Tag Archives: musings

Predicting the Future

Posted on April 11, 2012 by | 7 comments

This post is from a previous blog a few years ago:

With this blog entry I’d like to provide you with my own lead-pipe-cinch view of what you can expect from the future.

Think about the other side of things a while, if you worry about a meteor hitting the earth, terrorists crawling out of the ocean with butcher-knives clamped in their teeth or other doomsday scenarios. My predictions are going to happen. All those others are just unlikely maybe/ maybe nots.  Our track record doesn’t suggest we can be as good at predicting events as we are at, say, engineering. We’ve all been trying for a long time and our failures have been consistent.

My own predictions:

1) If you live long enough you will grow old.

2) You will die.

3) The people you care about and others around you will either die the usual way, scattered out along a timeline, or their deaths will be compressed into a shorter time span through wars, plagues and other disasters.

4) Death’s such an individual and inevitable experience it won’t matter much whether the entire planet goes with you, or you just lie down alone somewhere and do it. Cancer, a terrorist attack, plague, a giant meteor, getting whacked by a drunk driver, or just dying of old age all work out the same in the end.

The method and moment we exit the vehicle probably doesn’t have much to do with life’s purposes. I might even conjecture that frantic preoccupation with the number of times we ride this mudball around the sun distracts us from what’s important.

Life is the only route we’ve discovered to allow us to arrive at death on time.

The Bard said it best: “Cowards die a thousand times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.”

Don’t spend too much time gazing into the abyss. I said that.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules: Watching the Dumb to Become Smart?

 

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Concerning Zealotry

Posted on April 9, 2012 by | 4 comments

Originally posted on another blog site Tuesday, September 26, 2006

What’s wrong with zealotry?

Probably no human trait has caused more misery, bloodshed, pain and general deviltry in history than political or religious zealotry.

Political or religious zealotry.  The deadly twins.  They aren’t two separate traits.  Political, or religious zealotry are just one trait following two different paths to create ugly.

Think about it.  One of the reasons political and religious zealots tend to be found in the same human being lies in the fact that religious zealots have already graduated with honors from the school of blind faith.

Communism?  3/4 century of human misery caused by political zealotry.  Cambodia?  The Inquisition?  The Mormons having to flee to Utah?  The 3rd Reich?  Jim Jones?  Wossname Christian/Patriot bossman wanting to assassinate wossnamisimo prez of Venezuela?  The Kennedy bros. ordering the assassination of Prez Diem, was it, our ally, South Vietnam?  The Kennedy bros., themselves getting assassinated?

Political, or religious zealotry.

Today it isn’t getting better, as a person might have expected, because of the collapse of Communism world-wide.  It’s gotten a lot worse.  We’ve got Muslim zealots, Christian zealots, Prez step-two Bush Dynasty and ex-prez BlowJob wives all in the game of zealous one-upsmanship.  Zionist zealots wanting to snag every piece of real estate in the Middle East they can drum up an excuse to play for US support, which doesn’t take much.  Hispanic zealots in the US southwest wanting to take it away from the white zealots who took it away from them.  Environmentalist zealots trying to spike trees to injure the workmen cutting down trees while they listen to Joseph Rush Goebbels on the radio to help them remember what to think about rad-libs, Arabs, and whomever it is we’re bombing the bejesus out of this week.

This ain’t cutting it.  It’s not making your lives happier, and it’s sure as hell not making them better.

One of the things I like best about the teachings of the Buddha is the emphasis on moderation, the cautions against zealotry.

Religious moderates have never burned one another at the stake.  Political moderates have never dragged out the guillotine to punish the opposition.  They never built any gas chambers and ovens.  No political or religious moderate ever pulled the trigger on anyone, ever dropped a bomb on anyone except in self-defense.

Political, or religious zealotry.  Human traits worth hating, but they usually only hate one another.  Moderates never bother to hate anyone.

Moderates.  Nice, easy living sort of term.

Old Jules

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Housekeeping

Posted on April 6, 2012 by | 26 comments

Hi everyone, Jeanne here. Please bear with me while I make a few comments on the status of things here at So Far From Heaven.

First of all, the blog site isn’t going away. I’m sure Jules will post from time to time, but he’s also relieved to have made the decision to post only when he feels the urge without any dedication to a schedule. So, less stress, fewer posts, but not going away. If you’re not already signed up for email notifications, you might consider it. I’ve certainly found it helpful on other blog sites that I follow.

