June 21, 2019

My mom usually made us turn off the television before Fat Albert came on.

Was it ten or nine o'clock?

On weekdays my parents would be up at dawn and fully dressed for war. Me and my siblings learned to wake up, get out of bed, get ready for school on our own rather than face the wrath of mom. (Dad left for work earlier.)

On weekends my parents would be up a few hours later than dawn.

They'd wander out into the kitchen a bit disheveled and happy before they yelled at us to turn off the television and come to breakfast, a breakfast fit for warriors.

I don't want to hear any of that from my own kids.

June 19, 2019

It's not the sex or naked pics or pool boy threesomes.

It's the hypocrisy.

May 31, 2019

My ancestors didn't cross the seas to North America for the "opportunity."

They came here because their own homelands had turned into shit hole death traps.

That explains most human migration for a few million years.

If Trump and the Republican Party turn the U.S.A into some kind of shit hole death trap there's nothing binding me here.

Maybe they want to build walls to keep us from leaving...

March 12, 2019

Money was the stupidist human invention ever.

It's killed, maimed, and made miserable more people than guns, bombs, nuclear weapons, natural disasters, you name it...

These arguments about capitalism vs. socialism are silly.

It's like listening to Creationists explaining fossils and the geologic record.

We've created a world economy that's very brittle and unsustainable.

This thing we call economic "productivity" is actually a measure of the damage we are doing to our natural world and our own human spirit.

If we humans don't get our shit together, then the crash of our world economy is going to overshadow all the horrors of human history.

We need to make sure everyone is fed, has comfortable shelter, and appropriate medical care. Everyone needs to be educated, literate, and numerate.

Capitalism and socialism are myths, like Noah's ark.

March 11, 2019

All the "isms" are make-believe and easily corrupted.

If a society isn't corrupt, if nobody is punished for pointing out their society's flaws, if everyone has good food, comfortable shelter, appropriate medical care, if literacy and numeracy approach 100% limited only by rare forms of physical disability, then a society is successful and may call itself "civilized."

The U.S.A. is not a civilized nation.

March 3, 2019

The "freedom" of cars an illusion.

You're only free to go where you're allowed to go within the time constraints that bind you.

How often are you more than a few hundred yards from your car?

What do you see of the world beyond that?

Home, work, shopping, over and over and over again. It's hell.

When I was young and irresponsible I used to be an avid trespasser, walking, running, climbing places no one burdened by a car could go.

My own children and a good number of my nephews and nieces live in big cities. It's a joy to see them get around without their cars.

Cars allowed people who could afford cars to separate themselves from people who could not.

When the "wrong sort" of people were able to afford cars they were terrorized and harassed when they traveled.

How many relationships have become non-consensual because one of the parties couldn't get a ride home?

How many people have been killed and maimed by cars.

I hate cars.

It pisses me off every day that I have to own one to function as an "adult" in this society.

The car culture needs to end. It's killing us and the natural environment of our planet.

February 17, 2019

Chernobyl: The end of a three-decade experiment

This accident demonstrated how humans going about their ordinary business are worse for the natural environment than fallout from a nuclear power plant accident.

And now humans are returning...



I'm quite serious.

If anyone here wants to save the world, there are a few ways to go about it, mostly involving human rights especially for women, realistic sex education, universal access to birth control, and a broad scientific education emphasizing literacy, numeracy, and respect for the natural environment.

The ordinary activities of ordinary humans are more damaging to the natural environment than, say, tritium from the accident at Fukushima.

As Pogo says, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

February 10, 2019

If Trump had lived his life laughing he'd be much more appealing.

I know plenty of people Trump's age whose inner strengths and successful pursuits of happiness, no matter how rare, are etched upon their faces.

That dude Trump is a bitter, spiteful, old man who wouldn't survive a round of golf with anyone in my family, golf which is, I confess, sometimes more like Calvinball.




Trump gets off on cheating. Calvinball doesn't work like that.

Neither does life.

In the best of all possible worlds everyone wins.

December 7, 2018

When I was a kid Christmas time was the peak season of religious warfare within my family.

It's amazing how raw sexual attraction can bring people of diverse and conflicting faiths together.

My own "Christmas Spirit" looks a lot like PTSD.

My best Christmas ever I got the Hong Kong flu and everyone temporarily put their religious differences aside because they were afraid I was literally going to die. My dad's sister, and my mom's cousin had died as children in similar circumstances.

Alas my anoxic self did not get the Heathkit radio I most desired for that Christmas.

That may have been for the best. I later built a similar radio from scratch and that was immensely empowering.

My personal religion is equally scratch-built.

August 4, 2018

I graduated without debt, a very respectable university science degree.

My student fees were less than $1200 annually, thank you California, my housing was typically $80-125 a month, and I was pretty good at semi-skilled labor like loading and unloading trucks or maintaining crappy student housing, usually for $6 an hour or more. That was a lot of money then.

As a bonus, my grandma sent me $100 a month for food, and popcorn at the movies with a date, whenever I was actually enrolled in school. (My grandma was a hard ass about school, I was the first in her family to attend university, and she expected to make a good show of it, even though I was as bat-shit crazy as she was.) I also got a few grants for textbooks and the like along the way.

I once flunked organic chemistry because I could make too much money cutting o-chem classes Tuesday and Thursday to move furniture. My first hundred dollar working day was moving furniture deep into overtime when I should have been studying o-chem.

My kids had very hefty scholarships but they still graduated from college deep in debt, and the employment they found while in school paid considerably less than what I got in inflation adjusted dollars.

I think college and technical school should be free for anyone at any age. In this modern world of automation and other technological miracles there are simply not enough good paying no-skill and semi-skill jobs to go around. College keeps people out of trouble and has great potential for graduating people who will make the world a much better place, not just the science, medicine, and engineering people, but the language majors, artists, and philosophers too.