More Meaningless Meandering Musings from a Mediocre Mind, by Dave Barrows

If no one reads A blog does the blog exist? At this stage who cares. Have something to say then say it. Perhaps one day someone will look at it. In the old days, the printed word meant something. It was not easy to get material published. There were letters and correspondence but that hardly counted unless you were meaningful not mediocre.

1. In high school, back in the dark ages, we were forced to read Shakespeare. What a joke! How can a high school student understand: “To be or not to be that is the question.” Perhaps if you are a suicidal teenager. As you get older Shakespeare makes sense:

• “You speak an infinite deal of nothing.
• “Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
• “Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.”
• “Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream”
• “Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.”
• “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
• “Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
• “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
•  “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
• “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
• “This above all: to thine own self be true,
  And it must follow, as the night the day,
  Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
• “We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
• “All the world's a stage,
  And all the men and women merely players;
  They have their exits and their entrances;
  And one man in his time plays many parts.”
• “Cowards die many times before their deaths;
  The valiant never taste of death but once”.
• “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
• “All that glisters is not gold”.

2. Science or religion. Reports of near-death experiences—with tales of white light, visits from departed loved ones, hearing voices, among other attributes—capture our imagination… activity was detected in the so-called hot zone of neural correlates of consciousness in the brain, the junction between the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes in the back of the brain. This area has been correlated with dreaming, visual hallucinations in epilepsy, and altered states of consciousness in other brain studies.

3. The Vietnamese are coming. We need to fight a war to save democracy (1960’s). Fast forward to today. The Vietnamese electric car manufacturer VinFast has delivered the first units of its most affordable model, the VF 5 Plus, which has a starting price of around $20,000 (converted from VND 458 million) in its home market. In the United States, the small VinFast model is not part of the Vietnamese carmaker’s lineup. Instead, the East Asian company is focusing on its bigger models for the North American market, where it hopes to capture the attention of customers with the VF 8 and VF 9 electric SUVs.