“A man of 20 who’s not a liberal has no heart, and a man of 60 who’s not a conservative has no brain.” — variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill

Is it true? I don’t know, but it sure describes my experience.

We in America, lulled by years of prosperity, find it difficult to believe that barbarians still exist in the world.

But, yes, Virginia, there are humans who are not “civilized” as we know it. People who will kill you for your sneakers, and people who will torture you for the giggles of seeing you twist and scream. These are facts.

In our shrinking world, the far-away barbarians are now next door. With our transportation, communication, information, and weaponry, they’re here among us.

We got trouble. That’s a fact. And talking liberal at them won’t do a bit of good.

Some folks just need killing to dissuade them from their foolish ways. Maybe we don’t like that, but we don’t get to tell the Universe what’s true. We must have the humility to listen. The Universe will tell *us*.

And it’s telling us loud and clear, soldier.

February 9, 2006, Mount Shasta: Adrienne took two dogs to the dog park, but came home with three dogs.

Charlie is a cross between a beagle and a border collie. He has the dark eyes of a beagle, looking very much like Rudolph Valentino. We almost named him Valentino, because we carried him to the Humane Society for the mandatory one week, and then adopted him on Valentine’s day.

But he’s a rugged young fellow, and ‘Charlie’ sounded more down to earth. Not that he stays down to earth. He runs like the wind. When she takes him to the dog park, he leaps the fence like it was nothing, and runs far, far to the east, in and out of the bushes, and then far, far to the west. Now you see him. Now you don’t.

Other dog-park visitors call out, “Look! He’s over there!” and point. And then they cry, “And look! Now he’s way over there!”

Adrienne just smiles.

And, so far, he always comes back.

It’s wonderful to watch him run. He flashes across the field, hardly seeming to touch the ground.

How wonderful to be an animal. He helps me to remember.

Great Wall of China, January 13, 2005: With a friend, I hiked up the mountain on the Great Wall today. The air is crisp and cold, and it amazes me that men could carry stones to these remote mountains and build, and build, and build. I touch the stones, and feel the strong hands of men working in the cold so long ago, hundreds of years before Pilgrims arrived in America.

The mountains are shaped oddly to my eye. In fact, they’re the shape that you see in those misty watercolors, as you see here, going on, apparently, forever.

Mount Shasta: After my meeting with Henri earlier this year, in a far-away clime, we discovered that our second method book was written in only four days.

Started in a small hotel in downtown TianJin (about an hour’s drive north of BeiJing), once the writing was complete, then the real work began. It required about two months to then produce the 300+ measures of music, string graphs, and other illustrations, and to edit and remove errors and typos.

But now it’s done and available for sale on the EBay Megatar Store. This is Book Two of a series of six, and it’s entitled “Easy Touch-Style Rhythm.”

So if you’ve a hankering to play bass and walking bass, using our simple and powerful two-handed tapping method, grab yourself a copy and go boogie!

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

Humans in groups are generally clumsy, and damn few humans are skillful enough to actually create a Conspiracy.

That’s it. The vast majority of things that go wrong are doing so because humans can not work together, and not because some skillful group of humans is both effective and secret.

For example, let’s say that I’m concerned about global warming, and about fossel fuels, and about the gubbamint.

Does this mean that I decide to give up driving my Ford Focus grandly about the town?

Not at all.

Instead, I drive grandly about in the Ford Focus, worrying about global warming, fossel fuels, and blamingthe gubbamint. Blaming is so much easier than walking, as I drive grandly around in the Ford Focus.

And if there’s one thing a human knows how to do, it’s how to conserve energy. His own energy.

[See also Law 23 of Roommates and Dishes.]

So, just as a practical matter, getting together with a secret group of people in order to do something, doing it effectively and then still keeping it secret? Not usually likely.

It was our Foundering Father, Benjy Franklin, who said, “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

Humans, keeping a secret effectively? Naw!

Humans, operating effectively as a group? Haw!

Humans creating a conspiracy without shooting themselves in their collective feet? Pshaw!

So you can relax. They’re not really out to get you. You just got run over by ordinary human incompetence, greed, clumsiness, thoughtlessness, and avarice.

Feel better now?

There. Knowing this valuable Rule-O-Thumb, go forth and prosper.