Perspectives
Another way of looking at things
Genesis Americana
Nov 21st
In the beginning there was a land inhabited by natives. If it were inhabited by anyone else, they wouldn’t be natives, or it wouldn’t be the beginning. But we have to start somewhere.
After a lot of cold winters, hot summers, war, peace, migration, and what many believe to be idyllic times, the land was “discovered” by a Genoese explorer. After that, things moved pretty quickly. The natives were colonized and proselytized, sometimes raped, pillaged, and exterminated, or infected and then annihilated, sometimes enslaved, sometimes assimilated, but mostly cheated and kicked off their land as if they didn’t matter. Oh, those were days to be proud of.
Years later, a few men got together to protest a King’s abuses and a “Great Experiment” was born. There were some more rough times until they figured out that it was bad manners to enslave other people… that it was unfair to treat women as lesser beings, or prejudge people by their skin color, or for any other silly reason.
A bit more than 100 years ago someone had the age-old idea that they could do better than anyone else if only they could make all the rules. They realized that they couldn’t just seize power. More >
Pain
Dec 7th
Image via Wikipedia
I hate pain.
I Live with it every day. I severely injured my back in the Army more than 20 years ago, and while I recovered easily in my 20′s, now that I’m in my 40′s, it has come back to haunt me. I’ve gone to Chiropractors, massage therapists, and seen more doctors than I can remember. I’ve gone to the ER a few times over the years, but the hassle of waiting followed by the “we can’t find anything wrong with you except a (insert complicated medical term) and an elevated (insert another complicated blood test) level, so have you tried ibuprofen?” Apparently, pain doesn’t exist to the ER unless it’s covered in blood.
I’m now under a doctor’s care through the VA, and their “pain clinic” regulates exactly what I take for pain, they question me every month to see if I take everything as prescribed, if I take enough and not too much, and how many I have left when I see them for a refill. They demand to know exactly how many alcoholic drinks I have every month, and if I am seeing another doctor for pain or for any other reason. They also monitor my More >
Ouch! Poor Mustang…
Dec 3rd
My son had his first accident today. Thank God he is fine. The mustang he was driving, unfortunately, is not:
Ouch!
My son (who was driving) called us right away, and while we were slightly panicked, he was not.
I guess this means we’re in the market for another cheap second car. Oh well. Life goes on.
Weekly, a Term Misunderstood
Dec 1st
Image via Wikipedia
Most people who have watched TV in one form or another have heard the annoying Buzz Buzz Buzz of the FCC‘s Required Weekly Test of the Emergency Alert System. It’s been going off in the middle of our favorite programs for years, muting the sound of the program it interrupted, turning up the volume, and proudly announcing that “This is only a test.”
This is such an important system that Congress has spent tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars developing it.
- They developed the CONELRAD System in 1951. It was never used.
- They developed the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) in 1963. It was never used.
- They developed the Emergency Alert System (EAS) in 1997. It has yet to be used.
- They’re now working on iPAWS — the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. Want to bet it doesn’t get used either?
No emergency system has ever been used for a national emergency, in fact, since the beginning of radio and TV broadcasting. Nothing has warranted it.
(EBS was activated more than 20,000 times between 1976 and 1996 to broadcast civil emergency messages and warnings of severe weather hazards, but nothing nationsl
“No president has ever used the current [EAS] system or its technical predecessors in the last More >
Jace’s Wishlist
Nov 30th
See larger image
YoshiBlade Knife, Ceramic ()
List Price:
$18.45 USD
New From:
$17.27 In Stock
The cheapest I’ve seen this on Amazon. It is also available at ACE, Walgreens, Best Buy, and Sears… but then you pay for gas to get there, plus whatever tax rate the county or state has.
Nigel Farage goes feral
Nov 29th
…on the EU. In a speech given on the floor of European Union Parliament, this parliamentary member from the UK gives them hell:
Nigel Farage promotes leaving the European Union
“You’ve been in office for one year, and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble. This chaos… the money’s running out.
I should thank you.
