Acme Translating Services

Well, so there's been the huge flap in the news about candidate for Senate, Rep. Todd Akin (R)-MO. He's the one who basically said that there doesn't need to be an exception for rape in a desired prohibition on abortion, because it would be "very rare" that a "legitimate rape" would result in a pregnancy. This is because, apparently in Missouri at least, a woman's body is capable of preventing a pregnancy in the case of said "legitimate rape."

Now, presumably, Rep. Akin is meaning to distinguish "legitimate rape"--that's the kind perpetrated when a Black man rapes a white woman, or where the woman is so badly injured that the rapist can't claim she just "likes it rough"--from other alleged rapes, which are the illegitimate kind. All of this is so confusing, I thought I'd break out my handy-dandy Missouri Politician's Guide to the English Language to decode his heartfelt apology. This was originally posted by me as a comment on the CNN website's story online earlier this morning. I hope you find my translation illuminating.

AKIN POLITISPEAK: "Rape is an evil act. I used thewrong words in the wrong way and for that I apologize. As the father of twodaughters I want tough justice for predators. I have a compassionate heart forthe victims of sexual assault and I pray for them. The fact is rape can lead topregnancy. The truth is rape has many victims. The mistake I made was in thewords I said, not in the heart I hold. I ask for your forgiveness."

TRANSLATION: "Rape is what women want, most of the time. Because I am a geezerand a misogynist, I said what I reallybelieve--that most 'rapes' are just sour grapes because he didn't call the nextday. But then a bunch of pollsters toldme that my campaign funds would dry up for saying that, because big business,who is funding my campaign, can't afford to be associated with such a comment,since women make most of the buying decisions, and since at least one in fourof them have cried rape after he didn't call. So now I'm crying crocodile tears and saying sorry, so that maybe mycorporate sponsorship will have an out for giving me some more money to buy myvote in the Senate, if I'm so lucky as to be made a passenger on that gravytrain. Thank you and may my Lily-White,Male-Dominant, Christians-Only GOD bless your sorry, pathetic souls--even thoseof you wimmen."

TRANSLATION ENDED.

A Familiar Ring

I found this video today in some of my internet travels. It's a documentary about "geo-engineering," and its effects on agriculture, food supply, and economics. Geo-engineering is a euphemism for weather modification, using chemical agents and other techniques. It sounds like science fiction, doesn't it? Unfortunately, I've become increasingly aware in the past couple of years that it might be "science," but in my opinion, it isn't fiction. For example, it doesn't take but a few minutes to find online the text of patents for technologies to modify weather. If people are patenting it, someone's doing it.

Now, a few years ago, anything that talked about geo-engineering or "chem-trails" got pegged as tinfoil hat territory. But lately it seems that many people are noticing evidence that something big has changed in the eco-system--increased respiratory disease, increased neurologic disease, increased severe weather events, changing weather patterns, and more--and the dots, when you follow them, seem to lead not just to run-of-the-mill pollution, but to geo-engineering.

Do yourself a favor and watch this film. After you watch, if you want to conclude it's craziness, be my guest. (If you're new to the subject, you might want to search for the predecessor to this film, called What in the World are They Spraying? first.)

An Important Hour

If you don't understand how everything can have gone so wrong in the world in recent years, you need to spend an hour watching this movie. . .

Update: I used to have an imbedded YouTube video here, but it has been squashed, probably because so many people are watching it, so here's the place to go to watch it. Just paste this address in your browser's address window:

http://new.hulu.com/watch/392812

Go watch it quick before it gets squashed there, too.

This Is Our Doing

Below is a video coming out of Aleppo, Syria, showing the summary execution of alleged loyalists to Syrian leader Bashar Assad. The guy at the beginning of the video--the "prisoner"--is a policeman who was taken from a police station, according to this article. The others, well, who knows what they are supposed to have been doing.

The folks doing the executing are the so-called freedom fighters that our government is bankrolling and supporting. Just to be clear--executing prisoners captured in a 'war' is a WAR CRIME. Ipso facto, our government is assisting war criminals in Syria. Just as we have in Libya. Just as we have in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. They're supposed to be the good guys. Watch the video. Do they look like good guys to you? Or bloodthirsty psychopaths?

This isn't someone else's doing. This is what's done in your name, with your money, maybe by your children if they're in the military. This is OUR doing. And if you can't or won't watch it--or if when you watch it you get sick to your stomach--why would you let it continue?

Twin Sons ?

A fellow reader of a blog, American Kabuki, sent in this analysis of photos of 'James Holmes,' the alleged Aurora movie theater shooter.

Just seeing the first frame--the two pics side by side--you can tell that just about every major feature is obviously different. The nose of the dark-haired pic is shaped differently--wider at the bridge, at the middle, and at the nostrils. The eyes of the dark-haired pic are narrower from lid to lid, whereas the red-haired pic has rounder, more open-looking eyes. They're also clearly a different color and the shape of the folds in the upper lids are different. The ears of the dark-haired pic are less pronounced and the whorls are shaped differently than those in the red-haired pic. The mouth of the dark-haired pic is thinner-lipped and the mouth is positioned higher on the face (the chin is longer) than in the red-haired pic. And finally, the neck of the dark-haired pic appears rounder and softer (less visible muscle definition) with a less-pronounced Adam's apple than the red-haired pic.

But look what happens further down, when 'GC' overlays the pictures and aligns them on different features.

