It's a long sordid, and complicated story. Some people are pro-gay and pro-transgender got together in Houston, Texas. They decided that there was enough neighborhood and public support to push up a carefully crafted agenda, which basically said.....depending on how you felt or were biologically (male or female), you could go to the bathroom of your choice. So for example, if you were guy who occasionally liked to dress up as a lady and pretend you were a lady.....if you were in the public library or some basketball arena.....you could walk into the women's restroom.
I know, it's a pretty difficult idea to get across, but apparently....this was the mythical moment when it was believed by some political people as being an opportune time.
So, a number of folks figured out the whole scheme, and then went against it. In order to go against it.....they had to put it on the ballot and make it a referendum. Roughly 17,000 signatures of registered voters in the area were required. The group got over 50,000. When the city clerk got up to roughly 19,000 on the count and certified....they stopped. The minimum had been met.
An odd thing then occurred, as the city deemed roughly thirty thousand of the signatures as null and void. The wording to this....is not exactly clear, and I've yet to find any journalist (even from Houston) who can explain how they failed. One must assume they were either not a Houston resident or they were not registered, but this is never spelled out. These days, petition gatherers are trained and know precisely the three or four questions to ask, to ensure the guy signing is legit.
What happened next is rather odd. The city attorney then lodged a criminal type action, looking at the support group who put up the petition, and deemed that local ministers were behind the action. The big step here? A legal document forwarded to a judge and signed.....demanded that five local ministers of Houston hand over their sermons, personal emails that discussed this entire matter, and any correspondence that had the mention of the city mayor (who is lesbian).
You can imagine the eruption of hostility over this....the ministers have basically said that this stepped over the line of the Constitution, and there's going to be a long and hostile fight to start up.
Violation of religious rights? The Constitution offers up one of the most protective clauses on the face of the Earth for religion. You cannot make any single law which impedes religion of any citizen, period. No exceptions. You cannot interfere with the assembly of a religious group, as long as they are acting in a peaceful manner and not threatening anyone. I don't believe you can find any other government that goes to this extent.
The sermon request? I think the five ministers probably sat there as they got the letter and read it.....coming to just grin and start laughing. Some ministers might admit they have vast scripts and PowerPoint slides. Some might admit a single page with a few quotes. And some will just grin and admit that they have scrap piece of paper with two or three Bible quotes, and lead the entire forty-minute sermon based on those scraps of paper. Some ministers might have video stock of their sermons just because they think these were five-star episodes and great classics.
What would a city prosecutor do with sermons? This leads off to a funny moment or two which would brew up. I'm not sure this city prosecutor or the people behind him have considered what happens in court rooms, and how a minister would be in his "audience".....preaching to the judge.....preaching to the jury.....and preaching to the city prosecutor himself. A court room? No.....the minister can convene the moment into a church, and the whole court affair disappears in a matter of five minutes. It is in effect.....the most bogus use of law that one can imagine, and would be a court circus by all definition.
Saying that the church or ministers have no right to define local laws as hostile or threatening the social environment of their members? You'd have to lay out dozens of things which are allowed by ministers and disallowed. The minute you start this.....it becomes never-ending. What judge would sit there in a court, and allow this to become such a mess? I can't think of any rational judge sitting in America that would want this type of case in their court. Just imagine the minute you call a witness and they want you sworn-in to tell the truth, and the phrase....."so help me God" comes up.
Strangely enough.....all of this goes back to the original concept....letting some guy think he's a woman today, and going into the women's restroom. Or having some woman who thinks she's a guy and going into a men's restroom. Houston has 2.196 million people (at least Google says that for 2013). Out of that, how many people want the dual privilege bathrooms in public areas? No journalist, political figure or commentator has suggested a number yet. That's the surprising part of this story. For all we know......it could be dozen people out of 2.196 million. Maybe it's 216 people. Or maybe there's 16,326 people. You just don't know.
Yes, we've created a massive and frustrating mess, to help some people find the right bathroom for their personal relief. We've wrapped ministers, religious groups, news media idiots, neighborhood groups, Democrats, Latinos, blacks, Southern Baptist Churches, and Republicans into this. All for the sake of a bathroom break.
What idiot dreamed this up....to come a month prior to the November election? You can't find where this started, and you have to wonder if some Karl Rove-type character just sat there a year ago and felt he could trick the Houston Democratic crowd into doing something really stupid.
Roughly 1.6 million people came out in the county and city election of 2012 from Houston. The vote? County-wide, it was almost fifty-fifty for Republicans and Democrats. It's a fair balanced deal.
In this moment? The Democrats rely a fair amount on Latino votes, and I would take a fair guess that half of the Latinos registered to vote.....also attend some local church....and have some opinion about this whole sermon thing, and the transgender bathroom thing. If you ask me.....the leadership in Houston for the Democrats have blasted themselves severely over something of such a minor stumble, which might only benefit a dozen transgender, or a hundred, or a thousand who might want this.
This morning, I read that the State Attorney General has drafted a letter and sent onto the prosecutor involved in this....to simply stop. There are certain things which he might do, but getting the sermons into some legal episode? That crossed a line.
To simplify and tell this? If you had spoken up a decade ago to say that some major city in America would seek to pass an open-bathroom agenda for public facilities in town, then would fuss over a ballot referendum with adequate signatures, and finally go after some ministers and sermons in a courtroom turned church environment.....I would have laughed and said it'd make a great comedy. Well....it came to pass.
The golden moment in this comedy? At some point, if this goes into court with the five ministers, the prosecutor will be hotly frustrated with things, and some minister will say "I'm praying for your lost soul." The judge will get peeved and jerk the minister on the stand giving testimony around, and the minister will turn and respond that he's praying for the judge's lost soul as well. At that point, the fat lady will sung, and the curtain will close.
Friday 17 October 2014
Saturday 11 October 2014
The Speech Test Story
Somewhere in the late 1990s....I got introduced to the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test. Microsoft in some early version of Word....actually had the readability test as part of their package. I admit....from the two hundred folks in my organization.....I was probably only among two or three people who knew of the software test and it's implications.
Flesch-Kincaid works this way.....you wrote a page or two (or forty pages) of a speech or paper. The paper measures the wording....from 3rd grade level of high school.....all the way to graduate school at some university.
It's supposed to help you reach your audience. If you know that your audience needs a speech geared for lower-intelligent folks...say 10th-grade education....then you can build a speech to that degree, and measure it in the end to be certain of the standard desired.
It's a handy product if you give speeches....write white-papers....develop research projects....or putting together an entire book.
So I noticed today....someone finally took Flesch-Kincaid and applied it to Presidential speeches given since the late 1700s to the present. It probably took at least a year to dig up the various speeches, and run them through the application.
What they tend to find is interesting.
Most speeches written in the 1800-period....were mostly at the college-level of understanding. Washington, Adams, and Jefferson wrote comprehensive speeches.....that probably were a bit more difficult than common man of America could take and grasp. The thing is.....they were educated at a certain level, and most of the people they came into contact with.....were of the same level of education. Most of the speeches? They were heard by these same individuals.
From 1850 to 1875....things started to change. Presidential speeches were now being drafted and given....spreading from college-level on down to the seventh-grade level.
From 1925 to 1950....there were no more of the college-graduate level speeches. About ninety percent of the speeches given in this period by Presidents....were of the 12th grade of high school on down to the eighth grade.
Since 1975.....there's not been a single Presidential speech developed that went past the 12th grade of high school. The majority fit for eighth and ninth grade writing skills.
President Obama's noted speeches? They generally fit into the seventh grade to the tenth grade.
A odd fact or two from this study? The Gettysburg Speech drafted and given by Lincoln.....was noted at the eleventh-grade level. The poor notes given to George Bush's speeches? Well....they generally measure up to the same level given by President Obama. No better....no worse.
What does all this say about our national character and leadership? We've developed the remarkable ability to write marginal speeches that get the point across to people with limited or sparse education. We want a leader who seems to think like us.....talk like us.....and educated like us. He may be fake to some degree....walking around with a Master's Degree in law....but he's hired enough people to draft marginal speeches for our entertainment.
Fixing this or cleaning it up? Forget about it. I doubt if the public would be happy with a George Washington-type character today showing up and giving a humble speech which was drafted at the college level. Neither would the public likely stand and vote for a guy like Abraham Lincoln. We've gotten use to gimmick presidents, and it's the current trend. For better or worse, this is the direction we are going.
Flesch-Kincaid works this way.....you wrote a page or two (or forty pages) of a speech or paper. The paper measures the wording....from 3rd grade level of high school.....all the way to graduate school at some university.
It's supposed to help you reach your audience. If you know that your audience needs a speech geared for lower-intelligent folks...say 10th-grade education....then you can build a speech to that degree, and measure it in the end to be certain of the standard desired.
It's a handy product if you give speeches....write white-papers....develop research projects....or putting together an entire book.
So I noticed today....someone finally took Flesch-Kincaid and applied it to Presidential speeches given since the late 1700s to the present. It probably took at least a year to dig up the various speeches, and run them through the application.
What they tend to find is interesting.
Most speeches written in the 1800-period....were mostly at the college-level of understanding. Washington, Adams, and Jefferson wrote comprehensive speeches.....that probably were a bit more difficult than common man of America could take and grasp. The thing is.....they were educated at a certain level, and most of the people they came into contact with.....were of the same level of education. Most of the speeches? They were heard by these same individuals.
From 1850 to 1875....things started to change. Presidential speeches were now being drafted and given....spreading from college-level on down to the seventh-grade level.
From 1925 to 1950....there were no more of the college-graduate level speeches. About ninety percent of the speeches given in this period by Presidents....were of the 12th grade of high school on down to the eighth grade.
Since 1975.....there's not been a single Presidential speech developed that went past the 12th grade of high school. The majority fit for eighth and ninth grade writing skills.
President Obama's noted speeches? They generally fit into the seventh grade to the tenth grade.
A odd fact or two from this study? The Gettysburg Speech drafted and given by Lincoln.....was noted at the eleventh-grade level. The poor notes given to George Bush's speeches? Well....they generally measure up to the same level given by President Obama. No better....no worse.
What does all this say about our national character and leadership? We've developed the remarkable ability to write marginal speeches that get the point across to people with limited or sparse education. We want a leader who seems to think like us.....talk like us.....and educated like us. He may be fake to some degree....walking around with a Master's Degree in law....but he's hired enough people to draft marginal speeches for our entertainment.
Fixing this or cleaning it up? Forget about it. I doubt if the public would be happy with a George Washington-type character today showing up and giving a humble speech which was drafted at the college level. Neither would the public likely stand and vote for a guy like Abraham Lincoln. We've gotten use to gimmick presidents, and it's the current trend. For better or worse, this is the direction we are going.
Friday 10 October 2014
The Hefty Weight of Democracy
It's one of those odd psychological moments. You have a forum with some political guy or gal running for office, and some idiots are free to ask stupid questions. So you have one gal ask you....knowing you ARE a Republican....if you voted for Bush in 2000. There are basically three answers...."yes", "no", or "I don't remember".
This leads onto a second question....especially if you answered with anything beyond "yes".
The idiot could ask you....if you didn't vote for Bush, then who did you vote for? The quick answer and better comeback would be you didn't vote for anyone....feeling that none of the candidates were competent. Nobody would fault you for such an answer.
If you answered "I don't remember"? They will ask about your memory lapses and how often they occur...making you look foolish.
Out of a hundred Republicans or confessed right-leaning guys.....I would imagine that ninety-nine would just simply say "yes, I voted for Bush". The one guy? He might freak out and say "no", getting the more difficult questions next.
Over the past thirty years, and various Republican candidates.....I'm guessing most right-leaners would go the same way.
Democrats? Well....I'm guessing up to 2000.....the numbers would resemble the right-leaning folks.
This week.....the gal running in Kentucky against Senator McConnell.....was after a newspaper endorsement. They wanted her to appear up against a board, and answer some questions. These weren't rocket-science questions.....just simple position questions. Then they asked if she'd voted for Obama, and she went through various gyrations of avoiding an answer. She couldn't answer "yes" or "no" or "I don't remember".
I wouldn't call this stupidity......but a naive gut feeling that you feel like you screwed up not just once, but twice, and you don't want to admit this in public.
How many of a hundred Democrats would go through this gut feeling answer? I'd take a guess that three or four. It's not a lot, but it's enough that draws some puzzling thoughts.
If these four individuals act this way....what happens in the future? Will they ask some really tough questions of Democrats running for office, and demand some blunt truths? Will they expect more evidence on the table of past performance?
This Kentucky Democrat? I suspect that she lost five-percent of her support from this unique answer, and it won't be coming back this late in the election period.
Influencing the 2016 election period? I'm willing to guess that someone is watching all this stuff, and will make the same question come up on numerous occasions....forcing people to admit who they voted for or against.
Democracy is an odd thing.....now, you have to remember who you voted for in past elections, and be willing to admit this in public. We are lucky to remember who the governor is....the past record of the Dallas Cowboys....the ingredients of a good cocktail.....the pin number for the ATM machine....and when we last did an oil change for the pick-up. Now? Our voting record?
This leads onto a second question....especially if you answered with anything beyond "yes".
The idiot could ask you....if you didn't vote for Bush, then who did you vote for? The quick answer and better comeback would be you didn't vote for anyone....feeling that none of the candidates were competent. Nobody would fault you for such an answer.
If you answered "I don't remember"? They will ask about your memory lapses and how often they occur...making you look foolish.
Out of a hundred Republicans or confessed right-leaning guys.....I would imagine that ninety-nine would just simply say "yes, I voted for Bush". The one guy? He might freak out and say "no", getting the more difficult questions next.
Over the past thirty years, and various Republican candidates.....I'm guessing most right-leaners would go the same way.
Democrats? Well....I'm guessing up to 2000.....the numbers would resemble the right-leaning folks.
