I made a copy of the following while using the graduate library at California State Fullerton. My idea is that it appeared in the quarterly publican (If memory serves me) of The Institute for Democratic Studies, Santa Barbara, CA. This "think tank" is way long gone at this writing. Huxley's essay was hard to find in those days, and I suppose that it is harder today. I am a bit scared to learn the truth of it.
I know Murry Bookchin's Social Ecology shows a wealth of development compared to these words. Nonetheless, Huxley has done a great job etching a platform to note. He was as can be judged here, a liberal and libertarian. I place his comments
here for posterity and The Cause - - Political Ecology. Keep in mind that he is writing in the 60s. Prince Propotkin aside, Huxley's words are cutting-edge for his time and place, considering that he too was captured by his own time and culture.
Eddie Evans
I hope someone chooses to copy it from here and pass it along.
"Some day, let us hope, rulers and ruled will break out of the cultural prison in which they are now confined. Some day ... And may that day come soon! For, thanks to our rapidly advancing science and technology, we have very little time at our disposal."
"IN politics, the central and fundamental problem is the problem of power. Who is to exercise power? And by what means, by what authority, with what purpose in view, and under what controls? Yes, under what controls? For, as history has made it abundantly clear, to possess power is ipso facto to be tempted to abuse it. In mere self-preservation we must create and maintain institutions that make it difficult for the powerful to be led into those temptations which, succumbed to, transform them into tyrants at home and imperialists abroad. For this purpose what kind of institutions are effective? And, having created them, how can we guarantee them against obsolescence? Circumstances change, and, as they change, the old, the once so admirably effective devices for controlling power cease to be adequate. What then? Specifically, when advancing science and acceleratingly progressive technology alter man's long-established relationship with the planet on which he lives, revolutionize his societies, and at the same time equip his rulers with new and immensely more powerful instruments of domination, what ought we to do? What can we do?
Very briefly let us review the situation in which we now find ourselves and, in the light of present facts, hazard a few guesses about the future.
On the biological level, advancing science and technology have set going a revolutionary process that seems to be destined for the next century at least, perhaps for much longer, to exercise a decisive influence upon the destinies of all human societies and their individual members. In the course of the last fifty years extremely effective methods for lowering the prevailing rates of infant and adult mortality were developed by Western scientists. These methods were very simple and could be applied with the expenditure of very little money by very small numbers of not very highly trained technicians. For these reasons, and because everyone regards life as intrinsically good and death as intrinsically bad, they were in fact applied on a world-wide scale. The results were spectacular. In the past, high birth rates were balanced by high death rates. Thanks to science, death rates have been halved but, except in the most highly industrialized, contraceptive-using countries, birth rates remain as high as ever. An enormous and accelerating increase in human numbers has been the inevitable consequence.
At the beginning of the Christian era, so demographers assure us, our planet supported a human population of about two hundred and fifty millions. When the Pilgrim Fathers stepped ashore, the figure had risen to about five hundred millions. We see, then, that in the relatively recent past it took sixteen hundred years for the human species to double its numbers. Today world population stands at three thousand millions. By the year 2000, unless something appallingly bad or miraculously good should happen in the interval, six thousand millions of us will be sitting down to breakfast every morning. In a word, twelve times as many people are destined to double their numbers in one-fortieth of the time.
This is not the whole story. In many areas of the world human numbers are increasing at a rate much higher than the average for the whole species. In India, for example, the rate of increase is now 2.3 per cent per annum. By 1990 its four hundred and fifty million inhabitants will have become nine hundred million inhabitant A comparable rate of increase will raise the population( of China to the billion mark by 1980. In Ceylon, Egypt, in many of the countries of South and Central America, human numbers are increasing at an annual rate of 3 per cent. The result will be a doubling of that present populations in approximately twenty-three year On the social, political, and economic levels, what is likely to happen in an underdeveloped country whc people double themselves in a single generation, or even less? An underdeveloped society is a society with adequate capital resources (for capital is what is left over after primary needs have been satisfied, and underdeveloped countries most people never satisfy the primary needs); a society without a sufficient force of trained teachers, administrators, and technicians; a society with few or no industries and few or no developed sources of industrial power; a society, finally, with enormous arrears to be made good in food production, education, road building, housing, and sanitation. A quarter of a century from now, when there will be twice as many of them as there are today, what is the likelihood that the members of such a society will be better fed, housed, clothed, and schooled than at present? And what are the chances in such a society for the maintenance they already exist, or the creation, if they do not exist of democratic institutions?
