The Sign Says it All

Clay Aiken is... Gay?!

Clay Aiken recently announced that he is gay.

Unfortunately, this admission comes as a surprise only to himself! :0)

Maybe Not So Stupid Afterall?

The Administration has been slammed in the past few years for a variety of debacles, including being blamed for ruining the economy and starting a war based upon mistaken information. I have been thinking about all of this recently and wondering how so many well educated, well connected, people could make such big mistakes. It does not seem possible. Then I asked myself, what if the underlying premise, that these are mistakes, is wrong? What if this was all part of a larger, much more elaborate plan; one that is being held from the American public?

For example, let’s look at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a side trip to Iran. Iran is one of the biggest trouble makers in the world today, a major exporter of religious zealots and terrorism ( and oil ). Where is Iran? Well, sandwiched right between Pakistan ( our erstwhile ally ), Iraq and Afghanistan! If you wanted to put pressure on someone and create a foundation for future military action, what better way then to surround them with troops already in place?

What about the economy? Why would the people in Washington possibly want to intentionally ruin it? Well, by creating ( or allowing ) a period of economic down to occur, the government can cause several outcomes. One such outcome is that illegal immigrants are now less inclined to come here. The ones who are here are now unemployed or under-employed and American dollars are not being sent out of the country and being converted to pesos.

Who knows what other outcomes may arise from such a scheme to ruin our economy; outcomes that fulfill some larger and more diabolical plan? Between assuming that my government is too stupid or too evil, I will choose the latter.

Weather or Not

Its not whether or not
there will be weather or not,
but whether or not
we can weather the weather
we got.

Guess What This Man is Saying

When Life Began

In a recent rant, regarding abortion, I closed my essay with a statement that life began more than 2 billion years ago. I want to take a moment to expound on what I meant by that; a statement that may appear to be, on the surface, a non-sequitur. What did I mean?

Sometimes, the most complex questions have the simplest answers, once you reframe your way of thinking. The question here, pondered by those who debate the ethics of abortion, is when does (a) life begin? This is a crucial question to some who regard abortion as murder.

Let’s take a closer look at the process of birth. The ovum, a living cell, merges with a spermatozoon, another living cell, to produce the embryo, yet another living, group, of cells. Typically, thinkers focus on when does the embryo become alive? But as we have just seen, the two things that went into making the embryo themselves were alive to start with! Human bodies created these cells, which were in turn made the same way, cell to embryo, in a process that stretches back millennia. My parents begot me and their parents begot them, etc.

This question, when does life begin, is similar to the question, which came first the chicken or the egg? Well, the EGG of course, because the egg as an evolutionary “system” predates the existence of chickens; even dinosaurs laid eggs long before there were chickens.

When you step back from the question and remove the limitations that come from our time based sense of the world as human beings, you see that life, obviously, began some time in the past, scientists estimate that this was about 2 billion years ago. The cells and embryos are merely the carriers of this energy we call life, like a radio carries the radio waves which exist ambiently. If you shut off the radio, the radio waves still exist, independent of the machine and life exists independent of these vessels we call our bodies.

Therefore, the question of "when does life begin" itself is a non-sequtur because life has already begun and anyone one individual persons "life" is a continuation of the process which is life.

Seeing

In silence
and at a distance
he caresses her
with his eyes; flicking,
catching furtive glances.
Does she or anyone else
notice the way he looks
at her? From the corner,
he meets her gaze
while talking; shift never drifting,
but sees instead
what he imagines. In his mind
he knows the softness of her
sweater, the touch and the hang
of her hair. Her scent.
He could inhale her, but afraid
for to move closer
he too would be
exposed; of being seen
seeing.