The Days of Our Lives

If you were to find out that you have a terminal illness and would die in 2 year’s time, what would you do differently?
And... if that's the best use of your time, then why aren’t you doing that already?

Ever wonder how many days you are going to live? It's not in the millions, or even the hundreds of thousands. The average person lives to age 74. That calculates out to only about 27,000 days. That's what we start out with. Seems small doesn't it? If you take off the first 10 years, because you're too young to know what's going on, and take off the years in your 60's and 70's when you are in declining health and spending time going from doctor to doctor, that leaves about 18,000 “good” days. And most of those are spent working. In fact, if you take out work days, you get about 100 days per year, or about 5,000 days to call your own in the average lifetime – assuming there is no early demise. And of those, some will be sick days, and a lot you will be doing things you don't want to do. Yardwork, housework, shopping, social obligations, etc. It really narrows down pretty quickly to a frighteningly small number.

If you’re living an average life, you probably have bills to pay and those bills are going to continue coming in for at least the rest of the healthy years of your life (and probably beyond that). This means that you should probably count on working the days it takes to earn the money to pay them. So, for each year, there are about 260 work days, leaving 100 days per year in weekends, holidays, vacation, etc.

So this means that if you are 40 right now, you have about 2,000 non-work days left to enjoy your life in. If you look at your weekends over the past few years, how many of them were all spent doing things other than work around the house, or paying bills, mowing the yard, or spent with social obligations, etc. In the last month, how many whole days did you have to yourself? 4? 2? Let’s be generous and say it was 4. That would be half of every weekend dedicated to just doing whatever YOU wanted to do. That’s probably more than most people get, but let’s say you had that. In this case, you’ve got about 1,000 days left. If you’re 50, then cut that in half. This means you’re down to about 500 days left that aren’t going to get sucked away into the abyss of housework and other tasks to support everyday life. 500 days.

I don’t want to spend any of those precious days being angry, or sad, or full of regret over mistakes, or second-guessing past decisions. I will learn from the past, but not dwell on it. I just want to keep moving forward. But I also want to more forward carefully, and not waste time.

How many of those days will be good weather days for golfing? Or fishing? Or hiking, kite-flying, photography, boating, ballooning, whatever you like to do. Or what about travelling? There are a number of places I'd love to see before my "days account" is empty. Have you been thinking you were going to do something great and important with your life? Like hold a political office? cure a major disease? Solve a major social problem? Become a famous actor, comedian or renowned rock star?

In my case, the time is probably past for doing anything really important or grand such as that, so I will have to pursue more moderate goals. Beside writing new tunes, and going back to doing some artwork, I was thinking of writing a technical book. This one would be related to the area I’m working in these days, and would help with getting teaching gigs for teaching classes in the subject area. It’s part of a career back-up plan for coming into an age range (50’s) where companies don’t want to keep you as a full-time staff anymore.

But now I have to seriously think about the investment of days. It’s not something I can work on during normal work hours, so like my previous books, it would have to be done in my personal hours. How many of my precious 500 days would that take, exactly? If it’s going to be say, 40 chapters, and if I spend say, 10 days researching, writing and illustrating each chapter, that would mean it would burn up about 400 days. That’s almost all I have left! So maybe, I make it 25 chapters, and try to cut corners to do it quicker? Or do I forget the project altogether and spend the time out watching movies or walking or travelling? It comes down to the very pragmatic question of, “How much of my precious present time should I sacrifice to try to make my future time easier?”.

It’s interesting the kinds of questions you ask yourself when you really start to think about how much unencumbered time you truly have left. Do we create a budget of days left? Like money in the bank that you can spend. Once. Invest x days into this project or that one. Spend this much with family, this much with friends, this much alone, this much on hobbies, this much on self-improvement, this much on career development, this much on travelling,….etc.

These kinds of questions make a lot of other questions we think about seem small and trivial by comparison, don't they?

Racism is alive and well in America

Have a look at this short video: http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/mccainpalin-supporters-let-their-rac

Obviously racism is a big issue especially in the South (which is famous around the world for it), but that video was done in Ohio. That shows that racism is pretty common all over the country, it thrives in pockets wherever you have general ignorance and lower overall education levels. My worry is that some racist is going to pop out from behind a bush somewhere and assassinate Obama during that period after the election but before he officially takes office and has the full protection that a president gets. He will be exposed to higher risk during those 2 months.

Here's what I think about racism in general:
Racism is seductive to people for a couple of reasons. First of all, because it gives a person a certain sense of advantage without doing anything to deserve it. If you can push down all other groups and elevate your own, then it's an easy win for you. Preference in jobs, in getting loans, in politics, in finding a place to live, places to eat - all of life becomes easier if your group is privileged above other groups. This is especially appealing to those who cannot achieve much through their own efforts. (in other words, if they didn't go to college, and so don't have the advantages in life that that gives. This is why it is more common among less educated people)

The second reason is because to some degree, there are some facets of it that are actually true. For example, we are told it is wrong to think that black men are more likely to commit crimes more than white men, because all men are individuals and capable of individual thought and free will. But the fact is that statistically, a much higher percentage of blacks DO commit crime and end up in prison. As of 2005, blacks are responsible for 7 times as much crime as whites (see here for supporting facts)

Some would say that's because they are forced to it by economic circumstances, and then also they are targeted more by police. Those things are also true. But for whatever reasons, the fact remains that a higher percentage of blacks commit a higher percentage of the crimes to the point where it has become endemic to that sub-culture. Of course, if you starve a man, you can't really blame him if he then steals food to survive, however, the fact that it is unfair and explainable is one thing, but the fact that it is still statistically true, is another. Areas that are predominantly black have more crime than areas that are predominantly white. It's simply undeniable.

And so racists have fuel for their argument. It benefits them personally, and it is supported by statistics.

Of course whites are not the only racists. There are black racists as well. But blacks are only 12% of the population, so the whites win that one. And it is not just an American phenomenon. Germans were famous for racism. To this day, that is what the Nazi movement is most famous for. (well that, and that whole global domination thing) The Japanese, despite their polite demeanor and highly evolved society, are well known to be racist. I have read that it is even taught in Japanese schools as a simple fact of biology. (HomoSapiens is broken down into races and ranked, with Japanese on the top, and blacks on the bottom of the list). Japan is xenophobic to the extent that they do not allow immigration of anyone. They wish to keep the Japanese race 'pure'. South Africa is also famous for it as well, of course. It's everywhere.

Although there are US statistics to show that, as a group, black society has higher crime levels and lower education levels, that does NOT mean that an individual person who is black will have poor education or commit crimes merely because he is black. It has nothing to do with the color of his skin. It has to do with who he hangs out with, and the culture he is enmeshed with. A person is not primed to do crime by his skin color. Rather, he is prepared by the values, perspectives and worldview that he shares with his peers and kin. Crime is not a race issue, it's a class issue. If you grow up surrounded by criminals, then chances are you will be a criminal, regardless of what race you happen to belong to, or what color your skin, or hair, or eyes are. Race is irrelevent. But the culture - THAT'S the part that influences behavior and so becomes a predictor of future behavior.

Barack Obama is half black. But he is also a Harvard graduate, a published author, a state Senator, a US Senator, an agent for positive change in society, and his resume is full of amazing things. He is very intelligent, and has done spectacularly well, and that is why he has risen to the candidacy of the job of president of the US. Will he boost blacks over whites? well, I doubt it. But I'm sure he won't do anything that allows further denigration of blacks. I imagine he would dismantle any systemic barriers that prevent blacks from bettering themselves. But he certainly would not harm whites. Don't forget, it is mostly whites who are voting for him. Blacks are only 12% of the population. There aren't nearly enough blacks alone to elect him Senator, let alone President.

Culturally, he has far more in common with educated whites than he does with ghetto blacks. There are not a lot of wealthy, Harvard-educated, published, US Senators who are in the ghetto, and these things are far more at the core of who he is than just the pigmentation color of his epidermis.

So don't be surprised by the fact that racism is out there and still common. It will disappear only when everyone is educated past it. And, given that the quality of our education is going down, and that more than 50% of high school students are dropping out in many major American cities, that doesn't seem likely anytime soon. Rather, it seems that we are spiralling down into a society and a culture where racism and other ignorances and boorish thoughts, feelings, and actions are enshrined.

Education is far more important than just a way to get a better job. It raises you up out of the stink and mess of ignorance that otherwise sticks to you and holds you down.

Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Presidents

I have always wondered why abortion became a political issue, rather than a personal issue. It seems to me that politicians should be defined by their policies regarding national and international issues. Not so much these types of things.

To my mind, it's like defining all politicians according to who is favorable toward sex before marriage and who is not, and then fighting huge political battles over that for decades. I mean sure, there may be moral implications there, and so it has more of a sense of what is 'right' and what is 'wrong' to it than say a preference for certain musical choices, but it just doesn't seem to me like it ought to be the kind of issue that defines a major political battleground for election platforms for presidential candidates.

In the media, they seem to be using it to actually DEFINE who the candidates ARE. They are often defined as a "Pro-Life President" or a "Pro-Choice President". As if this is THE most important policy of a president for example. I have to say, the most important policies of a president probably should be things like economic policies and defense policies, and healthcare policies, and education, and immigration, etc.. Things that affect the fundamental health and survival of our country in the world. But Presidents should not be defined or decided on by this. I'm not saying it's completely trivial, but it just shouldn't be as relevent as those other issues as far as the president's role goes. He might be better defined as a "Pro-Free-Trade President", or as a "Pro-Immigration President", or possibly a "Pro-Military President", or "Pro-Diplomacy President", "Pro-Alternative Energy", "Pro Labor", "Pro Business", "Pro Healthcare", etc.. Aren't these things a little more relevent?

As far as the issue itself goes, somehow it seems bizarre to let one religious group define the national policies on this aspect of healthcare, and make the decision for the entire population of women, as if they cannot be trusted to have the morals or common sense to make the right decision themselves.

We also have Muslims here in America. Should we let them decide the alcohol policy for the entire country? No one can drink any kind of alcohol anymore? Or maybe they should set our national dress code policy and force all women to wear veils and headscarves and cover their entire body head to toe? They also feel that these issues are too important to be left to individual choice. And what about Jews? There are lots of Jewish people in this country. Should they get to decide the national policy on food, and take away all pork products from the national marketplace? Or what about Jehova's Witnesss? If I recall correctly, they don't allow blood transfusions. Should we allow that group to dictate THAT aspect of our national healthcare policy? Or maybe we should allow the Church of Scientology people to dismantle and outlaw our mental health professionals and facilities. They don't believe in that branch of medicine, so perhaps it should be taken away from the rest of the people in the country. Or, for that matter, why not respect the Amish doctrines and simply dismantle and remove all technologies and inventions that have been created since the discovery of electricity? We could all just go back to living the way people did in the 1700's.

Where does it end? Do we set our national policies of governance respecting all religions equally? Or do we set national policies based on religious doctrine according to the number of people in that religion within the country? Or do we set the laws depending on the regions of the country based on the percentage of people in each religion within that region? So we would allow legal polygamy in Utah where we have a higher percentage of Mormons, but it's illegal and immoral everywhere else? And we make all pork products illegal in the northeast corner of the country where there are more Jews, but make it perfectly legal in the rest of the country?

The U.S. constitution allows for religious freedom in this country and that is a good and noble thing. Everyone gets to decide whether or not they want to belong to a religion, and which one they choose, if they do. It's a personal choice. But if we are going to allow religious freedom, then we have to ensure a complete separation of church and state. This is exactly WHY that aspect of the constitution is so important! These religions all have different laws and beliefs, and some of them might be contradictory. We simply cannot allow the various religions to dictate the national policies that EVERYONE has to live by.

But hey - that's just my opinion. It's good that this country allows us to have one.

Certainty and Strength

In a conversation a few days ago about right and wrong and morality, someone asked me if I only see shades of grey. I've been thinking about that for the last few days.

The answer is yes.

I keep assuming there is always a completely pure black and a pure white somewhere, but I've never actually seen it. Absolute black and white / absolute good and evil are concepts we believe in when we are either young, or under the influence of religious teachings.

But in the real world, the more we learn, the more everything in the universe related to right and wrong is revealed as various shades of grey.

For example, most men are taught and brought up to believe that a man must never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, hit a woman. And you believe that is an absolute. An inviolate evil thing. Until one day you see a woman beating up an innocent little child and the only way to stop her is to be physical with her. Restraining, or if that doesn't work, then possibly hitting her to save the child. You think that we must not kill a person. Then you come across a situation where that person wants to kill you or your family or many others, and killing them is the only way to stop them.

All I am saying is that the longer you live, the more exceptional situations you see where you have to adjust your ideas of right and wrong. It's a lot less clear when you understand more about the bigger picture. It's all so simple when you're a kid. Good guys, bad guys, right and wrong. It's as simple as the old western movies - the white hats vs the black hats.

Another aspect of this I find is that when you believe in absolutes, you have strength. You can act with full force. You don't hold back anything, because you feel you are acting in the "right" in order to defeat "evil".

Imagine for just a moment that you are an American soldier in World War II. You come across a German camp and you can rush in and just start shooting to kill as many Germans as possible. They are the enemy. They are evil. They are dangerous and MUST be destroyed and you are justified and right in killing as many of them as possible. In fact, you are considered very brave and a hero for doing just that. This is because they are all nameless, faceless, soulless, demons to you. They are not people. They are cardboard cutouts of people. Unreal paintings of evil. Silouettes.

But then, lets say you go to live in Germany for a time and you get to know some German people. Let's say you become close friends and begin to see them as warm, friendly folks. Full of their own self-doubts about what their country's leaders are doing. Let's say they take you in and treat you like family. You see their humanity. You see their dignity and their brilliance, their beauty and their self discipline, you learn their history. You learn about their challenges and how they overcame them, and you begin to understand their world view. You see and understand the truth of their value as human beings.

Can you still rush at them and start shooting and killing them indiscriminately? Now that they are no longer just silouettes of evil, but are fully-formed humans? Now you know them to be warm, sensitive, honest, and just trying to survive against what they see as an implacable enemy. Now that you understand more, you cannot fight with the same strength, can you?

So it is with much of life. Greater understanding brings a more balanced view, and suddenly, the former ideas of absolute right and absolute wrong begin to look like shadows on the wall. Thin. Meaningless. Superficial. These shadows disappear with the slightest light.

Understanding takes away our strength to act with violence. It adds to our desire to simply understand, appreciate and help everyone. For as much as some things seem like unforgiveable sins, there is usually always another story to make you see a different side. Everybody has a story that could break your heart.

It seems that those who act with the most strength do so because they act with a sense of certainty that can only be based in ignorance.

But then, upon further reflection..... even THAT is not really wrong after all. Strength without reason becomes a force of nature. And as such, an agent of change. The more we see, the less we are able to effect change, I guess. When you understand everything about the forest, you hesitate even to just walk through it and disturb its balance, and the perfection of its silence.

In the end, there is no black and no white. But there are thousands of shades of grey and millions of colors.

The irony behind this is that we are taught to believe that knowledge is power. That understanding is strength. But it turns out that only a LITTLE knowledge and understanding gives you strength. Once you have more, then you begin to lack the certainty to act without fear or appreciation of consequence. There are always ripples of consequence to every action. To understand this is to question every move. We become paralyzed with thought and understanding. We become observers rather than participants in the events of the world. And thus, the greater understanding undermines its own value.

Once, long ago, Gandi was asked how he knew what was the 'right' thing to do, and what was the 'wrong' thing to do when the decision was not always so clear. He said something along these lines, "Think about the poorest, most helpless person you can imagine. Now think about how it might affect him. Whether it would help him or hurt him. Decide based upon that." That is wise, to be sure. But my follow up question would be, "In order to judge how it would affect the least powerful of us, How do we see all the consequences of our actions before acting?"

So the paradox here is a question about leadership. To be a leader, you must have strength in order to pursuade others to follow your plan. To have strength, you must draw that from your sense of certainty. To have the sense of certainty, you must have ignorance - either deliberate or through naivete. That is, you must pick a side and then ignore all the facts that support the opposite side. That is ignorance by definition. Because to fully understand the arguments that support the opposite side, erodes your sense of certainty about your side of the issue at hand. You begin to appear indecisive, and unsure, and therefore weak, and therefore unable to provide leadership.

So, do we draw the obvious logical conclusion to this simple equation? Becoming an effective leader requires ignorance? Ignorance of the opposite arguments? Ignorance of the entire set of consequences of your decisions and actions? So what is the motivation then if not truth and true justice? Is it merely power to act in self interest? Is THAT leadership?

In the slipperiness of language, I am trying to keep my footing and yet hold out a heavy truth to show you here.

The Left vs. The Right

In a recent conversation with my daughter she had some questions about politics and needed some answers. The following is essentially what I told her.

Q: Dad, this is an election year, and we're supposed to vote between the Republicans and the Democrats. What's the difference between the two parties?

A: Well, some of it is more historical than current. It's changed over the years. Originally, the Republicans used to be more toward the Right, which means they were Conservative, and the Democrats would lean more toward the Left, which meant they were more Liberal. But these days, it's more like just two competing teams trying to win power for their side. The ideological differences are less important to them now, because both are just trying to appeal to everyone to get power. So they just both say what they think the majorityof voters want to hear. The historical ideological differences of Left vs Right have given way to in-fighting and negative campaigns where they try to accuse each other of all sorts of things, in order to damage each other's electibility. Now, election campaigns seem to be more like Demolition derby or Roller Derby. They try to wreck each other and the last one standing at the end is the winner.

Q: What is "The Left" and "The Right", anyway? And which is better?

A: Well, the scale is basically about the size and power of the government. Traditionally speaking, to the right, you have less government, and to the left you have more government. Neither one is "better" than the other necessarily. Some people prefer it more right and some prefer it more left, but there are always trade-offs with both. Your preference depends upon which trade-offs you prefer.

Q: What does that mean - to have "more" or "less" government? Does it mean more employees working in the government?

A: To some degree, yes, but really it's not specifically about the number of government employees, but it's more about how much the government does vs. how much is done by companies in the private sector. The best way to illustrate the point is to look at the extremes of each side. In the most extreme "Left" model, you have a government which controls everything. Like a communist government, where everybody works for the government, the government owns everything, and provides everything. There is very high degree of control, and they control every aspect of the lives of the citizens. They decide what you will do a living, where and how you will live , whether or not you deserve a car, and what kind of car you deserve, the kind of furniture you are allowed to have, where you can go on vacation, etc. In that world you have a lot fewer decisions to make. You have very little freedom. China is an example of a country that is closer to the left end of the scale than most.

On the other hand, in the extreme "Right" model, you have the ultimate freedom, but you also have complete anarchy. There is no government to speak of. No central power that sets the laws or has the power to enforce them, it's basically the Old West all over again. Lawlessness. Criminals everywhere. Organized crime typically takes over in these cases, or nowadays, you get terrorists running the place - which is just another form of organized crime. But they have better weapons, and a religious angle added in. A good example of an extreme Right country is present-day Iraq. They have a small government that is not yet fully functional, so people are running amok and there is war and crime everywhere. Terrorists are everywhere because the government is not strong enough to control them.

Q: Why does freedom have to include anarchy? Isn't freedom a good thing?

A: Freedom is a complex thing. For instance, you think it's great if you have the freedom to do as you like. To go where you want and live as you want and don't have any rules or controls limits placed upon you. That sounds like fun, doesn't it? But if YOU have those freedoms, then the guy next door to you ALSO has those same freedoms. What if he is free to have an arsenal of machine guns and rocket launchers, and bombs, and missiles, and grenades at his house, and has the freedom to shoot them in any direction and any time in any way he wants. Freedom means having choices. Without controls, he can do things which threaten or endanger you and the other people around him. It works like this for business, too.
In a completely free society, you might have the freedom to open up a store that sells the things you love - say, a tack shop selling horseriding equipment like saddles, etc. Well, criminals could use the lack of controls to rob you and take your money, or even take your store away. In a completely free society where there is only a small government, they cannot control that kind of thing because they simply don't have the strength or size to fight all the injustices that people can inflict upon each other. It's like the Old West all over again. The frontier mentality. When people explore new frontiers, they go into new situations where there is no government, no control, and they have the ultimate freedom, for a while, but that carries with it a lot of risk, and crime is rampant. Things are completely unfair in that kind of a society.

Q: So freedom is a bad thing then?

A: No, of course not. But, like everything else, it's a question of degree. Too much freedom is bad. And too little freedom is bad, too. You want there to be laws. You want a safe and fair society. You want a government to create laws that support that vision, and then have the power to enforce those laws. But you don't want them to have too much power and too much control because that then restricts the things you can do by too much. It's a question of where the best balance point is between too much freedom but anarchy on one side vs. too little freedom but safety on the other side.

Q: So it's about controlling violence then, mostly?

A: No, it's about a lot of things. Essentially it's about fairness. It's about what different people think is fair. For example, some people think that if they buy a parcel of land then they should be able to do anything they want on that land - almost as if it's their own little country. But what if the owner of the land is a company that runs a factory and they pollute the water in the river that runs through it, and they pollute the air over it. That pollution then affects all the neighboring properties. So it's completely unfair for them to have to deal with the pollution that this company produces. So we need rules and controls over how much a company can pollute, and we need to have the power to enforce it, or else the company will ignore those rules. Also, we need common infrastructure for things like roads and bridges, etc. and we need someone to maintain them.

Q: Okay, I can see why we need controls and laws, but why does it have to be the government? Why can't it be companies in the private sector that do these things?

A: Well, for one thing, if we cut back on the taxes to the point where the government was much smaller than it is right now, then in the absence of a government with the resources to take care of the infrastructure, companies certainly would not step in and bear the burden. When that bridge in Minneapolis collapsed, you wouldn't see 3M or Sony, or IBM rushing out there to fix it. They would just let the infrastructure rot. When Katrina hit the gulf coast, if there was no government assistance, then there certainly would not be companies rushing to the rescue. Wal-Mart sent a truckload of waterbottles as a PR gesture, to get some good press to counteract all the bad press they get all the time, but they weren't about to buy families thousands of trailers, and pay them compensation for their lost homes, etc. They do not have the common good or common public interest as part of their mandate or mission.
Companies don't serve the public. They exist to make money for their owners. Period. That is the purpose and function of any company. Anything else they do, such as making products, providing services, or hiring employees, is just a by-product of that primary function. So when they operate, they are always looking for ways to cut costs and increase revenues and profits. If the police department were a private security company, they would not be so interested in catching the bad guys and keeping the streets safe, but rather they would be trying to cut back on officers as much as possible, and charge large tickets to get more revenue coming in. There can't be two competing police departments in the same town, so there is no competition to control them and keep them honest. Companies are essentially driven by profit. A single company with no controlling mechanism would take advantage of the people, until they finally lost their contract when the expiry date came up. Then they would be replaced by another company who would just do the same things all over again because they also want to maximize their profits, and there is no one to control THEM either.

Q: But governments always have more bureaucracy. Aren't companies more efficient?

A: Companies ARE more efficient usually, (but not always), but this is because competition in an open market forces them to be efficient. They are forced to cut costs to keep prices down, and they are forced to provide better quality products because that is what will sell better in the marketplace, and if they can't sell their products they go out of business. Competition keeps them honest. But the government provides services in areas where there cannot be any competition. You can't really have four fire departments, and twelve police departments, and seven federal immigration services, and nineteen central tax authorities, and twenty three armies, and a bunch of airforces, and a dozen navys, and eight national park services all trying to manage the same resources, etc. It just doesn't work that way. So, since there is no competition to keep them honest, we have to have rules and laws to keep them honest. We have checks and balances, and oversight committees, etc. So there are forms to fill out so that senior people can approve actions, etc. If this control layer gets to be too much, it is considered bureaucracy. We have to have the right balance of this too. The goal is to make sure that people in the government do not abuse their power or authority since they have singular control over things in their purview.

Q: Why doesn't everyone agree which things should be run by the government and which things should be handled by companies? Isn't it obvious?

A: No. Not always. The army, and the police and fire departments, and immigration, and the mint, and several other things are obvious perhaps but there are some things, like healthcare, that are not so obvious. Most countries in the world have decided that the government should provide healthcare for their citizens, but the US is one of 3 or 4 countries that don't agree. Here we have a private company-driven healthcare system run for profit. South Africa and Argentina are the only other countries I know of with a similar sort of system.

Q: So, if companies are more efficient than government because they have competition to keep them honest, then why is our healthcare more expensive per person than any other country in the world? And why does it suck? Why can't I get the kinds of treatment I need when I need it?

A: Good questions. I don't know for sure. Some say it's because the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies have joined together to create powerful industry lobbyists in Washington to get legislation that favors them and allows them to keep doing business like this with virtually no controls for quality of service or affordable rates, etc. But other people are afraid that if we let the government run it, like in England and France, and other countries, etc. then it will get even worse than it is now. It's one thing to decide which system is best. It's another thing entirely to be able to switch from one to the other. We already have a lot of huge companies making billions of dollars as health insurance companies. If we switch to the other kind of system, then those companies would go out of business and lots of employees would lose their jobs. It would shut down that whole industry. But that industry is almost shutting down all the other industries as things are right now, and it's forcing millions of people into bankruptcy every year, so we have to do something.

Q: Dad, my head hurts. Can we go home now?

A: Yup. Let's go.

Prophesies and Predictions - the End of the World

Have you ever been to visit a psychic? A spiritualist? Have you ever had a "reading"? If so, did the predictions come true? If you've never been, then why not? Is it because you don't believe that it could be true? Couldn't it still be fun though? If you don't feel threatened by it, then why couldn't you try it just for fun? Or is there some fear about what you might find out?

I know friends of my mother who, when they have a party, will occasionally have a spiritualist come over and set up a private reading space in one of the rooms, and then the ladies take turns going in to get their readings. When they come out, they all compare results and talk about how close they were, or what the spiritualist got wrong. You have people trying to trick the spiritualist, but it rarely works - it sounds like great fun. It always makes for an exciting and interesting party that people will be talking about for months - sometimes years afterwards.

That's fun for parties and personal interest, but what about those people who, over the centuries, have made predictions about world events, that seem to have come true? Naturally, we've all heard of Nostradamus, and we all know about the predictions of the end of the world in the Revelations section of the Bible, but have been others, as well. Merlin, a Welsh druid from the 5th century was one who was later made famous in stories about Legendary King Arthur.

In the western hemisphere, there were the Mayans who built an advanced civilization in Central America beginning in around 3000 BC. The Mayans were fanatical about timekeeping. They had a very complex, but incredible accurate clock that allowed them to predict not only things like solstices, and equinoxes, but solar eclipses thousands of years into the future. It is a truly remarkable mystery of our time to guess how they could have devised such an accurate mechanism for predicting future events.

The Mayans long calendar shows that we are in a Galactic Day which is 25,625 years long, and is divided into 5 cycles of 5,125 years each. We are now very near the end of the 5th and last cycle of the entire current Galactic Day. The calendar says that this era will end on the winter solstice, December 21st, 2012. That is just under 5 years from now.

Many people interpret this as meaning the end of the world. But the Mayans see the ends as also beginnings. The New Age begins that day. Scientists have confirmed that a very unusual event DOES happen on that day. That is the day when the Earth is directly between the Sun and the central core of our Milky Way galaxy. They are not sure what will happen, but it seems that many things are possible (all of them bad). By the way, these scientists have done the math - this event happens every 25,625 years. Just as the Mayan Calendar predicted. How could they have known this?

In a recent special on the History Channel, they showed the Mayan Calendar, and explained how so many other predictions from different ages and different people and different places around the world have also pointed to December 21, 2012 as being the end of the world.

The Mayans described a special 'spark' that is pulled out from the sun far into space, by the black hole at the center of the galaxy, on this date. Well, a massive solar flare can certainly do a lot of damage, there's no question there. There is also a description of how this could possibly switch our poles around and the Earth suddenly shifts orientation. The massive weather changes, freezing, thawing, tidal waves, tsunamis, earthquakes that can result from this would certainly qualify as a major change.

Here is an interesting article on the Mayan view of what happens in the 'end-times': http://www.adishakti.org/mayan_end_times_prophecy_12-21-2012.htm

Here is a website dedicated to the whole concept of that date being the end of times, and the beginning of a new era. http://www.december212012.com/

Some people look at the date as the day they will die and so it is horrible and frightening. Others look at the day with anticipation as the beginning of a new golden age of higher purpose and understanding. Edgar Cayce said that we are currently living out a karmic debt for out selfishness in the past cycle, and when 1221 2012 comes, we will be given another chance to regain what we lost. Still others think that it's all nonsense and that people are fooling themselves and reading too much into the meaning of the fact that the Mayan calendar ends on that day. These people refuse to believe that the world will end on that day or any other day, and everything will just continue along the next day just as it did before.

What are your thoughts on this?

High School Dropouts

The newest rates for dropouts from high school are out and the news is not pretty. In the nations largest cities there are lot of entire school districts that have a graduation rate of less than 60%. Many are even well below 50% Here are some of the worst:

Austin: 55.1% students graduated high school
New Orleans: 51.3%
Chicago: 52.2%
Albuquerque: 52.0%
Nashville: 50.4%
Houston: 48.9%
Ft. Worth: 48.9%
Memphis: 48.5%
Denver: 46.8%
Dallas: 46.3%
Miami: 45.3%
Los Angeles: 44.2%
Cleveland: 43.8%
Milwaukee: 43.1%
New York City: 38.9%
Baltimore: 38.5%
Detroit: 21.7% (almost an 80% drop out rate! )

Remember, these are not just a few bad schools singled out. These are the overall average ratings for the entire school districts in all the largest cities in this country. There were a lot more, but I just pulled out a few examples that were typical. Here is an article with more cities and more details: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-06-20-dropout-rates_x.htm#grad

What is happening here? How are we ever going to survive in this ever more competitive world with all the new up and coming sharp kids learning all the new technologies from the best schools in all these other countries around the world, if more than half of our kids can't even finish high school? What's worse is that by all accounts, our high schools are teaching material at a much lower level than all other modern industrialized countries. In maths and sciences among high school graduates, we are now ranked 30th in the world. Well below average for the world.

In some recent examples where high school students in Brussels were given an American 10th grade test, they thought it was some kind of a joke. For them, it seemed to be a middle school test. So even though our hoops are closer to the ground and larger than everybody else's, our kids STILL can't sink the basket. And now, more than half of them won't even bother to suit up to play in the game at all.

If you are an average person shopping for a car, are you excited about buying a car that is manufactured in a city where almost 80% of the people couldn't even finish high school? And it's an EASY high school compared to all the other countries....

What do you think is causing this? Is it the schools themselves? Or is it some other factor? And how can we fix it? We know it's not that schools are underfunded because we spend more than any other country on the planet in education. It's just that other countries are getting much better results with their students for much lower budgets.

So far, immigration is filling in the gap. We are importing the product of the better education systems elsewhere, so those people can work for American companies and continue to produce competitive products. But is that the best long-term solution? Frankly, although we still have backlogs in immigration, the US is losing it's attractiveness to foreign workers. The backlogs are more due to inefficient processing rather than large numbers of applicants. Less people are interested in coming here now. Many feel that southeast Asia, and Dubai, and Europe are the places to be now. If the trend continues, we will lose our ability to function as equals in the world. We need to find a way to fix this.

Who are Canadians?

A friend of mine just forwarded the following note to me. Recently, I wrote about what 'they' are saying about Canada. But I was talking about what the American Neocons, and also what an American military man were saying. This time it's Australia's turn.

~~~
An Australian's Definition of a Canadian - written by an Australian Dentist:

You probably missed it in the local news, but there was a report that someone in Pakistan had advertised in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed a Canadian – any Canadian. An Australian dentist wrote the following editorial to help define what a Canadian is, so they would know one when they found one. A Canadian can be English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. A Canadian can be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, Arab, Pakistani or Afghan. A Canadian may also be a Cree, Métis, Mohawk, Blackfoot, Sioux, or one of the many other tribes known as native Canadians. A Canadian's religious beliefs range from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or none. In fact, there are more Muslims in Canada than in Afghanistan.

The key difference is that in Canada they are free to worship as each of them chooses. Whether they have a religion or no religion, each Canadian ultimately answers only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

A Canadian lives in one of the most prosperous lands in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which recognize the right of each person to the pursuit of happiness. A Canadian is generous and Canadians have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return.

Canadians welcome the best of everything, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services and the best minds. But they also welcome the least - the oppressed, the outcast and the rejected. These are the people who built Canada. You can try to kill a Canadian if you must as other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world have tried but in doing so you could just be killing a relative or a neighbour. This is because Canadians are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, can be a Canadian.

~~~

Noble words, well said. I am grateful and thank this man for his very nice comments.

First, it strikes me that this is the kind of thing they used to say about Americans and the USA. It wasn't that long ago, either. But now, this is not at all how the world sees Americans. I wonder what happened.

As for the complete truth of what is said above, well, yes, I'd say that these things are true, but there is also another side to it.

This does mention that Canada is a collection of all kinds of people from all kinds of ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. That's true. But that's both good and bad. For example, here in the US, immigrants are encouraged to join the so-called 'melting pot'. This is the approach where people are supposed to surrender their original ethnic languages, culture, customs, etc. and become an American and adopt the American language, culture, etc.. They should 'blend in', in other words.

But Canada does not have the 'melting pot' approach. It has the so-called "cultural mosaic" approach where immigrants are encouraged to retain their original culture, language, etc.. It is somehow felt that the country is stronger because it is a mix of so many things. Theoretically, like the whole of biological life on the planet, its diversity is its strength.

Also, Canada historically has always had a small population despite the large geography because it's so cold there compared to other countries. Fewer people leaving other, warmer countries, wanted to go where is was so cold for 4 months of the year. But more people were needed in order to boost the economy and build the economies of scale needed to compete with other countries. So immigration was encouraged broadly, and the cultural mosaic approach was a way to encourage people to come there. The message going out to the world was "Keep your language. Keep your religion. Keep all your traditions, just change your geography. Work over here in Canada instead of there where you are. Enjoy our wealth of natural resources and modern lifestyle."

But no plan is perfect. What I've found living there most of my life, was that having so many people speaking so many different languages and maintaining so many cultures makes for cool and interesting restaurants, but it makes some other things difficult. Often, when I would sit in a restaurant, all the conversations at all the tables around me were in some other language I didn't understand. Chinese here, Italian there, Greek over there, Russian over here. It was the same thing standing in line to see a movie. It tends to make you feel isolated and detached from the humanity around you. You feel like you are are not in Canada, but that you are just in "the world" somewhere.

Without a common language and common cultural touchpoints, shared rules, shared understandings and values, it's difficult to get together with people and to know what they are thinking and to know how they will respond in a given situation.

For example, let's say you are eating your dinner in a restaurant and while your mouth is full, the waiter comes to ask how your meal is. You can't speak, but you don't want to be rude and make him wait, so you give him the "ok" symbol with your fingers. Well, depending on what nationality and culture he is from, he might interpret that as an "ok", or he might see it as you calling him an 'anal orifice'. The same finger gesture/symbol is used for different things by different groups. You have to know what neighborhood you're in, and you need to be aware of their cultural idiosyncrasies (Let's see now, I'm at Pape and Danforth and so this is a Greek area here. What does this gesture mean to Greeks again....?) It leads to many unfortunate misunderstandings.

Also, when people retain their original culture, they also retain their original prejudices and hatreds brought along with them from 'the old country'. So when the Serbs come and settle in a neighborhood, and the Croatians come and settle in another neighborhood nearby, they still dislike each other, and their kids fight each other, and the parents aren't always so well-behaved either. So you can picture this with Arabs and Jews, and with different African tribes. Long-seated cultural hatreds are part of what is preserved when you preserve the cultures.

Imagine if 200 countries were to send colonists to a brand new planet and each group from each country made their own little settlement right next to each other. Each one was a perfect replica of their home country, but it was only 1 street away from the next perfect replica of some other country. THAT is what Toronto has become(and many other places in Canada now. The Toronto effect of immigration has spread to many other cities by this time.)

