Pained Thoughts

All Blacked Out

2011-06-16T23:18:00.002-04:00

WHY FUKUSHIMA IS MORE DIRE THAN ANYTHING ELSE GOING ON RIGHT NOW

Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 11:12pm

The disaster at Fukushima continues to grow and it will soon reach the realm of the unimaginable, but you won't hear about it from America's mainstream media outlets. What follows are quotes from the latest objective and up-to-date report - this time from Al Jazeera:

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Al Jazeera."

"Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he [Gundersen] said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively."

"The problem is how to keep it cool," says Gundersen. "They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"

Believe it or not, it just goes downhill from there:

"We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl," said Gundersen. "The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometres being found 60 to 70 kilometres away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up."

It has become so bad that TEPCO and the Japanese Government seem to have realized that they just cannot even try to cover-up or hide the truth:

"Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns.

TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.

Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station - an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan - is now likely uninhabitable."

But, it gets worse, much worse:

"In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant. The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster."

Don't you think that the American Media should report things like this? Don't you think the American Government should do something about things like this? Unfortunately, there is much more that American Media should report on and much more the Government should do something about:

"According to Gundersen, the exposed reactors and fuel cores are continuing to release microns of caesium, strontium, and plutonium isotopes. These are referred to as "hot particles".

"We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo," he said. "Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters. Radioactive air filters from cars in Fukushima prefecture and Tokyo are now common, and Gundersen says his sources are finding radioactive air filters in the greater Seattle area of the US as well."

Why are hot particles are a problem:

"The hot particles on them can eventually lead to cancer.

"These get stuck in your lungs or GI tract, and they are a constant irritant," he explained, "One cigarette doesn't get you, but over time they do. These [hot particles] can cause cancer, but you can't measure them with a Geiger counter. Clearly people in Fukushima prefecture have breathed in a large amount of these particles. Clearly the upper West Coast of the US has people being affected. That area got hit pretty heavy in April."

And now, the worst part - what Al Jazeera calls "a problem of infinite proportions":

"Gundersen pointed out that the units are still leaking radiation. "They are still emitting radioactive gases and an enormous amount of radioactive liquid," he said. "It will be at least a year before it stops boiling, and until it stops boiling, it's going to be cranking out radioactive steam and liquids."

Gundersen worries about more earthquake aftershocks, as well as how to cool two of the units. "Unit four is the most dangerous, it could topple," he said. "After the earthquake in Sumatra there was an 8.6 [aftershock] about 90 days later, so we are not out of the woods yet. And you're at a point where, if that happens, there is no science for this, no one has ever imagined having hot nuclear fuel lying outside the fuel pool. They've not figured out how to cool units three and four."

The "infinite" part of the problem:

"Units one through three have nuclear waste on the floor, the melted core, that has plutonium in it, and that has to be removed from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years," he said. "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

Dr Sawada says that the creation of nuclear fission generates radioactive materials for which there is simply no knowledge informing us how to dispose of the radioactive waste safely.

"Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations," he explained. "To do otherwise is simply an immoral act, and that is my belief, both as a scientist and as a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing."

Gundersen believes it will take experts at least ten years to design and implement the plan.

"So ten to 15 years from now maybe we can say the reactors have been dismantled, and in the meantime you wind up contaminating the water," Gundersen said. "We are already seeing Strontium [at] 250 times the allowable limits in the water table at Fukushima. Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean. So I think we will have a contaminated aquifer in the area of the Fukushima site for a long, long time to come."

The article did not report on the effects of the disaster on the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps they did not talk about the Pacific because there is not a lot of information available. Or, it could be because even Gundersen and the other experts cited by Al Jazeera could not bring themselves to think about it. How many hot particles can the Ocean absorb? How would they be distributed though out the Ocean? At what level do the hot particles begin to affect the already depleted populations of fish humans rely on for food? What level of hot particles will render the fish unfit for human consumption? Could the effects of Fukushima increase the number and severity of jelly-fish blooms (already a significant problem) and effectively eliminate the Ocean's other inhabitants? Gundersen said, "Contaminated water tables are incredibly difficult to clean." I wonder how difficult it is to decontaminate an ocean?

In case there is a "reasonable person" out there who will say, "Let's put things into their proper perspective. The numerous nuclear tests at Bikini did not have a significant effect on the Pacific." I would say that we have no way of knowing what effects the nuclear testing had on the Pacific because we knew next to nothing about the way it was before Bikini. Moreover, I don't think that the Bikini Atoll sets right beside the Pacific Gyre. Fukushima is practically on top of it.

What will it take before the people demand that they be told the unvarnished truth about what truly is the worst industrial disaster ever? What will it take for Americans to demand that their Government do everything possible to mitigate the effects of the disaster?

The Dictionary of the Spell-Checker did not have the words TEPCO or Fukushima in it - it won't be long before every dictionary of every word processing software will contain Fukushima and TEPCO. I don't believe that I am one who sees conspiracies to take over the world and enslave each one of us behind every corner. But, I do wonder why (given the importance of these two programs to their base), the G.O.P. is insisting on changing or eliminating Social Security and Medicare? Because their Lords & Masters believe that they can actually do it? Or, could the circus of idiocy be meant to ensure that absolutely no one thinks about Fukushima? I'm not sure, but the virtual news black-out on Fukushima and its consequences speaks volumes.

The Al Jazeera article may be found (for now) at:

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

An Open Letter to the President

2011-06-16T17:39:00.003-04:00

Published on Saturday, June 4, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Open Letter to President Barack Obama from E.coli 0104:H4

by Ralph Nader

June 3, 2011

Dear President Obama:

My name is E.coli 0104:H4. I am being detained in a German Laboratory in Baveria, charged with being "a highly virulent strain of bacteria." Together with many others like me, the police have accused us of causing about 20 deaths and nearly five hundred cases of kidney failure--so far. Massive publicity and panic all around.

You can't see me, but your scientists can. They are examining me and I know my days are numbered. I hear them calling me a "biological terrorist," an unusual combination of two different E.coli bacteria cells. One even referred to me as a "conspiracy of mutants".

