Let’s start with something truly wonderful: Kimisho Ishizaka’s amazing open-source Goldberg Variations. You can hear this exquisite music of Bach, download and follow along in the scores(!), and even listen on your favorite mobile devices…all for free.
Moving on to the Annals of the Floored and Flabbergasted, I’m sure you read about the replicator hamburger science is trying to foist on us. Yuch. If I hadn’t already adopted the “less meat but much better meat” scheme, this one would have done the trick. The day the butcher counter starts peddling fake meat is the day I turn into a vegan. If you didn’t already have some doubts about the fake food and the chemical-laced setting in which it is served up to us, contemplate the fact that animals in the wild, domesticated animals, and lab animals in strictly controlled environments are getting fatter and fatter, just like us.
Then we have this: if you haven’t read it, you should. And while enjoying that tour de force of investigative journalism, bear something in mind: when someone else’s rights are violated, so are yours. What we see there is an unjust law — if not unconstitutional then certainly in direct contravention of the spirit of the U.S. Constitution — taken to its natural end by blatant official corruption.
Also in the Department of Unconstitutionality, we have the news that not one but two e-mail encrypting services have been shut down, one of them apparently as a direct result of secret government action and the other because its management is flat-out scared sh!tless. Big Brother is determined to read over your shoulder, whether you like it or not.
Ve haff vays of making you show us your mail…
And, my dears, if you’re not scared sh!tless, too, you have the nerves of an old oak fencepost.
While you’re contemplating these things, consider the actions of a man whose actions in the office to which we elected him directly contradict what he promised to do while he was talking us into voting for hm.
And speaking of the frightful aspects of America’s Brave New World, we see that someone somewhere would like to take some action to improve mental health care in this country, given the number of unhappy souls who have taken to the streets, the cinemas, and the schools with heavy armaments. Sounds hopeful, doesn’t it?
But what, really, does it mean? Given the state of organizations, private as well as public, that institutionalize the vulnerable, what really will be the outcome of this? Maybe a new rug under which to sweep sick people? How much hope do you hold out that we’ll do a decent job of reforming mental health care?
Along those lines, we have this little bit of double-think, which would be hilarious if it weren’t so effing gut-wrenching.
The other day, George, my favorite curmudgeon, posted a comment in which he first alluded to and then installed all the lyrics of a Country Joe McDonald song. Make no mistake about it, my friends: if anyone can save what little remains of this republic and its storied freedoms, it will be the curmudgeons, the sinkers of heels into the sand, the angry, and the vocal.
And so, a toast to George and all the curmudgeons of America: keep on truckin’!
Truely…it seems we as a Nation …We have lost our way. To think it’s OK to spy on folks…even our allies …well ….just isn’t right. Just imagine what our allies are thinking…what a betrayal. For Mr. Obama to try to explain it away would be funny ….if it wasn’t so sad……
jestjack, the CIA, NSA and FBI have ripped our 4th amendment to shreds.
Phone calls and everything you do on the internet is tracked and cached.
I spent 7 1/2 years in the NAVY as an analyst.
In 1972 they knew where every ship in the ocean was at any time.
Back in 1972 I was a Jason Bourne, I did what I was told.
Now I tell what I did.
Curmudgeon, yep you hit the nail on the head for sure.
I haven’t seen my country lately, it’s been taken over by a weird cult.
Yesterday I told my congressman to stop lying to me.
He wanted to know what lies, so I told him.
That shut him up.
A lot of water has gone over the dam in my life and I do have to say life has treated me well.
I knew what it was to grow up in a town on Cow Hampshire ( like Mayberry RFD) and allowed 12 year olds to pedal their bikes to the dump with their .22 rifles strapped to their bikes to shoot rats.
That was in 1960, I wonder how that would play out today.
History tells us America is in an inverted flat spin.
I will stop pontificating now.
Funny, I will glady kneel and let you slap me on my shoulder with a sword and knight me as a curmudgeon.
That is an honor for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg4A4L6K1es
this little bit of double-think
How many tours do you do until you just wonder what is life worth and who gives a $hit any more.
Two tours in Vietnam was the limit for our boys back then and now this silly war in the the ‘stans has kept troops there for 2 or 3 tours.
There is absolutely no reason why we should have troops on the ground in any of these ‘stans. Their governments are corrupt. Our government is corrupt and to be honest if I had to spend 3 years in a 2 horse shit hole desert environment I might want to swallow a .45 just to end it all.
There is a limit to what a man can stand.
Right on!
The scary thing is, the men who are coming back…there’s something about them that’s really different from the guys who came back from Vietnam. I’ve now had veterans of both wars in my classes. Can’t put my finger on it so as to explain in any way that makes sense…maybe it’s because, as volunteers, the current crop were different at the outset from the draftees who were sent to Vietnam. Maybe not. I think it has to do with having kept these guys (and gals, now) in harm’s way not for weeks, not for months, but for years. Many of the Vietnam vets I knew were spiritually & psychologically damaged; some of these guys are damaged, too, but it seems to be in a different way.