Can a Greenie be a Safety Nazi? Maybe not!

Yep, turns out there are some things we should have known about the notion of saving the planet by buying hip light bulbs. I have to admit, it bugged me to see that roughly 100 watts was the highest equivalent that seemed to be out there for the new fluorescent bulbs. And you don't want anything to make you hesitate when you are paying extra. In the meantime, looks like we get to see a civil war between Safety Nazis and Tree Huggers.

The below is some highlights from:
http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=97&sid=1403277

Is everybody going to be happy with what they see when using fluorescent bulbs?

Not unless there are some significant improvements over the fluorescent lights available in the marketplace today. The New York Times did a comparison of the quality of light from 21 bulbs, including 14 compact fluorescents. The results were not encouraging. They found that the response of the testing panel went the range from a collective groan to enthusiasm at what they saw.

Are there other concerns?

Yes, cleaning up breakage and recycling are challenges because of the mercury in fluorescent bulbs. Since the mercury can be a health hazard, you need to use care before cleaning up a broken bulb. Everyone, including pets, should leave the room, and don't let anyone walk through the breakage on the way out. Open the windows and let the room air out for at least 15 minutes before attempting to clean up the mess. Also, shut off the central heating or air conditioning system so you don't get residue in the ducts.

Recycling also is a challenge because you should not just place them in your regular trash. Unfortunately, at this point recycling can take some effort on the part of consumers [blah blah blah] [are you kidding me?]

Do Despicable People Have Rights?

Apologies in advance for what's possibly a too-controversial post for what basically is a friends-and-family blog. I'll keep it brief. But something that is going on is "really bothering me."

Reading and listening to TV and radio, I'm finding that not everybody agrees that what is going on in Texas with the Mormon Fundamentalists is a totally unacceptable violation of the civil rights of these people. The current line of thought for people who aren't bothered by it seems to be something like: "the DNA is going to nail a bunch of these men for underage sex and polygamy, so that's going to justify everything."

As far as what is actually wrong with this, maybe Ben Stein has said it best. (hyperlinked)

Those who think this is all OK seem to say that because they aren't child abusers themselves, there's no need to be concerned about the heavy handed tactics. This reminds me of the argument that we shouldn't mind giving up our rights to improve our security in this age of terrorism. Such people have said, they don't mind if the government listens to their phone calls, because they aren't doing anything illegal. And so on with other examples. I guess you could go down the entire Bill of Rights and say, what's there to worry about amongst us law abiding citizens? Search my house without a warrant, what do I have to hide anyway?

Wrong thinking! It does matter that we keep our rights, and that authorities respect "due process." No! you shouldn't say it's OK for the government to listen in without warrants on private conversations; maybe today you don't care but maybe tomorrow you'll wonder who is listening when you are complaining about the Government. And although I am someone who wonders if criminals get mollycoddled a little too much sometimes, I have to admit that even with the Miranda rights in place, some poor souls get railroaded anyway. New ability to use DNA evidence, as a matter of fact, has made it clear that some people must have been executed who were innocent. A lot of them got convicted on the basis of (notoriously unreliable) eyewitness evidence, but more than a few went down in a process of police interviewing that is becoming more and more discredited. So now is a time to relax standards for due process?

People are used to the police pretty much leaving law abiding citizens alone. I get this feeling it's hard to explain to many that this can change fast. A little taste of the "Officer Owens" - of an early post here - can make you understand fast that no sooner than certain people of that ilk get the message that it's time to give citizens of category X the business, you indeed will be getting the business. And the next thing you know, you find that same person thinks it is OK to misrepresent the facts in court (which happened BTW); after all, you are supposed to go down. Seems like, too, the further away from local government such messages get sent, the more radical the notions get about how to handle those of category X.

I can't say it any better than Ben Stein. Those people getting railroaded today on the basis of a crank call might be despicable as Hell in a multitude of aspects, but I want to say that anybody who can watch the videos of the state overreacting and just say, "it's OK, I don't like those people anyway," is somebody who is part of the problem instead of the solution. The right thing for us to be doing is to decry such things when we see them, and pray to God it won't spread to us next.

