Part of questioning everything is to be suspicious of things you are “told” to be truth. If it doesn’t make sense it probably isn’t. That’s a version of Occam’s Razor that I follow. Another is that actions have consequences. Every decision we make in life causes some effects down the road. How does all of this relate to the title of this post? While I … Continue reading Don’t Put It On God…Shit Happens…
I don’t know whether to give credit to El Nino or global warming for the forecast above but I welcome it whichever it is. I always dread mid-January to mid-February here in the Midwest as it is for the most part bitterly cold, windy, and often snowy and that is a combination that gets me down.  I am one of those who get pretty seriously depressed … Continue reading Snow Birds…By Necessity..
I have been ignoring my macro photography for too long now so took this picture of our Christmas cactus a while ago. Softened it up to give it a soft and airy feel Continue reading Soft and Airy…
But, first, letâs look at an unusual way of running a business, by having your employees own the company. One popular craft brewery has made a name for itself in part by going that route, with strong results so far…. One of things that we think is a big societal issue is this widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. And we realized that … Continue reading Shared Equity vs Pure Capitalism…
There are a lot of improvements waiting to be made in our national tax structure but reducing tax brackets should be a very low priority in the work. The loop holes put into the structure over the years needs immediate changes. It’s time to throw them all out and start over again and only add them back with a lot of restraint! It is a … Continue reading The case for more tax brackets
I must admit, at least in my senior years, I am a rebel rouser of the Don Quixote variety. That is I seemingly fight for lost causes. Things like less killing because of an overabundance of guns in our society or that we Christians should start acting like Christians. The latter is the topic for this post. For so many years I comfortably fell into … Continue reading Christianity Is Hard…
I spend a lot of time at my iMac and iPad so I am used to seeing this type of message. If it was only that easy…. Continue reading If It Was Only That Easy…
Some people seem amazed that I have put out about 400 posts a year for over five years here at RJsCorner! But in reality I usually struggle to limit it to that many! đ I often, like today, have at least twenty posts ready to go online. No, I don’t spend all day at my computer writing. In fact I usually spend no more than … Continue reading Being Creative…
I don’t know if the “all you can eat” is just an American thing or is it more world wide? But I do know that obesity is a very prevalent in America.  Kind of like our obese military budget we rule the world when it come to overweight. I will readily admit that I, like most American I think, have a weight problem. I … Continue reading All You Can Eat….
Is it a bad thing that I want to consume less this year than I did last year? This is a question I have been contemplating lately. Although I am not making out a specific list for 2016 I have decided to shed myself of much of the stuff I own and to not spend so much this year. It sounds like a noble goal … Continue reading Spending Less…
I think for too long weâve made Jesus just one character or episode in the Bible. If we want to see God, we look to Jesus. In Hebrews 1:3, the writer says that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father. So I think that if we could recapture that centrality of Christ in our churches through our teaching, our worship, our way of life, … Continue reading Evolving Faith…
I never tire of taking more pictures of the winter cardinals in the old apple tree in our backyard. As always they are gobbling up the sunflower seeds at our feeder after the recent winter storm. Click on the image to see a larger version… Continue reading Winter Cardinals in the Old Apple Tree
Of course the editorial cartoon above my Paul Combs is an exaggeration but it certainly has more than an ounce of truth in it. The media just seems to dominate almost everything in our lives now days. Cell phones are now on every restaurant table and are the main focus of those diners even to the exclusion of those sitting across the table from them. … Continue reading The Power of the Media
I wanted to spend a little more time in reflecting on my recent trip to Branson MO the week before Christmas. This one has an artsy touch đ Continue reading Reflections…
Just a quick pic that I took recently. The blue clip is to keep the racoons from stealing the suet đ Continue reading Birds In Flight
Call it what you want but I kind of wonder what all the deniers are saying about this winter season? Certainly they can’t deny that things are much different this year than last. Tornadoes in December are just not normal and neither are blizzards in the south and balmy weather in the north. When we visited the Southwest last April I simply fell in love … Continue reading El Nino… Climate Change…
Here is my favorite junkyard of all time. It is located in La Fruto Colorado and I discovered it in April 2015 while traveling the back roads to from Santa Fe to Denver… (click on it to see a larger image) Continue reading My Favorite All Time Junkyard
From the title it is hard to determine where this post is going. We can be wrong about almost anything in this life and there seems to always be someone around to alert us of that fact. If we get something set in our minds that just isn’t true then we are the worst kind of wrong. But… that is not where this post is … Continue reading Were We Wrong??
