The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Monday, October 17, 2011

Politics ...

A few days ago (Oct 8, 2011) I wrote about the Republican presidential race; I said that although Rick Perry was down and Herman Cain now seems like the favorite, Perry might yet make a comeback, given that he is the only realistic alternative for the Tea Partiers (who seem to have hi-jacked the Grand Old Party). The fact that Mitt Romney, the logical next-in-line candidate under old-school Republicanism, has been stuck at 25% in the polls for many months speaks volumes on how things have changed.

FYI, there’s a good article today about this by political analyst Charlie Cook in National Journal. Cook says just about what I did. However, unlike me, Cook summed up Cain’s sudden rise at Perry’s expense rather succinctly: “Cain seems to be functioning as a parking place for conservatives who have grown disillusioned or who harbor reservations about the previous flavors of the month . . . it’s a good bet that Cain is little more than a place for conservatives to window shop while they decide what to do.” Regarding Perry’s future prospects: “With the Republican Party wanting to nominate someone of his ilk, the question is whether Perry can effectively grow and develop as a national candidate . . . enough to win outside of the Deep South. If he can, he’s the nominee. If he can’t, he might not be.”

Bravo, well stated! I guess that’s why Cook writes for the National Journal, and I don’t.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:12 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

◊ Well-Funded Occupancy

Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ...

Let’s zoom from the far-right GOP of today (see above post) to the far-left; yes, there may actually be a far-left forming around the Occupy Wall Street event. Interestingly, there was a little tift in the press recently about the spreading Occupy movement and whether it is being bankrolled by billionaire George Soros (a man who made his billions on Wall Street and the like — a man in the top 1% of the powerful 1% whom the Occupiers are protesting against).

A few days ago, Reuters ran a story saying that there appears to be certain organizational links by which Soros money is finding its way to whoever is spending funds or earning a salary to keep the Occupy thing alive. The on-going “Occupy” event obviously needs food, blankets, sleeping mats, press outreach, toilets and “handlers expenses” for those who plan and guide the activities that gain press attention, such as marches on corporate HQ buildings. These things don’t just happen, despite the idealistic claims by the young Millennials that their “General Assembly” is the prototype for the horizontal, autonomous, emergent, consensus-based leaderless system of the future. Nonetheless, various sympathetic commentators such as financial journalist Felix Salmon protested that Reuters was acting too much like Rush Limbaugh and his friends in implicating Soros.

So, the latest version of the Reuters article starts out with the title “Soros: not a funder of Wall Street protests”. But the article itself still outlines how Soros money » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:35 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, October 13, 2011

◊ The End of Steve Jobs, and the Future

Economics/Business ... Science ...

I grew up in the late 60’s, so I remember the hippies. Well, actually I don’t – I mostly saw them on TV. The town I grew up in wasn’t the type of wealthy suburb where parents threw money at their kids and let them do whatever they wished. We were a bit more concerned with basic survival issues. Oh, not that there weren’t some wanna-be hippies, here and there. And in fact, there was one artistic guy who went all the way into his own little counter-cultural world. In fact, he’s still out there, calling himself Francois, surviving as a painter (the artistic type) and a clerk in a costume store. Even in his old age, he’s just as artistic and individualistic as I remember him.

Francois notwithstanding, I never fully understood hippies, nor their close cousins, the campus protesters and building-occupiers (nor the post-college/non-college “radicals” who egged them on). I gather that they all had something to do with individualism, with living life as an experience, with disdain for all the conformity and regulation that the social and economic system demands from most people.

I sympathized with their assumption that life “held something more”, and that we needed to care a lot for our fellow humans. But instead of sex, intoxication, protests and artistic expression, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:02 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, October 8, 2011

◊ Did ‘Hurricane Perry’ Blow Over?

Current Affairs ... Politics ...

