Brown Motion

This could well be the opening lyric of a country song. In fact it might have been.  But I am talking about me.  Pay attention.  Or not.  I don't care. I am getting old though.  I speak with the authority like I understand the exact stages of life.  Well see 12 hours ago I was on the cusp of entering 'the feeling of being old' and this morning it is full on.   And about seven years and five months and 13 days on I will be just 'old'.  But I suspect there are signs.  And I mean beyond the involuntary discharge of gases from many orifices,  some I did not even know were there.  For one - random body parts start hurting.  Bulges start appearing where there was no reason to.  The other day I found out I had grown a second liver.  Well it felt like it. Took a picture and called the doc.  Oh that is just a Lipoma he said.  Apparently they are common.  Well if you ask me I had not seen one before.  S...

More like chasing one's tail.  As in having persistence to keep going after it time and time again. This was a case where we literally wanted to go see the celestial body known as a comet. Why you ask?  Well for starters stuff on the planet seems passe.  So why not look up to something?  Literally. This one is a ball of ice and dust and seen streaking across our solar system for an observer in the northern hemisphere. Typical viewing times are in the month of July 2020, after dusk below the constellation Ursa Major (or Big Dipper).  Looking out on the NW horizon around 10 pm on the summer evening one might get lucky to see this faint blur of a comet dipping down toward the horizon. While only 3 miles at its core diameter, Comet NEO-WISE (so named as the acronym is part of a government funded survey for near earth objects), is about 0.66 AU away from viewer on earth at this point (1 AU is earth's distance from our sun = 93M miles). Below are a couple of pics take...

America stands on a precipice. That is not hyperbole.  That is fact.  Ripped by political tension and growing inequality laid bare by a pandemic it is showing the age of an almost 250 year old republic. Add to that lingering racial prejudice and lack of empathy we are clearly at a crossroads of where to turn next.  One of those choices ends in complete disaster. Time to get Vegas odds?  No.   Time to think.  Yes. Exactly what I feel has been on the decline. Critical thinking.  Every man, woman and child needs to above all develop this faculty if not for anything then for self preservation.  Of themselves therefore their community and consequently of this species. The so called rapid pace of innovation and development is often making headlines but as well known historian Yuval Harari points out someone has to take the contrarian if not realistic view of what the unintended consequences of all this development mean for humanity. I would posit t...

Rarely in Hollywood is a production with two protagonists popular. The film titled 'The Two Popes' was produced by the silicon valley disruptor media company called 'Netflix' unlike the legacy studios with big budget blockbusters, and has two lead roles.  It is a biographical narrative into the lives of two of the contemporary Bishops of Rome, the Holy See or what are commonly called - Pope.  The leader of over a billion Catholics globally the papacy is a powerful institution. The film traces the arc of the era of a German born and controversial cardinal Ratzinger who became the Papa or the Pope after the death of John Paul II.  Then it moves into the parallel life of the Archbishop of Argentina Jorge Bergoglio who is visiting Rome to hand in his resignation to this Pope.  It starred Sir Hopkins, a popular Welsh name, playing the role of Ratzinger against a not so popular Welsh actor called John Pryce who plays Bergoglio. The real life story is interesting, complex a...

May 31 2020. End of another calendar month in the year 2020.  Historic for a variety of reasons. After nine years the human endeavor to continue to devise ways to escape earth's gravity continued with a successful commercial launch of a rocket with a space module (made by SpaceX) the day before and the phenomenal docking with the International Space Station about 260 miles above earth. Bothe vessels were traveling over 17,000 mph during the time of docking. Simply amazing - requiring scores of staff working in close collaboration toward one single goal. Contrast that with the tragedy and travesty of what is unraveling on earth itself.  The same species but certain individuals with ideologies that are completely opposite of what made the victorious event possible. Potentially fueled by poor judgement and certain biases toward fellow man there was a death of a black man as the outcome of a police interaction in midwestern America. What followed was equally tragic with the expres...

My wish came true. The society is back to using plastics. Lots of it. First the ego filled arrogant ones in our species all across America decided to tell me and folks who share my disdain for all so called 'green initiatives' that are not thought out, to not use plastic. So they decided to ban plastic grocery bags. Then the straws in restaurants and QSR. Next they kept at their charade to look important by banning it in all manners of packaging and the like. Enter covid. LOL. Now to drink with a mask on from a goofy childproof cup is a nightmare.  Perhaps plastic (sturdy) straws will come back (with a hole in the mask allowing the drinkee to satiate their thirst). Already stores are offering plastic bags at no fee to just get customers to not bring their own variety of germs (in cloth and other bags that who knows went where before). Plastic dividers to prevent sneezes and coughs and all the germs in the hot air blowing from the orifices of these loud mouths from infecting the...

There was a funny comic cover that I remember from many years ago. That comic mag was MAD. Some foreign returned cousin or such had got a few copies and I happened on one. It showed a dunce (called Alfred E. Neuman) with a finger up his nose and the lady liberty staring down or a flag draping this dunce.. cannot remember much of the artistic detail. But the caption read - What me worry?  It spoke to the breakdown of American culture back in the late eighties inside the cover if I recollect.  The mag was written by a bunch of hilarious Jews and died a recent death after almost seven decades.  Fast forward to present time and now we got ourselves a pickle.  Not simply by the fact that MAD is dead. But a pandemic to be exact.  And the whole cause of this is Who? No I mean the answer is WHO.  As in the World Health Organization.  Not a rock band.  Not exactly. Now memory does not serve here as I forgot about the genesis of this world body but it must ...