Dear Readers,
Not for the first time, I break a long silence. Perhaps my longest silence ever.
In the past, I’ve written about being busy, lots of excuses for not writing, etc. All the experts on blogging say it is an error to not post regularly. I am in error.
Continue reading “A Long Silence”Greetings, earthlings.
I am a baby-boomer. There are more of us in the world than any of the rest of you generations X, Y, Z, Me, You, Millenial, whatever.
We were a progressive generation that changed the world. We created the sexual revolution, we fuelled the American Civil Rights movement, we invented rock festivals. Hell, we invented rock (actually we didn’t, it was Black blues groups in the 40’s who did that, but we take all the credit).
We created the sixties and seventies.
We had the summer of love.
We tried all kinds of soft drugs, and a few hard ones, and praised their ability to change our spiritual perspectives.
With or without drugs, we opened our minds to Asian philosophies and spiritual practices, and discovered that without them, we probably really couldn’t have quantum physics.
We discovered ecology (it was always there, just most people hadn’t noticed before)
Above all, we were free, free, free.
Continue reading “Talking About My Generation”News flash: The very day of this writing, former president of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso announced that he has been hired by the banking firm, Goldman Sachs, in a “non-executive advisory role.” Goldman Sachs was the bank that advised former Greek governments how to paper over their excessive debt, and then speculated on that same debt. José Manuel Barroso was EU commission president at the time. You can understand why the average European citizen doesn’t like the EU when news of this sort comes out just after the Brexit vote.
Oh, yes – Barosso’s main job will be to mitigate the impact of Brexit – hah!
Note: This is not part 2 of Brexit, as I promised – that will come soon. I think this is needed first. Warning: it’s very long, this post is – but read it anyway.
In the flurry of post-Brexit hand wringing, I think there is an important point to be made, and the leaders of Europe aren’t going to make it, so I will (never say I don’t have hubris…).
Yes, I accuse each and every European government, regardless of its political colour, of deliberately fomenting hate for the European Union among its nationals. Most European newspapers and magazines also bear responsibility for this.
I left Facebook on June 16, 2013.
I hated to leave – ever since I’d been in touch with former classmates, and people from my original home town, an extraordinarily special place, I have really cherished my Facebook contacts, old and new, as my network has grown and thrived.
I had to do it, though. I couldn’t stand the hypocrisy any longer.
I’m not an academic. I haven’t done any research. I just observe the world and say what I see, and what I see is this:
In the late 1930’s, two significant political figures discovered new technology.
At the time, the new technology was called Radio. And both of these political figures discovered, pretty much in parallel, its power and influence.
One of these figures was Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
The other was New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Continue reading “Doing Well by Doing Good”
There is so much debate going on about whether the guy who shot Rep. Giffords was influenced by communication such as Sarah Palin’s crosshairs, or was just a lone nut case.
Friends, IT DOESN’T MATTER!
Even a lone nut case is affected by environmental factors, and the communicational environment in the U.S.A. has been poisoned for a good 20 years now.
It’s in the air, and anyone can feel it.
When you live away and you come for a visit, you feel it so thick you can cut it with a dull plastic end of a lifelike plastic Kalatchnikoff barrel.
When it’s in the air, the nut cases will pick it up.
So will others.
Who cares if Loughner read Palin’s (or other extremists’) site or not? These sites didn’t cause the shooting, they created the atmosphere that helped someone decide that it was OK to shoot.
Content matters.
Rant of a Humanist Nerd 