Photo sent to me by CW

Photo Courtesy Sydney Morning Herald

Photo Courtesy Rense.com (added 7/29/12)

---

Updated: 7/27/12 Reader GC sends the following:

My take on the two pics of "James Holmes"

Description of "Holmes" photos is as follows:

01: Best alignment. Subjects left ear was used as main alignment point.

Resized pic slightly so ear sizes matched.

02: Moved the faces apart vertically while keeping eyes and bridge of nose aligned.

03: Shrunk black haired pic till the noses matched in size. Aligned nostrils.

The nose is WAY off. So is the eye spacing.

Look at how small the first pic needed to be shrunk to make noses same size.

Black haired subject nose and head in general is larger.

Left ear was similar in both pics.

Feel free to reprint this email in your blog.

Enjoy, GC

So, I'm wondering why exactly the authorities and the media are showing us pics of what are CLEARLY TWO DIFFERENT MEN, and telling us both of them are James Holmes and both of them are guilty of being the "lone-wolf shooter" in the theater massacre. I wonder.

Update 8/4/2012: Having made myself use a modicum of technical savvy (not easy), I did my own experiment with a photo editor on the two pics. I took the two pics and sized them (proportionally) until the irises of the eyes lined up correctly.I then overlayed one on the other and made it a semi-transparent layer, to see how they matched up. They don't. At all. The most obvious difference is the distance of the mouth from the eyes--way different. These two are not the same man. Period. Here's my amateur effort.

Faking War

It isn't enough to just MAKE war. Now our government and media and those of complicit western countries are just blatantly making stuff up to try to justify an attack on Syria. Well, actually, that's been going on for a while, as I noted in this post back in March, when a young liar known as "Syria Danny" and CNNs Anderson Cooper did an interview where they made it look like the violence in Syria was worse than it actually was.
Now we're down to bad Photoshop jobs. Here's an image from Gizmodo:













On the left is the article, from an Austrian newspaper, which plays up the impact of recent violence in Syria on "mothers." On the right is the real photo, from which the left's scene of utter devastation is created with a rather obvious paste job.

I wonder why they want to attack Syria so badly that they'll fake the reasons to do it? Hmmm.

The Mouths of Babes

Every so often, children put we adults to shame. I've just read about one of those times. A bunch of homeless children, living in Delhi, India, have self-organized a workable, fair, banking system.

No derivatives. No exorbitant interest. No too big to fail. No golden parachutes for executives. Just a human-to-human banking system where kids work and save their money for important things for their future, and some take 'advances' or loans for stuff like a uniform so they can go to school, or to help their parents open a business. It makes me think of the Building and Loan in the movie It's a Wonderful Life. Every so often, children put us to shame. And, for a minute at least, they make me proud of being human.

Their story is here on RT today.

The Next Right Thing

There's a saying common in twelve-step programs. It doesn't come from the program literature, but it's common wisdom in the meetings. It's the twelve-step equivalent of the golden rule: Do the next right thing.

It's probably so pervasive because by the time people make it to a twelve-step program, they've pretty effectively trashed their lives and just as effectively killed off brain cells and emotional development, so they need something very simple to focus on while the haze clears and the metaphoric chickens of their addiction come home to roost.

When I first heard the phrase early in my sobriety, it seemed a little too pat, a little too pollyanna-ish. Later though, I grew enough to see the wisdom in it, because there are times in life when you find yourself in a situation where there's so much wrong that it's difficult to know where to start and hard to believe that anything you can do is going to make any difference whatsoever. That is where the "next right thing" becomes useful.

You see, in recovery, the first little bit of time, when you sober up just a touch, you realize that pretty much everything in your life has to change, and you're so scared that you want to wet yourself. If you're lucky, you just hang on through it as best you can.

After that, there's the "pink cloud," as it's called, where you're so happy to still be sober and to have not wet yourself that you're euphoric for a little bit. That's when addicts become really annoying, talking about how "grateful" they are, and how their "higher power" is seeing them through.

And then, the third stage is when you're sober enough to see reality and past being so petrified that that's all you can think about, and suddenly your cloud changes from pink to grey, as you begin to see what a walking, talking disaster you are, even when you're not loaded all the time. You realize that the booze or the drugs weren't the "problem" after all--you were the problem. You and your fear and avoidance and self-centeredness, and immaturity, and refusal to face reality on reality's terms--those were the problems. Your chosen substance was just a really poor attempted solution.

That's when your problems can start to seem insurmountable, like there's no reason to stay sober, because there's just too much damage and stupidity to ever come back from. That's when a lot of people with a few months in the program decide to use again--to go back to the same stupid and ineffective solution they've always used. But if you're lucky, when you're in a meeting, you'll share something that shows that's where you are, and someone will say to you that you can't worry about all the past, and you can't figure out all the future, you just have to "do the next right thing."

As a society, I think that's just about where we are right now. There's a lot of people who get just how messed up our world is. I think the financial crisis and our government claiming the right to imprison and murder us without a trial have pushed a lot of people over that line, at least. Some people are still on the pink cloud, where some savior--Jesus or Ron Paul or the Oathkeepers or benevolent ETs or Kalki the destroyer or something--is going to come and fix it all up for us, all tied up with a pretty bow.

But a lot of people have passed that stage too (Ron Paul's son endorsing Mitt Romney took a lot of the fun out of that savior myth). If you're one of those people, right now, you are at that third stage--where you look around and see the magnitude of the problems we've caused and allowed, and see that the cavalry is not riding in, and you look at each other and say, "May I panic now?"

My answer is no. It's not time to panic. It's also not time to give up. It's time to do the next right thing.

