Thoughts from the Year 2006Thoughts from the Year 2006First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms ..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live in us forever.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard
of.
They actually sided with the law!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
We have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
From Ypsilanti classmate JOYCE
PERRY-WILSON
There is a group at UCLA with a web page listing liberal professors
-- claiming that these are teaching political views as opposed to their
subject.. The web site sponsor is paying people to populate this
page with pejorative information. This is just another shade of
the rightwing attempts to suppress free speech by intimidation.
Minor but effective -- this is the definition of insidious. More
effective was my daughter's Boca Raton, Florida high school history
teacher using Richard Nixon's book on Vietnam as the only history text
on the war. This is like teaching Mein Kampf to explain why the
Jews had to be killed.
By the way, has anyone noticed that the strange crimes are again
happening in Florida? There is the sex offender who entered an
English high school as royalty. There are the two boys who beat
up and kill homeless people. I have stated before that
violence begets violence. The "boys will be boys" quote from my
daughter's Boca Raton middle school principal always rings in my ears
when I hear about these things. She said this to me when I
commented upon the boys pushing the girls to the floor when the
end-of-day bell rang. If people really believe that adolescent
violence is acceptable, then why do they get upset when it continues to
adulthood? Oh. That's right. In Florida, violence is
accepted except when it hits national news and that news might upset
the
tourist economy.
I understand that people who are found by police after they have
shot another policeman have little chance of surviving the
encounter. But again Florida takes the lead. On October 1,
2006 there is a news item that such a police officer - shooting person
was shot by the local police when they found him hiding behind a
bush. The autopsy showed that he had been shot 68 times.
The officers fired 110 times. This means that 1/3 of the bullets
missed their target. These officers need more time at the range
and some important lessons on the consequences of shooting
wildly. But worse than the high error rate, their captain states
that the shooting of 110 bullets at the man to make sure he did not
shoot back was not excessive. I disagree. 10 may not have
been excessive. 20 may not have been excessive. 110 times
is excessive. Maybe they stopped when they ran out of bullets?
Another one-liner. The Mexican Peso is now at 10.5
per dollar. A few years ago it was at 12 and it keeps going
down. A few years ago the Canadian dollar was at 65
cents. Now it is almost 80 cents and going up. A few years
ago the Euro was at 94 cents. Now it is about $1.30.
Devaluing the dollar is one more way the USA is paying for Mr. Bush's
war. Unless we look outside the windows, we do not see all of the
ways that we are paying.
Well. I won and lost that one. I predicted a couple of
years ago that AT&T as we know it would disappear. It
has. First it split up -- no, not the divestiture thing where the
BOCs were formed. No, now they split into cable and cellular and
long lines, etc. Then each got bought or, to be politically
correct, merged. The last to go was cellular which Cingular
bought last year. This is interesting because Cingular is the
joint venture of two of the RBOCs. Oh. BOC = Bell Operating
Company. These were formed by the original AT&T split about
one per state similar to the old Standard Oil break up. So the
twin daughters buy the drained mother company. Not a
problem. The interesting thing is that the prediction was easy to
make. The surprise is that Cingular is using the AT&T name
for the new company rather than retaining the name that brought it its
fortune. The younger generation would support the Cingular
name. The older generation would respect the AT&T name.
In the work I have done in the WiFi networking world, the older
generation has the money and the head count to make a substantial
market
difference; they just do not trust the youngsters. Keeping the
AT&T name may sell a lot of phone service to seniors. On the
other hand, I think that the market is not any longer interested in
phone service. If you think so, look at the US Post Office
competing with email. THe younger generation is not interested in
email: they are interested in the integration of all of the systems
into
one little pocket device that does it all -- and plays games.
Ford's is going on TV news today to announce a major
reorganization. The pundits are saying 27,000 people to be laid
off. GM announced a similar reorganization last month and they
will follow Ford's with another announcement of their own.
Chrysler does not count since it was bought by Mercedes a few years ago
and is in the process of total disappearance. Mercedes is hoping
that the historic poor quality of Chrysler products will be ignored
when the cars have a Mercedes sticker. Personally, I think that
the reverse will be true: Chrysler will drag the Mercedes name
into the mud. You remember the appropriate adage: you cannot make
a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The Germans do not understand
the American marketplace. Siemens bought ROLM for the name after
their first customer rolled the German junk out to the trash bin. Then
the market went to Cisco.
But this is trivia. What amazes me are the Japanese auto
makers. They can surely see well into the future. I mean in
the 1970's they produced a whole industry of tiny, ugly, reliable,
gas-saving cars. I bought one: a Datsun 510 station wagon.
I bought it when I got tired of fixing and paying for my Dodge.
The Japanese predicted the gas shortage and the ensuing fickle American
auto buyer rejection of the Detroit behemoths. They flocked to
the little ugly Japanese cars. Truly the Japanese predicted the
future then. I mean Detroit spent millions on advertising to
convince people that the annual replacement of their big chrome
monsters was necessary -- and people bought the little ugly cars anyway.
This is not magic: when you see the writing on the wall, you
act. You do not just spend more on billboards. The Japanese
just sold what people wanted. The Japanese are very good at
analyzing the American marketplace. Detroit is only good at
billboards.
Now GM and Ford's are going to Congress to beg for tax and
other concessions in order to compete with the future-reading
Japanese. I know 30 years is a long time -- but I remember the
1970's deluge of Japanese cars and the agony of Detroit when it had to
make smaller cars. Congress will remember too but they have tens
of thousands of voters who want someone to punish the invading foreign
future readers.
Isn't it amazing that a little group of islands (i.e. Japan)
overseas can better understand
where our marketplace is going than we can ourselves? OK.
