From My Cold, Dead Hands

This is far from a complete list.

After  George Hennard  drove his pickup truck through the front window of Luby's restaurant in 1991, killing  23 people, wounding 27 others, the NRA made sure nothing was done about it.

After Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris murdered 13 students at Columbine High School in 1999 the NRA insured nothing was done.

Tranquilized by The Trivial

A life can be spent in avoiding confrontation with itself.  That phrase echoes in the very marrow of our bones.

Faces along the bar cling to the average day. The lights must never go out. The music must always play. (September 1, 1939. W.H. Auden)

Daily lives, culture, society--all is arranged for distraction, else people discover that they and the world are not as they want.  No deep reflection, no serious reasoning--avoid them at all costs, and that is easy as the purchasing power of a wealthy economy allows whatever it takes to keep the music playing, the action coming, the thoughts at bay.

Distraction serves the national agenda, both politically and economically, as it stokes material ambition and acquisition. Climb the corporate ladder, buy a fancier car, a bigger house, a faster boat. Is everybody happy?

Pot Pourri--Chance, Consciousness, AI, Fate, Free Will--Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Roger Penrose, Peter Lynds

Black swans. A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that's what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are. Our minds are designed to retain, for efficient storage, past information that fits into a compressed narrative. This distortion, called the hindsight bias, prevents us from adequately learning from the past.

The Enchiridion By Epictetus

1. Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be
disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you will not be harmed.

An Excerpt From Don't Die in Bed: The Brief, Intense Life of Richard Halliburton.

TAPLEE, IN THE JUNGLE

Almost losing his life, he treks across the Malay Peninsula from the Andaman Sea to what was then called the Gulf of Siam.

As the dugout moved upriver, as the river narrowed, the sky became lost under dense canopies of mangrove.  Richard swatted at mosquitoes and flies.  Crocodiles slipped silently into the water as the boat approached.  Parrots screeched somewhere in the jungle and the men heard monkeys chatter.  Fish leaped out of the water to gulp a mosquito.  Deer timidly approached the bank to drink, eyes out for crocodiles.  Elephants drank from the other bank.  Cranes and herons reeled into flight upon seeing the boat.  Orangutans peered through underbrush at the men.  The men could smell rafflesia, a parasitic flower that smells like rotting meat.

That same year, in 1922 in the familiar world, people sat outside Parisian cafés discussing James Joyce’s new book, Ulysses.  In Vatican Square the faithful gathered under the third floor window of the papal apartments to pay homage to Pius XI, the new Pope.  Reporters stood around Warren G. Harding as the President listened to the first radio in the White House.  History was still in the making.

A boa constrictor hung from a tree.  Scorpions scampered across the forest floor, passing an anteater. Upon seeing the men in the sampan, a Sumatran rhino crashed away through the undergrowth.  Chattering Gibbons clambered up trees to look at them.  On the jungle floor a cobra, hood swollen, reared to strike its venom into an unsuspecting young Gibbon.