First Blog

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.” -Henry David Thoreau Happy Thanksgiving to all.   This is the day of the year where we often eat too much and watch too much football. It is also a day to give thanks.   So, before the turkey is served, and before the games begin, I count the many blessings in my life.   First, comes my family.   With me or without, my family is a wonderful group of folks.   All are good people doing good things, working to be better, sacrificing for others, and helping their friends. It is my honor to be among you.    I am always grateful for my parents, both good people who helped me no end in those early years, pointing me in the directions of good works, morality, honesty, and strength of character. The second is my life, as in I still have one. Because my dad died so young, I thought the same would be my fate.   But now decades later I’m still here, and with a detour or two have my health – which I do appreciat

When I was much younger, like an undergrad, I’d go out with friends for maybe a pizza and the discussion would be enjoined.   We’d argue this way and that, about one view or another.   We’d argue on and on until the pizza was long gone and bedtime or study time was upon us. Few feelings were hurt by the other. After all, it was just opinions shot back and forth.   The critical value of an opinion is in its flux of belief . It can or could be changed. Today, it’s different. When venturing onto websites of columnists, especially those of contributors, opinions are no longer changeable.   They are fixed, hardened, even cast as metal. Modern students are about the same, most with cast-iron views, not to be changed by anyone, any way, anyhow. The point here is you can’t call it an opinion unless you can cite something that someone can do or say to change it.   It rare we see this. What is slapped down on the page is not opinion but absolute truth in the mind of the contributor

So let Angela Merkel make natural gas deals with Russia, personified by Vladimir Putin. Long term, it can only help the USA.  If she can pull the EU toward deals with Russia, then her own and the fundamental EU distrust of Russia can and will likely grow. Poor Angela, with her big pinkish balloon of a globalist world popped, must remain relevant. Historically, Russia has always had an imperial attitude toward every other country, but who cared. For the West, they were too far east to matter; for the East they were too far west.  Sure, they were cozy with France more than a century ago, mostly because the rich needed a cool place to shop. For a few decades in the last century, they enjoyed the power to exert power, their only emotion. Russia, in fact, does not know how to be a friend; even their “friends” don’t like them and certainly don’t trust them. With a Russia-Germany gas deal in place, the Russians, communist or imperialist, will eventually squeeze the busy, mostly har

Social Media . One item of note today is the great preponderance of cell phones, blogs, twitters, and Facebook.  There are a dozen or more others, as you know.  The question I pose here is why? The Worldwide Data.   All numbers given are estimates, as there is no clear methodology for such data collection ('cept maybe cell phones) as there is for medical conditions, educational information, voters, religions, and the like.  Cell phones: There are  an estimated 5,980,000,000 mobile accounts worldwide, greater than the world population. Mobile accounts out number land lines 5:1. India and China account for at least 30% of this business.  Blogs: There are more than 160,000,000 blogs and 75% of that number are blog readers.  Some estimates are vastly higher. Twitter: There are at least 500,000,000 accounts, with more than 170,000,000 tweeting daily. The average visit time is more than 11 minutes.  People tweet, organizations tweet, religions tweet, even governments tweet. Facebo