AIN'T NO gOD

2009-06-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

LONG TIME NOSEE

I've got to make an entry. It's been so long. That's because I'm working my way through an algebra textbook, working on my book Boomed Out: a mythical memoir of a Silent between generations, and trying to keep up on my personal reading and my reading of books for "Page Turners", my book club. Currently reading Three Cups of Tea ghosted by David Relin for Greg Mortenson for the book club.

Came across this idea while reading Three Cups of Tea. The Taliban would be right at home in America's deep south Bible belt. In Afghanistan, while they were in power, the Taliban set up a "Department of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice". These people were book burners and anti-science almost as thoroughly as Bush's White House. The Taliban wouldn't let medical students study anatomy or view drawings of human anatomy. Imagine how much they loathed evolution! That's why the Taliban is a perfect fit for the American South. All those promise keepers who've gone on to cheat on their wives would flock to the Taliban whose values are just like their own.

2009-05-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

THOSE MIXED UP NEURONS

After I retired a few years back, I took a couple of algebra/mathematics courses. I noticed a strange quirk in my mental processes. Frequently four years ago when I meant to write down x, I would write down the numeral 8. Recently, I've begun working through my old algebra textbook in order to get to a new unused textbook I bought and wasn't able to use back in Spokane because my wife and I moved to Vancouver. This morning, I was doing the exercises at the end of a section, and I wrote down 4 when I meant to write down +. I'm still also confusing quite frequently the 8 and the x.

So, according to my poor befuddled neurons
8 looks like x sometimes and
4 looks like + sometimes also.

These slips occur when I'm lost in the overall algebraic function I'm doing and not always paying attention to the finer details that my hand is putting on the paper. But I can see how certain neurons which are responsible for curves and curlicues can get confused between x and 8 and I can see how the neurons responsible for lines that are vertical and horizontal and which intersect in the figures for numeral 4 and a + sign can also get confused when I'm not paying strict attention and am slightly distracted.

Now isn't that fascinating to catch our neurons at work like that?

2009-05-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

A WHOLE IN ONE

The other day I had an insight as to the whys and wherefores of my life. I think what I have to say might sound almost mundane, but like so many things in a man's life, I may have known something for the longest time, but until I actually focus awareness on it, the real force of the insight remains lost.

I've been an atheist probably as far back as I can think, with some lapses and backsliding into belief under the duress of painful times. In short, when I am most weak and helpless is when I make decisions about gods and powers of greatness that I normally would not make.

I don't know why I came to be an atheist, but as a teen, I probably said I was an atheist in order to shock people. The other day, though, I understood something about atheism that I'd not noted before. I was thinking about the book I'm writing and was trying to phrase a central theme of it when I chanced upon the following thought: my life seems to be directed toward the purpose of seeing myself as I truly am beyond or outside of the consciousness of a judging god.

To live godless builds a truly human way of evaluating life. I think atheism is allowing me to quit having a split nature, seeing myself at one time as a human animal and at another time as a constructed creature at the mercy of a whimsical god like the gods of the Bible or Koran. The end of dualism is the end of being split, coming to live within existential doctrine. I'm sure that's what the existentialists were hoping for—to quit living as dual people and to be as one.

To think as an atheist one escapes the duality of good and evil. As long as one is encumbered by the good versus evil continuum, he cannot help but be judgmental. His consciousness is bathed in good and evil thinking rather than in evaluating life on less onerous and practical terms.

2009-05-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

WRITING FROM SPACE

Long time since last entry.

I'm at Tully's in Vancouver. Just got back from the Humanists of Greater Portland meeting. At the meeting this morning, I felt light-headed and couldn't follow the talk on "dark matter" very well. Suddenly I was struck by the thought that I didn't belong among these "smart" people so I didn't go to lunch with the sub-group that always meets for lunch following the Sunday presentations and drove straight back here to Vancouver. On the drive back I was filled with fear and a sense of worthlessness—fear and worthlessness, my old nemeses from college drinking days. As soon as I pulled into Tulley's, a place familiar to me, I was okay again.

