the voice of reason's blog

So the president has finally decided to do something about illegal immigration. I'm amazed to find I actually wholeheartedly agree with a politician on something, but this is what Georgia senator Johnny Isakson had to say about Bush's speech on illegal immigration and reform:

“I’m grateful that the President is focusing on border security, but it is clear that any placement of National Guard troops on the border will be merely temporary. We must have a more permanent solution for securing our borders, and that is why I will seek a vote this week on my amendment to require that strong border security measures be funded and fully operational before we begin any guest worker program.”  Read More »

Everybody's out to save the world.

Everybody wants to be the hero.

And what's wrong with that?

Nothing--except for one thing. Everybody wants to be in control, and make the changes, and be in charge, and get everybody else to think like them. It's an issue of force. But true progress comes with two first steps: a change in an individual, and that individual taking control of themselves.  Read More »

"To be in a passion you good may do,

But no good if a passion is in you..."

William Blake, Songs of Innocence
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"Better reality than a dream; if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame."

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"The law is reason free from passion." -- Aristotle

Aristotle might be very sad today to find that passion is replacing logic, and reason is now subservient to personal quests for popularity and absolute power.

~

It has been noted often in the past that there is a wide gap between words and deeds. You can say you’re going to do something, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to do it. You may do something, but it may not be what you said you’d do. It may be an intentional lie, or perhaps just a change of plans; it may be an avoidable diversion. Then to complicate matters further, there is also the matter of what you mean to do, which often has nothing to do with what you say, or any relation to what you actually end up doing.  Read More »

There is an old saying: “The world is only two meals and twenty-four hours away from barbarism.”

This is far truer than most people ever know, or would care to guess.

People by nature are primitive. Our learned behavior and acquired veneer of civilization are easily torn away. The threads holding our “normal”, stable little lives together are few and thin—it would not take much to break them.  Occasionally we are reminded that we are not as much in control as we would like to believe. Such occasions usually occur when natural disaster strikes—we still cannot conquer the might of nature. Case in point: Katrina.  On other occasions other people destroy our “civilized” lives, reducing us to primal creatures, stripped of human thought and dignity. Case in point: the Holocaust.

We labor under the delusion that we are safe. We may admit the rest of the world has issues, but it’s a case of the “It can’t happen to me” thoughts. I am safe, we think; nothing can touch me here, in my nice secure school, my quiet little neighborhood, my pleasant community. That is what many think. And that many is wrong.  Read More »

Have you ever played Pac Man?

A little yellow mouth, chasing and being chased by those colorful little splotches, eating little white dots and an odd assortment of fruit.

Sounds a lot like life.

Sometimes you're the predator, and sometimes you're the prey. Sometimes you conquer, sometimes you die. Sometimes you do both. Sometimes you miss the fruit, and sometimes you don't. And the whole set up is terribly addicting.

I'm a firm believer in the power of the unconscious. The subconscious. Whatever you want to call it. Everything--especially games--is a protrusion of some element of that sub/un conscious. Even the simplest things reveal things about us.

People get sick of hearing that everything has a big, deep, and/or depressing meaning behind it. Me too.

Some things, they say, just "are". Sure. So--what "are" they?

Everything has meaning. Everything we make reflects something about us.

The little yellow mouth moves how you tell it, but it can only move according to the parameters of the game, and only within the carefully defined limits of the little lines.

I am a firm believer in free will, because I believe we all have a choice. Every one of us.

Sometimes it's hard to identify what that choice is, what the options are, and even harder to see their end results and consequences. We do have a choice. And the first choice is to decide whether or not you have a choice.

But even though you have the choice to move within the game how you want, you didn't make the rules of the game; you may not have chosen the game.

We didn't choose our lives, in the sense of what we are born with; we don't choose the rules of this life, in the sense of things like gravity or other 'universals', although the lucky few can bend the rules.

Terry Pratchett wrote, 'The rules are there to make you think before you break them.'  Read More »

This is the second part of the "Health Care to Die For" post I promised. Bit shorter than I thought it would be, but that’s just the way things worked out; and probably a plus for anyone who may read this, who won’t have to strain their eyes for as long. ;)

Picking up right where I left off, the next thing I wanted to talk about involves sunscreen and the vitamin D deficiency.

Vitamin D is a nutrient the human body absorbs from sunlight essential for healthy teeth and bones. That's the popular kids' drink Sunny D’s claim to fame--it contains that essential vitamin. Well, the more kids drink Sunny D the better, because now even in the summer, with plenty of sunlight available, people are still getting vitamin D deficiencies. Our mania for tanning has increased, and tanning is quite literally our bodies baking, like cakes in an oven; when our bodies soak up the light and heat of the sun, as well as all the harmful rays we're not supposed to get so much of. Too much of the harmful sun rays can cause skin cancer. The people who over-tan (I'm not denying it is possible to tan at least relatively safely by any means) are getting so much sun, or fake sun, as to harm themselves. Those harmful rays help contribute to sunburn; if you've ever had a sunburn that darkened into a tan, you're seeing the link between the rays and the effect right before your very eyes. So while our mania for soaking up harmful rays has increased because we all want to be "cool" and have tans, we're going to tanning salons to do it and when we are getting natural sun, we wear so much sunscreen we're blocking out both the bad and the good.  Read More »