can you relate?
i woke up today without an alarm but not in the way that you may think, not an hour early only to stare at the ceiling but with the blue morning sunlight filling the room through our skylight. I was three hours late but not today, I am taking the day off from my normal routine.
The dogs started getting restless with me knowing that this isn't going to be a day spent from sunrise to sunset alone. I could hardly stand it anymore, their excitement to start the day off with a long walk in the daylight rubbed off on me and i dragged myself out of bed.
Saddled up we set out along our normal route me enjoying the crisp late winter air and the dogs peeing on anything that smelled other than earth. The walk was uneventful until I saw the garbage trucks and realized I didn't put the garbage out. Frustrated with myself, I bucked up for the dogs and meandered home at my own pace again; sniffing, peeing and enjoying the crisp air.
When I got back in I decided that I needed to follow some of my own advice I had dished out to my love and got a pen and the back of a bill envelope and started the list:
1. wash dogs
2. start laundry
3. haircut
4. massage
5. return easel
6. return stantionS
7. dishes
8. line up tomorrow morning activities
9. date tonight?
10. return badge from work
11. talk to my lady about canceling Comcast DVR service
12. call some friends
13. etc, etc, etc
until I got to number 26.
I also have a car load of stuff that I need to return to work before I get to sink my teeth into my day. So, first things first; what can I do on my list before I leave? then I get a call that structures my day a little more than I wanted but work is important and that car load of stuff needs to get to work sooner than later. I commit to a reasonable time line and then settle into get my day organized. I needed to find out about our date tonight because it involved tickets to an event and I didn't have them with me. I called the box office and confirmed we had tickets to the show this evening; excited I called my love. We talked and confirmed tonight will work for our date then I asked her about canceling our Comcast DVR service..GULP. This is a big step in today's world; we have sucked Comcast's DVR nipple through good and bad times. Remember when VCRs were our only option? Comcast was there. Tivo? Comcast was there. Then Comcast came out with DVR service. Sun beams from the sky.
I put my Tivo in the 'old technology that I am bored with' hands of my father. He still uses it today, that was five or six years ago, god love him. the interface wasn't that bad but I certainly missed the bubbly sounds and unmeasurable better interface Tivo offered. But, Comcast will mature, won't it?
You'd think, "this powerhouse monopolistic company would have the resources and gumption to offer the best possible service.". That is what I think. There is clearly more to it but it just tickles my logic button that if Comcast has a box already in your living room they could have capitalized much better. We trust Comcast's box:
1. We rent movies from the box, that is a form of online payment that most people disregard because it isn't removing monies directly from your credit or banking accounts but rest assured it is online purchasing; you do get a bill for the services you purchased online.
2. We put our personal information all over the service. We let Comcast know exactly what shows we like and which ones we fast forward the commercials, which ones we watch live, etc.
3. We tolerate the incredibly poor interface.
Then Comcast downgraded their interface and that was it for me, I built another computer that will do all my DVR and TV viewing needs. Long story short I got lazy and didn't use it for over a year but today I am. Got'er hooked up, configured and an interface that I will use. And I got an Apple TV! Life was getting better now that Comcast is delivering 24Mbps internet service to my house for $56 a month. My thanks to Microsoft's Media Center Division and the incredibly elegant Apple TV solution that the (ever-leading media delivery agent) Apple team put out. that Apple TV feels like you are walking through the isles of a movie rental store, it feels like something we are familiar with. Comcast didn't grasp that concept. I called Comcast but spared the nice lady my above sob story, she asked me to go ahead and unplug the DVR cable box and return it to the closest Comcast location. They will remove the service at that time and retro payback any overpayment's. She also asked me to be sure and get a receipt. That's it? Nice.
I called around and scheduled a massage this afternoon and then set off to get the day back on track. I looked at my list and crossed off the few things that I could from the calls I had just made. Highlighted the items that required me to do something at the house before I left and then crouched down to play with the dogs for a bit. All the while I have music playing in the background. After rufflin' with the dogs I crawled over to the entertainment center and looked behind at the skeleton of a long long relationship, my Comcast Cable box. Relax, I told myself, it will only look weird for a while but you will get used it not being there like a missing tooth. My eyes, for as long as I can remember, look first to the amber digital time readout this aged relic provides. I reached behind and started unplugging the ol'coot, "Goodbye old buddy", I thought, "You did good" as I personalized the experience. I like these sorts of milestones our world sees and, like most in my generation, enjoy the current pace of advancement. Plug by plug I felt the perceived shackles fall to the carpet behind the DVD player that will soon to be liberated by Mr. Jobs. Goodbye Comcast Cable Box. Off to the day.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
National Education System.