Like most fears, this morning's fear gathered strength and spread the more I indulged it. First thing I knew I was imagining my old age, myself in a nursing home, whining for help, trembling and begging. Not a pleasant set of feelings and imaginings. But that's just the way it goes with me sometimes, rather fewer times than in my old drinking days and in early sobriety. But my bouts with insecurity seem to be increasing in frequency again. Maybe stimulated by working on Boomed Out? Dark matter indeed!

2009-03-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

ATHEISTS HAVE THE MOST SUSTAINABLE ETHICS

How often have we atheists been asked how atheists can have any
sense of "morality" since we have no godly law which supports our
ethical beliefs? I'm currently reading a collection of essays called,
The Sense of the Sixties, and in it, Robert Penn Warren (he wrote All
The King's Men) appeals to the same source for my guiding lights as do
most atheists and agnostics. Warren was writing an essay directed to
the situation between blacks and whites as they existed in the
mid-1960s, but his conclusions as to a good foundation for ethics is a
universal I also subscribe to.

"It would be an even more vicious illusion to think that in
trying to solve the problem he would be giving something away, would
be "'liberal," or would be performing an act of charity, Christian or
any other kind. The safest, soberest, most humble, and perhaps not the
most ignoble way for him to think of grounding action is not on
generosity, but on a proper awareness of self-interest.

"It is self-interest to want to live in a society operating by
the love of justice and the concept of law…. It is self-interest to
want all members of society to contribute as fully as possible to the
enrichment of that society…. It is self-interest to seek out friends
and companions who are congenial in temperament and whose experience
and capacities extend our own…. It is self-interest to want to escape
from the pressure to conform to values which we feel immoral or
antiquated…. It is self-interest to want to escape from the burden of
vanity into the hard and happy realization that in the diminishment of
others there is a deep diminishment of the self." —Robert Penn Warren

2009-03-09T16:25:00.001-07:00

CONVICTION LEADS TO ERROR

The following paragraphs come from a book I'm reading presently, The Great Equations by Robert P. Crease. Laughing at Ehrenhaft, I'm forced to say that I'm 71 and I can't even find a podium. So my mumbling and grumbling about religion usually occurs in the presence of my lovely wife. Ehrenhaft, fundamentalist religious nuts of all religions and me...

"It took place in September 1946 in New York City at one of the first postwar annual meetings of the American Physical Society. At one session, the presentation by the young Dutch theorist Abraham Pais, who was struggling to explain the strange behavior of a puzzling, recently discovered new particle, was interrupted by Felix Ehrenhaft, an elderly Viennese physicist. Ever since 1910, Ehrenhaft had been claiming to have evidence for the existence of 'subelectrons,' charges whose values were smaller than the electron's, and his efforts to advance his claims had long ago exhausted the patience of the physics community. Now approaching seventy, Ehrenhaft was still seeking an audience, and approached the podium demanding to be heard.

"A young physicist named Herbert Goldstein—who told me the story—was sitting next to his mentor and former colleague from the MIT Radiation Laboratory, Arnold Siegert.

" 'Pais's theory is far crazier than Ehrenhaft's,' Goldstein asked Siegert. 'Why do we call Pais a physicist and Ehrenhaft a nut?'

"Siegert thought a moment. 'Because,' he said firmly, 'Ehrenhaft believes his theory.'
The strength of Ehrenhaft's conviction, Siegert meant, had interfered with the normally playful attitude that scientists require, an ability to risk and respond in carrying forward their dissatisfaction. (Conviction, Nietzsche said, is a greater enemy of truth than lies.) What makes a crackpot is not simply our prejudices, nor necessarily the claim, but our recognition of the disruptive effects of the author's conviction. For conviction tends to wipe out not only the dissatisfaction but also the playfulness, the combination of which produces such a powerful driving force in science." —Robert P. Crease

2009-02-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

THE SENSE OF THE SIXTIES

I'm reading a collection of materials from a book about the 60s. Almost all the essays seem to have appeared in the time frame between 1964 and 1966. I came across a couple of enticing comments. The two comments I have in mind came from the pen of Andrew Kopkind, one of which I'll bet he recalled (or not) not too long after he'd made it and wished he'd not made it. What political figure do you think Kopkind's remarks were about?

