Morning Toughts

-->        Today, April 22, 2016, is a good day.  All days are good days if you approach them as such.  Yesterday I completed the heavy labor in cutting the bottom eleven inches of siding off the house and replacing it with a rot resistant product called MiraTec.  I’ve seen both positive and negative reviews, but my cost-benefit assessment committed me to this as the best choice for cost and ease of installation.  All I have left to do is apply a second coat of primer and then the final color on about fifty feet of the garage.  Fortunately for my back it is raining right now…  I’d like to thank Karl A for his motivation getting me off my backside and helping get this done. 

I wonder what communication will be like in 10 years?  I was thinking about Star Trek this morning and how they were able to travel faster than light, yet communication with Star Fleet was instantaneous.  So obviously they’ve figured out how to move independent particles (or is it waves?) faster than light so they don’t slow down when they leave the warp field.  But I digress!  My thoughts were really more along the line of will we be able, or will we be willing, to communicate in more than emoticons?  

The conservative media is abuzz with discussion and condemnation of the recent announcement that Harriet Tubman is to be recognized on the next version of the US $20 bill.  While I can come up with a group of individuals who might be more deserving of this honor I am not sure I see the big deal here.  But again, we must make every decision a political argument.  Truthfully, I’d be a little more sympathetic to the Administration if the President hadn’t gone out of his way to encourage the division of the nation during the past seven years.

The artist Prince, or the artist formerly known as Prince, or [insert symbol] has passed away. It is unfortunate, but death stalks us all.  Sometimes we mourn the famous who’ve made choices in life that speed the inevitable and I guess this is to be expected, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for them when I look at those nameless men and women who struggle to get the most out of each breath and overcome the disabilities they were born with, or have incurred from accident, or fighting our Nation’s wars.