Modern Times at the Store

I've felt a blog coming on about "modern times and the shopping experience" for a long time, and finally something has happened to get me motivated enough to write about it. It's going to be hard to keep this brief as there sure is a long list of things "that really bother me" about the various stores we've been shopping at. This'll take more than one post.

What really bothers me? It's not just about high prices. But that too - like onions that nearly cost a dollar and apples that cost more than two - but what else is new? I'm striving, though, to avoid being like my father, who I remember remarking, when he himself was middle aged, that elderly people live in a world with a skewed evaluation of what things are worth, going back mentally to all the old prices of their younger days and tending to be unable to comprehend just how much the dollar had changed in value. Dad seemed to say (like I'm saying now) that he "wasn't going to be like that." Yet he was unable to avoid this fate when he got to be in his 80's, generating some family stories about various things he said and did. He did develop a form of dementia, I should note; but are we all doomed to wind up living in the past when it comes to the dollar?

Outside of inflation, though, I find myself getting quite aggravated shopping, especially at the grocery store. Things have changed. Not so long ago, we'd be able to go to a single store and get all of our shopping done at once. Now, though, it takes a trip to at least two different grocers, and not because we are too picky; stores are perfectly capable of being out of staples. You can't get these stores to admit it, but a large part of the problem seems to be computerized inventory control. Sometimes it seems clear someone has been assigned to check out the shelf stock the old fashioned way, but this never lasts long. It seems clear when this is just being done by computer; you have the phenomenon now of finding empty shelf space one day, going back for the next few months and discovering it still empty. A sample of the things that have been missing for months from certain shelves that I have noticed include cranberry juice, lime juice, black peppercorns, tomato soup, lard, specialty brands generally, and club soda; in some cases what was missing was the most popular size container.

The reactions of the store employees has been very interesting. In modern times, the idea is to provide lip service, while doing nothing to actually correct a problem. One employee told Sue that she wasn't finding black peppercorns because of the difficulties the neighborhood was causing as far as when they were allowed to empty trucks. Supposedly this problem was causing the peppercorns to be missing from the shelf for months on end. Another employee, told that lime juice in an economical size had been missing every time we checked, reacted by getting temporary approval to reprice the smaller size if we bought several. I'm sure that guy went home and told his wife that he was proud of how he solved this problem for us. But really, he didn't do what I would want him to do, and that is to make sure in future that the proper size was going to be there so that we didn't have to stop and try to find an assistant manager or somebody every time we needed the item. After all, he didn't deny it was supposed to be available, but as the weeks went by I saw that nothing had been done to correct the stocking error. When we stated we felt computerized stocking was the problem, oddly these employees tended to deny it.

Now I do have a slight sympathy for those trying to use computers for stocking, humans are not perfect either. My own experience with it is that you tend to overstock certain items, especially popular ones, fearing a loss of profit and wanting to avoid that reputation of being out of essential items. I've screwed it up in my day, and I've seen others do worse; company Buyers can absolutely put a company out of business with their mistakes. We once had a neighbor who could explain what happens when computerized stocking goes bad, though, and it's not all the machine's fault. We went over the missing cranberry juice phenomenon with this neighbor, and I complained the shelves were full of a dazzling array of choices, cranberry juice, cran-apple, cran-grape, cran-apple lite, low fat low salt cran-lemon, high-fiber sugar free cran-mango-soy that doesn't harm the environment, etc., yet the plain regular cranberry juice was not to be found. He concurred, saying his job was to try to make these very systems work, so he would find some guy doing inventory at the cranberry juice aisle grouping all these different choices together as just cranberry juice "because they are all the same price." Well, now of course the computer thinks the store is jam packed with regular juice and desperately needs to order all the other items, being absolutely out of them. I've even become convinced that some items vanish completely, never to be seen again, because some computer notes that the very product that supposedly is vastly overstocked also never sells!

