Musings...

Is it finally here?.... For such a long time, more than 20 years, I've believed our economy would collapse, and it is doing so. But the real collapse isn't here yet. Not as long as we have a printing press that will turn out dollars on demand to a waiting populace and the rest of the world that's riding economically on our shoulders, all who do little to nothing to earn them. And of course as long as the dollar has a shred of respect.
No one ever asks, "Where does Uncle Sam get all that cash that magically appears every time we hit a bump in the road"? Whoever believes it's from taxes is a moron. While we're burdoned with far more taxes than we can pay, our Government is spending way over annually than what it takes in.
Who says we should be doing this? Not the people. No one has ever asked me if it's OK to hand it out. The people we elect goes to Washington and does what ever they damned well please, even though it's directly opposite what they may have indicated they were going to do, and we let them do it, then send them back to do some more.
Our pockets have never been deep enough to be everything to everybody. The idea that we should foot the bill for those who don't want to work is asinine. But we have grabbed on to the idea that welfare is OK. We don't call it that anymore. Instead we call it disability, grants, medicare, medicaid, and yes, even social security and a thousand other Government 'gimme's'. We all look at the menu of availability and hitch up and retain respectability with our neighbors. What's even stranger is that a very high percentage of those who recieve don't vote, most by choice. Those who do vote fall prey to the wiles of the politician who are only in the business of distributing every thing they can get their hands on forgetting their responsibility towards our country and its future.
Yep, we're in a bad way. Far worse than we realize. But the real collapse ain't here yet..... but it's coming. Probably when the Governments' check for the electricity to run the printing presses with bounces.
There are those who have a pet blame for every thing, but it's really us to blame. That's why we can't fix it......................

Time?

The world is mostly made up of those who just get up and do whatever it takes to make it through that day, never thinking about much of anything. Those may be the lucky ones. It's not that I'm judgemental of those who aren't curious about much of anything, though it's hard for me to understand them.
If you could somehow break the numbers down to those who actually run this world we live in I think we'd all be surprised at the incredibly small group. Likewise, those who truly think about 'things' are definitely in a minority. I don't know if I belong to any minority of thinkers or not, but I've always had an unsatiable desire to know something if not everything about things in my world. Probably the most maddening thing for me after God, and whether such a thing exists or not, is time.
Time governs everything about us each second of our stay on this earth until the very end. We just go from day to day and year to year, satisfied to simply accept time and what it does to us without question or thought about it. I on the other hand, have always been aware of the holes in the absolutes we attach to the concept of time.
All of us know about how time 'stops' when something traumatic happens to us. When I was a child I had an accident so violent and devastating that I can recall how time seemingly did change its momentum to a slow crawl as the accident continued to have its way with me. What if it did really change it's normal path. Is that possible? Maybe. Are you somehow nuts or just 'way out there' if you entertain such thoughts as a true possibilty? Maybe.
The Einstein's and Hawking's and others were and are of the mindset that time is variable, and I believe it is also.
There are many clues as to the variable qualities of time all around us. If time were absolute for mankind and all things, then the rose, the cockroach, the California Redwoods and the turtles would all have the same natural span of time as we, but that isn't so. Or is it?
Can time be manuevered?
The simple housefly says it can. The housefly's normal lifespan is 17 days, at the end of which, the fly is worn out and old, just as an eighty year old human is at that age. Has the fly actually lived eighty years in 17 days? I tend to think so, it's just that in our human arrogance, we believe we are first and supreme and therefore can't imagine anything that suggests our thinking should be compromised to the concept that all things are possible with or without God.
More about this simple fly.
When the ambient temperature around the fly cools to a certain place the fly goes into a state of diapause and time stops for it... completely! It is common for the fly to remain in a diapausal state for six months, or 180 days, give or take a few. At the point the ambient temperature rises to a place acceptable for revival, the fly 'wakes' up and continues on it's merry way for the remainder of its 17 day life span. It's fascinating that the fly in diapause for six months slept through more than ten lifetimes, or the equivalent of more than 800 years, then picked up where it left off and continued on till time dictated it would die from old age.
Does this mean time truly is variable and manageble?
From my treebranch it does.............