First and with a lot of spin toward the last resident of the White House: He "continually pressed the Johnson Administration on a Vietnam settlement" and "criticized the President for regarding the war as 'purely a military problem.' "

The next Kopkind comment is a stronger clue to the political identity I have in mind: "He can afford the luxury of the free rein because he has a precious commodity—time. Nothing much is likely to happen to him for five years, maybe more."

2009-02-18T17:38:00.000-08:00

A ROMANTIC, ONCE I WAS
till birds did ask me leave their nest
and go among the peopled world
there to beat my breast
and leave them curled
in peace and quiet rest.

As I get further into old age and farther from the romanticism that cursed my early and mid life before science took a strong hold on my imagination and my rational brain received more nourishment than my intuitive brain, I can see how the spirit of the poem, "Song", held my senses fast. Reading a little Tennyson today, I was struck by the melancholy and somber tone of this Romantic's work, and I did get a brief glimpse of what it meant to be the romantic that I was. When I say "romantic" I don't mean it as a synonym for romantic love. I mean to imply the entire death-oriented, religion swallowing, grail-questing, hero-worshiping, pie in the sky, good versus evil seeing mental blob that is the romanticism that drives fundamentalism of all brands to go out and beat their enemies bloody, tilt at windmills and bring down towers with airplanes. I subsume religion under the heading of that romanticism.

If you need further proof, look at the picture of Tennyson.

2009-02-12T08:00:00.000-08:00

WHAT ARE THE ODDS things are going to get worse in future rather than better? According to a New York Times article, two satellites have collided and the debris is spewing higher and lower through space:

"For decades, space experts have warned of orbits around the planet growing so crowded that two satellites might one day slam into one another, producing swarms of treacherous debris.

"It happened Tuesday. And the whirling fragments could pose a threat to the International Space Station, orbiting 215 miles up with three astronauts on board, though officials said the risk was now small."

PLEASE SAY IT ISN'T SO, ROMEO!

New research shows—according to an article on CBS news—that love acts like addiction in the brains of those who suffer under the lash of love. I could have told them that. Painful withdrawal symptoms can create craving, but it's wonderful when love works out. Like 20% of the couples in one study, my wife and I still bill and coo, and our VTAs must light up like the Fourth of July:

"In humans, there are four tiny areas of the brain that some researchers say form a circuit of love. Acevedo, who works at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, is part of a team that has isolated those regions with the unromantic names of ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens, the ventral pallidum and raphe nucleus.

"The hot spot is the teardrop-shaped VTA. When people newly in love were put in a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine and shown pictures of their beloved, the VTA lit up. Same for people still madly in love after 20 years.

"The VTA is part of a key reward system in the brain."

What more should we expect, since emotions are adaptations for the regulation of our animal behavior? Robotics, anyone? Again we can see that feeling love toward an imaginary god in one's head would self-reward the believer for his faith with chemical enhancement. Pity the poor atheist who can only love life which and people who do not always reward him with as much feeling in return. Of course, people of faith, who are truly honest about the reality which their god has given them, must feel terrible most of the time because living is not always a friendly process. Taking that a step further—couldn't we say that Christians and Muslims and Jews are in very destructive (even sadomasochistic relationships) with their gods?

2009-02-10T16:54:00.000-08:00

FAUX NEWS IS A REPUBLICAN GROUPY OUTFIT

From a blogger at Huffington Post comes the following. Read it and weep with laughter at the totally biased Faux (Fox) News people:

"Critics of the Fox News Channel intimate all the time that they take their marching orders and construct their dizzy little metanarratives from concise memoranda from straight out of the Republican messaging machine. But if you were to accuse the network of doing so, they'd typically respond, "Zounds! Thou wound mine honour, goode fellowe, verily!" Or, they'd have chief flack-and-Sith Lady Irina Briganti cut you, with dirty knives. But Media Matters has caught the foxy newsies in flagrante delicto passing off a press release from the Senate Republican Communications Center as their own enterprise reporting."