Don't like Walmart and the other big businesses making a killing while exporting our jobs and destroying small merchants? Don't shop there. Even if paper towels are 9 cents cheaper. And tell other people why you've made that decision. Who knows? They might be trying to do the next right thing too.

Don't like big Pharma selling us risky, ineffective drugs and lines of BS and bribing doctors to help them get us hooked? Then take responsibility for your own health and stop buying the line of thought that you can eat fast food, frozen pizzas and bacon, sit on your butt 24/7, use and abuse your body in every way and fix it all with a magic pill that the nice man at Pfizer provides because he's a nice man and your health insurance is required to pay for, courtesy of government regulation.

Don't like the big bankers stealing the wealth out from under us regular people? Don't borrow from them, don't let them within half a mile of whatever money you have, and begin insisting, loudly, that those who have done wrong are accountable and are not in a position to do it again.

Don't like the government telling us that we're expendable cattle to be spied upon, put on hit lists, sent to die in their eternal wars and paid food stamps to keep quiet about it? Tell them no. Do whatever is in your power to be non-compliant, and to be particularly noisy about it.

Want there to be less violence, hate and division in the world? BE less violent, hateful and divisive.

Worried about people who are having a hard time? Surely there's some you know or know of. Help them. Hand them a bit of money, or a casserole. Or if you haven't got those to spare, a supportive note or kind word certainly couldn't hurt. If your life is stinking, you'd love to have it fixed, but the next best thing is to know that someone at least is thinking kindly about you.

Et cetera. Each of us may not be able to fix the whole world, but if a lot of people fix their own bit of it, the world will fix itself.

At the same time that we're doing the next right thing, we have to be careful to resist the temptation to recycle old and stupid solutions. For example, we've seen that easy credit and bigger social programs are not the answer to a system that's fundamentally unfair. We know that stuffing our fingers in our ears to avoid hearing about all the butchery committed by our government in our names isn't saving us from decline in the world's esteem. We're becoming painfully aware that all the extra "security" we've bought at the cost of financial solvency and personal freedom has brought us not safety, but living on the perpetual brink of World War Three. We've already tried avoiding the consequences of a lack of integrity and compassion by the 'bread and circuses' tactics of keeping people half comatose in front of a TV, plugged into an I-pad and a smartphone, so we won't notice the suffering of our fellow humans. Those were stupid solutions to our problem of national or worldwide fear, just like getting drunk is a stupid solution for the alcoholic's individual fear. And stupid solutions don't get smarter if you try them more often.

So we need to just leave that stuff behind and each one of us do the next right thing.

I know I'm at odds with just about everything else you might see or read. That information is telling you to: 1) ignore all the evidence that things can't go on like this much longer; or 2) hoard canned goods and bottled water, buy gold, and prepare to defend you and yours to the death, or 3) make a date with a running automobile in a closed garage.

Well, sorry. I'm always the renegade. I can't ignore the evidence, and I'm too stubborn and have too much residual Catholic guilt from my upbringing to take myself out. As for the rest, I'm middle aged, 5'4", 120 lbs, and own two guns: a .22 rifle my hubby bought with S&H green stamps when he was 12 and a .380 pistol that's missing its clip. I'm probably screwed if violence and survivalism is going to win the day.

So I'm going to keep doing the next right thing and figure that if any significant segment of the populace is doing the same, we're all going to be fine.

If I'm wrong:

1) I can always panic later;

2) If I've been nice to people in the meantime, someone may give me a sandwich; and

3) If the saviors do show up, they probably won't mind that I started saving the world without them.

Pharma-Co-Logic

Looks like it's been a series of fairly bad days for big-Pharma megalith Merck, although you'd never know it to look at the mainstream news. In late June, a lawsuit that has been pending since 2010 was ordered "unsealed." That means, in real world terms, that the Defendant must now stop pretending to the public that it doesn't exist.

Two former Merck virologists allege that Merck defrauded the federal government when it sold millions of doses of vaccine that it knew to be of waning effectiveness. In a special kind of whistleblower lawsuit that allows private people to stand in the position of the government to stop fraud in government contracts, the former Merck scientists claim that Merck knowingly phonied up study results about effectiveness of the mumps vaccine in its famous MMR (measels, mumps, rubella) concoction, to hide the fact that the vaccine was becoming less effective as the virus mutated.

They allege that Merck, in its effectiveness studies, only used the "domesticated" version of the mumps virus--the one its vaccine was made from--and not the wild versions of the virus that people would actually be exposed to in the real world. They also allege Merck overstated effectiveness of the vaccine when it directed its scientists to "count" the viruses killed by animal antibodies that are sometimes added to samples to make it easier to find the human antibodies generated by the vaccine. So basically, Merck's effectiveness numbers included not only the viruses killed by the patient's immunity, but also those killed by a separate agent--sort of like if it poured Clorox on the samples and then claimed that its vaccine killed all the viruses the Clorox got. Finally, the virologists say that Merck fired labs whose results didn't agree with theirs, and threatened their employees with jail if they contacted FDA about the phony results. Nice.


And, only a week after the 2010 whistleblower case was unsealed, a chain or primary-care medical clinics also sued Merck, alleging that it intentionally overstated its vaccine's effectiveness to maintain a monopoly on the MMR vaccine market and make some extra money.

For its part, faced with public allegations that it phonied up test results, Merck says, "It's important to understand that none of the allegations in the complaint relate to the safety of M-M-R II and we remain confident that M-M-R II helps protect against measles, mumps and rubella as described in the labeling for the vaccine." Sort of a non-answer to the question whether it lied about the drug's effectiveness, isn't it?

