A FEW OF THE MAJOR PROBLEMS CURRENTLY

A serious problem has existed since the patent offense became too liberal in granting patents.  A company can be rewarded so many patents they can become a monopoly in no time.  This might be good for the Romney type of money acquisition but it is terrible for new products, safer, better, cheaper. and more useful to ever get marketed.  Read this article for more information.

Another is the threat of a cyder attack that could shut down the entire US Internet grid.  Leon Pannetta  made a clearer statement on the threat.  For more on this, click here.

Between all the threats to our lives, bodies, and material possessions as well as our professions, some of us welcome old age where the threats seem less relevant after a long, fulfilling life. 

BIDEN-RYAN DEBATE

The talks after debates is are interesting.  CNN thought Ryan won (which confirms what I have thought all along...more are Republican on CNN (which is probably why I stopped watching CNN as often as I used to do). MSNBC thought Biden won, confirming that they probably lean more on the Democrat side though they bring the most ridiculous Republican representative on their programs.  The only Republican whom I respect and whom they have on MSNBC frequently is is Steve Schmidt.  He shows the most objectivity of any of those who make guest appearances where there are Democrats..

Republicans thought Ryan did a great job.  Democrats knew Biden did a great job. (The focus group was 50% in favor of Biden.  He was articulate and clear on every subject raised.  Ryan continued his games of repeating the Republican five point goal  but no 'mapquest' directions on how they will get it done.  In a focus group, one Catholic woman agreed with Biden.  She felt it was important to be able to choose for herself and did not want to see non-Catholics forced to follow the values of a religion not their own.

This followed a day that started with a knock on my door and two Jehovah's Witness ladies who have tried to speak to me several times before.  They came with greetings from a former regular JW visitor with whom I enjoyed sharing thoughts.  She accepted my Atheism and I respected her right to believe with 'faith', which has always eluded me.  Today, as we were discussing some of our differences. One lady told me she does not believe in evolution as it is still only a 'theory'.  I said it has been proven in labs many times.  I asked why she thought that a virus gets stronger and stronger, is that not evolution?  At this point, since they can never answer anything beyond their limited mantra, they immediately asked how life starts.  I told them we were not talking about that.  The Bible can't explain it beyond a 'theory' either.  The conversation of people who are willing to accept views blindly only grew more frustrating when, in the evening, I listened to the same blind logic among undecided voters in a focus group.

Voting day cannot  come soon enough for my nerves which are getting as ragged as Mrs. Bennet's (Pride and Prejudice).  For someone who has promised herself to live a stress free life for her remaining days, I can't fight the addiction of following this election campaign. 

HOW DO WE EDUCATE DISINTERESTED VOTERS

If you are feeling too calm, get yourself irritates by asking a simple question of your friends. Ask, "Where do you get your political news."  Answers may be, "I don't listen or watch news.  The media lies."  I try to suggest that they stop watching Fox News, but that is like asking them to convert to another religion.".  If they tell me they think Obama isn't a citizen or that he isa a Muslim, I want to sell them stock on a Ponzi scheme. 

There is no answer to politicians who lie and are believed despite years of archived film proving their lies being played over and over.  (After all, the media isn't to be believed, say they.)  Groucho Marx asked, , "Who do you want to believe, me or your lying eyes?"  Unfortunately, too many want to believe the 'me' and not the truth-teller.

Other friends say they wouldn't vote for a black man while forgetting that President Obama is as much white as black and they also profess to have no prejudices.  There are those who vote by appearance.  "I can't vote for him, his eyes are too close together."   I suppose we should not only question whom to put into the House of Representatives, we should also look at whom to throw out.  There are three men on the Science committee for whom we should all have a frantic desire to see them on another job.  One believes that the world was created in six days, down not believe in evolution not science and thinks we should live by the Bible, not the Constitution..  A seco9nd believes CO2 probably came from dinosaur flatulence, and a third believes that woman have a built-in 'something' that prevent them from getting pregnant during a 'legitimate' rape.Since they got oto the prestigious 'science' committee, one must ask what about the others on the committee?  What do THEY believe that they allow these fools on it

The truth is that the Re[publicans really don't care what Romney believes.  They will have him vote whatever they tell him to do.  He signed Nprquist's pledge.  See this.

IN RELIGION, THE NUMBERS FOLLOWING IT IN THE US ARE GOING DOWN

It seems that other countries can be more objective in their comments about us that our own politically correct media.  It seemed that the world was faster at enlightenment that we in the USA.  Finally, a study has been completed showing that US Protestants are no longer a majority.

Even though our constitution reads that there should be a separation of church and state, there are those in Congress who are fighting to make the USA officially a  Christian country.  Let's hope that never happens.  Listening to the Congressmen who believe that the country should be run by the Bible rather than laws, that the world is not older that 9000 years, that there is no such thing as evolution, that we need no government, only live by the bible, it is mind bending.

For more details on he subject, click here. 

For those of you with a higher tolerance for hearing the views that may differ from your own, click here.

