Fighting for the Future

The house is quiet this afternoon so I thought I’d sit down to write for a while.  This is kind of a stream of consciousness post.

In news from the internet this week.

1.     The Democratic Party is seeking to change the time for the next State of the Union address from the evening to the afternoon so RBG won’t miss her bedtime.

2.    Speaking of Justice Ginsberg – she says she is good for 5 more years.  I guess she has already decided the DNC doesn’t have a prayer in 2018 or 2020 elections. 

3.    All the experts who predicted HRC had a 99% chance of being President are now certain the Democrats will sweep the mid-terms.  Personally, I’m feeling just a little better about the Republicans chances now.

4.    I guess someone has run up the government cost estimate for Bernie Sander’s proposal for “Medicare for All.”  If I read it right, it comes in at about $33,000,000,000,000.68.  This is without assuming allowances for graft, corruption, and greed.  Since we are about to bust the bank on Social Security and it is the kids who want it I say “Let’s do this thing!”  So what if we turn into another Venezuela?  On the bright side, it should end that whole legal versus illegal immigration problem as the attractiveness of coming to America disappears.

5.    Speaking of Venezuela – the rising star for the DNC is avowed Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first-time

candidate for New York’s 14^th District, widely supported by other first-time candidates, who seems to have benefited from all that a quality education at Boston University can offer.  Like most candidates, big on ideas, a little short on reality.

6.    People who view themselves as comedians continue to believe their political opinions are important and have expressed them in some interesting ways.  For the record, I didn’t find Carrot Top’s brand of entertainment all that appealing, but to each his own.  Pissing in public kind of falls into that same category.

7.     Trump Derangement Syndrome has now been classified by mental health professionals (and I use that term loosely) as Trump Anxiety Disorder.  They suggest counseling, group hugs, and binge watching of the historical documentary “Frozen.”

8.    John Brennen, former closet communist and former head of the CIA has voiced concern that President Trump is a Putin Puppet.  The communists (Lenin) had a term for sympathizers of their doctrine who lived in capitalist

societies like America, I think the term was “Useful Idiots.”  I think this works well to describe John Brennen.  I could describe President Trump in a number of ways, but a puppet for someone else?  Never.

In the words of Mel Blanc… “That’s all folks!”

The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow, or will it?

 (with apologies to Charles Strouse)

We are bombard with news about this or that evil thing Trump did, broadcast by those individuals and groups who lost power in the 2016 election.  At the same time, we are inundated with the evil conspiracies of the left by those who seek to support the current administration.  Thankfully or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, there seems to be no limit on the amount of hyperbole and hypocrisy that is allowed and encouraged in today’s “post-truth” world where opinion reigns and facts are considered a hindrance to agenda.

These aspects of our politics are not new.  Today they are simply amplified by the ability to communicate instantly with an audience.  In the days before radio, writers, journalists, and opinion(ists) each had to get past an editor before their product was broadcast.  Then it was printed or broadcast by the town crier.  With the advent of radio and television, when news was only a small portion of a broadcast day the scripts were checked and the news readers rehearsed to tell the correct story, usually without a lot of obvious opinion or bias.  The major U.S. networks at least maintained an illusion of impartiality in their reporting.

Then along came cable, satellite, and the internet and the world changed.  With all those channels and all that air-time, something had to fill up all that empty space.  Why not empty thoughts based on feelings rather than facts?  The elders among us can probably remember the three CNN reporters huddled in a hotel in Bagdad broadcasting the nightly bombings just like Edward R. Murrow of WW2 fame.  What gets lost in our memories is the propaganda nature of these reporters.  In the Second World War Murrow’s broadcasts were supported by the English to show America how they were withstanding the onslaught of the German Luftwaffe.  In CNN’s case, they were supported by the Hussein regime in the hopes of showing how they were withstanding the attacks by the coalition and perhaps tell a compelling story of how innocent lives were being lost due to indiscriminate bombings.  It all made for great theater.  Journalism has now become just that – theater.  Reporters aren’t hired for their writing, their analysis, or their grasp of conflicting ideologies, they are hired for their good looks and good hair.

