Category Archives: Adventure

Jack wrote this in November, 2005:

When Jack was answering questions on a now-defunct web site (see the Ask Old Jules posts) he also asked questions in different categories. Some of them are as mundane as “How do you change from Windows 10 back to the Windows 7 version?” but others are more along the lines of the amusing posts that you’re familiar with.
Here are a handful of those, just for something different.
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·  Is second-guessing the future a driving force of human history? Is the belief in logic the cornerstone?

Humans are addicted to predicting the future and betting on it.

The ancients had their oracles and prophets and based vital decisions on them. 2000 years of Christians have believed judgement day was coming during their lifetimes and the fear of it has kept the institution of Christianity alive and influencial throughout that 2000 years.

Those massive 20th Century wars happened because leaders, rulers and governments believed they could predict the future and they predicted they’d win. Half of them were completely wrong and the others weren’t right, as things played out. The sides that lost were rebuilt by resources of the sides that won immediately after WWII and the result was the collapse of the empires of the winning sides, and the eventual destructions of their own economies, industries, manufacturing infrastructures and employment.

Human beings are absolutely lousy at predicting the future, but they constantly rely on the non-ability to make vital decisions in their lives. If 20th Century leaders hadn’t believed, despite all evidence to the contrary, they could predict outcomes, the 21st Century world would be an entirely different place.

Seems to me a part of the problem is the belief in what is invariably labelled ‘logic’. That’s what rulers and leaders call their prognostications. Faulty logical constructions appear to occupy a huge place in human tragedy involving wars.

Would humanity be better served examining the history of prognostication and abandoning attempts to indulge in logic as a basis for decision-making?

Can the statement, “There’s no proof that [fill in the blank]”, ever be valid?

Doesn’t the assertion there’s no proof require a foundation of the person doing the asserting having examined [not only] all evidence, but also every other facet of existence where evidence not yet discovered might be hidden?

Proof is a difficult enough matter involving almost any assertion. But isn’t the statement, “There is no proof” just a sloppy way of admitting, “I don’t know of any proof”?

Or possibly, “I know so much about everything and I haven’t seen proof and I’d certainly have seen it by osmosis or assimilation if there was any, therefore there mustn’t be any proof”

Is the emphasis on feelings in philosophical discussion [QA] the result of feminizing?

A surprising lot of Q/A in the philosophy category are about emotion and appear to be the result of a blurred distinction between thought and emotion. Questions and answers of this sort appear to come predominantly from females, though it’s certainly shared by a lot of males.

I’ve mused on the phenomenon a considerable while and sometimes think it’s the result of commercializing emotion, using it as a sales-tool for, say, television commercials and fund raising. The fuzziness encouraged by avoidance of analytical thought in favor of ‘feel’, I’ve wondered, might have bled across into the habits of expression of lifetime viewers?

But feminization has been the source of a tsunami of subtle changes in our western perceptions of reality during the past half-century, and a deeper incorporation into, or respect for the place feeling or emotion occupies in individual and societal decision-making.

Is it the female influence leading to questions such as, “How do you feel about philosophy?”

Can the arrogant enlightened individual be redeemed by insincere displays of kindness and compassion?

When an individual is pronounced to be arrogant, though the arrogance was inadvertent or unintended, would mawkish, dishonest displays of conspicuous courtesy, compassion, emotion, and a fawning care for the feelings of others help him return to the state of non-arrogance?

Just curious.

  Does studying philosophy confuse the issues, or clarify them?

I’ve studied philosophy half a century and been into more areas of spiritual and metaphysical examination and discipline than I can remember without considerable effort. I wouldn’t swap any of it for not having done it, but having been-there-done-that puts me into an awkward position of wondering whether all that was actually necessary in terms of where I am and where I intended to be.

But reading the questions on the philosophy section and the overwhelming percentage of the answers it seems to me that maybe cutting out a lot of the heterodyne from the past couple of thousand years, pulling the kinks out of things, and cutting out some of the middle-men might provide a better platform for understanding how to think. Particularly in an environment where so much is abbreviated anyway, attention spans are limited to a few impatient moments, and half the gurus, PHD philosophy instructors, wise men, shamans, sensei[s] and martial arts enthusiasts are semi-literate anyway.

Would something along the lines of the old Volkswagen repair book, “Philosophy for the Compleat Idiot” be helpful?

