Tales From This Side

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. ( Anonymous ) What is happening right now in the United States? What has happened to the gap between wealthy and poor over the past 50 years? How have the population percentage shares of those two groups changed? What has happened to fiscal regulation in the U.S. over the past 20 years? What is happening with taxpayer money right now? Where is it going? Who is getting it? The quote mentioned is often paired with the following: Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundanc...

Winter term at my educational facility is hell (think of an assembly line with people on it, ala The Wall , and then you might start to understand where I work). Who am I kidding? The whole year is hell. Who has time for a blog? Personal opinions? Forget it! Besides, such things are not conducive to the efficiency and productivity of a conditioning engine, which is, in truth, what educational institutions (at least at the pre-college level) are. The anarchist dream. But more on my anti-educational views another time. It is enough for now to note that it isn't that I haven't had thoughts in the past five months, but merely that my overlords have provided no time for their expression. This is a bad equation that I move swiftly to remedy, but in the meantime, I'm pressed to fall on older material, and in this case that material is really just informational. The following post is actually an email that I have "at the ready" to send to students that ask for it...

[Editorial Disclaimer - 10/22/2009: I wrote this at a time when I was living in a significantly different frame of mind, at least in regard to dietary principles, and my typical lack of posting speed has kept it high enough on the blog queue that I figured it was worth a note. I stand by what it says - eating the way suggested here is undoubtedly of great health value - but I now have reservations about the primacy of raw foods in the human diet. This isn't to say, of course, that I have returned to eating a traditional, American diet. Not by a long shot. Perhaps, sometime, I will expound upon the topic.] Amidst the expansive, capitalist book stacks of Barnes & Noble, I see all the familiar categories: Science Fiction, History, Reference, Art, Children’s, Fiction, etc. One heading, however, stands out, its associated shelves much longer than I recall seeing them in years before. “Health” has become a huge section in the modern incarnation of the former, town book seller...

There are good and bad sides to scientific advancement, but the core of scientific thought, or, at least, the application of it, appears to be harmful to humanity. A bold statement, to be certain, and I will not here defend it as properly as it deserves to be. It is an opinion I often engage with due to the manner in which I see scientific "advancement" (itself a dubious suggestion) put to use. Science, in general, seems to adhere to the notion that the human body is inherently flawed, a faulty organism, that requires as much intervention as possible to prevent it from failing utterly. The truth of the matter is that the stellar, strong, and robust human machine is a marvel, a marvel that we break ourselves. If you have ever spoken to me at length, then you know, as well as I, that cooked food is the destroyer not only of individuals, but of our very lineage, causing a string of increasingly unmanageable deficiencies, each built on the previous ones, stretching back into ...

The universe is predetermined. An explanation: all things contained in the universe are consequentially linked. That is to say that all things interact with all other things based on the sum total of their previous interactions. I kick a ball, thus it leaves its current position and attains a new one, from which another person kicks it, a second kick that could not have occurred had I not sent the ball there in the first place. So, my decision to kick the ball, my "free will," has influenced its future? Yes, and no. Yes, I have influenced its future, but not by anything but an illusion of free will. I must ask, what interactions in my day, in the previous minutes, or even in the previous seconds, have influenced my decision to kick the ball? The truth is that I could not have done anything BUT have kicked the ball at that moment. Upon deeper investigation it should be realized that none of my actions are free. All of them operate based on the influences of previou...

Part I Part II Part III Part IV I awoke mildly dispirited from the night before, and lest I be labeled a “sissy” or other such term, it is worth noting the importance of not killing without reason. To wantonly destroy is not “wrong” – concepts such as “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” are merely constructions that exist in our minds – but it does, if repeatedly enacted, reduce the ecological diversity of an area, and doing that reduces the fitness of that portion of the ecosystem. Reduced fitness, multiplied, is extinction. Thus, to destroy without reason (i.e., for purposes other than food or defense) risks creating a state of mind that, generation upon generation, could lead to our own destruction. It was with this sort of selfish thinking that I rose and lamented the unnecessary death of my roommate. Such sadness, however, would be short lived. As I entered the kitchen I expected to have a quick clean-up job before me, but to my surprise, the bait that I had left out – a ...

Part I Part II Part III Now, when it comes to mouse traps, there are more out there than you might think. The variety is immense. There are "bucket" traps that involve convincing a mouse to jump into a bucket of water to get bait, where they drown. There are glue traps, flat boards with powerful adhesives that the mice run across and then get stuck on. (We actually had a variation on this in my college fraternity house where spilled beer on the kitchen linoleum from the night before would turn sticky and catch cockroaches by the handful. Should have patented it.) There are electric traps that shock mice to death. There are even traps that gas chamber the insidious and dangerous beasts, Nazi-style. And, of course, there is the classic, wood-based spring trap. On top of all of these there are also what are termed "live catch" traps which are not dissimilar to the raccoon trap I previously mentioned, only much smaller, obviously. My goal was to "live cat...