Enough. I am being facetious. The American auto industry is
just stupid. When the price of gas goes up, people buy smaller
cars. It happened then and it has happened now. This is not
predicting the future. This is looking out the window. This
is looking at what you need and thinking that maybe the rest of the
country needs it too. I do not think that gasoline in Detroit has
remained at 30 cents a gallon after all of these years. Then
again, Detroit could have looked at the Japanese sales figures and
figured out that maybe they could sell the same kind of cars. I
know that Detroit has a quality problem -- real or imagined. But
who is going to trust a company that always lives in the past?
I mean we have survived a whole lot of bad Burger King ads and we
know more are coming. But what is with Pepsi Cola? A Diet
Pepsi machine voted as a player? What does this say about the
product. When the ad is over, I wonder what happened.
The other really bad ads are the Volkswagen ads with the rude, ugly,
little black frog. I have said before and I shall say it again:
the Germans do not know how to market. They do not understand the
American culture. They bought ROLM from IBM and ran it into the
ground. They bought Chrysler which was already ruined. They
built an automobile assembly plant in MIssissippi. The ugly black
frog ads are just more vulgar TV air time from a culture that lives in
a different world.
I live in Mexico. I cross the border weekly. The current
Border Patrol procedures are very citizen-friendly compared to a few
years ago. I fear the draconian, 1984-level identification
processes that are coming down the pipe. Expiring permits just to
exist/live in the EEUU. But this is not about that -- as fearful
as that
is.
This is about protecting the border from illegal immigration.
This needs to be done. Pretending that the problem of illegals
can be resolved without plugging up the border is like opening
the kitchen window and then spending your life swatting the
flies. We have the technology. We can find soldiers
wondering around the Afghan and Iraqi deserts. We are able to
find illegals walking in straight lines from south to north. This
is not even difficult with what we have. We can read license
plates from space satellites. We can identify individual faces
with camera images that look like shadows. We can see the heat
signatures of people walking across the sand -- we can do all of this
from
space. We can fly solar-powered planes that will stay up for days
taking pictures. We have many choices with state of the art tools.
I heard the theory the other day that the reason we do not use our
technology for this is that the average person would learn the
capabilities of our military. I have long suspected this but the
rest of the world already knows our capabilities -- only the citizens
of the EEUU do not know their own government's capabilities. The
enemy
certainly knows what we can do.
We have people talking about replacing cell towers with balloons on
strings -- the purpose of which is to save a lot of money and to cover
large areas. This same technology can find people walking under
such balloons.
Build a 2000 mile 30-foot high fence? Give me a break.
Not only would it not work, it is ugly both physically and
philosophically.
So. You want to solve the problem? Stop the shouting and
complaining and start plugging. Use what we have. Do
the job. Close the window. Then argue over what to do about
the flies that are in the kitchen.
Life is a novel in real time. It is in the viewpoint of the
first person and it has chapters. The chapters are connected by
events and persons. There is a start, a middle, and an end.
The characters and their definitions are introduced and developed
though out the book.
We find all sorts of way to classify the characters. There are
men and women. There are givers and takers. There are
causes and effects. You can think of many more such pigeon holes
than I can. I discovered many years ago when I was confiding in a
minister some of the awful things going on in my life that he knew and
was at least passively supportive of accusations being made of me of
the same sort that I was suffering. Passive, shit: he gave me the
choice of accepting these accusations or leaving his church. I
left his church.
I concluded that there are people who know what serious hurt is and
those who do not. Serious hurt? An event or series of
events that cause you such emotional pain as to also cause physical
pain and change your life. The measure of these people is not the
external evaluation or scoring of the event. The measure of the
person is how they deal with the hurt and progress on their life path.
Here is how I see it. When the hurt arrives, suffer it
thoroughly, and then close the chapter. If you do not, the hurt
will linger into so many chapters following that you will have no
life. You lock it into a box that you go to privately when you
feel the need and come back out and relock the door. You never go
there publicly. You never wear it on your sleeve. You use
the event to make your life better. You know where the bottom
is. If you did not get there, you at least saw it.
So. Why do I write this? The scars never go away.
You would not want them to. You wear them with hidden knowledge
that you saw the bottom and bounced back up. The reason for the
hurt is that there was something very good about your life that has
been lost. You can want to revisit the part before the
hurt. You may not. The longer after the hurt, the less you
want to go back.
A very good friend of mine just lost his wife to cancer. This
took three years of a roller coaster of which the entire last year was
all downhill. We all saw the love that started this ride.
We all saw what happened at the end of the ride. We all want to
make sure that our friend recovers his old self and remembers mostly
the joy.
But he has become one of those that have known the pain of the
serious hurt. Maybe all of these words are a waste of time.
The problem I have is that I think that such pain makes a person more
willing to share and belong to the people who would like to help the
world be a better place. Those who do not even know what I am
talking about are probably those who leave their shopping carts
in the middle of the aisle and throw trash out their car windows or
drive their cars in Florida wondering why people are unhappy with them
straddling the car lanes. I think that at least one of these
scars is necessary for any person who is in the confiding business.
I just spent the weekend with a family with three little kids: 1, 6,
and 8 years. The little girl (6) is an angel -- with horns - and
I love her dearly. The boy (8) is a slow learner at school
because he has had an ambivalent attitude toward school for as long as
I can remember. I drove him the kilometer to school today because
he got up late. He got up late because he wanted to miss school:
-- they close the gate at 10 minutes late. But it is the baby boy
(18 months) that is most interesting to me.
I always hear -- and always believed that "No means No". This
is true regardless of which sex is saying "No". My kids grew up
thinking I was a tyrant. They still do. I shall be
apologizing to Megan for the rest of my life as she repeats incidents
-- not usually the same ones -- where I was not fair or she interpreted
what I wanted in a logical manner but not at all what I intended.