2009-02-07T08:24:00.000-08:00

IF YOU THINK FOX NEWS VIEWERS ARE IGNORANT OF FACTS, YOU ARE...

The following excerpt is from The Carpetbagger Report:

"I have naively believed for years that staying informed about current events by getting some news is better than blissful ignorance derived from getting no news. Then Fox News Channel helped demonstrate just how wrong I was.

The Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland conducted a thorough study of public knowledge and attitudes about current events and the war on terrorism. Researchers found that the public’s mistaken impressions of three facets of U.S. foreign policy — discovery of alleged WMD in Iraq, alleged Iraqi involvement in 9/11, and international support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq — helped fuel support for the war.

While the PIPA study concluded that most Americans (over 60%) held at least one of these mistaken impressions, the researchers also concluded that Americans’ opinions were shaped in large part by which news outlet they relied upon to receive their information.

As the researchers explained in their report, “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR or PBS are less likely to have misperceptions. These variations cannot simply be explained as a result of differences in the demographic characteristics of each audience, because these variations can also be found when comparing the demographic subgroups of each audience.”

Almost shocking was the extent to which Fox News viewers were mistaken. Those who relied on the conservative network for news, PIPA reported, were “three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions. In the audience for NPR/PBS, however, there was an overwhelming majority who did not have any of the three misperceptions, and hardly any had all three.”"

...CORRECT!

Read the whole article here.

2009-02-06T19:27:00.000-08:00

JUST THE FACTS, MAM

Historical population figures for Hammond, Indiana:

Census Pop. %±
1880 699
1890 5,284= 655.9%
1900 12,376=134.2%
1910 20,925= 69.1%
1920 36,004= 72.1%
1930 65,559= 82.1%
1940 70,18=3 7.1%
1950 87,595 = 24.8%
1960 111,698= 27.5%
1970 107,983= −3.3%
1980 91,985= −14.8%
1990 84,236= −8.4%
2000 83,048= −1.4%

You might ask, "George, what are you doing, posting this list of the rising and falling population of Hammond, Indiana?"

Well... in the first place, I'm crazy.

Actually, since I was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, I feel particularly akin to Hammond folk, and I was doing some research on a man named Jean Shepherd. He wrote "A Christmas Story" which has become a Christmas classic about a kid named Ralphie who wanted a Red Ryder bee bee gun and whose mother was worried he'd shoot his eye out. Jean was born in Hammond and raised there and worked in the steel mills before serving in WWII in the signal corps. He died living on one of the keys in Florida, I believe. I came across the population figures and they reminded me of what happened to Dayton, Ohio. The same rise and fall in population and industry. Dayton took quite a hammering, losing Delco and National Cash Register during those years. We're talking 100,000 or more jobs. Horrible stuff. Hammond's plight is/was Dayton's plight, and they occurred in overlapping historical dates.

Anyhow, I was struck by a bolt of nostalgia, seeing those population figures for Hammond. Sometimes nostalgia takes me for a real trip, recalling my childhood and youth in the Midwestern state of Ohio, southern Ohio. And I just wanted to put that down for whoever might run across it and also have nostalgic memories. Jeez, I hate nostalgia. When I was young, I swore I'd never let nostalgia get me, but it has.

2009-01-20T15:47:00.000-08:00

OBAMA PROMISES AMERICA'S DAY!

I recall walking a memorial walk with many African-American students and youths the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated and how we felt and how far away the American Dream of equality and freedom felt on that day. I have been in tears more than once over the past months and days and hours as I witness America's reawakening. I feel, at age 71, as if the America of my youth has returned, those past days when with innocent and hopeful feelings, I believed in the American Way and its hope and promise for the world. These past 8 years I witnessed American leaders who thought nothing of torturing helpless captives, spying on Americans and acting in ways I've always associated with the worst of world leaders. Now those dark days are past, I hope for good.

