A comedienne called Scott Brown's daughters prostitutes and then discredited the comment herself. Big deal! Anyone who knows the daughters know they are drop-dead gorgeous young, successful women. Nothing there.
Chelsea Clinton is getting married. She has handled her life graciously and with propriety. It is good that she doesn't wear her battle scars and should serve as a model to many young women but they are not bright enough to do that. They will instead follow entertainment figures who trash their own lives with alcohol, drugs, and what would otherwise be seen as degenerate living because they don't know what to do with the obscene amount of money at their disposal and believe all the hypes about how great they are.
Some people act as though capping the gushing oil well has solved 'the problem'. That wasn't the real problem, was it? Will the media tell the truth and cover all the disaster to humans (financial, medical, mental health, relationships), marine life, and wetlands, fowl, animals, health issues? It seems highly unlikely.
Since some of our politicians think that anyone who really wants to work can just go get a job 'somewhere', why aren't they asked to do that for themselves....pretend they are jobless and see what the world has to offer them. They will be shocked to learn that not even McDonalds will hire them
You can stay out of jail if you mislead and distract, as long as you don't lie. Just ask Goldman, he did it.
Unfortunately, my mind doesn't seem so taken with the world at large...it longs to get my computer back from the shop.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
RUDENESS IS UBIQUITOUS THESE DAYS
For whatever reason, too many people seem unaware that they impact (by their behaviors) on other people. Tonight I was at a live live jazz concert in a restaurant/Inn. It was to celebrate the 20 years of jazz played here. I would rant that there is a difference in a public room that serves food and liquor when the music is ambient, everyone is there ready for conversation. However, when there is a $10 cover charge and most people have come to hear the music because they are fans of the live performers.
As it happened, I was a guest of a couple, friends of mine, who really love jazz and occasionally I am their guest as I was tonight. The table was set for four but there only the three of us so my hosts welcomed the evening's singer when she said she had no place to sit. As the evening progressed she pulled up another chair to the table and invited a friend of hers to sit there, talking through the music by her fellow performers. That was inconsiderate and rudeness #2, the first being bringing a guest to the table without asking permission from the hosts who had reserved the table. This finally forced a frustrated host to tell them they could move to another table if they wished to converse because we and all come to hear the music.
On the other side of the room, seated on tall stools at the bar serving drinks, a few people sat. Clearly three women were friends and their cluster made it clear that they wished to socialize. They were loud and definitely interfered with those who wished to hear the music. The bartender also joined in with their loud conversations.
Many drivers seem oblivious to the fact that they are not alone on the road. People often intrude into one's hearing space as well as physical space, seeming not to realize they are violating boundaries. Have boundaries disappeared from the list of subjects one tries to teach a child at a reasonably early age? I seem to be missing something critically different in the current society than I was taught how to behave sensitively of other people's personal and material space..
As it happened, I was a guest of a couple, friends of mine, who really love jazz and occasionally I am their guest as I was tonight. The table was set for four but there only the three of us so my hosts welcomed the evening's singer when she said she had no place to sit. As the evening progressed she pulled up another chair to the table and invited a friend of hers to sit there, talking through the music by her fellow performers. That was inconsiderate and rudeness #2, the first being bringing a guest to the table without asking permission from the hosts who had reserved the table. This finally forced a frustrated host to tell them they could move to another table if they wished to converse because we and all come to hear the music.
On the other side of the room, seated on tall stools at the bar serving drinks, a few people sat. Clearly three women were friends and their cluster made it clear that they wished to socialize. They were loud and definitely interfered with those who wished to hear the music. The bartender also joined in with their loud conversations.
Many drivers seem oblivious to the fact that they are not alone on the road. People often intrude into one's hearing space as well as physical space, seeming not to realize they are violating boundaries. Have boundaries disappeared from the list of subjects one tries to teach a child at a reasonably early age? I seem to be missing something critically different in the current society than I was taught how to behave sensitively of other people's personal and material space..
Thursday, July 15, 2010
COMPUTER RELIANCE, NOT ADDICTION
For years some friends have feared getting a computer, afraid they will get addicted. That says little about their ability to stick to their own goals and strength of character. The siren call of addiction has never been my fear though I use my computer more than many of my friends. I have not bought a newspaper in ten years but I am far more informed, globally, than most of them. I no longer buy reference books and always look up any word I don't understand.
People ask me how much time I spend on the computer. For me that is not answerable as I use it as often as reasons for me to do so arise. I play few games, only when I can multi-task doing something else like watching news or talking on the telephone.
One might say I have come to rely on my computers for information, news, entertainment, contact with friends, and spend less time doing all the things I do on it than I would have before I had a computer. To me it is an extraordinary time saver, not time waster. One might also say that a computer cannot make a leopard change its spots! If you weren't interested in the news, before computers, you probably won't be now; educating yourself will not hold you either. If you wish to make you life far more fulfilled in solitude, or with friends, it is all available. If you lack social skills, good coping skills and judgment, you probably won't develop those with a computer, either.
