Yes, actually, I still have friends who live inside the Matrix.

Not many, and they tend to be Republicans who are not religious nut cases.

Be that as it may, I recently received an e-mail from one of them. It is interesting not so much for what it says, but for what it implies regarding his news sources and world view:


"Well they passed some health plan, I hope it is like you said.

What I hear is not even close.

Also how stupid is to have an army post that soldiers are not allowed to wear their weapon...? Thank god that a police woman had a gun.

To stop a loving brother soldier..."

Here is my reply:




Hello (name withheld),

You would be surprised at how many progressives are furious with this bill and how little it accomplishes. And yet, as little as it provides, it is still an improvement over what we have today. Yet the Republicans are still fighting it tooth and nail.

It is not over; the Senate has not passed this legislation, and with Joe Lieberman's help, they plan to filibuster the bill so that it never comes to a vote. It may still fail in the Senate.

The one part of the bill the Republicans object to is the Public option. They have no problem with the part of the bill that forces people to buy health insurance so long as people have to buy that insurance from private insurance companies and not the government. That should tell you who they serve.

For what is worth, here is a breakdown of the benefits this bill will provide, congressional district by congressional district. I don't know which congressional district you live in, so you will have to pick the right one for yourself:

http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?...



As for the events on Fort Hood, the decision on whether soldiers should bear weapons on base or not is strictly a military matter, not subject to civilian laws. My understanding is that MPs are the ones allowed to carry weapons on military installations, but not regular soldiers.

One more thing:

"Sgt. Kimberly D. Munley has been applauded as a hero across the nation for shooting down Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan during the bloody rampage at Fort Hood last week. The account of heroism, given by the authorities, attracted the attention of newspapers, the networks and television talk shows.

But the initial story of how she and the accused gunman went down in an exchange of gunfire now appears to be inaccurate.

Another officer, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, 42, said in an interview Thursday that he fired the shots that brought down the gunman after Sergeant Munley was seriously wounded. A witness confirmed Sergeant Todd’s account."

Senior Sgt. Mark Todd just happens to be black...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13hoo...

a fragment from one of my favorite poems...

... translated to English:

Laurels? Do not foolishly demand them.
Ascents begins with falls
for overreaching spans and large burdens.
Thus, from the crest of yonder cliff,
The condor of the Andes jumps,
and for a moment plummets.

It is a good battle if,
at the end,
glory shimmers on a warrior’s shield
thick with arrows.

- Ode to a Prophet
by Salvador Diaz Mirón - Mexican poet

I want to die young at the end of the day On the High Sea, with face to the sky, When agony is but a dream far away And the flight of my soul is a bird soaring by.

Let there be no sad tears as I draw my last breath, at one and alone with the sky and the sea, No sobbing, nor prayer, nor laments of death; I only would hear the deep waves cover me.

To die when the bright glow of twilight is fading, And catches the waves in its last net of light; To be like that sun as its luminous shading Expires and is lost in the arms of the night.

To die, and die young: before time has destroyed The delicate fabric illusion has spun; When life can still say:"I am yours," but the void Of a final echo tells us death has won!

- Gossamer Stories,
Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera,
Translated by John A. Crow

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: —
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince’s banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle’s edge,
And thought, “Had I a sword of keener steel —
That blue blade that the king’s son bears, — but this
Blunt thing!” — he snapt and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king’s son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.

-Edward Rowland Sill

- My son was about 4, i was complaining about a guy at work that i absolutely hated. He asked, "Are there people there that you like?" i said, "Of course, there are lots." And he said, "Maybe you should just concentrate on them."


- while sitting with my 3 year old son on monday night a number of years ago, I was watching some football which he didn't have much interest in. The camera panned across the cheerleaders and he asked: "Dad, do you like boobies?", I said "Yes" and he replied "Me too".

I was a proud father.

More at AskReddit:




http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments... /

Fall dresses in reds,
a blushing apology
for Winter to come.

Oh, say can you steep by the stove's early light
What so proudly we boiled at the teabag's last squeezing?
Whose brew bags and large cups kept the strainer's busy,
O'er the teacups we watched were so gallantly dripping?
And the tea drip's red glare, the bags bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our tea was still there.
Oh, say does that tea-cup brimmingly yet wave
O'er the land of the freeps and the home of the crazed?

