Ego Vero Seek and you shall find... Ask and the door shall be opened - page 28

…It’s Friday and that means it’s music day.  Stuck in the 70’s music day!  Today’s first offering is a Steely Dan number off their 1974 (of course!) album “Pretzel Logic”.  Unless you are a Steely Dan superfan like me, you probably have not heard this song, titled “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”.  Regarding Pretzel Logic, they did have hit song from this album which you most likely know, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” which is a great song, but I like this one better;  No performance video, just audio.  Give it a listen:

Alright, since “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” was Steely Dan’s most successful single (with good reason) Here you go:

Apparently since I am over 50, I am a dinosaur as are most of my family and acquaintances.  I know this is true because when I tell people I know to read my blog, they say “what’s a blog?”  I am so screwed – since I don’t write about Beyonce or Justin Bieber no one under thirty will ever read this and no one over thirty knows what a blog is.  So let me tell you a little bit about how I found out about blogs, became a reader of blogs and then went on to blogging.

I have never thought of myself as an early adopter of technology but I have been using the internet since the early 1990’s.  Thinking about it now, it was the dawn of time.  My chosen portal: AOL, now just a footnote to history.  I started out reading what they called “newsgroups” which were kind of like discussion boards where someone would post an article or website adress, people would read and discuss.  Usually I would “lurk” in these newsgroups, a term that means to look in, read the article and discussion but not participate – if you don’t speak up, no one knows you’re there.  This evolved into general web surfing and a few sites helped fuel that, mainly The Drudge Report (which started out mainly as movie industry news and gossip) with it’s many links to news stories.  Another was Lucianne.com founded by Jonah Goldberg’s mother, Lucianne Goldberg.  It’s still around.  Finally, sometime in the early 2000’s a Radio Talk Show host I listen to named Hugh Hewitt began talking about this new thing on the internet with a funny name.  Blobs?  No, that can’t be it.  BLOG!  That’s it – internet lingo shorthand for weblog.  Weblog = weBLOG = BLOG.  He wrote a book about it.  Anyway, the amount of information and perspectives on information available to me online took a quantum leap with that revelation.  There are blogs about everything you can think of.  I zeroed in on politcal blogs mostly, but also branched out into Law, and Science as well as general interest.  Many bloggers write about other subjects in addition to their area of expertise if they have one.  When 9/11 happened, I started reading the military blogs or MILblogs.  Yes, the blogosphere has covered the War on Terror.  Over the course of years, I came to admire some of these bloggers (whom I have never met, nor communicated with) and at some point decided that imitation would be the best form of flattery.  On the sidebar to the right you will see a heading that says “Some Blogs I Like”:  Click on any of those, they are worth your time.

The subtitle of Hewitt’s book sums up the what Blogging is to me and why I decided to become a participant instead of just an observer:  “Why You Must Know How The Blogosphere Is Smashing The Old Media Monopoly And Giving Individuals Power In The Marketplace Of Ideas”.  I have decided to exercise my power and transform my exploration of life into a creative exercise – and to invite you along.  If you are lurking here, your journey has already begun.  Step into the light, introduce yourself and we can all continue our journey together.

I write about anything that happens to be of interest to me, and the subject matter is varied.  The posts are  in chronological order, the newest at the top – you can keep scrolling down to the bottom of the page and keep going back to view older  posts, all the way back to the beginning of time…err.. when I started this blog in February of 2014.  If you like what I write about some subjects but don’t care for others, look on the sidebar to the right.  You will see “categories”.  All my posts fit into one or more of these categories.  Click on the category you are most interested in, and you will see only posts in that category.  Simple.  Within my posts I often link to additional information and/or another blog or article that inspired the post.  When you see a word in red text, that is a link to additional information.  Click on it and the link will open in a new tab.  Any pictures within a post can usually be viewed in a larger version by simply clicking on the picture.

Please comment! To the left of the title you will see a box with the date and below it a box that says comments.  Click there and a dialogue box will open where you will be able to write comments on the article. This is how I know you’re reading and I welcome all feedback on my writing. You will be asked for your name and e-mail adress but don’t worry!  You can use an alias if you don’t want to disclose your name and your e-mail adress will not be displayed, nor will I spam you.  I moderate all the comments so I will see your comment.

Thanks! and Enjoy!

This is all over the internet right now.  A little boy is playing outside his house – a neighbor’s dog is loose and attacks the little boy.  The kid’s cat comes flying out of nowhere and chases off the dog!  The family’s home video surveillance system catches it all:

It is a happy ending, but the boy was bitten and required stitches – mom apparently was also bitten. It could have been much worse.  That is one awesome cat!

If you  have read much here you know that musically I am stuck in the 70’s.  If you haven’t read much here, congratulations on not wasting a lot ot time on the internet.  Now go tell all your friends and acquaintances that might be  disposed to wasting a lot of time on the internet to read this blog.  Thank you.  Now back to our program – in listening to my 70’s playlist today up comes ” Aquarius” by The 5th Dimension, a song that gained popularity in the late 60’s (ok, not 70’s) as one of the songs from the musical “Hair”.  This was at the peak of the hippie movement and the lyrics are all about how the dawning age of Aquarius will usher the human race into an era of perpetual peace, love and understanding.