Thus, I rely on my computers as I do any of the rest of the useful tools in my existence...the operative word being 'rely' not 'addicted'.
People ask me how much time I spend on the computer. For me that is not answerable as I use it as often as reasons for me to do so arise. I play few games, only when I can multi-task doing something else like watching news or talking on the telephone.
One might say I have come to rely on my computers for information, news, entertainment, contact with friends, and spend less time doing all the things I do on it than I would have before I had a computer. To me it is an extraordinary time saver, not time waster. One might also say that a computer cannot make a leopard change its spots! If you weren't interested in the news, before computers, you probably won't be now; educating yourself will not hold you either. If you wish to make you life far more fulfilled in solitude, or with friends, it is all available. If you lack social skills, good coping skills and judgment, you probably won't develop those with a computer, either.
Thus, I rely on my computers as I do any of the rest of the useful tools in my existence...the operative word being 'rely' not 'addicted'.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE THINK OF RAPE AS SEX?
Psychology Today at one time ran an article which stated: "Sex is the most profound and intimate way to express your love for someone. Different people enjoy and pursue sex in different forms—as the pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey put it, the only universal in human sexuality is variability itself. But within the universe of intimacy and pleasure that sex affords is a lot of room for error. Most people are affected by sexual problems at some point in their lives. "
Most definitions have to do with the procreation but in a recent discussion I had with a friend, I realized that to call rape 'sex' is to gift it with pleasant images since most people see sex as closer to the description from Psychology Today. I offer that rape is a unique physyical violence that, while engaging genitalia, in no way represents the broad spectrum of pleasuarable sex. To dignify rape by connecting it with that term makes it seem far less offensive than the cruel, painful attack it is to a women who has not been aroused so that the will be lubricated nor receptive within, physically or emotionally. It is painful, humiliating, subjegating, and may lead to unwanted pregnancy or STDs. To equate it with sex is a most cruel interpretation, if calling it 'God's will'. To demand that a child be forced to life as a result can only be the opinion of a person who is unable to be comapssionate to mother or child and knows nothing of human emotions. (Sharron Angle, are you olistening?)
Since I can think of nothing to favor it with approval in any form, I strongly suggest that rape remain a term for a criminal act that can never be associated with the more desirable act of copulation. To tie it in with the word sex is like calling everything in Nature in the sky as simply 'weather'. It may hurricane, be without clouds, deluge the earth with floods, but it is all part of the weather. Using the term weather alone is without giving the listener any sense of a clear description of what is happening in the real world of weather. I offer that the same is true of granting rape with a connection to sex.
Just as a rose is a rose, so rape is rape nd should never be called anything else!
Most definitions have to do with the procreation but in a recent discussion I had with a friend, I realized that to call rape 'sex' is to gift it with pleasant images since most people see sex as closer to the description from Psychology Today. I offer that rape is a unique physyical violence that, while engaging genitalia, in no way represents the broad spectrum of pleasuarable sex. To dignify rape by connecting it with that term makes it seem far less offensive than the cruel, painful attack it is to a women who has not been aroused so that the will be lubricated nor receptive within, physically or emotionally. It is painful, humiliating, subjegating, and may lead to unwanted pregnancy or STDs. To equate it with sex is a most cruel interpretation, if calling it 'God's will'. To demand that a child be forced to life as a result can only be the opinion of a person who is unable to be comapssionate to mother or child and knows nothing of human emotions. (Sharron Angle, are you olistening?)
Since I can think of nothing to favor it with approval in any form, I strongly suggest that rape remain a term for a criminal act that can never be associated with the more desirable act of copulation. To tie it in with the word sex is like calling everything in Nature in the sky as simply 'weather'. It may hurricane, be without clouds, deluge the earth with floods, but it is all part of the weather. Using the term weather alone is without giving the listener any sense of a clear description of what is happening in the real world of weather. I offer that the same is true of granting rape with a connection to sex.
Just as a rose is a rose, so rape is rape nd should never be called anything else!
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
DOES THE US ACTIVELY PROTECT US FROM DOMESTIC TERRORISTS?
A recent article by Joshua Holland brought up an issue long troubling to me. Some of the rhetoric I have heard from Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Bachmann and others sounds very much like they are supporting an uprising of violence. with phrases like, "Let's take our government back" Militias have grown stronger but indications are that they are not to protect the United States from invaders but rather from elected leaders and our own government. I have questioned the legality of elected politicians taking this position and felt myself whistling in the wind.
Usually I make comments on what some with whom I agree or disagree, has said, making myself clear by comments. Today I want to urge you to read this article by Joshua Holland. Once again we seem caught in the trap of the 'bad guys are foreigners...we Americans are the good guys'. How wrong is that thinking? The bad guys, folks, are some of us. Revolutions are not always started in other countries by the CIA, as some people might think, but are started within the American 'family'.We only have to remember the Murrah Bldg which seemed eclipsed by the towers, about which oil rich lands were the goal of the 'getting even 'with Hussein who had nothing to do with it. Our militias train regularly, are well armed, and look forward to overcoming our government, spurred onward by angry rhetoric from media and politicians yet , it seems, they are not considered a threat. I consider them a great threat and wonder why we can't, as ordinary people, see the forest for the trees.
