Who was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and why did Google add this to their front search page?

Ganhdi would have been 140 years old on October 2nd and Google celebrated his life and marked his brithday for the world to see, which because of him was declared by the United Nations General Assembly on june 15th 2007 as the International day of Non Violence. He joined what some might consider elite band of folks who have graced the google doodle. Those include Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Confucius and Michael Jackson. Perosnally I am not sure a child molester belongs in that company but Google decided he did. Anyway, October 2nd is a national holiday in India known as "Gandhi Jayanti", this day marks the occasion of the father of the nation’s birthday. This is one of three officially declared National Holidays in India and is observed by all Indian states and union territories. No where in India can you buy or consume liquor, a small way to honor this great man. He was born on October 2 1869 in Porbandar, Gujarat as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and has been celebrated for his ideas and leadership by example on non violent passive resistance. Most times you hear his name you will hear "Mahatma", this word is actually from the Sanskrit word meaning "Great Soul". The name change happened after he returned to India from South Africa, the Indian people began to call him Mahatma, a title reserved for great sages.

He married at a very young age, 13 and he a Kasturbai Makanji were blessed with four sons. This created some issues for the family, his wife is widly quoted as saying "You want my sons to be holy men before they are men!" The four of them tried to live up to their father's expectations of them, but each, in his own way, failed. Gandhi's attitude toward their failure was, by his own testimony, an element of guilt for sexual excesses in his childhood marriage. So even in the family of Mahatma Gandhi there was some dysfunction, who would have thunk it? The records tell us that Harilal, his oldest son, converted to Islam and later became an alcoholic. I also found that when Harilal's wife died in 1918 that Gandhi would not approve a re-marriage and that broke the son. I had no idea about any of this and was quite surprised to find out about it. Gandhi was a committed man and wore his convictions for all to see, and they would seem impossible for a son to live up to, this is really a sad story for the son’s of Gandhi. It appears to me that there is a paradox in Gandhi's life, poor treatment of his wife and children are not congruent with his behavior towards others. He was extremely demanding of himself, and those closest to him. It appears that he was easily able to display loving kindness to virtually everyone, everyone except his family. I found an interesting quote from Gandhi's best known biographer, Louis Fischer, in "The Life of Mahatma Gandhi". He put it very simply - Gandhi thought his sons could be chips off the old block, but the block did not chip. They say that later in his life he had mellowed concerning his expectations of his family.

He began studying law in 1888 in London and finished that schooling in 1891 and in 1893 he opened his own law firm in South Africa. In 1906 he began the Satyagraha movement to protest to the law that all Indians should be finger printed and should also carry an identification card. Gandhi started a peaceful campaign declaring that he would either go to the jail or die before following any anti-Asian laws. This was the first of many callings he was drawn to in his life, this is where he planted the seed of who he would become. George Paxton, of the London-based Gandhi Foundation, said that times Gandhi sounded very anti-technology because he advocated a return to a simpler way of life. He viewed most techologies as a bane to the poor because they were so often employed at the expense of the poor. In India there were massive numbers of unemployed, and the introduction of technology wasn't benefiting them, it was benefiting the owners of the factories. While he did not publicly advocate technology he would not have been able to lead India to indepence from British rule in 1947 without being a master of it. Without technology such as the telegraph, telephone and newpaper he may not have risen to prominence.

While the bits of technology are differnent the priniciples are the same, most technological advances do not immediately benefit the masses although I think we are hitting a time when that tide is shifting. We are more impowered today than ever with new things, and I find it all fascinating. Don’t get me wrong, I am not sure we can handle it and keep it in the correct perspective. We have all this gadgets that help us get through our days, our crackberrys and I-phones and all the other wifi connected gadgets. But is being connected really all it is cracked up to be? We seem to have short memories, what did we do before cell phones? We got by just fine, when I was a kid my Mom kicked us out of the house and we were not allowed back until it got dark. No phones to GPS track us and we lived way out in the country and wandered for miles looking for some mischief to get into. Think about how frustrated you get when there is no cell service, or no connectivity for your I-pod. The simplier life Gandhi spent his life defending was just that, a simpler life. A life that one could enjoy without the pressures of a dictatorial regime ruling the country.

At the end of World War II, Britain emerged victorious and when general elections were held in 1945. While there were promises of self Government a committee arrived from England and discussions were held with the leaders of India about the future of the free India. These meetings obviously failed because of the differences in the opinion between the Congress and Muslims leaders. India did eventually attain Independence in 1945 but due to ongoing issues the country was partitioned into India and Pakistan. This inability to get everyone on the same page caused huge problems between the Hindus and the Muslims that continue to this day. During the entire ordeal Gandhi worked tirelessly to unite the Hindus and the Muslims. This angered the Hindu fundamentalists so much that one of them, Nathu Ram Godse, assassinated Gandhi on January 30, 1948. The last words on his lips were ‘Hey Ram’ (Oh God). He later inspired millions of people around the world, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

He was a great man and I for one am glad that Google honored him on his birthday.

What do you see when you examine your own mortality?

