. . .
Yesterday morning I walked South on Conestoga Avenue with my new Sony ICD-PX820 digital audio recorder which I had purchased from Amazon.com. I bought it so I won't forget, and thereby lose the many tidbits of description, similes & metaphors, and characterizations that occasionally occur to me while I am out and about in the world -- such important reports as: stopping at Circle-K to buy my Mega-Millions ticket and my PowerBall ticket, and while there I bought three pop-tarts and a Pepsi Max. Ate one pop-tart on the way home, cherry filled, and drank the Pepsi. Kept the other two Pop-tarts (one blueberry, and the other cinnamon & brown sugar) for later.
How's that for portion control?
Hey . . . this recorder really works. It's small, easy to carry, and easy to operate. The recorded messages are stored as .mp3 files, and can be dragged and dropped into my computer for permanent storage.
It's great.
. . .
The New Criterion article Morals & the servile mind by Kenneth Minogue is sub-titled: On the diminishing moral life of our democratic age.
Kenneth Minogue is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics.
Here are some of the article's high points:
The first clarifying step must be to recognize that democracy in the abstract misleads us.
Living in a democracy . . . becomes a different thing in each generation. Something that benefits us in one generation may no longer be a benefit in the next.
My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them.
Our rulers are theoretically our representatives, but they are busy turning us into the instruments of the projects they keep dreaming up.
The statesmen of eras past have been replaced by a set of barely competent social workers eager to take over the risks of our everyday life.
That's enough of the copy and paste since I would hate being accused of ignoring or violating copyright.
Note: This article has been excerpted from The Servile Mind, by Kenneth Minogue (Encounter Books, August 2010).
But the article is certainly thought-provoking, and I recommend it to the intelligent and discerning reader who enjoys having his (or her) inner thought-cache provoked.
Additionally, the ideas expressed in the article might stimulate ideas of your own on the subject, ideas you might wish to incorporate in an essay or an article to be submitted for publication.
. . . .
When JoAnn returned from her vacation she brought everyone a gift. Mine was a new book titled Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern. And it is funny. I understand that a new TV series based on that book is scheduled to start up in a week or so, with William Shatner as My Dad. How can that not be funny?
But how, on broadcast TV, will they get around all the book's profanity? -- without ruining the curmudgeon-like flavor of the My Dad character?
We'll see.
. . .
A shameful factoid --
In the United States, household bleach is the number one cause of accidental poisonings, with more than 50,000 cases (including eight deaths) reported to poison control centers in a single year.
(Yes, the above has been saved in my 'Story Ideas" folder)
. . .
According to AWAD:
The longest word in the English language is:
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
(NOO-muh-noh-UL-truh-MY-kruh-SKOP-ik-SIL -i-koh-vol-KAY-no-KOH-nee-O-sis)
noun
A lung disease caused by inhaling fine particles of silica.
A shorter word, an exact synonym, is silicosis.
. . .
By the way, I caught the typo in the title before publishing this blog entry, but then (for my own reasons) I decided to ignore it. I wonder if 'Weel' is a valid English word. Maybe I'll look it up to find out. Or maybe I won't.
__________
You will find relief from vain fancies if you do every act in life as though it were your last.
--Marcus Aurelius, philosopher, writer, Roman emperor (121-180)
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