Not long ago Mr. Eugene Black, the former president of the World Bank, expressed the opinion that it would be extremely difficult, perhaps even impossible, for an underdeveloped country with a very rapid rate of population increase to achieve full industrialization. All resources, he pointed out, would be absorbed in the task of supplying, or not quite supplying, primary needs of .its new members. Merely to stands to maintain its current subhumanly inadequate standard of living, will require hard work and the expenditure all the nation's available capital. Available capital be increased by loans and gifts from abroad; but in a world where the industrialized nations are involved power politics and an increasingly expensive armaments race, there will never be enough foreign aid to make difference. And even if the loans and to underdeveloped countries were to be substantially increased, any resulting gains would be largely null by the uncontrolled population explosion.
The situation of these nations with such rapidly increasing populations reminds one of Lewis Carroll's parable in Through the Looking Glass, where Alice and the Red Queen start running at full speed and run for a long time until Alice is completely out of breath. When they stop, Alice is amazed to see that they are still at their starting point. In the looking glass world, if you wish to retain your present position, you must run as fast as vou can. If you wish to get ahead, you must run at least twice as fast as you can.
If Mr. Black is correct (and there are plenty of economists and demographers who share his opinion), the outlook for most of the world's newly independent and economically non-viable nations is gloomy indeed. To those that have shall be given. Within the next ten or twenty years, if war can be avoided, poverty will almost have disappeared from the highly industrialized and contraceptive-using societies of the West. Meanwhile, in the underdeveloped and uncontrolledly breeding societies of Asia, Africa, and Latin America the condition of the masses (twice as numerous, a generation from now, as they are today) will have become no better and may even be decidedly worse than it is at present. Such a decline is foreshadowed by current statistics of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
In some underdeveloped regions of the world, we are told, people are somewhat less adequately fed, clothed, and housed than were their parents and grandparents thirty and forty years ago. And what of elementary education? UNESCO recently provided an answer. Since the end of World War 11 heroic efforts have been made to teach the whole world how to read. The population explosion has largely stultified these efforts. The absolute number of illiterates is greater now than at any time. The contraceptive revolution which, thanks to advancing science and technology, has made it possible for the highly developed societies of the West to offset the consequences of death control by a planned control of births, has had as yet no effect upon the family life of people in underdeveloped countries. This is not surprising. Death control, as I have already remarked, is easy, cheap, and can be carried out by a small force of technicians. Birth control, on the other hand, is rather expensive, involves the whole adult population, and demands of those who practice it a good deal of forethought and directed will power. To persuade hundreds of millions of men and women to abandon their tradition-hallowed views of sexual morality, then to distribute and teach them to make use of contraceptive devices or fertility-controlling drugs-this is huge and difficult task, so huge and so difficult that it seems very unlikely that it can be successfully carried out, within, a sufficiently short space of time in any of the countries where control of the birth rate is most urgently needed. Extreme poverty, when combined with ignorance, breeds that lack of desire for better things which has been called "wantlessness"-the resigned acceptance of a subhuman lot. But extreme poverty, when it is combined with the knowledge that some societies are affluent, breeds envious desires and the expectation that these desires must of necessity, and very soon, be satisfied. By means of the mass media (those easily exportable products of advancing science and technology) some knowledge of what life is like in affluent societies has been widely disseminated throughout the world's under- developed regions. But, alas, the science and technology which have given the industrial West its cars, refrigerators, and contraceptives have given the people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America only movies and radio broadcasts, which they are too simple-minded to be able to criticize, together with a population explosion, which they are still too poor and too tradition-bound to be able to control by deliberate family planning. In the context of a 3, or even of a mere 2 per cent annual increase in numbers, high expectations are foredoomed to disappointment. From disappointment, through resentful frustration, to widespread social unrest the road is short. Shorter still is the road from social unrest, through chaos, to dictatorship, possibly of the Communist party, more probably of generals and colonels. It would seem, then, that for two-thirds of the human race now suffering from the consequences of uncontrolled breeding in a context of industrial backwardness, poverty, and illiteracy, the prospects for democracy, during the next ten or twenty years, are very poor. ROM underdeveloped societies and the probable political consequences of their explosive increase in numbers we now pass to the prospect for democracy in the fully industrialized, contraceptive-using societies of Europe and North America. It used to be assumed that political freedom was a necessary pre-condition of scientific research. Ideological dogmatism and dictatorial institutions were supposed to be incompatible with the open-mindedness and the freedom of experimental action, in the absence of which discovery and invention are impossible. Recent history has proved these comforting assumptions to be completely unfounded. It was under Stalin that Russian scientists developed the A-bomb and, a few years later, the H-bomb. And it is under a more-than-Stalinist dictatorship that Chinese scientists are now in process of performing the same feat.