It would seem to be true that buying the items, which all get bar-coded, has no effect on stocking decisions. And all these choices have another irritating effect: it's too darn easy to grab the wrong item, wanting the regular version and accidentally picking up the "lite" version or whatever. Anyway, we are finding ourselves having to go to more than one store these days, we just accept it as a fact. So shopping is a lot more involved, and burns up a lot more time and gas, than it used to. Al Gore call your office.

This isn't what set me off enough to do a post, so stay tuned.

A Vote for Ron Paul

I can definitely be a one-issue voter. I can remember somebody saying when Gilmore was running for Governor of Virginia: "tsk, tsk, it's awful that people voters can be one-issue-voters and elect Gilmore because he's promising to end the 'car tax' " I immediately responded, "yeah, well that's me, I hate that tax!"

Now I'm absolutely all wound up again and brother I had to vote for Ron Paul and yessir yabetcha it's a one issue thing again!

What burning issue has me riled up? The tax man cometh, and I was reminded yet again that the tax code does not allow people to deduct medical expenses unless they are enormous: the first 7.5% of your income. I think this is outrageously wrong, personally. It certainly flies in the face of the modern notion as to what a person should have to pay out of his own pocket for health care [i.e. as close to absolutely nothing as possible]. But think about it - it does fit perfectly with the government's notions about personal health care expenses, which is that those personal expenses can cost next to nothing as long as part of the payments go to support the Bureaucracies they have created.

Last year our family had some dental expenses, and we didn't want to wait to cover these unexpected expenses by setting up a Flex plan. There really are a lot of problems with these Flex programs, the major problem being it is too hard to predict what your uncovered medical expenses are going to be. Yet you have to able to do this perfectly in advance or any excess money you set aside actually can be taken from you. Dental expenses are a good example of what Flex plans are not good for as they often arise on an emergency basis and often are not in the nature of something that can reasonably be postponed. So yet again I'm thinking, maybe we'll be able to take it off our taxes, but oh no, the amount would have to be far greater than it is and we just have to eat these expenses. Thanks a lot US tax code!

So how does this lead me to vote for Ron Paul in the Virginia primary? Let me explain.

I decided I needed to finally bone up on how each candidate stood on the issue of health care. Then by golly I could vote for the guy who represented my views the best! Each candidate's website has a section for "issues, " so, it was pretty easy to do. It was interesting to read between the lines.

For example, looks to me like the issue of Universal Health Care has become urgent for some reasons I didn't know about. Turns out one of the things breaking the bank for Medicaid is that people who wind up on it are usually uninsured, then when they have health problems they really sock it to the government. To be put in this position is like allowing a person to drive around without car insurance, wait until they get into an accident, then go get whatever insurance they need and use it to cover them for the accident they just had. Of course private insurance isn't done that way. In fact one of the notorious techniques they have to control costs, canceling that insurance after paying off, is unavailable to the government. Seems that policy wonks have really decided this situation has to go, believing that it's going to be possible to collect some kind of payments out of most of these same people while they are healthy. Supporting Universal Health Care, then, is win-win for these candidates, as the policy wonks are going to be in support of what they say while they get to look like what they care about is all the poor people.

It was also asserted by Obama that three quarters of health care costs today are generated by people with chronic problems like diabetes and heart disease. I didn't know that either; and man that has to be clobbering Medicaid now.

So anyway I went through all the candidate's positions on health care and most of them weren't really saying what I want to hear. For one thing, one of the things that is really wrong with our system IMO seems to be only mentioned by Huckabee. He points out that the employer based insurance that predominates is a flawed thing that came about "as a way around World War II wage-and-price controls." I'd like all the candidates to home in on this, and I'm ready to rant about it, but am going to save that for another post.

When I got to Ron Paul things frankly weren't much better but I have to give him credit for saying one thing I wanted to hear: he says he's for "making all medical expenses tax deductible." Hooray! Mr. one-issue, Yours Truly, zoomed to the polling station and gave Paul the honors.

