WHEN THE MEDIA DISAPPOINTS

For quite a while, I have been a fan of Ed Schultz on MSNBC.  However, my respect for him has slipped markedly.  He has been holding Obama to a promise that Obama couldn't really have understood how difficult it would be to hold to before he was in office and under the control of the Secret Service for security.  I am amazed at the naivete or stupidity that it represents when he repeatedly criticizes Obama for not marching at the protests with the people.  He clearly has no idea what the security would cost the American people even if Obama's security staff would have allowed it.  Nor does he consider how dangerous to the security of our country if something fatal happens to Obama at this time.

Schultz's coverage of the Wisconsin protests and actions of Governor Walker have, for the most part, been well-deserved criticisms and comments.  I believe that Ed Schultz really does fight hard for the middle class.  However, his  negative comments about Obama should at least be based on something more relevant to major issues and more carefully thought out on Schultz's part.

THOUSANDS OF LIVES IN THE VORTEX

It is probably unimaginable to think of being left with absolutely nothing but that which attached to one's body, in seconds.  Trying to think about it, is probably unique to and telling about each individual who tries to visualize themselves in that situation.  What do you do about hygiene, food, fresh water, places to eliminate.  Think about having no money in your person and no place to get it.  If you had a bank account and savings, the bank may have disappeared.  If you had a job, your workplace may be gone.  The owners of the company may be dead and wills at this point are somewhat useless even if they could be found.  For individuals, disorientation is one of the most difficult to handle...to have nothing familiar around you is high on the stress scale.  If you've ever moved to a new home or apartment and gotten up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, only to discover you headed in the wrong direction...it is no longer where it used to be.  Imagine that everything about your life is now that way.  There is nothing, and in some cases no one, familiar to you where they used to be.

As if that is not enough, the threat of radiation poisoning hovers over you in  the aftermath of all your losses, loved ones as well as everything material.  To the best of my historical knowledge, Americans have never had to deal with so vast a human need.  There have usually been enough people around to lend a hand or donate to agencies like the American Red Cross who could lend their hand for you.

We are now realizing that it was not simply a residential area but had factories and businesses which cannot complete contracts which will effect many other countries waiting for parts or product.One has to wonder how even the strongest in character and physiology can survive but we must also realize that not 100% of any population is like that.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) will likely be only one of the residual problems people will struggle with in nightmares and slow hypothalamus changes.  Living over a fault can be denied only while assuming the country is protecting you with all the security that has been put in place.  But assuming that it would be too great a denial to assume that the government, engineers, and experts can predict the potentially destructive forces enough for most people, not only in Japan, but even other places; especially those that live over faults, are near oceans, or have nuclear energy facilities..  Studies show most accidents occur close to home, often within the home, and one can say that natural disasters.fall in that category as well.

Shall we just assume God is out to get us, one way or another?  I doubt many will look at it that way.  Should we assume we are caught in a big lottery over which we have no control?  Quite likely.  Our lives are at the will of random chance.  We can better the odds by healthy living and less risk taking but that sort of sums up.  There are lots of philosophical speculations about predestination, free will, God's will, this being only one of our lives, parallel universes, and the list goes on and on.  Our reality can only be what we perceive.

RAISE EDUCATION STANDARDS; DON'T LOWER QUALIFICATION STANDARDS

It came to my attention that some police forces and other public works, like firefighters and other jobs which require fast thinking and creative responses, are lowering their test standards so more African Americans can pass them.  That is as effective as getting someone to hold their finger in the leaking dam.

When is someone going to listen to Obama about our need to do better education?  Think, "don't raise the bridge, lower the river".  We must stop thinking about accepting problems rather than finding solutions.  I see the move to lower standards when hiring police as an insult to all law enforcement.  I would very much like to know by whom those decisions are made.  Are they departmental,.out of desperation?  Does no one any longer want the job from hose qualified, or are we making a negative racial statement again? 