But of course they DIDN'T just land on another planet. They landed in a country that already HAD a culture of it's own. It wasn't vacant. So, of course, we have to look at the issue of the Canadians who were there before the others came, and how it has affected them. The First Nations people (natives) were more or less pushed onto reserves by the English and French that settled Canada. (Mostly English.) Then, the white, English-speaking mild-mannered Canadians (like me and my ilk) that were Canada for the past 300 years, are now being overrun and pushed out by all the people coming from China, India, Pakistan, Russia, and other places, especially in the last 25 years or so as immigration has accelerated. So the Canada that was, is being lost in the cultural shift. Now, tellingly, people want to join the Mounties but they demand that they be allowed to wear a turban instead of a traditional RCMP hat. So Canadian culture suffers and loses out and becomes diluted with this form of immigration.

Frankly, one of the reasons I moved from Canada to the U.S. was because I wanted to be around people who spoke English again. It's not a prejudice or anti-immigrant sentiment. It's just that I wanted to be able to understand and join in conversations with the people around me again. I didn't want to always feel like I was walking along a corridor in the UN building. I didn't want to feel so isolated and disenfranchised anymore. Especially in my own country. I wanted to fit in somewhere, and yet somewhere along the way, I lost my sense of "Home" where I was. So I moved. My home country is not just another place - it's now another place at another time in the past. That place, the Canada that I knew growing up, is now gone.

Of course, I am not criticizing any one group or anything. It's just that there are positives and negatives to the Canadian approach of respecting all the different source cultures, but maintaining them. I hope I was fair here.

Planning Ahead

Hidden away from the world, there is a massive, highly secure, impenetrable vault, 425 feet deep in a frozen mountain on a distant remote island in the Norwegian arctic archipelago of Svalbard close to the north pole. Few people have even heard of these islands. Almost no one ever ventures there.
This hidden vault is impervious to terrorist attack, to earthquakes, to blizzards, to storms, fire, flood, global warming, or nuclear holocaust. Even a direct hit by a medium sized meteor would not penetrate it. Nothing can touch it. It is hidden by its obscurity almost as much as it is hidden by its remoteness, or by its depth inside the mountain. It is so far from the rest of the world of human life, that it might as well be a vault on the moon, or maybe another planet.

What is kept here in this vault so deep under a mountain near the north pole? A very special treasure. something worth more than gold, silver, platinum or diamonds. One that may one day be called upon to save all of mankind.

Seeds. That's right, seeds. It is the Svalbard Global Seed vault. There is room in its massive secure chambers for 4.5 million vacuum-sealed samples of different kinds of grains, and beans, and all manor of plants and crops. Stored for posterity against a potential biological catastrophe.

It turns out that over the 6,000 years of our civilization, we have been growing crops and trying to genetically tune the food crops to the specific types that we eat, but in the process of excluding the ones that don't suit our tastes or our growing season or the wetness or dryness or acidity levels of our soil in any particular region, we have inadvertently eliminated a lot of the biological diversity in the plants that grow on the Earth. And since humanity now inhabits almost every corner of the globe, there are few untouched non-agriculturally tended areas that grow free and wild as nature intended.

For example, potatoes, like many plants now, have become specialized. Ireland is famous for it's potato crops, but soon they will have eliminated all but one type of potato growing there. So it has now become genetically fragile. If any disease or infestation should affect it, it lacks the natural resiliency of genetic diversity to defend against it. In other words, nature normally takes care of these things by simply having a lot of different species of potato, and so if one dies out because some new potato disease wipes them out, there are others that will survive because they were just different enough to out-maneuver that problem.

But, in developing agriculture over the centuries, we have changed the equation that life has been using to survive for millions of years. We have been methodically eliminating all the other types of genetic examples of potato in favor of the ones that produce the most money for crop owners. The largest, fastest-growing, longest growing season, most insect repellent, etc. The cheapest to grow. In our CURRENT environment.

However, species of bugs and diseases are always evolving, and because they are simple organisms, they evolve quicker. If a disease or a bug variation comes up that feeds on the one type of potato we have left, it could potentially wipe that species off the map, and we would lose an important staple of our diet. This risk is there for all crops in the world. Also, there could be major disasters such as floods, fire, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, etc. that could wipe out entire regions of the Earth taking important crops with them.

Potatoes originated in the Andes. So that is where we need to go to collect the widest variations of potatoes for preservation since they have been there the longest, and therefore have had the most opportunity to develop genetic diversity. That way, if future scientists need to create a new hardier strain of potato that can overcome some new biological problem, they will have a large sample of genetic diversity to work with to develop the new strain. Think of it as a palette of colors for an artist to paint with. The range of colors you can create are extremely limited if you are missing the basic colors like yellow or red to mix in.

Planning ahead for disaster on a global scale is what these biologists are doing. They have been quietly going around the world collecting samples of every possible kind of grain in Ethiopia, or bean in South America, etc. and processing them and storing them for posterity in that huge vault near the north pole. They are selfless, unsung heroes doing a valuable essential job. There would normally be a temptation in many governments to cut a program like this to cut taxes and win votes. But thankfully, more visionary, long-term thinkers are at work here.

But I think we should expand the vision further. I think we should be doing the same thing with animals and all species of life, not just plants. Maybe we could freeze the embryos of everything from chickens to elephants. From dogs to dragonflys. Even people. We have sperm and embryo banks for people. Why not expand that concept to include all species and store them in a similar vault. But maybe at the other pole this time. Bury it in a vault deep under Antarctica. That way, it is not on property owned by any one country. It's probably unwise to let one country have exclusive care of the future of all life on the planet. A vault like that is probably impervious to any force in the world except the force of politics.

There are roughly 30 million species of animal life on Earth. It will take some time and some effort. We should probably get started. If we could cut the war in Iraq short by just one week, that would probably pay for the whole project. Think of it as a kind of Noah's Ark.

It occurs to me that we should also have a similar vault for our collective knowledge just in case something happens. For one thing, in the event of a major catastrophe where we might have to begin again, we'll need instructions on how to use the stored cells to regenerate the various species and re-grow the plants to repopulate and restore the Earth again.

There is so much of math and science, and geology, and biology, and medicine, and technology, and literature and art and music and poetry even - to be saved for posterity. From architecture, to bridge-building, to space science, to MRIs, to History, to languages, to Zoology. There are millions of books about millions of topics, in hundreds of languages, that are worthy of saving. I think we should have it in magnetic (disk) as well as optical (CD's) as well as microfiche (film) as well as printed forms. So that if the technology exists to read it, it is all accessible and convenient, but if the technology does not exist, then as least a printed version is available. Obviously, the paper/books would have to be stored at temperature and humidity levels that allow it to be preserved indefinitely.

Also, "Rosetta Stone" translations would be necessary too. Tables that translate an identical message into as many different languages so that all the materials are readable and so that all the languages are preserved as well.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we never have to use these treasure troves of our life and civilization on planet Earth? And wouldn't it be a horrible thing if we DID have to use it, but it didn't exist?

If I had the means, I would start this great project myself. Some things are just necessary.

At some point in the future, it might make sense to create these repositories of our plants, our animals, and our knowledge off-planet. Say on the moon, or Mars. or on Ceres (a large asteroid relatively nearby) It might make sense as a way to ensure the survival of what is on Earth, and also help stage the outward expansion of our life and culture and species into the galaxy.

There are other places on other planets. Perhaps there are some places that have nothing there now but that we could bring life. Who knows? Maybe that's what happened here.

What They're Saying About Canada

Here is what some right-wing pundits are saying about Canada:

ANNE COULTER: They better hope the United States doesn't roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent. We could have taken them [Canada] over so easily.

[ALAN] COLMES: We could have taken them over? Is that what you want?

COULTER: Yes, but no. All I want is the western portion, the ski areas, the cowboys, and the right-wingers.

COULTER: They don't even need to have an army, because they are protected, because they're on the same continent with the United States of America. If we were not the United States of America, Canada -- I mean, we're their trading partner. We keep their economy afloat.

ELLIS HENICAN [Newsday columnist]: We share a lot of culture and a lot of interests. Why do we want to have to ridicule them and be deeply offended if they disagree with us?

COULTER: Because they speak French.

CARLSON: Without the U.S., Canada is essentially Honduras, but colder and much less interesting.

CARLSON: We exploit your [addressing Canadian Member of Parliament Carolyn Parrish] natural resources, that's true. But in the end, Canadians with ambition move to the United States. That has been sort of the trend for decades. It says something not very good about Canada. And I think it makes Canadians feel bad about themselves and I understand that.

CARLSON: Canada needs the United States. The United States does not need Canada.

CARLSON: I think if Canada were responsible for its own security -- you would be invaded by Norway if it weren't for the United States.

~~~~~~~~~

Now here, on the other hand, is a word from a US Naval officer fighting alongside Canadians in Afghanistan:
From: Mike Jansen (Maysonet) Subject:: US Naval Officer speaks up Date: 13 Dec. 2007 Oh Canada !
Subject: FW: US Naval Officer speaks up One American's View -

David Meadows is a retired US Navy Captain and the author of numerous books and articles on military subjects.This message was on the U.S. Military.Com website.

David Meadows ~ April 27, 2006 On April 22, 2006 four Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb. Respects and heartfelt sadness go to the families of those heroes who stand alongside the U.S. In the Long War half a world away. While we focus on the war in Iraq, the fighting continues in Afghanistan where side-by-side the U.S. And one of its most loyal allies, Canada, engage the re-emergence of the Taliban.

Canada is like a close uncle who constantly argues, badgers, and complains about what you are doing, but when help is truly needed, you can't keep him away: he's right there alongside you. We have a unique relationship with Canada. We have different political positions on many issues, but our unique friendship has weathered world wars, global crises, and the ever-so-often neighborhood disagreement.

Canada has been with us since the beginning of the Global War on Terrorism. In February 2006, without fanfare Canada, leading a multinational force combating growing Taliban insurgency, increased troop strength in Afghanistan to 2,300. With the American military stretched thin against rising instability in both Iraq and Afghanistan, an ally that increases its troop strength is inspiring and deserves our respect.

Katrina was another example of our close family-like relationship. Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. Two days later, the Vancouver Urban Search and Rescue Team rushed from British Columbia, Canada to Saint Bernard Parish, Louisiana. In this Parish of 68,000 Americans, the first responders were Canadians. Overall, within the devastated Gulf Coast area, it appears Canada was the first responder outside of local efforts. They worked 18-hour days, going door-to-door alongside Louisiana State Troopers, rescuing 119-Americans.

While FEMA ramped up to surge into the catastrophe; while the administration and Louisiana fought for the politically correct way to respond; Canadian aid was already at work. The Canadian Forces Joint Task Group 306 consisting of the warships HMCS Athabaskan, HMCS Toronto, NSMC Ville de Quebec, and CCGC William Alexander sailed to the Gulf Coast to deliver humanitarian supplies. They stayed, working alongside U.S. Navy and Mexican warships, to provide aid to Katrina victims.

Katrina was not an anomaly of our close relationship. When Hurricane Ivan devastated Pensacola, Florida in October 2004, Canadian humanitarian help was there also. Canadian power trucks roamed the streets and countryside helping restore electricity where Americans had a unique experience of running into workmen who only spoke French.

Canada took a lot of undeserved flak for failing to leap into Operation Iraqi Freedom when our administration sent us galloping across the desert. But Canada remains one of our staunchest allies in the war. When United States military forces were fighting up the highways in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Canada quietly increased troop numbers in Afghanistan and continued Naval operations with U.S. Warships in the Persian Gulf. I was at the Pentagon on 9/11, stationed on the Joint Staff. During the early hours after the attack, the United States closed its air space and ordered every aircraft within our borders to land immediately at the nearest airfield.

Canada immediately stood up an Operations Support Post. With civil aviation grounded, aircraft destined for the United States were forced elsewhere. Most landed in Canada. Re-routed travelers and flight crews were hosted at Canadian Forces facilities in Goose Bay, Gander, and Stephenville, Newfoundland; Halifax, Shearwater, and Aldershot, Nova Scotia; Winnipeg, Manitoba; and, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Canada rapidly mobilized its forces. Within hours, the Canadian Navy was on alert with ships preparing to cast off immediatelyfor any U.S. Port to help victims of the 9/11 attacks.

Canada's Disaster Assistance Response Team prepared to deploy from Trenton, Ontario. Canada dispersed CF-18 fighter aircraft to strategic locations throughout Canada. No politics. No negotiating. No questions. They were just there. Canada would have fought any adversary that approached the United States that day.

Canada has been such an integral partner with the United States in the Global War on Terrorism that on December 7, 2004 when President Bush awarded the Presidential Unit Citation to Commander Joint Force South for combat success in Afghanistan, he was also recognizing the secretive Canadian Joint Task Force 2 commando counter-terrorism unit. The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded 30 Bronze Star medalsfor heroism in combat to Canadian Forces personnel. Some of those 30 died in action. Many of the others were wounded. These Canadians earned this American medal for heroism fighting alongside Americans.

When we recall our own dead heroes, we must remember that these warriors gave their lives not only for Canada, but also for the United States. Canada is more than a neighbor. It is a close family member with the gumption to disagree with its brother to the south but always be there when disaster strikes and America needs help. For that, I salute you, Canada, and extend my respect for the sacrifices given by members of the Canadian Forces.

~~~~~~

I remember a few years ago when Bush said that Britain was America's greatest ally and it's best friend. I remember how hurt and insulted Canadians felt. I thought at the time that if I were the president, I would get on the plane and go straight to Canada and get in front of a large crowd of Canadians and I'd say this,

"I said in a speech recently that Britain is America's greatest friend. And I meant it. Do you want to know why? "
"Because Canada is not a friend."

"Because Canada is MORE than that. Canada is FAMILY!"

That's what I would have said. But hey, that's just me.

Dualism

First, let's have a definition. According to the dictionary, the philosophical and theological meanings of the term are that it covers the concepts of mind vs body, or spiritual vs material, or good vs bad. Let's set aside the good vs bad definition for the moment and focus on the other two.

From a mind vs body perspective, I think there has been a great deal of twisting of faces and wringing of hands over the years about whether the mind can conquer the body. The general underlying and commonly understood concept is that there is a constant struggle between the body and the mind, in that the body wants to do evil and that the mind is the higher level being that must override the base impulses of the body.

There is a powerful scene in Frank Herbert's book, "Dune", where the Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit is testing young Paul Atriedes' humanity by holding a poisoned dart at his throat while he holds his hand in a box under great pain. He can feel that the flesh is being burned off his hand, and he is in great agony, but yet he knows that if he withdraws his hand, then he will feel the sting of the Gom Jabbar at his thoat and he will die instantly from the poison. So this is a test of his mental willpower to control his body's natural urge to pluck the hand from pain and damage in order to avoid certain death. To withstand damage and pain for a higher purpose.

Her assumption is that to withdraw his hand despite the immediate consequences would mean he is given over to animal impulses, but to keep it in the box despite the pain indicates a higher mind function, and that the mind truly controls the body even in situations of great stress, and that therefore indicates that he is truly human. It is a painful and horrible test, but there is no actual damage to the hand, it is pain by nerve induction, but the illusion is what is important. After it is over, Paul says "I see the truth of it". Indeed.

But is this truth? Is the body evil, and the mind good? Is the mind's conquest over the body the ultimate expression of virtue?

Religions teach us that yes, this is true. The body has base appetites, to over-indulge in food, sex, pleasure, comfort, etc., and the mind is a higher-level form of the person, and it must conquer the body's tendency to sin, by strict adherence to a higher set of standards. It is the mind's job to resist temptations and not eat when hungry. To not pursue sex when it feels the urge. To resist drink when thirsty. To force the body to exercise hard and to work when it feels lazy and tired. A person of character and substance has complete control of their appetities and their urges.

I suggest that it is a little more complex than that. It occurs to me that the mind certainly has base urges itself as well as higher motives. And that the body also may possess some higher yearnings and might not only always seek the most primal pleasures. For the mind, there are lofty urges such as sacrifice, patience, generosity, courage, compassion, kindness, responsibility, and a sense of fairness, and many others. But there are also more base urges such as greed, selfishness, jealousy, envy, pride, arrogance, snobbery, ignorance, cruelty, etc. So the mind has both types of urges as well as some in the middle like curiosity, playfulness, humor, etc. And there are also special abilities such as art, music, mathematics, creativity, leadership, etc. There is, in fact, a full spectrum of good to bad to exceptional within the mind alone before ever going to the body.

And so it is with the body as well. The body may feel tired and hungry and thirsty and lazy, but it also has its higher moments when it wants to run and jump and climb and to be strong and to resist fatigue, overcome pain and disease, and perform despite the physical difficulties it faces. It is far more than the embodiment of base appetites.

Materialism vs Spiritualism
Materialism is not merely about the accumulation of possessions as many people think. It is much broader than that. It is about believing only in the concrete. The here and now. It is about resisting anything that is not irrefutably logical and instrinsically substantive and undeniably proven through empirical evidence. Materialism varyingly allows that there is a mind somewhere within the body although it exists at some higher aggregate meta-level than cellular or molecular. But it shuns the whole idea and concept of a spiritual world.

In other words a materialist may accept that some intangible things exist but that they exist as illusions, concepts, and affectations of the mind and imagination - but they steadfastly resist the notion that anything intangible exists on it's own - outside the mind. Like supernatural beings or powers. God, the devil, angels, demons, ghosts, miracles and magic, etc. These types of things are all unprovable, and utter nonsense to a materialist.

To this mindset, I would have to agree with Shakespeare when he said in Hamlet, "There is far more in heaven and Earth than is dreamed of in your philosophies."

First, let's look at what the "mind" is. A spiritual person might suggest that this surely indicates that there is a soul at work. A separate being, independent of the body that merely inhabits the body for a time and then moves on to its rewards in the afterlife.

However, a materialist view would see it as simply a higher-level functional layer of the body itself. In other words, when the brain has evolved to a point where it is complex enough, and there are enough synapses firing, then there is a phenomenon that manifests itself as consciousness. A certain self awareness. It is the result of a complex network of intersections of knowledge and decision-making abilities that behaves in ways that we interpret as intelligence. Creatures of less intelligence, less complex brain function, may act instinctively, and may act in self preservation, and they may have some tricks or tactics for hunting, etc., but they are limited in their development.

However, once there is sufficient levels of brain activity and complexity, then another level of ability emerges where the animal is now capable of developing speech, and becomes capable of abstract thought and can participate in conversations with others and useful interaction and eventually even creative endeavors such as art and music. But the assumption is that these higher level functions are entirely based upon the sophistication of the brain activity, and have nothing to do with a spirit or soul "inhabiting" or animating a body.

On some levels, the materialist view is seductive because it is solid. It is the limit of that which is logical and reliably provable. The spiritual argument seems fanciful and unsubstantiated. So why is there support for it, at all then? Is it merely wishful thinking? Is it delusion? Is it fantasy? Is it a hope that there is some meaning and purpose to life so that the struggle for good acts in life are rewarded in the afterlife?, or on the negative side, a hope that all this just cannot be for nothing?

I would point out that there are some times where an event happens that suggests the presence of spirit, and the event is witness by multiple people or has some other empirical level of manifestation that convinces people that it is real although not solid, substantial, or reproducible. In my own experience there have been a couple of examples of this in my life. One happened in Delphi, Greece in August 1989. I stepped off the tour bus amidst the ruins of the ancient city of Delphi which I had never visited nor read about, but somehow, I knew every road, and most of the buildings. I knew where the bathrooms were, and the city treasuries, and the temple of Apollo, and the building that used to be the main marketplace - despite the fact that there was no evidence to suggest that today. Well, not without doing a lot of research. I knew everything about the place as if I had once lived there. I did have the feeling that I did live there at some point long long ago - very much like going back to visit a neighborhood you lived in when you were a child. And I certainly had the feeling that I had taught every day in the amphitheater there. The people I was travelling with were amazed at how much I knew about the place without having any maps or other sources of information. I had no idea this was going to happen. It was just as much a surprise to me.

Another event happened a few years later, which really gave me pause. I was taking a meditation class where we were encouraged to relax and open up our minds to any 'messages' or visions, or images that might come. I did have some thoughts about a surgical procedure that did seem to be highly relevant to the woman sitting to my immediate right. But the most surprising thing happened at the end of the session when everyone was leaving and as I was saying my thank you to the instructor, he told me that while we were in our session he had a vision and saw a man come into the room from behind me and walk up to me and stand directly behind me with his hands on my shoulders in a 'sponsoring' or protective way. He spoke to this apparition, and the apparition said that he was my older brother and his name was John. I told him that this could not be true because I have no older brothers. I am the oldest of three brothers. The instructor also told me about a ring he noticed on his finger. It was a gold ring with a square red gem with a small diamond chip and an initial "V" in it. That caught my attention. I have a ring exactly like that at home. It was a gift from my father when I was very young.

When I returned home, I called my mother to tell her about this apparent vision of a spirit claiming to me my older brother and about the weird coincidence with the ring. Instead of laughing it off as I expected, my mother suggested that I should ask my father about it. So I talked to my father and he reluctantly admitted that there WAS in fact another brother born two years before me, and that they had named him Johnny, but that he had died of a heart malfunction after about 6 months.

So, aside from shock of finding out about a brother I had who had died and I had never heard about before, here we have a case where there is externally corroborated evidence of things, or people even, that exist on some other level beyond either our own imagination or the physical corporeal level. Then add to these personal exeriences of mine, the cases cited in books like "The Case for Reincarnation" and "Life Between Life", which describes a case where a man under hypnosis regression therapy goes back to a previous lifetime and begins speaking in a language that a great deal of research discovered only existed between 200AD and 800AD. This is a rare viking dialect that died out completely over a thousand years ago, and is only know to a handful of advanced linguistics scholars in the world today, and the man did not have any access to such information.

Similarly, there was a woman who, while under regression, began speaking and writing in an ancient language that was only ever known to about 50 people in history. It was a special language developed and spoken by just the members of the royal family in Persia about 800 years ago and then disappeared after about 60 years. It was used as a way for the members of the royal family to send letters to each other and discuss affairs of state without being overheard or have their messages sabotaged by their political rivals and the military people whom they distrusted.

A spiritual level of existence seems the only logical explanation that fits all these observables. To deny that, despite the empirical evidence is to be just as blind and intransigent as the religious people who refuse to acknowledge things outside their philosophies.

So I would say that there is more than just the material world of everyday life out there. There are the mental realms of thought, and discovery, and creativity, and art and science, and there is apparently also some spiritual level where our existence persists beyond the physical body.

That does suggest we have a spiritual being or existance, but still does not guarantee that there is an anthropic God. An all-powerful, all-knowing human-like, but super-human super-natural being who watches our every move and judges our worth based on our actions in this life. But it does at least suggest that a spiritual level of reality exists, and so there is at least a 'place' or a level, or a 'realm' for a being such as God to exist in.

In the interest of intellectual honesty we would have to at least acknowledge that much. So, for me, the concept of Dualism, is insufficient. There are more than two levels, for us to exist on. We exist physically, we exist mentally (that aggregate meta-life abstract reality level), and evidently, we exist spiritually as well. I have read that we are not physical beings that occasionally have a spiritual experience, but rather, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. But I remain open to new information and ideas.

The Questionable Future of the Music Industry

Have you ever seen the Tom Hank's movie, "That Thing You Do"? It was about a 1960's pop band of teenagers that came up with a song by that name, and it told about their rise to fame as they were discovered by the major record label, turned into overnight stars, and toured around the country.

In those days a band could be 'discovered' like that and then they would sign up with a record company and suddenly the record label could turn them into stars by arranging promotions, concert tours, advertising, billboards, radio airplay, television spots on the Ed Sullivan show, radio interviews, etc.. They would saturate the advertising channels, send the records out to all the record stores, the artist would become famous, and the record company becomes rich, and in the process the artist would eventually become wealthy. This is how people like Michael Jackson could amass their fortunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. That was how it used to work in those days, and many people who are not involved in the industry might even think it still works that way.

But that was then and this is now. Those days are over.

Those big record companies became increasingly greedy and began writing contracts that completely cheated the artists. They knew that the artists mostly wanted the fame more than the money, and so the record companies essentially took most of the money. They took all the rights to all the music and then paid the artists a pittance and controlled everything. There was an ever-increasing list of things that the artist would have to pay for out of their advance. Promotional copies sent to radio stations, returns, even advertising - which was the whole point of going to a record company in the first place. But because the record companies had a stranglehold on the distribution of CDs to the retailers, they were in a position to leverage that for an ever increasing share of the revenues. Often the artists reached the point where having a hit album might even mean going into debt because of the associated costs - even as the record company was raking in the profits. I did see one accounting sheet for a band based in Seattle which had a complete breakdown of revenues and costs, and the bottom line was that after selling $3 million dollars worth of CDs, the record company was ahead by over $900,000, but the band was $14,000 in debt. They ended up having to work off the debt by touring for the next 4 months. In the end, the bandmembers would up making less than minimum wage for their highly successful album.

The major change element could be summed up as being digital media, the internet, Napster and CD burners. Once music left the analog world and became digitized in handy mp3 format, then the internet connected everybody to everybody else, then Napster and other sites came along to provide a mechanism to share all this music for free, suddenly the fancy restaurant food was free out the kitchen back door, so no one was paying to go in the front door anymore.

Success is defined differently now. In the 70's and 80's, a hit record was one that sold a million copies. Sales of two to five million was quite common. But now, it's been more than a decade of people downloading for free and sharing and burning CD copies for friends, not to mention the iPod (which means they don't even have to burn the copy anymore. The friend just borrows it and loads it into their iPOD and then hands it back.) Buying a CD seems so last century to the kids today. In this current distribution model, 75,000 units actually being sold at retail is considered a success.

Therefore, the profits for record companies have shrivelled to a fraction of what they once were, and with fewer dollars to spend, predictably, the record companies became more and more selective about who they would promote. They have now reached the point where you already have to have become regionally famous on your own with your own recordings, and selling them yourself to a significant volume before they will risk a dime on you. They won't even bother to come see you play unless you already have a following and CD's that are selling well.

Now, for the latest generations of young people, they have come to assume that music is free, like a nursery rhyme, or the Happy Birthday song, or a math equation. "Hey I get the Pythagorean Theorum for free, why shouldn't I get the new Yellowcard CD for free, too?". There is little appreciation for intellectual property of copyrights. There has been lots of resistance to this from the record labels, obviously, because they don't want to see their industry collapse. But they are unable to turn back the hands of time. Time has moved on, and their old business model has been rendered obsolete. And so every month for the past 12 years there have been new horror stories about how profits are crashing in the record industry. Therefore artists have switched over to making their money from touring instead of selling CD's.

Various people have tried different ideas to try and find a way for people to survive and make a living from making music. Apple has come up with iTunes and changed everything. Now they sell songs one at a time for 99 cents each, and this allows people to download them quickly and legally and cheaply. Rather than forcing people to get in their cars, go out to music stores and hunt dow the CD they want and maybe not find it available, AND also have to pay $20 for 12 songs when there is only one on the album that really interests them, iTunes allows them to just buy that one song they like, and they never have to leave their house.

This has sucked the remaining life out of the record companies. They no longer have the money to promote the artists properly anymore, and then they have no means to really make profits from them even if they do. As a result, record labels now demand a percentage of the concert tour revenues as well as 99% of the CD sales. They are struggling to survive.
Everyone is looking for new ways to sell music and keep the industry alive, and keep musicians going.

One idea is to have all the songs sold separately like iTunes, however they are sold for a penny at first, and then as they become popular, the price starts to go up, based on the volume of of sales, until it eventually reaches 99 cents then stays there. So if something is not as popular, it's not as expensive to buy. Since it doesn't cost anything to distribute, this is a possible working model.

Some prople are talking about other schemes and plans. Some think all music should just be free. There are some people who think that you should pay for the service of accessing music, rather than buying a copy. So you pay $xx per month to belong to a service like Rhapsody for example, but then you can download all the music you want as much as you want. The idea here being that they pay the musicians out of the service subscription fees. Some see huge profits for the music industry that way.

But I can see certain problems with that too. How do they decide how much to pay the musicians then? How much do they pay beginners? Who decides who to admit into the paying scheme? Who gets rejected and based on what criteria? Which ones earn more and which ones earn less? Do some artists earn a higher percentage than others, or is it the same percentage, but their income varies based upon volume of downloads? As an artist, how do you promote yourself to get people to download your music? Advertising is extraordinarily expensive. With such minimal returns, where does that invenstment come from? Also, with the barriers to entry lowered as they are today, there are now millions and millions of new recording artists. How many millions of hopeful young budding musicians are out there on Myspace and facebook with websites full of new music? How do you rise above the general noise level of all that is now out there in order to be seen and noticed? How do you become well-known in that kind of industry?

The Power of the Press

I think the media in this country is it's own force. I don't think they are "controlled" by either political party, but both parties do try to manipulate the media to their advantage. Having said that, I really believe that fair, impartial journalism is "dead and gone" as Don Henley sings on the new Eagles tune, "Frail Grasp of the Big Picture". (excellent album, by the way. Their first real studio album with new tunes since The Long Run came out in 1979. And it's a double CD and only $11.99. Best 12 bucks I ever spent.)

I have to say that it does bother me that every news show I hear on the radio or watch on TV seems to be pursuing some sort of agenda. Except for NPR, perhaps.

My friend's wife used to run the TV news for CBS in St. Louis. She hated the fact that they always told her what news to put on and what she couldn't put on. They have a formula for packaging the news. It has to entertain. It has to scare people. It has to sell advertising. And it has to do this while staying consistent with the political goals and ideology of their owners. And they have a precise formulaic way of doing all these things. Also, they have a demographic profile they target.

These days, women buy almost all the consumer goods in our economy. They do the grocery shopping, they buy the clothes for themselves and the kids, and half the clothes for their husbands as well, they buy the furniture, and decorations, and things for the house. They are the ones spending most of the money in the stores and shopping malls. Men may watch a lot of TV as well, but it's the women that make most of the buying decisions for most of the households in America, and this is a consumer-driven economy.

Therefore, that is who the advertisers target with their ads. And those advertisers want the shows they sponsor to attract their target audience. Their demographic. Their potential customers. Therefore, the news is packaged for college educated females between the ages of 20 to 42. That is their core demographic. Anything that doesn't appeal to that group is considered 'risky' in the news business. They've got news to sell.

But statistically, when it comes to politics, women do not necessarily vote overwhelmingly Republican OR Democrat, so the news organizations are free to back one party or the other. Since it doesn't affect their target demographic, and hence their advertisers, when it comes to skewing the news to fit a political agenda or ideology, they will usually back the politics of whichever corporation owns them. So let's take a look at who owns the news in this country.

Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdock, the famously right-wing ultra-conservative media magnate that owns News Corp. He owns countless newspapers including, now, the Wall Street Journal. He makes it very clear what stories to put on the air and what not to. He is known to apply pressure to his executives to skew the news to support his personal views. He donated $2.9 M to George Bush in 2000 through his tobacco company, Phillip Morris.

NBC network is owned over 80% by GE. So GE gets to say what agenda is played out on NBC and CNBC news. And they donated 1.1 million dollars to George Bush's campaign in 2000.

CBS is owned by Westinghouse, whose Chairman of the Board, Frank Carlucci, is an owner and executive of the Carlyle Group - George Bush's family company.

ABC is owned by Disney, who also donated heavily to Bush's 2000 campaign. Robert Iger is the current CEO there and he used to run ABC. Michael Eisner was the former CEO of Disney, is one of the wealthiest men in the world today, and has been very active in politics.

CNN is owned by Time-Warner. In fact they own a mega empire of news and entertainment. The largest subscription in the entire cable industry in this country. Over 13 million households. They donated 1.6m to Bush in 2000.

The fact is that the news media can make or break a candidate. If they say, even in passing, that a given candidate "has no chance of winning the election", then suddenly all the voters that would have voted for that candidate drop him because they don't want to waste their vote. So they choose someone else. They will choose someone their favorite news media told them DOES have a good chance to win.

And the media chooses which stories to air, and how to skew them and how to cast a light on each one. If they like a candidate, then when the person gets into trouble, (as they all seem to at some point), they make him look like the underdog trying to survive against all the cruel and unfounded accusations of the other party. When they want to crucify him, they show every detail that supports the accusations, and show how the evidence is overwhelmingly clear, or else bring up enough veiled accusations, that even if they don't directly accuse him of something, we somehow become convinced that he must be guilty of at least SOME of the things linked to him. And aren't we glad we found out this guy was a homosexual pedophile taking bribes, cheating little old ladies out of their savings, and funneling money and weapons to terrorists - before we made the mistake of voting him into power?.....

The process of getting elected to office in this country has become a process not of promoting a candidate's plans, or even empty promisses for the future - but rather it is simply a take-down of his opponents. The goal is to make yourself look good simply by making everybody else look bad. One political expert pundit that was debating on the radio last year during the election campaign for the Senate said, "The Democrats are too disorganized - they need a plan. They need to show that they have a detailed plan for what they will do if they succeed in getting elected....... no wait a minute... what am I saying? That's not how it works. If they put forward a plan, then all they will be doing is giving the Republicans a clear target to shoot at. No, nevermind what I said. They don't need a plan. They just need to criticize the Republicans and do what their opponents are doing. If they can do enough damage to knock the other guy out of the race, and they get into office, THEN they can bring out their plan. That's how the game is played these days." Very true words, unfortunately.

There is now an entire industry that does nothing but dig up dirt on political opponents. These are teams of researchers that will look into the past of a candidate and they will find SOME sort of dirt somewhere. If they say in their campaign that they are against abortion, then these people will find out that when he was 16 years old he got his girlfriend pregnant and she had an abortion. If he says he is against communism, they will find some comment somewhere attributed to him when he was 12 years old saying that he thought that socialized systems make sense for some countries. They will dredge the lake looking for dead bodies. They will search every closet of every person that ever talked to him looking for skeletons. No one is completely clean. Everyone has dirt somewhere. And if they don't, then these people will find people who will make things up, and then without attributing any direct authority or credibility to them, they will put them on the air anyway - just to raise doubts about the candidate. It's an evil business.

And the whole battle is carried out on the battlefield of the media. They set the rules and they play favorites. The days of the fair, impartial journalist are long gone. These days everyone has an axe to grind. Everyone has an agenda to push, and journalists have even come to think that it's a GOOD thing for them to have an opinion and to promote it at every opportunity. Apparently, the audience is not to be trusted to form their own opinion when presented with the facts. Hey, we can't have that! people making up their own minds?! What if they get it wrong?

The media have the biggest real power here in this country, but the ones who pull their strings are not the politicians, but rather the corporate parents noted above. And there is nobody higher up to pull their strings. They are not accountable to anybody. They are the top of the food chain in this world at this point. That is who really runs this country, because they determine who gets elected, and then once elected, they can influence policies and decisions at any level because they have the power to make that person look stupid, lame, evil, or a hero.

The president, (whomever it is), serves at the pleasure of a handful of powerful elite. Namely, these are people like Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner, Frank Carlucci, Michael Eisner, Robert Iger, etc. It is they who will decide who you vote for president next year. They tell you who to vote for as congressmen and senators. You have no real choice. You THINK you have a choice, but you don't, really.

Why? Because YOU are not on-site in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, or on Wall Street, or in North Korea, or inside the beltway in D.C. You cannot be in all the places where things are happening. And even if you were onsite in Iraq as a soldier on the ground, for instance, you could only physically be in one place at one time. You could not be in every battle in every town and in every riot, and in the political meetings all at the same time. But a few thousand reporters can be in all those places at once. So you rely upon them to tell you what is happening. and they will tell you what they want you to hear to twist your opinions to their purposes. You think whatever you are told to think. You might judge things completely differently if you knew different facts. But you don't because they didn't tell you different facts.

It's alarming to think that everything you think you know right now about what is going on across the country and around the world is all based on information you got from them. But that is the uncomfortable truth of it. They have fed you most of your strongly held beliefs on these kinds of subjects.

