i spent the weekend talking with my neighbor who is 90 years old and still going strong...i asked him what he did for a living when i first met him and he said..."what haven't i done!" and after half a dozen hours of conversation with him i realized he had done a lot... including professional gambler, farm foreman, with a little jail time for when he "blew a man half in two with a 12 gauge shotgun for messing with his wife..." OK a bit rash but the man lived and the shooter was released after 9 months in jail to contemplate his debt to society...which he figured the man had it coming...his entrepreneurial tendencies were well rewarded while he served in the military as he sold his whiskey and cigarette allotment for a handsome profit as he never "smoked nothing in my life"...but he drank some when his wife left him...but thats another story...i would like to do a video auto-biography of this man while he is still active and lucid...well i have been thinking about a man being beat and stomped to death at the hands of law enforcement and how much damage that does to police community relations...there is a very big difference between the way a dog thinks and the way a pack of dogs think...and it is the same with people "Crowds and Power" by Canetti is a good reference to this kind of group think...i think police are so traumatized by negative encounters with the public so often that they just hit first and think later...it is harder to train someone not to shoot than to shoot...or stomp or punch etc...i was watching one of my history DVD's ("The History of Ancient Rome"...Prof. G.G. Fagan) and in lecture 37 he describes "The Shape of Roman Society"...and he points out how strictly stratified society was with the "Honestiores=the privileged class and the "Humiliones= the non-privileged class...of course there were a whole lot of slaves back then and they were pretty much property like a horse or cow...throughout the history of humanity there have been people who have enslaved other people simply by overpowering them...the Romans once took 20 thousand people captive and sold them as slaves in a single day...one Roman had more than 4 thousand slaves...slavery has been around as long as people have been able to get away with it...nowadays slavery has died out but not stratified society and those people who are viewed as of a lower rank in society are often abused with impunity...as long as there are people who are on the government payroll to enforce the law they much be held to account for any actions that violate the code of law...and those infractions must be so obvious to the civilian population that no one can agree that it is OK to abuse the rights of anyone whatever their perceived status...that is in the USA...the thousands of people fleeing their countries and showing up at the border to be citizens here due to the belief that they at least have a fighting chance to live as respected citizens and equal to any...no...to ALL! other citizens...and if that ideal is not fought for and spoken for the ideals on which this country was founded are being abandoned....and were are in a bad way... "Precepts or maxims, are of great weight ; and a few useful ones at hand do more toward a happy life than whole volumes that we know not where to find." Seneca
i noticed that someone has posted a lot of photographs which are supposed to come from this very blog...but not one of them is mine...and i am the only writer of this blog...looks like it might be some asian hacker types trying sell some of their goods...half the world is hacking the other half maybe...
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