Monday, August 29, 2005

Pascal

Thanks to Doug, I decided to get interested in Blaise "Monsieur le Smart@$$" Pascal.
Monsieur le Smart@$$was his middle name according to Doug. Folks, I found out that Doug was just s**ting me on that. As far as I can discover, this Blaise Pascal fella didn't have a middle name.

I did read up a little on him though. Thought I'd educate myself just a tad. I read this:

Born at Clermont-Ferrand, 19 June 1623; died in Paris, 19 August 1662. He was the son of Etienne Pascal, advocate at the court of Aids of Clermont, and of Antoinette Bégon.

Then I just sort of wandered off in a daydream, so that's all I can tell you about Blaise Pascal. Oh, 'course I already knew about Pascal's Wager. Had to learn that in Philosophy 101. You know that one. It says that you might as well believe in God. Just in case there is one. Like that. I always thought that was chicken. I've got courage enough not to believe.

And I knew that one of his most famous works is the Pensees. I never read that, so I don't know if he was talkin' about the male anatomy and just couldn't spell. Probably not, seein' as how he was a prodigy and all.

The only other think I know about him, other than he was an important genius, is that he was ugly. There, I'm done I think. Don't know one other thing.

Except there's a quote site that has some quotes by him like, "I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room." Now, I kinda like this, 'cause it means that women can't be the cause of evil. Also, it refutes the notion that it's the love of money that is the root of all evil, so it's interesting on that front too.

He also said, "Since we cannot know all that there is to be know about anything, we ought to know a little about everything." I vote for that. Well, not for knowing a little bit about absolutely everything I guess, but the part about not knowing so much about anything. I've always been a skimmer myself. I just look at leaves from the top. Don't want to turn one over and see what's underneath. Usually a worm.

Another quote is "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread." Not sure what this means. There's never any silence around me. You can ask anyone.

And he said this: "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of." I love that. I never knew that he was the one who said it. But I know that I've heard it and liked it. He was a genius mathematician and he said something like that. So I sort of like him I think. Just a little bit, me being a skimmer and all. Don't want to get into him that deep.


On another front, Happy Birthday to my first born: dddragon.

12 comments:

mireille said...

yeah, what you said. also good work on clearing women and money. you're kinda our female Mark Twain, TLP. xoxo

the many Bs said...

Very interesting stuff. Good thing you paid a little bit of attention. Happy birthday to the kid - dddragon!

Doug The Una said...

Huh. That's funny. I was sure his middle name was "monsieur le smart@$$" If not him then who? I'm pretty sure the guy's name sounded like "Pascal" Pascoo? Pasca? Hmm.

Jamie Dawn said...

I dropped by wish ddd a good day.
I know what you mean about those long, infinite spaces of silence.... who has those in their life??

dddragon said...

OKAY, Hoss was right - you must change your header line: I have this BLOG so that I can comment on other BLOGS. It's a very boring BLOG. Clearly we all think your blog is NOT boring.

Seems like this is false advertising. You could get fined for that by the FCC or somebody.

GodlessMom said...

And Blaise Pascal is such a cool name. I always wished I had a cool name but mine sounds like something out of a 70s sitcom.

Are you saying a prodigy can't talk about Pensees? How about Vagzeez?

Lila said...

Yeah, interesting stuff. I can honestly say that I have no idea what Pascal looked like. I might have to do a Google image search...

BarbaraFromCalifornia said...

How cool is that finding out about someone on the blog and reading about that person?

Ugly and brillant are often common bed-fellows.

Enjoy the day.

Blueberry said...

...and he has a programming language named after him (how cool is that?), one that I tried learning in college but didn't do me much good except that I discovered I wasn't going to become a programmer.

I don't know if he was ugly or not (now I'm curious) but I like his mind, at least based on the quotes.

Tom & Icy said...

Math, logic, reason... back to trying to make sense.

Mikki Marshall said...

stop showing off with all your new found booksmarts and such...jeez

WordWhiz said...

I always liked that guy. Our Philosophy 101 teacher compared the wager to placing a bet where you were putting up a quarter and the other guy was putting up $100.00. If you lose, you lose small, but if you win, you win big. Makes sense to me. I usually try that on my youngest son, who hates going to church, trying to encourage his willing participation. Unfortunately, he's not buying the philosophy.