Another disquieting lesson of recent history is that, in a developing society, science and technology can be used exclusively for the enhancement of military power, not at all for the benefit of the masses. Russia has demonstrated, and China is now doing its best to demonstrate, that poverty and primitive conditions of life for the over whelming majority of the population are perfectly compatible with the wholesale production of the most advanced and sophisticated military hardware. Indeed, it is by deliberately imposing poverty on the masses that the rulers of developing industrial nations are able to create the capital necessary for building an armament industry and maintaining a well equipped army, with which to play their parts in the suicidal game of international power politics.
We see, then, that democratic institutions and libertarian traditions are not at all necessary to the progress of science and technology, and that such progress does not of itself make for human betterment at home and peace abroad. Only where democratic institutions already exist, only where the masses can vote their rulers out of office and so compel them to pay attention to the popular will, are science and technology used for the benefit of the majority as well as for increasing the power of the State. Most human beings prefer peace to war, and practically all of them would rather be alive than dead. But in every part of the world men and women have been brought up to regard nationalism as axiomatic and war between nations as something cosmically ordained by the Nature of Things. Prisoners of their culture, the masses, even when they are free to vote, are inhibited by the fundamental postulates of the frame of reference within which they do their thinking and their feeling from decreeing an end to the collective paranoia that governs international relations. As for the world's ruling minorities, by the very fact of their power they are chained even more closely to the current system of ideas and the prevailing political customs; for this reason they are even less capable than their subjects of expressing the simple human preference for life and peace.
Some day, let us hope, rulers and ruled will break out of the cultural prison in which they are now confined. Some day ... And may that day come soon! For, thanks to our rapidly advancing science and technology, we have very little time at our disposal. The river of change flows ever faster, and somewhere downstream, perhaps only a few years ahead, we shall come to the rapids, shall hear, louder and ever louder, the roaring of a cataract.
Modern war is a product of advancing science and technology. Conversely, advancing science and technology are products of modern war. It was in order to wage war more effectively that first the United States, then Britain and the USSR, financed the crash programs that resulted so quickly in the harnessing of atomic forces. Again, it was primarily for military purposes that the techniques of automation, which are now in process of revolutionizing industrial production and the whole system of administrative and bureaucratic control, were first developed. "During II," writes Mr. John Diebold, "the theory and use of feedback was studied in great detail by a number of scientists both in this country and in Britain. The introduction of rapidly moving aircraft very quickly made traditional gun-laying techniques of anti-aircraft warfare obsolete. As a result, a large part of scientific manpower in this country was directed towards the development of self-regulating devices and systems to control our military equipment. It is out of this work that the technology of automation as we understand it today has developed."
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Why I went to college
draft
Being here sick, tired, weak, unable to continue serving humanity's cleaning needs until well, I briefly remembered why I went to college, really remembered.
I wanted to know. I wanted to know the power questions and the power answers. I wanted to know what the "knowers" thought. I knew from socializing with college graduates while in foreign lands that there was much more worth knowing and I did not know much if any of it. I knew there was a language within English that was so different, more powerful than the language I was using, although it was the same language. Now I understand that this is an "intellectual" side of the English language. (Now I'm overheating from fever. Funny words following.)
So I went to college and studied hard and then not so hard, and then hard again, and then went on my own path to "college." I was a maverick, reading outside the curriculum, which turned out to be the best idea. I had a couple good role models, it turns out. I did not do well, but I did what I wanted to do. I did explore ideas, people, nature, events, and on and on.
I remember MEAL, an acronym for metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and logic. I remember studying each as discrete subjects, and then as related, and then finding the axis of it all, social and physical ecology. That's where it lead.
"Art, religion, philosophy, science, social affairs," these terms, too, the American Pragmatist Santayana claimed to be the "realm of being." I suppose there's more between the words, but like MEAL, these words help to place the full of it into some perspective. Well done George!
