Facing the New Year

I made a number of minor resolutions this year. One that I can keep is finding a cheaper place to buy cigarettes, and cigarettes that come in exotic flavors such as strawberry and grape. So, I hope that doesn't make me "fruity". The new photo processing software I have works great and there are a lot of things you can do with it. I'm reading through a book of quotations of famous people that my Mom gave me. She also gave me the book lying around the house "When I say No, I Feel Guilty". That's an old one. I think I'm actually going to read the Gospel of Mark through at the start of this year. As to that number puzzle where you fill in the numbers for each callendar day, there seem to be too many possabilities to insure getting it right. If you're wondering about the photograph, assuming I remember to put it in, that's my roommate Bill in the background. He has more hair than I do but he's actually ten years older. I guess I want to be more thoughtful and conscientious this new year, to heed the advice of "Deliberate often, but decide but once". There is also a quote from my name sake that says something "Whatever you enjoy doing, do it not having expectation of a reward and in this way you will follow the [proper] course of nature". But I like the one from Soren Kierkegaard better - that goes "This world has enough reflection - what we need is more Passion". Hello, Rod Stewart! Here's one I thought was from Gandhi, that goes "When two elephants fight each other - it's the grass that suffers". Some have said the biggest consumers and wasters of petroleum energy is the armlements industry. Others say our biggest carbon footprint problem is that we are all meat eaters and factory farms are world class polluters. People wonder who the smartest President we've ever had was. Let me tell you, George W Bush was not as dumb as people made him out to be, and President Obama is not as smart as people make him out to be. Not only that, but with each passing day of lost opportunity, George Bush, in retrospect appears less "dumb" every day! But I think unquestionably our smartest president was Franklin Roosevelt. People say that he was really more perceptive than Churchill even. On the subject of action, I would like to quote the proverb I've quoted before, "When all is said and done, more is said than done". Here is one more for you I'm going to doctor up a little. Jesus Christ talking: "When I am dead I would rather that mankind ask why there were no monuments to me, rather than have people continually ask why there Were monuments to a person like me". Continuing, "of course I lack the true humility to have actually uttered a statement like this". A proverb goes "When three different people call you an Ass, you better put on a bridal!"

The other night on KCET 28.4 then had a fascenating program on the human genome. Human beings only contain something like 23,000 genes, or as many as a chicken, and fewer than many plants do. Of course they are now trying to synthisize dinasaurs from the DNA of a chicken. What this tells me is that it's easier for man to have "evolved" than Creationists think because one gene can make a big impact. And it doesn't take changes in that many genes to denote an ape from a human. But there are genes, and "master genes" and switches. Yes dinasaurs resemble birds, but often many species have inactivated genes controled by "switches". I've heard that in autisum, certain mental development "switches" have not been thrown. There are birds on an island with long, skinny, pointed beaks for getting nectar from flowers, and other birds with short, stout beaks for cracking of various nuts and fruits, but otherwise the birds look the same. They both have the same controling gene but in one case the switch isn't thrown. Also there are fruit flies with spotted wings and other fruit flies without them, all because of a switch that wasn't thrown. But they say man may have been allowed to develop the size of his brain because in a gorilla, his jaw muscles take up so much space that it interfears with his skull size. It seems a key muscle gene got damaged through mutation in human beings ironically enabling his brain cavity to expand in size. Some people say you need both science and religion. Well, science is like arranging the Tetrus blocks so that they fit. Religion is the descent of more Tetrus blocks to work with. While you may need both in society, they don't have to be the same person.

This and the last two photographs are being typed on Saturday January 2, 2010. And I guess we’ll try and do that Ringo thing to complete the set. Perhaps in marketing we could combine Beatles Early Nuggets with this album rather than the Harrison one. A disk with nineteen songs like this one could have songs averaging up to four minutes.

ACT NATURALLY

The One And Only Billy Shears

Act Naturally (single B side)

Boys (from Please, Please Me)

I Want to Be Your Man (“Meet the Beatles”)

Honey Don’t (from Beatles for Sale)

If You’ve Got Troubles (from Anthology)

What Goes On? (from Rubber Soul)

Flying (from MMT)

Good Night (Anthology version)

Octopuses Garden (Abbey Road)

Back Off, Boogaloo (single)

I Don’t Treat You Like I should (from “Ringo”)

I’m the Greatest (from “Ringo”)

Choose Love (title song)

Instant Amnesia (from Ringo-rama)

Photograph (from “Ringo”)

Goodnight Vienna(GNV)

Ooh-wee! (The New Jean Harlow) (GNV)

The No No Song (GNV)

Snoockeroo (GNV)