The Bears

We have finally reached the threshold of a Bear Market, according to the New York Times, and it's all tied to oil. The Dow has dropped a thousand points in the last month, and while that makes me afraid to check my portfolio because some of that money floating in the ether is supposedly mine, I also find myself a little giddy. Maybe this is the point at which things will change. Probably not. Oil may drop drastically and everything will seem fine again. People may just return to the pumps as before. We forget that 100 years ago we could have gotten around just fine on the fantastic system of trains that ran across this country. Wouldn't it be nice to just jump on a train here in Aspen, and not have to rocket into the air in an aluminum tube with jets attached to its wings? I feel like smoking a cigarrette, and taking the day off work. It's beautiful here in the mountains, but I miss the city. I miss being surrounded by masses of humanity. I miss the smells, the smiles, the sprawl. Life is a mystery. I've experienced major insanity, and let me tell you, it's a whole lot more realistic than what we call reality. The world we've invented is a world of nonsense, a black and white world in the midst of a universe of color floating in a void. Insanity is a rebellion against the walls of psychotic culture, it makes one feel powerful and fills the soul with an indignation and a hope of something else. When that falls away, there is only culture floating in a void of possibilities. This culture is something solid, stinking, wretched, crushing our souls in the spinning disposal of separation. Good Morning America. Doesn't anyone hear the screams of our crushed soul? We are boiling our potential in this melting pot. Hope? Faith? Joy? Honesty? Love? Rebellion.

So it's like some kind of journal

Well, I documented the pure insanity here in these online pages. The truth is it's been a shit storm, and I've done pretty well fooling myself on that account over the years. I guess I've been an emotional wreck since I can't really say when. I was born on the road, never knew my father, got left with my grandparents, and from there I got shipped around a whole lot. It really wasn't very much fun growing up a spoiled rich kid. It's more than it's made out to be. As much as I like to pretend, as I sit here mired in a crap heap of 28 years of hiding from my misery, I must say, when I wasn't the boy crying in the dark, I was whistling. So i'm sitting here paralyzed, wondering how to get out of this mess. I never really threw any clothes away over the years, partly as a result of living in so many places at the same time. I could have started a used clothing store by just selling my own. Instead I actually decided it would be a good idea to go around buying up old clothes that people had given away to thrift stores. This is really precious. So I went around collecting a whole lot of what I once saw as gems, and now i'm stuck with a home full of things that I don't need, and a store full of things that I don't need, and that will take me way too long to sell. Also, I've realized that having a store, for me, is a complete and utter nightmare. So I've just awakened from a nightmare that I've built up around myself, and I can't see any way out. As good an option as suicide seems, I really don't want to live on in infamy, as another of those fellows who was found hanging from a rope in his garage. Each day a new beginning right? I believe it's time to start throwing it all away to preserve myself, or whatever self there is worth saving in there. I pray to a god i'm not sure I believe in. I'm broken. Reading Of Human Bondage is not helping me, but it sure is engaging. It sure is pretty outside, but I just can't seem to grasp it. There you have it people. The end of the jumpsuits for me. It's time to get off this silly ship. I don't know where i'm going, and I have no idea how to get there. If I can just get rid of all this shit, it will be a beginning. But it's the mess inside that worries me the most.

