Let there be Light. and there was the Sun
Let there be Rocks, and there was the Earth, with lots of Rocks.
Consider,
Rocks cannot move or think or reproduce.
The next step up towards Life would be plants.
Plants cannot move or think, but they can reproduce. (Minimal movement?)
Can Rocks imagine Plants? I don't think so.
The next step towards Life would be animals.
Animals can move, and reproduce. (Minimal thought?)
Could Plants imagine Animals I don't think so.
The next step towards Life would be Man.
Man can move and think and reproduce.
So,
Is there another step?
We have Rocks - they cannot imagine even the next step, Plants.
Then we have Plants - they cannot imagine the next step, Animals.
Then we have Animals - can they imagine the next step, ?? I don't think so. Rocks cannot imagine Plants, Plants cannot imagine Animals, Animals cannot imagine Man, so why should Man be able to imagine the next step? Or even what it is? It would be as hard for us to imagine the next step on the rung as it would be for Rocks to imagine Plants or Plants to imagine Animals or Animals to imagine Man or Man to imagine - WHAT? What would the next step be? Magic? Robots? Life without Form? Just Imagination? Stars and atoms as a Giant "Brain"?
Who knows? we are as a Rock "Thinking" about a Plant. Or a Plant "Thinking" about Animals . Or Animals "Thinking" about Man. . . . . .
Rocks have no movement or thinking or reproduction.
A step up to plants brings still no thinking and minimal movement but they can reproduce.
A step up to Animals brings movement and little or no thought but they can reproduce.
A step up to Man brings movement, thought and reproduction and maybe a little of What?
Rocks = 0 abilities,
Plants = 1 ability.
Animals = 2 abilities.
Man = 3 abilities.
?what? = 4 abilities? Reproduce, move, think and - you tell me! Move thru Time? Life without form? a Brain the size of our Galaxy? The size of the Universe?
Is there another step with 5 abilities? Or 6, 7, 8, HUNDREDS?
Just saying.
Or asking..
.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
Saturday, March 4, 2017
How I cured my Throat Cancer.
I woke at 4.00am with "Throat cancer" -again! (4.07am to be precise) I padded down to the kitchen and took a couple of antacid pills - I usually take one, but this was a particularly bad attack of "Throat Cancer". Pretty soon my "Throat Cancer" was gone!
About 5 years ago when visiting my doctor I had told her that I thought I had throat cancer as I got this burning in my throat. Not all the time, just on occasion. She asked me a few questions and told me to take an antacid pill next time it happened. Apparently it was acid reflux!
When I woke during the night I was sleeping on my back, which I don't usually do. perhaps that caused the acid to get up into my throat? But what could have caused it? I had two strong beers, some sweet potato chips with avocado dip, pecans with sugar coating and apart from Chick Filet chicken a few hours earlier nothing.
Anyway "Throat Cancer" cured. Thank goodness.
Have a nice day.
About 5 years ago when visiting my doctor I had told her that I thought I had throat cancer as I got this burning in my throat. Not all the time, just on occasion. She asked me a few questions and told me to take an antacid pill next time it happened. Apparently it was acid reflux!
When I woke during the night I was sleeping on my back, which I don't usually do. perhaps that caused the acid to get up into my throat? But what could have caused it? I had two strong beers, some sweet potato chips with avocado dip, pecans with sugar coating and apart from Chick Filet chicken a few hours earlier nothing.
Anyway "Throat Cancer" cured. Thank goodness.
Have a nice day.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Consider our Universe with its four dimensions - at least four dimensions!
P.S. I just Copyrighted this. J
Consider our Universe complete with its 4 dimensions – at
least four!
Scientists tell us that all the atoms, worlds, stars and galaxies added together do not give enough mass to enable it to work the way that it does.
According to their calculations all the matter that they see is only 4% of the mass needed. So, they ask where is the other 96%?
Now these scientists are a lot smarter than I am, (My IQ when I had it tested at about age 26 was 134)
The scientists that are working on this problem are far and away more intelligent than I am. Stephen Hawking for example has an IQ in excess of 160. (As a matter of interest my mother had her IQ tested when I had mine tested and it was 160 – she would have been about 47 years old then!)
But let’s do some wandering, or should I say wondering?
We live in a 3 dimensional world. Or 4 dimensions if you count Time.
Now consider people living in a 2 dimensional world. That would be a flat world, on a flat surface, with two dimensions. How difficult do you think it would be for them to imagine a world with three dimensions? I would think pretty much impossible, wouldn’t you? I don’t know how if you lived in a 2 dimensional world – width and length only – you could conceive of three dimensions. That would of course be height. How could they imagine it? What reference point would they have?
Undoubtedly there would be some inhabitants of this world that were more intelligent than the others. Some would be very intelligent.
Say a 3 dimensional person passed through their world. As that person travelled down through their 2 dimensional space they would appear to the 2D people as a shadow on their world. First would appear the feet, then as the feet disappeared below their ‘horizon’, or through their flat world, the shadow of the legs would appear as two round objects. As the body continued down those two shadows would vary in shape and size until the body reached the hips, then the waist, the chest, the neck and finally the head.
Now would it be possible for one of the really intelligent 2D worlders to recreate or imagine the 3 dimensional shape of the thing that passed through their world? Possibly. But that 3rd dimension would be how much more complicated to them than their two dimensions? A hundred times a thousand times, a million times, a billion times? Who knows? Certainly it would be almost inconceivably difficult.
An ‘easier’ example might be if a ball passed through their flat world. First they would see a spot, the spot would be perfectly round and would increase steadily in size until it reached a maximum diameter and began to get smaller, eventually ending in a dot before it disappeared. Could they then recreate or imagine the shape of that object in a 3 dimensional world? They would also need the 4th dimension – time – to envision accurately the shape. If they got the speed wrong it could be stretched out into an absurdly long ellipse or it could look like an M&M – yum, yum, that would not be too bad if they could get the taste right.
That is the equivalent of the difficulty that we have in our 3 dimensional world, imagining the fourth dimensional. In fact I think that imagining a 4th dimension would be millions or even billions of times more difficult than imagining a 3rd dimension!.
We have no idea what time is. We can’t see it as we can see our 3 dimensions. We can’t move our heads or arms or legs in it as we can our three dimensions! It “Moves”, but only in one direction – ‘forwards’? Well, we call it forwards, perhaps it is sideways or up or down, or perhaps all 3 or even 4, or more ways at the same ‘time’?
Why does it only go one way? Why not backwards as well? Why only at one speed? Or does it only go at one speed? Perhaps it goes at different speeds at different ‘times’ or it could be different for different people? Certainly it is, or appears to be going at a different speed for me than it did when I was a child, when it went V e r y S l o w l y ! Now it is going so fast that I don’t even know sometimes if it is winter or summer, or even which year!
What is time? If our 2D people would have difficulty imagining a 3D world – and I don’t know how they could, trapped as they are in 2 dimensions, what chance do we have of imagining a 4 dimensional world? Surely it would be at least as hard, or maybe a million times harder? You tell me.
Back to today’s problem, the Universe only contains 4% of the matter needed to ‘work’.
