Tired of Drinking the Kool-Aid? Is your glass half empty or half full?

 Who’s Tired of drinking the Kool-aid?

Worldwide we all have been drinking the Kool-Aid for almost a century.  It has been97 years since eddy Perkins from Hastings Nebraska invented the stuff by experimenting in his mother’s kitchen and somehow General Mills and now Kraft have been able to sell a colored, sort of flavored, powder that really only has somewhat of a taste due to the massive portion of sugar that gets added when you make it or in the case of “sugar-free” the amount of artificial sweeteners in the stuff.  While it generally has a great reputation among parents because it’s cheaper and marginally better than. Straight up pop for kids has been used in one of the largest mass cult based “suicides?” In history.  So..maybe our thinking on Kool-Aid is divided?  

But moving from the drink to the phrase… it’s part of seeking peace and joy to ask oneself “am I comfortable with what I believe?”  Also we often ask “what about all the Kool-Aid I’ve been given over all the past experiences in life and is it time to stop just drinking the same stuff from the same sources?  Well that is certainly something to ponder and maybe we could start by mixing up some grape (my personal favorite) and pouring it in a glass… but wait  a full glass may have way too much sugar in it so let’s stop at about half a glass alright?

Oh No!! Now we fall into the classic  Is the glass half empty or half full puzzle?  Which brings us around to another insight into seeking peace and joy.  

Inevitably  we fall into this debte/argument because the answer depends upon your perspective.  Like whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.  Alas my friends.. the real question is “Why is it so important to hang on to this dualistic debate.  Isn’t it time to ask a few deeper questions—like what would it take to stop using our valuable time on such matters?  This whole debate gets settled or moved forward in no fewer than 4 ways.

First, why is it so hard to either fillthe. Glass up or empty it rather than starting an argument?  Second, Does it matter how much is in the glass if no one is going thirsty?  If you count air as a valuable substance on the planet—and most folks really wouldn’t do well without it—isn’t the glass always full or overflowing?  Finally, is the person or people in charge of choosing the glass creating a problem that might not exist with a little forethought?

Bottom line.. Kool-Aid tastes great if you like sugar and there are worse things for your health over time.. for example bacon is sugar free?  Oh and no big arguments seem to happen over Kool-aid because there are enough flavors for everyone and if the person next to you picks that black cherry instead.. well nobody gets all bent out of shape.  Also maybe we might start thinking about asking different questions  when it comes to the things we choose to argue about.  Maybe the glass is neither  half empty nor half full.  Maybe we need to figure out what is important to say is in the glass, how we are going to share what’s in there, and also maybe we could rethink what size glass we. Really need so that everyone has enough to drink?  

Sometimes fighting about the answers is not as worthwhile as finding some different questions? 

Winning at the derby May the horse be with you

 Life—Winning By A Nose?

Well it’s “Derby Day” and “Star Wars” Day.  So it would seem that all horses running in the 150th edition of the Kentucky derby should have been required to have a Star Wars themed name.  And we’re talking the original trilogy here not the cash grab prequels or hangers on just trying to milk the Milkyway for all it’s worth.  It’s hard to say what these Star Wars names would be—maybe Yoda Fastest Pony and Obi-wan a different race but not this one?Perhaps Leia bet down for the win?

Anyway, about 20 fine horses will be called to the gate and the bell will sound the crowd will cheering the most exciting two minutes in American sports will be underway.  

Now for those of us not that familiar with the sport of kings it’s good to know the Kentucky Derby is the first leg of the “triple crown.”  However, when one thinks of horses and legs four sort of comes to mind —right?  If a horse with three legs won now that would be a story.  Before we could all bet on everything including the over and under  on how many nose hairs Taylor Swift pulls before the third concert on every tour the Derby was by far the most popular betting event of the year and it makes sense.  

The Derby and Seeking Peace and Joy

You see it seems that everybody wants to have a horse in that race or a dog in that fight.  When we are working on something we want to get out of the gate fast, hit the ground running,  and stay on the fast track.  As things go along we really want to be hitting our stride and we most certainly want to be strong in the home stretch and no matter what we want to win even if it’s just by a nose.  Then again no matter who or what is entered most of the time the rats keep winning the rat race and maybe we can win even if we. Don’t finish first.  After all sometimes it’s just important to be in the right “place” and to “show” up. When others need you.  After all the jockeying for position and chasing each other’s tails it often seems like we wind up running in a circle, ending up with tiny bits of worthless paper, and end up with a bunch of racers a lot like u—tired and hoping to find a nice quiet field to rest in. 

