Translate

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Donald Trump As The Tasmanian Devil

Trump, ever the consummate 'bad boy', understands that in order to be constantly acknowledged he must stand out from the crowd. He proved that in the presidential primaries. Even his outlandish hair style and orange skin are a form of marketing called 'branding'. And some people are often caught up in fads and such, enough of his "over-the-top" hype might actually tip the scales in America's Rust Belt where an inordinate percentage of disavowed voters who don't "feel" like they've had enough of a say in things live.

Anyway, here's a very short Bugs Bunny clip that illustrates my point:

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Dinosaurs: Museum of Ancient Life in Lehi, Utah

If you are interested in seeing magnificent fossil displays of dinosaur creatures, then one place I highly recommend is the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point in Lehi, Utah between Salt Lake City and Provo. 

https://www.thanksgivingpoint.org/visit/museumofancientlife

If you're interested in reading about dinosaurs in a fun way, then preview the link below:
Discover magazine articles on dinosaurs 
(over 313 articles)
http://discovermagazine.com/tags/dinosaurs

Stressed Out From Telemarketer Calls?

Are you stressed out about telemarketing calls? If so, then I suggest turning the ringer off and only picking up if a recognized caller starts to leave a message (set answering machine to kick in after minimal number of rings). Your friends and family may even decide to opt for this strategy after you report to them how it works for you. Also, having Caller ID is another aid, especially if the phone's caller ID audio tells you who's calling so that you don't have to look at the digital display (this allows you to leave ringer on and turned down). Though registering your number with donotcall.gov is good, it's minimally effective. The best bet is to become a dead end for unwanted callers (unanswered phones are unproductive).

I did all of the above and it provided so much relief that it encouraged me to buy almost complete peace by adding a robocall blocker to go along with my caller ID/answering machine.

Note: The above is a comment I prepped for the comment section of the Dear Abby website. 

http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/2016/7/26/1/no-call-list-pulls-the-plug-on#disqus-comments

To learn more, search and read what telemarketers say to one another in order to boost their cold call success rate.

Also, read:
http://lifehacker.com/im-a-telemarketer-heres-how-to-get-rid-of-me-1540911401

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Trump & National Enquirer

 Ever the entertainer, Trump glibly repeats the National Enquirer assertion that Ted Cruz's father, Rafael, was in a 1963 photo with Lee Harvey Oswald, who then went on to assassinate Kennedy. Now, who in their right mind believes what they read in the National Enquirer? And, if he doesn't believe it, then why is he repeatedly rehashing what is such a painfully obvious fabrication? 




While reading the above, it finally dawned on me that the descriptor that I had been searching for to best describe Trump is the word "glib",  meaning insincere, superficial, shallow. 

Saturday, July 23, 2016

As It Was: WWI, Great Influenza Epidemic and Draper’s New Wife


My paternal grandfather, Draper was in his early 20s.  It was early winter up high in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.  Riding warefully along a section of the wagon trail where he’d helped dig out bodies of unfortunate victims of avalanches on
two previous occasions, he reflected briefly on other hardships that friends and family had endured since he’d become the “man of the family” after his father’s death (who’d worked himself into an early grave) when he was just twelve.  

Passing beyond the danger zone, he deeply inhaled the crisp dry air in relief.  The sun glared brightly in the cloudless sky.  Miniature rainbow colors sparkled
off of the ice crystals clinging to the grass stubble that protruded defiantly up through the snow cover. Yesterday’s frozen slush in the wagon tracks and hoof prints refused to soften.  The story of previous travelers was frozen in time as his horse added its
hoofprints to the tale told.  The dry crunch of snow where its hooves hit unblemished surface was oddly reassuring--- such that Draper soon chose a line of travel that kept this wintry sound at a steady uninterrupted rhythm.

His thoughts and senses were keenly alive.  He had much of which to think and to feel.  His resolve to enlist in the army and join in the fight against the Kaiser was firm.  Coming down from the ‘high country’, the only thing that lay between him and the enlistment office in Salt Lake City was declaring his deepest feelings to Nelly, the dark haired young gal who’d helped the other womenfolk serve the ward’s men their
midday meal in her father’s field during their
communal lunch.  He’d propose that they be married after he returned from The Great War.

