Author Archives: BZ

Hypocrisy?

Posted on by

Not in the slightest, if you’re a Democrat. Because, after all, being a Demo is all about “feelings” and “emotions” and has little to do with facts.

And as I’ve said a million times, never let facts, rationality or proportion get in the way of a good screwed-up stance or perspective.

LEFT WINGERS and “PROGRESSIVES” — STOP READING NOW!

You’re about to have your monetary Sugar Daddy exposed.

Because, after all, nothing succeeds like success. From the WorldNetDaily:

Soros makes Halliburton stealth buy

Report reveals billionaire funder of left-wing groups invests more than $62 million

Billionaire George Soros has quietly invested $62 million in the purchase of more than 2 million shares of Halliburton, the major government contractor criticized by his own Open Society Institute and the activist group he funds, MoveOn.org.

The holdings were disclosed in a quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Soros Fund Management LLC.

Vice President Cheney is the former CEO of Halliburton.

As WND reported, another outspoken leftist who had criticized Halliburton was discovered to own stock in the company – filmmaker Michael Moore.

Huh. Isn’t that interesting — and completely UNREPORTED.

But, of course, that’s why you read me, related blogs and other internet sites.

New Media indeed.

And I’m just a little Flappy Bird.

BZ

 Share

Hesitation

Posted on by

I hesitate to make this post, but thought it might stimulate discussion and, admittedly, I’m curious about a possible response via comments. Some people think I’m sufficiently mentally borderline anyway, much less considering what I’m about to write. But in any event it was, to say the least, wholly unnerving. And I have never, ever, experienced anything like it in my 50+ years.

In the process of driving home from our honeymoon last week, my wife and I stopped, last minute, at a motel overlooking Lake Shasta in order to avoid being stuck in a nasty snowstorm ravaging I-5 in California. I can distinctly remember we were on the second floor in room 214. There were perhaps 5 others in the entire motel complex.

We had dinner at the motel’s restaurant bar and found it overpriced and disappointing. We went back to the room through a heavy downpour, where we watched some television for an hour or so, and I went to bed first. She continued to watch television for a bit longer.

I had a dream where I found myself in that same precise room, in the darkness. I could see, in my dream, the shape of my wife sleeping on her left side, away from me, as a darker object framed by the slightly lighter shades of the bathroom in the background. I found, in my dream, comfort in front of me and terror behind. I was on my back in the motel room, my right hand hanging over the bed.

I can recall an overwhelming feeling of malevolence in the room, encompassing the room, draping the room. I can describe it in no other fashion: malevolence, a permeating malevolence, something clearly wishing to do me harm. And, as my hand lay over the side, there was pressure on my hand and it was clutched by something much larger than my hand, damp and cooler than my prevailing body temperature. I was being touched. Clasped.

There was pressure and contact; my brain told me so.

Because of this contact, I recall my brain awakening me from the dream. And yet this, this, presence was still there, a damaging presence, an ill presence. I had had the dream and yet the dream seemed to have followed me into the present. There was the silhouette of my wife, rimmed by the light from the bathroom window. I could hear her heavy breathing away from me; I could hear the rain and wind outside, spattering against the glass. My hand was held. The presence was on my right. I turned my head left to see my wife. I did not want to look to my right. I pulled my hand, successfully, away from the edge of the bed. A large, large presence was still at the direct edge of my side of the bed though no longer grasping me. It was massive.

And then it was gone.

I remained awake for at least another hour and then fell asleep.

The next morning my wife asked: should I wake you up when you do that?

I asked: do what?

When you moan in your sleep, she said.

It was some time after midnight, perhaps 12:30, and you were moaning in your sleep. I’ve never heard you do that before. Do you want me to awaken you? she asked.

I said: how did you know I was moaning?

She replied: I heard something. There was something in the room. I felt it and I heard it. And then I heard you moaning. It was so strange.

I have never, ever, retained a dream into wakefulness where my dream contained my immediate reality. That is to say, I’ve never dreamed about my actual surroundings and incorporated them into my waking reality threshold. Though, I must admit, my dreams have always “taken care of me” in the past when I am in danger of being “killed.” When my demise is imminent my brain has always dragged me into the land of the living. I have survived any number of actual critical incident events during my career but, despite this, have found myself challenged but never “killed” in my dreams.

Despite that, I knew I had come closer to death than ever before that early morning.

Was it a dream within a dream?

It was, I must admit, all too real to me.

BZ
 Share

This Is Why

Posted on by

This is why, amongst other things, no Republican should endorse John McCain for president.

Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be,” McCain said Wednesday on CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman.” “We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.”

So: being in Iraq has wasted lives. I tend to disagree. I do not agree with many of the ways and means employed by our Commander In Chief; in truth I vehemently disagree with the manner in which he has waged this war and a number of the strategies involved. That is another issue entirely. But to state that those military lives have meant nothing is beyond egregious.

This confirms that (and though I must acknowledge McCain’s service to his country and his sacrifices made as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam conflict) McCain is not a stable individual or influence and is a distraction on the order of Ross Perot.

Even the Democratic National Committee called McCain on his comments:

Senator McCain should apologize immediately for his callous comments,” said Karen Finney, a DNC spokeswoman. “How is it that John McCain now believes American lives are being wasted, yet he so stubbornly supports the president’s plan to escalate the war in Iraq and put more American lives in harms way?”

They have a point. An excellent point.

Once again proving that, in terms of this man, McCain considers that it’s all about McCain and no one else. His Gang of 14: wrong. His McCain-Feingold legislation: wrong.

