Another cool free tool -- Line Break Remover

I don't know about all of you, but I am constantly using portions of emails that I receive to insert in other documents. When I cut and past them into a word processor, or add/delete text to the original message itself, the cursed line breaks from the original email are still embedded, which results in ragged lines of varying length. (Sound familiar?) This means that I have to manually find and delete each of the line breaks to get my word processor to format properly.

The other night I was editing a long email that I had received to send it to someone else, and of course by the time I got done, I had lines that were miles long or only a couple of words long. Faced with the prospect of yet again having to do the line-by-line delete, I said "there's gotta be some kind of tool that will do this in one key stroke." Well, I found it! Text Fixer - Remove Line Breaks. This little tool is a joy. I've used it a few times now and it's a god-send.

Check it out. Your welcome.

~ Tom

Things don't really change...

I was listening to Al Gore being interviewed by Keith Olbermann this evening on Countdown. Al was making the point that Bush manipulating and lying to get us into his long-desired war was bad enough, but that the really scary part is how the public, and especially the media, ignored the real facts and completely failed to employ any sort of critical reasoning. Keith (who I am really digging these days) wondered if there was any hope for the majority of this country. Can we do anything to get our countrymen to even read Al's book, let alone implement the ideas Al offers to save our democracy? I wonder the same thing -- it seems to me that the public conscience and discourse have descended from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to American Idol and Britney Spears' cooter. That made me think about a quote that I haul out every once in a while, which pretty much illustrates what I'm getting at here:

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a facist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in every country.

-Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshal at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II.

Mourning the goats...

Here in the Bay Area we have a cool thing going on where they use goat herds to clear weeds on public lands (or private owners can also rent a herd for the job). I have run into the herds on hikes and always enjoy seeing them and sometimes being able to pet them.

Thus, I was horrified this morning when I opened my paper and read the following:

"Someone armed with a small-caliber gun shot and killed 15 goats early Tuesday that were part of a herd hired to graze on fire-hazardous underbrush and weeds in the Oakland hills, police said."

I immediately felt a huge sadness and melancholy. They were just innocent creatures. And what kind of mind would contemplate such an outrage, let alone execute it?

But then, I began to think of an interesting session I had years ago when I was in therapy. I asked Dave (my shrink) why I could feel such intense sadness over the death or abuse of "dumb" animals and yet could not feel the same over starving children or tortured/killed people throughout the world. I was really concerned about this, feeling that I was deeply flawed. He talked me through it and we came to the following conclusion: Such outrages against human beings are against my own species. Thus, I cannot LET myself feel the pain and sadness like I do with animals. The enormity (look that word up in your dictionary) of that reality is just too much to open myself up to. If I feel as horrible as I do when it involves innocent animals, something inside me knows that I will simply not be able to handle it when it involves my own kind. I wish I could change this, but maybe I really don't.

Anyway, I'm mourning the goats today, and wondering if I can risk summoning up the same visceral feelings with respect to all the incredible outrages being committed or allowed by my so-called representative government, and other evil persons, against innocent humanity.

P.S. After my initial post, I remembered that I had taken some pictures of a herd while on a hike in the summer of 2001.







~ T.

You'll smile and feel cheery...

Even if I didn't have a three-and-a-half year old granddaughter who never gets tired of hearing this, I would still play it just for myself every once and a while if only to smile and cheer myself up. I'm just a kid at heart.

~ Tom

Believing in nothing

I was just reading "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki and came across this, which I now share with you:

Believing in Nothing "In our everyday life our thinking is ninety-nine percent self-centered. ' Why do I have suffering? Why do I have trouble?'"

I discovered that is is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color -- something which exists before all forms and colors appear. This is a very important point. No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea. You strive for a perfect faith in order to save yourself. But it will take time to attain such a perfect faith. You will be involved in an idealistic practice. In constantly seeking to actualize your ideal, you will have no time for composure. But if you are always prepared for accepting everything we see as something appearing from nothing, knowing that there is some reason why a phenomenal existence of such and such form or color appears, then at that moment you will have perfect composure.

Let's face it!

Here is something that is fun and addictive. If you have kids or grandkids, turn them loose on it. They will love it.

There are no instructions, so here are a couple of hints.

1. If you hold down your left mouse button, you can drag the selected facial feature to get it to line up exactly with other parts.

2. To use the scale tool click on the "X" in the middle and hold down your mouse button and then drag it around in the grid and you'll see the selected facial feature change scale.

3. The opacity tool is a simple slider. Just click, hold down mouse button and drag.

Post a comment to lemme know if you dig it. I find it really fascinating.

Ciao,

T.

P.S. Trying to create you own face is hard.

Cost of War

One of the things that makes me so angry, frustrated, and diminished is the cost of this insane Iraq war. I keep thinking of all the things that we could have spent the money for that would have advanced our country and mankind. Well, here is a great site that makes the point far better than I can. While you are visiting this site, poke around a bit. Really fascinating stuff.

~ Tom