NY TIMES PROFILE OF CHRIS MATTHEWS

Frequently, for several weeks, I have written about my disenchantment with Chris Matthews' show on MSNBC, Hardball. Today the NY Times ran a wonderful (though long) article on him by
Mark Liebovich. I consider it a fair article, pointing out positives as well as being truthful and realistic about impressions of others and simply reporting observations without the need for editorial comment.

I suggest it as a good read if you haven't seen it.

AGING WITHOUT GROWING OLD

Longevity depends on so many factors: genetic inheritance, life style, exposure to toxins, accidents, mind set, life stressors, endocrine balance, neurotransmitter balances and many more factors, for which I am using training wheels.

Recently I received a pps presentation in email that made me really try to understand some of the sentimental, pseudo-spiritual stuff with which many of us are gifted.
The following are among some of those 'treasures'.

-"So long as one continues to be amazed, one can delay growing old." It is my sincere hope this writer will never become a researcher. I've missed the connection. One criteria determines growing old? Alzheimer patients are constantly being amazed and lots of them are really old, look old, and act even older.

-"Old age arrives suddenly as does the snow. One morning on awakening one realizes that everything is white." That can only mean the denial finally cracked! Old age is insidious and creeps up gradually. Most people don't have one 'aha' moment but start having them frequently, generally after they realize there are adults younger and more alive than they, and when they have a good mirror.

-"It is by growing old that one learns to remain young." When you grow old you cannot turn back the clock; you will never again be young no matter how much plastic surgery, hair transplants, tummy tucks, or other attempts to recreate what was once there. It ignores that some human functions are ageless, like a mind that imitates the Energizer Bunny and just keeps on going.

-"Old age embellishes everything. It has the effect of the setting sun on the beautiful twilights of Autumn." Wrinkles, poor vision and hearing, medical problems, incontinence, dentures, and all the accouterments of seniors can be considered embellishment by some, but most would call them something more parasitic.

-"As one grows old one generally rids himself of his shortcomings because they no longer serve a useful purpose." This is the first I have heard that shortcomings serve a purpose and are not just liabilities and a disappointment, annoyance or just plain PITA to those around them.

-"The person who considers himself too old to learn something has probably always been that way." This one almost made a bit of sense. Of course it doesn't consider that some people just stop caring about some things. However, the saying holds true if it means that a person who is alive will always be wanting to add more knowledge to their already slowed down mental CPU and almost full-to-capacity drive in their cranium.

I'd rather be able to say, "Growing old is what I do best. Nothing but death can stop me, While I am doing it, I am learning, having fun, and enjoying the process most of the time. I love that some people tell me I neither look nor act my age, except my brother who tells me I look like an old hag. I hate that younger people talk about me, in my presence, with things like, "Isn't she cute?" It makes me want to say, "Would someone bring me a dry Depends?" Then I will start boring them (or shocking them) with tales of my youth and tell them they are too young to understand.

WHY DO WE CALL IT TECH SUPPORT?

Beware adding a new component to an existing system. Nothing is standardized. Let me be more specific. I own a Panasonic DVD Recorder easily using it until I changed my ISP (Internet Service Provider). It primarily converted my family videos on VHS to DVDs. I also recorded programs. This was a handy feature as I watched shows, usually at bedtime, from a comfortable prone position. I guess TIVO is like that. Verizon offers a DVD Recorder for which they can charge more. I refuse to give in to that kind of marketing after years with Microsoft that kept forcing me to buy their new version or go without.

When changing Internet providers was 'a fait accompli', I ran into this proprietary system in Verizon that will not allow the Panasonic unit to download the TV Guide, which it uses for scheduled recording. Instead, I am limited to recording 'live' only. (I haven't figured a way to shut off the recording once started...it is like the salt machine; now more pages of another manual to read). The tech from Verizon, who was wonderful, made it clear this was an issue beyond his province. He did, however, scan the manual and said I should have received an accessory that would, when installed, allow the two units to talk to one another and I would get my TV Guide back. He suggested I find it as it was probably sent with the unit.

After hunting through years of accumulated cords and accessories heaped in a box, I failed to find it. The cord is an IR Blaster. My next move, which seemed logical at the time, was to go online to see if I could order one. Impossible! The accessory order site kept telling me they had no such accessory (though the part number was listed in the manual and the unit is only 18 months old). The telephone maze was polite. A pleasant feminine voice informed me she was automated but could answer my needs if I spoke my answers. I thought, "I can do that". My choices were invariably none of the ones mentioned. Eventually on my second or third tour through the maze, I reached a tech support woman named Mary. She was also polite and took down my problem painstakingly. I'm not sure whether she wrote it down or typed it painfully with arthritic fingers. It took her several minutes and I had to repeat and spell everything several times. It then became apparent she did not plan to do anything with the information. Shegave me a case number then connected me to tech support. After that time-consuming triage, I was told if we were cut off, all I had to do was call in again...meaning that I would have to go through the telephone maze again! Morally, I cannot enter my thoughts and fantasies here.

