The birth of time and space occurred some 15 billion years ago.
“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Bill Clinton when asked about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Dick Cheney, a four time draft dodger justified the Iraq invasion, claiming ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).’
If opinions are only opinions what are opinions.
There is only one Matriarchal society in the world, the Mosuo.
Thousands of Americans and it is estimated over a million Iraqis have died so far over these WMD.
Japan invaded the United States on December 7th, 1941. Today American flags adorn Japanese cars in America.
Do politicians wake up thinking about poverty in America or the world.
Recently I noticed a shirt made in Vietnam. Fifty six thousand Americans died in Vietnam fighting the spread of Communism.
Seinfeld was about nothing, John Cage once said he was saying nothing.
All industrial nations have universal healthcare except for the United States
‘Semper Fi’ stickers have been seen on Japanese and German cars.
The earth is four and one half billion years old.
What is a picture really worth. Robert Musil said pictures on the wall soon disappear.
The life span of elephants is 70 years.
George W. Bush was AWOL during Vietnam.
Our language of nouns, things, divorced from context, makes for easy classification but little thought.
John Kerry served in Vietnam; Dick Cheney obtained four deferments.
Each weekend at Mass, we prayed for the conversion of Russia from Communism.
During the week we hid under our school desks preparing for nuclear holocaust.
All religions have as a central tenet the Golden Rule - none follow it.
George Tenet claimed WMD were a slam dunk; he received the Freedom Medal.
There are a hundred billion synapses in the brain.
All debate should be enthymematic; 98 percent of all Internet debate is ad hominem.
Gossip is universal, as is the blame game.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Do American boys still work on cars.
Do dreams mean anything. Do nightmares
The Iraq invasion has cost over 700 billion dollars and counting.
In just ten generations you have 2048 grandparents.
The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe.
Fossil fuels are the result of life death and time.
Does birth order matter.
Colin Powell provided complex testimony at the UN for WMD.
Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, 1945. Approximately eleven more ovulations occurred before the egg dropped that became me.
My mother says my fist love was a car, a 1955 Chevy.
George W. Bush praised Michael Brown after Katrina struck New Orleans.
Movies mirror our dream world, Hollywood movies often mirror nightmares of individual revenge and widespread catastrophe.
L. Paul Bremer was awarded a Freedom medal. So was Rosa Parks.
Photo Postcards of lynchings in America from 1883 till 1960 were displayed in February, 2000 in New York.
There are over four million porn websites in the world.
Evolution was never controversial in Asian; Asians never considered themselves top dog.
Tobacco kills approximately 400,000 people each year. Alcohol about 80,000, illegal drugs kills only a few thousand.
While Satan still lingers in the minds of people, Government has replaced him in America.
What if there were no affirmative action.
Ronald Reagan had the highest peace time tax increase in America history.
The earth has had two deep freezes that killed most life on earth.
Laughter is an evolutionary tool for it’s OK.
Does anyone diagram sentences or practice Palmer penmanship.
The Romans used roads for soldiers and communications.
What is the need and appeal of speed, of music.
Eisenhower proposed the Interstate Highway system because of war.
The Black Plague killed 25 million people.
Mornings make me high, is that consciousness or dopamine.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu killed over twenty million.
How do we know we are thinking.
It is estimated that 110 million died in wars in the 20th century. Some place the estimate as high as 140 million.
The first victim of war is truth.
At one time the sun never set on the British empire.
In Asia silence is knowledge.
Communist Russia was an ally during the second world war.
There are 80 Wal-Marts in Communist China.
I am therefore I think.
The world didn’t end at the first millennium. Nor the second.
In 1999, manual apparatus sold well because of fear electricity would not work in the new millennium.
Jim Thorpe, an American Indian, was probably the greatest athlete of all time.
Among our closet relatives in the animal kingdom are the peaceful Bonobo.
The universe is flat. The end point of the universe is estimated but not known.
Humans date back 150,000 years.
Edit to Bible: money is the root of most evil, or much evil. Fear, insecurity are big factors too.
