Favorite books, movies, authors, etc.

FAVORITE INFLUENCES
      Emanuel Swedenborg
      Edgar Cayce
      A Course in Miracles
      Unbiased spiritual studies

FAVORITE MOVIES
      Casablanca
      Lawrence of Arabia

      Bagdad Cafe

      The Snake Pit

FAVORITE BOOKS
      The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
      Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
      Series: A Course in Miracles
      Thinking: Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
      Aztec by Gary Jennings
      Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
      Series: Junior Classics, 10 volumes
      Series: Dune by Frank Herbert et al.
      Series: Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
      My Antonia by Willa Cather
      Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
      Maus I & Maus II by Art Spiegelman

FAVORITE AUTHORS
      Frank Herbert
      Philip K. Dick
      Ann Rule
      Steve Hamilton

FAVORITE POETS
      Wallace Stevens
      William Blake
      Rumi

FAVORITE POEMS
      Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens
      Like This by Rumi
      Songs of Innocence: Introduction by William Blake
      Peter Quince at the Clavier by Wallace Stevens
      Things I Didn't Know I Loved by Nazim Hikmet
      The Lamb by William Blake
      The Tyger by William Blake
      Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing... by Rumi
      Ode on the Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth
      Edward, Edward. Ancient Ballad, author unknown
      Love Dogs by Rumi
      The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth
      Auguries of Innocence by William Blake
      The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens
      I have lived on the lip... by Rumi
      The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
      Sonnets 18, 29, 110, 129, 130, 138 by William Shakespeare
      The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes
      Spring and Fall (To a young child) by Gerard Manley Hopkins
      Come to the garden in spring by Rumi
      Attunity by Russ Bedord
      The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
      The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
      Composed on Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth
      My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
      Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Miniver Cheevy by Edward Arlington Robinson
      La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats
      London by William Blake
      Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne
      The Garden of Love by William Blake
      Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
      Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden

      Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

      The Gift by Russ Bedord
      The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell
      The Silken Tent by Robert Frost

      

Free Market

How do subsidized and deceptively marketed products create a "free market"? The US market is not free, but "authorities" say so. It reminds me of the aphorism: You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. But if authorities think the pig is beautiful, it is presented in the language of beauty. Yet it's still a pig.

Solve problems or retire issues.

Seeing a concern as a real problem suggests that there is a real solution Seeing a concern as an issue pretends that resolving the issue is the same as solving the problem that caused it. Too often, the issue is made to go away with expedient action while the problem remains. As long as the problem remains the issue  returns, sometimes with a different symptom and different appearance.

Evolution

Don't believe in evolution?

Don't evolve.

Thomas Jefferson quoted.

Paraphrased and quoted:

He feared that the rise of a new form of absolutism was more ominous than the British rule overthrown in the American Revolution. He distinguished in his later years between what he called "aristocrats and democrats." And he then went on to say "I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial[,] and bid defiance to the laws of our country." He also wrote "I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."

                                                                     ~ Thomas Jefferson

(From Noam Chomsky's book : Power.)

We were warned more than two hundred years ago about corporations and banks, and their subversive intent has been pursued for all that time. They might be given credit for persistence, I suppose, but not credit for persistent, narrow minded ignorance. This defiance of democracy has been made to appear "democratic." It is not.

Capitalism

Capitalism is supposed to raise net worth, but if the net worth of society is lowered while the net worth of a few is raised, this is not capitalism. What is it? My view—the system is authoritarian, not democratic—some unwise decide for the many. (See the blog with the Thomas Jefferson quote.)