Month: March 2011
Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #90
Posted on March 27, 2011 in Roundup
All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.– Benjamin Franklin
Though Libya and Japan remained concerns for me, I paid especial attention to the constitutional crisis now afflicting the country made possible by the takeover of the Supreme Court, the Congress, and various legislatures by the Tea Party. Top among my concerns for the 2012 election is the widening rift between rich and poor. I do not think the Founding Fathers would have approved of our current economic state and the idea that corporations have become powers beyond the reach of states. I voted to stop this and will again in 2012. Will you?
- 15 Mind-blowing facts about Wealth and Inequality in America Also check out this article on the true relationship of Christianity and tax cuts.
- Stop Corporate Tax Dodging: Talking points and background information — Open your wallet. You probably have more in it than many corporations pay in taxes. Close down Ugland House!
- Debt, Austerity and How to Fight Back — Another valuable article from The Nation
- The War on Elizabeth Warren is a war on corporate accountability
- Remembering the Triangle Factory Fire 100 years later — Some say the New Deal was born this day. The Tea Party is working hard to strip this legacy away. Also here
- Narrative of Suffering — If you met John Boehner suffering on the sidewalk, what would you do?
- Abusing Open Records to Attack Academic Freedom — A law that Scott Walker himself refused to obey
- 5 “Awesome” New Inventions that you will never hear about — The first item is very disturbing: a helmet that will control soldiers’ brains. Imagine soldiers who will not care if they fire upon civilians or even their own people. WRONG.
- Liberalism, Conservatism, and Insanity — Lock me up because I believe that peace beats war and respect for all those born in these United States beats hating them once they leave the womb?
- It’s Tracking Your Every Move and You May Not Even Know — What the article doesn’t mention is that you can stop the tracking by switching your phone off or by not using the GPS
- Is Radiation Panic Contaminating Your Life? 5 Ways to Detox from the Fear
- GOP Bill Would Force IRS to Conduct Abortion Audits — While at the same time, forbidding audits of the wreckers of our economy
- Jimmy Wong wants to give Alexandra Wallace “A Big Hug” — One way to confront a racist
- Stop Federal Funding of Fox News — No taxes. Which means you have more in your wallet than they have contributed to fighting the deficit. ~We all have to do our part.~
- 3 states seek to kick habit of raising cig taxes — Yes, bring back nicotine addiction! It brings in the bucks! (Ick!)
- Top Ten Sausages from History — Get your mind out of the gutter, OK?
- Baby Dolphin trapped in flooded rice field — Nice picture here of the man rescuing it
- The Wrong Kind of Talk Therapy — Sometimes net reviews just aren’t appropriate
- Depression Drugs — SSRIs — May Reorganize Brain Plasticity
You can find me on Twitter and Dailybooth as “EmperorNorton”. Ask nicely and I might invite you to follow me on Facebook.
Vitamin D and the Cold Blue Funks
Posted on March 26, 2011 in Depression Glands Mania Medications
My endocrinologist tapped a few keys and brought up my latest bloodwork. She pursed her lips as she scanned the numbers. My [[triglycerides]] were too high, so she upped my [[Lipofen]]. Everything else was within proper balances. Except at the bottom of her study: my [[Vitamin D]] levels were excruciatingly low.
I asked her what that meant.
“We don’t know a lot about how it works,” she admitted. “We do know that when it is low you can feel tired and depressed.” I had just confessed to these symptoms a few minutes before, so the result explained the torment of my winter.
Some people, she explained, had trouble producing enough Vitamin D from sunlight. The amount that they use to fortify milk didn’t suffice. I spent the winter taking walk after walk in the bright sunlight, but I wasn’t producing.
So the cure was a megadose of the food supplement. It came in an emerald softgel about the size of my little fingernail that I have to ingest once a week.
The role of Vitamin D in depression is not confirmed at this time, but a recent study out of Great Britain suggests that low vitamin D levels are associated with melancholy, “independent of age, sex, social class, physical health status, and season.” This finding remains controversial because other symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency such as heart problems might in themselves lead to depression.