The one thing that seems to get around this virtual monopoly on information and agenda-driven propaganda is the web. It is our way to connect to hundreds of millions of other people at all levels in all countries around the world. It is a way to gain information and perspective that is not engineered by these organizations and the handful of people that really run them all. Pragmatically speaking, the other content you read on the web may not all be real, or true and factual. It may be incomplete and unsupported. It may be personal opinion, and hearsay, and it may serve the agendas of THOSE people writing in their blogs, etc. But it is the bigger picture. it is a light in the dark. It is another voice in the din of media voices telling you THEIR stories. Somewhere in the mix of all these versions and stories and agendas is the truth. It gives me hope.

index of articles

This is index will allow you to more quickly find something that might interest you. The topics are as widely varied as you might imagine. Remember that you can also click on any picture to enlarge it to see more detail.Don’t Get Me Started – Val Serrie

161. Territory Disputes at the North Pole
160. The Prospects for Marriage
159. The Great Conversation
158. The Fountain of Youth
157. Are You Happy? What Exactly is "Happiness" Anyway?
156. The Power of Religion
155. You Should Go See "Sicko"
154. Why a Wall Won't Work
153. Staying Employed After 50
152. Has The Time Come For a Global Government?
151. The New Immigration Bill
150. Mercedes leaves Chrysler at the Side of the Road
149. Little Ways Companies Can Cheat You
148. America's New Royalty
147. Salaries and the Effects of Competition
146. H1-B Work Visa and Jobs in the US
145. A Vision For The Future - A New Twist
144. Old People Can Say Anything They Want
143. Don Imus - Social Misfit, or Harmless Loudmouth?
142. Illegal Immigrants Add 18 Billion to Texas Tax Revenue
141. Thomas Dolby Plays.... The Cafeteria
140. Death's Purpose
139. The Secret
138. They Always Report the Bad News
137. Tomb Raiders - the Bones of Jesus
136. Communism Within Companies Within America
135. Corporate Politics - Nasty Tactics
134. America - The "Bad-Guy" Hero Culture
133. An Angel Among Us
132. "Socialized Medicine"?
131. Ancient Technology Secrets
130. What Will Happen In Iraq - What We Need To Do
129. More...More...MORE!! We MUST HAVE MORE!!!!
128. How Polite Are You?
127. Great Songs
126. The Dirty Little Trade Secret
125. The War over Raising The Minimum Wage
124. Revolutionizing The Music Publishing Industry
123. Men or Women - Who Is Smarter?
122. Jay Greenberg - Boy Genius
121. Our Festival Gig
120. What People Believe
119. Getty Ready For The Show
118. The Art of Photography
117. The Secret To Corporate Selling
116. Air Guitar - A Rant
115. Born To Shop
114. Different Types of Intelligence
113. Politicians Should Know History
112. Healthcare is Sick!
111. Does God Exist?
110. Work For A Company? Or Work For Yourself?
109. Performing Live Music - Cover Songs or Original Music?
108. Fake Guitars, Fake iPods, and Other Counterfeits
107. The Libertarian Approach Thought Through
106. The Lost Art of Conversation
105. First Band Performance Getting Closer
104. Steven Colbert - A Brave Comic Wit
103. The Politics of Pretty
102. Do You Have Too Much Stuff?
101. Guilty Pleasures In Movies
100. Real Estate Scams
99. MTV Visits My House
98. Humphrey Bogart - To Have and Have Not
97. The Civil War In Iraq
96. The Freedom Cycle: From Chaos to Dictatorship and Back
95. Life and Leaving The Nest
94. Bringing People Up To Speed
93. Cars: Buying or Leasing? New or Pre-Owned?
92. Mini Concert
91. Hawaii
90. Star Trek Technology Today?
89. Memories of Arizona
88. The Show Party
87. In The Movies
86. It's Raining Aliens - Again??
85. Al DiMeola
84. The Gentle Fog
83. Guitar vs. Piano - A Comparison
82. The Dallas Guitar Festival
81. The Art of Archery
80. The Profound Silence at the Top of The World
79. A Better Democracy, Perhaps?
78. I'm Published!!
77. Money and Couples and Earning a Living
76. Education By Proxy
75. Extended Warranty Scams
74. Is Time Travel Possible?
73. The Cure for Cancer
72. The Obsolescence of College Degrees Over Time
71. A Different Perspective on Immigration
70. Writing Music - My Albums (10 CDs)
69. My Little Recording Studio
68. The Toothpaste Lesson
67. The Legend of 1900
66. Groundhog Day
65. Education, and the Decline of American Civilization
64. My Little Guitar Collection...
63. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Flame"
62. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Thunder"
61. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Cherry Blossom"
60. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Brazil"
59. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Monterrey"
58. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Ivory and Ebony"
57. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Songbird"
56. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Little Donny"
55. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Midnight Storm"
54. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "EJ Frankenstrat"
53. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Quicksilver"
52. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Lady In Red"
51. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Flash Gordon"
50. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "The Jetsons"
49. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Excalibur"
48. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "White Magic"
47. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Lightning"
46. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Ruby"
45. The Choreography Tree
44. A Flying Car - My Design
43. Christmas Lights - Streets on Fire
42. Truckstop Christmas in 1960
41. The Mystery of How The Pyramids Were Built
40. Naked Art
39. Overcoming Hate
38. Overcoming Terrorism
37. The Tablecloth
36. Yes... But Is It Really "Art"?
35. Dragons - Did they Actually Exist in the Past?
34. Intelligent Design - Supernatural Science?
33. The Ant and the Grasshopper - Canadian Version
32. Where Did The Bible Come From?
31. Creationism vs Intelligent Design vs Evolution + Big Bang Theory
30. Smart Children
29. Stratocasters - Mexican-made vs. American-made
28. The Nature of Magic ...
27. The Grocery Store - A Rant
26. America's Capacity For "Greatness"
25. The Space Program - America's Peak Era
24. iPOD - The Clever Marketing Guys at Apple
23. My Experience About Life and Death and Living Again
22. Thinking Skills to Allow Anyone to Solve Any Problem
21. Drive-in Theaters - An American Tradition
20. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator of Sherlock Holmes
19. William Shakespeare
18. Should a President be Qualified for the Job?
17. Picture of Val
16. Creative Music Writing Techniques
15. The Music Industry and the Quality of Music
14. Buying a Telescope
13. Should an Artist Please Themselves, or Please Their Audience?
12. Recording Studio Techniques
11. Where Do We Go From Here?
10. TENJEWBERRYMUDS
09. Happiness
08. You Might Be A Persnickety Fussbudget If…
07. The Dark Side
06. Americans in Prison
05. A Special Kind of Love
04. Artistic Authority
03. The Thief
02. Singer or Model?
01. Weather Modification

Territory Disputes at the North Pole

Ever since Canada was first created, the Canadian Arctic Islands have been part of Canada and no one has ever tried to take them away. But now that we have Global Warming, the polar ice is receding, and that is exposing more of the water and land which now makes it possible to drill for oil and valuable minerals further north than ever before. In fact, a recent US geological study estimates that 25% of the worlds remaining oil may be in the north polar region.

Also, the receding ice is beginning to make Canada's Northwest Passage navigable by normal, non-icebreaker ships for part of the year. This brings some economic advantage to shippers who could cut thousands of miles off trips between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Suddenly, the far north is becoming valuable, and various countries are trying to steal away Canada's sovereign property as they grab what they can, now that they see it is going to be worth something very soon.

Denmark
There is a tiny football-field-sized island named "Hans Island" in the Kennedy Channel between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Denmark's Greenland. This tiny dot of land is not valuable for itself, but rather for the fact that it establishes a land foothold on the Kennedy Strait which runs up from Canada's Baffin Island straight up to the North Polar sea. There is an economic zone that extends over 200 miles of water around any country's land. Canada has had Hans Island all along, and it shows as being within Canada's territorial waters.

But now that oil may be found in the Kennedy Strait, Denmark wants to claim Hans Island in order to take a much larger piece of the Kennedy Strait in which to set up water-based oil rigs. Whomever owns the tiny middle island, then lays claim to most of the water rights all along the channel up to the north polar sea.
Canada and Denmark have been fighting a 'polite' battle over this tiny island for the last few years now. Denmark showed up one day and planted a flag and left a bottle of Brandy and two glasses and a sign that read "Welcome to Danish Territory. Have a drink". So the Canadians took down the Danish flag, put up a Canadian flag, drank the brandy, and replaced it with a bottle of Canadian whiskey and a sign saying, 'Welcome to Canada. Have a drink"




The United States
The Northwest Passage is clearly inside Canadian territory. It is an internal waterway within Canada much like the Mississippi is an internal waterway within the US. It is one of the water (ice) passageways that cuts through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and lies within two Canadian provinces(territories) - Nunavut, and Northwest Territories. In the map below, the NP is that channel of water running directly across the middle of this territory between the islands.

Now, because it is about to be more navigable, which allows ships to cut shipping time from the Atlantic to Asia by two weeks, it now has economic value, and so there are those in the US government that are now claiming that it is international waters. Specifically, the US ambassador to Canada, Wilkins said "The US does not recognize Canada'a claim on the Northwest Passage".

They are basing this on the fact that the Canadian Arctic is not highly populated enough. Banks Island, Baffin Island, Victoria Island, and other Canadian islands and the Canadian mainland are sparsely populated with smaller towns and cities such as Inuvik, Sachs Harbor, Iqaluit, Resolute Bay, Pond Inlet, Cambridge Bay, Alert, Grise Fiord, Tuktayuktuk, Fort Collinson, Holman, etc.

But because these towns and cities are not large enough to have millions of people, that means that the US State Department feels that they should be able to take the passage and use it to transport oil from Alaska to the US east coast, as if it belongs to the US. That's like Canada saying that they do not recognize the US's claim on Montana and North Dakota.

Russia
Russian president Putin has made the extremely bold move of trying to claim the entire North Polar underwater continental shelf. They even went to the extent of planting a flag underwater at the north pole itself a couple of months ago. This does not necessarily impinge upon Canadian soverereign territory, but it is shocking and alarming that Putin would make such a bold grab for resources from an international body of water. Here is an article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=464921&in_page_id=1811
This is undeniably an international body of water, like the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. Imagine if Japan or Russia were to suddenly claim ownership of the entire Pacific Ocean based on the fact that the ocean floor looks similar to the continental shelf under their land thousands of miles away. This claim is similar to that. It only seems less intrusive because it is located further north than most people think about, but it is just as remarkable a claim nonetheless.


Canada's Foreign Minister, Peter Mackay , said, "This is posturing. This is the true north strong and free, and they're fooling themselves if they think dropping a flag on the ocean floor is going to change anything. There is no question over Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic. We've made that very clear. We've established - a long time ago - that these are Canadian waters and this is Canadian property. You can't go around the world these days dropping a flag somewhere. This isn't the 14th or 15th century."

Canada has started building a new fleet of six Arctic military icebreaker ships, to enhance its current fleet, and building a new deepwater port in Nunavut on one of the islands at the Eastern end of the NP, and is also adding more military forces to the Canadian bases there and in other parts of the north to be more able to defend it's arctic sovereignty when called upon. However, it's a big piece of land and water and they will be hard-pressed to protect against all the usurpers who want to take it away from them. Canada has a small population to defend its land.

The debates heat up as the global climate does.

The Prospects For Marriage

A friend just sent this one to me on email. This is apparently a real woman in new York City looking for a husband. She has decided to advertise on Craigslist and come clean and just tell it like it is. When I read this, I had so many things I wanted to say, the words were all trying to get out of my mouth at the same time - like the three stooges trying to get through a doorway.

So, for the moment, read the woman's advertisement, then below that, one man's answer (it's sarcastic, but also brutally honest), then below that, my comments.

~~~
Actual Ad from Craigslist website in NY.

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I'm tired of beating around the bush. I'm a beautiful
(spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I'm articulate and classy.
I'm not from New York. I'm looking to get married to a guy who makes at
least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind
that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don't think
I'm overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could
you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around
200 - 250. But that's where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won't get
me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married
to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she's not as pretty as
I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I
get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

- Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics- bars,
restaurants, gyms

-What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won't hurt my
feelings

-Is there an age range I should be targeting (I'm 25)?

- Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east
side so plain? I've seen really 'plain jane' boring types who have
nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I've seen drop dead
gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What's the story
there?

- Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows - lawyer, investment
banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they
hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?

- How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for
MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults - I'm putting myself out there in an honest
way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I'm being up front
about it. I wouldn't be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn't
able to match them - in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a
nice home and hearth.

it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial
interests
PostingID: 432279810


THE ANSWER
Dear Pers-431649184:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully
about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.
Firstly, I'm not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your
bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here's how I
see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a
crappy business deal. Here's why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you
suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring
my money. Fine, simple. But here's the rub, your looks will fade and my
money will likely continue into perpetuity...in fact, it is very likely
that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won't
be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning
asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation
accelerates! Let me explain, you're 25 now and will likely stay pretty
hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in
earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy
and hold...hence the rub...marriage. It doesn't make good business sense
to "buy you" (which is what you're asking) so I'd rather lease. In case
you think I'm being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were
to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It's
as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage.

Separately, I was taught early in my career about efficient markets. So,
I wonder why a girl as "articulate, classy and spectacularly beautiful"
as you has been unable to find your sugar daddy. I find it hard to
believe that if you are as gorgeous as you say you are that the $500K
hasn't found you, if not only for a tryout.

By the way, you could always find a way to make your own money and then
we wouldn't need to have this difficult conversation.

With all that said, I must say you're going about it the right way.
Classic "pump and dump."
I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of
lease, let me know.

~~~~

Alright, now I'll give my two cents on this.

According to an article I read several months back about what 1 million dollars buys you around the country, in Manhattan, it buys you a 1 bedroom apartment. Like Seinfeld's from the TV show. There were no 2 bedroom apartments for under 1 million dollars. So, I guess if she wants a brownstone in Central Park West, that's perhaps 3-5 million dollars? I can see where you would need to make $500k+ per year to live there. But who says she is supposed to live there? My point is that if she has aspirations to have that kind of money and have that kind of lifestyle, then she needs to find a way to earn it herself.

$500k per year doesn't really register with most people, so let's break it down a little. Consider that if you don't go to college, chances are you will end up with a minimum wage job. Minimum wage is a little over $6/hr at the moment, which, for a normal 8 hr day is about $50 per day. average income in the US is probably around $50K that works out to about $200/day. The president of the United States of America earns $225,000 per year, which translates to about $900 per day for running the most powerful nation in the world. Yet even that is not good enough for this woman. No, her minimum requirement for a husband is $500,000 per year, which is $2,000 per day. That is a LOT of money. She should try finding a way to earn $2,000 a day, and keep doing it again every 24 hours, consistently, for years.

Apparently, her only measure of a man's value is his paycheck. I cannot begin to express how much that bothers me. I am totally furious at that view. It is completely dehumanizing. It's as if there is nothing about you that is worthwhile except your paycheck and earning potential. Your knowledge, skills, humor, musical talents, art, your wisdom and experience, insights, thoughtfulness, caring, compassion, ability to teach, to understand, to empathize, to love, to make love, - all are worthless. You are your paycheck. Period. The marketplace has spoken and rendered it's judgment. Your present salary is the sum total of your worth as a human being. To women like her, that is.

Another thing that just irked me about her ad was that, in her mind, she directly correlates the level of beauty of the woman with the amount of money she should be able to attract in terms of her husband's income. She complains that there are all these 'plain' women who have wealthy husbands and she, who is much younger and prettier, hasn't found one yet. She feels this is completely unfair and out of balance. To her, the men who earn the most money should only be attracted to the most beautiful women - like her. In fact, she seems to view it as direct compensation for being beautiful. It's as if she feels that women 'sell' their beauty in marriage, and the marriage 'marketplace' judges her beauty by matching her with the appropriate income level of husband. This seems like long-term prostitution to me.

That is just so vacuuous and cruel and also stupid, I almost can't speak. ....But I will force myself. Let's think this through a little more for her, shall we? Since she apparently hasn't had the chance yet....

Okay. First, in order to translate the beauty of a woman into the 'Husband-Income Draw Factor' (The HIDF) you would first have to have some way to precisely measure the beauty of the woman, the way you measure the income of the man. So, exactly where do you go to get this done? Is there a clinic somewhere that gives a woman a reliable, precise, objective, universally acceptable 1-to-10 rating?

Oh I can just see it now. Picture the scene: There are two women sitting in a clinic, and one is sitting behind the desk at her computer and she is wearing a white lab coat. She is speaking...

"Yes, maam, I see your evaluation has come back and you are a ... let's see now.... an 8.2. That's very, very good! Congratulations! (I have a cousin who is a 8.1, we are all very proud of her) Now, let's just look this up on our handy beauty-to-wealth conversion chart, shall we?....... Hmmm. Yes, here we are. According to our HIDF rating chart, that should entitle you to a husband who makes between $221,000 and $315,000 per year. That would entitle you to shop in this list of stores, drive this list of cars right here, and live in one of these 2 areas here on our map of the city. What's that? You want to live in Central Park West? Ummmm, well, I don't know.... That's a bit tricky. Let me look that up. Let's see now. Let's look at the median property values there,....ok.... and cross reference the mortgage payments to income, and......... hmmm. Well, I'm very sorry, miss. It looks like the properties in that neighborhood require an income of over $500,000 per year. And that requires women who are above a 9.1 on the beauty scale. You are an 8.2, so I'm afraid that those properties are a little out of your reach. I'm sorry. Have you considered cosmetic surgery? Some eye work, perhaps? Maybe a different nose? If you could just tweak your beauty up from the 8.2 you're at now, to the 9.1 you need to be for that level of husband-income-draw-factor, then maybe we can get you into the house of your dreams...."

This plays out like a Monty Python sketch! It's insane and ridiculous. And now let's just take it to it's logical conclusion, shall we? Picture the kitchen scene 10 years down the road, when the guy who answered this woman's ad implied she would be 'done'.

The man sits at the breakfast table and speaks to his wife, "Susan, I have some good news and some bad news. First the good news. I just won the Anderson account, which will increase my income by about $100,000 dollars per year, so I'm now in the $562,000 range! It's fantastic, really! I'm so pleased!
Now, here's the bad news bit. I just received your latest beauty rating report card and, it seems that since your 35th birthday, you've slipped down below a 7.0 rating. I wasn't going to say anything, and I've been putting this off for months, really. I was hoping you'd be able to pull yourself back up, but it looks like age and gravity are winning there, sweetheart. At this point, I doubt you'll ever see the better side of 7.0 again. The clinic tells me that two years from now you'll be lucky to even hold onto a 6.5. I thought I could continue on as long as you stayed at LEAST above a 7.0 (I thought that was very lenient on my part, actually, but it was mostly because of the kids), but now that you've dropped down to a 6.8, and you're headed further south from there - I really have no choice anymore. I'm exercising the escape clause in our pre-nup contract. You know - it's the one where you can dump me if my income falls below $300K, and where I can dump you if your beauty falls below 8.0. I've filed the papers already. It's a clear breach of contract. I'm sorry, but it's out of my hands.
Look, even at my old income level, I'm entitled to a 9.1, and according to the chart published right here in the newspaper, everyone knows that I am entitled to a 9.3 now, with this new contract I've just got. Frankly, it's becoming embarrassing to be seen in public with a 6.8. My advisor tells me that that might even damage my own rating, and therefore my own income earning potential. And we can't have that, now can we?
So I'm afraid we are going to have to make a change here. Yes, it's time for me to trade up. I'm doing the both the car and the wife this year. I might hold off on trading up the house until next year, after I see where interest rates go........
Look, it's not so bad, really. I mean it's not like you're suddenly a 3 or something. But since you're going to be moving down the HIDF scale to a man who only earns about.... ummm... ooo, I see..... about $110,000 per year, (Yikes!) Well, I guess that means that I'll be able to provide a better home and education for the kids. And, looking at your accelerating declining beauty trend on your report card from the clinic, it looks like by the time the kids are ready for college in 8 more years, you'll have slid all the way down to a husband that barely makes $60K per year! You'll be struggling to just survive way out in the boonies somewhere upstate. I doubt they even have schools that far out of the city. So we'll have to decide what is best for the kids in the long term, given the circumstances. Best of luck in your next situation."

It sounds like Monty Python, but these are the implications of her assumptions. If all a man is is a paycheck, and if all a woman is is a beauty factor that earns a corresponding income level of husband, then these scenarios are the logical conclusion. It is so dehumanizing. So shallow, heartless, and harsh. So cold, and pointless. It really almost makes you want to just live alone, doesn't it? I pity the man who ends up with her. And I bet there are millions of others like her. I really hope this is not where our society and culture are headed. I hope this is a more isolated case. But I'm afraid it might not be.

The Great Conversation

Do you consider yourself a 'philosopher" to any degree? Do you think about the meaning and purpose of life? Do you have an opinion on morality, ethics, and whether good comes from a God-being, or whether goodness is something innate and independent of itself and discovered by man, or whether it is merely an abstract concept created by man and can be adjusted or interpreted as needed by the moment?

When you read philosophy books about Socrates, the father of philosophy, or Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Voltaire, or any others you enjoy or respect - you join into the 'great conversation' of humanity that has carried on since Socrates started it in the 4th century BC. It could easily be argued that Jesus was also a philosopher (besides being a prophet, or a religious icon or God, or Son of God or whatever you personally believe). Socrates, like Jesus, never wrote anything that survived his time - but their thoughts and teachings were written down by their followers and they continue to influence the world thousands of years later. By reading these works, or thoughts, we can start to understand the minds of the great thinkers of classical or modern times and ponder these things ourselves - perhaps to add our own insights into the 'conversation'?

I think Socrates would be very amused to hear that philosophy is a subject for which there are departments set up in universities. He would laugh and say, "Do you also have a department of Love? A department of Jealousy? A Humor Division?". Philosophy is defined as the study of wisdom itself.

It occurs to me that these days, most philosophers are either professors in universities, or else they are religious leaders (who are proselytizing their own religion by presenting their dogma and doctrine as philosophy - which might actually be legitimate - but it's debatable, of course!), but I think the most common philosophers are probably comedians. The comic observes life in intimate detail. Things that most of us don't realize, or do think about but don't talk about. They sometimes take an external point of view to analyze from a distance - and thereby show how ridiculous and nonsensical a certain behavior is. Typically, they start these observations with a phrase like, "Have you ever noticed...." Jerry Seinfeld is famous for this style. But most comics are philosophers to some extent. Observing the human condition and criticizing what they see is basically what they do for a living. Far from being excluded, ironically, the physical comedians may have some of the most subtle observations of all, if you think about it.

What makes us laugh? Why? Is it because someone told us it was funny and we believed them and we continued to follow that pattern for the rest of our lives? Or is it something deeper than that? Why is it that when a comic falls down or trips over something and seems to be hurt, some people laugh hysterically and others don't find it funny at all? What determines that? Is it genetic? Is it conditioning? Is it something based on personal experience? What is the cause exactly? To understand all this and still be funny to most people is not trivial. A good high quality comic can definitely be a philosopher. Bill Maher, Dennis Miller, Robin Williams, George Carlin - these men and others have some useful insights and interesting observations about the human condition. Their genius is in being able to see it, know it intimately, find the twist of humor in it, and turn it around and present it back to us in a way that reveals a new insight about it in a funny way. Quite a trick.

But usually, when we speak of philosophy, we are thinking of deeper matters. More serious matters.

Whenever philosophy is discussed, religion seems to intertwine with the concepts, so I'll assume a belief in God in the following questions because that is too integral to the concepts of morality, ethics, goodness, justice, etc. to leave it out and still participate in a meaningful conversation. (My own personal beliefs are notwithstanding). The concept of God is included here to provide structure to the classical thought and modern interpretation.

So... questions:
1) Where does "Goodness" come from?
In other words, if you believe in God, then you probably believe that God is "good". But why, exactly? and how? In other words, is God "good" because 'Goodness" exists as a concept and he is well described by the concept? Or is it merely something he creates and so it is whatever he creates by definition? In other words, Is "goodness" defined as being whatever God is? Many religious people would vote for this option. But if he murders, does murder then become a "good" thing? If he defines "good" and he does it, then, by definition, whatever he does is "good", correct? If he causes or allows a hurricane which destroys cities and hundreds of lives, does that become "good" because it is an act of God? Or is God being bad when he does that? Is he capable of being bad then? No? If God is pure goodness, then, logically, murder and destruction are part of what he does and are therefore "good" and therefore we should strive to do that as well. If that offends our sense of what "goodness" and "virtue" is, then, logically, through Socratic reasoning, we would have to accept that the concepts of Goodness and Virtue exist outside the concept of God, and that God is not always good. And that may offend our religious beliefs on some level. So our beliefs may contradict each other. In this contradiction, we are faced with a dilemma of what to believe.

2) If God is not always good, (that is, if his behavior does not always flow in concert with our concept of "goodness and virtue") then where did the concept come from? Did we just invent it? Or is it some standard truth that exists in the universe in and of itself? If we just invented it ourselves, then that means we could change it to suit our purposes. If stealing was convenient to our purposes, then we could simply expand our definition of "good and virtuous" behavior to include stealing and we would be all set, right? But what of the rights of the person who had his things stolen? Would he feel that was fair? Or would he feel cheated? Presumably, we could not accept that we have the right to alter the concepts of good and virtue to include something like stealing. Or lying. Or killing. Or hurting people. Or damaging property or the world.
Therefore, logically, if we accept this premise, then we have isolated the truth that 'Goodness" and "Virtue" are things that define themselves and are beyond the purview of both mankind AND God. In which case, since (if you believe in God) you believe that God created the universe, and yet he is not good or virtuous - then who or what created goodness and virtue? And if these things exist outside the purview of God, then what else is outside the realm of his design or control?

3) What does "Justice" mean? Does justice exist? Where do we learn the meaning of it? Who determines justice? Is it defined by those that are powerful? If Germany won World War II then Hitler would today probably be considered the hero, and Churchill would be considered the monster. The victor writes the history books and sets the tone for how the future regards the past. Is this also the way with justice? What is justice? Is it merely the mask worn by power? Or is it something that exists intrinsically on it's own merit and is beyond the reach of those who would turn it to their own selfish purposes?
For instance: Let's say that in early America, there was a man who went to a farm in the deep south and opened up the barn, and freed a slave and took him away to allow him to live the rest of his life as a free man. The slave owner might send the police after the man that freed his slave complaining that he was wronged, and that that man stole his property. He would seek to have "Justice" serve his purpose to return his property. Or the man that freed the slave might also seek Justice to defend his action as the right thing to do because it counters slavery, which he believes is inherantly evil. Who is right here? Whose side does justice serve? And in this is there a lesson about what exactly justice is? Who or what invented it? Is God just? If so - why are small innocent children killed in war, in disease, in natural catastropies? Or do we need a different definition of justice to include these atrocities? Have we reasoned that God os not just, or do we misunderstand the concept of justice? Or do we misunderstand the power or role of God?

4) If God is not just, then why do we praise him, and do what he says? What compels us to follow his rules, his teachings? What compels us to construct great cathedrals in his honor? Do we merely wish to appease a powerful being that might otherwise crush us? Is God merely a capricious power that we are frightened of, or the benevolent creator of all that exists, and therefore the very definition of goodness and virtue - but then in that case what of the above observations/arguments?

5) What is the difference between morals and ethics? And who defines them? If you define your own morals, then what guidelines do you use? Is any behaviour that benefits you considered moral? Then what about the next guy? Can he also do whatever he wants to you and your property and still be completely moral because it servers his purposes? Assuming not, then what are the rules that are common for all behavior, that we can accept and use as our guidelines - and where do these rules come from? Our religious leaders? Which religion would that be? What about where the religions differ? Is murder always bad morally? What about the situation when one religion says it's ok to murder someone as long as they are an infidel (a non-member of that particular religion) or as long as the murder is a retribution for some other sin according to other rules set up by that same religion? Who decides what is fair overall? Are you allowed to have your own personal moral code? Or are you only allowed that if your own morals happen to exactly coincide with those of the society or religion that surrounds you? In which case are morals merely the rules for behavior dictated by the most powerful in our society - those with the ability to enforce their rules and impose their will upon the others - and is that in itself immoral??

6) Why be good? If you could steal a million dollars from a house down the street from you, would you do it? No? Why not? Is it because you are afraid of being discovered and punished? What about if you were guaranteed not to be caught, and that no one would ever find out - THEN would you steal the money? Still no? Why not? Is is because you simply know it's wrong? Why do you want to do good? What compels you to want to be good? Is virtue it's own reward in some way?

These are some of my questions in the Great Conversation of history.

The Fountain of Youth

Have you ever wondered what makes us age and die? If our cells are constantly reproducing themselves, then why don’t they just keep going? What happens to cause the aging process and the eventual failure of the biological systems that keep us going?

For many decades, scientists felt that cells – the basic building blocks of living tissue such as the human body – were immortal. In other words, they felt that if they were kept in ideal lab conditions, taken well care of and not damaged, the cells would continue on indefinitely, like little machines that never break down.

This was because cellular biologists had cell cultures that seemed to just keep breeding for decades in controlled laboratory conditions. Some cells did die, but they all had assumed that this was a random effect caused by mistakes on the part of the lab staff, or other external factors. Therefore, these biologists felt that aging and death were something that was caused external to the cell. It might possibly be something food-related, or accumulated radiation over time, or disease, etc.

This was the thinking in the field until 1961 when a young Dr. Leonard Hayflick discovered that cells in his lab were dying after about 9 months. He realized this only because he had noted the dates that the tissue samples had arrived from the hospitals. When he compared the deaths of the cell batches to the dates they arrived in his lab, he made the correlation which eventually made him famous.

He discovered an internal ‘clock’ within the cells themselves that told them when to die. He found that human cells could reproduce 50 times, but no more. At that point, the cell dies. This came to be known as the now-famous “Hayflick Limit”. He tried freezing cells and found that when he froze the cells down to -250F, then all activity stops, and the cell is suspended. It can remain in this suspended stasis indefinitely. He currently has cells which are 46 years old that are still suspended this way. These are the oldest known cells in the world.

But when he warmed these cells up again, the internal ‘clock’ began again exactly where it left off before it was frozen. This was a puzzle until a Russian biologist attended his lecture on the subject and then went to the Moscow subway station on his way home. As he stared down at the railroad tracks, he had an insight about how this ‘clock’ worked.

The railroad track, if twisted, looks like a DNA double-helix. He proposed that there are a number of bonds or bars in the DNA strand, like the ties in the railroad tracks. And with each replication, one of these bonds breaks or is dissolved until they arrive at the last one, which tells the cell to keep reproducing, and when that one is finally lost, the cells stops and dies.

There are 50 of these bonds, and so it allows 50 replications and then no more. It is built into the very DNA structure of the cell at the end of every chromosome, and this little stretch of DNA is called a telomere.

The implication then is that humans live the length of time they do because they are limited to 50 cellular reproductions, and that, multiplied by the length of time it take to replicate the average number of cells in the body gives the approximate lifespan of a human. Other animals may live shorter or longer lives depending upon how many bars they have in their DNA strands that are destroyed with each cell generation.

Some tortoises, like the large Galapagos tortoise, have twice the number of little DNA cross members and so they live about twice as long as a human. A lobster, interestingly, does not have a natural lifespan. They do not age, but rather keep living and growing until they are killed and eaten. This is curious and causes researches to wonder about what genetic manipulation they might do to human cell DNA to make us also life indefinitely.

So far, they have determined that there is an enzyme called telomerase which can extend the telomere. As the telomere loses each little bar, it creates another one – thus extending the cell’s ability to keep replicating and also therefore extending the life of the organism indefinitely.

However, the price you pay for this is cancer. To have this uncontrolled growth is what causes cancerous tumors and, in fact, that is what cancer is, really.

Cynthia Kenyon is a molecular biologist who has made some remarkable progress with extending life by manipulating genetics. In 1993, she discovered the so-called “Grim Reaper gene” that causes the cells to die in a special type of tiny worm that she experiments with. She picked the C.elegans worm because they only have a normal lifespan of about 13 days, and because she had the entire genome of 20,000 genes mapped out for it. Her plan was to just tweak one at a time and see if that extended the lifespan.

She found this gene that, when adjusted, caused the worm to live twice as long. Then she found another gene that she called the “Fountain of Youth gene”. This is the one that spawns the repair processes that repair damage that ages a cell. The Grim Reaper Gene kills the cell by disabling this Fountain of Youth gene.

Cynthia is currently doing research into the human genone to see if she can accomplish the same thing for our species.

In the meantime, she recommends a low carb, low salt, low, sugar diet similar to Atkins or South Beach. This kind of diet will keep your body from aging as fast and keep you younger longer. She is 52 now and says she feels as young and agile as a teenager. She is hoping to live to about 150 years old, but she has plans to extend the average lifespan of humans to about 500 years based on her latest genetic experiements. She doesn’t have the answer yet, but she’s working on it.

This brings us to the obvious question. Is this something we want as a society? Is it something you would want as an individual?

If you could be young and healthy strong for most of that time, then why not?

As a society, I don't think we would want to extend the 'old age' part of our lives for another 70 years, but if we could extend the young-adult to middle-aged stage - the most productive stage of our lives, then that would help society in a lot of ways.

Most of the "developed world" is aging. The average age in Europe, for instance, is 54 years and getting older every year. In the last 50 years, in developed, modern countries, people are not having as many babies. My father was the oldest of 9 children in his family. My mother was the youngest of 16 children in her family. This was common in those days, but it's virtually unheard of now.

Look at Japan. Fully 21% of their population is the aged. By comparison, Florida is only 17%, and it's the retirement capitol of America. Japan's largest problem these days is not their economy, or competition with American products or companies, or rivalry with China, etc. It is how they are to take care of their aging population. The old need the young to take care of them. But if the younger generation spends all of their time and energy taking care of the older people, then they are not producing goods and services to keep the economy of the country going and so the country withers and dies. This decline is evident in Japan today.

The developing world has the larger populations now, but that is primarily because people there have lots of children in order to have a way to survive when they are old. Without the social infrastructure of a developed nation, this is their only choice.

But these countries are starting to develop now and are building their own strong economies. China and India have come a long way from the 3rd world nations they were a couple of decades ago. They now appear to be poised to become the next economic superpowers. I think you will see that as their social programs evolve to the point where their old people are taken care of better, then their populations will also start to drop.

From a personal level, it takes a long time to learn all the useful skills at the levels needed in today's complex, technological society. By the time we really know what we're doing in any field, we are already starting to think about retiring. Some have said that if it takes till you're 50 to really know what you're doing and become an expert in something, then you have 10 or 15 productive years at that level and then you retire. It seems like a lot of 'ramp-up' time and 'ramp-down' time for relatively little peak producing time.

Well, imagine if you could extend that peak time. Imagine if you could take all that knowledge and skill and wisdom you've accumulated - and then just keep going for another 70 years. Think of all you could accomplish. What could Einstein have done with another 70 years to do it in? or Newton? Or what could Shakespeare or Dickens have written? How different would the world be today if our best and brightest could have shone their light a little longer?

I wonder how things like marriage, and education, and careers would change if we lived to be 150 years old.

What do you think?

Are you happy? What exactly IS "Happiness" anyway?

Are you happy? What makes you happy?I have been thinking quite a lot lately about happiness. What exactly IS "Happiness"?

Is it a state of mind? Many people seem to think this. To them, happiness is a state of sensation where they feel pleasant and untroubled. In this scenario, it is not the external situation that creates or denies happiness, but rather, it comes from within. It is a state of being. A mental condition of feeling generally 'satisfied' in all respects. But if this is all happiness really is, then couldn't we all achieve happiness through simple medication? We could all just take happy pills like Zoloft or Prozac or something similar, and just 'bliss out', right? But would that really make you "happy"? You would still have your problems - you just wouldn't care and so they would probably get worse.