Maybe the key to the whole thing is to understand that the horses don’t really care if they are in a race or what colors they have for a brand.  They don’t care who is scheming to win or lose depending upon how they perform. They appear just to get out there and be the best version of the creatures the universe intended without worrying about the horse next to them running a little faster.  Maybe we should just eat a few more carrots and apples and breathe deeply and fly like the wind.

Finally here’s some Peace and Joy Betting Advice…

So off to the track we all go

We arrive with a fistful of dough

Got great tips from my buddy 

But it rained track was muddy

So our picks didn’t win, place, or show

May the 4th be with you

May the force be with you 

And today.. 

May the horse be with you!

Flat earth or Wheel? Which Came First not really which are you?

 Do You Feel Like You are Just Spinning Your Wheels?

So starting tomorrow pay attention to how many times you see something with wheels on it.  Let’s include bikes, trikes, strollers, cars, trucks, trains, planes, and well of course suitcases which are a relatively new wheeled object.  Did we overlook skateboards, rollerblades, roller skates, and those funky shoes with the wheelie the heels?  Yep count them too and then think about the invention of the wheel.  

According to an AI source the wheel as we know it was “invented in about 4,000 BCE.  However, in some ways it is hard to believe that prehistoric—don’t we really mean before  we wrote stuff down?)  Certainly the first people on the planet had histories?  They couldn’t have mastered living in the moment all the time—right?  Okay back to the wheel.. or the grindstone now there’s a wheel.  It seems reasonable that some folks used an old log to help move heavy things by sitting the heavy thing on the log and pushing?  Okay so they didn’t draw a sketch of it in their cave.  They were busy hunting huge buffalo and running from grizzly bears and didn’t have time to scrape stick figures on the cave with berry based paint every night.  Plus circles are hard to draw—you don’t think so grab an etch-sketch  and give it a whirl.  

Alright let’s say the wheel gets invented  sometime back in Summary or Egypt or china or someplace that gets credit for all the ancient stuff… and all of the sudden one of the clans in the tribe has a thing they can use to move stuff and these people soon find they can build a cart for hauling people.  Can you imagine the stir that created?  Little boys sitting at the mouth of their caves and huts see their neighboring clans rolling past and there you have it the first time in history one. Family started comparing their wheels with someone else’s and now it’s Ford Vs. Chevy, and all the rest.  It wasn’t long and we were starting to use wheels for all types of things.  However, what if we hadn’t decided to trust the wheel?  How would planes take off or land?  Instead of saying “It’s like learning to ride a bike” would we be saying “It’s like learning to hop around with a stick between our legs?Would we pack far smaller suitcases—well maybe, however, where would we be going I mean everything  would be by horse or on foot?  Oh and how boring would office chairs be?  

What’s the SekkingPeace and Joy connection?  It seems like there are some choices in life and they include using the wheel to do different things in different ways knowing it won’t always work just like wheels that were made of wood or stone.  I mean what if you had some wooden wheels and parked near a beaver dam? Oh and until the first part of the 20th century wheels weren’t filled with air so that created some challenges.  Anyway the point is the wheel has changed and we have adapted and changes what we do with it.   But it is not only choosing to use something with wheels, it choosing to be a wheel.  

Seeking peace and joy, especially in a community, can mean trying to help others move their heavy stuff in life over obstacles and over the course of a long. Journey.  We can choose to hold things and people up while we stay grounded.  We can choose to carry far more weight than we might be on our own and risk getting a nail and becoming flat, ruptured,  and getting thrown on a pile to be tossed into a grinder or worse onto a fire.  Yet if you make the choice to be a wheel you might get admired and taken places all around the world and might make little children very happy as they get their first whiff of mobility-based freedom.  

Maybe the point here is that we all might have a fuller life if sometimes we use the wheel and sometimes we become the wheel and when we need a moment to relax and regroup then maybe we should  just be sitting’ here watching’ the wheels go round and round. 

Modifying the laws of physics?

