Just uploaded the third installment on the podcast, the first half of "Shepherds". And just submitted it to Itunes since it appears it didn't work through Libsyn. Hopefully now it can be found on Itunes. If not, you can syndicate it directly from the show's site on Libsyn.

Went to the doctor again today. Apparently the three days worth of antibiotics the doctor at Erlanger gave me didn't deal with the problem, whatever it is. So Dr. Jones gave me a prescription for Cipro. Yes. You heard me. Cipro. The nurse gave me the prescription and said "Cipro" and it was like the bulldog caught the parked car. I said, "What?! What do I have that is so bad it needs Cipro?!" So there was a bit of confusion until they assured me that there are far stronger antibiotics than Cipro and I told them I'm a postal worker and several postal workers were KILLED by Anthrax a few years ago and they were giving everybody else zip-loc baggies of Cipro... so. Every once in a while you really should hit that kind of mental brick wall. The sense of your whole mind suddenly being derailed is really quite refreshing.


Also found out my nifty electronic blood pressure thingy makes a far better paperweight since it's apparently unbelievably inaccurate. So I, quite naturally, asked the nurses which one I should get, where I should go, to which they replied with blank stares, shrugs, and mumbles of "I dunno." They said to ask the pharmacist. Why a pharmacist would know anything about electronic blood pressure monitors, I have not a clue. Basically all they said was "get a new machine" and then, inexplicably, could not tell me where or what. Oh, and just to be fair I *did* ask the pharmacist at Walgreens. He too shrugged and mumbled "I dunno." I trust my point is made.


The last couple days I have been thinking on a story told by Dr. Campbell about Sri Ramakrishna. The story goes, a woman came to Ramakrishna and said, "Master, I find that I do not love God. The concept just does not work for me." Ramakrishna said, "Is there nothing in the world that you love?" The woman said, "Yes, I love my little nephew." And Ramakrishna said, "There he is."

Whatever we love in the world, therein lies our God.

I have been thinking it's not just people. Whatever one's passion in life is, the qualities that it embodies for us are the qualities we identify most as God, whatever we call it. I've been thinking about this and asking myself what I love and why. Space, space exploration, scientific space exploration, writing, science-fiction. What does it all mean to me, what are these things vehicles for?

Hope. Endlessness. Cycles. The creative drive. Learning. Higher consciousness. Higher knowledge. Evolution.

I could call it Allah or Jehovah or Ralph. I just happen to call it the Force. And obviously my concept of it, the sum of all these qualities, is not the same as anyone else's. We all create our own gods. Or maybe we're just tuned to see the particular wavelengths of our own core values out of the myriadness of the entire Force. I think if we saw the entirety of it we'd go bug-nuts. We can't handle it.

So.

In between all this I've been thinking about Artificial Intelligence again.