my cubic centimeter

I am currently making preps to cultivate a plant that, if my neighbors or the local authorities ever find out about it, could land me in some hot water.  But don’t worry….I’m taking precautions. Right now, I’m just preparing the soil and laying out where my “patch” will go.  Later on, when I begin actually planting seed, I’ll continue to do so as discretely and outside the view of my neighbors as possible – possibly at night...using ultra-red light to see by. So, if you promise not to tell anyone, I’ll let you know what I actually intend to grow. It’s…..clover! You see, last spring, we started to put in a vegetable garden – nothing significant, just a few tomato, pepper, and squash plants.  Additionally, we have a few strawberries, and hope that our two fig trees will continue to grow and start to produce larger, and more plentiful, fruit. We tried to do everything we could to make sure the soil we were planting in was of good quality, and we have made sure to water as mu...

Scene:  A corporate board room, perhaps.  A man in a shirt and tie sits across a long table from four people of various ages, manners, and standards of dress. Man in shirt and tie:  Good morning.  Welcome to The Roasting Pit chain of restaurants’ consumer focus group and thank you all for participating!  I’m Hank Hampshire.  As you all know, The Roasting Pit specializes in the good food that people really love!  Our reputation is tied to making sure that every menu features delicious, mouth-watering selections which include generous and satisfying portions.  But, we don’t pretend that our food is, shall we say, “longevity friendly”.  (Laughing)  Like our motto says, “Great food to eat, while you still can!” (Consumer panel all smile and nod in firm agreement.) Hank (continuing, while standing up next to presentation easel):  As you all know, we have had great success with many of our delicious and satisfying menu items, like our (tu...

I was reflecting last night, as to our world and what a crazy time this is.  Listening to any news of the day and you hear any number of reasons to believe that all these bad things – you know the things that I'm talking about – are causing the perception of madness and mental angst.  I wonder, however, if perhaps we don’t have cause and effect reversed.  Perhaps something is pervading our thinking, our soul, or our spirit with, for lack of a better word, an ugliness, and this, having persisted for so long, is projecting a force that is leading to all the bad things we see happening. Take art for example – even more specifically, popular music.  Here is a list of "best song lyrics of the last decade", which was prompted by a question to the Twitter community: https://www.buzzfeed.com/terrycarter/best-song-lyric-of-the-decade OK, so, maybe I'm being overly judgmental, or maybe this really isn't the best representation of what is really the best of the last decade i...

It seems to me that one of the more consistent and dominant traits of Nature, when thought of in its aggregate, and in the contexts of both space and time, is the infinite, or, perhaps more accurately, the potential for the infinite.  However, there doesn’t seem to be much discussion about this, with respect to the natural world around us in particular, except as it relates to the universe as a whole. I am told, by some very smart people, that human knowledge – the entire sum of all that we know – is doubling at an exponential rate.  For example, in 1982, the inventor, philosopher, and futurist, R. Buckminster Fuller estimated that, by 1900, the combined world knowledge was doubling at a rate of every 100 years; then, by 1945, it was every 25 years.  Today, some of those very smart people are saying that, with the help of computer technology and the like, this could now be occurring at a rate of every 12 hours. I have no idea if this is accurate or not, and am definitely ...

I believe that the great eternal, fundamental, and mortal struggle for human beings is over the sovereignty of the individual human soul and the essential imperative to protect this from the soul-destroying collective. There is a reason why our greatest fear was embodied in the science fiction depiction of “The Borg”.  This represents the triumph of the collective over the individual, and the ultimate annihilation of the individual human soul.  As human society advances toward this ominous fate, we see everything that defines our humanity suffer. Things that make us intrinsically human and distinguishes us from an ambiguous and indistinguishable collective begin to disintegrate and die.  Male and Female.  The recognition of, and the deference awarded to, the sapient and its preference to the bestial.  The spark of the divine and a sensitivity to Its energy.  The sanctity of a single human life. The hive, recognizing these very real threats to their collecti...