Let's Talk About Taxes...

It amazes me, sometimes, how many of those who have opinions on taxation don't have a clue how governments have to operate. A government is basically a service agency: that is, it exists to provide one or more services to a defined set of clients.

Yet Another Change in Direction...

Up until now, I've limited the content of my posts to my observations and opinions on facets of our lives and world.  There has been near zero feedback concerning those posts, either positive or negative.  Since I'm not getting any dialog by just expressing opinions, I've decided to change my approach for future posts to this blog.

In any given future post, I'll be describing how I would apply that power to make changes in our society, our world, and ourselves.  You are invited to read and comment.  I don't expect everyone, or really anyone, to agree with me on every issue, but I do expect that anyone who comments on my post will exercise both their brain and good manners.  Anyone who can't (or won't) do both will be ignored, and their posts will be deleted.

Be advised that this policy doesn't proscribe your right to free speech.  Blogspot is (currently) free, and you can post whatever you want - within the limits of the service agreement - on your own blog,  I, on the other hand, don't have to put up with senseless blathering, or flames, or any other form of bad manners on my blog, and I choose against such.

I  suspect that some of you will find what I say to be offensive, but that's the breaks.  Opinions are like unpopular body parts - everyone has them.  You are entitled to yours, and I'm entitled to mine - at least for now, in this country.  I can't prohibit you from thinking the way you want to, and you can't prohibit me, either.  What I can do, at least here, is to tell you how your life might be different...  if I were king.

Mariner

Daydreams

I daydream about waking up from a long, good night's sleep, in my sailboat's V-berth, cuddled up to my Honey.  In my dream, the morning is just cool enough to make such cuddling very comfortable.

When I finally give in to the need to get out of bed, I make coffee and take a cup out to the cockpit, where I sit and watch the world come to life, usually in a wide salt-marsh, bordered by low-growing trees.  The sun isn't yet over the horizon, but there's plenty of light, and a slight breeze offsets the humidity.  There are a profusion of species of birds, and perhaps an otter or even a dolphin (of the mammalian persuasion), hunting for breakfast around the boat - the smaller fish like to hide in its shadow.

My Honey is sulky about waking up ;), but eventually she drags herself - along with her own cup of coffee - out, to join my in my morning devotions.  As the sun breaks over the horizon, the miracle that is life on the water, in all its complexity and interdependence reveals itself.

I can't imagine feeling closer to God than that.

I dream of and long for moments like that, while I sit, 300-plus miles away from the ocean, watching my life slip away, waiting for others to finish what they need or want to do.

Mariner

Constitutional Protections

Sitting here ruminating about the sorry state of the nation again.  Sorry if that offends you, but it's the way it is.

Finally Done!

For the past couple of weeks I've been in the process of moving my blogs from MySpace to Blogger.  It hasn't been easy, as MySpace has no built-in means to export blogs, and Blogger's import mechanisms don't work on anything but Blogger blogs. Essentially, I had to capture all of my MySpace blogs as text files and transcribe, or copy and paste, them into new posts on Blogger.  Not fun.

I also split up my blogs, separating out the boating and food posts into their own sites.  I hope this will make for easier reading for those topics, while this blog will continue to catch the rest of my meanderings.

I'm going to delete all blogs on MySpace, except for a final, goodbye blog to be left there for about the next month for those of my friends who are not on Facebook. After that, I plan to delete my MySpace profile.

My reasons for leaving MySpace are detailed in the sidebar.  As to why I don't just post to my Facebook Wall - I don't know what the retention policies are at Facebook.  Blogger exports provide a means of backing up my posts to my local computer, and the export files are XML, although they aren't using any industry-standard schema.  This means that, should I desire it, I can at some future time reformat the files to suit any new host that I might choose.

Anyway, whether you enjoy reading my posts is less important than whether you find them useful.  I hope that they are and remain useful, and that you will continue to look for them here.

Thanks.

Mariner

The Mexican Flag

I just read today that a lot of people of Mexican origin (many still in Mexico) are really peeved at American cartoonist Daryl Cagle.  It seems that he recently drew a cartoon mocking the Mexican "War on Drugs", using a distortion of their national flag.

Its A Sad Thing...

... but all good things must come to an end. Today I cancelled my 3G mobile wireless plan.