“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.“
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States, and former General of the Army.
“Who more than self, their country loved” ???
Someone just mailed me a rough e-mail post that seemed over the top by any standard. To classify Al Gore and everyone who believes in climate change as a “bunch of turds” seems wrong to even type.
I read AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH when it came out in 2006. Saw the film. The one stunning fact that most impressed me was the graph that showed the abrupt spike in the earth’s warming years 1980–2006. The spike was almost straight up, while the combined years before cars were almost dead even. Today the Raleigh News and Observer stated this year was the warmest ever in North Carolina.
Someone has suggested cow farts as the cause of the earth’s warming. I was reminded in last night’s poker game that that the earth itself has been here billions of years. Humans a lot less.
If cow farts are the villains, and many fear mankind’s extinction without change,–does that mean farmer Jones has got to gun down Daisy?
Gore’s book and realization are worth revisiting. The whole book lays it out. I cite one paragraph:
“The truth about global warming is especially inconvenient and unwelcome to some powerful people and companies making enormous sums of money from activities they know full well will have to change dramatically in order to ensure the planet’s viability.”
Viability? (“the ability to live or survive successfully”). Would you give up hamburger, milk, dairy products if cow farts will kill us all?
Here it is: And it ain’t cow farts. Candidate Gore couldn’t come right out in 2006. Now we know. It is gas. Petroleum, Petrol. The oil industry.
Why would anyone argue against the evidence? To save their industry? I don’t know. Other than money.
In the south cars are sacred. Give up my mustang? “Out of my cold dead hands” again. Without change it’ll be dead hands for everybody.
What would be the price of changing all gas driven machines to another harmless source. Think back, would you give up those two old cars you traded in 15 years ago to save your family, mankind, that grandchild?
Think Americans can’t build you an electric car or such as good as Old Betsy? They are here now. Price to change what we drive? Turn in Betsy? What in the world will that cost?
It doesn’t matter.
Eastern North Carolina has spawned a new party, The SHIT-HEELS. These are a group that believe we are going to transform hog shit to gasoline, yet deny climate change.
From my friend, Alan: The head football coach was about to send a rookie college football coach on his first recruiting trip. The prior season had yielded no wins, eight losses, and two ties.
Old coach’s instructions. 1. If they ask you what our team record was last year, pretend you didn’t understand them. 2. They will likely respond, “…what was your record last season?” 3. You can then say “Oh! EIGHT AND TWO”.
(It is not whether you win or lose, but how you place the blame. Or CLAIM THE FAME!)
(“It’s the economy, Stupid”!)
Here is a quote of my own. Almost always the coach being fired is a better person than those firing him/her.
I hated to fire a coach. Like shooting your dog.
Historically team wins dictate employment. 2-8, 1-9, 2-8, adios. Most recoveries look hopefully like this—first year (3/5) , second year -5/5, third–7/3 and almost everybody is happy. Can’t please em all no matter what.
There are a lot of different things going on now. Historically judgement on football coaches was about four years. A lot like politics. “Give him four years to build his program” to “he better win next year or he’s gone.” Like politics? Similarly “…if he gets it done in four years, we’ll give him four more!”
The previous Presidents, Clinton, W, Obama had eight years.
There is currently a lot of chest thumping over the economy. And, in fact, the current crowd began to brag about this being totally to their credit very early on. A little quick for football.
CLINTON from 1992-2000 ended with a surplus budget. (“It happened during my administration!”–POGO, AND BILL.) Economy record? 9/1.
2000-2008: The “W” (give cheney and rusmfeld plenty of credit). Iraq and hedge funds. The term “trillions” at the end of this eight. Economy record, 0-10.
Obama (2008 – 2016) . The good news on the street is that we have been in the longest bull stock bull market ever. About 8/9 years. Hmm, that puts its beginning about 2008.
JET JOB (definition). In the sports world when a team improves rapidly, skeptics arise. Why? Because to do it right takes time. When a team goes from 2/8 to 8/2 in the first year of a coach’s tenure, eyes roll. Pundits ponder.
It can happen quickly. One team we had pulled 2/8 to 8/2. I’ve got to say that coach was a really good one and we brought in two all time players at QB and wide receiver. After another 2/8 was about to be terminated, one staffer seemed concerned: “I’m not sure. This guy has recruited a great group for next year, plus he had the courage to properly red shirt some that will really help.” Still he was replaced and the new coach went 8/2.
“You can’t make chicken salad until you have the chicken.” (Buddy Bedgood).
MAYBE JUDGEMENT (CREDIT) ON THIS POLITICAL GROUP SHOULD WAIT UNTIL 2024. OR 2020?