It is not my fault, I want you to know. I cannot help but harm innocent humans, and I am very sad about this. I want to redeem myself, so I am sending this life-saving message straight from my Petri dish to you.

This outbreak in Germany has been traced to food--location unknown. What is known to you is that invisible terrorism from bacterium and viruses take massively greater lives than the terrorism you are spending billions of dollars and armaments to stop in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Malaria, caused by infection with one of four species of Plasmodium, a parasite transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes destroys a million lives a year. Many of the victims are children and pregnant women. Mycobacterium tuberculosis takes nearly three million lives. The human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV) causes over a million deaths. Many other microorganisms in the water, soil, air, and food are daily weapons of mass destruction. Very little in your defense budget goes for operational armed forces against this kind of violence. Your agencies, such as the Center for Disease Control, conduct some research but again nothing compared to the research for your missiles, drones, aircraft and satellites.

Your associates are obsessed with possible bacteriological warfare by your human enemies. Yet you are hardly doing anything on the ongoing silent violence of my indiscriminate brethren.

You and your predecessor George W. Bush made many speeches about fighting terrorism by humans. Have you made a major speech about us?

You speak regularly about crushing the resistance of your enemies. But you splash around so many antibiotics (obviously I don't like this word and consider it genocidal) in cows, bulls, chickens, pigs and fish that your species is creating massive antibiotic resistance, provoking our mutations, so that we can breed even stronger progeny. You are regarded as the smartest beings on Earth, yet you seem to have too many neurons backfiring.

In the past two days of detention, scientists have subjected me to "enhanced interrogation," as if I have any will to give up my secrets. It doesn't work. What they will find out will be from their insights about me under their microscopes. I am lethal, I guess, but I'm not very complicated.

The United States, together with other countries, needs more laboratories where scientists can detain samples of us and subject us to extraordinary rendition to infectious disease research centers. Many infectious disease scientists need to be trained, especially in the southern hemispheres to staff these labs

You are hung up on certain kinds of preventable violence without any risk/benefit analysis. This, you should agree, is utterly irrational. You should not care where the preventable violence comes from except to focus on its range of devastation and its susceptibility to prevention or cure!

Well, here they come to my Petri dish for some more waterboarding. One last item: You may wonder how tiny bacterial me, probably not even harboring a virus, can send you such a letter. My oozing sense is that I'm just a carrier, being used by oodles of scientists taking advantage of a high profile infectious outbreak in Europe to catch your attention.

Whatever the how does it really matter to the need to act Now?

E-cologically yours,

E.coli 0104:H4 (for the time being)

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.

This letter immediately reminded me of the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln because of the importance of its contents, its simplicity, and clarity of thought. I do not understand why its message has not been mentioned by the mainstream media or why others have not thought of the defense of our Nation in terms of those things that represent a definite clear and present danger to everyone who lives in the United States - it is just a question of common sense.

Most of defense spending should be dedicated to defending Americans against what most threatens them: disease, our crumbling infrastructure, the contamination of our environment, and the destruction of our most important resources (fresh water, fertile soil, marine life, and the oceans themselves). Put into proper perspective, the threat of "global terrorism" is infinitely less than any one of these threats and weaknesses - as are the probabilities that we will be attacked by another nation. Moreover, addressing these threats and weaknesses represents the most significant opportunity we have for economic growth and increased prosperity for the people of the United States and for those of the entire world.

Unfortunately, as an old Spanish Proverb states, "Common sense is the least common of the senses." If we fail to pay attention to defending ourselves against the most common and frequent clear and present dangers to ourselves, they will destroy us. It is that simple. If our society succumbs to these dangers and weaknesses, it will be because we willingly and knowingly chose ignorance over common sense.

The Truth about Torture and the Hunt for Bin Laden

2011-06-07T00:59:00.003-04:00

This letter from Elisa Massimino, President and CEO, Human Rights First, published in the Organization's monthly "Rites Wire" of June 2011 is a trenchant, concise, and irrefutable analysis of the role of torture in the search for Bin Laden. (Surprisingly, it also demonstrates that not all of Senator McCain's principals have been compromised to gain points with tea baggers or the extreme right):

From the President and CEO

News of the Osama bin Laden operation wasn't even a day old when torture apologists began claiming vindication. To hear former vice president Dick Cheney and his allies tell it, without the CIA's water-boarding program, the United States would never have found bin Laden. Cheney and company want Americans to believe that torture makes us safe, and they don't seem to care about the dangers it poses—to our national security, our national character, and our men and women in uniform.

But their propaganda push has run into a few hurdles, otherwise known as facts. The truth is that torture hindered the hunt for bin Laden. It failed to get critical information, and two detainees lied under torture, setting back the investigation. In fact, just like the operation that led to Saddam Hussein, it was legal, humane interrogation that produced the key intelligence—not torture. This was no surprise to the many veteran interrogators who for years have argued that torture is inefficient and counterproductive.

Armed with these facts, opponents of torture are setting the record straight. After getting the inside story from CIA director Leon Panetta, Senator John McCain took to the Senate floor to reveal that the bin Laden operation had nothing to do with torture, and Americans shouldn't either. I went to the American Enterprise Institute to debate the issue with prominent torture supporters, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, on a panel moderated by John Yoo. Watch the debate here.

But the renewed debate has made clear that we can't sit back and let the torture apologists speak unopposed. We're doing everything we can to strengthen the consensus against torture. As the hunt for Bin Laden shows, torture isn't just wrong; it's also wrongheaded.

Sincerely,

Elisa Massimino
President and CEO
Human Rights First

Thoughts on a Progressive Facebook Program for the 2012 Elections

2011-05-04T22:42:00.005-04:00

Everyone should focus as much energy as her/he can, both personal energy (and that of the others we may recruit) on truly vital issues and leave the fight about who is really a progressive aside. This bickering is is one way the servants of the 10% who own 90% of the nation's wealth distract the public's attention.

