Where's Waldo's Self by Louis Evan Palmer

That search is very much like opening nesting dolls, wandering in houses of mirrors & trying to keep track of endless ripples in an unknown ocean.

If we agree, we can say that "I-ness" or "Being-ness" reflects a dance or conversation. It's an epiphenomenon. Maybe.

But we discover that our brain decides things for us unconsciously up to ten seconds before we are aware of it. Part of the dance. Offered up to our conscious self.

In one theory, it's the hemispheres of our brain that talk to one another and create awareness.

Yet, "who" is aware of the "conversation". Or, is "awareness" or "what" itself an illusion and what we are witnessing memory. What is memory then? "Who" remembers and who is aware of it?

No matter where you stop in the search for "Being-ness" there's always one more remove that is the "who" it is that's "aware". Either "awareness" itself is illusory and not really there or there is no "being-ness", or more precisely, no personal being-ness.

Perhaps it's a viewpoint within a universal consciousness and what appears to be a personal awareness is the "view" from a particular location, person, time. Everywhere and nowhere.

Where's Waldo's Self, The Way It Can Be, Louis Evan Palmer
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Support his art, ideas and worldview, Order books by Louis Evan Palmer: the novel "Oaklane Woods"; short stories "Tales Told to a Tree"; poems "40 Poem Fragments". Order via Kindle link at right of screen Copyright 2014 Louis Evan Palmer He lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Semblance with a thousand Causes by Louis Evan Palmer

Our life appears to be defined by illusion - not an illusion in the sense of not being real or not existing but an illusion in the sense that our life, "reality", is so different from what we think it is or how we think it came to be.

How many realities with vastly different causes look like the one we think we're in? What do we do to shape and color it?

It's especially evident and perplexing with things we take as axiomatic like space, time, identity. Each ubiquitous but ineffable. We define time is terms of motion and space. We define space in terms of matter and energy and time. We define identity in terms of space and boundaries and exchanges and interfaces and memories and feelings. Circling and spiraling and gyrating and vibrating. Remembering, both recording and recalling.

The things we experience and remember are changed through experiencing and remembering. Emotions affecting everything. Pain and pleasure present in almost every event. Pain making time go slower. Pleasure making it go faster. Meditation making time vanish.

Words that never existed. Words that change their meaning over time. Ideas that never existed. Ideas that we thought were ever-present but that had a birth in a history we didn't know. Words and Ideas that seem as real as an apple or a rock.

Looking at an object or a process and seeing a certain set of causes but realizing that any one of a hundred sets of causes would look he same.

Semblance with a thousand Causes, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be
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Support his art, ideas and worldview, Order books by Louis Evan Palmer: the novel "Oaklane Woods"; short stories "Tales Told to a Tree"; poems "40 Poem Fragments". Order via Kindle link at right of screen Copyright 2013 Louis Evan Palmer He lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

Baseball, Statistics & Disappeared Histories by Louis Evan Palmer

It's apparent that Barry Bonds took steroids and as a result of that there is a steady chorus from those who wish to ostrasize him and to asterisk his record. They are probably the same folks who wanted to put an asterisk beside Hank Aaron's home run record. But really if you want to scratch the surface of these records you'll find that we should putting asterisks beside all the records because there's something wrong or peculiar with all of them.

Babe Ruth's home run record of 60 was set in 1927 not long after rules were introduced that resulted in a harder baseball and shorter outfields. That's one asterisk. In Babe's day, there were no brown-skinned players in the majors yet teams from the negro leagues won about half of the exhibition games they played against the white majors teams. There were also no hispanic players. In other words, many of the best players were not in Babe's major league. That's two asterisks. There also can be no doubt whatsoever that the calibre of player back then was lower than the calibre of player now. Just looking at the Olympic records will confirm that observation. That's three asterisks. In 1920 the spitball was banned but pitchers who were using it could continue. That obviously had a huge impact on hitters and home runs. Asterisk #4. Scuffed balls or foreign substances like pine tar were also banned in later years.

In light of the above, statements to the effect that "the 1927 Yankees was the greatest baseball team ever" are unadulterated balderdash.

The other glaring truth of the matter is as Mark McGwire stated, in baseball it was not specifically against the rules to use steroids. That came in 2002. Steroids are legal for medical purposes. In 1990 in a very politicized debate, the USA put steriods on its schedule III even though it did not meet the requirements of that designation - that is, being addictive. In 2005, "prohormones" were added to that prohibition. In most other advanced countries, steroids are legal with a prescription but if found in possession of them without a prescription, it is not a serious offence (no jail time involved). Barry Bonds started his major league career on May 30, 1986. Mark McGwire started his career in 1987.

The other truth is that you can put all the muscles you want on someone without talent and it will not enhance their performance enough for anyone to notice - their physique but not their ability.

Barry Bonds deserves his records just as much as Roger Maris and Hank Aaron. It's doubtful Babe Ruth would have been very successful today with all his drinking and womanizing, he probably wouldn't have gotten the chance. Also, against much better players from all over the world and from the old negro leagues, he definitely wouldn't have fared as well.

The rules and evironment of a given sport are always in flux - in baseball, for example, the composition of the balls, the bats, the dimensions of the field, permitted and banned substances. We care about these things because we care about the games we play and watch and we care about their histories. Yet, vast swaths of them are illusions. The negro baseball leagues had many of the best players and yet records are hard to come by and while they are getting cobbled together, it's painfully slow. It's another of the disappeared histories of which we as a society seem to bury with remarkable frequency.

Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire were caught up in the heavily politicized and phony war on drugs. Steroids is not even close to crack. However, it's a convenient way to denigrate a current player's achievement and to harken back to a misrepresentation of a past.

Baseball, Statistics & Disappeared Histories, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2007 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

BUY BOOKS BY LOUIS EVAN PALMER

• OAKLANE WOODS - Amazon Kindle Book
• TALES TOLD TO A TREE - Amazon Kindle Book
• 40 POEM FRAGMENTS - Amazon Kindle Book

Neil Reynolds leads Globe & Mail charge into SPP oblivion by Louis Evan Palmer

In today's Globe & Mail, another of G&M's bully boys for fascism rails against opponents of the Security & Prosperity Partnership (SPP) such as the Canadian Action Party (CAP) and the New Democratic Pary (NDP). He succinctly terms their opposition "nonsense" while less obviously and between the lines, he is also trying to categorize all opposition to the SPP as "nonsense".

In a fairly short article, Mr. Reynolds neatly demonstrates most of what is wrong with columnist-driven news: unsubstantiated statements & claims, slanted news bites and facts, opinion-driven conclusions disguised as fact-based reporting. Ever so convincing, Mr. Reynolds says on more than one occasion, "..it might be a good thing".

He argues that the CAP is no good (and its claims & opinions) because it has very little support. The NDP is no good because some of its claims as to the real disposition of power in Canada and elsewhere are similar to CAP. And, by the way, the NDP are not in power so how can they be right about anything? In Mr. Reynolds' universe, power is the balm that salves any problem.

Mr. Reynolds does not appear to have read any of Chalmers Johnston's last three books about the American Empire and its corporate and military leadership. Nor, John Perkins and his expose of the tactics and legacy of Economic Hit Men and the various agencies and institutions like the World Bank which work hand-in-hand with the "corporatocracy". It sounds a lot like SPP, Mr. Reynolds.

Mr. Reynolds pleads for rationality and "the market" without any inkling as to how fraudulent and malleable these forces really are. They are part of their very own "reality" that the current Bush regime is making. Mr. Reynolds seemingly has not heard of the Plunge Protection Teams, Hedge Funds, Currency Traders, secret Tax & Bank havens and other anti-market forces that operate with a frightening scope & frequency and breath-taking impunity. This is today's real world where unrestricted cash flows is the new piracy.

Mr. Reynolds is very much like the belligerent but rational Flat Earthers - it made perfect sense but it was wrong. People like Mr. Reynolds have no problem with Robert Nardelli, the former CEO of Home Depot, getting a severance package of $210m USD but let anyone suggest that these nouveau robber barons might have ulterior motives and plans - like the SPP, well, that is "nonsense".

It's lucky for Canadians, and those looking in on Canada from the outside, that we have Mr. Reynolds to patiently explain the true lies of what we think we see.

Unhappily though, there are those who see Mr. Reynolds as another G&M apologist for the demise of Canada which is the certain consequence of an SPP union. It would take about as long as it takes for Mr. Reynolds to write "it might be a good thing"!

No thanks, Mr. Reynolds! I'll take the CAP and NDP before that happens.

Neil Reynolds leads Globe & Mail charge into SPP oblivion, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be
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Copyright 2007 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

BUY BOOKS BY LOUIS EVAN PALMER

• OAKLANE WOODS - Amazon Kindle Book
• TALES TOLD TO A TREE - Amazon Kindle Book
• 40 POEM FRAGMENTS - Amazon Kindle Book

The Urge to End History by Louis Evan Palmer

The urge to end history gets posited in various ways, in isolation, in volleys, as ultimate desolation, as eden remade, but its main attribute is that the desired state we will find ourselves, if we're alive, is one in which no appreciable change will any longer occur. Stripped of rhetoric, it's a conclusion to the human journey on this planet, a solid self-sustaining stasis.

This resolution, which some fervently want, is the emergence of a national or global community where major sources of confrontation have been addressed or, more likely, negated.

They are Utopians and whether that Utopia is good or bland, it will be certain and orderly. And this is not a bad thing except for the fact that Utopians with power seem to differ from Utopians without power. Utopians with power seem to be revolutionists at heart and they are the ones who will make history even when they are seeking to end it... in their favour.

Most people are happy with steady, incremental progress and peace. The history they want is unspectacular. But the pushy people who inhabit the corridors of power and whisper in the ears of those who command the armies & the weapons are not satisfied with patience and peace, they seek advantage and they seek dominion.

These are the people who muse about a clash of civilizations or armageddon or startling new weapons that can assure full-spectrum victory. These are the people who constantly wage every kind of war, large and small, against everyone. The methods they use to attain the peace they envisage deforms society to the extent that what is protected in the end is a twisted perverse version of the peaceful community that we began with.

We have to be careful what we give to our leaders since they can fashion it into something quite different. It is safer and more accurate for us to agree that history will never end and that we must live together peacefully. It is much more dangerous to slide into the "dream" that we can somehow end history to our liking.

The Urge to End History, The Way It Can Be, Louis Evan Palmer, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2007 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have been published in numerous pub

BUY BOOKS BY LOUIS EVAN PALMER

• OAKLANE WOODS - Amazon Kindle Book
• TALES TOLD TO A TREE - Amazon Kindle Book
• 40 POEM FRAGMENTS - Amazon Kindle Book

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