Those are the steps that have led me to this forum and the topic of “inquiry” in general.
I was amazed many years ago in college at the effect of a macramé’ volcano my roommate keep on the wall. It was rich and deep with a “molten lava pool” appearing at the center of an up-thrusted mountain surrounding the pool. Then the bright yellow lava flowing down the sides of the volcano. We laughed at the sexually suggestive effect of the image. Then counted the number of couples united by its power.
That led me to a study of imagery in books by Carl Jung and others.
Many years later I stumbled across the “darwin fish” image, and was intrigued by its power to unite and focus non-believers and irate xtians.
Spanning all these years, I read a lot about dreams and what can be learned from them. That led to an appreciation of the power of thought and “self dialogue” on my life. A delightful little book titled “As Man Thinketh” by James Allen found its way into my life to spin lots of these ideas together.
At one point I found myself living in what had become a hotbed of religious intolerance and activism ( Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA). I saw my more liberal, rational friends feeling lost and overwhelmed. I began getting involved with social groups formed to counter the continuous pressure of government-endorsed religiosity.
That led to the formation of a “Freethought” group where we could gather and discuss our ideas and passions. The power of visual imagery on the people drawn to the group was soon obvious. The “Darwin Fish” on the literature table at each meeting was constantly being picked up while the stack of 8x11 sheets of white paper with print on them were ignored.
That led me to seek VISUAL ways to promote Freethought and “inquiry”. That passion slowly took over my life, pulled me away from my real job, and sucked me into the disrespectable field of collecting and selling visual novelties that promote rational, freethought ideas and lifestyles.
As I now spend vastly more hours earning a living than I ever did when I had a “real job, and most of these hours are spent at a computer, I am constantly looking for computer-based audio material to make the long hours seem less oppressive.
So when I heard about Point Of Inquiry, it quickly became a favorite. Along with Mike Malloy, Thom Hartmann and Rachel Maddow. Now if DJ would just start doing 10 programs a week, I would be very happy.
I hope a picture will be displayed near this note. It is an image of Billy Graham that I found on a popular USA magazine recently. Graham is a powerful xtian evangelist in the USA. While the content of the article praised this man’s influence over USA politics, the cover image placed the two tops of the letter “M” directly behind his head. This creates an image that could be seen as a pair of HORNS. I am curious if this might cause some vague and certain feelings of discomfort among the devil-fearing xtians in our society.
It also looks like cat ears too, but that would be an insult to cats. I don’t think they would want him as one of them either. 