My suggestion is that each of us organize local groups that establish opposition to the Citizens United Decision as a litmus test for defining acceptable candidates for all races (governors, state legislatures, mayors, assembly members, judges, district attorneys, sheriffs, etc.). We will have to move fast to have an affect on the primaries. By doing this, we can begin to use the successful tactics of the Repugnants and their lords and masters.

Repugnant success is due to their short-sighted emphasis on a very small number of issues: "Abortion"; "Allowing Religion in Public Schools"; "Sex Education;" "Big government;" the "War on Terror"; the "Deficit"; and "Jobs". We must not forget the Big Ticket issues of the evangelical wing of the Repugnants, "Family Values;" "the Defense of Marriage;" and "Secular Humanism." They have no need to stipulate real programs to address these issues. All they do is give tirades against or for these issues and attack their opponents by saying they are amoral secular humanists, "Big government" types who support everything that the Repugnants define as bad for America as well as oppose everything that the Repugnants say is good and necessary for America. Repugnant success based on this system illustrates a weakness of Progressive candidates.

Progressive candidates and their supporters tend to carefully build up the facts and rationale for their programs. They then outline a course of action. Unfortunately, a very large percentage of the population does not want facts, figures, and details. All these people want is to be told how they should react emotionally to the issues defined as "essential" by the media, the Repugnants, and the propaganda campaigns created by the publicity machines built by the right-wing super rich and the "Independent Evangelical Christian Right." Breaking this indoctrination requires that Progressives take some pages from the Repugnant playbook and use them against those who created this system by establishing make-or-break, black & white issues and hammer away at them.

1. As I said at the beginning, the first issue must be "Citizens United" and every progressive must mount a very strong and simple way of opposing this -- in the same way that the Repugnants have used "Roe v. Wade" and "Brown v. Board of Education".

2. Progressives must use every opportunity they have to condemn in the strongest of terms the privatization of Medicare and Social Security. Progressives must "tattoo" a very large line in the minds of the electorate that anything that might reduce Medicare or Social Security must be rejected and that anyone proposing to do so must be rejected as well.

3. Progressives need to wage all out war against the petroleum industry. We need to demonstrate to America that "Big Oil" is making higher profits than it ever has and that the compensation packages, perks, and other incentives given to top managers has grown to obscene levels. Levels that actually have a direct effect on the price of gasoline. The second part of this issue is demonstrating that, because of the number of incentives, tax breaks, and other Repugnant support schemes, Big Oil not only does not pay taxes, it actually receives funds from the income taxes paid by the middle class.

4. The next issue should move from "Big Oil" to "Big Companies" in general. Again, progressives must hammer a way at corporate taxes and incentives as well as tax breaks for the top 1%. Here too, progressives need to provoke strong emotional reactions to: "corporate welfare" as well as to the de facto tax-free status of huge corporations and the super-rich.

5. The forth issue should be the loss and exporting of jobs. Progressives need to be very emotionally opposed to this and call for legislation that would tax companies for every job they export or have exported. The candidates should constantly emphasize that the Repugnants not only are not against the exporting of jobs, but reward job exporters with tax breaks. This issue also includes the fact that the Repugnants and their masters are not only interested in exporting every job they can, but want to destroy any kind of job security and basic programs, such as health care, that workers and middle managers currently have. It is here where Progressives need to put a great deal of effort to the promotion of measures that protect the right of Americans to organize and unionize.

6. The banking industry and the financial markets must be re-regulated to ensure that there will no longer be companies that are "too big to fail." Other regulations and tax law must be put into place that would take away existing incentives that allow companies like "Harley Davidson" to shut down as much production as possible because the company can obtain higher profits by dedicating as many of the company's resources to as possible to investment banking,

7. The ability of the EPA and the FDA to regulate the industries they were made to regulate must be increased exponentially. The Repugnants and their masters simply do not care about the world we will leave behind to our descendants.

Finally, these seven issues should be tied together in order to create a very strong emotional certainty that these seven issues prove that the top 1% of the population is waging all out economic war on the lower 90%.

The Blitz - Implementing a New Culture

2010-12-21T21:44:00.006-05:00

Marketing an Organization

Introduction

I ask all of you to be patient with this, in a way it could be considered my life's work. I planned to put this system forward in a book, but I don't want my ideas used to further and strengthen consumerism-something I think of as the cancer that will cause our extinction if we fail to recognize it and direct our energies to our real needs as human beings. Before we start with the actual marketing system, I want to give you an overview of my career so that you can see that it is a system that works.

I had the good fortune to work with a man who knows more about business, marketing, and market research than anyone I have ever met or read (and that is a considerable number people from the world over). During that time I began to see that the products that succeed, in spite of the best efforts of those marketing them, are the ones that mean something to those who make them, those who recommend them, and those who use them. I then had the chance to put my insights into practice, first in Mexico and then Internationally and they worked extremely well. How well? I was living in Mexico and working for a privately held firm and I was number 2 in the company and the number 1 spot was, and is being held by the owner. I took a chance and took the job of Market Research Manager at Wyeth Mexico, S.A. de C.V.

This was a big risk. In most pharmaceutical firms in Mexico, the Market Research Manager gets about as much respect as a kicker of a football team, but the Marketing Dept. was in complete disarray. After less than months with the company, nothing was done in the department without my approval. Two months later, the President instructed me to write the entire marketing plan for the coming year. When I asked how I was to work with the two therapeutic area managers and their product managers, he told me not to work with them. I was to write the entire plan, for the company as a whole, for both therapeutic areas, and for every product. At the same time, he expanded my responsibility to Manager of Business Development. To make a long story short, after three years with the company, I was given the additional responsibility of Director of Women's Healthcare – the company's most important franchise. After 12 months, we doubled our market share of one product line and the annual growth rate of the sales of the other line in terms of tablets sold went from 3% to 18%, even though we had to double the price of the product during those 12 months.. After that, three and a half years as an employee of Wyeth Mexico, I was transferred to Wyeth-Ayerst International as a Product Manager of one of our product lines. Ten months later I was named Director of Women's Healthcare.

