04.01.09
Big-3 Bailout – why them and not us?
Okay, you’re probably thinking this is another one of those articles complaining about bailing out the automakers. It is, but probably not like you are thinking…let me explain…
So, we have the U.S. automakers, and they are suffering because they are fat and spoiled and stodgy and generally lacking in common business sense.
Next, we have President Obama and the Democratic Senate worrying about the automakers going out of business because of…(see reasons above).
And so, all of these people collaborate and decide the best course of action is to send billions of dollars to these companies to “bail them out” of their bad business practices. And, they do exactly that…they send billions of dollars to the same people who blew their own money on big homes and fancy airplanes and frivolity abundunt.
So, you are probably now starting to ask about my point. It is this:
Wouldn’t it make a whole lot more sense to take those billions of dollars and use them to offer government-sponsored incentives to U.S. citizens who purchase an automobile built by a U.S. automaker? Seriously…if President Obama told me that he would send me a check for, say, $10,000 if I bought a Ford or GM automobile, I’d do it. In a heartbeat. Even though I don’t even need a car right now, if I thought I could get a brand new car for $10,000 off, I’d do it! And I bet a lot of other people would, too.
Wouldn’t this stimulus do the same thing that the President is trying to do, only better? It would significantly increase auto production, save jobs, stimulate the economy, and even better, keep that money out of the pockets of those spoiled, fat-cat automaker CEO’s!
I ain’t no business or economic genius, but I sure don’t see the downside of this plan, and even if there was one, it probably wouldn’t have anywhere near the downside of the current plan! So what am I missing?
02.18.09
Part II – Time travel is an oxymoron
Time does not exist, so how can we travel ‘though’ something that does not exist? Well, we can’t.
Scientists and physicists spend millions of dollars and hours exploring the concept of time travel, probably without giving a whole lot of thought to whether time really even exists at all. Well, actually they do think about it…I believe that they have corporately made the educated assumption that ‘time exists’ so it is on that foundation that all of their other theories rest.
Reminds me of the group of scientists back in the 1800’s who all got together and deliberated and then proudly published their finding that “nothing new can ever be invented…we have already invented everything that can be invented!”
Point is, educated opinions are only as good as their foundation. Researchers are snipe hunting for the elusive ‘time travel’ formula based on the assumption that ‘time’ actually is a thing that can be traveled through. Bad assumption, I believe.
My favorite theory is the one that says ‘time’ slows down the closer you get to the speed of light, and if you could exceed the speed of light, you could go ‘back in time’. I think this is all based on the concept of reflected light. When we look at the stars in the sky, we are actually seeing the light that was emitted or reflected millions of ‘years’ ago. What we see is what that star looked like when the light was emitted. So, are we seeing the past? In that respect, sure. If we were there, is that what the star would look like? No. Conversely, sitting on that star, looking at earth, one would see prehistoric earth…what you see is all relative to where you are.
So, if we took a trip at 10 times the speed of light would we be going back in ‘time’? Only to the extent that the light we were then seeing was the light that was emitted from the earth earlier. BUT, that does not mean that we now exist in ‘that time’, the past. We just exist, not in a particular time, but in a particular place; everything is relative to the place where we exist. ‘Time’ is not a function in any of that because ‘time’ is a contrived notion.
So, when we travel at the speed of light for a period of ‘time’, do we return to an earth that is hundreds of years older? Probably not. IF that was possible, it could only happen as a result of somehow shifting our position in our existence, but it would not have anything to do with ‘travelling through time’.
Anyway, what about the future? If going really fast puts us in the past then does going really slow put us in the future? As dumb as that sounds, it is the logical corollary to the ’speed of light’ time travel theory. So if one is not true, the other probably isn’t either.
And what about the ‘grandfather paradox’? It goes away. Your grandfather’s ‘time’ is the same as your ‘time’ because, again, a logical and sequential flow of events through ‘time’ does not actually exist.
There are physical laws that state that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form. So, since energy is represented by atomic particles, I think that concept also applies to matter, in saying that one atomic particle cannot exist in two places. The concept of ‘time travel’ would place billions of atoms (in your body) in two places at the same point in ‘time’. In other words, the hydrogen atom in my little fingernail would also exist in a raindrop in a past ‘time’, which by definition is impossible since the exact same atom cannot be in my fingernail AND in a raindrop at the same time.
