Blogging to Resume, After All, Friday May 3

Ah the fragilty of goodness! ... How delicate, it seems, is the biosystem in which a daily blog can thrive.

My travels over, I find myself behind in other work: It's looking unlikely that I can resume blogging before this Friday, May 4. I'll see if I can come up with a last word, too, on Two Births, Two Origins.

However, for your amusement, two stories.

(1) Recently my 3 year old son, Gregory, asked to be excused from the dinner table. I told him that he may be excused, if he behaved, once excused. To which Gregory replied, "But I AM hāved!" (Now, how do I explain to him that, although, pace Quine, sakes really do exist, hāves do not? Also, I continue to wonder how he was so sure that he was already hāved.)

(2) We had to take two long road trips yesterday, during which I played with everyone else in the car, "Punch Buggy", i.e. the first person who sees a Volkswagen Beetle shouts out "Punch buggy, don't punch back!" and gets credit for one 'buggy' sighting--the person with the most at the end of the day being the winner. We have in our apartment a picture of my wife standing next to a yellow Beetle. In between trips, Joseph, 6 years old, asked whether he could count the Beetle in the picture for the purposes of the game. I told him that he could not count it, and of course he knew that he couldn't. But the interesting question was why he couldn't, and yet why he was tempted to ask. "Why shouldn't that Beetle in the picture count?" (I asked), "Because you can't drive it anywhere," was the response--and good enough for both of us.

I didn't have to ask him why he was tempted to ask. I know that he likes jokes, and philosophy.