For eight years the religious right and conservatives, in general, complained about the past administration and its apparent discrimination of their rights versus the progressive agenda.  They were told to sit down and color because the left knew what was right and the people had spoken to who the elected as President.  Today we have a clear reversal of fortune, where the radical left and the liberals are complaining about the apparent discrimination of their rights versus a more conservative agenda, the difference?  Well actually there isn’t any, backing those claims up with factual data is unnecessary.  Those who have the microphones have the loudest voices… they get to choose who you want to believe and as long as you are in lockstep with them you can remain comfortable and smug you are on the right side of the political spectrum.

They say there is a pendulum effect in politics.  What is in, will be out soon enough.  But as I watch the pendulum swing I wonder what happens when it passes the horizontal because of the speed of displacement (change)?

Will the sun still come up?

Culture Change.

One of the pages I follow on Facebook had a post in praise of the new Secretary of the Air Force and the leadership vision she brings.  It shared this article.  New Air Force secretary presses for a culture change in her service. Please forgive me, but I have to suppress something that ranges from an inner chuckle to an outright laugh. 

I entered active service in 1974 and after retirement in 1996 spent the next twenty years working as a civilian for the Air Force.  In those forty plus years I can’t recall a time the Air Force was not experiencing some kind of culture change.

Sometimes the changes came so quickly we hadn’t even began the last one, before the new one had replaced it.  I often wondered if we wouldn’t be better off with a chameleon type uniform to show our ability to change.

I would like to borrow Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem, “How do I love thee?” to capture my view on this.

How do I change thee?

How do I change thee? Let me count the ways.

I change thee to size, strength, and mission so large

My soul can reach, while I am in charge

For the ends and purpose of political grace.

I change thee to the level my days allow

Most quiet change, by rule and wile

I change thee often, as airman’s lives I beguile

I change thee haphazardly, as if I am the night

I change thee with passion put to use

For I have but a short time to make it right

In my ego, and with childlike faith

I change thee with words, oft times out of place,

With promotions, selections, wisdom implied; and if the President smiles

I shall change thee for a longer while.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things that need to change in the Air Force, but with each new administration the Department’s need to bend to a new management style, a new political agenda, or to correct a real or imagined need means the service can never reach efficiency in either its organization or its leadership.

Perhaps I am too old to appreciate the dynamics at play, and it is the easy out to believe that, but I wasn’t too old when the Air Force changed from being led by airman who believed the nuclear bomber was supreme to airman who thought fighters were the only way to go.  At the end of the day that transition led the Air Force to carry nuclear bombs from North Dakota to Louisiana without realizing they were on the aircraft.  We had a culture change were regulations were no longer regulating, but just kind of giving advice; if you cared to read it.  (Kind of like the new SECAF suggests)

I was there when the culture was changed to tell our airman that doing your job was the number one priority, and rated officers should focus on being the best they could be and the rest would be taken care of.  I was also there when those same airmen were let go during downsizing, or passed over for promotion because someone else had spent less time flying and more time doing other things that impressed the squadron commander.

I was there when the Air Force management philosophy changed to reflect the current fads in manufacturing.  When management styles were defined in a box, quality management was job 1, when everyone should have 7 habits, when evaluation forms had rankings (or not), when officer evaluations needed secret key words, or when the Weighted Airman Promotion System (WAPS) should weigh this or that aspect heavier or lighter based on how many people could get promoted.  Because at the end of the day, everything is about promotion, isn’t it?

Break-Break:  Just a random thought here.  In celebrating the 4^th of July, a friend who knew his family history, pointed out one of his ancestors had fought the entire Revolutionary war as a private.  He had lived through the winter at Valley Forge and participated as a part of the Colonial Army for four long years without promotion.  It was wrong of me, but my first thought was he probably had problems with the Weighted Revolutionary Army Promotion System (WRAPS) testing.

Somehow, I’ve missed the culture change where rated officers in the Air Force actually learn how to lead airman by example from the time they are Lieutenants.  For almost all pilots, or navigators/weapon system officers/combat system officers/pick your term, the first time they get to really be in charge of another individual to the point of controlling their life is when they are Lieutenant Colonels with 14 to 18-years of service.  Even then if you are a fighter pilot you are in charge of 24 type A personality pilots who want to fly and will avoid almost anything that threatens that choice.  Non-rated officers, on the other hand, have to deal with the young kids almost from their first day, but at the end of their careers they will never be the Chief of Staff.

