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migration
I am migrating to WordPress. I’ve tried other forms, such as Blogpot, and I’ve been at LiveJournal for a very long time now and have grown to love some wonderful people on here from Vancouver B.C., Chicago, Portland, and other points here and there. The guilty know who they are.
I am migrating everything to WordPress. It is at http:// ( Read more... ) -
Peace- Prevail- Pregnancy
I was walking down a street that cuts through Portland State University and I came upon three poles sticking in the ground. They looked old but yet were novel to me. I’ve been down this block many times and I’ve never seen them. The plaque showed it was a few years old. Hmmm… I missed a detail all this time… amazing.
On the poles is a phrase ( Read more... ) -
The reason for the season- (a rant on religion)
Sitting on my couch my dim perception of the world around me thought it noticed a single snowflake fall outside of my patio doors. My experiences in Iraq have turned my mind into something similar to a raven’s. That is it notices things things in the environment that are different. It isn’t so much that an object is shiny that a raven will grab ( Read more... ) -
myth, depression - the minotaur
I was given a gift of a free Tapas Acupressure Therapy (TAT) session by someone who attended one of my PTSD lectures. At the same time I have not been to my regular counseling session for several weeks. My anger issues have gotten better with more attention being given to them. I noted a strange disconnect between my bodily sensations and mental ( Read more... ) -
Environmental Ethics
I took Environmental Ethics to better understand the reasons for man’s behavior in relation to the natural environment. Yet as Hill’s question of ‘what sort of person would destroy the natural environment?’ had been brought up in class, I had agreed with the question raised of whether this was indeed the fundamental question. For to me it was not ( Read more... ) -
a very simple paper on Spinoza’s notion of mind and body as written for someone who doesn&rsqu
The question is asked “does Spinoza successfully establish that the human mind is identical to the human body?” The predominant view held by the person on the street is of a kind of dualism, of a spirit inhabiting the body, or embodied souls. The problems of such a view, while not the topic of this paper, constitute the objections to the ( Read more... ) -
Abortion in the opinion section of the newspaper
I should not respond. If you wrestle with a pig you both get dirty (as the saying goes). There is a zero chance that any response of mine, however artfully crafted and free of terms to offend, would sway the mind of the commenter. So I didn’t try too hard in being neutral. I did chastise a bit, but not too much for it shouldn’t fail us to ever ( Read more... ) -
Courage- driving a humvee
This story came to my mind while I was listening to the audio book Deep Survival while going to drill weekend. There were some things in the book that struck home, some lessons that I need to ensure are learned by my infantry students. That is complacency and belief in one’s ability. We try very hard to instill a sense of a ‘can do’ attitude in our ( Read more... ) -
A good quote
The past cultures I admire-Periclean Greece, the city-states of the Italian Renaissance, Elizabethan England, are examples-have mostly been produced by communities , and remarkably small ones at that. Also remarkably heterogeneous ones, riven by factions, stormy with passionate antagonisms. But…[a] mass society, like a crowd, is inchoate and ( Read more... )