I have tried, using my very limited intelligence, to figure out what has happened to the missing 96% of the matter in our Universe. My first thought is to blame the Black Holes. Well surely as they are beyond imagining in their own right, they could be the culprits! For Billions of years now – 13.8 billion if our scientists have got any kind of a basic handle on time – those darn Black Holes have been sucking our Universe in and sending it, where?
Where indeed? Perhaps the missing 96% is in the Black Holes. But what the heck does that mean? When our daughter Sarah was a teenager, her room was a sort of ‘Black Hole’, things went in and never came out! Our freezer is a sort of modern “Black Hole’, things go in and never come out!
But our Universe’s Black Holes are different to our private home-made Black Holes. Stuff is definitely going IN the black holes – I know I saw it happening in the Disney movie , “The Black Hole”. (Actually I am lying, I didn’t see the movie. I just said I did for the effect.) But then again, if I do see it one day when did I see it? If ‘time’ is as different as it must be, perhaps I saw it even before it was made? Had you thought of that? Or perhaps I saw it AND everything that I have done over the last 74 years all together, at the same ‘time”! Perhaps everything that has happened, and is happening and will happen is happening all at once! So there is no time? Sort of like the 2D world that is just” there”, perhaps ‘time is just “there”
Too far out? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Who knows, I don’t and I bet you don’t either.
Back to the Black Holes. Are they really Black? Could they be Dark Purple, or even ALL colors together. Or how about NO color? Enough of that. So the stuff goes in. I have to say, in spite of the lessons learned from Sarah’s Black Hole, I for one do not believe that it goes in never to be seen again. Call me a pessimist if you will, and there are those among us who do just that, but I think that stuff does something.
Here is one thought, it goes in and comes out somewhere else – in the Fifth Dimension!! Has that ever occurred to you? It has? Oh s**t and I thought I was the first to think of that!
Of course, the Fifth Dimension. If there is a one, two, three, and four dimensions, why not a fifth? Or for that matter a 6th, 7th, 50th? Who knows, well it was just a thought!
So it goes into a fifth dimension. Now that we have established that, where do we go from here? Well first off if 96% of our Universe is already in there, presumably the other 4% will be following soon – well soon in Universal Time. Certainly after the Big Banks, and Wall Street have sucked in all of the world’s money. Hey, a similarity, do the Banks and Wall Street already have 96% of the money? They definitely have MORE than 96% of my money!
Enough already, don’t get me started on that. I am going to save that for another piece, which would be much more difficult to understand than a fifth dimension. I’m pretty sure there is no one alive today or in the past or the future who can explain why we let Banks and Wall Street rob us all with impunity.
Whew, back to the ‘easy’ question of a Fifth Dimension. So it goes into The Black Holes – I imagine that there are Billions if not Trillions of Black Holes busily sucking away OUR universe – and comes out in the Fifth Dimension. That explains right there where the missing 96% is. Do we need to go further? No. But I will. You were afraid of that weren’t you? Come on admit it.
Immediately I have to ask myself what happens when the 5th dimension has ALL of our Universe, what then? Nothing in this amazing Universe is ever stable. Is that when we have another BIG BANG and start all over again? No, too boring. I don’t think the same thing happens again and again. Something different happens. Something that we cannot imagine of course. We already have our 5th dimension which is a billion times more complicated than the 4th dimension, which in turn was a million times more complicated than the 3rd dimension . By the way, I did just pick these numbers out of thin air, they have not been established by ‘real’ scientists, just by little old me. I put that in for the few reading here who do not understand my theories.
Ready for another theory? I thought you might be. Stuff goes into the Black Holes, the forces in there are unimaginable, yeah, yeah, we already know that, we saw Disney’s movie too. No really, so unimaginable that it actually compresses the atoms down to almost nothing. And you thought that I was going to say it tears them apart didn’t you. Come on admit it you did. Didn’t you? Well it doesn’t. Well OK, it might. I’ll give you that. But what if it doesn’t, instead it compresses them.
Take a Hydrogen Atom, probably the most common thing in the Universe. In order for our limited brains to understand the scale of an atom - If the Nucleus of a Hydrogen Atom were the size of a golf ball its single electron would be a mile away from the nucleus! And more than 99.9% of the mass of the atom is contained in the nucleus. So you can see that most of an atom is space. Another analogy is to compare a penny to the size of the moon. An atom compared to a penny is about the same size as a penny compared to the moon. But don’t forget that virtually ALL of the space in the atom is space. Some atoms could be compared to a ping pong ball as the nucleus and the electrons circulating at the surface of the Earth or even further out. Or compare a gold atom to the Sun. if both were one foot in diameter, Pluto would be 1.6 miles from the Sun. The outermost electron of the gold atom would be 3.3 miles out from the gold nucleus, twice as far as Pluto is from the Sun! So you can see that the space in an atom is virtually ALL of an atom. How do you compare the size of something a foot in diameter to something several miles in diameter that is all empty space? I’m not sure that I could do the calculation. My Dad could. He would immediately say the volume of a sphere is 4/3 pi R cubed. So the volume of 1 foot diameter ball is 4/3XpiXR cubed. = just over .5 of a cubic foot, I think. The volume of a ball 3 miles in diameter is equal to about 4 Trillion cubic feet. (If my calculation was right.) A trillion is a big number. If you stacked dollar bills 6 feet high they would cover 100 football fields. Wow 100 football fields covered 6 feet deep in 1 dollar bills! Or, just one football field 6 feet deep in $100 bills! Or 5 times the number of stars in the Milky Way – our Galaxy - which has 200 Billion stars. BUT, that is only ONE Trillion. The answer was 4 Trillion! So 400 football fields full 6 feet deep, or 20 times the number of stars in our Galaxy! See why I say that the area filled by the nucleus of an atom is so insignificant compared to the overall size of an atom? ½ a cubic foot compared to 4 Trillion cubic feet. (The electrons are so small that they effectively don’t add any size or mass to the nucleus.)
Where the heck was I going with this? See I have so much fun with numbers. J Oh yes, our Black Hole, well one of the Billions of Black Holes in our Universe, or Trillions of Black Holes? Or Trillions of Universes? Let’s not go THERE! Our atom goes into the Black Hole and gets compressed down to its component parts. Trillions of atoms are compressed down to the size of one atom. Now that would be Heavy! Could that be the missing 96%? All those atoms compressed down into all those Billions, (Trillions?) of Black Holes. All the 200 Billion stars from our Galaxy compressed down to the size of one star 1/20 the size of a star? Or if you prefer all the stars from 20 Galaxies compressed down to the size of one star? (Aren’t numbers fun?)
See, there is plenty of room for our imagination to roam. Why not lets yours wander? Come on have fun, ramble, stray, see what you can come up with. Who is there to say you are wrong? Stephen Hawking? He would not bother to answer our meanderings, he is too busy thinking his own thoughts. Maybe he is working on the Sixth Dimension?
Scientists tell us that all the atoms, worlds, stars and galaxies added together do not give enough mass to enable it to work the way that it does.
