It Takes One To Know One

When I was growing up, a popular expression was "it takes one to know one." With that in mind, I would say that Al Gore is eminently qualified to make

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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070430/D8OQM6MO0.html

this determination. Of course another popular expression, "the pot calling the kettle black", also fits quite nicely.

The Human Carbon Footprint Is Inconsequential

Read about it here.

Cancer Prevention

When I read this article I realized that the best method of cancer prevention would be to move to the tropics and become a nudist.

Something You Don't Often See On Network TV

If Someone Calls You A Liberal

If someone calls you a liberal, ask them which kind of liberal? Now a days, when most people say liberal, they are talking about left wing liberals or what I call socialist. But there is another kind of liberal, in fact it is the kind of liberal that existed before the socialist co-oped the name. They are classical liberals. Many people that call themselves conservatives will be surprised to find that their beliefs about government share more common ground with the classical liberals than they do with the so called neo-conservatives.

Everything That Was Frozen is .........?

Read this article to find out the current status of our planet's ice.

The Proof Of The Pudding Is In The Eating

The expression, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating", which is often shortend to "the proof is in the pudding" means that you don't know how something works until you try it. Back in 1982, two American towns enacted new but dissimiliar gun ordinances. You can "eat their pudding, so to speak" here.

Conflict Of Interest

I just read this article that says, "1 in 2 Americans now receives income from government programs." It got me to thinking. If you go down to the Piggly Wiggly and they are having a contest giving away a new Corvette, somewhere in the rules it will say that employees of Piggly Wiggly and their family members are not eligible to win. Why, because of Conflict of Interest that is why. With so many Americans drawing money from the government, it seems to me that the opportunity for conflict of interest is tremendous. Now I realize that some of these people are drawing a check that is small in comparison to their overall income but for some, it is their entire income. So what can we do? I say we not allow anyone to vote who receives over 50% of his or her income from the government. Being nearly 60 years old myself, this would probably disenfranchise me in a few years. So be it. Anyone who draws a government check that provides them with over 50% of their income should be disenfranchised. Otherwise, they are going to be voting to get themselves more money instead of voting to make the country better. They can't help it, its human nature. Of course this would mean that most people who work for the government, like congressmen, state legislators, governors, FBI agents and public school teachers would be unable to vote as well. If they decided that voting was real important to them, they could always quit and get a job in the private sector. Or, they could forego their government salary and continue to work for the government for free and get a second part time job to support themselves. Judging from recent voter turnout, I don't think it would be much of an inconvenience to many people to become disenfranchised.

My New Favorite Web Site

I have a new favorite web site. Its digg.com . For those of you not familiar with digg, its a site that allows users to post links to articles or sites that they "digg." Then other users can rate the link by digging it or burying it. Scanning down through the listings, I've found all kinds of interesting stuff.

Dear Dubya, I Found You a War Czar!

Tom Chartier has a solution for the search for a War Czar.



read more | digg story

Something Stinks

I'm not talking about my old sneakers, although they do qualify. I'll give you some clues. The US has more citizens in prison per capita than any other country in the world. Over two dozen men in Texas alone have had their convictions

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070409/ap_on_re_us/dna_exoneration

overturned on DNA evidence. Three young North Carolina men who were guilty of no crime had to spend in the neighborhood of three million dollars in legal fees to keep from being railroaded by a rogue prosecutor.

That’s right, what stinks is the American justice system, or more appropriately the American injustice system. If we are that "shining city on the hill", "the greatest nation in the world", "the land of the free and the home of the brave", why do we have so many citizens locked up in prison? Why do we have so many convictions being overturned and why do people who can come up with three million dollars have to spend it on legal fees and people who can't come up with it have to spend their lives in jail? I personally don't have the answer to those questions, but I've got some ideas.

First, we have too many laws. The congress and the state legislatures pay themselves way too much money and then think they have to come up with all these micro-managment laws to justify that pay.