I heard an NPR interview recently with researchers looking into addictive behavior and they found that there are endorphins that get triggered by substances which increase the overall level of serotonin in the brain, but that SOME people get hooked on that level of serotonin and the brain becomes accustomed to the new levels that the substances are creating, and so their sense of 'normal' can only be arrived at by artificially elevating these chemicals to that level, and then they need more than that to actually feel 'good' again. And so they accelerate their use. This is like driving a car and wanting to feel the thrill of going fast - but driving at a high rate of speed isn't enough for them. They need to be constantly accelerating to a higher speed in order to continue to get the sense of thrill that they are hooked on. Similarly, these people need ever-increasing doses of drugs that give them a higher level of serotonin in order to feel normal.

Obviously, this path leads to destruction - both physical and financial, since these mood enhancing drugs may do damage after extended uncontrolled use and also they are not free. And somehow, artificially enhancing chemicals in the brain doesn't seem like a viable long-term solution to the problem. That isn't happiness, that is merely the artificial simulation of the effect of happiness. Mostly it is simply the numbing of the senses to the point that you don't care about the bad things, and that is not at all the same thing. So there must be more to it than that.

Is happiness based on external things then?

Different things make different people happy. For some it is a favorite food. I know a number of women who are completely happy when they eat chocolate. Or ice cream. These things seem to trigger that state in them regardless of whatever else is going on in their lives at the moment. Of course the effect is only temporary, and they have to stop eating it eventually, and at that point, reality comes crashing back in to their consciousness.

I know with me, there are certain things that give me an injection of a happiness feeling. It's usually about music. Playing guitar with the band when things are really cooking, is one of then. Listening to my own recorded music that I've done a lot of work on but it's turned out well - that makes me happy. It's an accomplishment. Also when I just hear certain tunes from certain artists. Dream Theater has a song called "The Spirit Carries On" about life, death and the afterlife that makes me happy. "Limelight" by the Alan Parsons Project is another. "The Messiah Will Come Again" by Roy Buchanan. "Where Were You?" by Jeff Beck. "Unconditional" by Willy Porter. There are some by Eric Johnson, Pink Floyd, Toto, Vertical Horizon, Sarah Maclachlan, etc. that all make me feel happy when I hear them.

Also sex makes most people happy - at least temporarily. Especially at the moment of climax, of course, but the whole experience is very pleasurable. Although, it might be considered more of a 'thrill', rather than a buoyant sense of 'happiness', really. It's hard to say.

For some people, it's physical activity that generates the endorphins that raise the serotonin levels. running, swimming, climbing, or riding a bicycle. But isn't this pretty similar to the chemical approach where a person takes drugs to generate the chemicals that give the sensation? Again, it's only temporary. Our bodies won't allow us to exercise constantly, and once the exercise stops, the levels go back down to normal.

Some people are happy when they are engaged in a particular activity. This is interesting because for some, it may be that the activity makes them happy because they simply enjoy doing that. For others, they enjoy the escape it provides. Golfing, for example. Or fishing, or woodworking, or gardening, cooking - whatever. Some people may love these activities. For others, it may be not so much the activity itself, as the fact that the activity is taking them away from some other activity that they DON'T want to do - like work, or housework, or dealing with a difficult spouse, etc.

Is this the solution? Find something you enjoy doing, and then just do it all the time, so that you can be happy? But if you do find an activity or a hobby that you enjoy that much, and did it all the time, then you would have to stop working, stop making a living, stop paying bills, and lose your home, and your car, and your possessions, and your security, and you wouldn't be able to feed, house, clothe or protect your family. Would THAT make you happy? I suggest it would not. Also, would you really be happy doing it all the time? Golf might be fun on the weekends when you get away from work and the house and shirk your other responsibilities for a few hours, but is it still fun when you are out there all day every day? Rain, sun, heat, cold, etc....? Any activity gets old after a while.

Is happiness a response to a positive set of conditions in one's life at the moment? Does being wealthy, healthy, and comfortable guarantee that you will be happy? If so, then why are some people happy and some not happy regardless of whether they are rich or poor, healthy or sick, etc.

Some would suggest something more spiritual. They might say that happiness comes from within - not within your body, but from within your soul. Happiness is the result of being truly satisfied with your situation. It is a spiritual sense of calm. Of serenity. Of gentle ease and understanding. Of balance.

Well, that may be, but if that is the case, then what of growth? What of striving to be more than you are? What of struggling to improve? To learn new skills, increase your capacity to become more than what you started as? If we all felt like simply accepting our situations as they are then we would all be living back in the caves from whence we came. No one would have struggled to learn to plant crops, to build homes, to seek out answers to difficult questions. And we would still be dying of trivial diseases at age 35 because no one would have had the drive to learn more and study disease and create cures and treatments to extend our lives.

And what of that struggle to do better? Is THAT where the illusive happiness lies? In the forward motion that comes from learning and growing and striving to push ahead and grab onto the next ledge above and leverage ourselves up another notch on the mountain of knowledge?

Or is that nothing but another illusion? Have we gained nothing? Is the struggle to gain knowledge or power over our obstacles simply some sort of contest to allow us the luxury of the illusion of progress so that we feel good about ourselves? Like becoming 'rich' by playing monopoly. It's a fake situation, but you feel some sort of artificial high by winning at it anyway - as if it were a worthwhile endeavor.

One thing is certain. It's not about money. Many of us feel that money would solve a lot of our problems and since our problems make us feel unhappy, it seems a logical conclusion to assume that if we have a lot of money, then those problems can be paid off and put aside - thus clearing the way for happiness to flow through. But it's not really that simple, is it?

On a recent TV show that I heard about, they interviewed a number of people who had won millions of dollars in various lotteries, but they interviewed them a year or several years after the win, to see how the money affected their lives in the long run. Most of them had gone back to their previous state of income after the money was spent. Some were worse off. None were actually happy.

This goes far beyond simply spending the money foolishly and then having nothing left to show for it 2 years later. Material things have a way of becoming meaningless when you take them for granted. Imagine you go into the lobby of a large, lavish hotel and walk by the lounge area. It may well be a $7,000 sofa sitting there, and a $2,000 coffee table under a $20,000 chandelier. But it means nothing to you. because it's just part of a hotel, it's not in your home. Well, when you have lots of money, the things in your home take on that same detached meaningless status. You have lots of money and so there was no real sense of sacrifice involved in gaining these things and so they are not treasured, and they mean nothing to you. But this is only part of the problem. Most lottery winners had lost all of their friends and couldn't trust their family members.

This is because their family members all expected to be given money, and they expected to eventually inherit what they were not given immediately, so the lottery winner was never sure of the intentions of their family members. They might be hanging around and pretending to like them simply to gain financially when they eventually died. So all of their motives and actions were suspect, and it turned the person with the money into a paranoid recluse who could trust no one.

Also, all their friends disappeared. This was because when the newly wealthy person won the lottery, all their friends came out of the woodwork to ask for money. But once they gave them the money, then these friends had no way to pay it back, so they started to avoid the rich person out of embarrassment. And so the wealthy person was finally left alone and lonely in the end. Indeed, money does not buy friends. And money may solve problems - but it sometimes creates new ones, and so this also is not happiness.

I have thought about my jobs and my career, and the ups and downs I have gone through. I think back to the job I had 5 to 10 years ago, which was a mid to upper management level position in charge of running a regional business for a large software company. I had dozens of staff, and responsibility for running a $12 million dollar consulting business with a 40%+ profit margin. I was paid roughly twice then what I earn now. Since then, I left that company as it downsized and went to a smaller company which meant my salary has dropped dramatically. I understand this company's situation, and so I understand why they cannot afford my old salary. But still - it's difficult to keep paying the bills when the income and benefits drop as the prices continue to rise.

On the one hand, things were a lot easier 5 years ago when I made twice as much money. .....Or were they? Sure, the money made it easier to pay for things, and still put money into savings, etc. but I had a lot more pressure on the job itself, since I was responsible for things I had no control over. Also, I still had money worries, because most of my income was still being chewed up by expenses. Most of us typically set ourselves up to spend whatever we earn no matter what we earn. So we always have pressures there. Also, the whole time I was in that job, I was constantly living under the threat that I would be laid off every day. That was the recession and the company was downsizing, and they were laying off hundreds or sometimes thousands of employees every 3 months. I personally had laid off about 35 people over the course of about 4 years. It was very stressful, because I felt for them. It wasn't their fault. They were doing everything right and yet the recession and the market factors, and the expectations of wall street meant that we had to keep getting smaller and reducing costs to keep profitability up to levels that impressed the stock market analysts regardless of the recession we were in.

So for four years, every conversation anyone ever had on any given day always contained some component about the potential layoffs. Everyone wondered if they would last another month or week or day, or if they might be spared only to face the risk all over again during the next quarter when the same exercise happened all over again. It was horrible for all of us. So the money was good, but the stress was doing its best to kill me.

Now, I work for that small company, but I am working on contract at a much larger company. It's a huge, complex, but fascinating job. I've learned a lot, which after 30 years in the industry is a unique pleasure. And I am feeling good about my contributions. I don't feel like I am at risk of being fired or laid off. At least my position is stable - but now I have the constant money pressure of losing ground every month since my expenses keep going up, but my income is locked. I can't legally change anything to make more money.

So - it's hard to be happy and have everything go along smoothly. There are always trade-offs and challenges. And if that is the case, do we simply accept that we will always have those challenges and seek to be happy anyway? Happiness for it's own sake - not based on anything but the need to be happy itself? Or should we always pick apart every situation and look for the bits of it that we CAN be happy about and focus on that? - which is the same thing, really. If all aspect of my career were going badly, I could still look at my life and say, well, at least my family is healthy and I have my health to keep going. Or I could say at least I am not 75 years old and I still have the energy to keep working and try to improve the situation. Or at least I have my mental faculties, and some skills. Or at least..... something; anything. I could always find SOMETHING to be thankful for.

But is that enough? Or are we just kidding ourselves? There are a lot of people who are unhappy because GWB is the president and they feel he is making a series of bad decisions and is taking our country in a direction they don't want it to go. I'm afraid that if you tie your happiness to things over which you have no control, then you will NEVER feel happiness. Others seem grumpy all the time because they feel there should be a certain order to life and the way the world works, and yet the actual world and the people in it are constantly acting in ways that seem stupid, fruitless, self-serving and are sewing the seeds of anarchy. They have the same problem. They cannot change everybody and everything, so they will have to learn to be happy based on some other measurement if they want that feeling of happiness.

I can think of at least 2 people I know who are like the above scenarios, and I can think of a third who seems to spout happiness and she derives her happiness from simple things like music or a picture of her favorite guitarist. She has chosen to simply DECIDE to be happy regardless of what may be going on around her. Who is better off? The one who is happy despite not having a good reason for it and is ignoring all that is going on? Or the other one who DOES understand in detail exactly what is happening, but who is letting it eat him up inside as he considers the ramifications? Or the one who is grumpy because he cannot tolerate stupidity or ignorance or simple-mindedness in those around him? People who miss the point drive him nuts. But people will always miss the point. Try as he might to explain it.

Some people think that if they were suddenly thin instead of fat, then they would be happy. Some think if they were suddenly young instead of old, THEN they would be happy. Some think if they could be cured of their blindness, or their cancer, or their aids, or their alcoholism, or their gambling habit or their drug habit - then they would be happy. Some think if they could get out of jail, or be spared their death sentence they would be happy. Some think if they could finally have children they would be happy. Some think if their child could be well again, they would be happy. Some think if they could just get through this tour of duty in Iraq and get home safe, then they will be happy. Other think wish that for their son or daughter or husband or wife or brother - to come home safe from Iraq.

The happiest thing I think I've seen so far is a tiny 3 yr old girl eating her ice cream, playing with her puppy, and being surrounded by her loving family. So is it about naivete? About innocence? About the bliss of ignorance? Can civilization move ahead if we all only seek that?

What about you? Are you happy? Do you think you know what happiness is? Or is it like that Supreme Court Justice once said about pornography, "It's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it..."? Is it even worthwhile to TRY to be happy? Should we simply decide to be happy. or should we based it upon something tangible? Is life even about the pursuit of happiness, or is it really all just some struggle to survive and grow and thrive as we overcome one obstacle after another? Is there some greater good that comes by each of us struggling to improve? Or is the greater good served best by all of use just deciding to be happy with whatever we are and whatever we have right now at this moment?

What do you think?

The Power of Religion

I want to talk about something subtle here. I know it will probably be misunderstood by some who are prone to take offense at almost anything, but I assure you, no offense is meant, and if you feel offended, it is only because I have not explained myself well enough and so you misunderstood. What I want to say is perhaps difficult to articulate, but I feel somehow compelled to try anyway. Please bear with me as I struggle to navigate to a core, but subtle, truth.

Religion is power. About this, there can be no question. What is power if not the ability to sway large groups of people to act in a certain way? And who can deny the times throughout the history of civilization when political and religious leaders used religion to start wars, continue wars, to enslave people, to build large cathedrals and monuments, to feed people, help the poor, educate the ignorant, treat the sick, to discover new lands, to conquer new countries, to achieve great and terrible things. Many of the biggest things humans have done, both wonderful and horrible, have been because they were compelled by their religion to do them.

Please note that I am not talking about any specific religion, but rather the generic concept of religion itself. I am referring to all the major religions, including Christian faiths from Catholicism and the various protestant denominations to the orthodox Christian religions of Greece, and eastern Europe, and Judaism and it's denominations and degrees, to the various types of Muslim faiths, to Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrarianism, Hinduism, Pagan beliefs, as well as older religions such as the gods of the Romans, the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Sumerians, and the Egyptians, the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas, even the most primitive and earliest faiths such as Animism, etc..

These all have certain things in common. They have leaders, and followers, and rules, there is a core belief system, and there is usually a book that includes the legends, stories, and mythology of that belief system, and there is the core essence of power in the two forms I want to acknowledge here, including the more subtle form that intrigues me the most.

Why is religion so powerful? It doesn't seem to matter what the specific faith or denomination is, they all seem to have a remarkable ability to empower their followers. Many people have talked about how religion has a power to bring about change because it influences the actions of large groups of people. But I don't really want to focus on that aspect so much. I want to talk about the sense of power that it seems to give a specific person who believes in a faith completely.

On Thursday, I was interviewed for my input on business strategies by a man named Brian, who, besides being a business analyst and marketing specialist, is a very religious Christian evangelist who showed me pictures of his recent trip to the Amazon with his church as they went to spread their faith to the native peoples of that region. It was interesting. They brought fishing line and fish knives for the men, toys for kids, simple jewelry for the women, they brought medicines, and they set up little booths where they could give haircuts, and a dentist to help with their teeth, and eyeglasses to help people with eyesight problems. And they handed out bibles to everyone. I asked how successful they were and he said that they managed to convert 385 people over to their faith. They brought help in real tangible ways, as well as in trivial trinkets to get their attention and win their trust and support, all in order to proselytize their religion and spread its influence to that remote corner of the world.

I looked at Brian closely. He was tanned, healthy, clear-eyed, he spoke well, was intelligent and articulate. He looked like an executive. Strong, sure of himself. Politically correct. A man accustomed to positions of leadership over others. Conscious of his image and his appearance. Good-looking, well-dressed, crisply clean and professional. Most women would be attracted to him, I think. He smiled when he should, and was serious when he should be. His questions were on target and he understood my answers well - including the more subtle implications, which was why I could penetrate his professional persona and talk to him on a personal level about his trip and his faith, and other things.

What I was most impressed with was his sense of utter confidence. But this confidence was not due to his education, or his job, or his resume of past accomplishments. I think it was due to his religious convictions. His unshakable faith in the religion he belonged to. He has power because he is absolutely sure of his vision of how the world works and his place in it. In his mind, there are no ambiguities. There are no questions. He understands that there are other religions and people that follow them, but in his mind, they are simply wrong. They are misled or misinformed about the TRUE path and the TRUE religion. I won't say which one he belongs to except to say that it is one of the American protestant Christian religions. This is not about the religion itself, and I don't want you to either identify with him or reject him based on whether you've already decided he is right or wrong. That's not the point. His specific denomination is irrelevant to this discussion. What IS relevant is his sense of personal power. THAT is what I want to get at and understand.

I was given a secular education. Although I did go to Catholic schools for elementary levels, I went to normal public schools for high school and college /university. And during that, I studied about some religions, Tibetan Buddhism for instance, but I was never indoctrinated into the teachings of a religion other than simply to understand how they work.
I could not seriously follow a religion because I have seen too many. I have seen them from the outside, and so once you have that larger perspective, it is not possible to ignore what you know and continue within it. It's like being in a dream. Once you become aware that it is only a dream, you cannot continue in it very far, because it loses its integrity. The constructs of its belief system collapse around you.

I was educated to believe that Science was the best way to determine the answers to the big questions in life. The scientific method seemed most logical and reliable to me, and that has formed the core of my belief system. To me, logic is extremely important. I cannot believe in or trust something that is not logical, or that at least does not have some empirical evidence to support it. The presence of a UFO on the ground in front of me would be enough empirical evidence to override the logical guess that travel from another planet is impractical and therefore unlikely and therefore the sightings of UFOs are quite probably something else.

Nevertheless, there ARE intangibles in our universe that we come up against all the time. Logic and empirical evidence, and repeatable experiments under controlled conditions don't cover everything, and so there are some fuzzy areas where we must extend our perceptions and our rational thought to try to perceive and understand what we can, with fewer clues. Here, in this realm, is where faith is born. It provides answers to those questions that are left unanswered by science and rational thought. Different religions have different answers, so there is no guarantee of being correct, but it is a club of like-minded people.

From a scientific perspective then, religions are organizations and movements based upon faith. And faith is based upon.... ignorance. (now, don't go getting upset, just listen for a minute....) Science and logic and reason fills in most of our understanding of the world around us and the universe beyond that through observation and analysis. For those areas beyond what Science can reliable predict, we are ignorant. That is the region of ignorance. Faith steps in to supply answers to that ignorance. Are they reliable, testable, reasonable, logical answers? No. But are they useful nevertheless? Well, yes. Perhaps so. Because they give you power.

What are these intangible areas I'm talking about that science has no answers for? They are things like the following:
No one doubts that you have a mind, but where is it physically in the body? Can you surgically remove it or change it? Can you change someone's opinion of a subject by tweaking a specific nerve in his brain? How does science explain this? Or can you just change the brain in some physical plane, and the mind is at some higher, more intangible level?
How, exactly are the mind and body connected? Why is it that when a person is sad and depressed, that can make them physically sick? How can bravery and determination overcome pain? Why do some people like pain? Why do some people hate chocolate?
What happens after you die? Is there a soul that lives on? If so, what happens to it? Where does it go? Does it come back to live again in another body?
Is there payback and retribution for when we do bad things? What about when we do good things?
What is 'Good"? What exactly, precisely, is "Evil"? How do we explain or understand extraordinary abilities like telepathic abilities? Or telekinesis? Or clairvoyance? Or prescience? The ability to predict the future? If the universe was created by a 'big bang' 13 billion years ago and literally nothing existed before that, then what event in the nothingness happened to cause the actually original explosion to occur?
If science says that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, then how did the universe suddenly pop into existence from a mathematical singularity?
Or was that just the entry point into this universe of a wormhole that opened up from a different universe, which emptied immense quantities of matter into this universe in a sudden rush of creation? If that's the case, then where is that other universe physically? And what contains both of them? and are there others beyond that? And before that?
Science explains very well "how" the universe exists. But it doesn't really explain "Why" the universe exists. For these larger questions, we have no solid answers from science that can be explained by observation, analysis, and reliable experimentation, except perhaps at the fringes of these questions. So, a person who is 'only' equipped with science can only cover the areas that science explains, with any confidence. Beyond that, he/she is ignorant. Usually, they feel that it is irresponsible to speculate about those areas, much less construct entire belief systems to chart those territories.

But religious people feel differently. They do not dismiss it as irrelevant or as trivial, or as irresponsible to speculate. They try to understand these areas. Each faith has it's own understanding of them, and in providing their 'answers', they seem to imbue their followers with a sense of confidence and power, that gets them elected to offices of power and influence, or allows them to be effective in their daily lives, and grow to positions of influence where they can make a difference in the world. Maybe it's not so bad to follow a religion. The specific answers to the big questions might not be correct, but having a belief system to cover them seems to offer some advantages.

Now for some irony. The power that flows from a person having their religion explain the intangibles, disappears if they begin to learn about other religions. Once they are exposed to the actual details of multiple perspectives and multiple religions, they begin to see the flaws in their own religion and they see how arbitrary the answers given by their own leaders really are, and so they lose faith in those answers, and that means they once again have holes in their understanding of the universe and so they lose their power of confidence and assuredness. So on some level, their power is based on their ignorance. Knowledge removes their personal power.

Tangible advantages from intangible answers? Ignorance brings power and knowledge takes it away? The universe really IS just messing with us, isn't it? That is just precisely the kind of counterintuitive trick this universe likes to pull. It has such a twisted sense of humor.

You Should Go See "Sicko"

I just returned from seeing "Sicko", the new movie about the state of healthcare in the US.
It shows how far down we have spiralled in this country, and then they go to visit Canada, England, France, and even Cuba and take a close look at how the free government-provided universal healthcare systems work in those countries.

Here in this review, I will try to cover both sides of the issue. First, I will support Michael Moor's position, then I will explore the other side of the argument.

The reviews have said that this is more 'even-handed' than Moore's previous films. I tend to agree. He has no personal partisan agenda here. He is exposing a system that is broken, rather than demonizing Republicans. Our broken healthcare system is a tragedy that we ALL share in, and it needs to be addressed NOW. He is not trying to play partisan politics here. He is showing a serious problem, and he is showing how other modern countries have solved the problem.

Our healthcare is now ranked 37th in the world - just slightly ahead of Slovenia.

We have the worst infant mortality rate of all countries in the entire western hemisphere. Also, enough people die from mistakes made in US hospitals to make up the equivalent of a fully-loaded 747 crashing every single day. The film opens with a video of a man with a wound on his knee, who is taking a needle and thread and sewing his own flesh back together, because he is one of the 50 million Americans that have no medical insurance at all. For these 50 million Americans, they might as well be living in the worst of the third world nations. But the film is not about them. It's really about the 250 million Americans who DO have medical insurance and STILL can't afford proper treatment because of all the extra fees, co-pays and deductibles, etc. Each year now, fully half of all personal bankruptcies (2 million per year)are due to medical costs that are not covered by medical insurance.

A friend of a friend of mine worked in the Army until he retired as a lieutenant colonel at 45. Then, he started his own business and made it successful, and ran it well and built it up until he sold it for 3.5 million dollars at age 60. This was his retirement nestegg. However, that very year, at age 60, he became ill, and had no insurance, and in the course of the following year of illness, his medical expenses exhausted his entire 3.5 million dollar fortune. He was left penniless.

America is a great country to live a good life, as long as you are young and healthy and strong. But if you get sick and need medical help - and we all do eventually - then this is not the place to be. In fact, it may be one of the worst countries to live in.

ALL other modern industrialized countries have better healthcare than we do, and even many so-called third-world countries do as well.

Cuba's healthcare system puts ours to shame - literally to shame. Go see the movie and see what Cuba did to help some poor Americans who were rescue worker heros at 9/11 but that were in need when our own government or system had failed them. He tried to take them to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base to get help, because he found out we were giving free medical care to Al Qaeda prisoners, but our government turned them away. So he just took them into Cuba, where they were given excellent first rate care - for free. In some cases, helping out with problems that American healthcare had not been able to solve for years. By the way, he went to a pharmacy and one woman who had some breather medicine replaced, said she pays $120 each three times per month for that. In Cuba, it sells for less than 5 cents each.

One particularly striking visual is to see Americans as the poor refugees from a disadvantaged country coming to Cuba to receive help. That just completely goes against the self-image that America has of being the best country in the world. We have been fed that propaganda for years. And one reason we believe it, is because of the immigration that America receives. This reinforces the idea in our heads that this is the place to be. But we have to remember that the people who come here were sold the same propaganda. Also, many Americans may not be aware of it (because it doesn't hit our news) but virtually all modern countries have immigration - AND immigration problems. Look up stories about England and Germany and France and find out about their immigration. People are just dying to get into those countries too. This is not the only place to be. And, from a medical perspective, it may not be a good place to be at all. Wait till you see the truth about the Canadian system, and the free healthcare systems in both England and France. They are far, far, FAR superior.

We here in the US, have been fed a pack of lies about what the other systems are like and how bad they are. We've been told for years that the government provided healthcare systems are poorly run, and that they provide terrible healthcare compared to ours. We tend to think they have old, out-dated equipment, risky medicine, and poorly trained doctors. We are led to believe that it is very risky to be treated in a foreign hospital, even.

All that is completely false. It is political rhetoric designed to scare us away from the whole idea of universal healthcare for everyone. Our system is worse. Not only far more expensive - but also worse. This is part because MD's cannot perform all the necessary treatments because their malpractice insurance does not insure them for all procedures. And it is partly because so many people are simply denied care. They are denied care because they have no insurance at all, or because the insurance companies have found a loophole to allow them to avoid coverage. They even hire private investigators to go looking for any hint of a pre-existing condition so that they can deny coverage for any medical problems now. One of these investigators is interviewed in the film and he tells it like it is.

Those politicians that opposed the universal healthcare idea called it "socialized healthcare" because they know that Americans are scared to death of anything "socialized" because they think it leads to an entire socialized system. Somehow, we don't call our police system "socialized police" - but that's exactly what it is. It is provided by the government, not private industry. So is our fire department. And the state-run school system. And the libraries around the country. And the trash pickup, and the water services. These, and many other things, are ALL "socialized services", but we don't call them that. So why would they single out healthcare insurance to call that "socialized" if the government provides it? Obviously because they are protecting the interests of the healthcare companies that make billions by leeching our system dry.

So, instead of calling universal healthcare "socialized healthcare", I think a better term is to call it "civilized healthcare".

Some people are afraid that universal healthcare would add too much to our taxes. Well, in my own personal case, I pay about $1,000 per month in medical insurance premiums and the copays and deductibles for an average healthy family of three. That's about $12,000 per year. That could be considered a tax. And that represents a significant extra tax. If we became actually sick, it would be a LOT higher than that. And yet, if we went to a universal system, then the 50 million other people would be added into the pay side of the equation, which would lower the costs. So in the end, I think we would be paying less than we do now.

But besides this, we need to lower the actual costs of the healthcare itself to the costs other countries pay. And we need to improve the quality of the care as well.

Moore also showed the newest tactic that hospitals in the US are now doing, which is called 'dumping'. Once a patient's insurance runs out, they cut off the hospital tags and put them in a cab - still in their hospital gown - and send the cab to a skid row clinic, and the cab dumps them at the side of the road in bare feet, and disoriented, and with no idea where they are or what is happening. Our system is far worse than simply too expensive - it's become immoral. People in the other countries mentioned are all healthier than us and live longer than us on average - so the end results are clear as well.

When Moore put out an ad looking for medical horror stories, he received over 25,000 stories in the first week. Our country is full of people desperately unhappy with the healthcare offered here. And many of the stories were not just from people treated badly by the system - but rather from people who are IN the system and who are forced by their employers to treat OTHERS badly. Denying coverage. Denying the care that they desperately need, in order to keep corporate profits up.

Moore interviews one healthcare insurance worker who breaks down in tears when she explains how it breaks her heart to deny the desperately needed help that her clients must have. The companies often quote "pre-existing condition" as the reason for denying coverage, and the list of pre-existing conditions in the book is the first 37 pages. The film lists them alphabetically in star wars scroll format. And some of the conditions are things like "yeast infection", which is common to almost all women, and "back pain" which almost everyone I've ever met has had at some point. Diabetes is a big one, and that affects a huge percentage of the population now. So this list allows the healthcare insurers to refuse coverage to just about anyone they please. Of course, they might choose to take them on as a customer, and start receiving premium payments every month, and only refuse coverage later when they actually try to USE their insurance.

Moore also interviews the senior physicians who are responsible for denying claims for healthcare. They are incented by their employers to keep the denials high. They have a minimum quota of 10% denials of service. If they deny enough claims, they can receive financial bonuses. In one case, the signature is a stamp used by clerks on behalf of the doctor, and the doctor has not even reviewed the cases at all. It's a shame that our system does not consider this criminal behavior. But here, cash is king. Profits are our religion. We have become the Farengi.

And Moore doesn't even cover some of the other aspects of the problem. For example, the incredibly high cost of healthcare insurance for employees is what causes our major companies to become unprofitable and uncompetitive with other companies around the world. For example, GM has to pay healthcare for over one million employees and former employees. This means that they are burdened with a cost that their competitors from countries like Japan, Germany, Korea, etc. are not. That makes them more expensive and less competitive. The other American carmakers are in the same boat.

Also, last year, Continental Airlines lost 400 million dollars. When they investigated, they discovered that they could have saved over 800 million dollars in healthcare insurance costs if they simply had a younger average age workforce. So they petitioned the SEC to let them report their annual earnings in two modes - the actuals, and what they WOULD have earned had their employees been younger. If this catches on, what do you think companies will start to do with all their older employees? How easy will it be to stay employed for someone over 50? What will all the baby-boomers do when they are left without work? That is a huge part of the population. Who will support them? Can you see how that might belabor the country's economy further? And then what? Will 40 become too old to employ? Will 30? We will end up with a thin layer of 20-somethings trying to work and pay the way for the entire population of children and those over 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80? I think it should be abundantly clear by now that this system simply does not work. We need a better system. Perhaps a system like other modern countries have.

And one fascinating fact is that Moore seems to have actually found the precise moment that our system changed to this HMO nightmare we currently have. It was from a taped conversation between Nixon and Agnew, and Kaiser Permanente was trying to take over, and Nixon gave it to them, because he liked the idea of companies making money from providing less healthcare. Then, Moore also shows exactly how much each congressperson was paid for their votes to support privatized healthcare. Most were paid between $100K to $350K. Some were below $100K, but GWB was the highest paid. He received well over $830K from medical companies and pharmaceuticals.

Fundamentally, Michael Moore's argument is that the United States, the richest, most powerful country in the world, has a TERRIBLE healthcare system. The fact that we are unable to offer decent basic healthcare to our entire population is a shameful embarrassment by standards of any civilized country in the world. And yet we spend more per capita on healthcare than any other nation on the planet. The truth of all this is obvious and the arguments are irrefutable.