I recently received news that my Brother-in-law has bladder cancer and I have spent the last couple of days contemplating my life and my own mortality. I hate that – I should not need news like that to force me to do it. I try very hard to examine myself on a daily basis but sometimes my hectic life gets in the way and that pisses me off. I am going to vow, again, to myself, not to let that happen again. I spoke with my Brother the day after the news and the day before the meeting with the oncologist and was surprised at what good spirits he was in. I have never faced any news like that but I hope if I get that news that I do not crumble into the fetal position in my bathtub and start sucking on my thumb, who knows it could happen. (I did steal that line from my brother) Bride and I have talked a lot about Brother Bill and our mortality and what we believe in or not believe in since first hearing the news.

Bride said the first thing she did was pray and I asked her why. She told me that it seemed the right thing to do. We then started talking about our belief in God, she is not sure if she believes and I consider myself a spiritual seeker so that did not get us anywhere. So that got us to talking about why is it that when news like that comes our first thought is to pray? We talked about religion and the role it plays in our lives, from early childhood through until today. She was raised Catholic, schooling and all and I was raised Baptist – how did we get together, right? Anyway we have very different backgrounds in that regard but neither of us is overly religious so it has never created any issues for us. Now she is more Agnostic than Atheist and less Catholic and I consider myself as somewhat the same. I am not sure what that means exactly but I guess it means I am somewhat Agnostic and have Atheistic tendencies.

Spiritual seeker – my ambling through life has lead me down, and back in some cases, many different paths. Some were good, others not so much, some were long road trips and some were brief incursions. I have learned some things that were beneficial to me and I learned things that were not so helpful. I have learned through example and study and I have learned by observing bad examples. I have learned from examining the motives of teachers who had their own agendas. I have found that we need to be observing and learning all the time and have found I learn more when I least expect to be learning something – the AH HA moments. I guess I am wary of teachers and when learning, in an organized way, from them I think I put up a knee wall and place a jaundiced eye on the material. No matter the source of the information we each must examine and reconcile this new information with what and who we are, without that what does it really mean – blind faith I think.

There has been one constant on my journey and that is most folks have some hypocrisy in them, and yes I place myself at the top of that list. You might think, from that statement that I am somewhat jaded wouldn’t ya. It is not meant that way and I do not believe I am, I feel that I am simply a realist. I will give you a test, the next time you are at church and you are in the parking lot trying to get out look around and examine the faces of your fellow church goers. Inevitably you will see at least one with the look of complete disgust on their face with the slowness of the traffic leaving the church. Not even out of the church parking lot and the grace of God is already slipped from their mind, gone – I have not gone to church in years but did this experiment many times and it proves out, every time. So, I know you are thinking that is not true, well it is my truth and like any truth it needs to be examined and believed individually. Try it for yourself. You also have remove the rosy glasses that organized religion provides and be open to the truth, no matter where it comes from. Sometimes the truth is ugly and not something you want to see and not something you want to admit is in you. In my earlier years my pig headedness and stubbornness and blind beliefs simply blocked these easy to see hard truths, especially when placed against my own shining example (I had a high opinion of myself back then – some might even say sanctimonious). That lackadaisical approach to my early beliefs created MANY problems along my journey.

Through all of my journeys, I have also learned that there are a range of possibilities for the meaning of our lives. On one end of the spectrum we have, and I will use an analogy here, life starting, the annual bulb being planted in the ground during the spring, or when we are conceived. The little sprouts pop forth searching for the sunlight and start to grow, we are born and cared for. We, along with our flowers, reach some early stage of development, childhood and growing up. We reach our stride, like the flower starting to bloom and then comes the autumn. Our flower starts to slow down, fade and eventually die in the winter, not unlike us, getting older and passing away. Maybe, just maybe, it is that simple, we are nothing more than an evolutionary inevitability. We are born, grow old and die, like everything else on the planet and maybe that is all there is to it. The other end of that spectrum is the story of the Bible and we all end up in either a glorious Heaven or a miserable Hell. That is one part that is not as discussed as much and a discrepancy in the plan as I see it. If you believe that there is a Heaven, then you must also believe in Hell and recognize that God also created Hell. Personally I never understood or could reconcile that God would create such a place and send people of his flock to that place.
Anyway, I have come to be OK with it, no matter which end of spectrum may be the truth. Maybe, as the Buddhists believe, we are reincarnated, what we come back as depends on the culmination of our Karma from this and previous lives. What I have found is that all major religious groups and spiritual societies have a set of guidelines, rules for living right if you will and I think you might. They all basically tell us to do the right thing. Christianity has the ten commandments, Buddhism has a range of Precepts, depending on whether one is a monk, or layperson and in the Qur'an there are more than 10 commandments and Hindu’s have 5 principles and 10 Disciplines and Taoist’s have up to 1000 commandments depending on the sect we are talking about. I have never liked the word commandments, it implies a dictatorial relationship with your highest religious figures and that, I would think, was not the intent as it countermands the rest of it. In my opinion, folks – relax, this is all just my opinion and my truths and what I have observed and found on my journey. Each of us have our own journey and yours will different than mine and different from anyone else’s. If by chance your dander is up, it might help to refer back to paragraph 4 sentence 1. If you are being truthful with yourself someone else’s opinion should not make you question your own beliefs or even get mad about what is working for someone else, I am just saying.

So through all of that I have distilled it down to something that my simpleton brain can understand, be an upright person – the best person you can be. Don’t lie, steal, cheat, kill or any of the stuff we know is wrong. Right and wrong is really that simple – black and white and those who want to muddy it up with conversations about gray areas simply do not have the moral courage of their convictions or maybe they do not even the convictions to begin with. It is easy to let one little thing slip, oh I will take this or cheat on that or do whatever it is we know is wrong. Well if you compromise who you are, even a little, it becomes easier next time and once accustomed to the small lies the ones just a little bigger will start to come easy as well and the next thing you know……… So I try VERY hard not to compromise my principles, my moral and ethic foundations are strong and no matter the situation I will not lie to you or steal from you or do what we all know is wrong. Not even a little because once you compromise yourself you are on a slippery slope because you have figured out how to lie to yourself. When you can do that, you might as well admit defeat in the game of life because you missed the point. My unbending ethical foundation is hard to maintain and has caused me many a hardship throughout my life, tiny ones with Bride, big ones with friends, and huge ones at work and most every other area of my life. Seems it might have been easier to just go to church and sit in the pew, depending on the sermon giver to tell me what their truth is.

So what does all that mean? It means it is not easy to be a good person, your beliefs will be challenged every day and in every way. Being a good man is what gets me through the days. I try hard not to question or judge others or the methods they use to get through their days, I do not really care. I have enough problems with myself. Everything else is just fluff, my striving to be a good man is NOT following anyone else’s doctrine, it is what I have found makes me happy and helps me get through my days. If believing in God is what makes you happy then I am happy for ya. Finding happiness and something to help you get through the days is truly rare in our society (look at the # of antidepressant prescriptions if you need proof). If believing in Allah is working for ya, bless ya my friend because a lot of people never find any happiness and nothing to help them through. To me, it does not matter what the “it” is, as long as you can be true to “it” and you find peace and happiness in it.

To sum all that up, if our foundation of morality is in tack, the mortality thing will take care of itself!

I love you Brother Bill

What is it with high beam headlights and not knowing when to switch them to low beams?

It has always bothered me when approaching traffic rides with the high beams on and for some reason refuses to switch them to the low beam mode of operation when traffic approaches. That seems to me a common courtesy, one that seems to have long since gone by the way side. I know for a fact there is a law against bright lights in Indiana, more on that in a moment. I live in Florida where several of the laws governing vehicles and there operation seem to be lacking. Even some equipment in vehicles is optional, such as turn signals, another peeve of mine by the way. It is difficult enough to operate a motor vehicle but when the rules are skewed it becomes exponentially more challenging do so safely. Turn signals, or directionals or flashers or whatever you want to call them are more for other peoples safety. They help cars following you decide how close they can tailgate you and they also warn cars in front of you as to you intentions, I am going to turn here in front of you now for example. So living in Florida has prepared me, somewhat, for this and the lax state of peoples driving courtesies.

Let’s go back a little to talk about lights on vehicles. When I was younger and in high school we used to put switches on the brakes lights, switches on the brake lights you ask? That allowed us to make a quick turn, if by chance there was someone else chasing us, say onto Possum Hollow Road by Kiser lake and that person would never see the tail lights or the brake lights come on. There were some indiscretions in my youth, I will not deny them but look at how I turned out – right? Anyway I am just saying that I am familiar with the wiring on vehicles, going to Ohio High Point Vocational school for auto mechanics and being interested in electronics has allowed to jump right in and get it, when it comes to cars. Some time ago, for unknown reasons, car manufactures stopped placing the high beam, low beam switch on the floor to the left of the brake pedal. Some propeller head figured they could save 13.987 cents per unit if they moved it to the turn signal knob, so that is the path they took. STUPID if you ask me, and they did not by the way ask me because here I am telling them anyway. A simple trip through the south and they would have quickly realized that people already do not use the turn signal knob, they would have known that putting additional controls on the same knob would prove fruitless but NO they went and did it anyway.