I had a three times rule. When I asked for something to be done
by either daughter, they, at that point, had the option of arguing the
action. Maybe it was not possible. Maybe the other daughter
should do it. Maybe I should do it. Maybe it should not be
done. If I got no response on the first request, the second was a
demand and not a request. If I got no response on the demand, the
demand was repeated with a punishment. There were no
threats. A threat implies that an action is impending whether or
not the completion of the action will be fulfilled. My kids
knew that the third time was going to make them unhappy. I regret
that the kids do not remember that the first request was debatable and
that I came across as such a tyrant. But I believe the
alternative is worse.
I have just watched a mother say no over 100 times in two
days. In none of these cases did no actually mean no. If
she meant no, she swatted a hand or a bottom -- maybe without saying no
first. In all of the cases to the baby, the baby continued what
it was doing. It might have paused. It might have walked
around something. It might have done several things. But the next
thing it did was to repeat the offensive action. The baby
repeated this until the mother got tired of saying no. Or the
mother went out of the room or something. The baby got what it
wanted just by outlasting the no's.
Almost every time. Sometimes the mother eventually took action
with a swat to the hand or bottom. The result of this force
caused a lot of laughs but is in itself terrifying. The baby
would go to someone physically larger than his mother and tell them to
hit his mother. The baby does not talk real well at 18 months but
it would make indicative hand motions. the father might pull the
baby onto his lap and ask "Who should I hit?" and the baby would point
at the person who told him No. Usually his mother.
Sometimes it was me that he thought should be hit.
The little girl is not so up front. When her mother says no,
the girl being older, goes to one of her friends or one of her friends
mothers, and tries again. If this fails, she will wait until no
one is looking and sneak what she wanted. Then she gives her most
innocent smile to prevent being punished or she whines about how
unfairly she was treated. But she has learned to smile, hug, and
whine so effectively that punishment is rare. No does not mean No
to her either. It just means that she will work around the
no. She is devious and manipulating and lovable. The boy
and baby are up front, assertive, and aggressive.
When a woman gets sexually assaulted because the man did not accept
that "no means no", maybe he learned that lesson at his mother's
knee. His ultimate woman role model.
I know I shall have a lot of people dismiss this as junk or maybe,
even maybe, someone will write me telling me that I am off base.
Maybe babies should forget what they learned as babies when they grow
up. I do not think so. Mommy, the next time you say no to
your child, make sure that the no is not debatable by manipulation or
perseverance. Mommy, "No means No" all of the time, not just when
your daughter gets raped.
People who know me know my dislike for most things Texas. To
quote a TV personality: They wanted to be their own country and maybe
they should have been." Obviously the current most distasteful
product of Texas has the initials GWB. The climate is too hot and
humid for me (I spent 18 years in Arizona and loved it). The land
is too flat to be considered scenic. There are scenic places,
I'll give you that. Austin, near the university, is a good
example. But mostly it is flat and unscenic.
I have complained about their lack of culture in other places.
One thing that always bothered me was the lack of respect for school
zone speed limits. But then high schools have posted speed
zones. If a kid has not learned ot cross in the crosswalks by
high school, maybe he deserves a few close calls. But then in
Plano, Richardson, and North Dallas, the kids did not walk or take the
bus: their parents drove them. At school start time there was
always a line of cars letting the children (not young adults) off in
front of the school. I know this because there were a couple of
high schools on my way to the office. If I drove at school start
times, the traffic was chaotic as the mothers drove in and around each
other and mostly double parked for long enough to let their kid out
the door, kiss him good bye, yell last minute directives, wave, and
then make sure the kid was aimed in the direction of an entrance to the
building. Airport loading zones move faster.
Academics? Not a high priority. Your kid may attempt
suicide if he does not make the AAA football team. Oh
sexist? If the daughter does not make the cheerleader squad she
may follow the same path. When we lived there, public
spankings in the schools were the preferred manner of discipline.
I hope that they have at least stopped hitting their kids. But
then our current President does not understand that violence begets
violence and Texas still has the longest waiting list on death row.
But what really pisses me off is "Tex-Mex" food. The original
Tex-Mex food is for shit. I discovered that there are basically 4
types of Mexican food. The first type is the food I get in
Mexico. Heavy on
the carbs, heavy on the red sauce, and light on the meat. Why
not? Corn, wheat, rice and beans grow everywhere. So do
chickens. Pigs and cows are harder and cost more.
The second is California Mexican food, also found in Arizona, New
Mexico and other
western states. This is heavier on the meat and includes such
things as chimichangas (deep fried burros). Typical of California
Mexican food is large portions and you can find the meat. The
tortillas are usually wheat.
The fast-food restaurant Mexican food does not really qualify as
food. Taco Bell, etc. No matter how much you buy, you
always feel cheated when you are finished eating. I can tolerate
Del Taco on a good day.
Then there is Tex-Mex. When we lived there, it was impossible
to find a chimichanga. Santa Fe Annie's had a version but it was
sort of how Taco Bell would envision a chimi: it was small and not a
whole meal. I have found this version in Mexico: sort of a chunk
of beef, pushed into a thick taco and deep fried. Santa Fe
Annie's was better than this but not a real meal. El Torito (A
Texas chain) has chimis but they fill them with rice. If you go
to an El Torito anywhere, the food is Texas style: it looks pretty,
comes on a big plate, and everything has filler.
The California style enchilada is a real meal. The local
Mexican restaurant on 19th in Phoenix had what they called the Mexican
Flag special: three tortillas: red, green, and white/yellow. This
took up an entire large plate and left no room for the rice and
beans.
Three Tex-Mex tortillas look like a row of pencils.