During the past ten years that I have been incapacitated, I have had the chance to effect a minutial review of every research report, every market analysis, every consulting project, every marketing plan, strategic review, as well as every strategy and tactic I and those who worked with me made during my career. What follows is a description of how I succeeded, even though I might not have been completely aware of it at the time.

Overview

Understood correctly, marketing is nothing more than a process of definition. At the most simple level, a company or an organization takes raw material applies energy to it and creates a product. What has been forgotten (if anyone was ever been completely cognizant of it) is that these three things are the same regardless of the nature of the company or organization.

The real raw material of any kind of economic organization is people. Not the “we recognize that our most valuable resource is our people” platitude found in every worthless exercise known as “mission statements.” Here “people” should be understood as anyone who intervenes or can intervene in the creation and adoption of the product.

Energy, as it applies to any economic organization, is information. Information is at the heart of the activities of any organization and it is subject to the same forces as those set forward in the laws of thermodynamics – especially entropy. Even monetary resources are a form of information. Money really is nothing more than a measure of the rate of adoption of your product and a symbol of the possible leverage you may be able to exercise over the raw material.

Finally there is the product. This is the most difficult thing for many to understand, but the product is not the thing that is sold. The product is what it means to be a person who: designs, creates, discovers, makes, recommends, sells, buys, and purchases (or joins) it. In short, the product is a culture. If it is not, it is simply a commodity that is replaceable by any other similar commodity (the failure to recognize this was the cause of the tremendous decline of the American automobile companies). What then are the things produced by companies or organizations – cars, planes, food, medication, books, services, etc.? These are the tools with which the raw material is worked and converted into part of the product: the culture - everything done by the company or organization.

What does all this mean for “The Blitz”? It means that we must establish and create a very trenchant, concise definition of who we are, why are we together, what we offer, and to whom we offer it. This is much more than a mission statement. I have observed a number of companies and divisions of companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on these and I have participated in the role of consultant, observer, participant and moderator. I have never seen a company really benefit from the exercise. The reason for the failure of mission statements is the same reason party platforms are meaningless: They are designed to appeal to everyone and to offend no one. In turn, the culture definition works because it gives people (the raw material) a short declaration that informs their decisions about the product/culture and an immediate and strong emotional link to it. In our case, THE BLITZ.

Two of the the best statements of culture I know of are those of the Marines and that of West Point: Simper Fi and Honor, Duty, Country. They are short and cannot be misconstrued. They may not be always followed, but their meanings are clear. (I do not want to enter into the controversies surrounding the Armed Forces. But, if every officer really internalized these words, the conduct of the officers and the behavior of the enlisted men in Iraq and Afghanistan would have been much different.) We must come up with something like these two or three words – stones that are the foundation upon which every decision is made, every alliance is built, and to which everyone is absolutely committed. These statements also demonstrate another aspect of successful statements of culture, they are positive. An organization might want a statement like: “We oppose everything the Tea Party stands for.” It is short and to the point and provokes an immediate emotional response, but it is a very big trap.

There is one very significant problem with negative culture statements. Groups who adopt this statement cede the initiative to the group they oppose. The opposition then becomes the ones who act and those opposing them becomes the ones who react. This is what happened during the mid-term elections. Progressives reacted to the Tea Party (which is precisely what those dedicated to serving the plutocracy wanted). We went on the defensive, we tried to reason with the country and demonstrate that the Tea Party and those behind them were wrong; and we lost the House and barely held onto the Senate. Instead of defending the accomplishments of the Democrats during the past two years, we should have ignored the Tea Party and the Republicans. We should have made it very clear where we are going, of the way ahead for the country, and the prosperity we seek to create for all Americans. If we had communicated this to the country, we would be in a very different place.

If we are to follow the system, we must develop our statement. The Philosophy of Blitz expressed in the “Leftcheek deuce” blog is a great description of our cultural values. But, now comes the hardest part – finding a short, (3 to 5 words if possible) statement that expresses our values and that creates an immediate emotional impact on whosoever reads or hears it. And, unlike mission statements, it cannot appeal to all and offend no one. The definition of the other parts of the marketing plan come very easily once we have our statement.

My suggestion is that we adopt a new word for our statement of culture:

“Lifreeproditran”

Life, Freedom, Prosperity, Dignity, Transparency

Once we decide on our statement of culture, we can then move on to define the tools we will offer to convert our raw material into our product.

IMMIGRATION - CUTTING OUR OWN THROATS

2010-04-29T15:11:00.012-04:00

The Republicans and the extremists they pander to will be able to obtain one of their most treasured goals this mid-term election if the people affected do what they want - refuse to vote or, even worse, vote Republican. The people affected are Hispanic voters who have friends and family who are undocumented and the Tea Party's goal is to sink a knife deep into any chance of Immigration Reform (especially any kind that includes any form of amnesty) for at least twelve years. The timing of the Arizona Law was no accident. These extremists wanted something that would exponentially increase the Hispanics' disappointment with the Obama Administration, while the Republican Senators make it impossible for Obama to do anything before the mid-term elections. If the Hispanic Community plays into the Republicans' plan - there will be no positive Immigration Reform for more than a decade.

I understand the desperation for positive Immigration Reform that allows the undocumented immigrants to stay in this country. It is something I want as well. I have too many friends that could be deported at any moment, I know too many children whose lives would change forever if their parents were to be deported. Because of this, I'm asking Hispanics to change their tactics to keep the best chance we have for just Immigration Reform alive.

I too am very disappointed that President Obama has yet to take up Immigration Reform, but we all must understand the reasons for the delay. Barak Obama took over the Presidency facing the greatest number of dangers to the country since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He had to stabilize the financial system of the country and work closely with the leaders of many other countries to keep the world financial systems from collapsing - all the while knowing that these actions were nothing more than band aids and that much more work had to be done and still has to be done to keep this and future crises from wrecking the finances of the world. Moreover, he had to take action and ensure that the American Automobile Industry would not collapse - something that would have led to the highest loss of jobs in American History. He also had to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court as well as see to it that his nominees to fill all of the posts in his government be approved. He had to do all of this while the Republican Party was doing its best to keep him from doing anything - in complete disregard of the damage being done to the country, its institutions, and its people. Finally, he had to initiate healthcare reform by pushing industry as far as it would go for now and to likewise pass a comprehensive banking/financial services reform bill. It is not my intention to be an apologist for the Democrats or President Obama, I am just pointing out the challenges they had to face and why Immigration Reform has yet to be put on the legislative agenda.