I suppose I have to let you know that I often just do a "protest vote" and really this was one of those times. If Paul had any chance at all, I'd have to reconsider really voting for him. But as it was, it felt really good!

PS: while researching positions I came across a set of really, really idiotic stuff from so-called experts. Some moron is actually quoted as saying a good idea is to eliminate health insurance altogether [#7]. Now I'm as ready to listen to varied opinions as anybody, but that has to be the stupidest thing ever said when it comes to ideas about fixing health care. The other dolts are not much better. God save us from experts!

PS

I meant to include this link on the last blog. This has to be the ultimate !!

http://www.thudguard.com/


more post-script:
another dubious TV show on the supernatural has hit the airwaves. I am glad to say I have not watched it, but it sounds just as bad or even worse than "Ghost Hunters".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal_State

Eggnog and Other Dangers of Modern Life

We see above a picture I scanned from a newspaper showing kindergartners at a local school digging into some kind of "rock" constructed from flour, searching for hidden treasure it seems. I got a big kick out of the idea they needed to be wearing eye protection.

One thing Sue keeps saying is "How did we as kids ever survive?" Surely the kinds of risks our parents exposed us to just letting us go outside to play would peg them today as child abusers. How exactly did we ever develop into a society where our kids must live in a risk-free world? Who decided this and how did society become so intense about enforcing this notion?

Certainly one of the culprits is our Tort system. You have to expect defensive behavior in a world where anyone might sue anyone for anything, no matter how ridiculous. As a consequence, some of the warning labels and disclaimers you see can be quite hilarious. One of my favorite disclaimers is in a commercial that shows an SUV driving into a volcano and subsequently getting blown out of it, landing miles away. "Do not attempt" it advises.

Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch certainly has some good ones on warning labels; after all the humorous examples it goes on to say "Predatory lawyers know they can file ridiculous lawsuits against innocent product makers and blackmail them into cash settlements..." But what amazes me is that it seemingly proves effective to use the warning labels and disclaimers in the first place. Sometimes I see some disclaimer flashed on the screen in tiny writing, and for an impossibly short period of time. Is it really true that anyone trying to sue some company that does that would just hear the judge say, "yes, it was too tiny to read and shown too briefly to read, but that was all that was required by the law and therefore you lose your lawsuit."

The law is an ass, they say. An ass that does not care how ridiculous it looks, it would seem. I remember watching a program that had a bunch of lawyers on it and one of them criticized the lawsuit that the lady had against McDonalds for making their coffee too hot to pour on your crotch. One of the other lawyers spoke up and said something like "actually I was involved in this and you know if you learn the details you find the lady had a good case, McDonalds had been warned before and blah blah blah." I guess it is probably true, that if you were involved and you buried yourself only in the legal issues, anyone who was willing to look at it only from that perspective possibly could be convinced of this.

And then there is the phenomenon of not having a warning label where one would be advisable. Take the recent case of popular little seats made to put a baby in; apparently the manufacturer suggested the kid was not able to get out of the seat and parents were using it to put the child aside so it did not have to be watched. And they would put child and seat on the tops of tables and counters [the company had literature showing this usage]. Of course there have been several incidents of severe injuries as the kid and seat topple off together to hit the floor. Well, I have little sympathy for that company [or for the dumb parents either].