Finally, a quick look at the metaphysical nature of nature. Scientists and classically educated researchers have long poo-poo’ed on any notion of ghosts or psychics or any reference to strange science. Well, given the concept of ‘no such thing as time’, and ‘all things simply exist’, the idea of some people having an ability to ’see the future’ or ’see the past’ makes more sense. Given that ‘time’ does not really exist, then these seers are not really jumping ahead or backward in a simple sequential flow of events but are instead “tuning in” to other events.
In short, time travel is simply an extension of a faulty concept, that being that time actually exists at all. Explanations of ‘alternate universes’, and ‘going fast to visit the past’ are all based on a contrived premise, that being that ‘time’ is a thing; it isn’t. ‘Time’ is just a one dimensional conceptual tool that we invented to make our lives easier.
Part I – Time does not exist
Here, I am talking about the concept of ‘time’. Scientists tend to treat the concept of time (hereafter just referred to as ‘time’) as a thing that naturally exists, like gravity or magnetism. They talk about time as a thing that can be explored or traveled through (more on that later). I think they are wrong.
First off, let me say that I am not a scientist, not in the classic sense with the letters and papers and all the normal trappings of academia that we (and mostly they) equate as the prerequisites of being able to use the label. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking about things.
So, time…what is it if it does not exist? It is nothing. Time is a man-made invention that we use as a benchmark for our existence. We use time as a tool to gauge almost everything we do. We invented time for our purposes. ‘Time’ is based on the spin and rotation of our planet. ‘Days’ are represented as sunset to sunset. Then these days are broken into consecutively smaller units to help us measure the smaller aspects of our daily existence. ‘Years’ are represented by how long it takes our planet to go completely around our sun. Days and Years don’t really line up, but that’s no big deal…we just ‘fudge’ the calculation with leap years and the occasional adjustment of the atomic clocks. Yep…we made time, and we adjust it when we need to so it continues to fit our needs. It is not a constant, it is not even a variable…it doesn’t actually exist at all.
If you went to Mars with your wrist watch on, you would find after a short while that your days and nights were all wrong. That is because on Mars, ‘time’ is different. A Martian day is about 40 ‘minutes’ longer than a day on earth. So what do you do on Mars…do you change your clocks so that a day becomes 24 hours and 40 minutes? Or, do you just stretch out the ‘hour’ so that it fits within our concept of the ‘24 hour day’? Doesn’t matter…the point here is that ‘time’ is just a concept we use to measure stuff. It is not a constant, like gravity and magnetism, because it doesn’t really exist in the universe. If it did, it would be a constant, too
Our concept of ‘time’ is based entirely on a starting point and an ending point. Hours, minutes, days, decades, doesn’t matter…they are all based on a starting moment and an ending moment. But, we live in an infinite universe, without a start and an end. The universe (or the void of space, whatever you want to call the big black void where we live) has always been, and will always be. How can there be ‘time’ in a place with no start and no stop? If we base our concept of ‘time’ on when an event started and when it stopped, then logically the black void of space would have a starting point from which all time would have begun. But, as best we can tell, it does not. So, by default, without a starting point, we can’t have ‘time’.
‘Time’ is a one dimensional concept in a three dimensional universe. We cannot comprehend a universe without time so we don’t try…our brains are not equipped to comprehend such a complex concept as a place where no time exists, leading to the inevitable question, “if there is no ‘time’, then what do we call our existance?” Don’t ask me. I can’t comprehend it either. But, unlike our classically trained scientists and physicists, I don’t try to lean on the simple contrived concept of ‘time’ as a crutch, trying to force-fit everything we know into that concept. Because it doesn’t exist. Everything we are, everything we know, everything that is and always was and will ever be, just exists, not as a simple sequential, one dimensional flow of events but as a big glob of existance. We just exist. And we invented ‘time’ to help us explain and measure that existance.
02.11.09
U.S Car Makers Continue to be Wrong
Well, I’m not one to say I told you so, so I won’t say that. That’s tacky. But I was right.