According to their calculations all the matter that they see is only 4% of the mass needed. So, they ask where is the other 96%?
Now these scientists are a lot smarter than I am, (My IQ when I had it tested at about age 26 was 134)
The scientists that are working on this problem are far and away more intelligent than I am. Stephen Hawking for example has an IQ in excess of 160. (As a matter of interest my mother had her IQ tested when I had mine tested and it was 160 – she would have been about 47 years old then!)
But let’s do some wandering, or should I say wondering?
We live in a 3 dimensional world. Or 4 dimensions if you count Time.
Now consider people living in a 2 dimensional world. That would be a flat world, on a flat surface, with two dimensions. How difficult do you think it would be for them to imagine a world with three dimensions? I would think pretty much impossible, wouldn’t you? I don’t know how if you lived in a 2 dimensional world – width and length only – you could conceive of three dimensions. That would of course be height. How could they imagine it? What reference point would they have?
Undoubtedly there would be some inhabitants of this world that were more intelligent than the others. Some would be very intelligent.
Say a 3 dimensional person passed through their world. As that person travelled down through their 2 dimensional space they would appear to the 2D people as a shadow on their world. First would appear the feet, then as the feet disappeared below their ‘horizon’, or through their flat world, the shadow of the legs would appear as two round objects. As the body continued down those two shadows would vary in shape and size until the body reached the hips, then the waist, the chest, the neck and finally the head.
Now would it be possible for one of the really intelligent 2D worlders to recreate or imagine the 3 dimensional shape of the thing that passed through their world? Possibly. But that 3rd dimension would be how much more complicated to them than their two dimensions? A hundred times a thousand times, a million times, a billion times? Who knows? Certainly it would be almost inconceivably difficult.
An ‘easier’ example might be if a ball passed through their flat world. First they would see a spot, the spot would be perfectly round and would increase steadily in size until it reached a maximum diameter and began to get smaller, eventually ending in a dot before it disappeared. Could they then recreate or imagine the shape of that object in a 3 dimensional world? They would also need the 4th dimension – time – to envision accurately the shape. If they got the speed wrong it could be stretched out into an absurdly long ellipse or it could look like an M&M – yum, yum, that would not be too bad if they could get the taste right.
That is the equivalent of the difficulty that we have in our 3 dimensional world, imagining the fourth dimensional. In fact I think that imagining a 4th dimension would be millions or even billions of times more difficult than imagining a 3rd dimension!.
We have no idea what time is. We can’t see it as we can see our 3 dimensions. We can’t move our heads or arms or legs in it as we can our three dimensions! It “Moves”, but only in one direction – ‘forwards’? Well, we call it forwards, perhaps it is sideways or up or down, or perhaps all 3 or even 4, or more ways at the same ‘time’?
Why does it only go one way? Why not backwards as well? Why only at one speed? Or does it only go at one speed? Perhaps it goes at different speeds at different ‘times’ or it could be different for different people? Certainly it is, or appears to be going at a different speed for me than it did when I was a child, when it went V e r y S l o w l y ! Now it is going so fast that I don’t even know sometimes if it is winter or summer, or even which year!
What is time? If our 2D people would have difficulty imagining a 3D world – and I don’t know how they could, trapped as they are in 2 dimensions, what chance do we have of imagining a 4 dimensional world? Surely it would be at least as hard, or maybe a million times harder? You tell me.
Back to today’s problem, the Universe only contains 4% of the matter needed to ‘work’.
I have tried, using my very limited intelligence, to figure out what has happened to the missing 96% of the matter in our Universe. My first thought is to blame the Black Holes. Well surely as they are beyond imagining in their own right, they could be the culprits! For Billions of years now – 13.8 billion if our scientists have got any kind of a basic handle on time – those darn Black Holes have been sucking our Universe in and sending it, where?
Where indeed? Perhaps the missing 96% is in the Black Holes. But what the heck does that mean? When our daughter Sarah was a teenager, her room was a sort of ‘Black Hole’, things went in and never came out! Our freezer is a sort of modern “Black Hole’, things go in and never come out!
But our Universe’s Black Holes are different to our private home-made Black Holes. Stuff is definitely going IN the black holes – I know I saw it happening in the Disney movie , “The Black Hole”. (Actually I am lying, I didn’t see the movie. I just said I did for the effect.) But then again, if I do see it one day when did I see it? If ‘time’ is as different as it must be, perhaps I saw it even before it was made? Had you thought of that? Or perhaps I saw it AND everything that I have done over the last 74 years all together, at the same ‘time”! Perhaps everything that has happened, and is happening and will happen is happening all at once! So there is no time? Sort of like the 2D world that is just” there”, perhaps ‘time is just “there”
Too far out? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Who knows, I don’t and I bet you don’t either.
Back to the Black Holes. Are they really Black? Could they be Dark Purple, or even ALL colors together. Or how about NO color? Enough of that. So the stuff goes in. I have to say, in spite of the lessons learned from Sarah’s Black Hole, I for one do not believe that it goes in never to be seen again. Call me a pessimist if you will, and there are those among us who do just that, but I think that stuff does something.
Here is one thought, it goes in and comes out somewhere else – in the Fifth Dimension!! Has that ever occurred to you? It has? Oh s**t and I thought I was the first to think of that!
Of course, the Fifth Dimension. If there is a one, two, three, and four dimensions, why not a fifth? Or for that matter a 6th, 7th, 50th? Who knows, well it was just a thought!
So it goes into a fifth dimension. Now that we have established that, where do we go from here? Well first off if 96% of our Universe is already in there, presumably the other 4% will be following soon – well soon in Universal Time. Certainly after the Big Banks, and Wall Street have sucked in all of the world’s money. Hey, a similarity, do the Banks and Wall Street already have 96% of the money? They definitely have MORE than 96% of my money!
Enough already, don’t get me started on that. I am going to save that for another piece, which would be much more difficult to understand than a fifth dimension. I’m pretty sure there is no one alive today or in the past or the future who can explain why we let Banks and Wall Street rob us all with impunity.
Whew, back to the ‘easy’ question of a Fifth Dimension. So it goes into The Black Holes – I imagine that there are Billions if not Trillions of Black Holes busily sucking away OUR universe – and comes out in the Fifth Dimension. That explains right there where the missing 96% is. Do we need to go further? No. But I will. You were afraid of that weren’t you? Come on admit it.
Immediately I have to ask myself what happens when the 5th dimension has ALL of our Universe, what then? Nothing in this amazing Universe is ever stable. Is that when we have another BIG BANG and start all over again? No, too boring. I don’t think the same thing happens again and again. Something different happens. Something that we cannot imagine of course. We already have our 5th dimension which is a billion times more complicated than the 4th dimension, which in turn was a million times more complicated than the 3rd dimension . By the way, I did just pick these numbers out of thin air, they have not been established by ‘real’ scientists, just by little old me. I put that in for the few reading here who do not understand my theories.
Ready for another theory? I thought you might be. Stuff goes into the Black Holes, the forces in there are unimaginable, yeah, yeah, we already know that, we saw Disney’s movie too. No really, so unimaginable that it actually compresses the atoms down to almost nothing. And you thought that I was going to say it tears them apart didn’t you. Come on admit it you did. Didn’t you? Well it doesn’t. Well OK, it might. I’ll give you that. But what if it doesn’t, instead it compresses them.
