I seem to remember that it was Woody Ellis who first pointed out to me that all those Greeks were a pain in the ass. It was about that time that my English teacher, Mrs. O'Hara, told me that all generalizations are invalid. With conflicting messages like that being presented to me in school, it's a wonder that I turned out as smart as I did. Truth is, I don't know that all those Greeks were a pain in the ass, but I'm pretty sure that Socrates was. He would go around accosting people in the marketplace and asking them tough questions. Then, before the poor guy had a chance to complete his answer, Socrates would hit him with another question. That, and the fact that he was as gay as a three dollar bill, leads me to believe that Socrates was indeed a pain in the ass.
Wiki has an article called "Socrates on Trial", which is the title of a play that I think I saw once on TV. I seemed to remember that one of the charges against Socrates was blasphemy, but it's been a long time since I saw the play, or at least part of the play, or maybe it wasn't even the same play, but the Wiki account sounded familiar to me. It said that Socrates was actually charged with "failing to recognize the gods of Athens and corrupting the city's youth", not exactly blasphemy, but close enough. Socrates pleaded "not guilty" to those charges but was convicted anyway. If they had charged him with being a pain in the ass, he might have pleaded "no contest", but maybe there was no law against being a pain in the ass in ancient Athens. Wiki did say that Athens had recently lost a war with Sparta, and that Socrates was rumored to have been a Spartan sympathizer, which may be where Uncle Ken got the idea that Socrates was charged with being an enemy of the state. Maybe they didn't have enough evidence to convict him on that, so they trumped up those other charges.
I also remember seeing something on TV about a famous painting called "The Death of Socrates". It depicts Socrates drinking the poison hemlock while his friends are weeping and wailing about it. In the background you can see that the door to his jail cell had been left open, I suppose by the guy who brought in the hemlock. The implication is that Socrates could have easily escaped if he had wanted to. The guy who was explaining the painting said that the Athenians didn't really want Socrates to die, they just wanted to throw a scare into him to get him to quit being such a pain in the ass, or words to that effect. Socrates, defiant to the end, said that he would rather die than cave in to his critics. Wiki says that Socrates drank the hemlock because he was a law and order kind of guy who would rather die than break any of the laws of his beloved city. Either way, it seems apparent that, in addition to being a pain in the ass, Socrates was more than a little funny in the head. Too bad they didn't have mental health counseling in those days. Rather than condemning Socrates to death, they could have rendered him harmless with medication or something.
I am not telling any Christians what to believe or how to behave, I'm just explaining why I don't go to church anymore. According to Thomas Paine, who literally wrote the book on it, Deists are true monotheists so, no, we are not Christians. I try to keep an open mind about things like that myself, so maybe I'm not a true Deist. I'm okay with that because I never joined any Deist church or swore allegiance to any Deist doctrines.
I don't particularly care for cornbread, but it's nice that Uncle Ken has found a productive hobby in his old age. He has his art, but that's more properly called "creative" than "productive". I meant to tell him yesterday, but I forgot, that the reason they say the baking time is 15-20 minutes is that all ovens do not heat exactly the same, and some people pre-heat and some people don't. The original bread recipe that I started with said to "bake at 350-375 degrees for "30-40 minutes, or until done". I ended up baking at 400 degrees for 45 minutes, and I don't preheat.
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