Oddies and endies in e-mail

I'm always surprised that so many people in other countries have died and left me, little ol' me, bunches and baskets of money! Here's today's catch. Did you get one?

"On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate of Late Engineer Reinhard Hermann, I once again try to notify you as my earlier letter to you returned undelivered. I hereby attempt to reach you again by this same email address on the WILL. I wish to notify you that Late Engr. R. Hermann made you a Beneficiary to his WILL. He left the sum of Seventeen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($17,500.000.00 USD) to you in the codicil and last testament to his WILL. This may sound strange and unbelievable to you, but it is real and true. Being a widely traveled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or simply you were recommended to him by one of his numerous Friends abroad who wished you good."

The spelling and sentence structure is improving however, (must have out of work college students employed in these schemes) and this guy was UK not Nigeria, and an engineer, member of the Helicopter Society, and a philanthropist, not just a scumbag prince or potentate. Still, the capitalization of nouns doesn't look right. But maybe that's the UK way.

When Fed Ex called for our address yesterday I was hesitant. That's another scam going around, although that one usually comes via e-mail--a "delivery problem." But in that case, the insurance company had left out part of our street name, and since there are 15 or so streets around here with a similar name, and ours doesn't appaear on some maps because we are private, they couldn't find us.

One of the Christian groups to which I subscribe has apparently sold their mailing list--or maybe an organization went belly up and some other company got possession, because I've been receiving a really odd collection of end-times, money appeals, and book announcements in the past week or two. Groups I've never heard of and haven't visited their web sites. Although data mining is very sophisticated these days. I just hate to visit Amazon and then have the site tell me where I've been and what I looked at. It's just creepy. Like each click has a little RFID embedded. Since I visit Christian bloggers and many of them have ads, and you have to leave an e-mail address to comment, it's possible these companies found me that way.

But Helicopter Society? The UK philanthropist? Who falls for this?

Vote for Grande Conservative Diva Blogger

Gay Patriot is having a poll to vote for your favorite Conservative Diva--I'm not on the list--no one knows who I am, but Tammy Bruce is. Right now, Neoneocon is leading. She got my vote. But I just might vote again.

My note to Sherrod Brown

Ohio Senator--Democrat

"Why didn't you hold out for the bribe and corruption that Nebraska and Louisiana got? What exactly did you get for voting for this mess?"

Mindful meditation

Your child probably can’t sing Christmas carols at school this time of year, but you will find wide acceptance of Buddhism in classroom exercises, taught as “mindful meditation.” In the western way of thinking, if you’re not “doing” --reading scripture, praying, singing, volunteering--then you’re not technically practicing a religion. But in the eastern way, it’s the technique, not the teaching or the doing, that matters. You can "believe" anything you want. That’s because the godhead is inside, not outside, the body in that faith tradition. Therefore, lots of schools close their doors to our traditional religious practices--prayer, religious symbols in the classrooms, daily Bible readings, Bible stories of heroes, teaching creation, and songs--while welcoming warmly religions from other cultures with wide open arms if they can masquerade as something "healthy" like meditation, thought control for a good purpose, anxiety and stress control, and drug and alcohol reduction tools. It's ignorance of religious thought and teaching on the part of your school board and administration that allows this.

If you are a Christian, "man up" and object to your child being taught that god is within. That's a religion. It's not our religion, it's not our culture, and what's sauce for the Christian is sauce for the Buddhist, Hindu and Humanist. Don't let the word "meditation" fool you. In the Christian and Jewish traditions, that is mediation on God's word. It is content, not a blank mind stilled to allow anything in with the power of suggestion from the teacher or guru.

NYTimes

Meditation therapy

How to, from Shambhala Sun

Alcohol relapse prevention U. of Wisconsin

With children, academic studies

Mindful schools

Mindful techniques to use with children

Staples on a dollar and a head

I was looking for information on whether it is legal to staple a $20 bill to a letter and came across a story from Florida where a woman took her 8 year old to an ER for a small head wound caused by a pillow fight, and left with one staple over the wound and a bill for $1,654, of which $754 was covered by the family's insurance. Both the article and the readers' comments are mostly filled with the outrage over the cost of medical care for such a small accident. Duh! I wonder why?

