A SUGGESTION TO THE HOUSE AND SENATE

The Obama administration is already receiving criticism for not prosecuting the bad guys, GWB, Cheney and all the rest who violated the Constitution and broke all sorts of laws to make themselves felons. However, I strongly believe it would behoove our government to allow the investigators to get all the information to build a case but not bother our own legislative branch with the work of dealing with it. They have far more important business to pull the country out of the toilet into which Bush and company dropped it, before it gets flushed down by the rest of the world.

It is an American disgrace and we need to make amends to the world so that it will be clearly understood that not all Americans approved of the behaviors of our self-appointed leaders. The question of whether we should prosecute those who ordered torture has been raised. For some reason people seem to think that following orders is an excuse though we prosecuted others after WWII without regard to whether they were following orders. More importantly is whether the perpetrators should be prosecuted. While ignoring our Constitution certainly deserves more than a raised eyebrow by Justice, it would be more expedient to let the World Courts deal with all the violations made during the war.

While our 'news entertainers' spout off all their venom and criticism they are failing to see their own responsibility for ratings going down. Fox 'Noise', as Olbermann refers to the unfair and unbalanced channel, has apparently lost 1/3 of its viewers. It didn't even rate on the list a week or more ago. It is sad that the ignorance on some of those channels by the 'entertainers' (who no longer know they should be reporting what is happening rather than trying to force things to happen as Rush Limbaugh has always done with his lies)is allowing them to follow Bush right to oblivion. Those who think they are so good are talking themselves out of a job.

THINKING ABOUT THINKING: METACOGNITION

The other day I wrote about thinking about thinking. I hadn't previously thought much about my thinking and thought that thinking about my thinking might be rather interesting. The Latin speaking ancestors knew its importance, thus cogito ergo sum, followed by excreto ergo sum, proving there are lots of ways 'to be'.

After thinking about what I thought, I shifted to when I thuoght. I realize that I think ALL the time, awake and asleep, but I remember some of thoughts more than others. Then I began to puzzle about where my thoughts are getting their instructions as to what to keep and what to dump in the recycle bin. Who is the creature in my head saying, "Save this. Chuck that." That got scary!

I'm thought things I don't even know I ever thought about. I wonder what I think about myself that I'm not telling me. I always thought I liked myself. Could not liking myself be one of those thoughts that my brain keeper threw away?

Most of my thinking time is probably spent on thinking about the things I should be doing but don't seem to get done. That led to thinking about happy thinking, guilty thinking, angry thinking and all the rest of the emotions that find their way there. I think out many subsequently lost solutions during my time between wakefulness and sleep. Everything is so clear then; perfect solutions. I just can't remember what they were later. I remember finding a solution to a problem one night and was elated. I remembered the solution in the morning but have not been able to recall what the problem had been.

Thinking is a word often used in place of 'opinion' as in, 'I think you should.....'.
In grade school, the teachers would tell us to put our 'thinking caps on'. I never had one. Worse was when we were told, "Now you must remember this". I lived in terror that I would forget what I was supposed to remember because I had no control over what I forgot. I heard I needed metacognition. I checked out eBay but knowing was selling any. You can imagine my embarrassment when I learned it meant thinking about thinking. Then I'm always thinking of one thing when I should be thinking of something else. It's a good thing people can't read minds or my life might be full of less good health and opportunity if people actually knew what i was thinking much of the time!

I'LL BE BACK AFTER BREAKFAST

Sometimes it is sleep that comes in on little cat feet instead of the Chicago fog. Tonight is one of those nights. I'll be back in a bit.

PONZI SCHEMES

Wikipedia writes: "A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit. The term, "Ponzi scheme," is used primarily in the United States, while other English-speaking countries do not distinguish colloquially between this scheme and other pyramid schemes.[1" On the other hand, in today's world, the technique has been mastered by Madoff who seems to have gotten away with 49 billion since, even though there was a whistle blower for several years, the SEC ignored all facts.

While Ponzi didn't invent the pyramid scheme, he certainly learned to make it function well for himself as did many others until recently Bernie Madoff became world's champ and cruelly defrauded many of their life savings and retirement money. While he is certainly responsible for his own actions, it is as though we were saying, "Well, it is not the fault of the police that they didn't catch the bank robbers, they were on their coffee and donut break."




Most important was that the SEC was allowed to ignore the whistleblower. From the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald: "HARRY MARKOPOLOS, the private investigator who uncovered the Bernie Madoff scandal, came straight from central casting: geeky, too-big glasses and a prominent comb-over. When he spoke, it was in the vocabulary of a man who had watched a lot of detective movies."