Miraculously, my call was answered by 'Teluneus' of tech support, who said, "Oh, if you already have a case number your problem must have been solved." I informed him that I had been transferred to him because my problem had NOT been solved. On the first run through he agreed there was a part that could do that. After being given the model number again, he told me the part number did not agree with the one I gave him. At this point, after insisting I had the correct number, answering his question , "Where are you getting it?" I told him I am reading it on the accessory page of my manual. I discovered he had written the wrong model number down. He suggested a couple of places where the part could be obtained. "They probably have it is stock'. I told him 'probably' was not good enough. Both places were not in my state so I asked if I could order the part from Panasonic. In a tone which implied, "Why would you want to do that?" he told me it would take a bit of time to get it. He then pointed me to yet another transfer that would take my order. Before I lost him I asked him what do I do with it when I get it. He said, "Plug it in" I asked, "Into what?" After several minutes of this sort of dialogue, he informed me I would have to call tech support back to go through the 'escalation form'. I said, "Do you mean this is not something I can do myself?' He said, "Oh, no we will have to walk you through it." The 'we' was a tip-off that he would not have to do it himself as he seemed ill-equipped and informed about the process. Score one for my team?

This example is probably not unfamiliar to anyone who owns a computer or any piece of computerized technology. Be prepared for the hours of life this procedure, too often repeated, steals from you.

AUTOMATED WAVES OF THE FUTURE

Germany has invented an automated restaurant where there are live chefs but no wait staff. Making choice easier, food servive more pleasant and faster, are trends being set in many place, in different ways. A few years ago, while in London, I was introduced to Yo! Sushi. A conveyor ran on its track so that it all the choices were accessible to all tables. Dishes circling were color coded. A patron would pull off their choice, eat, and at the end of the meal a server would add up the colors of the empty plates and total for the final bill. Both of these restaurants seem to have excellent food with good chefs.

Another form of robotic food service in the vending machine. If this method is currently in use, it has not been well-publicized and I have not partaken of its products. Our current vending machines only use mechanical means to serve and collect money around me here.

It takes someone with an idea to start a trend and then innovators and entrepreneurs to make it happen. I have no doubt that the menu will eventually contain a list of ingredients, food value, and the approximate length of time it takes for preparation.. That way a party can coordinate to some degree how long it will take for their entrees to arrive, though the present system of letting some food cool down, or even get cold, until the whole order is done might continue.

I wouldn't miss that 20% tip which seems to be needed even though the service may be less than perfect.

Addenda 4/9: This came as an email rather than comment, so I am adding it here:

"Many decades ago (1962) Jean and I were in Hong Kong on vacation. We were taken to

lunch by our tailor (Charlie Wei) to a local establishment. There, waitresses roamed around

with trays of various food items. The plates were never taken away so that at the end of the

meal the tab could be established by looking at the color bands on the plates. I have to

assume that was a long established tradition."

THE USA WORLD EMPIRE

How Lethally Stupid Can One Country Be? This is a must read article by David Michael Green. There is one fallacy in the delivery. The writer asks how a country with the capacity to choose can have allowed this to happen. We, as a nation of individuals, lost our capacity to choose under the brainwashing we have experienced in the past few years. We need to look no further to understand how this works than to the FDLS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, a controversial Mormon fundamentalist polygamous sect.) For anyone who wishes a powerful autobiographical account of being raised in the sect and finally getting out of it, I suggest that you read Carolyn Jessups' book, Escape. There are many more examples to be found onthe destruction of human individuals and free thinkers due to brain washing. The saddest part is that people having their brains washed rarely ever know it is happening to them because they are kept clean of any inputs which might change the message. Our government has forbidden truths to be known. They have brainwashed through two techniques: Keeping people in line with fear; keeping people ignorant of the truth. That is the basic structure to brainwashing.

We the People of the United States were being brain washed by Bush, Sr and Jr though that is the only thing Junior ever did better than Senior ( probably because he had more sociopathic helpers). If you are able to read the first article, then try a second, which has less anger in the writing and adds more history to the narrative, which you can even hear should you prefer it to reading. Actually, our country and history books have been brainwashing us for more than a century. The slow erosion of our democracy is not new, but just as the world has speeded up everything, technology, global warming, so has the destruction of our democracy been speeded up.

All empires eventually fall: "Akkad, Sumeria, Babylonia, Ninevah, Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Mali, Songhai, Mongonl, Tokugawaw, Gupta, Khmer, Hapbsburg, Inca, Aztec, Spanish, Dutch, Ottoman, Austrian, French, British, Soviet, you name them, they all fell, and most within a few hundred years. The reasons are not really complex. An empire is a kind of state system that inevitably makes the same mistakes simply by the nature of its imperial structure and inevitably fails because of its size, complexity, territorial reach, stratification, heterogeneity, domination, hierarchy, and inequalities." (from the linked article by Kirkpatrick Sale).

