"In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me -- and by that time, no one was left to speak up."
                                      -- Pastor Martin Niemoller
Ramblings

Well  here it is.  My  "ramblings".  Some of my ideas about philosophy, politics, and just about everything. Even that is a part of my philosophy: that everything is interconnected, and nothing can be looked at in isolation.  Some things I say will give you a laugh. Others may make you angry. Still others may make you say "Oh yeah..."
 

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Check back often. This page will undergo a lot of evolution.

Apples
Lint

Apples
Remember the old days, when you could bite into an apple, and taste and eat only the apple ( get one without worms, please )?  Try this: take an apple, and a sharp knife or razor blade.  Hold the cutting edge at right angles to the skin of the apple and scrape it.  You will get a pile of some substance that looks like wax. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that all apples should be covered by this wax like substance.  Great.  Now I can't eat one without ingesting this substance, which is registered with the Department of Agriculture as an INSECTICIDE! Now, even though it is registered as an insecticide, it doesn't kill any insects, so I doubt it would have very toxic properties. What I do worry about, however, is the fact that this stuff does not wash off, and any insecticide that was sprayed on the fruit cannot be washed off.

I talked to some produce venders, and this stuff is on almost every fruit and vegetable available.  Allegedly it protects the fruit/vegetable, but I think the real reason is to give it a shiny appearance, so the brain dead public will think they are getting a better product. Cut open a shiny, red apple and chances are the inside will be green.  Sign of the times. Bright and gaudy on the outside, bitter and unripe on the inside. ( is Bill Gates the culprit? )

And please, don't tell me to peel the apple. Anyone who knows about nutrition knows that 95% of the food value is in the skin.  The plant creates the sweet pulp only to lure dumb animals to eat the fruit, in order to spread the seeds ( fruit always has seeds, doesn't it? ).

Finally, another insult to the apple. At least in supermarkets, all apples now get their own label. I think this is to compensate for checkout people who can't distinguish a Winesap from a Macintosh ( BG again? ), but now, in addition to the wax, I have to try to peel off a tiny label that was designed to be hard to remove, thus leaving adhesive residue on the apple.

Lint
You don't usually pay much attention to day-to-day chores, but next time you dry clothes in a clothes dryer, notice the lint filter. The filter accumulates lint throughout the drying process, and it doesn't really matter if the clothes are new or old, the filter still gets loaded.  This leads to the inescapable conclusion that clothing is really just made of lint.  Long fibers of lint strung together.

I suppose if you continued washing and drying the clothing, long after it is no longer wearable, it would simply disappear, little by little being peeled off the lint filter. Which brings up another question.  Could these lint fibers be recycled into new cloth?  Can you imagine a new recycling bin:  bottles, paper, plastics, lint. Remember, you saw it here first.

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