Solis

Question: Do you believe your Master?

Question: Should you?

Answer: No.

At least "no, not if s/he's doing it right."

We are hostages of a long-ago philosophical debate than many don't even know occurred. The setting for the debate was the 18th century, and the scene was western Europe. For centuries, our universe was filled with the Unknowable. Things we had no way of understanding:

where do spices comes from? The border

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I'm a great admirer of the singer/songwriter Christine Lavin. She manages to alternate laughable slice-of-life songs with ones that offer powerful reflection on parts of life we experience but don't know how to name. In particular, I was thinking of subs and listening to Lavin's "Damaged Goods." The middle lyrics:

She had her first man when she was 23,
Years after all her girlfriends gave away their virginity.
And now at last she thought her life had begun,

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Do you like to dance? Little boys and girls, universally. Women, generally. Young men, occasionally. "Mature" men (hah!), not so much. Actually, "way too much given how wretched they are." Work by British evolutionary biologists suggests a painful explanation for the near-universal horror of middle-aged male dancing:

The cringeworthy ''dad dancing'' witnessed at wedding receptions every weekend may be an unconscious way in which ageing males repel the attention

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