Now I am writing about suicide because I clean the remains of suicides. I sometimes wonder the "why?" of suicide. Then I remember Durkheim's book, Suicide. Ah, I wanted to know, and Durkheim helped. Education is a good thing. I never thought that I would learn about suicide while in college.
I remember sitting in foxholes at night, fighting the urge to sleep, to fall into a deadly void for moments. Ah, to sleep, to relax, to extend myself into the a dreamland void of non-wake, non-suffering. Sleeplessness is suffering, I have learned. And soldiers suffer so much. I believe that it actually hurt, staying awake that way. I believe that I wondered how different it would all become with the passage of a 7.62 lead ball from an AK 47 through my brain. I may have even wondered if sending a smaller, maybe more deadly 5.62 round through my head might achieve the same peaceful affect as sleep. How could I continue to stay awake?
I staid awake because "Charley" lived well in the dark and he wanted to kill me, and he wanted to kill me real bad, even at the risk of his own life. His friends were just as bad. Sometimes they tried, and because they tried, I learned the skill of staying awake. Staying awake, I learned to think the deep thoughts during the night. I thought the small thoughts too, the thoughts from daylight hours when I watched ants march across the bottom of my foxhole.
These were the "low land" ants. Then there were the "high land" ants, those marching across the parapet in singular order, silent to all but their opposing ant armies. Little did they know or want to know their brethren below gained a much less useful perspective of the World. Their lowland brethern were bound by the limits of their horizon, 4 cliffs, dirt walls surrounding their line-of-march. Occasionally dirt and clods of dirt fell upon them or in front of their line-of-march. They marched on, anyway. What a big difference in perspective they experienced. Perspective would give me big thoughts and little thoughts with more words and a greater ability to nuance ideas, events, and nature.
My thoughts lead to my own perspective of the World as I sat there watching the clouds gather in the sky, way off. As hours passed, as I took my own two hour sleep breaks (If one can sleep for 2 hours in a rice paddy or rain forest.), those "way off" clouds made a slow march of their own to my tiny foxhole below. "How different the World looked from up there" I often wondered.
From the clouds, I might be able to see for miles and miles around. I might see from Saigon to Beinhoe, from War Zone D to the Happy Valley. Maybe I could see Charley?
I sat, legs and feet dangling over the edge of my foxhole many dark nights. I could sometimes see comrades to my left and right, sometimes to my rear, sometimes forward of me. I could see trees, vines, maybe a trail or two. I saw the sky, the clouds, and the stars. I saw the stars a lot. I had not grown up watching the stars. In Vietnam, I watched the stars from my foxhole. The sky stood out so clearly. The Big Dipper and Little Dipper were often subjects of conversation among my foxhole companions, whenever I had one, and I usually did. I will not, cannot forget them, stars, comrades, or Charley.
So I learned the skill of staying awake for inordinate amounts of time and during night time hours when I should have been asleep. I also learned the skill of juxtaposing nature for a more meaningful view of the World and its inhabitants. During these times I thought the big thoughts with my small collection of words, words that I wanted to add to when I could go to college some day. I had not thought of college before, but now it was something to think about. "Why did people go there" and maybe I need to go there and see what is going on. "After this, why not?"
"MEAL would bring more meaning to what I thought those nights in my foxhole.
It is so ironic, too, how "Charley" may have influenced my decision to go to college more than any other character in my life's short story.
I will close for now and perhaps resume this thread at a later date, when I feel better.
Being here sick, tired, weak, unable to continue serving humanity's cleaning needs until well, I briefly remembered why I went to college, really remembered.
I wanted to know. I wanted to know the power questions and the power answers. I wanted to know what the "knowers" thought. I knew from socializing with college graduates while in foreign lands that there was much more worth knowing and I did not know much if any of it. I knew there was a language within English that was so different, more powerful than the language I was using, although it was the same language. Now I understand that this is an "intellectual" side of the English language. (Now I'm overheating from fever. Funny words following.)
So I went to college and studied hard and then not so hard, and then hard again, and then went on my own path to "college." I was a maverick, reading outside the curriculum, which turned out to be the best idea. I had a couple good role models, it turns out. I did not do well, but I did what I wanted to do. I did explore ideas, people, nature, events, and on and on.
I remember MEAL, an acronym for metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and logic. I remember studying each as discrete subjects, and then as related, and then finding the axis of it all, social and physical ecology. That's where it lead.