Take a Hydrogen Atom, probably the most common thing in the Universe. In order for our limited brains to understand the scale of an atom - If the Nucleus of a Hydrogen Atom were the size of a golf ball its single electron would be a mile away from the nucleus! And more than 99.9% of the mass of the atom is contained in the nucleus. So you can see that most of an atom is space. Another analogy is to compare a penny to the size of the moon. An atom compared to a penny is about the same size as a penny compared to the moon. But don’t forget that virtually ALL of the space in the atom is space. Some atoms could be compared to a ping pong ball as the nucleus and the electrons circulating at the surface of the Earth or even further out. Or compare a gold atom to the Sun. if both were one foot in diameter, Pluto would be 1.6 miles from the Sun. The outermost electron of the gold atom would be 3.3 miles out from the gold nucleus, twice as far as Pluto is from the Sun! So you can see that the space in an atom is virtually ALL of an atom. How do you compare the size of something a foot in diameter to something several miles in diameter that is all empty space? I’m not sure that I could do the calculation. My Dad could. He would immediately say the volume of a sphere is 4/3 pi R cubed. So the volume of 1 foot diameter ball is 4/3XpiXR cubed. = just over .5 of a cubic foot, I think. The volume of a ball 3 miles in diameter is equal to about 4 Trillion cubic feet. (If my calculation was right.) A trillion is a big number. If you stacked dollar bills 6 feet high they would cover 100 football fields. Wow 100 football fields covered 6 feet deep in 1 dollar bills! Or, just one football field 6 feet deep in $100 bills! Or 5 times the number of stars in the Milky Way – our Galaxy - which has 200 Billion stars. BUT, that is only ONE Trillion. The answer was 4 Trillion! So 400 football fields full 6 feet deep, or 20 times the number of stars in our Galaxy! See why I say that the area filled by the nucleus of an atom is so insignificant compared to the overall size of an atom? ½ a cubic foot compared to 4 Trillion cubic feet. (The electrons are so small that they effectively don’t add any size or mass to the nucleus.)
Where the heck was I going with this? See I have so much fun with numbers. J Oh yes, our Black Hole, well one of the Billions of Black Holes in our Universe, or Trillions of Black Holes? Or Trillions of Universes? Let’s not go THERE! Our atom goes into the Black Hole and gets compressed down to its component parts. Trillions of atoms are compressed down to the size of one atom. Now that would be Heavy! Could that be the missing 96%? All those atoms compressed down into all those Billions, (Trillions?) of Black Holes. All the 200 Billion stars from our Galaxy compressed down to the size of one star 1/20 the size of a star? Or if you prefer all the stars from 20 Galaxies compressed down to the size of one star? (Aren’t numbers fun?)
See, there is plenty of room for our imagination to roam. Why not lets yours wander? Come on have fun, ramble, stray, see what you can come up with. Who is there to say you are wrong? Stephen Hawking? He would not bother to answer our meanderings, he is too busy thinking his own thoughts. Maybe he is working on the Sixth Dimension?
Good luck with that Steve.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
A letter to my father.
Hi Dad, how does the lawn look? I just mowed it. Were you watching?
do you remember when we went fishing together for the first time on the pier at Shanklin on the I.O.W.? When we caught a fish you wouldn't let it flop about on the pier like some others were doing. You held the fish firmly by the tail and banged it's head on a steel post to kill it.
Do you miss me as much as I miss you?
Can you fix stuff there? It really would be heaven if there were lots of things to fix.
I just got laid off from my job so I should have time to write that book about you. I think I will call it, "Big Feet. Tough shoes to fill. My Father was a remarkable man."
Thanks for teaching me to swim, and to ride a bike, and to fix things, and to care.
I really miss our long phone conversations when we talked about fixing things. Things in your house, and my house, and other houses, and the world.
It rained really, really hard a few days ago and the lawn was almost floating, there was so much water on the ground. It reminded me of when we laid the lawn at 21 Chestnut Avenue. It must have been about 1954, was that when we moved in? You had ordered the Turf - we call it Sod over here - and it had rained almost every day. You worked of course so we pretty much had to do it on weekends. Well after about two weeks you were afraid that the grass would all die. It was in pieces that were about a foot wide and three feet long. Each piece was rolled up. So there were probably several hundred pieces. The weekend arrived and it was raining, hard. we decided to do the job anyway and went out in our raincoats. you laid down some planks of wood to roll the wheelbarrow on, so that it would not get bogged down. We floated the pieces into place! You brought them over in the wheelbarrow and I floated them into place. I think. you probably helped me with that part too. I must have been about 11 or 12 years old.
Anyway it had a good start. It could not have been better watered in! And it grew well although over the years the area in front of the house gradually turned into mostly moss. I think it was a mixture of being quite shady and being England, it rained fairly frequently. Plus there was a lot of clay in the area, which probably held the water.
Talking of clay do you remember that Mum's brother Clive took some of the clay and used it to make a pot?
I had a similar parent/child project with daughter Sarah. It was at our old house on Dock Road in Pasadena. She must have been about 10 years od. It was in the early 1980's. I had decided to put in a brick patio at the back of the house. I think it was about 20 feet by 30 feet. We ordered the bricks and sand and mortar, We raked the area flat, covered an area with sand mixed with dry mortar and laid the bricks. doing a section at a time. Sarah seemed to enjoy it. When it was finished, it took just one weekend, we swept playsand into all the cracks between the bricks. We did a good job apparently because it is still flat and in good shape some 35 years later! I think Sarah enjoyed it and hopefully she will remember the project with pride and pleasure.
do you remember when we went fishing together for the first time on the pier at Shanklin on the I.O.W.? When we caught a fish you wouldn't let it flop about on the pier like some others were doing. You held the fish firmly by the tail and banged it's head on a steel post to kill it.
Do you miss me as much as I miss you?
Can you fix stuff there? It really would be heaven if there were lots of things to fix.
I just got laid off from my job so I should have time to write that book about you. I think I will call it, "Big Feet. Tough shoes to fill. My Father was a remarkable man."
Thanks for teaching me to swim, and to ride a bike, and to fix things, and to care.
I really miss our long phone conversations when we talked about fixing things. Things in your house, and my house, and other houses, and the world.
It rained really, really hard a few days ago and the lawn was almost floating, there was so much water on the ground. It reminded me of when we laid the lawn at 21 Chestnut Avenue. It must have been about 1954, was that when we moved in? You had ordered the Turf - we call it Sod over here - and it had rained almost every day. You worked of course so we pretty much had to do it on weekends. Well after about two weeks you were afraid that the grass would all die. It was in pieces that were about a foot wide and three feet long. Each piece was rolled up. So there were probably several hundred pieces. The weekend arrived and it was raining, hard. we decided to do the job anyway and went out in our raincoats. you laid down some planks of wood to roll the wheelbarrow on, so that it would not get bogged down. We floated the pieces into place! You brought them over in the wheelbarrow and I floated them into place. I think. you probably helped me with that part too. I must have been about 11 or 12 years old.
