I rarely comment here like this, but I must speak out on this one.

Obama is calling for military action against Syria.   This would be catastrophic.   So far, Obama is following the constitutional requirement that only Congress of declaring war = committing acts of war.    But he is advocating precisely the wrong course of action.

Obama has shown evidence of horrific crimes against humanity, but he has NOT produced evidence of genocide.   It may seem awful to have to make this distinction, but it does matter.   The former requires punishment without adding more innocent victims; the latter requires action despite the cost in innocent lives.

Have we not proven to ourselves, beyond any doubt, that we cannot control the mideast militarily?   Syria is Iraq times ten times ten.

This is not a matter of being a pacifist or not, a Republican or a Democrat, tea party or socialist:   It is a matter of survival of the planet that every act of violence not be justification of unleashing untold violence.

People of good will, no matter what their “political affiliation,” need to raise our voices before it is too late.

Entergy, citing economic reasons (not its long battle with the State of Vermont nor the intense and persistent protests demanding its closure), announced that it will close Vermont Yankee by the fourth quarter of next year (2014).

I heartily congratulate all those who have fought the long, hard battle to shut down Vermont Yankee.

I also appreciate how some people feel, how they work for the plant or have friends or relatives who depend directly on it.  I feel very bad for them.  I mean that in all sincerity.  And I appreciate how some feel it will “hurt our already weak economy.”  It may, indeed.

But I must say that no amount of money, no amount of “good jobs,” no amount of “business stimulation” could make me wish that plant to stay open a minute longer.

Yes, this does make our already difficult economy of southern Vermont in yet more in need of help to get it moving out of the doldrums.   But we should also keep in mind that many of those who come to this area do so because it offers a cleaner, safer, healthier environment.   And again:  What economic stimulation is worth the price of endangering all living things for generations to come?

Sometimes we have to take a step back and take an honest look at what we are doing.   Nuclear power plants create toxins more powerful to humans than anything that has ever existed on the face of the earth.   This is not an environmental activist’s nightmare; it is a simple, horrifying fact.  Nothing we can construct can ultimately “contain” such forces.  How much more proof than Fukushima do we need?   We are fallible creatures and we know it, right?

Nuclear plants are neither the solution to our need for electricity nor are they a solution for our economy.  We’ve already created enough radioactive waste to threaten humans a hundreds of generations ahead of us.  We can at least turn off the dangerous engine and stop creating more unimaginably radioactive poisons.  We must.

Have you noticed the changes in Google?   Google made it’s name, literally, by being clean, and reasonably unobtrusive in it’s advertisement itself as well as advertising third parties.   The equation has changed in the past few months.

First consider the demise of iGoogle.   If you’ve never seen it, iGoogle is simply a nicely designed step up from a icon strewn desktop, that had absolutely no advertising, not even teasers from Google.    Google encouraged a bunch of developers, some in Google and some out, to come up with what are called “widgets,”  little things that do stuff, like a nice clock or weather in cities around the world.   It had a Google search box as where your cursor went initially, which was perfect.

But the beauty of the iGoogle was of course its downfall:  The fact that it had no advertising, that it’s whole appeal was in not having advertising, meant that it wasn’t generating profit, perhaps even competing with Google products that Google could put advertising on.

And a  fundamental illogical aspect of capitalism strikes again:   Thou shalt profit by thy endeavors.   Thou must.   Thou cannot leave a penny on the sidewalk.   Thou cannot give away what you could otherwise sell.

So have you noticed that Google’s search page now pops up with enticements to check out other Google products?     Have you how much more of the page of an average search is cluttered with “Ads related to…” at the top?

We are being eaten alive by advertisements.

Since the internet is now a primary source of our information, we increasingly are having to pay for that information by having advertisements thrust before our eyes.    We are passive victims, innocent bystanders, in the paroxysms of an insane mechanism: the market.