A few weeks can be a long time, especially in Presidential politics. Back in late August, just as Hurricane Irene was about to hit the East Coast, Texas Gov. Rick Perry had just announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination, and had soared to the top of the polls. But now, after a few rough weeks of inter-mural jousting with Mitt Romney and an admission that he sometimes governed Texas like a reasonable politician and not a rabid Tea Party animal, Perry has lot his luster.

And then the liberal press opened fire with an accusation that Perry’s family used a patch of hunting ground that had a prominent rock monument with an offensive racial epithet painted on it. Perry said that his dad immediately painted over the bad word as soon as they started using the place, but the Washington Post claims to have spoken with people remembering that he didn’t. It’s mostly a “did so, did not” confrontation, but that still doesn’t do Perry much good with the northern moderate swing voters that he would have to attract in order to beat President Obama in Nov. 2012.

So, to extend the meteorological metaphor, the high energy levels in the conservative currents of the GOP have found their way to another brewing storm, and they seem to be building up to hurricane levels. Yes, I mean Herman Cain, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:43 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, October 6, 2011

◊ Some Advice

Current Affairs ...

There’s a cute little advice-column parody at the end of The Atlantic mag, called “What’s Your Problem” by Jeffrey Goldberg. In the October issue, Goldberg presents himself with a mock question about how to come up with a “things I want to do before I die” list, given all the choices that a young, rich person might have. Goldberg’s mock advice was to come up with a reverse list, i.e. things you definitely do NOT want to do during your lifetime. He then posted 25 items that would appear on his own list. I thought I would comment on some of them.

1.) Climb Mount Everest
2.) See any movie or read any book about self-actualizing rich people who climb Mount Everest
3.) See that movie about the guy who cuts off his arm in a ravine that isn’t even on Mount Everest

COMMENT: So far I’m totally in synch with Goldberg. I have no intention of seeing 127 Hours either. I like hiking, but not that extreme stuff.

10.) Collateralize a debt obligation

COMMENT: Best to avoid debt obligations in the first place

12.) Colon cleanse

COMMENT: It just gets dirty again anyway, and fast. Pretty much like house cleaning.

15.) Create a coat of arms for my family

COMMENT: I agree, coats of arms are over-rated.

18.) Play golf

COMMENT: On a nice day, I’d rather be » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:50 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, October 2, 2011

◊ Rain Flower

Photo ...

I had trouble getting to sleep the other night, so I spent a half hour or so perusing Fr. James “Jeff” Behrens’ monastery photo book Portraits of Grace. Jeff’s photos and his gentle written reflections were a nice calming touch, just what I needed. It felt so good and comforting simply being under the covers, resting against propped pillows with the book in hand, that I probably stayed up a bit longer than I had to. It was one of those cozy moments of life that come along too infrequently.

I guess that I’m still a bit of a ‘monastery romantic’, despite having been to real monasteries and talking to real monks (including Jeff). Their life is just as gritty as anyone else’s. But Jeff’s book helps to feed my illusion, nonetheless. He focuses in closely on quotidian stuff like tools and windows and leaves and dishes and shovels, with just the right sunlight and shadow to make it all seem beatific. Yea, I know it’s not real life, but sometimes real-life is not what one needs.

On page 85, Jeff has a shot of a praying mantis standing on a wet morning glory flower. Quite interesting. The next day, I went out back by my car, where my own morning glory vines are still in bloom, and I noticed that they were still wet from an earlier rain shower (not surprising given how wet the past few months have been around here). So I went inside and grabbed my camera, and here’s what I got. No bug, but still not a bad shot, IMHO. Thanks, Jeff, for the idea.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:49 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, October 1, 2011

◊ F111/F35: Deadly Misdesigned Beauties in the Skies

History ... Personal Reflections ...

By the time most of us reach our late teenage years, we usually take up some sort of rebellious cause, something to distinguish ourself from the life that our parents and all their friends lived. You want to make it clear that your world is going to be better, that you aren’t going to make the same mistakes and fall into the same traps that they lazily fell into over the course of their lives. I was no different. My cause was pacifism; not exactly a surprise choice for the time, i.e. late 60’s and early 70’s. Me and my generation were going to show the world that you didn’t ever need to kill another human being in order to have a good society where everyone can have a good life.

