Why do our bodies wear out? Why can't we just go on and on and on, accumulating a potentially infinite number of Frequent Flyer mi...leage points? These are the kinds of questions that philosophers have been asking ever since they realized that being a philosopher did not involve any heavy lifting. And yet the answer is really very simple. Our bodies are mechanical devices, they break down. Some devices, such as battery-operated toys costing $39.95, break down almost instantly upon exposure to the Earth's atmosphere. Other devices, such as stereo systems owned by your next-door neighbor's 13-year-old son who likes to listen to bands with names like "Nerve Damage," at a volume capable of disintegrating limestone, will continue to function perfectly for many years, even if you hit them with an ax. But the fundamental law of physics is that sooner or later every mechanism ceases to function for one reason or another, and it is never covered under the warranty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When you're tall, thin, blond, and have big boobs, you can have any job you want. ... ultimately, it all settled into a runni...ng soap opera, with new episodes on the same theme every week. Barbara and Peter. Episode 13 of the Barbara is Uninhibited and Peter is a Drag Show: this week Barbara and Peter went to a party and Barbara pulled down her pants and mooned the guests and Peter was furious. Joanna and Dave, Episode 19 of the Will Joanna Ever Get Dave to Share the Household Duties Show: this week Joanna refused to get out of bed and change the channel and Dave hit her and she threatened to kill herself. Claire and Herbie in the Claire has Sexual Boredom but Loves Her Husband Show: this week a man in the office Claire has the hots for put his hand on her leg while they were having a drink at P. J. Clarke's, but it was time to go home and feed the children and she never did find out whether it was significant or an accident.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Education at school continues what has been done at home: it crystallizes the optical illusion, consolidates it with book learning..., theoretically legitimizes the traditional trash and trains the children to know without understanding and to accept denominations for definitions. Astray in his conceptions, entangled in words, man loses the flair for truth, the taste for nature. What a powerful intellect must you possess, to be suspicious of this moral carbon dioxide and with your head swimming already, to hurl yourself out of it into the fresh air, with which, into the bargain, everyone round is trying to scare you!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The vast majority of individual termites, belonging to the most highly evolved species, never leave their crowded fortress city, c...ould not see anything if they did, spend their entire existence in the narrow chambers and narrower tunnels of a labyrinth where they were born and where they breathe perpetually the damp, carbon dioxide atmosphere and dread more than anything else being compelled to leave it, even for an instant. The lives of certain human city dwellers who spend their days in air-conditioned offices, pass from them through tunnels of the subway to narrow chambers in some housing development, may seem remotely analogous.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in t...erms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that's the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Again we took to the beach for another day (October 13), walking along the shore of the resounding sea, determined to get it into ...us. We wished to associate with the ocean until it lost the pond-like look which it wears to a countryman.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »