| #501: | We tend to view the past in two opposite ways: Either our ancestors were incredibly wise or incredibly backward. They were jerks like us! |
| #502: | People bathing in the Ganges believe the water is pure when flowing and impure only when still. It's the same polluted water! |
| #503: | I don't see what's so romantic about the wild horse in America. It was an invasive species brought here by the Spanish! |
| #504: | Mickey, Minnie, Mighty and Jerry - the four famous faces on Mouse Rushmore. |
| #505: | Making just enough money doing things you believe in is better than making a lot of money doing things you don't. |
| #506: | What a glorious place to be - the Northern Hemisphere in June! |
| #507: | The ego is usually biggest in those who have done the least to deserve it. |
| #508: | Legalized gambling boosts the local economy only in the same sense that methamphetamine gives you energy. There's always a price to pay. |
| #509: | You ain't seen nuthin' -- 'til you've driven South Dakota from end to end. Whole lot of nuthin'! (I'm doin' it now!) |
| #510: | I can think of nothing less romantic than a motorcycle ride across America. That's 2500 miles of shit in your face. |
| #511: | Humans have a primal need for "witnesses" - beings more powerful than themselves acknowledging what they are doing. |
| #512: | A child's first witnesses are his parents. They are the audience for his performance. "Mommy, look at me!" |
| #513: | Adults seek an audience in friends, co workers, romance. When that's not enough acknowledgment, they seek fame, power. |
| #514: | Sadists and serial killers are seeking acknowledgment. People WILL pay attention to you if you're killing them! |
| #515: | The need for witnesses is more powerful than the need for love. Being noticed for the bad things you're doing is better than no notice. |
| #516: | When people don't have adequate witnesses, they invent them. God is one. Conspiracies are another. |
| #517: | It is certainly frightening to have the CIA following your every move, but that's better than no one watching you at all. |
| #518: | For a witness to be emotionally satisfying he must be superhuman to us. We feel alive only when acknowledged by someone higher. |
| #519: | We tend to idealize our witnesses. We want them to be more powerful than they are so their acknowledgment of us has more value. |
| #520: | Romance is a conundrum. We seek the perfect witness, so we idolize potential partners, but this delusion is bound to crash with experience. |
| #521: | Our need for witnesses arises from our human nature. We are followers, even when we lead. We are always hooked in to our social environment. |
| #522: | Humans are unique in the animal world for their ability to take instruction. They are programmed to want approval, to be "witnessed." |
| #523: | Here are some photos from my brief visit yesterday to DEVIL'S TOWER, Wyoming. http://bit.ly/V8Fvn |
| #524: | Some people know how to bake a good pie while others know how to serve it. Sadly, the servers usually get all the glory. |
| #525: | Everyone worships the singer who sang the song and the actor who starred in the movie, while the person who wrote their words is forgotten. |
| #526: | True creators will always be the abused underclass, while promoters, performers and poseurs with no creative skill reap the benefits. |
| #527: | In commerce there is little incentive for quality, since a low-quality product, slickly marketed, can sell just as well. |
| #528: | The main incentive for quality comes from outside of commerce, simply because it is more satisfying to produce. |
| #529: | "Quality" can be defined as that which best fulfills the original purpose of the product. E.g. the original purpose of food is nutrition. |
| #530: | As soon as you depart from the original purpose of a product, you invite marketing to sell you crap you don't need. |
| #531: | See my old essay: "Quality vs. Crap: The Enduring Struggle of Life" (Kilroy Cafe #35) http://bit.ly/1470Tk |
| #532: | Just as you start getting good at life, it's time to think about dying. - #existentialism |
| #533: | There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can generate content and those who can't. |
| #534: | "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't." - Unknown |
| #535: | Wherever you go, your caffeine addiction will be served. In the middle of nowhere, the first thing you'll find is a Coke machine! |
| #536: | Up here in the northern latitudes, you got to get your biological activity done real quick before winter closes in again. |
| #537: | The whole "winter" concept remains a mystery to me. Why would people willingly live where the weather sucks half the year? |
| #538: | People in the north claim they love the "four seasons." Bull! It's only because they live in a climate-controlled bubble. |
| #539: | It's easy to say you love winter when you rarely have to experience it directly. Try it as Mother Nature intended: freezing your butt off! |
| #540: | Here's a Thing You Don't Need: SNOW - http://bit.ly/132Hid (my blog entry, Jan. 09) On the uselessness of winter. |
| #541: | Fishing - the sport for guys with nothing else to do. |
| #542: | Suggested medically based rock band names: Scar Tissue, Lethal Injection, Bloody Mass, Cadaver, Necroscopy, Brain Tumor, Stat! |
| #543: | The perfect name for a rock band on Martha's Vineyard: Chappaquiddick Bridge. |
| #544: | Here are some photos from my visit to MT. RUSHMORE two days ago: http://bit.ly/r21PB |
| #545: | The rarest of all human abilities is to question ones own position in life. |
| #546: | The same people who buy expensive exercise equipment also refuse to walk a short distance when a taxi is available. |
| #547: | "Lifestyle exercise" is when you take advantage of whatever opportunities life gives you for physical activity. |
| #548: | At the airport in Milwaukee, I encountered my first-ever "Recombobulation Area" Photo: http://bit.ly/mNvtW - I thought they were extinct! |
| #549: | If not for casinos, where would all the has-been bands and singers be playing? |
| #550: | Britney, Cher, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Barry Manilow - They're all has beens, guys! Haven't done anything creative in years! |
| #551: | I know I may be a little late, but what's so damn wrong about the South seceding from the Union? The main issue was self-rule, not slavery. |