So, just in the last several months, we've seen revealed that the statins people take to lower their cholesterol (so they don't have to eat right or exercise to do it) cause diabetes, muscle weakness, and memory loss. We've seen GlaxoSmithKline criminally convicted and fined $3 billion (about 10% of its profits for selling the drugs in the first place) for fraudulently marketing its antidepressants and diabetes drugs despite knowing of potentially fatal risks it wasn't disclosing. Now, Merck and its cash-cow-give-it-to-everyone-MMR. Kind of makes you wonder whether drugs are really helpful, or just very profitable.

So, how many prescriptions are YOU taking?

Read more about the lawsuits against Merck here, here, and here.

Not Anymore

Apparently, this clip came from a new series on HBO. All I can say is WOW. Someone clearly forgot to pay the censors to keep this off the air. Kind of makes me wish I watched TV.

Curtain

For the last few days, the news reports, online and otherwise, have talked about the Barclays bank scandal involving LIBOR, which is one of the main rates the big banks set as the price at which they'll lend other banks money. One can be forgiven if their eyes roll back in their heads and their mind goes into hibernation mode upon hearing this, since the whole subject of how interest rates are set isn't exactly a pulse-quickening notion.

But even if it's not exciting, let me assure you--this is a BIG DEAL. A big F-ing deal, in the immortal words of our Vice President. So this post is permission to freak out, just a little, over the news.

The LIBOR scandal, if it's pursued to its end, will wind up demonstrating that the entire banking model is corrupted, made-up fakery--basically Al Capone-style organized crime with a nicer suit. In essence, what the scandal means is that the supposed "market" price of money that we all have signed on to with our credit cards, adjustable rate loans, etc.--you know, so many points over "prime," has been a racket--a fixed deal with extra profits built in for the banks. This means that everyone whose had a mortgage or a credit card in the last couple of decades has probably been ripped off, because the "market" has been rigged. It also means that everything about the money "market," from interest paid on savings to the BAZILLIONS of dollars paid by taxpayers for supposed "debt" for government operations hasn't been a fair bargain, but instead one that was being fixed by conspiracy and collusion of the large banks, who, coincidentally, own the central banks.

Here's a cool video that explains it.

So, this is big. If anyone in the Western World still has any brain cells left after years of Angry Birds and pharmaceutically-induced coma, it may just spell the end of the road for the banksters doing pretty much as they damn well please, while the world says, "thank you sir, may I have another?" Wouldn't that be nice?

Money and Mouth

In this country, we talk a lot about "values." Freedom. Family. Education. God. Helping people. The word value means to assign something worth relative to other things. And our "values" are supposed to be the things we esteem more highly than other things. We assign a higher "worth" on things we value, right? And surely, in this country at least, we think of "value" as a monetary concept. We all know that the phrase "good value" means that we get something that's well worth the money we paid for it, relatively speaking. So, let's have a look at what Americans value.

My first listed value was freedom. So lets look at some things that we see as important to freedom. Well we're told (ad nauseum) that the military protects our freedom and dies for it if necessary. A staff sergeant (E6) in the US Army makes $34,636. Not much "value" there. The Press-that's important to freedom. Even Thomas Jefferson said so. A journalist in the US makes an average of $58,467. Well, that's a little better, but still pretty low for a bastion of our "values."

What about family? Well, we all know how much you make for being a parent. Zip. Zilch. Nada. But that's a volunteer gig, so it doesn't really count. But how about someone who helps a volunteer parent keep a family together--a nanny. Average: $31,200. Yikes. Housekeeper: $21,955. Daycare worker? $19,300. Ouch. So much for valuing family.

Education. That's certainly an American "value," isn't it? Well, a high school teacher makes an average $43,668. Other grades make less. A liberal arts college professor makes $80,627. Not much evidence that we care a lot about education, is there?

Well there's helping people. Yeah, that's it. Here we go: a cancer researcher makes an average $160,000. Brain surgeon can make up to $602,538. That's certainly more like it.

And what about God? Certainly that will make our list favorably. Well, the median income for a pastor: $85,455. Not bad, but on a scale of eternity? Meh.

So, what DO we value?
Pounding people to a pulp over a little brown ball, aided by assorted pharmaceuticals. Average NFL player: $1,900,000.

Big breasts, big muscles, lack of taste or brains. Cast member on Jersey Shore, Season 4: $1,400,000.

Siphoning money out of the real economy and stifling real business and competition. Average Goldman Sachs employee: $367,057 or more. Corporate Bond Trader: $1,000,000 . Mergers and Acquisitions Banker: $2,000,000

Yup. It seems that in "values," just like in everything else, you get what you pay for. 'Nuff said.

Here's to Your Health! Now, Who's Going to Jail?

So, it's being reported (here, here, and here are some examples) that Pharma-Giant GlaxoSmithKline has just pleaded guilty to criminal charges that it fraudulently marketed some of its big sellers, anti-depressants Paxil and Wellbutrin--in spite of grave risks that the drugs caused a greatly increased likelihood of suicide, and that it withheld required data showing that its diabetes drug, Avandia, caused potentially fatal heart problems.

What's now been admitted by GSK is that, despite knowing about, and covering up data that showed Paxil caused a risk of suicide 8 times greater than placebo, especially in young people, GSK marketed Paxil for off-label use--that is, use that's not approved by the FDA--in young people!

