I'm really enjoying the shit out of NewsBurst from CNet - customizable with a variety of news and entertainment feeds provided right at your finger-tips, and the ability to add your own preffered XML/RSS feeds, and put them all in their own little categories for handy access with your preffered of two viewing options. Makes for a groovy home page, even for someone like me who avoids the news like the plague most days (yes, even though I preach understanding and awareness, I dont seek out the general news, only what I feel I need to know that day - blowing my mental circuits on most of the absolute crap that is foisted off as "news" would be a waste of a beautiful mind.)

Coming home is always nice. After spending most of the past month not at home, returning with a lot off my mind (work, family issues, school all temporarily relieved) is nice. Sure, the cats managed to turn a slightly disorderly home into a toxic disaster area while I was gone, and sure there is only electricity in half the house right now... but yeah, its good to be home.
Clear skies, artifact hunting and hikes... in the past two days I managed to shoot up an entire brick of .22 ammo, most of it all on Saturday. Its amazing how fast 500 rounds of ammo can be shot up... and I was trying to moderate myself. Lots of killed tin cans, lots and lots. Plus a couple busted alarm clocks, and half full cans of old dried paint.
Home is good... refuge and storm all in one, but more importantly than being my refuge, it is my storm.

Understanding

Understanding is more important than ever now.
Not "understanding" the way people say when they mean compassion or empathy (although that in particular is a skill of value weighable in gold, and not necessarily because you give two shits about other people... you dont have to sympathize, but if you can empathize with them, you have something), but understanding of not just what is happening in the world around, but why it is happening.
We now live in a global society that is quickly becoming "flat" - instead of vertical tiers of ability and service, the playing field is quite literally leveling and the capabilities of a more diverse group to play major roles in the global supply chain are evening out with the likes of the United States. We cannot simply sit atop the heap, know what we want to know, and say "frag it all" to the rest, anymore.
This flattening means that not only does a company in India have the ability to play at an even, effectual, level with the top American companies, it means that small groups and companies can do the same. In today's world, a resourceful individual or small group can provide the supply of a niche product at a higher rate of production and with wider availability, and as the supply grows, so does the demand. This includes Al Qaeda, and similar global guerrilla organizations.
We have to understand these things, we have to understand these relationships. It is no longer a specialized field, niche interest of academics and analysts who shape corporate and international policy, these things have to be understood by the people it affects - you and me. "Grassroots" organizations, like Al Qaeda, understand and use that understanding to their advantage, and can hurt us with it.
The world of today, and the coming tomorrow, demand a higher level of understanding of things all across the board. A diverse and flexible understanding of the forces that shape the world, and ones role in those forces, combined with the individual talent, knowledge and flexibility of decision making and self guided learning will be the marked characteristics of tomorrows survivors. Everyone else will be washed under the tide in one way or another, cannon fodder, grist for the mill or simply the suffering "get along, gettin' along"ers.
The ability to pick up a rifle and fight effectively, the ability to play and learn at a self directed pace, the ability to work within global market structures, and the particular skills needed to be controlling factors within those markets, engineering to fourth-generation warfare tactics - if we were truly going to be ready for tomorrow, this would be the focus of the Ivy League and nations top scientific/technical schools in preparing tomorrows captains of industry, doctors, scientists, engineers, software developers and entrepreneurs.
We have to understand - our understanding for tomorrow has to be diverse, flexible and robust. It will simply be impossible to know one thing, do one thing, and have no flexibility, no diversity and no other strengths in the tomorrow of today. The more we understand, the less individual sub-topics we have to be well versed in - the more we understand, the more connections and relationships become visible between everything. Once that level of understanding is reached, it actually gets easier, you just have to keep up then.
We have to do this though, average people, because we live in a society that is fast developing to where we will almost all have to become technologically skilled to intellectual elite to survive. Our leaders, corporate execs and politicians need to develope and cultivate their understanding too. Without understanding, we will lose.
This is why if you look right you will see the link to "Global Guerrillas" and why I do end up covering such a diverse range of topics, specialized understanding just doesnt cut it anymore.

Fired Up

Waiting is always the worst part. Slyly eying good looking women and girls as they move past, the nurses who know they are not only cute in scrubs but very good at their work and walk with that air of sexy confidence, only lasts so long. I get tired of it all, waiting for the surgery to end, waiting to get told we can wait some more but surgery went well, but when its over, I want to shake things up a bit.
Perhaps thats why, after the four" gangstaz" in the black Lexus cut us off, nearly hit us stealing a parking space and then did their damndest to sideswipe us as they left, I flipped them the bird and yelled out "Fuck you, foolio!" as loud as I could.
Luckily I got out of a beating or a shooting on that one... but not because they didnt want to. I just wasnt going to be beat. If they'd wanted to shoot me... well I left myself wide open for that. Play the cards your dealt, even if you're the dealer.
Stupid thing to get killed over, really.