This is an excellent, informative film. I'm glad I went to see it. I think we all need to see this at least once. This message needs to get out. When it comes out on DVD, I will buy it and loan it to all my friends to make sure they see it too.

~~~ HOWEVER ~~~

So far, I have spoken in favor of Michael Moore points in the movie.

It does raise a lot of very good points about how our healthcare system and services have declined in this country, and then also how great the healthcare systems are in 4 other countries in particular.

But is there another side to the story?

Always.

I always like to be fair and impartial, and try to get at the balanced view. After seeing that movie, I was alarmed, and upset, and a little shocked at our system (even though my own experiences already told me much of the bad news) and very impressed with the systems in England and France, and Cuba. I think on the whole, Moore was correct - but incomplete.

He left out the bad news about their systems, and the good news and realities about our system.

First, the Canadian system. Republican Politicians here talk about how the delays for surgery are extensive. Test equipment and procedures are not always available right when you need them. And it takes months to schedule needed surgeries. Well, that is MOSTLY untrue, but not entirely. 18 years ago, my father had a triple bypass surgery. He was scheduled for it, and it was supposed to happen in 3 weeks. But suddenly, they shut down the wing of Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto where it was scheduled, and they told him he had to find another place to have it done. Well, by that point, time had become an issue. He had become a lot weaker and needed the surgery right away. He couldn't work anymore, and no longer had the strength to even walk upstairs to go to bed and was sleeping in a chair downstairs in his house. We looked and no other hospital in the Toronto area or, that region of Southern Ontario could do the surgery quickly enough. So we ended up taking him to Harper's hospital in Detroit. They scheduled him in for surgery in 2 days, and he was in, out, and back home in about 5 days. So score one for the American medical system there.
On the other hand, OHIP, the Canadian healthcare insurance system, paid for it, so they get some credit too.

You see, the Canadian system is not like the European healthcare systems. Theirs are run by the government. Americans are mistaken when they think that the Canadian system is a government-run system. It's not. It is the exact same sort of private business healthcare providers that we have in the US. However, it's the INSURANCE provider that is run by the government. So you can go to whichever private doctor or hospital you choose, but then the government pays for it.

In England and France, it is all government-run as well as funded.

And in England, they have both a private and a public healthcare system. The private system has sprung up to exploit the gaps and failures of the NHS public one. Given a choice, many Brits would choose the private one, and they feel they will get better care there. But, naturally, it's expensive.

Canada also has a private healthcare system alongside the other. In other words, although all the doctors and hospitals are private, some will take the government insurance and some won't. For example, Shouldice Hospital in Thornhill (Part of Toronto area) is known as the best hospital in the world for hernia operations. Kings, queens, presidents, and important and wealthy people come from all over the world to Shouldice when they need a hernia operation. It is not covered by OHIP, the government insurance company in Ontario.

And in France, it is said that they have an excellent healthcare system. What Moore found in his documentary is very true. However, it has been stated that within the decade, the social programs will have bankrupted the nation. They are perhaps given too much. You simply can't have it THAT good for that long, apparently.
To give everyone free healthcare AND free sick time for months if needed, AND free housecalls AND almost free medicine AND free daycare for children, AND free in-home nannies to help take care of children, do laundry and cook meals when you are feeling sick, AND minimum of 5 weeks vacation AND generous retirement pensions, AND free university education.... well it's all too much. You need a productivity level that is impossibly high to pay for that. You simply cannot get that for a whole population just by taking some money from the wealthiest of people.
At some point the books have to balance.

So yes, Moore did tell the truth, their system is great - but it seems that it won't last forever. Their system seems ready to collapse within the next few years unless they take steps soon to mitigate losses by reducing the benefits they give their citizens. But for now - they get a pretty smooth ride.

As for the US system, yes, there are a lot of shortcomings, and a lot of them are due to denials of coverage by the health insurance providers. But why is that? Well, it's partly because of the fact that they are greedy and want to make huge multi-billion dollar profits, but it's also because the actual medical costs themselves are so expensive in this country. Blue Cross is a non-profit provider, but they are also very expensive because the costs are high. Why are the costs so high? Partly because doctors also want to make a lot of money - but also because medical malpractice insurance is so expensive. And why is that? Because the medical lawsuit settlements are huge. And why is that? Because lawyers get a percentage of the proceeds of the lawsuit as their payment. That fact right there drives a lot of the high cost of healthcare in this country to it's current ridiculous levels.

But if you look at the level of healthcare AVAILABLE in this country, it is awesome. All the equipment and procedures and doctors we could want. It's all there and all available - if we can afford it.

As far as going to live in any of these other countries, well, you have to look at the whole big picture. Generally speaking, the cost of living in those places is much higher than the US, so you typically have a better overall lifestyle here in the US. I know for a fact, that I could not have the house or cars or other things I have in my life here if I were living in Canada. Not unless I had a completely different way of making a living that paid 8 or 9 times as much gross income. The combination of lesser economy of scale for companies, AND therefore fewer job opportunities, AND higher taxes, AND higher costs for everything, reduces the lifestyle considerably compared to most places here in the US.

In Cuba, sure they have great healthcare, but did you see the buildings where people lived? Not exactly the American standard of living.

And in Canada, the good economic performance is laudable, but they exist at the pleasure of the US policy. The US seems to be pursuing a policy of devaluing the US dollar right now. Possibly as much as 30% over the next few years, in order to increase exports to reduce the trade deficit. If this continues, then Canada is in a SERIOUS situation.

80% of Canada's exports are sold to the US. A major portion of that is automobiles, for example. GM, Ford and Chrysler all placed major manufacturing facilities in Canada years ago as part of the Auto Pact (the precurser to the Free Trade Agreement - which pre-dated the NAFTA that eventually included Mexico) The reason they did this was two-fold. Partly, it was to allow the automakers to take advantage of the cheaper costs of operating in Canada. But the big reason, was to prevent any Canadian-based car companies from starting up and entering the market. That was the deal. We'll put our factories there and hire your local Canadian workers, if you agree not to go into competition with us by developing and marketing your own cars. With equal technology and yet cheaper cost structure, Canadian cars would have been very competitive. It was a shrewd and wise move on the part of American Car companies and the US government.
However, if the US dollar shrinks too low, against the Canadian dollar (They are almost at par right now), then the US car makers might find it too expensive to continue to operate in Canada and bring those operations into the US, shutting down the auto industry in Canada and crippling the economy. The same thing goes for the lumber and beef, and agricultural industries.
To put it bluntly, the US could shut down Canada in a heartbeat. And it's all pretty much within the control, (if not purview), of the US Federal Reserve Bank.

US financial policy can make or break most of the economies in the world. Other countries have their own value and some measure of control, but in reality, the US dollar is still the official currency of the world right now, and the US consumer economy drives the largest economic activity globally either directly or indirectly. Major changes here have ripple effects felt throughout the world.

If America coughs while facing north, Canada gets the cold.

It's a good thing they have a good healthcare system.

Back to the movie, If you've read the internal letters from execs at the HMO companies as they talk about the film and are trying to come up with defenses to counter this, you can see pretty clearly that they feel exposed here.

Personally, my impression is that Moore did only present one side of the argument, so there are a few points missing that would support the companies, and their side would have to be the following, I think:


HMO and other insurance companies might say:
1) The doctors charge too much
2) The doctors take too many tests to support themselves in case of a lawsuit, not because they are needed.
3) Pharmaceuticals charge too much for drugs.
4) People don't take care of themselves. They drink and eat too much and that makes them unhealthy and too expensive to maintain.
5) Hospitals charge too much.
6) They are publicly traded companies. Their stocks would drop if they didn't make the profits they make. Wall Street has high expectations.
7) They have to store cash away as a hedge against large litigation suits that may arise from unhappy customers.
8 ) Their premiums are based upon an assumption of 10% denials, which is probably appropriate since doctors try to schedule unnecessary tests and provide unnecessary care to some extent. If they were to approve every single claim, then they would have to raise their rates dramatically to compensate for that extra expense, and so they are actually helping to keep overall costs down by refusing SOME services and procedures.
9 ) They have to pay for expensive Washington lobbyists to press their interests to the congress members and the president.


The Doctors and Hospitals would say:
1) The malpractice insurance is too high, they have to compensate with high bill rates
2) Medical equipment and supplies are expensive
3) Medical assistants are expensive
4) The Lab costs are too expensive and that jacks up the bill.
5) The insurance companies always negotiate the fees down, so they have to jack them up higher to compensate
6) Medical school is expensive, they deserve to make at least $500K per year minimum for life. They used to make that before the HMO's came in, and these are the rates they have to charge to make that now (after costs of running a practice)
7) Hospitals have to provide some healthcare to the millions of people without insurance and so they pass those costs along in the charges for those that do have medical insurance. That makes the rates higher. If everyone paid for healthcare,m then the overall rates would be somewhat less.

The Pharmaceuticals would say:
1) The tremendous costs of developing a new drug is hundreds of millions of dollars.
2) The clinical trials, and the extensive testing to get a new drug approved by the FDA and onto the market are very expensive.
3) There is only a limited number of years before their exclusive right to sell a drug runs out and they will have to compete with the generic drug makers. They have to charge a lot because they have to make the entire product lifetime profit in that short window of time.
4) They are publicly traded companies. Theur stocks would drop if they didn't make the profits they make. Wall Street has high expectations.
5) They have to store cash away as a hedge against large litigation suits that may arise if the products fail in some way and a public health risk is identified later.
6) They have to pay for expensive Washington lobbyists to press their interests to the congress members and the president.

Summary
So there is no single culprit here. It's NOT just one guy doing all this bad stuff to people. This is NOT Bush's fault, for example. It's not even one company. In fact, it's not even just one industry. The problems are endemic to the entire system. The whole approach to running a profit-driven healthcare system like this is fundamentally flawed. It is the system that is to blame. And it is the system that needs to be fixed. And what's more - this system is not the fault of any one party. It has been going on since Nixon started it in the early 70's. We've had both Democrats and Republicans in office since then and no one has managed to fix it or even slow it down. Now it is clearly out of control and careening down the hill.

So Moore didn't present the above counter arguments that he might have if he wanted to be completely fair to all parties.

On the other hand, Moore also missed some other powerful arguments that would SUPPORT his position as well, such as:
1) Doctors that cannot offer complete or proper care because they are not insured to do certain procedures that are necessary. My own personal doctor was interviewed in the Dallas Morning News last year about this and he was telling about how sad it is that he can't administer anesthetic to the chest area anymore, and so if he is working on a chest injury, he has to put the anesthetic in the arm but try to get it as close as possible to the chest, and just hope that some of the anesthetic gets over to the wounded area. It's sad and ridiculous, but that's the kind of medicine our doctors are forced to by the insurance they are given.
2) American carmakers and other companies that cannot compete because of the extraordinary high costs of supplying healthcare insurance to their employees. Their competitors from other countries don't have this heavy burden because in their countries that government provides these services and bears those costs. That put America's manufacturers at an international disadvantage.
3) More than half of all personal bankruptcies are due to medical expenses now.

So, having a universal healthcare plan isn't merely a responsibility and an expense - it's costing a lot of money both privately AND on the large corporate scale to do it the way we do it today. It would cost us a lot less in taxes to pay for a universal system than we are paying right now in premiums, co-pays, fees, and deductibles, and in lost competition, not to mention lost productivity from poor health.

So this movie doesn't give the WHOLE picture of all aspects of the healthcare problems in this country, however, he only has about 2 hours, and he does manage to get across a lot of good points in the time he has.

I don't want to demonize any companies, or people, but I sure would like to see the problems get solved somehow. After looking at the kinds of systems that most other civilized modern countries have for healthcare, it seems that a profit-driven model might not be the best way to approach healthcare for a nation anymore. Maybe it was good at one time, but it seems that it's gone off the rails here.
Privatization generally brings quality and efficiencies to a process, but maybe privatization doesn't work well in this particular case. There is simply too much opportunity for abuse.
The purpose of a government is to correct that. To provide controls and safeguards to make sure these kinds of things DON'T happen. Instead, it's been left in the hands of profiteers, and that was a mistake.

If we left air pollution control in the hands of manufacturing companies to decide how clean they WANT to run their factories, I think we all know what would happen. In a free market profit-based system, companies will take shortcuts to improve profits. That is simple human nature. Because greed and short term gains always outweigh the responsible long-term view.
That's why it's the government's responsibility to take the long-term view that benefits and safeguards it's citizens.

Why a Wall Won't Work

There has been a lot of talk about putting up a wall or a fence along the border with Mexico in order to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country. I don't think this will work. Essentially, the problem is that people will simply go over, under, or around the wall. Let's look at some of the more obvious problems with this:

1) The wall would have to be thousands of miles long to cover the entire border. If it's not, then people would simply walk around it and go across in places where there is no wall.

2) The wall would also have to be very high so that it is not easy to climb over it. It would probably have to be 20 feet high or so, and it would have to have barbed wire on top as well.

3) The wall would also have to be dug deep down under the ground to discourage tunnels. In fact, a tunnel was already discovered under an existing border wall in the San Diego area.

3) Many people have suggested that it would need to be double walls with a no-man's zone between them containing a myriad of high-tech sensors such as infra-red, motion-detectors, sound-detectors, smell receptors, and cameras.

4) And of course, if there is an attempt to cross this wall in some way, then the monitoring equipment has to all be monitored by border patrol. Thousands and thousands more than are there today. Some have said as many as 20,000 more guards than are there today.

5) This wall would be bigger than the Great Wall of China, which, as everybody knows, is the only man-made object that is visible from space.


6) Then, with such a massive, expensive wall running for thousands of miles along the border, that still would not keep out unwanted foreigners. They would get around the wall easily by simply getting in a boat and sailing around the wall and coming up on the coast somewhere - as Cuban refugees have been doing on the Florida coast for decades. And they have further to go.

7) So then, it would become necessary to put up a similar wall all along the California coast, blocking off the entire Pacific Ocean. And of course, that means also another wall all along the gulf coast. And then, of course, we would need another one all along the eastern coast to completely block off the Atlantic Ocean.

8) Then, of course, we have the border with Canada on the north side. Well, we can't block off access from all three sides but leave that side open, so let's just seal that off too, shall we? There's another 4,000 miles of double walls, 20 feet high and 20 feet deep. Let's not forget the coastlines of all the great lakes. Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, The St Laurence Seaway, The Niagra River, Lake Michigan, Lake Superior - seal them all off completely.

Then we would be safe, right? Wrong. What about Alaska? And Hawaii? And Guam? And Puerto Rico? These are also American states and territories. If someone were to enter these places, they could travel to any other place in the US. So - let's wall them all off and seal them all up. Yes. Walls for everyone. Every coastline. No more looking at the water. We can't have open coastline like that! - why, we might get an undocumented worker sneaking in there!

This system of walls along thousands and thousands and thousands of miles of borders and coastlines would be the biggest and most expensive project in all of human history. It would make the Great Wall of China look like a weekend project on a shoestring budget. It would take more people than we have in this country to build it. It would cost more money than this country has or could possibly earn in a thousand years, to make it. It would require more cement than the whole planet has, to build it. And how long would it take for such a massive project? 100 years? 200 years? And it would require at least half the population to staff it - diligently ever watchful for those pesky workers who want to come here and get a $5/hr job.

Remember, this massively expensive GWA (The Great Wall of America) would not be there to repel foreign invaders (as the wall in China was built to do). It would be there to prevent Mexican workers from coming here to work for us. To pick our lettuce. To mow our grass. To cook our food. To build our houses. Yes. That's the horrible fate we would be spending all that money and time and effort to avoid.

But THEN we would finally be safe right? Wrong again, sunshine!

Even an impenetrable double wall for thousands of miles would still not prevent against corruption. There will always be border guards who can be bought off to let people through. It's been in the news lately in the San Diego area where border guards routinely let through thousands of people for money or sex, or other inducements.

Then, people will still hide in the trunks of cars and the backs of trucks, and shipping containers on boats and trains, etc. So they would get in that way.

Also, there are those that come in legally, say, on holiday, but then stay and work illegally. Or then come to work legally on a work visa, but then their visa expires and they stay and keep working and don't leave.

Alright then, out of the remaining 50% of the population, we would have to have an elaborate, massive and massively expensive bureaucracy of immigration officers to constantly be patrolling every business, every house, every school, every street looking for people without their paperwork. And of course, since that is the only way they could tell the people who are here illegally from those who are here legally, then ALL Americans would need to have and carry their identification at all times. And, to avoid these ID cards from being counterfeited they would have to have biometric chips included, for fingerprints, etc. and there would have to be a massive central database system to contain this and millions of readers out there that are portable that the officers can use while patrolling the streets.

So let's add this all up:
We would be completely enclosed on all sides by double walls 20 ft high topped with barbed wire, and 20 ft deep underground. There would be armed guards everywhere. Not just on the walls all around, but also patrolling the streets looking for anyone without papers. We would all have to have our paperwork with us at all times, and we would have to endure constant searches of our homes and businesses. There would be constant monitoring of our phones, our mail, our email, or IM, and text messaging. We would all be completely numbered, classified, and certified. The database would be always up to date with all knowledge about us so the government would know all our secrets, and all our movements. They would know who we are, where we are, what we are doing, and who we are doing it with, at all times. Since they would need to monitor us, and track everyone's movements, that means we would most likely be required to seek permission from the government to move, or travel, or to change jobs. If they decided not to permit you to move or change your job, or if you displeased them in some other way - say speaking out against the government or it's leaders, then you could have your licenses revoked and be without papers. Then as soon as a roving team of ICE officers discovered you - you would be captured and deported immediately.
And for work, most of us would either be working on building the wall, or we would be in security service patrolling it or patrolling the streets.

Yep that should about do it. Finally, we would be .... um....free.

Is this what we wanted? Is this the life so many people tried so hard to come here to have, and died to protect? I guess this is what we would need to do to protect our cherished so-called "American way of life".

Ironically, in the end, this would probably actually work to keep out foreigners. But, it's not the walls that would keep people away. It's the lifestyle. After all, we would have turned the entire country into a prison, impoverishing ourselves in the process, and we would have surrendered all our rights, privileges, and freedoms.
Who the heck would want to come and live here then? In fact, I think the walls would end up having to be used for the opposite purpose - to try to keep the inmates IN...

The obvious question becomes, "So what WOULD work, then?"

Well, for a lot less money than walling-off the entire US and turning this country into a fascist prison, perhaps we could simply invest in Mexico and make THAT place an attractive enough place to live. That would keep people there, and probably would drain a lot of the people currently here illegally out of the US and compel them to go back home. After all, no one really WANTS to be a second or third-class citizen in a foreign country. They are here because this is where the work and jobs are that can keep them from starving. If we help generate those jobs back there in Mexico, then Mexico becomes the best place for them to be. They get to have jobs, have a life, AND be a legal, proper taxpaying citizen with full rights and privileges. They speak the language. They retain their culture and their dignity.

So how do we do that? We could invest in tourist attractions in Mexico.
Lewis Black, the comedian, was talking about this for a place like Mississippi. He says, "No one wants to go there, so you go there and spend a bunch of money build a Bid F--kin' thing there. Then people will come from all over to see the Big F--kin' Thing. So you put in a restaurant and a gift shop. A gas station. A couple more restaurants. A hotel. You start selling tours of the Big F--kin' Thing. Postcards. T-shirts, hats, etc. Pretty soon, you have a whole industry built up on a Big F--kin' thing you built there in the middle of nowhere.

We could do that, but on a larger, more serious scale. We invest in infrastructure there. We put Disneyworlds there, theaters, Sea Worlds, Condos. We put in casinos. We run tours of big stars through there, so they get first rate shows. We put factories of all kinds, we put schools that people want to go to. We start businesses there. Do you suppose there might be some businesses that might like to invest in a place that has less restrictive laws and has a less saturated economy with less competition? Of course there is.

How do we do all this?
Well, whenever a country is inclined to expand and take over it's neighboring country, first they have a war, conquer the army of that neighbor, then they do this kind of investment. They put people there. Settlers. Businesses. Jobs. But we are Americans, so we put in attractions. Build another Las Vegas, .....whatever. Things that attract investment and things that build jobs, and that builds a society. We give tax cuts and other incentives for people and companies to invest in Mexico, and put their businesses there, maybe even re-locate there. We would do that if we suddenly owned Mexico after a war, right?

Well, maybe we can do that WITHOUT having a war. Maybe we can cut a deal with the Mexican government. They want to keep their people from leaving and going to the states. They want to have a wealthy country, and a nice lifestyle, too. Maybe we trade our investment for a piece of the country. We could have some percentage of ownership - like buying stock in a company, only this time, we buy stock in a country. We share in the gains and losses. But we invest - and we make it work. Everybody wins.

Surely, this is less money, and more positive than building a wall around our entire country and becoming prisoners.

Staying Employed After 50

It used to be that a person would graduate college, find a job with a company and work there for 40 years and retire from there with a full pension. Someone who moved to another job had almost a black mark on their career. People wondered why - was he fired? What did he do wrong? Why did he have to go looking for another job?

Then came a time when people started voluntarily moving from company to company every 10 years or so. Sometimes they were laid off during a recession or the company took a bad turn and downsized, or sometimes it was just the ambition of the man to move up quicker, and that was a way to do that.

Then it changed so that companies were hiring only a core set of people as permanent employees, and then another group of people as contractors. The rate per hour was more expensive, but they were temporary, and they paid no benefits such as healthcare insurance, etc. And they could let their contracts lapse when they didn't need them anymore. That way, the number of staff could fluctuate with the peaks and valleys of demand based on the projects that needed to be done at any given point.

Now, some companies hire employees as if they are contractors, but they don't pay the contractor rates. They hire them just to staff a specific project, with the intention of laying them off again in a year or so when the project is over. And when they do lay them off, the settlements are so low - just a week or two of pay and that's it - if they get anything at all. Some, like my old company, give a week for each year of service, but then the average length of service is only 2 or 3 years, so the severance pay is not enough to see you through to getting your next job, especially considering some people in IT now have to look for a year or two to find their next job.

There is no security anymore. You are your own security. It used to be that if a man sacrificed his own dream of owning and running his own business, then he was at least trading that for the security of a decent career job in a decent company. But that is no longer. You cannot rely on a company to provide a secure job. Your personal skill set is the only security you have, and so you have to keep it from becoming obsolete. It has to be current, and it has to be skills that are in demand.

Now age is becoming a problem in remaining employed. This is for everyone who is middle-aged. Unless they work for the government. The problem specifically is with the new implications of the extraordinarily high cost of healthcare insurance. Companies are being forced to pay a high premium for having an employee population with a higher average age.

Last year, Continental Airlines lost $400 million, and when they did the analysis to see why, they found out that they could have saved $800 million dollars on their healthcare insurance if they simply had a younger average age for their employee base. Now, real estate is not the biggest expense a company has anymore. Nor is IT infrastructure. Many times, it's the cost of healthcare insurance for their employees. And when they can save close to a billion dollars in costs just by shifting their workforce to a younger average age, then that provides a huge incentive to replace the older staff with younger staff, doesn't it? In their case, it meant the different between losing $400 million dollars and MAKING $400 million dollars. And that affects their stock price, obviously, because investors only want to invest in companies that make money, not lose money.

So Continental Airlines made a bid to the SEC to allow them to report their earnings in two ways from now on. Once, to show the actual earnings as they do today, and again, to show what the earnings WOULD be if they had a younger workforce. Many other companies are also petitioning the SEC for the same right, since this affects all companies across the country, and this puts them on equal footing. The SEC is considering the request.

Think about what this means. Once this becomes known and public and obviously visible, then no major company will ever want to hire anyone in their 50's anymore because it skews their average age and makes their insurance too high. For a small company with under 100 people, even just one person with claims for some chronic health problem can skew the premiums for the whole group upwards.

I have a feeling that this will all lead to a situation where it will become very difficult to find a job for all of us 50 and older. Even people in their 40's will be at a huge disadvantage. The other thing is that technology and systems change so often now that a person who has experience from 30 years ago doesn't really provide the extra value that they used to anymore. Experience of things more than 10 years ago may be considered obsolete by today's standards. So only the last 10 years counts at all, and of that, only the last 3 to 5 years is really relevant. So a young person of 25 can be just as valuable to a company as a person of 55. The extra experience might mean nothing to them anymore if the job is technology-based. I hate to think that is really true, but that is becoming the attitude of some managers now.

So what is next? Well, I guess since most companies will no longer want to hire people over 50, but people over 50 still have to eat and support themselves for another 30 years or more, this means that they will be forced to become contractors. If they cannot be employed as an employee, then they will probably try to be employed as independent contractors. That means that it makes sense to cultivate relationships and a network of contacts to try to leverage to get work as we try to find the next contract when the current one expires. It means hopping from one contract to the next looking for work constantly. It also means that we have to concentrate on building marketable skill sets that are always current and mainstream and have a market. I guess this is the future for most of us. We become self-employed whether we want to be or not.

For some people, government work might look pretty good right about now.

Has the Time Come for a Global Government?

At the moment, there seems to be very little oversight over the rulers of countries when they go bad. There is the United Nations, but they have little teeth. They hold regular meetings and have limited contributions toward peacekeeping forces, etc., but I get the impression the house is pushed around by the bigger players in the room.

I'd like to see a world-based legislative body with an authority to hold world leaders accountable for their sins against their own people and against their neighbors.
I think countries should still exist and should be allowed to manage their own affairs, but that there should be a higher authority for someone to appeal to when they need to seek justice. It must be someone not easily corrupted by the politics within a single nation.

Imagine if there were a global governing body that Bush had to go to to propose his case for a war with Iraq. This whole nightmare of a mistake that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars might have been avoided if they had said no AND had the means to enforce that decision.

In the larger sense, whether the person is running the US, or the UK, or Sweden, or Venezuela, the world simply can't afford to have a self-serving country leader running around trying to start wars for no good reason except self-interest and self-enrichment, or political influence leveraging. It doesn't serve the common global interest.

I know there are those that view this global governing body to be the future destiny of America - but the global body cannot be American. America is already too powerful militarily, and as it loses it's economic supremacy over the next few years, there will be the temptation to use it's hyperpower military to gain some economic leverage back, and that should not be allowed. It should be an extension of the United Nations, and could possibly be housed in Iceland. Iceland is in the middle of the Atlantic between the power bases of Europe and America. In fact, because of the curvature of the Earth, often the planes on trans-Atlantic flights do pass over Iceland on their way. And Iceland is a country small enough not to have global domination dreams, and they seem relatively impartial, so that might make a good neutral place to set up shop for the global government.

And this new body is needed for more than just resolving disputes between countries, and keeping naughty country leaders in line.

More and more these days, certain companies are larger than the countries that used to contain them. They play gamesmanship by pitting one country against another as they move their jobs and assets around the globe. If they are big enough, no single country's government can really touch them. They are citizens of the world - not of a single country.
These include G.E., G.M., IBM, HP, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Cerberus, Royal Bank of Scotland, Phillips, Toyota, Volkswagen, etc. there are thousands of such companies. The Fortune 500 are just the biggest 500 in the US. But this is only one country in a big world that is getting bigger all the time.

Someone needs to be the global authority to regulate these companies in the common global interest. Having them escape prosecution or compliance with one country by leveraging their ability to move to other less restrictive countries does not work in the best interests of the world in general. Companies operate completely by pursuing self-interest. That is fine on a small scale, but when a company has hundreds of thousands of employees and makes more money than hundreds of countries, and when they make decisions that affect millions and millions of people and the marketplace and economies of countries - then they need to be controlled to some degree.
That's why we have governments at all. If we were left to the desires of companies, then those who own the companies would pollute the world, and keep everyone who is not an owner in abject poverty and would operate unlawfully in every possible way at every possible opportunity. The only thing that keeps them controlled is a government body that enforces it's laws. But now that companies extend beyond the borders of any one country, and in a time that has companies that have offices in literally hundreds of countries - the time has come for a global authoritative body to provide that measure of enforced control for the common good.

For example, if a large company that has plants in the UK and the US is not permitted to dump toxins in the countries it inhabits, then who is to stop them from taking them to the middle of the Atlantic and dumping them there? It does not fall under any single country's jurisdiction. We need that global oversight.

Also, from an equalization perspective, a global authority could correct economic inequities to bring the poorer, uneducated people of some countries up to a common standard.

People look to the US to provide aid to every poor country in the world. It is not the job of the wealthiest neighbor on the street to pay everyone else's mortgage, or cut their grass or educate their kids.
The US, like a good citizen of the world should just simply pay their proportionate amount of "taxes" into a global pool and the global authority can take care of the less fortunate ones.

That way, no one can accuse the US of using their money to influence the politics of other countries for self gain, etc.

Also, in cases where poorer countries in one area deliberately allow their people to emigrate illegally to wealthier countries thus placing a potential burden on the hosting country, the global authority could stop that and force the sending countries to comply with immigration/emigration guidelines. It's simply not fair to dump their resource mis-management problems on the wealthier countries.

Also, there is so much business done internationally over the internet now, that there needs to be a central global body that regulates and oversees the transactions to make sure that everyone is playing fair, no one cheats or does an end-run around the country they live in to escape taxes, or duties, or import quotas, or contraband, or whatever they are trying to get away with.

In this day and age where so much is done in the global space, I think we need a global authority with the power and resources to police it. It simply cannot be left up to the individual countries to fight it out one to another anymore.

Of course, not every nation would want to pitch in at first - it would have to be explained to them how they stand to benefit.

For example - no one would suspect that the US would want to voluntarily submit to a higher authority like that. Because for the last 60 years, we've been king of the world and everyone else is subordinate to us. We are the sole superpower, we have the biggest economy, we are the most this and the biggest that, etc. etc., etc.

HOWEVER - that is all changing quickly.

The US's strongest power is it's military might, correct? Yes, we have the largest military in the world. We should - we spend more than all other countries in the world combined on military spending. 51% of all military spending in the world is done by the U.S.

BUT - we are being taught new lessons in Iraq. We can conquer armies, but we cannot conquer terrorists and insurgents. A small, cheap, determined force can undo us every time. This is because it costs money and time to mobilize a massive force like ours. We have 180,000 troops and 145,000 contractors in place in Iraq - that's 325,000 military personnel - and they kick our butts whenever they want by sneaking in, attacking, then sneaking out. Our military is designed for a full frontal assault where the one with the most toys win.

But their approach is completely different. Terrorists have no capital city to bomb. No capital building to storm. No congress or parliament to overtake. They live in mountains and fields and meet in people's kitchens. They can outmaneuver us. Also, they can attack our presence or our interests in many different countries simultaneously. They can attack anytime anywhere - and with respectable force. We have to sort out treaties or make arrangements and negotiate trade-offs to enter into another country - or else go to war with them. So the terrorists can even surround us - despite the fact that they have far fewer men. Due to their decentralized structure, we have no major target and we cannot conquer them by taking out strategic targets or winning decisive battles. We would have to kill every single person.

Al-Qaeda is more than a group of terrorists now. It has become a movement. It is a philosophy of hatred toward America. It is an idea. You can kill a man with a bullet, but you cannot kill an idea so easily. We are spending well over half a trillion dollars using the most expensive high-tech fighting force in the world to fight phantoms, shadows, and ideas. And every time we attack, we make them hate us more - which only makes them stronger.

And at the moment, we seem to be ramping up to a military confrontation with Iran, and we seem to be initiating recent confrontations with Russia again. We are already spread too thin with Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no way we have the money and resources to fight two more major countries like that - plus whomever they can align on their side. This whole military aggressiveness may be our undoing.

So our great massive military engine is in the process of being rendered obsolete and over-stretched at the same time. Where does that leave us in our global power base?

Then we have our consumer economy. The whole country's infrastructure is based on an assumption of cheap oil. But that is disappearing now and our prices are starting to shoot up. I just paid over $3.50 per gallon which is unheard of in this country - and it's heading up higher as China is taking more and more of the world's supply and as the supply itself dwindles.

As we export our middle class jobs offshore to India AND at the same time we export our manufacturing base to China AND we import all our manufactured good from China AND we add the increased fuel prices for transporting goods across the country, AND the Chinese government starts to wield their big ace card - they are starting to use their 1.2 trillion dollar US dollars stockpile of treasury bonds to buy things, which puts that money into circulation, which devalues our currency - suddenly everything becomes much more expensive here in the US and we have fewer jobs and they pay less so we have less of an ability to buy stuff - so the consumer feeding frenzy grinds to a halt - unless something drastic changes, that will collapse our economy.

Suddenly we lose our military effectiveness AND our economic power base in the world.

Then we have every other nation in Central and South America dumping their economic problems on us by exporting their poorest people as illegal immigrants AND looking for aid all at the same time.

AND we are being held ransom by huge global conglomerates who break our laws and flaunt their global leverage and we are powerless to stop them because they can so easily take their taxbase to another country any time they like.

We could actually USE some help from a higher power. From a global authority that could regulate and ease the pressures on us. We didn't need anyone's help before, but we are now heading into a new era where things may not be so rosy for us, and a little help might be welcome.

Also, the smaller countries can benefit in obvious ways.

I think the concept could be sold to people if it is presented in the right way.

The New Immigration Bill

Well here is an interesting new development that is controversial, and yet the two sides of the argument are not based on party lines. It seems about 50% of each party's senators and reps are on each side of the issue. So this might be worth discussing here.

There seems to be two main points of argument:
1) Is it amnesty or not amnesty?
2) The new Point system for determining eligibility.

Amnesty or Not Amnesty?
Those who believe it amounts to amnesty feel this way based on the fact that today these people who came here without documentation are here illegally. If this bill goes through, then they will suddenly have a legal basis for being here. That means we have rewarded their initial illegal behavior by making it suddenly legal, and so it is not a disincentive to others who are thinking of doing the same thing.

Those who DON'T see it as amnesty point to the fact that there are fines and potentially back taxes to be paid in this plan to legalize these people. They feel that with the workers having to pay these thousands of dollars in fines to get on track legally - that constitutes paying the penalty for the crime of not having documentation.

In addition, they point to the reality of the fact that there are 12 million of these undocumented workers here now. We don't have the luxury of deciding whether or not to let them in. They are here already, and since they have no paperwork, we don't really know who they are, or where they are and so it becomes impossible to cull 12 million hidden people from the herd of 312 million people in this country, and put them on trains or boats and ship them back to Mexico or Guatemala or wherever they came from.

It's just not physically possible for one thing. I think many people don't really understand the scale of what 12 million people represents, so just try this for a second. Imagine a field with a crowd of a thousand people in it. Now imagine 5 fields like that next to each other. Imagine ten fields with those thousand people. Imagine a hundred such fields. That's those five fields side by side repeated twenty times back into the distance. In your mind's eye, stretch your inner sight out to that distant horizon and picture a hundred fields each with a thousand people standing there. It would be a sea of people as far as the eye can see. Now imagine that entire sea of humanity - TEN MORE TIMES!! In a helicopter, it would take some time to fly over that immense crowd of humans covering the landscape for miles and miles. Now imagine that all of THAT is repeated TWELVE MORE TIMES. It's an insane number of people. It's an ocean of faces stretching out as far as you can see, drive or even fly in a helicopter within a few minutes. That is twelve million people. It's more than half the population of Texas. More than ALL the population of New York City, that sea of humanity. Even if they were all patiently standing in line waiting to be deported, it would literally take years to shuttle them out of the country on trains or boats or whatever. Especially when you consider we'd have to find which country each of them belongs and to send them there. After all, would it be fair to send them all to Mexico? As a country, we couldn't just dump our problem on another country's doorstep like that. They are not all from Mexico. They are from all over Central and South America.

And then - they are not exactly just standing there patiently waiting to be deported either are they? No. They are spread out for one thing. In fact, they are spread across an area about 1500 miles top to bottom and three thousand miles wide. They are everywhere and anywhere, and maybe nowhere you might look. That's because they are also hiding in a population that is almost 30 times larger than that even. You would have to find them - and they don't want to be found - so they would be hiding from you, and moving around from job to job and place to place. AND remember - you don't even know specifically who you are looking for. You have no names, addresses, descriptions, etc. Do you really expect to find 12 million people who are hiding when you don't know who they are, where they are, or what they look like? AND when they are more or less indistinguishable from the 100 million others that look and sound pretty much the same, but are here legally? Somehow I just don't think that would work.

It's far too expensive to conduct raids of every home and every place of business, every factory, warehouse, or shack in the woods where they might be - looking for undocumented workers. Also, many American-born citizens don't have their passports or citizenship papers intact either, so we would have to produce all the up to date documentation for all 300+ million Americans as well to do this. If the 2000 census is any measure at all, that took 12 years of planning just to PLAN to do that - and that was a mail-out campaign and they were only just COUNTING people. Can you imagine what it would take to actually process through the birth certificates, validating documents and passports, etc. and do actual RESEARCH on over 300 million people? That alone might take decades. And yet without that, how could ICE officers doing raids throughout the nation in every building on every street tell the difference between an undocumented worker and an American citizen who simply doesn't carry his birth certificate and passport with him everywhere he goes? Or what if he simply doesn't have them - like many Americans don't? Then what criteria would they use to determine who is here illegally? A Spanish accent? Brown skin? That's not law enforcement - that's just racism.

For another thing, our economy has become dependent upon this labor force. They are 5% of the overall labor force, but for the construction, manufacturing, and agricultural fields, they have become the vast majority. Also for restaurants, hotel workers, lawn care etc., they are the majority of people working in those lower-paying jobs. They are 5% of the workforce, but they are responsible for 2% of the 3.5% growth nationally because their low pay leverages their financial usefullness higher. So not only is it physically impossible to find them and deport them, but it is also financially impossible to do it without wrecking our economy.

So we are left with a dilemma. We have three choices here before us:
1) Round them all up and deport them regardless of the cost or difficulty.
2) Leave them here in place, but keep them as illegal immigrants, with no status and no rights, and low pay. (Effectively, a slave labor workforce)
3) Legalize them, introduce a system to bring them into visibility, and track and control them like citizens and legal immigrants.

Do we destroy ourselves in order to try to enforce the existing laws, or do we make new laws to make those people now legal? And in the process pick up several billion more dollars in back taxes and fines to help fund the construction of better walls and better surveillance at the Mexican border? (An irony of ironies...)

Or do we leave things as they are, with 12 million unknown, undocumented workers permanently in our society? This seems dangerous in a post 9/11 era. Both from a security point of view thinking of terrorists, but also from a health point of view in terms of the spread of disease from a large portion of the population that do not have adequate healthcare. Also from a crime point of view.

Let's use some simple logic here. People who want these people to go home suggest that we stop people from hiring them and then they will go home on their own. They say the jobs are the magnet that brings them here. If we turn off the magnet, then they will leave.
Think about this. What REALLY happens if we shut down the employers ability to hire these workers? Do they suddenly hire more expensive American workers? No. They cannot compete with the other companies all over the world that get cheaper labor elsewhere and they go broke, or they outsource to overseas labor, or they simply shutdown here and move the whole company there and compete from there now. We lose their tax revenue, their business, and the other jobs they might have provided that pay higher and hire Americans.

And the workers? what do they do? Do you REALLY think they would just go back to live in Mexico or Nicaragua or Guatemala? Not hardly. They would stay here and look for something else. If we make it impossible to find something else, then they WILL turn to crime. If we leave them no other option, they will do this to survive. If we make them desperate, they will do desperate things. Our jails are full now already with 1.5 million Americans in them today. So far, the non-American-born people are only 1/5th as likely to commit a crime and be incarcerated. If we make TWELVE MILLION PEOPLE into criminals to survive, we will have a civilization-destroying problem on our hands that would make Iraq seem like a safe place to live by comparison.

So for these reasons, the 12 million people will be staying here. Over that there is no real choice for us. It is simply a fact and a practical necessity. They won't go, and we can't make them, and we can't afford to even try. So they are here to stay. Those who don't like to face that will simply have to reconcile themselves to that reality, get over it, and start to think about what to do about the aspects of this that we CAN control. The decision becomes whether to let them remain as illegal and hidden or make them legal and trackable and have them participate in society paying their taxes for the services they use, serving in the army, doing their part in helping to build and maintain this nation, etc.

The Point System
This is another point of contention between politicians. Canada first developed the point system, and it spread to Australia, New Zealand, England, etc. Today, a number of countries have adopted this approach. Essentially, the immigration policy is based upon earning points based on what the country wants to encourage. Those with enough points are allowed in.

For example, if you have skills and experience in fields in which we need people, you get points for that. For example, we need nurses. If you are a nurse, then that earns you a lot of points - it works in your favor. if you have advanced degrees, you get points. If you speak English, you get points. If you have other accomplishments (books you've written, inventions you've created, companies you've started, etc.) you gain points. Basically, anything you do to bring value to the country earns you points and therefore you earn your entrance to the country, and the country is assured of getting people it can use.

Some say that this is better than the current system that favors those with family connections, because we don't need millions of uncle Joses, cousin Chicos, etc. that do not have skills useful to the US, and actually come as a drain on the systems. But rather, bringing in people that have what we need is a way to make the country stronger, more innovative, more competitive and more survivable in this global reality in which we now live.

Others suggest that families need to stay together, and that the point system rewards only the stronger swimmers, and leaves behind the others. Also, they point to the fact that right now, we have employers sponsoring the workers who have specific skills they need. So they have jobs to go to. In Toronto, you might see a doctor or an engineer from India or Pakistan driving a cab because his credentials and skills allowed him to earn entry to the country, but there were no jobs at his level that needed him yet at that point.

Impressions
Generally, my impression is that those who are calling it amnesty are those who are against immigration in the first place, and would really just prefer that no one be allowed to come to this country, and that those here now should all go home because they are changing the racial content and social structure of the US by diluting it's existing cultural mix, and skewing it more toward the latino culture mix.
Generally, these people have said that the illegal immigrants should be caught and sent home to their source countries. Then if they want to come here, let them come the legal way and pay the costs and wait the time. Well, that is part of what this new immigration bill is describing. People would have to go back to their source country to apply for legal status, pay a fine for having broken the law before, and THEN they would be admitted legally.

My impression of the arguments that disfavor the point system is that they are made by people who are afraid of letting higher-skilled people into the country because they might compete with them for the higher level jobs. But if they just come to make hotel room beds, and cut the grass and work in kitchens, and pick cotton, then they are not competition and so pose no threat to them as just cheap laborers. This thinking serves a certain personal agenda perhaps, but it works to the detriment of the country's best interests.

Companies say repeatedly that they cannot find the skills they need for the higher skilled jobs here in the quantities they need. They have a choice of either bringing in workers from other countries, say doctors from Europe, engineers from China, software developers from India, etc. or else they just have to outsource completely to these other countries. I have certainly found this problem repeatedly over the past few years. In fact, with one company I work with right now, they are having trouble finding qualified Java programmers and C++ programmers who are skilled, local, and available. And when they do find someone, they are almost invariably Indian. Most have greencards already, some don't. The point is that there is a need for these skills. Here, below is a letter I received yesterday from someone in the Bay area about this topic:

~~~
Hello. I just read your blog dated April 25th. I couldn’t agree with you more! I run an IT staffing firm in the Bay Area and if I had a dollar for every time I had to defend, to our upper management, our use of H1 – B’s for those Java contract orders you referred to, I’d be able to buy a everyone in our company an extra large latte!