I am following up on my earlier blog comment about U.S. Carmakers being Idiots. They are, of course. But the latest rounds of corporate bailouts just reinforces that fact (yes, it is a fact). The Big-3 companys are failing because they are idiots. We are bailing them out (because we are idiots). And the Big-3 uses the bailout money in typical fashion, to pay huge salaries to the CEOs (who are idiots); for extravagant corporate retreats (obviously full of idiots); and, finally, for producing…..what? Nothing new. Same old rhetoric as before…99.9% petroleum cars, 0.1% alternative fuel cars, lots of eyewash and phoney advertising, no real effort or expenditures on what people really want/need…cheap cars that run on something other than gasoline. The very first condition of the bailout SHOULD have been…fire the top four levels of management. They are clueless and stupid and stuck in their old stodgy unsuccessful ways. They are failures. They should not be rewarded, for anything. If you need a definition of the term “Loser”, there you go…look no further than the upper management at our own Big-3. Yep…they are still idiots.
Children’s Rights – Our Wrongs
I saw something on television about the horrible condition of Children’s Rights in my state. And, I am positive that there are definitely areas where that is sadly true. However, I think in many, many respects we have overdone the ‘rights’ of children. I am associated with some very good and wonderful teachers and school counselors. The stories I hear from them just makes me cringe. Children spitting on teachers. Children kicking and physically assaulting teachers. Children disrupting class by standing on their desks and screaming. Children who ‘know their rights’ and threaten lawsuits if teachers touch them in any way. Children without boundaries. The general response, of course, is to call the parents and have the children removed from school, which, in quite many instances, was exactly the goal of the child anyway.
We as a society, in my opinion, have swung too far the other way. Yes, we need to protect our children from harm, certainly, but our definition of harm has become convoluted. When a child has earned the right to be punished for nonacceptable behavior, then they should be rewarded with the punishment they have earned. When a child physically assaults another human being and then gets away with it (because of his age), then he has learned a lesson he will carry with him throughout his life, all the way to prision. That isn’t fair.
We should have processes in place to help those children whose parents are, for whatever reason, failing to teach their offspring the limits and boundaries our society has imposed on us as adults. Limits and boundaries. Hitting another person is wrong. Recognizing that an adolescent brain is not always equipped to handle rational, abstract reasoning, we should be prepared to handle misbehavior in more understandable terms when that fails.
I misbehaved in high school, one time. I was sent to the principal’s office, slapped on the rear-end twice with a big wooden paddle, and sent back to class. I never did that again. I totally understood the consequenses of my actions in very clear terms.
When we fail to allow schools to take acceptable action for unacceptabe behavior, we as adults are failing our children by not allowing them to learn the rules of society. Children are classified as ‘minors’ for a reason, primarily, I believe, because it has been widely recognized for centuries that until the age of majority, a child’s brain is not equipped to make good and rational decisions. They still test their limits and boundaries well into their teens, so we as adults must be equipped to teach those limits and boundaries imposed on us by our form of society. When we fail, they fail. The bulging prision system is testament to that failing.
Spitting on people is not acceptable behavior. Assaulting people is not acceptable behavior. Screaming in a room full of people is not acceptable behavior. This is true at any age. Yet our children are doing these things without consequence. Or, if there is consequence, it is more likely in the form of pushing them away, getting rid of them, attempting to apply reason to a 14 year old brain that is totally unequipped to understand the abstract complexities of societal norms, or worst of all, mental torture (we call it ‘time out’ which is actually nothing less than solitary confinement).
I see absolutely nothing wrong or improper with using the age old and time proven methods of negative reinforcement for appropriate negative behavior. Further, I would even go so far as to say that parents who disagree with that are not being parents, but are instead more concerned with being their child’s best friend.
A parent is a teacher and a percentage of parents are neglecting that role and raising confused little people who have no respect for other people’s boundaries. Worse, when those confused little people enter our public school system, those parents expect the school system to apply that same level of nonconsequential punishment. Only later, when those confused people misbehave as an adult, do we finally remove their rights and punish them. Why do we wait so late?
02.03.09
Microsoft Vista is just horrible
I bought a new Sony laptop. I like Sony because any Sony I have ever owned has worked until the day I got rid of it, sometimes for decades. They are a quality name brand.
Anyway, the new laptop came with Vista installed. So, okay, I figured I might as well accept the change…after all, newer is better, right?
OMG…Vista is simply horrible. It is an Operating System written by geeks for geeks. Now I am forced to understand administrative rights and read/write permissions and a ton of geeky stuff that I never had to know in any previous Microsoft OS. And, for the record, I don’t want to know it. I just want to read my email, post my blog, and run some occasional apps. It is no longer fun.