Schopenhauer said reading was thinking with the mind of another.
A British newspaper marveled at the number of stupid people in America after W won the second time. No testing to confirm ’stupid’ was conducted.
Fascism is of the right, Communism of the left, Dictatorship personal.
Hitler was a Catholic, so was Timothy McVeigh, so is Antonin Scalia.
A child dies of preventable causes every 15 seconds in the world.
The time circumstances and accomplishments make Franklin Delano Roosevelt our greatest president.
Jonas Salk took no profit from his team’s development of the Polio vaccine.
Wittgenstein said if all science problems were solved it would not touch any of life’s problems.
Between 2003 and 2007 the profits of the nation’s largest medical insurers rose 170.2 percent to $12.6 billion.
Experts and throwing darts are equally reliable prognosticators.
America ranks 37th in the world in healthcare, right next to Costa Rica.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, is ugliness.
In geologic time, human history is a few seconds life less.
If Think Tanks are only about partisan and corporate ideology, why are they called think tanks.
Coffee sex books and the open road all I need.
The richest 1 percent in America saw their wealth triple from 1980 to 2006. The bottom 90% went down 20 percent.
If free will exists how do we justify our politics in a world of poverty and disease.
Sixty percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000.
Liberalism and conservatism equiponderate Tao.
Corporate tax amounted to just 7.4 percent of total federal tax revenue in 2003.
The sun is middle age in sun time and should burn out in roughly another 5 billion years.
I had a much stronger fantasy life young.
The war on drugs was started in 1969 and is still in progress.
Beckett wrote I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
The war on terrorism, a noun, started during the Bush administration.
I do not understand cults, nor Tea Baggers.
Only two chromosomes separate us from the great apes.
Has the debate over nature versus nurture been resolved.
Combined taxes consume 21 percent of the poor person’s earnings, but only 7 percent of the earnings of the rich.
Each breath is a million billion billion atoms of oxygen.
I find honest people interesting but so rare.
If all conceptions are children, when and where do they grow up.
Do birds think as they fly south, then north.
Somethings are givens, our parents.
Sartre thought other people were hell.
The majority of drug offenders are white, but blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison.
Humans are distinct from animals because we know we are humans.
Being guillotined was for the privileged during the religious heresies. Being burned alive for the common people. People arrived early at both for a good view.
Wal-mart insures its workers and designates the corporation the beneficiary.
The individual with inherent rights was created in the 18th century, but suffrage didn’t happen till the 20th.
Wittgenstein thought all problems, problems of language.
Maybe life on earth is a first draft or one of many.
When asked a stupid question Obama smiles nicely, I cannot do that.
Language is the reason we know that we know.
It could be said that Indulgences brought down the Holy Roman Empire.
If all work is outsourced how will we know. Suppose robots do the rest.
Is America the first working plutocracy.
There are approximately 3.5 million homeless in America.
If actions are additive, how can we ever tell if any action is the right action.
Neither marriage nor God is mentioned in the US Constitution.
Consider how much money corporations could funnel back into the community if they outsourced executives and their boards.
Kafka said the meaning of life is death.
Will humankind ever attain immortality on earth.
Which would you choose, great beauty, intelligence or long life.
It is the journey that matters. I’ll go on….
Fact Paradox and Random Musings
Let’s revive the Golden Rule
“Karen Armstrong looks at religion’s role in the 21st century: Will its dogmas divide us? Or will it unite us for common good? She reviews the catalysts that can drive the world’s faiths to rediscover the Golden Rule.”
Question, if the golden rule is the central tenet of all religions, why does it get so little press?
The Beauty of it all
As we all know by now, Scott Brown won the senate seat previously occupied by Ted Kennedy. He won it by a pretty good margin, especially for Massachusetts. The beauty comes from the fact that of all the Democrats Ted Kennedy wanted socialist health care probably more than anyone. Now, through the death of Ted Kennedy, the Democrat party will likely lose their precious health care. Not to rub salt in the wound but, Martha Coakley would be the Senator from Massachusetts today if it were not for (in part) you guessed it, Ted Kennedy.
