Many Nigerians ask me why I care about Nigerian politics. In these remarks, I explain why I care about Nigeria, why I am Obident, why Tinubu belongs in prison, and why Tinubu will destroy Nigeria.

FAQ: Why I care about Nigeria, why Tinubu belongs in prison, and why Tinubu will destroy Nigeria.

Noam Chomsky on atheism, religion, the scientific method, morality, and nationalism. This file contains copyrighted sound. It is disseminated for  educational purposes and falls under the "fair use" provisions of British and US copyright law and therefore is not a copyright infringement.

Noam Chomsky on atheism, religion, the scientific method, morality, and nationalism

On Nov 12, 1971, on the eve of Mariner 9 going into Mars' orbit, Ray Bradbury took part in a symposium at Caltech. In this audio, Bradbury reads his poem "If Only We had Taller Been."

If Only We Had Taller Been

The fence we walked between the years
Did balance us serene
It was a place half in the sky where
In the green of leaf and promising of peach
We’d reach our hand to touch and almost touch the sky
If we could reach and touch, we said
‘Twould teach us, not to, never to be dead.

We ached and almost touched that stuff
Our reach was never quite enough
If only we had taller been
And touched God’s cuff, His hem
We would not have to go with them
Who've gone before
Who, short as us, stood as tall as they could stand
And hoped by stretching tall that they might keep their land
Their home, their heart, their flesh and soul
But they, like us, were standing in a hole.

O, Thomas, will a race one day stand really tall
Across the void, across the Universe and all
And, measured out with rocket fire
At last put Adam’s finger forth
As on the Sistine ceiling
And God’s hand come down the other way
To measure man and find him good
And gift him with forever’s day
I work for that

Short man, large dream, I send my rockets forth between my ears
Hoping an inch of good is worth a pound of years
Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal mall:

We’ve reached Alpha Centauri!
We’re tall, O God, we’re tall!

---

Poem copyright by Ray Bradbury. Posted based on Fair use for education purposes only.

Ray Bradbury Reads His Poem "If Only We Had Taller Been"

Noam Chomsky describes the rols of propaganda in professional sports

Noam Chomsky: Propaganda And Professional Sports

Jealousy by Jeffrey Guterman

Jealousy (Now and Then) Music Video : Jeffrey Guterman.

Part 1: Recorded in Miami Shores, Florida, 07/10.12

Part 2: Audio recorded at Loconto Studios, Sunrise, Florida, 1988. All instruments by Jeffrey Guterman. Video recorded and edited at Miami Beach, Florida, 2006.

Song "Jealousy" words and music by Jeffrey Guterman. Copyright 1988 by Jeffrey Guterman. All rights reserved.

Jealousy by Jeffrey Guterman

$aving Donald Trump 2.0

Marco Rubio repeats same scripted line four times during GOP debate

Medley Of Songs By Jeffrey
Copyright by Jeffrey Guterman
All music and vocals by Jeffrey Guterman

Medley Of Songs By Jeffrey

A Conversation With Terence McKenna: Predictions In 1998 For 2012

Excerpt from "Final Earthbound Interview with Terence McKenna" (1998) via  http://www.realitysandwich.com. Full interview at https://youtu.be/NCaK35DQ4uk.

TRANSCRIPT: Well, novelty is not necessarily good or nice. Novelty is complex. That's what it is. And so I see, really, a concatenation of tendencies and forces here at the end. It's only going to get weirder. The level of contradiction is going to rise excruciatingly even beyond the excruciating present levels of contradiction. So I think it's just going to get weirder and weirder and weirder, and finally it's going to be so weird that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is. And at that point novelty theory can come out of the woods because eventually people are going to say: "What the hell is going on!?" It's just too nuts. It's not enough to say it's nuts. You have to explain why it's so nuts. So between now [1998] and 2012, the next 14 years, I look for the invention of artificial life, the cloning of human beings, the possible contact with extra-terrestrials, possible human immortality and, at the same time, appalling acts of brutality, genocide, race-baiting, homophobia, famine, starvation because the systems which are in place to keep the world sane are utterly inadequate to the forces that have been unleashed. The collapse of the socialist world, the rise of the Internet, these are changes so immense, nobody could imagine them ever happening. And now that they have happened, nobody even bothers to mention what a big deal it is. The fact that there is no such thing as the Soviet Union: People never talk about it anymore. But when I was a kid, the notion that that would ever change was beyond conceiving.

So the good news is that as primates we're incredibly adaptable to change. Put us in a desert, we survive. Put us in the jungle, we survive. Under Hitler, we survive. Under Nixon, we survive. We could put up with about anything. And it's a good thing because we're going to be tested to the limits. The breakdown of anything... And this is why the right-wing is so alarmed. Because what they see going on is the breakdown of all tradition, all order, all sanctioned norms of behavior. And they're quite right that it's happening. But they're quite wrong to conclude that it should be resisted or is somehow evil. The mushroom said to me once, it said: "This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for the stars." You don't depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions; it's a fire in a mad house. And that's what we have. The fire in a mad house at the end of time. This is what it's like when a species prepares to move on to the next dimension. The entire destiny of all life on the planet is tied up in this. We are not acting for ourselves or from ourselves. We are, we happen to be the point species on a transformation that will effect every living organism on this planet at its conclusion.

A Conversation With Terence McKenna

Opening lines from book, Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We live on a planet that is all but perfect for our kind of life. Not too warm and not too cold. Basking in kindly sunshine, softly watered. A gently spinning green and gold harvest festival of a planet. Yes alas there are deserts and slums. There is starvation and racking misery to be found. But take a look at the competition. Compared with most planets, this is paradise. And parts of earth are still paradise by any standards.   

What are the odds that a planet picked at random will have these complacent properties? Even the most optimistic calculation would put it at less than one in a million. Imagine a spaceship full of sleeping explorers, deep-frozen would be colonists of some distant world. Perhaps the ship is on a mission to save the species before an unstoppable comet like the one that killed the dinosaurs. The voyagers go into the deep freeze soberly reckoning the odds against their spaceship's ever chancing upon a planet fertile for life. If one in a million planets is suitable at best, and it takes centuries to travel from each star to the next, the spaceship is pathetically unlikely to find a tolerable let alone safe haven for its sleeping cargo. But imagine if the ship's robot pilot turns out to be unthinkably lucky. After millions of years it does find a planet capable of sustaining life. A planet of equitable temperature bathed in warm star shine refreshed by oxygen and water. The passengers, Rip Van Winkles, wake stumbling into the light. After a million years of sleep here is a whole new fertile globe, a lush planet of warm pastures, sparkling streams, and waterfalls. A world bountiful with creatures darting through alien green velocity. Our travelers walk entranced. Stupefied. Unable to believe their unaccustomed senses or their luck.     

The story asks for too much luck. And yet isn't it what has happened to each one of us? We have woken after hundreds of millions of years asleep defying astronomical odds. Admittedly we didn't arrive by spaceship. We arrived by being born. And we didn't burst conscious into the world but accumulated awareness gradually through babyhood. The fact that we gradually apprehend our world rather than suddenly discovering it should not subtract from its wonder. It is no accident that our kind of life finds itself on a planet whose temperature, rainfall, and everything else are exactly right. If the planet were suitable for another kind of life, it that other kind of life that would have evolved here. But we as individuals are still hugely blessed. Privileged. And not just privileged to enjoy our planet. More, we're granted the opportunity to understand why our eyes have opened and why they see what they do in the short time before they close forever.  

We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones

Noam Chomsky:  If Trump Becomes President

Jeffrey Guterman

Popular tracks