One of the earliest lessons in life we have to learn is that we can't always have what we want. "No, you can't have that second piece of cake; no you can't have that bar of chocolate'. And so it goes on and as we go through life and get older the wants become bigger and the pain of denial harder to bear! But in our heart we still hanker after our dreams and a part of us forever ponders the possibility. If only, we think.
This is just on a personal level but it's also a tendency in society itself. We all expect the government to be there to furnish what we want when we want it and no questions asked.
But sadly life isn't like that in the big adult world any more than it was when our mother sternly but fondly said 'no' to us when we weren't even knee-high.
I think this is one of the biggest problems in modern political life - the fact that our politics tends to be dominated by two opposing tendencies both of which are equally selfish. There are still a few idealists left even in the political jungle but they're few and far between and have almost no influence.
What we have is a competition between those who have the sweets and chocolate bars and want you to buy them from them at as high a price as they can get away with and on the other side of the fence those who want them free or at least at such a low price that no one can survive by producing them. Even worse you have the middlemen - like supermarkets - who buy the goodies from the producers for a tiny amount and then resell them to consumers at inflated prices. That way the only ones who benefit are the purely parasitic supermarkets and retail stores.
So what's the answer? If it was simple we'd all be doing it. Lots of 'solutions' have been tried but none of them work very well. Either you disadvantage the producer through control of manufacture and supply and the consumer through deliberate restriction of availability or you have the middlemen ripping everyone off and both producer and consumer suffering. Neither capitalism nor socialism has worked that well in practice.
So maybe the problem is greed. In the years not that long ago - in the eighties or early nineties even - people were satisfied with a smaller rate of profit and prices were lower and you could actually afford to eat reasonably well without needing to take out a bank loan.
If the big retailers and other middlemen were less greedy they'd still be multimillionaires but maybe not billionaires.
And if people showed common sense - which sadly they all too often don't - they'd vote with their feet and take the capitalist road and boycott the rip-off chain stores and go to the (on the whole) cheaper outlets that are often just small stores.
I buy a lot of stuff from small stores where even the big supermarket chains are charging higher prices for the same things.
Let's stop these robber barons and restore economic purchasing power to the people once more!
And I say this as someone who is totally opposed to socialism but equally opposed to the crazy Mafia-style economic system that masquerades as global capitalism.
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BAD JOKES!I was in the restaurant yesterday when I suddenly realized I desperately
needed to pass gas. The music was really, really loud, so I timed my
gas with the beat of the music.
After a couple of songs, I started to feel better. I finished my coffee,
and noticed that everybody was staring at me....
Then I suddenly remembered that I was listening to my iPod.
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________________________________________________________________________________Delusions of A
Hopeful Pessimist
by Sadie1263
Sadie is married, with three grown sons and nine dogs.
She works for a family business, loves reading (just about
everything), watches a lot of TV and does a lot of dog walking!!
I’ve been a little down for a while now. The usual things in life...the ups, the downs.....some minor illness issues. Usually I can just bounce right back from these things. Just for some reason things seemed to snowball for a little while and then I just couldn’t seem to get past all the different mass of feelings.
But recently I found a way to make myself feel better about things. I occasionally watch the series Taboo on National Geographic, Hoarders on A & E and TLC, and Strange Sex on TLC. Really catching any of those shows.....will probably make you feel better about just about anything.
I’ve seen a man in a sexual relationship with his car. Granted....it was a pretty red car......but it was only a Pontiac......now a Ferrari, Lotus or Lamborghini, even a 60’s corvette.....I would probably understand. But a Pontiac.....it wasn’t even a Firebird. Also.....luckily...they didn’t go into detail how he was consummating this affair. Seriously....my imagination is bad enough. But it did show him under the car kissing and licking on the vehicle and explaining his love affair to his father.
There was a man that feels he is really a dog trapped in a human body. He often dresses in a dog suit and has a friend take him to the park and play ball with him. I’m not sure who I felt more worried about.....the dog-man....or his friend that went along with this.