The law was changed when Mitt Romney was Governor of Massachusetts. The Democrats were worried that if John Kerry won the Presidency that Mitt Romney would appoint a Republican to the Senate. So, they changed the law. Now, thanks to that law, the people are picking who they want to take Kennedy’s place. They chose Scott Brown. A Republican.
Thanks Ted. You’ve been a great help.
Independent Voters Are Just Plain Dumb?
What conclusion can one come to after Obama won Massachusetts by 26% and now Brown wins. Their values and policies are diametrically opposed. So then what do independents want? What motivates their vote? What does it say when voting changes so quickly and is no longer about issues and values?
Obama ran on a retreat from hubris of imperialism, healthcare for all, improvements for the middle and working class, and change. Brown is opposed to healthcare for all, and for that matter opposed to all of the above. Brown is pro all the policies that since Reagan have diminished the middle class in America. And yet these negative attitudes and values seem to always win when money enters the picture. The Bible was right.
Does the reactionary propaganda coming from certain conservative supported media have so strong an effect that people, independents in this case, actually believe America is moving too far left? And what does ‘left’ mean. Given our healthcare is ranked 37th in the world, you’d think Americans would want improvement. We used to consider our nation exceptional, today we are happy with mediocre.
Americans will vote for war, vote to remove the rights of gays, vote to reduce taxes as our infrastructure collapses, so really maybe independents represent a strain of thought that simply reverses the golden rule. A ‘I got mine’ you get yours attitude. The irony of all this is the last presidency and the republican ascendancy failed America. The 2008 election demonstrated that so well and yet….
So what is it independents want? We know there are some who will always vote republican and some democratic, but now we have a group that clearly has no idea what it wants. Mention the old fashioned American value of making all of America great but it will cost you - whether true or not - and you’ll lose. And so it goes….
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Winston Churchill
How Is The Internet Changing The Way You Think?
What do you think?
“This year’s Question is “How is the Internet changing the way YOU think?” Not “How is the Internet changing the way WE think?” We spent a lot of time going back on forth on “YOU” vs. “WE” and came to the conclusion to go with “YOU”, the reason being that Edge is a conversation. “WE” responses tend to come across like expert papers, public pronouncements, or talks delivered from stage.
We wanted people to think about the “Internet”, which includes, but is a much bigger subject than the Web, an application on the Internet, or search, browsing, etc., which are apps on the Web. Back in 1996, computer scientist and visionary Danny Hillis pointed out that when it comes to the Internet, “Many people sense this, but don’t want to think about it because the change is too profound. Today, on the Internet the main event is the Web. A lot of people think that the Web is the Internet, and they’re missing something. The Internet is a brand-new fertile ground where things can grow, and the Web is the first thing that grew there. But the stuff growing there is in a very primitive form. The Web is the old media incorporated into the new medium. It both adds something to the Internet and takes something away.”"
My personal thoughts later.
Is Fox News anti America?
Whenever important news is breaking I often switch between networks to see how the information is being presented. Tonight an important news conference occurred concerning Homeland security and Fox chose only to criticize the conference because none of the information was shocking in their estimation, and then switched to Glenn Beck, who only berated the Obama Administration about other issues including healthcare.
Is this just biased partisanship or does this constitute a more traitorous attitude towards our democracy? What concerned citizen would engage in constant criticism but nothing of substance?
Global Warming made easy
The world cannot argue for itself
The seas and lakes cannot say stop
The air cannot use a ventilator
A dying tree cannot see a doctor
Buffaloes wolves and bears disappear
“We challenged two leading British scientists to try to prove the science of global warming to a group of people whose views very loosely reflect national opinions.
And, as if that wasn’t tough enough we asked them to do it in my kitchen.
Can they do it? Well, you can see for yourself.”
Why are American children getting dumber?