This week.....the gal running in Kentucky against Senator McConnell.....was after a newspaper endorsement. They wanted her to appear up against a board, and answer some questions. These weren't rocket-science questions.....just simple position questions. Then they asked if she'd voted for Obama, and she went through various gyrations of avoiding an answer. She couldn't answer "yes" or "no" or "I don't remember".
I wouldn't call this stupidity......but a naive gut feeling that you feel like you screwed up not just once, but twice, and you don't want to admit this in public.
How many of a hundred Democrats would go through this gut feeling answer? I'd take a guess that three or four. It's not a lot, but it's enough that draws some puzzling thoughts.
If these four individuals act this way....what happens in the future? Will they ask some really tough questions of Democrats running for office, and demand some blunt truths? Will they expect more evidence on the table of past performance?
This Kentucky Democrat? I suspect that she lost five-percent of her support from this unique answer, and it won't be coming back this late in the election period.
Influencing the 2016 election period? I'm willing to guess that someone is watching all this stuff, and will make the same question come up on numerous occasions....forcing people to admit who they voted for or against.
Democracy is an odd thing.....now, you have to remember who you voted for in past elections, and be willing to admit this in public. We are lucky to remember who the governor is....the past record of the Dallas Cowboys....the ingredients of a good cocktail.....the pin number for the ATM machine....and when we last did an oil change for the pick-up. Now? Our voting record?
Thursday 9 October 2014
Bama and Ebola
I was reading over Bama news this morning, and noted that our state governor (Robert Bentley) came up and did a media speech deal yesterday with the state health officer, and some infectious disease expert from a Montgomery hospital.
The deal? Well....the governor wanted everyone in Bama to know that things are OK, and all planned out if Ebola arrives in Bama.....no matter if it comes via Gulf Shores, the Tennessee border, or via the Birmingham airport. There's a plan.
Somewhere in the talk, the mention of a checklist for state medical folks was disclosed. There are questions now that get tossed early on in a medical interview....like....have you been traveling recently....like to Africa? There's some mandated procedures that got mentioned, and the governor kinda summed it up....Bama was ready.
Where does this leave us with the normal Bama scenario?
Well....first, we tend to find different ways of pouncing words that we don't commonly use. So, I'm betting on several creative ways of folks saying "Ebola". Maybe E-bul-lie.....E-bull-ly....Eb-o-lie....etc.
Somewhere down the line....some Bama folks will pull out their Bibles and look through Revelations (always a popular place to find agreeable stuff), and point out that God already forecasted this, and it's all part of the master-plan.
At some point here, some Bama or Auburn football coaches will sit and ponder over various strategies if their quarterback gets Ebola, and how they would handle it with the back-up quarterback.
Bama graveyard managers will start to eyeball expansion, talking up the need to double up on space in the near future.
Bama lawyers will see potential income angles by calling up folks who have wills and hinting that maybe it's time for another review, and maybe cutting out folks or including folks....ifing you got Ebola and suddenly passed on. Folks might talk passionately about the Ford 150 pick-up and who it might go to.....if they got Ebola.
These African missionary missions might draw more negativity. Folks might say they'd do some missionary work, but only in Texas or Utah.....just to be on the safe side.
Bama airports? You can imagine the cleaning services folks getting some note from the Airport Manager that they need to wear hazmat suits whenever some guy throws up in the concourse...even if it's from too much booze at the airport bar.
Guys will sit around the general store in Bama and discuss cleaning solutions for Ebola....mostly from experimental ideas that they got from their three years in the Army, or from the county agricultural agent that visited recently. It'll always involve some element of diesel and some weed-killer....be highly flammable....and eat paint off a car in sixty seconds.
We'll even have a few guys who talk up an underground bunker idea....where they and the family will huddle up for six months while Ebola destroys the heartland of Bama. The wife isn't aware of the bunker or the plan, and would likely divorce the guy once the plan gets mentioned.
The problem in Bama....is that we tend to think too much. We don't see a simple problem.....we see a vast multiple-scenario complex mystical situation....that demands a frustrating answer beyond human reckoning. It's the five-side barn, the horse that adds numbers, the septic tank that has worked for forty-five years without replacement, or the twenty-year old Dodge car with an automatic that has never required rebuilding.
Even now....this moment.....over 300,000 Bama folks are working hard on Ebola prevention and handling. They will casually mention this at the Waffle House as they meet with friends and peers. It'll get brought up in Sunday Bible School this weekend....that they just acquired some special special cream from Canada that dissolves Ebola on contact.
The governor? Well....he's simply putting himself into the same position....thinking ahead.
Frankly, it's a shock to some Bama folks because they still thought that Guy Hunt was governor (1987-1993)....forgetting that Guy had to resign in 1993 after the conviction of taking $200,000 which was used mostly for marble figurines and high-end lawn mowers.
So, don't get too excited if your Bama neighbor talks up Ebola. He's just thinking ahead.
The deal? Well....the governor wanted everyone in Bama to know that things are OK, and all planned out if Ebola arrives in Bama.....no matter if it comes via Gulf Shores, the Tennessee border, or via the Birmingham airport. There's a plan.
Somewhere in the talk, the mention of a checklist for state medical folks was disclosed. There are questions now that get tossed early on in a medical interview....like....have you been traveling recently....like to Africa? There's some mandated procedures that got mentioned, and the governor kinda summed it up....Bama was ready.
Where does this leave us with the normal Bama scenario?
Well....first, we tend to find different ways of pouncing words that we don't commonly use. So, I'm betting on several creative ways of folks saying "Ebola". Maybe E-bul-lie.....E-bull-ly....Eb-o-lie....etc.
Somewhere down the line....some Bama folks will pull out their Bibles and look through Revelations (always a popular place to find agreeable stuff), and point out that God already forecasted this, and it's all part of the master-plan.
At some point here, some Bama or Auburn football coaches will sit and ponder over various strategies if their quarterback gets Ebola, and how they would handle it with the back-up quarterback.
Bama graveyard managers will start to eyeball expansion, talking up the need to double up on space in the near future.
Bama lawyers will see potential income angles by calling up folks who have wills and hinting that maybe it's time for another review, and maybe cutting out folks or including folks....ifing you got Ebola and suddenly passed on. Folks might talk passionately about the Ford 150 pick-up and who it might go to.....if they got Ebola.
These African missionary missions might draw more negativity. Folks might say they'd do some missionary work, but only in Texas or Utah.....just to be on the safe side.
Bama airports? You can imagine the cleaning services folks getting some note from the Airport Manager that they need to wear hazmat suits whenever some guy throws up in the concourse...even if it's from too much booze at the airport bar.
Guys will sit around the general store in Bama and discuss cleaning solutions for Ebola....mostly from experimental ideas that they got from their three years in the Army, or from the county agricultural agent that visited recently. It'll always involve some element of diesel and some weed-killer....be highly flammable....and eat paint off a car in sixty seconds.
We'll even have a few guys who talk up an underground bunker idea....where they and the family will huddle up for six months while Ebola destroys the heartland of Bama. The wife isn't aware of the bunker or the plan, and would likely divorce the guy once the plan gets mentioned.
The problem in Bama....is that we tend to think too much. We don't see a simple problem.....we see a vast multiple-scenario complex mystical situation....that demands a frustrating answer beyond human reckoning. It's the five-side barn, the horse that adds numbers, the septic tank that has worked for forty-five years without replacement, or the twenty-year old Dodge car with an automatic that has never required rebuilding.
Even now....this moment.....over 300,000 Bama folks are working hard on Ebola prevention and handling. They will casually mention this at the Waffle House as they meet with friends and peers. It'll get brought up in Sunday Bible School this weekend....that they just acquired some special special cream from Canada that dissolves Ebola on contact.
The governor? Well....he's simply putting himself into the same position....thinking ahead.
Frankly, it's a shock to some Bama folks because they still thought that Guy Hunt was governor (1987-1993)....forgetting that Guy had to resign in 1993 after the conviction of taking $200,000 which was used mostly for marble figurines and high-end lawn mowers.
So, don't get too excited if your Bama neighbor talks up Ebola. He's just thinking ahead.
Wednesday 8 October 2014
On the Topic of Free College
I read a piece today from Yahoo Finance....over "free university" deals in Europe. It was kinda comical....they came to some point and suggested that America ought to offer the same deal....free college. They noted....Germany was already doing it.
I sat there....mostly laughing. There's some differences between the US and Germany on college.
First, NO German university has any NCAA-related action. No football...no million-dollar coaches...no massive sports complex....no alumni program...no volleyball team for ladies sports...no softball program.
Second, if you screwed around and played drinking games all the way through your first semester...they’d invite you to leave, and you would not find much sympathy with a second chance. Party schools in Germany? None. Forget about that angle.
Third, German university programs don’t have a bunch of support staffs with imaginary job descriptions and ample incomes. A German university likely functions with half the staffs that most US colleges have.
Fourth, towns around the university programs in Germany have a high value on the students...mostly because they go to recruit them to sign up as residents of the town....getting to the 100k, 200k, or 300k level....which means more handouts from the national government. This relationship to the town, makes the university a pull partner of the local city and of value. Most cities run more transit buses through a university district...subways are added...and they are part of the local community.
Fifth. Cops who protect the German university...are city cops or state cops. There are no hired thugs or wannabe cops patrolling a German university, nor is the cost dumped onto the college. Nor are the legal proceedings separate. If you do something stupid on a German campus...you get a city judge, and the DA after you....so you don’t have to worry about getting expelled....you get actual real jail-time, with no campus lawyer helping you.
Sixth and final, all these instructors and professors are part of a national level of pensions and benefits. Some guy is watching the whole trend, and ensuring that stupid individual university administrators aren’t lining up some guy for a $300k a year pension deal. If some German governor woke up tomorrow and got wind that some professor in his state is about to retire and get more monthly income than his job....someone would be dragged to the state capital and be asked some pretty difficult questions, and it wouldn’t be a pleasing situation.
They can offer free tuition...the question is....would US university programs be willing to offer the same deal? My guess is...NO. I should point it....it generally takes 4.5 to 5 years to get a bachelor’s degree in Germany. And it’s around seven years if you count in the master’s degree.
I should also note....they also don’t run up bogus ethnic studies degrees, how-to-feel-good physic 116 classes, or Bigfoot studies courses. Got a professor who gets into trouble with some student for relationship woes? They turn the evidence to a state prosecutor and let him handle the mess from that point on...no worries for the university in terms of legal issues.
I sat there....mostly laughing. There's some differences between the US and Germany on college.
First, NO German university has any NCAA-related action. No football...no million-dollar coaches...no massive sports complex....no alumni program...no volleyball team for ladies sports...no softball program.
Second, if you screwed around and played drinking games all the way through your first semester...they’d invite you to leave, and you would not find much sympathy with a second chance. Party schools in Germany? None. Forget about that angle.
Third, German university programs don’t have a bunch of support staffs with imaginary job descriptions and ample incomes. A German university likely functions with half the staffs that most US colleges have.
Fourth, towns around the university programs in Germany have a high value on the students...mostly because they go to recruit them to sign up as residents of the town....getting to the 100k, 200k, or 300k level....which means more handouts from the national government. This relationship to the town, makes the university a pull partner of the local city and of value. Most cities run more transit buses through a university district...subways are added...and they are part of the local community.
Fifth. Cops who protect the German university...are city cops or state cops. There are no hired thugs or wannabe cops patrolling a German university, nor is the cost dumped onto the college. Nor are the legal proceedings separate. If you do something stupid on a German campus...you get a city judge, and the DA after you....so you don’t have to worry about getting expelled....you get actual real jail-time, with no campus lawyer helping you.
Sixth and final, all these instructors and professors are part of a national level of pensions and benefits. Some guy is watching the whole trend, and ensuring that stupid individual university administrators aren’t lining up some guy for a $300k a year pension deal. If some German governor woke up tomorrow and got wind that some professor in his state is about to retire and get more monthly income than his job....someone would be dragged to the state capital and be asked some pretty difficult questions, and it wouldn’t be a pleasing situation.
They can offer free tuition...the question is....would US university programs be willing to offer the same deal? My guess is...NO. I should point it....it generally takes 4.5 to 5 years to get a bachelor’s degree in Germany. And it’s around seven years if you count in the master’s degree.
I should also note....they also don’t run up bogus ethnic studies degrees, how-to-feel-good physic 116 classes, or Bigfoot studies courses. Got a professor who gets into trouble with some student for relationship woes? They turn the evidence to a state prosecutor and let him handle the mess from that point on...no worries for the university in terms of legal issues.
Sunday 5 October 2014
The Club
I came to a number of conclusions about these clubs.
1. Until the early 1990s....no one ever cared if they made a profit or not. Suddenly, almost overnight.....a club had to be profitable, and you started to see managers go fairly frequently. The ones that stayed.....invented all kinds of gimmicks....and they cut zero profit situations entirely. It was like day and night, in just a year or two.
2. Every single club throughout the 70s and 80s....had a room in the back where the senior NCOs would gather and play poker. It was their home, away from home. They drank while they played, and I imagine that a quarter of them needed alcohol rehab. At some point in the 1990s....these rooms rapidly started to disappear. Maybe it was the type of entertainment that looked bad, or just a whole generation of NCOs retired.
3. For some reason, almost every single club could hustle up and lay out a fabulous Sunday buffet dinner which attracted just about everyone on base. But from Monday to Friday....this was the last place on Earth that you wanted to go for noon lunches. It was like an entirely different crew running the place on Sundays.
4. I can remember twenty-five-cent pitchers of beer in 1979. That basically all disappeared in the early 1990s as the anti-alcohol agenda came into play. The cop patrols in the parking lot? Yeah, that started about the same time in 1990. The problem with profits? Well....yeah, that started about the same time too.
5. For years and years....the Ramstein club had live entertainment at least five nights a week. You could walk in on a Thursday evening and there would be four-hundred folks sitting around. Live entertainment today? If lucky....they might run something up once a week.
