AdamSmith

'Atheists & agnostics...'

'Novel Writing with Thomas Hardy...'

again -- and given all the above posts -- you have lost me. Sorry to be so slow. Explain if desired.

Occurs also that the Germanic grammatical basis of English has maybe embedded into itself a certain Teutonic leaning-into-emotional-&-intellectual conflict--for-its-own-sake which is not very productive? ...'Tomorrow belongs to me'...

That is very useful. Genuinely thank you That was helped clarify my thinking a lot.

I think I am an absolute atheist. Yet I believe in a spiritualism that the concept 'humanism' does not remotely do justice to. Help me understand your beef with that?

Again...

Well, it is. I would stand in trembling, and dread, and fear of his judgment. I would not seek to evade that judgment.

Charon on the River Styx, coming to collect the lost and ferry them across. by Gustav Dore

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)#Canto_III:_The_Gate_of_Hell Through me you go to the grief wracked city; Through me you go to everlasting pain; Through me you go a pass among lost souls. Justice inspired my exalted Creator: I am a creature of the Holiest Power, of Wisdom in the Highest and of Primal Love. Nothing till I was made was made, only eternal beings. And I endure eternally. Abandon all hope — Ye Who Enter Here Variant translation: 'Through me the way to the suffering city; Through me the everlasting pain; Through me the way that runs among the Lost. Justice urged on my exalted Creator: Divine Power made me, The Supreme Wisdom and the Primal Love. Nothing was made before me but eternal things And I endure eternally. Abandon all hope - You Who Enter Here.' Variant Translation: 'I am the way into the city of woe. I am the way to a forsaken people. I am the way into eternal sorrow. Sacred justice moved my architect. I was raised here by divine omnipotence, primordial love and ultimate intellect. Only those elements time cannot wear are beyond me, and beyond time I stand. Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.' Note: Full inscription on the top of the gate.

If so, then so... Canto III Per me si va ne la città dolente, per me si va ne l’etterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente. Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: fecemi la divina podestate, la somma sapienza e ’l primo amore. Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterno duro. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.

PPS Sex & alcohol fuel learning!

Now, the white players at NC State in that era I could do with pleasure! ...that cute little shooter Monte Towe...! Et al.

Big bland white guys are just not my thing. That is what the b-ball team was full of when I was there (just like Allen today). And while the starting team (1977-1979, Mike Gminski etc) was very bright, the B-levels were dumb as dirt. A real turn-off for yer AS.

Just wait. Again, took two years to take down Tricky Dick. Mueller's report will make damning reading. Smells like it's coming fairly soon.

This one-two punch might even be what finally lets Ryan & then McConnell & their respective compadres grow a pair...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/james-comey-fires-back-trump-000051704.html

Comey, who will publish a book next month, also tweeted. “Mr President,” he wrote, “the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/17/donald-trump-lawyer-andrew-mccabe-fbi-fired-brennan

Fierce.

Because, seriously, I can't stomach organized sports ruling any college campus the way that basketball claimed 2/3 of all Duke students' thought pathways. Not what I went to college for. Sorry to be such a sourpuss. (The twin, unrelated, factor was that 51% of all men students, and 49% of women, belonged respectively to fraternities and sororities.) Sorry: on this I am (as Nixon said of Robert Kennedy) a "fiery seventeenth-century Jesuit priest." What brings the thought up, btw?