The also admit that they marketed anti-depressant Wellbutrin as a treatment for obesity, anxiety, addiction, and ADHD, although it was not approved for those uses, and posed risks that, because it was "off-label" use, weren't fully disclosed to patients.

And, just to make sure that their deadly snake oil could get maximum distribution, GSK gave perqs to doctors, like fancy-pants spa visits, hunting trips, and vacations to Jamaica to induce them to prescribe the drug, and helped to publish a journal article that misrepresented data about the drug's effectiveness.

In the case of Avandia, whose use was severely restricted in 2010 after it was linked to heart risks, the company admitted that it had failed to report data from studies that indicated Avandia could cause possibly fatal heart problems. It also admitted to making false or exaggerated claims of its safety and effectiveness, ironically touting it as good for your cardiovascular health (all except for those possible fatal heart problems, that is).

For all of this, GSK has agreed to pay about $3 BILLION in criminal and civil fines--the largest penalty in big-Pharma history. They'll probably also get the socks sued off them by families of teens who tried or succeeded in committing suicide because of their unapproved use of Paxil. Please, please, can I PLEASE be on the jury?

Who could have known that drug companies don't really care if people die, just so long as they buy their pills first? Oh gee, I don't know---maybe all of us, if we'd actually thought about it. You know, how pharma companies (whose ONLY legal purpose and obligation in life is to make the most money possible for their shareholders) might have a disincentive to actually cure a health problem, when it could make money like clockwork every month by keeping you sick, but selling you pills to "manage" your condition. I think I might have mentioned that once or twice in the past.

Notably missing from all the reports of GSK's now-admitted wrongdoing: Which marketing genius, CEO, or other muckety-muck is going to do time because of it? Oh yeah, I forgot. If you kill someone while robbing a convenience store of $38.40, you do life. If you kill people while making obscene profits for your corporate overlords, you get promoted.

Who Knew?

A while back, in a post titled, When the People Win, I talked about the situation in Iceland, as an example of what could happen if we just flew the interdigital bird in the direction of our friends, the Big Banksters, and said, "no, sorry, won't be paying you to tank our economy anymore, and by the way, we won't be paying you your protection racket money anymore to keep you from tanking our economy, either."

Back in 2008, when the banksters crashed Iceland's economy, Icelanders refused to give them trillions of dollars as a reward called "bailouts." Then they refused to accept "austerity," which is code for take the money from regular people in taxes, cut all the programs that benefit regular people, and give all the money to the Big Banksters and Big Business, then collect fat campaign donations from Big Bank and Big Biz, so you can do it again later on. What did they do instead? The arrested a bunch of furry bankster behinds, took out their corrupted politicians, defaulted on the fake debt the banksters had run up, and began to run their own country again.

I thought that it sounded like a pretty dang good idea--one we should emulate. Well, the edgiest of the mainstream media, the Young Turks show, has finally caught up with a little housewife in the midwest. The video is below. I still think the Icelanders are on to something here. Shall we meet at the Capitol? I'll bring the rocks.

The Only Time is Now

I've been getting indications that you all have noticed the scarcity of my postings of late. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to get motivated to do things that require discipline, planning, or forethought, like thinking about or researching blog subjects. On the flip side, I'm finding it easier, even natural, to do things that I feel like doing. I've been living in the present.

I know this sounds like the indulgence of an irresponsible urge--a childish failure to live up to my obligations--but in fact, I'm becoming aware that it's really the development of an essential skill that I've lacked for pretty much my entire life. You see, I'm a worrier. A control freak. Always have been.

I've always been one of those people who will endlessly, circularly, wonder and fret about how everything will play out in my life. I will think about how I will pay for my kids' college, how I will have 'enough' for a good retirement, how I will get everything done that needs done, when I'll pay the utility bills, whether I should get the oil changed in my car, what I will say to someone, what I should have said to someone, what someone will think about me, etc. For quite a while, I've understood intellectually that worrying, pondering, and planning every detail of my life is fruitless. You can't actually change anything by worrying about it, and you can't actually make things happen the way you want by "planning" them. But, know that as I might, I still did it.

Lately though, I've been increasingly understanding that, so long as you're spending your energy on thinking about the past or worrying about the future, you're actually using up all the time and energy you're allotted for right now. The import of this may not be obvious, so allow me to belabor the point for just a moment.

In our culture, we are taught in all kinds of ways, to focus on the past. We have "reunions" that are all about trying to live up to, or overcome, who we were when we were in high school. Yikes--thank goodness I've never attended one. We spend untold billions of dollars on "beauty products" and "procedures" designed to help us pretend that we're still young and stupid, instead of being proud of who we are, and how we've cared for ourselves, in the present. I don't know about anyone else, but you couldn't pay me to go back and be who I was at 20, or 30, or even 40. I view my wrinkles and spots and veins as proof that I've made enough mistakes to know better next time. My age is a warning to people not to mess with me. :-)

Speaking of mistakes, even our version of morality has you scour and examine your past for "sins." You are then told that you are to spend your time today "making up" for those missteps, by praying or performing some ritual, or doing good deeds or whatever. We're told that it is only after we've spent time doing whatever is the recommended penance can we move on from our mistake. Now, I've got no problem with the idea of praying or doing good deeds, but why dedicate those things to the idea of stuff you did wrong in the past? Rehashing and then trying to make up for your past errors actually doubles the time in your life you waste on your own stupidity, and frankly, in my life, I've made enough mistakes that I just don't have the time. I've decided that, for me at least, just recognizing that I've made a mistake and deciding to do better next time should be enough. Then, get on with life--right now. Pray or do good deeds because it improves today, not because it makes up for something yesterday.