2009-01-18T20:27:00.000-08:00

SCIENCE: IT'S TRAGIC AND IT'S FUNNY

According to an article in the London Times...

"40% of coma patients in a ‘vegetative state’ may be misdiagnosed,
says a new report: Trapped inside their bodies, apparently switched off to the world, but still alive: they are the undead. Or so we thought. Forty per cent of patients in a ‘vegetative state’ are misdiagnosed. Now British scientists are leading the field in trying to put that right

"But here’s at least one mordantly amusing and true story told to me by a psychologist at Putney’s Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. "Young man with motorbike head injury in a coma. His mum, a keen evangelical, comes every day with friends to sing Onward, Christian Soldiers by his bedside. She’s hoping to stimulate his brain into action. It works: he comes round, but he can’t speak. So they fit him up with one of those Stephen Hawking-type laptops, and the first words he speaks are: For God’s sake, Mum, shut it!” That’s about as funny as it gets on a brain-injury ward, but there’s a serious take-home message. Even minimally aware patients can retain emotions, personality, a capacity to suffer—and, as the young biker showed, attitude."

Read more about PVS here.

According to another article in the Times of London, studies by evolutionary psychologists show that:

"Wealthy men give women more orgasms"

You don't believe it, read more here.

2009-01-15T15:54:00.000-08:00

ATHEISM AND AGNOSTICISM DELINEATED

Atheists agree that the phenomenal identity named god does exist in the synapses of the brain and can, therefore, be discussed in abstract terms, but they claim no brain has contacted an identity in the material world outside the human synapse that correlates to the synaptic construct named god. Thus atheists conclude that god does not exist in the material world except as a synaptic pattern in the material human brain.

Atheists further maintain that “in synapsizing about the mental construct god”, the synapsizer or brain is, by necessity, restricted wholly to its own synaptic reality without reference to the real and material world by which human sensory organs interact with the phenomenal world outside the brain. Therefore, atheists are necessarily materialists, whereas agnostics, since their synapsized conclusions about the unprovability of a “god phenomenon” in the material world remains wholly a creation of the synapses of the human brain, are idealists.

The agnostic argument is a valid syllogism, but it has no implication for or reality in the material world. This discrepancy results because the agnostic has no evidence of the “phenomenon of god” in the material world which is as cogent as the synaptic phenomenon of “not-god” in the synapses of the brain. The two concepts are not equally evidenced to the synapses of the material brain. An agnostic, therefore, must ignore material reality in order to maintain the equality of the god/not-god evidentiary and syllogistic balance in the agnostic brain.

Agnostics are, I repeat, idealists while atheists are realists.

I have invented three terms in the foregoing discussion. Each term is based on the mental phenomenon of synapse, an evolved technique by which the material brain recognizes itself throughout its carcass and overhears itself communicating within its residence in the skull. Synapsizing is a more concrete and specific way of referring to the “activity of thinking”. Synapsized is the past tense of synapsizing, and, finally, the synapsizer refers to the brain/body which senses (feels) itself doing the synapsizing or thinking.

You may ask why I would invent terms. I do it to try and be more concrete or real about the processes that are happening within the human carcass when the brain idealizes or realizes the world it’s in contact with through evolved sensory equipment. I can see that if it were a philosopher/brain speaking here, “the brain that calls itself I” would need to invent and define a lot more terms in order to make itself understood to other brain/bodies. I have no training as a philosopher, and so this attempt seems silly and unrealistic even to me, though I sense that what I’m doing verges on an attempt to communicate what I think is a reality unique to this particular “brain that calls itself I”. However, this I-brain may not be unique at all.

“Ah, the humility! The humility!”