Second, we have too many lawyers. You may have trouble finding a mechanic to fix your car, or a plumber to fix your pipes, but there is a lawyer on nearly every street corner. Many lawyers are good people, like the guy that helped the Duke lacrosse players, but many of them are just looking for someone to sue. Too many of the marginal lawyers wind up as prosecutors whose only goal is production. They want convictions. The most efficient way to get convictions is plea bargaining, so they threaten innocent people who can't afford a protracted court fight and get them to plea to a lesser offence. Never mind that the people are innocent. Anyone with half a brain knows that innocence is no guarantee of going free in the USA.

Third, we have too many stupid people. That's right, people who go around whining and crying about the need for "law and order" and saying "lock the rascals up." We don't need "law and order"; we need "liberty and justice for all."

What is the solution? I don't know, you tell me. How do you renovate a corrupt legal system especially when the bulk of the citizens are quite happy with the status quo?

Jason Clay walks around the Pyramids of Giza

Lila Rajiva on Shock Jocks

What she says in this article makes a lot of sense.

TV News , Current Events and Censorship

I don't watch the TV news. All they talk about are sad stories. I like a little good news thrown into the mix; therefore I get most of my current event information from the web. Lately, I have been seeing a lot about Don Imus. He, as my daddy would have said, appears to have let his catfish mouth overload his tadpole ass. Before that it was Michael Richards. Before that we had the Janet Jackson debacle. Now we find out that the Duke Rape case was all due to a black female stripper telling a lie. I've studied these things and have noticed that they all happened during or immediately after a live performance. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that we have to immediately ban white men and black women from giving live performances. They can still perform; it just has to be recorded so it can be censored before submission to the public. Think about it. If Imus had been on tape, his comment of nappy headed ho's could have been bleep headed bleep. No problem there. Anyone who has ever watched Seinfeld knows that Michael Richards is a peach on tape, just not ready for a live audience. If Janet’s half time performance had been on tape, they could have just pixelated over the nipple and all would have been well, and if the Duke boys had been watching a porn video instead of a live stripper, no one would have ever listened to the stripper’s story. As for white women and black men, they seem to be immune from this insanity so I say let them continue to perform in real time, at least for the time being.

The Biggest Oil Supply in the World is in...

The oil shale deposits in Colorado according to this article. The article tells of a new process patented by Royal Dutch Shell that can extract the oil from shale for about $30 a barrel. While that process is unproven, the article does go on to say that existing processes can obtain oil from shale for about $75 a barrel. Bottom line is we may be quickly approaching a point where the cheapest oil we can obtain is right here in the good ole USA.

War Czar

President Bush is looking for a scapegoat, uh, I mean War Czar to take the blame for, uh, I mean run the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Do you suppose that there is anyone, anywhere that is dumb enough and desperate enough to take that job?

Decide For Yourself

I read this week that the Bush administration is touting the fact that employment figures are better now than they were during the Clinton administration. That may well be true. I don't pay much attention to government figures. Having worked for many years for a public utility as a 'figurer' I take figures with a grain of salt. Besides, even if employment is better overall, that might not be the case for me personally. Rather than watching the FOXCBSNBCABCCNN nightly news to figure out how things are going, people would be better served to just ask themselves, how am I doing? Am I better off now than I was last year, 5 years ago, 10 years ago? That is what is really important, not what some newscaster reports about some figures compiled by a bureaucrat.

Playing in the dirt may make you happier

According to this article certain bacteria found in soil may cause some of your brain neurons to produce more serotonin, a brain chemical associated with mood.

Why?

Why are our men and women fighting and dying to help people

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070409/ts_nm/iraq_dc_33

who obviously don't want our help?

Is there any truth to 'the enemy would follow us here?'

It’s become President Bush’s mantra, his main explanation for why he won’t withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq anytime soon. In speech after speech, in statement after statement, Bush insists that “this is a war in which, if we were to leave before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here.” But is it true?



read more | digg story

This is slick

Some Good Health Care News

Finally, a good idea on a way to reduce costs and simplify one aspect of health care. There are a lot more things that could be done better and cheaper if we did not have big Pharma, the FDA and the AMA fighting to maintain the status quo.

Beyond Partisan Politics

As this article points out, there are still Americans who put constitutional government ahead of partisan politics. Unfortunately very few of them are running for President.

