seeker for truth

(delivered to First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin on Sunday July 31, 2011) Prayer: Somewhere out there On a dusty shelf Or a spinning disk On parchment aged Or in pixels bright There are words waiting for you These words were written for you And when you find them They will touch your heart And change your life. Somewhere in there Between the synapses Of your frontal lobe Or floating around In the recesses of you consciousness Are words destined for another Words that will touch their heart And change their life It is your duty to record them So that they may be found. Somewhere out there Is a better world waiting to be described We spend our days and our nights Imagining this world When we are wise, We record these imaginings For each other To bring this dream one step Closer to reality. When we are unwise, We think that all of these imaginings are just stories. We pray this in the name

I used to shave off my mane. Because I was in denial of being a lion. Hear me roar!

I think that this is my first blog post that has any significant intersection with my professional life, but after listening to a couple of Podcasts on Google Plus and hearing the incessant plugging for Bing on the Slate Gabfests (it is, IMHO, a little over the top... just let them run their ads, don't become their mouthpiece) I felt compelled to throw in my two cents about balance in the cloud-o-sphere out there... As a human being out there in the technosphere, it is in your best interest to preclude the emergence of a Goliath from the fields of competitors.  In no market since the discovery of fossil fuel has this been easier than it is with the internet in this age.  In the evolution of modern computing, anti-trust regulation against Microsoft and ongoing similar actions (mostly in and by the EU) works to thwart some of the most abusive practices that are trending toward monopoly.  But, the most important thing is user behavior, where you click and for what is the main determ

if you seek healing radical transparency is the only path

i am sad that we miss the opportunity of being colleagues

'you cannot serve both God and money' said Jesus so we choose money?

the obligations of our primate behavior chain better angels

i'm feeling friday after a week when my time belongs not to me

There is nothing but moral equivalency twixt Jew and Muslim.

I am part of a larger organism which is far beyond my ken.

Haiku not for you. Verse is way to retrain me, in economy.

"Happy Mothers Day" Reason cannot stop my hope That the dead can hear

argue the pictures argue the sea burial ignore the killing

Killing, like torture, Surrenders moral high ground. Is that leadership?

Joy on the TV Obama, Stewart, Colbert I feel so alone

War on terror done? Not unless we have courage, And stop the practice.

we teach friends evil wring hands when they turn on us cheer when they are dead

In what historical cases has a war purported as a 'just war' achieved its stated purpose without producing horrific, long-term unintended consequences? If you have examples, please include your take on what made the war just, what its purpose/goals were, and how any unintended consequences did or did not effect the realization of the goals. thanks for playing along, eric

There is no amount of 'no fly zone' or no cache of weapons that will change Libya into another Egypt. The UN's belief that military power could be used to 'tip the scales', simply shows how fundamentally they misunderstand what has caused the successful revolutions to become so: nonviolence. If Gaddafi can be credited with preventing a successful revolution, it must be most closely linked with his having kept Gene Sharp's From Dictatorship to Democracy  or its derivatives out of the hands of his people.  Because what is clear, is that they were not ready, and despite Western hubris, there is nothing that can be done at the last minute to make them so. If the UN wants to support the ending of oppressive regimes its money would be better spent translating and disseminating literature on effective nonviolent resistance to oppressed people around the world.  The spread of weapons and violence will never bring peace, for they are antithetical. It is not that I

After Simon and I rode the bus the other day he couldn't stop thinking about buses and he couldn't stop saying, "bus" over and over. So I came up with this bus mantra to help him get to sleep that night. After repeating it a couple hundred times I realized that it deals with the journey of life as well as any. The bus stops. The doors open. People get off. People get on. The doors close. The bus goes. It also happens to be a practical guide to bus etiquette..