An Old Sufi Proverb For Caturday

A traveler asked a teacher, "What is the secret of life?"

The master replied, "The secret of life is to make wise decisions."

The traveler then asked, "How can I make wise decisions?"

To which the master replied,"You will make wise decisions based on your experience."

"How do I gain experience?" the traveler asked.

"Poor decisions."  

 

NOTE: I received a radiant bouquet of posies from the MOTI yesterday but my Verizon Cloud won’t let me download pictures just now; I must not have accumulated adequate social credits yet this month. I will post the glorious pictures as soon as Big Brother sees fit to allow.

 

Verizon has finally deemed me worthy to access my own Cloud so here is my lovely bouquet that arrived on Friday from the MOTI. It smells like Spring in the valley and is equally delightful to the eye, all blue and lavender set amongst of deep pink roses with splotches of gold double tulips. It perfumes the entire room. Thank you, my pretties, for yet another bunch of extraordinary pretties. They are even lovelier today as the tulips have unfurled to their full majestic glory but I’m not going to temp the Verizon gods to more mischief, so you must use your imagination. Thank you, thank you!

Closeup of the unfurling tulips:

 

 

 

Wing Day Special: Three For The Price of One

The Democrat’s guide to solving inflation:

Take one chicken wing. Cut it into 3 pieces.

Now you have 3 times as many wings - so you can afford to pay the new, higher price per pound. If people complain, blame Trump – or White Supremacy. You can now sell the drumettes and wingettes at an increased price to suppliers, who will sell them as overpriced appetizers, donate the wing tips to a soup kitchen and take a tax write-off.

There. Done and dusted.

A bunch of Yankee doodles sticking another feather in their cap.

 

PS: Beware the Ides of March

Et Tu, Brute?

What Would You Do For Wisdom? Mutt Day Edition

“What I would do for wisdom,”
I cried out as a young man.
Evidently not much. Or so it seems.
Even on walks I follow the dog. –

Jim Harrison, Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry

Not much, evidently.

But then, who needs wisdom when “you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy…” (h/t Joey Biden).

Time, Again

Originally posted 3-13-22:

The Doomsday Clock was developed in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nonprofit founded by Manhattan Project scientists following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The group’s members included Albert Einstein and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic bomb  - serious scientists – who wanted a metaphorical way to remind the public of the high stakes involved with nuclear weapons.

All of which makes it difficult to take their current day counterparts seriously.

The Doomsday Clock remains set at 100 seconds to midnight in 2022, unchanged since 2020.

The current Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is comprised of a batch of Post-Normal steampunk scientists with political agendas in need of advancement. This is how they define themselves:

“The Bulletin is a media organization, posting free articles on its website and publishing a premium digital magazine…The Bulletin focuses on three main areas: nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies.” 

A media organization? That’s great, you wouldn’t want any real science going on around nuclear weapons of self-destruction. And please note: they’ve added climate change to the mix of things that lead to self annihilation. All that’s missing is a statement on diversity, equity and inclusion…oh wait!

“The Bulletin is committed to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The profound challenges of our moment cannot be met without increasing the diversity of background and perspective of our organization. Data show that homogenous organizations have blind spots that obscure incoming risks and areas of opportunities. The Bulletin is determined to improve diversity along the lines of age, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity and expression.”

Doesn’t sound like much serious science going on around here. Confirmation: the President and CEO of the Bulletin of Atomic Science  - that’s responsible for scaring informing us how close to midnight and annihilation we are – is Rachel Bronson.

“(Ms. Bronson) earned a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA and PhD in political science from Columbia University.”

Not physics, not math, not chemistry but rather political science: more politics, less science. But I note Ms. Bronson has written many articles about the politics of global energy. Plus she’s appeared on NPR, CNN, PBS, al Jazeera, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart giving her  all the bona fides and gravitas needed to scare inform us of pending global disaster, most likely due to ‘climate change’.

So here’s my advice: forget about the Steampunk Scientists’ Doomsday Clock.

Steampunk clock designed in the style of an Astrolabe featuring wings and dials, cogs and gears

It’s nothing more than political science fiction. The only clock you need to worry about is the one that stole an hour from you last night.

To quote that wise old Indian Native American: “politicians are the only ones who think you can cut an inch off one end of a blanket, sew it on the other and make it longer.”