What is thought without organization? When we are uneducated we make decisions based on survival and emotion. I don't mean in the scholastic sense exclusively; education comes in many forms and from many different sources.
The key to the success of education is to keep an open mind and be tolerant of others points of view. You cannot possibly have a well-rounded education if you do not take the lessons that are learned from another. Imagine an environment with a prevailing body determining the education that your children receive? And if all the lessons available were determined by a body that you do not agree with. Shouldn't those lessons be as general as possible to teach as many different demographics as possible?
We can all agree to disagree on the methods that are used to educate our children in the public school system; forcing religion out of our schools was a great first step. The core values of tolerance, empathy and acceptance should not be taught as a subject as it pertains to a fundamentally religious organization; those values need to be instilled by the parents and reinforced by all surrounding inhabitants of this beautiful planet, namely us.
There are always what-ifs and exceptions to any idea but the fundamental point to this post is that kindness is key to the co-existence of our society. We need to treat all the people in our society with the same kindness and respect we would extend to someone we love or respect. We talk to our friends, family and people we respect much differently than the way we interact with the society that surrounds us.
Back to education. Educating our youth and ourselves should be the focus of every person on the planet. We have the natural direction to only focus on our survival; something that makes sense from an animal sense but we are only animals by our species classification. We do not think like animals anymore, we have separated ourselves from the animals with education and the ability to record information. We have advanced based on science and factual recording of historical events. Volumes of books are written in the world to teach people; thoughts and studies transferred from our mind to another media for others to absorb, ensuring we do not become stagnant in our evolution as a species.
This is not a discussion on religion although it leans towards that because the oft-argued education points are based separating religion from our education system. The other arguments are demographical, a major driving factor towards introducing or even prolonging the presence of religion as staple in our education system. The less educated people are the more they harbor an idea that this awful, hard world will all be over soon and they can live on the other side of the gates to heaven. This is a subject for another post.
Very important to realize, our education system is only a small influencer of the outcome of our society as a whole. What education we provide at home has a much greater impact than our schools. We need to have a baseline education system so we can all function safely together in the world. We need to be able to read and do simple math which enables us to hold jobs from grocery bagger to CEO. Can't we all agree that a drivers license is a good concept for our safety while driving? That then begs an important question, how much of the bible was apart of your drivers ed class? How many questions on the written test were based on scripture? We can assume that there was no reference to religion...why then in our schools where children are less capable of forming their own opinions? I do not have facts and it may discount my thoughts for many people but I can at least hypothesize this idea:
Are people that attend schools with an emphasis on religion any smarter than attendees or public schools required to separate church and state?
If they are not smarter, more successful, more tolerant, more charitable and generally more kind then there is no reason to have religion in our schools. We need to have a foundation in our education system that meets the cultural needs of as many demographics as possible. That leads to the this post titled 'National Education System'.
We need to have federal involvement in our education system and we need be proud of the system we currently have. The work that our educators have put into our society is immeasurable. Could you imagine what your life would be like if you did not go to school? If you were the attendee of a public school that separated religious points of views from non-religions points of view; do you feel less educated? I have to assume no. The need for a national education system is to create that foundation all schools can to abide by; do our educators really have time to create rules for the schools or should they be focussed on bettering our children and society? This eliminates pockets of our society growing to a religious threat with decades of teaching a point of view that is one-sided. Could you imagine if a Muslim community popped up in South Dakota and was able to use public monies to educate their children in Muslim beliefs? Why then is it acceptable for any other religion to do so? We need rules, we need guidelines and those parameters need to be nationwide to ensure we don't create religious conflict because you were born in Muslim South Dakota or Southern Baptist Missouri.
Running that system is hard! Fighting public emotional needs for education is not an easy task but shouldn't the NEA be focussed on providing the best possible education for our children? Should they be concerned with Coke machines in schools? Shouldn't that responsibility be in the community? The NEA should be setting standards that allow for the greatest amount of information to be passed to a child in the most formidable years of their lives. All that baseline provides is direction to ensure tolerance and kindness are the foundation of our society. If you were born before 1975 you saw a totally different education system than you do today. Today we have required our educators not to paddle, curse, isolate or be unkind to our children. I think that is progression. I have gone through my entire life without reading the ten commandments and I, like the majority of the planet, turned out just fine.