The episodes with the guy in love with his blow up pool floats. A woman that loved eating fingernail polish. A woman that loved to eat sheet rock and had actually started eating her house. Not to mention the woman that was eating her deceased husband’s ashes.
Then any episode of Hoarders should really be classified as a horror show. Different members of my family often come into the room and pat my hand and keep telling me it that it is just a show....to calm down. I admit when they stand there up to their necks in garbage and say....”I just don’t even know where to start”.....that I start screaming “Where you are standing you moron......one bag a day!!!!”” Of course there were several houses I wouldn’t even bother to clean up. Just one match would probably take care of it. (Did I mention the house that had over 2000 rats in it or the other one with a few hundred rabbits?) But I will say that show has done wonders for my house.....after almost every episode I get up and clean and throw a few things out.
But seriously.....if you watch a few of these shows.....you really sit back and start to reflect on your life.....and realize......hey......things are not that bad. Your family and friends are really pretty normal. My diet might not be perfect but I’m certainly not eating dryer sheets, sheet rock or cat snacks. I’ve also truly admired some cars in my life....and not once have I licked any of them. I guess I’m actually doing pretty great!
So remember.......whenever you are really down........turn on the tv....or download a few of these episodes and find out how truly wonderful you are!!! __________________________________________________________________________________________
mikemarshall
Husband to BigLin who founded the site, Mike Marshall is a retired
college lecturer with a PhD in Philosophy. He and Lin have been
together 15 years - married for 12 - and have a son who's eleven
and a daughter aged seven. They make their way together, buying
and renovating real estate to sell and let. Here is another brilliant
article which he was kind enough to write for us.
What if?
The whole notion of ‘mind over matter’ is one that I find difficult to deal with, let alone accept. To begin with it implies a dualist concept of mental activity which is not a notion that I find persuasive. Even to use the expression ‘mind over matter’ requires us to assume that the mind is somehow NOT a material object or at least a material phenomenon.
Let me briefly outline my objections to the dualist conception of the mind. To begin with how do we (if in fact we DO) perceive an immaterial phenomenon or process? Jumbo has suggested the wind but we CAN feel the wind and also see its physical effects in sending currents of air to disperse other equally material substances. Sight is not our only sense; we also possess the faculties of touch, taste, smell and hearing. All of these senses help us to form a judgement about the physicality of an observation. It is my contention that so far NO unequivocal evidence of the existence of any kind of non-physical phenomena or processes has been adduced satisfactorily.
There is also the argument from Occam’s Razor, a principle that is often misquoted as ‘entities are not to be multiplied without necessity.’ Occam never made such a statement but he did write ‘it is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer.’ The corollary of this principle is in essence that if two rival theories each appear to explain the facts equally well but one is simpler than the other and does not require us to posit additional entities to make it work then the simpler theory is to be preferred.
It is simpler to assume the identity of mind and the brain – a physical object – than to posit an incorporeal mind that has an uncertain relationship with the brain. Of course Occam’s Razor is only a methodological principle and not a scientific law but practical experience over centuries has shown that it is almost invariably correct. Copernicus invoked it on behalf of the heliocentric view of the universe as did Einstein in explaining how his theory of relativity was a simpler account of the universe than the notion of a luminiferous ether.
Finally there is the argument from experience and from the structure of the brain. Consciousness among humans is invariably found located within a physical object, the brain. Our brain fires electrical impulses that appear to determine our actions and no thought has yet been found that did not originate within a human brain.
The brain IS matter; mental activity is a physical process taking place within the brain. It seems impossible to regard the two things as separate in any way and if mind and matter are one and the same how can there possibly be such a thing as ‘mind over matter?’
Geller’s alleged powers of psychokinesis are simply the best known instances of that curious phenomenon. Many better but far less widely reported practitioners have achieved much more impressive results than Geller when tested under strict laboratory conditions.