Vista continually asks me for permission to run what I want it to run. I am the administrator…I shouldn’t have to give permission when I want to run my programs.
Vista won’t download. When I try, it tells me I don’t have permission. From whom? To do what? Very sucky.
And lockups!!! OMG…this system will lockup solid just by looking at it the wrong way! Really, using IE or Firefox and clicking a little too quickly on links will lock the system so tightly that even Ctrl-Alt-Del fails to work. You are forced to do a hard re-boot, which naturally entails all the funky blue screens the next time you boot up.
Okay, so I finally had enough of Vista’s horrific, unfriendly behavior so I decided to go to the Sony web site and get the XP drivers so I could reformat the hard drive and install my good old reliable XP Pro. Well, guess what…Sony, obviously in cahoots with Microsoft, doesn’t have XP drivers for this laptop. Sony, Sony, Sony…for the first time since I was born, you have disappointed me royally. You should simply and naturally assume that there will be a breadth of users out here in the real world who have a breadth of operating system requirements, and support your product(s) with appropriate drivers for any of them, or at least the most widely used. But no, so sorry, Vista only.
Well, I am undeterred. Sony, your challenge has been accepted…I have started my search for the myriad of required XP drivers from Intel and others as to make my Sony laptop work the way is should have worked out of the box. Reliably. Easily. Ungeekably. A happy, friendly experience. In other words, without Vista. Once I have the required driver sets, and my laptop is working under XP, I will return and post the places where I found all of the appropriate drivers. Because, if you have found this post, you are probably going through something like I am. And, since Sony (bad, bad Sony!) isn’t going to step up to the plate any time soon, we need to take appropriate action to support ourselves.
And, if you have ALREADY gone through this nightmare yourself and found some good drivers, pass them along to me so I can post them here (and give you some well deserved credit).
Mr. Gates, I do respect you and the work you have done in the past, but you really slipped up with the Vista operating system. The cool dude in the Apple commercial is right…Vista is really bad. You truly need to do some serious backpeddling to recover from this horrible OS, because I am very representative of the baby boom demographic, and I can guarantee you if I am unhappy with you, so are MILLIONS of others. Vista sucks. Either pull it off of the shelves, or rejoice in the sound of millions of MS Vista users swinging over to Apple OS.
Did I mention that Vista sucks? Just checking…
07.03.08
U.S. Carmakers Are Always Wrong
I read a short article in the newspaper yesterday and I’ve been fuming about it since. And what better place to fume than my blog? The title of the article was Carmakers say fuel-economy proposal too aggressive. The crux of the article was that the “Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers” wrote 70 pages “explaining” (wah-wah-wah) why the government proposed rules for increasing fuel economy in cars by 4.5% per year from 2011 to 2015 is “too hard”. The “Alliance of Cry Babies who Don’t Give a Carp About the Planet” said in their response that this proposal “would require manufacturers to expend resources at a pace that is excessive given the fact that the auto industry is already under economic stress”.
Idiots.
I mean, why are they under “economic stress” anyway? Is it because they make a product that people want? No. Is it because they make a fuel efficient automobile? No. Is it because they have an aggressive engineering shop who has the latitude to design the cars people actually want? No. it is the opposite. Economic stress means that they aren’t making money. And they aren’t making money because they aren’t making cars that people want. And they aren’t making cars that people want because they are, and always have been, terrible and horrible at responding to peoples actual needs, even though those needs are visible even to a box turtle years in advance. I mean, how long have most of us known that gasoline was reaching unreasonable levels? 3, 4 years?
Idiots.
The response from the “Alliance of MudHeads Who Make Excessively Big Cars” is less of a response to a good proposal and more of a list of excuses why they don’t want to stop making big cars with big engines which burn big fuel. Meanwhile the Japanese are busying themselves improving and producing hydrogen cars; the French and Indians are producing cars that run on compressed air; the Brazilians are running their cars on Ethyl Alcohol. And the American Carmakers? Living as usual in the side pockets of the Arabs who just keep getting richer and richer as they drive the U.S. into recession and eventual depression.
Idiots.
Why is it that the American car industry is Always behind the power curve when it comes to knowing what people want? Americans are faced with $6.00 per gallon gasoline in the not-to-distant future, and what is the “Alliance of Big Heavy Petroleum Burning Cars” doing? Supporting the industry; an industry that is still producing Hummers and Escalades and Silverados, even while used car lots are filling up with these vehicles because nobody can afford them anymore.
