Saturday, April 26, 2008

WOW! This is really good and more important than our vacation or how my peach trees are doing. It's an interview with Reverend Wright by Bill Moyer.

I've only listened to the first 30 minutes (Part I) and will now listen to the second part (Part II), but WHO KNEW this was who Reverend Wright was based on media's representations of the man?

Journalism has really sucked in the last decade and I offer kudos to Bill Moyers for giving us an example of what journalism SHOULD be.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Earth Day, the lazies, our Spring Vacation, and nuking Iran.

Just a reminder that today is Earth Day. The media seems to want to make this whole week Earth Week, which doesn't hurt my feelings AT ALL.

I'm WAY behind in blogging. I've got some stuff from our Spring vacation and some stuff regarding our peach trees, but haven't had the urge to get everything coordinated into posts because I've been distracted by Politics. It's looking like if Obama doesn't win the Democratic primary I won't be voting at all in November and that thought just rankles me. I take voting very seriously; just ask my kids.

The last Democratic Debate had Hillary mentioning how if she's POTUS she'll nuke Iran if they decide to attack any country in the Middle East. Keith Olbermann asked her about that in his interview with her last evening:



Here we go again with a warmonger vying for the White House.

We need sanity in the WhiteHouse! Nutballs at the head of governments lead people to believe that the entire populace consists of nutballs, and that's just not true.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Chile's Clutter Challenge - Cognition!

If anyone has been keeping up with Chile's Clutter Challenge a lot of people have been trying to clean up their lives. This is probably part of what inspired a recent Ureka moment for me.

I'm a perpetual hopper, going from one idea to another. While this allows for massive breadth in knowledge, it normally fills the everyday mind with WAY too much to focus on. I lack focus. Well, focus is really just a function of the mind, and the mind is what you train it to be/do.

Meditation is nothing new for me. I've discussed it with quite a few different people who follow the practice and am amazed at the variety of styles people use. I've mostly followed the "no mind" philosophy and tried to eliminate though by letting ideas drift away. A friend of mine seemed appalled at that fashion. She was sure that meditation must be towards a goal or purpose. Other friends visualize different things, which seem to affect the body via suggestion or metaphore.

If meditation can manipulate the brain's ability to perform certain functions, why can't it improve focus? What about other brain functions? To test this, I'm changing my meditation to a meditation on a single object. Today was the number 1. Try to keep the word/image/concept of one in your consiousness for 5-10 minutes.

Having Trouble? I sure did.

Endless War ... On The Installment Plan.

First day back from vacation (which I'll blog about later this week), but going through Email I couldn't help noticing:



Our tax dollars at work.