The Sylmar Scribbler: Britt Towery

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The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
-Shakespeare, As You Like It, Touchstone

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Recently I became curious about my old neighborhood in Pirmasens, Germany, where I was stationed at the Husterhöh Kaserne as a soldier in the U.S. Army during the mid-70s. Through the magic of Google Earth and the Internet, I explored the place I once lived, now thirty five years hence . . .

You can't go home again . . . to Husterhöh Kaserne

Leonard Pitts, one of my favorite columnists, just wrote about the persistent whitewashing of Confederate History in the old South in an article entitled "The Civil War: A conspiracy of amnesia", and pointed to the out and out lies that are being told about it; the biggest whopper, of course, is that the Civil War was not about slavery! . . .

Whitewashing the most peculiar institution - a Lost Cause

Ernst Haeckels old idea that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" is raising its head again; he suggested that the stages of a complex organisms development correspond roughly to the stages of its evolutionary history, so that, for example, the presence of gill slits in the early development of the mammalian embryo was considered evidence of a distant fish ancestor for mammals . . .

Evo devo - where a little means a lot

Herein lies a tale of history misunderstood, and then of history revived. It begins in Heidelberg, Germany in 1975. I was then a young soldier in the US Army, and with a fellow soldier, had taken a day trip to visit the storied university town of Heidelberg. While strolling along the Philosophers Way, . . .

From whence equal rights? Well, here's the Thing

Zeno of Elea was well-known for his logical paradoxes, such as: Motion involves shooting an arrow at a target, which he argues first must move half-way to its target, then half-way again from the midpoint, then half-way again, never quite reaching the target; in fact, in order to get to the first half-way point, the arrow must go half-way to it, and to get to that point, it must go half-way to it, etc., requiring an infinite number of steps to reach the target. According to Zeno, then, you can never get to where you are going. Zeno went further, in the grand tradition of reductio ad absurdum (if you are out on a limb, why not go all the way?), oft employed by not just ancient philosophers but modern day zealots, and suggested that in fact motion is impossible. The paradox is strikingly silly, but where is the logical flaw? . . .

Zeno's paradox . . . not so much

Are we going in the right direction as a country? Do we have effective leaders? Are our goals, our American Dream, achievable? If not, what should they be? William James suggests that "A great nation . . . is saved . . . by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks." . . .

Recasting the American Dream

Recently a friend mentioned wrestling with Derrida and Foucault. My curiosity now stimulated, but having no idea whom Derrida was or what he wrote, and sticking with my lifelong strategy of never reading philosophical writings directly unless at the point of a metaphysical gun, I chanced upon someone who had studied critical theory and had read Derrida and Foucault (in the original French!). That someone was my brother Craig, with whom I broached the subject of deconstruction, late last night at my brother Peters house in Eugene, following a UO football game and after a certain amount of wine, as follows: "So you are a literary guy; what the hell is deconstruction?" . . .

Philosophy & wine - modern critical theory for the (inebriated) million

My Dad, Tony Wiebe, retired as a family physician nearly twelve years ago, in 2000. During the course of his forty two years of practice, he had always taken care of family members, immediate and extended, with the greatest generosity. Dad was always available for family, 24 x 7, and family members were never charged for his services. He would get up at any time of the night . . .

Doctor Dad . . . irreplacable

Several chess writers have mentioned a German book entitled "Instructions to Spectators at Chess Tournaments" which was comprised of three hundred blank pages followed by the phrase "Shut Up!" This piece of performance art (the performer is the reader of the book) brought to mind an experience my son Jon and I shared years ago at a chess tournament; Jon had an interest in chess for a few years, starting in the fourth grade, and played in multiple chess tournaments during that time. I accompanied him to his last tournament, and joined the ranks of fussy parents . . .

Chess tournament etiquette: Performance art?

Thomas Jefferson was extraordinarily adept at saying and writing, apparently believing, and doing things that were paradoxical and often diametrically opposed to each other. This may go a long way to explain his enduring following by just about every political persuasion in the United States, and even abroad: Anyone can find in Jefferson something that supports their ideology, especially if they studiously ignore, in perfect Jeffersonian fashion, the things Jefferson said or did that would negate their ideology . .

Jefferson's legacy

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