PBS featured a show on the Blue Ridge Parkway last night. The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) film showed a remarkable performance of men who needed a job. And I was unaware of the nifty bargain between a North Carolina politician and FDR that wound with Tar Heels gaining both the lions share of the tourism yielded, and social security.
We have a current similar situation. Illegal Immigration. And a wall that won’t happen is all that we have as a solution. And a common knowledge that something has to be done that honors the law of the land.
The CCC was all about labor. Is there labor now capable of solving the border problem?
Sources? How about the military, both active and retired. Are there not those who could provide the skills needed such as helicopter pilots, officers who need arms and policing skills, those who have injuries yet can and want to help. Are we not already paying many of these heroes. How about a certain kind of prisoner, a trustee-like person who would serve rather than sit. How about a program for illegals themselves. We may be able have them serve a time period of volunteer aid that creates a legal pathway for them.
Is there data that could make this prediction: Surely significantly trained personnel would be more mobil than a wall. Technology and personnel could surely cut the number crossing illegally. What would a cost analogy of using the above sources (and others) predict, compared to the cost of construction and management of the wall and what it would accomplish.
“…all a fourteen foot wall does is create a market for an eighteen foot ladder.”
PS—Various forms of the legalization of marijuana are growing. Will this be worse that the ungodly number of young people who are in jail for minor pot offenses. Or those who have been branded evil for a little weed? And even more to the above issue, wouldn’t this shift the tons of money from the drug cartels who force their citizens to risk flight, to taxation accrued in our own country?
We are going to have drugs. What could be worse than what we have?
Anyone? Bueller?
The CNN ALL STARS VS “FAIR AND BALANCED” FOX
Anyone else fed up with panels of all the same ilk trashing the absent opponents?
How about the admonishments of “…don’t anyone say anything about politics!”
NO CONVERSATION OR DISCUSSION, EQUALS NO COMPROMISE, EQUALS STAGNATION, EQUALS “DO NOTHING” POLITICIANS DO NOTHING.
Our 17 year “longest war”seems to have no ending? It had a beginning! It got vitriolic
when ‘W”and his gang burned up a budget surplus by writing their war “off the books”.
Speaking of admonishments, how about “…don’t go in there (the mid-east.) You will own it!” —PoppaBush and Scocroft.
Six trillion in deficit spending jump started the hemorrhaging of cash that is now 22 trillion of national debt. (no blood mentioned).
Soon the lines were drawn.
Being from the sports world, we settled it head on. Coaching tennis for forty years, the format we used was 6-3. Six singles matches, three doubles matches. Match wins count one point. Lineups in order of ability.
Example: One head to head would look something like this:
Singles:
FOX TEAM VS CNN
#1 male player from Fox vs #1male player from CNN
#1 woman player from Fox vs #1woman player from CNN
#2 Male Fox VS # 2 male player from CNN
#2 WOMAN VS #2 WOMAN
#3 Males
#3 Women
These are your six singles matches or points. now
DOUBLES–
#1 twosome men from fox vs #1 twosome men from CNN.
#1 or best women’s doubles from fox, vs same from CNN
Note the next match often determines the winner in tight matches.
This match then will be a mixed doubles match (one man plays with one woman).
This could get messy. Mixed doubles is a lot like warfare. So be it.
George Carlin on changing the rules of football: LEAVE THE WOUNDED ON THE FIELD.
Emerald Isle, end of April, 2020.
My bride, Margaret, and I have stayed “at home” six weeks as required.
This time period, basically all of April, is surely different from the other fourteen Aprils we have spent here. Most notable is the absence of people. And the presence of great weather. Combined I have spent more time realizing how beautiful this place is. Nature is heavy duty. Lot of critters. No people sounds. I think I can hypnotize carpenter bees.
There is a price. First bump was W Bush and property value down like a ZION DUNK. Stoopid war (still going). Blood, treasure, deficit of a trillion? Don’t need wall street regs? Picnic day for teddy bears. Write the wars off the books.
Next: Florence. (“We’ll be fine if there is not a bad hurricane”).
I remember Hazy. 1954. The other names meant more to those they hit. We will remember Florence and the flooding. And property damage. We were all worried about “deductibles” and labor shortage.
The poor were and still are trying just to stay alive.
What the new virus exposes is how the poor in this country get the short end of the stick. No one was to blame for the virus. But do we not have a feeling for those whom the boot heels have crushed so often.
May comes tomorrow. People can ease back in. Have we learned anything? Winning a political argument, and/or keeping your lifetime congressional seat have become lesser concerns.
“Tom—God could make a more beautiful day, but doubtless he never did” (Dr. Lacy G. Hall)
http://datagenetics.com/blog/april12019/index.html
The link above states that a trillion is this big: If you could start counting dollar bills, one per second, non stop 24 hours a day it would take approximately 32, 000 years to get to a trillion.
