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Random Thoughts
NOTE: The following discussions contain some strong opinions. If you don't want to read controversial, personal opinions, please do not read on. I do not like "knee-jerk" liberal or conservative philosophies. I try to be open-minded, but certainly have my own biases. I hate "political correctness" and tend to overreact against those who practice it. - Bill McArthur, aka Hungry Mother (hungrymother) and Computing Doc (computingdoc). . To find our what I'm doing in real life, click here and choose "Current Activities" from the menu bar. Also, check me on FaceBook under William George McArthur.
03/28/09 comments Ways to Improve the World I am grateful to the Pope for his ignorant pronouncement about birth control in Africa. He has made it ever so clear that organized religion is a dangerous blight on humanity. Whenever I hear about a program to alleviate the misery in Africa, I always think that condoms should be handed out with food. When I visited Senegal, the hordes of children was as shocking as the miserable conditions that they were in. Abolishing and disbanding all organized religions would improve the world in many ways. Because the population would explode because fanatical people would stop wasting their lives for their hypocritical religious leaders, birth control would again be an important factor. Legalizing drugs and spending 50% of the funds, wasted on the hopeless "War on Drugs", on social programs for addicts would prevent a lot of organized and petty crime. Once again, birth control would be necessary to prevent a population explosion due to the missing carnage caused by the drug cartels. All political terms at all levels should be restricted to one term of 6 years for the life of the "politician" (that term would because obsolete). Lobbying should be abolished. Only those with worthy bodies should wear thongs on beaches. 03/18/09 comments A Tale of Two Contraries There are the best of men, there are the worst of men. After watching the John Stewart/Jim Cramer interview recently, I was convinced that the world was filled with greedy, cheating, hedge fund managers. A few days ago, I met another sort of man. This one , Scott Britton, is an intern at the Echo Farm in North Fort Myers, FL. where he is spending a year learning about the best ways to produce food for starving people in Africa. Following his internship, Scott, his wife and two small children will travel to some remote, needful place in Africa to help to save lives. Jim Cramer said that it was very satisfying to rake in money being unethical and greedy. I hope that Scott finds his calling very satisfying too.
02/21/09 comments Squeezed in the Middle Again As usual, the rich and the poor will benefit and those of us in the middle will pay for it. Will we be content to be the only ones following the rules and faithfully paying our taxes and our bills, or will we revolt against such an unfair system? As for me, I do what I think is right and the hell with anyone who doesn't like it.
02/06/09 comments Like an Eagle Diving for a Dead Fish I am so tired of hearing myself complain about the cold down here in Southwest Florida! This morning, I was out for a 5K run with the temperature about 50 degrees (F) and a northerly wind of 10-15 mph. The sun was shining brightly in the most beautiful blue sky imaginable. I was feeling sorry for myself for being chilly and having to wear an outer shirt over my running top. I was running on a concrete path by the Naples airport, and by a scummy pond filled with nitrates from the lawn fertilizer when I heard the unmistakably shrill cry of a Bald Eagle. I looked around and upward and saw the adult bird circling overhead. Then, suddenly, the eagle dove dramatically into the pond and scooped up the rotting corpse of a dead fish. What a great symbol of the American government, I thought. The government, especially the Congress talks as though it is a model for democracy, "... by the people, of the people, and for the people...,", but I wouldn't recommend that any nation transform itself into our image. Corruption abounds, and it's blatant. The corrupt pigs of the government don't even try to hide their tax cheating, selfishness, and gluttonous feeding at the lobbyists' troughs. Where's the outrage? I see and hear the talking heads on cable, but they always draw short of fully exposing and condemning the cheating and corruption. Why? Because their masters are also part of the same corrupt matrix. The newsies are spending a lot of time talking about Michael Phelps taking a hit on a bong as if that's bad and newsworthy. How many 23 year olds took a hit on a bong that same day all over the world? I wish I had, instead of putting up with the fetid mass that is our government. All of them should be called out and put out.
01/31/09 comments Stimulate This! Everyone should be issued a prepaid credit card for $500. The cards would expire in 30 days. This would stimulate the economy far better than giving our money to a bunch of shady characters who will use it for their own benefit, not for America's good. Too bad Obama has gone down the road of using lobbyists in his administration, counter to his own directive. The argument is that all the good people are lobbyists. If that's true, there are no good people. I liked Jessica Simpson when she looked good in cutoffs. I wish I could fish every day.