While violence may have been less an issue during the Bush administration, terrorism in the form of the negligence we saw towards out citizens through poor health care, inferior education, lack of regulation, mismanagement of monies that will follow us for more than a couple of generations, all need to be viewed for the destruction we endured as a people in a country that should have been internally safer in more areas than bin Laden bombings. I have been little heard for years as I have repeated bin Laden's threat that he would ruin the American economy (which he succeeded in doing very well because we had a greedy government run by an arrogant, poorly prepared puppet who played at being President.

WHAT HOBBIES CAN DO FOR YOU

When I was a child on a farm with two very demanding and annoying older siblings there wasn't much opportunity to get away from them when I needed. I read a lot, drew pictures, but mostly the thing that calmed me down was playing the piano. Before I was able to take lessons (it being the depression and my parents believing money should only be spent for life necessities), I learned to read music by myself. My only music was a book of camp songs. I think I can hear Tenting Tonight every time there is silence around me (which is probably why I rarely have silence around me).

Growing up in a time that little girls had to do needlework, I embroidered stuff I carted around for years and never used...tea towels, hand towels, pillow cases, table cloths, runners to cover furniture...all manner of useless things. By the time I had a place of my own, I might have used them had it been ten or twenty years earlier and before I knew better. This industriousness morphed into learning to knit, needlepoint, and hook rugs, later. By now it was no longer relaxing, it was always for someone who demanded an afghan or a hooked, long haired dog for a grandchild, a cross stitched coverlet for a newborn or some such.

This stuff was done after TV became an outlet for my eyes and ears but not my hands. This era lasted watching TV a bit in the evening while doing some handwork, then when all the teen-agers musical cacophony was down for the night, I played the piano and sang, to settle my head for bed.

There was a phase of picture taking with SLR cameras, macro lenses, long lenses, wide lenses, and all the paraphernalia that went with them until digital cameras came in. At the same time, I had a series of video cameras, starting in 1979 that kept getting smaller and smaller, clearer and clearer, until today they are tiny and give a good picture. Odd, as I remember the first camera I had, which had to be held on a tripod that took up half my living room, was the start of another hobby...archiving people and events in my life.

Travel was never considered a hobby, it was just something we did. We took pictures, made slide shows together and set them to music, and it wasn't until then that I realized I was different than most of my friends who could sit quietly and enjoy themselves. I can only live a frenetic existence that went on to silversmithing, water colors and oil painting dabbling, doing calligraphy until the computer did it better, cooked gourmet meals for friends and relatives, and look back as I told myself, "Been there, done that, what's new?"

Back to the title: Hobbies can fill your life with distraction from the stress in your body until you get to a place where you learn to relieve stress in many other ways than frenetic activity. But, I think I am ahead of most of my readers...you have to be old to be there, to learn never to worry about anything over which you have no control, to be in a place in your life when your children are no longer your immediate responsibility and you can do pretty much (within financial reason) anything you wish, whenever you wish to do it. Interacting with people has always been one of my hobbies as well as my vocation. Knowing that, I realize that the longer I live, the more people I collect around me and the more stuff I will never get to neatly take care of before I leave this world. It may be the only passive-aggressive action left to me, to leave it all for my kids (with whom I had to fight for years to clean up after themselves) the, "At last, now you can clean up after me!" In kindness, I will leave them with a full nip collection of more than 500 nips so they can have a party as they heave my entire earthly load of hobby detritus into a dumpster.

HARD TO DEFINE WORD CONCEPTS

There are words in our daily use that people utter as though they know what they are talking about in a one-size-fits-all way. Love is one of those words. The reason no one can adequately define love is that there is no single definition. It is unique to everyone who says it; the lover, the parent, the friend, the sibling, the adoring fan, and many others. We love people, things that touch our senses, concepts, the light at the end of the tunnel, and so much more. There is an often used euphemism, 'making love', when people are engaged in pure animalistic behaviors. From childhood on we are told we must 'love' our Country. It is amazing that children grow up with any common understanding of the term. (The picture to the left is one of the Tarot cards.)

Old is another word which, standing alone, means little. When does a person feel old? Look old? Act old? Is it a physical feeling, an illusion, a pre-determined state, an identity, or a subjective label given to someone by a 'younger' person. To a toddler, their 20's year old parents are seen as old until they are senile and gone. The person who was born before you will always be seen as old(er). Is feeling old something that comes from within or is superimposed on you from outside? Ageism should be considered here as well. Clothes and other material things get old, worn out, and are often thrown out. Somethings get old and become antiques and are highly valued and costly on exchange.

Healthy is the last word I will include today. I may write more on this subject as my brain continues to play in my head with the idea of more words like this. Healthy seems a completely subjective term. Is health decided on what the chances of living determine? Is it judged on one's capacity/incapacity? How much is chronic pain a factor? Does prognosis change the label? A Christian Scientist must be seen as healthy until they are dead since they are permitted no medicine, only prayer. Does one's pain threshold determine a degree of wellness, or health? If you feel healthy, does it mean you are?

