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Thomas Jode,
Gosh, the feeling I got from Sagan, his writing, movie and TV shows was that he was a very spiritual person, though not necessarily religious.
Zero G.,
Your last post reminds me that the "Kill Bill" movies were just shown again this last week. (They are more of my guilty pleasures, though I'm not sure why.)
I guess one thing that I didn't agree with Carl Sagan, if he disagreed at all, was the lack of spirituality in the values he portrayed in science at the time.
MEDICARE - Why not include an amendment in the health care bill to allow any person, any age, that is denied coverage by a private insurer to buy into Medicare?
I am a member of The Planetary Society and I truly admire the minds and work of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. However, I have come to change my mind about the "We Are Here" gold records on the Voyager spacecraft. I keep thinking, "What if "V"-like (malevolent) aliens find it?
http://blogs.coventrytelegraph.net/thegeekfiles/Vser2.jpg
I hardly think that it is simply Us vs. Them. It is all Us, and those who against Us are confused, because the are us. As everyone has been saying, the confused need help.
What do you do with a sick person? You heal them.
Remember when Pres. Carter promised to tell the truth about UFOs.
Quark,
There are many paths to enlightenment, and after enlightenment, it is back to life as usual.
As is said: Before enlightenment chopping wood and carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood and carrying water.
Quark,
I'm sure he tries to.
Thom,
Please use Akido in your conversations with conservatives from the right-wing think tanks. These would be lessons to help us use this idea.
Re: ETs
Remember this?
"Vatican Acknowledges Possibility Of Extraterrestrial Alien Life"
http://aphroditeastrology.com/2008/05/vatican-acknowledges-possibility-o...
Zero G.,
I have mentioned on this blog that I never got high --- I tried to smoke MaryJane once during my college years but I, like The Big Dog, couldn't inhale!
I did try a mild form of "speed" to finish work before graduation, but decided not to continue that because I liked it too much and didn't want to be dependent on it.
I may have been unwittingly self-medicating, though, since I have found out in recent years that I have ADD and ritalin and adderall have helped (though I don't use them regularly, either, for the same reason.)
I have to question the rationale of Thom’s about-face on the public option yesterday, beyond the issues yet to be fleshed out—and not just the details of the rather vague Senate proposal to replace the public option. I agree that it is a step (even if a baby step) in the right direction to reduce the eligibility age for Medicare. But it is a mistake to think that this will result in a wholesale run to retirement (or motivate someone to create a business), and the subsequent job vacuum to be filled by the unemployed. First, many of the unemployed are older workers anyways. Second, very few of the newly eligible would want to retire; many military retirees have civilian jobs because either they are bored, or their retirement check is insufficient the pay the bills with. Third, most people can’t afford to retire at 55 because their pensions are based on the number of years they work; stock-based and other yield-based retirement plans are worth the amount of money put into those plans—so unless someone is a millionaire, retiring early is a risky option. Fourthly, and not leastly, Social Security benefits are based upon the amount of money you pay into the system and the age you choose to retire; for Thom’s idea to work, the eligibility age for Social Security would also have to drop to 55; then the question will be whether the benefit is sufficient enough not to force the “retiree” to look for a job to supplement it. And the next question is how do you pay for an increase in eligibility for both Medicare and Social Security. And then, of course, is the Republican opposition to any change at all in the Medicare eligibility age.
I don’t know why, but I’ve never mentioned this health care-related tale. Quite some years ago I was hired on by a company that offered somewhat generous health benefits at low cost to the worker. I signed up for it, but I had to wait an entire calendar month for the insurance to kick-in. Not 30 days from date of hire, but one complete month—that is even if you were hired on the fifth day of a given month, you would not be officially covered until after the following month was over. It was in this no-man’s land that I found myself in a very uncomfortable medical situation: the skin under my left jaw began to get puffy, and over a week it continued to bloat and cause some pain whenever I tried to open my mouth. I knew something was seriously amiss, but I still had to wait another two weeks for my insurance to kick-in.
So I thought I would tough it out. Another week passed, and by then I couldn’t fit a straw in my mouth. It was just three days before the end of the month, but I couldn’t wait any longer, the pain was so unbearable. I found myself in the emergency room of Harborview Medical Center, the main public hospital in Seattle where all the bums go. When my number was finally called, the check-in nurse apparently thought I was just some punk who was slugged in the jaw by another punk, and didn’t take at all seriously my condition. I sat in the waiting room in absolute agony for several hours until I was at last called into a cubicle for an examination. The first doctor who looked at me was completely befuddled, and called in a “specialist.” He peered into the tiny hole that was my mouth, and determined that I had a hole in a back molar, and through it developed an abscess of epic proportions. You should not have waited so long, he told me. I was wheeled into emergency surgery shortly thereafter, and I still have the scar underneath my jaw to prove it. Fortunately, the abscess had not spread; such abscesses kill many young children who do not have access to proper dental care.
When I received the bill, it was five figures for a four day stay; it could have been more, had I not escaped my hospital bed wearing cardboard and plastic bags over my feet; my shoes had mysteriously disappeared, and no one claimed to know where they were. Naturally, the insurance company laughed when presented with the bill—it was, after all, a “pre-existing” condition.
Zero G.,
Apparently filmmaker Jay Weidner made a movie, Timewave 2013, about Terence McKenna's theories:
http://www.timewave2013.com/bio-jay.html
DRichards,
Re: my sending of your post to elected officials
Ironically, part of the password to send an email to the White House today was the word "Gomorrah." 'Just thought that was amusing...