Idiots.
Why is it that the automobile manufacturers are posting record losses this year? Hint: it is NOT because people want gas hogs. Yet gas hogs are what the automobile manufacturers keep producing and will produce until they finally get jolted from their ignorant bliss by imported hydrogen cars.
Idiots.
Instead of bellyaching and crying and whining about the government’s “unrealistic” proposal, you would think that the car industry would be on the leading edge; that their marketing gurus would be yelling at the top of their lungs, “Stop the manufacturing lines! We need to retool!”. Nope. They want to whine. They want to complain. They want to keep making 15 MPG cars and then are actually confused when nobody buys them. They just keep thinking that everything will be alright. It isn’t, and it hasn’t been for a long time.
Idiots.
I want these idiots to wake up. At least one of them, anyway. How about you, Chrysler? You brought Lee Ioacoca back to bail your stupid butts out (again). Hey Lee…have you thought about any alternative fuel autos yet? Well, probably not. Excuses are easier to make than profits. And “Big Oil” would get laws passed even if you did.
So I guess we are the bigger idiots for not making more noise.
04.14.08
CBS…those fake reality shows just GOTTA go!
I mentioned in an earlier post that I had two issues with CBS programming. I addressed the first (fictitious programming schedules), so here is the other: fake reality shows, where a bunch of wanna-be acters sadly act their way through some programmed reality. Jeeze, guys, this format appealed to boppers several years ago, but get a clue! Those youngsters have moved on. These shows are utterly worthless, totally stupid, completely staged, and, unless you have missed the point here, a total waste of time. Advertisers…pull out now, before it is too late! Why on earth do you want to have your corporate identity associated with these shabby productions!
Last night, because CBS can’t follow their own programming schedule, I actually watched the end of Big Brother. OMG!!! What a piece of tripe! These pseudo-acters prancing around pretending to be “real” (it probably took multiple takes to get some of those scenes to be believable). Jeeze-Louise, CBS…surely you can come up with something…anything…better than this! Advertisers…get a clue! I am definitely not alone in this opinion. Use your money for R&D or college grants…something that is actually beneficial and educational! Big Brother sucks! It’s about as close to ”reality” as a Superman cartoon and one tenth as interesting (unless you are a student of bad acting, whereupon it is great material!)
The days of “Reality” television are over. Like Wrestling, everybody knows they are staged productions, and let’s face it…they lost their novelty years ago. Move on, CBS!
CBS…c’mon, guys; a schedule is a schedule!
CBS, this is about your programming practices. There are two aspects of your programming that grind my gizzard. First, the fact that you allow sporting events to overrun regular programming. I know when my favorite shows come on, like 60 Minutes and Cold Case, but they seldom actually DO come on when you say they will.
Last night I settled down to watch 60 Minutes. Sure enough, per usual, I was stuck watching the absolute most boring sport in the history of televised sports….Golf. I don’t care about Golf. The very most I would ever want to see pertaining to a golf match might be 5 minutes of highlights. The rest of it is….boring.
But the same thing happens with all televised sports on CBS…if it runs long, nobody at CBS cares. Nobody at CBS gives a Carp about the audience and our lives and our schedules.
If I was running the network, that would stop. Sports can be stuck in the same schedule block as any other program. There should be no preference of sports fans over normal people (you read that right). If the sport runs long, tough! Read about it in the paper. Or purchase ESPN or the 143 other cable/satellite sport channels. I have every right to watch 60 Minutes at the scheduled time, and certainly my rights are no less important than those of any sweaty, overweight couch potato.
When it comes to programming, a television program should come on when you say it will, CBS. I bet the advertisers who spend big bucks on prime time advertising are peeved when their ads get shoved out to late-night. CBS doesn’t care. I am certainly peeved that I can’t expect CBS to stick to their own program schedule. Again, CBS doesn’t care.
I am the voice of the aging Baby Boomer, CBS. We carry a big $$$tick. Get a clue.
03.20.08
Well, I’m here…
Okay, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of blogs. So, now that I’m here, I might as well write something newsworthy. Being old, I have lots of thoughts on lots of topics. I also don’t like fluff…I write distinctly and to-the-point, so don’t expect a whole lot of fluffy, feel-goody, politically correct details.
Let’s get this party started (I like Pink…hey, I’m old but I ain’t dead!) . . .