 Gravity and Laws of Motion —They’re Heavy Man

If you are reading this on the day it was posted, then it’s the 319th anniversary of the day in 1705 that Isaac Newton became “Sir” Isaac Newton.  This was sort of a big deal for someone who had a couple of obstacles tossed in his 17th Century path including his father passing away about three month before he was born.  The source that provided that fact didn’t say how Newton’s father met his demise, however, it adds a little comic relief to imagine his papa was struck down by a torrent of walnuts as his father failed to recognize the universal power of gravity and due to inertia couldn’t rise up and move fast enough to avoid the pounding.  Nonetheless (this blog has included “nonetheless” far too many times lately providing evidence that vocabularies standing still tend to continue to stand still.  

So Newton provided the empirical/scientific community with three basic “laws of motion and some principles concerning gravity that guided most of our traditional study of physics until Einstein brought up that pesky e=mc squared idea which led to the invention of the flux capacitor  by Doc. Brown (Take that AI.  

Anyway what were these three laws of motion?  More importantly is there modern day evidence showing they were both reliable and observable?

1. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.  Well when you drop. A round object off a counter matter how slowly you were moving when you bumped it.  The earring back will roll all the way across the bathroom floor passing the rug and your towel from today’s shower and only come to rest when it finds it’s way to the tile directly behind the exact center of your toilet.  Secondly, Once you start eating potato chips your hand continues dipping into the bag over and over until pretty much all that is left is a salty bag and some crumbs on your navy blue shirt.
2. 2. Objects at Rest Tend to stay at Rest (unless a tremendous force is place upon them?  So once you set your remote to binge watch four entire seasons of The Golden Girls or Law and Order, you tend to sit on the couch and not move for episode. After episode until, in fact, the 64 oz. Diet soda you drank about 5 hours ago has filled your bladder and then you will become an object in motion headed toward the before mentioned toilet where many people then become an object at rest again.  
3. 2. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The evidence for this is overwhelming.  Every time you make a little more money, everything.  You need to survive will go up in price, your car will break down, a filling will fall out etc.  

You see these are useful rules or laws, however here are a few that Newton didn’t anticipate and are important to people living now. 

For Example

1. Every time you leave your smart phone in the bedroom when you are going to get something out of the kitchen that phone will ring, however it will stop when you are spilling your drink and are only one step away from your phone.
2. When you have less than three minutes to put your shoes on and get to the bus even though you live less than 20 yards away from the bus stop, your shoe string will break as you tie the second shoe meaning you have to deal with changing or fixing both shoes.
1. Whenever you really really really want some obnoxiously chocolate and sugary  cookies all that will be available is some sort of stale prepackaged “fig” chunks.  Thank you Sir Isaac Newton. 
1. So the Peace and Joy take aways?   You can make up rules to live by, however over. Time they are liable to need. Some updates or modifications. 
2. Your rules might not be respected or fully agreed upon and 
3. Somebody smarter than you or different from you is likely to come up with some entirely novel ideas about how the universe and you should act under all conditions and a whole lot of people may work hard to prove they were right—and in the grander scheme of things that’s okay.  . 

If you carry over that “every action has an opposite reaction does that mean you should make yourself miserable if you want other people to be happy?  That doesn’t seem reasonable.  If my enemies eat too much will my friends get really skinny?  Now science tells us this whole opposite reaction thing is about “conservation of energy” and you’ve used just about enough energy reading this far… so let’s forget the “opposite thing for now and just keep seeking some peace and joy with the hope that when we come across some… we keep seeking and having peace and joy cross our paths.  

Oh and maybe we’ll find some better cookies—some Nilla Wafers at least? 

Can artificial intelligence teach you to play with the cards you were dealt

 What’s in the Cards?

So last night we were sitting around the table and teaching a new player a card game.  Now euchre is much like life.  You know it goes by pretty fast.  You have some things that are pretty certain yet depend upon things others are thinking and doing.  You have other things that neither you nor your partner or partners ever know nor do you expect until the game seems to change.  Even when we know how the game is played sometimes we get horrible cards and thus we feel powerless while others seem to get a winning hand that they cannot mess up.  So if you want to learn about someone teach them a card game and help them learn that they will have to make choices that will have uncertainty involved some of which will work out and some that won’t, so it’s probably a good idea to mostly surround yourself with people who won’t kick you too hard when you are down and people who will respect you for taking a risk or two and counting on a little help from time to time.  

Now learning to play with a table full of friends and family is a neat event to be a part of, however, of course you can learn by downloading the app and playing with robots, however will the phone smile and laugh when a good move turn bad or a bad play gets to be okay due to some luck?  You see what we discovered last night is that. AI can’t hand you another beer and say “you’re getting it..hang in there.”  Your phone can’t slowly roll the ace on top of the queen to save the day and nod to the other phones playing along.   You see… humans win!

