To thine own self be true

Highly recommended– over 4 beautiful hours of aerial tours of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Much info, surprises, and spectacular views. Quite inspiring! (PBS DVD)

(easily The Folk Music Event of the Year–Two thumbs way up!)

Still beautiful and intact from her injury falling out of tree a few years back (pulled a Keith Richards) and in fine voice. A walk down memory lane with such solo-played classics as Phil Ochs’ “There But for Fortune”, Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”, Steve Earle’s “God Is God”, The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”. But the main delights turn out to be the duets, likewise all live at the Beacon Theatre in New York including Joan with David Crosby doing McCartney’s “Blackbird”, with Mary Chapin Carpenter doing Donovan’s “Catch the Wind”, with Mavis Staples singing gospel, with her old ‘rival’ Judy Collins doing “Diamonds and Rust” (her song about Dylan), with Paul Simon doing “The Boxer”. What a delightful, outstanding concert on 2 CDs (Razor & Tie), and especially the DVD!

by the T.O. Muslims who have unexpectedly made a significant donation of 250 thou to the people of Fort McMurray. Likewise by the million $ donation by B.C. Sikhs. Those major gifts of self is evidence that multiculturalism may be working after all and that kindness and generosity in Canada can transcend region, race, and whatever racial differences. Nicely done. I hope everyone in Canada hears that news.

ps/This is a total, truly significant, positive contrast to the Black Lives Matter/TO Gay Parade fiasco.

All Lives Matter.
None are superior to or have a ‘higher’ claim than others/other groups’.

(*Regardless of his work for black civil rights, the great wise Martin Luther King would have supported those ideas.)

She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy or Wickham could she think without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.

“How despicably have I acted!” she cried; “I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameless distrust. How humiliating is this discovery! yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.

First of many deaths to come. Guy’s car went underneath a truck’s trailer (shades of Whose Life Is It Anyway movie) His Harry Potter video was still playing a quarter mile down the road where what remained of the moving driverless car snapped a telephone pole. Neither he nor autopilot noticed the white side of the tractor-trailer against a bright sky.

Doh. Human and/or technological (‘autopilot’) error. (The deceased was notorious for speeding and had several tickets. Online, he had previously, hubristically and ironically, posted a video saying “Hands down the best car I have ever owned and use it to its full extent.”)

So much for alertness, following instructions (driver’s hands may not have been on the steering wheel), human autonomy (surrendering it to two machines), and distraction (watching a movie instead of the road). No-brainer prediction: This will not be the last death involving driverless cars.

We live two blocks over from the field where the fireworks show is and can see them unobstructedly over the roof of a neighbor’s house across the street. A bow window living-room view. Quite lucky every July 1.

Alvin Toffler, author of the popular, best-selling, influential 1970 classic Future Shock died at age 87 this past week. He and his book are mostly long-forgotten and most people would not know his name. But he was the first nonfiction writer of any note who correctly predicted and anticipated many things and changes that have gone down in the last 46 years. (Even Orson Welles narrated a documentary on Toffler’s book; the latter commanded that much respect.)

(previously posted on December 30, 2014)

In the 1960s, the Western world was undergoing massive social change. A provocative 1970 book that dared to assess what was going down then and to look ahead was Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock. Yesterday I had occasion to revisit this book, which I discovered the first time around in 1970 at university.

Toffler was right that:

-the pace of life, change, mobility, and increasing diverse choices would spiral out of control and that transience and a reduction in duration and permanence would become defining features of our then-future lifestyles and values.

-(with the exception of hoarders) the West had or would become a ‘throw-away society’. This goes well beyond things, to include people and relationships.

-marriages would become temporary and the nuclear Western family would continue to disappear. There would arise new forms of relationships and families including “homosexual daddies”, for instance–an example of the increased diversity he foresaw.

-rentalism would become extremely popular for all sorts of things and services.

-education would change greatly with revolt against authority, tradition, and the past as well as fewer agreements on common curriculum. Instead, there would be more focus on a fuzzy futurism no large numbers of people can agree on

-information would greatly increase and spiral out of control leading to information overload, decision overload, and future shock for those unable to adapt.

-with the availability of replacement or additional technological parts, people would become more cyborg-like, machine-like, sensibility-wise.

-because of human need for overstimulation, there would need to be more bombardment-of-the-senses types of experiences.

-numerous subcults would emerge to satisfy people’s diverse needs for belonging and identity.

…………………………………………………

As Toffler pointed out, we are living in an era of continuous change with an emphasis on technology and making money. It’s obvious now that the ‘losers’ in this scenario have been families, communities, public safety, health care, quality education, and public institutions and services which once exemplified the best of Western civilization. We are clearly living in a highly-technologized post-civilization era with all the obsession with money, materialism, craziness, barbarism, and violence that this term implies.

As in Toffler’s day, the average Western person today can likely tell you 10 technological developments. But that person would likely still be hard-pressed to list 10 ways in which their lives would change as a result (i.e., people believing that all these significant changes would have no bearing on their lives, causing them to change, too). In short, the same disconnect between the same two very related important questions from 1970 would still reveal a similar naivete or ignorance about how future developments are likely to affect or change one’s own life, the lives of others, and society. Plus ca change….

Lots of fun, educational, etc. Basic and advanced questions. Highly recommended.

and the Goth clerk with numerous facial piercings put it into a bag, she exclaimed “He looks so-o angry!”
To which I answered, “Well, he was deaf.”