Visions of the apocalypse —
Sodom and Gomorrah cites all ablaze
My mind’s eye sees in a glimpse.
Just raise time’s perennial haze.
The Dark Ages come again.
Frightened humanity shudders within.
Disease and strife abound,
Wailing voices the only sound.
If this story should ever relate,
My next breath I would gladly forsake.
My grave a preferred domicile,
For mankind becomes an imbecile.
Facebook is becoming Porn Central. Russians and Facebook — that’s getting all the attention, even though there’s quite a bit of doubt just how widespread the Russian Facebook impact was on the presidential election. But Facebook is slowing sliding into a pretty deep cesspool of rather raunchy pornography, and unlike the tiny drop in the bucket of the Russian influence on Facebook, pornography on Facebook is becoming a tsunami. Yet there’s no media coverage of that story at all. Why? And you’d think by now there would be an uproar by parents, given the salacious exposure to their children, but there hasn’t been a peep. Again, why is that?
When you are into nutritious, plant-based eating, you can’t help but take a peek at what foods other people in the checkout line are buying. I was really shocked today when I observed what this old man who was just in front of me was buying. There were no vegetables or fruit at all — zero, none. He bought a large amount of soda — a six pack of sugared Coke and a dozen of those little bottles of diet Ginger Ale. There were two large bottles of wine, a loaf of white bread, a quart of ice cream, and a package of chocolates that claimed to contain some peanut butter. That was it.
The man was only slightly overweight but somewhat stooped, possibly from early onset osteoporosis; his skin was splotchy with rashes on the face; and his thinning hair was lack luster with large clumps of hair missing…
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You don’t have to be Walter Mitty
To come up with a pretty little ditty.
You don’t need the approval of a committee
To write down verse very witty.
Just use imagination itty-bitty,
And you will compose something nifty.
You don’t need to employ outlaw banditti.
You don’t need to call a subcommittee.
You don’t need anyone else’s pity.
Just imitate the antics of your little kitty,
And throw the dice in dear old New York City —
That’s the nitty-gritty.
So hippity hoppity too
And bippity boppity boo.
Serendipity truly loves you.
In the middle of my back there is an itch.
I twist and squirm but cannot reach it — it’s a bitch!
Mind over matter, philosophers say, melts that witch,
But, try as I might, I really could use a switch.
The big political story in the United States is becoming less and less about the various bogus political attacks against Trump, and more and more about the splintering of the Democratic Party into two mutually distinct and potentially incompatible camps — the traditional Democrats (who have held power) and the so-called “progressive” wing of the party whose members tout themselves as “socialists”. The fissure between the two groups is growing larger and larger, to the point where one might conjecture a complete rupture of the party where the progressives break off to form their own new party.
Recently, a senator claimed he was having his Spartacus moment, indicating that he was going to the mat for some principle, risking being expelled from the Senate because of his unruly behavior. That was hardly the case. It turned out to be quite a joke on this “brave” politician, as the supposed confidential information he said he was revealing at his own risk had already been approved to be released. Hardly Spartacus; more like unintentional, egg-in-your-face comedy.
But there has been a true American Spartacus in our history, even though he himself was not a slave nor a black man. His name was John Brown, an abolitionist but with a puritanical, visceral hatred of that “peculiar institution,” American slavery.
Financed by a cabal called the “Secret Six,” a small group of well-off abolitionists in New England, John Brown went about acquiring 950 pikes and 198 Sharps Rifles for a planned…
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Where were you before birth?
And after death?
In the same non-existence?
You pass from one into another non-existence.
No choice, pre-planned.
One loses only the present moment in death.
One gains only the present moment in birth.
You are a captive of it,
For there is nothing else –
There is no future
And no past…
Illusions.
Let your mind roam free today.
Let it leap with associations.
Let it inspire with originality.
Let it frolic in the lush pastures of pure thought.
Let it rejoice, complete and entire unto itself.
For we are silly little things,
Trapped by a narrow existence,
Snared by time and space.
Yes, “a little soul carrying a corpse.”
Indeed, Epictetus.
But your mind, that is free —
Free as a bird.
There is a whole class of individuals in the United States who refer to themselves as “preppers.” They are preparing for major catastrophic events that will bring our civilization to its knees. They do this by storing a food supply, learning how to actually grow food, having a means to purify water, having a “bug-out bag” of necessary supplies in case they have to leave where they reside, developing anti-home invasion strategies in the event that the hunger-driven mob tries to break into their dwelling to get at their supplies, and generally training how to survive based solely on their own skills and devices.
There are many scenarios that preppers are afraid of, but one in particular keeps surfacing. It is the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that has the potential to utterly destroy our entire power grid, and make every device with a computer chip inoperable (think your phone, your car, and all those household appliances). As a result of this total shutdown of our electronic world, a massive EMP would virtually eliminate food distribution as well as end the availability of clean tap water.
The EMP has the potential to destroy our entire power grid because it can cause a complete destruction of the transformers that our power grid currently depends on to operate, and these transformers are complex machinery that are difficult and very expensive to replace, particularly if there is no power.
An EMP can happen one of two ways. There can be such a massive solar flare that the the Sun causes an EMP on unprotected earth. There is some evidence that this actually happened to a certain degree in the 19th century when, in all likelihood, it was such a Sun-induced EMP that disrupted a good deal of the telegraph system. The other possibility is a large nuclear blast high in the atmosphere over the United States. That also, theoretically, could generate a massive EMP that could take down our entire power grid.
So you would have millions of people in cities without any food or potable water and with no clue how to grow food or find and purify water. Just imagine the immediate and unavoidable mayhem that would lead to. The preppers already have and are actively preparing for it.
People have varying opinions about survivalists like the preppers. Some concede that to take the actions preppers are taking is prudent, while others believe that the preppers are loonies and what they fear can’t possibly happen. But the trouble with the preppers are loonies argument is that an EMP can happen — it does seem feasible.
However, my issue concerning an EMP event is this: if we know in advance that the transformers upon which our entire electronic civilization is dependent are vulnerable to an EMP, why don’t we focus on developing some kind of technology that would shield them? You would think we would make every conceivably effort to protect these vital pieces of technology if they are truly the essential underpinning of our entire way of life. Ditto all the computer chips we put into everything.
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Generations come and go —
The only permanence the flow.
Little waves lap upon the shore;
They thrive a moment and are no more.
Your time on earth a blink —
Even your memory long extinct.
So how to live the issue
When life itself mere tissue?
