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I'm liking being back more often. Things here are not so bitter. I'm less bitter, too. It's good to see old faces (okay, handles) showing up again. Missed y'all.
Where were ya, lost in the bitterbrush back beyond the Black Stump??
Yes, indeed, in the wilderness of bitter ideas.
A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.
Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich
Ya know Ponderer I’ve long thought about that. How much of this discord is domestically generated or how much of it is exacerbated and written by foreign trolls. It’s unrelenting and usually after an article about any given subject, depending on if comments are allowed, one can almost make up the “outrage†depending on the theme of the article. And this just gets pounded in over and over again.
I try to avoid group discussions on sites that are particularly prone to one side or the other. I have concluded that for most things-except science and mathematics- the “truth†is somewhere in the middle. Or at least I think it to be so. I hope I have made sense in this comment.
Here's me: I get up in the morning, have a bit of something to settle my hunger, and sit at my computer to sort of get my intellectual juices flowing. Sometimes I start with genealogical research, sometimes reading the news, or e-correspondence. It's when I start with discussion boards that I get the most distracted - (SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET!!! ) It is often difficult to discern what is domestic furor and what is foreign agitation, although many of the thinking processes I observe are foreign to me, anyway. Online discussion is often a consuming distraction to me. In days past, CHB was my first stop, and RR. I got out of that habit. This is a much calmer place to land first thing in the morning.
What I have observed over the last decade or so, is that the level of vitriol has increased. But it is not just in online discussions, it has permeated the wells of legislatures and the courts, too. Legal opinions, for many decades, were polite, dry disagreements on details or principles. Today (really, since Scalia), they are personal diatribes. But they have become more justified, too. Justice Breyer recently lamented the overuse of the "shadow docket" to shape perceptions and make legal pronouncements without adequate consideration. The last two weeks have demonstrated that in spades. I've watched as legislatures throughout the United States and of the United States pass legislation so extremely divorced from the principles upon which the nation was founded, and so detrimental to their own constituents, and I am appalled. I feel the need to scream about it. "Can't you see what's happening!?" Thus, I contribute to the cacophony...
A well reasoned argument is like a diamond: impervious to corruption and crystal clear - and infinitely rarer.
Here, as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game -- an economy that won't respond, a democracy that won't listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards. - Robert Reich
That is curious Mellow. I have not listened to any audiobooks yet but I’m thinking about doing so. Long ago I discovered it’s better to for me to read a book while I’m either sitting upright in a chair or a couch. Unfortunately a lot of times I try to read a book when I am laying in bed on the verge of going to sleep and I last about 10 minutes and then conk out. That’s where I think an audiobook might benefit me if not my local library.
In the meantime I recently read this book and I very much enjoyed it. It’s essentially about a bird specific to the Falkland Islands but it’s really very much more than that. I would’ve posted this under a “books†thread but I’m not sure this site has one…or if it does I didn’t look very hard to find it.
I am a corvid fan, myself but will add this to the list, thanks.
Are you stark ravin’ mad?
Now there’s something to crow about!
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. R. Buckminster Fuller
As I was walking a' alane, I heard twa corbies makin' a mane. The tane untae the tither did say, Whaur sail we gang and dine the day, O. Whaur sail we gang and dine the day?
It's in ahint yon auld fail dyke I wot there lies a new slain knight; And naebody kens that he lies there But his hawk and his hound, and his lady fair, O. But his hawk and his hound, and his lady fair.
His hound is to the hunting gane His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame, His lady ta'en anither mate, So we may mak' our dinner swate, O. So we may mak' our dinner swate.
Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane, And I'll pike oot his bonny blue e'en Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair We'll theek oor nest when it grows bare, O. We'll theek oor nest when it grows bare.
There's mony a ane for him maks mane But nane sail ken whaur he is gane O'er his white banes when they are bare The wind sail blaw for evermair, O. The wind sail blaw for evermair.'
Saw an Orca on the way home yesterday. My phone was off, and by the time it loaded up, the Orca was gone. It was younger Orca, maybe 10' long and did two air takes.
Having priority boarding I was in the front bow and saw the whole thing.
The ferry seemed to head right for the Orca and the fish disappeared under the ferry. I hope the ferry didn't hit it.
)
