Loosely Speaking

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Everything Else

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Australia burning...

The news is of hundreds of homes lost, fears of weather and winds bringing three separate fires into one, a pall of orange smoke over Sydney, smokey haze over the Opera House on Sydney Harbour... The blaze is in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. On my first trip to Sydney, we drove up that way, a little ways into those mountains and looked out from a high place into them. It is a terrible thing to happen anywhere, but it hits home hard and personal when you've been there. My heart aches for... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, October 18, 2013

REIGN

The disclaimer at the end pretty much sums it up: Any resemblence to actual people or events is unintentional. Why do they call it history, then? Why don't they create the story they want to tell, and give original names to the characters, instead of giving the impression that we can learn something from what is essentially only entertainment? Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Ratcoons

https://www.facebook.com/WashHumane The handwritten letter... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, October 11, 2013

A happy Thanksgiving weekend to all my Canadian friends!

May it be a masterpiece of contentment nurtured with good food and wonderful company! Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

I am ready to see some government shut-down...

I'd like to see the Congress and President not get paid until they sort this out. Will they have the guts and integrity to go that route? Doubt it... I am glad to see that Speaker Boehner has been delivered the message that he does not in fact, run this country. He has clearly delivered the message to anyone paying attention that his Party ideology is more important to him than the good of the nation. This bill could have been passed clean, and the argument about mandatory health coverage... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

again, with the sentimentality...

After reading the very thoughtful comments on the previous post on this topic, I realize that once again, we don't all attach the same definitions to a particular word. This has helped me clarify my own definition. Jimmy describes what I would call 'nostalgia'--a yearning for things lost or past. If one adds sentimentality to nostalgia, it gets kind of more unreal, recalling only the elements of the lost that were sweet and charming, and forgetting the unpleasant that was surely also part of the... Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, September 27, 2013

A Libertarian speaks about gun control, global warming and science

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-we-should-choose-science-over-beliefs&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20130925 I found this article most interesting, and have to admit it's true for me, too. Motivated reasoning... is not the path to Reality, which demands that we act intelligently despite our ideology. I will write less here, so you can invest some time into reading the article. Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Sentimental journeys

Some people use 'sentimental' as a warm and fuzzy word, meaning caring and feeling, sensitive, empathetic and sympathetic. Some people use it as a kind of pejoritive: emotionally-based reacting rather than actual thinking, a self-indulgence in the impractical. Whichever, Americans are notoriously sentimental, putting a high value on feelings, almost to the exclusion of any other way of seeing the world: As if it's the best, not just another approach to making the most of our humanity. Other... Sign in to see full entry.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

I just had an idea,

prompted by the local icecream truck that plays Christmas music as it passes by all summer. I got to thinking, that music will never be appropriate to that truck! It will be sound asleep in a garage somewhere, when that music should be driven 'round the neighborhoods. But what could that little truck be up and doing in the deep of winter? Hot dogs! Sausage onna stick! Switch it over from cold summer treats, to hot winter ones! Roasted chestnuts! Hot pretzels! I would run outside with a... well,... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Whoever makes the most noise, wins.

The self-righteous, defensive-to-the-point-of-paranoia, who think they--no one else, just themselves--are entitled by some twist of their minds to have it all their own way... and make everyone else have it all their way, too... Ideological terrorists, fanatics, lunatics... A sad day in Colorado, a day when the two state senators with the sense and balance to vote for a little gun-control were fired by those anti-control lunatics who think there's no problem because they themselves aren't... Sign in to see full entry.

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