded desks and snarled at each other hammering this thing out.  Those were the days my friends.

Long gone now, and as Beagles says, they are long past their prime.  They are nothing but a series of boring speeches and pomp and bullshit,  There still is something called the party platform which is fiercely fought over, but once it's decided on it's promptly discarded and nobody talks about it anymore.


If Beagles is not aware of the efficacy of locking down in curbing corona he has only to do a brief internet search, or pay attention when he is reading the newspaper.  Oh never mind.