A trillion times 6 or 7. That a lot of money.
Those who contend that the current economic changes will fry the President’s reelection chances, may won’t to consider some very grim thoughts:
“…now is the time for your tears.” (THE LONELY DEATH OF HATTIE CARROLL) by Bob Dylan
Longtime attache: Mr. Fields, why are you studying the bible at this late date?
W.C. Fields: I’m looking for loopholes.
I am still amazed at the subdued attitudes toward the pope’s denial of the existence of hell. Bet w.c. fields would have joined me in celebration. I tend to agree with the late Christopher Hitchens’ description that the notion of hell was often used as a form of “child abuse”. More on Hitchens later. For now he joins Yuval Harari, Bill Bryson, and Jared Diamond as authors I have become interested in studying. And will now recommend through some comments their books contain.
Infinity and eternity are tough to grasp. Bill Bryson, in his “A Short History of Nearly Everything”, used this example to explain how long this world has been around (13.5 billion years). Bryson says if you spread you arms to full wingspan, the distance from the tip one middle finger to the other represents 13.5 billion years. The distance from your left middle finger to your right wrist represents earth’s existence before any kind of life appeared. If you take one finger nail file off the middle finger of that right hand, that would approximate the length of time mankind of today (homo sapiens) has existed. Did god invent man, or did man invent god? No mankind before that nail file, no religion.
Below are some excerpts from these authors:
Reasons for religion
- The function of explanation
- Defusing anxiety
- Providing comfort
- Organization and obedience
- Codes of behavior towards strangers
- Justifying war
Table 9.2. Examples of supernatural beliefs confined to particular religions
1. There is a monkey god who travels thousands of kilometers at a single somersault. (Hindu)
2. You can obtain benefits from the spirits by spending four days in a lonely place without food and water and cutting off a finger joint from your left hand. (Crow Indians)
3. A woman who had not been fertilized by a man became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy, whose body eventually after his death was carried up to a place called heaven, often represented as being located in the sky. (Catholic)
4. A shaman, who is paid for his efforts, sits in a house in dim light together with all of the village’s adults, who close their eyes. The shaman goes to the bottom of the ocean, where he pacifies the sea goddess who had been causing misfortunes. (Inuit)
5. To determine whether a person accused of adultery is guilty, force-feed a poisonous paste to a chicken. If the chicken does not die, that means that the accused person was innocent. (Azande)
6. Men who sacrifice their lives in battle for the religion will be carried to a heaven populated by beautiful virgin women. (Islam)
7. On Tepeyac Hill north of Mexico City in 1531, the Virgin Mary appeared to a Christianized Indian, spoke to him in Nahuatl (the Aztec language, at that time still widely spoken there), and enabled him to pick roses in a desert area where roses normally can’t grow. (Mexican Catholic)
8. On a hilltop near Manchester Village in western New York State on September 21, 1823, the Angel Moroni appeared to a man named Joseph Smith and revealed to him buried golden plates awaiting translation as a lost book of the Bible, the Book of Mormon. (Mormon)
9. A supernatural being gave a chunk of desert in the Middle East to the being’s favorite group of people, as their home forever. (Jewish)
10. In the 1880s God appeared to a Paiute Indian named Wovoka during a solar eclipse, and informed him that in two years buffalo would again fill the plains and white men would vanish, provided that Indians took part in a ritual called the Ghost Dance.
Get this—yesterday at swimming pool gossip hour, a community friend pointed out that a local resident was actually arrested for this scam: selling the fact that for a certain amount of money he could earn you access to god, who in turn would grant you the kind of strength the salesman had demonstrated (among others feats, he tore a phone book in two! ) ps –an addendum to this addendum relates there actually were two family members charged in the scam. And, in fact, the two had an earlier disagreement about the money split, so one broke off into his own connection to god. From 13.5 b till yesterday a new religion from Lands End! Sounds like the Baptists.
VIRGINS. The copy below shows an amazing number of virgin births. I couldn’t help wondering if at least one of these virgin’s fathers didn’t concoct this theory as an “out” for a beloved daughter?
Christopher Hitchens “God is Not Great”
As for Bethlehem, I suppose I would be willing to concede to Mr. Prager that on a good day, I would feel safe enough standing around outside the Church of the Nativity as evening came on. It is in Bethlehem, not far from Jerusalem, that many believe that, with the cooperation of an immaculately conceived virgin, god was delivered of a son.