the meaningless drivel of the universe

Matthew, one of our regular customers, was just enjoying the yellow ambiance of the store. He found a pair of brown Greet sunglasses, which resting on his nose, made him a perfect picture of a man walking straight and powerful out of the 70's. We talked about how every human being is closely related. Matthew said "white people are the first black people." I didn't quite understand how that worked, but I admitted that we did all come out of Africa. I just learned the other day that there is more genetic diversity between two chimpanzees in the same family group, than there is between any two human beings. Not that it really makes any difference. We are so closely related that we all seem utterly incapable of not acting like assholes. We are a most remarkable species, and we treat our fellow man like dirt. The more we can convince ourselves that he's different than us, the crueler we treat him. Mean monkeys walked out of Africa on our own two feet. Are we all Jews? That whole Israel area would have been a first stop on the trail out of our original homeland of Africa. Did skin get lighter the further north in Africa we went? Was Whitey born in Israel? Did that super volcano really explode 80,000 years or so ago, like they said on the History Channel, and kill all of us but fewer than 50,000. Those are our parents, All six, almost 7, billion of us. Yet we seem to easily ignore that fact, and amidst all the knowledge of our relation we have ourselves easily separated by race, religion, and sexual orientation. Oh well. We lock each other up and kill each other with impunity. Is there a God who cares? Or is it really so simple as the invention of God in our own image. The reflection of the observer. And so as we are cruel, but also gentle and loving, wrathful, as well as forgiving, so is our God. If there is a devil, he is inside all of us, just like God, but more than likely they are just two sides of one coin: us. Creation, destruction, creation, destruction. Om Nam Shiva.

Dr. James Hansen of Nasa--a to b aint gonna be easy

Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming

James Hansen

Tomorrow I will testify to Congress about global warming, 20 years after my 23 June 1988 testimony, which alerted the public that global warming was underway. There are striking similarities between then and now, but one big difference.

Again a wide gap has developed between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by policymakers and the public. Now, as then, frank assessment of scientific data yields conclusions that are shocking to the body politic. Now, as then, I can assert that these conclusions have a certainty exceeding 99 percent.

The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb. The next President and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation.

Otherwise it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity’s control.

Changes needed to preserve creation, the planet on which civilization developed, are clear. But the changes have been blocked by special interests, focused on short-term profits, who hold sway in Washington and other capitals.

I argue that a path yielding energy independence and a healthier environment is, barely, still possible. It requires a transformative change of direction in Washington in the next year.

On 23 June, 1988, I testified to a hearing, chaired by Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado, that the Earth had entered a long-term warming trend and that human-made greenhouse gases almost surely were responsible. I noted that global warming enhanced both extremes of the water cycle, meaning stronger droughts and forest fires, on the one hand, but also heavier rains and floods.

My testimony two decades ago was greeted with skepticism. But while skepticism is the lifeblood of science, it can confuse the public. As scientists examine a topic from all perspectives, it may appear that nothing is known with confidence. But from such broad open-minded study of all data, valid conclusions can be drawn.

My conclusions in 1988 were built on a wide range of inputs from basic physics, planetary studies, observations of on-going changes, and climate models. The evidence was strong enough that I could say it was time to “stop waffling.” I was sure that time would bring the scientific community to a similar consensus, as it has.

While international recognition of global warming was swift, actions have faltered. The U.S. refused to place limits on its emissions, and developing countries such as China and India rapidly increased their emissions.

What is at stake? Warming so far, about two degrees Fahrenheit over land areas, seems almost innocuous, being less than day-to-day weather fluctuations. But more warming is already “in-the-pipeline,” delayed only by the great inertia of the world ocean. And climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a “perfect storm”, a global cataclysm, are assembled.

Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well underway it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date. In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.

Animal and plant species are already stressed by climate change. Polar and alpine species will be pushed off the planet, if warming continues. Other species attempt to migrate, but as some are extinguished their interdependencies can cause ecosystem collapse. Mass extinctions, of more than half the species on the planet, have occurred several times when the Earth warmed as much as expected if greenhouse gases continue to increase. Biodiversity recovered, but it required hundreds of thousands of years.

The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.

These conclusions are based on paleoclimate data showing how the Earth responded to past levels of greenhouse gases and on observations showing how the world is responding to today’s carbon dioxide amount. The consequences of continued increase of greenhouse gases extend far beyond extermination of species and future sea level rise.

Arid subtropical climate zones are expanding poleward. Already an average expansion of about 250 miles has occurred, affecting the southern United States, the Mediterranean region, Australia and southern Africa. Forest fires and drying-up of lakes will increase further unless carbon dioxide growth is halted and reversed.