All the previous aside, there are cultural changes that are critical and the question is how to separate them from the politically motivated changes that are never truly embraced by the average airman?

For example, when I entered the service we were learning to embrace racial equality.  Although the service had been technically integrated since President Truman’s Executive Order 9981, issued in 1948, the 1960’s had taught us discrimination was still an issue.  We had annual training on this issue during the 1970s.  Did this solve the problem?  Some would say yes, some no, but what I’ve seen is the military services have embraced equality to a far larger degree than civil society because of the need for discipline and harmony within a combat unit far outweighs personal bias. 

I believe, despite the changing winds of the political climate, the same will be said for the acceptance of the homosexual communities, unless or until they begin to disrupt good order and discipline.

How do we bring young airman who’ve grown up being sheltered from reality into a culture that demands we face the reality of the world on a daily basis?

As Bob Dillion so eloquently put it, “The times they are a ‘changing.” I wonder how we effectively change the military culture, when the civil culture doesn’t know what right is?

The Lost and Found

I assume from the beginning of time and space there must have been things lost and at the same time things found.  Leading me to this theory.  The universe is a really big mall, even bigger than the Mall of America, King of Prussia Mall, or for super-size "the New South China Mall."  As such, it must have a lost and found booth.  I wonder what we would find in it?

Let’s start with privacy.  When the universe was, as modern science tells us, a single dense point it had all the universe to itself.  BANG there goes the neighborhood.  Now there are all kinds of galaxies, black holes, stars and planets cluttering up the place.  Whoever is in charge has done a poor job of setting up the zoning codes to keep things orderly.  My county commissioners have chosen to follow this universal model of zoning oversight so we have multi-million dollar homes located conveniently next to $50,000 construction marvels.  Kind of like in Brazil where the rich live within the walls of their property while the poor live on the other side of the wall in cardboard boxes.

Understanding.  Again in the beginning we understood we didn’t know everything and perhaps there was a higher power or guiding force for our lives, our planet, or star system, and our universe.  What should we place our faith for a future in?  What should we do to establish order and harmony within our society?  Along came someone who said he understood and brought down the word from above.  This gave the people new understandings.  It also created classes, jealousy and envy.  Eventually a new guy (or gal) would find some new understanding and bring down new tablets.  Sometimes the people in charge would claim divine guidance and next thing you know there is are a bunch of pyramids laying around.  So here we are today where everyone has their own, customized and unique, understanding and everyone else is full of bull feathers.  Come to think, I wonder if understanding was really lost or just never existed.

Humility.  Until “Star Trek” taught us we were not quite as good as the Vulcans, but far better than the Romulans and Klingons we were a humble people, one small spec in the cosmos.  We mostly kept our opinions to ourselves and engaged in gossip and backstabbing on a local level.  Now that we’ve lost that humility we engage in a global and perhaps galactic level of pontification.  We all know more than everyone else, just ask me!

Insight.  An ancient philosophizer once said “There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading.  The few who learn by observation.  The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”  We have cultivated a society where few people seem to understand what they read, fewer still observe the universe around them, and the majority really don’t even learn after they pee.  We accept the pabulum from our preferred media as if every grain of it is either completely true.  By the way, I will say I’ve only peed on electric fences I thought were turned off.  Usually I was right.

Well the sprinklers are done and I can go clean up the yard so this is enough thinking for today.  I hope both of you who will read this far have a great day.

Perhaps...

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In 1960, the Presidential election was about passing the torch from the older generation, i.e. men who were born in the 19^th century, to the younger men of the what is now called “the Greatest Generation.”  Much was made of the youth and vigor of these new candidates.  The election of Bill Clinton marked the passing of the torch to the Baby Boomer Generation.  Looking at the Presidential field today, perhaps it is time to pass leadership once more, but who in Generation X is there to pick up the torch?  Both main parties, for different reasons, have rejected the younger candidates.  Our choices, including Mr. Sanders, have an average age of 70. If that 3 am phone call Ms. Clinton so famously advertised in 2008 comes in, who will be awake to answer it?  She’s already shown a tendency not to want to pick up the phone, and would Mr. Trump?