Anyway it had a good start. It could not have been better watered in! And it grew well although over the years the area in front of the house gradually turned into mostly moss. I think it was a mixture of being quite shady and being England, it rained fairly frequently. Plus there was a lot of clay in the area, which probably held the water.
Talking of clay do you remember that Mum's brother Clive took some of the clay and used it to make a pot?
I had a similar parent/child project with daughter Sarah. It was at our old house on Dock Road in Pasadena. She must have been about 10 years od. It was in the early 1980's. I had decided to put in a brick patio at the back of the house. I think it was about 20 feet by 30 feet. We ordered the bricks and sand and mortar, We raked the area flat, covered an area with sand mixed with dry mortar and laid the bricks. doing a section at a time. Sarah seemed to enjoy it. When it was finished, it took just one weekend, we swept playsand into all the cracks between the bricks. We did a good job apparently because it is still flat and in good shape some 35 years later! I think Sarah enjoyed it and hopefully she will remember the project with pride and pleasure.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Getting a permit in AA County.
Getting a permit to build a house in Anne Arundel County Maryland is difficult in the extreme. It took us three years and cost $60,000. That was just to get the permit, not including the house! And that was with a lot that already had a home on it, albeit a small home. The house was just 360 square feet. But it was there and had been there for the 30 years that I had owned the property and for years before that. The county had no problem acknowledging that it was there and collecting taxes on it. We decided to build a home there after Julia with the multiple injuries from her car accident years before and her Fibromialga was too ill to climb the stairs in our 1860's house. We decided that a small home on one floor would help her.
After three YEARS and three engineers we got the permit. The first Engineer, retired while it was proceeding. Well not really proceeding as he was pretty ineffective and had pretty much given up hope of us ever getting the permit. In fact he was very upset and told me that he was going to call the county when I told him - after he had retired - that the county had "agreed" to allow us to have a permit for a 1500 sq ft home. Well actually I think that I got them to agree to let us at least apply for a permit!
The next Engineer didn't have much more luck. He too went through the motions and once again it was up to me to sit in the offices of the permit offices and wait for them. I took in pizza's and donuts and made friends. I went to the print shops and had made, and paid for the 10 copies of the various plans that the County required.
After a while this Engineer committed suicide! Which should give you some idea of the stress that trying to get a permit from AA Co entails!
By now we were some two years into the process with still no end in sight. And running out of engineers?
The third Engineer certainly had experience on his side. He was well into his 70's perhaps even 80's! But he had been around and seemed to know what to do. It was during his "Reign" that we finally got the permit. I still had to trot down to Annapolis with my Donuts and Pizza and Candy. I still had to get and pay for the multiple copies of everything - God knows what they do with 10 copies of everything! I even had to go to court a couple of times. But we prevailed and were finally granted a permit to build a 1500 sq ft house. on our 1/2 acre lot.
We had fought for this and pointed out that there were several homes on our road with houses of 4 or 5 or 6,000 sq ft on smaller lots than ours! it had even occurred to me that perhaps I should be "greasing some palms", perhaps that is how it was done. But I decided not to risk that! If I approached the wrong person - that rare honest bureaucrat - I could be in even worse, deeper doo doo than I already was! Certainly I would have been willing to do it if a few thousand in the right place had saved us 2 or 3 years we could easily have saved some $50,000! Not peanuts in any ones life. But I had never done it and was afraid to risk it as I said.
Having the permit was only the start. The nightmare continued and even got worse. See my blog/letter entitled My Permit Nightmare. And my further letters detailing how the bank and the builder cheated us out of some $200,000. Ever tried taking on a bank? Don't bother. I went to the OCC - Office of the Controller of the Currency who supposedly Control the banks. Ha Ha Ha Ha. I can't stop laughing. Well I must say I didn't believe it right from the beginning. I said to the person at the OCC the first time I talked to them that I thought they would end up saying to me, "The bank says they did nothing wrong and there is nothing more that we can do for you" That is virtually EXACTLY what they said three years later!
Well enough of that I guess. Maybe I flourish on stress. Certainly I have had more than my fair share in this area.
After three YEARS and three engineers we got the permit. The first Engineer, retired while it was proceeding. Well not really proceeding as he was pretty ineffective and had pretty much given up hope of us ever getting the permit. In fact he was very upset and told me that he was going to call the county when I told him - after he had retired - that the county had "agreed" to allow us to have a permit for a 1500 sq ft home. Well actually I think that I got them to agree to let us at least apply for a permit!
The next Engineer didn't have much more luck. He too went through the motions and once again it was up to me to sit in the offices of the permit offices and wait for them. I took in pizza's and donuts and made friends. I went to the print shops and had made, and paid for the 10 copies of the various plans that the County required.
After a while this Engineer committed suicide! Which should give you some idea of the stress that trying to get a permit from AA Co entails!
By now we were some two years into the process with still no end in sight. And running out of engineers?
The third Engineer certainly had experience on his side. He was well into his 70's perhaps even 80's! But he had been around and seemed to know what to do. It was during his "Reign" that we finally got the permit. I still had to trot down to Annapolis with my Donuts and Pizza and Candy. I still had to get and pay for the multiple copies of everything - God knows what they do with 10 copies of everything! I even had to go to court a couple of times. But we prevailed and were finally granted a permit to build a 1500 sq ft house. on our 1/2 acre lot.
We had fought for this and pointed out that there were several homes on our road with houses of 4 or 5 or 6,000 sq ft on smaller lots than ours! it had even occurred to me that perhaps I should be "greasing some palms", perhaps that is how it was done. But I decided not to risk that! If I approached the wrong person - that rare honest bureaucrat - I could be in even worse, deeper doo doo than I already was! Certainly I would have been willing to do it if a few thousand in the right place had saved us 2 or 3 years we could easily have saved some $50,000! Not peanuts in any ones life. But I had never done it and was afraid to risk it as I said.
Having the permit was only the start. The nightmare continued and even got worse. See my blog/letter entitled My Permit Nightmare. And my further letters detailing how the bank and the builder cheated us out of some $200,000. Ever tried taking on a bank? Don't bother. I went to the OCC - Office of the Controller of the Currency who supposedly Control the banks. Ha Ha Ha Ha. I can't stop laughing. Well I must say I didn't believe it right from the beginning. I said to the person at the OCC the first time I talked to them that I thought they would end up saying to me, "The bank says they did nothing wrong and there is nothing more that we can do for you" That is virtually EXACTLY what they said three years later!
Well enough of that I guess. Maybe I flourish on stress. Certainly I have had more than my fair share in this area.
Friday, March 21, 2014
The ACA and abortion.
Are Corporations people? Do they have religious beliefs that can be violated? Am I crazy? Well you would probably think so if I believed that!
More likely is that the "Beliefs" are simply political.