The formula for failure is set but we would be able to prevent it being stirred into completion if people would listen and believe it will happen. We must not 'stay the course', not only as Bush tells us to do in Iraq, but also here on home turf. We would be on the slide downhill to our own destruction as a country. We need to attend to all the priorities at home that have been discussed by all three candidates, weigh them as to outcome, and start planning to bring America back to its former state of integrity, ethics, separation of Church and state, investment in better education for all children, work on updating the infrastructure of the country, and we must go back to valuing our best resource....our legal citizens and making plans to take care of them first! We need to stop pretending we can be altruistic and charitable with our tax money. Our own people need it more than many of the countries to whom we are sending it. We need to stop the politics of self-service to politicians, pork projects to keep them in office, no-bid contracts and business as usual by the lobbyists who have big corporations to serve, not the country as a whole..

In conclusion, we need to stop listening to the least knowledgeable, least patient, least capable of empirical-thinking citizens and start running the country differently. We need to bring the Constitution into the 21st Century just as the Bible needs to be brought to date by those who choose to live by it.

WHO ARE THE REAL TERRORISTS

I don't believe that Osama Bin Laden has just been waiting for a chance to terrorize us with bombs; he has succeeded in his threat to break the US economy. He has had willing partners in the greedy Bush administration to help carry that threat out with the war profiteering. All the mercenaries are not soldiers, many wear business suits and they all are bleeding our country and its people financially dry.

Bin Laden's speech of 10/20/2004 can be read here in its entirety. However, if you lack time, the most important part of his message was:

"All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.

This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.

All Praise is due to Allah.

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah"

Despite the many warning voices, plus this well publicized speech, Americans have allowed the Bush administration to fall into Bin Laden's trap. That is why we have not had a repeat of the bombed towers. We have had a Congress and Senate that blindly followed the leader and must carry the legacy they will have well-earned in the history books for future generations to see how badly run the country has been for these last eight years.

Bin Laden further said in that 2004 speech:
"That being said, those who say that al-Qaida has won against the administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in this war have not been precise, because when one scrutinizes the results, one cannot say that al-Qaida is the sole factor in achieving those spectacular gains.

Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations - whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction - has helped al-Qaida to achieve these enormous results."

It seems that no one listened to or believed any of the glaring truths of the plan from the 'enemy', outlined and fulfilled right before our eyes while the Bush Administration lied to us for these almost eight years. The saddest pill for me to swallow with all this is America fights and kills its people for greed, trying to make us believe it is for principle; the enemy commits atrocities and would have us believe it was their only choice for their principle. For me it is like a bad movie that should have been titled When Evil Meets Evil. The rest of us are just the 'collateral damage' from the actions of one side or the other.

YOU'RE OVERLY SENSITIVE

There are many techniques people use to shut off having to hear the emotions of others. One in the series of useless statements is the title here: You're overly sensitive. Where does one set the gauge or range of acceptable levels of feelings. I've always believed people feel whatever they feel , freely. Their actions may not be as free. Rage cannot give way to mayhem, violence, assault on another, or murder. However, one might fantasy all those things and cause no harm to anyone.

I've written before about the ploy of disqualifying someone's feelings to get them to stop speaking of them. Men, Nature's Natural 'Fixers', do this more than women (who can usually handle more feelings with less squeamishness). The usual ways of disqualifying are to ask, "Why do you feel that way?" without wanting to know the reason behind the feeling at all, but rather meaning, 'Why haven't you been able to turn off that feeling?", or simply stating, "Stop feeling that way."

Wikipedia defines emotion as an"affective state involving a high level of activation, visceral changes and strong feelings. Over the history of psychology there have been many different ways to classify emotions. Most current theories classify emotions as a set of basic emotions that can be blended.

Within psychology there are several, different, approaches towards emotions. Modern theories include cognitive functions of emotions, the neuro-psychology of emotions. There is an approach that emotions are evolutionary adaptations that allow people and animals to deal adequately with a broad range of situations with very limited conscious reasoning."

The area for which there is less research and understanding is how physiologic processes affect emotion. While that article deals with hormones and emotions, another deals specifically with pre-menstrual emotions.

One can learn to control emotions only by becoming skilled at acting, in whatever manner one believes to be a 'normal' reaction to the situation. We all have to learn to act at times. We try to control our tears and rage, we don't rant in places where we know we will be criticized rather than sympathized with, whatever we believe to be our suffering. Pride disallows an enemy to see our feelings for fear they will hurt us when we are vulnerable. Fear of 'hurting people's feelings' often makes people hold back expressing their emotions. There are many reasons why people 'act' differently than they feel. Our political campaigns are good examples. People only want to see and hear 'up' candidates.

When Hillary acted privately with her emotions she was viewed as cold. When she cried publicly in New Hampshire, she was accused of faking it. When Barack's minister expressed the rage felt by most blacks too close to slavery in their heritage, he chose to displace the rage rather than explain why he felt it. No reasonable person can hear a minister call God to damn our country and feel comfortable and patriotic. Not everyone has learned how to be tactful, politically correct, or discuss feelings instead of blaming others for their discomfort and frustrations.

Maybe someday we can go to a machine like an ATM, put money in, and get the proper balancing of emotions 'fix'. If all our money doesn't get spent in Iraq, we may go back to working on our own country and more research for a change.