2009-01-09T14:18:00.000-08:00

I'M GOING BANANAS

The following is a paragraph from a very interesting analysis of the interrelation of governments, monopolies and a bruised environment.

"Is there a parable for our times in this odd milkshake of banana, blood and fungus? For a hundred years, a handful of corporations were given a gorgeous fruit, set free from regulation, and allowed to do what they wanted with it. What happened? They had one good entrepreneurial idea—and to squeeze every tiny drop of profit from it, they destroyed democracies, burned down rainforests, and ended up killing the fruit itself." — Johann Hari

Read the whole banana here.

2008-12-29T17:41:00.000-08:00

PLEDGES TO ABSTAIN WORTH THE AIR THEIR SPOKEN INTO

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

2008-12-24T17:59:00.000-08:00

BACTERIA ALTERING DNA OF HOST

This stuff gets curiouser and curiouser, doesn't it? Found the following on Wired. What would it mean if bacteria were altering our genetic inheritance or that it did so in the past? One more accidental trigger for change and speciation.

"Wolbachia is a prolific parasite, having carved out a niche for itself in some 70 percent of all invertebrate animals. But it's doing more than living in their cells: it's changing their very DNA in a way that could affect how scientists study genetics and evolution across the animal kingdom."

Read more at Wired.

2008-12-23T15:22:00.000-08:00

GOULD'S THE PANDA'S THUMB

The following I got from my reading this morning over at the Border's Books near our new condominium. I walked over because my car is snowed in and I don't have a snow shovel. We left our snow shovel back in Spokane at the house we sold there. The new owner is getting a lot of use out of it, no doubt, but we could use it here, where Vancouver is experiencing near record snowfall. Anyhow, evolution has certainly developed many unique ways to foster reproduction. I found this one in Stephen J. Gould's The Panda's Thumb:

[SNIP]
Consider the curious life of a male mite in the genus Adactylidium, as described by E.A. Albadry and M.S.F. Tawfik in 1966. It emerges from its mother's body and promptly dies within a few hours, having done apparently nothing during its brief life. It attempts, while outside its mother, neither to feed nor to mate. We know about creatures with short adult lives—the mayfly's single day after a much lengthier larval life, for example. But the mayfly mates and insures the continuity of its kind during these few precious hours. The males of Adactylidium seem to do nothing at all except emerge and die.

To solve the mystery, we must study the entire life cycle and look inside the mother's body. The impregnated female of Adactylidium attaches to the egg of a thrips. That single egg provides the only source of nutrition for rearing all her offspring—for she will feed on nothing else before her death. This mite, so far as we know, engages exclusively in sib mating; thus, it should produce a minimal number of males. Moreover, since total reproductive energy is so strongly constrained by the nutritional resources of a single thrips' egg, progeny are strictly limited, and the more females the better. Indeed, Adactylidium matches our prediction by raising a brood of five to eight sisters accompanied by a single male who will serve as both brother and husband to them all. But producing a single male is chancy; if it dies, all sisters will remain virgins and their mother's evolutionary life is over.

If the mite takes a chance on producing but a single male, thus maximizing its potential brood of fertile females, two other adaptations might lessen the risk—providing both protection for the male and guaranteed proximity to his sisters. What better than to rear the brood entirely within a mother's body, feeding both larvae and adults within her, and even allowing copulation to occur inside her protective shell. Indeed, about forty-eight hours after she attaches to the thrips’ egg, six to nine eggs hatch within the body of a female Adactylidium. The larvae feed on their mother’s body, literally devouring her from inside. Two days later, the offspring reach maturity, and the single male copulates with all his sisters. By this time, the mother’s tissues have disintegrated, and her body space is a mass of adult mites, their feces, and their discarded larval and nymphal skeletons. The offspring then cut holes through their mother's body wall and emerge. The females must now find a thrips’ egg and begin the process again, but the males have already fulfilled their evolutionary role before "birth." They emerge, react however a mite does to the glories of the outside world, and promptly die.
[PASTE]

Gould in the brief essay which includes the snippet above is talking about why almost all sexed species produce males and females at about the same 50/50 ration. The Adactylidium mite is the exception that tests the rule.

