Intelligent Design

What about Stupid Design?
It is argued, for example, that something as complicated as the vertebrate eye could never have evolved by chance, without a guiding intelligence.
But why design eyes that weaken as we age, that are subject to blindness and disease, and that are limited the way ours are?
For that matter, why would an intelligent designer give us teeth that rot and gums that recede?
There's so much palpably wrong with the little piece of the universe where we live, that one might go so far as positing an absent-minded designer with occasional flashes of intelligence and a nasty tendency to play practical jokes.

Wishes and Fulfillment

You have probably been exposed to the New Age fad of visualizing Success. The first step toward achieving what you want is to visualize it, one is told. And visualizing it becomes a guarantee of achieving It - jobs, money, the perfect spouse.
At my age, some of the things desired by people in their thirties, who are launching themselves into life, don't seem relevant. I'm more modest in my ambitions: maintaining decent health, living to see my grandchildren reach maturity, making good use of the time allotted to me.
A friend of mine fantasizes about travel, about renting a barge and floating down the canals of Europe, about buying a camper and roaming about the North American continent, and in fact he did something a lot of people imagine doing but never get together: he and a couple of friends, men in their late sixties, bought huge motorcycles in California and zigzagged across the US and Canada for a few months.
My fantasies are more about staying put than about traveling.
One recent fantasy that I'm living with is to install a pottery studio in our home and devote much more time to ceramics - my latest passion - than I am doing at present. I'm halfway there, in fact, because an acquaintance of mine, an accomplished ceramicist, is allowing me to use her studio two days a week.
Another fantasy is to create a music studio, with sound equipment, and to play and write music. I imagine writing arrangements for the big band I play in.
Another fantasy is to get a regular gig in a pub with my pianist friend and play standards. I'm too shy to move forward on this, but it's certainly possible.
And I entertain fantasies about importing musical instruments and opening a woodwind store. This is not a serious idea!
Interestingly, I don't have fantasies about writing a hugely successful novel or anything else connected with writing and literature, though that has been my main occupation all my life.