I have permission to post some other things that Jules has written in the past, some items from previous blogs, poetry, some pieces from other projects. I would appreciate your feedback about this idea. I suspect I am biased about his writing and don’t have enough distance from the situation to really know whether our followers  want to see anything “old” or just wait for something current.

For anyone who wants a daily dose of Old Jules’ writing, please visit  Ask Old Jules, where you are still welcome to ask questions there through the comments.  Although I only post one question and answer per day, there is a lot of variety and randomness from day to day that you might enjoy.  The Facebook page So Far From Heaven: Ask Old Jules will also continue with shorter q/a posts more appropriate to the Facebook format.

We’re very gratified that at this point we’ve got a nice solid core of dedicated readers. I’m also following a lot of nice people that I never knew existed, and intend to keep doing so. We appreciate all the responses we’ve had so far and look forward to continuing in the same vein although not with the same frequency.

Until next time,
Jeanne

26 Comments

Posted in 2012, Admin., Communication, Creative Writing, Human Behavior, Writing

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Dressing Hoes, Handles and Whips

Posted on March 28, 2012 by | 10 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Different world.  This is one of the first adult jokes I ever remember hearing:

First morning on her new job in a hardware store a man approached her.  “I need a flat bastard.”

“Cad!”  She slapped him and he rushed out.

The manager was aghast, but she explained the customer swore at her, so he just shook his head and went back to his business as another man approached her.

“I need a flat bastard.”

“Cad!”  She slapped him and he ran from the store.

This time, the manager questioned her and she explained the offending language.

“Ahh.  It’s okay.  They were asking for bastard files.  See,” pointing to a bin of files, “Those are called bastard files.”

She apologized, and he went back to work.  Another customer approached her.  “I need a file.”

“How about one of these flat bastards?” Glowing with new-found knowledge.

“No, I think I’ll take this little round son-of-a-bitch.”

Trying to dress my tools, all the little bastards I could find around here were Chinese s-o-bs.  Worthless.  I ended up using that grinding wheel as a whetstone, which was slow, but worked.  But the stone soaked up a lot of oil while I used it. 

While I was dressing those blades and working linseed oil into the handles I found myself wondering whether anyone does that anymore.  As a kid I was taught that nobody would respect a person who didn’t take care of his tools.  But I suspect there aren’t enough people doing any hoe work anymore to cause them to bother with it.

And of course, the tools aren’t made to last, anyway.  Aren’t even made to do the job they’re shaped for.

I’m going to keep my eye out at auctions and thrift stores for some broken tools with metal D-handles, I reckons.  That shovel has a lot of life left in it if I can find a handle that was made when the folks making it thought someone would use it eventually.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Open Range Ranching?

Old Jules, what can you tell me about open range ranching in the 1800s?

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Posted in America, Country Life

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What about the non-Jews killed by the Nazis?

Posted on March 27, 2012 by | 7 comments

Note from Jeanne: Here’s another example of a random question answered by Old Jules a while back on another website. If you have a question you’d like answered, please leave it in the comments. And of course, find more equally random questions and his answers at www.askoldjules.com.

Old Jules, why does everyone forget the other 10 million people who were killed by the Nazis?  It’s well known that around 17 to 21 million people were killed during the Holocaust. including Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies, Disabled people, Peasants, ethnic Poles, Soviets, prisoners of war, etc…
But why is it that people only ever remember the “six million Jews” when talking about the Holocaust? Even my friend’s little brother is taking history in school and is being taught about Nazi Germany and even he said he is only being taught about the 6 million Jews,etc…
Isn’t it either ignorant or disrespectful to forget or outright ignore the fact that it wasn’t only Jews who were targeted?

Jews are no better, no worse than the rest of us. If those of us who are non-Jewish were Jews. we’d probably direct a lot of energy to turning the German holocaust to our own advantage, just as they’ve done and continue doing. [In fact, many ethnic groups use similar tactics to keep the memories of wrongs done to their ancestors in sharp focus, probably for the same reasons].

Israeli Zionists are more intelligent and better educated than most citizens of Europe and the US. They understand the populations are mostly shallow ignorant sheep, that their attitudes and viewpoints are easily manipulated by controlling the information fed to them by the media and textbooks. They’d be a lot less intelligent than they are if they failed to take advantage of the obvious.

It’s true a lot of other groups died during the holocaust and that 20th Century genocides killed far larger numbers of others in the USSR, Cambodia, Biafra, French Guiana, Armenia, the Ukraine and elsewhere. Mostly they go forgotten and unnoticed.

