A THOUSAND WORDS

Since I found so few films worth watching on Netflix -- they cater to popular taste and I'm unpopular -- I dumped them.  I tried BritBox and got grabbed by some big American conglomerate that I had a devil of a time escaping.  Now I'm subscribed to AcornTV.com,  whose Brit movies I've been watching for a long time but randomly since there's a bit of crossover to Netflix.  This change works especially well when I find a good Australian film.  I also admire the strict, but hardly Puritanical, Scandinavian films and also Irish.  Or Wales, et al. These are what I've watched so far.  They're all pretty good mystery series in six episodes.  Pretty much the same pattern and check list of characters, but different enough to mostly hold my attention. I do have to give you a warning on the last film on this list.  It's called "No Offence " but there are plenty of reasons to be offended.  Paul Arnold is the writer/producer behind "Cracker...

I'm using some earlier sequences to deal with each issue in order.  This one is the second stage of human development, but the last of the brain to develop, so it extends through several stages of maturation.  I begin to suspect that some people never really develop through the last stage and that what some people attribute to college education, is merely the brain achieving maturation. This entry is preparation for the next, which is about writing as narrative through the whole length of life.  Stories are a way of testing the ideas developed in the pre-frontal cortex.  It is also the location of empathy, which is a way of inhabiting stories.  Some people feel this is the future of evolution, because when people tell the stories and understand each other, the ensuing progress helps the survival of all. Another reason for liking to have cats around is that they have no pre-frontal cortex.  That part of the brain that is behind the forehead.  C...

MY FOCUS BOUNDARIES is the key theme.  "How far to go." 1.  Originally Scots/Irish immigrants who were raised agricultural and becoming urban industrial revolution 2.  Child's arrogance carried to academia 3.  Blackfeet Rez in several kinds and their whites 4.  Dog catching in Portland 5.  A denomination for a certain sociology in several places 6.  Portland in a time of inspection 7.  Irrigation town with computers 8.  A world within: desire, safety, presentation, cell code So what does it mean? What does it feel like? What happens when you cross? Does anyone come along? What if there were no borders? Border filters Profit making borders. 5 negative qualities that come from our genome. Inability to perceive others — one point of view High and quick anger Conflating categories into all one thing and not allowing change Binary thinking — all black and white Competition — saf...

This is a slap-pack.   Write each on a card.   Slap them on the table and think about them singly or bunched, whether you are alone or with others.    Feel free to add more.   They are for discussion more than for implementation.   I will add more as I think of them. 1.  Every regulation or administrative decision MUST be in line with the Constitution.  This will be enforced.  Ignoring enforcement is defined formally as violation. 2.  No millionaire et al may run for government office.  Some form of regulation is needed for persons and corporations that exceed some high limit. 3.  "Corporations" -- the idea that an institution or business is like a person -- are a fantasy idea and are declared null and void. 4.  As basic requirements for civilization, the separation of families is banned.  But a careful definition of "family" is necessary. 5.  Label all diversions and set them aside.  Us...

When I was a little kid, I thought a "social disease" was a kind of sociological phenomenon, something that made a social group uneasy.  It was close to WWII when Naziism was considered a disease, an aberrant destroyer of democratic civilization, for the benefit of a self-chosen elite.  I was right, but not quite in the way I thought.  The "anti-biotic" (" against life" ) was war.  It left seeds that have recurred. Social diseases like STD's come from other people, getting from one body into another through contact.  I guess really all human-to-human transmission is either body-to-body or through a vector, often an insect like a mosquito carrying malaria from one blood system to another, or a bat carrying rabies from one blood system to another.  These are not human-to-human but rather mammal to mammal with insects as vectors.  You can't catch a disease that afflicts insects.  Usually, vectors only carry disease entities without being hurt, b...

When I was in seminary in Chicago about 1980, my practise was to go to the most wealthy suburb's shopping mall to buy small things I needed, like an alarm clock or socks.  Shoppers there were not trapped in poverty and they had a strong sense of value.  On one of these expeditions I spotted a BOOKSTORE!!  A BOOKSTORE!!!  And it wasn't a chain.  Nor was it one of the arcane and fascinating Hyde Park bookstores.  It was feminist.  I hardly knew what that meant. Inside was a huge section of "erotica."  Forbidden books.  One was " The Story of O ."  I bought it, of course, and at a stoplight, while waiting, I flipped it open and read a few sentences.  The next thing was horns honking behind me as I sat reading, gaping, growing wet. Now "feminists" write articles -- openly, and analyze the author, who is no longer anonymous.  What was forbidden porn has become intriguing anthropology.  We called God into question, then...

The house was not particularly remarkable to the sibs who grew up there.  At least at the time.  It was their norm.  Probably it was not remarkable that the effect of growing up together in that house had affected them in such different ways.  Some would attribute that to gender difference and some might say it was birth order.  Some theoretical thing. There had been five of them, but not because of a third sib.  The added person was their grandmother, their father's mother.  She would not have have agreed to live with them except that she was in a wheelchair.  Their father built a little "grandmother house" adapted for a person in that situation.  The bedrooms in the big house were on the second floor, inaccessible to her which the sibs thought was a good thing because it kept her out of their space.  Her addition had a nice bathroom but no kitchen.  She had no intention of cooking.  She was a snob.  Mom took out a t...