I was hoping I would be able to tell you the results of an experiment I undertook. The white 7 gallon buckets that are used for my homebrewing hobby carry a big warning label that a child could fall into the bucket and drown. It occurred to me that possibly this was something that has never happened except in crazy circumstances, since under normal circumstances a child unable to get out of the bucket would also not be able to get into it. So I had Google email me every time it had a news story involving the words "drown" and "bucket" or "pail." I decided the experiment failed as there was a long period with no emails [something wasn't working] and too many stories where it wasn't clear what happened. I also decided that possibly incidents wouldn't always make the news. I wound up with just a few stories on buckets, and only one was clearly a case of drowning in a bucket similar to what I use for homebrewing [one that drywall paste comes in]. But no details of how it happened. I sure got emailed a lot of tragic stuff. Vast quantities of children drown in swimming pools and bathtubs, with an eerie constant factor being that toddlers do so silently and without much struggle, theoretically not quite realizing what is happening. There were several stories worldwide of children drowning in mop buckets, one kid also drowned in a bucket that her mother had vomited in [ugh!]. As I remember they threw the book at that poor lady. But 90% of the articles Google sent were public-service type warning that children could drown in such buckets! Nonetheless it was a failed but interesting experiment.

[bad link edited out]

Bold New World

I guess with the "rant" style blog, it's pretty easy to go off into something a little too heavy. If "something really bothers me" it lends itself to that, maybe.

But here's something that's been bothering me that should be in a lighter vein: Contrived TV programs purporting to be something else. Two shows in particular, lately.

I probably shouldn't admit this [I'll use the word "almost"] but they "almost" had me going on these shows for a bit. Certainly I was almost buying in to a Court TV program called "psychic detectives" or some similar title. This program shows true crime stories where the police called in psychics to help them crack unsolved cases. Now from some books I've read [not from one of the shows] I did know that some weird, unexplainable things have happened, such as the lady who was helping the Green River detectives and wound up literally uncovering one of the bodies. She was accompanying them to a dump site and said she was getting vibes and "try here," just walking up to a little area. She was so shocked that a body was there she never helped them again, refusing to do so, totally shook up. Maybe it was just a coincidental thing. Anyway, you have to wonder, sometimes.

This Court TV program is something else, though. Story after story of psychics helping crack cases, that assistance varying from astonishing to perhaps less than astonishing, but story after story. Probably because there were just so many stories, finally I became convinced it was just too much. The sincerity of the police who were claiming the help was really appreciated and valuable was a puzzle at first, though. It finally occurred to me that there were a couple of explanations for this:

*in some cases the cops just seemed to like the "good yarn" themselves and did what they could do help that story along.
*in other cases, they were victims of talented operators who knew how to get over on these guys. In at least a couple of the shows, it seemed to me that the psychics were using the technique of secretly discerning what the detectives knew and then repeating it back to them, claiming the source of the knowledge was some sixth sense.

Is it possible that ESP or something really helped? Well, in some cases just repeating back to the detectives what they already were starting to suspect might have helped in an odd way, it seemed to me.

For an even more cynical put-down of these shows, and more on techniques that are used, see http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1883787.htm


Now, for a TV Program that "really bothers me" but to which, at times, I am nonetheless drawn for brief, irritating, spells, that's gotta be "Ghost Hunters." Now this program on the Sci-Fi channel is in the reality TV form [that could be a whole other blog] and the boldness of the real dishonesty of this particular program is mind-bending. An organization calling themselves "TAPS" puts on a show that so earnestly portrays what they are doing as being on the level it has to be seen to believe. These people would have you believe that they are using the latest scientific equipment, and the latest techniques. With special know-how they are able to document "para-normal" events right and left. They clearly have a considerable following amongst those who just cannot seem to come to realize: no reputable group has ever been able to do this. It's the sheer amount of shown para-normal activity alone that just begins to scream "fake!" Not to mention the total lack of credibility given to the program outside of, well, themselves. But I have no doubt they have many true believers.

One very clever aspect: they include debunking as part of the program. In other words, they go to a site to do a show, and they always make sure they debunk some phenomenon there that has been reported. Absolutely brilliant!