6. I spoke to a NCO a couple of years ago and asked them what the chief draw of the local NCO Club was, and he admitted that they were running a mystery dating game agenda, and that would usually draw around a hundred folks on a Friday night. No band? No. No DJ? No. It was reality dating as entertainment. I questioned this guy.....how could this draw any crowd? And he simply admitted that it was fairly lame, but this was "safe" and would pass the base morals agenda easily.
7. In all the time I ever spent in an Air Force Enlisted/NCO club.....I've only witnessed two fights. The first one was in 1977, and between three drunk guys over one gal. The SPs arrived....totted the three off to the jailhouse, and the gal just walked out the front door with some fourth guy. The second fight was between two drunk housewives....arguing over something of a nature involving a spilled drink. The truth is....Air Force guys just weren't the type to fight much over anything....even when drunk.
8. Bingo was a gimmick to draw in Asian wives of Air Force guys. I worked with a guy who was hired by the club to run their bingo operation. In a normal one-night operation.....my associated hinted that over $10,000 would easily run through the bingo operation. I asked about the profit take, and he said it was almost zero. The club's whole game was to make it last two hours and ensure they drank and ate a fair amount.....which was where they made profit.
9. The worst club I ever went into....was an annex of the main club. I actually showed up on opening night....shocked at bright colors, bright lights, pool tables in the open, and a modern-style bar. The burger bar was four-star and I was amazed at the offerings of the club. Six months go by, and I show up at the same club on the second occasion....finding it a dark, shadowy place....no pool tables, just open floor.....and weird music in the background. Everyone was dressed weird, acted weird, and you felt like you were at some San Francisco bar. I quickly sipped through one brew, and left. Four months later....they busted the place one night for immoral activity in the bathroom, and some hint of drug activity.
Clubs aren't like clubs of the 1970s, or for that matter....of the 1980s....or for that matter.....of the 1990s. Most clubs have been modernized over the last decade....offer up commercial style food, and have a small pub/bar for the marginal crowd that might show up for one single drink. The fear of drinking on base? I think it weighs heavily upon folks today. In 1979.....you might have three-hundred folks fairly drunk on a Friday night at the Rhein Main Air Base NCO club. A typical club today on a Friday night? There might be one guy drunk, and you can put a 50-50 bet on him not avoiding the cops and some arrest.
A different world.
Friday 3 October 2014
My Lego Story
I browsed at the window for several minutes and then came to the high-end choices.....a Simpsons house, for the equivalent of roughly $240.
It's an awful lot. Course, it's time-consuming as well. I'd take a guess that it'd take pretty much an entire Sunday afternoon to put the whole thing together.
And then? What? How exactly will you display your Simpson's house? Will your wife allow it on the coffee table? Is there any place that it'll fit in the cubicle of your office? Will you even display it?
A toy for a kid? I kinda doubt it. I'd suspect that you'd have to be at least eight or nine....to read through the instructions and assemble it. But how many kids would want to sit there for four hours and assemble such a thing?
I'd almost like to stop and ask how many they sell in a year, but I suspect it's more for looks than actual sales. At best.....I'd guess that a dozen get sold.....mostly bought by girlfriends for their geeky boyfriend.
In the 1970s.....nothing like this would have ever been sold in any town or at any major store. The minute you spoke of a $50 Lego deal.....it was a no-go. Today? Ample funds, wild ideas, and a natural tendency to do crazy things.
On the adjoining shelf was a pirate ship, which ran into the $400 range. It was double the number of parts and man-hours.
Yeah, for me....it just begs a lot of questions on common sense. But apparently, we've lost that quality of life.
Wednesday 1 October 2014
The Problem With Cultural Evolution
There's an interesting case coming up in Colorado. I doubt if the national media will pick up on it or discuss it much.
The case relates to the state's new laws over medical marijuana, and a private company's rules on employment. Company X (a satellite TV service) has an employee. The employee is a quadriplegic who has been advised by a Colorado doctor to utilize medical marijuana, which is legally sold in the state. The company has a drug-testing program, which marijuana is one of those drugs that is listed on the forbidden list.
The chief reason that the company will say is that they are fearful that employees might show up at the work-place, with lingering affects of the drug in their system, and cause safety issues (for themselves or the public).
The guy in this episode, had been with the company for three years, and the original drug test occurred in 2010, with dismissal as the result. The original court episode resulted in the company being proven innocent...the dismissal was allowed. The appeal? Again went for the company. So we are at the level of the state supreme court listening to the case. Personally, I expect them to render for the company again, and the case will move to the national level for one last chance.
The medical experts tend to side mostly with the guy in this case. His health has improved with the use of marijuana. Safety experts will generally side with the company.
If you go to the Fortune 500 companies.....almost all of them have some type of drug testing requirement. You could work for them for over forty years and never get tested. You could be tested yearly. What generally happens within the Fortune 500 companies is that an event occurs which makes a division chief question the individual in question. The HR office will send a note to this guy and require him within X-number of hours to report to a nearby lab and give a sample. Failure to do so.....results in automatic dismissal. It's usually written into your contract.
The problem here....is that we have an evolution going on with medical marijuana where one part of the nation has progressed on, and the standards of the remaining nation remain with certain rules. There is more than ample proof that serious usage of marijuana disrupts your thinking process and could potentially cause an accident. Hence.....even for buying medical marijuana.....they generally instruct or require you to leave the premises of the "store" and go home. They don't even want you smoking this in their parking lot.
All of this leaves a regular user with limited options for employment. A Piggly Wiggly shelf stocker, a gas station clerk, a french-fry guy at Burger King, or a pizza delivery guy. At some point a decade down the line....some journalist is going to write up some big long story about the woeful problem with medical marijuana users and the unfairness of laws and forced drug-testing. Some political party is going to promise a safe conversion for the nation, and we will all wonder a year or two later why accident rates have jumped a couple of percent.
The case relates to the state's new laws over medical marijuana, and a private company's rules on employment. Company X (a satellite TV service) has an employee. The employee is a quadriplegic who has been advised by a Colorado doctor to utilize medical marijuana, which is legally sold in the state. The company has a drug-testing program, which marijuana is one of those drugs that is listed on the forbidden list.
The chief reason that the company will say is that they are fearful that employees might show up at the work-place, with lingering affects of the drug in their system, and cause safety issues (for themselves or the public).
The guy in this episode, had been with the company for three years, and the original drug test occurred in 2010, with dismissal as the result. The original court episode resulted in the company being proven innocent...the dismissal was allowed. The appeal? Again went for the company. So we are at the level of the state supreme court listening to the case. Personally, I expect them to render for the company again, and the case will move to the national level for one last chance.
The medical experts tend to side mostly with the guy in this case. His health has improved with the use of marijuana. Safety experts will generally side with the company.
If you go to the Fortune 500 companies.....almost all of them have some type of drug testing requirement. You could work for them for over forty years and never get tested. You could be tested yearly. What generally happens within the Fortune 500 companies is that an event occurs which makes a division chief question the individual in question. The HR office will send a note to this guy and require him within X-number of hours to report to a nearby lab and give a sample. Failure to do so.....results in automatic dismissal. It's usually written into your contract.
The problem here....is that we have an evolution going on with medical marijuana where one part of the nation has progressed on, and the standards of the remaining nation remain with certain rules. There is more than ample proof that serious usage of marijuana disrupts your thinking process and could potentially cause an accident. Hence.....even for buying medical marijuana.....they generally instruct or require you to leave the premises of the "store" and go home. They don't even want you smoking this in their parking lot.
All of this leaves a regular user with limited options for employment. A Piggly Wiggly shelf stocker, a gas station clerk, a french-fry guy at Burger King, or a pizza delivery guy. At some point a decade down the line....some journalist is going to write up some big long story about the woeful problem with medical marijuana users and the unfairness of laws and forced drug-testing. Some political party is going to promise a safe conversion for the nation, and we will all wonder a year or two later why accident rates have jumped a couple of percent.
Monday 29 September 2014
Battlestar III?
I thought.....hmmm....so this story would tell the rest of the story of version two on Earth? No.
What the writer of the article suggested was that they'd just rebuild the entire general script and tell the story fresh....yet again.
How different was version one versus versus version two? It was an entirely different story, with different angles that you just couldn't do in 1978. In 2004, you had real graphics....so you could build up six minutes of every show with some dynamic battle in space.
About a year after the 2004-version started up.....I happened to catch an episode and was amazed at the storyline, and characters. It was crisp. It was leading you onto various mystery elements, and motivating you to come back for the next show.
How to build version three? I'm not sure that it can be done in a different way, and lay out a totally different outcome. It's amazing.....so much creativity around, and the best that folks can suggest.....is to just redo it once again. Thankfully, we haven't had idiots come to do this with Gilligan's Island or Gunsmoke.
Sunday 28 September 2014
White House Stuff
Having been to DC, and walked the entire circle around the White House....I can say that I have a better prospective about this now. The structure itself.....is one of the most protected sites in America....yet one of the most viewed sites in America.
I'd take a guess that well over forty-thousand people will walk around the front or back on an average week-day. In August, on a Saturday....there's probably 200,000 people who will come by tour bus or just walk by the front or back.
In essence, it just isn't an easy site to offer protection. There's the fence, and there's roughly three-hundred feet of open ground that you have to make your way through....to find a dozen-odd guards standing there with machine-guns ready to greet you.
What I expect to eventually to occur....some Jihad group will figure some innovative way to get into the place before they are stopped. At that point, the Secret Service will stand up and admit the location is not working. Yeah....we might actually see them suggest moving the President to a new White House....some secluded mountain valley in central Virginia....with triple the number of security personnel and moats as part of the design.
It might be a decade away.....maybe two decades away. But this open-access environment that exists there......will eventually prove to be a bigger problem than they are willing to accept.
Saturday 27 September 2014
What Could Have Happened
All of this came from some Lassie episodes, some Sunday afternoon forest fire documentaries, and write-ups in the news of this really 'great' profession.
Even after I'd signed up with the Air Force recruiter, these sessions over the forest ranger job idea would come up. The excitement, I came to realize....was a job where you mostly drove around in an old Ford pick-up with "US Forestry" on the side, standing in some shack 200 feet above the ground, and wearing a uniform. Sadly, after a while, I questioned where exactly this would lead onto.
Years later, I came to realize that this was one of the lowest paid jobs in the US government, and getting that cabin on the forestry reservation was the only plus-up when you added up the salary and benefits.
I came across an article this week....a rookie US forest ranger....makes $20,908 a year. Figure thirty-percent taken for state/fed taxes, social security. Then figure at least $250 a month for health insurance. You might make $1,000 a month....roughly what a kid would make if he'd gone to the Marines or Army.
The free cabin? Well, that helps. Course, you probably still have a 1974 Ford pick-up, and the uniform might be issued out so you don't have to pay for it.
Moving up? If you actually had a degree, and put in a year or two....you might get up around $30,000 a year. Course, you'd have to ask yourself....after spending four lousy years in college....is this forestry deal worth all the hassle?
For some reason, I'm kinda glad the Air Force recruiter got to me....beating out the logic of my associate in high school. I might be sitting in Montana today....wearing some green forestry suit, driving a beat-up forestry truck, and climbing 288 steps to reach my shack above the trees. My daily priority? Mostly checking picnic sites, watching for bears, and calling the cops when I noticed marijuana planted in my section of the forest. Maybe once a year, I'd notice a fire, and get a pat on the back for reacting to the emergency.
Life has a funny way of making sure you don't do something stupid.
Friday 26 September 2014
Our American Tradition
The season ends for major league baseball this weekend, and folks will have to settle back for six months and wait for 2015's spring to come, and an opportunity to sit and eat through 3,000 calories in one afternoon....of awful fatty and greasy food.
I hadn't been to a major league game in almost fifteen years....when I went to a Nationals game in 2012. It was an opportunity to reintroduce myself to all the wonders of bad food, and the escalated cost of sitting through a game in this modern era.
It's hard to walk into a stadium today, and not expect to spend anything less than $50 on food and drink. By the time you figure a beer or two....a whooper-hot dog and fries....then some chili dog....toss in a $4 bottle of chilled water....then some twenty-ounce alcohol-slushy mix....you've easily past $40 and 1,500 calories.
Even in the shade, as I was.....it was 97 degrees, and by the 8th inning, I started to realize my hydration issue, put down a second bottle of chilled water, and a third beer.
I sat and watched some guys go through six to eight bottles of beer during a game, and at least $40 of ribs and greasy fries.
If you figure grease and fat alone....you probably did enough for an entire month...just in a four-hour period.
All of this says something about American society, our trend toward fatty food with no limits, and the ability to accept a pricing scheme of questionable nature.
I suspect if a guy were aggressive and did six baseball games a summer with his buddies...he could figure on adding at least five pounds onto his frame, if he didn't do anything extra on physical activities.
Diet or change coming? No. I just can't see major league baseball changing in that direction. They might offer some vegetarian stuff, and try to put calorie/fat signs up about everything, but society now has no desire to dump the greasy food or high calories deal. It is....what it is.
Meaning of a True Communists
We used to have a simple label for Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, liberals, Communists, etc. You could write a 3 x 5 card's worth of information and basically say what some ideologically was all about. Today? You can't do it.
The problem is....we are even going this way with environmentalists, where in ten years.....what label and commentary we established for some environmentalist....won't work.
Yeah, a true Communists today....just ain't the plain old Communists that we learned about in high school.
The Astro-Turf Discussion
I was probably around thirty years old, when I first observed astro-turf....being able to stand on it and rub the stuff. My general perception was....it's basically concrete with some weird carpeting over it, and if you fall....it's a bit different than regular grass or sod. Personally, the last thing on earth I'd want to do....if playing baseball or football....is play on astro-turf. This was some park that we had in Tucson....which had a big issue with limited rainfall, and they'd designed this for some local soccer league.