Why do people so often want to assume that everyone knows exactly what they mean when they use a particular word. One of my daughters, as a very young child, lisped. Not only did she lisp, but she pronounced words as she thought they should be, rather than as they were meant to be. We discussed why there are words, after I corrected her on a mispronunciation she used. I told her that is not the way the word is said. Her answer to me was, "That'th the way I thay it!" I said, "I know you do, but if you want people to know what you are talking about, you can't say it that way." She looked so puzzled and, I must be frank here, it was only one of the many things I never understood about the way she viewed the world as compared to the way I viewed mine. I'm not sure when she grasped the concept that people didn't know what she was talking about half the time until she started to use words as most of the rest of us did.

I recall reading a book by the anthropologist, Gregory Bateson, many years ago. Not being too shallow in language skills at the time, I was annoyed that I had to look up 38 words on one page (and that was before computers and Merriam-Webster on them). It was hard to believe he was writing in English. I can't remember the word I had to look up to find out that he meant swamp. Today there is NO synonym for swamp in Merriam-Webster. I muttered through the required reading and scolded myself for being cursed and not able to read something without looking up that which I didn't understand. The curse still holds though I have kissed many frogs in my day in attempt to get rid of it.

SATIRE LIVES IN LOTS OF PLACES

Life would be very dull if there were not humor and satire in it. The Onion is a wonderful medium for providing us with lots of laughs. Reason Magazine recently did an interview with an Onion Staffer.

The Onion Atlas gives a very amusing picture of the world. Be sure to click on the green onion icons.

You will find many examples of extremely insightful observations, as long as your sense of humor remains intact.

The short video is an example of what you can enjoy on the Internet if you will only take the time to look! Reason.tv is interesting, a well...usually straight, not satirical as The Onion. Check it out.

If one wants to know why the Republicans have no concept of budgets and why the economy is so far down the public toilet, one needs only to look at the convoluted and inaccurate logic perpetrated by Boehner and others in the Republican Senate minority. Republicans have never understood that they'd save a great deal in human suffering, but also in later costs for those unwanted children.

Posted by Mary Jane Gallagher and Robin Summers, National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association at 8:49 AM on January 31, 2009. Read the article linked above by these two women to better understand why the Republicans who pretend to be for families, in fact often do more to destroy them than help them,with their current restrictive policies on many things, but especially on family planning, one-size-fits-all thinking, and teaching sex education.
The National Right to Life Group is anti-abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. I understand this as Pro-fetus rather than Pro-life, under any and all circumstances, the demand that a child born to extreme poverty die a natural death regardless of the amount of suffering incurred in the process, and insist on the same for an excruciatingly suffering, terminally ill patient. In fact, this group has taken themselves the task to insist that humans must live, though they may lack medical care between infancy and old age. Quality of life is clearly not a consideration.

MORE OLDESTS

"Dominicans yesterday (in 2003) celebrated the birthday of the World’s oldest living person Elizabeth (Ma Pampo) Israel who turned 128 even as government vowed to increase pressure on Guinness World record officials to officially confer the title on the Dominican.

Unfortunately, the Guinness World record has not officially recognized Ma Pampo since they are still in the process of verifying the claim. A Baptismal certificate has been issued by the Roman Catholic Church with her birth date stated as January 27, 1875, but since it is not an official record, it cannot be used to authenticate the claim.

The claim was further thrown into doubt when it was learned that at some point in her life she was called Minetta George. Guinness officials have said that it is important to clarify these various issues before the title can be conferred. Given the state of record keeping during that time in Dominica, it may be difficult to collect collaborative evidence to substantiate the claim.

At the age of 128, Elizabeth (Ma Pampo) Israel is considered the World’s oldest living person. Born in Portsmouth, Dominica, and the daughter of slaves, she started working on a plantation at the age of 25 and retired 79 years later. Ma Pampoo ascribes her longevity to her diet--including lots of dumplings and bush tea. She has survived her husband and two children.

There are at least seventeen centenarians in Dominica (with four residing in close proximity to Ma Pampo), from a population of 70,000 making it the country with the highest concentration of centenarians per 1000 of the population. Dominica’s pristine, largely untouched and unspoilt environment, which lies largely unpolluted, has been cited as the main reason for longevity on the Island."


It fascinates me that if you are so old that you don't have a birth certificate in your backward country, you don't make the Guinness Book of Records so you don't really get to go down in history.

Since no one can prove when they were born, other than wherever it was noted at the time, does it mean that if you don't have a birth certificate, you never existed?

A 31 year old cat is purported to have died in 2001.
That would be a real bonus to a pet owner...the joy of their cat living that long. Perhaps it saved them thinking about an Elephant, tortoise, or parrot so the pet could outlive them.