Some criticism at Wikipedia shows them no mercy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Hunters
"Ghost Hunters has attracted various critics and skeptics. Some question the scientific validity of the investigations conducted by the TAPS team, its methodology, and particularly its use of instrumentation, as there is no scientifically-proven link between the existence of ghosts and (for example) cold spots or electromagnetic fields (which Hawes and Wilson say are not necessarily paranormal). Of ghost hunting in general, skeptical investigator Joe Nickell says, "...the approach of the typical ghost hunter—a nonscientist using equipment for a purpose for which it was not made and has not been shown to be effective—is sheer pseudoscience". Others contend that the show's claimed evidence of the paranormal could be easily hoaxed, since third party review of evidence collected by TAPS is not encouraged, and those who have contacted the group asking for full footage from everything recorded at the haunted locations have also gone unanswered. With each new season, critics of Ghost Hunters continue to publish skeptical analyses and theories on the Internet, often employing frame-by-frame analysis of episode footage which they believe debunks the show's findings." [footnotes deleted]

You finally realize watching the show that for a fact these people have to be fully aware that they are really completely in the business of deceiving the public. The last time I started to watch the program, they began with reading an email from the such and such grade class from so and so Florida Elementary school. Clearly a whole class of students and their teacher was getting duped into believing this program was for real. Not a hint of irony [or shame] crossed the faces of our ghost-busting "investigators" as they continued to pretend it was all for real. I had to turn it off.

Seems like today we are heading for the Age of Misinformation. The internet has been famous so far for providing plenty of baloney; people have to decide for themselves what is for real and need to be ready to "snope" out stories that don't sound right. I guess for TV more disinformation is what's come with the age of cable. Don't expect any concept of integrity to pull any programs, it's clear that the integrity of the producers is getting diluted in the massive volume. Shame on the History Channel, for example, for showing over and over again a terrible program years ago on the Kennedy Assassination. I think we are really in for it.

Sub-Prime Saga

Honesty on this subject requires courage, I've decided. And we have seen some of that from a few. First off we must absolutely and positively give credit to the Daily Show [and it's funny, too.] I'll let you watch it without comment.

daily_link

Amongst bloggers, without that editorial control, I had hoped for more. Of course I couldn't do an exhaustive search. The below was a good one, though. I especially noted:

*Lenders were supported by politicians and "community leaders" eager to promote minority home ownership.

*When Illinois (Cook Co.) tried to establish credit counseling programs for new minority buyers by targeting ZIP codes, the program was pulled as being "racist".

*this is America, where nothing happens if it isn't about poverty, race, gender or disability.

see:
blog_link

And lastly, Ben Stein weighs in to give us some perspective. Something we didn't get from TV's Jim "Mad Money" Cramer.

see:
Ben_Stein

Sub-Prime: in the "that really bothers me" vein again

As a matter of opinion, I think this whole business of the Sub-prime crisis has been brought on for the most idiotic reasons. I saw this coming years ago when the Washington Post would run articles claiming that Lenders were still discriminating against Minorities; the proof that this was happening would be statistics showing that, say, 7% of loans went to Af/A's while they represented 10% of the population. That would be the full extent of the evaluation! There was no thought of saying that Black applicants tended to be less qualified, not in the articles I saw. I guess that would have been racist.

Now, I don't need to be told that Lenders haven't necessarily had the most stellar record when it comes to non-discrimination. I'm sure in the old days a loan officer could reject a qualified minority applicant and just be following some sort of unwritten company policy that maintained such a policy was best. Furthermore, there have been plenty of claims over the years that banks and loan companies would simply red-zone entire districts as off-limits to loan approval. In fact, maybe minorities had been suffering from residual discrimination when these articles were written. But the writers were not proving anything: you don't have to take a course in statistical analysis to see that such arguments are flawed. In fact, I'm sorry, but my opinion has been that such articles have been completely dishonest. I don't believe the editors for one second believed that such lame analysis proved anything.

And, yes, I think there was some sort of agenda the newspapers were following. The ACORN organization [acorn.org] apparently really pushed this. Now, of course, they are screaming bloody murder. Government must bail these innocent people out! I'm hearing a little grumbling about that, though. How about people who put nothing down? Maybe I wouldn't want to be in their shoes, but at the same time, it hardly makes sense to see them profit from a bail-out, either.