Mostly Texans brag about their chile. Shoot. Any Mexican
can make a chile to die for. But when in Mexico I like to eat real
food. The Mexicans make wonderful caldos and verduras
(soups). And if you live near the coast, everything is made from
fish. The one thing you have to be careful of in Mexico is that
they boil their meats. I asked a friend why when I gave a family
a 12 kilo turkey, they kept it frozen until after I left. My
friend told me because they were too embarrassed to let me know that
they did not know how to boil such a large bird. They would not
roast it because running the oven for that long would be too
expensive. Oh. In Mexico, they do not use measuring spoons
for salt. Salt is measured in handfuls. If you have a heart
condition, avoid real Mexican food.
While living in Dallas, we traveled all over the metroplex following
people's ideas on good Mexican food. We tried every place we
could find. Every place anyone recommended. We found no
good Mexican food in Dallas, Arlington,
and points between. I am sure there was some. There are a
lot of Mexicans in Dallas. The trouble is that Texans have no
knowledge of or interest in good Mexican food.
The real zinger though is that last month I heard someone refer to a
chimichanga as Tex-Mex. A real Texas legacy: if we cannot
claim
it already, we will steal it.
Regrettably I can no longer enjoy chimis: between my diabetes,
and heart condition, and being overweight, the best I can do is cut off
the ends, eat the middle, and look to make sure no one is looking.
I live in Mexico most of the time. I see Mexicans. I see
gringos. I see both living on both sides of the border. I
keep asking myself what is a Chicano? Today I had it explained to
me. A Chicano is a Mexican born on the north side of the
border. That is easy. Anybody born on the north side of the
border is automatically a citizen of the EEUU. BY definition
there is no such person as an illegal Chicano. The parents of a
Chicano may be illegals but the Chicano is legal.
But there is a worse problem here. It is the one thing that
has always made me angry. The historic value of the EEUU society
is that it is multi-cultural. There is increasing
pressure to end this. We hear about a constitutional amendment to
make English the official language. To quote George Bernard Shaw:
"They haven't spoken English in America for years." My daughters
speak English. I speak English. Both are Americanized
English. Yes, I can speak English English when necessary.
My one daughter can go one better and speak Welsh or Gaelic in
emergencies. If we are going to pass such a stupid measure we
need to incorporate something like the French Language police -- and
then we would all go to jail.
I have been to some other countries. The children
there are
all learning English as a second language. Do you think that this
is because English is better? Do you think that it is because
they all want to come to America? Get real. They learn it
because their schools require a second language (since only Americans
think they can get by only talking to each other). The second
language chosen is English because it is the most common foreign
language. English is also a very difficult language to
learn. Everything in it is irregular. It has by far the
largest vocabulary. If a student can learn English, he can learn
any language.
So. Give up on this concept of a single language -- there is no such thing. Language must be alive and changing. Our culture is alive and changing only when we permit the same of the language. You all understand what I mean by "gringo". We have courts to determine ambiguous terminology in our laws. I have written elsewhere that what something means in Texas is not what it means in California or Massachusetts. I have lived in the San Francisco Bay area and have really enjoyed the ideas cultivated in a true multi-cultural environment. It is great to see children playing when they all speak different languages at home.
I am sorely disappointed on a regular basis. I have friends
who will not shop in stores with bi-lingual signs. Last week in
the local Wal-Mart I felt like belting the parents of the pretty little
girl seated in the shopping cart in front of me. I presume she
was a Chicano. Her father was obviously a gringo. Her
mother was obviously Hispanic. The girl seemed to
share the best of both -- except language. The parents conversed
in Spanish or English as convenient to themselves. They only
addressed the little girl in English. When I addressed her in
English, she responded. When I addressed her in my broken
Spanish, she did not respond. What a travesty.
I firmly believe that you should speak your legacy language in your
home so that your children can learn it along with your cultural
values. They will learn English
from the TV soon enough. They will not learn your home language
from TV.
Americans are known around the world for their selfish,
self-centered attitudes. Their refusal to accept the citizens of
the world as equals by refusing to travel there and refusing to learn
their languages only exacerbates the problem. Taking the
languages skills away from a child is as abominable as tearing the
wings off of flies. Worse.
This is not just true of Spanish. It is true of Chinese and
German and all the languages in between -- in either direction.
For God's sake, if you will not learn a second language, do not deprive
your child of their birthright; of being a citizen of the world.
My friend Tino sent me this -- I do not know the origin. I believe that many of the liberties for which these men fought and died have been given up due to lack of general interest of the population and a totalitarian presidency.
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons serving in the Continental Army; another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War. They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured. Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags. Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton. At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt. Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months. John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart.
Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates. Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: "For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." They gave you and me a free and independent America. The history books never told you a lot about what happened in the Revolutionary War.
We didn't fight just the British. We were British subjects at that time, and we fought our own government! Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we shouldn't. So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they paid. Remember freedom is never free! It's time we get the word out that patriotism is not a sin, and the Fourth of July has more to it than beer, picnics, and baseball games."
This is how I see it -- and I know all of my Moslem friends will
disown me. Israel belonged to the Jews from as far back as we
have records. Certainly before the Moslems stole it, put rocks on
it, and claimed it their own holy place. Recently the Jews took
it back -- if you call 50 years ago recent. Now there are a large
group of rich (and poor) Moslems who think that the Jews should give
Israel back to them. For this they are willing to go to any
lengths at all -- including having their own people killed to make the
Jews look bad in world opinion and to recruit other malcontents,.
So we have a group, the Palestinians, that reside in Israel, harass
Israel, and live poor because they do not get enough from their rich
friends. We have neighboring countries, e.g. Lebanon, that permit
terrorist organization to harass Israel. We have foreign leaders
paying bounty for killing Jews. Oh. I forgot. He is
on trial for other things.