How long should graduation speeches be?  Perhaps if they were shorter flyover aircraft might make it back to their base.

There is a difference between acceptance and tolerance.  Nobody wants to be tolerated, everyone wants to be accepted.  Perhaps if we understood we all are bias about somethings and that benign tolerance is okay -- then we might get along just a bit better.

How should news reporting work?  Perhaps if we eliminated the so called experts brought in to tell us what they think, and stuck to letting us sort out the facts for ourselves we would understand issues better.  Or perhaps not.

If the glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere are melting, and the glaciers and ice fields in the Southern Hemisphere are growing, will the oceans only rise in the North?  Perhaps?

There is a lot of talk by the Democrats about free college for everyone, and at the same time the flight of manufacturing to other countries is on-going and encouraged by the trade deals the various Presidents (both parties), and candidates for President have supported, e.g. NAFTA and TPP.  So as the economy shrinks and the service industries like food, medical, legal, governmental, etc. grow.  Should an employee’s compensation be based on the type and number of degrees held, or the value of that employee to the company?  The interesting thing is there will be far more candidates for the job, than jobs for the candidates.  Is the principle of supply and demand something that can be ignored?  Perhaps not.

Notes on a Saturday

It is the middle of June here in the Florida Panhandle and the day promises to be clear, hot, and muggy.  The house is quiet except for the gentle hum of a few fans and the harmonious inhaling and exhaling of my sleeping wife.  My chores are mostly done, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with the day that will be productive.  Not coming up with any great answer I’ve chosen to write down the random thoughts that rattle around inside my head.

Humor – within the nature of laughter is an underlying cruelty.  We laugh at others; their foibles, mistakes and predicaments.  If we are self-aware we ultimately can laugh at ourselves.  My wife used to get mad at me if I smiled or laughed at church as I watched some young couple struggle with a child, or some parishioner with a unimportant minor mistake.  As we move further along the lines of political control and correctness when will humor vanish?  Will Rodgers, and Bob Hope are legends because they were able to point out the mistakes and arrogance of the nameless “them” in government.  For example, “The only difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” (Will Rodgers) 

I grew up near the Catskill Mountains in New York.  There was a time when it was called the Borscht Belt, or “The Jewish Alps.”  When we drove over to see our cousins; we would pass large summer resorts like Grossinger’s and smaller summer camps like that shown in the movie “Dirty Dancing.”  These resorts were filled with first and second generation eastern European Jews seeking relief from the summer heat of New York City.  This area was also the training ground for the great comics of the past, men like George Jessel, Jerry Lewis, Mel Brooks, and Rodney Dangerfield. Ethic humor was a staple for them.  Today we are outraged at the insensitive nature of the jokes.  How dare the Jews make fun of the Poles, or the Poles make fun of the Russians, or the WASPs they found here in America.

If we have reached a point where we are emotionally damaged by some chalk writings on the sidewalk, I fear the death of humor is not far away.

The upcoming election – we in America think of the election as a two-way race. Democrats versus Republicans.  We dismiss the alternative parties as amusing sideshows.  Kind of like the parsley we sometimes put on the mashed potatoes, or the Lima beans your Mom would put on the plate at dinner.  The "big two" used to seek a middle ground for a platform and the Presidential elections generally boiled down to “where you happy with the government, yes or no.”  If you were -- the incumbent party generally won, if you were not they lost, (e.g.  Carter v Reagan, and Bush v Clinton).  On years where there was no incumbent the candidate’s personality, and occasionally political positions were more important, (i.e. Nixon v Kennedy, and Nixon v Humphrey v Wallace).