I was aware of some of what was going on. I know somebody who decided to step in and help an employee who was getting himself in trouble. This employee was from South America and really was somebody who was trying to get in on the American Dream. Unfortunately, he was attracting predatory businessmen. One of the things he got talked into was buying a nice new pick-up truck with all the fixings... this on little or no money down and on an interest-only loan! Now this kind of loan is designed for someone else, someone who was waiting to cash out a CD, someone who was expecting to inherit money, etc. Not some working stiff who was going to watch his car loan get upside down on him. And surely someone at the Lending institution was supposed to help make sure this didn't happen. Supposed to unless, hmmmm.

I'm sure the thinking was that Lending institutions could be forced into making some loans that were a bit riskier and that, well, if a little less profit was made out of the billions coming in, so be it. The problem of course is that when you ask businesses to do this sort of thing, they react in the way that is in their nature: they proceed with the profit motive. Wrong method for social engineering. I think it brings out the worst in a business to have some authority lean on it and advise it to do things that have been against the best policies. And to top it off, it greases the chute for the bad apples in management to get an upper hand and take over. In this case:

"Hey, we're being asked to make riskier loans. OK, so be it. First we get rid of the old fuddy-duddies in the company who get in the way. Next we get these shaky applicants to sign up for some zingers: interest-only when it makes no sense, balloon loans when ill advised, etc. In the short term, this kind of stuff has really made the bonuses pour in. Let's get in on it!"

I have in fact heard that one of the problems with bad policies in Banks and other Lenders has been just that: too much of a time-lag between the later ill-effects of bad management and the initiation period of the ill-advised practices. Businesses, and, well, just about everything in general can suffer from this, but for Lenders, it's a case where big bonuses get paid out in the interim, it seems. Another interesting aspect is that in the old days, the current panic would mean a "run on the banks." Nowadays, the panic is slamming certain Hedge Funds and other related markets.

Well, I for one am not ready for the big bail out. I guess it would be hard to totally oppose some kind of help for certain cases, and surely we are going to see something happen by politicians in the matter. It's just too big of a Political Football. I don't have all the answers, either, but one thing I really want to see is some honesty. Thanks again to those sources who have been honest. Let's learn the correct lessons from this.

Perception

Someone once said something very true: we live in a world of Perception, not Reality. Although I was first impressed by this insight long ago, recently the truth of it has been hammered home pretty hard.

This blog has certainly been proving the point, and don't get me wrong, the irony of what I'm about to cite regarding blog feedback is not upsetting: on the contrary, it fits well with my new worldview, which I will relate at the end here.

I guess it's pretty clear what set me off and got me going on writing a blog is my increasingly unpleasant experiences with the local gendarmes and their objections to my driving behavior; but especially bothering are the new trends in Federal participation in local traffic enforcement. Blogging about it gave me the perception that I would be seen as valiantly fighting back against Big Brother, etc, etc. The reaction from my niece Louise, though, gave me some pause. "Man, Uncle Carl, you sure get stopped for speeding a lot." Hmmmmm. Maybe the reality of how this blog is being received is different than my perception here! Who else thought that I clearly was someone just getting too many tickets... or that it was a little nutty to do such a rant about it?

When I sent out the URL that helps balance your checkbook; that wasn't a blog, and I wasn't sure everyone would find it useful. But I allowed myself to think some would use it, or pass it along. The one response I got [you know who you are!] joked about balancing checkbooks: "do people still do that?" I got a chuckle out of it. But that also gave me some pause: probably a lot of people thought that was a silly thing to send out. God help me, I use the hell out of that thing.

Here's something more in the category of "hammered home hard."
.... Anymore I do not assume that other people see me the way I see myself. Realizing this when younger would have been very helpful at work, in relationships, for life in general. I'd say that's the positive thing I'm taking away from that whole fiasco.

Keep it coming on the blog feedback. Fear not, I am receptive these days to wake-up calls on Reality. I thank you in advance.