Riding down into Heber where Nelly lived, he noted a bit more activity than he’d expected.  When he came upon the first person out-and-about, they noticed Draper’s perplexed look and taunted him with, “The war’s over! What are you so down-in-the-mouth about?!”.  As a feeling of stunned astonishment swept through him, he urged his horse into a canter and headed straight to Nelly’s house.  In the short time
it took to arrive, he’d already made up his mind to wed his lass and return home with her just as soon as it was proper.

The happenings of the next few months were left out of the story told me, but married they became & it was late winter when Draper and Nelly were bundled and
loaded up in a buggy headed back to the high country. While crossing a creek that fed into the Duquesne River, their rear wheels broke through the ice.  As they were struggling to free themselves from this predicament, two of Draper’s buddies came riding along the bank.  When they saw him with a cute gal, they started ‘hurrahing’ him and giving him a hard time – but as soon as they found out that the two were
newlywed, they settled down and quickly pulled the buggy up and out.

It was during the following year that the worst of the Great Flu Epidemic hit.  Many people died.  Draper kept the now ‘expectant’ Nelly secluded on their
homestead as he often helped nurse the many stricken by influenza in their neck-of-the-woods.  He never caught it -- which he attributed to his love of raw onions (which we now know to contain the same antimicrobial substance as garlic and radishes).  It was this level of hardship and concern for his new family that made him decide to move them back down to Heber.  It was there and then that my father was born & the next story told was of delivering their milk each day to the Park City Jail for hard-to-come-by
‘cash money’. 

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

We Create Our Own Reality

"The old saying: "There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so," is an Absolute Truth."
"When you know that God's Energy comes forth into the individual absolutely Pure and Perfect, then you must realize that it is the individual who requalifies that energy and imposes his own impure quality upon it. This Pure God Energy is projected forth by the conscious effort of the individual, and he must impose some kind of a quality upon it, for that is his privilege as a Creator."
"Everyone is constantly qualifying this energy, which is pouring forth continually. Each one is continually pouring his color into it, through his own consciousness."
from page 32 of the I AM Discourses:
http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/iam.pdf
Thus, add the gossipy, mean spirited and superstitious thoughts of others to your own misconceptions and images and you have the formula for a personal travesty in the making. Coalesce enough like minded misbegotten souls together and you have a force for disaster.

Tibetan Yogis and the Chinese Invasion

Now that China is becoming more bellicose, we need to remind ourselves of the nature of what Communist policies can be like. The Japanese genocidal invasion propelled China towards communism. Then they perpetuated the same evil upon defenseless Tibet. Anyway, watch the documentary and be touched by the compassion of the Tibetans.

Yogis of Tibet (rare documentary)
1 hour 16 minute video
Be sure to watch segment at 38 min. marker (or at least the 45 mark).

Summary of what documentary is about:

About compassion:

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Global Warming: I Didn't Know The Gun Was Loaded

We all know what we're likely facing in the future, but very few of us are admitting our fears. Repressing our worries about global warming and all of its related effects as a resultant interplay with overpopulation will not prevent them from manifesting. For example, people living closer to the equator will be the first to be forced to flee northward. All around the world, borders will become increasingly militarized. Resources will become increasingly precious. Ocean levels will decimate all coastal areas world wide. Seafood availability will be decimated by ocean acidification. Arable land will be increasingly prone to desertification. And the  negative effects goes on and on. In short, devastating.

In the end, we will have nobody to blame but ourselves. But, will we take responsibility upfront? Not likely! Instead, our children will hear the echoes of the hungry ghosts of their ancestors singing a rendition of:
"I Didn't Know The Gun Was Loaded".

Friday, July 15, 2016

More About Coffee

More About Coffee

I'm fortunate to have a coffee shop close by that sells a wide variety of coffee beans that are roasted locally. They brew up two different kinds each day and then put such into marked insulated thermal gravity dispensers. As they rotate the selections through their stock, you have the opportunity to try all 50+ kinds. Each regular customer eventually realizes their preferences. Then when they buy coffee beans, they know if they'll be satisfied with their purchase.

30 Things About Coffee

Caffeine: The World's Favorite Drug

The world's favorite drug is caffeine.

"For hundreds of years coffee was used in its raw form — astringent and bitter — boiled or rolled with animal fat into a crude approximation of energy pellets. People clearly were chomping the coffee berries for the buzz, not the flavor. Yes, modern coffee tastes great. But it is 400 years of selective breeding and refinements in growing, harvesting, roasting, and brewing that have taken it from its unappealing natural state to the aromatic, smooth, flavorful beverage it has become. And without the caffeine, nobody would have bothered with the plant in the first place."