There appears to be a deliberate attempt to focus entirely on Jewish victims and the German holocaust and brush all the others aside. This could be the result of a number of possibilities.

This focus isn’t necessarily intended to suggest the only victims of genocide that matter are Jews, and it isn’t necessarily a cynical, opportunistic PR campaign by Israeli Zionists to twang the heartstrings of the world or the US and Europe with constant reminders of the German [Jewish] holocaust so’s to keep military and financial assistance going to them.

It might just be that Jews worldwide feel the pain of the Jewish genocide more than they feel the non-Jewish ones, and since they’re deeply connected within the media, governments, publishing and elsewhere, they naturally focus on their own painful remembrances unconsciously. Not because they don’t care about the others, exactly, but they care more about their own.

But it might also have something to do with keeping the eyes of the world directed away from Israel’s own massacres when they find genocide against others to be convenient.

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Commitment to Dogs That Won’t Hunt

Posted on March 23, 2012 by | 20 comments

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Searching around in my mind as I drove to Kerrville yesterday I was trying to find something, almost anything, the word ‘we’ could be applied to that included all of humanity.  Not an easy task, despite most of the lofty notions humans have about themselves.

Intelligence and thinking came to mind, but didn’t survive even long-range scrutiny.  Whatever else we might be, human beings are only intelligent when compared to one another within a miniscule range of options.  Probably the least intelligent human being able to function is somewhat smarter than the next-best up for consideration in the animal kingdom.  And a few notches up on the yardstick, the smartest human being isn’t much more intelligent.  But there’s enough difference top-to-bottom to demolish the word ‘we’ when it comes to defining anything all humans have in common.

As for thinking, there’s just not a hell of a lot of it going on.  The overwhelming majority of humans are riding along on shock waves created by thinkings of an underwhelming few individuals.  Of the several billion humans on this planet there’s not more than a shot-glass full who could figure out how to manufacture a lead pencil.  Or, for that matter, a shot-glass.  Or build a fire without materials provided by some autopilot composite of individuals not-thinking somewhere else.

Pride held up a lot better, but as I turned it over examining all the nuances I found it was handcuffed to something else.  Commitment.  This species couldn’t have survived this long without it any more than a tribe of beavers could survive without the non-thinking commitment to building community dams.

And pride is the glue holding it together.  A necessary virtue to keep things moving, even though the commitments most frequently to dogs that don’t hunt, haven’t hunted for centuries, but nobody’s devoted enough thought to the matter to notice.

When I was a kid the adults used to say if a snapping turtle ever got a bite on you it wouldn’t turn loose until it thundered.  One of the places in this reality where the word ‘we’ can be applied to humanity is our commonality to that imaginary snapping turtle.  Commitments come along, sometimes the result of someone thinking something, sometimes just out of the blue, and ‘we’ lock our pride into it and don’t turn loose until it thunders.

When I began this post I intended it to examine human commitments to failed ideals and myths.  I planned to reflect on our often failing repeated attempts to commit ourselves to individuals, to political parties, to geographic boundaries.

But I’m going to have to save that for some future post. 

I was watching bumper stickers as I drove along considering all this.  Proud to be an American.  Proud to be a Texan.  Proud to be a Native Texan.

Presumably those declarations are a source of pride because of the effort and personal hardship involved in achieving them.  If pride had anything to do with personal achievement.  Or thinking.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Views on Atheism?

Old Jules, what is your view on my religion? I’m an atheist.

 

20 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Communication, Current Issues, Education, History, Human Behavior, Solitude, Survival

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A Filler for Bad Texas Weather

Posted on March 20, 2012 by | 12 comments

Good morning everyone, Jeanne here.  Jules and I discussed the possibility that the horrendous weather he’s been having down there in the hill country might inhibit his going online for a day or two, so I’m putting up a couple items that I was going to save for a future Ask Old Jules entry. As always, if you have a question yourself that  you’d like to see answered in a future post, you can put it in the comments on either site. 

Old Jules, my partner and I  have asked spirits/orbs/ghosts into our home so that we can take photos of them. We have some good orb pics. The thing that have really noticed is that within a minute of my partner sensing something in the room, I often smell an incredibly strong smell of rotten eggs/rotten flesh. This has happened about 3 times whilst asking for beings to be photographed. The other night after taking pics I suddenly smelt it in my bedroom, like it was following me (and I was undressing). My partner seems to sense beings,  but I don’t.  I smell them, but he can’t.
So my main question is whether this smell is of bad spirits/demons?