What I can say about this is that since taking Vitamin D, I have begun to smile again — genuine smiles rather than the forced grins that civility demands. The glow of my exercise sessions last beyond an hour or two and it is far less hard to get them started. Other depression sufferers report similar results.
The one thought that troubles me is whether the symptoms of depression that I have felt all these years is nothing more than a symptom of this deficiency. But then there is the question of the mania: This can happen when there is too much Vitamin D in the system. Are my mood stabilizers the wrong treatment? I do not remember changing my habits in advance of the surges of energy. So I shall work with my psychiatrist, remembering that for the bipolar the body is an explosion and a fire that rages and ebbs.
Nietzschean Christianity
Posted on March 20, 2011 in Hypocrites Morals & Ethics
Forms of American Christianity prove endlessly creative when it comes to combining affirmations of faith with worldly life. Consider, for example, the new fad of “pole dancing for Jesus“. The thing that makes this possible isn’t a biblical text (and never let it be [[The Letter of James]] which says that you shall be judged by your works!), but a variety of existentialism that has been attached to it.
[[Frederich Nietzsche]] wrote of two kinds of morality. One of them he called Slave morality. The statement which exemplifies this is “I did it because it was right.” The other he called the Master morality: “It was right because I did it.”
Christians who practice what [[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]] called “cheap grace” hold, in part, that all you need to do to be held as a Christian is to say that you are one or that you accepted Jesus into your life and that’s that. It doesn’t matter what you do, just that you do it. It is these so-called Christians who have so neatly combined Nietzsche with Christ (and in the end denying Christ) by introducing a new morality: “It is right because I am saved.” There’s no costly grace involved, no Christ of the Gospels who calls for more than mere declaration that the light bulb of salvation has lit up in your soul and moved you to put a bumper sticker on your car. You don’t have to help the poor through your vote or your words. You can be just as mean and obstinate as you were before because one thing has “changed”: how you describe yourself spiritually.
Is it implausible that these have set their moral compass to the Tea Party? Should it surprise us that they have gone directly against the Bible and declared that their wealth and prosperity makes them paragons of Christian virtue? Speak of community to these and they accuse you of communism. Speak of hope and they rage against you. Give them the Beatitudes to sign and they accuse you of being subversive. Respect a Muslim and they wail about your undermining religious freedom. They have abandoned Christianity for modern megachurchs that thrive on their donations and the publicity they earn through the awe of the numbers they attract rather than genuine acts of charity.
They are the eternal opposites of Christ because they read the Bible for loopholes past its jeremiads against greed and contempt for the weak. It is easier to stick a rope through the eye of a needle than for these to do real good. God calls on them to be servants, but they want to be the overlords.
Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #89
Posted on March 20, 2011 in Roundup
As all wars do, the no-fly zone being implemented over Libya has me saddened. Long time readers of this blog know my pacifist leanings. But there are some conflicts that I give more energy to opposing than others. Such was the case with Afghanistan in the beginning. Such is the case with Libya now because in my estimation, it amounts to a just war where only military objectives are targeted. Still, I wish Gaddafi would just step down and give his country a rest. This may cause him to retreat into obstinacy and that may prove bad for Libya. But I don’t know.
- What if we’re not broke? — And the Big Duh of the week goes to the Washington Post — didn’t they think about this while they watched us cut millionaire and billionaire taxes in the middle of a stock market surge?
- What Caused Inequality to Grow? — Two words: Ronald Reagan. Also here.
- Why isn’t the I-Phone Made in America? is another article on a tangential theme from those immediately above. See this, too.
- A Small-Minded Town — If the New Federalism that Ronald Reagan promised doesn’t deliver, traffic tickets become a way for local governments to make their living
- Japan Earthquake Swarm Google Earth Animation
- Weighing the Consequences of Nuclear Power — The nuclear power industry spin has been dizzying. This article guides you to a broader perspective.
- The End of the Nuclear ‘Renaissance’? — I am really ~on the line~ when it comes to nuclear power. The collection of quotes in this article, however, made me laugh.