Thanks for the well thought out article!

Chris
~~~~

So this problem is common. If they hire them locally, at least the money stays in THIS economy instead of leaking out of the country into the economies of other countries.
As it turns out, the CEO has simply found it too difficult to find people here, and too expensive and difficult to go through US immigration to bring them in on H1-B work visas (he has sponsored several people over the past decade, and it takes years and costs a fortune and it's a huge administrative overhead to bear) so he and his partners have decided to outsource to India. That's right. It's not just an option for big development shops for big companies anymore. Now, even little companies are doing it. The process and the industry there has evolved to that point.

The US immigration CIS division of the Department of Homeland Security has now made it SO impossible to legally bring workers into this country, that it's literally now easier to export all the work to India, 12,000 miles away and manage it across 12 time zones and deal with THEIR government paperwork, and currency conversions, corporation tax rules, etc. This is the reality businesses face in this country today.

The way that LEGAL immigration is related to ILLEGAL immigration is simply this: If it were simple, easy, and possible to use the legal system, then most of these people would take that route. It's so much easier to live here legally and have proper documentation. But the official legal immigration system is so broken here in this country, and takes so long and costs so much, that many people are forced to work around it. The workers, the employers, etc.

The current immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed. It's that simple. And this new bill might just be the right balance of legislation to fix it.

Mercedes Leaves Chrysler at the Side of the Road

Mercedes, who bought Chrysler almost 10 years ago, has been regretting it ever since. The stockholders have been pleading with them for years to dump it. Finally, yesterday, they announced that they have found a buyer. Cerberus will now buy Chrysler for $7.5 billion.

Let's keep in mind:
1) Mercedes (Daimler-Benz) paid $36 billion for it when they bought it.
2) Of the 7.5 billion, 5 billion goes back to Chrysler itself immediately, and the other 2.5 billion are chewed up in outstanding debts, etc. so Cerberus will effectively get all their money from the purchase back.
3) In the end, Daimler-Benz will get less than nothing for the company. In fact, they will have to spend about 650 million dollars to facilitate the transfer - just to scrape Chrysler off it's books. So the whole exercise will cost Daimler-Benz over 37 billion plus the running losses over the past 10 years.
4) As soon as they announced they had dumped Chrysler, Daimler-Benz stock jumped up.
5) Actually it made more sense for Canadian Frank Stronach of Magna Corporation to buy them. His was the losing bid at 5 billion. At least, in his case, it made some sense because his company supplies almost all the body parts for Chryslers. So this purchase would have consolidated his vertical supply chain, and ensured his continued business for his core company.
6) But no one can figure out why in the world Cerberus would buy them - even though, as it turns out, they get the company for free in the end. Still, it loses billions of dollars per year. It just doesn't seem to make sense for a financial investment company.
7) When a financial investment company like Cerberus buys a company, they will usually break it up and spin it off into smaller companies and sell those off piecemeal at a profit. That's how they work. Is that what we can now expect for Chrysler? Would Jeep or Dodge Ram Trucks make it on their own? Do the economies of scale not apply across brands? Time will tell.

Why is it that Chrysler is so bad as a company? Is it that their cars are too expensive, that they don't sell? No, their cars are among the least expensive cars in the market. Is it that Chrysler cars are THAT poor in quality? Well no, maybe not. (although they aren't that great, according to quality surveys.) But that's not really the point. The point is that Chrysler loses money as a company. So does GM and Ford for that matter. They simply are not profitable companies. But experts say it's not because they make poor quality cars.

So what is the real problem?

Well, according to the automakers, it's apparently all about healthcare costs in this country. American automakers can't make as much profit as European or Japanese automakers because they have to pay ridiculously high healthcare insurance premiums for their employees, and none of the foreign car companies have that burden. Each of the big three has over 1 million employees and former employees to pay for - for life, whether they work there or not. Not all companies have to pay for former employees as well as current employees. That is a special burden that the automakers bear. However, the high cost of healthcare insurance is a problem ALL American companies face when competing with companies from other countries.

If the average U.S. worker's family healthcare premium is $1,000 per month (that's about what what mine is) then that is about $1 billion per month, or $12 billion per year. That's a lot of money! In Chrysler's case, their healthcare insurance cost is far more than the entire value of the company - every year!!

No other industrialized countries have this kind of system (except South Africa). Every other civilized country in the world has a government provided healthcare program. It is considered a basic service that a government provides for it's citizens. But somewhere along the way, people in this country were convinced by healthcare companies, and doctors, and big pharmaceuticals, and the politicians that support them - that that is somehow a bad idea, and that we should have a privateer system and pay 3 times as much as any other country in the world for the same or sometimes lesser quality of healthcare.

And what causes these high costs? Besides high rates for all medical services and products that produce huge profits for the healthcare industry, there are also malpractice insurance fees, and uneccessary testing to prevent malpractice lawsuits. And why are there so many malpractice lawsuits? Well, perhaps it's because lawyers take a percentage of the proceeds of the action if successful. So they become opportunistic.

As far as I know, this practice does not exist in other modern countries. Elsewhere, lawyers are restricted to being paid by the hour - as a professional service. They are not permitted to be paid a percentage of what they can sue for. So therefore other countries don't have as many spurious suits as we have here. Suing someone in this society has come to be seen as something akin to winning a lottery. They feel that if they can win a big enough settlement, then they are set for life. It's no longer just about compensation for loss or damage, as it is in other countries.

And it's the lawyers who have spurred and sustained this perception. They are the ones who spin up the dollars of a $35,000 loss to a $3 million dollar windfall. Of course, it's because they get a percentage of it. And it's usually a LARGE percentage.

This has led to a strange phenomenon in recent years where young people going through medical school are not going through to become doctors, but rather continue on to also get their law degree. The goal is to be a lawyer who knows all about medicine so they can make a fortune in medical malpractice law.

Now we can see the domino effect.
Greedy lawyers create more lawsuits and the suits are for more money. More lawsuits at higher settlements mean higher insurance payouts, which means higher premiums to doctors. Often, well over $100,000 per year. Also, the doctors order many more tests to protect themselves. More tests and especially higher malpractice insurance premiums, means higher doctors rates for services. Higher rates for services means higher health insurance costs for health insurance companies which in turn means higher premiums for us. Higher insurance premiums means much smaller profits for American employers, and that makes it more difficult to compete with other companies from other countries that are not similarly disadvantaged.

Something has to change. We cannot keep going on like this indefinitely.

Little Ways Companies Can Cheat You

There are some organized groups of people that are fairly upset with Texas Governor Rick Perry because he seems to be selling out the Texas roads to a private company to start charging tolls to make some money. Since we already paid the taxes to build the roads in the first place, we own them. To now have to also pay tolls to drive on them means we are in effect paying a double tax.

So one effect of this is that we see road after road that used to be a free road to drive on, is suddenly now becoming a toll road. And it's not always completely obvious, because they don't have to set up toll booths anymore to take your money. You have to look for the signs.

A few weeks back, I recieved a bill in the mail from a toll road company for 40 cents because apparently a road that my wife drives on from time to time, 121, is now a toll road for part of it. Not the whole road - just part of it. That means you'll be driving along as usual and not even necessarily know that the section you just drove through was a toll section unless you happened to see the sign. It never used to be a toll road, but they have now decided that they are going to put up a camera and capture license plates and start mailing out invoices. I assumed they put a sign up somewhere to warn people that they were going to start doing this, but it was too small or not seen.
The really sneaky aspect to this is that since the whole road is not a toll road, you didn't make a conscious decision to enter a toll road. You are just driving down a normal highway that had no toll sign before you entered it, but as you are driving along, just one or two miles of it are suddenly a toll section, and your license plate was photographed and an invoice will be mailed out to you.

Then I had the opportunity to drive along there recently myself, and I saw the sign - it was just a tiny little sign at the side of the road - it looks like a no-parking sign or one of those signs warning you not to throw trash at the side of the road. It just says "toll road begins 1 mile". It mentions no rates, there are no flashing lights, there is no toll booth, nothing. It's just a little sign on the side of the road to make it technically legal, I suppose. Then later, there is a camera mounted on a pole that takes pictures of the suckers' cars license plates as they pass by it. I could see how she easily missed it. I just got off at the next exit, before the toll starts.

I don't like this on principle, but hey, it's only 40 cents - so I paid it. It probably cost me more than that to process the check through my bank. I suggested to her not to drive on that road anymore. There is no real need to - there are plenty of other roads just as good going in the same direction, that aren't toll roads. Making this one a toll road seems kind of arbitrary to me. Just another tax for nothing.

Then a month later I got another bill for $2.00 from the same people. Is this another toll charge? No. This is a bill for sending me a bill. That's right. After charging me 40 cents for a toll they now also want to tack on an additional $2.00 as an administrative fee for billing me for the 40 cents. They are trying to convince people to buy tolltags, so to do that they want to charge everyone administrative fees for sending out an invoice - as a further punishment for driving on a road that was always a normal free road for the past umteen years, and has now suddenly been made into a toll road.

We called up customer service to complain and they agreed to cancel that charge. Then on Saturday I received yet another invoice from them. This time it's another $3.00 administrative fee for sending me the $2.00 invoice. So it's an endless loop. They send an invoice, and you pay the invoice, then they send you another invoice for sending you the previous invoice.

This is insane. The dollar amount is trivial, so I don't care about that - but the principle of this just burns my butt. This is unfair, usurious, and evil crap.

This reminds me of other sneaky devious tricks that some companies do that are not strictly illegal - but SHOULD be.

For example, I bought a digital camera from an online shop about a year and a half ago and part of the deal is that they give you a free gift. It turns out the free gift is a free year's subscription to any 3 magazines. You pick the ones you want and you get them free for a whole year. That was fine, that was ok.

But then a year later, I saw three charges on my credit card bill for automatic renewals for the magazine subscriptions - these people took my credit card information from the digital camera purchase and gave it to a magazine subscription company who then billed me WITHOUT my permission for something I did NOT want. I can't believe they do that!

They didn't send any sort of notice to say that my one year free subscription was going to expire and would I like to continue it at this cost, etc. No - they simply charged my credit card - which they should NOT have had in the first place.

I have always hated the it's-free-now-but-we-automatically-bill-you-later-unless-you-contact-us-in-time-to-stop-us type of marketing. I think it should be outlawed. There needs to be a law against these kinds of practices.

There is another type of ripoff that I really hate as well - the security system ripoff.

I have had a security system on my last 3 houses. The first one, had a 2 year term, and then it switches to a month-to-month. We were there for 5 years, so I was on a month-to-month by then. So when I moved to the second house I put the cancelation for the security service in with 30 days notice before the move date. They accepted the cancellation.

Then they continued to bill me. I told them to stop. They said no. They would continue to bill me for two more years. I said nooooo - I had cancelled the service, and gave the 30 days notice as stated on the contract.

They said - now get this - that I could cancel my service, but I could not cancel my payments. They had put a very tricky clause in the light-colored fineprint details on the back on the contract that says that you can cancel the service within 30 days notice anytime, but to cancel the contract itself, it has to be within 30 days of the anniversary date of the contract. Otherwise, IT AUTOMATICALLY RENEWS IN TWO YEAR INCREMENTS!!!!!!!!

That is absolutely criminal!!!

And we had just passed the anniversary date, so I ended up paying out another two years ahead of time and with NO service, on a house I didn't even own anymore - to get cancelled. That cost me $600 for nothing. I was severely pissed in a way that I only rarely ever get. I DO NOT enjoy being cheated!

Here is another nasty, dirty trick that a company victimized me with:

Here in Texas, we have lots of bugs. On a house that is more than say 5 to 8 years old, they are very common - it's just part of having such a warm, sub-tropical climate. So most people in the suburbs have a pest control service of some type. On the same house (2 houses ago), the house was about 10 years old, so I ordered a service - the full works. That means you pay a big one time payment of about $500 for them to do a full perimter spray and shoot the walls through the electrical sockets, etc., and then they come back for maintenance visits about every 3 months. Those maintenance visits are usually $60 to $75 depending on the company.

Well, I had had that service for 2 years, and we had not seen any bugs for a long time, so I figured we could probably skip a year, and I told that to the bug company when they came back for a renewal. All of a sudden, there were a bunch of giant water-roaches all over the place that came from nowhere. These were big flying black roaches about 3 and 4 inches long, crawling all over the walls, the ceilings, dropping onto the beds - it was like a nightmare!

I was told that when someone doesn't renew, the pest service guys will sometimes go in at night and release some roaches just outside the master bathroom window where the tub is - because there is no cement under the tub usually - and that's how they inject new bugs into the house, so that you will freak out and call them back to fix the problem.

I went outside to cut the grass and sure enough - I found a plastic container left just beside the wall right by the window over the tub to the master bathroom. I think they used that to bring the roaches in. Also, there was a little hole dug out at the edge of the house there to make it easier for them to get in under the house right at that point.

again - CRIMINALS!!!!!

I ended up getting the service again to clear up the infestation - but from a different company. Now, on this current house, it was brand new when I moved in 3 years ago, and I had the service just in case for the first year, but there wasn't anything, so I cancelled. No problems this time.

Bottom line - be VERY careful. There are LOTS of unscrupulous companies out there.

I just wanted to rant about this for a bit. It seems like this ought to bug more people than just me. Have you ever been caught up in this kind of nonsense with a company before?

America's New Royalty

This is the time of year when companies reveal to the public the salaries of their top executives. Have you noticed the amazing sums that the CEO's and other senior executives are paid these days? It is truly extraordinary. They now live the kind of fantastic surrealistic lifestyles that used to be reserved for royalty.

Back in the mid-1700's, Americans fought a little skirmish against the British called the War of Independence. Perhaps you've heard of it. It was in all the papers. It culminated in the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America to establish this country as a sovereign nation separate from Britain.

Why did we do this? Well, it wasn't just that Americans didn't like king George III - the king at the time, but rather that they didn't like the very idea of royalty. It was because they rejected the core philosophy of an elitist group of people that governed them and was held superior over them. Taxation without representation. The royals were lining their own pockets at the commoner's expense. The monarchy and all their royal elites were wealthy beyond measure while they taxed Americans into poverty.

So the people rose up and fought against that economic tyranny. They pushed off British rule and established their own government. A government by the people and for the people, as the paper says.

So isn't it ironic that now, after 230 years, we find ourselves in a somewhat similar position again? We have another elite privileged group - but this time it's the corporate CEO's and other C-level executives. They are in some ways very much like a modern version of an extended royal family for America.

They are paid literally millions of dollars per year, and then are also given houses, palaces really, to live in. Some are provided by the company as a perk, some are purchased out of their staggering salaries. Bill Gate's house is a custom-made high-tech palace of 66,000 feet. Larry Ellison's Japanese-style palace was listed for $25,000,000, but he has purchased 5 adjacent lots in Malibu beach for $65,000,000 to build his new castle on the sea. This was the largest residential real estate transaction in US history - and it didn't even include his house yet. Donald Trump has the most expensive house, listed at 125 million dollars in Florida. They own and drive the finest cars, and are also given limos to ride in, and even corporate jets to use for personal use - in many cases to commute to work each week. Larry, in fact, has his own Russian MiG fighter jet just as a toy, and both he and Bill Gates have ocean racing yachts worth tens of millions of dollars. Gate's old partner in Microsoft, Paul Allen, has the most expensive super-yacht in the world, called The Octopus, worth more than 100 million dollars. These corporate royals lead lives of unbelievable luxury, with people to see to their every whim. They are very much like the royal families of old, in this sense.

And they do conduct wars like the old royals did. But the wars they conduct are all financial. They do hostile takeovers of other companies and the raid the treasure chests of other kings of industry, and their foot soldiers are the legions of tens of thousands of employees that they send out to generate their wealth and expand their empires - just like the old days. The game is the same, just the details have changed a bit.

Queen Elizabeth II of England is paid the equivalent of 11 million dollars per year. That may seem like a lot of money, but keep in mind that that is about what the AVERAGE CEO in America is paid these days. And the perks are pretty similar as well. Some CEOs are compensated far beyond that. Larry Ellison of Oracle, for example, only has a salary of a few paltry million per year, however, his bonus package paid him 703 million in the last year I checked.

And these salaries are paid despite the uneven or even poor performance of the companies that they run, and despite the hardships these leaders may impose upon their subjects. The year that Ellison was paid 703 million, the company was laying off literally thousands of workers.

At Northwest Airlines the executives have just maneuvered the unions into taking a $195 million dollar cut in pay to help the company get out of chapter 11 bankruptcy. In exchange for the concession, they are giving the employees a $185 million equity charge against the company in case of complete bankruptcy. Of course when a company goes completely bankrupt, they are insolvent, and the creditors split up the assets and get just a few cents on the dollar for their equity invested. So I guess we don't know how much that equity would be worth in this case.
It's an interesting concession - in the case of a bankruptcy, the company's assets would be sold at a fraction of the original value, typically. And then the creditors split these proceeds. Well, if they go bankrupt, then the company execs give up the whole company anyway - regardless of who is standing in line to be paid. So this concession actually costs them nothing. And in fact, by promissing the employees a share of the proceeds of such a sale, what they are really doing is devaluing the interest that all their other existing creditors have in the company. In other words - they just bought their union concession with someone else's money and without their permission.

And for the excellent job they've done in leading the company (into bankruptcy), and then cutting the pay of all it's workers, The executives at Northwest are well-paid. CEO Steenland at Northwest has a total compensation package of $1.46 million per year. That's roughly 7 times as much as the job of President of the United States pays. This is what they pay this CEO to run a single company. And it's a FAILING company at that.

Is it that the job of CEO is so complicated that only a genius can do it? Is there some aspect to the job such that only some super-human being can hope to perform the daily tasks? Why do stockholders feel compelled to pay these king's ransom-like salaries? Are there no cheaper alternatives? Is there no one qualified to do the job willing to take less than millions upon millions of dollars per year?

Where is the effect of competition that the capitalist system is so famous for? These are not capitalist investors for the most part - these are just employees. They go from company to company doing the job of CEO, CFO, COO, etc. Why is there no competition for the position that would lead to a lower cost? Is there a shortage of CEO-level people in this country? Capitalism is normally based on supply and demand.

The capitalist system was designed to compensate the innovative risk-taker entrepreneurs who invest CAPITAL (hence the name) into a company and are therefore entitled to the rewards if they absorb the risks and run it well. But usually, these CEO's are not the original capital investors that founded the companies anymore. More often, they are simply hired professional managers. The capitalists are those that invested in the stock market.

So are professional managers entitled to the same returns and perks as the capital investors in this system now? Are they truly entitled to make more money than world-class political leaders who run entire countries? Is running Germany, or England, or Australia less important or less complicated? Is running the United States less demanding? Less important? And are these CEOs entitled to these amazing salaries and perks even as their companies spiral down into ruin and their employees are forced into the street, or are forced to accept pay cuts? Even in total failure, to get them out of their positions, the shareholders must again pay millions and millions in exit clause payouts of staggering proportions.

Is this fair? Is this what we had in mind when our forefathers threw off the yoke of servitude to royal elitists?

I don't think so.

I like a capitalist system in general. I like the concept that if someone invests the money into a company then they should get the reward. They assume the risks, and they may win or lose depending upon how clever, innovative, and imaginative they are in producing products and services that are needed. That system rewards those who do things that benefit the marketplace and the society, because they provide better quality products and services. It sure beats a communist system, where everything is controlled by bureaucrats who have no incentive to excel.

But it seems that this situation of having a hired executive class of employees that are paid sums of royal weight regardless of their performance, ingenuity, innovation, or problem solving skills is counter to the actual goals of capitalism itself. This is a system of fat cats rewarding their buddies. This is elitism. This is the old royal club in a new form. This is essentially the core principles of what we fought against and rejected 230 years ago.

I think maybe we need a new system. What do you think?

Salaries and the Effects of Competition

Do you wonder if you are making the right amount of income for the job you do?

I think just about everyone thinks they are underpaid, under-utilized, and under-appreciated. It's part of the human condition.

In the articles I read the other day about the H1-B quotas, there were some letters written in response, and most were from people in the IT industry who are upset because they are not making as much money as they used to make in the 1990's, and they feel this is due to the foreign workers here on H1-B's.

One letter in particular caught my attention. It was from a very angry young man who does C# programming for a living. He points out that he runs his own business and is making between $30K to $35K per year, but that he gets unsolicited offers all the time from headhunters offering him $50/hr which translates to $100K per year, but he refuses because he says that ten years from now, $100K will mean nothing.

Well, that kind of broken logic and flawed thinking makes me wonder how good his programming skills are. It is completely non-sequitur. And it is an emotional response. He can't seem to see that $100K NOW is better than $35K NOW and that 10 years from now, both may be higher.

But quite aside from that, he talks about how he is making $35K/yr as a programmer and yet truck drivers make over $50K. And why should C# programmers make only slightly more than driving a truck? He invites anyone to open a book on C# and on AJAX and tell him that that stuff is easy. Tell him that that is anywhere close to the simplicity of driving a truck. So why does it only pay slightly more on average? He blames H1-B's for this. Since employers can hire people from other countries to come at a lower salary to do the programming work, then they don't have to pay him more. Furthermore, he has a girlfriend who is a lawyer in another country, and she says that $30K is a lot of money in her country. So he is fed up with the US and is moving to her country. He says that here in THIS country a lawyer would not go out with a programmer anymore because there is now too much of a class difference. They just don't make enough money to interest a lawyer, despite the fact that being a programmer is every bit as complex and intelligent a vocation as being a lawyer - in fact probably much moreso.

Well, there are several things wrong with this whole mindset and his whole argument. Let's just list them quickly:
1) He is not limited to $30K per year. He already said that he has had offers of up to $100K
2) He seems to think that a job should pay according to how difficult or complicated it is. Tell that to professional baseball players. They play a simple game that 8 yr old kids play, but they make more money than the political leaders that run the country - an order of magnitude more. Income is NOT tied to complexity of the work. Look at schoolteachers. Look at musicians. The list goes on.
3) He blames income inequality for keeping men and women from being attracted to each other. He must just not get it if he hasn't seen exceptions to this in his life so far. Plenty of couples have one working and the other doesn't work at all.
4) He seems to think that programmers should make far more than truck drivers. Now THIS is the most interesting thing to talk about here, I think. This is where I want to make a point.

He is laboring under some delusion that you should be paid according to how complex a job is. What he apparently does not understand is that job salaries, like every other aspect of the economy, may flow up and down according to the laws of supply and demand. If there is more supply than demand, then the price goes down. For example, if there are too many people doing shoe repair, then people charge less and less to compete for a shrinking number of customers and so the overall income of shoe repair people goes down. This is the same for every type of work.

Right now, in my area, it generally costs about $30/week for someone to cut my grass for my house. I actually cut my own grass now, but I used to use a service. If suddenly twice as many grass cutting services enter the local market, then they have to compete to get the work. That means they have to cut prices or provide some other incentives to get the business - like trimming the bushes for free, or doing the weed & feed after cutting, or whatever. essentially - they provide more value for the money either by adding services, or cutting prices. Let's say that the cost of cutting my grass goes down to $15 this way. Now, suddenly the same people who used to work full time at the old rate, are still working full time, but only getting half the money. That starts to make it difficult for the grass-cutters to make a living. They are earning much less money now. So, predictably, they begin to leave that market. They either go elsewhere to another market where there are fewer grass-cutting services, or they switch into a different business that is not so competitive. Once the number of competitors drops again, the prices for the services again rises to meet the demand. That is the so-called "Invisible hand" of the economy that Adam Smith (the founder of economics) talked about in his famous book "The Wealth of Nations" over 200 hundred years ago.

That is the law of supply and demand in a nutshell.

In this case, we have a programmer complaining that there is too much labor supply brought on by the additional H1-B workers in the local economy and that is why he cannot make his $150K to $200K per year that he apparently expects to make in order to be on par with the average lawyer, rather than earning a salary that is more on par with a truck driver.

The problem is not so much that there are a few H1-B workers in town that can do the work. It's that programming is something that can now be done anywhere in the world. If not done by him in California, then it can be done by Michal in Poland, or by Ramesh in Bangalore, or by Chai in Shanghai. They have computers too, and are also on the internet. Suddenly, they are in his backyard so to speak. In other words, they are his competitors for the work he hopes to do. If he is competing with them, he cannot afford to charge MUCH more than them for the same work, or else employers will simply go to them. And they do - in droves. That's why there has been such a huge rush to use offshore outsourcing, or offshore globalsourcing (that's where the company doesn't give the work to an Indian company, but instead opens up an office in Bangalore and hires the Indian programmers locally there, so they are shifting the work to the cheaper workers in that country, but not giving it outside the company.)

But the truck driver doesn't have that same pressure, does he? His work is local, by definition. Specifically, a truck driver in Sacramento is not competing with a truck driver in Calcutta to be able to take a load of peaches to Boise. So his competitors are only the other local trucking companies. You can train someone quickly to drive a truck, and therefore the so-called "barriers to entry" of that vocation are low - however, companies cannot outsource it to people that live in a cheaper economy and therefore can live on a MUCH lower salary.

So therefore, the truck driver has a smaller competition base in his market space, and the competition have to live and eat in the same economy as he does, so presumably they need about the same amount of money as he does to eat, therefore his salary stays roughly the same.

THIS is why truck drivers make almost the same money as computer programmers. It's not about who is smarter or which job is more difficult or more complicated. It's just about supply and demand. Who's job is more local, and therefore has less competition. People that do construction, home repairs, plumbing, electrical, etc. all need to be physically present and so they don't compete overseas for business. They only compete locally with other people who have to live in the same economy and pay the sames prices for food, clothing, and housing as them, so they are somewhat protected.

This is a one of the reasons that I have encouraged my daughter to go into medicine and become a doctor. She wants to be a surgeon. Lab analysis can be outsourced to India, but not direct hands-on surgery.

Of course this effect propagates down. As people here figure this out, then they will all want to go to local-based skills and services, and that will increase competition locally, which also starts to drive down the cost of salaries again. After all - it's all about supply and demand, right?

I think as awareness of this global vs local market phenomenon grows, there will be more consideration of this as the kids make their choices in school courses.

H1-B Work Visas and Jobs in the U.S.

There is an article in IT Business Edge to which I felt compelled to respond.
It is about how companies are complaining that the quota of 65,000 for H1B's is too low, but the author points out that there are another 7,000 reserved for those with Masters degrees from US universities, but they are not being used, and she proposes that this is because companies are not really interested in hiring the best and brightest, they only use the H1B program to hire cheap labor, and that's all they are interested in.

Then there is a raft of responses, the first of which actually appears to be from Bill Gates. I think it is just someone with the same name as THE Bill Gates, though.

Most of the responses are from Americans who feel that H1B people should not have jobs here, because there are Americans to do those jobs, and that they are just keeping the salaries low because companies want to hire cheaper H1B people. As an example, one guy said that there are plenty of Americans to do programming, but not for 15 bucks an hour, like the H1B people get.

These people are misinformed. That's simply not how it works. However, I noticed that the grammar and communications skills of those people were terrible. Not just inaccurate, but it was literally difficult to follow what they were even saying.

I felt compelled to respond, and this was my response:

Apparently there are at least two common misperceptions about H1B visas. Allow me to state two simple facts, and then add some other points:

1) Besides stating the steps they took to try to hire an American worker to do the job first, employers are also required to prove that the salary offered to an H1B candidate is equal to or higher than what they already pay other Americans for that same position. They must list the names and salaries of others in similar positions and show that the proposed salary for the new H1B staff is in that same range. The reason for that is so that companies DON'T use H1B's as a way to get cheaper labor. If labor is cheaper now, it is because supply and demand has shifted to force that.

2) Companies are in a global competition now. It's not just about America anymore. Their products and prices must compete with those of other companies from China, India, Malaysia, Poland, etc. And these places all have cheaper labor.
Would you rather that the companies here simply outsource everything to factories and offices in those countries? No? Well, then the alternative is to have some of those people come here. If H1B people are HERE, then they spend their money HERE in THIS economy, not in India, or Poland, or wherever. Keeping the money circulating in this country stops the bleeding of wealth out of the country.

3) I have been in a position to hire IT professionals for many years(I have 30 years experience in the IT field) and I must tell you that I have never given preference to anyone based upon their nationality, race, background, gender, age, etc. Nor have I discriminated. Also, as a manager of people hiring new employees, I have never said to my bosses - "hey I want to hire this one because he's cheaper. He is on H1B and so we can take advantage of that. " The corporate system simply doesn't work like that. At least not for large companies. The salaries for the positions are already set in the payroll salary ranges. So we pay what we pay. And the negotiation over salary comes AFTER we have already chosen a person based on their fit to the job. If the job pays $60-65K, and the candidate wants, $70K, we tell them that the range is only up to $65K for that position, and they decide if it's worth it for them. Or, if it's a special situation and they cannot go cheaper and we REALLY need that position and it's a perfect fit, I might go back to my management and negotiate and build a case to try to get an extra 5K. It's all about fit to the job. It has nothing to do with H1B - EXCEPT - to be perfectly honest, there are two factors which make it undesirable for employers to hire an H1B. One is the paperwork. The legal paperwork for an H1B employee is extensive, and expensive. Legal fees are expensive. It is $4500 for a 3 yr H1B application. Plus some administrative hassle. The other factor is accent. Most people prefer to work with people they can understand, and if the person cannot communicate very well - that is a deal-killer. To be completely honest, I HAVE discriminated against some people because of that. But frankly, I think that is fair. It has nothing to do with race, color, gender, religion, age, hair color, body weight, or anything else. It is their basic ability to communicate. I think that it is a job requirement to speak and write English clearly in order to communicate with other employees well. I think that is a fair requirement.

So why not choose American workers? Of course I choose American workers, if they are qualified and available. Why wouldn't I? That saves me the delays, and hassle, and costs of the paperwork for the H1B. I have directly hired probably over 50 people in my career, and (I'm guessing here, but) I would say that about half were Americans. There were also a lot of Indians. Some Canadians, some Brits, some Chinese/Asians, etc.

It is a simple fact that most of the candidates for IT jobs in the past 10 years have been Indians. Period. The reality of the situation is that if I advertise a job now for a Java programmer and it pays say, 65K per year, and I get 15 applicants for it, then 10 of them are probably Indian, 2 are Southeast Asian and 3 are American-born. Probably none are female. THAT is the reality.

As I am evaluating their credentials, I don't much care about their education, really. This is because by the time they have accumulated enough experience to be useful to me, (10 yrs or more), the college degree they got 10 years or more earlier is now obsolete and irrelevent. Usually the school curriculums are a few years behind the real world anyway - so even if it's current, it's not. Really, I care far more about their experience - especially their RECENT experience.

I look at projects they've worked on, and tools they've used. I look for inconsistencies in the facts of their resumes to see if they are lying. Then I interview ALL the ones who are qualified. Statistically, since 2/3 of them are Indian, there is a 66% chance that the person selected will be Indian. However, if the accent is really thick and hard to understand, then I would probably prefer to look at another candidate.
Then I select the first choice and second choice, find out their salary requirements, and if they are in line with our budget for that position, then schedule a few other interviews with technical peers, and other management, and maybe my boss. Then go to my management and try to get a signature on the offer to hire.
It's that simple folks. There is no back-room sneaky stuff. There is no wink-and-nod, and secret handshake. There is no hidden old-boys club. This is EXACTLY how it really works. Those of you who hire staff know what I'm talking about.

Frankly, if I am hiring a project manager, I get a different mix of candidates. More Americans, more Europeans, more females - it's a management type job. Less technical, so a different demographic shows up, and that determines who gets hired.

You hire from the pool of available options. If it's mostly Inuit that show up for a particular skill set, then chances are, you're probably going to end up hiring an Inuit.

Also, most people need to wake up and realize something else. Other than small companies - there are very few "American" companies anymore. That is an outdated leftover concept from decades ago. Nowadays, they are multinational companies. They have offices, plants, factories, distribution centers and sales locations all over the world. The company I work for right now has IT staff in the US, UK, Poland, and India. And the project I am working on at the moment has teams in all those places.

My last big company was a large database and apps company which has offices in 109 countries. I was a regional director for them for many years, and that is where I did most of my hiring. GM is all over the world, as is Ford, and GE, and Coke and Pepsi, IBM, HP, and you name it. All the big companies operate in many countries. So they can shift their internal work from one country to another almost seamlessly.

People think the president should do something about offshore outsourcing - but he can't. If the US government tries to stop offshore outsourcing, or globalsourcing by applying tax penalties on them, they can simply make one of their foreign offices their new headquarters and start paying taxes in THAT country. Suddenly GE is a Bangalore-based company with branch offices in the US. Do you see?

Multi-national or global corporations are, by definition, beyond the purview of the legislation of a single country to control them.

Even if you threaten to cut them off from doing business entirely in the lucrative US market, the real fact is that only 4% of the world's people are here in the US. The other 96% are out there in other countries, and frankly, THAT is where the big growth markets and big opportunities are. The US has a strong consumer base - but it is a relatively saturated market for products. However, India, China - these countries need lots of products and services and now they have the money to buy them. The Chinese government alone has over 1.2 trillion US dollars that they about to start spending. That is more than the entire US national debt was when Bush became president 6 years ago. They have LOTS of cash to spend. So that is where a significant market opportunity is. And places like Dubai, UAE is where the big oil companies are spending their money and focusing their attention and some are moving there. That is where the opportunities are now in that industry.

It's not just about the US anymore. This is NOT the center of the universe anymore.

Here is just one example: every year, India produces 1.5 million new engineers, and China produces over 3 million engineers. The US only produces 70,000, and half those are foreign students who will leave when finished. And the other 35,000 who are Americans will have trouble even finding jobs here. Because this is not where those kinds of jobs ARE anymore. Most of that kind of work is now over there. That's where the bulk of growth, innovation, and opportunity is now.

This is reality, folks. This is globalization. It affects everybody. Learn to live in this new world because we can't go back to the old one.

A Vision For The Future - A New Twist

I have a vision. It's about green. And greed.

Think back for a moment. When do you suppose was America's heyday? When were things the best for America? The 1950's? The 1960's? The 1970's? Sure there was the cold war, and Viet Nam, and there were social problems at home, too - but yet somehow people seemed happier. They seemed positive. In 1957, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the next year would be better, and that every year after that would again be getting progressively better and better. What was it about that post-war era that made life so positive and hopeful and forward-thinking?

I think a large part of it was because the US lead the world in innovation, inventions, in technology. People talked about the space age, and Nasa was sending up missions to the moon, and we were inventing everything from microwave ovens, to pushbutton phones, digital watches, to the personal computer. We created networks to connect the computers together. There seemed to be no end to what technology would do for us, and America was king of technology.

Well, in the last 20 years, it seems we've lost some of that edge. Other countries have overtaken our lead and now THEY are the fountains of technological innovation. THEY have the cool new products coming out. THEY now lead the way and take the first steps. Much of the technical innovation seems to come from southeast Asia now. Japan, Korea, etc.