Sounds as though you might need to try the NOSE (Neotronics Olfactory Sensing Equipment; Neotronics). It’s likely to be the rage in the next generation of marketing ghost-chasing equipment to television watching ghost busters.

Paranormality’s grand
Electro-magnetically scanned;
Ghost-chasing adventures
And captitalist ventures
Finally go hand-in-hand.

Old Jules, what’s the best strategy to play blackjack online?

The best strategy is to not play online. Would you play blackjack at a casino where they took the cards into the backroom to shuffle them, where everything important happened outside your range of vision, where the whole thing, beginning to end, was done in a dark room illegally and you’d have no recourse in the unimaginable event you could prove you’d been cheated?

Online gambling from the US just about fits that description. The online casino strangers you play with provide the games because they have a vested interest in winning. If Lady Luck doesn’t offer up the profits there’s nothing at all to keep them from helping her along.

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The Social Security Entitlement Adventure

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | 20 comments

Good morning readers. I’m obliged you came by for a read.

I got an email yesterday from an old acquaintance who’s carrying a serious chip on his shoulder about somebody calling the Social Security pension he lives on an ‘entitlement’. He raged on about how he paid into it fifty years, and his employers matched everything he paid. So, he says, it’s not an entitlement.

Sheeze. I wonder what else a person would call it. He’s entitled to it. What the hell is it but an entitlement?

But I think he’s concerned that because ‘entitlement’ has become a buzzword for something else he doesn’t like.  Namely a whole range of government payouts to bank owners, automobile companies, multi-national corporations, all manner of people bleeding the US budget dry with bailouts and payoffs.  I think he figures they might quit paying him his pension because they called it an entitlement.  Putting him down with scum bankers and CEOs and Chairmans of Boards and politicians.

Seems to me he’s just not thinking right.  He’s gotten old up there in Al Capone country and no longer seeing the opportunity it would represent if they took away his retirement check he needs to live.

Truth is, we lived fairly tame lives, we retirees.  Generally we did what was needed and more-or-less stayed within the boundaries of the laws and ethics while we did it.

In a lot of ways we screwed ourselves out of the adventure we were entitled to.  The adventure of sticking up banks and shooting it out with the cops and whatnot.

Those bankers and CEOs and politicans got to have all the fun, though they didn’t do it in a way that would take them out in a blaze of gunfire.  But we spent our lives in an environment with them in their houses on the hill, and down on the street corners and alleyways people were shooting it out with one another and the cops.

We just plodded along working our asses off not getting to drive limosines nor scoot around in the shadows mugging anyone.  But now maybe they’re finally going to give us our shot at having some fun finally.

Seems to me it’s about time.

Old Jules

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Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Survival

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Guard Cats – In the Interest of Harmony

Posted on March 9, 2012 by | 21 comments

In the pic they’re patrolling in Placitas, New Mexico.  But it’s the same here.

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

There’s a rich-people kind of house up the hill, a quarter-mile south of me.  It sits on 90-odd acres of land, has a barn worthy of the name, and it’s been sitting vacant during all the years I’ve been here.  Vacant, but for sale.

But a couple of weeks ago a couple of strangers pulled up in front of the cabin on a four-wheeler with side-by-side seats.  It’s the first time I’ve ever had an unexpected visitor here except Gale or Gale and Kay.  Naturally I scrambled out to find out what they wanted.

Turned out he’d just bought the place and wanted to introduce himself to his nearest neighbor.  That done, he left saying they’d be moving in soon.  Friendly exchange.

Then yesterday I went up to Gale’s and he was there.  They’d just done their moving into their new home.  He and Gale were discussing things and I sat down for a quick cup of coffee before going on about my business.

“I’m hoping you won’t shoot my dog.”

“Is it a chicken killer?”  Thinking whatever danger there was to his dog probably came in the form of dead chickens.

“It’s never been around chickens.  It’s a mutt, a rescued dog, part lab, part herder, part pit-bull.  What killing it’s done was cats.  I had a lot of feral cats on the last place I lived.”  He paused.  “I know you have cats down there.”

That gave me pause for thought.  While I was thinking, he added, “If you see him, he’s gun shy.  Just fire into the air and he’ll run away.”