Nor is it necessarily in conflict with current scientific orthodoxy to assume that psychokinesis – the alleged ability to control the movement of objects through mental activity – involves any kind of non-material force or process. If this faculty genuinely exists (and I am sufficiently persuaded by the evidence that it does) the obvious explanation is surely that electrical impulses are being sent out by the brain to an equally material object and that the principles behind the action are either derived from electro-magnetism or the two nuclear forces. It is an interaction of two material elements resulting in an unusual but not mysterious PHYSICAL process.
So ultimately consciousness is a process that takes place within a physical object, the brain. While it is clear that the operations of consciousness cannot be reduced to a purely physical description of them that their origin is inside the brain is IMO as certain as any kind of statement about the workings of the human mind.
Ocean Song
-by Linda Marshall
We all began in the sea,
And to the sea return,
Its endless ebb and flow,
At times battering the cliffs,
Foaming in white clouds
Falling, receding, withdrawing,
Singing and wailing
In our little boats
We strive to ride and master
The irrepressible sea,
Catching our shoals of fish,
Shining bright as the sun,
Upon the waves of salt
But are never of them
Now from sea to shore
We yearn, belong to neither,
Sea-sick, land-sick,
Hungry for constant motion
Yet longing for stasis
In spring our new tide flows
And in bright summer
We breast life’s waves,
Seas calmer
In autumn billows blow,
In winter fierce storms rage
Within each one of us
Dwells our lost souls:
Marine, amphibian
All gathers, rushes, ebbs,
Recedes far from us,
As the saltness
No longer savours
Only our tears are brine,
And in cold winds
They freeze to ice
On face and lips
Gone, all gone,
The echoes of the booming waves,
Crashing against the mightiest of lands
Hushed at last
To quietness
The eternal ocean
But never long
To remain
Silent and still
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Some are just an individual having fun,
some have high production values,
but there is internet-born "TV"!
This is from "Thinkr"... THNKR is a channel that produces four shows - Bookd, Prodigies, Podium and Epiphany -
all of which are absolutely brilliant. These are the types of videos you can't stop watching.
They're inspiring, thought-provoking and extremely well-produced. ______________________________________________________________________________Did you know? Duct tape has played a pivotal role in several NASA missions: In 1972,
Apollo 17 astronauts used it to repair a lunar rover bumper; in 2001,
International Space Station astronauts and cosmonauts constructed a
kitchen table using leftover aluminum pieces and duct tape; and in 2005,
Space Shuttle Discovery astronaut Stephen Robinson crafted a hacksaw
for a repair mission using a blade, plastic ties, Velcro, and—yup—duct tape.
The phrase "under god" has not always been in the Pledge
of Allegiance. It was added during the Eisenhower administration
to distinguish the United States from the "godless" Communists in the USSR.
The first VCR, developed by the Ampex Corporation in 1956,
weighed nearly 1,500 lbs. It took another 15 years
before a commercially viable product hit the scene.
Google's founders were willing to sell to Excite for
under $1 million in 1999—but Excite turned them down._______________________________________________________________________________
MEMBER INTERVIEWS
___________________________________________Our Member of The MonthRustyCongratulations! ___________________________________________Tell us how you discovered the internet, and a brief history of where you've been online. In the late 1990's my ex wife bought our first desktop, and "surfing" around I found WJLA forums
(Washington, DC) where anyone could comment on the day's top stories. Thought it would be
interesting so I joined in. When that went belly up, I found Proboards forums about 10 yrs ago.
Some of the same people I knew in the beginning I still have daily contact with at another forum.
Been on Facebook for about 5 yrs as well.
Tell us about your family?Was married the first time from 1982-2002, we had 2 children a son (29) & daughter(23)
My daughter graduated college in 2011 and has taught English as a second language
to kids in Japan (6 months) and just returned to the US from South Korea where she
taught for a year. My son was a US Army SGT with 2 tours in Iraq. He left the Army in 2009,
got married and now works at a hospital emergency room. He's studying to be a nurse.