China has grown into a huge force on the world stage. They were a third world country just 15 years ago, and now they are the emerging giant of the world. They have done this primarily by keeping their currency cheap, and therefore their labor cheap, and therefore they have become a destination of choice for outsourcing manufacturing to, or for simply buying manufactured goods.

Let's look at one example:
It used to be that if you wanted to be a guitar-maker in the US, you would set up a little shop, design your guitars, buy your materials, make your guitars and sell them to people who would visit your shop. If you became bigger, and they became more popular, you would put them in other music shops and sell them that way.

Well, now it's done differently. You cannot possibly hope to make guitars for less money or more efficiently than they can in Korea or China. They have the high volume production equipment and economies of scale that you could not hope to match. So instead of trying to compete with them, you join them. You use what they have already put in place. So now you go to visit Chinese or Korean companies like Samick, who builds guitars for other companies under their labels. These are anything from Fender to Washburn, Schecter, Epiphone, Ibanez, Breedlove, Ovation, etc. Pretty much any guitar that said "Made in Korea" was actually made by Samick. They claimed at one point to make over 80% of all the guitars in the world. So you go to visit them, they show you a catalog of models, and you pick a handful of models, pick some combinations of features from their list, just so they are slightly different from other models they are making for other labels already. Then you agree to minimum volumes, and delivery guidelines, and sign a contract for production.

Then they make up a few samples with your name brand on the headstock to take back with you to the US, and you go visit the buyers of guitars for the major music store chains like Guitar Center, Sam Ash Music, etc. and you show them the guitars, and then you make a deal for the retail side. They agree to a price they will pay. You line up some advertising to start to create a demand. So you call up Guitar Player magazine, and Guitar, and Guitar One, and Guitar World, etc. and you put in some glossy ads for your new guitar products. Then the ads go out, the orders start coming in from the retail side, then you start fulfilling them from your Korean friends at Samick. They can either manufacture as required, or in batches for less money per unit, but then you pay up front.
You have become a middle-man. You are just moving "units". It no longer matters whether they are guitars, or toasters, or lighting fixtures. It is an inventory sku, and it has pricing and fulfillment limits set and the system flows - from manufacturing through distribution, through retail, to the consumer. You are not a guitar maker, you are a business man.
And that is how business is done, mostly now.

But where is the innovation? This is not innovating. This is not pushing the envelope for the industry or the world. The innovation belongs to the Korean company for coming up with the product. And even then, it is mostly just mixing and matching existing features, done with existing tooling. This one is a single cutaway. That one is a double cutaway. This one is a thinline acoustic/electric jazz guitar in the style of a Gibson ES-335. That one is styled like a Les Paul. This one is a strat-copy - and so it goes.

This is not innovation. This is not moving us forward.

I think there is a new area where we, here in America, can lead the world, and in our leadership position, we can find our profits again. And in that process, we will find our bright future once again. We just need our American optimism, our ingenuity, and our willingness to try.

For years, people have made a fortune by making things cheaper and competing on price. The lowest price wins. Wal-Mart is king of the retailers on the planet. That has been the rule for the last few decades, but now it is time for a change. Now, instead of competing to make things cheaper, we need to compete to making things more efficient, more environmentally friendly.

The new goal is "Green". In other words, while China and others are busy making things cheaper and cheaper - we have the opportunity to lead the world in developing environmentally-friendly products and processes.

Instead of competing in a price war in a race toward the bottom, we compete on a whole different level, in a whole different direction. More efficient cars, trains, boats, and planes. More efficient heaters for houses. More efficients batteries for gadgets. More efficient light bulbs. More efficient use of farmland. More efficient use of urban space. Less polluting cars and products. More efficient gas and energy consumptive products. Also, we can lead the world in developing processes and technologies for producing clean, cheap energy from renewable resources like wave power, wind power, solar power, reclaiming methane from trash and using the energy in that to run power turbines, etc.

China has amassed an enormous surplus of 1.2 trillion US dollars by selling stuff because it's cheap. We can make a fortune by selling stuff because it's efficient, and it's environmentally better. People all over the world will buy those products, because there is a wide and growing awareness now of global warming and how that will affect the planet. No one wants to see the major coastal cities of the world flooded out, and the farmland ruined and reduced. No one wants to see the weird weather patterns, freezing here, boiling there, storms, and tornados, and F5 hurricanes coming every year to destroy homes, villages and entire cities. They want products that will help reduce that and stave off the effects of global warming as long as possible.

The current crisis of global proportions, rather than being our doom - might just be our biggest opportunity. We just have to be smart enough to figure out how to make money from it. Green has to be connected to Greed. Once people see the way to make these green products pay a profit, then you will see people falling over each other to where they can come up with excellent products and processes to help move us forward. And the ones who start first and invest in the innovation and really commit to that direction will win the biggest. Toyota has already figured this out, and so they have made the deepest inroads into making and selling hybrid vehicles so far, and now they are positioning to become the world's largest automaker - but it's still early in the game. If we jump in with our resources, and our ideas, our innovation, our special genius - we can still leap out ahead and take a huge lead.

Some will say that the current political environent and the big oil companies have too much of a vested interest to allow these kinds of changes, and they have traditionally worked against it - but don't worry, because I have another idea to change THAT too.

We just have to find the tipping point in the equation, and then the whole game changes.

For example: GM had produced some really promissing electric cars a few years ago. These looked like the wave of the future. But they were destroyed and the program was squashed - largely because Big Oil applied pressure in the right places and suddenly GM caved. They shut it all down.

So, rather than accepting that we have to live with Big Oil as the neighborhood bully - why not find out WHY they do that. Well, I don't think it's because they want to destroy the country - or the world. They live here too. So I think it's safe to assume it's because they make more profit if we buy more oil.

So how about this: Through a combination of legislation AND attractive incentives, we force the oil companies to diversify their business to include green products. If they are motivated by money, then set up the game so that their motivations further our collective best interests. Greed is a powerful motivating force. Direct it in the right direction, and we all win! Hey - I bet if Exxon-Mobil stood to make a fortune by selling those expensive batteries for electric cars, then electric cars would
be on the road TODAY.. Big time!

So give them a piece of it. Don't make them an adversary - make them a partner. Share the wealth. Show them their role in this brilliant bright and clean new future. Show them how to be the good guys with the white hats AND still be rich - and they will suddenly be the biggest flag-wavers of all.

Every problem has a solution. We just need to think deeper, and try hard. In that way, America, and the whole world, will move forward. We all win! That's my dream.

...Well, that and being a rock star/guitar god, of course...

Old People Can Say Anything They Want...

I remember George Burns saying something to the effect that he could say anything now that he was old. In his opinion, it was one of the great things about becoming old. You can say the most bizarre, and strongly opinionated things you like and people just let you get away with it. Picture the twinkle in the eye of a michevious little old man.
In fact, I would say this: Everyone knows that the truth is the hardest thing to say in public because it offends so many people. But you can get away with saying just about anything - no matter how big a truth it is - as long as you are old enough and frail enough that people would seem a bully and a brute by attacking you. Your apparent vulnerability can be your greatest protection.

In fact, I guess that's when you know that you are actually "old" - when you can say outrageous truths, and everyone lets you get away with it!

Well, my father is a little like that. He is 75 yrs old in about a week, and he is legally blind - though he does have some very limited sight. I just got off the phone with him for our now ritual weekly catch-up conversation every Sunday morning.

He told me about the interesting cab rides he takes with Muslim cab drivers every week when he goes shopping. Most of the taxi drivers in the Toronto area seem to be Muslims from Pakistan. He doesn't have a lot of friends left because he has now outlived them, so he talks to these drivers on the 20 minute drive to the shopping mall he likes to visit.

He is very much a student of the international economy and politics, and also cultural differences. Now that he is retired, he has more time to pay attention to politics, and world economics, etc. He is interested in all this, and he usually tells these guys his theories as a conversation starter, and then listens to their responses, in order to learn their perspectives. Then he tells me about these conversations.

Some of the things he says might cause them some uncomfortable moments here and there but what are they going to do - stop the car and beat him up? Stop and force him out to the curb? He is old and blind. Besides - it's only honest questions, and most of it is not really offensive, just a little impertinent. What does it hurt to talk to a harmless old man.

He preaches the idea that most of our problems with wars and violence and misunderstandings could all be solved if we simply adopted a single language to speak and write, a single monetary system, a single education system, a single type of political system, and a single religion. Well, that may be true, but it could never happen - too many people would have to give up their strongly held beliefs, and their advantages over other people. It's unrealistic - but it's interesting to hear the responses and perspectives that this brings out in people from different backgrounds - so it's highly useful as a way to draw people out of their shell into an interesting philosophical, social, and political discussion....

On one of the recent trips, he said to the driver, "So let's assume that the Muslim way is the right way, and everyone converts to the Muslim teachings, etc. What about the other Muslims who are attacking and killing people - which goes against the teachings of the faith? How would you stop them?"
The driver said, "Let me ask you something. Do you have a brother?"
Dad says "Yes"
driver says, "Would you kill your own brother?"
Dad says, "No, of course not - but that's what I mean right there! Why would you assume I was talking about killing them? Couldn't you just educate them? Is there no way to enlighten them to make them see that what they are doing goes against what they say they believe in?"

They have conversations like that. Also, he talks to them about jokes. He tells them Canadian/American jokes, and then gets them to tell him some of their jokes so he can see the difference in humor. He says our jokes make no sense to them, and their jokes make no sense to him. In fact, he says many of them have no sense of humor at all. Humor just isn't a big part of their life like it is here.
I find this especially interesting because a person's sense of humor tell you a lot about how they think. The things that press a person's funny-button, show a map of their thought processes, inclinations, and motivations. If you told them enough jokes and watched their reactions, you could map out their entire personality enough to predict exactly how they think and how they would respond in a variety of situations.

Today he told me about a funny one. They were driving along, and they were talking about the rewards to Muslims for sacrificing themselves to the cause. For martyring themselves to the great cause of killing Israelis or killing Americans or other infidels. The Muslim man thought that the promise of an afterlife with all the food he could eat, all the wine he could drink, and 72 virgins sounded pretty good and was worth the sacrifice of a life.
Dad says, "Did it ever occur to you that they might be lying to you?"
Puzzled, the Muslim man says, "What? What do you mean? It cannot be a lie. Why would they lie?"
Dad says, "Well, how many Muslims are there in the world right now. About one billion - isn't that so?"
Muslim man says, "yeees......"
Dad says, "Well, about half of them are men, right? So that means there are about 500 million Muslim men, correct?"
"yeees..." hesitantly...
Dad continues, "Well, simple arithmetic says that there aren't enough women in the whole world to have 72 virgins for each of 500 million men! Especially not if you only count Muslim women!"

There was silence for a minute as the logical implications of this sunk in. Then suddenly the Muslim man burst out laughing. "You are RIGHT!" he says, laughing and slapping the steering wheel. He thought that was so good, he gave him the ride for free and didn't charge the usual $20. So far, my dad has received 3 free rides because of conversations like that.

Of course, it would be harder for any of us to say those things and not get into trouble. But old men get away with saying almost anything political. And old women can berate and chastize a 300 lbs footbal player and get away with it. Protected by their frailty, and the fact that no one wants to beat up an old person - they are actually almost invulnerable!

Don Imus - Social Misfit or Harmless Loudmouth?

Don Imus is thought by many to be the original radio "Shock Jock". There have been others since, of course, and one I can think of who became more famous, but Don may have been arguably the first of these obnoxious radio DJ personalities. The idea is that they attract attention by saying outrageous things on the radio. Things which people would never say in polite society. Things that might be heard in a pool hall or among teenagers in a high school, but not among most adults in a normal situation, and certainly not publicly broadcast on radio or television.

So because they stand out, they attract attention. Because they may speak what some people secretly feel, they may attract a following, and that is what some don't like.

Last week, when the Rutgers University Women's Basketball team won their game, Don Imus made the comment that there were some "nappy-headed Ho's" down on the court there. The team contains 8 girls who are black. So this time, he stepped over the line. He normally skirts the edge of what is allowed anyway, but this time, he went over the line and people are upset, and bad things are happening to Don Imus.

This has raised a huge flap in the news for several reasons. He apologized on Friday morning and thought that would be the end of it. Then, the controversy began to pick up momentum, with the girl's team appearing on Oprah, and also being interviewed by the press and giving their rebuttal speech time on national news, etc. It has snowballed into such a large issue that after a couple of days, Imus was apologizing hourly and appeared on Al Sharpton's show making a full deep apology. As of now, several days later, fully 7 of his show's major corporate sponsors have dropped him and two networks have suspended his show for 2 weeks pending further decisions. As of this morning, MSNBC has permanently dropped the simulcast for his show. CBS is looking for a replacement.

There are perhaps two main schools of thought on this and that creates a healthy debate usually (which is why it is interesting to discuss here).

Some people are outraged at the atrocity of a white man calling black girls "nappy headed ho's". Especially since they are not rich and famous and open to public comment of any kind. They feel he can call Britney Spears or Paris Hilton anything he wants because they are famous, but these girls are just normal college girls and so should be beyond any similar comments. In fact, these girls are hard-working sports heroes, who have accomplished a difficult thing and they have done nothing to deserve any sort of derogatory remarks. They feel it shows a huge lack of sensitivity on his part, and is clearly both a racist comment against blacks, and a sexist denigration of women in general. They feel he should be baned from the airwaves forever and his show cancelled and he should be fined and punished to the maximum extent allowed by law and public pressure. They want to make an example of him and teach people a lesson.

Then there is the other opinion that says "ahhh, let it go. Grow up and get over it." that he is a shock jock. As such, he is always testing the limits of what the airwaves and public sensibilities will bear. And are black women so delicate and fragile that they are so deeply threatened by some loudmouth idiot who makes a verbal gaff on a radio show? They say that this became a big issue mainly because it was a slow news weekend and there was nothing else to latch onto and make into an issue. They also point to the concept of free speech, and they point to the fact that he has insulted lots of people on a daily basis over the years. That's what his show is all about in fact. It is abrasive, repugnant and shocking. (Hence the name.) They claim no one takes it seriously, and if someone does then they need to just get over it and switch the channel like everyone else does. As one female friend of mine so colorfully puts it, "They just need to put on their big-girl panties, and get on with it..."


Besides being a Shock Jock for his morning radio comedy show, Imus also has a place called "Imus Ranch" in north east New Mexico where he brings all kinds of sick kids for a real cattle ranch experience for free. He even flies them to New Mexico for free and brings them in from the airport. The ranch is a 4,000 acre spread about 50 miles northeast of Santa Fe. There is a 14,000 ft hacienda where he and the guests and ranch hands all live, plus barns and indoor rodeo and outdoor rodeo, and horses,m steers, and lessons on how to live the ranch life. He also has doctors and medical staff to help out the kids with Cancer and other serious diseases. He has set this up as an 8-day 7 night trip for the kids, all expenses paid. Seems like a decent kind of thing to do.

You know what the real irony of this is? Let's do three little logical thought experiments, shall we?

Thought Experiment #1
Sports is very competitive by it's very nature. And teenage girls are normally very competitive anyway, and so they can be pretty cruel to each other at times.
If any of the girls themselves on the team were having an argument or a falling out in the change room before the game, I'd be willing to bet money that they would call each other far worse names than what Imus said. In fact, I bet what he said is pretty mild by comparison to what they may have called each other from time to time.

So if that's the case, then it wouldn't be what was said that is the real problem - it would just be the fact that a white guy said it. You know what? THAT is racism, right there.

It goes back to that whole idea that blacks can use the n~ word but not whites.

Thought Experiment #2
I bet if Imus had made a slightly racist-based comment that implied that they were very hot/sexy/attractive at the same time - there might not have been a complaint or any hurt feelings. He might be seen as a dirty old man perhaps, but the girls might have felt not too bad about it.

So reasoning our way through this - if a racist-based comment implying that they were hot/attractive/sexy would have been ok, but a racist-based comment that implies that they were ugly/unattractive is what they really find offensive, then, logically, the racism aspect of the comment is not the part that offends them. It's really the fact that he was saying they are ugly.

To a young woman - I can see where that would be especially hurtful. But that would mean then that this is not really about racism. It's really about this silly old fart calling these girls ugly. On that level, that is unkind, and shameful, but probably not worth all the grandstanding and ruckus and dropping his show, firing him despite about 30 or 40 sincere apologizies.

Thought Experiment #3
Why do you suppose CBS and MSNBC, and the 7 sponsor companies dropped Imus right away and made public statements about doing it? Do you think it has to do with genuine outrage at Imus's "nappy-headed ho" comment? Or do you suppose that it might just be because there are 39 million blacks in the country and they didn't want to alienate a huge marketplace like that?
In other words, do you think their response was driven by ethics, or by shrewd marketing-based profit calculations?

Is there any way we could tell? Well, perhaps there is.

If a CEO of a company that was sponsoring the Imus show was just appalled and insulted by Imus's comment, then he could just simply drop the show and say nothing to the press about it, right? After all, that happens all the time. Companies end business relationships all the time without notifying the press corp.

That being the case then, it follows that if these companies wanted to try to use this incident as a way to either avoid losing marketshare by negative association with Imus ~ or ~ even MORE cleverly - use this as a way to make a free statement on national television that SUPPORTS the black community - 39 million customers - then, if that were the case, I guess we would see public statements made by the companies on their websites and in the news talking about how they will not condone this behavior and how this goes against their core beliefs, etc. etc. etc. because then they would be looking to leverage the situation to their advantage.

So go look for yourself. What do you see? which is it? What happened? Therefore what was the motivation?

It's all in the arithmetic. And it's pretty simple arithmetic.

Y'know, the more I think about it, the more I begin to think that there is a whole set of people out there, including some black activists who make their living looking for opportunities like this to stand up and preach their message and sell their soap. And they do seem pretty righteously indignant, so people buy it. And when they do, they lose sight of the real issue - because the issue has been spun so many times people forgot what it was in the first place anymore.

Illegal Immigrants Add 18 Billion to Texas Revenue

Are undocumented workers good or bad for the economy of Texas? Are we better off if we arrest them and deport them?

There are a lot of people at the grass roots level who feel that they are a burden on the system here. They feel that they get free healthcare, free education, free police protection, fire protection, etc. and pay no taxes. They don't necessarily have precise concrete numbers to support that theory, but it seems logical.... ..... ......doesn't it?

This is a popular idea because there are politicians who promote such concepts for their own political purposes. They play upon the xenophobia of the average American. They make them feel like they are being inundated by a foreign force that is coming to take away their jobs, their lifestyle, their safety, their way of life. And since they feel threatened, they vote for someone to take steps to protect them from the perceived threat.

Bingo. There's the motivation.

Well, here is the truth. The numbers are in. The Texas State Comptroller's office has had a detailed look at the net effects of undocumented workers on the Texas economy and discovered that they actually CREATE 18 billion dollars of net revenue per year in the Texas economy. If they were all put on a bus and shipped back to Mexico, then the state would immediately suffer a loss of 18 billion dollars per year.

This was just released in a new report that is touted as the first of it's kind that has looked at the effects of undocumented workers on the budget of a state. No doubt, bringing these facts to light will cause some controversy.

These undocumented workers, primarily from Mexico, represent 6.3% of the workforce in the state. By removing them, we would cause labor shortages which would result in a rise in payroll costs. On some levels, higher salaries can be a boost to the economy - but only if the raises are due to increases in productivity. If the raises are caused by labor shortages, as would be the case here, then this has a negative effect on the economic competitiveness. The value of Texas exports would decline slightly as a result, thus negatively affecting us all.

Economists argue that one of the main factors that contributed to the economic success of America was the slave labor that we had hundreds of years ago. To have a large unpaid labor force to build infrastructure and produce saleable goods, either agriculture or manufactured, is a huge advantage to the economy of a country, especially when competing against other countries that do not have a free labor force.

Some might say that the undocumented workers of today represent the modern day equivalent of that slave-worker force. In those days, the workers were not paid anything, but they were housed, clothed, and fed, and given the basics of medical treatment to keep them healthy and productive. Now, the employers don't provide all those services to illegal immigrants, but they pay them a wage that equates to the cost of that most basic level of existence. Minimum wage in many cases. And less on occasion. But the net effect is the same. The economy advances. The middle and upper class citizens benefit from the profits of using the lower class to do the dirty jobs for the bare subsistence wages. In Texas, for example, housing is about 30% to 50% of similar homes in similar areas in the north where there are fewer illegal immigrants to fill construction jobs for low salaries.

Why do they come here to work so hard for such low wages? Well, many are happy just to be away from the staggering poverty of some countries south of here. The dangers of organized crime down there and other risks make life untenable for many people. There are many stories of the dangers of the trip from central America through Mexico to the US border. There was a horrifying account told on NPR radio recently about the gangs on the trains that throw people under the wheels if they don't hand over whatever money they have.

Most undocumented workers are content to live quietly here in the shadows of Americans. They are working at jobs most Americans won't do for wages that American's won't take and living in modest homes that most Americans would not live in. They cause no trouble. In fact, the LAST thing they want to do is to attract any attention to themselves. They are afraid of being deported. They are, after all, here illegally. And so they don't want anything as much as even a traffic ticket to attract the attention of the police or other authorities their way. So they try to live quietly and within the law.
Yet typically, undocumented workers are the scapegoats blamed for high crime rates, or overcrowded schools or just about every other social problem you can think of.
And yet in a recent UC Irvine study led by sociology Professor Ruben Rumbaut, it was found that 3.5% of American-born men ages 18 to 39 wound up incarcerated, while only 0.7% of foreign-born men of the same ages did. So, statistically, Americans are 5 times more likely to commit crimes than immigrants.

As for paying taxes, not all the undocumented workers have no papers. Most of them do in fact have papers. These are usually fake credentials that allow them to be employed. But since there is paperwork for employment, then the income taxes are subtracted at source just like they do for anyone else that earns money through employment. Also, since they live here, everything they buy here to live is taxable through sales taxes, and if they own a house, they pay property taxes as well, or if they rent, then the rent they pay has the property taxes factored into it. So, counter to what many people may think, they DO in fact pay taxes.

Without the benefits of a detailed analysis as was done by the Texas Comptroller's office, still, national economists have estimated that total national economic growth would be a half a point to two full points lower without immigrant workers.

Bernard Baumohl, executive director of the Economic Outlook Group, a research group in Princeton Junction, N.J. says "Immigration is actually critical, it allows the U.S. economy to grow more rapidly without higher inflation pressures."

Besides the restaurant, hospitality, and agricultural industries, another major industry that benefits from the lower cost labor of these undocumented immigrants is the construction industry. And this time, it was the construction industry and the housing boom that comprised 70% of the recovery from the most recent economic recession.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 22 percent of construction workers are foreign born, with 2.4 million immigrants working in the sector, the largest source of jobs for immigrant labor. Jerry Howard, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders, estimates that 25 to 30 percent of those working in resident construction are immigrants. Of these however, it is difficult to know exactly how many are here legally since many of them do show paperwork, but they may not be legal papers.

But Howard warns, "You take 30 percent of the labor out of any sector and you're going to have serious impact. The costs would go up and it would suppress demand to some extent because of the higher costs."

Howard points out that in northern regions of the country, such as Buffalo, N.Y., very few construction workers are foreign born, however in California, Texas and other places, immigrants may be as much as half of the workers on the average construction sites. And he added that it would be hard to replace certain skills such as stone masonry for example.

Then we also have to take into account the fact that not only are these workers building the homes, but they are also helping to sustain the market by buying them. Granted, they may be buying the lower-priced homes, because most of them cannot afford to buy the homes they work on, but it all helps the economy. And when they eat they buy their food from American grocery stores and American restaurants. They are consumers themselves in this economy, and so although some of them might try to send a few dollars home to help support their families back in the old country, most of their meager wages are taken up just trying to survive here and so it filters right back into the local economies where they live.

So don't be fooled by the rhetoric of those who are prejudiced, or simply misinformed. The undocumented workers provide a valuable service for a very modest cost. Granted, they represent a social factor that needs work. We need to provide adequate medical care to them so that they don't bring untreated disease here, and poverty creates economic necessity that does drive some crimes of need, and so we need law enforcement, and also, we do need to provide education to their children so that they have other options to support themselves besides joining a gang. So we have to share a little of the existing infrastructure of this society. But overall, our country would be a much less comfortable place to live if they were all to suddenly disappear tomorrow. If they suddenly left, we would have no one to cook the meals, make the beds, pick the crops, build the houses, AND in Texas alone, we'd be 18 billion dollars poorer every year.

Of course, that's just my opinion - I could be wrong. What do YOU think about it?

Here are some articles on the subject:
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/69970/Report_Illegal_Immigrants_18_billion_boost_to_Texas
http://media.www.dailytitan.com/media/storage/paper861/news/2007/03/12/Opinion/Illegal.Immigrants.Unfairly.Blamed.In.Society-2772452.shtml
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/01/news/economy/immigration_economy/index.htm
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/052099/ins20.jpg&imgrefurl=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/ins20.shtml&h=142&w=200&sz=9&hl=en&start=11&tbnid=hSaKoKGEeYvUiM:&tbnh=74&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dimmigrant%2Bconstruction%2Bworker%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Thomas Dolby Plays ....The Cafeteria

Thomas Dolby came to the cafeteria at work the other day.
That's right. Thomas Dolby, the British pop star from the 1980's. He's the one that had the smash hit, "She Blinded Me With Science" in 1982.

I went down to watch. It was not what I was expecting, actually. I was expecting a performance, and it was a presentation. A powerpoint style presentation while he talked about his history and how technology and the music industry has changed in the past 30 years and some of the ramifications of those changes. Then he did perform 2 tunes afterward.

He told a fascinating story about how his song became a hit and one extraordinary event that happened just afterward. Those were the very early days of MTV and he said he had an idea that doing a video might be a back door into getting into the music industry and getting a song on the radio. Good forward thinking at the time! His record label gave him a ridiculously small amount of money to do the video. One day shooting, and no producer or director. He said that was fine, he'd do it himself. He literally wrote the tune 3 days before the shoot to match the title he'd already come up with.
Then, a few weeks later while he was recording his next album in Brussels, he got a call saying that his video and single were big in the US, and he needed to get on a plane immediately. He has just contracted mono and felt like crap. He was sweating all the way there on the plane. When he arrived, they had a fleet of limos come and pick him up at the airport. People were coming up to him and saying things like, "Hi, I'm Larry - I discovered you". Then they wanted to take him directly to some big party, and he said he had to meet a friend instead, so they handed him a phone and said sure. He really just wanted to get away from them, so he made that excuse up - but he only had one phone number in LA. It was Michael Jackson's.
They had met while recording in adjacent studios in London, and Jackson said to come visit him if he ever was in LA. Thomas called him from the car and Jackson said to come over, and so the whole fleet of limos showed up at Jackson's mansion. Then the gates opened and they went up to the house, but he was embarrassed about bringing this whole group there, and so he got out and told the rest of the entourage to wait out there while he walked up to the mansion in the pouring rain.

He knocked on the door, was let in and brought to a huge majestic room and Michael Jackson sat there on a big throne and they talked about music and recording techniques, etc. Then he started seeing little eyes appearing through the stairway spindles on the second floor looking out at him. Then there was a huge flash and suddenly the "She Blinded Me With Science" video came blasting out and showing on a giant screen there, and all the little kids came out in their PJ's and slippers and started dancing, and playing with little remote control cars on the floor around them while they talked about music. He said they were just kids from Jackson's neighborhood whose parents let them come over to play in Jackson's mansion.

Bizarre. He said it didn't make him think Jackson was sick or deranged - just really eccentric.

So Dolby talked about that and other adventures, and the past, present , and future of the music industry. And how his company had grown and developed the ringtone playing software engine for cell phones, and how he had 120 employees working there, etc. and how they switched from PC's to cell phone/wireless technology, and the cultural shift that implied. He talked about going to visit Nokia in Helsinki, Finland to make the deal with them. At the time, they owned 40% of the world cell phone market, etc.

He was actually quite personable, friendly, witty, professional, gracious and reasonably humble - well, for a former star. Also, he spoke well. More like a corporate presenter accustomed to giving presentations, rather than a fish out of water musician talking to a group of people he didn't understand. He was very adept in both worlds, it seemed.

THEN he actually played and sang 2 tunes. The second one was She Blinded Me With Science. He had just three devices on the desk in front of him. An m-audio sampler player pad unit, a small synth about 12 inches square and 2 inches thick, and a Mac notebook computer. Then they had the Mac screen showing up on the big screen so we could all see what he was seeing. That was his whole rig. That and a microphone and it all just plugged into the tiny portable PA system.

He was using Pro Logic software on the Mac, which is not much like Pro Tools. It's not so much a recording software as it is a MIDI performance software that allows loops and multi-tracking. So he plays a drum beat, then starts it looping, then adds a snare loop layered on top. Then adds the bass notes, then they are looping too. Then he lays down several synth pieces. They all multitrack and just keep repeating. It's actually quite easy to do. There is a little less demanding musicianship doing it like this. It seems more technical than musical. He is just layering the tiniest of musical snippets and looping on multitrack. It does keep him busy when he also sings and then throws in the odd sampled voices and weird sounds. But it is definitely 80's pop electronica.

The music was interesting and had a good danceable beat, but it doesn't really connect to me, personally. It seems to be all about using the technology, and it's very sterile - more like playing an elaborate drum machine. Actually, it's pretty much exactly like playing my Roland MC-505. Which is essentially a DJ music machine. It has 720 sound patterns and each one has 16 tracks of stuff you can add in or take out plus you can add in your own snippets and sounds on the tiny keyboard on there. In fact, you can compose entire songs with all the tracks in any one of about 1400 different instrument sounds. It's interesting, and it's the stuff they play in dance clubs in most countries around the world, but to me it's not really true art.
It doesn't express emotional content. It seems empty of any meaning. But that is endemic to that genre. For me the whole electronica soundscape is about technology and sometimes skill, but little emotion, little art or meaning. But he was good at it and it was entertaining for a couple of songs, to be sure.

It was a cool 90 minute presentation. He took questions at the end. There were 4. One was from me, and that was the one he spent the most time answering.

I mentioned that in the old days of "Music Industry 1.0", besides the record labels taking all the money and taking the ownership rights for the music, and besides all the bad things they did to cheat artists, the one good thing they did was to invest in marketing the artist and built a public image for them. In other words - they advertised and marketed the artist to sell the records. I asked him about how marketing/advertising is done for new bands now that the old model of record labels who pushed an artist and built them up as a name brand, etc. is over. With the proliferation of cheap recording equipment around the world, now there are literally millions of new artists out there with songs they want to have heard. How does a new artist make it through that kind of obstacle course to become well-known now?

He basically said in a rambling 10 minute round-about answer that he was lucky that he already had a name that was famous and sold records that was built up for him in the old marketplace. And of course, he can now leverage that name to sell CDs on his own.
But he also said that the new music industry is done differently now. He calls this "Music Industry 2.0". Now we have MySpace, YouTube, CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon, etc. And he pointed out that it's still difficult to get on the front page of iTunes. He talked about creating a buzz with your friends and building lists of fans and managing that list yourself, and inviting them to concerts you play and advising them when you release new songs, etc. Also he said you basically have to invest the money in online advertising, but be careful where you invest, because advertising can blow your budget really quick.

No kidding.

Obviously there were a lot of things he said in 90 minutes that I couldn't squeeze into this brief synopsis.

It did make me think that I need to get some of my tunes on iTunes. Not all 112 - but maybe just 40 or 50 or so.....

Also, CD-Baby is something I'd seen before and thought I ought to get signed up for.

There is already a music video for one of my tunes on YouTube. Produced by Joe Caneen, a film producer from California. It's about the day in the life of a big rig trucker. There is no dialog. It's just scenes from morning till night all across America. From the professional trucker's perspective, and it has one of my tunes as the soundtrack. The tune is, "The Road Not Taken". He really did an expert job of matching the scenes to the music. There is a link to it on my music website in the sample videos page. It doesn't have especially fancy guitar work on it though - this was the very first thing I played and recorded after having put down the guitar completely for 10 years. I was pretty rusty. So if you watch that video, please don't think I'm playing my best or anything. It is the guitar equivalent of singing a song when you first wake up...from a 10 year coma!

As for MySpace, I've been thinking about that too. Guitar Player Magazine has a programme where guitarists send in their Myspace pages with their sample tunes, and the editor at GP listens, picks a few he likes, then puts them in the magazine each month.
But I have to pick one tune that has some flashy guitar - and it's hard to pick one. They are all so different. Whatever you pick, you get labelled as. If I pick a Latin style tune, suddenly, I'm a Latin player. If I sent them an 80's style tune, suddenly, I'm a classic rock long haired dude. If I send him a prog-rock tune, suddenly I'm that. If I send him a blues tune, then I'm called a blues guitarist. I have a bunch of Jazz tunes as well, and funk, and pop, and acoustic tunes, and......whatever he hears first becomes the brand that is stamped on my forehead. People are so quick to label you.

Maybe I need to send him 10 tunes of 10 totally different types and force them to listen to them all before they decide how they are going to label and limit me!

Wal-Mart? Now THAT's something I had not considered before. But I understand they are a huge music retailer now...

Maybe I'll just give them a call, right? Yeah. That's what I'll do. I'm sure they'll be happy to hear from me! In fact, they're probably upset that I haven't called already! They're wondering if they've upset me or offended me in some way, probably. I'd better call them right away and let them off the hook.
Of course, they'll probably want exclusive worldwide distribution rights with first-call options on future releases, so I'll have to consult my international legal team on that issue. But hey - if they can push enough units through the channel and capture the market segment, we can talk.... (LOL - I crack me up..)

Actually - we (VSP) do have some more live performances coming up. An MS fundraising event in Cleburne, TX on April 21st, and maybe another similar event at The Ft. Worth Stockyards a week later. That one is televised. Also, two University of Chicago Alumni events coming up, plus a corporate gig in San Antonio, plus a Music Festival in Lewisville in June. I'm trying to get the new drummer up to speed and solid before I really start to push the pedal down on getting us places to play.

Here's something funny - I've had some trouble getting and keeping a drummer. We joke that it's like Spinal Tap, where their drummers kept dying on them. Well, this drummer is the 4th so far. And he's been having troubles with moving and not having a phone and not showing up for a couple of weeks. If he doesn't show up Tuesday night, that will be 4 weeks without word. I think then it might be time to give up on him and bring on Drummer #5. I have another Drummer, Aaron, who is anxious to get a chance to play with us.

I can just see a band picture with the other 5 of us standing together with shovels beside four freshly dug and filled holes representing the four previous drummers.... Here lies Mike, Jason, Scott, and Matt.....
I can just see Aaron standing there with a really worried look on his face. Perfect!

Death's Purpose

Yesterday was the first year anniversary of the death of a friend of mine. She was 45 years old at the time. She had just moved from Ansonia, Connecticut to Austin, Texas and was starting a new life. She had left her marriage and was prepared to start out on her own.
Through the kindness of another friend who was in the position to help her get down there and get started, she had just landed an apartment, a vehicle to drive, and she was starting work for the first time in years. March 16th was her first day on the new job as a pastry chef, however, it was a temporary arrangement for her because she really wanted to work in a bookstore or a library because she loved reading books.

