One Mystery Solved, Two More Posed
The ancient mystery revealed:
If a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Answer: of course, you nitwit. The production of sound waves by a falling object is a physical process independent of the physical process of the receipt of sounds waves by a listening device such as the human ear. The fact that there are STILL people in this day and age who view this ancient ‘riddle’ as a meditation on the meaning of existence only proves that sloppy thinking is timeless.
Now, here’s a couple of mysteries of more recent vintage I would like to pose (I’d really like to pose them to 9/11 ‘Truthers’, but I doubt anyone that reads my blog fits the description):
If George W. Bush or his ‘neocon’ advisers perpetrated 9/11 as a pretext to invading Iraq, why the side excursion to Afghanistan and the whole ‘al-Qaeda’ angle? And why weren’t there any Iraqi hijackers ‘planted’?
And while we’re at it, a third mystery: if George W. Bush and his ‘neocon’ advisers never believed that Iraq possessed WMD stockpiles, and fabricated the whole thing as an excuse to invade (perhaps to make up for their clumsy oversight in picking the nationality of the 9/11 hijackers), why not go the extra mile and fabricate the ‘proof’ that the WMDs had been found? I mean, really…how hard would it have been, if Bush were REALLY the dishonest SOB his opponents make him out to be, to plant some chemical weapons in the middle of some godforsaken patch of a war zone?
Life is just so mysterious (when you’re a credulous fool, anyway)…
I think that first question can be asked in a still-relevant way. If there is no sensory organ close enough to interpret the vibrations produced by the falling tree as “sound,” could it be said to have made a “sound”? Sure, you could argue that sound is those waves, by definition, but I think the question really seeks to ask, even in slightly sloppy wording, whether anything has any meaning outside of an interpreter to judge it as such. Not that I think your interpretation is wrong, only that I think it misses what’s the deeper point of the question. I don’t subscribe to zen, so I’m really just playing Devil’s advocate here.
As for the other two, you’re right on. I can dislike Bush as much as anyone, as I said before, and I can even think that he used 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq. But claiming that he orchestrated 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq is a huge leap, and one that requires the type of extraordinary evidence that the mental midgets who subscribe to that theory can’t even dream up.
Damn. I put on my pedantic hat and clicked on the comments link, only to discover that Fargus had beat me to the exact point I was going to make. Fine. What he said.
Michael Moore explained that George Bush orchestrated 9/11 do that the Carlyle(sp?) Group could put a natural gas pipeline through Afganistan.
It’s an idiotic explanation, of course, but they have one.
If we invaded Iraq for the oil, where is the oil? I’m not getting any. Also, if Bush planned this, he did a piss-poor job.
Well, really, that’s it! Bush is simultaneously a corrupt, evil, conspirator AND stupid & incompetent.
Steves, that would definitely make him the Worst. President. Ever.
It would, wouldn’t it. I’m bummed about Giuliani’s missteps because I apparently match up very well with him on the issues:
http://www.vajoe.com/candidate_calculator.html
Sense is only common when it’s logically and succintly expressed. Well done.