Randomizer Volume V Series II

Because the thoughts keep coming and they are more then likely random. Plus I needed a breather from the immigration talk.

• Here's an excerpt from "The Eight Pillars of Greek Wisdom" regarding modern distractions and how the absence of them helped make Greece great. "The absence of artificial distractions permitted the mind to focus, and the scarcity of complexity let the most essential issues stand out....life was lived on a more human scale....Entertainment did not, as it does today, constantly saturate the consciousness r assault the eye with hyper stimulation....ours is a society deprived of the chance for deep thought. Unlike the problem faced by the prisoner in Plato's cave, our problem today is not too little light, but too much, a light so glaring that we cannot see what is real." Can I get an amen?
• U2 is now officially at the "Steven Spielberg" phase of their career. What do I mean? I mean that the supreme nature of their past work has granted their contemporary work a certain immunity from criticism. They once pushed the envelope and created a new paradigm. Now their work is fairly formulaic and the torch for ground breaking innovation has been passed on to another generation. We still love you but we've come to stop expecting a new Achtung Baby.
• We've been watching Mad Men on Netflix. It has singlehandedly taken the golden and some naive sheen that I had of pre-Vietnam America. Evidently AMC has set out to make the "American Dream" look as self absorbed, empty, and decrepit as possible.
  
• A few photos from the Mogollon Rim that were taken on a recent camping trip. Not many people realize this but there is some incredible country that is just an hour or so outside of Phoenix.