DRichards,
Several times a week I cut and paste parts of this blog and send it to Pres. Obama and my representatives in Washington, D.C.
I just did that with your previous piece "Giant Banks Are Trying to Make Bailouts Permanent."
Thanks for posting that!
Quark,
I learned so much about so much, "because I got high!" Most of Terrence's earlier works dealt with psilocybin and I was particularly indebted to him for a little book he wrote under the psuedonym "O. T. Oss, O. N. Oeric."
Anyway that was long ago, and beyond the statute of limitations, I'm sure.
One of his theories dealt with human/entheongenic interaction as a possible leading cause of language, and religion...in the beginning there was the word, after all.
As I understand the Mayan calender, and the Hindu yuga cycles, they are coordinated with the precession of the equinoxes which culminate in 2012.
I never really got my head around time-wave zero.
@Quark RE "enlighten the teabag groups":
I know that I sing the utopian and cry the dearth BUT can an automaton be fortified with ‘mens rea’? Intentionality is sacred and separates us from flatworm but I do not see access to communication with folk incapable of the rational. They appear to lack even the ability to form access to the basic frameworks required.
I KNOW that I am a brain snob, but . . .
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/
Giant Banks Are Trying to Make Bailouts Permanent
According to the following Democratic and Republican congress members, economists, financial experts and journalists, the "too big to fails" (with help from bank-friendly voices in Congress) are trying to make the bailouts permanent:
Congressman Brad Sherman, who serves on the House Financial Services Committee, and was formerly an accountant, and other Democrats in Congress
Congressman Spencer Bachus, the ranking Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, and other Republicans in Congress
Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker
Senior Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron
Peter Wallison, financial policy study analyst at the American Enterprise Institute
Veteran financial writer William Greider
Journalist Matt Taibbi
Unless we break up the too big to fails, they will again make speculative gambles that drive them into insolvency (as they have again and again), and the government will bail them out over and over - perhaps secretly - sending the American taxpayers the tab (through taxes or inflation).
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/
Maybe U.S. presidents shouldn't get peace prizes
This morning I wrote a package of two articles for the Daily News about President Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize he accepted in Oslo this morning. You can read the main story here -- in a sidebar I argued that the president is probably a lousy choice for a peace award....
Scott,
Maybe the idea should be to try to enlighten the teabag groups...not necessarily merge with them.
I think Thom is really smart and insightful, however, his idea that the populist left can merge with the populist right is, in my opinion, not possible and there is a very good reason for this. John Dean in his book "Conservatives Without Conscience" goes into detail about the conservative right in this country, based largely on Dr. Bob Altmeyer's work on Authoritarians of over 30 years.
Altmeyer estimates that 25% of the U.S. population are Authoritarins.
:Authoritarians are: Authoritarian followers usually support the established authorities in their society, such as government officials and traditional religious leaders. Such people have historically been the “proper” authorities in life, the time-honored, entitled, customary leaders, and that means a lot to most authoritarians. Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:
1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in
their society;
2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
3) a high level of conventionalism.
In North America people who submit to the established authorities to
extraordinary degrees often turn out to be political conservatives, 2 so you can call them “right-wingers” both in my new-fangled psychological sense and in the usual political sense as well. But someone who lived in a country long ruled by Communists and who ardently supported the Communist Party would also be one of my psychological right-wing authoritarians even though we would also say he was a political left-winger. So a right-wing authoritarian follower doesn’t necessarily have conservative political views. Instead he’s someone who readily submits to the established authorities in society, attacks others in their name, and is highly conventional. It’s an aspect of his personality, not a description of his politics. Rightwing authoritarianism is a personality trait, like being characteristically bashful or
happy or grumpy or dopey."
Who does Thom think the Tea Party members are? Who does he think the Social Dominators who are directing the Tea Party members are blaming for all that has happened?
Zero G.,
I think you mentioned Terence McKenna the other day. Something in my brain "pinged" but I couldn't remember what I once must have known about him ('read something about him a long time ago.) He and his brother Dennis (a professor at the U. of Minnesota) were discussed on the History Channel last night. According to the piece, the two ingested Amazon plants with the chemical DMT, a hallucinogen which supposedly expanded their consciousness. One brother claimed to psychically travel back in time, while the other travelled forward. Terence used the I Ching and what he called "periods of novelty" in his timewave theory, similar to the world view of the Mayans, Hopi and Hindus, who based their philosophies on the idea of recurring events (or "end of the world" and rebuilding of a new world events) which they claim are predictable. McKenna came up with the same cycles through mathematical formulas.
Do I understand this correctly? What are your thoughts on this?
Thom, care to discuss Dr. Sagan's mischaracterization of Dr. Velikovsky's views with Dr. Duryan?
Listening to Barack Obama mentioning Ghandi and MLK Jr. and then championing the state’s right and rightness to use force to enforce the peace.
Remember, MLK’s words:
“My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years — especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. ”
Obama’s speech validates the use of force, and a government's ability to claim a rightness of cause. He also claims that the use of American force has been a counter to a force of evil in the world, rather than an instrument to open unwilling markets and foreign lands to extraction of resources. He claims a false history, one that denies Mossedegh, Allende, Lumumba and many more. He denies, “War is a Racket” as told by Smedley Butler.
Now, I am not quite so naive as to argue that Ghandi’s non-violence would have defeated the Nazis. But as Nietzche observed:
Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
One might be reminded of Tom Lerher’s reaction when Henry the K won the Nobel Peace prize.
It’s enough to make one’s head spin. And as the Grateful Dead once observed, “The faster you go, the rounder you get!”