YOU CAN ONLY LIVE IN YOUR SKIN

Too many people seem to have too permeable, personal boundaries.  They take on the problems of others and try to make choices for them.  Out with a friend for lunch to a p[lace new to me, she knew everything on the menu and was going to tell me what to eat. As she read the menu, she gave a running critique of almost everything on it. She had tried most all dishes.. We were in a Thai restaurant but things looked different than the choices with which I was familiar. I rather like a bit of spice and heat and look for the number pf red peppers beside the description on the menu.  My friend advised that I should not even go above mild as even that was hot. She ordered her meal and I ordered mine, telling the waitress (who didn't seem to understand too much English) that I didn't want sweet (Bel)l, peppers but hot were fine.  This took a while to make clear.  I actually received exactly that for which I asked.  My friend had to ask for a taste of my food.

Have you known the people who talk to a sad friend and spend the rest of the day figuring out how to solve the stated problem, naturally having only a small portion of the facts.  There are those who freely offer advice, unsolicited, and then are offended when it is not followed. Others are brought to depression because they can't stop thinking of the sad tale told by a friend about a situation of distress.

I've never been sure how one gets to be objective. As a therapist for over 60 years, I'm not sure whether I was trained or whether it just came naturally.  I've always known the difference between  the pain of another and empathy (when you can understand the other's experience and even their pain but know that it is not your own.  Don't tell someone they should leave their spouse, let their aged parent live on machines, live by the Bible or not, or anything that is not a choice for your own person. .  The Indian who said, "You cannot know a man without walking a mile in his moccasins"  was correct to a point.  You can never totally know another as you might \get to know yourself.  Never assume that what is right for you is right for someone else.:

It is tough enough to live your own life without trying to live that of another!  So why do so many people try to live in someone else's skin?  Here is a tutorial I found on the subject you find of interest if you need to think more critically about your own boundaries.

OUR USE OF 'UNIVERSAL IS SUCH A JOKE

With reference to the universe, we about as significant as an atom.  There was a time, probably still is in the Bible, that the earth was everything..Those things that were blinking in the sky were 'stars'; no one had any idea what later turned out to be masses that were different for each.  If people can get beyond the Bible and deal with facts, not fiction, they would learn many things.  Recently I was impressed to learn that the sun is made up of Hydrogen and helium.  Who would have thought.  It isn't a ray gun put out by God to punish bad people by giving them cancer, after all.

Suicide bombers thinking they will be rewarded by Allah in their Heaven with 72 virgins, luckily will never know they were lied to in their virgin-less oblivion. How sad that those who want to get government out of our lives keep bringing more of government into them.  We are not even permitted to end our lives if we choose.  It amuses me.  When people believed in Heaven and Hell that might have held quite a threat.  Today, I dare you to punish me after I'm dead.  First of all, if you do, I won't know it.  Secondly, ...well, I guess there is no secondly.

Why do we say 'living in the past' when those people have 'missed the boat.
  Wopuldm't iot make more sense to speak of it as 'living in the passed'?  After all, we are constantly told 'what goes around comes around.  If you missed it in the past, you cn catch it when it comes around again...or is that only the bad stuff that does that?  I can never keep track.  In today's political campaign, if you listen carefully to both sides of the attack ads, there are no good guys .  Frightening thought, especially as it seems so likely to be true.

 HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

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LOWERING THE STRESS IN YOUR LIFE

For more than six decades, I have taught and lived by this rule.  Do not worry about anything over which you have no control.

It hadn't really occurred to me that some people do not know how to shut worry down because their body feels anxious and they obsess on their worry.  There are some critical questions one must ask to be free of that worry.

First: Is there something I can do to change the outcome?  For example, after WW2 many worried about Russia using an atomic bomb on us here in the USA.  Asking whether there was something I could do to influence this outcome, I reasoned that the only thing I could do was use my one vote in any presidential election we had to choose the person I thought to be most effective in foreign policy.  My influence stopped there.

Second:  If the worst of my fears was realized what,m if anything, could I do about it.  In this case, I could not build a bomb shelter for myself no avoid radiation if it was outside the shelter.  Since the answer was I was helpless to change the risk, I would not worry about it.  If a bomb fell, it was likely I would be dead along with anyone else around me.

However, there were many things in my life at the time about which I had to make choices for myself.  What career would I choose; how hard I would work at it, how would I choose friends, how would I handle things abhorrent to me, and on and on were the choices I would be avoiding while concentrating on something on which I could effect no change.

I believe that many people worry because their body is cuing them with anxiety and the obsess on whatever was in their mind at the time.  They do not ask themselves the question they need to ask to focus on those things in their life they need to answer because they are overwhelmed by what they see as complexity beyond their ability to make choices.  In that case, they must take all their 'worries' one at a time and sort them as to whether they can effect any change by their own actions. 

Another example:  You have not enough money to pay the bills you have. Do not worry about the future, tackle the present.  Do you have enough to pay a little to each creditor?  Contact each and let them know your situation and what they may expect.  If you can, pay any one of them in full to avoid service charges and interest,  Do you have other sources of income?  Is there something you can sell do for anyone  for which they might pay you?  What skills and resources do you have?  Believe me, your 'worry' is far better spent on trying to figure what you can do than bemoaning what you can't do.