New View Askew

Okay so we’ve all seen pictures of pretty dogs that make us smile and go oooo and ahhh, right?  But have you ever seen anything as cute as my Prudie? Of course not! Yet in a world that is clearly on the highway to hell Prudence doesn’t care. And why is that you may ask? Well of course I’ll tell you! I read somewhere that one of the things that makes dogs (okay, and pretty much all other creatures as well) so loving and equanimous about life is that they have no concept of time. I know, I know, we all understand that dogs can’t tell time, an hour or a day is basically the same to them. What I mean is that they have no idea about the past or future, they only understand the present. That means, of course, that they also don’t know about the great bugaboo of humans, mortality. You know, if we weren’t constantly obsessing about the fact that we’re all going to tip over at some point our current life could be really . . . swell. Think how simple life could be that if instead ...

Agnotology : “Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth.” From Barry Ritholtz, “Big Picture Blog” (a truly brilliant source of information you can’t find yourself.) Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is “the study of   culturally constructed ignorance .” “People always assume that if someone doesn’t know something, it’s because they haven’t paid attention or haven’t yet figured it out,” Proctor says. “But ignorance also comes from people literally   suppressing truth —or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what’s true and what’s not.”    (emphasis added) Fairly amazing, and when it comes to certain issues, its dead on.” Dear Leader here. I dredged this up because the conventions these past two weeks have reminded me how sorely screwed up our political and societal issues are. We have selected...

Foolishly I started thinking about my recent FB post about making America great again (hey, that would make a great campaign slogan!) and a couple things occurred to me.                                                       Deja vu all over again! First, what the hell does that mean, to be great again? Obviously it implies that things aren’t so great now. So then when were they great? What should we be aspiring to? The fifties and the fakey Father Knows Best lifestyle? The sixties when we baby boomers were running wild and Vietnam raged on? The seventies with disco and Whip Inflation Now? The eighties with Ronald Reagan, Star Wars and Iran Contra scandal (and being great again?) The nineties and Bill Clinton and . . . oh never mind, you get my point. To some extent I think as individuals most of us have some romantic attachment t...

July Morning - Uriah Heep Sorry, just couldn't resist this. Men of a certain age who spent time in yet another country that we tried to bring democracy to so many years ago will certainly remember this tune - especially on a July morning. I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard this song - in Bangkok on R&R.                                   AC -130 Gunship somewhere over Vietnam Not much has changed in the world except maybe the haircuts.  I wish I could be around to see what songs the guys and gals from our Iraq and Afghanistan adventures remember when they're old and gray like me. But if it's the "Thong Song" then I don't want to know. Music really is the only real time machine that we humans can depend on. They say that taste and smell can really spike a memory and I'm sure that's true but it doesn't matter what you are doing or what you did, I guarantee t...

Come on, Thelma, get the kids packed we're gonna go see Noah's Ark! I have got to make some new travel plans for the summer, Noah’s Ark is opening up in (ta da!) Kentucky. By that I mean it’s the real ark. Well, okay a replica of it but this is the real deal - It’s 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits which, I think, is pretty big so it must be real! I know that there are some out there who don’t think that the Ark story is true but really, how difficult is it to believe a guy and his kids were able to herd seven pairs of every freaking creature on earth onto a boat and take care of them for 40 days? Sheesh, come on! Anyway, the guy who built this is a former science teacher from Australia so it must be true. (Former might be a key word.) In this exhibit, apparently there are also little statues of many of the creatures that old Noah took on board (they couldn’t display them all because there wasn’t enough room. No, wait, hmmm.) Well, anyway, they di...

Here we are, wracked once again by violence, anger, sadness and confusion. And I, once again, have little to offer. Why should I? As much as we Americans love simple solutions – just build an app or invent a new machine! – certain problems are immune to simple solutions. If they were they would have already been solved and this disconnect between blacks and whites is certainly one of those type problems. There is obviously a lot of angst, anxiety and anger in the country – and the world - that has been building for years. It seems, however, that this particular issue predates all that; it is certainly related but I think it’s different. It’s clear that something is going on given the number of blacks that are being killed in officer related shootings. Statistics show that 509 people have been shot and killed by police so far in 2016. 95% were male and 24% are black. Keep in mind that roughly 13% of Americans are black. To say this disparity is strictly racial profilin...

The End of the Summer Affair Well, there goes that warm, fuzzy feeling from the 4 th of July. You know, I was feeling forced to comment on the “shocking” (sarcasm on) decision not to indict Hillary Clinton for her “extreme carelessness” with the whole email thing but then I said to myself, why, who cares what I think? The whole thing stinks, both candidates stink and the opinions of all the talking heads stink. Especially the talking heads. So why should I add my stinking opinions?! I can’t think of anything that will make me feel any better about it let alone anyone else. Especially when I have something really important to talk about today. It is with a heavy heart that I must share that I fear she has been cheating on me. Oh, I’ve suspected it for some time, all the telltale signs were there: visiting me at odd hours then disappearing, telling me how great I am and I’m the only one – and then doing her best to crush my ego. And the oldest trick in the book; she...

Happy Independence (from Fear) Day! You will find very few people who are more cynical about the direction of our country – and for very good reason - than me. Yet, oddly, you will also find very few people who are more optimistic about how it will turn out. Why? Because America has always been able to figure out how to solve our problems, one way or the other. As Winston Churchill said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” We face a ton of problems at home and abroad yet it’s not like we haven’t faced this and worse before. We survived the Civil War, the Great Depression, WWI, WWII, Korea and Viet Nam. And we will survive ISIS and every other assault on modern life that comes our way too; that’s what we do. I know that most of us are disgusted with the direction the country has taken and the choices we have for leaders and rightly so – in a country of 330 million, these are the two best candidates we can come u...

Experts? We don't need no stinking experts! I was thinking about writing another letter to the editor (so far they haven’t asked me to stop writing but I expect it any day!) It was in regard to the now famous “Brexit” vote and the confusion swirling around it. It seems that both sides of the argument did a fair amount of fear mongering (read: lying) about what it would mean. My letter was going to be about the fact that it’s really hard for any of us to tell when we are being lied to anymore since truth and beliefs have either come to mean the same thing or, more sadly, perhaps neither means anything. And apparently it doesn’t even mean anything if you are a so called “expert.” Experts said things would be terrible while other experts said it would be great. It’s too soon to know for sure but it seems to me that only one view can be true but I don’t know. What I do know is that the internet and social media has allowed ALL of us to become “experts” (despite lacki...