Moments of Awareness

Update 06-20-2018: Mr. Kim may be beginning to realize that Mr. Trump is no respecter of persons - he's equally faithless to everyone - and may (re)act to this realization with violence (like attracts like), so maybe it'll be North Korea after all, but they won't be alone . Dennis Rodman started making a series of high-profile visits to North Korea in February 2013 , between the filming and the airing of his second appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice . Both times on TCA , Mr. Rodman won nothing as Project Manager and was fired fairly early (after what most bosses would consider rather poor performances in most cases), but was continually praised by Mr. Trump for being a 'Great guy, terrific guy," etc., etc. ad nauseum. Mr. Rodman has befriended Mr. Kim and continues to travel back and forth despite his own declarations that next time he may not be able to come back . Mr. Trump is demonstrably loyal to few or none, although there are secrets he's happy to kee

I read this piece today, then this one . Reading the first I thought, as one commenter posted, " Well, it's choice, isn't it. " Addiction to anything is a choice not to find a way to let it go, even when we recognize its detrimental effects in our lives. But we are indeed on the cusp of some kind of massive global failure of what we consider to be civilization, as posited by some of the Silicon-Valley-defecting groundbreakers interviewed in the first piece. The only question is whether mankind will have time to bring it about before nature destroys enough of us and our infrastructure to render society as it stands obsolete. It won't be the end of the world - the Earth will go on with or without us barring anything short of whatever kind of collision it would take to actually vaporize the planet - nor even of humankind, but depending upon how this society ends an evolution may be triggered in future generations that leaves whomever remains of what we currently ar

If you know us, you know that we're not feminists, we're humanists. We believe that every human being has inherent value, and that the actions of each individual should be given merit where they can regardless of our personal feelings, or even the apparent contribution of those actions to society. If a person's choices aren't doing overt and widely-accepted damage to the social fabric, those choices may be of value to someone else even if we don't see or understand it. You may also be aware of our views on women's empowerment , that we believe that for anyone to wait for power to be given is foolish and wasteful, that each on their own must find the power within themselves and make of it what they will. If the external universe doesn't respond in the way we'd like, it's up to us to take the initiative to work at understanding why, make the changes we're able, and, if necessary changes are beyond our reach, find another approach or move on

The one thing the newest leader of the free world understands better than anything else is, the more heavily a person invests in a thing - be it real estate, a wager, or a political opinion - the harder they'll fight to justify their choice. For people of a certain mindset, the introduction of empirical evidence to the contrary will spur them to dig in and resist a change of heart with even greater fervor (see any active comment section anywhere for proof of that), and the more divided a contingent is kept the easier it will be to set various factions at one another's throats, thus not only allowing for the hegemony to exert greater control with less effort, but distracting from the actual agendas of the ascendancy. By the time enough people get together and begin to wonder why they're fighting each other when they all want the same thing, there'll be little left with which to bring about an evolution (always preferable to a revolution). Those who are most convince

Let's face it: There are nearly 7.4B people on Earth at this time. The question of how many this planet can support is essentially unanswerable , but current widely-accepted estimates stand at around 10B, which we're expected to reach between 2050 and 2100 . Of course, the accuracy of these estimates depends in large part upon levels and types of consumption and rates of procreation, but without diving into all the variables explored so well and thoroughly in each of the two articles linked above (such as the need for a majority of people to stop consuming animal products, for instance), we'll just go with the stated numbers for the purposes of this post. You get the gist. More important in any case than whether the world is overpopulated or quickly on its way toward being is the question of with whom it is currently populated. Depending upon your source , President Trump's recent approval ratings lie between 39 and 55% in the US. Current statistics for his approva

Sec. 3. Definitions. (d) Except as otherwise noted, "the Secretary" shall refer to the Secretary of Homeland Security. More on this below. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sec. 5. Detention Facilities. (a) The Secretary shall take all appropriate action and allocate all legally available resources to immediately construct, operate, control, or establish contracts to construct, operate, or control facilities to detain aliens at or near the land border with Mexico. Detention facilities are not new in the US. There are currently 111 such facilities operating around the country, and our nation's first such establishments were used to contain other groups of Native Americans . What's notable about this current order is its parallel to the immediacy with which the Konzentrationslager were ordered after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor and the subsequent issuance of the Reichstag Fire Decree in 1933. The Fire Decree was instated in response to (and as a means of pr

Peace: You'd mentioned [...] some months back that you were hoping [Ireland's  peace walls would] come down or stay down where they've already been removed [...] . I [...] was curious as to how it's all progressing from your perspective as a citizen there. To be frank, I'm also curious about real-world perspectives on our newly-elected president and how people are feeling about his apparent hostility toward the rest of the world, particularly there in Ireland given the tremendous degree of support you've given to some of 'our' most socially-important companies and the threat his attitudes may pose to your economy . I have trouble calling those companies ours, since I believe that many or most of the big ones have done great things for the whole world, or as much of it as they've been able, and have little to no intent of advancing American agendas to the detriment of that of any other civilized society. I'd like to see him embrace their natu