Nobody 676
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Nobody # 676
Nobody Asked Me But:
And the years are rollin' by me.
They are rockin' evenly.
I am older than I once was, and younger than I'll be.
That's not unusual.
It isn't strange,
After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same.
After changes, we are more or less the same. Paul Simon – “The Boxer.”
Writing by moonlight:
Happiness is those mornings when the full moon shines down through the atrium and onto my desk and computer, and I work by its light.<<<
This is one of my favorite pictures from our trip. It was taken near Newcastle through a window on the fast tra
in from London to Edinburgh. The North Sea is in the background. At first sight, I thought that the blur ruined it. But then I realized that to me the sense of motion represented the beauty of the trip and all the wonders that we saw and experienced.<<<
“A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq’s government and a humanitarian catastrophe,” the report said in its executive summary. “Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United States could be diminished. Americans could become more polarized.”
The passage above is from the report of the Iraq Study Group. The tragedy of this greatly mishandled misadventure is that, at least in my opinion, the outcome described above is inevitable. It is the classic example of turning a bad situation into one that is hopeless.<<<
It is now 6:32 and the sky is lightening, but the full moon remains my companion.<<<
Charles Frazier waited nine years after his first novel, the wonderful “Cold Mountain,” to publish his second. Not wanting to prejudice any of you who may decide to read it, or listen to it as I did, I will say little about “Thirteen Moons,” except that I liked it. However, a question is posed in the book that I want to answer.
It is first asked by Bear, one of two older Cherokees that are like fathers to the novel’s hero, Will Cooper. And later, in his fading years, Cooper poses it to himself: “If you knew you had only one more day would you praise creation or curse God?”
If I am one of the lucky or unlucky ones who know of their impending death, I am sure that in moments of fear, I will curse, not God, but reality. But I also know that my overwhelming feelings will be those of thankfulness that I had the chance to hang around – to know and be known, love and be loved and to live most of the time as opposed to merely existing.<<<
Post script: The lucky or unlucky question above is worth exploring, but at another time.<<<
My grandmother once taught me that two wrongs do not make a right. She should have taught that to Senator John as well.
(1) “McCain seeks more troops for Iraq.” (2) But gays need not apply. Another “good” guy proves himself not so good. Caught off guard by a reporter’s question about whether he supports gay rights, John McCain answere
d yes and no. He said he opposes "discriminating against any American," and he opposes discrimination in the workplace, BUT he believes in firing gay people from the military.
Sorry John but you don’t get it both ways. You can’t pin on an anti-discrimination badge at the same time you discriminate. My regular army brother, with his 5 tours in Vietnam, is to the right of McCain on most issues. But he still says that he measured those who accompanied him on his jungle forays by their bravery and commitment to duty and not by their sexual preference.<<<
Sir Winston Churchill once wrote that, “Democracy is the worst possible form of government except all others that have been tried.” The same is true of de facto segregation. No, bussing is not wonderful, nor are the other various school district plans that give race an edge. But they are better than the do-nothing alternative. And yet, by next spring, the O’Connor-less Supreme Court will outlaw these plans using the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment as their justification for keeping white schools white.
Well guess what Supremes? If, in a nation still far from integrated, racial minorities were as equally protected by the 14th Amendment as were their white brothers and sisters, de facto segregation would grow smaller by the year, smaller still by the decade, until we would truly be one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
And for my money, you can remove the just from Justice in the four court hard-cores and too often in “Justice” Kennedy, as well.<<<
Two weeks ago, Time Magazine updated the A to Z advances in American health knowledge for 2006. If you read the list you learned:
B – Bacon is bad, especially if you eat it too often. Sausage too. Neither is good news for me, but sometimes love is cruel.
C – Coffee and chocolate are good – unless you are pregnant, in which case, coffee can be bad. But since I am not, excuse me while I have another sip.
R - High doses of resveratrol (found in red wine and, OK, be boring, in red grape juice too) fed to obese mice seemed to prevent problems usually seen in chubby rodents (and people), including diabetes, liver damage and premature death. However, to gain the optimum benefit I will have to drink 100 glasses a day. No sacrifice is too great for one’s health.