"Art, religion, philosophy, science, social affairs," these terms, too, the American Pragmatist Santayana claimed to be the "realm of being." I suppose there's more between the words, but like MEAL, these words help to place the full of it into some perspective. Well done George!
Now I am writing about suicide because I clean the remains of suicides. I sometimes wonder the "why?" of suicide. Then I remember Durkheim's book, Suicide. Ah, I wanted to know, and Durkheim helped. Education is a good thing. I never thought that I would learn about suicide while in college.
I remember sitting in foxholes at night, fighting the urge to sleep, to fall into a deadly void for moments. Ah, to sleep, to relax, to extend myself into the a dreamland void of non-wake, non-suffering. Sleeplessness is suffering, I have learned. And soldiers suffer so much. I believe that it actually hurt, staying awake that way. I believe that I wondered how different it would all become with the passage of a 7.62 lead ball from an AK 47 through my brain. I may have even wondered if sending a smaller, maybe more deadly 5.62 round through my head might achieve the same peaceful affect as sleep. How could I continue to stay awake?
I staid awake because "Charley" lived well in the dark and he wanted to kill me, and he wanted to kill me real bad, even at the risk of his own life. His friends were just as bad. Sometimes they tried, and because they tried, I learned the skill of staying awake. Staying awake, I learned to think the deep thoughts during the night. I thought the small thoughts too, the thoughts from daylight hours when I watched ants march across the bottom of my foxhole.
These were the "low land" ants. Then there were the "high land" ants, those marching across the parapet in singular order, silent to all but their opposing ant armies. Little did they know or want to know their brethren below gained a much less useful perspective of the World. Their lowland brethern were bound by the limits of their horizon, 4 cliffs, dirt walls surrounding their line-of-march. Occasionally dirt and clods of dirt fell upon them or in front of their line-of-march. They marched on, anyway. What a big difference in perspective they experienced. Perspective would give me big thoughts and little thoughts with more words and a greater ability to nuance ideas, events, and nature.
My thoughts lead to my own perspective of the World as I sat there watching the clouds gather in the sky, way off. As hours passed, as I took my own two hour sleep breaks (If one can sleep for 2 hours in a rice paddy or rain forest.), those "way off" clouds made a slow march of their own to my tiny foxhole below. "How different the World looked from up there" I often wondered.
From the clouds, I might be able to see for miles and miles around. I might see from Saigon to Beinhoe, from War Zone D to the Happy Valley. Maybe I could see Charley?
I sat, legs and feet dangling over the edge of my foxhole many dark nights. I could sometimes see comrades to my left and right, sometimes to my rear, sometimes forward of me. I could see trees, vines, maybe a trail or two. I saw the sky, the clouds, and the stars. I saw the stars a lot. I had not grown up watching the stars. In Vietnam, I watched the stars from my foxhole. The sky stood out so clearly. The Big Dipper and Little Dipper were often subjects of conversation among my foxhole companions, whenever I had one, and I usually did. I will not, cannot forget them, stars, comrades, or Charley.
So I learned the skill of staying awake for inordinate amounts of time and during night time hours when I should have been asleep. I also learned the skill of juxtaposing nature for a more meaningful view of the World and its inhabitants. During these times I thought the big thoughts with my small collection of words, words that I wanted to add to when I could go to college some day. I had not thought of college before, but now it was something to think about. "Why did people go there" and maybe I need to go there and see what is going on. "After this, why not?"
"MEAL would bring more meaning to what I thought those nights in my foxhole.
It is so ironic, too, how "Charley" may have influenced my decision to go to college more than any other character in my life's short story.
I will close for now and perhaps resume this thread at a later date, when I feel better.
Friday, June 27, 2008
North Pole Could be Ice-Free This Summer
The North Pole's ice may not break apart this summer - a first in human history.
Here I am, 61, born Green because I've always asked, "What if," and it turns out that there probably IS something to global warming. Life would have been better for me if I had not been asking myself those silly little questions about limits to growth, those Malthusian-Marxian-Darwinian questions before I had the intellectual ability to articulate these powerful ideas and others. Little did I know at 8 years old that my conjuring about the limits to growth in the Downey cemetary were setting a foundation for fundamental environmental analysis and ecological theory.
I wish Ruddy Devilla was still alive. I miss his skill with these things. Global Warming doesn't take much skill though, at least not much mental power for anyone with time in a green house. It's "no-brainer."
