What was the question?

Greetings gentle reader, I encountered two articles yesterday that gave me pause...one, responsibly labeled itself 'speculation' on the topic that extra-terestial lifeforms might be, er, gi-normous. (The rational being, larger creatures have longer lifespans, thereby encouraging the development of the brain.

Elephants (when not being hunted to an early grave) have/had for a long time a longer average lifespan than most humans but this is speculation. Whales, turtles and parrots also enjoy long lifespans but there are no recognizably sentient beings among any of them...using our understanding of sentience...

The second, and again, using our critical reasoning skills we have to 'assume' the average viewer knows the question was posed for 'entertainment purposes' (It was some producer's idea that people would be interested in knowing if poverty was 'hereditary.'

What rankles about this is the fact that the one percent truly believes they are 'exceptional' (and they desperately want YOU to believe that too!)

If we remove the 'stop-think' factor a rational person employs when viewing 'entertainment', you find the not particularly bright taking this rhetorical question to heart, and believing their less than stellar economic prospects were their parent's fault.

While it is 'true' that a child born to wealth has a better chance of enjoying a prosperous life than a child born to poverty (and in this, Morgan Freeman uses himself as an exception to the episode's 'genetic inheritance' meme.) left unbroken is the general perception that people with money are 'smarter' than the rest of us, which isn't true at all.

If 'smarts = prosperity' then where is Einstien Inc? There is no such place/company, conversely where are the intellectual works of JP Morgan (whose major accomplishment in life was to bankroll Thomas Edison.) They too do not exist.

(Why the average dummy thinks Einstien founded GE [a wholly owned subsidiary of the Morgan Guaranty Trust] is, er, baffling.)

It is NOT 'speculation' that poverty is directly proportional to the corruption/mismanagement of the civilization you live in.

Poverty, like money, is a human invention...therefore poverty is the by-product of money being 'mis-managed'. But this isn't particularly 'entertaining' considering the history of the impoverished has a rather murderous track record.

I share this because it rarely occurs to the young to question their circumstances...and they usually believe what their elders tell them, even if these elders are severely misinformed...(as the scientists on this particular episode of 'Through the Wormhole' were and most modern economists are as well!)

That said, it all starts with 'writing', the first step in sharing knowledge.

How unfortunate is it that those who control your 'perception' keep you and by extension yours, ignorant of the fact that poverty is NOT a 'natural state of affairs'.

Now I will return to my long time signature catch phrase,

Thank you for letting me inside your head.

Fact, fiction and that blurry line in between

Greetings gentle reader, I read something yesterday that truly blew my mind (and I've been avoiding those 'easily mis-understood and purposefully divisive' articles for some time now...but wasn't on the renowned MSN homepage an AP article (you could see this drivel coming out of Fox but AP, they're supposed to vet their stuff more vigorously...except when it comes to, er, propagandizing the extraordinarily gullible public.

Yes, I take heart in the fact that most people retain a modicum of critical reasoning skills so yesterday's, er, 'poll' citing white people are 'cool' (read sympathetic) to police violence I sort of stopped short and wondered what kind of, er, editor would greenlight such an irresponsible opinion piece...and it wasn't run as an op/ed, it was run as a 'most people think', an 'informational article' on the scale of did you know?

Well, coincidentally or otherwise, the article went on to cite the 'usual suspects', the 25% of the public that identify themselves as conservatives. While the article didn't specifically say conservatives, it's where the coincidence kicks in...it said 25% of white people could see a situation where a law enforcement could assault an average citizen during the performance of their, er, job.

Um, understand, it is NEVER okay for ANYBODY to use physical force to control you. NEVER. Not a cop, not a judge, hell not even a prison guard! It's NEVER okay so where and it doesn't matter who's 'cool' with the idea...so the entire article was...pointed.

Yes, gentle reader, the purpose of article slike that one is to plant in YOUR MIND that it's 'okay' for law enforcement to use physical force when they feel it is 'warranted'.

Naturally the factor that makes the average citizen's mind recoil in horror is these guys ROUTINELY exercise poor judgement with lethal force, now we are being told it's 'okay' for them to put a beating on you...if they feel threatened.

US police have KILLED more people LAST MONTH than UK police have killed since 1900...a hundred and fifteen years, something's wrong with this 'police state' we find ourselves in.

It's time to start demanding editorial accountability.

