Sagan is on my future list all reet.... but since my home library comes from used books I pick up here and there, not much Sagan. People don't dump him at book exchanges. Thanks for the recommend, I'd enjoy knowing what he has to say about pseudo sciences. I'm Native American (card carrying), also a psychologist and have my own views on spirits and such. It's curious that Sagan DID write about neurology so much. I'm not sure he was trained in it.

To pick up the theme in Contact, yes there is a world of hard science (and numbers) out there, and we are foolish to allow ourselves to be held back by "the demon haunted world"........ at the same time there is always the Unknown on the fringes of the lamp of science. Perhaps music takes us into that unknown, no science needed. Where DOES pi end????

Sagan lived for years with a blood condition, I know that, and perhaps he was haunted by where we go when the breathing stops. Certainly that experience falls beyond the lamp light.

moodymags said

Good Evening to everyone.....I have never posted on this page before but have followed the lads since 1968 and DOFP. Now I AM RETIRED and looking forward to a full summer of concerts in 2015! I could never follow a UK TOUR more fully than one or two local gigs due to my teaching job-but now the ELGs and PRSN and CLLT are a thing of the past.......and....HERE...WE.....GO! I look forward to meeting lots of fellow travellers on the road. Love and peace...

welcome!

I'm so out there, my brother's first fiancée instructed me, "Get back on the wall, leslee."

I haven't been posting because my life is so empty, I would either have to bore you all or make something up to participate.

It works for him. Walking the Evo this morning, I was thinking about how my life was all wrong. In the best of all worlds, I would be petite, with long, flowing blonde hair, a round face, and big blue eyes with long black eyelashes. I would be a flower child frolicking and beautifully singing through a meadow in flowing cotton. I know I could never be that girl, but a lot of the qualities I would like from life would be absurd coming out of this physique. Somehow, big bones and long faces with big noses go better with sitting here doing nothing to advance the human equation, all grumpy, in my winter coat, at the computer.

If only I could learn how to get the hand I'm dealt in gear . . . I'm getting old.

>BOOM!Splat!<

Actually, the boss was watching a movie about a flower-child girl who was all calm and peaceful - like the SNL spoof of Ben Carson. She was a psycho killer. It made me think of other Hollywood movies where always somebody acting that way is - I don't even want to talk about it. But it is as if Hollowood can't accept that people out there really are kind and gentle.

I was reflecting on my half-empty negativity today. I walked two hours tonight in 20-degree weather to retrieve the boss' car from the shop. Thought I, "Why do you complain about your freezing fingers when your sweater is so warm? Why do you complain about being outside in the cold three hours when you get to stay inside the other twenty-one? Why are you whining about the one person outside, when so many others are inside around fireplaces cuddling with friends and family?

I'm sitting on the hairdryer now, trying to get those extra two degrees when I already have 96 of them.

Thanks for seeing things my way. XOXOXO

I love to make my students howl. That's what it's all about, no?

The question is, if I leave this job, which poor toad picks it up? When I move, it will be to Detroit to help with me mum, unless it's too late. I found out recently there is a tech headhunter outfit in the old Clarkston Mills building. That is right by my zen garden. For whatever reason, everything that haunts me about Clarkston - save Pine Knob and that being the first place I saw Justin live - was owned by Henry Ford. I only recently learned he owned this building, too. On one of my last trips back, I went inside to explore. It was a Saturday, and the door was open. It's a concrete mall, but it looks like they didn't use forms to pour the concrete, it's all moundy. Well, it's really kinda neat. It has about three levels, and at one point I heard footsteps and then I heard the outside door lock. A ghost! And he locked me in! No problem, thought I, as I rather liked it there. As it turned out, I could still get out, but it was fun.

What on earth were we talking about?

Along those lines, I like what Justin said in his last Q&A about Europe being home. Last night, I was thinking of a democracy where the majority are taken in by flash, hype, and cool, and tweeting six times a day on how big Kim Kardashian's rear end is healthy and sane . . .

This week, I reviewed ‘The Cult of the Presidency’ by Gene Healy. It had me thinking about the First and Second Commandments, and how folks look to the president to heal the sick, create prosperity, defend the nation, stop crime, feed the hungry, educate the children, and everything else. Healy said the executive power expands because The Wee People demand it, and only big egos who think they can deliver will be attracted to the office.

One goes back to 1 Samuel 8 where The Wee People shouted, “Give us a king!” Whereas the Israelites lived rather peaceably amongst themselves with only judges; we today want more government, adding 75,000 pages to the Federal Register every year, exacting 25 percent of our incomes in taxes, with some candidates talking about taxing some brackets 88 percent. Our government has racked up enough debt to saddle every man, woman, and child citizen with a $56,000 bill. We want our mighty president to deliver more, at the cost of even higher taxes and more regulation.

And why not? The objective is a perfect society – not so much where people live in harmony; but a chessboard where all the pawns fearfully assume their places and do not move until commanded. Blood and horror and wars and rumours of war are so much better for keeping us little weasels in line than letting us weave our own silly metaphorical tapestries, with love, with friends in places we love. From recent experience, corroborated by stories from others, the bureaucrats in the welfare and healthcare system aren’t in the business of getting people back on their feet so much as they are into setting people up for life with wraparound services. I may have mentioned here what a friend who used to work for Big Pharma had to say about how the industry was not into healing, but managing disease.

“Once an alcoholic always an alcoholic” keeps physicians, nurses, social workers, counselors, and bureaucrats in business. They send the spiritually-wounded on a never-ending search for the answer to the question of “why” they did something irrational. I happen to be addicted to addiction, and when I had free time, I read all I could on the subject. Without exception, the only folks claiming to be cured, in life as well as in text, claimed it happened because they found God. And guess what the only thing our highly-subsidized bureaucratic behavioral health people can’t mention is.

Then, there’s that bit about liberating women from men in the home. They are now free to have Uncle Sam step in as the breadwinner, but Mom has to work to get her benefits – so the kids have to go into daycare where they learn the ways of multigenerational poverty, or they take to the streets with older delinquents for role models. Granted, this is not always the case; there are lots of women who flee abuse and work out nice arrangements with grandmas and such. But the kids end up turning to government for food and housing, and with school breakfast and lunch given for free, they still don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

The feds gave us subprime mortgages and a bubble that burst, and now the solution is even more subprime mortgages. We’re told the fed can’t run an efficient post office, and so now we want them to run healthcare – like they’re doing in North Carolina – assigning people four accounts, all billed for the same visit and invalidated for preposterous assigned dates; mailing thousands of children’s SSN’s out to the wrong addresses; losing food stamp orders for up to a month.

The answer to all the madness, of course, is to elect a demagogue who promises us all of the above and more. Is there a moderator in the house? It's time for me to get my X, no?