So as I said earlier about Indiana and their rules. Some time ago I was stationed north of Chicago and I was there for about 9 months going to schools. Anyway being from Ohio, a scant 4-5 hour drive away I traded duties, bought some one off and was able to travel home almost every weekend. I remember class would get out around midnight and off I would go into the darkness. Indiana is where I learned another lesson about driving, never let the tank go below a quarter tank. I remember passing a gas station with a quarter of a tank and out on route 30 there is NOTHING and damn if I did not run my Jeep out of gas and ended up walking A LONG way to find gas and was able to pay someone to drive me back to nowhere where my Jeep was. To this day I very rarely let the tank go below a quarter and I live the city now where there are gas stations on every corner. So on one seemingly uneventful trip home we are tooling down the divided highway and a car was approaching with their high beams on, so I flash my high beams. No joy, so I flash them again, leaving them on high for just a little longer, still no joy. The third time I leave them on for like 5 seconds and still no joy. Now if I would have had any brains in my head I would have let it go at that but NO I could not do that, I had been disrespected and a toll would have to be paid. As I mentioned I was driving a jeep and across the top of the jeep were 8 KC daylighters at 100 watts a piece for a total of 800 watts total. I figured with those and two high beams at the legal limit of the time of 55 watts each I was pushing 910 watts a lighting, almost sufficient for normal nighttime driving, almost. In addition to that I had convinced a friend of mine that worked at Grimes, they made aircraft landing lights among other airplane related items, that I needed some of those lights. He was able to provide me the lamps but no mounting for them, no worries a metal fabricator outside of Chicago whipped them out for about 50 bucks a piece and voila 2 aircraft landing lights were mounted on the front bumper. So now I have the 910 and an additional 1500 per lamp for a total of 3910 watts of piercing halogen light available to me to drive at night. It was so bad I had to install a separate alternator and battery just to keep the lights operational. Stupid things we do as kids huh? So there I was, faced with Mr. bright lights at about 3am in the middle of Indiana and what was I to do? I flip all the switches to the on position and I could see that it was a cop car as clear as if it were the middle of the day, and he was still over a mile away. Well you can imagine his surprise when night turned to day and I found that it startled him about $390 worth because that is what the ticket cost me.

Well I do not have nearly that much light available to me anymore, I drive a minivan or my old 58 ford jalopy and neither of them would look right with a light bar across the roof and I am not even sure KC daylighters are even still sold. Somedays I wish I still had them because for some reason people still ride around with their high beams on and after “the incident in Indiana” as it has become known I will rarely flash even my normal high beams to get someone to turn theirs down. I guess I will have to suffer through, I mean I am already used to no turn signals so why has it been so difficult to get past the high beam issue?

Well if I can ask one favor of you, PLEASE use your damn turn signals and stop using your high beams when you are cruising around in town!

So why is everyone in such a big damn hurry!

So the other day I was on my way out to the Home Depot and was just amazed at how big a damn hurry everyone seemed to be in. In one case, a person in a big green Ford Excursion cut across three lanes of traffic, almost ripping the front of my old jalopy off in the process, that vehicle is so big he may not have even noticed if he did. Who in the world still drives one of those gas guzzling road hogs anyway? That prompted me to observe for a day or two the behavior of my fellow drivers and I was shocked at what I found. I was reminded of the country singer Billy Currington as he croons on his latest hit – “God is Great, Beer is good and people are crazy”. People are crazy and drive like they’re crazy!

I got to thinking back about my friend in the Excursion, where could he have been going that would justify his asinine behavior, I thought I would ponder it a while in an attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt. Could it be that he was transporting his pregnant wife to the hospital, I don’t think so as he was headed in the opposite direction of any of the hospitals in town. Could it be that he was an undercover policeman on the way to the scene of the crime, I am not positive but with no flashing lights behind the grill it is highly unlikely. Could it be that he was hungry and just had to get over to Bono’s for some baby back ribs before he starved to death, that is a highly probable maybe. Could it be that he was dealing with an emergency at home that required a 1 pound box of 6d finish nails, galvanized for outdoor use, immediately or someone might actually die? That is the conclusion I came to when I got to home depot and saw the behemoth he was driving sitting in a freaking handicapped spot at the Home Depot. I still cannot figure out what the pound of nails would have been used for.

I have talked before about bad drivers and the lack of common decency on the road these days but I am presented with more material on a daily basis. So on my observation days I also noticed several other examples of sheer idiocy, mostly perpetrated against me. I drive an old jalopy so I never seem to be moving quite fast enough to make folks happy, keep in mind I am usually at least close to the speed limit but that really means little to most folks. I like to leave space in front of my car when I drive, I have 4 wheel drum brakes and for those who remember what that is like you know, stopping in a hurry is challenging and if it is raining give it up. I was tooling down Southside Blvd. and I had my space in front of me, enough space evidently for the kindly woman driving a Mazda 6. In what can only be described as a nearly impossible feat she darted in front of me, there could not have been more than a foot between her and me and maybe another foot to the car in front of her. She then proceeded to stamp on the brake pedal to make the right hand turn, I damn near crashed in my attempt to miss her, thank God there was no on in the left lane from where she just came moments early because that is where I ended up.

The very next day Bride and I are on our morning walk, thankful we were on the sidewalk, when I heard a big vehicle coming up behind us. Just as I realized how fast it was coming and turned to ensure we were not getting ready to be mowed down - VRROOOOM this freaking school bus blasts past us. After passing us, the bus then jams through an S turn in the street without ever even tapping the brakes causing the top of the bus to sway wildly. We were both amazed and thanked God we never had kids who would have to ride with that bus driver. The moment we thought it was over we are watching and the bus comes to a stop sign, I say stop sign because the bus did not stop, tapped the brakes to get the lights to come on but stop - NO. It went around that 90 degree corner so fast that the tires were squealing. I wished I would have had the forethought to get the bus number so I could have called it in to the bussing company. There were 2 other busses that went past at a normal speed so we did not to get the wrong person in trouble so we did not report it. Looking back, if I had to do it again I would call it in anyway.

