Potato Chips or Gun Clubs - Which Side are You On?

I ate a whole bag of chips and most of the dip – What’s unusual about that – you knew you would – you can’t leave an available snack alone until it is all gone – and you knew that when you bought it, now didn’t you?. You couldn’t wait to get out of the store and tear the bag open and begin in on those crinkle cut chips just made for dipping, now could you?

They were considered to be animals of poetry. There would be an uproar in the gun clubs if anyone was heard to have shot a hare – James MacFarlane – The Wild Places, 2008 p174

Naïve conservatives reject the results of the principles that they advocate. Philosophical conservatives believe that their principles will result in the world of their desires. Pragmatic conservatives know that it is the results that are everything and that principles are irrelevant.

Dogs ate the dead, and the living ate the dogs – James MacFarlane – The Wild Places, 2008 p178

Factoid: Children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts

In its Cartesian form dualism was wholly anthropocentric, identifying everything other than the human mind as matter or extended substance. Since matter can have no value in and of itself, the result was much like that in idealism. Most ethics and all economic theory have followed anthropocentric dualism in this respect – Herman E Daly - The Commong Good p200


On which side of the line
     Is each to be placed
The means and the ends
    And those in-betweens
    In particular
The animate and the inanimate
     Of any fraction of each
Which side are you on?

Wild facts are not threats to the inanimate world. If they include exhaustion of resources and increasing entropy, these are not calamities in themselves. They are because of their effects on living systems – Herman E Daly – For the Common Good, 1989 p204

Given a number of social models for the introduction of a new technology, the one followed will be that which most enhances the concentration of power

Snow perpetuates the effects of moonlight, which means that on a clear night, in winter hills, you can see for a distance of up to thirty miles or so… you require… a full moon, a hard frost, a clear sky and a willingness to get frozen to the bone – James MacFarlane – The Wild Places, 2008 p192

Factoid: As of 2007 at least 21% of college admission departments and 22% of hiring managers reviewed social network profiles when checking out applicants. 77% of executive recruiters used Internet search engines to help screen candidates.

Like so many melancholics, he developed his own rituals of relief, in the hope that these might abate his suffering – James MacFarlane – The Wild Places, 2008 p197

Reach out, reach out
For the silver tideline
     Of moonlight
Moon shadow, moon shadow
Nightwalking in greyscapes
     This silver melancholia
Shade and tone have no hue
     But that of a wolf’s howl
Snowfall, snowfall
     In the moonlight

Running a sweepstakes that is primarily intended to collect names, addresses, ages and habits is an ongoing practice in the info collection industry – Hal Niedzviecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p236

Progressives are conservatives trying to make their mortgage payments. Liberals are progressives who have had their mortgages foreclosed. Everyone wishes to be a conservative – so long as they don’t have to worry about missing a mortgage payment – so long as they thrive. And the only thing that separates them is whom it is that they blame – why did I not get the bigger slice of that pie like I deserve!

The model of willing submission to comprehensives monitoring [is] a form of participation – Mark Andrejevic – iSpy: Surveillence and Power in the Interactive Era, 2007

It becomes grey
A deep synthetic cord
     Metallic
Hung in the air
     Foretelling
     Of snow


I smell chocolate
I see the dead
I hear you sigh

Many of those who died… did so in their rural huts and cabins, quietly. In a dark expression of the politeness and dignity which characterized much behavior… the last to die in a family would often save the strength to reach, close and fasten the door of the cabin, so that the corpses would not be visible to passers by. The cabin would then be pulled down upon them for a grave – Robert MacFarlane - The Wild Places p179

Mistaken for granite
This was not gneiss
     But dolomite

It becomes clear, as it is not in a city, that the world is old and troubled, and that light and warmth and fellowship are good – Edward Thomas – Wales, 1905

What is good has
     To be renewed
What bad sticks to you
     Like glue

We don’t really care who peers in at our lives if we think that their peering will keep us safe, help us connect, or otherwise advance our interest. But we do care if we thing that someone is taking what we give away for free and selling it to the highest bidder without kicking a single cent back to us – Ned Niedzviecki - The Peep Diaries p232

Poetry is intended to allow the blind to see. The poet is a one eyed man. Poets are kings

Fate that lacemaker implacably at work, holding upon her knees the cushion of our lives, and stuffing it with pins – Jean Cocteau - Les Infants Terrible  p137