We have this little country of Jews defending itself against
unending foes that want it to die. And we hear about civilians
being killed by the Jews because they did not leave -- and as a matter
of fact, congregated in a published war zone. We hear about 40 to
60 innocent lives taken by bombs intended for missile delivery systems
only a couple of hundred meters away. And how many civilian lives
would the terrorists have taken if Israel were not always on the
defensive? After all, the Lebanese terrorists are targeting
civilians -- unlike Israel who is not.
I am sorry but my patience is wearing thin here. When the
enemies of Israel state as their political goal, short or long term, to
eliminate Israel, there is no other answer than for Israel to fight for
its life as aggressively as possible. And this means eliminating
the enemy that is currently attacking it and able to grow stronger each
time it has any success.
Hey guys. It is time to stop thinking that you will go to
heaven or whatever you call it because you killed someone.
Killing anyone is wrong and killing them just to steal what they have
is wrong. You do not go to good places for murder and
larceny. Israel is a small place inhabited by the original
owners. They have every right to defend their ownership in courts
and by force when necessary.
I have heard it all now. The president of Lebanon is claiming
that the shelling of buildings by Israel in his country is an act
against humanity and that there need be war crimes charges against
Israel. So. Let's get thing straight here. Hezbullah is a
terrorist group vowed to eliminate Israel. Hezbullah is hosted by
Lebanon. Hezbullah has elected representatives in the Lebanese
government. Hezbullah kidnapped Israeli soldiers in Israel to start the
latest go around. Hezbullah has not returned these soldiers and
there are no published plans that it shall do so. Israel has been
hoodwinked into a cease fire that is shaky because nobody is living up
to its terms. Hezbullah is still accepting weapons from
neighboring countries. Hezbullah has been firing hundreds of
missiles into Israel causing intentional damage to solely civilian
properties, such as home, schools, and hospitals. And the
president of Lebanon, the host of Hezbullah, is complaining about the
damage that Israel did? He should be on his knees thanking God
that Israel has contained its actions to Hezbullah military
targets. And when is the president of Lebanon going to help
return the originally kidnapped soldiers?
I may not have all of the facts and I have lived in enough places to
know the local prejudice is responsible for many things that people
outside the area do not understand and should keep their noses out of
but I think I have laid this one out pretty well -- and I really wonder
about the integrity of the entire world that would put Israel under
fire at this point.
Many years ago a fellow invented the movable type printing press
(Yes, I know who he was). There was a problem with placing the
individual letters into a font board for printing: letters could
rotated making words hard to read to say the least. So the
printer invented serifs. Serifs are those little lines at the
bottom (and sometimes top) of each letter. WHen a row of type is
properly set, the printer can look at the row lengthwise and see if
there is a line of serifs running along the bottom of the row and make
sure that serifs do not show up vertically. This indeed was a
lifesaver. I took print shop in secondary school. I learned
all about this. We refer to the most common of the fonts with
serifs as "Times Roman".
I have also worked with computer video terminals for 20 years.
In fact I worked for a company that made these videos and I worked on
laying out the character set bit maps that we used. In those
days, a character took a finite number of bits in width and a finite
number of bits in height. 6x8 was common. You take a
quad-ruled piece of paper. We called it graph paper. You
take each possible character, lower and upper case. SPecial
characters, numbers -- anything that you plan to display as a character
and design a 6x8 box for it.
Here is the zinger: if you must include serifs, you have lost one
vertical row. If you want to look smart, the bottom two rows are
reserved for letters with tails (e.g. 'y'. 'j'). This leaves a
6x5 bit map for the normal characters. This is an almost
impossible chore and giving up the serif improves your readability by
more then the 20% more space that you have bought back.
What does this have to do with anything? Your eyes have the
same problem as the font creator when it comes to size, shape, and
bits. If you have a given box size (much more flexible with the
screen definitions we have today), the letter can be shaped for optimum
readability. With all of the screen reading that we do, this is
critical. And by the way, this applies equally to printed on the
paper letters.
To reduce eyestrain, the letter should fill its box in the most
accurate shape relating to that letter. Your eyes should not have
to decipher whether you have displayed a '5' or an 'S'..
Various studies went into this and were published prior to
1980. More since. The optimum color combination was a white
letter on a blue background. The optimum character set had no
serifs. Serifs are confusing, take up space, and are legacy left
over from placing little pieces of lead into little rows. Times
ROman is hard on your eyes and should be abolished. Why it is the
WIndows default is beyond me.
The company I worked for last, Siemens, adopted a policy that the
corporate papers would be printed using a particular font. BUt
this was a German company and they picked a font common in Europe but
not so common in the USA. So what did the USA company do?
It wicked a font that it thought was equivalent: Times Roman.
Come on people where's your sign?
It is beyond my comprehension why books are still published using
this archaic font. Why Windows still uses it as the default for
letter writing products. Why newspapers till print with it.
Why it is any usage at all. DO you see the text in your mobile
phone? Does it use Times Roman? Not a chance.
Why not? They still have to concern themselves with readability
and bit maps. What can the majority of people see from the
largest distance -- that is the criteria. I actually have found
people who like Times Roman. There were people who liked the old
Chevy II also. There is no excuse for these people.
Why did this come up? I heard that children when told to dial
"911" could not do so because there is no "11" key on the
telephone. Now I know we have dumbed down our kids but I will
even give you that. So now all the cop cars have "9-1-1".
They insert the dashes because they want everyone to know that they
must dial 3 numbers. The problem I have is that on the cop cars
they use the TIme ROman forma numbers! Instead of "9-1-1" they
have "9-1-1".
The difference? Well, it is not so evident here but they put such
a long serif on the top of the "1" that the "9-1-1" looks like
"944". You do not think so? Look at the next cop car you
see. If they have tails on the 1's and the dashes, from any
distance they look like 4's.