As far as I’m concerned John McCain is so far out as to be beyond Pluto. Every GOP member, take heed and remember: this military veteran honors not the sacrifices of our valiant military personnel.

BZ
P.S.
You want to read about Vietnam heroes and their exploits in the Hanoi Hilton? Check out:
1. Vietnam pilot Dave Carey at http://www.davecarey.com, who was held in the Hanoi Hilton for five-and-a-half years, and subsequently wrote the book “The Ways We Choose.”
2. Vietnam pilot Charlie Plumb at http://www.charlieplumb.com, who spent six years in captivity and is a highly sought-after motivational speaker.
 Share

Leadership

Posted on by

United States Army Colonel David Hackworth had his vision set by VMI Commandant Colonel Glover Johns. We would do well to incorporate these philosophical tenets into our military, leadership and daily lives.

  • 1. Strive to do small things well.

  • 2. Be a doer and a self-starter — aggressiveness and initiative are two most admired qualities in a leader — but you must also put your feet up and THINK.

  • 3. Strive for self-improvement through constant self-evaluation.

  • 4. Never be satisfied. Ask of any project, How can it be done better?

  • 5. Don’t over-inspect or over-supervise. Allow your leaders to make mistakes in training, so they can profit from the errors and not make them in combat.

  • 6. Keep the troops informed; telling them “what, how, and why” builds their confidence.

  • 7. The harder the training, the more troops will brag.

  • 8. Enthusiasm, fairness, and moral and physical courage – four of the most important aspects of leadership.

  • 9. Showmanship-a vital technique of leadership.

  • 10. The ability to speak and write well-two essential tools of leadership.

  • 11. There is a salient difference between profanity and obscenity; while a leader employs profanity (tempered with discretion), he never uses obscenities.

  • 12. Have consideration for others.

  • 13. Yelling detracts from your dignity; take men aside to counsel them.

  • 14. Understand and use judgement; know when to stop fighting for something you believe is right. Discuss and argue your point of view until a decision is made, and then support the decision wholeheartedly.

  • 15. Stay ahead of your boss.

Some basic principles never decline with age.

BZ
 Share

Future Shock Then & Now: Change Or Die

Posted on by

Ever have one of those days where your head spins from the information you think you should know, how to get it, how to absorb it, how to process it and then, in terms of not only your blogging career but your life as well, what to do with it?

I am having one of those days.

Quite literally, I am feeling more than overwhelmed.

Back in my formative collegiate years, Alvin Toffler wrote a 1970 book that I skimmed briefly for a class, entitled Future Shock. In this book, Toffler postulates that change will occur so exponentially in the future that humans will find themselves challenged on every level: socially, psychologically and even physically. Toffler submits that humans have a finite capacity to digest change, and wonders to what end we seem to continuously push for said change.

An excellent article about the negative effects of change and information overload is here, from the Principia Cybernetica Web.

I know this about humans: we push just for the sake of pushing. Not because we want it, demand it or even need it. But because we can.

We marvel at our childrens’ capacity to digest technology but even they will be challenged by the rate of change in their lifetimes.

Where will it stop? Where will it end? Can it end? Should it stop?

It indicates:

If you’re 1 in a million in China, there are 1,300 people just like you.

In India, there are 1,100 people just like you.

The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQs is greater than the total population of North America.

In India, it’s the top 28%.

Translation for teachers: India and China have more honors kids than we have kids.

China will soon become the Number One English-speaking country in the world.

If you took every single job in the US today and shipped it to China, it would still have a labor surplus.

During the course of reading this post:

60 babies will be born in the US.
244 babies will be born in China.
351 babies will be born in India.

The US Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10 to 14 jobs – by age 38.

Also according to the USDL, 1 out of 4 workers today is working for a company for whom they have been employed less than one year.

More than 1 out of 2 are working for a company for whom they have worked less than 5 years.

According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley, the top 10 jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004.

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

Name this country:

– Richest in the world.
– Largest military
– Center of world business and finance
– Strongest education system
– World center of innovation and invention
– Currency the world standard of value
– Highest standard of living

England. In 1900.

The US is 20th in the world in broadband internet penetration (Luxembourg just passed us).

Nintendo invested more than $140 million dollars in research and development in 2002 alone.

The US federal government spent less than half as much on research and innovation in education.

1 of every 8 couples married in the US last year met online.

There are over 106 registered users of MySpace (as of September, 2006).

If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world, between Japan and Mexico.

The average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day.

There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month.

To whom were these questions addressed before Google (BG)?

The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.

There are about 540,000 words in the English language, about 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.

More than 3,000 new books are published daily.

It is estimated that a week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th century.

It is estimate that 1.5 exabytes (1.5 X 10 to the 18th power) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year.

That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.

The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.

For students starting a four-year technical or college degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their 3rd year of study.

It is predicted to double every 72 hours by the year 2010.

Third generation fiber optics have recently been tested by NEC and Alcatel that pushes 10 trillion bits per second down one strand of fiber.

That’s 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone calls every second.

It’s currently tripling every 6 months and is expected to do so for at least the next 20 years.

The fiber is already there. They’re just improving the switches on the ends, which means the marginal costs of these improvements is effectively $0.

Predictions are that e-paper will be cheaper than real paper.

47 million laptops were shipped worldwide last year.

The $100 laptop project is expected to ship between 50 and 100 million a year to children in underdeveloped countries.

Predictions are that by 2013 a Supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain.

By 2023, when 1st Graders will be just 23 years old and beginning their (first) careers, it will only take a $1,000 computer to exceed the capabilities of the human brain.

And while technical predictions farther out than 15 years are difficult to make, predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.

I’m beat.

BZ
 Share