The fight for true Immigration Reform will be unlike any of the fights this administration has faced and this is another reason healthcare and banking reforms had to come first. Achieving the kind of reform you and I want is likely to take up most of the President's time during the last two years of what I hope is his first term, even with super-majorities in the House and Senate. If the Democratic majority is reduced or, even worse, is lost - the President will not be able to achieve reform no matter how hard he tries. It is, therefore, essential that we do all we can to register every citizen and ensure that as many minority and young voters vote and vote Democratic.

There is something else we must do to help ensure Immigration Reform - when marching and during the meetings - we must speak and chant in English, all of the flags carried must be American, the colors worn must be red, white, and blue, and all of the signs must be in English. One of the major fears of those who are against immigration reform is that they will be forced to learn Spanish. It is therefore imperative that our efforts do not underscore those fears. Making the United States a multilingual nation is something we can do at a later date.

Finally, we must adopt a simple slogan that will appeal to a basic American value and that underscores the contributions of Hispanics. I suggest we use:

Immigration Reform Because:
We're Willing to Work

The slogan appeals directly to the "protestant work ethic" and it directly refutes a prejudice held by more whites than I can believe (the lie that Latinos are lazy welfare cases). We have to make these people see just how hard Hispanics work: Holding down two full-time jobs, picking and moving 4,000 pounds of tomatoes a day for $50, standing for almost 8 hours a day in a beef packing plant, etc. The instances demonstrating that Americans refuse to do this kind of work are to many to count. Aside from this, there is a final benefit in Immigration Reform that should be forcefully expressed by our press spokespersons*.

By allowing the Hispanics who are hear to stay and work, there will not be a Social Security or a Welfare crisis. The number of legal workers contributing to the Social Security system is declining while the number of recipients of Social Security and Medicare is growing. Accepting the the undocumented workers in the country as legal residents, this Social Security crunch will be avoided. Perhaps we should modify the proposed motto to:

Immigration Reform:
Because We're Willing to Work and
You'll be Able to Retire,
Your Social Security Benefits Intact

Our best chance for real Immigration Reform is now, with this President and Democratic super-majorities in the House and Senate. We must, therefore do everything we can to ensure that all minority and young voters get out and vote and vote Democratic.

*I wish I could say that this is my idea, but it is not. I saw it on the Internet. I want to credit the originator of the idea, but I have been unable to find the original reference.

Testicles - Bibletastic.com

2009-11-08T16:42:00.000-05:00

Testicles - Bibletastic.com

Health care once again

2009-08-13T16:00:00.004-04:00

I have spent most of my life in the pharmaceutical industry. I was responsible for my company's most important product line everywhere in the world with the exception of the US and Canada. I have dealt with the national health care systems in 45 countries and I can say that many of them (especially in the Scandinavian countries and in France and Germany) are very superior to health care in the US (just look at life-expectancy, quality of life, and infant survival data). If we do not change the way we handle health care, we will be unable to compete with the rest of the world because more and more money will pour down the black hole hole we call the "American Health Care System" (as if there is a system).. The per capita expenditures on health care in France and Germany is half ours and we do not even have universal coverage. In addition, their systems are better than ours in almost every metric you want to examine (especially so when it comes to patient satisfaction and new born life expectancy).

If you are interested in the facts concerning the proposed health care system and not the lies and exaggerations of the tartigrade twit know-nothings, please review the following 8 points and examine the information contained in the administration's website by clicking the link at the bottom of this post:

8 ways reform provides security and stability to those with or without coverage

Ends Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions: Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history.
Ends Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays: Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses.
Ends Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care: Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics.
Ends Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill: Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill.
Ends Gender Discrimination: Insurance companies will be prohibited from charging you more because of your gender.
Ends Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage: Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.
Extends Coverage for Young Adults: Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26.
Guarantees Insurance Renewal: Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick.

Learn more and get details: http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/health-insurance-consumer-protections/

Internet Search Techniques

2009-08-09T12:18:00.000-04:00

Internet Search Techniques

This advice is very useful and I hope that you take the time to read it.

Time to Think

2009-07-31T20:13:00.004-04:00

Today, I remembered having read something about the shortest event ever measured. I don't remember the event, but I remembered that it lasted 2 attoseconds. I knew that an attosecond was quite short. I thought that an attosecond was to a second as one second is to a million or maybe a billion years (although I really doubted the latter). I'm not sure why, but I looked it up today and found out that one attosecond is to one second as one second is to the time the universe has existed. How can one possibly live in "the moment" when discrete actions begin and end in such an infintesimally small amounts of time?

The Egyptians and Proclus may indeed have been right when they said that "god" was not to be found "out there somewhere", but in the eternal present the eternal now. "God" or whatever you want to call the Source of Being may indeed "exist" in all the way down outside the very bottom of time and bring all creation about with actions infinitely small and infinitely short. It's just a thought.

Mayberry

2009-07-05T14:55:00.003-04:00

We all have images in our minds of bucolic small towns where everyone knows everyone else and all the people get along for the most part. A place where most are disposed to help anyone in the town in almost anyway they can. It does not matter whether it's Mayberry, Lake Wobegone, or the suburb of "The Wonder Years." These places are part of the American Identity and what makes these places such a persistent idea is that they exist and existed- not as perfect as the myth, but closer to it than one might imagine. These places are rapidly disappearing due to a number of factors and one of these is chrystal meth. According to Walter Kirn, writing in today's New York Times Book Review, Methland - The Death and Life of a Small American Town by Nick Reading gives the reader a very effective and engaging account of how, why, and by whom these towns are being destroyed. Reading also describes how meth is a symptom of the diseases destroying the towns - it is not the cause. Finally, he also shows how one town began a process of recovery that appears to be working. I have placed this book high on my reading lst and I hope you will do the same. The unending "Dateline", "60 Minutes", et al reports will not bring about the political action needed. The only thing that will lead to political action is us. Our leaders will not act until we force them to - with letters, emails, phone calls, demonstrations, etc. There are solutions out there and it is up to us to make the politicians find and adopt them.

