The Weekly Notes 2008
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to the Weekly Notes 2008 Archives Perennial Favorites: The media people always
say, Duke is the perennial favorite. Right! It was clear that the referees
though so. I am still recovering from pneumonia and I have very little energy
for much else. With nothing better to do, I sort of watch most of the Duke, Telephone: On Easter morning, I
discovered my telephone did not work. I was still tired from my bout with
pneumonia and did not want to deal with that. I was waiting until my son
showed up in hope that he would be able to check the outside line. I wanted
to make sure it was their problem and not mine before I called them. You
might guess the phone started working again before he came. I wrote it off as
a fluke. Surprise! The same thing happened again the next morning. My son was
not here and I thought about it for a while. As I did, the phone started
working again. Oh, oh! Again yesterday morning
I got the same thing and before I could check the line it was working again.
Damn! However, that afternoon, it went out again and I rapidly got outside to
check the line. It was their line and not my phones. Oh boy, I began psyching
myself up to spend some time shouting at a damn answering system. I finally
called and I was completely thrown off my game. A human being answered. After
a moment of stammering, I was able to explain the problem completely and got
reassured that it would be attended to. What could I do? I had all this pent
up rage and no one to vent on. That is what should have happen, but It was
frustrating because it usually does not. We are used to getting a stupid
answering system that is dumber than a Ford executive. Maybe Verizon is
getting the message. That would be nice. This Week with
Stephanopoulos: George had Charles
Schumer and Jon Kyl on his show. For about 15 minutes, they sat there and bad
mouthed each other while calling each other “my dear friend.” God
Gord, what a pair of hypocritical bums. They did make one point. According to
Meanwhile: Our wonderful Pentagon
managed to accidentally send a bunch of missile components to Census: The local news people showed
us some numbers that indicate a dramatic drop in the Merck Again: Now they are in trouble
with a drug they make called Singulair. It is intended as a treatment for
children who are struggling against depression. Instead of helping them,
there is some indication that it increases depression to the point where the
kids commit suicide. Instead of giving these kids pills, why doesn’t
someone try to find out what is causing them to be depressed? This is crazy.
Kids should be pissed sometimes and disappointed sometimes. I know I was, but
I did not hear of any cases of chronic depression when I was a kid. What has
happened? Chronic depression has a cause. I think this is more than a failure
of Merck. It is a failure of our adult community to properly nurture our
kids. We are all to blame. We should stop giving pills and start giving
positive reinforcement. An Apology: A while back, I had
occasion to complain about and to Blue Care Network Advantage (BCNA). That is
our heath care insurance carrier now that Ford had abdicated. I wrote some
essays that were very critical of the people who were pretending to help us.
Since then, the problems have cleared up and BCNA has been very responsive to
our needs. I was very happy and surprised when I receive not one, but two
real written apologies from BCNA. I’m sure most of you have experienced
the normal reply to a complaint from a giant bureaucracy. The reply is always
a study in mush-mouthed dishonesty, never a real apology. They talk all
around the issue and blame everyone and everything except their own
incompetence. These letters from BCNA were entirely different. I found them
to be sincere and honest. It was a breath of fresh air. Why is that so hard
to do? PBS: PBS gave us another
special on Global warming and energy. They all have the same answer, hunker
down, use less. Don’t look for new solutions, hunker down. The had a
bunch of government blowhard officials and University blowhard officials and
no new solutions for anything or even a direction. One speaker was Edward
Mazria, an architect. He has good ideas about how to build more energy
efficient enclosures. Those are things that should be done, but that is all
he had. The government people did not even have that. There is no new effort
in energy research from out government or anyone else. Where are our
scientists? Charlie Gibson: On this one, he is
wrong. He says eggs have gone up 25% and it’s due to the cost of diesel
fuel. The truth is, eggs have double in price in the last year and that is
mostly due to the ethanol fraud being perpetrated by that Woman in Lansing
and other people like her. The price is ethanol, if we consider all of the
hidden costs is probably more that $5.00 per gallon. You must add to the pump
price, the money she steals from taxes to subsidize these conmen. Then you
must add the increased price of almost everything we eat. You must also look
at the fact that ethanol is much less efficient as a fuel than gasoline.
Ethanol is a fraud being perpetrated by farmers and manufactures who are
aided and abetted by dull minder government fools. Back
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