today while I was picking raspberries, I found a wild blackberry bramble growing and fruiting right there next to my (relatively tame) raspberry patch. What a luxury and rarity -- I got something for nothing! Thanks to the birds for their droppings in my yard!
Eating fresh fruit out of my garden usually makes me feel a kind of haughty pity (which I wish was just pure compassion) for people who only ever eat their berries out of plastic boxes from supermarket shelves, which "berries" taste almost nothing like the fruit they claim to be, and which have been pumped full of chemical fertilizers, coated with chemical pesticides, picked before ripe (to increase the length of shelf-life), shipped across thousands of miles (usually), and sold at a high price that fluctuates regularly according to the performance of the market, and the availability of the crop.
this is much like what I feel about knowledge lately, innocent fresh young ripe ideas. these days, the average consumer is sold ideas that have been guarded jealously from the moment of conception (to protect them in their infancy from competitor-pests), developed overly quickly for the sake of budget, slapped into a sleek contract/patent box, pushed through whatever arm of government controls their regulation and/or market, and sold to consumers/citizens-of-the-world at great cost, in a guise that little resembles their original/natural form; aren't they paler, blander, older, less nutritious, and possibly even toxic/harmful, much like those supermarket raspberries? And, when's the last time you were browsing the supermarket shelves and they were giving away free food? When's the last time you were in a Borders and they were giving away free books & CDs? Or a BestBuy and they were giving away free (good) software?
The nice thing about the Web: there're a lot of good ideas here that you can get for nothing. Thanks to the writers/programmers/bloggers/people for their droppings into cyberspace...
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