- Japanese Should Be Drinking To Stave Off Radiation Poisoning — Damn I would be in a fix if San Onofre went up — couldn’t they synthesize the single ingredient in red wine as a pill?
- The myth of the panicking disaster victim — Now the panicking news reporter is a fact.
- Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media — Just shout it through a bullhorn over and over again
- Study: Majority of Consumers Obtain News From Online Sources — ‘Cause we can’t stand being bombarded by television news is the reason why, I think.
- Gay families more accepted than single moms — A sad state of affairs. Single parents should be treated as well as any two-parent family head. But the deadbeat dad lobby is powerful and its voice immense.
- The Self-Reported Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors — Unfortunately, it is the C students who grow rich and become Tea Party candidates
- 100 Years of Set Locations — What was filmed in your neighborhood?
- One-in-five Brits believe lightsabers are real — Not so long ago, in a universe called Birmingham….
- We’ve built a flying saucer, boasts Iran (even if it does look like it belongs in a 1950s B-movie) — This one just barely edges out Karl Rove’s anti-union commercials for the most bogus news story of the week.
- Daylight Saving Can Be Hazardous to Your Health — I’ve suspected that the sleep deprivation harms me in a number of ways, mostly having to do with my bipolar disorder.
- Mental Illness is Only a Problem When Mental Illness is a Problem
- Surrounded by Bipolar Disorder — Reality should sink in after you read this.
Picture: a trilobite orgy from ScienceDaily
You can find me on Twitter and Dailybooth as “EmperorNorton”. Ask nicely and I might invite you to follow me on Facebook.
Dream
Posted on March 16, 2011 in Dreams
Woody Harrelson shows off his store of explosives and announces to the world that his organization is going to track me down and blow me up.
Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #88
Posted on March 13, 2011 in Roundup
Lynn says “It’s not fair. It’s not fair that Japan should have to deal with these meltdowns after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
New Privacy Policy
Posted on March 6, 2011 in Site News
Due to Facebook’s aggressive campaign to collect and sell information on its subscribers, I have decided to instigate a privacy policy which will protect users who do not wish to become cattle to comment on this blog without needing a Facebook ID. I believe in an InterNet which allows people privacy and freedom to comment without their words being broadcast to the world.
The new policy is:
Pax Nortona does not share or sell your email address to anyone. Furthermore, it does not subscribe to or otherwise utilize any service that does.
If you become aware of any person or website harvesting this site for personal information, please contact me so that appropriate blocks may be set in place.
Please keep our commitment to you in mind when commenting here.
Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #87
Posted on March 6, 2011 in Roundup
The joke that went around last week goes like this: “A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies…looks at the tea partier and says, “Watch out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie!”
- How you can boycott the Kochs
- It’s all about the Benjamins, what? — A chart showing what is proposed to be cut and what was lost to the Bush tax cuts
- GOP Wants Tax Payer Money For Nascar… Seriously
- The United States isn’t a Company and It isn’t a Family — It’s a Country — A little common sense thinking that defies the pundits
- America is not Broke — We’re the wealthiest country in the world. We can afford the best if we raise taxes on the uberrich
- The Breakdown: Do Corporations Deserve ‘Personhood’? — The Supreme Court has been sending mixed messages on this
- The most typical face on the planet — Ah, but we are all atypical
- Liver, Not Brain, May Be Origin of Alzheimer’s Plaques — Which might explain why so many alcoholics develop Alzheimer’s?
- California Islands Give Up Evidence of Early Seafaring: Numerous Artifacts Found at Late Pleistocene Sites on the Channel Islands
- Natalie Portman: Don’t Hate Her Because She’s Uber Talented — Damn, girl! You rock!
- Exploiting Charlie Sheen — Another way in which enablers in the media help keep some of us sick for entertainment purposes. Also see here.
- Stare at boobs for longer life: Study — Lynn has given me permission to do so based on this. But I will still exercise.
You can find me on Twitter and Dailybooth as “EmperorNorton”. Ask nicely and I might invite you to follow me on Facebook.
Enabling Bipolar
Posted on March 1, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Stigma Suicide
People who say that I am a dupe aren’t my friends.