I noticed this week a big fiasco going on in San Francisco. There are a number of fields around the city which are used for soccer and football. The city admits that while people like the sod fields....maintenance on the fields to keep them in operating condition is a major problem with the budget. So, they want to astro-turf up the whole operation.
Naturally, folks are ballistic about this.....angry...and frustrated with the way head.
What this leads to is the method of construction of the astro-turf.....being from old tires. Yeah, there's this big worry over cancer-causing agents.
Accusations are going back and forth.....locals saying the political folks are taking pay-offs from the tire companies. Tire companies wanting no part of this discussion because they make tires....not astro-turf.
Conspiracy talk? Oh yeah. Various people talking bribes, and various people defending themselves because they haven't seen a single dime of a bribe (probably wishing they were bribed in the first place).
The comical side of this? Out of a thousand folks in San Francisco....I'd take a humble bet that less than fifteen might utilize one of these grassy fields for some sport.
Yep, this topic eats up journalism talents, political bickering, parks and recreation discussions, and expenditures of city funding (which is kinda heated these days). All of this....to make a marginal group of people in the town happy.
Democracy is an odd thing...sometimes, it even creeps into astro-turf discussions.
I noticed this week a big fiasco going on in San Francisco. There are a number of fields around the city which are used for soccer and football. The city admits that while people like the sod fields....maintenance on the fields to keep them in operating condition is a major problem with the budget. So, they want to astro-turf up the whole operation.
Naturally, folks are ballistic about this.....angry...and frustrated with the way head.
What this leads to is the method of construction of the astro-turf.....being from old tires. Yeah, there's this big worry over cancer-causing agents.
Accusations are going back and forth.....locals saying the political folks are taking pay-offs from the tire companies. Tire companies wanting no part of this discussion because they make tires....not astro-turf.
Conspiracy talk? Oh yeah. Various people talking bribes, and various people defending themselves because they haven't seen a single dime of a bribe (probably wishing they were bribed in the first place).
The comical side of this? Out of a thousand folks in San Francisco....I'd take a humble bet that less than fifteen might utilize one of these grassy fields for some sport.
Yep, this topic eats up journalism talents, political bickering, parks and recreation discussions, and expenditures of city funding (which is kinda heated these days). All of this....to make a marginal group of people in the town happy.
Democracy is an odd thing...sometimes, it even creeps into astro-turf discussions.
Wednesday 24 September 2014
A Hundred Years Ago, When Life was Big and Grand
From the newspaper.....The Review....of High Point, NC. 14 Sep 1914 (one hundred years ago this past week):
It is the front page, and highlights one of the top thrills of the week going on in High Point. The county fair with these traveling shows.....with the introduction of cars....became a big attraction. People drove for an hour or two.....bringing the entire family out to a show. We dressed in finer clothing, and were on good manners with peers watching us.
Yeah, we came for the motorcycle death race. We begged to see the diving man. We all sat there for hours debating what really was the "what is it" creature from west Texas. We guessed the remarkable intelligence of the guerrilla and if he'd eventually replace the teacher in our school. We dreamed of snakes for weeks after the fair. The Ferris Wheel was a once-in-your-lifetime thrill.
Generally, all of these shows had scantily-clad women wrestling, hidden tavern-like operations for cheap booze, and a chance to take bets on various things which tended to always go wrong.
The Review gave it great press, and worded in a pretty classic way. They injected a couple of key comments....the son of a Methodist minister...to peal away your curious nature. "Serve the public to the best advantage" was a nice way to say that it's a show to dip into your pocket and spend money on some event.
The truth is.....we don't get write-ups like this anymore. We don't have traveling shows like this anymore. We don't delight in death-defying motorcycle races in steel cages anymore. And we don't wonder about the mysterious creature from west Texas. That says a little about society a hundred years later. We are.....less, and kinda shaking our head over that.
The Otis L. Adams Shows are now holding forth in Mechanicsville Ball Park and large crowds are attending nightly, even the opening night, Monday drawing a good crowd. There are a number of good shows on the ground and well worth seeing. Perhaps the best feature of all is the motor-dome wherein two motorcyclist race with death around the edges of a round enclosure, whose walls are almost perpendicular. It is a sensation worth experiencing. The educated gorilla, the “what is it” animal from southwest Texas, the diving man, snakes, Ferris wheel and other attractions are worth the price. The usual “spend-your-money-as-you-please” attractions are on the midway. We found Manager Adams a very pleasant gentleman and always ready to serve the public to the best advantage. He is the son of a Methodist minister and says he has been in the show business since a mere boy. He is highly elated over the fact that this is the first time out of nine that he has been successful in getting a date for the High Point and said he was determined to make a winning attempt this time if he lost $1000 by coming. But it looks like he going to make good out of his first venture here.
It is the front page, and highlights one of the top thrills of the week going on in High Point. The county fair with these traveling shows.....with the introduction of cars....became a big attraction. People drove for an hour or two.....bringing the entire family out to a show. We dressed in finer clothing, and were on good manners with peers watching us.
Yeah, we came for the motorcycle death race. We begged to see the diving man. We all sat there for hours debating what really was the "what is it" creature from west Texas. We guessed the remarkable intelligence of the guerrilla and if he'd eventually replace the teacher in our school. We dreamed of snakes for weeks after the fair. The Ferris Wheel was a once-in-your-lifetime thrill.
Generally, all of these shows had scantily-clad women wrestling, hidden tavern-like operations for cheap booze, and a chance to take bets on various things which tended to always go wrong.
The Review gave it great press, and worded in a pretty classic way. They injected a couple of key comments....the son of a Methodist minister...to peal away your curious nature. "Serve the public to the best advantage" was a nice way to say that it's a show to dip into your pocket and spend money on some event.
The truth is.....we don't get write-ups like this anymore. We don't have traveling shows like this anymore. We don't delight in death-defying motorcycle races in steel cages anymore. And we don't wonder about the mysterious creature from west Texas. That says a little about society a hundred years later. We are.....less, and kinda shaking our head over that.
Uber and DC
Even though I've been gone from the DC/Arlington area for 15 months....I still track local news.
This week, there's this report out about DC taxi business. What the taxi guys say for the DC region....is that they've sat and watched business spiral downward by twenty percent. Fewer trips....less profit....less potential for recovery.
Blame? Well, Uber.....the online capability that connects people who need rides with private drivers (not taxi-service)....got ahead. When faced with competition....rather than look at the Uber model and try to adapt parts of it to their system....the DC taxi system attack Uber in court and via the city council.
Uber got accepted by the public and I'd say that a quarter of the market has now been totally lost to the DC taxi system. It won't be coming back.
The main reason? Smart phones. Guys took the app, grasped the method of operation, and then learned how to use it quickly and efficiently.
Over the three-year period that I used DC taxi operations....I learned three key things. Almost none of them had a credit card capability (I've heard that most adapted in the last year)....so it meant that I had to carry cash, if I was going use a cab. Second, every single DC cab you rode in.....had a funky smell....not just mildew or body order but something like a dead fish. Third, few of the taxi drivers spoke English as their primary language and accents took some time to adjust to and accept.
On a hot summer day last year in late June.....I boarded a cab for my last trip out of Arlington to DC (Union Station was the request). The lady who picked me up was from Jamaica....with an accent that was delightful to hear but difficult to get across "Union Station". The car had no real suspension, and at times lurched a couple of inches to the left, or right. The seat was finished.....feeling more like tractor seat than a car seat. She offered up some free water to me....since her AC wasn't working and it was easily 95-degrees. I shock my head....mostly over this being my last trip in DC, and just hoped that we wouldn't hit nothing to kinda screw up this remarkable trip.
I have no doubt....Uber will continue to take away business, and another quarter of the business will evaporate by the end of 2015. Those without smart phones (the broke crowd of DC)....will stick with cabs. Those who adapt.....will give up cabs entirely. You can guess the business angle of this. Cabs will survive, but their customer base will hint of their future, and how people perceive them.
This week, there's this report out about DC taxi business. What the taxi guys say for the DC region....is that they've sat and watched business spiral downward by twenty percent. Fewer trips....less profit....less potential for recovery.
Blame? Well, Uber.....the online capability that connects people who need rides with private drivers (not taxi-service)....got ahead. When faced with competition....rather than look at the Uber model and try to adapt parts of it to their system....the DC taxi system attack Uber in court and via the city council.
Uber got accepted by the public and I'd say that a quarter of the market has now been totally lost to the DC taxi system. It won't be coming back.
The main reason? Smart phones. Guys took the app, grasped the method of operation, and then learned how to use it quickly and efficiently.
Over the three-year period that I used DC taxi operations....I learned three key things. Almost none of them had a credit card capability (I've heard that most adapted in the last year)....so it meant that I had to carry cash, if I was going use a cab. Second, every single DC cab you rode in.....had a funky smell....not just mildew or body order but something like a dead fish. Third, few of the taxi drivers spoke English as their primary language and accents took some time to adjust to and accept.
On a hot summer day last year in late June.....I boarded a cab for my last trip out of Arlington to DC (Union Station was the request). The lady who picked me up was from Jamaica....with an accent that was delightful to hear but difficult to get across "Union Station". The car had no real suspension, and at times lurched a couple of inches to the left, or right. The seat was finished.....feeling more like tractor seat than a car seat. She offered up some free water to me....since her AC wasn't working and it was easily 95-degrees. I shock my head....mostly over this being my last trip in DC, and just hoped that we wouldn't hit nothing to kinda screw up this remarkable trip.
I have no doubt....Uber will continue to take away business, and another quarter of the business will evaporate by the end of 2015. Those without smart phones (the broke crowd of DC)....will stick with cabs. Those who adapt.....will give up cabs entirely. You can guess the business angle of this. Cabs will survive, but their customer base will hint of their future, and how people perceive them.
McWeed?
I noticed in medical news today.....there's some growing concern over marijuana-infused drinks/food being marketed now in Washington state. Doctors have noted a couple of cases so far....involved kids with various diseases....who were supposed to benefit from the relaxed rules on medical marijuana....ending up in some hospital unit from an extreme dopey situation where a fair amount of infused food or drink was offered to them for their ailment/condition.
The issue is, which I find interesting.....the menu is kinda varied. It includes pretzels, chocolate bars, peanut brittle, nuts, cookies, trail mix, energy-type drinks, tea, and just plain "shots". The state started an allowance for this....but noted in the rules that there must be a THC (the power agent of marijuana) limit to each item. One cookie, for example....ought to have just the right amount of THC.
Course, it doesn't take an idiot to figure out that you might sit there....consuming six cookies in ten minutes. The reaction time? That's an interesting thing. You can figure that just one cookie consumed with the THC.....will take around one to two hours before your body will react. So figure six cookies consumed, and you don't feel nothing. Then 2.5 hours later, you suddenly feel yourself in a daze. Twelve cookies? Overloaded.
What stops the gal or guy from consuming six THC cookies? Nothing.
The pro-marijuana crowd generally put enough rules into place to make this all appealing to the public. The problem I see is that we have a society that is very capable of doping up on a dozen cookies in one session with a cup of coffee, and walking around in some mall for an hour....then flipping into a high-mood and doing stupid stuff for the next two or three hours. Operating a car or farm tractor? Same deal.
All of this leads people to get the idea that it's like a Burger King operation and you can just pick two of these, and four of those.....never really grasping what you are aiming to achieve.
The issue is, which I find interesting.....the menu is kinda varied. It includes pretzels, chocolate bars, peanut brittle, nuts, cookies, trail mix, energy-type drinks, tea, and just plain "shots". The state started an allowance for this....but noted in the rules that there must be a THC (the power agent of marijuana) limit to each item. One cookie, for example....ought to have just the right amount of THC.
Course, it doesn't take an idiot to figure out that you might sit there....consuming six cookies in ten minutes. The reaction time? That's an interesting thing. You can figure that just one cookie consumed with the THC.....will take around one to two hours before your body will react. So figure six cookies consumed, and you don't feel nothing. Then 2.5 hours later, you suddenly feel yourself in a daze. Twelve cookies? Overloaded.
What stops the gal or guy from consuming six THC cookies? Nothing.
The pro-marijuana crowd generally put enough rules into place to make this all appealing to the public. The problem I see is that we have a society that is very capable of doping up on a dozen cookies in one session with a cup of coffee, and walking around in some mall for an hour....then flipping into a high-mood and doing stupid stuff for the next two or three hours. Operating a car or farm tractor? Same deal.
All of this leads people to get the idea that it's like a Burger King operation and you can just pick two of these, and four of those.....never really grasping what you are aiming to achieve.
Bank Walmart?
I made a prediction about ten years ago....that Walmart would eventually get into banking. Well....the financial news folks say that it's about to occur.
The intention is to provide a simple bank, with no fees on accounts, and no fees for bad checks or overdraft. Personally, I think the no fee idea for bad checks will last six months before they realize it's costing them too much. But the rest of this....particularly now when most banks will charge you for various minor actions.....makes sense.
In DC while I briefly lived there....most banks would allow you three checks a month to be written without cost, and then flip some fee into extra checks. Same deal for ATM visits....I noticed one bank to allowed only one visit per month free, and then they flipped on a $2 per ATM visit after that one free visit.
Bank and the way we use them have rapidly changed. I can remember in 1977....there simply weren't ATM machines in the local area of Bama where I grew up. I noticed a year later, while at Rhein Main Air Base in Germany.....we'd gotten our first ATM on base....requiring a special card, and they wanted you to pay around $20 to get the card. Five years later....most all banks had an ATM machine, and the card was free.
Visiting banks? I have to admit.....in the past two years....I've probably only stepped inside a credit union or bank maybe four times. I mail my checks for deposit now. I check on my credit card bills online. My pension check goes straight to the bank.
From the peak in 1978.....I probably went to the local base bank six times a month.....I'm almost down to once or twice a year. I think it's possible to avoid the bank entirely, and go your entire life after day one of getting your account.
