"Socialized Medicine for Monkeys Now to Include Internet Addition" - It's All So Warm and Fuzzy

This Facebook thing – One more thing to check everyday – I check my e-mail and the news feeds and I check to see who has signed onto my blogs – It's becoming an obsession – And now I have all these friends – and how can I let them down – And are you expected to say something even if inane? – So far I have just been a voyeur and this, I am told is not acceptable – Yes, I vote to make Internet Addiction a recognized disease – Will Obama cover it in the new Health Care plan.

And then an hour later I'm doing it all again - Oh Mister Obama, please reform hearthcare and make Internet Addiction a crime

We can all get rich cleaning up one another’s pollution! – Herman E Daly – Economics in a Full World (Scientific American Sept 2005) p106

There was a news story the other night about how they restored a women’s sight by using one of her teeth (her eye tooth no doubt). All very high tech and we want to see the blind see again (it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy) – but at what cost – all these miracles come with a price – and though no one wants to be denied – let all the blind see - the more "one" gets the less there remains for the rest – in a sense its all just a big social pot, our per capita income – some spend more than their share and some a lot less. The more exotic and expensive the procedures the less remains for the mundane like healthy living – heart transplants come at a price (not just that of executed criminals of  China) – the services for the few are paid for by reduced services to the many - the higher and more exotic the technology the more it must be funded by its non beneficiaries. We complain about the cost of our health care system then we cheer thees new high tech procedures – there is a disconnect between feeling good and our wallets and when there is a problem we taken it out on the disadvantafed.  Perhaps the solution to real heath care is less health technology and more basic clinics – just a suggestion for you can’t have both – its an economic rule – a technology that benefits the wealthy marginalizes the benefits of  the many (it’s the law).

I worked for newspapers at a time when I was not competent to do so. I reported inaccurately. I failed to get all the facts…, I put lies in the paper. I wrote headlines containing double entendras. I wrote stories while drunk. I abused copy boys – Donald Barthelme – “Brain Damage”, 1970

Only 13% of American adults read at or above a proficient level – meaning that “they could perform complex and challenging literary activities” (what ever that means – maybe I’m not among the 13%). 22% of American adults perform below basic (meaning they posses “no more than the most simple and concrete”) quantitative literary skills (give me an example – as the say at the spelling bee – use it in a sentence).

A society in which every school child “needs” a computer, and every sixteen year-old “needs” an automobile, and every eighteen year-old “needs” to go to college is already delusional and is well on its way to being broke – Wendell Berry – The Progressive, Sept 2009 p19

The point of political
      Poetry is not get it
Read in twenty-years
It’s to fry your brains
      Like eggs
      In bacon grease

The innocent can retain his purity throughout life, without deceiving himself or being deceived by others. To be innocent, he does not have to believe in a guileless world – Stephen Spender – World Within World, 199 p31

A GREEK TRAGEDY


A world addicted
Let me backtrack
Not the world

      But me
It is I who is addicted
      To things
That this world
       Cannot sustain. It's
A biophysical impossibility
Without any resolution
       That would seem to be
       Less than tragic
When reality is manifested
It becomes something that
       I cannot accept
I love you Jocasta

Growth cannot increase everyone’s relative income… If everyone’s income increases proportionally, no one’s relative income would rise and no one would feel happier – – Herman E Daly – Economics in a Full World (Scientific American Sept 2005) p107

Neil and Cindy are here – its just like old times. Neil has to show up at work before he knows if he will have to work today. Work is such an insane institution. Cindy is waiting on a shipping number for her hammock frame. Cindy is just insane (work has nothing to do with it in her case). Strange how it takes sane people to endure in an insane institution. Or should that be – "strange how it takes insane people to thrive in sane institutions." Opposites attract, likes repel. But by that rule if work were sane and rational only the insane could hold down jobs. But work is not sane and it drives people insane. So we know likes must attract and opposites repel. The rules of mechanics - the rules of the physical universe do not apply to social institutions.

Capital does not govern the knowledge of reality, but it gives reality to knowledge – Jean Francois Lyotard

Walter says that he has heard his first primary joke “John Kerry walks into a bar and the bartender asks ‘ ‘Why the long face’?” Well, I thought it was funny he said. I heard the same joke several weeks later. It was not nearly as good the second time, but that might have been due to the way it was told. Have you heard the one about this new guy in prison. It seems that on his first night there after lock up, men would call out numbers like ‘42’ or ‘87’ and the cell block would break out into hysterical laughter. The new guy turns to his cell mate and asks ‘What was that all about?’. His cellmate explaines, “Well you see most of us have been in here so long that we know all the jokes by heart. So to save time we have given them each a number rather than repeating them over and over.” “Oh, I see” said the new man and figured he would give it a try. He hollers ‘36’. Nothing, nada - silence, dead air. “What’s the matter” he turns to his mate and asks, “Was ‘36’ not funny? “No, its not that the joke was not funny” he said “but some people can tell them and others can’t”

Being prepared to receive what thought is not prepared to think is what deserves the name of thinking - Jean Francois Lyotard

The last express to arrive in the Financial District before 9AM was loaded to the gunnels. Then a school bus went by with only two passengers. From now on the busses headed downtown will be much less crowded. It is now my turn to go. I am wrong, the next bus is crowded with workers who have options - who can afford to be late. It is crowed but not as crowded as that previous express bus. The next express should have lots of white space. Shall I wait and see. The expresses are on seven minute headways. I decide not to wait. I need to get to the dentist by 9:30 and I decide not to take an expresses and walk up one block and catch the local at Sacramento Street.

One cannot consume an occurrence but merely its meaning. The feeling of the instant is instantaneous – Jean Francois Leotard

Whether milk or poison / the product doesn’t matter / bread or napalm / the product doesn’t matter – Ernesto Cardenal – Pluriverse, 2009 p 187