Reflections

See Reflections on the 1970s

Relative (Lawyerly) Misery

Robert Miller notes that a story in American Lawyer recites that Manhattan lawyers earning $1,000,000/year and more are unhappy because financial professionals make more. Miller concludes, "Indeed, there is no misery so small that it cannot fill the human heart."

With that in mind, I will go back to my books and my writing.

"And a Merry Christmas to you!" said Scrooge (eventually). Or something of the sort.

The conference Enquiry, Evidence & Facts was a smashing success.

Whether my talk was a smashing success is a different question.

I know of no programme or community in the world that is quite like the Enquiry, Evidence & Facts programme and community in London. May it (or they) long live!

A Puzzle

The narrator -- in the Chevron ad on PBS TV --, the narrator (sonorously) intones, "Where are the answers?"

I think, "Where are the questions?"

Then I think, "In the very act of asking for answers, the narrator asks a question."

So, dear Reader, do I have any reason to complain?

Is the narrator's answer a question? Is it both a question and an answer? Is it both a question and a question?

Or does the narrator's answer (question?) generate a question?

And why am I wasting my time with such questions?

The Most Incomprehensible Thing

An article in the NYTimes reminds us that Albert Einstein reportedly said:

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

There is a similar mystery -- or, there is a species of this mystery -- about the ability of evidence to reach beyond itself, to suggest possibilities that are not, strictly speaking, shown or demonstrated by evidence but that nevertheless sometimes turn out to be (probably) true. (E.g., I see what looks like a footprint -- and I infer that someone walked there; I see what may or may not be a handprint, I infer that it is a handprint, and I infer, or guess, that David Defendant's palm put it there.)