2008-12-22T04:41:00.000-08:00

SOCIALISM FOR CAPITALISTS, CAPITALISM FOR SOCIALISTS WORKERS

According to Steven G. Brant:

“The funny thing is, I've known that a significant portion of the US economy is Socialistic for years. ‘What are you talking about?’, you ask? ‘The Military Industrial Complex,’ I answer.

“You do know that all military weapons are purchased using ‘cost plus’ contracts, in which businesses are guaranteed a profit, don't you? And that literally every weapons system comes in over its original budget... and that those cost overruns are absorbed by the government, not the arms manufacturer? There is no Capitalism in the Military Industrial Complex. It's all Socialism, justified by the concept that these weapons are so important to American security that the companies that manufacture them have to be guaranteed a profit, so they don't accidentally go out of business. (By the way, I worked in contracting years ago at the Army Corps of Engineers. So, I know something about how military contracts work.)

“Now, getting back to the death of Capitalism in America as a whole, don't be so sad. You know the expression: ‘From every emergency, there's a chance for something new to emerge.’? Well, that's where we are.”

Read more of his essay here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/capitalism-is-dead-now-wh_b_127016.html

2008-11-16T12:17:00.000-08:00

THE DRAGONFLY COFFEE HOUSE

After all these years, I'm surprised that I can come into a WiFi coffee house anyplace in the world and make an entry on my blog. I don't why I should still get this jolt of electricity when I experience connectivity, because I first used this four years ago when I took my jaunt around the US just after retirement. I dropped into coffee houses and university libraries all over the States and made entries to AINT NO gOD.

The Dragonfly is a corner espresso joint in Portland, in the Alphabet District here at the corner of 24th & Thurman Street. I just came from a meeting of the HGP (the Humanists of Greater Portland) where Robert Sanford presented a very interesting digital photo show of his Spring trip through the Balkans. Let me assure you it was not your family vacation show. It displayed depth and humor and information.

Robert's presentation made me aware of my issues with identity and self-esteem. Seriously, at age 71, I should be over it, but I'm not. Robert stands over 6 feet tall and is imposing. An ex-cop and English teacher, he made me recall that taller men do better in our culture than shorter men in general. Also, he's urbane and knowledgeable. Many humanists are. If our little group is any measure, humanists are also financially better off in general. I felt my insignificance in the world. I felt a lot like I used to feel back in college when I made myself a general nuisance just to make sure that everyone knew that I was in the room. Displaying my imitation of the mad genius, I made more enemies among the cultured than I did friends. I can see now that humility would have served me better and a redoubled effort to master the subject of Literature. The depth of my personality disorders are now evident to me. Perhaps I've done as well as one can do, given my circumstances—a kid of the working class in a world of intellect. Master of no subject matter, I felt eclipsed by literary scholars and strove to become the master of some type of knowledge, yet detail bores me unless it's part of an interesting slide show like Robert's slide show this Sunday morning at Friendly House. God, those days were painful! I just felt a touch of it this morning and I don't want to return to those states of mind again.

The false front of my alcohol recovery was, I now see, another front. Though my knowledge of the recovery process is pretty detailed and interesting, it is not interesting to the world in general. A man like Sanford is more sought out. And I'm okay with that. I'm not being defensive, though, if my past is any example, I could easily be defensive. A sign of more progress? Yes. Whoopee!

Here, at the Dragonfly, I'm also surrounded by people who have done well in the world or who are trying to achieve in this world. A three story frame condo in this district can go for 500,000 dollars and up. All the women around here are interesting. They dress well and wear tight jeans and nice sweaters and blouses open at the neck. Even their hats are interesting. I don't know how to describe what I'm seeing, but I know I'm seeing wealth and culture displayed, and I still don't have the words to describe it. But I know what I'm seeing. If anything, it's in their faces. They are intelligent faces, whatever that means. Or is the intelligence in the eyes? Or is it the self-consciousness of their demeanor that tells me they've very aware of their surroundings and their place in it? In short, am I looking at people just like me when I entered the world of culture and money? If so, I missed the mark a long time ago and failed miserably to calculate my own worth. I can see where F. Scott Fitzgerald was coming from, can't I? When he said the wealthy were different.