Mountain glaciers are the source of fresh water for hundreds of millions of people. These glaciers are receding world-wide, in the Himalayas, Andes and Rocky Mountains. They will disappear, leaving their rivers as trickles in late summer and fall, unless the growth of carbon dioxide is reversed.

Coral reefs, the rainforest of the ocean, are home for one-third of the species in the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.

Such phenomena, including the instability of Arctic sea ice and the great ice sheets at today’s carbon dioxide amount, show that we have already gone too far. We must draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide to preserve the planet we know. A level of no more than 350 ppm is still feasible, with the help of reforestation and improved agricultural practices, but just barely – time is running out.

Requirements to halt carbon dioxide growth follow from the size of fossil carbon reservoirs. Coal towers over oil and gas. Phase out of coal use except where the carbon is captured and stored below ground is the primary requirement for solving global warming.

Oil is used in vehicles where it is impractical to capture the carbon. But oil is running out. To preserve our planet we must also ensure that the next mobile energy source is not obtained by squeezing oil from coal, tar shale or other fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel reservoirs are finite, which is the main reason that prices are rising. We must move beyond fossil fuels eventually. Solution of the climate problem requires that we move to carbon-free energy promptly.

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children. Humanity would be impoverished by ravages of continually shifting shorelines and intensification of regional climate extremes. Loss of countless species would leave a more desolate planet.

If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead. We must demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. We must block fossil fuel interests who aim to squeeze every last drop of oil from public lands, off-shore, and wilderness areas. Those last drops are no solution. They yield continued exorbitant profits for a short-sighted self-serving industry, but no alleviation of our addiction or long-term energy source.

Moving from fossil fuels to clean energy is challenging, yet transformative in ways that will be welcomed. Cheap, subsidized fossil fuels engendered bad habits. We import food from halfway around the world, for example, even with healthier products available from nearby fields. Local produce would be competitive if not for fossil fuel subsidies and the fact that climate change damages and costs, due to fossil fuels, are also borne by the public.

A price on emissions that cause harm is essential. Yes, a carbon tax. Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is needed to wean us off fossil fuel addiction. Tax and dividend allows the marketplace, not politicians, to make investment decisions.

Carbon tax on coal, oil and gas is simple, applied at the first point of sale or port of entry. The entire tax must be returned to the public, an equal amount to each adult, a half-share for children. This dividend can be deposited monthly in an individual’s bank account.

Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is non-regressive. On the contrary, you can bet that low and middle income people will find ways to limit their carbon tax and come out ahead. Profligate energy users will have to pay for their excesses.

Demand for low-carbon high-efficiency products will spur innovation, making our products more competitive on international markets. Carbon emissions will plummet as energy efficiency and renewable energies grow rapidly. Black soot, mercury and other fossil fuel emissions will decline. A brighter, cleaner future, with energy independence, is possible.
Washington likes to spend our tax money line-by-line. Swarms of high-priced lobbyists in alligator shoes help Congress decide where to spend, and in turn the lobbyists’ clients provide “campaign” money.

The public must send a message to Washington. Preserve our planet, creation, for our children and grandchildren, but do not use that as an excuse for more tax-and-spend. Let this be our motto: “One hundred percent dividend or fight!”

The next President must make a national low-loss electric grid an imperative. It will allow dispersed renewable energies to supplant fossil fuels for power generation. Technology exists for direct-current high-voltage buried transmission lines. Trunk lines can be completed in less than a decade and expanded analogous to interstate highways.
Government must also change utility regulations so that profits do not depend on selling ever more energy, but instead increase with efficiency. Building code and vehicle efficiency requirements must be improved and put on a path toward carbon neutrality.

The fossil-industry maintains its strangle-hold on Washington via demagoguery, using China and other developing nations as scapegoats to rationalize inaction. In fact, we produced most of the excess carbon in the air today, and it is to our advantage as a nation to move smartly in developing ways to reduce emissions. As with the ozone problem, developing countries can be allowed limited extra time to reduce emissions. They will cooperate: they have much to lose from climate change and much to gain from clean air and reduced dependence on fossil fuels.
We must establish fair agreements with other countries. However, our own tax and dividend should start immediately. We have much to gain from it as a nation, and other countries will copy our success. If necessary, import duties on products from uncooperative countries can level the playing field, with the import tax added to the dividend pool.

Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great expectations.

oops

How easy it is to forget the self. To return is to be free again. To come back to the one, to the soul, is to return. The all lives inside the one. We exist inside the self. There is nothing outside but the reflection of within. Everything is here. That beautiful self within makes it easier to say goodbye to the reflection we seek without. Reproduction is just another illusion. The production exists without. To forget the self is to seek the other. This forgetfulness is life. It keeps things interesting. But then the illusion collapses, and we are forced to find the self again; and then begin to forget ourselves once more. Our nature is to seek, and we find ourselves and forget ourselves, and then we die. Goodbye illusion. Enjoy your concert.

Life Goes On

Well what do you know? We survived another Friday the 13th, and put the nuclear holocaust on the back burner for another day. One day at a time, as the saying goes. Life goes on. It's not that big a deal.

So the other day, my friend Matthew and I, with eyes wide, and foggy brained, discussed the all, standing in the sun, as I ignored my work duties. Matt is a bearded fellow with bright ideas and a strong belief in "the sacred herb." My belief in the same herb is not so faithful, as things get cloudy after awhile in the high hills of my dome. But on this occasion, Matt brought me back to the sunny heights with talk of Rasta and the interconnectedness of all. He brought it home again, for a moment, as I expressed my frustration with the great load of meaning and non-meaning in this age of lost innocence and the Death of the American Dream. As I struggled to keep some connection to some higher meaning outside the pipe, old Matt explained that we are simply the eyes of God witnessing our own creation. God, he told me, the creator, had no way of observing the creation; and here we are, the observers of the earth, separated from pure being by our questioning minds. In the midst of consequences of 1000's of years of our own inventions, it is becoming increasingly obvious that eating of the tree of knowledge may really have been a terrible idea. Now we are stuck in information overload. Knowledge is meaningless now, because too much information finally led us back to relativity, which took the wind out of our choice to be. Not to be seems far easier amidst the guilt of the Tipping Point. Man has become the weapon of vengeance upon ourselves and our garden, which God never was. So according to my estimation of the meaning of Matt, we are witnessing the imperfection of the creator, through the obviousness of our own imperfection. The Creator couldn't see itself, so we came to see it for her; and so to observe our own imperfection, as the masters of this planet, is also to see the imperfection of the creation of God. We ate the apple didn't we? Of course we did. So did the creator see its own reflection through us? Life and Death, life and death, life and death, is less than perfection. Existence is life and death, molecules popping in and out of existence. Maybe we don't die "over there," but we are stuck in the observation of over here, and are totally attached to this. We have yet to comprehend the unknown, we only whistle and pretend. The unknown is where we understand the powerlessness of creation. Does the Creator really have any power beyond what has been created? Our mistakes seem to be evidence that we are the acting creators. Our power over our own existence in the choices we make, seems to indicate that our power is intact, but we cannot escape our role as observers. We are the judges, and we stand before the judgment of ourselves. The creator must be experiencing its own powerlessness as it watches us spiral into our own destruction. The human being has become a force of nature, changing the face of the earth as we act in consciousness unlike the unthinking hurricane or earthquake. I was hip to the experience of feeling like the eyes of God observing its own imperfection in my own dissatisfaction with reality. We are coming up on 7 billion pairs of eyes here on earth to observe with. Come in Honolulu! We still can't seem to see a goddamn thing, so stuck are we on our individuality. But we are the same eyes, looking out at each other as if we are separate. Maybe that is how God feels. Looking out on the world that it created, powerless over its imperfection, and lonely because existence seems incapable of looking back into the eyes of itself to admit that there is no separation. I'm hungry, anyone for a taco?

