Craig's Fire

….in this case, the Beast being us and Beauty being what we describe as such. I heard an NPR show on How Pleasure Works and it got me thinking….. Read More…

Pulled these gems off an interview with the director about his new movie – which itself is about the Grim Reaper:
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“I find it a lousy deal. There is no advantage to getting older,” he says, raising more laughs.
“I’m 74 now and you don’t get smarter, you don’t get wiser, you don’t get more mellow, you don’t get more kindly – nothing happens.
“But your back hurts more, you get more indigestion, your eye sight isn’t as good and you need a hearing aid. It’s a bad business getting older and I would advise you not to do it if you can avoid it.”
Throughout the film each of the characters are forced to make big decisions about their lives.
“One must have one’s delusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and too clearly life does become unbearable because it’s a pretty grim enterprise,” Allen says.
“I do feel that it is a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself.”
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End Quotes – there are some true words in there!
Or at least that is the way I have been feeling as of late!

Just finished reading:
The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Four Visionaries Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America.
This is the inside story of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, Andrew Weil and others who kicked off much of the 60′s with their interests in mind-bending drugs, self-introspection and holistic health. These stories are unfamiliar to most who didn’t live through that era. I’m not even sure that those who did not directly experience some of these times would be able to graph many of the changes which these folks spearheaded.
I’ll leave it at this – it’s a great book for anyone with interest in the 60′s. As the author notes, many of the concepts put forward by these pioneers are now part of everyday life – from the mind-body connection to the meditative spirit – from the idea that we are spiritual creatures to the importance of community and from the idea of Earth Day and Environmentalism to the ideas of sustainability….most of it hit the greater culture in the crucible of those times.

Podcasts: I really enjoy listening to certain episodes of NPR’s Fresh Air. Even then the particular subject is not something which seems of interest, listening through can be very educational. One recent episode detailed how one of the leaders of the Skinhead movement become “converted” back to a normal and sane member of society – fascinating!

Another interest of my is innovation and entrepreneurship, especially in the fields of technology (google, etc.) and energy (anything from clean water to clean energy).
I highly recommend a podcast series put out by Stanford University called Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders. This series features some of the top minds in the world giving talks to Stanford students. Listening to these audio programs will immediately increase both your IQ and your optimism!

It takes a lot to piss me off – but Jefferson is the darling and hero of many “normal” conservative, and certainly among the top 5 founders – maybe Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Adams………Franklin, etc.

But the far right Texas School book people just decided to write him OUT of history as far as his importance….
Their reasoning? Obviously that he was a Deist and a man of the Enlightenment – in other words, he failed their religious test!

“Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas….
The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards. We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/13/texas-textbook-massacre-u_n_498003.html

Why does it seem that Texas, a state which 1/2 the folks want to leave the Union anyway, has such an outsized (See: GW, etc.) effect on this country?

They are also removing stuff about civil rights and lots of other things the far right doesn’t like to think about.
Sorry, my conservative friends, but I don’t want to hear you tell me in the future how we are falling further and further behind the rest of the world…when we can’t even teach our kids about honest history.

Mechanic’s Mind - a term I have not heard before – and yet one that would seem to be obvious. I have never read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, yet the title brings to mind a definition possibly close to Mechanics Mind.

For the uninitiated, the closest thing might be the 1963 Movie Classic “The Man with the X-Ray Eyes“. This is the story of a normal man who started to see through things. At first, he only saw through the first layer…such as clothes or a wall. But as his powers increased, he started to see the breakdown of EVERYTHING to the extent that it all eventually became molecular! Read More…

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795 Read More…

A society or economy or country built entirely on the ethic of survival of the fittest simply will not work. Here are some examples…

A talented and strong employee stays employed due to his experience and capabilities. But what if he falls off a ladder next week, hits his head and loses a good part of his cognition? Would we then tell him to become homeless or that he does not deserve a job? Read More…

Here is an interesting article on a man who made it in life – and then came to an understanding of what he had and what he didn’t.

Here is a paragraph which expresses well the way I feel when I’ve been on vacation in certain places:
“The tipping point came while he was on a three-week holiday with his wife to islands of Hawaii.
“It was the biggest shock in my life, when I realised how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five star lifestyle is,” he said. “In those three weeks, we spent all the money you could possibly spend. But in all that time, we had the feeling we hadn’t met a single real person – that we were all just actors. The staff played the role of being friendly and the guests played the role of being important and nobody was real.”

As mentioned, I often feel the same. In fact, Martha and I were sent to Jamaica on a FREE trip by one of our vendors way back in 1986…..and I was unable to enjoy myself due to the wide and obvious gulf between the residents and the tourists. That has held relatively true to this day…not that I don’t enjoy luxury (I very much do!), but I don’t like going places where I am the center of attention as opposed to just visiting. An example might be that I would prefer touring Montreal or London rather than being enclosed in a fenced “all inclusive” places which was secured from the locals “for my protection”.

I’m not judging those , obviously numerous, who can feel comfortable in those situations. I am admittedly over sensitive in many ways, and this is one of them!

Pizza – is most definitely one indication (beside beer) that God Loves Us.
But not just any pizza will do for Martha or I. We are most definitely full fledged Pizza Snobs. If you want to talk New Haven Pizza, Artisan Pizza, Vermont Flatbread or others more pure forms of the art…we are there! But Pizza Hut, Dominos (really, not too bad) or Papa Johns will not do… Read More…

They know nothing!
I’m talking about the business media in general…and specifically, all those pundits always waxing poetic about facebook being the biggest competitor to google, twitter being a competitor to both, etc. Read More…