So the ACA provides contraceptives. Abortions are against some peoples and some corporations beliefs. But : -
For one thing the use of contraceptives do not cause abortions, even in the way of causing a fertilized egg to be aborted, because contraceptives don't do that, they prevent the egg from being released in the first place! So there is no egg to be fertilized and "aborted". And if the egg has been released a contraceptive does not affect it at all. The purpose and the way that contraceptives work has been shown to be that they stop the egg being released. So there cannot possibly be any form of abortion.
This has been shown in Europe and even the Catholic Church is OK with it! No egg, no possibility of conception, no baby to be aborted - and in any case contraceptives don't cause abortions. As I said before they prevent the eggs release.
The next step for conservatives would be to declare that an abortion has occurred after the first or second or third date, even if sex did not happen!
Just saying.
More likely is that the "Beliefs" are simply political.
So the ACA provides contraceptives. Abortions are against some peoples and some corporations beliefs. But : -
For one thing the use of contraceptives do not cause abortions, even in the way of causing a fertilized egg to be aborted, because contraceptives don't do that, they prevent the egg from being released in the first place! So there is no egg to be fertilized and "aborted". And if the egg has been released a contraceptive does not affect it at all. The purpose and the way that contraceptives work has been shown to be that they stop the egg being released. So there cannot possibly be any form of abortion.
This has been shown in Europe and even the Catholic Church is OK with it! No egg, no possibility of conception, no baby to be aborted - and in any case contraceptives don't cause abortions. As I said before they prevent the eggs release.
The next step for conservatives would be to declare that an abortion has occurred after the first or second or third date, even if sex did not happen!
Just saying.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Tax cuts for the rich.
Tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich. Then they will make jobs. We keep hearing this cry Well we have cut taxes to the rich over and over and over again - where are the jobs?
If we look back in history we can see that tax cuts to the wealthy have never worked to produce jobs. Exactly the opposite. The only thing that has cut the unemployment rate has been increasing taxes on the rich!!! True. Look back in history and check it out.
The average American pays 30% of his income in taxes. But the top 2% pay just 16% on average, and the very rich like Mitt Romney for example, income last year $21 MILLION, paid just 12%.
Under President Eisenhower the top tax rate was 80% and we had full employment and no deficit and hardly any National Debt!
To clarify, an 80% tax rate does not mean that a rich person pays 80% of his/her income in tax. They pay the same rate as any person up to a certain income for example 10% up to an income of $25,000. Then income over that and up to say $50,000 is taxed at say 20%. This means the income ABOVE $25,000 is taxed at 20% NOT the first $25,000 which is taxed at the 10% rate. Then the next $50,000 is taxed at a higher rate but again ONLY the amount from $50,000 up to $100,000 NOT the amount under $50,000 For some reason most people don't seem to be able to understand this and insist that we should not take 80% of their money etc etc .This continues until we get to say $1 million at which point any money over $1 million is taxed at 80% - but not the amounts under that.
My step figures are not accurate, they are just for examples. It might be an income of $2 million or 3 or even 5 before people under President Eisenhower started to pay an 80% tax rate, but the point is that once individuals reach exorbitant amounts like this they are not Earning it. There is no way that anyone can earn millions. You and I work hard for 40 hours a week and earn perhaps $25,000 or $50,000 or even $100,000, how can someone like the CEO of my bank for example EARN $53 MILLION? But that is what he is paid! And there are more than 400 "Executives" in that one bank who "earn" more than 1 million EACH! Some make $5 or even $10 million each! So that is probably One Billion paid to the executives of that one bank! Why is it do you suppose that when I put my money into that bank they can only pay me .001% interest? Virtually ZERO! Because basically the "executives" are stealing the money from us. There was even some discussion, which never came through apparently, yet, to CHARGE us for keeping our money in their banks!!!
Yet Americans, especially poor ones, object to taxing the rich! The wealth gap keeps increasing with the poor and middle classes paying higher and higher tax rates while the rich, who are getting richer and richer, pay lower and lower tax rates! Why would we agree with this? It does not make sense, not to me anyway! If I were making $25,000 AN HOUR - that is what the CEO of my bank makes! I cannot imagine that I would object to paying a higher tax rate. $53 million a year works out to $25,000 AN HOUR if I work a 40 hour week! Can you even begin to imagine that? And still there are people who want these incredibly, ridiculously overpaid greed mongers to pay LESS TAX!!
Just saying.
If we look back in history we can see that tax cuts to the wealthy have never worked to produce jobs. Exactly the opposite. The only thing that has cut the unemployment rate has been increasing taxes on the rich!!! True. Look back in history and check it out.
The average American pays 30% of his income in taxes. But the top 2% pay just 16% on average, and the very rich like Mitt Romney for example, income last year $21 MILLION, paid just 12%.
Under President Eisenhower the top tax rate was 80% and we had full employment and no deficit and hardly any National Debt!
To clarify, an 80% tax rate does not mean that a rich person pays 80% of his/her income in tax. They pay the same rate as any person up to a certain income for example 10% up to an income of $25,000. Then income over that and up to say $50,000 is taxed at say 20%. This means the income ABOVE $25,000 is taxed at 20% NOT the first $25,000 which is taxed at the 10% rate. Then the next $50,000 is taxed at a higher rate but again ONLY the amount from $50,000 up to $100,000 NOT the amount under $50,000 For some reason most people don't seem to be able to understand this and insist that we should not take 80% of their money etc etc .This continues until we get to say $1 million at which point any money over $1 million is taxed at 80% - but not the amounts under that.
My step figures are not accurate, they are just for examples. It might be an income of $2 million or 3 or even 5 before people under President Eisenhower started to pay an 80% tax rate, but the point is that once individuals reach exorbitant amounts like this they are not Earning it. There is no way that anyone can earn millions. You and I work hard for 40 hours a week and earn perhaps $25,000 or $50,000 or even $100,000, how can someone like the CEO of my bank for example EARN $53 MILLION? But that is what he is paid! And there are more than 400 "Executives" in that one bank who "earn" more than 1 million EACH! Some make $5 or even $10 million each! So that is probably One Billion paid to the executives of that one bank! Why is it do you suppose that when I put my money into that bank they can only pay me .001% interest? Virtually ZERO! Because basically the "executives" are stealing the money from us. There was even some discussion, which never came through apparently, yet, to CHARGE us for keeping our money in their banks!!!
Yet Americans, especially poor ones, object to taxing the rich! The wealth gap keeps increasing with the poor and middle classes paying higher and higher tax rates while the rich, who are getting richer and richer, pay lower and lower tax rates! Why would we agree with this? It does not make sense, not to me anyway! If I were making $25,000 AN HOUR - that is what the CEO of my bank makes! I cannot imagine that I would object to paying a higher tax rate. $53 million a year works out to $25,000 AN HOUR if I work a 40 hour week! Can you even begin to imagine that? And still there are people who want these incredibly, ridiculously overpaid greed mongers to pay LESS TAX!!
Just saying.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Ironing.
An ironing board sits in our utility room, actually there are two there. I am not sure why because I don't think we have ironed anything in at least 10 years. Certainly I have not, and I'm not sure that Julia ever has. Well not since that first week after we got back from our honeymoon when I walked into the room and she was ironing. I asked her what she was doing and she replied, "I am ironing". My immediate answer was "Well don't."