This is a bewildering question for educators and even for the corporate infrastructure. But does the corporate infrastructure care if the children are dumb? That we could debate. Anyway the following came out of a discussion in which a conservative, as they always do, blamed ‘liberal’ education for the drop in test scores. Knowing many teachers I knew that to be a falsehood used only as a club and offering no real interpretation of the situation. So I asked a teacher of twenty five plus years why, but also asked her to ask all teachers she knew. Reply in discussion below.
‘Lazy’ was the first answer, “Parents” is the primary answer. That has come from several teachers, up to HS level and including private schools that cost lots. But I admit they are probably a bit biased and so annoyed by parents today, who claim Joanie can do no wrong, parents is an easy answer for them.
So why? Allow me to extrapolate: Consider the Couric interview with Palin, if Palin were our child and expected to know some of the things asked or at least to answer intelligently, would we blame Couric for the stupid answers. The right does. And that is what teachers in America face today. They face an attitude that the brat can do no wrong or stupidity can be rationalized as not stupidity. If a teacher told my parents I did wrong in school my father would have handled it very simply. Today the parent would argue with the teacher and claim they expect too much.
But this only gets at part of the answers I received. TV, Video games, sports, no respect for adults, lack of reading, no consideration for their professionalism, were also mentioned. But why do these things make them dumber - because being dumb is a consequence of all of the above. Dumb has become an American value, see only our last president.
From ‘Notebook, A Quibble,’ By Mark Slouka
“I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible. I carry that burden to this day, and have successfully passed it on to my children. I don’t believe I have the right to an opinion about something I know nothing about—constitutional law, for example, or sailing—a notion that puts me sadly out of step with a growing majority of my countrymen, many of whom may be unable to tell you anything at all about Islam, say, or socialism, or climate change, except that they hate it, are against it, don’t believe in it. Worse still (or more amusing, depending on the day) are those who can tell you, and then offer up a stew of New Age blather, right-wing rant, and bloggers’ speculation that’s so divorced from actual, demonstrable fact, that’s so not true, as the kids would say, that the mind goes numb with wonder. “Way I see it is,” a man in the Tulsa Motel 6 swimming pool told me last summer, “if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.”
Quite possibly, this belief in our own opinion, regardless of the facts, may be what separates us from the nations of the world, what makes us unique in God’s eyes. The average German or Czech, though possibly no less ignorant than his American counterpart, will probably consider the possibility that someone who has spent his life studying something may have an opinion worth considering. Not the American. Although perfectly willing to recognize expertise in basketball, for example, or refrigerator repair, when it comes to the realm of ideas, all folks (and their opinions) are suddenly equal. Thus evolution is a damned lie, global warming a liberal hoax, and Republicans care about people like you.”
Article appeared in Notesbook. www.harpers.org Harper’s Magazine
Happy Thanksgiving
‘Thanksgiving’
“Gettin’ together to smile an’ rejoice,
An’ eatin’ an’ laughin’ with folks of your choice;
An’ kissin’ the girls an’ declarin’ that they
Are growin’ more beautiful day after day;
Chattin’ an’ braggin’ a bit with the men,
Buildin’ the old family circle again;
Livin’ the wholesome an’ old-fashioned cheer,
Just for awhile at the end of the year.
Greetings fly fast as we crowd through the door
And under the old roof we gather once more
Just as we did when the youngsters were small;
Mother’s a little bit grayer, that’s all.
Father’s a little bit older, but still
Ready to romp an’ to laugh with a will.
Here we are back at the table again
Tellin’ our stories as women an’ men.
Bowed are our heads for a moment in prayer;
Oh, but we’re grateful an’ glad to be there.
Home from the east land an’ home from the west,
Home with the folks that are dearest an’ best.
Out of the sham of the cities afar
We’ve come for a time to be just what we are.
Here we can talk of ourselves an’ be frank,
Forgettin’ position an’ station an’ rank.
Give me the end of the year an’ its fun
When most of the plannin’ an’ toilin’ is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin’ with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An’ I’ll put soul in my Thanksgivin’ prayers.”
Edgar Guest