Minds and Gods

2009-07-03T23:52:00.003-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

This is a fantastic book that in the world I wish and even pray for everyone would be intensely interested in. The author, Todd Tremlin, demonstrates through cognitive science that various neural structures and programs that came about as a result of evolution function together to actually predispose us to believe in divine agents as long as these agents have a limited number of "unbelievable" attributes and that these "unbelievable" attributes are somehow acceptable. The book is a fascinating tour of the mind. One might expect that a book such as this would have as one of its messages that our cognitive predisposition to attribute phenomena to divine agents argues against the existance of such agents. However, Mr. Tremlin makes it very clear that this is not a conclusion with which he would agree. He does, though, make it very clear that an understanding of these predispositions is essential as they can create unconscious and subconscious assumptions about our God or gods with which our conscious mind would not agree. All-in-all, whether you are agnostic, athiestic, or very religious, this is a book that you should definitely read.

The flag says it all.

2009-06-21T14:22:00.001-04:00

I need to warn you about this book . . .

2009-06-05T15:01:00.002-04:00

Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief… by Rodney Stark

Rarely have I been so disappointed by a book - even "Evolving God" was less disappointing. I am just under halfway through and I can't stand it any more. Stark totally dismisses Ancient Egyptian religion as a polytheistic "temple faith" that gave nothing to its people. The only thing he deems of any worth is Akhenaten's heresy because it is somehow obvious that monotheism is much better than polytheism. It seems that, for Stark, the only worthwhile discoveries of God are those of a capricious deity who deems his creations to have no value whatsoever and who consigns the overwhelming majority to eternal damnation for the edification of the infinitesimal elect. Oh, I forgot, the other acceptable and valid discovery is of a deity who takes one very insignificant group of human beings as his "chosen people" - the rest of humanity being completely unworthy of the attention of the supreme being and who should furthermore be subject to periodic genocides because of (among other terribly important factors) their inability to say shiboleth. Greek religion is also dismissed as degenerate as that of the Egyptians. A tradition that gave us philosophy, science, math, ethics, and democracy is summarily judged to be worthless superstition. (I wonder if one could even find an Athenian of the 5th century BCE who actually believed in the their creation myths as literal truth. But, suppose one could; how is that any different from the belief of many 21st century Americans that an apple and snake determined the fate of humanity?)
The faith of the Egyptians led to a civilization that lasted for 3,000 years and that left for all humanity some of its most meaningful monuments and symbols. Even the cross as a symbol of divinely granted life is something we owe as much to the Egyptians as to the Romans. The Egyptians were also the first (as far as we know) to develop the archetype of the godman whose death and resurrection redeems creation. As for their "temple faith that had nothing to do with the common man", the Egyptians enthusiastically participated in every celebration of every "god." They knew that they formed a valued part of the order of creation and that the pharaoh and priests carried out rituals necessary to maintain that order just as they carried out similar rituals that were also essential to that same divinely mandated order. Religion was an integral part of their lives - so integral that they would not understand the question; "What is your religion?" The Egyptians also understood the need for dualism in creation. They understood that it was not possible for Horus to destroy Seth because they knew that chaos was just as necessary to creation as order. If chaos seemingly gained the upper hand, Egyptians knew that that was the way of creation. They did not assume that they were worthless worms in the sight of God and that any setback or illness was because they had angered their "god." They also knew that what we take as their "gods" were nothing more than attributes of God and that their myths were just ways of finding some understanding of that which is essentially unknowable. Before you decide to jump on me, I should point out that I know that Egypt was not a paradise and that there were many priests who encouraged every superstition so that they could benefit from it. What I am referring to are their ideas - I understand that a lot was lost in their application. However, one should always keep in mind that, of all the peoples and religious systems in the world, the Egyptians were unique in one way. When they thought of paradise, they saw it as being just like Egypt, only a little better. I suppose that is of no importance to Stark. Just as it is of no importance that almost everyone who was privileged enough to experience Ancient Egypt said that the Egyptians were the "happiest and most satisfied people in the world."
I regret buying the electronic version of the book. I just don't think that returning it in an email to the publishers would have the same effect as sending back the book itself. I do not think that I should agree with the author of every book I buy, to the contrary. However, an author who publishes a book with a title such as this one should give the religions of the Greeks and Egyptians an honest review. Otherwise he should make it clear on the cover of the book that he believes that the only great religions are those that are monotheistic and that engender things like pogroms, inquisitions, jihads, and genocide.
All this aside, I should be grateful to Mr. Stark. I had been debating whether I should leave my Judeo-Christian traditions and beliefs completely behind and embrace Perennial Philosophy or not. Mr. Stark made me see the choice in the starkest of terms and, because of him, there is no longer any debate within me. He made me see that I want nothing to do with certainties of this kind of monotheism as they are false certainties that have given the human beings little in exchange for all that they have cost us. ( out of 5 stars)

If you are interested, you can read other reviews (all of which are shorter than this one - I promise) at: http://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=millsge

Executive Compensation

2009-06-05T13:48:00.002-04:00

This is the most rational and just executive pay policy: Establish a maximum multiple of the average employee salary. Mandate that annual pay increases cannot be more than the increase of the average employee salary. Bonuses cannot be more than a maximum multiple of the average employee bonus. I know of no more just, reasonable, or effective pay policy. Can someone out there get this idea to someone who can do something about it?

Evil

2009-04-26T13:06:00.002-04:00

I really can't add anything to these editorials other than to say: "If you fight evil with evil, evil wins."