Now this sounds like I am being picky. Maybe I am. I do
not think so. But if you took the tails off of the 1's there
would be no confusion. More over, the real problem is not with
the cop cars. The real problem is that you are making your brain
translate what you see into what you know should be there. This
is what you are doing every time you read Times Roman anything.
The letters are much harder to read because 20% of the letter space is
wasted with little lines. And if you think that the 20% does not
make a difference, take one of the CNN or MSNBC pages and tell your
browser to use the Times Roman font and see if you can still read it in
the default small print that they use. I doubt you can. You
want your eyes to last longer and be more relaxed? Stop using
legacy fonts. Easy.
I judge things. I think we all do. I have my own
criteria and I am going to lay some of these out. Let's talk
about legislature. You know: propositions on the ballot.
This is easy. If it benefits me, I like it. Most bills
sound like they benefit me but most do not. You often have to
read the entire bill before you find out who it benefits. For
example, in Texas for the last couple of years, the legislature has
pushed a telephone reform bill to "equalize" the playing field
for all companies. The first page talks about fair competition
enabling the telephone giants enough profits to permit gifts to the
indigent. The second page talks about banning free internet
access as anti-competitive. What can be more competitive than
free? Even AOL is going to free. But Cingular cannot exist
unless it is permitted its high rates to be charged by everyone?
Several years ago, the governor of Arizona proposed raising the
state sales tax from 3% to 4%. In addition, he would remove the
sales tax on food. This was sold to the public as helping the
poor who spent a disproportionate amount of their income on food.
People I talked to believed this garbage. I checked my receipts
for the year (yes, I had them). I would have had a tax increase even if
the total on all of the receipts was non-taxable. But it was
worse than that: I added up the receipts food versus non-food.
Approximately 1/3 of each grocery receipt was non-food and therefore
still liable to be taxed. These people believing they were
helping the poor raised their total sales tax by about 20%. The
poor? They get food stamps. They get enough food stamps for
their family that it is a large source of fraud as they sell their
stamps (and now their groceries) and buy other things.
In California a few years ago, the nurses union got on the ballot a
proposition that penalized the directors (and only the directors) of
hospitals that replaced professional staff with untrained workers or
reduced the bed count of high expense wards. Columbia and others
spent millions of dollars advertising how the proposition would add a
storm of new taxes and raise hospital expenses so high that hospitals
would leave the area. Lies. All lies. But when you
are deluged with all of these ads, and the nurses union had no money to
counter these ads, guess who lost? You and I did. Columbia
bought Good Samaritan hospitals and as soon as the voting echoes died
down, laid off half of their registered nurses and replaced them with
LPNs. But the rates did not go down and the administrators took a
pay increase for this massive effort. If anyone had bothered to
read the bill, they would have seen that they were being taken by big
money.
So. ALways ask yourself: What does it do for me? This is
not the same as what good does it do? I am not into paying for
things the benefit the general public. I am the general public
and if it does not benefit me directly, then it does me no good and I
vote against it.
I have already laid out the ground rules for voting for a
bill. The easiest way to see who benefits is to see who is
fighting it. They are the ones that do not benefit. The
ones who benefit may hide beneath the names of organizations that sound
good but are really into higher profit margins for themselves. If
I find insurance companies or banks for something, I am automatically
against it.
Remember "What's good for General Motors is good for the
country?" President Bush certainly does: he has spent 6 years
subsidizing Detroit Iron monstrosities. You wonder why our
gasoline usage is up in six years? Look at the high percentage of
gas guzzlers coming out of Detroit. He even exempted these
vehicles from the CAFE standards. Now GM and Ford are tottering
on the edge of bankruptcy because of the gas shortage and the surplus
of these behemoths. More money into their coffers so that they
have time to catch up with the Japanese who were not so stupid.
Regrettably if the Republicans are for it, I am against it.
This
has not always been true but the Bushes have made everything so
corporate supportive and so socially irresponsible that this lifelong
conservative (me!) has become a Democrat. I am still just as
conservative. Maybe more so -- but I do not like self-initiated
wars against the wrong enemy (sounds like Orwell) and tax reductions to
other people that increase my taxes and increase the national debt.
If the answer is increased taxes, I am against it. If this thing is
necessary, they will figure out how to pay for it without new
taxes. Except school bonds. Mostly I vote for school
bonds. The single most important expenditure over which I have
some say is education and I am a strong advocate of public education.
What prompted this? Another run in with the Seventh Day
Adventists. I have trouble with most religions. They have
trouble with other religions. In most Christian (including
Catholic) churches that I have attended, I hear about how they are
saved and everyone else is going to hell. The LDS says that
others can get to heaven but not the highest level.
And those are just the Christians. The Moslems, Jews,
Buddhists, Hindus, all have their own. But mostly I hear about
how wrong is the other guy. As soon as I hear the other guy being
degraded I walk out of the door. I even heard 30 years after the
Vietnamese war a Baptist minister spend his whole sermon on a passage
from Daniel saying that women, children, and pacifists should not go to
battle. He stated absolutely that pacifists were cowards. I
diplomatically mentioned at the door that their were other
interpretations to that passage -- not in his church.
But religion by definition as tradition. Hand me down beliefs
through many generations. Keep holy the Sabbath Day? Do you mean
to tell me that someone kept track of which day of the week that God
rested after he created the universe in 6 days? Did he tell it to
Moses when he dictated the first 5 books of the bible? Has
someone kept track of it through the history to know which day is the
seventh day? I doubt that Adam even knew. I do not believe
in Creationism. And God certainly did not dictate volumes to
Moses. We made it all up. Or at least our forefathers
did. Did Jesus change water into wine? I hope so. Did
the Pope deciding that Sunday was a better day than Saturday for the
Sabbath day make a difference? I hope not. But there is an
entire religion based upon that change. And what is good about
them? I have no idea. But they write pamphlets and even
books on how awful is the Pope and his church.
