Just some thoughts as 2022 winds down.
All artificial sweeteners have now been implicated in various forms of dementia / senility, not just aspertaime. Why are they still legal? Why is aspertaime legal, when it kills, maimes and debilitates so many people every year? (In fact, in many countries it is illegal now… just not in America. Think on that.)
Why was it that (approximately) 30 years ago the Federal Trade Commission jumped all over Microsoft for some small business “unfairness” yet today they don’t even seem to notice far, far (FAR!) worse transgressions against the consumer? Who does the FTC serve these days?
Did you know the computer industry Cherishes your ignorance of How Things Work? They sell more stuff that way (so they think). Do you like being “used” that way?
There are people who say (something like) “Oh I’m not Christian, I don’t do Christmas.” Really? Of the 60 different forms (approximately) of celebration for the Year’s End / the Year’s Renewal none of them work for you? Christ Mass is just one “set of clothes” for the Great Celebration recognized by a large percentage of the world. Do you really want to be that Self Riteous / Ignorant / Insulting to Others? Is there no way you can rephrase what the culture does into something you can agree with? When you say “not my holiday — go away” you are saying that the culture doesn’t agree with your inner world and you won’t come out and play until it does. Well, as frequent readers here may have noticed, I can testify that the Culture will never agree with your inner world. Ain’t a gonna’ happen. Believe me. Deal with it, but do so without offending others’ Profound Beliefs, even if they’ve never stopped to think about those Beliefs and if they really agree with them or not. (Sheeple have feelings too, ya know?)
MSG (monosodium glutamate) kills a few hundred people very year. Why is it still legal? Things with far lower “death rates” have been shut down, why not MSG? Answer: the FDA keeps insisting it is safe, and without their agreement on the Death Rate the legal machinery can do little to keep you safe from it. So, the real question is why does the FDA continue to insist that it’s safe?
Cell Phones were more reliable before they became “smart.” Dropped calls, greater expense, confusing layouts, every “new and improved” edition being completely unlike the previous one, and the almost required adjunct of a “sky drive” (Internet storage) as almost the only way to backup or transfer what’s on your phone… it all amounts to Great Profits and Less Service to the Consumer. (Yuck)
When red and blue lights flickering or alternating 2 to 3 times a second are known to be a major trigger for seizures, why do police cars and ambulances use red and blue lights flickering 2 to 3 times a second? Are they trying to cause ill health in the population or are they just ignorant? Which answer is preferable?
The actual death rate for CoVid will never be known, because the tests are over eager (a large number of false positives) and because when some one dies from some other cause but the corpse tests positive it’s still counted as a CoVid death.
However, even with the numbers as reported, the death rate is only a little higher than the usual death rate for the Annual Flu. So why the Big Panic? Why the continued Panic? (Could it be because Big Pharma has now made unprecedented amonuts of money? Naw…)
The death rate for Heart Disease is higher than for CoVid. (Look it up!) Why did the (so-called) News Media fail to report that one to each and every member of the Herd? Why, instead, do they still continue to foster the panic?
Why does the Computer Industry insist that an ordinary password is “like leaving the front door open” yet they also insist that you, after setting up the password for your computer then add a 4 digit PIN? If a 20 character password is “leaving the door open” then a 4 (or even 6) digit PIN must be setting out Tea and Cookies. Insanity, really. (I have no explanation for this behavior, other than it’s their lawyers trying to keep my lawyers from beating them up — and I don’t even have lawyers. Sheesh…)
Why, in all the Insanity that passes for Health Care these days, is there so little discussion or education about how to keep yourself healthy, how to really keep your immune system in good shape and so on? (There’s a lot of email BS traffic about “boost your immune system” [often involving some allegedly recently discovered Lost Book of the Ancients] — the best that can be said about those emails is that most of them are harmless.) Health comes from Inside. Not from Outside. If you get to where you actually need a doctor (other than for accidents and for any “text book normal” Human — there are exceptions to everything) then someone goofed. That’s not an exaggeration; in fact, that used to be the standard for Chinese Medicine, which unfortunately has become Westernized and (in the last two generations, more or less) has lost most of the Profound Wisdom it once had.
The purpose of a Business is service to the Customer. Anything else is Unethical. Yet the major Business Schools now openly teach that the purpose of Business is Profit. That leads to a downward spiral with no recovery for any enterprise. Abuse the Customer and you lose your customers. (Which may be why there hasn’t been an AntiTrust law suit in such a long time… monopoly is the one except to “abuse the customer – lose the customer.” I mean, if the customer has no where else to go (or believes he hasn’t) then you can abuse their trust all you want and get away with it.
(One except to the above. The purpose of an Investment Firm is, in fact, profit. That’s its product. Profit in that case is serving their Clients. Microsoft’s product is supposed to be a superlative operating system [they have a long way to go on that one], that would be how M$FT serves their customers. Yet nearly every action M$FT takes [since Bill Gates left the company] is to maximize their profit rather than improve their product (I can show you 30 year old bugs in Windows. Shameful.). That only serves their investors, and that’s Bad Business, which means you’re not serving your investors (riddle that one). In fact, they have so much surplus Ca$h that they managed to buy Bethesda Game Works for $7.5 billion dollars and Blizzard (another game company) for $68 billion! That’s a FREAKIN’ lot of suprlus cash, and it was your cash at one time.)
By the way, Microsoft’s purchase of both Blizzard and Bethesda (besides causing much fear and consternation among game players) now makes Microsoft a prime candidate for antitrust investigation. Those purchases should never have been approved by the FTC. Prediction: M$FT will never again be brought up under an antitrust investigation. I hope I’m wrong on that one. It should probably be broken up into about six companies now.
I could go on… but the needs of my Customers (not my Profit Line) demand my attention be else where just now. 🙂
To sum up: as I said above, the Culture (especially “Western Culture” [though, like Gandhi, I tend think it would be a good idea, rather than it is or is not one) is never going to conform to my inner World, or my values or my sense of ethics. This is the “harzard” for the Free Thinker. I think that’s a small price to pay for Inner Freedom. Especially since I can conform to my own inner standards, and frankly that’s challenge enough to keep me busy.
And Happy!
Have a good New Year. This next one and every one.
Better and Better every year — It’s just a choice, after all.
God Bless Us, Every one.
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