Op-Ed Columnist - The Banality of Bush White House Evil - NYTimes.com

2009-04-26T13:05:00.000-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - The Banality of Bush White House Evil - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Time to Come Clean - NYTimes.com

2009-04-26T13:04:00.000-04:00

Op-Ed Columnist - Time to Come Clean - NYTimes.com

The Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt by James Henry Breasted

2009-04-25T08:49:00.003-04:00

This is a work that few would include in the curricula of secondary education. It should be put there. Its importance transcends Egyptology as it demonstrates how deeply the evolution of religion and that of society are intertwined. As Breasted presents the material, the reader has the opportunity to see his or her society and religion mirrored in those of Ancient Egypt. But, its most vital message is to be found in Breasted's demonstration of how the rise of religious literalism led to the stunting of the development of ethics. Priestly literalism - driven by greed - did great harm to the development of a system of ethics that began in the Middle Kingdom by turning the wrongly named "Books of the Dead" into the equivalent of cosmic "get out of jail cards" very similar to the infamous Papal Indulgences. A deep awareness of how this came about is essential to the ability to recognize the development of such nefarious trends in our own society.

S = k log w again

2009-04-05T20:11:00.002-04:00

I just finished The Alchemy Key by Stuart Nettleton - it's a marvelous book that I recommend to anyone (especially if you have no interest in Alchemy). Nettletton's knowledge is encyclopaedic and he shares it in an extremely enjoyable way. I am still somewhat dizzy from the breakneck speed at which the concepts, symbols, cosmology, and history ire presented. Reading the book gives one a very good idea why people like Newton, Goethe, Graves, and Campbell were so entranced by the subject. But it has brought me around again to entropy. Seeing how many concepts, thoughts, beliefs, etc have been packed into Christianity, Judism, and Islam (not to mention the many other belief systems that lay behind western and eastern societies) makes me question how much these can hold. This is even more of a question when one realizes the conflicts and contradictions humanity has packed into these foundations. Just the conflicts between what Nettleton refers to as the "Afro-Asiatic" and the "Indo-Hittite" belief structures have blown whole regions apart in the past and time has increased, rather than lessened, these conflicts. When will our "S" value increase beyond our power to do something about it? What is the tipping point for cultural, economic, social, philosophical, and religious entropy? I would feel better if I knew that someone was thinking about this and I would feel even better if someone has considered this and can prove that it is not a problem. I don't think that anyone has thought or is thinking about it, though. And S = k log w, continues ticking away.

Entropy and Bright Eyes

2009-03-31T17:58:00.004-04:00

My mind can't seem to stop mulling on entropy. As the S value of a closed system increases, the energy available to that system declines. At its core energy (or information for that matter) is nothing more than order and order means that any given group of discreet elements can only combine in a limited number of ways. My son introduced me to a singer who goes by the name of Bright Eyes and I thought that this kid should be the Bob Dylan or even Woody Guthrie of this generation, but as quickly as I thought that, I realized it was not possible. My son's generation won't have a Dylan or a Guthrie - there are too many possibilities, too many options, too many outlets, too many... It is fantastic that people can create their own sound tracks for their lives but... How many possible combinations can there be? When does a culture's, a society's, a nation's S value become too high? Can we continue to create more and more possible combinations of practically everything in our closed system and still survive? Oh, don't worry about it. Perhaps I'm just too old. But you really should listen to Bright Eyes sometime. You might even save our culture by doing so, who knows?

S = k log w

2009-03-30T12:49:00.004-04:00

I cannot think of a more trenchant or pithy comment on life and the universe. E = mc2 pales by comparison and is meaningless without this statement. It transcends science and is truly religious in scope. The Ancient Egyptians would have treasured it and one can almost be forgiven for seeing some synchronicity between the use of the letter "S" as a symbol for entropy and as the first letter of the name of the lord of chaos, "Set". Shannon's insight - that entropy applies to information as well as energy - was almost as amazing as Boltzmann's original epiphany. Money (capital, monetary units, dollars, euros, etc.) - because it symbolizes energy and because it is a form of information - must be subject to entropy. Is it possible that financial system is collapsing because it's "S" value has become too high? Is it possible that the trillions of dollars being injected into the system will have no effect at all? Will these trillions of dollars (an amount that is meaningless because one cannot conceptualize it) hasten the decline by pushing the "S" value even closer to infinity. Have we reached the point where our current concept of money will no longer work because money represents too many things? I'm not sure that this even applies, but the thought won't leave me alone.

Mexico

2009-03-24T16:16:00.003-04:00

I lived in Mexico for 12 years. My wife is from Mexico, my children were born there, and I love the country and its people. One was a huge guy who always gave me a big abrazo that took me off my feet. My wife and her brothers grew up with him, he was at almost every family function I remember and he was murdered by drug traffickers. Like my father-in-law and all but one of my brothers-in-law, he was a police officer. He was a Mexico City officer who volunteered to go north because he thought he was needed. He was and now he is no more. Most Americans seem to think that Mexico has become a Columbia - it has not and it will not. To see why, look at the op-ed piece in today's New York Times entitled "Mexican Evolution." Most Americans seem to think that Mexico is hopelessly corrupt and they are wrong. After 12 years, during which we lived through some of the worst things to happen to Mexico, I know how corrupt the country can be. I also know how honorable it can be. Manuel was honorable, very honorable and I cannot stand the idea that some seem to have about men like him. Yes, he was killed because he crossed the traffickers, but he crossed them by opposing them - he did not take money from them. Like cops everywhere, there are good and bad cops in Mexico, but most are like Manuel.

President seeks control over...

2009-03-23T15:31:00.005-04:00

Executive compensation. I will continue to flog this particular horse everywhere and every time I can because this is the most just and effective way of controlling executive pay. Executive compensation must be linked to the salaries of everyone in the company. By legally linking top executives' compensation packages to a legally mandated multiple of the their companies' average salaries, we ensure that top executives will do well only when their companies and their companies' employees do well.