She had read thousands of books and remembered them all in detail. She had an awesome memory and a terrific sense of humor. Also she was a writer and a very talented poet. She liked posting to her blogs. In fact, although the actual time and date of her death were uncertain because she was found a few days later, I have to assume it was the 16th, because it makes sense that she would have posted something about her first day at her new job as soon as she was home and had rested.

She was type II diabetic at a serious degree, and I assume that was the cause. Her sister said that she passed quietly in her sleep. Somehow that seemed appropriate for her because she spent so much time in her dream world. Her writings, her dreams, her poetry, all her friends were online friends. And most of all her living was done during the night. A time of dreams.

Thinking about her passing has made me think about death itself.

Death has a purpose, doesn't it?

It makes us want to enjoy every sandwich. It makes us try to accomplish what we can while we can. It makes us want to make a difference - to make our little visit here count in some way.

If we had all of time to accomplish our goals here, then many of us would procrastinate forever. There would always be time to do it later. Ironically - one of our goals while here is to learn that! So we need the clock to teach us to move forward. To get things done.

I want to live and behave in such a way that everyone who I ever meet, even for just a few moments, will have something memorable and useful and positive from that brief encounter. I would like to leave my imprint on everyone's life I touch. Not just for notoriety - but rather for the benefit to them. Every time I meet a person, it's an opportunity to help them in some way. I don't want to waste the opportunity. It may not always be practical or possible, but I try. Why not?

Sometimes, I just share a joke and a smile. Or, maybe something I said may have a more profound effect and maybe prevents a suicide. Sometimes I can solve a complicated technical problem or maybe give a new insight or creative new perspective to someone to help them in their path. The other day I saw a teenage girl trying to change a flat tire, and she was dressed in her good clothes, and her dad was trying to talk her through it over the phone. I was at lunch and I had the opportunity to stop and change the tire for her. It was a small thing for me, but it was a big thing for her. Sometimes I only bring a smile to a tiny little girls face by doing a little trick to amuse her. All these things are well worth my time.

Also, I certainly don't want to get to the end of my time here and then find that all I had done was to work to pay the bills every month and watch television every night for decade after decade. I don't want to pass on and leave nothing behind. So I write and record music, I write books and blog articles, I struggle to create some sort of legacy. Maybe it is a conceit to think my efforts may be worth anyone's notice, but then maybe not. I don't know - I only know that I should try my best.

Some people say they will go kicking and screaming into the night, resisting death until the last possible second. But not me. I do not fear death. I know that it is not the end, it is merely a change of state. I know that I will continue on in a new form. Still, it makes sense to do as much in life as I can while I am here.

When my time comes, I will go quietly and peacefully into that new adventure, because I accept that the universe is in balance and I do not presume to know better. All is as it needs to be.

The Secret

At the prompting of both my brothers and father, I ordered The Secret. It’s available in both book and DVD form. Since my time is short these days, I chose the DVD version.

What is it? Well, essentially, it’s a self-help approach not dissimilar to that which a lot of self-help/inspirational/ success gurus preach. It is presented as a message discovered thousands of years ago, buried, re-discovered, used by many of the great achievers of history from Albert Einstein, to Winston Churchill, to Henry Ford, to many others. Then it's now here, being presented in this DVD in different ways by a number of experts. Some of the experts are people like Bob Proctor, who I have seen give motivational seminars for years. Other experts are nuclear particle physicists, physicians, philosophers, authors, etc. The author of Chicken Soup For the Soul is there. Wealthy people who have been successful.

“The Secret” is something they call “the power of attraction”. The fundamental concept is that when you want something and think about it and visualize it, you attract it to you. In fact, whether it’s good or bad for you – whatever you think about, you attract to you. So you must be careful how you focus your thoughts. Be sure to focus on GOOD things. Things you want. Then ignore and surrender your fears to the darkness. It is very similar to “The Power of Positive Thinking”, and “The Power of Intention”, and it is exactly the same thing as the “10th insight into life” in the Celestine Prophesies. Has this ground been covered before? Yes. Does that make this worthless? No.

This is a good refresher on the concept, and I found that when I started the DVD I was tired and already in bed ready to go to sleep. But after I’d watched it, I felt energized and could stay up several more hours and do more things. It’s exciting to think this may be true on the level that they say it is.

They say that when you deliberately say you want something specific, and you visualize clearly yourself getting that thing, your brain sends out an “order” into the universe, and the universe will fill the order. If you are always thinking bad, negative things, then those bad negative things will happen to you. If you think good, positive things, then that is what will happen to you. What you think, you become. Your thoughts manifest themselves into reality. That is exactly the same as the 10th insight.

I interpret this on two levels. The Twilight Zone level, and the pragmatic level. On the pragmatic level, I can certainly see how this works, simply because when you envision a particular goal long enough and hard enough, it shapes your thinking, and that directs your actions to happen in the exact right steps to achieve that goal. In other words, we end up where we steer ourselves. And if we are keeping our eye on a specific target, then we are likely to make all the little decisions to get us there. If the goal is to lose 50 lbs of body weight, for instance, then by living that vision every day, you might subconsciously start to act in a way that is consistent with being 50 lbs lighter, such as exercising more and eating less, and eating less fattening foods. When you think of yourself as thin, you might carry subliminal messages in your brain that tell you, “A thin person like me doesn’t like to eat hamburgers and french fries. We like to eat salads and vegetables. And we are not hungry all the time, like fat people. We are satisfied with smaller portions” This enhanced mental self-image would eventually manifest itself in reality.

But The Secret takes it a step further. They actually propose and present the “Twilight Zone” level explanation. And that is that it is our brainwaves themselves that actually alter the reality around us to make it what we ask for. This theory is based upon the premise that the whole universe is made of patterns of energy. This is, in fact, true. We are a pool of energy literally swimming in a sea of energy around us. And when we think, we actually produce energy, and that thought energy goes out into the universe of energy around us and effectively changes the environment.

At first thought, this seems very unlikely, because we don’t understand the mechanism. It doesn’t seem logical according to the cause and effect relationships we are familiar with. But I think we have to allow and examine the empirical evidence that supports the theory. It does seem to work. People have claimed this for centuries. I have known people for whom this has worked. So, somehow, we are left with a predictable result but an unknown mechanism. As Bob Proctor says, most of us don’t really understand how electricity works – but that doesn’t stop us from using it every day.

I am excited at the prospect of it working, but I'm also skeptical. There are logical non-sequiturs here. What if two men want the same woman? What if two women want the same man? Here's a bizarre notion - What if there is a woman reading this who suddenly decides that she wants me ? What happens? Do I suddenly wonder why I'm driving to the airport for no obvious reason and booking myself a flight to some city that I had no reason to be in? How does that work? What about when one person wants something from another person? Do they always get it regardless of what the other person wants?? Or even with things, inanimate objects - what if two people want the same house? What if EVERYBODY wants to be rich? Is there enough for EVERYBODY to get all they want? The authors say yes. The assure us that the universe is filled with effortless abundance.

In the end, I am left with the logical conclusion that it doesn’t hurt to try. The potential gains are so huge, and the downside is so small – why not? So I will do it. And I will not limit myself to only one single goal. I have several. They are all part of a vision for my life.

There are several techniques to allow you to fine tune your process and avoid some pitfalls, it would be worth it for you to go ahead and buy the DVD or the book. Use it. Learn it. I plan to go back and watch mine again once in a while when I need a booster shot.

They Always Report The BAD News...

This morning on the news I heard that Comerica Bank is relocating their headquarters from Detroit to Dallas to be closer to their market.

The entire focus of the newsitem was on the fact that they were leaving Detroit. They talked about how the sports stadium there is called the Comerica Center, and they talked about how they sponsored sports teams and were a part of the "community" in Detroit, and how their leaving will create a hole there, etc.

But I thought about how this news was GOOD news for Dallas. It is a large financial institution coming to town. They bring jobs to the Metroplex here, they will spend money locally, the economy is strengthened, and this is all good news for Dallas.

So as I lay there listening to the story it struck me that every time a news reporter covers a story, they ALWAYS gravitate to the negative side to it, in order to report the bad news only - even if, as in this case, there is good news as well.

I guess they feel that "news" is really all about reporting BAD news.

Recently, I watched the movie "Bowling for Columbine" by Michael Moore. In the aftermath of the tragedy at Columbine High School, Moore did this documentary film about violence in America.

He notes how in Germany, they had about 160 people killed by guns in the previous year. France and England were about the same. Canada had I think 69 deaths. Japan had 39 deaths from firearms. The United States had over 11,700 deaths by firearm that same year.

At first, I thought it was going to be an indictment against American culture because of the fact that we have so many guns in circulation. I especially thought this when he went to a bank in his home town of Flint Michigan because they were giving out guns to people for opening an account there. He opened an account and then proceeded to browse through the catalog selecting his weapon of choice. The teller said they have over 500 guns in the vault. As he turned to walk out with his new firearm, he made a parting comment about the questionable wisdom of passing out guns in a bank.

he also went to visit Charleton Heston to ask him questions about the NRA and some of the decisions they've made such as hosting an NRA rally in Littleton Colorado within a few days after the Colombine masacre, and hosting another gun rally in Flint Michigan the very day after a 6 year old boy brought a handgun to first grade one day and shot a 6 year old girl to death.

Also, in the news lately was a story about how a well-known avid outdoorsman writer who has a TV show and regular column about hunting etc., has just lost his job and career and support simply because he suggested that assault rifles were probably not appropriate as hunting guns. The NRA jumped on him with both feet and he is now gone. His TV show cancelled, his sponsors removed and publicly distanced, his articles cancelled, his career over.

Due to the gun-friendly climate in this country, and the Columbine tragedy, and because of the death statistics, I thought Moore was trying to make a point about guns being the cause of the high violence and deaths. And frankly, I think that is what he probably INTENDED to make the film about. But it didn't quite work out that way.

During the course of the film, he went to Canada and found that Canada's 10 million households actually own 7 million guns. So Canadians have plenty of guns. But they don't have the violence or the crime rates that we have here. The US has 10 times the population of Canada, but it has almost 200 times the number of gun-related deaths.

A number of people he interviewed on the street thought it was the history of violence, but Moore pointed to the massive violent history of Germany, and of England who basically conquered and ran most of the free world for 200 years. Yet they also were nowhere near the same violent death rate of America.

Is it movies or video games? Nope. Canadians see all the same movies and play all the same video games as Americans.

Finally, it seemed to come down to the evening news here. Specifically, it came down to fear-mongering. Moore seemed to discover that what was really causing this violence is the fact that our news scares the crap out of us every day. It makes us fear everyone and everything. It makes us arm ourselves against everyone else.
It makes us distrust our neighbors. He points out (with incredulity) how people in Canada don't lock their doors. He interviewed people everywhere in Canada and they said they didn't lock their doors. So he went up a few streets to see for himself if it was true. He just walked right up to people's doors and opened them to see, and sure enough - they were all unlocked.

So there seemed to be a general pervasive feeling of trust and comfort there.

Then he tried to draw the connection of how generating fear causes people to buy material goods. Guns, ammunition, survival things, food, etc. people stockpile when they are afraid. It's interesting. I don't know if we can really draw a straight line between the gun manufacturers and the news producers trying to scare people into buying more guns, though. That seems a bit far-fetched.

But somehow, the culture of our news has been skewed toward scaring people. That much is clear. It's the reasons behind it that are a bit foggy...

And the news producers have become EXPERTS at frightening people. Have you ever noticed the news teasers they have during the afternoon, trying to get you to watch the evening news?

"What your child's teacher may be doing to your child without your knowledge!. News at 6!"

"What you don't know about your favorite restaurant might kill you!!! News at 7"

"The hidden danger recently discovered in your water supply, and how you can protect your family!!! News at 7"

"The internet friend your child has, just MIGHT be this local pedophile!!! News at 11"

"Do you have a late model GM or FORD car? Find out tonight why your wheel might just fall off if you take a left turn at the wrong speed, and how to tell if your car is one of the ones affected!!!"

"Terrorists have infiltrated the Metroplex!! Film at 11!!"

It's all about shock value. It's all about generating fear. Ironically - that is exactly what the terrorists themselves try to do. They hope to create anarchy by instilling fear uncertainty and doubt. But these people use fear to get your undivided attention. So they can sell advertising time.

People are rivetted to their TV sets when they are frightened. That makes them watch all the comercials because they don't want to miss that important fact that got them there in the first place. The teaser that hooked them in. And while they are fixated on the screen, the advertisers blast their psychologically designed adds directly into their subconscious. Later, the hypnotized viewer doesn;t even realize WHY he turns into every store in the mall to buy something.

I know a woman who used to produce the news for one of the 4 major network stations in St. Louis. They told her how to sell the news, and how to target market it for specific demographics, and ignore the news that was not compatible with the messages the sponsors wanted and how to silently endorse the sponsors' products, or at least their principles, etc.
She got so sick of the way they forced her to produce and package the news and the manipulations of the news and the public that she finally just quit and went and took a producer's job with the Public Broadcasting TV network station there. She is MUCH happier now.

That Girl In The Window

“Hey baby, when do you get off work?”….

A 39 yr old Detroit man named Ronald Dotson was sentenced to 18 months to 30 years because he was found in the alley with a couple of mannequins he had dressed up in lingerie.
Ronald has a thing for mannequins and so when he sees one in a window display, he can’t help himself, and he breaks the window and steals the mannequin and takes her away to do whatever nasty things he does with them.
Well, they are not anatomically correct, so I don’t think he can do THAT much really.

He told the judge “I’ve never been able to take care of myself.”

Ahhhhhh. Now I see. I’m thinking that it’s not about the mannequins. It’s about getting off the freezing cold streets of Detroit in the wintertime. For the destitute poor, jail is far preferable to the street when it’s cold and snowing. I suppose he has just found a way to get picked up and put in jail without hurting anyone. He gets a warm room, a bed, a toilet, and shelter from the storm.

I wonder how much of a factor this is in contributing to the overcrowding of our jail systems across the country. California is on the verge of letting thousands of criminals go free simply because they don’t have the facilities to house them, and they were sued when they tried to send the overflow prisoners to Arizona.

Tomb Raiders - The Bones of Jesus

Simcha Jacobovici is an archeologist/TV Director who has been compared to Indiana Jones by those who wish to discredit him. But yet that may be somewhat appropriate considering that his big real-life adventure is about to be released as a documentary film and the movie is produced by none-other than James Cameron, of Titanic fame.
This time though, it’s not about some legendary Shankara Stones, or the Holy Grail, or the Ark of the Covenant. This time, it’s about the actual skeletal remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.

The ancient city of Jerusalem is literally built on top of thousands of years of burial plots. In 1980, during a boom period of construction, in a part of Jerusalem called East Talpiot, there in the lot beside the home of Tova Bracha, they uncovered an ancient first century tomb. And in the tomb was the ossuary that contained the boxes where family members placed the bones of their deceased loved ones. It is very common to have ossuaries from that period in Jerusalem. But this one is special.
The names on the boxes actually say “Jesus, son of Joseph; Maria; Mariamene; Matthew; Judas, son of Jesus”; and “Jose” (a diminutive of Joseph) ” Also, there is a related box with the name “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”.

Obviously, this is highly controversial. There are those who will refuse to believe that the bones of Jesus of Nazareth could ever be found on the Earthly realm, because, since his body was not found in the tomb the soldiers put him after his crucifixion death, they assume that he was bodily, physically taken up to heaven. That’s what they have believed for 2,000 years. They argue that Jesus is a very common name from that period, as is Maria (Mary), and James, and Matthew, and Joseph. They also argue that Jesus' family was probably too poor to have a family grave. Also, they believe that Jesus' mother Mary was buried in Ephesus, near Kusadasi, Turkey.

But there are the others who have done some research and they are equally convinced that this is, in fact, the “Holy Family” of Jesus of Nazareth. For one thing, to them the site seems a perfectly reasonable setting for a family of their stature to inter their deceased within. Also, it somehow seems much more believable to them that the family came and took his body back in the middle of the night from the tomb the soldiers put him in, rather than accept the notion that he rose bodily to Heaven.

Thirdly, there are the names. Yes, they were not uncommon names for the period – but that exact combination is. A father named Joseph, a mother named Mary (Maria), a son named Jesus, brothers named Joseph (or Jose) and James (The Gospel of Mark says these were two of Jesus’ four brothers), - this combination is statistically very unlikely. In fact, a statistician from University of Toronto named Andrey Feuerverger, calculates that the odds are 600 to 1 in favor of this being the original family of Jesus Christ.

Further evidence in favor of this theory is that in recent years, biblical scholars have determined that Mary Magdalene’s real name was “Mariamene”, and that she was Jesus’ wife, and DNA evidence scraped from the bones shows that the bones of Jesus and Mariamene are not related, and yet they were buried together in a family ossuary, implying that they were a married couple. We can probably assume that DNA testing will continue to see if the bones of Jesus' son, Judas, contain similar DNA sequences to both Jesus and Mariamene.

Of course, there will be continued controversy over this, as there always is with subjects that touch upon the ingrained religious beliefs of many people.

I was there in Jerusalem in 1989, and I found it very interesting that the local Jews living there don’t seem to treat the history of Christ with any special reverence. To them, of course, he was a historical figure, but not a God as he is to Christians. As I walked the narrow streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, the tour guide pointed out the exact actual places that are the “Stations of the Cross” denoted in every Catholic Church I had ever been to as a child growing up. I was amazed, when she pointed to the impression of a hand on the wall at one of the stations and said this was the handprint of Jesus when he leaned against the wall for support while carrying his cross. The cement mixture was soft and his hand left a permanent imprint there. I wondered why, if this was true, it was not more publicized within the Christian Church. While I stood there staring incredulously, A few feet away, there was a table with people selling Elvis soaps and Jesus soaps. To them they are both the same thing, a famous figure from the past, whose image can sell cheap merchandise to stupid tourists. Except that Jesus was the local boy. Elvis was someone from far away. Other than serving as a tourism draw for Christians from around the world, Jesus of Nazareth is simply not that important a person to the Jews of Israel.

Imagine if the townspeople of a small rural town in Texas discovered a historical site nearby that was of great religious significance - to Muslims. It would be of similar relevance.

In a completely consistent manner, Tova Brachs shrugs, laughs and wonders if the value of her home will go up since she has such a famous neighbor. She says, “Maybe I can make a fortune selling trinkets to tourists”.

The film documentary “The Jesus Family Tomb”, produced by James Cameron, will be seen on the Discovery Channel in the week of March 7th.

Communism within Companies Within America

Has it ever occurred to you that, although we live in a democratic society with a free enterprise economy, for those of us who work in a large corporation, we actually operate in a communist society, with a communist-centrally planned economy? It's almost as if we are living in a bunch of little communist countries INSIDE one larger democratic free-enterprise country.

Most large corporations have several thousand employees. Some that I've worked in, have many tens of thousands of employees. These companies are like a microcosm of society itself. Like little countries within the larger country.

Within a large corporation, the CEO is like the communist dictator. He sits at the top of the food chain there and he was appointed, rather than voted into office. There was no general election. He did not campaign on a platform. He has all the power in that system. He has ultimate decision-making ability over all projects, over all aspects of the company, and over all the people. He determines what the rules are, and how to enforce them, and what the penalties are for people if they do not obey them. He decides whether or not they go to war with another company. He decides what they produce and how much and how many. He decides how much and when to invest in the supporting infrastructure.

He sets up a top-down hierarchy of control, with those at the top having the most control and those toward the bottom having less control. The lowest level in this hierarchy is the worker level. This is where the production actually happens. They are the citizens in this system.
The citizens of this society have no decision-making capabilities about where they will sit, what kind of workspace, what their phone number will be, who they will work with, etc.

And from an income perspective, working for a corporation, you do not decide how much money you make. The boss and the rules decide. You are paid a fixed salary - just like a communist worker.

In a free-enterprise system, if you own a shoe store and wish to sell shoes to the public, you can decide what kind of shoes to offer and what prices to set for them. You can decide whether to open up your shop in the most expensive location and a large shop with extremely high rents, or you can open it up in a less expensive location and make it a small store. In each case, you decide whether you will sell the articles with the right profit margin and the right volume to justify the expense levels. You decide. It's a business decision, but you have the freedom to guess where and how much and what kind and how big or small, and how much to advertise and where and who to hire and when and how much to pay them, etc. You decide if and when you will take a vacation and how much time you can afford to take off without hurting your business. You have control over your fate and so you will either succeed or fail, but it will be based on the business decisions you made. You take the responsibility, and you live with the consequences, good or bad.

But in a corporate environment, you do not have any of those options as a worker. Only if you are higher up in the management hierarchy do you make those assessments - and then they are not decisions so much as recommendations to a yet higher authority. It is very hierarchical.

Also, the trade-offs for working in this corporate environment are similar to those of working in a communist country. In exchange for surrendering your freedoms and decision-making prerogatives, you receive a guaranteed salary regardless of the profitability of the company. You are given guaranteed vacation days and sick days, and you are provided with medical care, and old age pension, and other basics of life.
And in the opposite case, if you are an independent business owner, you have the trade-off of having to live with the insecurities of a completely unreliable income, and no guarantees, but on the other hand - you get to make all the decisions, that might affect these things.

I find it fascinating that, as a culture, we tend to praise freedom, and free enterprise and a democratic way of life, and we have traditionally felt that communism was evil and bad and inefficient and just doesn't work, and we must fight it everywhere. In fact, for decades, our soldiers fought to the death to prevent us from becoming communist, and to preserve our freedoms - and yet here we are on a daily basis living our lives in a completely communist environment. The free enterprise system is an illusion to those of us inside corporations, or working for the government. Government organizations work the same way, don't they? Large organizations, hierarchical, run by rules, no freedoms or decision-making at the lower levels. Your salary is dictated by the senior levels and by the rules and guidelines. There is no entrepreneurial aspect to your job or deciding your income, etc.

Some might argue that sales positions allow you to make a flexible income based on your own performance, but I think that is a fallacy. You still are hemmed in by the sales compensation plan. You still make what they decide you will make - it's just within a certain pre-defined flexible range is all. For example, you cannot decide that you can make more money if you simply lower the prices of your products and services in order to sell high volumes. Or to increase the prices to sell at a higher margin. You simply can't make those calls. That's another department, other people - and they have their rules and guidelines, and their own limitations.

Now please understand, I am not complaining about the terrible work conditions of working in a corporate environment or anything. It is not terrible at all, in fact. I am merely observing the strange philosophical dichotomy that it represents between Democracy and free-enterprise and Communism noting the facts of what we really have here. Once again - it's all about the trade-offs, isn't it?

Index of Articles by Val Serrie

Now the list of these articles has grown to 135 and so it’s becoming more difficult to find one you might be looking for just by scrolling down, so from time to time, I will post an index here to allow you to more quickly find something that might interest you. The topics are as widely varied as you might imagine. Remember that you can also click on any picture to enlarge it to see more detail.

Don’t Get Me Started – Val Serrie
135. Corporate Politics - Nasty Tactics
134. America - The "Bad-Guy" Hero Culture
133. An Angel Among Us
132. "Socialized Medicine"?
131. Ancient Technology Secrets
130. What Will Happen In Iraq - What We Need To Do
129. More...More...MORE!! We MUST HAVE MORE!!!!
128. How Polite Are You?
127. Great Songs
126. The Dirty Little Trade Secret
125. The War over Raising The Minimum Wage
124. Revolutionizing The Music Publishing Industry
123. Men or Women - Who Is Smarter?
122. Jay Greenberg - Boy Genius
121. Our Festival Gig
120. What People Believe
119. Getty Ready For The Show
118. The Art of Photography
117. The Secret To Corporate Selling
116. Air Guitar - A Rant
115. Born To Shop
114. Different Types of Intelligence
113. Politicians Should Know History
112. Healthcare is Sick!
111. Does God Exist?
110. Work For A Company? Or Work For Yourself?
109. Performing Live Music - Cover Songs or Original Music?
108. Fake Guitars, Fake iPods, and Other Counterfeits
107. The Libertarian Approach Thought Through
106. The Lost Art of Conversation
105. First Band Performance Getting Closer
104. Steven Colbert - A Brave Comic Wit
103. The Politics of Pretty
102. Do You Have Too Much Stuff?
101. Guilty Pleasures In Movies
100. Real Estate Scams
99. MTV Visits My House
98. Humphrey Bogart - To Have and Have Not
97. The Civil War In Iraq
96. The Freedom Cycle: From Chaos to Dictatorship and Back
95. Life and Leaving The Nest
94. Bringing People Up To Speed
93. Cars: Buying or Leasing? New or Pre-Owned?
92. Mini Concert
91. Hawaii
90. Star Trek Technology Today?
89. Memories of Arizona
88. The Show Party
87. In The Movies
86. It's Raining Aliens - Again??
85. Al DiMeola
84. The Gentle Fog
83. Guitar vs. Piano - A Comparison
82. The Dallas Guitar Festival
81. The Art of Archery
80. The Profound Silence at the Top of The World
79. A Better Democracy, Perhaps?
78. I'm Published!!
77. Money and Couples and Earning a Living
76. Education By Proxy
75. Extended Warranty Scams
74. Is Time Travel Possible?
73. The Cure for Cancer
72. The Obsolescence of College Degrees Over Time
71. A Different Perspective on Immigration
70. Writing Music - My Albums (10 CDs)
69. My Little Recording Studio
68. The Toothpaste Lesson
67. The Legend of 1900
66. Groundhog Day
65. Education, and the Decline of American Civilization
64. My Little Guitar Collection...
63. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Flame"
62. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Thunder"
61. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Cherry Blossom"
60. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Brazil"
59. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Monterrey"
58. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Ivory and Ebony"
57. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Songbird"
56. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Little Donny"
55. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Midnight Storm"
54. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "EJ Frankenstrat"
53. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Quicksilver"
52. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Lady In Red"
51. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Flash Gordon"
50. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "The Jetsons"
49. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Excalibur"
48. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "White Magic"
47. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Lightning"
46. GuitArt - The Guitar Calendar - "Ruby"
45. The Choreography Tree
44. A Flying Car - My Design
43. Christmas Lights - Streets on Fire
42. Truckstop Christmas in 1960
41. The Mystery of How The Pyramids Were Built
40. Naked Art
39. Overcoming Hate
38. Overcoming Terrorism
37. The Tablecloth
36. Yes... But Is It Really "Art"?
35. Dragons - Did they Actually Exist in the Past?
34. Intelligent Design - Supernatural Science?
33. The Ant and the Grasshopper - Canadian Version
32. Where Did The Bible Come From?
31. Creationism vs Intelligent Design vs Evolution + Big Bang Theory
30. Smart Children
29. Stratocasters - Mexican-made vs. American-made
28. The Nature of Magic ...
27. The Grocery Store - A Rant
26. America's Capacity For "Greatness"
25. The Space Program - America's Peak Era
24. iPOD - The Clever Marketing Guys at Apple
23. My Experience About Life and Death and Living Again
22. Thinking Skills to Allow Anyone to Solve Any Problem
21. Drive-in Theaters - An American Tradition
20. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator of Sherlock Holmes
19. William Shakespeare
18. Should a President be Qualified for the Job?
17. Picture of Val
16. Creative Music Writing Techniques
15. The Music Industry and the Quality of Music
14. Buying a Telescope
13. Should an Artist Please Themselves, or Please Their Audience?
12. Recording Studio Techniques
11. Where Do We Go From Here?
10. TENJEWBERRYMUDS
09. Happiness
08. You Might Be A Persnickety Fussbudget If…
07. The Dark Side
06. Americans in Prison
05. A Special Kind of Love
04. Artistic Authority
03. The Thief
02. Singer or Model?
01. Weather Modification

Corporate Politics - Nasty Tactics

Most of us have seen it at least, even if we haven't been immersed in it ourselves. I'm talking about the world of corporate politics. The power trips, the stonewalling, the tactics, the strategies, the character assassinations, the power plays, people taking credit they don’t deserve, and putting the blame for their own mistakes on others instead of themselves. The ruined careers, the wild chances, the phony suck-ups, the brown-nosers. The great pretenders, the hidden budgets, the hidden perks, favoritism, all the saints and sinners.

In every major company, there are always some who are trying to build their own little fiefdoms. And there are those who love to criticize others. There are those who pretend to know things they don’t and there are those who happily assassinate the character of their rivals. There are always people trying to leverage their situation to improve their security, their power, their wealth, their popularity, and their success. There are all kinds of political animals out there.
Over the years, I have seen a lot of different tactics, so that, while I haven’t seen it all yet, I have seen enough to give me a reasonable understanding of the lay of the land.

Here is one example of a subtle trick: I remember one guy that I used to work with. His trick was to walk around and just ask people what they were working on and how things were going. He would do it harmlessly and conversationally, and people thought nothing of a little friendly conversation with “Stanley”. He seemed like a nice guy. But then what he would do is get into a meeting with your mutual, higher boss in your absence and starting talking about your area and reporting on your status, instead of allowing you to report on your own area.
Stanley would offer all the information that the big boss needed so that he didn’t need to talk to you. Then he would gradually assume the role of reporting for your area. The boss would come to ask Stanley about status on your area because he always seemed to know the answers – which seemingly puts him in a position over you. When he would explain things and the big boss would ask why something was the way it was, he would offer to go find out. Then Stanley would come back to you to find out, and before you know it – Stanley is your new de-facto boss, and it’s only a matter of time before it is made official.

But that is not a nasty trick, since all he did was insert himself into the reporting stream between you and your boss. At least he didn’t assassinate your character. But there are plenty of people who will glady do that, and there are plenty of ways to do it.
For example, there is a dirty tactic that I call, “30,000 foot bombing”. This is a form of character assassination that is done high-up, in meetings among people at the higher levels of a company. It might be coffee conversation while milling about waiting for an important quarterly results meeting to start. It’s usually casually said, but in high places. The person who wants to destroy his rival might say any one of the following comments about that rival.

1) “His project is completely out of control”
2) “He is NOT a team player.”
3) “He just doesn’t get it.”
4) “He isn’t able to see the big picture.”
5) “He needs constant supervision.”
6) “Everywhere he goes, he leaves behind a trail of mushroom clouds.”
7) “He runs every business into the ground.”
8 ) “He is just a small-time manager – he has no vision.”
9) “He is a loose cannon.”
10) “For God’s sake – don’t let him talk to the press.”
11) “How he manages to still survive when we’ve lost some perfectly GOOD people, I’ll never know.”
12) "I've tried helping him, but he is beyond help."
13) "I used to think he had a drinking problem, but now, I don't think so. That's just simply the way he is."
14) "He's probably doing the best he can manage."

These comments are deadly bombs and there is no real defense against them. Think about it. These are large-scale crushing accusations, for which the defense would have to be a string of details. But the details are not welcome or discussed in that context - in a meeting with executives. These are one-liner carpet bombs. How do you defend yourself if someone has said your project or your department “is out of control”? The only adequate defense would be to give a detailed status report on your project to show how well you know all your details. But in the executive suite, NO ONE wants to hear the details like that. They deal in high-level generalities. And in those high-level generalities, you cannot defend against these kinds of attacks. So – once the attack is made, it sticks. There is no way to exonerate yourself. All the person who is attacked can do is to attack back in similar fashion.
And so it becomes a battle to the death. But usually, people back away from the fight long before it escalates to that point. They reserve the attacks for the lower level up & comers to keep them from ever entering the rarified air of the executive suite. They sabotage their chances first, and that keeps them from getting to the point where they could potentially launch a counter-offensive.
Occasionally, two of the execs will gang up on a third though. They can decide between them how they will split up the conquered territory ahead of time, and then design a concerted tag-team attack. It’s deadly.

There are so many ways they could accomplish it. They can use any of the comments listed above, and each person reinforces the other. When the CEO is hearing it from two different sources, it no longer seems personal – now it seems like a problem to be dealt with. Each one shows “scars” in their organization from where they had to deal with the target person’s organization.
They may say things such as, "All of our projects are doing very well and tracking according to schedule – EXCEPT of course the ones where we have to engage Ted’s organization. Naturally, we can’t expect to get good traction there. We always have trouble once we engage with his teams. Most of his projects are out of control and behind schedule. They can’t respond in time, and that slows us down. So, to be realistic, any projects where our teams have to interact with his teams, we have to add an automatic schedule slide factor of about 30%. But in all other areas, we’re doing fine!”

They can combine these direct attacks – 30,000 ft bombs – with non-verbal assaults, which are the more subtle weapons that actually work quite quickly to marginalize a person and destroy their credibility.

These include tactics like rolling their eyes every time a certain person speaks in a meeting. Or they make facial expressions that look like a suppressed laugh. As if they are having a hard time not laughing right out loud at him. Or else they refuse to look at him when he speaks. Or talk over him. Or dismiss his results or his findings. Or they work the speaking rotation so the victim speaks last, and then just before the victim speaks, they standup as if to leave the meeting and say, “Well that’s a good update. I think we have some next steps to follow up on… thanks everybody!” And that forces the person to speak up and say he hadn’t spoken yet. That forces everyone to sit down again, so they are all put out.

Then there are situational things they can do. They can go to the big boss and convince him to give them a similar responsibility and then try to marginalize everything the victim does by simply looking at his next targeted activities and doing them first – thus making his work seem late and unnecessary. Or they can trump his data by reporting his results for him before he gets a chance to stand up and deliver them. Or sabotaging the other projects or other systems or people that are upstream from the victim’s project and making him wait for input – and therefore run late. There are a thousand ways to make someone look bad.

Eventually, the victim is discredited, discouraged, and either fired, or he quits on his own – leaving his responsibilities and projects free for the taking by his rivals. It’s a pretty cut-throat world out there.

The "Bad-Guy" Hero Culture.

Currently in the news are stories about how a Judge in Milan Italy is holding over 30 named CIA Agents responsible for kidnapping foreign nationals on Italian soil and taking them to other countries to be tortured and interrogated in our current war efforts. Ironically, we call it the War Against Terror, but we seem to use terror tactics ourselves at times.

Many people are suggesting that the current administration advocates a culture of lawlessness and deception and perhaps even arrogant disdain for the constitution and the law, and so that fosters this kind of behavior, however, this is not the first time we have done this. We, as a country, have done similar things many times in the past, it seems. I imagine that it was also pretty common during the cold war. This stuff wasn't invented in just the last 7 years. Though it does seem a lot more prevalent now than before.

This practice may be a part of why America is not well liked, nor trusted by much of the rest of the world. Agents and others within our government subvert the legal processes of our own constitution as well as everyone else's in order to further their partisan and personal interests. There is corruption, despite the words and beliefs to the contrary. These people probably think they are heros for "getting the job done despite the beaurocrats".

I think the real truth at the very core of this problem is that our culture respects and rewards the rebel/bad boy type. The criminal. The outlaw.

Is it just a coincidence that, in the old days, when the rest of the world admired America and Americans, we had movies where the heros were the good guys? In cowboy movies, they wore white hats, and the bad guys wore black hats. In gangster movies, they were the cops who caught the gangsters. In war movies, they were men of honor and sacrifice, and doing the right thing was the goal. The Lone Ranger, Zorro, Roy Rogers, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Superman, etc. True, they were simplified, mostly one-dimensional roles, but they were good, law-abiding, evil-fighting role models.

But over the past 50 years, that has all changed. Look at music for example. Rap music became popular. Have you listened to the lyrics of Rap music? It would be hard to think of a more racist, anti-social, or violent message. Rock music has taken a turn toward the dark side. Bands and songs about death and evil abound everywhere. There is an entire musical genre called "Death Metal". Just looking through a guitar catalog shows guitars with skulls and spikes that look more like weapons of evil than musical instruments. Some bands wear face masks and the most gruesome, evil-looking makeup you can imagine. Tattoos, body piercings, leather, studs, metal chains, spiked mohawks - even the look is as menacing as humanly possible.
Imagine a person from the 1930's or 1940's seeing these rock bands of today and hearing their music with all the loud screaming about death and dismemberment, and evil, violent messages. Imagine the culture shock for them to go from the America of the 1940's to this. Back then, when they looked forward to this period, they thought of this time as a dream. This would seem a nightmare to them now.

But honestly, I think that the music and fashion/look styles are more representative of where we have gone already, rather than being the cause. To see the real cause, I think we need to look at a more complex, sophisticated image machine. Hollywo