Yes, I realize Marx only had it half-right:  He understood the oppression and insanity and cruelty of capitalism.   He understood, too, that were systems of human organization far worse than capitalism.    But he did not understand — and really, who it’s a lot to ask — how we could get beyond where we are now.  He had ideas; he had hope. We have seen that it is a rocky road to say the least.

To say the least Marx was far too optimistic.    I wonder if he foresaw that people would do many heinous things in his name.   But things haven’t worked out so well.  Capitalism’s crumbling seems continuous, yet it’s still the only show in town, the only circus on earth.

Still there’s gotta be a better way.

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Such a situ

community: particularly in terms of human intimacy…

preparing for the fact that we are likely to see a Republican president and a Republican congress in 2016…

everybody’s got their own share of angst, though certainly some people get more than their share…

the beauty part:  finding quiet sounds;  Bach’s solo cello suites; starting on the third, fifth, or seventh of a chord…

We’re fond of saying that we live in a world in which everything is instant, but it’s not really true.   The world of computers and cell phones is a stop and start world.   We’re constantly pushing a button and waiting for a response and then pushing another button and waiting for a response.  Constantly.  It’s not so much instant as sporadic.  The internet, in its 2013 incarnation, is not a world of instantaneity.  It is a world of clicks and waits, and click again.  It demands our attention in a hurky-jurkey way, pulling us from pillar to post, from trivial to profound in a click and back again to trivial in another.

At the same time that it’s amazingly fast, the internet and mobile devices slice time like a broken second hand of a wristwatch.

Is it a wonder we’re all either hyperactive or depressed, or both at once?

For all it’s terrible aspects, there’s some stuff that’s fantastic about social media.   And for all that’s fantastic about it, there are some terrible aspects.   One way or another, we’re stuck with it, it’s “here to stay”…at least until the Next Big Thing comes along.

Both the wonder and the problem with social media are that it enables nearly intimate personal exchanges, access to an amazing array of factual information, and virtually instantaneous relay of up-to-the-minute communication among a vast number of people.   None of these were conceivable pre-internet.

The trick is in the “nearly” and the “virtually.”  Ah, there’s the rub.   Intimacy is, by definition, not something you share with whoever and whomever you should stumble upon in the course of your life.   The “up-to-minute communication” may be wrong or wrong-headed, can be shut off in a moment by a controlling government or monitored down to the dirt under one’s fingernails.   And the amazing array of factual information may also be wrong, distorted, or, in the best case, simply thin, raw, unanalyzed — a vast tangle of disconnect factoids with no discernible integrity, no basis to form inferences by which one could reach valid conclusions of significance.

Social media is simultaneously a lonely world full of people, disconnected facts, and innumerable cute cat videos and a way of sharing truly precious moments with people one cares about.

If we’re lucky enough to be on this side of the digital divide, we can rejoice about what it brings to our doorstep , but we should not mistake it for the hug of a loving friend or the honesty of a good long candid conversation.

Still, I love to see pictures of my kids and grandchildren…and some of those cat videos really are funny.

I had a conversation with one of my son’s one day about advertising.  He asserted that the escalation of advertising we are witnessing will one day be seen as a “bubble,” not unlike the housing bubble.   It would continue to expand for a few more years, and then would burst.   We would look back on that collapse much as we do the housing bubble now.

I do know what he means, but I can’t say I accept it with equal equanimity.

If there is key tenet of our modern religion, capitalism, it is that advertising is what makes everything tick.

I am old enough to remember Burma Shave signs along the highway, little red signs, that went by pretty fast and were sometimes funny.   Now, in the glorious twenty-first century, we’re watching one show and an ad blips up demanding our attention to an ad for another show.   I’ve even seen where it’s advertising the very show I’m watching.    And the show itself is more of a series of advertisements than a show.  Surely my son is right.  Surely this is a form of heat death, of entropy, as advertising turns in on itself.

I bet against him though. Advertising is too close to the heart of the “free market economy,” to be left by the wayside.  It only flows in one direction:  Always more.

Capitalism is running a fever.  It’s death has been “greatly exaggerated” many times, but it is surely running a fever.