Trillions

2009-03-21T14:02:00.004-04:00

I do not know why part of the trillions that the Government and the Federal Reserve are giving to financial institutions could not be given to the citizens instead. The funds that would be given to citizens who are minors would be put in trust funds for education and health care. Regulations could also ensure that the recipients use the funds to become solvent. Citizens could then use their remaining funds in any way they want. In this way, the people will decide which corporations survive and which do not. This will force corporations to offer truly competitive products at competitive prices. To those who cry "socialism"; how is giving funds to corporations any less socialistic? Furthermore, the giving of $250,000 to each citizen would barely make a dent in the amount of money the Government and the Fed have given and are planning to give financial institutions. Moreover, this would be a much more democratic bailout than that being implemented. Finally, if inflation becomes too much of a problem, then we should take a page from Nixon's play book and impose a price freeze.

What Worry...

2009-03-19T23:31:00.002-04:00

To see what has me so worried, go to my blog, ebookliberty.blogspot.com.

Compensation?

2009-03-17T18:43:00.002-04:00

We as a society must redefine this concept in legal, moral, and human terms. Too few receive too much while too many receive too little. It is painfully obvious that market forces alone will not regulate executive compensation. Just legal standards must be established and enforced by law. Every year I was told that no employee could receive more than a 3.5% raise and that my department's total salary could not increase by more than 2.5%. Every year, the CEO and top management received raises that exceeded the levels established by obscene margins. Executive salaries and incentives must be restricted to reasonable multiples of the company's average wage and their raises must be limited to the percentage increase of the company's average wage. That bonuses and options to top managers be granted only if the company does well must also be legally mandated. The pressing need to enact laws to ensure that a company's executives do well when, and only when, the company and its employees do well demonstrates to what extent our society has been corrupted by greed. In a fundamental way, this greed is no different than that that destroyed the Soviet Union and which, if unchecked, will destroy us as well.

You wouldn't believe...

2009-03-16T18:06:00.003-04:00

how fun reading is with an electronic book. I can't explain why, but I enjoy reading much more with my Sony E-Reader. My children gave me a PRS-505 for Christmas and I can't put the thing down. I've read more than 15 books since Christmas and a large number of lengthy papers and essays available on the Internet that I hadn't read before because my back makes spending more than 30 minutes reading a single paper on the computer a less than enjoyable experience. The only negative about the gift is that it has made me very aware of an extremely imortant issue that I didn't worrry about before. It is an extremely trenchant issue for every individual and for the world at large, but it seems that most give it little or no thought.

Supermarket Coffee

2009-03-04T13:46:00.003-05:00

It's never easy to be sure what you are buying when purchasing coffee in supermarkets - especially if you absolutely cannot live without a very fresh, very dark roast and you want to try something other than Starbucks. There are some brands you can count on: PapaNicholas (good), Caribou (better), and Peets (best).

For a good decafinated dark roast, try the decafinated French Roast by PapaNicholas (www.papanicholas.com).
If you want a Rainforest Alliance Certified product, go for the French Roast by Caribou Coffee (www.cariboucoffee.com).
Finally, if you want a "now I can die happy" coffee, the only product in our local supermarkets is the whole bean French Roast of Peets Coffee. The beans look as if they had been polished by hand and the aroma, taste, and texture are exceptional. Check out their website (www.peets.com) and see how coffee should be made.

Meltdown

2009-03-03T20:03:00.003-05:00

We and the corporations who serve us have lost sight of what a corporation does. Everyone knows that a corporation takes raw materials, combines these with energy and creates a product. Where we have failed is in our definitions. All companies use the same raw material, the same energy, and produce the same product. Corporations are failing because management is unaware of this. The only raw material is people (employees, providers, customers, investors). The only real energy is information. The product is a culture - the Chrysler culture, the Bank of America culture, the Apple culture, the Viagra culture, etc. If management has a strong idea of what their company's and their products' cultures are and if all decisions are made based on how they affect the cultures, companies will prosper and shareholder value will increase. If the companies continue to treat their products as commodities, if they continue in their failure to watch over their cultures, the corporations will fail. If managers do not establish the culture and commit themselves and the company completely to it, they and their companies will fail. Chrysler will never rise again unless it truly means something to be Chrysler.

Why Religion?

2009-03-03T00:07:00.005-05:00

Even though an implant pushes a constant stream of highly concentrated narcotics directly into my cerebral-spinal fluid, the pain almost always hovers around a 7 or an 8 (10 being the worst pain I can imagine and I can imagine a lot). Religion is, therefore, something I have thought and read a great deal about over the past 10 years. When asked, I used to say that I was a nonaligned Christian. I don't respond that way anymore. The title I use now is Perennial. I will write more about this, but the easiest definition I can give for Perennial is that the way one lives one's life and, most importantly, the way one treats one's fellow creatures and one's planet is infinitely more important than what one believes. I know all of the arguments against this and I no longer believe them. The worst tragedy to befall humanity came about when Religion was defined as something different from the way we lead our lives and the ways in which we do all that we do. A question about Religion would have been meaningless to an Ancient Egyptian. For them, it was just a question of fulfilling one's obligations to one's self, to one's family, to one's clan, to all others, to one's society, and to the Divine. We must return to this sense of Religion, to this sense of life.

A Start

2009-03-02T21:12:00.003-05:00

It may seem strange to be thankful for constant severe pain, but I have become thankful for it. Without it I would still be so wrapped up in international pharmaceutical marketing that I would have little or no time to find the things I have found. I would have missed so much of my childrens' lives. I would have had no time to have read what I have read and all I have yet to read. Most importantly, I never would have taken the time to simply think. I hope to share with you what I have discovered in a way that will be meaningful for us both. I will post on four subjects: Religion, Politics and Current Affairs, Books and Reading, and (a subject very dear to me) Coffee. I hope to post just often enough to keep you interested and not enough to put you off. Most of all, I'll always strive to be honest with you and with myself so that we all may get something from this. I hope you like the title photo. It is by my son and with his permission I will share more of his work with you - that may be a better reason to visit this blog occasionally than anything I might write.