01/20/09 comments A Day Too Big For Words Watching the Inaugural coverage, I saw a shot of Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, with a tear on his cheek. I feel really good about this day, but many Americans have much deeper feelings than I do. They deserve their joy.
01/16/09 comments Heading South Tomorrow, after a month in the frigid North, my wife and I are heading south again. The temperature this morning was 8 degrees (F) and it is supposed to be colder tomorrow morning to see us off. We plan to stop by our home in Cape May Beach to drop off winter clothes and to tie my single kayak on top of our car. We're hoping to catch the 11:00 AM Ferry from Cape May to Lewes, DE and then to drive down the DelMarVa Peninsula to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel. We're in no hurry to get back to Florida except that we want to get warm again ASAP. I had decided not to bring our Sirius radio on the flight up here, so I needed to get a substitute for the long drive down to Naples. I decided to get an FM transmitter and bracket to my new iPhone and to cancel our Sirius subscription which was expiring on January 19. We'll be able to listen to music on Pandora Radio and my wife can get her political fix with the NPR app and the NPR mobile website. Our new grandson is two weeks old today and is doing well. The next time we'll see him, he'll be five months old. I'm going to bake on the beach for a week to thaw out.
01/11/09 comments Stopping By the Woods I love the simple poem by Robert Frost, even though more than one of my English teachers tried to ruin it by analyzing it, looking for theme, figures of speech, metaphors, anomalies, onomatopoeias, and hyperboles. I can't help but think of the lines of the poem whenever I confront a winter scene with quietness in my soul. Today, I celebrated my winter stay by hiking in the snow and ice around Lake Galena in Peace Valley, near Doylestown, PA. I used hiking poles and set a rapid pace for the 6.1 miles around the lake. I was so cold when I started that I thought that I would get frostbite, but I generated so much heat that I ended up without gloves, hood off, and coat half unzipped. At one point in my walk, I came upon the place that I felt most represented a Frostian moment. As I quietly surveyed the scene, all alone on the trail, I thought of the many times I have cross-country skied by myself in the woods. Beautiful memories, all poetic.
01/08/09 comments Addictions The other day I was thinking and saying that not all addictions are bad. Coincidentally, Sinnerviewer gave me this nice award and tagged me to list 5 of my addictions. I've never been one for moderation in my life, so this is easy:
Anybody else want to try to list 5 of their addictions?
01/05/09 comments Grandparenting My seventh grandchild was just born on January 2. The first one was born in 1999. It's a lot easier to have grandkids than to have kids, mainly because you don't have to send them to college, but also because they don't live with you and it doesn't take any energy to beget them. My grandchildren are spread out in three families. In each, a granddaughter was the firstborn and a grandson was the last born. I know the names of each of my grandchildren, but only approximately know their ages and don't know any of their birthdays, except for the recent one, and that will soon dim away. I have featured grandkids on Christmas cards in 2005, 2006, and, belatedly, 2008. What happened to 2007? Well, I crossed the Equator in a ship, and that took precedence, at least in my mind. It's getting harder to bring all of the grandchildren together, but it is a very special event when it happens. One of my grandsons has my name and another has it as his middle name. These honors are most precious to me. I missed the births of two of the grandchildren, because they were born ahead of schedule. I was in Puerto Vallarta for one of them, and in Hawaii for the other. Not that I'm of much use when a grandchild is born, but I'm pretty good at running errands, I'm fair at shopping, and I'm tolerable at taking orders. I was actually in the birthing room for the delivery of my first grandchild. I never had that experience with my own children, so I was pretty intimidated about the whole procedure. I huddled in the corner of the room and tried to maintain a side view of the proceedings, but it was awesome to be present. The other four births were covered here, here, here, and here. When my daughter and her new baby, encapsulated in a space-age infant seat, were about to get into the car for the ride home, I mentioned to her that she rode home from the hospital in her mother's arms and her mother didn't have a seat belt. Also, I told her that past time she already carried the egg for the new son. I find it all pretty awesome.
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