·  Is there a relationship between morality and behavior?

Some of the more memorable and passionate affairs I enjoyed in my life involved women who could quote scripture chapter and verse and spent post-coital breaks sanctimoniously condemning the sluts they believed their husbands were running around with on the side. I’ve never doubted the husbands and their other women held similarly outspoken high regard for moral behavior.

I eventually came to regard morality as a distinctly different phenomenon from behavior among the morally outspoken.

Is there sometimes an overlapping between morality and the behaviors of those who possess it?

Is trust a contract on the part of one individual to fulfill the expectations of another individual?

The concept of trust appears to manifest itself in at least two different ways.

In one, it’s passive. Acceptance and recognition derived from observation of individual traits and behavioral patterns.

In the other it frequently appears to be an active, manipulative attempt of the trusting to control the behavior of the trusted without regard for the demonstrated traits, inclinations and behavior patterns of the recipient. When trust rears its head in this way it often becomes an ambiguous fabric of Chinese handcuffs gradually constricting the options of the target. A tightening ownership of the person trusting over the only-vaguely-aware trusted until breaches, tear-filled betrayal accusations and pain of the trust-web weaver inevitably result.

Is the mere projection of trust of one individual on another an implied contract on the part of the trusted to not hurt the trusting and to march in lockstep with the other slaves of the ‘honor’ of being trusted?

Is there any obligation at all on the part of the trusting if the trusted has no similar web of expectations?

Would it be unethical to sell your ID?

I saw on Yahoo news a while back that people are paying big [real] bucks for imaginary land and facilities on an online simulation game. I know a lot of people on this site probably wouldn’t buy into a thing of that sort, but there’s a segment of the user community constantly wishing they could be someone else. And a lot of them aren’t happy and wish they could buy happiness.

I’m just wondering if there mightn’t be a market for being me. I’ve spent almost seven decades becoming me, and I’m happy. A cabin, a flock of free-ranging [good] chickens comes with me, along with four great cats.

I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be anyone but me, but tastes differ. A lot of people might want to be someone they could pick up a cheaper deal on.

Is this the reason they’re offering extra points for every answer? Are they trying to help their longtime, loyal users by running the prices up?

I haven’t made up my mind to sell and I’d have to consult with the chickens and cats before I agreed to it, but I’m a caring sort of man and I feel sad sometimes knowing there are so many people who can never be me.

Jack wrote this in February, 2006. To be honest, it feels almost insensitive to post given the events of the last couple of years, but since he wrote it over 15 years ago, I’ll post it anyway. –Jeanne

You made it.

No monsters, no drug-crazed uglies, no cancer from second-hand smoke, no cops kicking down the door with guns drawn interrupted your sleep-path to set you loose from this reality.

It’s another day, and all those things you feared haven’t robbed you of getting to plod through it as best you can.

There’s something to be learned from that:

All that worrying and fretting you were doing yesterday, being scared of germs, or bosses, or cars running over you, or terrorists from somewhere else in this madhouse crawling up on the beaches of America with butcher-knives clenched in their teeth didn’t come in and set off a bomb to destroy you, didn’t poison your water because they’re jealous of the perfect existence you have.

The economy didn’t collapse during the night, dissolving the value of that plastic card with the strip on back telling whether you like cream in your coffee and other essentials about you.

All’s well with the world.  The things you worried over yesterday didn’t happen.

_________________________________________

Ho hum.

_________________________________________

You might conclude all that worry and fear you allowed to sneak into your life yesterday to influence your thoughts and choices was wasted?

No.  It did exactly what it was supposed to do.

All that fear caused you to project negative energy and anger all around you.

It helped you make lousy choices to give you more challenges for this life.

But the sun’s up for a new day.  Time to decide whether to repeat yesterday, or leave some of that fear behind and try something else.

Jack

Jack wrote this in February, 2006:

Morning blogsters:

I see on Mountain’s feed the leviathan is moving in another out-of-sight place.

This time it’s the forced relocation of Din’e families from Black Mesa.

I don’t know the nuances and issues here.  The last I remember hearing about Black Mesa involved a squabble between the Hopi and Navajo over a piece of ground both were occupying.  Must have been a quarter-century ago.

I gather from Mountain’s blog a law was passed to resolve it all, and that the Din’e must have won and continued to occupy the land until now.  Maybe the Hopi were relocated.