It appears that few read it, or know anything about insurance, medical care or the costs of doing business--any business. Isn't it odd that other workers seem to want to be paid for their labor, to get their benefits paid by their employer, to receive unemployment and worker's comp, but doctors, nurses, lab techs, schedulers, and janitors in clinics should work for nothing or minimum wage? Isn't it strange that your landlord, electric company, gas and water utilities, gardeners, and street pavers all need to be paid and factored into your business costs, but not hospitals (she took him to the ER) or "doc in a box" clinics. And I found it odd that most people can grasp, when they get the bill, what 4 years of college costs, but are in la-la land about tacking on another 4-8 years of medical school to those costs. It appears from the article that no further testing was done to pad the costs (regardless of what Obama says about wrong foot amputation), so we can assume the doctor recognized from his training that a superficial head wound would bleed--a lot.

That ER where Mrs. Tobio took her child is also treating people who have no regular doctor, no insurance and no intention of ever paying. By law, it has to treat them too. So that cost is picked up by the people who do have insurance. And the doctor that stapled the wound has to carry malpractice insurance so that's factored into his costs--and no tort reform will be included in the current Senate or House bill because the lawyers have a powerful lobby. Also, in order to save costs, and they've already saved a bundle, the Tobios carry a very high deductible policy--$2500--choosing instead to cover the out of pocket expenses and pocket the savings. Some years they win, and some they don't. Even a few months of savings covered that $900 they had to pay. And their state regulates who they can buy from so that reduces competition and increases cost. That too isn't addressed in the current "reform."

When I was a kid, I was jumping on a bed like a trampoline and hit the ceiling cracking my head open. I don't remember if Mom took me to Dr. Dumont or not--there were puddles of blood everywhere so she probably did. Head wounds bleed like crazy. He probably used a needle and thread. I still have a bump and it's covered by my hair. But parents would not settle for that today. Childhood bumps have to have first class, non-scarring treatment. And no one had health insurance.

The reporter did her job--she got the scoop on what the real costs are behind that little staple in Ben Tobios head, but that's at the end. Most readers commenting, never got that far.

His staple paid for all the things the hospital does not, or cannot under current laws that regulate government programs such as Medicare, charge for, Sullivan said: bed sheets, plastic medical tubing, privacy drapes.

"Staples may be something we can charge for, so those things end up with what looks like a very high charge based on what the cost is," Sullivan said.

"At the same time," he added, "what drives the cost of health care is people get in a facility and they want the best doctors, the nice MRI machine that costs $1.5 million; they want the best of everything because we have very high expectations in a time of need, and there is a cost to that."

If I make coffee at home, it costs about ten cents a cup; if I go to Panera's it's about $1.80 plus my driving costs which includes auto insurance.

Unintended consequences--livestock production

Or was it? New laws in Europe regarding the caging of chickens might destroy the industry and remove a valuable food source from the table.

How to destroy an industry

"Are EU consumers to be deprived of eggs based on the misplaced perceptions of flock wellbeing by extremists intent on destroying established intensive livestock production? Will EU consumers be supplied with eggs from countries with a lower cost of production from cages or cage free systems or even eggs labeled as "cage free or free range" but derived from conventional cages? Either way consumers will be deprived of the nutritional value of eggs or will be required to pay more for their purchases.

We should carefully monitor events in the "old world" and be careful not to emulate the folly of the EU in our industry."

Brr it's cold

Yesterday was the first day of winter, and although we haven't had the snow that the east coast and midwest have experienced, I think my blood has thinned. I checked and still have plenty of fat layers. When browsing my site meter today I found someone looking at this, apparently I had linked to it in the past. Looks mighty good today. Even the prices didn't blow me away. And I don't even like Florida! Time to put on my heavy coat and mittens and go to the coffee shop.