Our culture also teaches us to obsess about the future. We're supposed to plan for our retirement, save for a rainy day, book a wedding venue two or three years ahead, sign on for thirty years of debt to have a place to live, open a college savings account when our kid is two, have six months of liquid assets in the bank, yadda, yadda, yadda. None of this stuff is a bad idea. But if it results in doing stuff that makes you worried, obsessive and unhappy now for the supposed promise of some satisfaction years down the road, it's the height of stupidity. If it causes you to forego doing something that would really enrich your life today so that you can have more dinners at a cafeteria when you're 80, well, sorry, but I don't much like canned green beans anyway.

So many people put off happiness and satisfaction for the supposed safety or security of what we might get, have, or need, someday. Ask the people who put their savings in trading accounts at MFGlobal, or with Bernie Madoff how well it worked for them. They would have been better off giving fists full of money to perfect strangers than how they wound up. At least they would have made somebody's day. And even if there's no financial funny business, we don't know if we'll be alive at the end of the mortgage, when the kid is old enough for college, or even tomorrow. So all most of us are doing with all this focus on the future is trying to convince ourselves that we have control over something tomorrow so that we can conveniently ignore that we're giving up our control (and enjoyment) of today.

I'm not sure what has occurred to make this very obvious truth finally penetrate the rigid little pores of my consciousness all of a sudden, but something has. And so I've been trying to spend my energy in the present--enjoying one of the last years where I'll have both my girls home for the summer, gardening, playing games, walking dogs, knowing that the past is best left right where it is (in the past), and trusting that the future will be here when, if, and how it's supposed to be. This isn't a recommendation to be stupid or thoughtless or frivolous. It's just a recommendation to just go ahead and BE. Now.

So here's some cool thoughts about focusing on the now. I'm going to keep working on it.

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. ~Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Forever is composed of nows. ~Emily Dickinson

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. ~James Thurber

We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow. ~Fulton Oursler

Pile up too many tomorrows and you'll find that you've collected nothing but a bunch of empty yesterdays. ~The Music Man

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. ~Albert Einstein

The Bottom Half

I've listened to Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion for years. One of my favorite parts is his tagline for the fictional town his radio character is from, Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. He always says Lake Wobegon is "where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." No mean feat, since average sort of implies some above and some below.

The idea of levels put me in mind of Maslow's Triangle, or Hierarchy of Needs. I first learned about this in a high school psychology class, many years ago. Here's an image of it, taken from the Wikipedia article on the subject:

Maslow theorized that people can only advance to a higher level of development and "self-actualization" when their lower needs are met. So basically we have to meet our survival-level needs of food, water, sleep, sex, etc., before we can begin to meet needs for security of body, employment, resources, etc. And those safety/security needs must be met before we can love and belong to a group of friends or family. Once we have love, we can then move on to self-esteem, confidence, respect, and the like. And finally, after we learn to love others and ourselves, we can become "self-actualized." The chart shows self-actualization to include "morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of facts." Sounds pretty nice, and pretty rare.

There's another perspective we can use to see how this works. It's called the "triune brain." Here's an image.

We actually have three brains, all rolled up in our heads. The first and lowest--barely more than a wide spot in the neurological road as an enlargement at the top of the spinal column--is called the Reptilian or R-Complex. It's called that because that part of our brain is very similar to the brains of reptiles. It's the surviving part of our brain-- the part that deals with instinct, survival needs, and aggression. The reptilian brain is the most primitive part; it can't go any higher than hunger, temperature control, fight-or-flight fear responses, defending territory, and keeping safe.

The only "emotion" used by the reptilian brain is fear. Fear of starving, fear of not reproducing, fear of cooking as you bask on the warm rock, fear of losing your territory, your mate, or the egg you just heisted from the chicken coop. On the triangle, the reptilian brain is the boss of the bottom two levels. All of the reptilian brain, and all of Levels 1 and 2, boils down to acquisition and security: getting enough to live, and keeping it.

The second brain is called the Limbic System. The word limbic comes from Latin, and means shell, arc, or girdle, so you can think of the limbic system as a shell or girdle surrounding the reptilian complex. It's the part of our brain that is similar to the brains of older mammals--dogs, cows, horses, even mice--basically all the other land mammals, except primates. It's the feeling part of the brain. On the triangle, the limbic system is responsible for the addition of Level 3--where we see friendship, family, and intimacy, not just in the protective or survival sense, but in a sense of actually valuing others for companionship, fondness, and love. It's where you stop hanging around with others because they can protect you or give you stuff, and stay because you like them. The limbic brain is what's working when a dog (an instinctive creature in many ways), will be excited and happy to see its owner who is mean to it or starves it, instead of trying to attack and eat him. The dog truly loves the beast, even to its own detriment.

The third brain, the neocortex, is the "highest" brain. It's thought to only exist in primates and and cetaceans like dolphins (although I personally believe that some other animals have developed at least a bit of its function). "Neo" comes from Greek and means new or recent, and neocortex is the most recent part of the brain to exist. The neocortex is the thinking part of the brain. It's responsible for "higher thought," such as storing and accessing complex memories, advance planning, abstract thought or making "connections" between unrelated things, critical thinking, consciousness, and imagination. On the triangle, this part of our brain is what we have to use to get above level 3. And it's where we, as average humans, are supposed to be, brain-development-wise. Above the dogs and cats and cows and mice.