Now, evidently, the issue’s a different one.  Peabody Coal wants to strip mine coal there, and there’s the threat of relocation for the ones left on the Mesa.

Seems to me there are several separate issues here.

As for the relocation:  the Din’e are a numerous folk.  The Rez is the largest in the US (I suspect).

If they believe this is wrong and want to stop it, they’re able to do it, and they know perfectly well how do do it.

Mountain’s blog’s asking for petitions to be signed.  Sometimes petitions and legal action still work, even against the leviathan.

The Zuni managed to stop a strip mine cold through a lot of stirring and insisting through the legal system.  (That mine notice at the top of this entry didn’t happen because of Zuni determination, fighting the leviathan alone, and winning.)

But at the end of the day, this one might well come down to Din’e determination in other ways, standing alone, or with whomever else believes enough, is concerned enough, to join in.

If it comes to Din’e warriors drawing a line in the sand and facing the dragon alone, to people dying, so be it.  Sometimes that’s just how it has to be.  Sometimes we just have to gore our own oxen, sometimes we have to die doing it because we know what we are doing is right.

It’s what makes us men.

We’ve never been afraid to die for something we believed in.  If something’s changed that, we deserve whatever we get.

But any day is a good day to die if it ain’t in some drunken car wreck, some drug deal gone sour, some slow death of diabetes or fast one of suicide.  Wiggling and twisting in the web and calling it struggle until the leviathan comes to suck out whatever’s left of life in us.

We can go along being bought and paid for an awfully long time.  We can sell our souls to the leviathon a piece at a time, as mostly we’ve all done.  Until the leviathan comes to just believe it’s the way of all things and demands a piece that ain’t for sale.

We can beg and shuffle, and when he says, “YOU MUST!”, lower our eyes and say, ‘Sold’.

Or we can look him in the eye and say, “Come on ahead and do your damnedest.”

The Din’e can win on this one if they believe and if they’re determined enough.  But sometimes we all get so accustomed to losing in this life we forget how to win.

We’ve got to sing the song of life each day so when the time arrives to sing the song of death we’ll recognize it and know how to sing it.

Jack

(I see I’ve only talked of a single issue here.  But there’s another I’ll discuss later.  The strip mining of my, and your deserts so folks in Phoenix, Albuquerque, Tucson, El Paso, can fire up their hair dryers and air condition their homes.  I’m going to say some things about that, but in another entry.)

The King Is Dead
Long Live The King

Behold, sweet sovereign of song,
creator, keeper, carrion king
of Rock and Roll,
how we miss you.

Old now, my liege, how we hum
how we whistle distant echoes
of your reign
and remember!

Not for you, sweet prince,
mediocre marble monuments,
bronze busts in barren halls.

How you were us!
How, in your dotage,
your swollen jowl,
your sallow cheeks,
your leaden eye
became our own.

Not for you, the canvas likeness hung on walls
with saints, small children, gods and golden men.
Not you!
For you, lord, the paper likeness,
the image on black velour;
in plaster lamps,
plastic icons,
and now this final homage
to your fiery youth.

With every moist touch of these lips, this tongue
we wash away the mucous of those later years
of yours and ours;
summon forth the young prince;
call back those vibrant times
of yesteryear
when the bud shot forth from the vine
and you emerged
and we emerged.

Every touch, sweet prince, to brush away
the bloated darkness of those later
aftertimes
and stay the past within this tiny,
glossy image forth.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright©2002, Jack Purcell

Jack wrote this in February, 2006:

The tiny Alamo Band – the unforgiven:

Probably the most destitute Native Americans in the US .  Descendants of the Navajo and Mescalero scouts who helped the US Army during the Navajo War of 1864.

When the Din’e and Mescalero were taken to Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico there was no obvious place for these scouts and their families.  Even the US Army was unwilling to send them to Bosque Redondo for slaughter in punishment for the assistance they’d given.

Alamo, a temporary, tiny, rocky Rez was created for them north of Magdalena, New Mexico until a better place could be found.  Later Alamo was placed under the umbrella of the larger Navajo Rez, which didn’t want them, didn’t welcome them for tribal rites and ceremonies.  Didn’t claim them as kin.

They’re still there, the Alamo band.  Inbred, poor disfranchised.  Bereft of any tribal benefits that can be deprived by the Navajo.  Unclaimed by the Mescalero.

The forgotten and unforgiven.