The Dalai Lama on self defense

I received an email news letter this morning that contained the following quote from the Dalai Lama:

"If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun."
-- The Dalai Lama, in The Seattle Times, May 15, 2001

This makes more sense than anything I have heard any leader in the USA say for a long time. Maybe we should get the Dalai Lama to run for office.

How Could I Live Without Filing Taxes?

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 5,293 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Its About The Dancing

I figure

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070404/ap_on_go_ot/karl_rove_protest_1

these protestors saw the video clip of Karl Rove dancing. It was bad enough to make a marble statue rise up in protest.

Happiness is ...

We talk a lot about happiness. On the white album, the Beatles had a song entitled; "Happiness is a Warm Gun." Most people don't talk about what "happiness is", instead, they talk about what makes them happy. Last night, after I ate, I was out on Digg.com and I came across this link. It won't tell you what happiness is, but if you go down to the bottom of the page and click on "functions". Then in the left column, click on "happiness", it will show you where in the brain "happiness" occurs.

PTJD

I retired several years ago. The company I worked for was pretty good as companies go. As with all jobs, there were some good times and some bad. In the six years since my retirement, a lot has happened but even now, when I dream, especially if it is a nightmare, I dream about the place where I worked. Many times in my nightmares, I do not recognize the faces. Sometime I won't recognize the locale, but always, I know I am at work. If I forget, someone in the dream will remind me. I don't think this is coincidence. I think I have something I call PTJD, post-traumatic job disorder. It is similar to PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, just not as severe. I might just as well call it post job disorder as post-traumatic job disorder. After all, by their nature, most jobs are pretty traumatic. I've met people who said they loved their work, most of them were self-employed. Quite a few of the others appeared to me to be delusional. I once worked with a guy who went around all the time saying, "I love my job, I love my wife." I know he was kidding about the job, he may have been serious about his wife. I don't seek out treatment for this aliment; I have others like my inherited OCD and allergies that deserve more attention. After all, you have to dream and occasionally one is gonna be a nightmare. At least I have not waked up screaming and sweating... yet.

Demonizing Smokers

I don’t smoke, never have. Oh, when I was a teenager, I would sneak an occasional cigarette, but I never did start doing it regular. Many of the people I grew up with and around, including many of my relatives, were smokers. Many of my best friends have been smokers. It has always seemed to me that smokers were happy, easygoing people. When I was young smoking was all right; in fact it was socially cool. The Surgeon General came out with some stuff about it being bad, but nobody much cared about that. Over the years, smoking has fell from grace. Now, smokers are a pariah. With all the health concerns that have been raised over the years, I can understand people not smoking. What I have trouble understanding is people who don’t smoke and seemingly despise smokers. These people, some of them former smokers themselves, speak of smokers as if they were some lower order animal. Why is that?

Well, there is a thing called genetic predisposition that seems to have a lot of affect on how we develop and behave. I have a theory. I believe that some people, maybe even many people, have what I will call an “antagonistic gene.” These are the people who are always talking about “us and them.” “Us” being the group they are including themselves with and “them” being the enemy. Back when I was young there were groups that many people spoke of as “them.” Inclusion in the “them” groups often had to do with nationality, race, religion or sexual preference. It has become socially unacceptable and politically incorrect to denounce most of those groups. In fact one might be accused of hate speech for merely criticizing one of the former “them” groups. I am sure that this is a frustrating circumstance for the “us” folks. I think that many of the “us” folks that don’t smoke have substituted smokers as one of their new “them” groups. As for me, I probably have a touch of the antagonistic gene myself, but I will limit my “them”groups to politicians, government officials and their like and leave my smoking friends alone.

High Speed Rail In Our Future?

Earlier this week I read an article about the increasing problems the airlines are having with lost baggage and not being able to meet schedules. This morning I read where the French have set a new land speed record of 354 mph for conventional rail. These two things have gotten me to thinking. Is high-speed rail the transportation system of our future? Probably not by itself, but how about in the heavily populated corridors? Traveling at 354 mph, a train could go from Atlanta to New York City in around 3 hours. With the existing airline security delays and having to travel to and from airports, 3 hours does not look that bad. There is already talk about a high-speed train from Sacramento to San Diego via San Francisco and LA. Who knows one of these days we may be back using trains like our fathers and grandfathers did.