Video Game sales are up 45% in the first 5 months of the year. Has the quality of reality outside the door gone down 45% in the same period? Grand Theft Auto IV is driving the upswing with massive sales as the top seller of the year, having sold 4.2 million copies. What's missing from our regular life? What are the people going to the games for most? We must not be getting enough killing, stealing, and prostitutin in our regular lives. I have a feeling the Japanese Knife killer was an avid video gamer. I think once you play enough games you long to bring your virtual world into the real one. Is it any surprise that we generally play war games before we go to war? Oh I don't know, maybe not. Why are we filling our minds with such crap? If we create reality, then why are we making such a nasty one? For some reason the Care Bears game just doesn't sell. I guess we are the lizards, and we just don't care.

Well, it's friday, the 13th, again, so we should all be very afraid that something bad will happen. We can sit paralyzed in fear all day. I feel like the whole show is tumbling down. The human race has figured too much out, and now life is so complicated that the dangers of existence are ready to overwhelm us. Like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN which threatens to create a small black hole which could conceivably swallow the earth, possibly in just a few years, as it expands. Yep, the first world sure is an interesting place to follow the news. Smart people are the dumbest people on earth. Let's invent this to fix that, and we'll let somebody else worry about fixing all the problems that our little quick fix will cause. It's like this whole thing about getting the "standard of living" up around the world. We are sold this hawbaggery all the time. Sure, having a high standard of living is great. We get to eat food from all over the world, while the third world starves. We get to drive in cars, fly in airplanes, and have our lights on all the time, while the have-nots just get a warming planet, and deteriorating farming conditions. The faster the first world grows, the more of a middle class is created in China, India, and the rest of the world, the faster the supplies that the planet can provide will be used up in the waste wash of consumerism. By spreading apple pie and the American way, we are accelerating the demise of human life on the planet. The way we live is not sustainable, and we are on the verge of the back lash. We were #1. Not anymore. We made our bed, and we've been busy making the bed of the rest of the world, and now we are all in bed together, and it's getting dirty. Really dirty. What am I talking about? It's a beautiful day. I'm gonna go out whistling and buy an expensive breakfast of imported foods. Mmm. I have yet to find a drug that completely removes the feeling of guilt which threatens to overwhelm. Television works pretty good. Maybe i'll turn on CNN, and see what's happening between us and them. But wait. We're all on the same boat, orbiting around the sun, in the midst of this vast universe of the unknown. It could all be so much fun if I didn't know how to read, if I wasn't subjected to all this information. The world is as small as we make it. I sure wish this town had an Arby's.

The Brat Child Lives

So I opened a yellow store in Greedhead, Colorado, which is insane and way too much responsibility. I dream of running back to Europa and doing nothing. Eating behind the St. Josep Boqueria in Barcelona, and riding an old bike in the sun. I'm good at nothing. Nothing is my specialty. It's so choice. I'm going to work my way back to it as fast as possible. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, what the hell am I doing trapped in paradise USA, the tip of the golden pyramid. Satan himself owns a home here, in case you didn't know.

Little Tillich from The Courage to Be... it's rare you read something that so nicely explains one's present situation

The anxiety of emptiness is aroused by the threat of nonbeing to the special contents of the spiritual life. A belief breaks down through external events or inner processes: one is cut off from creative participation in a sphere of culture, one feels frustrated about something which one had passionately affirmed, one is driven from devotion to one object to devotion to another and again on to another, because the meaning of each of them vanishes and the creative eros is transformed into indifference or aversion. Everything is tried and nothing satisfies. The contents of the tradition, however excellent, however praised, however loved once, lose their power to give content today. And present culture is even less able to provide the content. Anxiously one turns away from all concrete contents and looks for an ultimate meaning, only to discover that it was precisely the loss of a spiritual center which took away the meaning from the special contents of the spiritual life. But a spiritual center cannot be produced intentionally, and the attempt to produce it only produces deeper anxiety. The anxiety of emptiness drives us to the abyss of meaninglessness.
Emptiness and loss of meaning are expressions of the threat of nonbeing to the spiritual life. This threat is implied in man's finitude and actualized by man's estrangement. It can be described in terms of doubt, its creative and its destructive function in man's spiritual life. Man is able to ask because he is separated FROM, while participating IN, what he is asking about. In every question an element of doubt, the awareness of not having, is implied. In systematic questioning systematic doubt is effective... This element of doubt is a condition of all spiritual life. The threat to spiritual life is not doubt as an element but the total doubt. If the awareness of not having has swallowed the awareness of having, doubt has ceased to be methodological asking and has become existential despair. On the way to this situation the spiritual life tried to maintain itself as long as possible by clinging to affirmations which are not yet undercut, be they traditions, autonomous convictions, or emotional preferences. And if it is impossible to remove the doubt, one courageously accepts it without surrendering one's own convictions. One takes the risk of going astray and the anxiety of this risk upon oneself. In this way one avoids the extreme situation--till it becomes unavoidable and the despair of truth becomes complete.

