In less than a month, I will celebrate my fifth anniversary as a member of the Dagblog community. If anyone has noticed (and maybe no one has), I haven't been around that much in the recent past. Let me start by saying this is not one of those "good-bye" blogs. Rather it is more of a "I be around, bopping in from time to time." There two main reasons for this.
A person I "met" on Tumblr because I reblogged his photographs, Bouwe Brouwer, from the Netherlands [here is his Tumblr site Pjotr's pics ] got into a discussion now that we are friends on Facebook, he does a lot of creative writing, most of which hasn't been translated into English. But he shared with me some of his haiku poems,many of them translated into English.
Bernie Sanders seems to be gaining some traction for the Democratic nomination and pits himself against the front runner Hillary Clinton. I doubt her campaign staff will be caught flat footed as they were in 2008 when Obama seemed to come out of nowhere. Already we see Clinton steering her rhetoric to left to counter Sanders. How much of it is just smoke to get through to the nomination we may or may not find out. Sanders has been consistently in his positions and voting. He is after all an Independent Socialist.
I published today this post "E-Expectations" on my own website elusivetrope.com (yes now I have my own website) and repeat here. I just started the site so there isn't much content and since I try to write something every day, it does help me keep things short.
I have had a love/hate relationship with computers, internet and the recent wave of technology for some time now. It generally tilted towards more hate than love, but this had to do a lot with the fact that my job, like a lot of people, had me staring at a computer screen (when I wasn’t cursing out the copier) for most of the day. If I had a nickel for every time I said “I wish computers were never invented,” I wouldn’t be able to retire, but I would have a lot of money.
“I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn’t prepared for this.” Audrey Hepburn, UNICEF photograph, Horn of Africa
Most anybody who has delved into social justice and environmental issues has come across the quote by Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
Fight Flight Freeze sounds like some surreal schoolyard playground game, some weird mix of Red Rover and Simon Says.
Yet is another take on the Fight Flight Response. I think viewing our response to a (potential) threat as Fight Flight Freeze Response is a more accurate and provides some insight, I believe, into what many would call the political apathy in this country.
I think everyone is aware of the notion of Fight or Flight, and that it was a emergent feature of our evolution in an effort to survive and reproduce. One of our distant ancestors crosses a path with a tiger and his or her body goes into a response that among other things increases the heart rate and prepares the muscles. He or she is ready to either fight or flee as fast as his or her feet can manage. Freezing was rarely seen as third option in this response to a survival.
The other day I was walking through downtown Seattle and something that reminded me of one of the reasons I left Portland, Oregon, for Indiana.
This reason was what I perceived as whole lot of people flaunting of wealth, as well as possessing a shallow aesthetic and an extreme conceitedness (The last two could be said of many of the not-so-wealthy hipsters). What I saw in downtown Seattle was a little shop called Vain.
One of issue that will become increasingly debated over coming ten years, in part due to the aging baby boomers, will be the legalization of assisted suicide.
It is already legal in places like Oregon and upheld (surprisingly) by the US Supreme Court.
In the aftermath of the ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby (and a few other decisions), there are some who are calling for reform of the Supreme Court. In May, Norm Ornstein in the Atlantic makes a compelling case for term limits, and links to another Atlantic article by David Paul Kuhn a few years back about the increased polarization of the Supreme Court in recent times.
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
—Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding possible obscenity in The Lovers.
This past weekend was the 50th Anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision on Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which Justice Stewart included his opinion that utilized the (now possibly over-used) expression “I know it when I see it.” Later he would state:
“In a way I regret having said what I said about obscenity -- that’s going to be on my tombstone. When I remember all of the other solid words I’ve written…I regret a little bit that if I’ll be remembered at all I’ll be remembered for that particular phrase.”
As I commented on one of Maiello’s blogs: “Annie Hall is still one of my favorite movies, in part because it treats relationships in a sentimental but unsentimental way that is rare in the movies. But it also has some of the best off beat humor.” One scene that I didn’t mention in the comment was a conversation between Singer and Hall when they first started to get to know each other:
Annie Hall: Oh, you see an analyst?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, just fifteen years.
Annie Hall: Fifteen years?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, I’m going to give him one more year, and then I’m going to Lourdes.
I’ll be honest that until I began working on another blog using this quote (which about a year ago), I had no idea as to what “Lourdes” was a reference to. I assumed it was probably some kind of place like the Vienna Circle, except it was place with the current top-notch psychologists or neuroscientists of the day. In other words, that particular part of the joke went over my head. It turns out that Lourdes is
...in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France,…[where] The Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to Bernadette Soubirous on a total of eighteen occasions [said to have occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858]….To date, 69 miracles cures have been recognized, to have occurred and certified by the Lourdes International Medical Committee which has been in existence since 1947.
One of the things about approaching the age of fifty is that one is constantly reminded of the fact because everything that occurred during the year one was born is also reaching its 50th anniversary. In some ways, it is interesting because one is able to see more clearly the culture and Zeitgeist into which one was born. And since we are on the topic of insanity and violence it seems, it is fitting that recently one of the great films of all time Dr. Stangelove had its 50th anniversary.
A question was proposed on another thread regarding Elliot Rodger‘s murder spree: “Or should we just acknowledge that this was a case of a severe mental illness and leave it at that?” I would say to that: “No.” The reason is that even those who are severely mentally ill do not exist in a vacuum. In most cases, they lived a life without the mental illness. And even while the illness or syndrome or disorder (or whatever term one wishes to use) is active still are in most cases part of some cultural setting.
“I walked into a nightmare. I have seen famine in Ethiopia and Bangladesh, but I have seen nothing like this – so much worse than I could possibly have imagined. I wasn’t prepared for this.” Audrey Hepburn, 
Fight Flight Freeze sounds like some surreal schoolyard playground game, some weird mix of Red Rover and Simon Says.
The other day I was walking through downtown Seattle and something that reminded me of one of the reasons I left Portland, Oregon, for Indiana.
In the aftermath of the ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby (and a few other decisions), there are some who are calling for reform of the Supreme Court. In May, 
