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We’ll exile ourselves to places like  Costa Rica, Italy, Germany and Norway for the same reasons our forefathers came to America.  Us worker bees will leave the tyrannical hedge fund managers and their big oil buddies to play with their –  own 401k’s.

It might be a good thing — no one left to fight their wars.  Perhaps they’ll stop booting out the illegal aliens;  who may be needed to clean their mansions and perform CPR on their stressed out hearts?

“You inherit an old house.  A real fixer-upper.  You scramble around to earn some money and scrape together some funding to start improving it.  Some of your better-off friends are a little jealous because, while the place is a wreck, it’s in a great location.  You start fixing the foundations where the floor was sagging.  You spend money replacing the galvanized pipes with copper…you start re-wiring the outlets so they’ll be grounded.  You throw a party even though you’ve just started the renovation.  People who come over see a fixer-upper.  A dump.  Some may see the potential.  Most just cannot believe you spent X-dollars and the house is still a mess.

This country is that house.  The previous administration looted the Treasury and the moral underpinnings of American Values were smashed.  A lot of effort has been made to stabilize the wreckage and it doesn’t show up to an observer who can’t imagine what it would look like if it had been allowed to continue to fall apart.”   David Gene Echt

Half the country needs to be educated or re-educated to take on the jobs of change. He promised us change, and we’re getting it. Now we have to participate,  involve ourselves in the change. Velma Hart is obviously doing everything right, kids in private schools, a noble profession, no credit card, living within her means; what do you say to that? The healthcare reforms,bank bailouts, credit card rules and education changes that Obama has undertaken aren’t helping her,because she paid her mortgage, has health care through the VA (which, by the way, is socialist health care), she doesn’t use a credit card and she has always lived within her means so they won’t help her or the half of the country who lives as she lives , they help the irresponsible half and that half doesn’t want anything to change, and they don’t want to participate in change.

People like Velma suffer because of the speculators and gamblers who have played around with our hard earned dollars and want to continue to do so.  There is also the fear of the unknown that is driven into our minds by the media, which is paid by those same speculators and gamblers.  I won’t even get in to the religious zealots that feed their line of garbage that plays on faith.  They are yelling, because if they yell loud enough people can’t hear the truth.

Meantime, 19 year olds are aiming bullets at each others heads in some sandy venue in the name of religious zealots, media hype, speculators, gamblers and that coveted Kardashian lifestyle.

Do you think that an otherworldly influence is trying to get a message to us?   Or am I reading too much in to all the earthquakes and volcanoes.  Religious extremists say that bad things happen because of our heathen ways and disregard for our maker.  George Carlin said the earth is going to shake us off like a bad case of fleas.  I look at these pictures and that is one pissed off volcano wreaking havoc and causing millions to just stop.  Maybe the message is we need to stop for awhile and hang out on cots and talk about stuff with strangers in large rooms.

or else…

See more volcano images and havoc at –> http://blogs.tampabay.com/photo/2010/04/iceland-volcano.html

PS:  this woman and her daughters were highlighted in a blog I did in December.  Well…

the desire to classify is inherent in humans, as we crave a sense of order. Similarly,  humans are predisposed to impose group boundaries and to see outsiders as a threat. We seek every opportunity to identify with a home land, a home tribe, a home religion, a home team, and to declare everybody else the enemy.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327275.900-immigrant-species-arent-all-bad.html

Wheee – chromosomes!

Human DNA By ed_case

http://www.scq.ubc.ca/filter/?cat=3

But some of you are doing fascinating things with your time.  check it out

Inventor Shawn Frayne has come up with a device that harnesses the power of wind without any rotating parts. Instead, his company’s Windbelts capture energy using fluttering fabric.   Air passes over a taut membrane, it induces a vibration, somewhat akin to a violin bow.   Magnets mounted on the membrane bounce back and forth between metal coils, inducing an electric current.

What makes this so way cool is that it can be put on fences in urban areas and it can be palm sized or room sized and the materials it is made from are all available right here in the good ole USA.

http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/windbelt

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Scientists from Ohio State University report that marijuana, contrary to the conventional wisdom,  may help ward off Alzheimer’s and keep recall sharp. Are you kidding me? The only thing I was able to recall was where the ice cream was. Their findings, released today at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington D.C.:  chemical components  of marijuana reduce inflammation and stimulate the production of new brain cells, thereby enhancing memory. I don’t know, I’ll need more evidence before I believe this one.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=pot-joins-the-fight-against-alzheim-2008-11-19

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two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.  Show this to your kids next time they whine about being bored.

Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.  they must have giggled after they pulled this off.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/

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This is my favorite story.  Click the link to see the full story.  I’m not doing this fascinating kid justice with this short introduction.

The extraordinary true story of a Malawian teenager who transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk is the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

Self-taught William Kamkwamba has been feted by climate change campaigners like Al Gore and business leaders the world over.

“People thought I was smoking marijuana,” he said. “So I told them I was only making something for juju [magic].’ Then they said: ‘Ah, I see.’”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8257153.stm

We’re putting on our make-up, changing our radio stations, worrying about our mortgage payments while soldiers are dying for them.  “No one seems to care”.   He went home every night to his wife and kids and they didn’t seem to care or understand either.  He loved her and she him, but,  his wife asked him to leave because he was too angry all the time.  He found a motel room that he rented by the week.

There was also a Vietnamese refugee who was working as a cook and trying to Americanize himself living in that same motel. He was friendly and sat outside his room after work, seemingly enjoying his good fortune while Jack bemoaned his sad fate. I don’t know the details of just how it happened, but,  Jack and the Vietnamese fellow became friends and had beers together and talked and laughed.

Jack brought him to my house and introduced him to my kids.  He was hard to understand, but he was amazingly grateful and that was clear.  Jack  made fun of how he messed up the English language.  Then would teach him how to speak words correctly.  They didn’t become lifelong friends or anything like that, but, both of them had enhanced lives because they allowed each other in.

God is a much better teacher than hate.

By the way, Jack and his wife got back together and are growing old together.  He is still grumpy and unaccepting, but, not so full of hate.

knats says:

hating haters still makes you a hater.

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