But, unlike in Lake Wobegone, the vast, vast majority of people fall below average, and spend their time not in the "higher thinking" neocortex, not even in the "feeling" limbic system, but slumming in the "surviving, competing and securing" reptilian brain. Think about it.

For most people, the vast majority of time is occupied with work (Level 2 security)--and getting and taking care of our stuff (Level 1 survival or Level 2 security). Our "recreation" is often about shopping, dining, or social medial which is looking at, eating, or talking about getting more stuff. Frequently our recreation is watching and obsessing about sports, which is symbolic competition and survival struggles. All Levels 1 and 2.

Our other entertainment is popular media, like TV and video games. Probably 95 percent of what you see there is below level 3.

Reality shows? Levels 1 and 2. Some are about competition--outsmarting or out-scheming others to make yourself the winner and them the loser. Some are just garden-variety voyeurism where we watch other people who are "more messed up" than we are so that we can feel superior and less afraid of our own shortcomings. Dramas? Level 2. Cop and doctor and lawyer shows are about showing how everything from crime to illness to "justice" is all under control of the heroes, and not at all scary or uncertain--security. Fashion and home-fashion shows? Level 2. It's about having the right stuff to show yourself not to be inferior or an outsider--security. Documentaries? Well, once in awhile you might get an exception, but most are Level 2. Let's watch about the Holocaust, with no parallels drawn to anything happening now, and convince ourselves that this could happen "never again," then switch to the news to watch the vilification of Muslims or illegal immigrants. News? Level 2 on a good day. Ads? If you don't buy this, you won't be as good as everyone else--Level 2, tops. Video games are usually either searching for stuff, or shooting stuff. Level 1.5.

Even most people's "spiritual life" is Level 2. Going to church to be allowed to go to Heaven or to avoid Hell is survival-based Level 1, just on an eternal scale. Going to church to gossip about people's clothes or make business contacts is security-based Level 2. Going to church to enjoy how advanced you are and to condemn other people who aren't--I don't need to tell you what that is, do I?

In fact, I had a hard time coming up with activities that I understand "normal" people do on a regular, day-to-day basis that are even Level 3, much less above. Some examples I thought of: having a cuddle and a bedtime story with your kid, doing volunteer work without expecting any recognition or accolades for it, spending time with friends where you just enjoy their company (not compete over a sport, shop for more stuff, or other lower level activities). So there are some relatively common Level 3 activities, but they take a distant backseat, in terms of time spent, to our more reptilian pursuits.

So what's my point? Simply this: if our cosmic "job," if you will, is to be human--to use the equipment and advantages we have to their best use, we're not doing it. We're "higher mammals," and yet we spend almost all of our time in the reptilian part of our brains. We rarely muster a foray into the limbic, feeling, area of the older mammal, much less into the higher realms of the neo-cortex. We've allowed ourselves to be bogged down in the area of bare survival, mindless acquisition, and primitive competition to the point that we squander our spiritual and mental selves in the equivalent of the evolutionary primary grades, instead of graduating to the Level 3 limbic and beyond. And we need to stop it.

Of course there's always going to be some time we've got to spend in the mental and spiritual basement--just getting stuff done because it has to be done to get by. But we need to do it knowing that's what it is-- that it's the dregs, and not the meaning of life.

And then, in the time we have left, we need to do something better, not more of the same. Replace TV with conversation or gardening or woodworking or painting or singing or playing music or playing a board game with your family. Replace reptilian "sports religion" with individual or group fitness activities. Replace empty addictive behaviors like compulsive websurfing or social media with real life creativity and community,--maybe a hobby and joining a group to learn more about it. In short, spend more time exercising your mammal brain.

The biggest first step would be just to think often about which part of the brain is telling us something. If it causes anxiety, fear, worry, addiction, or obsession--if it demands more and better and is never satisfied, it definitely has a flicking, forked tongue. If it puts us in a place of contentment, happiness, or satisfaction, it's the warm blooded mammal brain we're hearing. And if it gives us a sense of creativity, accomplishment, spiritual wholeness, or healthy respect for ourselves and others--a feeling that "I'm great just like I am, and just where I am"-- we've hit the mother lode: the neocortex.

And then, once we can identify which brain is activated in us by the different things we do, think and say, we have a choice of where to spend most of our time and mental energy--whether we want to hang out in the bottom half, scratching and clawing, competing and acquiring, worrying and defending, or whether we'd rather put our focus on the things that make us experience fulfillment and satisfaction, love and compassion, creativity and pride of accomplishment.

In the end, everything we need to make the change to the top half is already in us. Three brains. We just have to choose: Lizard, Lassie, or Leonardo.

The Answer

Many years ago, I first read the book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams. It's the first of a series of books in a sort of sci-fi comedy genre--hilariously funny, very ironic. The Hitchhiker's series makes fun of just about every tradition, institution, and sacred cow we have in our western culture. If your exposure to it is by way of the TV series, or none at all, you should fix that.

My reason for bringing it up is that the premise of these books is that Earth was an experiment, basically a computer program set up by higher intelligence to come up with the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. After millions and millions and millions of years, it works, and the computer spits out the answer: 42. The trouble is, after all those millennia, no one remembers the Question.

I've been feeling a bit like that. For quite a long time, I've been changing, evolving, finding new bits of myself and discarding other bits along the side of the road. For a few weeks now, I've been feeling like I've "arrived" somewhere, since I don't feel a push to keep going somewhere else. But as I look around, I'm not sure where it is I've arrived. I'm pretty sure that there's a "point." There has always, no matter how stupid my life has been at times, been a point. So there must be one, but I'm danged if I can figure out what it's supposed to be.