Since then, to my knowledge she hasn't ironed anything, with the possible exception of a special dress or two and maybe one or tow of my dress shirts. I credit myself with having added years to her life with that simple statement.
My sister still irons everything, as do a few of our friends. My sister irons the hankies, sheets, socks - everything. I can't imagine that it takes her less than 4 hours a week. So let's use that as a guide to how much time I added to Julia's life. Four hours times 52 weeks = 208 hours per year, times 50 - the years since we got married = 10,400 hours. Now divide that by 24 to give the number of extra days afforded her. And you get 433 days or 1 year 2 months and 8 days! BUT, if you break it down to 8 hours days which would be more realistic you get more than three and a half years! Even better divide the 10,400 hours saved by the 40 hours in the normal work week and you will find that I personally by my small, considerate, thoughtful, kindhearted act added a full 5 years to her life - thus far!
As another item of interest I don't know where our iron is, or for that matter if we even still have one!
Just saying.
Since then, to my knowledge she hasn't ironed anything, with the possible exception of a special dress or two and maybe one or tow of my dress shirts. I credit myself with having added years to her life with that simple statement.
My sister still irons everything, as do a few of our friends. My sister irons the hankies, sheets, socks - everything. I can't imagine that it takes her less than 4 hours a week. So let's use that as a guide to how much time I added to Julia's life. Four hours times 52 weeks = 208 hours per year, times 50 - the years since we got married = 10,400 hours. Now divide that by 24 to give the number of extra days afforded her. And you get 433 days or 1 year 2 months and 8 days! BUT, if you break it down to 8 hours days which would be more realistic you get more than three and a half years! Even better divide the 10,400 hours saved by the 40 hours in the normal work week and you will find that I personally by my small, considerate, thoughtful, kindhearted act added a full 5 years to her life - thus far!
As another item of interest I don't know where our iron is, or for that matter if we even still have one!
Just saying.
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Gym.
I don't think that I am going to make it to the gym again today. That makes it ten years in a row!
Friday, November 8, 2013
Windy.
It was very windy here last night. Not as bad as it was in the Philipines mind you where they had winds of 200 mph with gusts up to 235 mph and 50 foot waves. We on the other hand had some winds, the strength of which I have no idea, except that it did blow my boat into the water - from on land where it was sitting up on logs. Fortunately I had looped its line over one of the pier poles which stopped it from blowing across The Lake. Also very fortunately I had forgotten to remove the plugs. These I always remove, except this time, to allow any rain water to drain out. But I had forgotten, otherwise it would have promptly sunk, which would have made its retrieval extremely difficult! I have no idea how I would have been able to get it out of The Lake if it had filled with water! Certainly not on my own.
The wind also blew my crab traps into the water from the pier where they had been sitting after I pulled them out last week. Now please bear in mind that crab traps are basically made of chicken wire, so they are about 98% holes, maybe 99%, surrounded by thin wire! That does not give much area for the wind to work on. But there they are, in the water.
The wind also blew my crab traps into the water from the pier where they had been sitting after I pulled them out last week. Now please bear in mind that crab traps are basically made of chicken wire, so they are about 98% holes, maybe 99%, surrounded by thin wire! That does not give much area for the wind to work on. But there they are, in the water.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Looking for companionship.
I like poetry, long walks on the beach and poking dead things with a stick.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Guns - again!
Yes here I am again with my "favorite" subject - guns.
What is happening with us? Yet another multiple gun killing yesterday. No I don't expect you to remember which one that is, after all there is one almost every day.
Here we are all up in arms and excited about Assad in Syria killing 1,400 people with Sarin Gas but not in the least bit concerned that here in the US we kill way more people than that with guns every month! 2,500 people dead in the US every single month! More than every other country in the entire world COMBINED. How crazy is that? And we are not in the least bit concerned. In fact I think we may be proud!
We vote against health care and against keeping guns out of the hands of idiots and crazy people. This makes the US, the richest country in the world, also the most dangerous country in the world. With the worst and most expensive health care in the world, (well not really health CARE, more like health BUSINESS) and the most likely place to be killed or maimed by a gun in the whole world.
Just saying.
What is happening with us? Yet another multiple gun killing yesterday. No I don't expect you to remember which one that is, after all there is one almost every day.
Here we are all up in arms and excited about Assad in Syria killing 1,400 people with Sarin Gas but not in the least bit concerned that here in the US we kill way more people than that with guns every month! 2,500 people dead in the US every single month! More than every other country in the entire world COMBINED. How crazy is that? And we are not in the least bit concerned. In fact I think we may be proud!
We vote against health care and against keeping guns out of the hands of idiots and crazy people. This makes the US, the richest country in the world, also the most dangerous country in the world. With the worst and most expensive health care in the world, (well not really health CARE, more like health BUSINESS) and the most likely place to be killed or maimed by a gun in the whole world.
Just saying.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Garden Harvest.
Finally here we are getting towards the end of June and the harvest is starting to come in. We leave for England early tomorrow morning. Julia made dinner and here is what we had from the garden - Beets, Cucumber, Peas, a pie made with Eggs, Spinach and Swiss Chard. So far everything was from our garden. Not from the garden, yet, were the Tomatoes and of course the Avocados. I also had a Home Made Beer.
This morning we had Raspberries from the garden and yesterday we had our first Squash of the year along with some Fish from The lake. Usually by this time of the year we would have been having Figs too.
Unfortunately we have had some "visitors" - I suspect Deer, who have decimated our Tomato plants, Beans, Lettuce, Beets tops, Potato tops and Sweet Potato tops. Maybe even more. Not a good thing.
There is a pear tree in the front garden with probably several hundred young pears on it. last year I went out there one day and ALL of the pears were GONE! Completely gone. At first I thought that the kids had got into them. But looking around I did not see any sign of pears. If the kids had picked and thrown them they would be laying around, plus they would not have picked every single one. The pears were well on their way, quite big, but still not ripe but apparently ripe enough to be eaten, almost certainly by deer.
Not sure what to do. Very frustrating.
This morning we had Raspberries from the garden and yesterday we had our first Squash of the year along with some Fish from The lake. Usually by this time of the year we would have been having Figs too.
Unfortunately we have had some "visitors" - I suspect Deer, who have decimated our Tomato plants, Beans, Lettuce, Beets tops, Potato tops and Sweet Potato tops. Maybe even more. Not a good thing.
There is a pear tree in the front garden with probably several hundred young pears on it. last year I went out there one day and ALL of the pears were GONE! Completely gone. At first I thought that the kids had got into them. But looking around I did not see any sign of pears. If the kids had picked and thrown them they would be laying around, plus they would not have picked every single one. The pears were well on their way, quite big, but still not ripe but apparently ripe enough to be eaten, almost certainly by deer.
Not sure what to do. Very frustrating.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
An observation.
This is just a simple observation. Make of it what you will.
I think that the Republican Party is anti education because they know that once someone is educated they vote Democrat!
