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Just because I haven’t written about this for awhile.  I’ve exhausted most of the programs I really wanted to see, and now about half of my time is watching old episodes of Deep Space 9, and the other half searching for new programs, most of which are obvious shit before you get through one episode.
DS9 holds up for the most part.  There was one episode where they traveled back in time, to like the 1990s or something, and they had a thing called ‘The Interface’.  It was all clunky looking old computers with green letters, but they had the right idea.  Of course, the writing was on the wall, even then.  There are some characters I like a bit better than before, some less.  First time watching, when I was in my 30s, I had the hots for Kira Nerys.  Now, I find Jadzia Dax infinitely sexier.  Also, I’d kind of forgotten how obnoxious Julian Bashir can be.
Since “The Good Place” (which is one of the most original, and intelligent comedies, that’s ever been on TV), and Continuum, which I was kind of tired of by the time I got through it, I’ve been looking for something else worth binging on, and not quite finding it.  I’m watching two at the moment.  One is called Timeless, and it’s about a crew of time travelers whose job is to NOT interfere with the time line, while they chase another guy around who is most definitely screwing up the time line, and they can’t really trust their bosses, either, because they’re controlled by a weird cabal which has existed for centuries.  It’s not very good.  All of the characters are kind of lame, and the historical things are way over-simplified and it’s propaganda for the official narrative, at a level small children can understand.  Another is Limitless, based on the movie of the same name, which was an awesome movie, but this is more a cop show with a gimmick.  It has it’s entertaining moments, and it’s rare to see a positive aspect to drug use,  so I’ll give it a bit more time.
And keep looking.

It was a lovely, near perfect day at the cottage.  Now, the thing is, I normally don’t enjoy going to the cottage much.  Oh, I like my in-laws, but there’s no communication between us.  They don’t speak English, and they don’t go out of their way to communicate with me in Czech, either.  As often as not, conversations are conducted with my wife as translator.  The cottage is in a lovely region, but often everybody just stays in and watches TV.  So, I get bored.
But today we had to move a huge pile of dirt from the front yard, and make a pile of it in back of the house, inside the chicken’s pen.  So, that was a couple of hours of good, strenuous outdoor work.  If I did that on a more regular basis, I’d actually be losing weight.  And, it was a perfect day for it.  Cloudy, so not too hot, but everything is in bloom and it is a very lush region.
Lunch was a cabbage soup, with bits of sausage in it, and a dish that I will transliterate  as chevabchitzi, which is ground beef, but sausage shaped.
After lunch, we went to look at a house, because I often talk about setting up an English School in the country, and Kotelsko is a small enough village to count as country.  I was actually kind of hoping I’d find some glaring flaws, because setting up shop directly across the street from my wife’s parents, while it would have some advantages (assistance with routine repairs, extra accommodation for overflow guests), is not my dream situation.  But, it was actually kind of perfect.  So, we’ll see.  We can’t actually afford it, but we may give it a go anyway.
Then, we took a walk up the hill, saw how what used to be a sheep meadow has been transformed into a honey farm, and got a great view of the hills and forests all around, and Trosky (which means ruins, and they are), two towers of a castle on the highest mountain in the area, quite impressive, around 12th century I think.
Then we came home, which pleased me, because normally Helena wants to stay just as long as she can, and we get back late at night.  But, we were home plenty early, watched a movie (Patch Adams, which I’d never seen before.  Quite a beautiful piece of work.)
And that was my day.

I was on my own today because Sam was working and Helena accompanied Isabel to a dance competition which was out of town and they aren’t even home yet and it’s almost 1 a.m.  These things can go pretty late but I expected them in by midnight at the latest.
Anyway, I went for a lovely little walk in the afternoon, to smoke a joint and to try and work out a little poem that had been floating around in my noggin since I was out smoking a joint on the balcony this morning, just after everyone left.

