Shop 'til you drop. Or until they drop..

We heard news this week that seemed unbelievable.. At least unfathomable. Shoppers at a New York Wal-Mart acted like savages all for cheap foreign made goods .. All to save a few bucks on a Christmas gift that will one day be discarded like all other material possessions on earth. Knocking someone down is one thing, but taking the life of a temporary worker just trying to make enough to get through life is the part that can give you the chills. The mob of giftseekers is now being looked at closely by police, who want to try to determine what person trampled the 34-year-old that stood at the door when the bargain hunters stormed into the Wal-Mart..

Here today .. making a buck. Gone tomorrow.. due to a frantic crowd that seemed to have lost its sense of purpose.

Is this where we are as a country? Are we here at a place where common sense and morality don't matter? Instead, does it only matter to "have" things .. "have" items..? Is it more important to own things than it is to be a part of life? Is it more meaningful for some to buy until the bank account is drained than to give over the holidays? Have our children become so spoiled that we don't even care that so many can't read when they graduate? So spoiled that parents will spill into stores looking for the highest priced items as a show of love and affection..?

Those material possessions will rot away, just like all of us. The interesting thing is that our flesh and blood will rot even faster than plastic and paint..

There is no reason that a crowd in America should even take the life of another human being in a shopping frenzy.. Equally, there should never be a time when the same crowd appears to show no remorse after they do trample him to death..
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The TIMES OF INDIA has a headline today: "IT'S WAR" .. It reminded me of the days after 9/11 when the New York papers had headlines like "WAR" and "BASTARDS!" .. It's a frightening time in life.. Terrorism seems to be making a comeback, and increased fears are being reported of an attack greetings Barack Obama in his first days in office.. But what is also scary is what the TIMES of INDIA says in today's editorial: "Constitutional experts must put their hands together to see whether under existing laws any special, but temporary, powers can be given to the security agencies. All major political parties should be taken into confidence to see what urgent steps can be taken to prevent the nation from sinking deeper into chaos. There is a pressing need to restructure India's security architecture. A federal agency to deal with terrorism has been suggested by this newspaper and now by the PM. A coordinated effort to process information gleaned by state and central agencies should help to transform randomly collected information into actionable intelligence"

India: We've been there, done that. The new agency doesn't always work well, and on the Constitutional liberties issue? I won't even go there.. There are some things that could make terrorism win, and one of those things would be giving up Constitutional liberties.

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Did you know they found a piece of wood on Mars? No really... Did you know they did?

Some people would have us believe that this is a piece of wood. Now, photos from that many light years away could always be deceiving, but a few experts tend to believe that the "wood" is actually sedimentary rock on Mars. But that's not stopping several websites from speculating on where the wood came from .. Maybe Noah's ark was a spaceship after all? Water may prove life on Mars exists.. Wood may simply prove lumbering once did..

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First the bees disappeared .. now acorns!? Squirrels going hungry throughout the world!

In a story that doesn't make me laugh but instead, as the bee thing, worry, botanists throughout the country have been popping up asking where all the acorns are this year.. I can say from personal memory, last year was a tough year for head injuries. You could hardly walk outside the house without a squirrel tossing acorns down on the ground. It like a warzone.. acorns raining down constantly in attacks from the trees. But this year, nothing. I had a few passing thoughts about it earlier this fall, the time when my car would be covered in the morning with acorns. There weren't really any.. At all, and now message boards and discussion groups have been popping up on the Internet to talk about the new conundrum of botany .. A reason to worry, if you're a squirrel. A reason to pay close attention if you're a human..

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BRYAN SMOLOCK SCHMUCKRAKER.COM SUNDAY NOVEMBER 30 2008 8:08 AM EDT

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