Acts of Good

Good and kind people outnumber all others by thousands to one. The tragedy of human history lies in the enormous potential for destruction in rare acts of evil, not in the high frequency of evil people. Complex systems can only be built step by step, whereas destruction requires but an instant. Thus, in what I like to call the Great Asymmetry, every spectacular incident of evil will be balanced by 10,000 acts of kindness, too often unnoted and invisible as the "ordinary" efforts of a vast majority.

Stephen Jay Gould

High Irony and Media Chickens

I was just reading this. It is part of a coordinated GOP attack on Barak Obama. Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and was the President of the Harvard Law Review. My irony meter is in the shop for repairs after being overloaded by this about Obama from someone working for the Shrub who barely mustered a C-:

"It's sort of like, 'that's all I need to get by,' which bespeaks sort of a condescending attitude towards the voters," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "And a laziness, an intellectual laziness."

Look Younger and Live Longer

It has long been know that animals including humans and age much slower and have far fewer health problems when they restrict their calorie intake by 30 to 40%. New research has discovered why and some other things we should know before set down to stuff our face next time. Oh yeah and we should act on what we know. Bonuses; Food cost a lot of money - eating much less means more great toys and things to do, It makes you look younger because you will be! Here's something about the latest and here's another.>>

About That Big Question

I ran across this today and thought it deserved at least one more mention.

In a shift of historic importance, America's colleges and universities have largely abandoned the idea that life's most important question is an appropriate subject for the classroom. In doing so, they have betrayed their students by depriving them of the chance to explore it in an organized way, before they are caught up in their careers and preoccupied with the urgent business of living itself. This abandonment has also helped create a society in which deeper questions of values are left in the hands of those motivated by religious conviction - a disturbing and dangerous development. Read the rest.>>>

A State Department To Be Proud Of, NOT

The best national security asset the United State ever had was the fact that this has been the "getting place" for the word. No one blows up their grocery store or the school they send their kids too until those places refuse to cater to people. As a result of actions like these by the fools running this country we are in more danger of destruction now than at any time in history.

Should you cook and eat your cat after it is run over by a car?

Too many think that's a moral question. It's not. Read on>>

See Change

Certainty has never been all that invigorating to me. Some say change is certain and that it's the mark of human progress that more than any other holds all opportunity. Maybe, if there are enough heretics around. I like change when it is progressive. The more we learn the better we can live. Every facet of our existence can be measured and modified to improve our chances for happiness. There is a plenty of resistance to change. That too is part of human nature but it can also be measured and it's importance compared against other options and evaluated with an eye toward making life better. Holding traditions as sacred and unchanging is poison to progress and everyone from Budweiser to NASCAR to the little church on the corner knows how to impersonate a tradition to "place" their product in our society and to shield them behind words like God, country, patriotism and safety, where they are protected from doubt and reason, the true vessels of progress and happiness.

I'm always more attracted to people who tolerate ambiguity and conflict and are open to new ideas and experiences than I am to those who are rigid, structured and persistent in their ways. Those differences are being explored and measured. The better we get at understanding them the more it seems those differences are not the result of divine revelation after all. Again, I'm reminded of:

A blow to the head will confuse a man's thinking, a blow to the foot has no such effect, this cannot be the result of an immaterial soul. [Heraclitus, 500 BC]

“You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”

Remembering Alex with a video of some of his work>>
Good bye Alex>>

Jesus is not supporting the troops

Piety makes me sick.>>

Love, Signed Lucy

The older we get the more we remember. I know when I was younger, my imagination spent most of it's time thinking about new things and the future. As we go through our lives and our circle of life becomes larger and full of experience, we have more opportunity to reflect on real things. So, now, there are paths in the forest of my memory that are as rewarding as the thrill of imaging things in front of me sometimes. Along with finding new friends, part of living is loosing some friends. But we don't forget them and we miss them. Sometimes I wonder where some have gone and imagine they made new friends and told them something about us. I guess, because we just do that with new folks we get to know.

Lucy's remains are in Houston. I wish I could visit her, she's come such a very long way for us to see her.

I've wondered many times what it would be like to see the spot she was found. I've imagined standing there on that patch of Burgess Shale, way up on a steep slope above the tree line and seeing where she fell silent to her people sixteen hundred times as long ago as Rome's Augustus.

But she is not silent for our generation. She has made a long and difficult journey from the very edge of our humanity to bring her message to us.

I wonder if she had plans the day she started her journey. Was she on her way to see distant friends? Did she wonder how her kids were doing? Or, did she just hope to find enough food for them that day. Was she able to have hopes and dreams? Did she tell her family where she was going? Did her friends cry when she said goodbye that day?

They could not have known she came to us. I imagine they missed her. We will never know many of those things but we can hope for her and dream for her and think about her sometimes when we think of ourselves.