The title for this post should be used every time another senseless death occurs because of unstable people getting their hands on guns. If the current batch of politicians are so afraid of the NRA then it is time for them to go…. no matter their party affiliation. Continue reading Killed by the NRA…
This is going to be one of those posts that wrenches my heart. It was one of the most tragic days of my life. When my mother abandoned my father leaving him with two very young boys we changed from a two-income family to one very low payed bread winner who struggled daily to make ends meet. Dad was never much of the communicator so … Continue reading About Poverty… A Very Personal Story
Here is an afternoon thought to chew on….. Continue reading Cowboy Jihadists……
After the recent post about not judging the past by the criteria of the present, my heroes have been on my mind. The two most influential founders of our country were Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. They were the most dominant thinkers of that period and are among my primary heroes. One of the things that draw me to them is that I like to … Continue reading Being a Writer… Jefferson Style
Some of the biggest problems today are caused by religious certainty. People who are very certain that their religion is better than all the others tend to want to impose the rules laid out in their Holy Book on everyone. They have little respect for the fact that some people are guided by other Holy Books, and other equally valid types of ideals based on … Continue reading Religious Certainty…
I can’t help myself with this one… it is too funny to resist… It would be a very tough choice deciding which side of the wall I wanted to reside Continue reading Too Funny To Resist…
Sometimes it seems that the NRA is a police force who forces “their” laws on the rest of us. They have such a strangle hold on so many politicians as to get their way even when it is opposed by a vast majority of our citizens. Realizing that we have more gun violence in a day than Great Britain has in a year should be … Continue reading Move Along…
LaVoy Finicum says the Feds won’t take him alive One of the armed protesters occupying a federal wildlife refuge in rural Oregon said he would rather die defending the building than be arrested by the FBI. Source: Oregon Occupier Warns FBI Heâd Take Death Over Jail | TIME I guess that not all the nuts in the country are running for president. Some of them … Continue reading Let Me See If I Got This Right?
Being the beginning of a new year I am going to try and get some things off my chest so maybe I won’t fret about them all year. This is one of those posts. Take it with an ounce of truth and a pound of jest. đ Maybe I should erase my “About Me” page here as it probably quickly pushes some people away from … Continue reading Old Guys Just Aren’t Very Popular on the Web…
If strong enough, the storm of electrons and other charged particles from an EMP could disrupt the Earth’s magnetic field, disable satellites and the internet, ground all commercial aviation, silence telecommunications, and fry much of the electrical grid â catapulting our society back to the 19th century for months or years. Peter Pry, executive director of the federal EMP Task Force on National and Homeland … Continue reading As If We Didn’t Have Enough To Fear…
I would really like to hear the words in the title of this post much more in the near future, at least from the wingnuts who have current control of the GOP. But in reality the title means that I will not be posting anymore about those yahoos until at least some of us have the opportunity to vote for or against them. It seems … Continue reading I Am Suspending My Campaign..
In fact, friends invariably called the 28-year-old Farook a âvery nice person,â while his landlord even described him as a âvery gentle person.â He enjoyed working on old cars and shooting hoops. For her part, the 29-year-old Malik was seen as âa good girlâ and a good student who aspired to be a pharmacist. Before dressing in austere Islamic clothing, she was even viewed as … Continue reading The Root Cause of Much of Today’s Terrorism
In fact, religion is invariably a tangle of contradictory teachings â in the Bible, the difference between the harshness of Deuteronomy and the warmth of Isaiah or Luke is striking â and itâs always easy to perceive something threatening in another tradition. Yet analysts who have tallied the number of violent or cruel passages in the Quran and the Bible count more than twice as … Continue reading How Well Do You Know Religion?
Here is a thought that all us “mature” folks need to realize going into this new year. But even more so it needs to be learned by those at the other end of the message. Life teaches each of us lessons. Whether we use them to become better people is up to each of us. Continue reading Some Thoughts Going Into This New Year..
Here is wishing you all a Happy New Year filled with promise and hope. Yeah I know it is a presidential election year so it will be a dirty one but here is hoping that you will be able to ignore as much of that as possible but not so much as to not be able to come to an informed decision this coming November. Continue reading Happy New Years!!!
RJ's Corner 