Of course, that entails the risk of tweaking my injury, causing worsening pain throughout the day, so we’ll leave out the jumping part, but keep the rest. It does feel good to wake up in a positive frame of mind, to be sure. So much so, it makes me sad, for all the days of late that have not been so blessed. (Side comment: Yow!, as Zippy would say, some mornings the coffee just really hits the right spot……) I’m going to need to be careful when I go into public…. people will think it strange to see me in this state, given my normal curmudgeonly appearance….

Hell, who knows, I might even shave to greet the day, an act I’ve not performed in, well, a long time, possibly years. Normally, I shave when I feel grubby, which can take a couple weeks, in the right bacheloric frame of mind. (Not sure if ‘bacheloric’ is a word, but it should be…) In my full-on old curmudgeon bachelor cloak, I’ve been known to frighten small children, and cause dogs to bark frenziedly, so it might be a real treat for the neighborhood….. Of course, it will confuse them no end to see me with a clean-shaven, smiling face, anyway, so what the heck….

I can hardly wait to go check out Smart Bee, to see what it has in store for today. Brilliant quotations on profound ideas from the greatest minds in history will literally fall into my lap for inclusion in today’s effort. If it all lives up to its promise, this will be a very shiny one indeed…. And, whatever the poetry section comes up with is bound to be a good one…… Shall we Pearl?….

“Not all birds can fly. What separates the fliers from the walkers is the ability to take off.” — Carl Sagan
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“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.  You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.  Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there.  The only difference is that there is no cat.” — Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio…

Ah, Albert…. I love Albert. I hold him in the highest esteem of anyone, alive or dead, of whom I am cognizant; believe me, that is very high esteem, indeed… We’ll not see his like again…. This quote shows one of the reasons why he was such an outstanding human being, aside from his status as the brightest genius of his time. In a few simple words, he makes a complex subject understandable for those whose minds pale in comparison to his own, yet without showing the least bit of condescension. Not to mention, some pretty good humor…. “the difference is that there is no cat.”  I laughed out loud, myself, as it is just so appropriate to the subject…..

This also demonstrates the power of his genius. He was able to look at common things in our universe, and see the physical implications of how it worked at its most basic level. He once was asked by a friend, as they walked along the beach, why he thought that sand was so strangely different when in differing amounts of water, i.e., on the ocean floor, fully drenched, it is loosely adherent, and the grains separate easily. When dry, it is also loose, and the grains do not stick together. But, at the ocean’s edge, it is hard, almost like concrete, and will form into any shape, and hold that shape until it dries out…..

Albert  paused, picked up a handful of wet sand, and gazed at it for a moment, then launched into what he thought was the reason, to wit: surface tension causes the different properties at the different levels of saturation. This, of course, is absolutely correct, and shows just how his mind almost automatically uses Occam’s Razor to narrow in on the most simple, and most correct, explanation for the question at hand. It is almost as if he was born with software for his organic computer/brain that the rest of us have never heard of, much less loaded onto our machines.

Albert Einstein, to me, is the most perfect example of how a human being can live with honor, integrity, and a deep love of both the physical universe, and for his fellow man. Every act in his life was carried out in a way that demonstrated his passion for living, and showed both the power of his intellect, the depth of his human compassion, and the steadfastness of his love for his fellows. I don’t think there is a better example in all of history to hold up for young people to admire…. Even without the genius which marked his inner life, his actions and statements all show that he lived a life of which anyone could be proud, and could do well to emulate…..
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Beauty crowds me till I die,
Beauty, mercy have on me!
But if I expire today,
Let it be in sight of thee.

~~ Emily Dickinson
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In the 17th century, Kikaku, one of the ten disciples of the great Japanese poet Basho, composed a haiku:

Take a pair of wings
From a dragonfly, you would
Make a pepper-pod.

Basho told Kikaku: “That’s not a haiku. You kill the dragonfly.”

Kikaku recomposed the lines:

Add a pair of wings
To a pepper-pod, you would
Make a dragonfly.

— Amal Naj, PEPPERS
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“Of all the things I’ve ever lost, I miss my mind the most.” — Smart Bee

Having spent the last three hours experiencing typus interruptus, while dealing with issues out in the Big Blue Room, I come back to find this as the first pearl to catch my eye. Such a sad lament, one I can identify with closely, as it parallels my own experience. I first lost my mind back when I was a teen, and have been misplacing it periodically ever since. The set of psychosocial circumstances that lead up to the actual misplacement are often somewhat bizarre, but, then, that could be said of both life in general, and my own in particular….

Brutha: “I mean about … what gods are … how gods came to exist.”

Barman: “Gods don’t like that sort of thing. We get that in here some nights, when someone’s had a few. Cosmic speculation about whether gods really exist. Next thing, there’s a bolt of lightning through the roof with a note wrapped around it saying ‘Yes, we do’ and a pair of sandals with smoke coming out. That sort of thing, it takes all the interest out of metaphysical speculation.” — Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods”

Terry Pratchett is very popular among hackers, among others, mainly for statements such as this, which I’ve included here because it gives the flavor, if not the actual texture, of what I’m trying to say here. This is a particularly apt metaphor for me, because I rail so much about the lack of rationality in religion, and the cupidity of those who choose to follow its precepts. In my way of looking at the Universe, or universe, if you prefer to be politically correct, if there are going to be gods, then they should act like gods, not like spoiled old men with odd ideas about, well, almost everything…. Most of the stuff that I was raised with in the Christian sect my parents chose to expose us to seemed to me to be the actions of someone that modern society would send for psychiatric treatment, not someone who either wanted, or needed, my worship….

“All authority is quite degrading.” — Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

When one couples the mistrust and disbelief, with which I view those points of dogma associated with Christianity, with this truism from the mind of Oscar, it helps to explain my own reason for that mistrust. The concept of God as espoused by those sects gives the ultimate authority to God, with the express implication that this authority extends to his representatives here on Earth, and THAT is ultimate degradation! Especially considering that those same representatives are supposed to also be considered as the ultimate authority on what God wants, or expects, from His creations.

You know, it just annoys me no end to capitalize the He, or His, when in reference to God, just for the sake of literary accuracy…. so, I’m not going to worry about it from now on, as I find the whole concept of a God who wants worship to be distasteful in the first place…. Just WANTING to be worshiped, to my mind, indicates that it is not deserved….

“Always store beer in a dark place.” — Lazarus Long

This kind of thinking is more along the lines of what I hold to be true, according to what I’ve observed in my life. It may seem a bit obscure, but this statement from Lazarus is one I’ve found to be one that grows larger the longer one considers all its implications, and all of its power as metaphor. And, if it has no other effect, it may help someone keep their beer in a drinkable state….. which I’ve found to be as important in the larger picture as just about anything else I can think of….

“It’s all there…. all there inside you already. Happiness, love, serenity, peace, all are waiting for us to discover them, right there where they have always been, inside us, abiding…..”  ~~ gigoid
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