Met my current wife Anna (who works at our local hospital emergency room) in 2003
at my work and we were married later that year. She has 3 children a son 32, daughter 28
(Elena's mom), and her youngest daughter who just became a registered nurse is 24
(She lives with us). If I get sick I just ask our resident RN for a diagnosis, lol!
What are your three favorite things in life?Family; our new home (which we'll be moving into next month);
and visiting family in my wife's country (Georgia).
Tell us some favorite advice or lesson you got along the way?When it's time to be serious be serious, otherwise laugh at yourself once in a while.
Do you play a musical instrument, or have an artistic talent?Musically or artistically talented? LMAO! No just athletic. Played baseball
and/or softball my entire life up until 10yrs ago, kinda miss it.
Hobbies?Now that we'll be moving into a house I used to love gardening,
yard work anything outside. I'll be getting back into that which I've
missed the last 10yrs of being in a "condo" I also am a bit of a car nut!
Did you get into trouble as a kid? Any stories you can tell?Nothing destructive. A few of us neighborhood kids set off fireworks
on a neighbors open bedroom window once. It was an old
couple and I think we may have shortened their life.
Do you like to cook?Yes, I'll cook anything and everything on a gas grill.
Your favorite material possession(s)?The 2012 Chrysler 300 I got last year, my first NEW car I ever owned.
An old picture Anna found in my late mom's desk back in 2010 after she died.
It's a picture of my dad in uniform (Army) before he went off to war (1941)
and my mom when she was 18. I had never seen it.
What type of entertainment do you like best?With TV, it's reality based police shows (First 48, Cold Case Files, etc) and Seinfeld.
Do you have any funny or strange tales to tell, things that happened along the way?Not strange but scary. We were on vacation in Kohbuleti (on the Black Sea) and got caught up in this 2008 war.
I'll tell the whole story another time because it's so long but to make it short we had to get from the far western
part of the country back to Tbilisi (eastern part). We caught the last bus leaving headed east. Things were then
heating up in Tbilisi as the Russians were bombing a local military installation. Went to the American embassy
and they evacuated us to Armenia by bus. From there, we went to Estonia and on to New York. VERY scary!!
If there is one thing you are absolutely passionate about, what is it?Justice for those affected by crimes, particularly murder. My favorite show (The First 48) shows
detectives investigating murders in select US cities. These guys are real life heroes. The stress
of being expected by peers, the victims families and public to solve these crimes is tremendous.
These guys/gals do a great job and they care. There's nothing better than to see these scumbags
who ruin families get what's coming to them. I'm just amazed there's so many who just don't care
about others and laugh about killing.
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Gibby's CornerOur Gibby is a retail manager who wants to one day run
her own business. Born in France, she has two boys, loves
to run, loves pizza, has one sister ("My sister inspires me,
she beat cancer 3 years ago, she is my hero."), her favorite
word is bootielicious, her favorite song is Elvis's 'Burnin' Love',
and she prefers the city to live ("I would be too bored living in
the country , I need to be close to shops, clothes shops in
particular and I need the night life a city provides."). Gibby
runs her own board: Gibby's Place. Check it out, it's a lot of fun!
Introducing the Japanese kick ass honey bees.
Various animals and insects use tricks to ward off predators
but Japanese honey bees use the most direct and disturbing
means of doing so. If a lava stealing hornet should happen
to visit their hive to cheekily attempt to pinch some honey
they will team up together to form a ball around the
unsuspecting hornet and literally cook the poor guy to death!
The bees must maintain a very precise temperature in the
ball; too cool and the hornet won't be killed , too hot and
both the hornet and bees will die. They do this by vigorously
vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat. It takes a
whole hour for the hornet to be cooked! It takes about 500
honey bees to form a ball to slow cook the giant Asian hornet.
Can you imagine being slow cooked alive .....jeez...
Take a look at this short video which shows the bees in action ,
those of a nervous disposition how ever may wish to look away.
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Bits & Pieces
CONTRIBUTING STAFF
Big Lin
MikeMarshall
Sadie1263
Hunny
Donna
Gibby
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