You've no doubt heard or read how evil corporations like Monsanto are slowly poisoning us by putting additives and chemicals in our food. The so-called experts advise us to "eat natural." Consume only that which comes directly from nature. Look for the list of ingredients, and if you can hardly pronounce any of them, don't eat it. For example, here is a partial list of ingredients found in one of our everyday foods you may very likely have in your own kitchen: glutamic acid, aspartic acid, histidine, leucine, E515, E300, E306, methylbut-1-YL, ethanoate, ethyl ethanoate, pentyl acetate, methylbutyl ethanoate, , ethyl ethanoate, yellow-orange E101, yellow-brown E160a, methylbutyl lutonate, ethane gas.
Wow! Scary stuff! What horrible Monsanto concoction contains this devil's brew of chemicals? Wait for it...wait for it...Nature's own BANANA!! That's right. Those substances and more can be found in every banana plucked off of every banana tree on the planet. Moral of story? Every edible plant and animal on earth contains a cornucopia of chemical ingredients. The concept of eating "natural" indicates a lack of biological knowledge on the part of its adherants.
One final question? What would companies like Monsanto have to gain by poisoning their customers? Sounds like a stupid business plan to me.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Birthday Poem
Since today is my birthday and also the one year anniversary of my little blog, I thought it would be appropriate to post a poem I had published several years ago about getting older.
GAMBLING WITH TIME
What is age
but an illusion
That melts like a sugar cube
inside our minds
Sweet and sour
raw and spicy
For there is no time except
for the play that skims through your head
Because life is like
betting on a longshot
The over/under
some abstract number
The odds pivoting
like a roulette ball
When the only sure thing
is that there is no sure thing
So place your bets,
then read em and weep.
GAMBLING WITH TIME
What is age
but an illusion
That melts like a sugar cube
inside our minds
Sweet and sour
raw and spicy
For there is no time except
for the play that skims through your head
Because life is like
betting on a longshot
The over/under
some abstract number
The odds pivoting
like a roulette ball
When the only sure thing
is that there is no sure thing
So place your bets,
then read em and weep.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
2001: A SPACE TRAJEDY
One of my favorite films of all time is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which was released in 1968. Based on a short story by the iconic Sci-Fi author, Arthur C. Clarke, it depicts a 21st century where flying to the moon is as routine as hopping a plane to LA. Enormous space stations orbit the earth, and the moon itself is fully colonized. Such was the vision of life in the coming turn of the century.
I have viewed the movie countless times. The first time was in 1968 along with two of my buddies at the old McVickers theatre in downtown Chicago. It was a mindblowing experience, partly because we were watching the movie stoned. But even straight, it was an exhilirating experience thanks to the Oscar winning special effects.
I watched SPACE ODYSSEY again a couple of weeks ago on one of the cable channels. This time, instead of exhiliration, I felt a sadness--sadness over what could have been compared to what is.
Kubrick, Clarke and other visionaries of their day were wrong. Flights to the moon are not commonplace. We have not colonized the lunar landscape. There are no massive space stations orbitting earth. And to think we had such a great start in the 60's.
At the beginning of the 1960's, President Kennedy made a famous speech in which he declared that by the end of the decade we would put a man on the moon. With the finest scientific minds in the country and a sufficient budget, we achieved the goal in less than a decade. That first moon landing was followed by five more, the final one taking place in April of 1972. Subsequently, we built space shuttles ande a space station. There was still talk of colonizing the moon and setting foot on Mars.
We are now 14 years past 2001, and there is no space odyssey. No human has set foot on the moon in 43 years. We have yet to step foot on Mars. Thanks to President Obama's policies, we no longer have any space shuttles, and the only working space station belongs to the Russians.
So what happened to the dreams and visions of the 60's and 70's? In a word: government. Nasa took control of the space program, and when that occured, space exploration went from a scientific endeavor to a political endeavor. Budgets became political footballs. Goals and strategies became political footballs. No one had to worry about success and achievement to further their careers because careers were propped up by political pull and bureaucratic inertia.
In the interim, we have seen a virtual explosion in other technologies, such as computers, the internet, cellphones, tablets, smart TV's, streaming, texting, etc. Buy a computer, smartphone or MP3 player, and within a few years it becomes obsolete because of lightning advances in the technology. And in every single instance, these innovations were the creations of free enterprise and individual entrepeneurs--not a government agency like Nasa or the FCC.
The lesson to be learned is simple. Endeavors by private enterprise are dynamic, efficient, goal oriented. Endeavors by government agencies, on the other hand, are ponderous, inefficient and stunted by political whims and in-fighting.
Had our leaders in Washington thrown space exploration to the private sector a half century ago instead of relegating it to a bureaucracy that stifles innovation and long-range planning, I dare say we would be having those routine flights to the moon, and colonies on Mars.
That is why it saddens me to watch Kubrick's masterpiece of filmmaking. Thanks to government, our space odyssey has become as empty as space itself, our dreams and visions trapped in a vacuum.
Open the podbay doors, Hal...
I have viewed the movie countless times. The first time was in 1968 along with two of my buddies at the old McVickers theatre in downtown Chicago. It was a mindblowing experience, partly because we were watching the movie stoned. But even straight, it was an exhilirating experience thanks to the Oscar winning special effects.
I watched SPACE ODYSSEY again a couple of weeks ago on one of the cable channels. This time, instead of exhiliration, I felt a sadness--sadness over what could have been compared to what is.
Kubrick, Clarke and other visionaries of their day were wrong. Flights to the moon are not commonplace. We have not colonized the lunar landscape. There are no massive space stations orbitting earth. And to think we had such a great start in the 60's.
At the beginning of the 1960's, President Kennedy made a famous speech in which he declared that by the end of the decade we would put a man on the moon. With the finest scientific minds in the country and a sufficient budget, we achieved the goal in less than a decade. That first moon landing was followed by five more, the final one taking place in April of 1972. Subsequently, we built space shuttles ande a space station. There was still talk of colonizing the moon and setting foot on Mars.
We are now 14 years past 2001, and there is no space odyssey. No human has set foot on the moon in 43 years. We have yet to step foot on Mars. Thanks to President Obama's policies, we no longer have any space shuttles, and the only working space station belongs to the Russians.
So what happened to the dreams and visions of the 60's and 70's? In a word: government. Nasa took control of the space program, and when that occured, space exploration went from a scientific endeavor to a political endeavor. Budgets became political footballs. Goals and strategies became political footballs. No one had to worry about success and achievement to further their careers because careers were propped up by political pull and bureaucratic inertia.
In the interim, we have seen a virtual explosion in other technologies, such as computers, the internet, cellphones, tablets, smart TV's, streaming, texting, etc. Buy a computer, smartphone or MP3 player, and within a few years it becomes obsolete because of lightning advances in the technology. And in every single instance, these innovations were the creations of free enterprise and individual entrepeneurs--not a government agency like Nasa or the FCC.
The lesson to be learned is simple. Endeavors by private enterprise are dynamic, efficient, goal oriented. Endeavors by government agencies, on the other hand, are ponderous, inefficient and stunted by political whims and in-fighting.
Had our leaders in Washington thrown space exploration to the private sector a half century ago instead of relegating it to a bureaucracy that stifles innovation and long-range planning, I dare say we would be having those routine flights to the moon, and colonies on Mars.
That is why it saddens me to watch Kubrick's masterpiece of filmmaking. Thanks to government, our space odyssey has become as empty as space itself, our dreams and visions trapped in a vacuum.
Open the podbay doors, Hal...
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