Tasty Tidbits 8/8/11

1. Priorities.
2. Beautiful minds.
3. Doom and gloom grab bag.
4. Rick Perry and the Theocrats.
5. Surveilling us.

1

I really need to remember that I’ve got unread books that are more relevant in the long run than this morning’s news and blogs. Same goes for this blog — both the preparation and the reading of it. I may cut back a bit.

2

A New York Times feature story (From the New York Times, so it may count toward your freebies) on a man with schizophrenia appeared today, which reminds me that more than half of the people whose health I make it a point to pray for daily are suffering with brain disorders (f/k/a mental illness), diagnosed either professionally or by me (some are in denial). And that doesn’t count my exact contemporary who had a massive stroke a few years back.

Do remember, if you’re one who tends to be a skeptic about mental illness, that every organ in the body can develop problems, and the brain is no exception.

3

I have gone on quite a bit about my economic bearishness. I even wrote a longish two items for publication today.

I’ll spare you, cutting them way down:

• In True Believers at the New York Times Sunday, Frank Bruni, riffing on Rick Perry’s Prayerapalooza in Houston Saturday, notes that we all, religious and secular, share “a similar yearning for easy, all-encompassing answers.” (Giving Perry and his friends the benefit of the doubt, they may have been praying for the discernment to find difficult, complicated answers; if so, Bruni’s segué is not apt.)
• A friend, in the midst of reading Aftershock, was uncharacteristically pessimistic. “Buy gold,” he advised. I demur. I can’t eat, live in, or burn gold as fuel. I’m skeptical about its magical powers as a hedge.
• 43 years or so ago, I had doubts about a system built on usury and “the invisible hand” turning our individual acquisitiveness into general welfare. But it seemed to be working, and there’s a lot of things to think about in life. I wish I’d paid closer attention, not only to ordinate acquisitiveness (whatever that is), but to the ease with which that economic doctrine would morph into quasi-religious justification for inordinate acquisitiveness and outright con games.
• The invisible hand now seems to have turned to writing on the wall. Funny how I’d never noted the “invisible hand” parallel between Adam Smith and the prophet Daniel before.
• There’s a cartoon “Austerity Survival Guide” at the New York Times. I try not to over-analyze cartoons, but I’ll weigh in that I don’t think we’re going to balance the budget on the backs of plutocrats. They will need to up stuff, as we all will.

4

I have no previous familiarity with the website “Business Insider,” which doesn’t appear to have much to do with business, but beginning here, its coverage leads one, hyperlink-by-hyperlink, to a fairly strong connection between Rick Perry (and Michelle Bachmann) and the New Apostolic Reformation, which I first learned about a few weeks ago but which, from my first-hand examination of its own websites (which I unfortunately can’t find this morning), appears theocratic, heretical and cultic. I am not going to drink any KoolAid these self-appointed apostles offer me.

5

Have you noticed how often crooks are caught on surveillance cameras these days? (E.g., here and here.) I don’t know whether to be reassured or spooked.

Bon appetit!