Walmart's game here? They want to be the one and only bank that you ever do business with. You start your account there.....your son or daughter comes in at age seven and gets an account that they stay with sixty years.....and their son or daughter repeats the same experience.
The fears of the competition? I suspect some folks are uneasy in smaller towns with six banks and a Walmart in operation. If just five percent of the regulars to the Walmart (those three-times-a-week folks) join up with Walmart....one of the banks in town will have to shut down due to limited business. If you got half the folks into this.....you'd be lucky to have two banks open in town.
What Walmart hasn't said....is that it'll handle loans for cars or houses. My guess is that by 2016....some car loan deal will be worked out. And maybe ten years from now.....even a home loan deal might be possible. To make these happen....I'd expect Walmart to step out and buy several companies with business in existence....rebrand them as Walmart-players, and just herd everyone into the Walmart operation.
Yep....someday down the line (probably 2025).....you will look around your neighborhood of sixty-odd folks, and note that three-quarters of them are Walmart bank participants. And over in the nearby town where a dozen empty bank building sit......folks will pass and note how they went out of business.
The intention is to provide a simple bank, with no fees on accounts, and no fees for bad checks or overdraft. Personally, I think the no fee idea for bad checks will last six months before they realize it's costing them too much. But the rest of this....particularly now when most banks will charge you for various minor actions.....makes sense.
In DC while I briefly lived there....most banks would allow you three checks a month to be written without cost, and then flip some fee into extra checks. Same deal for ATM visits....I noticed one bank to allowed only one visit per month free, and then they flipped on a $2 per ATM visit after that one free visit.
Bank and the way we use them have rapidly changed. I can remember in 1977....there simply weren't ATM machines in the local area of Bama where I grew up. I noticed a year later, while at Rhein Main Air Base in Germany.....we'd gotten our first ATM on base....requiring a special card, and they wanted you to pay around $20 to get the card. Five years later....most all banks had an ATM machine, and the card was free.
Visiting banks? I have to admit.....in the past two years....I've probably only stepped inside a credit union or bank maybe four times. I mail my checks for deposit now. I check on my credit card bills online. My pension check goes straight to the bank.
From the peak in 1978.....I probably went to the local base bank six times a month.....I'm almost down to once or twice a year. I think it's possible to avoid the bank entirely, and go your entire life after day one of getting your account.
Walmart's game here? They want to be the one and only bank that you ever do business with. You start your account there.....your son or daughter comes in at age seven and gets an account that they stay with sixty years.....and their son or daughter repeats the same experience.
The fears of the competition? I suspect some folks are uneasy in smaller towns with six banks and a Walmart in operation. If just five percent of the regulars to the Walmart (those three-times-a-week folks) join up with Walmart....one of the banks in town will have to shut down due to limited business. If you got half the folks into this.....you'd be lucky to have two banks open in town.
What Walmart hasn't said....is that it'll handle loans for cars or houses. My guess is that by 2016....some car loan deal will be worked out. And maybe ten years from now.....even a home loan deal might be possible. To make these happen....I'd expect Walmart to step out and buy several companies with business in existence....rebrand them as Walmart-players, and just herd everyone into the Walmart operation.
Yep....someday down the line (probably 2025).....you will look around your neighborhood of sixty-odd folks, and note that three-quarters of them are Walmart bank participants. And over in the nearby town where a dozen empty bank building sit......folks will pass and note how they went out of business.
Saturday 20 September 2014
Just a Humble Opinion on Aliens
Yeah, I've watched probably over a hundred movies where the aliens turn out somewhat friendly or neutral.....but I've sat and pondered over this to a fair degree.
You'd like to assume that Gus has grown up on a great planet, with good moral leadership, and has all the stuff that he'd require in life. But there could be a hormone, or drug influencing Gus.....and it's all downhill from that point on.
I'm also of the opinion that if some planet got smart enough to travel this far.....it has to have something on their list to fear future planets coming after them. Yeah, we might be 200 years away from being a threat, but sooner or later.....we might be the hostile ones.
So, on that fateful day when Gus and his party arrive and offer up some handshakes.....I won't be in line, and I'll be awful suspicious of their intentions.
Twain's Thoughts
Some need to be envisioned, discussed, and put into some focus of your life.
A Potential Mess
The Wall Street Journal put out an interesting commentary yesterday (Friday) over the airstrikes discussed by the Administration that would hit ISIS targets in Syria. Basically, the word is that the President will personally approve each single strike, as the Pentagon comes up to target positions.
Hours later....the Secretary of Defense (Hagel) tried to dispute the commentary....saying that the President as more or less setting the priorities and would have over-view of the strikes.
This kinda brings back memories....oddly enough....of the Bosnia Campaign and how the Clinton Administration dragged itself into the midst of military affairs....viewing daily Air Tasking Orders (ATO) that the Air Force and Navy would hand out to units for their daily missions.
Back in WW II....the Air Force sat down and developed an entire science over bombers and daily missions. They could line up forty B-17s....have a strategic target set for the evening of the next day....and allow everyone to prepare maps and objectives.
Over each decade since WW II.....we got the ATO process more and more process. We built bombs that had absolute precision built into the outcome (aiming at center structure of a bridge and simply knocking out a 20-foot section instead of dropping twenty bombs and destroying the whole bridge). The computer networks enabled mission data to move quickly out and be ready for a scheduled process. Satellite data got fed into the planning process, and made the pilots smarter over the target and the issues on hitting it.
So, along came Bosnia. The Clinton Administration decided that it needed to micromanage the entire war....from the White House. The military's planning structure? It sat in Italy. They were on a 72-hour cycle.
The target guys would spend most of a day looking over priorities, values of targets, and then pick the twenty-five-odd targets for X-day (that was roughly two days away). The pilot planners would then sit and look at the recommendations of the bombs or missiles to be used. The munitions folks would look at their stock to advise if they had the right bombs or missiles on hand. The lawyers would review the target and if there were churches or schools or ancient sites nearby. This would eat up the second day of planning. And then the third day was when it'd hit the squadrons and they'd plan their mission....hitting the tanker at the right point to refuel (if required), and what threats were in the local area, and what pilot would fly which plane.
Once the Clinton staff said they were in the process.....the Pentagon had to build a communications bridge getting data (secure and classified), all the way back from Europe to the White House/Pentagon. Then a couple of Pentagon big-wigs had to read over the twenty-five-odd targets and grasp the meaning and selection process, as it went to the priority process. These guys would then walk over to the White House and stand there as the inner-circle of the Clinton Administration walked in.
As this was laid out.....the political guys standing there in the room....were fairly shocked at the science and organized data data put in front of them. It wasn't a hap-hazard deal thrown together by a bunch of teenage kids. Organization, science, and logic were heavily administered into this ATO process.
Naturally, questions arose in the first days of this. Why target this bridge.....normal people will need to cross the river....and the targeting expert from the Pentagon would explain how they picked that bridge and how they'd only destroy a twenty-foot section.....allowing repair to occur when the war ended.
Then they'd go the power sub-stations.....why go after this.....regular people need electrical power. And the Pentagon targets guy would pull out the President's own priority list, and note that disrupting their power, if it supported a military installation.....was legitimate targeting.
Getting the President's inner circle to grasp the fundamentals and convince the President to agree....became a nightmare episode on a daily basis. Oddly enough....the ATO guys shocked the White House staff by planning these episode seven days a week.....which meant they had to show up on Saturday and Sunday.....and waste two or three hours on these continued discussions.
Along the way.....arguments eventually got back to the ATO planners, and the lawyers doubled up on their work-load. You had to know just about every single secondary structure within several hundred feet of the target. Were there daycare centers nearby, or TV network stations, or baby-milk factories?
So, an entire fourth day got incorporated into the cycle. Frustrations started to dissipate around the second and third weeks of the campaign....as the White House staff started to realize that this wasn't a one-time a week discussion or chance to argue over warfare priorities. This was a daily thing, and people just plain lost interest in messing around with what came every twenty-four hours.
Eventually, the war came to an end. The ATO guys shut down their process. The bridge network to the White House was kinda dismantled. Life returned to normal.
Odd to how this micromanage deal got brought up again (as the Wall Street Journal points out)?
No.....go review the guest list from approximately a week ago for a White House function. Sandy Berger (Clinton's chief political adviser)....attended. He hasn't been an Obama adviser and I doubt if he's ever been invited to any reception with the President. But he got onto that list. My guess is that Sandy Berger advised the President and his staff to recreate this magnificent machine of the President approving targets.
The Pentagon? They probably just sat there and shook their heads. Half of the targets for this type of campaign will be spur-of-the-moment episodes where some US Army Sergeant will be attached to an Iraqi unit, coming under fire by 200-odd ISIS players, and he'll need a pair of Air Force fighters to drop some munitions into the middle of the ISIS folks within the next hour. Will some idiot sitting back in some situation room get the call, and then spend two hours debating the necessity of bombing a target that is within 216 feet of a mosque? Will the President sit, pause, ponder, and spend seventy-two minutes worried over how this might be perceived by the news media?
Yeah, this is the type of situation that you don't want some political guy trying to make minute-by-minute decisions over the situation about to occur. The President ought to be there to settle the opening scene of an "opera"....saying what characters will be there....how much the entry fee will be....and ensure that the drama unfolding will be successful in the end. Beyond that....he needs to stay out of the middle of the mess.
This isn't a simple job. You have to know when to stand back and let people do what they were supposed to be hired to handle. Otherwise.....we could fire all officers in the military and just let the President run everything....everywhere, with a bunch of NCOs and Privates.
Hours later....the Secretary of Defense (Hagel) tried to dispute the commentary....saying that the President as more or less setting the priorities and would have over-view of the strikes.
This kinda brings back memories....oddly enough....of the Bosnia Campaign and how the Clinton Administration dragged itself into the midst of military affairs....viewing daily Air Tasking Orders (ATO) that the Air Force and Navy would hand out to units for their daily missions.
Back in WW II....the Air Force sat down and developed an entire science over bombers and daily missions. They could line up forty B-17s....have a strategic target set for the evening of the next day....and allow everyone to prepare maps and objectives.
Over each decade since WW II.....we got the ATO process more and more process. We built bombs that had absolute precision built into the outcome (aiming at center structure of a bridge and simply knocking out a 20-foot section instead of dropping twenty bombs and destroying the whole bridge). The computer networks enabled mission data to move quickly out and be ready for a scheduled process. Satellite data got fed into the planning process, and made the pilots smarter over the target and the issues on hitting it.
So, along came Bosnia. The Clinton Administration decided that it needed to micromanage the entire war....from the White House. The military's planning structure? It sat in Italy. They were on a 72-hour cycle.
The target guys would spend most of a day looking over priorities, values of targets, and then pick the twenty-five-odd targets for X-day (that was roughly two days away). The pilot planners would then sit and look at the recommendations of the bombs or missiles to be used. The munitions folks would look at their stock to advise if they had the right bombs or missiles on hand. The lawyers would review the target and if there were churches or schools or ancient sites nearby. This would eat up the second day of planning. And then the third day was when it'd hit the squadrons and they'd plan their mission....hitting the tanker at the right point to refuel (if required), and what threats were in the local area, and what pilot would fly which plane.
Once the Clinton staff said they were in the process.....the Pentagon had to build a communications bridge getting data (secure and classified), all the way back from Europe to the White House/Pentagon. Then a couple of Pentagon big-wigs had to read over the twenty-five-odd targets and grasp the meaning and selection process, as it went to the priority process. These guys would then walk over to the White House and stand there as the inner-circle of the Clinton Administration walked in.
As this was laid out.....the political guys standing there in the room....were fairly shocked at the science and organized data data put in front of them. It wasn't a hap-hazard deal thrown together by a bunch of teenage kids. Organization, science, and logic were heavily administered into this ATO process.
Naturally, questions arose in the first days of this. Why target this bridge.....normal people will need to cross the river....and the targeting expert from the Pentagon would explain how they picked that bridge and how they'd only destroy a twenty-foot section.....allowing repair to occur when the war ended.
Then they'd go the power sub-stations.....why go after this.....regular people need electrical power. And the Pentagon targets guy would pull out the President's own priority list, and note that disrupting their power, if it supported a military installation.....was legitimate targeting.
Getting the President's inner circle to grasp the fundamentals and convince the President to agree....became a nightmare episode on a daily basis. Oddly enough....the ATO guys shocked the White House staff by planning these episode seven days a week.....which meant they had to show up on Saturday and Sunday.....and waste two or three hours on these continued discussions.
Along the way.....arguments eventually got back to the ATO planners, and the lawyers doubled up on their work-load. You had to know just about every single secondary structure within several hundred feet of the target. Were there daycare centers nearby, or TV network stations, or baby-milk factories?
So, an entire fourth day got incorporated into the cycle. Frustrations started to dissipate around the second and third weeks of the campaign....as the White House staff started to realize that this wasn't a one-time a week discussion or chance to argue over warfare priorities. This was a daily thing, and people just plain lost interest in messing around with what came every twenty-four hours.
Eventually, the war came to an end. The ATO guys shut down their process. The bridge network to the White House was kinda dismantled. Life returned to normal.
Odd to how this micromanage deal got brought up again (as the Wall Street Journal points out)?
No.....go review the guest list from approximately a week ago for a White House function. Sandy Berger (Clinton's chief political adviser)....attended. He hasn't been an Obama adviser and I doubt if he's ever been invited to any reception with the President. But he got onto that list. My guess is that Sandy Berger advised the President and his staff to recreate this magnificent machine of the President approving targets.
The Pentagon? They probably just sat there and shook their heads. Half of the targets for this type of campaign will be spur-of-the-moment episodes where some US Army Sergeant will be attached to an Iraqi unit, coming under fire by 200-odd ISIS players, and he'll need a pair of Air Force fighters to drop some munitions into the middle of the ISIS folks within the next hour. Will some idiot sitting back in some situation room get the call, and then spend two hours debating the necessity of bombing a target that is within 216 feet of a mosque? Will the President sit, pause, ponder, and spend seventy-two minutes worried over how this might be perceived by the news media?