“Now the birth of Jesus Christ was in this wise. When his mother, Mary, was espoused to Joseph, before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” Yes, and the Greek demigod Perseus was born when the god Jupiter visited the virgin Danae as a shower of gold and got her with child. The god Buddha was born through an opening in his mother’s flank. Catlicus the serpent-skirted caught a little ball of feathers from the sky and hid it in her bosom, and the Aztec god Huitzilopochtii was thus conceived. The virgin Nana took a pomegranate from the tree watered by the blood of the slain Agdestris, and laid it in her bosom, and gave birth to the god Attis. The virgin daughter of a Mongol king awoke one night and found herself bathed in a great light, which caused her to give birth to Genghis Khan. Krishna was born of the virgin Devaka. Horus was born of the virgin Isis. Mercury was born of the virgin Maia. Romulus was born of the virgin Rhea Sylvia. For some reason, many religions force themselves to think of the birth canal as a one-way street, and even the Koran treats the Virgin Mary with reverence. However, this made no difference during the Crusades, when a papal army set out to recapture Bethlehem and Jerusalem from the Muslims, incidentally destroying many Jewish communities and sacking heretical Christian Byzantium along the way, and inflicted a massacre in the narrow streets of Jerusalem, where, according to the hysterical and gleeful chroniclers, the spilled blood reached up to the bridles of the horses.
“Sapiens” by Yuval Harari is thought provoking. President Obama and Bill Gates listed it on top of their reading recommendations. And, as slow as the first 13 billion moved, the immediate past and present have picked up the pace. Harari points to the computer as the clue to the hastening developments. Not the least of which is our increasing ability to gain “data”. An acceleration of data collection will truly be rapid. So much so that Harari’s next book “Homo Deus” (man god) contends that the next version of man will differ from the homo sapiens we are today into a newcomer as different from us as we are from neanderthals. Heavy.
I don’t know who will win the lottery prediction of mankind’s end. Most have suggested we better be ready Thursday or so. But looking at the scope of our past and speed of change, aren’t we perhaps just at the beginning, not the end?
Is the truth what we should pursue, if not worship? We are witnessing artificial intelligence galloping forward. New knees were unthinkable not long ago. New brain in the future? No way? Harari would say not long now. Would it not follow that soon one would not have more evidence than faith to lean on. Hitchens says exceptional claims demand exceptional evidence. What I do believe is that Hitchens deserves the right to be an “antithesis” rather than an atheist. Certainly Americans have the right to freedom of thought. And who knows, the data required to unleash the many mysteries of life and beyond, may be nearer than we know.
Christopher Hitchens “God is Not Great”
Chapter 15 – Religion as the Original Sin
There are, indeed, several ways in which religion is not just amoral, but positively immoral. And these faults and crimes are not to be found in the behavior of its adherents (which can sometimes be exemplary) but in its original precepts. These include:• Presenting a false picture of the world to the innocent and the credulous
• The doctrine of blood sacrifice
• The doctrine of atonement
• The doctrine of eternal reward and/or punishment
• The imposition of impossible tasks and rulesChapter 16 – Is Religion Child Abuse?
When we consider whether religion has “done more harm than good”—not that this would say anything at all about its truth or authenticity—we are faced with an imponderably large question. How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith? This is almost as hard to determine as the number of spiritual and religious dreams and visions that came “true,” which in order to possess even a minimal claim to value would have to be measured against all the unrecorded and unremembered ones that did not. But we can be sure that religion has always hoped to practice upon the unformed and undefended minds of the young, and has gone to great lengths to make sure of this privilege by making alliances with secular powers in the material world.Chapter 19 – The Need for a New Enlightenment
“The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand.” —GOTTHOLD LESSING, ANTI-GOKZ.E (1778)“The Messiah Is Not Coming—and He’s Not Even Going to Call!” — ISRAELI HIT TUNE IN 2001
Yuval Noah Harari
In the 300 years of the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrators and governors incited some anti-Christian violence of their own. Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians. In contrast, over the course, of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions, to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.
George Carlin
Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time!
But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money!
W.H. Auden, “The More Loving One”
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That for all they care, I can go to hell.
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The various forms of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people to be equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.
Garrison Keillor
Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.
Stephen King
When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, “Why god? Why me?” and the thundering voice of God answered, There’s just something about you that pisses me off.
A local minister, Casper Holyrod, died recently. His obituary provided a possible resume builder when it quoted a suggestion by the minister: “Preach the gospel at all times. Even if you have to use words” Don’t actions speak louder than words? If you are indeed “Christian”, act like it. Embrace its obvious lessons. Swearing allegiance on an occasional Sunday isn’t the answer. I certainly don’t know the admission standards for the pearly gates, but don’t let them beat you up with the “guilt stick”. Your guess is as good as anybody’s and it is yours alone.
•“… sometimes I turn, there is someone there. Other times, it’s only me.” EVERY GRAIN OF SAND.
The Little Green Book of Tennis 