A Brief History of Violence...Stephen Pinker

An Addenda to the subject of violence. We find a presentation by Stephen Pinker who believes this Century sees less violence than previous ones.

A new book that looks worth reading

There is a new book out by a Globe writer stationed in Washington that I think should be a good read. I plan to get it soon and maybe if others of you will also read it, we can have a healthy discussion.

Confused by Nature

In my front yard there is an azalea bush that rewards me for letting it live there by pushing forth beautiful, colorful flowers in the Spring. Today I spotted two weak blossoms, pretty and pitiful at the same time, obviously running on some archaic survival impulse. I identified with the bush. It is the second week in October, we have not had a hard frost yet, and the weather prediction is that it will be in the high eighties all weekend. What do I wear?

Life is confusing enough without having nature adding to it by making me pull out the summer stuff being put away. (Actually, I had just stopped looking for the summer clothes I couldn't find that had been put away last year.) On the bright side, the A/C doesn't really have to go on because the nights are cool; the heat doesn't go on so the gas bill stays reasonable.

The days are shorter and my lack of being highly enough evolved make we want to eat and store up for the winter, when I will only wish to hibernate. Out comes the light box, next to my computer, and the heat thrown from the bulbs is somehow incongruent with the temperature around me. If I don't turn the light box on, I begin the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder. If I do turn it on, I roast myself. Life presents constant dilemmas. Someone cleverly put this to verse.

Unlike most of life's dilemmas, this one is a piece of cake! I can enjoy Indian Summer as long as it lasts. I won't be around when all the glaciers are melted and the planet is uninhabitable for humans.

Another speech from the bullying pulpit

Our bullying administration has chosen to ignore advice from many credible sources and tried to put strength and force (the bully's choice) to win something never really explained. Do we win with bases in Iraq that will be blown up rather quickly? Do we get democracy in the middle East when it doesn't wish it? Does no one recall Osama bin Laden in an early speech saying that he would break the USA economically? It is happening gradually and we are quaking morally to save something unknown, for President Bush. He will have no admirable legacy, no matter what is done.

Quote Bush: "The more successful we are, the more "troops can come home". Bush, as usual, painted his rosy picture while the military and media is saying otherwise. In one of the Marx brothers' films, Groucho Marx, when caught in a lie, answers angrily: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" My reaction to Bush's speech was that he was aping Groucho Marx, without bushy eyebrows and moustache. A difference between Groucho and Bush is that 1/3 of Americans seem to be believing his words and not their own eyes, extremely frightening for the other 2/3 of us.

Terrorism

Webster defines terrorism as :: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. We in the US and for that matter, much of the world, seem never to have a moment free of terror. Spouses now need to look carefully to be calm that their spouse won't murder them. Especially check on the traits of the spouse killer in that last link. For a map of world incident terror attacks there are sites to make us realize it never stops.

In the 70s and 80s, adolescents terrorized their parents, often as drug abusers. Many parents today are still enablers because they have not found a way to say no to their aggressive, over-indulged offspring. In 1998 a writer wrote a helpful article about the mistakes that parents make in rearing their children.

What can we expect of the children who have lived through Darfur, Iraq, Bosnia, Belfast, Afghanistan, and other places where they have suffered wars, famines, deaths of family from political murders, natural disasters and all the things that can happen in our world. Adoptive parents of foreign orphans (who have been unloved an alone in their cribs for too many months) are paying the price in rearing children incapable of making proper emotional attachments due their early psychological and physical deprivations.

We are terrorized by those who abuse mind-altering substances, suffer from untreated psychiatric disorders, sociopaths, and those who use computers to scam, hack, steal identities, and otherwise use the Internet for blackmail purposes.

We run the risk of raising our children to be too trusting if we don't let them know the dangers. We also need to be aware that those who have been abused often grow up to be abusers. Humans are not doing a very great job with all the knowledge, medical, technical, psychological and other that is out there. I weep for all that must feel helpless in their lives so much of the time.
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Does anyone get a whole picture

Not once have I heard anyone talking with General Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker about the problems that the Iraqi people are having other than their death or maiming. 1.5 million have left Iraq, for Syria. The human misery that was started by this war cannot be rectified by anything the US can offer, at this point. The price Syria is paying for that influx, to my knowledge, has not been touched by the American media. While the big boys play their word games and GW Bush tries to 'save face and his legacy in history', he has accomplished little through the lies that led us other than prove Barnum knew what he was talking about. "You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

On another note, Google and Microsoft are facing off in an anti-trust hearing which started today, to see if Microsoft is complying with an anti-trust order which Google believes it is not. You can read more on the hearing on the proprietary Microsoft and the accusations on how stifles the growth of competition.

While our country has been killing us with toxins for fun and profit, the EU has surpassed us in exports and GNP.

The Wrong Question

All the hearings with Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeous are asking the wrong questions. In my opinion, the questions that should be asked are: Is making apologies for the ill-planned, impulsive, subjective decisions made by this administration worth the lives of all Americans?

It is not just present lives of those in armed services that are being lost. Our domestic budget has been shaved back so far that our children are being poorly educated; often medically abandoned; and we will be paying off a national debt far beyond the abilities of a generation or two. The infrastructure of our nation has been sorely compromised by lack of Federal funding. Our roads, bridges, public transportation, public buildings and other aspects of our physical and public safety are far below the standard we had been led to believe would be handled by the taxes being extracted from the middle and poor classes by our government.

The current hearings reveal that, in the opinion of the BBC, “Now, both Gen Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker clearly feel that it is their duty to make the policy (of the surge) work.” Further, BBC writes, “No-one, either in Washington or in Iraq, believes the Americans will be there to stay indefinitely, in large enough numbers to affect the eventual outcome of the civil war.”

American lives are being saved when forces are provided with phenomenally expensive Humvees. However, while it is important to save American lives, arming them with more expensive vehicles is not the single alternative. Getting them out of Iraq can be more effective. Further in the BBC article today, “Gen Petraeus himself has said that the average counter-insurgency campaign takes about nine years.” If we follow that path, I submit, we will have slipped further down in world status of infant mortality, literacy of our youth, social programs to lower crime, and all the many formerly funded programs that made us a leader in the world. We will be further open to terrorist attacks here, lacking in funding for security of our imports, borders, and holding back from illegal arrivals who are not here to further our cause for freedom and democracy.

You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails. - -Yiddish proverb

This proverb must have been the precursor to When life hands you a lemon; make lemonade.

Apparently our government, in charge of public lands, parks and waters, is unable to adjust its sails since no one in the government is teaching sail adjustment in this administration.

However, Nevada, as a state, is trimming its sails and stopped this administration's plan to dump there.

Adjusting one's sails is a gross understatement in some situations like in Greece.

Odds and Ends

Reading an article online , I glanced to the right. A box read: Stand Up and be Counted....Gut Check America. I readily admit I have a perverse sense of humor and that struck me as speaking to the point of the article, in a way.

Here is yet another cancer causing threat. If lack of security doesn't kill you, your country's security efforts might.

In the past, I studiously avoided glancing at the ads to the right of an article. I've decided to scan them now because they provide good humor. A man who advised President Bush for a year on presidential powers, has recently written a book on his experience. On the right is a box within which are the words: Visit on Faith, Arrive with one perspective, leave with many.
Washington Post (and) Newsweek.

Last for today are what the marketers are currently doing to us. Someone has rated the best to the worst.