There is no differential of intelligence potential in the brains of any of our races.  The opportunity for good education is by dedicated teachers who can instill the love of learning in the students they teach.  Schools must all accept that we have many hungry children who cannot learn while they suffer hanger pangs,  We cannot teach in a one-size-fits-all format.  Not everyone is capable of learning from similar sources; some learn through auditory inputs, others visual.. 

Don't let the greedy legislators take any more from education.  Take equal taxes from the richest 1% and give it to the schools to be spent on specific advances for education...not just tenure and raises for the incompetent because the union says to.  I support unions but not when they get as greedy as the legislators.  Protests will arise, not just 'against' but' for ' needs to be met, as well.

RADIATION THREAT IN JAPAN

As nuclear reactors keep blowing up and spewing radiation into the atmosphere in Japan, people are validly fearful.  Most of them are a generation or two away from the WWII terror of radiation from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which is probably good.

The world's hunger for energy has become a controlling appetite.  Engineers are trying to make units that run on less energy.  As example, 18 years ago, at my house,  we had two Sanyo heat exchanger wall units (powered by electricity) installed in matching 16' x 16' rooms above each other in the rear of the house.  Even though electricity was a bit cheaper then, to actually heat a room .   Running one of the Sanyo units in the winter made electric utility bills prohibitively high.  Last Fall, both wall units really had become disabled and obsolete so two new Fujitsu units replaced the old heat exchangers.  One of them was on all winter, heating a room that normally could be used only during warm months, the heating bills (even with the raise in natural gas costs) did not seem to go up though we had a rather cold winter.  The machines run so quietly, you can not hear them, which was certainly not the case of the previous units.
 Some of us who have lived  long time will remember  8/6 and 8/8/1946 when two bombs were dropped in Japan.   For the next few years we lived in terror that the Russians would do the same to us.  TV 'News' keeps asking the question as to how safe we would be here in the US should we have a similar natural disaster causing our nuclear energy facilities to fail.  Some of these plants are several decades old. 

BEFORE AND AFTER PICTURES

I'm drawn to comparisons and when things are done to my house, I take before and after pictures...at least most of the time.  Had I not done that, I would not have noticed that workmen stole about twenty cobblestones and claimed they were under the debris.

Today, we have satellite pictures of the before and after of the tsunami taken from satellite.  Man is extremely resilient.  In a few years, Japan will have rebuilt just as Californians keep building their houses on hills that keep having mudslides or forest fires destroy them.  If before and after pictures were posted prominently in some of those areas, it would probably still not stop people from living and constructing their material lives in such insecure spaces.

Protest marches are 'before' pictures.  In Egypt, the 'after' pictures were happy.  Not so in Libya where Qaddafi has hired mercenaries and is killing his own people who are protesting.

We record so much before and after as we age, diet, change hairstyles and clothing, friends, and, most importantly, clean up after Nature has decided to visit us with disasters....hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes,  tsunamis, monsoons, lightning strikes, volcanoes, and all the other things that intrude into our lives.

THE INCONSISTENCY OF WORDS

Words are spoken an, while we may understand the meaning, it is strange to our ears when they are mispronounced.  Worse than that is by whom they are mispronounced and how they get to be accepted as correct because of the status of the one who mispronounces.   Nuclear ( adj \ˈnü-klē-ər, ˈnyü-, ÷-kyə-lər\) not nooc-uh-lar as has been pronounced by so many, especially G W Bush. 


The English have a word for adornments, it is jewellery.  However, in American English it is jewelry with the root being from gem or jewel.  However, I too often hear people pronounce it as: jew-lery.


Yet another is realtor:  \ˈrē(-ə)l-tər, -ˌtȯr, ÷ˈrē-lə-tər also rē-ˈal-tər\   It is not pronounced real-a ter. Eventually dictionaries bow to the worst of us and change the dictionaries.  Nauseated used to be an adjective that because of its misuse is now accepted in dictionaries as a synonym for nauseous. Nauseous used to mean a person was disgusting.

Add to those who guess.at the meaning of words they hear and go through life using them inaccurately to the point that the rest of us question our own understanding of the word.

There are many more of these but I will have to start keeping a list of them before I can come up with Part 2.