New phones that can do new things are nice…. And yet?—here’s an 8 liner… Welcome to Tuesday or whatever day it is  Days don’t matter until we make them.

Is this the most amazing thing?

This phone will rumble buzz and ding

At anytime for everything

There’s movie clips and memes to bring

The stream’s a never ending string

But does it smile when children sing?

Smell like Lilacs in the spring?

Or just addict us to it’s ring? 

Life is taxing, but common sense could work

 Life is Taxing

It would seem that most people most of the time can find some reason to complain about taxes.  This is partially and sometimes totally because most. People are fairly unaware of what their world might look like without the use of collective dollars to perform collective services.  For example, imagine. Your regular life in a world where there were no regulated places for you to drive or park?  Let’s say roads, any portion of them, were constructed and maintained by private citizens at any level we might choose?  Now let’s do the same with building materials, the quality of food, the distribution of water, and let’s toss in the education of our children which is controversial sometimes, however, we. All know parents who have no place whatsoever in teaching their kids only what they know with the reading or educational materials they own.  

Yet as April 15th (known as Tax Day in the U.S.) approaches it’s probably inevitable that we contemplate what we pay unto Caesar.  Depending upon which state we lived in during which tax cycles we have put tax funds in the hands of our fellow citizens to perform   some fairly strange tax tasks. 

For instance, although cookies crumbling in certain circumstances should be considered a crime, spending tax dollars to determine if gingerbread houses would hold up in earthquake conditions was probably a stretch.  While gingerbread structures might  or might not hold as California floats away from the western Rockies, did other snacks get tested?  Like slightly moist Jolly Ranchers left in the sun for a week would probably stick to each other and the ground in almost any context Mother Nature has to offer.  

In the “high-tech tax spending category we have two winners.   We used money to have people stare at Barbie dolls and then used simulated scenarios to determine if staring at dolls helped people recognize faces in video evidence.  This facial recognition study proved that staring at Barbie didn’t improve a. Thing, but did they try ogling Ken or maybe G.I. Joe? Data man, we need data!

The second hi-tech tax task was a study where we set computers in front of television sets hoping to help the computer learn language and get insights  about human speech.  The study results showed that your television can’t teach your computer much of value without adult supervision—so maybe any kindergarten teacher or responsible parent could have clued us in on that—just saying.

Finally, tax dollars went to study whether frat kids drink more and sleep later than other students when events are related to campus recreational activities such as big time college football etc…Guess what?  They do—shocked?

So we make some crazy decisions about how tax money is being spent and yet it may be time to take a common sense. Look at taxation, therefore here are three proposed new taxes that might move us toward “domestic tranquility.”which was mentioned in one of those pesky founding documents.  

The Noisy Toys Tax Ac-  Every toy that makes a noise must either be taxed at the point of manufacture or contain a permanently powered bluetooth chip thatch blinked to a smart phone volume switch.  Toys can have sound they just can’t be unending and loud.  Also kids can make the sounds on their own…I’ve heard them..I’ve been them….we don’t need loud sounds that burn batteries.

The “Childproof” Cap Tax Act—It’s okay to have safety measures to protect kids, however, if adults can’t open 3 out of 4 of the caps you put on medicine, food, or hygiene products, then. Bam! Big pharma should be paying a tax because not being able to open things creates stress, stress raises blood pressure, and yep.. you know it…strokes, heart attacks, and really nasty gas in elevators  will be the outcome.  A lot of people use their fingerprint to buy “who let the dogs Out” on i-tunes why can’t our medicine come in containers that a fingerprint will open?  And while we’re at things that should either be built differently or be taxed let’s consider the 

No tile in the earpiece tax—Yes.. we know that there are slim “tile” type devices that can be tracked by our phones.  All glasses that include prescriptions lenses should have to come with a tracker.  Why does it take people so long to find their glasses?  Hint—what are glasses for?  Seeing better perhaps?  So wouldn’t it make sense to have some way to locate glasses that did not depend upon them?  

Prescription glasses cost a ton and vision insurance costs a ton.   It seems that this little change could help a ton?

Anyway—these are just a few thoughts, however, don’t worry about new or old taxes all that much, to date I’ve never seen a bank. Truck follow the funeral parade—you can’t take it with you.  

As the clock ticks forward to tax day the words of Grandma “Murphy”  linger heavily in the air

“Life is not fair”  and “There will be no whining!”    