Wake up America and look at your own backyard and neighborhood!
Monday, July 12, 2010
EXERCISE IN FRUSTRATION
Unable to type since the malware I quarantined kept popping up elsewhere, I ran the over two hour total system scan. It would find a new object and quarantine it and the computer would work properly for a bit. Then it would repeat freezing the keyboard and changing the current screen in the process I cursed in the air with very unladylike curses (having picked them up in several languages here and there over the years).
Eventually, the retrieval method stopped working and the cursing renewed vigorously. (The neighbors might not have known how good it was to have my AC on and windows shut). I went to my second drive and deleted the whole folder that had been a backup to an old drive a few years ago, one I just never got around to attending just as my closets are full of clothes I no longer wear and my kitchen drawers are full of tools I no longer use. I figured that I should not only put it in the trash bin, but I also deleted it from the trash bin...hoping never to see any of it again. Meanwhile I decided to buy the Malware program I had been using free.. I had tried before to pay for it and download it but the malware that was on prevented me from typing the info needed to purchase it. The program said it accepted several of the cards I held , but only through PayPal in which my account had not been updated to the new expiration date I had neglected to send to PayPal. This all began to feel as though I was sliding down a banister and picking up lots of splinters in a very sensitive and painful area.
Once I was able to update PayPal, hoping fervently that the malware wouldn't peak-a-boo me again, I managed to successfully handle the update to PayPal but, while I had a reference number, there were no instructions on downloading the malware I had just purchased. Meanwhile, the computer is working as it should, for several hours. Now I just can't believe it is a problem solved so I sit here waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Eventually, the retrieval method stopped working and the cursing renewed vigorously. (The neighbors might not have known how good it was to have my AC on and windows shut). I went to my second drive and deleted the whole folder that had been a backup to an old drive a few years ago, one I just never got around to attending just as my closets are full of clothes I no longer wear and my kitchen drawers are full of tools I no longer use. I figured that I should not only put it in the trash bin, but I also deleted it from the trash bin...hoping never to see any of it again. Meanwhile I decided to buy the Malware program I had been using free.. I had tried before to pay for it and download it but the malware that was on prevented me from typing the info needed to purchase it. The program said it accepted several of the cards I held , but only through PayPal in which my account had not been updated to the new expiration date I had neglected to send to PayPal. This all began to feel as though I was sliding down a banister and picking up lots of splinters in a very sensitive and painful area.
Once I was able to update PayPal, hoping fervently that the malware wouldn't peak-a-boo me again, I managed to successfully handle the update to PayPal but, while I had a reference number, there were no instructions on downloading the malware I had just purchased. Meanwhile, the computer is working as it should, for several hours. Now I just can't believe it is a problem solved so I sit here waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
SIMPLE THINKERS
The world is full of people who want to simplify everything that is complex. It really can't be done. They do it by finding someone to blame, as though that solves the problem. They define the results and think Bandaid but do not realize that the dike will still leak until the breach is repaired. It seems that everyone has a solution to the problem of the gushing oil in the Gulf of Mexico but none can define the problem.
War in Afghanistan is another problem with which everyone has advice but understand little about consequences to just pulling out after having been there as a presence for more than ten years. Most people who are even too young to remember Shinola don't remember what they cannot differentiate from it. Everyone thinks they can do a better job than Obama but have no idea about what the man is juggling and how brilliant he really is, even if we disagree with him. My biggest gripe is that he has left the money people that Bush put into place and rescued Goldman Sachs who laugh at the rest of us who are keeping them rich, we the taxpayers.
Creating Minds,org has some interesting ideas about defining problems. One suggestion in to scope out boundary of problems. For a full list and some suggestions, click here. WikiHow also has a way to define a problem. Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution. To read Wiki's suggestions, click here
When will people learn that you can't paint until you have prepared the surface. You can't treat a medical condition until you have made a diagnosis. You can't make a solution until you have defined the problem in its entirety, especially the cause..
War in Afghanistan is another problem with which everyone has advice but understand little about consequences to just pulling out after having been there as a presence for more than ten years. Most people who are even too young to remember Shinola don't remember what they cannot differentiate from it. Everyone thinks they can do a better job than Obama but have no idea about what the man is juggling and how brilliant he really is, even if we disagree with him. My biggest gripe is that he has left the money people that Bush put into place and rescued Goldman Sachs who laugh at the rest of us who are keeping them rich, we the taxpayers.
Creating Minds,org has some interesting ideas about defining problems. One suggestion in to scope out boundary of problems. For a full list and some suggestions, click here. WikiHow also has a way to define a problem. Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution. To read Wiki's suggestions, click here
When will people learn that you can't paint until you have prepared the surface. You can't treat a medical condition until you have made a diagnosis. You can't make a solution until you have defined the problem in its entirety, especially the cause..
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