When I ran for office in 88 as a "Green," I did not bring Global Warming up because of the breadth-and-depth of cement headism in Orange County. "What's the point," I used to say to myself. Use something tangible as a Green issue, something like the loss of species' habitat and the long-term survival of species in the wild.
Then there were women's issues, which are obviously on the back-burner, judging by the ignorance of so many women that I have seen - - Breeders and couch sitters, besides those in destitute life-styles and still popping out the babies. 7 Billion humans will be on this planet in less than 15 years. So whose going to feed them? Whose going to house them? Whose going to give them jobs and thereby keep them off the streets? They sure as hell are not going to go into intellectual endeavors, or study technology, or avoid snake oil, trinkets, and bread and circuses. What a fat mess! They'll destroy what's left of wild nature.
What about water? Where's the clean water going to come from?
I had it right then, and I have it right now. The real issues are environmental. Terrorism is nothing new, and in a sense, terrorism has environmental roots, which I don't have time for now. I needed to get the link down. Ruddy I miss those conversations so much.
Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleanup
Here I am, 61, born Green because I've always asked, "What if," and it turns out that there probably IS something to global warming. Life would have been better for me if I had not been asking myself those silly little questions about limits to growth, those Malthusian-Marxian-Darwinian questions before I had the intellectual ability to articulate these powerful ideas and others. Little did I know at 8 years old that my conjuring about the limits to growth in the Downey cemetary were setting a foundation for fundamental environmental analysis and ecological theory.
I wish Ruddy Devilla was still alive. I miss his skill with these things. Global Warming doesn't take much skill though, at least not much mental power for anyone with time in a green house. It's "no-brainer."
When I ran for office in 88 as a "Green," I did not bring Global Warming up because of the breadth-and-depth of cement headism in Orange County. "What's the point," I used to say to myself. Use something tangible as a Green issue, something like the loss of species' habitat and the long-term survival of species in the wild.
Then there were women's issues, which are obviously on the back-burner, judging by the ignorance of so many women that I have seen - - Breeders and couch sitters, besides those in destitute life-styles and still popping out the babies. 7 Billion humans will be on this planet in less than 15 years. So whose going to feed them? Whose going to house them? Whose going to give them jobs and thereby keep them off the streets? They sure as hell are not going to go into intellectual endeavors, or study technology, or avoid snake oil, trinkets, and bread and circuses. What a fat mess! They'll destroy what's left of wild nature.
What about water? Where's the clean water going to come from?
I had it right then, and I have it right now. The real issues are environmental. Terrorism is nothing new, and in a sense, terrorism has environmental roots, which I don't have time for now. I needed to get the link down. Ruddy I miss those conversations so much.
Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleanup
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
A Florida senior citizen,
A Florida senior citizen, 76, drove his brand new Corvette convertible out of the dealership.
Taking off down the road, he floored it to 80 mph, enjoying the wind blowing through what little hair he had left.
'Amazing,' he thought as he flew down I-75, pushing the pedal even more.
Looking in his rear view mirror, he saw the highway patrol behind him, blue lights flashing and siren blaring.
He floored it to 100mph, then 110, then 120.
Suddenly he thought, 'What am I doing? I'm too old for this,' and pulled over to await the Trooper's arrival.
Pulling in behind him, the Trooper walked up to the Corvette, looked at his watch and said,
'Sir, my shift ends in 30 minutes. Today is Friday. If you can give me a reason for speeding that I've never heard before, I'll let you go.'
The old gentleman paused. Then said,
'Years ago, my wife ran off with a Florida State Trooper. I thought you were bringing her back.'
'Have a good day, Sir, ' replied the Trooper.
Taking off down the road, he floored it to 80 mph, enjoying the wind blowing through what little hair he had left.
'Amazing,' he thought as he flew down I-75, pushing the pedal even more.
Looking in his rear view mirror, he saw the highway patrol behind him, blue lights flashing and siren blaring.
He floored it to 100mph, then 110, then 120.
Suddenly he thought, 'What am I doing? I'm too old for this,' and pulled over to await the Trooper's arrival.
Pulling in behind him, the Trooper walked up to the Corvette, looked at his watch and said,
'Sir, my shift ends in 30 minutes. Today is Friday. If you can give me a reason for speeding that I've never heard before, I'll let you go.'
The old gentleman paused. Then said,
'Years ago, my wife ran off with a Florida State Trooper. I thought you were bringing her back.'