W – Wealth; money can't buy happiness, but it can buy health. Big surprise!<<<<
In that same issue I also learned that falling out of bed kills 600 Americans each year. I am thinking of either installing a high railings or rubberizing the floor next to our bed.<<<
FYI: when we encounter the unexpected, the amygdala, a primitive, almond-shaped clump of tissue that sits just above the brainstem signals us to engage danger or to run from it. My amygdala seems to be heavily weighted toward the latter.<<< (Not totally true. My wife thinks I confront danger too much.)
Ever since we attended the signing of his new teen novel, by NY Daily news sports columnist, Mike Lupica, I have been a regular in reading his columns. I recently found these two gems:
“Two days before he resigned, Donald Rumsfeld apparently wrote a memo suggesting that our policy in Iraq isn't working.”
“Rumsfeld also thinks A-Rod has been a bit of a postseason disappointment with the Yankees.”<<<
The second:
“Finally today, a happy birthday to my daughter, Hannah, who turned 8 yesterday.”
"She is our fourth, and our first girl, and I tell her this weekend, in the newspaper, what I tell her all the time: she was, in all wonderful ways, worth the wait.”<<<
Did you read recently that an Orange County couple claim that to get proper schooling for their severely autistic son, they were forced to shower employees at his elementary school with diamond jewelry, Coach bags, Chanel perfume and other lavish gifts worth a total of $100,000, according to a legal claim filed this month?
Funny, the best I ever got was a box of See’s chocolates.<<<
And here is still another item from those weird schools in Orange County. It seems that students at University High in Irvine currently use a numeric code linked to a prepaid account to buy their lunch or snacks, but the principal decided it would be safer to take their fingerprints and scan them as students traversed the lunch line. After numerous parent privacy complaints the district overruled his plan, but think of the wasted possibilities.
There could scanners set up at classroom doors, so administrators (they too would be printed) could not enter without an appointment. And why stop there?
L
et’s add telephones with angry-voice recognition software to automatically screen out of control parents.
Any other suggestions?<<<
Number 1, UCLA 65-62 over # 6 Texas A&M! The picture (left) is of the past and present – Coach Wooden congratulating Coach Howland.
Nobody # 676
Nobody Asked Me But:
And the years are rollin' by me.
They are rockin' evenly.
I am older than I once was, and younger than I'll be.
That's not unusual.
It isn't strange,
After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same.
After changes, we are more or less the same. Paul Simon – “The Boxer.”
Writing by moonlight:
Happiness is those mornings when the full moon shines down through the atrium and onto my desk and computer, and I work by its light.<<<
This is one of my favorite pictures from our trip. It was taken near Newcastle through a window on the fast tra
in from London to Edinburgh. The North Sea is in the background. At first sight, I thought that the blur ruined it. But then I realized that to me the sense of motion represented the beauty of the trip and all the wonders that we saw and experienced.<<<“A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq’s government and a humanitarian catastrophe,” the report said in its executive summary. “Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United States could be diminished. Americans could become more polarized.”
The passage above is from the report of the Iraq Study Group. The tragedy of this greatly mishandled misadventure is that, at least in my opinion, the outcome described above is inevitable. It is the classic example of turning a bad situation into one that is hopeless.<<<
It is now 6:32 and the sky is lightening, but the full moon remains my companion.<<<
Charles Frazier waited nine years after his first novel, the wonderful “Cold Mountain,” to publish his second. Not wanting to prejudice any of you who may decide to read it, or listen to it as I did, I will say little about “Thirteen Moons,” except that I liked it. However, a question is posed in the book that I want to answer.
It is first asked by Bear, one of two older Cherokees that are like fathers to the novel’s hero, Will Cooper. And later, in his fading years, Cooper poses it to himself: “If you knew you had only one more day would you praise creation or curse God?”
If I am one of the lucky or unlucky ones who know of their impending death, I am sure that in moments of fear, I will curse, not God, but reality. But I also know that my overwhelming feelings will be those of thankfulness that I had the chance to hang around – to know and be known, love and be loved and to live most of the time as opposed to merely existing.<<<
Post script: The lucky or unlucky question above is worth exploring, but at another time.<<<
My grandmother once taught me that two wrongs do not make a right. She should have taught that to Senator John as well.
