Conrad Memories from the Future

So ... what just exactly is print media.  Only places where ink physically exists on paper?  If that is the case, I miss newspapers (like them), I miss some magazines (not much) and I don't much miss books (at all).  My wife is different.  She is reading a physically printed book right now, a Ken Follett novel while I am reading The Testaments by Margaret Atwood on my Kindle.  We are both happy. But what of the birds condemned to cages?  Well, I think their life is cruelly abused anyway and a newspaper on the bottom of the cage doesn't improve it a lot.  Now, the dogs on the left?  Obviously that's a different story as you can see. And there are other uses of the printed word.  It justifies the fantastic underground library Padmini has shown us.  It gives a preacher something of substance to thump when bringing the word of God to his flock.  It makes leaflets possible so that they can be handed out for the next revolution, somethin...

This post was sparked by Padmini becoming disconnected from power and, no, I couldn't resist the pun.  This is, of course, one of many ways we can be unplugged from so many sources and we are often encouraged to unplug from the internet, from social media, from the electronic wonderland in general. While unplugging from the technosphere is a good thing to indeed do on occasion, sometimes it is well to consider what we've already unplugged.  Some of the essentials are laid out in the above graphic, the 4 spheres of the earth.  It is the human way after all to not fit into a habitat, but to create a habitat from raw materials, so it is not a surprise that this process might actually remove us from the nurturance of nature. Don't get me wrong, we wouldn't be here and talking if this disconnection had not happened.  We don't have fur and hide, so we can't survive unclothed in most wilderness.  We are neither strong enough nor fast enough to win a he...

Popularity is a metric and it is a metric that has its basis in biology. Those who are popular tend to be the best to breed and continue the species. If a person in a group is popular, it is because they are the best at furthering the survival of the group in the face of often predatory nature competing for survival in an ecosystem, fit to lead. If a food is popular to an intuitive eater, it is because that food meets the chemical and physiological needs of their body. Those are some of the biological bases of popularity. Because of these biological bases, as long as we are creatures, we are not going to just root it out and discard it . Besides, there is another complication for humans that seem to be non-existent or nascent in other creatures, the biological advantage of imagination. We are not bound by the simple limits of the ecosystem, we can actually forge ecosystems in our minds and we can share those visions. We can then create them physically, a seeming defiance of na...

Such a pretty face.  Just ask him.  You have nothing to worry about, because he has the steering wheel of all our fate in his pretty hands and he never makes mistakes.  He heard you thought something happened yesterday that was a mistake on his part, silly you.  The only mistake is you thinking that is what actually happened because you are so gullible, so easily mislead by those jealous of his beauty. His beauty, intelligence and renowned manhood are adequate to any task. He goes up against something so much bigger than your petty presence, the reality that only something with nature's majesty can throw your way, the reality that can actually kill you, discard your body.  Yes, it can kill you, but it can't even muss his hair.   He doesn't care in the slightest what you think, you bringing up something that requires humility and knowledge to survive it, something that requires you to look death and your own impermanence in the face. ...

I grew up in Norman Rockwell's version of America, small town of 110, Grandparents one direction 20 miles away, the home of the President of the United States, Allied Commander who had just won the war a decade earlier, just 15 miles away.  Other than the atomic bomb and tornado drills, hope for the future knew no bounds, for migration through the huge middle class was open to everyone from that vantage point.  Life was so wholesome that there were no curse words hurled around or sexual situations on TV.  Lucy and Ricky slept in separate twin beds! Play was unrestricted.  We climbed anything we could find and rode our bikes all the time.  We were real Mark Twain characters, wearing no shoes in any weather allowing it, building snow forts in weather that allowed that, ever forming worlds from our imaginations.  One of our favorite pastimes was playing Cowboys and Indians when no one was available with a glove and ball to play catch.  A good guy ...

Heroes are such a part of the human psyche, everything from the pop culture heroes shown above to the real world heroes facing danger in the ER or the grocery store during a pandemic.  People need a sense of the heroic and it is a good thing.  It inspires us to consider what people are capable of under extreme circumstances.  It always brings us to consider our own capacity for greatness. No, I think an appreciation of heroism is a very good thing.  Worship on the other hand gives me much more hesitancy.  Worship connotes surrender of one's own judgment to a higher focus and that surrender of judgment is where I have a problem.  When, instead of worship, it is a genuine love that embraces the truth, then I am much more comfortable, for that allows new information, new input, acceptance of contradictions when they prove to be established truth. History unfolds new understandings of our heroes on a continuing basis.  If we allow ourselves, the u...

Emotional Investment It is interesting that in this time of pandemic crisis that the two gold standards evoked for mobilization and solution in America are the Manhattan Project and the moon landing.  I'm selecting the latter for today's topic of emotional investment, because it has elements very fitting for the theme I want to develop. President John F. Kennedy announced May 25, 1961 the goal of America going to the moon by the end of the decade.  He was charismatic and inspiring.  Most presidents in most times could not have excited or motivated a nation to try something so extreme, so dangerous, so expensive.  But, he inspired adventure in a culture hungry for adventure, a country inspired to do 50-mile hikes on his bidding for fitness, a country enamored with Camelot!  And a country locked in a harshly competitive cold war with the Soviet Union, a threatening nuclear rival. Kennedy admitted privately that he didn't give a damn about the moon, all ...