The Courage To Be, Paul Tillich, 1952. pages 47, 48.

Three poems from the hole

Dulces

The orbs of fate spin heartlessly and cruel through infinity
While the seasons make their rotations
And consciousness oscillates between
Being and non-being
And the sheep graze
And the wolves wait
All is quiet as darkness comes

On the opposite side of the same planet
The sun is rising
Everything is spinning in the void
Every possible outcome since the beginning of time
Manifests and disappears
Here we are existing in the midst of non-existence

At least the love was real
As real as all the emptiness
Maybe the empty space,
Inside the empty space,
At the heart of all existence,
Is love
Reality inside out
Maybe everything else is the illusion
Empty and whole
Two poles of one thing
Outside the mind
Just the illusion
Of separation


Here's the Steeple

Oh Church
What solemn, serious, theater
How prim and pomped with crosses,
Music makers, podium, stained glass.
When belief is the only relief,
And we go looking for a different hue.
Sitting on a wooden bench in the silence of an empty chapel
Listening to the wind and pretending to be a tree
To become the nothingness for just a moment
To choose, for a second, not to be.
Then retreat from God and cry in the darkness!
"I am alone."
This is the beginning of death


Depress Haiku

And now to become
The infinite weight of nil
As winter begins

Just for Today

So i'm growing weary of small town life. I'm starting to feel trapped by my own inventions. I built up a little reality for myself, which is suddenly crumbling apart in the food processor of my brain. The developed self-concept, which was fortified with too much old literature, philosophy, and spiritual books, is falling down on itself. The void, which once was sublime, is now as depressing as it is empty. There is no thinking one's way out of being. Action is the only way out. There is positive action and negative action. The choice not to do is rarely conscious. How much does brain chemistry have to do with this equation? In retrospect, one can find themselves buried in the reality of an equivalent unconsciousness in all the doing they were so busy participating in. With a new existence in the bottomless glass, what seemed to be a purpose driven life suddenly seems like the root of our damnation. If nothing is built up, then there is nothing to fall down. Our world is Bi-polar. We are buried in the consequences of our actions. The idea that we know what we are doing is ever crumbling, as it is ever argued.

In other news, a 25 year old man in Tokyo went on a killing spree with a large knife, wearing a stylish suit, tee-shirt, and Converse sneakers.

The action and inaction of a century of oil addiction has tipped on us and the price of black gold is skyrocketing as the dollar and our stock-market fall. As our role at the top of the food chain wanes, and the rest of the world begins to overtake us in more than just their need for sweet crude and all kinds of fancy food, our past actions start to look like the seeds of our destruction. Nuclear weapons, anyone, anyone? Government sanctioned insanity is the norm nowadays, and we are so deep in the hole of our own irrational righteousness, that the best we can generally hope for is a bad day of depression that we can blame on ourselves. If the machine is sick, how can an individual cog be well? Enter Religion on stage left. Enter medicine on stage right. Redemption in the face of guilt. Another day to trod on into the headwind of our own insanity, pressing on in this labyrinth of the inventions of our fallen selves. The solutions of today are the problems of tomorrow. Around and around and around she goes, where it stops, nobody knows.