(1) “McCain seeks more troops for Iraq.” (2) But gays need not apply. Another “good” guy proves himself not so good. Caught off guard by a reporter’s question about whether he supports gay rights, John McCain answere
d yes and no. He said he opposes "discriminating against any American," and he opposes discrimination in the workplace, BUT he believes in firing gay people from the military.Sorry John but you don’t get it both ways. You can’t pin on an anti-discrimination badge at the same time you discriminate. My regular army brother, with his 5 tours in Vietnam, is to the right of McCain on most issues. But he still says that he measured those who accompanied him on his jungle forays by their bravery and commitment to duty and not by their sexual preference.<<<
Sir Winston Churchill once wrote that, “Democracy is the worst possible form of government except all others that have been tried.” The same is true of de facto segregation. No, bussing is not wonderful, nor are the other various school district plans that give race an edge. But they are better than the do-nothing alternative. And yet, by next spring, the O’Connor-less Supreme Court will outlaw these plans using the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment as their justification for keeping white schools white.
Well guess what Supremes? If, in a nation still far from integrated, racial minorities were as equally protected by the 14th Amendment as were their white brothers and sisters, de facto segregation would grow smaller by the year, smaller still by the decade, until we would truly be one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
And for my money, you can remove the just from Justice in the four court hard-cores and too often in “Justice” Kennedy, as well.<<<
Two weeks ago, Time Magazine updated the A to Z advances in American health knowledge for 2006. If you read the list you learned:
B – Bacon is bad, especially if you eat it too often. Sausage too. Neither is good news for me, but sometimes love is cruel.
C – Coffee and chocolate are good – unless you are pregnant, in which case, coffee can be bad. But since I am not, excuse me while I have another sip.
R - High doses of resveratrol (found in red wine and, OK, be boring, in red grape juice too) fed to obese mice seemed to prevent problems usually seen in chubby rodents (and people), including diabetes, liver damage and premature death. However, to gain the optimum benefit I will have to drink 100 glasses a day. No sacrifice is too great for one’s health.
W – Wealth; money can't buy happiness, but it can buy health. Big surprise!<<<<
In that same issue I also learned that falling out of bed kills 600 Americans each year. I am thinking of either installing a high railings or rubberizing the floor next to our bed.<<<
FYI: when we encounter the unexpected, the amygdala, a primitive, almond-shaped clump of tissue that sits just above the brainstem signals us to engage danger or to run from it. My amygdala seems to be heavily weighted toward the latter.<<< (Not totally true. My wife thinks I confront danger too much.)
Ever since we attended the signing of his new teen novel, by NY Daily news sports columnist, Mike Lupica, I have been a regular in reading his columns. I recently found these two gems:
“Two days before he resigned, Donald Rumsfeld apparently wrote a memo suggesting that our policy in Iraq isn't working.”
“Rumsfeld also thinks A-Rod has been a bit of a postseason disappointment with the Yankees.”<<<
The second:
“Finally today, a happy birthday to my daughter, Hannah, who turned 8 yesterday.”
"She is our fourth, and our first girl, and I tell her this weekend, in the newspaper, what I tell her all the time: she was, in all wonderful ways, worth the wait.”<<<
Did you read recently that an Orange County couple claim that to get proper schooling for their severely autistic son, they were forced to shower employees at his elementary school with diamond jewelry, Coach bags, Chanel perfume and other lavish gifts worth a total of $100,000, according to a legal claim filed this month?
Funny, the best I ever got was a box of See’s chocolates.<<<
And here is still another item from those weird schools in Orange County. It seems that students at University High in Irvine currently use a numeric code linked to a prepaid account to buy their lunch or snacks, but the principal decided it would be safer to take their fingerprints and scan them as students traversed the lunch line. After numerous parent privacy complaints the district overruled his plan, but think of the wasted possibilities.
There could scanners set up at classroom doors, so administrators (they too would be printed) could not enter without an appointment. And why stop there?
L
et’s add telephones with angry-voice recognition software to automatically screen out of control parents.Any other suggestions?<<<
Number 1, UCLA 65-62 over # 6 Texas A&M! The picture (left) is of the past and present – Coach Wooden congratulating Coach Howland.
posted by jmt | 8:53 AM
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