Monday, April 7, 2014

Monday.

Gray skies this morning.  It may rain but I don't think I will do more than look around outside and see how much more ice has disappeared.  One of my second starts of borage has peeked above the soil.  Everything else that was doing well is still doing well.  I am about four rounds from finishing that hat.  Should be done today.

Saw an interesting segment on one of Al Jazeera's programs last night which confirms my opinion of news today--much of it is a meaningless waste of time.  The reporters traced the phenomenon to the rise of CNN and other 24 hour news outlets.  The major problem is what to do with all that time especially when you don't really have anything to say.  And what they do is spew forth with repeat information without anything new or they pull speculations, only sometimes noted at such, out of their asses or they resort to absurd shifts like moving away from an interview with an important politician on an important ongoing problem to the newest court appearance of an idiot personality.

Anyone out there know about "pedestrianism?"  Evidently it was a popular sport in the late 19th century.  I knew that it was popular in England.  One event was the background for Peter Lovesey's mystery novel Wobble To Death.  Endurance walks or runs haven't died out.  I saw a piece on TV last night about an annual 152 mile "marathon" across the Sahara.

And this is a foretaste of what happens when government is run like a business and profits are the only metric that matters.  The only good point--the law hasn't been corrupted enough to prevent private parties from trying to do the government's job.  But how long before the environmental equivalent of "ag gag" laws come into play?

Interesting notion!!  Label politicians according to where they get their money and whose interests they serve--just like how many want to label food.  Local money+local issues benefiting local people=local politician.  Money from distant millionaires and billionairs+issues benefiting those benefactors and the local people marginally or not at all=GMO (generically modified by oligarchs) politicians.  Of course the oligarchs will oppose the prospect with as much energy as Monsanto has opposed labeling its genetically modified organisms.

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