Later that day I was on my way home and was passed by a cement truck, with the slowdown in construction I have not seen many of them lately so it stood out for me, that and the fact he was going around me, at a good clip. So as he speeds by I see that the front bumper is about as high as my head and stuck out from the front of the truck. I mostly got to see the undercarriage of this monstrous death machine, all the spinning parts and large pieces of steel. So as I am looking at the thing I notice that it is all of the sudden much closer, this guy is changing lanes. I was wondering, how could he be missing me riding along right here. The rear view mirror on the passenger side of the truck was missing, busted maybe from a similar tactic with a semi truck. I slowed, as he sped up and disaster was averted. The car behind the cement truck was a 68 Chevy Impala, the body appeared in great shape and it was painted in a gray primer. I love that year Impala and we nodded at each other, we had a moment really like most folks who drive old cars have when they see each other. There is a camaraderie between old jalopy drivers, it does not matter if the jalopy is beautifully restored or in progress or just an old piece of crap. For those who drive old vehicles, you know what I mean, for those who don’t the reason will probably never be clear to you. We had a couple of gestures about the cement truck, we both understood how dangerous that was, and while the 68 Impala came with drum brake,s this car enthusiast had changed over to a 4 wheel disk brake setup so he was obviously better equipped to handle the idiocy of everyday drivers.

I think I have figured out the reason people drive like that and I bet it is not the reason you are thinking. In the age of TV set baby sitters they picked it up watching Popeye. Do you remember the one where he and Bluto are both in little cartoon cars and are waiting at the cartoon red light and when the light turns green, BAM Bluto stomps the gas and his little carton car vrooms to the next light, which is also red. Meanwhile our spinach eating hero, Popeye, takes off slowly and reaches the same red light Bluto was already waiting at before that light turned green. There they sit, side by side and the only difference is that Bluto used much more gas and was wearing out his tires more quickly and wearing out all the other parts of the drive train at the same time. So this second light turns green and Vrooom – Bluto stomps the gas again and makes it to the next red light in the big hurry, and again Popeye slowly takes off the ends up pulling up to the same red light Bluto has been waiting for. Well this goes on for several lights, I do not remember the rest of the skit or where they were going but I remember the cartoon cars and Bluto Vrooming to the next light each time. Could it be that unbeknownst to us we have been taught and are continuing to teach poor driving skills subconsciously through Popeye cartoons?

I would like everyone to drive like your Granma or Grandpa might drive for one whole day.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday that the recession has ended, at least based on the numbers

He said "From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over at this point." Bernanke added there is a risk that labor markets will remain weak through 2010 because growth will be too anemic to create jobs. He also acknowledged that economic forecasting "is not one of your most precise sciences" in the same breath and that "ongoing headwinds," will keep growth at a moderate rate due to the financial and credit problems. Bernanke also stated that "unemployment will be slow to come down," he said. "It will come down, but it may take some time." A former top Fed staffer, Vince Reinhart, who is now at the American Enterprise Institute, said the technical end of the recession is more about arithmetic than anything else. Well Vince it was nice to hear someone admit all this really means nothing for the folks who are struggling to pay their rent, mortgage or electric bills. It pisses me off when our government tells us things it knows to be blatantly BS. When our President enthusiastically declared in a recent national TV address that "the bleeding has stopped” it makes me wonder what the hell kind of Band Aids does he buy because Mr. Oatmeal’s household budget is still hemorrhaging and cash flow is problematic at best.

Our president is not the only one riding the economic stability hay wagon, the rosy claims are coming from many quarters. There are still some significant economic facts of life and numerous skeptics suggest such cheerful tidings should be taken with a grain of salt, do you feel the sunshine being blown up your butt yet? I know that President Obama is a big Abe Lincoln fan so I dug into that a bit looking for honest Abe quotes and found one I think fits the rosy rumors being spread. Tis better to be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." It is not just at the federal level the optimism seems to be trickling down from, hum where have I heard that term before? Sorry. Anyway, the folks I know are still struggling, maybe I do not know the right class of people. Some of the indicators would be the unemployment rate, still over 15 million Americans are out of work and that number is expected to continue to rise through the first half of 2010, or another year. The stories that the housing market has hit bottom are also suspect, my humble observations tell me that VERY FEW if any homes have sold in my neighborhood. They say there is an unsold inventory of about 4 million homes and that is expected by some to climb to at least 11 million, and even the optimistic projections show it continuing to climb. The Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the former skipper of the World Bank and a professor at Columbia University recently reiterated his view that "we'll be lucky to get out of the recession by 2012." As the good professor sees it, you need GDP growth of 3% to create new jobs and that could be two to three years away.