The w.c. is from 7 years ago--you can tell we're all from Indiana and Ohio by the amount of clothing and the umbrellas--and it was a hot day.

New words, familiar sound

Last week when our young Haitian friends were visiting and we were sitting in traffic waiting to get into the Zoo, Frandy and Zeke sang "O Holy Night" for us in French. Here's a treat if you like language--the Christmas album, of Jana Mashonee singing ten traditional carols in different Native American languages – “O Holy Night” in Navajo, “Silent Night” in Arapaho, “Winter Wonderland” in Ojibwe, “Joy to the World” in Chiricahua Apache, etc.



Jana’s website You can hear her new album. In addition to providing all the vocals and piano, Jana wrote and co-produced the album. I think she was on Fox this morning if I got the dates right, although I'm not sure it was local or national. Which ever, I missed it.

For native youth, through her organization Jana's Kids, “Jana addresses the issues of cultural pride and identity, motivation and ambition, education, alcohol, tobacco and drug awareness, and gang association. She proactively involves her audiences in this extraordinary interactive presentation. Music, lecture, questions, answers, and demonstrations are the main components of this educational, entertaining, and motivational program.”

What makes the leftists unhappy about Obama

Although they don't seem to mind his spending trillions for more socialism, it's his spending it and getting the same ol' same ol' that ties their shorts in a knot.

"Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum."

I had that spotted in 2007. Even with strings to a puppet master, it's hard to get an empty suit to dance. Although unlike Drew Westen at Huff'npoof, I think he's still way left of center. I still think he's a marxist; it's just that he had a few ethical, smart and patriotic Democrats in his own party that he hasn't knocked over yet or bribed into silece. And Drew--Joe Wilson still did and said the right thing, "You lie." Only now you libs know it too.

The peacemakers

This is Shane. I don't know him--just came across an item about him. He's going to talk to youth. Notice the ear stud, head bandana/scarf holding back the long hair, and scruffy but endearing face. The outfit hasn't changed in 40-50 years, much. He's a professional peacemaker going here and there. Willowcreek, Iraq, Calcutta. The usual. We need a few peacemakers in a suit and tie, or at least a button down oxford, khaki slacks/dress jeans and loafers. Someone who doesn't dress the part. They are needed first in families, church councils, schools, board rooms, cafeteria lines, muffler shops, prisons, factories, twitter, Facebook and Blogger, and the halls of congress. Then when they are sufficiently battle scarred and wise, send them into other war zones. The exciting thing about peace seminars and radical faith workshops is, you get to hang with people who think just like you do.

Academe's bias against white males

Any parent who would pay to send a kid, male or female, into this hell hole should be charged with wallet abuse.

"You might think that a university whose students were victims of the most notorious fraudulent rape claim in recent history, and whose professors -- 88 of them -- signed an ad implicitly presuming guilt, and whose president came close to doing the same would have learned some lessons.

The facts are otherwise. They also suggest that Duke University's ugly abuse in 2006 and 2007 of its now-exonerated lacrosse players -- white males accused by a black stripper and hounded by a mob hewing to political correctness -- reflects a disregard of due process and a bias against white males that infect much of academia.

In September, far from taking pains to protect its students from false rape charges, Duke adopted a revised "sexual misconduct" policy that makes a mockery of due process and may well foster more false rape charges by rigging the disciplinary rules against the accused.

Meanwhile, none of the 88 guilt-presuming professors has publicly apologized. (Duke's president, Richard Brodhead, did -- but too little and too late.) Many of the faculty signers -- a majority of whom are white -- have expressed pride in their rush to judgment. None was dismissed, demoted, or publicly rebuked. Two were glorified this month in Duke's in-house organ as pioneers of "diversity," with no reference to their roles in signing the ad. Three others have won prestigious positions at Cornell, Vanderbilt, and the University of Chicago." The rot at Duke

The bios and photos of those 88 should be tacked on public bulletin boards along with the faces of other identity theft criminals.