Spring Cleaning?—Start Here Finish Where?

 Spring Cleaning and Other Possible Mistakes

So earlier today it seemed somehow the right thing to do to continue a project in scrolling through the wasteland of once current computer files to determine one of three things: 1) What in the world is in a file named blank 1377, 2) is it anything that has even marginal value now? And 3)what can it teach me about things I think are so important at one moment  and then at some other moment make me shake my head?

After sorting through about 30 files it became evident that each one seemed pretty important at the time they were created and it seemed okay to “save.” Some of the files deserved a “real” name so that it would be possible to find them in the digital junkyard on this computer and a few were prompts for crappy memories that important or not needed to be sent to the place where half your socks go when you do laundry.  Face it we don’t know where those socks go and you don’t know where those files really go—-perhaps in Area 51 there’s a huge warehouse where the government trades socks to some ancient race of aliens for insights on how to become more inefficient in finding reasonable people to run for elected office?  

Nonetheless, a few files were sorted through and. Became a “history” of sorts.  There were some files/events that highlighted great moments—some documents about children getting accepted to college for example, there were some job/work related documents  mostly drafts of things that  were concerns about events that never happened or didn’t happen as predicted, and there were a couple of documents that inspired  thoughts about how to spend some time in the future (and served as a reminder that there is no future—there is only now).  

There was a song lyrics file part of which will be shared below.  In short it seems all this pile of electronic data forms some sort of history of everyday events real and imagined.  Looking back upon these “events”provides some food for current learning (again see the song lyrics below). It also prompted some wondering about the value of “spring cleaning”. 

Do we get rid of some things because, although they have value they remind us that we haven’t made the changes  we were thinking of and therefore there’s no real place for this or that object?  Does Spring Cleaning remind us that we often use energy in ways that unintentionally leave tiny piles of stuff that we move around about a thousand times because  we never quite. Had time to change in the first place?  Which leads to the question—do we just clean it now or do we get angry with ourselves  and get overwhelmed and say “well we cleaned up 30 files, we took a shot at one of those cupboards etc..?  Or perhaps  did we conclude ‘what kind of experimental change in actions will it take so that these. Little piles aren’t here next Spring?”  It seems the third  response won’t leave us thinking about the “mistakes and flaws that might have left us cleaning today and feeling sort of awful about the day when that little mess started.  For in the end every single day has events that seem horrible, seem triumphant, and seem to leave a lot to be decided at some point in the future.  April 12th for example is the day the U.S. Civil War started and that happened because of a mess and left a. Mess we are probably still cleaning up.  The pharmaceutical cure for Polio was deemed safe and became a method for diminishing the impact of that disease.  So looking at those two things—one caused a lot of grief and one prevented a lot.  Also the Russians/soviets sent a man into space on this date and this event spawned all kinds of scientific efforts like makingTang grabbing some rocks from the moon, and providing speculation for conspiracy theories galore.  

The point here I that things happen—some good, some not, and in the case of space…we’re just getting started.  Almost everything that we remember will go through some “Spring Cleaning “ Spiritually anyway and as long as we focus on the current status of the “cleanness or the lesson of the mess and the ability to use decisions to change—well we can avoid feeling the mistakes last forever and that is a valuable part  in seeking peace and joy.  Life changes.. it’s Spring.. Clean a Little..  and Remember. (Song Lyrics)

The wiser I get the more that I’ve found

My body just carries my spirit around

And there’s a new circus around every turn

The best thing to do is pay attention and learn

And pass all these lesson to the next travelers by

Try to enjoy life and understand why

But if why eludes you  don’t wallow in frets

Don’t let your butterfly wings get weighed down with regrets  and 

Breathe and stretch and dance your own dance

And laugh and smile when life gives you a chance 

There’s more to this song, however , it seems appropriate to offer some additional lyrics from a song that I modified (thank you Mac and Reha) way back in 2013 this is  the very long chorus

Life is a set of changes

From time to time they will rearrange us

Sweep us between safe and dangerous 

As the wheel of fortune spins to name us

Cracks our lenses then reframes us

We can walk with saints but no one’s blameless

We can take the raindrop and make the golden ray

Take the magic from the moonlight bring it to the light of day

Find each and every promise lying out there in the fray—

But when we can’t we must make peace with the fact my friend 

That life is just that way.

Hey… what’s this under the couch?  Part of a candy cane?