Still there? OK, I’ll get to my point (finally!).  The song was released about forty years ago and the human race is just as screwed up now as it was then, if not more.  So what the hell happened?

I looked up “Age of Aquarius”; follow the link if you have some time, but I’ll give you the short take:  Various astrologers and philosophers have competing theories about what it actually means and when it will arrive (or did arrive) based on differing astrological calendars (though Robert Zoller’s summation seems to fit the current times very well).  Of course it helps to have some belief in astrology, which I don’t, but this is a thought exercise.  Oh, sorry I forgot to tell you – this is a thought exercise.  So The Age of Aquarius  may or may not have dawned or have yet to dawn and if so, there is no guarantee that it will usher in an era of “sympathy and trust abounding”, “mystic crystal revelations” or “the mind’s true liberation”.

My question is: if the earth’s relative position in the cosmos were able to influence human behavior, is the human race even capable of achieving that level of enlightenment?

The short answer in my opinion: NO.  Let me expand that somewhat:  Can A Human Being achieve that level of enlightenment?  Most likely YES;  Can the Human Race as a whole achieve that level of enlightenment?  Most likely NO.

Magical rays of love from the universe are not going to change human nature.  There will always be warmongers, sociopaths, haters and idiots with too many items in the express lane.  No, the only thing that can change human nature is one human – who can change his or her own human nature.  One person cannot change the world – only themselves.  One can only influence what is outside one’s self.  If you want to change the world, change yourself first – clean up your own act.  Tidy up your own metaphysical house and yard and before trying to reach outside your borders into someone else’s territory and change other’s behavior.

What do you think?  Leave your thoughts in the comments!

A normal person suggested I post more recipes on this blog.  Up til now I have only posted one recipe and that was for the perfect Manhattan.  So let me think…hmmm… I don’t think  it’s a good idea to turn this into a cooking blog since I can only “man cook”.  But I will post a recipe this time as a personal favor.  You owe me now!  Note that this is not my recipe – if it were my recipe it would likely be inedible.  And actually it’s not a recipe at all – it’s a link to a quiche recipe from a celebrity chef.  I won’t tell you who it is but I will give you a hint – he is f*cking famous.  Plus I liked the name: Rocket, Mushroom and Bacon Quiche.

That’s a quiche?

You’re Welcome!

It’s more Latin!  This phrase meaning literally “to infinity” or loosely “without end”.  In conversation and writing it is used to describe a process that continues without a foreseeable conclusion or resolution, not to describe a person physically moving toward infinity.  If one were moving toward infinity what would that mean?

Ad Infinitum…Et Ultra!

Since infinity is not a physical object, one could never reach infinity much less move past it.  Even if given all of eternity (I assume).  Infinity is defined as the quality of being infinite, or without end or limit; or a space, amount or period of time that is without limit or end.  Well, that clears things up…not!  One thing is known – this post will not go on ad infinitum.  The End.

…Aaand that’s the good news.  It appears to some observers that the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) may have wanted to obscure that fact from the public.  The San Francisco based engineering firm URS corp. was tasked with preparing a revised cost estimate, and complained that they had been “instructed” by the CHSRA to hold estimates to a baseline established in 2012.  URS said in their March report that the new estimate of $7.13 billion, an increase of $.94 billion was accurate and that “in their professional opinion” CHSRA was incorrectly assigning cost increases to a contingency account.  In response, the Rail Authority sent a letter to the firm asking it to revise it’s report, stating that the estimates were “misleading and not accurate”.  That settles it then.

“The  ultimate cost of the Central Valley segment will be determined by many factors not yet known, …which may explain why URS produced a higher estimate”...”It is noteworthy that over the life of a project, as design progresses, there will be several estimates,” the authority said. “A change in one estimate does not necessarily result in a change to our budget.” – CHSRA Statement

Ahh…the “Living Breathing Budget” theory.  The California taxpayer may now rest easy.

…to my Mom and all moms near and far, past and present!

Close enough.  “Massive Tunneling Machine Stuck Under Downtown Seattle, Fix Could Cost Taxpayers Millions”

Seems that there is a large construction project in Seattle for which the contractor purchased one of those giant machines that bores tunnels – like the English Channel Tunnel* – and the gizmo has broken down and is stuck.  A lot of cash is needed to free it.  The question is, whose cash will it be?  So far the State of Washington says the contractor should pay, the contractor says their not paying.  Could there be a lawsuit on the horizon?

The repair is likely to cost $125 million, which is $45 million more than the machine cost to begin with.  The project has already incurred cost overruns of $190 million due to “unforeseen problems”:

“Among the issues the project has encountered are: too much groundwater; a labor dispute involving the International Longshore and Warehouse Union; and a well that Bertha ran into, damaging her massive cutter head and main bearing.”

By the way, Bertha is the boring machine, that is the machine that bores the hole not the boring machine.  Anyhoo…who could possibly have foreseen a labor dispute?  I mean..c’mon.  That never happens.  And when there’s a labor dispute nothing bad ever happens at the worksite.  Nice giant boring machine you have there…be a shame if something happened to it while it was in the middle of a tunnel 1000 feet under ground.  Oh, wait.  Something did happen to it.  Never mind…move along…nothing to see here.

*The English Channel Tunnel  passes under the English Channel and connects England and France via railway.  The Brits call it “the chunnel”.  The French call it “le chunnel”.