This is our furry friend. His name is Stinky, on account of his breath which was God awful before we took him to a vet to get a rotten fang extracted. (This is an adopted stray, long story, etc.)

He is an old man, and cannot eat too much, or too fast, because he pukes his guts out...



And this is a nightly visitor, an opposum who enjoys a hot meal some nights, when Stinky tosses his cookies...



Hey, a hot lunch is a hot lunch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm9sIAW39o0

When the singer falls silent, life falls silent
Because life, life itself is but a song
When the singer falls silent, then fear will kill,
hope, light, and joy.

When the singer falls silent, we are left alone
the humble sparrows,
and laborers will cross themselves
who then, shall fight for their wages?

When the singer falls silent, the rose dies
what good is a rose without song
song is light over the fields
always lighting those fallen below.

Let not the singer be silenced, because silence
hides the evil that opresses,
singers don't know how to kneel
or fall silent when faced with crime.

When the singer falls silent, life falls silent...

-Mercedes Sosa

Xipe-Totec, my main desktop, is bleeding to death...

I opened it up to put a new graphics card, and discovered that the CPU cooler has busted a strap, and there is a whole row of capacitors next to the CPU that are leaking...

The motherboard can blow any minute now...

Replacement motherboard is on the way, with new memory since the old memory is not compatible with the new motherboard.

At least I can reuse the CPU and all the peripherals.

Sigh...

He had trouble focusing, to a point that was scary sometimes...

He is in his mid 20's now, and still takes ritalin.

I have met many people with ADD/ADHD.

The first was a co-worker, in his early 30's, when my son was still pre-teen.

I know the controversy surrounding the use of ritalin to treat ADD/ADHD, and the over-prescription of this medication.

But meeting this person, a well adjusted fully functional human being, who had also taken ritalin for a lifetime, gave me some relief from my fears.

If my son turned out as well adjusted as this man, then I would feel I made the right choice for my son.

One thing I have learned, being among people with ADD/ADHD, some of them my bosses, is that they have an uncanny ability to respond well in crisis situations.

When there is an emergency, and seconds count, I hope to God there is a person with ADD/ADHD to take charge and make decisions.

What I have learned is that these are highly intelligent, highly capable individuals who live in the moment.

These are people who live, not in the past, not in the future, but in the very moment. Their scope of attention is narrow; it is only the present. But when the present is the most important moment in the world, there is no better person to handle the situation than a person with ADD/ADHD.

If you want a good fighter pilot, with situational awareness, get a person with ADD/ADHD.

If you want an officer that makes the right call in the middle of a firefight, get a person with ADD/ADHD.

If you want a fireman that can make life or death decisions, whether to go into a burning building or not, get a person with ADD/ADHD.

My son is a nurse now. He has the reputation of making the most rapid response calls of any nurse on the floor.

All of them, the right call.

All of them saved a life.

Is ADD/ADHD a disability?

In my honest opinion, no.

Not if your life is on the line.

Schopenhauer points out that when you reach an advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. The whole thing gears together like one big symphony, with everything unconsciously structuring everything else… one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too;… Everything arises in mutual relation to everything else, so you can’t blame anybody for anything. It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended.

- Joseph Campbell

As quoted by John Briggs and F. David Peat, in their book "The Turbulent Mirror"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

Does anybody else know she actually has a music album out?

I had the great privilege of meeting these thru hikers on the trail in 2008:

Bogie & Bacall


The Appalachian Trail (A.T.) is more than 2,175-mile long footpath stretching through 14 eastern states from Maine to Georgia.

They hiked it from the foot of the Appalachians in Georgia, all the way to Maine. I met them in Madison, Hut in the White Mountains of Vermont.

He is a retired Physicist from Oak Ridge. She a School teacher. The finest people I have ever had the privilege to meet on the trail.

I'll be up at the Whites next Labor Day. Chances are I will not bump into them again.

But I will be thinking about them...

Here is their journal:

http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?tra...