radical agnosticism

one one level i am forced to agree...looking towards the past for configurations ( or what to do next ) is inherently foolish and will leave considerable lattitude for repeated mistakes and recidivist behaviors...the issue is, since this is nothing if not a pastoral message, that the "church hierarchy" is trying to control my present by placing my future in some fundamentally unproven haven of eternal bliss...i think you are manipulative here and really haven't any better idea of what might occur at or after death than i do...you simply believe you do ( or want me to believe )...to borow one from old fred nietzsche,"a casual stroll theough the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."...i don't believe you know...i believe you are delusional in your hope...or you are cynically manipulative...either way i will remain agnostic...you will not see me in church sunday...or any other day for that matter.

wine

this is from five years ago and it still confounds me whenever i run across it in an old file...$79300 for a double magnum...three liters...$26433.33 a liter...$26.43 a milliliter...has someone opened this and had a taste...or is it an investment? seems more likely the price was the result of a bidding war between wine snobs with too much money for their own ( or that of anyone else ) good...what would you do with a now twenty-two year old bottle of wine that couldn't possibly be worth the amount that was paid for it? the end purpose of a bottle of wine is to be imbibed and i have to wonder what occasion would merit $1321.50 a sip ( i measured out a comfortble mouthful of water and it came to fifty milliliters...so that is how i calculated the cost of a sip )...the disjunction between the cost and the reality of use is nearly complete here...the real can die in a multitude of ways...tulipmania for isntance...there are bubbles of all sorts from spices to housing to, seemingly, wine...reality has slipped a pulley here.