Cave Cave Deus Videt

Hieronymus Bosch, 1485


Of the seven Deadly Sins -- Pride, gluttony, envy, lust, greed and sloth -- Greed has been grabbing the latest headlines.


In the 1987 film , 'Wall Street,' financial shark Gordon Gecco (Michael Douglas)speaks the movie's mantra -- 'Greed is good. Greed Works. Greed Sells'. Now, 20 years later, 'Wall Street' seems more documentary than expose. This is not your fault!

Sure, you're greedy - it's a human trait -- but let's examine the core of that word. There's greed, and then there's GREED,. Small-letter greed is a luxury car, a summer house, someone to cut your grass. Big-letter greed is three or more cars, a villa in Europe, a yacht. Small-letter greed is democracy; big-letter greed is oligarchy.

It's all about words. The end game in a democracy is inclusionary; when one accumulates Billy Gates-sized money, one looks to give back something, to help out the human race. An oligarchy feathers its own nest. How many times do we have to hear the Rush Limbaughs of the world decry 'touchy-feely' people? How many times do we have to listen to them extol the 'virtue' of simply making money for its own sake?

Wall Street in the last eight years didn't give a fig about John Q. Public. Minus any effective regulation, they simply invented more ways to make money; if it eventually burned the average citizen... hey, it's collateral damage.

Neighborhood Action Groups -- Not a good track record

When a neighborhood action group is formed, it is almost always 'against' something, and again, almost always that something is in that neighborhood. It may be a tree someone wants to cut down, or a home someone wants to build; it could be a variance someone wants, or an amenity someone wants to install.

We've had a bunch of these groups started in the Madison/Chatham area, and without exemption they have brought out the worst in the local citizenry. Neighborliness, dialog and compromise give way to lawyering up, bullying tactics and outlandish, worst-case scenarios. We should be ashamed. And here is the rest of it.

Next on the Agenda -- God Laughing

Creationism vs. Science. Perhaps it has been too easy to debunk the former, but the inflated hubris of the scientific community in its exploration of our origin has made few inroads into real understanding, and their latest foray into existential silliness -- the Hadron Collider -- just compounds the problem.

Cosmologists say the Big Bang occurred some 15 billion years ago when an unimaginably dense and hot object the size of a small coin exploded in what was then a void, spewing out matter that expanded rapidly to create stars, planets and eventually life on Earth. The huge Collider, nestled far underground at the Franco-Swiss border, has begun to examine this theory by smashing atomic particles together.

And just to prove that the human race hasn't really progressed much since the Venerable Bede predicted the dates of Easter, we're scared of what might happen! Really. The fear is that the Collider will create tiny black holes that will literally suck in planet Earth.

Talk about suicide on a grand scale, this little opus could make us the laughing stock of the universe. (Hey, did you guys see what those Earth idiots did to themselves yesterday?)

Not to worry. Stephen Hawking -- the modern Bede -- says it can't happen, and even if it does, it'll be so quick you won't feel a thing!

A Point in Passing

How does a small coin exist in a void? I thought voids were, well, you know, void.

A VP Candidate?

OK OK, chances are pretty good that this pic is a Photoshop creation; some enterprising hack thought it would be funny/nasty/wild to put Sarah Palin's head on some hottie's body.

But what if it's real? Would you vote for someone who willingly posed in that outfit? If you've been doing your Jaxonia homework, the answer should be obvious. The picture, true or not, is irrelevant. It says nothing about issues or credentials and precious little about character.

Do NOT fabricate a life story or philosophy from a few pictures or a 30-second sound bite. READ... LISTEN...THINK!