I suppose that's why I've been writing less for the last month or two. The stuff I had been writing about--the stuff that ticked me off, the stuff that set an obsession in motion, even the stuff that made me smile--all seems to be strangely useless. My research has become more rare, less engaging, and strange enough that even when I find an "answer," that is, something that looks like an important thing, it has come to feel like no one remembers the question.

The only thing that has been making my list of stuff to do on a consistent basis, besides the stuff that I really can't avoid, like paying the bills and keeping up the day to day household stuff, is working in my garden. Each morning, as I look out the window for the first time, as soon as it's light enough to see, I feel the call. And, as soon as possible, I'm out the door to water and feed, pluck spent blooms, pull weeds, pinch back leggy plants, rout out squash bugs, spread compost, eat tomatoes and strawberries and beans pulled straight off the plant without even washing them, and plant more 'rescues' from the garden center. Rescues are plants that are no longer pretty enough to entice the average consumer to buy them, so they sell them for just about nothing to co-dependent keepers of strays like me who are willing to fuss awhile to see the bloom again. I do best these days in my garden. The answers I'm getting there are pretty straightforward, just like the questions. The plants are drooping--water. The plants aren't blooming--more fish emulsion. The plants are being eaten by grasshoppers--buh-bye grasshoppers. There are too many tomatoes--make salsa.

Other answers are floating about as well:

-Leave each other the hell alone.

-Say a big, vehement NO to the people who spend their lives trying to scare us of e coli, or shingles, or erectile dysfunction, or nuclear holocaust, or illegal immigrants, or radical islamists, or whatever, so that they can cruise easily to more and more capricious, ridiculous power over our food, our health, our government, and our money.

-We are all part of the same organism: the earth. When we attack each other, we're attacking aspects of ourselves. Our obsession with hurting other people to relieve our fear about our circumstances is the same psychologically as a cutter, who feels better when their own blood runs.

When do you suppose folks are going to ask the questions?

Spirograph and How the World Works

Remember the Spirograph? I had one when I was a kid. For those of you too young or too deprived to have ever seen the critter, Spirograph was a set of different sizes plastic gears with holes in them. You put the gear on another piece with teeth on it that meshed with the gears, then stuck a pen in one of the holes in the gear, and move the gear around and around, drawing these cool shapes and geometric patterns without lifting the pen. You could use different colors of pen, and make very pretty designs. There was supposed to be all kinds of complicated geometry and stuff that went into it, but it was fun anyway. Here's a pic of the exact set I had:

They still make them, but the new ones are oddly unsatisfying to me. THIS is the Spirograph. The man who posted this pic is very proud of his Spirograph set--it's not even for sale. If you follow that link, you can see inside the box and some other versions of the set too.

Anyway, perhaps I was just easily amused, but it did amaze me how one continuous line could make all those designs, and you could draw pretty flowers just by putting stems and leaves on the shapes you made. It seemed somehow that everything was connected when you used it, and now of course, I know that's right.

Today, I ran across a chart that reminded me of a Spirograph drawing. It certainly shows how things are connected, and not in the happy way I felt when I was drawing flowers.

I might get a nasty letter from a lawyer if I post the actual image here, so click this link to see the article in Business Insider and the chart. It shows how fewer than two hundred people connect and conrol just about every major corporation, media outlet, government, central bank, 'charitable' foundation, think tank, policy-making organization, notable political campaign, and ice cream parlor. Well, no, that's hyperbole--ice cream is apparently still independent. But nearly everything else is run by these high-rolling masters of the universe. Make sure you think about Spirograph the next time you're wondering why everything always seems to take power away from regular folks and give it to the crazies who want to mine, drill, imprison, exploit, and/or bomb everything and everyone on the face of the planet.

Then, go get some ice cream.

The Majority?

If you're still thinking that that you live in a democracy, you might want to watch this video. It shows how electronic voting can be manipulated with access to only the memory card of the scanner. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that we probably haven't had a clean election in years, and we're not gonna get one this year either.

American Ingenuity

Wow, who ever would have thought that stuff could be so simple? But leave it to an American. In light of the NDAA, the targeted killing of Americans abroad, without due process, just because someone says they're a terrorist (of course, recently the government also had a toddler on the terrorist no-fly list), and the drip-drip of erosion of our civil, human, and Constitutional rights, one might be excused if one thought that things are just too far down the road to do anything about. But one clever American has come up with a solution: a petition. And not just any petition, a Do Not Kill List.

It's real. It's on the White House Website. And it basically asks that signers be put on a list, kind of like the Do Not Call list, except it requests that there be a list of people who don't want our government to kill us without due process. Here's the actual text from the petition page at whitehouse.gov:

The New York Times reports that President Obama has created an official “kill list” that he uses to personally order the assassination of American citizens. Considering that the government already has a “Do Not Call” list and a “No Fly” list, we hereby request that the White House create a “Do Not Kill” list in which American citizens can sign up to avoid being put on the president’s “kill list” and therefore avoid being executed without indictment, judge, jury, trial or due process of law.

The idea is already drawing coverage in the world media. It's a capital idea. I'm signing. I think you should too. And I think it would be just lovely if instead of 25,000 signatures by June 29, there were 25 million. Maybe our illustrious "leaders" would start to feel a little nervous about a few million peasants showing up outside their Washington apartments with pitchforks.