I’m a man who has a huge respect for how badly neighbor problems can intrude and make life a hell for both neighbors.  But I’m also aware that animals can cause neighbor problems lightning-fast.  Quicker than almost anything else.  For instance, there’s almost nothing that will piss a man off worse than killing his dog, no matter what the dog was doing at the time of demise.

“Tell you what.  I’ll make sure my cats don’t come up here killing your dog if you’ll make sure your dog doesn’t come down here killing my cats.”  Seemed a fair enough proposition to me.  I pretty much figure if my cats go up there attacking his dog, anything on his place, he’s welcome to shoot them, but it would be more fitting if he came down here and put a bullet between my eyes.

He expressed a concern that his dog might mistake me for a cat, saying that since I’m around them I’d have their scent on me, but I assured him that wasn’t a concern.  I’ve never met a dog I couldn’t stand off.  And I shouldn’t have any reason to be around this one.  During my years here I’ve only set foot on that place a couple of times.  Once because of cows, and once challenging some people who were up there loading things into a truck.  I just politely asked if they had permission, and noted the license number of the vehicle.

The man’s 74 years old, seems a nice guy.  Ex-pilot.  And if we need to talk we  probably will enjoy most things we might discuss.

I surely hope my cats don’t go up there attacking his dog, though, because I’d expect him to shoot them. 

Old Jules

 

21 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Current Issues, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior

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Sunday Morning Coming Up, Down and Sideways

Posted on February 26, 2012 by | 12 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for stopping by for a read this morning.

Those of you who haven’t been getting enough magnetism in your areas will be glad to know we’ll be having a nice little geomagnetic storm today. 

CME TARGETS EARTH, MARS: A coronal mass ejection (CME) launched from the sun on Feb. 24th appears set to hit both Earth and Mars. According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud should reach Earth today, Feb. 26th around 1330 UT, followed by Mars two days later.

The CME was hurled into space by a filament of magnetism, which rose up from the sun’s northestern limb and erupted on Feb. 24th: SDO movie. Although much of the cloud headed north, out of the plane of the planets, the cloud’s lower edge will dip down low enough to intersect Earth, Curiosity, and Mars.

http://spaceweather.com/

It couldn’t have come at a better time here.  The ranchers have been complaining something awful about the magnetic drought.

Meanwhile, it’s mostly business as usual here.  When I went out onto the porch to say my hellos to the felines it was all present and accounted for except the invader cat.  It was out there last night, but I figure it’s commuting to whatever place it has real people somewhere, keeping them on edge, then hurrying back here where things are really happening.  But that leaves it open to the possibility of missing something both places.

I’m thinking it will carry on this game as long as it thinks it can get by with it at both ends.

Those of you who believe radio waves are messing with your heads will be gratified to know there’s a place in the US where you can get away from it.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/west-virginias-quiet-zone-becomes-refuge-for-those-on-the-run/

West Virginia’s ‘Quiet Zone’ becomes refuge for those on the run from wireless technology

By posted Sep 15th 2011 3:12PM
 
 There’s a 13,000-square-mile section of West Virginia known as the Quiet Zone where there’s no WiFi, no cell service, and strict regulations placed on any device that could pollute the airwaves. Those unique conditions are enforced (and aided by the surrounding mountains) to protect the radio telescopes in the area from interference, and it’s hardly anything new — as The Huffington Post notes, Wired did an extensive profile of the zone back in 2004 (the area itself was established in 1958). But as the BBC recently reported, the Quiet Zone is also now serving as something of a refuge for people who believe that wireless technology makes them sick — a condition sometimes called Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (or EHS). Those claims are, of course, in dispute by most medical professionals, but that apparently hasn’t stopped folks from calling the local real estate agent “every other week or so” to inquire about a place in the zone.
 
For those who don’t want to migrate to West Virginia, however, experts suggest a person might  just hit the switch at the power pole and see whether it results in any improvement. 
 
One body of opinion leans to the thought that radio waves have a lot more influence on the human mind when they’re allowed to enter an antenna, swoop down through some receiver to an amplifier, then out to a speaker.  Then back through the air where they encounter a human ear.
 
Making sure those radio waves don’t get passage through and convert themselves to something the human mind can interpret into pictures and words, those experts say, interrupts the damage they can do, or at least reduces it.
 
My personal opinion is that I don’t know.
 
Old Jules
 
Today on Ask Old Jules:  Life in the 1960′s?

Old Jules, what was your life like in the ’60s?

 

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Astronomy, Country Life, Current Issues, Science, Senior Citizens

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