So here we are in the year 2016, our political tastes and sensitivities have evolved to the point where out of 330,000,000 people the best we could find is a pompous, braggart billionaire with a twitter account and the willingness to say what so many are thinking, and a political opportunist with so many scandals and lies behind her that there is no way to know what she really believes.  Of course the east coast media is outraged over the things Mr. Trump is saying, but after setting the foundations for these rants for the past 16 years they have only themselves to blame.  Speaking of rants, I am reminded of Aesop’s fable about The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Today Mr. Trump is being criticized as a racist for this comments about the judge handling the Cohan v Trump and maybe Low v Trump lawsuits.  After his comments about the judge’s impartiality (based on ethnic background and membership in a legal group known as La Raza) the charges of him being a racist are tossed out and of course widely carried in the various mediums we use for news.  The thing about this is, for those people who support Mr. Trump it really doesn’t matter, and for those people who don’t support him it only serves to inflate their self-righteous indignation.  Is he a racist?  Probably, but then I would say so is Ms. Clinton.

After seven plus years of the current administration I see the charges of being a racist are so prevalent in this country that it has become the first thing that anyone ever rolls out to counter a position that is contrary to their party line.  If you don’t believe climate change is caused by the US and the carbon based fuel industry you are a racist.  If you don’t believe the President is doing a good job, you are a racist.  If you question whether the Justice Department will actually prosecute the candidate the President just endorsed, you are a racist.

Don’t get me wrong, there is racism in the country.  There is a lot of racism, but it is not racism as defined solely as the ability to control a significant part of the population that goes on to say minorities can’t be racists.  This is a power seeking corruption of the term that allows people to talk at each other rather than to each other.  Those who favor calling whites racist and dismissing the charge against blacks may have had a case for the argument last century but when the President, the Attorney General, and Secretary of Homeland Security are people of color and use race as a decision point for what the Federal government will or will not challenge or defend, I believe the argument becomes moot.

I saw a conversation on Facebook the other day.  One of the few where people actually do more than post a picture and the commenters type LOL.  Two New Yorkers were talking about the evilness of Mr. Trump and the unsuitability of Ms. Clinton.  I assumed in the tone of the conversation they both liked the socialist rhetoric of Mr. Sanders.  Both agreed they would “hold their noses” and vote for Ms. Clinton.  I am but one voice, but if you have to hold your nose to vote then what does that say about your roll in self-government?  Perhaps it is time we started voting our conscience?  If you like Mr. Sanders as a socialist, then why not support the Socialist Party of America, they claim to be a democratic-socialist and social-democracy party much akin to what Mr. Sanders has been arguing for?  Why settle for a two-party system when there are options?

A final thought:  Mr. Trump reminds me a lot of Mr. Clinton, both with huge egos, coming into the election with a number of scandals behind them.  Both became their party’s candidate despite the best efforts of those they ran against.  In Mr. Clinton's case the baggage did not seem as important to the country as the stalled economy.  It will be interesting to see what we think is important in this election.

On the Way to a Career

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Forty-two years ago, on this day in 1974, I was on Interstate 80 in the middle of America.  The thing I remember most about that drive was how the Interstate was not yet complete and every so often it would just stop and I’d have to get off on to a real road and travel through towns and see real people.  Of course back then, thanks to the energy crisis, the government had determined you should never-ever go faster than 55 mph so being on the I-80 itself wasn’t all that much of a time saver.

If my memory serves, I left home on February 26 to make a March 2^nd check-in at Mather AFB, Sacramento, California.  The first day I made it to Toledo, Ohio where I stopped at a Holiday Inn and had Trout Almandine for the first time in my life.  Back then motels had real restaurants, with real food, so you didn’t have to check in and go looking for it someplace else.

Day two saw me reaching Des Moines, Iowa.  The thing I remember most about that and the next day was they must all be adherents of the Flat Earth theory because that was all you saw once you got past Davenport.  Mile after mile of flat snow covered ground.  (Just a point here, if I had understood the military a little better I would have planned to get to Omaha so I could have stayed in the visiting officer’s quarters for a lot less, but heck the government was going to reimburse my travel.)