Need a bowl game printout?

All on one page. Save a twig.

Ohio State Buckeyes are in the Rose Bowl playing the Oregon Ducks. Bucks vs. Ducks. But if they were playing Oregon State, we could say OSU vs. OSU!

A very teary Christmas

This song always makes me teary, not cheery:

I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents under the tree
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light beams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

It makes me think of all the promises I've heard in my life time (or made), only to have them dashed. And yet, every time I hear it, whether Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Josh Groban or the local high school choir, I'm lulled into believing--yes, this year the promise will be kept. I make it all the way to the last line with the beautiful words, and find out it was all a dream. I assure you, you have the job; we'll get together soon; I'll stop by just as soon as. . . ; I'll never take another drink, I promise; she is doing so well she'll be discharged from the hospital Tuesday; look this present is for you; congratulations you're pregnant; you can't miss it; I'll always love you, and so on.

But I still love the song.

When the globe was really hot

From 600 to 200 BC there was a cold period, followed by a warming, called Roman Warming, from 200 BC to about 600 AD. You know what's neat about that? God used it for the spread of the Gospel! Then from 600 AD to 900 AD there was another cold period, and we call that the Dark Ages, probably because it's difficult for science, technology and learning to flourish when you're so cold you have to migrate, and the crops won't grow so you spend all your time looking for food and fighting off bigger people with better horses and spears from warmer climates.

But, looky here, more "global warming" before the industrial age and sooty smoke stacks and coal mines--the Medieval Warming period from 900 AD to 1300 AD, followed by the Little Ice Age, which went right up to about 1850--around the time people began to notice it was getting warm again. It's "normal" I suppose for humans to be so self-centered that they believe their own life time is the way it's supposed to be, but we've had far more cooling periods than warming, so look out! And other warming periods have been longer and hotter than this one.

The Chinese have even better records for this--notice how similar the warming periods are (note the line going up around 1000 AD). Don't take my word for it. Hundreds and hundreds of studies from ice, sedement, tree rings, tree lines, fossils, etc., show that warming and cooling are natural cycles for the earth, and for humans to survive, warming is definitely better than cooling. Read earth's own story free of political scam and hands out for higher taxes in Unstoppable global warming by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery (rev. ed. 2008, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers). Or for a summary of studies on the medieval warm period, read it here at Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.

Stop the hot air of Cap and Trade Plunder. Tell your senators and congressional representative, NO.

Perspective of an immigrant

"When I came to America in 1980 and experienced life in this country, I thought it was fortunate that those living in the USSR did not know how unfortunate they were.

Now in 2009, I realize how unfortunate it is that many Americans do not understand how fortunate they are. They vote to give government more and more power without understanding the consequences." Read Svetlana's article here.

Laughing at the left

'Taint funny, though. Just a few examples here.

"They believe we can spend our way out of debt.

They believe people who have never run a business can run a business better than people who have spent their whole lives running businesses.

They believe that teenage girls who aren't allowed to get even minor cosmetic surgery without a parent's permission should nevertheless be able to procure an abortion without a parent's permission.

They believe it is unconstitutional for a legislature to mention Jesus but perfectly okay to mention Allah.

They believe explicit words in the Constitution protecting contracts, and gun ownership rights, and property rights against government seizure, are to be ignored; but that wholly invented "rights" that cannot be found in any words of the Constitution, but that merely "extend" from "emanations" from "penumbras" of other judicially created "rights," are somehow sacrosanct and essential parts of the Constitution."

No, not funny. And he goes on and on.

Nelson caves

"Sen. Ben Nelson has said he would support the health care bill, all but ensuring that Sen. Harry Reid will be able to secure the 60 votes he needs to set up final passage on Christmas Eve." American Spectator

Blackmail, corruption, bribery (he also gets more Medicaid money), deceit, lies, Chicago thugery, and God know what else--oh yes, no Christmas recess if you don't fall in line. Well, at least the air force base is safe. What a backbone.

