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June 2, 2003:
The Drum Beat Gets Louder:
The week of May 26, 2003, news. Now our fearless leaders are
talking about the evil in Iran. The threats are not particularly
veiled. I think an invasion is only months away. How thin will
we spread ourselves before we cannot sustain the effort? We are
bogged down in Afghanistan. Our government finds we need more
troops in Iraq than was anticipated. Let us wonder what dreamy
planners anticipated the postwar Afghanistan or Iraq. Who was
it who though a democracy would just automatically spring up
and grow where the seeds had not even been planted? Where is
the plan? Except for political expediency we don't seem to have
one.
Meanwhile, our president is at the top of his game. He is
beating up on raggedy arabs and paying off his business cronies
with an unprecedented tax break. He has discovered that reasonably
safe foreign wars can be a powerful political tool. He can concentrate
on easy victories over inept raggedy Arab kids. Success in these
adventures will cause the rabble to ignore the real problems
of failed leadership.
On Democracy:
We should democratize the world. There is no doubt of that, but
we need a plan, not a loose cannon. If you want to know why America
should get busy and democratize the whole world, just take a
look at Ethiopia for God's sake. How many children and mothers
must perish in agony before we begin to act. What's happening
there need not happen. We are letting it happen. We need not
do much. Rather than beat up on raggedy arabs we ought to fed
these people and give them the means to resist the scum who rule
them.
Poison Gas and Stuff:
May 30, 2003, news. Powell is still trying to put a good face
on the weapons of mass destruction. He insists that it was not
an invention to justify the invasion. Others in the military,
like General James Conway, are trying to limit the damage and
embarrassment by admitting that the weapons probably are not
there. He admits that they have found no evidence and they have
essentially stopped looking for it. The conclusion is obvious.
There never was a case for this war. He will probably be reprimanded.
The Four Day Week:
This notion has reared its stupid head many times in the past.
Now it's being bandied about again. People don't want to go to
work because they see it as work rather than an interesting challenge.
That is the fault of management and government. It need not be
that way. People could and should look forward to going to work.
It would only take a simple change in attitude by management.
I have worked at many different places and done a lot of different
things. I have never found a job that did not have a challenge
built into it. There is something terribly wrong with the mentality
that says working less is better or healthier.
The problem is even worse now. Some fools in Michigan are
even talking about a four day school week. That is insane. Of
course the kids love the idea. The kids don't want to go to school
for the same reason that adults don't want to go to work. They
see it as work rather than an interesting challenge and learning
experience. That is the fault of the system.
The notion of a four day school week is madness. We already
leave all that plant and equipment sitting idle more than half
of the time. We don't need a four day week. We need a 12 month
year. We need to invest in our kids. We need to make school interesting
for them rather than mind-numbing boring.
School and work have become ugly words in our culture. The
connotation is so negative that I wish we could scrap both words.
Neither of those activities is inherently negative. Both can
and should be positive experiences. Adventuring should always
be the way a child experiences education. With enlightened management,
work could be the same for adults. Of course, perhaps enlightened
management is a contradictory notion.
The Postoffice dilemma:
The Postoffice is not getting enough business, so says the Postmaster.
He blames a lot of things like e-mail and the attacks on New
York and Washington. His solution is to make the postoffice less
competitive by raising rates. Clever!
About Food:
I am not a natural food freak, but there are differences in foods.
Natural food are those which man discovers in nature. Though
many green freaks would disagree, natural foods include meat,
even hog fat. Meat has been part of man's diet ever since Homo
habilis. Unnatural foods are those which man manufactures. I
think the biggest and ugliest one is refined sugar. Hydrogenated
oil is another. I should try a diet of all natural foods, no
manufactured foods. I bet I would get slim and healthy without
counting calories or fat grams or anything else. Of course, I
would have to give up beer. Oh dear!
Change:
Now that I'm too old for it to matter, I can give some advice
about life. The advice is, don't get in a comfortable rut. Its'
a little late now, but looking back I can see I did the same
things too long and stayed too long in the same places. Once
I mastered something, I should have moved on to something new.
I can see, looking back that I always gained in the long run
by changing and learning. This was true even when the change
was caused by other peoples decisions. It's interesting to notice,
several times when I thought someone was hurting me they were
actually helping me by forcing me to change, adapt, and learn
new things.
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