Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit: wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. This sentence is an example of a paraprosdokian. Look the word up in your dictionary: “p-a-r-a-p-r-o-s-d-o-k-i-a-n.” If you can find it, let me know where you found it. I tried, and I can’t find it in any traditional […]
Author Archives: Dave Franzetta
Ode to Doughnuts, in Infinite Variety
What is it that is so appealing about doughnuts? At their essence, doughnuts are lumps of sweet yeast dough, sometimes with holes cut into the middle [more on the doughnut hole later], usually deep fried, then rolled in sugar. They go great with coffee, but they’re also great with a cup of tea or a […]
The Gambler’s Folly
At the Vortex
Sedona, Arizona is a very special, singularly beautiful place, with its spectacular red rock canyons and hills literally leaving you speechless. Over millions of years, layers of sandstone and limestone were left in the area by a receding ocean. Iron oxide eventually covered the grains of sandstone and, in a natural process, rust formed. The stunningly beautiful red […]
All About Aces
A Lowcountry Paradox
They call it “the Lowcountry” for good reason. The coastal regions of southern South Carolina and northern Georgia, roughly from Charleston, South Carolina to the north and extending to Savannah, Georgia to the south, a stretch of about 120 miles of coast–assuming it was a straight line of coast–has an average elevation of about 2 […]
Cluelessness–What We Don’t Know (Part III–Are We Hopelessly Clueless?)
At a press conference on June 6, 2002 at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, in response to a question about the quality of intelligence about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld delivered his now-famous quote about “unknown unknowns:” “There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. […]
Cluelessness: What We Don’t Know (Part II–Everyday Anosognosia?)
A news story, reported by Michael A. Fuoco in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1995, began: “ARREST IN BANK ROBBERY, SUSPECT’S TV PICTURE SPURS TIPS At 5 feet 6 inches and about 270 pounds, bank robbery suspect McArthur Wheeler isn’t the type of person who fades into the woodwork. So it was no surprise that he […]
Cluelessness: What We Don’t Know (Part I)
Philosophers spend a lot of time wondering and worrying about questions like: what CAN we know?, what DO we know?, and how do we KNOW what we know?; so much so that an entire branch of philosophy, known as epistemology, deals with these and related questions about knowledge, and what exactly knowledge might be. Epistemological philosophers have also […]
What is it About A$$holes?
You are driving down the highway, travelling with the flow of traffic as you near a construction zone where the traffic narrows from three lanes, then to two, and finally to one lane. You’ve merged into the single lane, when you see, in your side-view mirror, a black Dodge Ram pickup truck blithely cruising along the shoulder […]