The Reviewer's dilemmna

Writers are very defensive of their works so why are reviewers surprised when authors go off on them for what they perceive to be 'unflattering' reviews of their works? (Which begs the question;why do most authors refuse to review the work of others? (because it is a totally thankless task... unless you write flattering puffery which aids no-one. And we've all read those reviews too...worse, we bought the product and asked ourselves afterwards what book did knothead read because it certainly bears no resemblance the one you have in your hands!)

Authors are correct, the reviewer (often) doesn't understand what the author is trying to communicate, but who's fault is that?

If the author had done a better job of explaining themselves, mayhaps the reviewer would have been kinder...or maybe not because dreck is dreck. You can't put lipstick on a pig, thereby magically turning it into art!

Don't misunderstand, it is possible to breathe new life into old stories but simply re-hashing badly over-trodden ground serves no-one.

Unsurprisingly, many fall short of the mark...and succeed despite the lack of logic (plot holes large enough to fly commercial airliners through) so perhaps that is why some authors write drivel and expect to be heaped with praise, sort of a self-inflicted wound, the talentless bilking the clueless is one of the oldest cons there is.

So I've got this here sharp stick, now, who wants it right in the ol' eyeball?

Rinse & Repeat

Greetings gentle reader, launched the, er, recycle of Hard Reality into 'Unplugged' this morning. Not a particularly attractive title, I'll have to admit but I played with some alternatives and wound up getting too far away from the actual subject matter again so I returned to the proverbial 'first impulse'...it remains to be seen if it is the 'best' one.

Unintended consequences

Under the category of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it', I went to make a new cover for my novel End Play...and not only wouldn't the system let me do it but the old cover went 'poof!' Now I'm stuck! My member dashboard has a glaring red 'attention needed' screaming at me and I don't know how to fix it! So I 're-published' the book under a new title "Edge of Eternity" (A lot closer to the subject matter than End Play, which is tied to the events in the Series...)

Both works, Hard Reality and End Play are, er, 'self-contained' enough to stand alone, in fact if it weren't for the fact that one begins on the same day the other ends, the reader wouldn't even suspect there was a connection.

If 're-titling' my projects doesn't raise too many red flags at Create Space, I intend to rename Hard Reality as 'Unplugged' (again, a title that more closely reflects the events that take place in the book.)

In a self-defeating turn of events, promoting my works on social media has resulted in zero reviews because my friends can tell me in person how much they enjoyed my book...go figure? [sigh]

Happy Friday!

Greetings gentle reader! I hope you're getting everything ready for an exciting adventure this weekend! What, you're not planning an adventure? Too expensive you say? Dang, that's why books are so helpful. When you need a getaway but can't afford it, a book can take you to places you only imagined/sometimes never imagined and you don't have to pack a single thing (assuming you always have your sense of wide-eyed wonder handy!)

That said, it's looking like a different kind of adventure is getting ready to show up on your front doorstep, unannounced. Actually the game is changing everyday, not that the corporate-owned media has commented but the blogosphere is alive with red flags...which the corporate lapdogs dismiss as rubbish, the incoherent rantings of the deranged minds that lurk in cyberspace.

The political situation globally is a trainwreck and those behind the scenes continue to throw gasoline on the fires they themselves started.

The real danger lies in the witchhunt...who are they going to blame for all this? More curious is the huge number of people that have been robbed by these manipulating scoundrels. People who operate 'above the law', (because they own the law/lawyers.) Who will the cheated extract their 'pound of flesh' from?

Maybe you don't need a book after all...(but the above isn't going to happen this weekend and since you have some free time on your hands...)

Just saying, ya know?

Going off the rails

Greetings good citizen! This morning's headlines say Saudi Arabia has gone to war with the rebels in Yemen. Does anyone else see a pattern developing? (Besides rising fuel prices...)

So what are you going to do? The beauty of democracy is the power to alter the system to make it better for everyone, the caveat here is if we fail to use this tool, and 'democracy' is reduced to the narrow agenda of the self-interested few) it will be turned against us...resulting in revolution.

It is this, er, 'propensity' for humans to repeat, over and over, the abuses of the past that creates the popular meme that mankind isn't worth saving; so when we finally run afoul of our own stupidity, it will be a well-deserved end.

That, perhaps, is the Biggest Question of all, is mankind worth saving?