Yeah, this is the type of situation that you don't want some political guy trying to make minute-by-minute decisions over the situation about to occur. The President ought to be there to settle the opening scene of an "opera"....saying what characters will be there....how much the entry fee will be....and ensure that the drama unfolding will be successful in the end. Beyond that....he needs to stay out of the middle of the mess.
This isn't a simple job. You have to know when to stand back and let people do what they were supposed to be hired to handle. Otherwise.....we could fire all officers in the military and just let the President run everything....everywhere, with a bunch of NCOs and Privates.
Thursday 18 September 2014
College Stuff
This week, I noted an odd episode that has occurred with a state-run university.....requiring training....which is all computer-based....and at some point, it asks the individual about his sexual history and habits.
The college? Clemson, out of South Carolina.
The questions get down to asking you the frequency, the number of partners, and the general methods of sex that you do. Fairly personal information.
What the college says....I should note they are the only college in South Carolina requiring this...is that it's all necessary because of Federal Title IX rules.
So they built a computer-based one-hour training program which is supposed to prevent you from illegal crimes of passion (as federally mandated), and these questions fall into the requirement. Again, I will note.....this is the only South Carolina university doing this.
People answering correctly? I'd take an amusing guess that absolutely no one is putting down factual information. Some punk college kids are probably answer they do sexual activities at a rate of a hundred or more times a week.....and have at least three-hundred different partners (some imaginary). All of this data is then pumped into a report, and they will try to get various government funding to examine the further sexual nature of Clemson students (a fairly hot and lusty crowd, by the nature of the answers).
You could see some dimwitted questions being added, and this thing taking five or six hours in the decades ahead.
You could ask the punks about their fishing habits, and the lures they use. You could ask the punks about sugary drinks.....Tab, Dr Pepper, or Mountain Dew.....that they consume. You could ask about their driving habits (if they use the parking brake). You could ask about their consumption of moon pies or beef jerky. You could ask about their preference of deodorant, discovering that almost no guys ever use the stuff. You could ask about puppet preference (Ernie or Bert or Cookie Monster). You could ask about their fetishes....noting that a quarter of the women role-play and pretend to be Xena-Warrior Princess. You could even ask about their wiping habits....if they use one, two, three, or multiple layers of toilet paper when they do their business.
I'm guessing that Clemson recently hired someone with an agenda, and they are in charge of this mandated Title IX training deal. If you refuse to accomplish this by November....the college can toss you out.....so they've signaled their intent to force you play along. Honest actions by the students? No....don't anticipate anyone will answer truthfully. So it's pretty bogus, and then you start to wonder.....if it's bogus, why bother?
Yep, we've got problems in American education....but it's getting more and more creative, if you ask me.
The college? Clemson, out of South Carolina.
The questions get down to asking you the frequency, the number of partners, and the general methods of sex that you do. Fairly personal information.
What the college says....I should note they are the only college in South Carolina requiring this...is that it's all necessary because of Federal Title IX rules.
So they built a computer-based one-hour training program which is supposed to prevent you from illegal crimes of passion (as federally mandated), and these questions fall into the requirement. Again, I will note.....this is the only South Carolina university doing this.
People answering correctly? I'd take an amusing guess that absolutely no one is putting down factual information. Some punk college kids are probably answer they do sexual activities at a rate of a hundred or more times a week.....and have at least three-hundred different partners (some imaginary). All of this data is then pumped into a report, and they will try to get various government funding to examine the further sexual nature of Clemson students (a fairly hot and lusty crowd, by the nature of the answers).
You could see some dimwitted questions being added, and this thing taking five or six hours in the decades ahead.
You could ask the punks about their fishing habits, and the lures they use. You could ask the punks about sugary drinks.....Tab, Dr Pepper, or Mountain Dew.....that they consume. You could ask about their driving habits (if they use the parking brake). You could ask about their consumption of moon pies or beef jerky. You could ask about their preference of deodorant, discovering that almost no guys ever use the stuff. You could ask about puppet preference (Ernie or Bert or Cookie Monster). You could ask about their fetishes....noting that a quarter of the women role-play and pretend to be Xena-Warrior Princess. You could even ask about their wiping habits....if they use one, two, three, or multiple layers of toilet paper when they do their business.
I'm guessing that Clemson recently hired someone with an agenda, and they are in charge of this mandated Title IX training deal. If you refuse to accomplish this by November....the college can toss you out.....so they've signaled their intent to force you play along. Honest actions by the students? No....don't anticipate anyone will answer truthfully. So it's pretty bogus, and then you start to wonder.....if it's bogus, why bother?
Yep, we've got problems in American education....but it's getting more and more creative, if you ask me.
The "So Help Me God" Situation
For decades....DoD (Department of Defense)....Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy....had an oath requirement when you enlist or re-enlist. At the end, there is an optional situation.....you say "so help me God" or you just affirm what you vowed and leave out the God phrase.
If you were an atheist, you could take the second option and just avoid any religious talk. All of this worked OK, for decades.
So in 2013, someone in the Air Force....they won't say who....determined that there would be one oath, and it'd have to require you to recite the phrase "so help me God" at the end, period. No exceptions, no waivers.
It didn't really appear in any media, and if you asked around.....barely a thousand people probably noticed the change.
But you could predict a problem would occur sooner or later....as it did in August of this year. An NCO came up for re-enlistment, and the paperwork for the oath only allowed the God-phrase to be used.....no options....and this NCO was an atheist.
The guy took the paperwork, and did everything right....then crossed-out the phrase at the end, and did everything except that God-phrase. It didn't work....the unit wouldn't accept the amended paperwork, and noted that if he did nothing....by September, he'd be out of the service.
Well....all of this crap hit the fan....and went to DC to the Pentagon. They stood there kinda amazed. Naturally, the Pentagon legal staff is involved, and days of discussion went into this. Oddly enough, the Marines, Army and Navy were puzzled. They hadn't done anything to change their oath requirements....they still offered two different ways of doing the oath. So, naturally, they leaned over to ask the embarrassed Air Force legal guys....what the hell was going on here?
Silence is more or less what was noted.
After days of internal discussion....this week, the mess was fixed. The Pentagon told the Air Force.....there's two ways of doing the oath, and the God-phrase is optional.
When this mess started in 2013.....who was attached to the change? I can only take a guess. I noted back in 1993, upon arriving at Bitburg Air Base....that suddenly I had three recent graduates of the Air Force Academy in my new shop. One of the "gentlemen" was a religious nut, to the ninth-degree. Being a officer, I had to respect the guy for authority, but his commentary over unacceptable behavior....required me to continually note to him that people were entitled to be different. The other two graduates....had a strong difference of opinion with him, and considered him more of an outsider. But in conversations....both noted that there were a number of religious enthusiasts at the Academy, and it was going to be an issue in the years to come.
Well....those years have arrived, and those graduates are all now senior leaders in the Air Force. Religious authority has finally arrived, and forcing changes that aren't part of the general Air Force culture. This week....the Pentagon legal staff corrected their behavior. I'm kinda of the view that there will be more corrections down the road. It's not finished.
If you were an atheist, you could take the second option and just avoid any religious talk. All of this worked OK, for decades.
So in 2013, someone in the Air Force....they won't say who....determined that there would be one oath, and it'd have to require you to recite the phrase "so help me God" at the end, period. No exceptions, no waivers.
It didn't really appear in any media, and if you asked around.....barely a thousand people probably noticed the change.
But you could predict a problem would occur sooner or later....as it did in August of this year. An NCO came up for re-enlistment, and the paperwork for the oath only allowed the God-phrase to be used.....no options....and this NCO was an atheist.
The guy took the paperwork, and did everything right....then crossed-out the phrase at the end, and did everything except that God-phrase. It didn't work....the unit wouldn't accept the amended paperwork, and noted that if he did nothing....by September, he'd be out of the service.
Well....all of this crap hit the fan....and went to DC to the Pentagon. They stood there kinda amazed. Naturally, the Pentagon legal staff is involved, and days of discussion went into this. Oddly enough, the Marines, Army and Navy were puzzled. They hadn't done anything to change their oath requirements....they still offered two different ways of doing the oath. So, naturally, they leaned over to ask the embarrassed Air Force legal guys....what the hell was going on here?
Silence is more or less what was noted.
After days of internal discussion....this week, the mess was fixed. The Pentagon told the Air Force.....there's two ways of doing the oath, and the God-phrase is optional.
When this mess started in 2013.....who was attached to the change? I can only take a guess. I noted back in 1993, upon arriving at Bitburg Air Base....that suddenly I had three recent graduates of the Air Force Academy in my new shop. One of the "gentlemen" was a religious nut, to the ninth-degree. Being a officer, I had to respect the guy for authority, but his commentary over unacceptable behavior....required me to continually note to him that people were entitled to be different. The other two graduates....had a strong difference of opinion with him, and considered him more of an outsider. But in conversations....both noted that there were a number of religious enthusiasts at the Academy, and it was going to be an issue in the years to come.
Well....those years have arrived, and those graduates are all now senior leaders in the Air Force. Religious authority has finally arrived, and forcing changes that aren't part of the general Air Force culture. This week....the Pentagon legal staff corrected their behavior. I'm kinda of the view that there will be more corrections down the road. It's not finished.
Wednesday 17 September 2014
The Republican/Democrat/Republican/Democrat Party
Out of 100 Senators who sit today in DC....roughly eighty of them (both parties) are really Republican-Democrats. This means....they really pretend to be of one party, but could flip on any given day to help some agenda group, foundation with political money, lobbyists, or special topic culture.
You'd think that they come to DC to represent their state, or the voters who sent them there. But that's only media gossip.
The "hype"? Thank goodness that the networks exist, and cable news have so many potential outlets.....to allow these guys to get their Hollywood-star-status out in front and capture the imagination of dimwitted voters.
I'd take a guess that if you viewed ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News on an average day....at least thirty Senators will appear, and at least two hours of commentary will be offered up in bullet-like clips. The news idiots are smart enough to ask a simple basic question, and try to limit the Senator to just forty words of commentary, cutting them off before they spill the beans that they really don't know much beyond the memorized piece they got this morning from the Party headquarters or the agenda group.
This sort of game of the media pumping up characters....plays out well, except the public probably has started to catch on, and is now more frustrated with politics. A soap opera-like scenario....bogus guys appearing nightly on TV.....stupid commentary from both the news media and political figures. All this adds up.
The fix? It's not a positive deal....but maybe it's finally time for multiple parties. Toss in two or three additional political parties with ten-to-fifteen percent of the nation behind each, and limit the Republicans and Democrats to sixty percent of the national vote. Maybe then, we end up with less theater and better leaders.
You'd think that they come to DC to represent their state, or the voters who sent them there. But that's only media gossip.
The "hype"? Thank goodness that the networks exist, and cable news have so many potential outlets.....to allow these guys to get their Hollywood-star-status out in front and capture the imagination of dimwitted voters.
I'd take a guess that if you viewed ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News on an average day....at least thirty Senators will appear, and at least two hours of commentary will be offered up in bullet-like clips. The news idiots are smart enough to ask a simple basic question, and try to limit the Senator to just forty words of commentary, cutting them off before they spill the beans that they really don't know much beyond the memorized piece they got this morning from the Party headquarters or the agenda group.
This sort of game of the media pumping up characters....plays out well, except the public probably has started to catch on, and is now more frustrated with politics. A soap opera-like scenario....bogus guys appearing nightly on TV.....stupid commentary from both the news media and political figures. All this adds up.
The fix? It's not a positive deal....but maybe it's finally time for multiple parties. Toss in two or three additional political parties with ten-to-fifteen percent of the nation behind each, and limit the Republicans and Democrats to sixty percent of the national vote. Maybe then, we end up with less theater and better leaders.
Tuesday 16 September 2014
The US Army to Africa's Ebola Episode
News reports indicate that the US Army will ship around 3,000 medical personnel off to Africa in the next week.....to help one of the countries in their requirements. This is one of those deployments that will not end well.
You can figure that 2,000 of the group will be actual medical personnel. The other 1,000? Well....you start to get into support. There will be some kind of communications team....maybe eight guys to ensure satellite communications are up and computers are working. You can figure they will drag their own chow hall along with them, and twenty personnel will be keeping that running. Logistical folks? Figure at least fifty doing various things. Engineering folks? At least a hundred.
So, problem one.....the camp where they 'live' and the compound where they work, will be separated, and each will end up requiring security. In Africa.....things tend to disappear....so you can figure a minimum of twenty guys for each camp will be on security patrol.
Concentina wire? Yep.....they will put it up and make it look threatening. The locals will question this and ask if this really help or creating a military presence.
Food? You can figure they will fly in food every couple of days on a military transport. The water supply? No one is going to trust the local water supply....no matter how much the Colonel says it's pure and he sips each day.
In the heat of the tropics.....guys will screw up and make a mistake, and somewhere around day thirty of the deployment....one of the Army guys will come up with a fever. Tests will take forty-eight hours, and then they confirm that Private Snuffy got himself a case of Ebola. Snuffy will thrown on some transport aircraft, and hustled off to some Army fort in Georgia where his family arrives and gets all frustrated that the Army guys won't talk over his odds or his treatment.
A week or two later....the second guy gets Ebola. The Army tries to explain this to the Pentagon, but no one can understand how guys screwed up on the procedures and got infected.
When the unit is told to wrap up their initial six months and group two will arrive.....then someone in the Pentagon will write up an order that the first team must spend three weeks at some camp in Texas where they will be isolated and kept from everyone....before they can be released back to their regular lives.
Yeah, it's not the kind of medal or achievement that you'd want to brag much about.
