The movie Dragonheart for me is sort of a guilty pleasure.
It’s not really that good in my opinion, but it has one thing in it that’s said that I love so much I’ve kept it in my collection of quotes to remember:
“A knight is sworn to valour. His heart knows only virtue. His blade defends the helpless. His might upholds the weak. His word speaks only truth. His wrath undoes the wicked.”
Among inspiring quotes, I find this one makes me think.
I think everyone LIKED Spock, some loved him. But I admired him for his special qualities
Why this character is special for me:
A more contemporary hero, Richard Feynmann. Someone I’ve actually had the pleasure of meeting when I attended a seminar he gave once while I was in grad school.
I wish I could have taken courses from this man. I almost went into particle physics because of reading his work.
Why I admire this man:
A long term favorite of mine … Franklin combines so much of what I aspire to
Why I admire Franklin:
Still another hero of mine is DaVinci. One of those who has set standards for my life:
Why I admire DaVinci:
Another hero of mine is Albert Einstein
Why he inspires me:
I once kept a page on my computer in OneNote with pictures of heros, people or characters who mean something to me. Something in their character appeals to me. I think it’s worth some time to reconstruct those heros and why they mean something to me.
FIRST … John Wayne as Hondo Lane
Why I admire this character:
I’ll add to this list from time to time because I think it’s worth thinking out why certain characters, whether real or fictional, inspire me to be better.
A recent article by Michael Shermer from Skeptic Magazine in the Los Angeles Times makes some very interesting points about belief and how we’re all affected by it.
Michael is talking here about ‘Confirmation Bias‘, which is a tendency to interpret new information as confirming our beliefs and prejudices or to avoid information which might contradict them. Several examples including Jim Jones’ Jonestown mass suicide and others are great examples, but the more subtle examples he raises are far more important for us directly.
The article points out how, for example, Republicans and Democrats both tend to read and listen to news that supports their views … in fact how we all do. We look for and try to find ways to support our own thinking without giving other ideas a fair hearing. We ignore or avoid evidence that we might be wrong. Unfortunately, that’s the sort of thinking which gets us and everyone else in trouble.
I was trained in a Jesuit University and saw first hand this sort of thinking contrasted with real Critical Thinking.
I want to say Thank You to Richard Chappell for saying something that needs to be said. In his blog, he posted a short comment about Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to speak. I’ve seen so much comment on this selection by people who I thought understood, but obviously didn’t.
The problem with politics and in fact any discussion in this country is that we’ve lost the ability to disagree without getting nasty about it. We need to be about OPEN discussion and not polarization. With so many commentators talking about how bad polarization is, then getting upset with Obama over this choice, I think we’ll have a still harder time getting people to talk.
Unfortunately, politics isn’t about doing the right thing for the country, it’s become about winning. So much time and money is spent winning that everything else gets lost. If we don’t get over it, then in a few hundred more years, we’ll be written up in the history books as the ‘failed experiment’ and written off in history’s backwaters as one of the shorter lived civilizations.