'Have a good day, Sir, ' replied the Trooper.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Ultraviolet Light on the tiny and from the great and mighty.
One thing I enjoy about cleaning trauma scenes outdoors is the Sun's ultraviolet light. Toss a bloody, paper towel in the sunlight and bingo, those pesky micro-organisms sunburn to death. I am told that nothing kills micro-organisms in blood like light from the Sun, ultraviolet light. Judging from those sunburns I earned at the beach in my younger years, I have no doubt in the Sun's power to destroy my microscopic friends. In fact, I can recall the "bad kid" down the block toasting ants with sunlight. He focused the Sun's rays through the magnified glass and poof! Army's of tiny critters were innocently toasted by no fault of their own. The micro guys live in the dark by chance or design, and never live out of the dark by chance or design.
I guess that I've been lucky to clean in the high deserts of a number of southwester states. I've been burnt for sure, never toasted, though. Higher elevations allow more ultraviolet light to pass through the thin air, sunrise to sunset. Throw in the oven-dry, blowing wind and blood's crimson red turns volcanic black in minutes, wind or no wind. I have much respect for our Sun's ability to destroy life forms from 93 million miles away.
It is with great humility and awe that I read today about an ultraviolet light observation from an exploding supernovae. Imagine an exploding star producing the light of a million stars upon its extinction. Imagine that "The really cool thing about our observations is this light traveling ahead of the shock wave traveled through the star before it was destroyed."
It is all so great and grand, so dwarfing too. We are indeed tiny critters in a vary great and mighty place. We too can burn by no fault of our own. Check the pictures out: exploding supernovae.
Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleanup
I guess that I've been lucky to clean in the high deserts of a number of southwester states. I've been burnt for sure, never toasted, though. Higher elevations allow more ultraviolet light to pass through the thin air, sunrise to sunset. Throw in the oven-dry, blowing wind and blood's crimson red turns volcanic black in minutes, wind or no wind. I have much respect for our Sun's ability to destroy life forms from 93 million miles away.
It is with great humility and awe that I read today about an ultraviolet light observation from an exploding supernovae. Imagine an exploding star producing the light of a million stars upon its extinction. Imagine that "The really cool thing about our observations is this light traveling ahead of the shock wave traveled through the star before it was destroyed."
It is all so great and grand, so dwarfing too. We are indeed tiny critters in a vary great and mighty place. We too can burn by no fault of our own. Check the pictures out: exploding supernovae.
Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleanup
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Addiction
The below story from an anonymous writer is one of those stories that we read about far too seldom.
Drug addiction is monstrous, and I find that food addiction may come from the same place way down deep.
Addiction is in fact a big green monster buried deep within each of us. And maybe this metaphor is a little too colorful for the problematic reference to a Freudian unconscious state or the hypnotic trance states. In any case, as a metaphor it helps to explain that place in human consciousness that psychoanalysts have long suspected exists deep down. (And no, Skinner would not agree with any of this.)
So long as we keep it in check, we can manage in our world of temptations. Once loose, the temptations become trading posts between the green monster and the inner-most parts of our Being. Day by day we lose our reason to the green monster of addiction. We become a creature caught between pain and pleasure as the addiction monster trades pleasure for pieces of our humanness. We willingly and reluctantly sell-off our reason for swift moments of satiation.
So long as we keep it in check, we can manage in our world of temptations. Once loose, the temptations become trading posts between the green monster and the inner-most parts of our Being. Day by day we lose our reason to the green monster of addiction. We become a creature caught between pain and pleasure as the addiction monster trades pleasure for pieces of our humanness. We willingly and reluctantly sell-off our reason for swift moments of satiation.
Since I got clean I went to school and got my AA degree and finished a medical records office assistant course. I got a couple of certificates, one in coding and one in transcription, and I chose transcription as a career. That's my "day job", even though I work swing shift. The website is growing slowly, which is how I want it right now. Although it is my passion, it is definitely not my main source of income. Yet. Someday I will take some business classes, probably set up another site or two, and hopefully grow a good retirement! That is the plan, anyway."
So here we have a success story in the Reason's counter-attack on addiction. There is something about humanity that deserves that second, even third chance. Because addiction is so powerful, proof is right outside the door, I'll do my part for combating the green monster wherever it appears, even inside me.
Eddie Evans
Crime Scene Cleanup
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