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…

It seems that chance encounters often offer the best opportunity for seeing the world from another point of view….and so it was with a 10 minute cab ride I took in Boston today! 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!

One of my Brethren cuts wood - no protection, of course!

How to get clean in the middle of WV with no running water.

Yes, there were times in my past life when I could be considered a hippie – and a wood burning hippie at that, since that was the only possible source of heat out in the boonies of Lewis County, WV.

We found plenty of wood, sawed it with two-man saws and chainsaws…never learned much about seasoning, as our needs were immediate, so into the stoves it went.
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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.

Yes, the word debate is in quotes…..because, honestly, there is no debate. We have been screwed by unbridled capitalism…the so-called “free market” which allows our Corporate Health Care System to become something that the entire civilized world laughs at……while we allow our own citizens to suffer and declare bankruptcy by the millions. 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…

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…