You can figure that 2,000 of the group will be actual medical personnel. The other 1,000? Well....you start to get into support. There will be some kind of communications team....maybe eight guys to ensure satellite communications are up and computers are working. You can figure they will drag their own chow hall along with them, and twenty personnel will be keeping that running. Logistical folks? Figure at least fifty doing various things. Engineering folks? At least a hundred.
So, problem one.....the camp where they 'live' and the compound where they work, will be separated, and each will end up requiring security. In Africa.....things tend to disappear....so you can figure a minimum of twenty guys for each camp will be on security patrol.
Concentina wire? Yep.....they will put it up and make it look threatening. The locals will question this and ask if this really help or creating a military presence.
Food? You can figure they will fly in food every couple of days on a military transport. The water supply? No one is going to trust the local water supply....no matter how much the Colonel says it's pure and he sips each day.
In the heat of the tropics.....guys will screw up and make a mistake, and somewhere around day thirty of the deployment....one of the Army guys will come up with a fever. Tests will take forty-eight hours, and then they confirm that Private Snuffy got himself a case of Ebola. Snuffy will thrown on some transport aircraft, and hustled off to some Army fort in Georgia where his family arrives and gets all frustrated that the Army guys won't talk over his odds or his treatment.
A week or two later....the second guy gets Ebola. The Army tries to explain this to the Pentagon, but no one can understand how guys screwed up on the procedures and got infected.
When the unit is told to wrap up their initial six months and group two will arrive.....then someone in the Pentagon will write up an order that the first team must spend three weeks at some camp in Texas where they will be isolated and kept from everyone....before they can be released back to their regular lives.
Yeah, it's not the kind of medal or achievement that you'd want to brag much about.
Book Review: In Defense of Women
In Defense of Women, by H. L. Mencken (1918).
I will admit, I've never picked or read a single piece of Mencken's works. After this reading, I'll probably have to pick up every single writing he did, and read all of them.
Mencken wrote the piece around the era when women got the right to vote, and it was a all-in-one essay to cover women, marriage, and the various cynical episodes that occur. The analysis and views from 1918? It probably works just as well in 2014.
It's roughly 130 pages....readable in one weekend, and absolutely full of wit and humor. Some women might have some negative comments to say, but he throws just as much mud on men....along with political figures, religious freaks, and do-gooders.
I'd strongly recommend it for a college class project. For guys about to enter into marriage.....it might be a mandatory read.
H. L. throws one very interesting observation out on a page....suggesting that you could simply row the dice in some pub or public setting, and enter into the game of matrimony with some gal that you'd never met or talked to in your life....and the chances of a successful marriage were the same as if you dated her for several years. To this.....I agree. Maybe people think all this relationship stuff is complicated, and requires various introductions....but you could just as well work out this stuff on day two of the marriage, at least in my humble opinion.
So, if you were looking for a great read on relationships and women....by a cynical guy from 1918....this might be an interesting book to pick.
I will admit, I've never picked or read a single piece of Mencken's works. After this reading, I'll probably have to pick up every single writing he did, and read all of them.
Mencken wrote the piece around the era when women got the right to vote, and it was a all-in-one essay to cover women, marriage, and the various cynical episodes that occur. The analysis and views from 1918? It probably works just as well in 2014.
It's roughly 130 pages....readable in one weekend, and absolutely full of wit and humor. Some women might have some negative comments to say, but he throws just as much mud on men....along with political figures, religious freaks, and do-gooders.
I'd strongly recommend it for a college class project. For guys about to enter into marriage.....it might be a mandatory read.
H. L. throws one very interesting observation out on a page....suggesting that you could simply row the dice in some pub or public setting, and enter into the game of matrimony with some gal that you'd never met or talked to in your life....and the chances of a successful marriage were the same as if you dated her for several years. To this.....I agree. Maybe people think all this relationship stuff is complicated, and requires various introductions....but you could just as well work out this stuff on day two of the marriage, at least in my humble opinion.
So, if you were looking for a great read on relationships and women....by a cynical guy from 1918....this might be an interesting book to pick.
The "35-10" Phrase
There are around a thousand acronyms that I memorized during a twenty-two year period of service with the Air Force. Some were worthless, but the only way that you could communicate over some vivid topic deemed of highly significant priority by the Colonel or the First Sergeant.
35-10 was one of those phrases. It was the regulation that you were introduced to in basic training.....that had to deal with uniform and appearance.
When you talked hair style or length, it was 35-10. When you talked shoes authorized to wear, it was 35-10. When you talked the wearing of a hat, it was 35-10. When you noted the proper wear of a belt, it was 35-10. And when you noted watches, bracelets, or rings (the quantity).....it was 35-10.
It was around day three of basic training when I was formerly introduced to 35-10, and they were issuing the first uniform package. The green hat was a thirty-cent hat (by my prospective) and simply didn't fit or look anything like a professional hat. The pants and blouse-shirt? Ill-fitting and as cheaply made as possible (I think the shirt was $6 and the pants around $7). Their initial t-shirt distribution was 50-cent shirts that never made it past forty washes. The wool socks? They made your feet sweat in the 95-degree heat of Texas.
The instructor quickly introduced you to 35-10, and you felt there were a lot of rules about clothing, which didn't make much sense. The black wool socks would have been thrown out the first day, if they hadn't stuck it to you.....via 35-10....that they were awful important.
Around two weeks later, they issued out the blues package. The bus-driver hat? It looked like a bus-driver hat, and you just laughed. The two sets of blues? One had to be a pure-wool set for winter (it just didn't make any sense to me), and the other some type of summer blend of polyester. They let you know real quick....there were actual dates set up for the wear of one, versus the other. If you were spotted in August wearing the winter set.....unless you lived in Iceland.....you were in deep trouble. The black sock issue for the blues? They just wouldn't stay up and kept sinking down.
Over the years, I started to notice that they modified 35-10 about every two years. Up until the late 1980s....they were mostly all minor changes. You didn't really feel affected much. In the early 1990s.....changes started to occur once to twice a year, and people started to get frustrated, hostile, and argumentative about the changes.
At some point, badges became important. For half of my career....I didn't have to think much about this because neither of my professions had a badge. When they tried to force a badge onto the one profession in the late 1980s....all heck broke loose and a massive amount of criticism came out over it......halting it in a very short period of time. Five years later....they rammed it back down onto our profession....with no arguments allowed. The badge deal? Worthless, except as some boy-scout badge thrill. It was another $8 that you had to spend for the blues, and $25 for various cloth-type for the battle-dress uniform (mostly to get it sewn on).
The arguments over wear? I started to notice almost immediately upon my arrival at the first installation....that 35-10 arguments were almost daily, and kinda got worked up like a Baptist minister meeting where the words of Moses were heavily discussed and interpreted in various different ways.
Folks argued over hair styles, moustache lengths, braided hair on women, starch on uniforms, different blends of colors on the stupid belt, the fit of a women's skirt, and even the type of bracelets that folks wore. On an average base, I'd take a guess that over 3,000 man-hours a year were wasted on these 35-10 discussions and arguments, between 2,500 personnel on the installation.
The cost of uniforms? I really didn't see an issue until we got to the 1990s and the arrival of the new battle dress uniform. Between the pants, blouse, black t-shirt, and the sewn-on elements for the blouse....it was roughly $115 (one set). Considering the old "greens" were around $35....it was a hefty price.
The switch to the black t-shirt deal? The uniform shop in the early days of the this switch carried a plain vanilla black t-shirt set (three) for roughly $18. That was reasonable, but then you started to wash these, and the color started to fade after ten wash episodes. The cotton material? Cheap. So guys began to discover that you could get a really high-grade fancy black t-shirt, for $24 each. Yeah, it's fairly hefty amount of money, but I'd take a guess that half of all members went out and spent at least a hundred bucks on a couple of these t-shirts.
The boots? In basic, they issued you the plain black boots, the chuka boots, and the plain low-quarters. All together, they probably cost maybe $75. The low-quarters could always be replaced for around $18.....at least in the 1980s.
But by the 1990s....the newer boots had arrived, and you couldn't find anything that would fit right.....for less than $65. By the time I reached my last eighteen months.....I'd actually gone out and spent $100 for a pair of great fitting boots (I still have them today but never wear them).
I'd take a guess that my whole bag for basic training uniforms probably cost in the range of $450....which to me in 1977 was substantial. Today, I doubt if you could buy everything for less than $1200.
The necessity for stringent rules like 35-10? I guess it's the fact that people will interpret rules in various ways, and start to question things just because it's stupid. The black wool socks? It was something out of the 1950s, and I think eighty percent of the Air Force questioned the 35-10 standing on this....but waited patiently almost thirty years to get the rule tossed out. All the while....they violated the socks directive, and wore white socks whenever in combat boots.
I witnessed an episode around 1983 where some colonel wanted a female lieutenant in the organization to stand and have her dress length measured from her kneecap. Two inches above the cap was max, and for the sake of the argument....I kinda noted she was pushing four inches easily and it was a fairly short skirt. It's silly to argue over events like this, and it just starts soap-opera-like events to occur.
It's odd these episodes of life that take up unnecessary pieces of your memory. There are probably a hundred rules over 35-10 that I retain and can cite on a moment's notice. Worthless bits of directives......iron-clad stuck in your mind.
35-10 was one of those phrases. It was the regulation that you were introduced to in basic training.....that had to deal with uniform and appearance.
When you talked hair style or length, it was 35-10. When you talked shoes authorized to wear, it was 35-10. When you talked the wearing of a hat, it was 35-10. When you noted the proper wear of a belt, it was 35-10. And when you noted watches, bracelets, or rings (the quantity).....it was 35-10.
It was around day three of basic training when I was formerly introduced to 35-10, and they were issuing the first uniform package. The green hat was a thirty-cent hat (by my prospective) and simply didn't fit or look anything like a professional hat. The pants and blouse-shirt? Ill-fitting and as cheaply made as possible (I think the shirt was $6 and the pants around $7). Their initial t-shirt distribution was 50-cent shirts that never made it past forty washes. The wool socks? They made your feet sweat in the 95-degree heat of Texas.
The instructor quickly introduced you to 35-10, and you felt there were a lot of rules about clothing, which didn't make much sense. The black wool socks would have been thrown out the first day, if they hadn't stuck it to you.....via 35-10....that they were awful important.
Around two weeks later, they issued out the blues package. The bus-driver hat? It looked like a bus-driver hat, and you just laughed. The two sets of blues? One had to be a pure-wool set for winter (it just didn't make any sense to me), and the other some type of summer blend of polyester. They let you know real quick....there were actual dates set up for the wear of one, versus the other. If you were spotted in August wearing the winter set.....unless you lived in Iceland.....you were in deep trouble. The black sock issue for the blues? They just wouldn't stay up and kept sinking down.
Over the years, I started to notice that they modified 35-10 about every two years. Up until the late 1980s....they were mostly all minor changes. You didn't really feel affected much. In the early 1990s.....changes started to occur once to twice a year, and people started to get frustrated, hostile, and argumentative about the changes.
At some point, badges became important. For half of my career....I didn't have to think much about this because neither of my professions had a badge. When they tried to force a badge onto the one profession in the late 1980s....all heck broke loose and a massive amount of criticism came out over it......halting it in a very short period of time. Five years later....they rammed it back down onto our profession....with no arguments allowed. The badge deal? Worthless, except as some boy-scout badge thrill. It was another $8 that you had to spend for the blues, and $25 for various cloth-type for the battle-dress uniform (mostly to get it sewn on).
The arguments over wear? I started to notice almost immediately upon my arrival at the first installation....that 35-10 arguments were almost daily, and kinda got worked up like a Baptist minister meeting where the words of Moses were heavily discussed and interpreted in various different ways.
Folks argued over hair styles, moustache lengths, braided hair on women, starch on uniforms, different blends of colors on the stupid belt, the fit of a women's skirt, and even the type of bracelets that folks wore. On an average base, I'd take a guess that over 3,000 man-hours a year were wasted on these 35-10 discussions and arguments, between 2,500 personnel on the installation.
The cost of uniforms? I really didn't see an issue until we got to the 1990s and the arrival of the new battle dress uniform. Between the pants, blouse, black t-shirt, and the sewn-on elements for the blouse....it was roughly $115 (one set). Considering the old "greens" were around $35....it was a hefty price.
The switch to the black t-shirt deal? The uniform shop in the early days of the this switch carried a plain vanilla black t-shirt set (three) for roughly $18. That was reasonable, but then you started to wash these, and the color started to fade after ten wash episodes. The cotton material? Cheap. So guys began to discover that you could get a really high-grade fancy black t-shirt, for $24 each. Yeah, it's fairly hefty amount of money, but I'd take a guess that half of all members went out and spent at least a hundred bucks on a couple of these t-shirts.
The boots? In basic, they issued you the plain black boots, the chuka boots, and the plain low-quarters. All together, they probably cost maybe $75. The low-quarters could always be replaced for around $18.....at least in the 1980s.
But by the 1990s....the newer boots had arrived, and you couldn't find anything that would fit right.....for less than $65. By the time I reached my last eighteen months.....I'd actually gone out and spent $100 for a pair of great fitting boots (I still have them today but never wear them).
I'd take a guess that my whole bag for basic training uniforms probably cost in the range of $450....which to me in 1977 was substantial. Today, I doubt if you could buy everything for less than $1200.
The necessity for stringent rules like 35-10? I guess it's the fact that people will interpret rules in various ways, and start to question things just because it's stupid. The black wool socks? It was something out of the 1950s, and I think eighty percent of the Air Force questioned the 35-10 standing on this....but waited patiently almost thirty years to get the rule tossed out. All the while....they violated the socks directive, and wore white socks whenever in combat boots.
I witnessed an episode around 1983 where some colonel wanted a female lieutenant in the organization to stand and have her dress length measured from her kneecap. Two inches above the cap was max, and for the sake of the argument....I kinda noted she was pushing four inches easily and it was a fairly short skirt. It's silly to argue over events like this, and it just starts soap-opera-like events to occur.