The idea of the poem is what if we achieve a total knowledge of the universe and a sense of what it’s all about, like total enlightenment, then where do we go from there, like will life still be as interesting once we’ve solved all of our problems and everybody is working in concert.
I worked over to that semi-wild bit between us and the river, which is steadily turning into a modern, developed area of offices, homes and businesses, mostly offices and businesses actually.
First thing I saw was a couple of pheasants, just walking around.  Then, I couldn’t keep my joint lit, it was kind of windy, so I went up to the side of a tree to re-light, blocked a bit from the wind, and then as I walked away I saw a dead pheasant at my feet.  Then, as I walked on, I saw a drone fall from the sky.  I wasn’t sure what it was, I thought it might be another pheasant, falling dead, it seemed to be a pattern, but then I heard a beeping and walked over and saw it in the grass but I didn’t see anybody around, and from where I was you could see a long way around.  Anyway, no business of mine so I walked on.  Looked back at 50 meters or so and did see some fat kid come for it.
Then, I continued and eventually wound up walking through the new Dock In development, a whole new neighborhood being built all at once.  Most things were not open, some things are not completely built, but there was a trendy coffee place and a trendy juice bar, neither one of which had many people.  Then I walked through a street fair and back across the dam which sets the Dock In’s harbor apart from the Vltava, and looked down and saw a Nutria swimming.  They have become quite common in Prague in recent years, some ecologists say they are an invasive species and a pest, but I think they make an interesting addition.  Kind of like plump, rounded otters.  Then my footsteps turned homeward but, just before I left the wild prairie I saw three hares, just moseying along.
It was  a nice walk for wildlife, and I did finish the poem, and everybody’s home now and that’s my blog for tonight.

A lot has been written recently about how, scientifically, there is no such thing as race.  I hope it’s not racist of me to disagree, because I disagree.  In fact, I think this is PC nonsense.
Obviously, the people of Earth are not all of the same race.  We come in a variety of skin colors, and it’s not random.  Two white parents, from a small town in Minnesota, are not likely to have a black child.  If a white child is born in an African village, it’s an albino, not a Caucasian.  We have different skin colors and differently shaped and sized features, and they come from our parents, because our parents are the same race we are.  Sometimes that leads to a mix of races, but for somebody to be mixed race, there have to be races to mix.
Of course, the differences are within certain parameters.  We all have two eyes, two  ears, and a nose.  We are alike enough that we are attractive to each other, and can interbreed.  That just means that we are all of one species, not that we are all the same race.
“It’s just a social construct,” they say.  As are a lot of things, I suppose.  We define a table as an elevated flat surface, used to put things on, but it’s different from a chair or a shelf.  We classify animals as mammals because we give live birth and feed our babies on milk, but why don’t we classify animals according to the environment they live in, in which case the whale would truly be considered a fish.  But, we have decided on one set of criteria for purposes of classification, and there it is.
Same with race.  Social construct or not, it does reflect a real, and obvious, physical reality.  How we deal with it is another matter entirely.

Since they don’t have any attacks on Sanders which will actually stick – no serious scandals in his personal life and several decades of principled, honest and transparent public service – they like to attack his supporters.  We are obnoxious, we are uncompromising purists, and, which seems to offend them more than anything else, we are ‘self-righteous.’
This presents us with a quandary.  We are right.  We have been right all along.  When we said the primaries were rigged, we were right.  When we said they were cheating in Delaware, in West Virginia, in Nevada, Arizona, New York and California, we were right.  When we argued, back in 2016, in favor of universal health care, we were right.  Now over 70% of the American people are in favor of that.  When we argued in favor of a rise in the minimum wage and taxing the rich, we were right.  Now that Warren is running on those policies, and we point out that they are Bernie’s policies, they say we are being self-righteous.  When we say that we won’t accept any candidate who receives money from the oil, or pharmaceutical industries, they say we are being self-righteous, even though it’s clear that if a candidate accepts money from those industries, as almost all of them do, they will serve the interests of those industries and not the best interests of the people.

But, whenever we point out that Bernie has been right all along, they say we are being ‘self-righteous.’
Of course, being self-righteous is not a virtue.  It implies arrogance, inflexibility, and a lack of humility.  But actually being right is not only a virtue, it is the one thing we should be looking for in a presidential candidate.  And Bernie has been right all along.
If it’s self-righteous of me to point that out, so be it.