You should perhaps be the pinup boy of the Euro-skeptic movement. But just look around the chamber this morning. Just look at these faces. Look at the fear. Look at the anger. Poor old Barroso here looks like he’s seen a ghost.
You know, they are beginning to understand that the game is up, and yet in their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system. And it’s pretty clear that none of you have learned anything. You know, when you yourself, Mr. Van Rompuy, say that the Euro has brought us stability, I suppose I could applaud you for having a sense of humor, bu isn’t this really just the bunker mentality? You know, your fanaticism is out in the open.
You talked about the fact that it was a lie to believe that the nation state could exist in More >
Gods of the Copybook Headings
Nov 24th
Take a look at this trailer. Some of you may have seen it:
This is the trailer for Glenn Beck’s book, The Overton Window. Before you ignore it as a piece of right-wing propaganda, examine the words for a bit. They come from Rudyard Kipling‘s “Gods of the Copybook Headings” in 1919. People disagree as to its meaning, getting hung up over the death of his son, and his depression immediately following World War I.
A couple things stand out in the verses before the last two stanzas:
- First, is the juxtaposition of the Gods of the Marketplace (who waxed and waned, and were easily blown around by the wind; eventually crashing) vs the Gods of the Copybook Headings (slow and steady, never altering their pace).
- Second, was their ability to pacify the masses, disarm them, and then sell them into slavery — not at all referring to black slavery — this was a slavery of the mind, of the will, and of the finances of the people they were able to manipulate.
And in the last two stanzas, the meaning is crystal clear:
- There are four sure things in life since “Social Progress” began. The first is about a dog, the second, a pig. The next More >
Gassy Perspective
Nov 23rd
Oil companies (and the Elite who own great chunks of them) are buying up supplies of Natural Gas. Why? Is it the cleanest source of energy available? Is it the cheapest? Is it the best way to heat our homes or cook our food? It might be the former… but it isn’t really why they are doing it now. They’re doing it because they see the future. The future is simple: China just announced that all of the vehicles they are designing and building in the future will run on natural gas. Those who own natural gas supplies are going to get rich. Those who think that gas-guzzling Detroit automobiles are the past, present, and future… are going to find themselves (at some point) in a game they cannot win.
Another Kid’s Perspective
Nov 23rd
Growing up, the wildest, most disrespectful kids were the “PKs”, or “Pastor’s Kids.” If someone was going to mess around in a cemetery, it would be a PK. Everyone else with either too afraid of ghosts (who would deal them imaginary harm if they did anything in a cemetery) or parents (who would deal them physical harm if they ever found out). PKs were unfazed by either. Perhaps it was knowing that there were no ghosts, or that daddy wouldn’t ever lay a finger on them. I’m not sure why. From their perspective, it was the natural rebellion after years of having to dress up and go to Sunday School, and then sit straight and act attentive (quite difficult for a 5 year old) in Church for EVERY service EVERY week.
I remember hide-and-seek games in a pitch dark church sanctuary… several of them, actually. It seemed right at the time. Some of them were so big as to be really hard to find someone who knew the place and was good at keeping quiet. I don’t remember how we got into those churches. I must have been a PK thing…
PK boys were the loud (or quiet — never in the More >
Starting Perspective
Nov 23rd
My parents were born years before the Great Depression and lived through it as children and as young adults. They didn’t understand what caused it, but they surely felt the effects. In addition to the financial devastation, the Dust Bowl hit them particularly hard, as their families on both sides were farmers (one in Iowa, the other in Kansas). They raised four daughters… and then 12 years after the last one, I came along.
I was raised in a somewhat stable environment, and the first big events that affected me were the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and a president’s resignation, the 1973 oil crisis and the huge gas lines it caused, the peanut farmer who became president, the Iran hostage crisis, huge interest rates, and then Reagan‘s landslide victory followed by economic recovery.
The rest of the more recent national or world events sorta fade out, as marriage to a wonderful woman, the birth and raising of two great sons, and the prime of my life take center stage.
Now, events are unfolding on the national and world stage that are grabbing my attention again… and not for good reasons. We are facing tumultuous times on many fronts. I’d like to show you the good, the bad, and More >