I am a technical guy, used to assimilating and synthesizing large amounts of data from many points and after digestion developing action plans to put into motion the tactical effort required to meet strategic goals. The overly aggressive goals (pick any plan the government is working on) coupled with the size of what is going on it becomes clear, quickly, that the before the problem can be looked at we have to stop and realize that the methodology being used to move the plans forward is flawed. Without a sound methodology for repairing a problem, it is evident to most that the result may vary from the intended outcome. First, there are too many data points and secondly the decision makers are WAY TOO far away from those data points. What in the hell does that mean you are probably asking, well let me try to explain. When assessing a problem there are logical troubleshooting steps that follow a methodology, regardless of whether you are fixing a jalopy, a television or the national economy. It starts with data gathering, I will call them data points. Each data point is a piece of the puzzle, for example, is there gas in the jalopy, is the TV plugged in or is the unemployment rate over 10%. Now obviously on a project as big as 780 billion dollars there are millions, literally millions of data points that could be examined. Simple physics dictate that not all can be thoroughly examined, no big deal we can prioritize and gather as much data as we can about each. No issues yet with the methodology, is the gas gauge broken, are the remote batteries dead or are those last quarter’s housing start numbers.

In this plan, again pick one, we have ordinary folks gathering the raw data and they are reporting their conclusions to their boss. So one tier up, managers we will call them, are gathering the various data and synthesizing it into a report that will passed along to their boss. Their boss in turn is taking that analysis, along with analysis from many others and synthesizing for his boss. Keep in mind he is already htree times removed from the actual data, and God only knows how many steps in the chain there are on an issues like health care or pulling out of Iraq. I mean look at how complicated trying to shut down Guantanamo Bay Cuba was if you need a recent example. So that is how it should and most likely does work, the problems come from simple statistics. Say there are 10,000 people gathering data and say you have 100 managers performing the first iteration of synthesis and then another 25 performing the second iteration of synthesis and maybe another 3 for the third tier. Simple statistics tell me that of 10,128 people, some percentage of them are going to have an agenda. That is where things go horribly wrong. Back to my initial examples, maybe the Bride was has been driving my car and using the gas without my knowledge, maybe she took the batteries out of the remote because she wants to buy a new TV and maybe, just maybe our elected officials have a pharmaceutical plant in her district or a large military supplier in his district. You can quickly deduce that the game is rigged and there is no chance of a proper outcome. It is not the people, I am politically agnostic, it is the machine and methodology we are using in an attempt to solve our problems. The Republicans and Democrats are stuck in the same machine. The machine is so complex that many of them did not heed the little warning showing the little stick figure getting his arm stuck in the wood chipper and have been partially pulled in and are now doing ANYTHING to extricate themselves from the wood chipper.

I heard a story the other day that they have spent only 20% of the 780 billion, or about 156 billion has been spent to date. My biggest question is what are they going to do with the 600 some odd billion they have left? If they have only spent 20% and Ben Bernanke can say that the recession is over than put that make believe money (we are using the BIG credit card here folks) back into our collective wallets. Logic dictates that you cannot perform the same steps, only on a larger scale, and expect the results to be different. We Americans got into this financial crisis by spending money we did not have, we all are really to blame whether we want to admit it or not. Now to fix the problem we are going ahead and spend money we do not have. Now lots of people have said it but the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I am not sure I understand how the government going this far into hock is going to solve this or any other problem, I see it as crazy and self serving, self serving to someone other than me! We seem to be being bombarded by information from the sky is falling folks as well as the folks who somehow think this mess is over. I sometimes think I am a simpleton, I am made to feel like that by the “smart” folks up in Washington and that pisses me off, especially when some sanctimonious politician gets up and while smiling for the cameras tells us everything is OK. BULLSHIT I say to that as I try to figure out how to pay my bills and the new government taxes that are being levied against me.

DO NOT TAKE THIS AS AN ATTACK ON A POLITICAL PARTY _ I HATE THEM BOTH EQUALLY!

The bottom line: If you really believe the recession is over, put the crack pipe down and wake the hell up.

Mr. Oatmeal doing movie reviews on the radio - evidently NOT???

I seem to be unable to make it through and I do not know or understand why – Sorry Melissa.

About a month ago the place I work launched a new daily call in talk radio show called First Coast Connect. It is a great show and the host, Melissa Ross is a FANTASTIC on air personality and a great person as well. I give you that background so I you can understand the rest of the oratory. A couple of weeks ago I was asked if I would be interested in doing movie reviews for the show. I was intrigued, now I found my voice with the blog I thought it might be a natural extension of that. So I would be playing a character and she told me a story about a guy who did movie reviews while playing a character called “Normal Guy” on the radio in Chicago. Normal Guy was from the south side of Chicago and played it up pretty good, the stereo typical south side of Chicago blue collar worker who just went and watched the movies and then reviewed them on the radio. Simple enough I remember thinking. After that initial conversation I thought about what this character might be like, he was to have been born, raised and living on the west side of Jacksonville and I was not and do not. What might this guy’s name be, it had to be something that immediately and unmistakably screamed I AM FROM THE WEST SIDE OF JACKSONVILLE! What might the ranking scale be, not stars of course – maybe it could be Giorgi’s pork sandwiches, maybe moon pies, I was unsure.

