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Monday, September 29, 2014

eBook Publishing at Amazon

Recently I made the move from imminent author to eminent with the publication of two manuscripts. Well, I flatter myself with the “eminent” moniker, but then if I don’t who will? I will strive to justify my lofty opinion. After all I am out standing in my field and the hay fever is killing me. The first book is “Ruminations of a Bird Brain” narrated by a pigeon who believes he is a human wrapped in the body of the pigeon. Well, maybe, who knows if when a pigeon is pecking the ground he may be thinking lofty or at the very least silly bugger thoughts. First I listed the book for sale and it can be found at this web address: http://www.amazon.com/Ruminations-Bird-Brain-Robert-Carlson-ebook/dp/B00NKGI0LM After actually the book up and “live” for review and purchase, I made a short Youtube Video to describe it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JlAbFLVtjs
With a modest initial success I finished a second offering about a relative of a relative who left this world at a young age. He either left us behind on his journey or we left him behind on ours. It is all in the centricity of the reader. “That Boy in the 8MM Film” is about that boy, Nicky as we knew him, who grew up before our eyes and then suddenly was gone. What were the circumstances of that departure? What was his life like? Everyone who knew Nicky, but no one really knew him. This second offering is at the Amazon site: http://www.amazon.com/That-Boy-Film-Robert-Carlson-ebook/dp/B00NN1RFM4 Just like the other book, I prepared a Youtube video that includes a short reading from near the beginning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWNnJ0r7s98
It is my hope that you will visit the pages listed above and read more about the books. Most of all buy the books.
My eBooks by Robert Carlson Listing at Youtube
Enjoy.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

Small Worlds

Small Worlds

Parodying the Las Vegas slogan and stealing the joke I quote "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Unless it’s a case of Herpes because that will follow you home." It's funny and not funny at the same time. The reason is because while Herpes is a nuisance it doesn't kill you with massive organ failure and hemorrhaging from every orifice.

There once was a time when both good news and bad news traveled at the same speed. That speed was the speed of a galloping horse and the days it took to sail a boat across the water. The news could be birth of a royal heir, the death of a monarch, or war declared or ended. It could be the ordinary letters between family or lovers. On the flipside, it could be the virus in the fleas on the backs of rats. It could be an invasive land animal or a seed that blew on then off the deck to procreate and choke out indigenous species.

Sailing around the globe moved such bad actors as bubonic plague into the realm of weeks of travel time. The invention and refinement of air travel has made such horrors into realities that we must guard against as every juncture. One cannot afford to miss the indicators of infection lest we allow one of those epidemic vectors to reach around the globe and touch us here in the USA.

Europe must be vigilant for their protection. Everyone must be cautious for their own good. While everyone is responsible, it is up to the people who have the resources to track, treat and prevent the spread of disease to do so for everyone's sake.

Recently, Dr. Kent Brantley, the doctor who traveled to Africa to work on treating people who contracted the deadly Ebola virus became ill himself. While he has been improving in recent days, the 90% fatality rate is a bleak statistic. Such selfless acts has prompted one of America's premier analpores, Ann Coulter, to write that he was idiotic to go there to save those people.

While a person such as Ms. Coulter would never expose herself to such a risk for anyone's sake, People like Dr. Brantley do. His work may not save very many people who are infected, but the greater outcome is to stop others from becoming sick in the first place. That is the far more important thing to accomplish. We will not know, but he might have saved Ms. Ann from his fate by stopping the contagion that is now sweeping West African nations.

Ann Coulter's approach to containment would be to stop Africans from flying off the continent thereby stopping the spread. What she doesn't account for is that there are thousands of Americans, Europeans and Asians who fly to Africa and back for their business activities. Any one of them could become the vector that makes Ebola jump the ocean.

The stupid remarks that issue from the mouth of Ms. Coulter and others like her, Donald Trump comes to mind, that will add to the spread of the disease. It is doctors and other aid workers who will save us from this terrible fate.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Thoughts on the Relative Good of Something.


The gravity that holds the planets in their clockwork paths and pulls the tides will one day crash another asteroid into our planet.

Gravity that makes it possible for hot air to rise, clouds to float high above our heads and people to stand sideways at the equator also kills us when we slip off the precipice.

Wind drag that slows our cars and makes us consume more gasoline also makes it possible for birds to soar and airplanes to fly.

Fire that warms our bodies and makes food more palatable will also consume our homes and sleeping children.

The sun that raises water from the oceans to make rain upon the land will also burn our skin and make cancers that will kill us.

Alcohol that makes us feel good and sociable will also make it easy to crash our cars.

The aperture (of our eyes) severely limits the amount of what we can see but it makes images possible at all.

Food will sustain our lives but too much will make us fat.

Nuclear power plants give us electricity without carbon loading of the atmosphere but it leaves us with 10,000 years of toxic radiation wastes.

Morphine makes a crushed limb bearable to live with while it heals but it can also take over ones life and destroy it.

A stick of dynamite can clear an ice jammed river or bring horror to a open-air market.

A child can be a beautiful being to behold who grows up to be a great teacher or the next serial murderer.

Taxes can fund medical services for all, build great cities in which to live, support higher education and buy bullets and bombs to kill and destroy.

Fossil fuels have made our society possible and raised humankind from the muck and mire but it also heats our biosphere to a point where we may not continue to comfortably live.

Herbicides, Pesticides and fertilizers make the present-day crop yields possible to feed the world, but these same agents slowly modify and kill our bodies.

Death causes us grief and sorrow at the loss of loved ones, but without it we would not be able to live on this planet for very long.

Life without death would cause horrors beyond comprehension.

Decay dismantles all of our edifices, turns virile bodies into frail elderly adults, and spoils our food but without it where would a dead rat go? Ten million dead rats?

If this world was perfect how could anything move?

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen.

The heavy elements were crushed into existence in the center of dying stars that exploded and gave us carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, nickel, iron, arsenic, plutonium, uranium…

Nuclear reactors make heat for steam to generate electricity and they make plutonium for bombs.

A bullet can save you from a predator or take the life of your spouse in the heat of anger.