| #552: | "Pointless, redundant tautologies are an unnecessary waste of time." @aedison |
| #553: | "Dark in time machine. Read to-do list wrong. Killed Einstein. Hung out with Hitler." @aedison |
| #554: | Narcissism isn't self-love as much as self-centeredness, where you cannot grasp the needs of others. |
| #555: | My new philosophy essay: "Escape from Narcissism" http://bit.ly/zK9Ul (Kilroy Cafe #48) |
| #556: | What happens to most people after marriage? They gain weight! Symbolic of the changes in the relationship, there's no incentive to be thin. |
| #557: | Human life does not thrive under law or commerce, only in the hidden places that law and commerce ignore. |
| #558: | Governments are incompetent at raising children because they cannot make the creative compromises that real parents make every day. |
| #559: | Government is a world of inflexible rules where lives in the present are held hostage to the hysterias of the past. |
| #560: | The function of law is to punish the guilty and bankrupt the not guilty. The only winners are the lawyers. |
| #561: | Society has a right to rule of law, but the individual has the right to seek the hidden nooks and crevices the law can't see. |
| #562: | Today you will probably break a dozen laws. Can you list them? You drove over the speed limit, walked on private property, etc. |
| #563: | It is okay to quietly break the law as long as a "threshhold of damage" is not crossed where you hurt someone or run the risk of doing so. |
| #564: | In practice, police don't ticket drivers for 1 mph above the speed limit, only 10+ mph. This is the unwritten leniency the law must have. |
| #565: | A healthy life can be lived only in the peripheral vision of the law, not under its direct gaze. |
| #566: | When people feel they have been wronged, they don't just want justice; they want Judge Judy justice. It ain't gonna happen! |
| #567: | Half of life is knowing the rules. The other half is knowing when to break them. |
| #568: | The ingrown toenail is the bread-and-butter of the podiatry business. (If people knew their own toes better, most business would go away.) |
| #569: | In the desert you can usually camp without a tent. No mosquitoes! In summer, temps are perfect at night. The sun is your alarm clock! |
| #570: | For camping in desert, you need only sleeping bag, tarp, air mattress, air pump. You can camp almost anywhere. No real dangers. |
| #571: | The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. It relies on animals eating the apple for seed distribution. (There's a metaphor there.) |
| #572: | Old age is not a physical problem but existential one. People get so trapped by their past investments that they can't change. |
| #573: | If you eat raw, uncooked vegetables, you might as well be eating sand. Very little of it digests. |
| #574: | Humans evolved to eat cooked foods. Cooking is part of our digestive process, like the four stomachs of a cow. |
| #575: | The goal of the Capitalist system is to get people addicted to things they don't need, so they can be milked for profit. |
| #576: | My position on the paranormal: Who cares! If it's not reproducible, then you have to rely on your traditional five senses. |
| #577: | Death is inevitable, but "old" is a choice. |
| #578: | The JFK assassination: Just let it go! |
| #579: | Let's be honest here: The bear shape has no real relevance to the flavor of the Gummi Bear. |
| #580: | "Retirement" is only for people who have spent their lives in meaningless careers. |
| #581: | "Paranoia" is a strategy of defending the self by inventing outside threats. They may be scary, but not as scary as living without them. |
| #582: | "Paranoid aggression" is an outwardly aggressive act (assault, etc) that is seen as purely defensive by the person taking it. |
| #583: | A "paranoid panic" is when paranoia triggers a catastropic collapse of self-esteem which causes even worse paranoia. |
| #584: | In a panic, mild paranoia can become extreme, often leading to highly aggressive acts far outside the norms of society. |
| #585: | Crime sprees are usually the result of paranoid panic, as are workplace killings by just-fired workers. |
| #586: | If you have just failed or been rejected, it is easier to believe in an evil conspiracy than accept your own responsibility. |
| #587: | Paranoia thrives in those with low native self-esteem, and it is easier to sustain when these people are isolated from others. |
| #588: | A paranoiac with too many resources tends to become even more paranoid, because he has the power to further isolate himself. (Howard Hughes) |
| #589: | Classic paranoiacs: Ted Kaczynski, Howard Hughes, Richard Nixon, Hitler, Saddam, conspiracists, cult leaders, you, me... |
| #590: | Anyone can get paranoid when their world is collapsing around them. It takes great intellectual discipline to retain perspective. |
| #591: | See my old essay: "Paranoia: Our Enemy Within" http://bit.ly/Ik29m (Kilroy Cafe #26, Jan 09) |
| #592: | From May to September, the whole eastern half of the U.S. is essentially a tropical rainforest. Rich with greenery, bugs, rain & humidity. |
| #593: | In a traffic stop, officers can search a car if a drug dog "hits" on it - which means they can search ANY car with a poorly trained dog. |
| #594: | You can train a dog to find drugs, but you can't train him not to find other things. The "hits" may be high but also the false positives. |
| #595: | Why you need civil rights: because law enforcement will always be a flawed human operation with a built-in bias toward guilt. |
| #596: | Just by interacting with law enforcement you run the risk of being accused of a crime, so you want to limit that interaction. |
| #597: | Passing a cop car beside the road, it is natural to think, "What will I be accused of?" even if you know you've done nothing. |
| #598: | Police owe their existence - and ego - to crime. If they don't find it they are nobody. Find it, and they become powerful. |
| #599: | Police can always find more or less crime by adjusting their tolerance. "Speeding" can start at 5 mph above the limit or 15. They choose. |
| #600: | Bored cops are the most dangerous. They will detect more crime than busy ones - not necessarily to the benefit of society. |