If you want me to accept in your beliefs then make them positive --
what do you include? I do not want to hear about what you
exclude. You certainly exclude me.
When we lived in Texas, they had a law banning stores to be open on
the Sabbath Day. They presumed that this was Sunday but you could
pick Saturday if you wanted. This generosity made the law more
acceptable to those who did not like religion made into law. It
left no room for Moslems who have Friday for their Sabbath. But
then Texas is only friendly to gun-toting, flag-draped, Bible-thumping,
rapture-waiting,
born-again Christians. One of the department stores was
challenging the law by being open on Sunday and not Saturday.
That was 25 years ago. Texans are still strange but I think even
they have caught onto the fact that when the hurricane comes, it takes
everyone putting the sand in the same place to protect you. Blue
laws are called that for a reason.
I have read about the canal lining for several weeks now. It
seems a closed issue to me. The county of San Diego wants more
water. Los Angeles does too. These counties are desperate
and have done everything in their abilities to steal water from other
communities. Remember the Mono Lake fiasco? Now they taking
water from Imperial Valley. Do you want to know how
desperate? Look at the cost of the lining for starters.
Every citizen of the valley ought to be screaming bloody murder for the
evacuation of their water to foreign economies. And what does the
valley get in return? Nothing. They are not even paid for
their loss!
Like may issues this is being masked by irrelevant arguments (red
herrings). The bottom line: the current water leakage improves
the local water table and the agricultural abilities of the local
area. This must be significant or the lining would not be an
issue. This keeps the water near where it came from: near the
Colorado
River. A river that dissects a major world desert.
The red herrings include adding water to the Mexican side of the
Colorado River to appease the Gadsden treaty (as if the USA really
cared about treaties). Another argument is that it preserves the
water for the USA and stops giving it to Mexico. Do we really
hate Mexico that much? This lining will bankrupt the local
farmers on both sides of the border although those on the north can
obtain water from the canal. The lining will ruin the lives of
thousands of people who may attempt to cross the border to where their
water went. Another herring is the: "what good is a leaky
canal?" Have you seen those soaker hoses used for
irrigation? What good is a leaky hose?
Come on you guys! If you want your valley to thrive, kill the
lining. Exporting your major
economic resource to a city which
uses it to encourage more consumption is a loss for
everyone. Let San Diego lawn waterers get their own water from
the mountain runoff.
As you may know, I think Florida is a very perverted, dismal
place. But they have made a few good laws. You cannot
export dirt or trash across county lines: and their counties are
small. Why are these important? The average height above
sea level is 18 inches for the entire state. Exporting dirt would
make a location lower than sea level and that is a problem for water
table and storms. Trash is an issue because it cannot be buried
for fear of drinking water contamination. So you have trash
mountain beatification programs everywhere.
How does this compare to canal lining? You cannot export natural resource from one location to another without damage to the source location. In Florida the issue is dirt and trash. In California it is water. Everywhere in California there are two issues: water and electricity. This issue is a no brainer: You are exporting water from the desert? A desert whose total economy is dependent upon that same water? Shame on you!
I am not sure why I am even here but since this is what I have been thinking about, I shall write it all down.
Shaking hands. This is an easy thing. I read some
history and understand that it came about when two men wanting to show
some level of affinity and peaceful relationship had to clear their
hand of weapons to perform this action. This makes sense. I
also read that because this was necessary prior to the invention of
toilet paper, men shook wrists rather than hands. I this this is
unnecessary information.
Bowing. I have no idea the history of bowing. I know
little about this Asian practice -- but I have picked up a few
pointers. There is serious protocol here. The best
suggestion I can make here is that when an Asian comes up to you with a
hand extended (Asians have learned to do both simultaneously in the
Western world), shake his hand and do not bow.
Here is the deal. One of the many rules here is the the subordinate
will break eye contact first. Therefore if you do not bow and
just shake hands, everybody is happy. If you start to bow and
continue to look the other person in the eye, you are declaring
dominance or superiority. This may or may not be your intent but
the action will not be lost on the other person. The two of you
will continue to bow lower until one person either breaks eye contact
or resents the threat.
Remember that in the EEUU (USA), we have the concept of everyone is
equal and therefore shake hands in a manner which demonstrates
this. Asians are much more aware of status than are
Americans. Therefore, it is safer to not bow at all rather than
figuring out where you are in the food chain. You might already
know but there is no need in the EEUU to advertise this.
I made the mistake in the presence of my total management chain to
bow with the president of a giant Korean mega-corporation. Not
knowing the rules, I bowed and watched the other person. He kept
bowing lower until I thought he would break his neck keeping eye
contact. I really forget who blinked but we were parallel to the
floor, waist high before we stopped. He presumed that the
corporate senior engineer in the EEUU enjoyed a very high status and
sent me Christmas cards for the next three years. I might have
embarrassed the Chairman of the board of my own company when I tried to
bow. You do not need to do this: just shake hands.
Back to shaking hands. Unless you are doing a macho thing and
have to worry about who is going to crush whose bones, just extend
your, meet the other persons hand, grip it, shake up and down several
times and let go. Holding hands longer than this may indicate
that either or both parties are interested in a more serious
relationship.
I grew up in a family where I could be punished for touching another
person. Hugging was definitely forbidden. I know so little
about hugging that I won't even discuss it here. I remember a few
incidents that you might want to avoid.