Day three took me across the heart of America, and as I noted, it was flat with occasional sections of kind-of not flat, followed by mostly flat.  I think the interstate ended somewhere in Nebraska but since there weren’t a lot of towns and the government had already mandated I drive at an economical 55 mph I was still able to make Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Again, rather than stay at the Air Force Base, that I didn’t know existed there, I hit the Holiday Inn and had a humongous steak, surrounded by all sorts of cowboy stuff and a cover band in the corner singing something from “Bread.”

Day four, on to the Great Salt Lake and the salt flats.  My routine for the trip was to start at about 6 am, drive until I needed gas, then drive until 6 pm.  This afforded a rather leisurely day for a 23-year old on his own.  After Cheyenne, I left the flat great plains and headed into the Rockies.  That was some gorgeous country, with mountains rising to the sky.  It was something to see the peaks glowing in the morning light as the valley’s still lay in darkness.  I think the drive along the Wahsatch River was one of the most stunning of the journey, and perhaps in all my travels.  I stopped for gas in a little two pump station in the middle of the great salt flats.  In what can only be listed as a “small world” event there was another car with NY plates there.  The driver was on her way back to Poughkeepsie.  With the uncertainty of what was available for lodging in eastern Nevada I decided to call it a day when I hit Wendover on the Utah-Nevada state line.  This is where all the people who come to Bonneville to break the land speed records stay, or at least leave all their pictures and parts of their cars.  The little motel I found had all sorts of cool stuff to celebrate their accomplishments, or memorialize their failures.

Day five, the last day took me across the high desert of northern Nevada and over the Serra Nevada mountains.  The thing I remember most about that day was the cold and the need to stop and buy tire chains for the trip from Reno to California.  I was fortunate that I didn’t need them, but looking at the 10 feet of snow on either side of the road I would of really hated to needed them and not had them.  Crossing to the west side of the mountains there lay the wide Sacramento valley before me. What a beautiful sight in the afternoon, the sun shining down and the warmth picking up noticeably as I descended from the pass.    I would reverse the trip about 10 months later, this time with my wings and a future before me.

Simple trivia:  Google maps tells me this trip was about 2,842 miles and should take about 42 hours (39 without traffic).  I reckon I did it around 55 hours and since my little Subaru got 30 mpg I would have used about 95 gallons of gas.  At $.50 a gallon that works out to about $47.5o in fuel costs.  So here we are 42 years later, my car still gets about 30 mpg but my costs would not be $47.50.  I love progress.

Only Pawn in Game of Life

“Mongo only pawn… in game of life” ~ Blazing Saddles (1974).  There are many days when this quote comes back to me with a stark personal relevance. I wonder if Mel Brooks and Alex Karras appreciated how long that single line would live on?   So many of us recognize we are often not in control of our fate; in fact we are the lowest valued player in the game. 

This whole Presidential debate thing would be vastly improved if instead of putting all the candidates on the stage in a line we had them all sitting around a big arena controlling battle bots.  For each question they would send out their robot with their sound bite, it would fight for domination and if it won the sound bite would be heard.  This would keep us in line with the rise of cage fighting that seems to be gaining popularity.

Speaking of cage fighting, whatever happened to the “Rock’em-Sock’em Robots” game?  Has it been updated for the younger generation so that if one head pops up they both do and there is no loser?

You know, this whole cell phone encryption issue should really be blamed on Al Gore, not Apple.  Didn’t he invent the internet in the first place?  I have to admit to being torn over this whole deal.  One the one hand, since terrorists kill people using their cell phones shouldn’t we require all terrorist’s to register their phones with the government so they can be tracked and confiscated when public outrage demands? On the other, I believe the 1^st and 4^th Amendments are still part of our Constitution, and I am not a big fan of the Government spying on its citizens as so many seem to be.

My favorite headline today was “Hillary Surprised by Trump being so ‘Mean-Spirited’: He Used to Seem So Nice…”  I guess that’s the difference between chatting up a billionaire for a donation and the billionaire actually telling you what he thinks.

We need more news channels.  I think every individual with a camera and an opinion should have their own channel where they can tell other people what to think.

Mean tweets should be outlawed!  Since I don’t use twitter I have no idea what this means, but anything mean can’t be good.

You know, I’ve not seen a lot of baby kissing this campaign season!  I can certainly understand the Democrats not wanting to kiss babies based on their party’s platform, but shouldn’t the Republicans be out kissing every baby they can get their hands on?

