Quirky thoughts from an old man.
“Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured… but not everyone must prove they are a citizen.”
Now add this, “Many of those who refuse, or are unable, to prove they are citizens will receive free insurance paid for by those who are forced to buy insurance because they are citizens.”
Ben Stein
Author of What Would Ben Stein Do?
Last week the conservative news media was playing a story about a woman who was voting for Obama because he was giving out free cell phones. It sounded unbelievable to me so I looked into it. And found out that it is true. The administration is giving poor people free cell phones. Here is a link to the story in the Dayton Ohio newspaper. The number of people who are taking advantage of the program in Ohio has nearly doubled in the last year.
Does this remind you of the free ice cream story I told here a few weeks ago.
Or the famous quote often attributed to playwright George Bernard Shaw:
All this at a time when the Federal Government is spending Three Billion Dollars a day more than its revenue. It is crazy behavior. Which reminds me of my favorite saying:
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I promise to only do politics once a week and never on Facebook (almost)
My bumper sticker contribution:
A story told by a 3rd grade teacher
The most eye-opening civics lesson I ever had was while teaching 3rd grade. The last Presidential election was heating up and some of the children showed an interest. I decided we would have an election for a class president. We would choose our nominees. They would make a campaign speech and the class would vote. To simplify the process, candidates were nominated by other class members. We discussed what kinds of characteristics these students should have. We got many nominations and from those, Jamie and Olivia were picked to run for the top spot.
The class had done a great job in their selections. Both candidates were good kids.
I thought Jamie might have an advantage because he got lots of parental support.
The day arrived when they were to make their speeches.
Jamie went first.
He had specific ideas about how to make our class a better place. He ended by promising to do his very best.
Everyone applauded and he sat down.
Now it was Olivia’s turn to speak.
Her speech was concise. She said, “If you will vote for me, I will give you free ice cream.” She sat down.
The class went wild. “Yes! Yes! We want ice cream.”
She surely would say more. She did not have to.
A discussion followed. How did she plan to pay for the ice cream? She wasn’t sure. But no one pursued that question. They took her at her word.
Would her parents buy it or would the class pay for it…She didn’t know.
The class really didn’t care. All they were thinking about was ice cream…
Jamie was forgotten. Olivia won by a landslide.
The Lesson:
Every time Barack Obama opened his mouth he offered ice cream and 51.4 % of the people reacted like nine year olds.
They want ice cream.
The other 48.6% percent know they’re going to have to feed the cow and clean up the mess.”
Harry Binswanger
“People their products and their services must be judged on the basis of their individual, factual qualities, not on issues of race or nationality.”
“Urging people to “buy American” is not patriotism it is tribalism.”
A website that I have touted before is Bridge Hunter. It is a user developed guide to the historic and interesting bridges in the United States. Kind of a Wikipedia for bridges, it is very popular with engineers and others that like to see great engineering.
Recently I was asked by someone for advise on where to snorkel in Hawaii and by someone else for advise on where to snorkel in Belize. I did a search for a Bridge Hunter equivalent for snorkeling and didn’t find one. Since snorkeling is vastly more popular than looking at bridges it seems like it would easy and profitable to develop a user participation Snorkel Hunter web site. It would also be a great service to the sport.
A few caveats. Advertising would have to be low key and it would be important to keep travel consolidators like Expedia and Travelocity off the site. Also make sure that the site is smart phone accessible and it has good maps.
Every medieval town we saw on our European trip had a cathedral and a clock tower. In one of the towns, probably Bern, I realized that time used to be a monopoly of the church. They had the bell in the church steeple and since nobody had a clock when the priest pulled the bell to signal that it was noon, it was noon. It was until the late medieval era when civic governments got clocks and towers to put them in that the church lost its monopoly. Interesting. What monopolies exist today in the background that we don’t see because they are part of the fabric of our society?
If your interested in the beginning of the Renaissance read The Swerve by Steven Greenblatt a nonfiction account of the rediscovery of Lucretius that reads like fiction.
One more time question if you have time: Why does an hour have sixty minutes around the world? We use different languages distance and weight measures but time measurements seem to be universal. Why?