How did that all turn out for me? I don’t want to talk about it right now. Let’s just say as I proceed through my adult years, I fell into many of the same traps and have made many of the same compromises that my parents and their generation made. Oh well. But I still try to keep the violence and killing to a minimum. In my case, that would be “agentic killing”. I have never directly killed anything larger than a mouse, but I cannot say that I am entirely pure when you ask if anyone has to die in order to maintain the lifestyle that I have become accustomed to. I am a 99% vegetarian (and loving it – just eliminated eggs from my cooking and baking routine). Thus, I don’t take too many animals down to maintain myself, although admittedly I occasionally buy leather shoes or belts (but try to get by as much as possible with faux-leather items from Payless).

However, I do depend upon a car powered by gasoline to get to work, to buy food and clothing, and to maintain my social life. I also » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:11 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, September 25, 2011

◊ Space Vision

Outer Space ... Spirituality ...

It turns out that many of the US astronauts who have been up in the Freedom space station for several months have had vision problems. About one third have reported some level of vision impairment after coming home. Most have gotten better over time, but NASA is worried that more permanent damage would be done on a very long space mission, such as a trip to explore Mars.

Likewise, it turns out that 36 astronauts who were on “high radiation missions”, including the Apollo moon astronauts, experienced cataract problems. This was due to their heightened exposure to cosmic rays and other particles from the Sun and from space, given that they spent time beyond the earth’s magnetic shielding. (The space station astronaut problems stem more from brain fluid shifts caused by prolonged weightlessness — they are in low orbit and aren’t as severely exposed to radiation).

But interestingly enough, the deep space missions had another type of “vision” effect — vision in a spiritual sense. It turns out that » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:19 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, September 22, 2011

◊ Don’t Blink Twice, It’s Alright

Psychology ... Society ...

As I mentioned earlier in the month (Sept. 10), I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”, a popular book on decision-making. Thirty-eight percent of its reviewers on Amazon believe that it only merits 1, 2 or 3 stars. Even one of the 4 star reviewers says “The book is a series of semi-socio-scientific articles on insight and intuition. It is not a cohesive theory . . . Gladwell fumbles in trying take them into some unified theory that is comprehensible let alone cohesive.” My friend Mary basically agrees with that sentiment (see her comments on it); she finds it to be a desultory mix of topics and a grab-bag of sundry theories.

As to myself, I am also scratching my head, wondering why I don’t see what seems obvious to Gladwell, i.e. a big idea that will change how we and our leaders make decisions, big and small, and for the better. Not that Blink is devoid of all worth. There are a number of small ideas that have some value.

One such idea was elegantly presented recently in a short article on the Scientific American web site, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:01 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, September 17, 2011

◊ Friars Only

Personal Reflections ... Photo ...

I took a little drive this morning, stopping at a handful of places that had meant something to me in the past. It was a late summer/early autumn trip down memory lane. The coming of autumn always makes me nostalgic.

One of my stops was at the church where I got married way back in the mid-80s, St. Joes in East Rutherford. While walking thru the parking lot looking for a photo angle, I came upon this little scene. A dumpster and some garbage cans — friars only. Hmmmm, makes you consider that St. Francis was born wealthy but voluntarily became a mendicant, trading luxurious clothing and sumptuous meals for what ever he could garner from begging and sifting thru trash heaps (or where ever they put their garbage back in the 13th Century — but is garbage mostly a modern concept, a luxury of affluence?).

Well, I doubt that any modern OFMs had sifted through these bins. And more ironically, the friars are now gone from St. Joes, having given the parish back to the local diocese not long ago in order to conserve their dwindling manpower. So, this sign is a double anachronism, another memory of things that are no more. Which is just what I was searching for this crisp, cool morning.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:23 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

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