I wonder how a conversation between John D. Rockefeller and Bernie Sanders would go?   

The Rise and Fall of the Universe

Really Big Bang…. Long Time…. Really Long Time…. A lot of Expansion…. and then? Some scientist say we will reverse the process and shrink back into nothing.  We won’t even be, to use the line from KANSAS, “dust in the wind.”

We can speculate on all the stuff that has gone on in the universe, and we can guess with even greater uncertainty what will go on with it.  We are expanding man’s knowledge of how things appear to work, accepting some theories, rejecting others, and revising still others, but at the end of the day the science really is our best guess, based on observation and limited confirmation.  We are building ever bigger and more capable computers to tell us what will be.  Will these, at some point, become our gods as prophesized in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?”  If that happens, what will atheists not believe in?

I saw an article the other day where one researcher (scientist) suggests we are the only “earth-like” planet in the universe.  We are a 1 in 700,000,000,000,000,000,000 happenstance.  Wow, talk about winning the lottery!  Of course this “finding” comes with the usual caveats, “more data is needed,” “additional government funded research is warranted,” “global warming is caused by greed,” and “void where prohibited by law.” But you’ve got to be impressed with how lucky we are to be on earth, if we were anywhere else we would be dead!

Things That Confuse Me.

1. If about 90+% of children are vaccinated for the typical things, then why is the issue of unvaccinated children coming to school such a big deal?  Who are the unvaccinated children putting at risk other than themselves?

This comes up each time I see one of those shaming posters about not being able to bring peanuts to school, but unvaccinated kids are okay.

2. Why would a rational person choose to run for President?

What quality/reward is it that convinces an individual to stand for the personal attacks and vilification that come with the never-ending competition for the office?  As an aside, it appears perhaps my question is answered.  For in my opinion few, if any, of the current candidates appear rational.

3. Why does any project you start take 5-times as much labor as you originally imagined?

It really doesn’t matter if it is the building of an airplane like the Long-EZ, or the repairing a house. I doubt anyone goes into the task with the knowledge of how much time, effort, and expense it will take.

4. How do you know when you’re mature, or to put it another way, what are the warning signs you are reaching maturity?

I see a goodly number of young people who exhibit signs they are growing into mature people able to see both sides of an issue, but I see far more people who seem to have never reached that same level, or if they did they’ve abandoned it for more visceral response mechanisms.

5. What lesson should we take from Genesis 19?

Even if you dismiss the concept of God, the old testament must be recognized as a book of lessons, societal laws, and recommendations to maintain a civilization.  It is easy to say well that was then, and this is now, but as George Santayana observed, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Random Thoughts on Saturday, October 25, 2014

There were those who voiced outrage over the government’s response to the Hurricane Katrina/New Orleans disaster, using it to condemn the Republican administration.  Now there are those who voice outrage over the government response to the Ebola threat blaming the Democratic administration.  Perhaps we would be better served if we recognize a government that tries to do everything for everybody will do nothing well. Regardless of who is in charge?

When a group of people destroy businesses in the name of protest they shouldn’t be surprised when the business owners decide to move away and leave them with nothing but the destruction they wrought upon themselves.

Does threating large-scale protest if a jury does not find someone guilty really inspire confidence in our judicial system?

Why do we make newsreaders celebrities? What special talent do we think they have, beyond reading a teleprompter?

If a medical doctor is unwilling to appropriately quarantine himself during this “self-monitoring” period why would we believe an average citizen will?

Voter ID and Voter Fraud – both have their proponents and opponents.  Some claim the potential for large-scale fraud is so small voter ID is not required, and that having an ID disenfranchises those who are unable to get one.  We never hear about the percentages of those who would be disenfranchised.  How many potential voters are we talking about?  Is it 10, 10,000, 100,000 or more?  The Chicago political machine has a long history of supporting voter fraud, so they should be able to address the voter ID rules in the same way.  In fact, they are moving to the next level where regardless of which candidate you select on the machine the Democrats get your vote.  Remember -- in Chicago death is no reason to stop voting.