However, the Alamo Band is unique in one regard.  Even though they began as only temporary stewards of the land, they took care of it.  Today, the Rez hasn’t been made a parking lot, a strip mine, a garbage dump, nor a nuclear waste disposal site.  It hasn’t been over-grazed and eroded into a blanket of abraded arroyos.

Maybe it ain’t so bad, being forgotten and unforgiven, even though it’s hard living for them.

Jack

Old Jules, have you experienced any mind-boggling revelations yet?

This recent discovery by NASA that the tops of thunderstorms sometimes create/release beams of anti-matter [ http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/12/stor… ] might possibly finally explain something I’ve wondered about almost all my life: Outside the town I grew up near in the 1950s a man working in his cultivated field spontaneously combusted before witnesses also working in the field. Naturally not much time passed before it was declared not to have happened because it couldn’t happen. Same as a number of similar incidents over the decades. Once the traditional residue of it not being able to happen wears away maybe someone will figure out it can happen, whether that’s the explanation, or something else NASA hasn’t discovered yet.

Old Jules, has any government conspiracy ever been proved true?

A US president resigned because of the ‘minor’ Watergate conspiracy, and a lot of high-ranking officials went to prison. Andrew Jackson never denied his conspiracy and intent to take Texas into the US, despite treaty and personal assurances to Mexico it wouldn’t happen. It finally happened the last day of his administration. The result was the Mexican War and eventually the US owning the SW [now] states of the US. The Zimmerman Telegram, which was instrumental high profile in getting us into WWI was proven conclusively in the 1960s when the information was declassified that it was a piece of the conspiracy between Britain and the US government to draw us in. The government also conspired to misinform the public of the nature of the Lusitania, the fact it was an armed merchantman, as opposed to an unarmed passenger liner when it was attacked by the German Navy. Roosevelt and Churchill conspired to bring the US into the WWII by the ‘secret war’, which was secret to noone except the US public, and the intent of cutting off Japanese oil at Singapore in August 1943. Lyndon Johnson eventually admitted the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a US government conspiracy and complete fabrication intended to insert more US troops into Vietnam and increase US involvement. JFK and Johnson conspired to assassinate President Diem of Vietnam, Johnson admitted to it Is this enough? There are plenty of others, but probably not enough to spoil your complacency.

Old Jules, would you rather date a rich girl (for her money) a smart girl (for her brilliance)?

Rich girls still exist in the 21st Century. If I was determined to date one of the two I’d be forced to choose the rich one by the process of elimination.

Old Jules, what three things would make your life better, or make you happier?

Attitude adjustment: 1] Lowering your common denominator for what you believe is the minimum required to allow you to be happy. Example: When this cold front hit a lot of things went awry. My refrigerator went out in a way that resulted in all the lights dimming when it came on. Might have caused the capacitor/starter for the well pump to go out, but I can’t tell yet because the pipes are frozen. So I’ve been several days without water and refrigeration. Hauled water down from the neighbor place for the cats and chickens, but lost all the stored up frozen stuff from my garden and everything in the fridge. Meanwhile, the cabin is staying around 40-50 degrees F. This would probably have made a lot of people unhappy, and I’ll confess frustration has almost intruded a time or two, but I’ve remained reasonably content. My expectations aren’t high anyway, and while all this is a setback, I still have a place to live, blankets, animals I love, a life I love. Now, however, ecstacy: The neighbor went to town today and I was able to go up and wash the clothes I’ve been wearing 18 layers of for a week, shower, and wash my dirty dishes. Absolute heaven. Then I lounged around their place in front of the fireplace, let my hair dry and the washer/dryer finish, took a nap on their couch. Revelled in being warm. Tonight I still feel the residue. Now, all that happiness wouldn’t be possible if I required a lot more to allow me to be content, or happy. You asked for three, and there are more, but I’ll save them for another time.

Jack wrote this in February, 2006, to introduce himself in a new blog:

Hello blogsters:

Just beginning this thing, so this qualifies as a test.  Only a test.

If this were actually an emergency alert you should turn your radio dial to 640, or 1240 to the National Emergency Broadcasting System and listen for further instructions.

But this is only a test.  (Which is a plus, since the National Emergency Broadcasting System and CONELRAD appears to have gone belly-up sometime during the past 40 years).

So this will have to do.