So I agreed to do it, I had no idea what I was in for and I still cannot figure out what happened to me. We had several more conversations about the character and worked on picking a name. We decided that we would pick a street name and associate a name with it, for example – Lane Ave Louie or Mike McDuff or Wesconnett Willy. We never did nail a name down but we had eliminated several. I remember Melissa wanted the first movie I reviewed to be a chick flick, some tough west side dude reviewing a chick flick – I thought that was great and that we could make it funny. After a week or so there were no chick flicks that were newly released. At this point I was thinking I could just bull shit my way through a movie review, just like I do here in my oratories. I learned later that this is EASY compared to sitting in front of a microphone and reading your work. I know I call this an oratory and that is not without reason, simply a funny inside joke. I was to learn that actually being an orator is A LOT harder than I thought and much harder to BS your way through. So anyway we decided that “The Informant” would be the first movie I would review. I was planning on watching it over the weekend with Bride but the jalopy was calling for some attention and I was unable to carve out the time.

Monday I went to see Melissa to tell her I did not see the movie and she told me she had not seen it yet either, I was somewhat relieved. I was talking the day off on Tuesday to spend the day with my Bride on our 19th anniversary so we decided that matinee and then lunch would be a perfect date. That was a great day to by the way, we were up at 5am and off to the beach with coffees and we watched the sunrise. About 8am we came home and went for our morning walk, we are up to about 2.5 miles and go 6 days a week. After a swim and showers we were off to the 11:05 matinee showing of The Informant at the Regency 24 theaters. After the movie we stopped by Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch, my niece works there and when I asked for the check I was told the manager comp’d our lunch and wished us a happy anniversary. For those who know me you know how excited I get about a free lunch. After that it was home for another swim and a nap. Dinner and another movie, on demand this time, and it was a perfect day. Anyway, sorry I got sidetracked thinking about bride. So that evening I sat down and wrote a little something down about the movie. I just let it flow like I do here and thought it was pretty good. The next morning I tweaked it a bit more and sent it on to Melissa to see what she thought. She may have been humoring me but she said she liked it. After I read it again I started to wonder though.

So that is when I realized I had, like usual, no idea what I was doing. I rarely let that stop me but this was something else all together, it was Melissa’s show, it was on radio, it was all of the sudden scary. I started researching how to be a reviewer, my review did not follow any of the advice I found on how to review a movie. Now I was thinking, wow what am I doing here? I went back over my script again and while I thought it was good I was not so sure anymore. This is when things started feeling odd for me, anxious I guess. Now for those who know me know that I do not get anxious or excited about things. My life philosophy is to remain calm and balanced in all situations so I could not understand what was bothering me. Not wanting to throw in the towel right away I thought about it, a lot, trying to determine why I was feeling this way. I even pondered it for a while, some people call that meditation but to me it is ponderin (no g). I went through thoughts like, what if this character get popular and what would that mean to me? Would I be asked to do pledge shows, we are an NPR station? Would I have to make appearances, where I do not know? Was I afraid of it succeeding? Was I afraid of it failing? I have tried and failed at any number of things and have learned that to grow we must fail so I did not think it was that.

I could not find anything that seemed to touch this new nerve. I spent quite a bit of time going through the scenarios and nothing stood out as the reason for my nervousness. I decided that I would keep forging forward to see if something presented itself. We met to record the review I had written, and was approved by her boss. That is when my anxiety shot up even more, it was a very weird feeling for me. It has been YEARS since I had any anxiety, I was still in the military. We attempted to record and I was having all kinds of problems, so bad I started to break out in a sweat while we were trying. After several attempts with little progress and not wanting to waste anymore of Melissa’s time, I thought I would record it by myself, I knew how to operate the board and the digital recorder and I told her I would continue trying. It was not much better by myself, I went and got a drink of water and stepped outside for a couple of minutes. After several more attempts to read what turned out to be about a 3 minute piece I got one close and after a bit of editing I came up with the spot. I was not happy with it but was relieved it was over.

I let her know I was done and finished up some other work and headed home for the evening. On the way home I started pondering the “why was this happening” topic again and still could come up with nothing. I got home and went for a swim, noodle dangling actually, and decided that if doing these movie reviews was going to cause me this much stress that it might not be worth doing. I thought maybe this was just the nervousness that comes with trying new things, after some time on that I realized that I know what that feels like and this was not the same. After 44 years of roaming about the world I have learned to trust my gut feelings and this thing was screaming at me for some reason. After some more pondering and talking about it with Bride I decided I was going to let Melissa know that I was not going to be able to do them. It was weird, the moment I decided I felt completely different – the anxiety was GONE. I knew right away that I made the right decision, I sent an email explaining the way I was feeling and apologizing for backing out. Even a couple of days later I am still not sure what the deal was or what it was, specifically, that was causing my problems – Who knows. I am going to start a blog doing movie reviews, The Informant will be my first one but I will stick to my Mr. Oatmeal world, that is a place I am comfortable doing and saying whatever I want.

I have always had a great deal of respect for the on air talent folks but man I am here to tell ya, I have a whole new respect for them, especially the ones doing it "live." I want to apologize to Melissa, one more time. I am so sorry that I screwed up your idea for a west-sider movie reviewer and hope that you can forgive me as well as find someone that can make it work for ya.

DAMN, the Jacksonville Jaguars suck AGAIN this year!