Update: There is a rally in Omaha, Nebraska Sunday Dec. 20 demanding Senator Nelson switch his vote back to NO. The rally will be held at the Omaha Music Hall, 17th and Capitol. Doors open at 2 PM. Rally starts at 3 PM. Other participants besides Mike Huckabee will include Congressman Terry, Auditor Foley, Senators McCoy, Fulton, Krist, Price and Lautenbaugh.

Are we at the end of a natural warming period

There are two strong memories from my childhood: the snow was very deep and we were at war most of the time. I was born at the end of a warming blip that had existed during most of the the lifetime of my parents (1916-1940) which was part of a larger trend that began around 1850 after a cold period of several centuries. Whereas their formative years contained memories of dust storms, shriveled crops and nights so hot in Illinois they couldn't breathe, I remember giant snow drifts and winters that seemed to last forever followed by warm, idyllic and pleasant summers. Of course, I was shorter then, so it wasn't that tough to say it was up to my waist. However, another warming blip began in the 1970s, and I can remember driving to Illinois in the winter with our children and not seeing a snowflake. I still remember the summer of 1988--it was so dry and hot in Ohio, the Bruces broke down and bought an air conditioner for our Columbus house, and took a lake cruise to get out of the heat of Lakeside. Now things seem to be getting cooler again with lots of ragged, wild weather around the edges. I wouldn't even think of driving to Illinois in the winter now--the last five years where I grew up have been brutal with deep snow. Here in temperate mid-Ohio we muddle through gray winters as we always have with one or two blizzards a year and then weeks of melting snow drifts. This morning I woke up to the sound of snow plows, but didn't recognize the noise. We may get 2-4" as the northeast is pummeled.

The other memory--that of war--is a reminder that we need to be vigilant. Hitler was marching through Poland (Polenfeldzug) when I was born. I believe our President was trying to work out some sort of "accord." During my youth and right up to the collapse of the USSR, some version of socialism has been the enemy of our republican form of government--either the National Socialism of Hitler, or the Communism of Lenin/Stalin/Mao--both of which chewed up most of Europe and Asia. The other, centuries old absolute loyalty to a monarch, was Japan, now a democracy. This is another thing that is cyclical. Our ignorance and forgetfulness. Socialism doesn't need armored tanks anymore.

Sports and Greed

Recent events in science, politics, national security and the economy have caused many of us to completely lose faith in our so called “free and independent press,” because broadcast and print journalists carried the water for Obama in 2007-2008, downplayed the pinholes in the expanding housing bubble when there was still time to do something, research institutions and gatekeepers of the peer review sources manipulated data and blacklisted colleagues for the sake of government grants and personal gain in science, and cable, new media “fact checkers” and news aggregators played up every mistake of the military during the Bush years while ignoring the big picture with an end result of helping our enemies. The final straw has been the Tiger Woods story, at least for me. Yesterday I was reading How Tiger Protected his Image, in the WSJ. As I tried to work my way through the convoluted, complex story of Tiger’s deal with Golf Digest, I stumbled over many other media sources--Conde Nast, Tiger Woods’ own foundation, American Media, Inc., The National Enquirer, Men’s Fitness, News of the World, News Corp., Woods’ handlers, representatives, photographers, Laveley & Singer law firm in LA, spokespeople, editors, Media Industry Newsletter, and finally (but not the first) the hapless, untipped waitress in the church parking lot and her family.

And no, this isn’t just a story about sex, or even possible redemption, which for some reason many Christian writers are playing up. It’s a story about a systemic problem--greed. When his wife or babies test positive for an STD, then maybe we can say it’s about infidelity and sex, but in the meantime, the sports and information industries have some explaining to do their values.

Obama has led us off the cliff

We've all been wondering--why are they doing this to us?

"This week the president told the nation that we are "on the precipice" of passing historic health care legislation. He could not have chosen a better word, because that's what a majority of readers -- and the American public -- believe: that we're about to plunge into a health care system that is more expensive and offers lower-quality care than what we have now." Byron York

HT Murray