_______________________________________________

Okay.  That stuff posted.  The test?  If my memory serves me correctly I never scored higher than C- on any test.  I haven’t seen the scores on this one, but I’ll confess I didn’t study for it, so prospects don’t look good.

Fact is, I’ve been out of school several decades too long to care, much.

I’m more interested in psychic surgery, at the moment, than I am tests.  Psychic surgery, some specific aspects of southwestern US history, a wide range of metaphysical avenues including energy conversion, dowsing, Reiki, ‘thrust dowsing’, and nailing down a Unified Random Numbers Behavior Theory.

Fairly humdrum stuff, I think you’ll have to agree.

But this ain’t likely to bore you, because there’s about a zero-to-none chance anyone will ever read it anyway, what with tens of thousands of blogs starting every fraction of a second.  Thank goodness.

So there.

One more thing to add to my affirmations of gratitude.  I don’t have to search for those, but when one jumps out of the sky, as this one has, and lands spang on my dinner plate, trust me.  I’m going to jump on it like ugly on a monkey.

That about covers it for my self introduction to non-readers.

Jack

 

Jack wrote these two posts in December, 2005:

Jack wrote this in February, 2006, when he was studying lottery histories and trying to find patterns in the winning numbers:

Evening blogsters:

This blog entry isn’t about winning lotteries. 

It’s about the attempts by man to impose randomness on them, and about how numbers respond.  It’s about whatever underlying meaning can be drawn from that information.

Millions of people are out there today trying to predict what numbers will hit tonight on the burgeoning Powerball Lottery.

The advertised jackpot is now $300 Million, which means a person who took the money instead of allowing them to ‘invest’ it for him at low interest for decades, would be entitled to around $150 Million before taxes.  Roughly $75 Million after taxes.

Way more money than any human being needs to struggle through a stint of three-score-and-ten times around the star.  More challenges hidden in that $75 M bucks than most anyone needs, as well.

But the reason I’m writing this blog isn’t about stupid overwhelming amounts of money a person can buy toys with.

It’s about those random numbers and the way they behave.  They ain’t random.  They’re coming from somewhere, and they mean something.  They’re showing up in the lotteries throughout the world, all in the same non-random sets of patterns.

I’ve been studying this over a year.  It’s been a spiritual experience I never expected when I began…. but once I saw the Universe is trying to tell us something, measuring something, labelling something, through the numbers that hit each day, particularly when they win prizes, it was also clear it’s all by intelligent design.

All those people trying to predict what numbers are going to hit tonight would be better served trying to understand what those numbers are predicting.

Within the last couple of weeks, you might have noticed on my feed, the Wisconsin lottery hit the same combination of numbers twice during a ten day period.  Can you imagine the odds against such a thing happening?

Here’s another example.  These are the numbers that actually won the last ten jackpots on Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries:

MM 1/6/2006	8	11	28	37	53	12
MM 12/30/2005	14	20	25	40	44	37
MM 11/29/2005	7	8	40	51	52	5
MM 11/15/2005	2	4	5	40	48	7
PB 11/2/2005	6	11	14	27	41	38
PB 10/22/2005	6	7	36	51	53	17
MM 9/20/2005	35	36	40	42	52	45
PB 8/13/2005	1	2	18	37	43	37		37
MM 7/26/2005	1	10	18	29	55	8
MM 6/7/2005	7	14	28	46	40	25

Look at them closely, and when you do, imagine the buzzillions to one odds against it happening even once.  Look at how every time a jackpot is won one, two, or more of the same numbers win the next one, even when it’s on the other lottery.

We’ve got a lot to learn.

One of the things I want to understand before I die is what those numbers are trying to say, aside from screaming, “I ain’t RANDOM, you humans!  I’m trying to TELL you something.  Listen to me.”

The more trouble human beings go to, the more security measures they use, the more methodology, to try to impose randomness on numbers, the more they stretch and sing.  The more they try to get our attention.

Maybe in some future blog entry I’ll tell how a forward I got by email about a ‘black box’ in a university basement in the UK designed to generate random numbers first twigged me this might be so.

First I’ll see if anyone but me finds even a speck of interest in the subject.

Jack

Afterthought:

You dowsers, and the other metaphysical folk among you blogsters:

 If you have trouble believing this, dowse it for truth.  Channel it.  Skry it.  Do whatever you do, and once you’ve done it, tell me it ain’t so.

Namaste

Jack