It's odd these episodes of life that take up unnecessary pieces of your memory. There are probably a hundred rules over 35-10 that I retain and can cite on a moment's notice. Worthless bits of directives......iron-clad stuck in your mind.
Sunday 14 September 2014
Our "Lost" Civilization
“It would be very important for the Democrats to retain control of the Senate, civilization as we know it today would be in jeopardy if the Republicans win the Senate.”
-- Representative Nancy Pelosi (D, Cal)
Civilization in jeopardy?
Americans live in a remarkable period. In any given election year (occurs every two years)....we are on the cutting edge of total collapse of our civilization. Well....it sounds good when you say that way.
The guys who built the Nazca Lines in Peru? They ended up being a lost civilization. You'd like to believe some Nazca Republicans got into the mix....screwing up things for the liberal side of the Nazca folks.....but basically weather, stupid leadership from the head guy, and some bad crop years led to their downfall.
The Mayan civilization? They kinda drifted away after the year 900. Republicans at fault in Central America? No....between bad weather and some violent tendencies.....crop yields went down, and folks just got discouraged and moved off. Maybe if the EPA had been around and regulated everything, and if they had a decent Attorney General.....things would have gone differently.
The Easter Island civilization? They kinda went into a tree-cutting frenzy and by 1200....had cut just about every tree on the island down. Republicans at fault? Well....if things had been regulated and trees replenished....things would have gone differently, and there'd still be stone statues put up today....maybe into the tens of thousands. Heck, they might even be selling them as quickly as they carved them up, but then some Democratic guys would stand up and claim they were sacred in some way and prevent their export.
The Cahokia civilization? Well....they were a mighty tribe along the Mississippi river and were kings of the territory until the 1200s. Republicans tearing them apart? No.....mostly just a disease or two that entered the area, and with a drought.....made things kinda miserable.
The lost colony civilization at Roanoke Island, Virginia? Republicans at fault? Well....no.....the guys who left and promised to return....took a bit longer than expected, and I would imagine that folks got worried, and left.
Generally, it's hard to find any reasonable excuse to say that some society or culture failed to survive a Republican or Democrat-led disaster.
People that hear this type of chatter....usually just start laughing, or gulp down another sip of booze....thinking it's brand-x type political talk, and doesn't amount to much.
The sad thing here is that political folks are thrown in front of a microphone and expected to give some nifty forty-word statement to the press, and it gets thrown on the front-page of some newspaper. You'd like to think that the political player would stand there and think about what to say, and then comment on something in a remarkable way....but it never happens like that. So we get some lousy one-star marginal statement....that you just shake your head over, and flip the channel to some 1936 movie with Greta Garbo....trying to forget about American politics.
Oh, and in January, after the election, after the arrival of the Republicans in the Senate, and after we've lost our civilization....you might want to ask about the civilization business. Maybe it just keeps on ticking.
-- Representative Nancy Pelosi (D, Cal)
Civilization in jeopardy?
Americans live in a remarkable period. In any given election year (occurs every two years)....we are on the cutting edge of total collapse of our civilization. Well....it sounds good when you say that way.
The guys who built the Nazca Lines in Peru? They ended up being a lost civilization. You'd like to believe some Nazca Republicans got into the mix....screwing up things for the liberal side of the Nazca folks.....but basically weather, stupid leadership from the head guy, and some bad crop years led to their downfall.
The Mayan civilization? They kinda drifted away after the year 900. Republicans at fault in Central America? No....between bad weather and some violent tendencies.....crop yields went down, and folks just got discouraged and moved off. Maybe if the EPA had been around and regulated everything, and if they had a decent Attorney General.....things would have gone differently.
The Easter Island civilization? They kinda went into a tree-cutting frenzy and by 1200....had cut just about every tree on the island down. Republicans at fault? Well....if things had been regulated and trees replenished....things would have gone differently, and there'd still be stone statues put up today....maybe into the tens of thousands. Heck, they might even be selling them as quickly as they carved them up, but then some Democratic guys would stand up and claim they were sacred in some way and prevent their export.
The Cahokia civilization? Well....they were a mighty tribe along the Mississippi river and were kings of the territory until the 1200s. Republicans tearing them apart? No.....mostly just a disease or two that entered the area, and with a drought.....made things kinda miserable.
The lost colony civilization at Roanoke Island, Virginia? Republicans at fault? Well....no.....the guys who left and promised to return....took a bit longer than expected, and I would imagine that folks got worried, and left.
Generally, it's hard to find any reasonable excuse to say that some society or culture failed to survive a Republican or Democrat-led disaster.
People that hear this type of chatter....usually just start laughing, or gulp down another sip of booze....thinking it's brand-x type political talk, and doesn't amount to much.
The sad thing here is that political folks are thrown in front of a microphone and expected to give some nifty forty-word statement to the press, and it gets thrown on the front-page of some newspaper. You'd like to think that the political player would stand there and think about what to say, and then comment on something in a remarkable way....but it never happens like that. So we get some lousy one-star marginal statement....that you just shake your head over, and flip the channel to some 1936 movie with Greta Garbo....trying to forget about American politics.
Oh, and in January, after the election, after the arrival of the Republicans in the Senate, and after we've lost our civilization....you might want to ask about the civilization business. Maybe it just keeps on ticking.
Friday 12 September 2014
Booboisie
Booboisie is a word that has virtually disappeared from the commonly-used American vocabulary. It was invented about eighty-odd years ago by H. L. Mencken, who coined the phrase of "booboisie" as an ignorant guy from the heartland of America....who thinks he's smart enough to participate in Democracy (mostly by voting).....attempting to have bourgeoisie values (having status, money, class, or intellectual abilities beyond the lower class.
Mencken kinda had a view of most Americans being unable to comprehend the abusive nature of political figures, and their ability to promise you anything.....to get your vote.
Most people in America today....would be classified as potential members of the booboisie-class. I think Mencken would find himself a seat in an airport, a city park, a studio audience, or a city-hall meeting.....to observe people trying to manipulate democracy to work for their agenda or goals. Some might be for the better of mankind, and some might be only introduced to get your kid to add seven and seven.....to eventually get to the potential of equaling fifteen (by a mythical magical formula).
H. L. Mencken once said that "Democracy is the theory that people think they know what they want, and they want it good and hard." I suspect he'd seen a great deal of democracy at work, and knew it's general results were a mixed bag.
A cynical guy? Yeah. Mencken had seen enough of personal relationships that he more or less branded marriage as a dead-end. Oddly enough, he ended up meeting some Alabama gal, who had a degree in literature, and could write a wicked piece on occasion.....throwing common sense to the wind and marrying this Bama lass.
What made Mencken what he was? I went back a while ago looking at his youth, and how he'd somehow stumbled upon Huck Finn (by Mark Twain) and fell completely for the book. After you spend a period reading over Huck Finn.....you tend to admire simple language and the uncomplicated simplicity of life's little adventures.
So, as you might be sitting there tonight....watching ABC Nightly News, Fox's O'Reilly or CNN....with some joker trying hard to get you mentally set to some understanding of a topic or problem facing America.....deserving your time to get frustrated, angry, or hostile....thus voting a certain way, you might want to remember the word booboisie. You might be smart enough to get their message, but it doesn't mean you really understood or grasped the big picture of what's going on, or how you got manipulated into a bogus view.
Mencken kinda had a view of most Americans being unable to comprehend the abusive nature of political figures, and their ability to promise you anything.....to get your vote.
Most people in America today....would be classified as potential members of the booboisie-class. I think Mencken would find himself a seat in an airport, a city park, a studio audience, or a city-hall meeting.....to observe people trying to manipulate democracy to work for their agenda or goals. Some might be for the better of mankind, and some might be only introduced to get your kid to add seven and seven.....to eventually get to the potential of equaling fifteen (by a mythical magical formula).
H. L. Mencken once said that "Democracy is the theory that people think they know what they want, and they want it good and hard." I suspect he'd seen a great deal of democracy at work, and knew it's general results were a mixed bag.
A cynical guy? Yeah. Mencken had seen enough of personal relationships that he more or less branded marriage as a dead-end. Oddly enough, he ended up meeting some Alabama gal, who had a degree in literature, and could write a wicked piece on occasion.....throwing common sense to the wind and marrying this Bama lass.
What made Mencken what he was? I went back a while ago looking at his youth, and how he'd somehow stumbled upon Huck Finn (by Mark Twain) and fell completely for the book. After you spend a period reading over Huck Finn.....you tend to admire simple language and the uncomplicated simplicity of life's little adventures.
So, as you might be sitting there tonight....watching ABC Nightly News, Fox's O'Reilly or CNN....with some joker trying hard to get you mentally set to some understanding of a topic or problem facing America.....deserving your time to get frustrated, angry, or hostile....thus voting a certain way, you might want to remember the word booboisie. You might be smart enough to get their message, but it doesn't mean you really understood or grasped the big picture of what's going on, or how you got manipulated into a bogus view.
Thursday 11 September 2014
Luther and Gutenberg
I often point out little bits of American history which aren't discussed much. Pennsylvania, in the beginning, was a melting pot of various radical religious groups which packed up and left England, Germany and the Netherlands, in search of a free place to operate and pray along their own lines.
Some of the original groups? Schwenkfelders, Tunkers, Labadists, New Born, New Mooners, Separatists, Zion's Brueder, Ronsdorfer, Inspired, Quietists, Gichtelians, Deprellians, Mountain Men, River Brethren, Brinser Brethren, and the Society of the Women in the Wilderness.
Why this wide spread division of Christianity that divides over and over?
This generally goes back to Europe's period of history from 1525 to the mid-1700s. With Martin Luther's standing against the Catholic Church (the dominating force of life and society up until 1525), and Gutenberg's printing press....this vast door opened for the Bible (not Christianity itself).
Once the Bible has relieved from the Catholic Church, and translated from Latin to various languages.....Gutenberg's printing press accomplished a mythical transformation.....bringing these new interpretations to every single village. With literacy hanging around 3-percent prior to 1525.....you can watch the next two-hundred years as an impact period.....villages and towns set up schools and put mass education as a priority.
The driving force for mass education? Gutenberg's publications.
People began reading the Bible in various translations and came to different meanings and interpretations. Prophets appeared out of thin air, and religious movements started to become common. All of this kinda scared the Catholic Church, which mounted various conflicts (The Thirty Years War was the last of the episode on the Continent).
The settling of America in the 1600s? It all goes back to Martin Luther and Gutenberg. The necessity of religious freedom being written into the Constitution? Back to Luther and Gutenberg. The wide arena of various religious groups in existence today in America? Back to Luther and Gutenberg.
Some of the original groups? Schwenkfelders, Tunkers, Labadists, New Born, New Mooners, Separatists, Zion's Brueder, Ronsdorfer, Inspired, Quietists, Gichtelians, Deprellians, Mountain Men, River Brethren, Brinser Brethren, and the Society of the Women in the Wilderness.
Why this wide spread division of Christianity that divides over and over?
This generally goes back to Europe's period of history from 1525 to the mid-1700s. With Martin Luther's standing against the Catholic Church (the dominating force of life and society up until 1525), and Gutenberg's printing press....this vast door opened for the Bible (not Christianity itself).
Once the Bible has relieved from the Catholic Church, and translated from Latin to various languages.....Gutenberg's printing press accomplished a mythical transformation.....bringing these new interpretations to every single village. With literacy hanging around 3-percent prior to 1525.....you can watch the next two-hundred years as an impact period.....villages and towns set up schools and put mass education as a priority.
The driving force for mass education? Gutenberg's publications.
People began reading the Bible in various translations and came to different meanings and interpretations. Prophets appeared out of thin air, and religious movements started to become common. All of this kinda scared the Catholic Church, which mounted various conflicts (The Thirty Years War was the last of the episode on the Continent).
The settling of America in the 1600s? It all goes back to Martin Luther and Gutenberg. The necessity of religious freedom being written into the Constitution? Back to Luther and Gutenberg. The wide arena of various religious groups in existence today in America? Back to Luther and Gutenberg.
Wednesday 10 September 2014
The Consensus Against Einstein
Today? A book written in 1931 and released, entitled Hundert Autoren Gegen Einstein (One Hundred Authors Against Einstein).
It's a curious book, published out of the University of Innsbruck in 1931. Hans Israel was the chief author, although roughly ninety-nine other "scientists" helped to contribute to the criticism of Einstein, and his theory of relativity.
Roughly twenty-nine individuals wrote brief essays over their criticism, with nineteen additional folks making a comment or two, and the rest simply signed on as agreeing.
It is still sold today, at least in paperback version. 106 total pages. Amazon has it listed, although it doesn't appear to have any commentary or reader observations, as you'd find with most documents that Amazon sells.
The hype against Einstein and the theory of relativity? Well....you run into roughly three areas of thought.
First, scientists usually hate been left at the curb when new concepts arrive and it disagrees with their previous understanding of things. They've bought into concept A, and they don't like being challenged to accept some type of change.
Second, in the way that some geeky guys stand around and argue for hours about the Marvel world being better than the DC world (Spiderman versus Batman)......scientists do the same thing. If you dragged seven male frog scientists into a room, with lots of beer, lusty women, live NFL football on the screen, and ribs on the grill.....the likely topic of conversation would be frogs, and they'd debate the finer qualities of frogs over and over, and over.
Third, scientists hate when someone really pulls a rabbit out of the hat, and leap-frogs over them with a fantastic theory and tons of evidence to support it. Competition.....in the mind of most scientists.....is a evil thing.
So, in 1931.....a group of guys stood up against this dimwitted Einstein character, and his stupid theory of relativity. And they were wrong.
This kinda makes a person sit and ponder.....what else might we be debating in the wrong fashion, and finding some consensus being built in a stupid fashion? And if we recognized it.....would we even be willing to stand up and comment publicly about it?
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