Well, I've displayed myself pretty brazenly in this entry, haven't I?

2008-11-06T09:08:00.001-08:00

PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION MUST BE FOUNDED IN SCIENCE

"My truths, three in number, are the following: first, humanity is ultimately the product of biological evolution; second, the diversity of life is the cradle and greatest natural heritage of the human species; and third, philosopy and religion make little sense without taking into account the first two conceptions." —Edward Wilson

Would that make Wiccan religions a place to start? Their connection to the natural world? One day I sat eavesdropping on a coffee shop meeting of Wiccans as they talked about places in nature where they felt natural highs, where they felt connected to nature. I recall driving up onto Mesa Verde one morning at dawn. It was off season and I was alone, looking out over the landscape in a weak sunlight morning. I felt a high, a natural high. A friend who had been born in that region said that all the people in that region felt those connections.

ANOTHER NATURAL HIGH

So proud of America. Its election of Barack Obama to be its president. Gives me hope that many Americans are truly pragmatic and open. When the chips are down, they vote for a man's intelligence and put aside religious nonsense. I know that he did have to pass a religious test but Americans are looking for practical answers to our financial mess rather than at dogmatic solutions to social problems. Isn't that hopeful?

2008-10-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

HELLO OUT THERE! THREE MORE DAYS TO ELECTION!!!!!

My wife and I voted last week so we are at ease and relaxed. Yesterday while Mertie was at work and then at school, I had myself a movie day. I went to see "Religulous" and "W", taking a walk in between the show times.

Bill Maher's show didn't open up any new doors for me, but it was fun. I even laughed aloud a few times. "W" was excellent and followed Stone's usual format, getting into character traits of the famous and infamous men he deals with. I thought Brolin's performance was Oscar caliber.

Rainy in Vancouver. Approaching Winter begins to make the Fall cry. Mertie and I are about two months from being settled in our condo. We'll move on the weekend of December 12-15. Movers will pack our stuff on Thursday, the 11th, and move us on the 12th. We're moving to the opposite end of town, far from where I'm typing this at the Mon Ami. The Uptown District is a lovely part of town in Vancouver. I'll miss being able to drive down here in a few minutes to write and read. I'll also feel much farther from Portland though we'll be able to take I-205 across the rivers. It was a two minute drive to I-5, then 15 minutes into Portland. I'm sure the drive will be longer now. I'm also going to miss the lovely apartment complex we now live in. The new place is secluded and nice but the landscaping and flowering shrubs are fewer, plus our condo is between the two wings of the oval that cuts through our 60 condos.

2008-10-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER

Just dropped a buddy off at PDX (Portland's airport). He goes way back to the 60s after my first divorce. First I taught him in high school. Then I left that school, then got divorced, then moved in with Carl and his hippy friends in a walk up apartment on Main Street in Dayton, Ohio. Thus began my long journey to now where I sit in Vancouver Washington in Dolce Gelato, making this entry. Don't know how to talk about the visit. It seems that our relationship has not changed one wit for all the progress as a human being I think I've made. We quarreled and debated and got frustrated with one another, just like in the old days. Carl will, of course, be a big entry in my current book, Boomed Out.

2008-10-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

I'LL BE HOME FOR... WHEN?

I've begun working on a book which is taking up lots of writing time. And I've got to keep up with my reading. Wife and I are looking into a condo purchase. My entries here in Blogger may fall off quite dramatically. In fact they've already fallen off dramatically. I'm enjoying writing the book I'm working on. I'm trying to enjoy writing it rather than making it a chore. The book is called tentatively Boomed Out: a mythical memoir of a Silent between generations.