The first time I remember anyone interested in shaking my had was in
the high school gym and some serious honor had been bestowed upon my
friend Dave Stowe. He was in front of me and extended his had for
me to congratulate him. Obviously I was being given the honor of
being the first to offer my congratulations. I was so embarrassed and
so honored that I just stood there until he put his hand back
down.
The next time I was presented with an outstretched arm, I fared no
better. I was in Detroit with a group of IBM Account
representatives at a restaurant with us waiting to be seated. The
one representative who had invited me, Kathie, introduced me to the
senior, or at least one of the senior, representative, Len
Johnson. Len put out his hand and my immediate thought was: "Wow,
I get a second chance" and presented my arm. But I delayed as I
did have to go through this thought process. The delay was short
but Len noticed it and told me: "Do not worry, it does not come
off". I was again embarrassed -- worse than the first
time. Lennie is black. He is a ringer for Bill Cosby but
then I did not know who Bill Cosby was. I was just red-faced and
unable to say anything. He had mis-interpreted my hesitation and
responded positively to put my fears to rest -- only he had no
idea what I was afraid of. Lennie and I became friends and
ultimately he was the best man at my wedding. By then he knew I
was racially color blind and hopefully figured out that skin color was
not my problem when shaking hands.
Over the years I have learned to be comfortable with this practice
although I rarely initiate. I still have a couple of problems
with the practice though.
I find that women in countries outside the EEUU always shake
hands. Mothers teach their daughters to extend a hand not too
long after they have learned to walk. I have not figured this out
but I am sure it has some deep social significance. The foreign
women or girls have learned to match grips with the other person and so
have a handshake that does not leave you feeling that you just let go
of something that could have broken if you held it any
differently. Many American women extend a hand totally
limp. I wonder where they learned this. I think it is at
least insulting to extend your hand and then leave me to figure out why
we had this bad experience.
I did have a woman extend here hand flat to me the other day.
I did not know whether to hold on to it, kiss it, or try to turn it
around to shake. I held it at arm's length until we were both
uncomfortable enough and let go. If we had been alone, I would
have bowed down and kissed it. But we were in a room with about
10 people watching us.
There is another class of people and hand shaking that cause me
serious discomfort. We all know that I have a hard time saying
"no" to anyone for anything. But there is one line I will not
cross: I will not shake hands with anyone that I know has sexually
molested his own daughter or stepdaughter. I consider these
people beneath contempt and the concept of touching them is similar to
expecting a Moslem to finish eating the pickled pigs foot that you have
started. One such person still thinks that the reason I will not
touch him has to do with his wife. Not a chance. It was
what he has done to my daughter that makes me want to throw up when I
see his hand in front of me.. I have other feelings at the same
time but that one is the mildest.
Cult: a social group that has placed a person or the beliefs of a person between the individual and his relationship with his creator.
We all see
cults. The Moslems did not like the Teachings of Jesus so
Mohammed
created his own book twisting both the Jewish and the Christian
testaments.
The Mormons have reinterpreted a verse in Genesis to say that "God
made Man in His own image" to mean that someday each righteous man will
have his own planet/universe to rule.
The Catholics have interpreted Jesus saying that Peter himself and
the rock of Peter's faith is the foundation of his church on earth.
The Seventh Day Adventists believe that the Sabbath Day is Saturday
as though by some magical historic event we actually know which day of
the week God started his 6-day extravaganza.
Cults are a dime a dozen. President Bush has transformed a
nation of laws attempting to be the model for the world into a
laughable cult. There are many reasons people follow a cult
leader. The easiest to see is that at some point a culture has
dissatisfaction with the status qua a some leader comes out of nowhere
with a new vision. Historically the leader has had some traits
that make him a charismatic, fasttalking, handsome personality.
Even Hitler fell into this position. Why did Bush become such an
image? I don't know -- for God's sake, it took him 5 years to be
able to talk in complete sentences without a teleprompter. He had
trouble even with the prompter. He is a snazzy dresser. He
is not disfigured. He has a lot of money backing him up. He
knows how to get existing cults to prop him up: The NRA, the
Biblebelters, flag-wavers, etc. And therein lies the problem.
While the USA has financially outlasted every other major world
power and and set itself as the model government for the world to see,
the world now sees the leader has glass feet. Mr. Bush through
lies and deception has used his power to invade foreign country and
with his newly elected government killed its previous president.
When his tactics became too much for his own political party, they
started distancing themselves from him. Too little. Too
late. The general population voted his party out of power.
We will now see some additional distancing but again too little, too
late.
His party has enacted the most heinous of all possible laws: "The
Patriot Act". This is a comprehensive law curtailing many of the
rights that thousands of people have died for to protect. One
stroke of the pen and these rights are abolished -- and the Patriot Act
gives itself the power to deny additional rights as the President sees
fit. Exaggeration?
Did you know that as part of the Patriot Act, you are now required
to legally identify yourself to buy decongestants -- and your supply is
severely restricted. Your name and address and the ID that you
used is put into Federal database.
The PResident has found a new way to make laws. He just adds
his new law to his signature when signing a legitimate law passed by
Congress. For example, he has just added the right at his
desecration (which we have observed as totally lacking) t inspect any
first class mail that he feels my contain threatening language.
He did this by adding this sentence to a law he signed last week.
Historically there has been a right of total privacy of first class
mail. It is a federal offense for anything posted as first class
to be read by anyone other than its intended recipient. There are
even laws relating to quarantining undeliverable mail. The Post
Office has had the right to open first class mail which is believed to
contain volatile chemicals. This makes sense. We remember
the Anthrax scare. We have all heard rumored some time or other
of an exploding mailbox. We need to be safe. But for the
PResident to permit the reading of mail because the contents may be
subversive? If you still do not see the relationship between
President BUsh and Adolph Hitler, may God save you. Most of the
rest of the world is now looking at you personally as a living bad joke.