Dreams - When I remember them, they seem to be trying to "tell me something", as if my brain, in doing it's nightly sorting and culling (or whatever it's doing while I sleep) has pulled out some bits of thought (typically not memories) and brought them to my attention so that when I wake, I will have a chance to ponder them more fully. I do not believe that dreams are prescient, giving us a view of our near future, but sometimes they have enough inappropriate emotional content that I wonder what is going on. In this particular dream (yes, I am telling you my dream, I'll try to not make it too damned boring), I was in the house that I lived in while I went to high school, and my sister had recently left, but called to tell me how things were going. However, I couldn't find a phone (only multiple answering machines with no way to "pick up"), and I became more and more frantic to talk with her (for no apparent "reason"), until finally I woke up, all in a tizzy because I hadn't been able to talk with my sister. This seemed very odd, given our current relationship (not a lot of talking these days, although always friendly), so I have no idea what it means.
In actual news (not my dream news), we homo sapiens have "landed" a probe on a comet (there being so little gravitational attraction between the lander and the comet that it seems to keep floating off), and one of the key scientists involved (Matt Taylor, who is getting a lot of press) appears to be wearing a Hawaiian shirt that was designed by the advertising team of Heavy Metal. This includes multiple renditions of scantily clad women in seductive poses. There seems to be an increasing backlash to his dress and his demeanor (which includes calling the comet sexy but not easy), and a lot of my women scientists friends decrying his blatant sexism, but so far it hasn't garnered a response (if the guy has even noticed the bad press). I sort of understand how someone can be misogynistic, or racist, or in anyway hateful of a group "different" from themselves, but the level of self-hatred and active denial of what is really going on inside of a person to engender such behavior is, I must admit, a bit of a mystery to me. Perhaps if I had been raised in an environment where hating others, particularly others simply because they were different from me, was a common place activity (the powers that be instructing me that hating them would make me feel better about myself) maybe then I'd understand. But every time I am confronted with someone who I want to blame for something, my next thought is "what's going on in me that I want to assign blame, or try to control or demean this person?", which pretty much takes all the joy out of hating them. I feel sorry for people who don't realize that they are injuring others by their behavior (and, inadvertently injuring themselves), and who hate in a vain and pointless effort to feel better (kind of like having a war for peace), but the worst part is changing such individuals is by no means easy, and needs to be done on a one-on-one basis (as far as I can tell). Sadly, learning to hate seems to be more conducive to group activity, which means one individual can easily spread hate and violence through many people, but the opposite is far less true. At least so far: maybe someone will figure out how to even the tables between love and hate someday.