I love NFL football and am disappointed that I enjoy watching the Steelers and Atlanta play more than my home team. Why is that you might be asking, well our team has been mediocre for so long that 17,000 season ticket holders gave up their tickets this year, that’s right seventeen thousand season ticket holders did not renew. WOW, that number pretty much says it all! We really suck and with Jack Del Rio running the rudder, we are obviously in for another terrible season. I am somewhat stunned that the team owner, Wayne Weaver, has allowed this substandard performance to go on so long. Jack has been here since the 2003 season and in that time our record has been 50 – 46, barely 50% of our games. Moreover, Bill Prescott (Jaguars CFO) can blame the 17k folks for leaving on the economy and the unemployment all he wants but that is Bull, plain and simple. If we use Charlotte as an analog, we can prove out that he is full of it. In Charlotte, the unemployment rate is 12.4% while ours is 10.5% and somehow their tickets are sold out this year, not just season tickets but ALL tickets. Their record is not greatly different from ours over the same period at 56-40 but they made it to the playoffs last year. That alone is proof enough to me but when you consider that their stadium is even bigger than ours is it pretty much slams the exclamation point on that stupid claim.


I do not even need to wonder about this one, Wayne Weaver did not create successful companies like Shoe Carnival and Nine West by hiring and retaining top management that could only perform at anywhere close to a 50% of potential – NO WAY. So why does he keep him on? Are there pictures of Wayne in heels, is there some other little known factoid that is being used as leverage so Jack can keep his job? Wayne is not a stupid man, he negotiated (what was then) the most lucrative deal with a host city amongst NFL franchises, including rights to virtually all parking and concession sales in the city-owned and operated stadium. That is not the sign of someone who doesn’t get it. So there has to be something, there just has to be. I was so pissed off last week when I watched the Colts game, Tivo’d by the way because they are to agonizing to watch live, Jack is all smiles and laughing with the boys on the sideline. He was not appearing to take it as personally or as seriously as he needs to, Jacksonville loves football and has little tolerance for a loser, which the Jags and he are right. When I hear statements like “it's another rebuilding year” I know deep down that is "Jacktalk" for we are going to suck again this year and you fans should expect another losing damn season.


It would not be hard to exceed my expectations for the team, they are so low right now that almost ANYTHING would be more than I expected. The thing that really makes me mad is the fact that if we do not get rid of this guy, and soon, Wayne may be forced to sell the team or move it someplace else. With stats like 17K people not renewing their season tickets the writing is on the wall, maybe I need to get some red spray paint and go outline that so they can see it. No business can sustain that kind of loss in the revenue stream, or fans. Since Wayne has such a great deal he is actually losing money on the parking, or lack of parking. He is losing money on concessions, or lack of concessions and god knows where else he is hemorrhaging money. We, the citizens of Jacksonville, the Fans, have paid the price as well, the stadium underwent a 121 million dollar renovation when we got the team and we are paying for the lucrative deal Wayne Weaver was able to negotiate. We used to have a sponsor for the stadium they left as well. Alltel signed a 6.2 million dollar 10 year naming deal that expired in 2005, and I assume that since our team was a loser they no longer wanted to be affiliated with us so they did not renew the deal. Since then our stadium is called Jacksonville Municipal stadium, an embarrassment if you ask me.


When our stadium was built it was big, 76877 seats, but before the start of the 2005 season team officials installed a series of tarps covering some 9713 seats. This was to reduce the seating capacity so the games would stop being blacked out, so we have documentable proof that this losing streak has been going on long before the recent economic turmoil. With seven sections completed eliminated we still can not seem to fill the rest. Of course, we can’t fill them, no one wants to come watch a losing team embarrass themselves? We are now anticipating that ALL the local games this season will be blacked out, a damn shame, a damn shame since in September of 2007 an attendance record was set in this stadium at 85,412 – yes they had to build additional bleachers for a college football game between Florida state and Alabama. That is proof positive that we will come out to watch good games, we don’t even have to win all of them but at least have a good showing. The local paper and sports announcers are becoming more vocal about our collective disappointment in the head coach. With no confidence in the coach and with the high level of turnaround in the assistant coaching staff’s it is going to become increasingly difficult to field a good team. We also have had a HUGE turn over in players with nearly half of them being new to the team this year. Now the key word there is team and while you can force together a group of individually talented folks that does not a team make, leadership does and repetitive practice together as a team. With the turnover being so high we are never making the team thing. As any manager knows, without continuity of staff if is almost impossible to produce, whether it be widgets or a winning team.


I am even more scared for next year, the downward spiral is in full swing and I am not sure how long the Weaver’s can sustain a loser. Our inability to even win games let alone make it to the playoffs will cause even more defections from the ranks of season ticket holders. The one good thing right now is that there are a lot of good coaches out there, the bad news is that if we wait too long our stigma as a loser will be so great none of the good ones will want to come here. Wouldn’t it be great to get Tony Dungee back in Florida – that thought almost brings a tear to my eye. I do not think that the Gator hero in Tim Tebow is the answer to our problems either. Even if he was able to transition quickly into the pro’s and even if we wanted to bench our 60 million dollar quarterback that solution would only be a band aid on a still festering wound, Without proper coaching no player is good enough to carry a pro team, that is just a fact…….. DAMNIT I want the Jags to be a good team and I do not want to enjoy watching other teams as much as I do!