I Am Not Hamlet

At my worst I am misanthropic and certain technologies feed my disorder.  However, in this case, humans are much better and faster than machines.  Perhaps the lowly cashier deserves a tip jar?

     Recently, I accompanied my son's class on a trip to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.  If you're unfamiliar with the place, it's a collection of actual buildings of historical import moved there at Henry Ford's direction.  He was trying to bring a bit of America's (and a smidgen of Europe's) history to the Detrioit area.  Of course, there is an emphasis on the Industrial Revolution and its subsequent developments and technology.      So, the narrative at the Village (OK, there are actually three--farming, handicrafts (including glass blowing, pottery, and textiles), and the wonders of mechanical energy) is all about the benefits of steam, coal, and electric power.  Nowhere to be found, however, are the costs stemming from the Revolution.  Nothing is mentioned about the home economy that was swallowed, the great migration to cities and industrial centers that created slums.  Absent as well are the eco...

“You can’t out give the universe” –business writer posting on the internet   A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!" “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me “A sense of obligation.” --Stephen Crane I’m not sure where the first writer gets her ideas about the universe giving anything.   When I think of the universe, or even a bit closer, nature, I picture an indifferent void. Does the universe give anything?   Sure, it gives energy, or rather dissipates energy leftover from its creation.   But it is “giving” only because it is radiating ontologically, it can’t do anything else until all that energy is gone. But there is no motive there; no good will, altruism, generosity.   That’s like thanking a rock one slipped into one’s pocket for good companionship.   Sure, the rock accompanied that person, but only because the rock was kidnapped grabbed.   Neither does the universe possess malevolence....

     I don't know about you, but I almost always feel a twinge of guilt when I walk past a homeless person.  Something in me says, "That's a human, made in the image of God, that you're walking past right now who appears to need help."  Some Many of them are scammers, but many aren't; the trouble is trying to discern between the two.      I got a phone call from a friend on Monday, just shortly before I had to take my children to school.  It seems he had let a stranger spend the night with him and needed someone else to be with this stranger before he could be taken back home to North Dakota.  I hesitated thinking about how inconvenient this would be, how I couldn't do all that I wanted to do that day because I was adult-sitting some stranger.  And there was a bit of fear.  "Look, he's a Vietnam vet, he was tortured by the VC, he's got no teeth.  He's an old man; if he overpowers you, you're some kind of pussy....

I'm in the midst of starting my own business and I'm attempting to write content for my website.  This has to be the hardest writing assignment I've ever faced!  I write a few sentences and then scribble them out because...because they suck.  As evidenced from my lack of blog posting here, I'm out of practice.  And yet, I'm not.  I've been creating samples for my website and those are not all that difficult.  I'm stuck on trying to sell my business. If my business were about pulling garlic mustard or some other related thing, I bet I'd have no difficulty.  I'm excited and frustrated at the same time.  Is that even possible?  Who's the patron saint of writers?  Ah, here he is Except another source claims it is St. Paul.  Anyway, Sts. Paul and Francis, pray for this sinful writer.

I came across this formula the other day; you should try it too: take your age, multiply it by 365, subtract the product from 25,000.  Do you know what that number signifies?  That is approximately how much time you have remaining if you live in North America.  I was shocked to see my number in the 8,900 range.  While 8,900 days is rather abstract (it comes out to 24 years years and some change), it is strange to see your life expectancy spelled out in such a specific number.      How much time have I wasted?  How much will I continue to waste?  Now, that number was simply a general outline; I could drop dead today--laid low by an aneurysm or killed in a car crash--or I could live to be 96, no one knows, but still...it serves as a good reminder that no one, NO ONE lives forever this side of death.      I've found myself less enchanted by video and computer games these days, notorious time suckers that they are, an...

From Bill Kauffman's Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism War:  What is it good for?  No one ever answered Edwin Starr's question.  Well, Edwin, I'll tell you what it's good for.  It's good for taxes; it's good for day care; it's good for year-round schooling; it's good for the metric system; it's good for daylight saving time; it's good for the Interstate Highway System; it's good for divorce; it's good for school consolidation and the space program and the IRS.  In short, it's good for nothing that a genuine conservative might cherish. And: I am going on here, piling quote upon quote, because war effaces and perverts everything that traditionalist conservatives profess.  Every damn thing, from motherhood to the country church.  And yet postwar conservatives, and especially the scowling ninnies of the Bush Right, revere war above all other values.  It trumps t...