 

It’s hard to believe I wrote this last year just 2 weeks before they bored into my brain to confirm what the MRI indicated: metastasized tumors. I no longer perceive time as I once did and will never whine about Daylight Saving Time again, although I pray God lets me live long enough to break that promise.

I’m growing stronger bit by bit, day by day and am most humbly grateful to be here. I will try to post a new open thread Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays for awhile and see how it goes.

As always I thank you for your prayers and good thoughts and wish everyone a lovely, peaceful Sunday.

“Sensitivity Readers” v Little Chocolate Brown Men

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” – Philip  K. Dick

A society that consistently bows its morals, principles, conventions and rule of law to the will of lunatics, morons and delusional fringe elements with only a marginal grasp on reality cannot last for long.

While I am perhaps the only person who actively dislikes Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, at least the movie version,

But not because of the politically incorrect little chocolate brown men working there

I will defend to my death the WWII fighter pilot’s right to write it without having it bowdlerized by woke hipsters a generation or two later. Certainly not when the leading advocate for rewriting the author’s popular children stories defines herself itself as “non-binary, asexual, polyamorous relationship anarchist who is on the autism spectrum.” How long, oh Lord, are we expected to bend our will to the word salad of the lunatic fringe?

With inflation they’re up to 6 bits but still a bargain for the food challenged amongst us

Power Schtruggles Continue

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. - G.K. Chesterton

This has been an eventful week: CT scans, echocardiogram, MRI, blood labs, oncologist and then infusion day on Thursday. Thursday, incidentally, started with the loss of power at 4:30 AM, lasted for 3 days and required an unplanned and undesired visit to the nearest Holiday Inn B&B available – which was 30 miles away. We are told the outage was due to a “historic” ice storm here in SE Michigan; historic only if you’re under 5 or have a very bad memory. The only thing historic about it was the extent to which utility companies have been allowed to shirk their most fundamental responsibility of providing adequate, reliable service.

I certainly understand force majeure. But I also understand that when you spend your time chasing the dual unicorns of wind and solar “alternate” power to make your government overlords happy it’s a fool’s errand. What kind of an idiot encourages their customers to use less of their product? So while you look for places to stick more solar cells (in Michigan!?!) and Cervantes windmills while simultaneously decommissioning coal and nuclear power plants you allow the existing infrastructure to rot in place because the alternate energy crap keeps the Public Service Commission off your back.

Funny then how you get more, bigger and longer outages when weather does happen. 

I could rant on for pages, having spent my career working for utilities and energy companies but I won’t, life’s too short. Suffice to say that today’s energy companies have made their deal with their governmental devils in order to maintain as much of their business model as possible.

The regulatory compact which grants  monopoly access to customers within a geographic territory in exchange for the utility promise to provide reliable, nondiscriminatory power at lowest cost has become a complete farce. Even where unbundling and deregulation took place before ENRON’s demise brought it to a screeching halt the benefits haven’t been realized. If anything, government regulators and energy company providers and distributors symbiotic relationship has grown tighter and more nefarious. Along with everything else that’s wrong with the world today add the regulation of utilities.

But I digress, I was going to give you an update on my health. Obviously my eyes are getting better, for which I am so grateful you can’t even know and I can’t thank you often enough for your prayers. My scans and echocardiogram were all ok but my brain MRI was “inconclusive” so I’ve been referred to a neuro-oncologist for further evaluation. Your prayers have proved positive in the past and I will appreciate them ongoing as the schtruggle  continues.

Earth: a global warming “fixer-upper”

Caturday Reflections

The more things change…

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Black History month edition:

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. – Martin Luther King  (1929-1968)

Caturday edition:

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods. - Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

NOTE: My eyes are slowly improving as the steroid treatment continues, enough so that I can fully appreciate the beautiful flowers that arrived yesterday with love from the MOTI. As ever I can’t thank you enough for the joy, beauty, scent and love they bring with them. This arrangement includes bells of Ireland, saucer sized pink Japanese peonies and nearly as large vibrant yellow roses.

Add a cat and you would have absolute perfection.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day To One and All

A few random thoughts compiled from St. Valentine’s Day posts past:

Is Valentine’s Day not the best made-up holiday ever? It’s a fake holiday for lovers: lovers of flowers, chocolates, sweets, puppies…no matter who,

               

or what, you love there’s something for everyone.

Just remember: Valentine’s Day is both an exhibition AND a competition. There’s no such thing as too much of a good thing.

Happy Valentine’s Day!