"Arabica coffee is the species native to the mountains of Ethiopia, where it evolved with a blend of drenching rains, abundant sun, and a narrow band of acceptable temperature. Arabica is the smooth-flavored coffee Americans have come to love, the coffee that gourmet coffee connoisseurs swear by. The other common commercially grown coffee species is Robusta, which is heartier and more productive and can grow in warmer temperatures, out in the open at low elevation. Robusta beans are often blended into commercial coffees, like Folgers. But virtually all Colombian coffee is arabica."

"To brew Americans' average fix of nearly three cups of coffee daily, America imported 3.5 billion pounds of coffee in 2012, more than any other nation. The coffee Americans drink annually would fill more than 6,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

"If it's the flavor that makes us wild about coffee, why did our grandparents drink twice as much coffee as we do today? In those days the coffee was often roasted and ground long before it was consumed. And then it was run though a percolator, overextracting the bitter flavors. To most coffee lovers today, our grandparents' coffee was pure percolated plonk. It tasted worse, and they drank twice as much of it.

"For most of us, though, it's likely that we are interested not so much in a flavor experience as in a cup of coffee that is, more than anything, unobjectionable. If we phrase the question a bit differently — asking not what makes a good cup of coffee, but what makes a cup of coffee good — the answer is easy: caffeine.

"But most of us know little about caffeine. Even the most basic coffee distinction — between the robusta beans that become cheap diner coffee and the arabica beans that supply chic coffeehouses — is poorly understood. It's the lowly robusta that packs twice as much caffeine. Among the gourmet brews, people commonly perceive that a dark roast, with its strong flavor, has more caffeine than a mild-tasting, light roast. But that, too, is wrong. Because some of the caffeine has been burned off in the longer roasting, darker coffees have less caffeine than light roasts, bean for bean....."


Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette


My grandparents' generation grew up hand rolling their own cigarettes with unadulterated tobacco. These were perhaps not as "good tasting"?? -- but this, and the fact that they rolled their own, pretty much prevented 'chain smoking'. Then the tobacco industry started adding sugar, chocolate and other additives to the tobacco to make it taste better (and also to become more quickly and strongly addictive).  Improvements in mechanized cigarette rolling made pre-rolled cigarettes less expensive. Then WWII and mass marketing (with doctors speaking in favor) put the final 'nail in the coffin'. America's favorite addiction was now firmly in place. 

Listen:
Smoke,Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette:
https://youtu.be/LyYLrVNKE68

https://youtu.be/SWXbVsMkz1U

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Wit & Wisdom


Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I want to change myself. ~ Rumi

It takes a grown up to admit when they're wrong and work to rectify it.

Don't waste money trying to impress people.

A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.

You don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too. – Anne LaMott

People don't know how you feel unless you tell them.

Our rulers "live" in another country.

Non-interference / flow space in between....

“When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of performance accelerates”

All in all, I'm doing the best I can based on the choices I've made thus far. I am that I am.

Accept people and things as they are. Observe closely. Avoid condoning or condemning.

What's especially sad is that Wikipedia is generally more complete and accurate than our textbooks.

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” 

“Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.”

“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.”

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading."
Lao Tzu

If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.
Lao Tzu

Find your place where you're needed in the world and do the best you can.

"Don't judge what you don't understand." [It's better to say "I don't know (or understand ).

All in all, all is well.


Everything is relative because everything is related.

Say less; do more.

I tried to be open-minded once -- but it interfered with my sense of humor.

Stop, look and listen -- really, really listen.

Think fast;
think twice;
say something nice.

Too serious makes you delirious.

All you have are the choices you've made...

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you;  it’s the things you know that ain’t so.    Mark Twain

Be ever vigilant.

Know your adversary.

Life is as harsh as we need it to be in order for us to learn our lessons. We influence the setting; we set the tone. 

Out of sight;
out of mind.

Life is a bit like mountain climbing --- the summits are usually further than you think.

The truth and nothing but the truth. Sometimes the whole truth isn't known OR it's best not to reveal it.

Dare to be silent. It's not easy.

Do not desire to shine or appear clever.

Ashes to ashes;
Dust to dust.
What's been done,
it's in the past. 


Everywhere I go, there I AM.

Metaphorically saying, 
"You can't have your cake and eat it too" makes more sense as 
"you can't eat your cake and have it (too)" in the literal sense. And this was the original syntax.

The first day of the rest of your life is a new beginning (if you're doing it right).