Doubtless if you are a Republican you will laugh at this and say that there are many educated Republicans. But, if you read any posts on line it is easy to tell the Republicans from the Democrats by the way they spell and the way that they express themselves. While it is not 100%, if the spelling is poor, the poster expresses themselves poorly, puts sentences together badly, it is almost always a Republican/Conservative.
I would say about three or four to one.
Does this explain why the Republicans want to make education difficult? Sure most Republicans can afford to put their children through college. And of course these children are firmly brought up in a Conservative environment and thoroughly brainwashed into the Republican way. They are told how bad the poor are. How being poor is their own fault. The poor are also criminals. No mention of some poor people being ill, disabled, mentally disturbed, and therefore unable to improve themselves, especially as they often have limited access to medical care.
It amazes me how the truly ignorant will vote Republican. To read some posts I really do wonder how some manage to support themselves, they are so paranoid, so hate filled and have so little idea of how anything works!
Many are completely removed from reality, thinking everything that they see on the Internet, on Fox news or hear on Rush et al is true!!
Just saying.
I think that the Republican Party is anti education because they know that once someone is educated they vote Democrat!
Doubtless if you are a Republican you will laugh at this and say that there are many educated Republicans. But, if you read any posts on line it is easy to tell the Republicans from the Democrats by the way they spell and the way that they express themselves. While it is not 100%, if the spelling is poor, the poster expresses themselves poorly, puts sentences together badly, it is almost always a Republican/Conservative.
I would say about three or four to one.
Does this explain why the Republicans want to make education difficult? Sure most Republicans can afford to put their children through college. And of course these children are firmly brought up in a Conservative environment and thoroughly brainwashed into the Republican way. They are told how bad the poor are. How being poor is their own fault. The poor are also criminals. No mention of some poor people being ill, disabled, mentally disturbed, and therefore unable to improve themselves, especially as they often have limited access to medical care.
It amazes me how the truly ignorant will vote Republican. To read some posts I really do wonder how some manage to support themselves, they are so paranoid, so hate filled and have so little idea of how anything works!
Many are completely removed from reality, thinking everything that they see on the Internet, on Fox news or hear on Rush et al is true!!
Just saying.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Naive
How naive can Americans be? Twenty years ago a friend who worked at NSA told me about the programs they had to look for certain words in phone conversations, that every foreign embassy everywhere (including our own!) was bugged, that cell phone conversations as well as every other thing that you could imagine was being intercepted and "interpreted". I have assumed this to be the case ever since then. That was TWENTY YEARS AGO!!
And indeed before then! In 1967, soon after we came to the US - 1967 was 46 years ago - we had a telegram intercepted and sent to the Pentagon for examination, interpretation, or whatever. The telegram said Happy Wedding Anniversary, and was addressed to David & Julia Liddle. How did we find out about it's detour? When it was delivered, I commented to the post office man who delivered it that our wedding anniversary had been a day or two earlier and whoever had sent it either didn't know when it was, unlikely, or had forgotten. Then I noticed that it was dated and should have reached us a day or two earlier. It was at this time that the postal carrier told us that it had been sent to the Pentagon before it came on to us. he said that a lot of foreign mail and telegrams went there first.
If there is anyone out there that does not know this happens then I feel sorry for them. It should be obvious.
And, what POSSIBLE use could listening in to our phone conversations, looking at out our e-mails, or any other form of spying be to the US government except to look for terrorists? I cannot think of any reason, except looking for terrorists, spies or internet hackers trying to harm us that the US government would want to know if you were wishing Auntie Mabel a Happy Birthday, were saying "Wish you here" from vacation, Saying "Come on over, my husband just left.", calling to ask you to "Pick up Milk, bread and eggs on the way home." "Go to the library and pick up a DVD for tonight". Etc. Etc. Etc.
Can you?
In case you did not know, there are thousands of nuclear weapons out in the world owned by at least a dozen nations - lets see, The US, The UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Iran, Russia - several States of Russia, China, and maybe some others that I have forgotten or we don't know about?! And there are dozens? Hundreds? of Terrorist groups that would love to have one or several nuclear weapons. And doubtless are trying to get them. And equally doubtless would use it/them as soon as they got them. There are almost unlimited targets, including Washington DC, New York, London, and numerous other soft targets as well as targets that you and I could not even think of but the terrorists will. When that first one goes off, probably within the next ten years, the questions THEN will be, "Why didn't we know?" "Why did we do nothing to stop it?" And so on.
Well folks THAT is what we are trying to do now - stop it. BUT Of course the false indignation about "Our Rights" etc is going to prevent us finding out who, what and where. The news organizations and the Politicians from "The other side" care nothing about anything except getting that scoop or getting them selves into power.
Why do you care about having your conversations listened to or read? Unless you are doing something that you shouldn't be doing. I certainly have nothing to hide. Do you? Is it important enough to stop us looking for nuclear terrorism?
Think about it.
And indeed before then! In 1967, soon after we came to the US - 1967 was 46 years ago - we had a telegram intercepted and sent to the Pentagon for examination, interpretation, or whatever. The telegram said Happy Wedding Anniversary, and was addressed to David & Julia Liddle. How did we find out about it's detour? When it was delivered, I commented to the post office man who delivered it that our wedding anniversary had been a day or two earlier and whoever had sent it either didn't know when it was, unlikely, or had forgotten. Then I noticed that it was dated and should have reached us a day or two earlier. It was at this time that the postal carrier told us that it had been sent to the Pentagon before it came on to us. he said that a lot of foreign mail and telegrams went there first.
If there is anyone out there that does not know this happens then I feel sorry for them. It should be obvious.
And, what POSSIBLE use could listening in to our phone conversations, looking at out our e-mails, or any other form of spying be to the US government except to look for terrorists? I cannot think of any reason, except looking for terrorists, spies or internet hackers trying to harm us that the US government would want to know if you were wishing Auntie Mabel a Happy Birthday, were saying "Wish you here" from vacation, Saying "Come on over, my husband just left.", calling to ask you to "Pick up Milk, bread and eggs on the way home." "Go to the library and pick up a DVD for tonight". Etc. Etc. Etc.
Can you?
In case you did not know, there are thousands of nuclear weapons out in the world owned by at least a dozen nations - lets see, The US, The UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Iran, Russia - several States of Russia, China, and maybe some others that I have forgotten or we don't know about?! And there are dozens? Hundreds? of Terrorist groups that would love to have one or several nuclear weapons. And doubtless are trying to get them. And equally doubtless would use it/them as soon as they got them. There are almost unlimited targets, including Washington DC, New York, London, and numerous other soft targets as well as targets that you and I could not even think of but the terrorists will. When that first one goes off, probably within the next ten years, the questions THEN will be, "Why didn't we know?" "Why did we do nothing to stop it?" And so on.
Well folks THAT is what we are trying to do now - stop it. BUT Of course the false indignation about "Our Rights" etc is going to prevent us finding out who, what and where. The news organizations and the Politicians from "The other side" care nothing about anything except getting that scoop or getting them selves into power.
Why do you care about having your conversations listened to or read? Unless you are doing something that you shouldn't be doing. I certainly have nothing to hide. Do you? Is it important enough to stop us looking for nuclear terrorism?
Think about it.
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