When starting over, one begins wherever they're at. When an ending leads into a new beginning, lead off with a prayer (not despair)!

Am I a smart fellar or a fart smeller? Only time will tell.

The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.

Spirituality without soul becomes fundamentalism. It defines life in shallow and rigid undertones that do not resonate with the richness of God's overtones.

There are fundamentalists in every trade. They have no creative inspiration (no soul).

Those who are the weakest and most cowardly are often the most cruel.

We are most easily hurt by those we love the most.

“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”—George Orwell

In a full heart, there is always room for more love.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

The best way to keep one's word is not to give it lightly.

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength

Sooner or later, all chickens come home to roost. And when they do, they flock in together.

There is no one alive that can't use some help.

Take your time -- just don't waste any.

Smooth as a cat's meow-wow.

Fine as frog fuzz split down the middle.

There ain't no one that doesn't need help.

"The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off."

"A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied 10 minutes later."
General Patton

Nothing is forever -- though sometimes it seems like it.

I'm worried. And mostly about things I can do little or nothing about. Where's the sense in that.
                        "Me"




Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Global Warming: The Big Thaw


Earth's CO2 levels just now exceeded 400 parts per million. Levels have increased by 25% over the past two decades. Levels will keep increasing, and even if all humans were to suddenly disappear (causing human-induced emissions to cease) sea levels will still continue to rise, etcetera because the Earth's absorption capacity is steadily diminishing, and methane release from permafrost melting and oceanic hydrate degasification will continue.

It's call it the Big Thaw.

Note: The last time CO2 levels were this high was 3 to 5 million years ago. Sea levels were up to 80 feet higher then. As CO2 levels increase, then so do forecasts for increases in both temperature and future sea levels. 

Friday, July 1, 2016

Witicisms


It's better to accept your fate and receive guidance than to fight it and receive none.

I want you to be happy, too -- just not enough to do anything about it.
Sheldon Cooper

People change -- for the better; for the worse -- but people do change.

Being long in pride and short on brains is a bad combination.

... like watching a 3-D movie without the special glasses!

It takes a while to sink in.

... so bull headed stubborn that they can't listen to reason.

There was never a horse that couldn't be rode. Never a man that couldn't be throwed.

....slicker 'n owl shit.

... as stubborn as a Missouri mule.

Time doesn't go anywhere. It just is.

What is 'is'. What ain't 'ain't.

I'll look for you when I see you coming.

No news is most often good news.

Let's not be hanging a claw into one another now...

Let's not & just say we did.

Maybe yes;
maybe no --
I just don't know.

Here I sit all broken hearted;
Tried to shit but only farted.

Just because life ain't always easy doesn't mean that it's always overly difficult either.

~ In life, you’re first given an opportunity to make things right. If you don’t, it becomes a challenge; and, then it finally it becomes a crisis.~

If he had a conscience, his life wouldn't be worth living.

He's the south end of a north bound mule.

They can go fuck themselves AND the horse they rode in on (as you gesture with your little finger of the left hand jabbing upwards in the air).

They're treating me like a frothy dog.

Well beat the drums and sound the brass if there don't go one big horse's ass.

He's only got one oar in the water.

Sometimes two half wits do almost make a whole wit.

It'd take two of him to make a half wit.

I like my job. It's the work I hate.

Everything I like is either improper, illegal or fattening.

I'll look for you when I see you coming.

I love my job. It's the work I hate.

I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

There's nothing more relaxing than watching somebody else work.

Sometimes you eat just to keep from getting hungry.

A hungry man cannot feed another.

You can't fed a man who doesn't know he's hungry.

Who ever heard of a revolution of fat men.

Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying "I will try again tomorrow".

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

Count not the money not yet in your hand.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Mumble, grumble, pussycat stumble.

The only people you should get even with are those who have helped you.

Don't get mad, get even.

Kitty says to Matt Dillon:
Why, you are suspicious of everyone!
Matt's reply: Yeah. That's why I'm still alive.

He acts like he got hit in the head by a bolt of lightning so that even when he's standing still, he looks like he's scooting sideways.
Chester Goode

They act like they've got an itch that they can't scratch.....
.... Like they can't get to.
.....like they can't scratch in public.

Most folks can be trusted up to a point, but it's still best not to put temptation in their way.

Hook, Line and Sinker

Lock, stock, and barrel

For sure and certain, he's as tough as old hickory.

Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPhone


Sent from my iPhone