We have to use compassion and tolerance when we look at our education system; it is hard to run and even harder to fix. There is a lot of work needed; it isn't just shuffling money around to different hands. We should all be focussed on creating an education system that promotes progression, not regression. We should encourage our children to look at different points of view and allow them to form into a person that can participate in any human activity with any race or religion. When was the last time you look at the library or the Internet? With all the books that have been written over time by very educated, diverse people how could we be so ignorant to think that one book can be the foundation for raising every child in the world?
To conclude, we need a system to set the standards of tolerance, kindness and acceptance. As a whole our federally controlled education system provides that. Do you ever feel unsafe when your children are in a public school and are you confident that a belief system other than your own will not be taught to your child? Generally, we don't and we shouldn't need to...that is why we are Americans...that is the message we should promote worldwide.
The key to the success of education is to keep an open mind and be tolerant of others points of view. You cannot possibly have a well-rounded education if you do not take the lessons that are learned from another. Imagine an environment with a prevailing body determining the education that your children receive? And if all the lessons available were determined by a body that you do not agree with. Shouldn't those lessons be as general as possible to teach as many different demographics as possible?
We can all agree to disagree on the methods that are used to educate our children in the public school system; forcing religion out of our schools was a great first step. The core values of tolerance, empathy and acceptance should not be taught as a subject as it pertains to a fundamentally religious organization; those values need to be instilled by the parents and reinforced by all surrounding inhabitants of this beautiful planet, namely us.
There are always what-ifs and exceptions to any idea but the fundamental point to this post is that kindness is key to the co-existence of our society. We need to treat all the people in our society with the same kindness and respect we would extend to someone we love or respect. We talk to our friends, family and people we respect much differently than the way we interact with the society that surrounds us.
Back to education. Educating our youth and ourselves should be the focus of every person on the planet. We have the natural direction to only focus on our survival; something that makes sense from an animal sense but we are only animals by our species classification. We do not think like animals anymore, we have separated ourselves from the animals with education and the ability to record information. We have advanced based on science and factual recording of historical events. Volumes of books are written in the world to teach people; thoughts and studies transferred from our mind to another media for others to absorb, ensuring we do not become stagnant in our evolution as a species.
This is not a discussion on religion although it leans towards that because the oft-argued education points are based separating religion from our education system. The other arguments are demographical, a major driving factor towards introducing or even prolonging the presence of religion as staple in our education system. The less educated people are the more they harbor an idea that this awful, hard world will all be over soon and they can live on the other side of the gates to heaven. This is a subject for another post.
Very important to realize, our education system is only a small influencer of the outcome of our society as a whole. What education we provide at home has a much greater impact than our schools. We need to have a baseline education system so we can all function safely together in the world. We need to be able to read and do simple math which enables us to hold jobs from grocery bagger to CEO. Can't we all agree that a drivers license is a good concept for our safety while driving? That then begs an important question, how much of the bible was apart of your drivers ed class? How many questions on the written test were based on scripture? We can assume that there was no reference to religion...why then in our schools where children are less capable of forming their own opinions? I do not have facts and it may discount my thoughts for many people but I can at least hypothesize this idea:
Are people that attend schools with an emphasis on religion any smarter than attendees or public schools required to separate church and state?
If they are not smarter, more successful, more tolerant, more charitable and generally more kind then there is no reason to have religion in our schools. We need to have a foundation in our education system that meets the cultural needs of as many demographics as possible. That leads to the this post titled 'National Education System'.
We need to have federal involvement in our education system and we need be proud of the system we currently have. The work that our educators have put into our society is immeasurable. Could you imagine what your life would be like if you did not go to school? If you were the attendee of a public school that separated religious points of views from non-religions points of view; do you feel less educated? I have to assume no. The need for a national education system is to create that foundation all schools can to abide by; do our educators really have time to create rules for the schools or should they be focussed on bettering our children and society? This eliminates pockets of our society growing to a religious threat with decades of teaching a point of view that is one-sided. Could you imagine if a Muslim community popped up in South Dakota and was able to use public monies to educate their children in Muslim beliefs? Why then is it acceptable for any other religion to do so? We need rules, we need guidelines and those parameters need to be nationwide to ensure we don't create religious conflict because you were born in Muslim South Dakota or Southern Baptist Missouri.
Running that system is hard! Fighting public emotional needs for education is not an easy task but shouldn't the NEA be focussed on providing the best possible education for our children? Should they be concerned with Coke machines in schools? Shouldn't that responsibility be in the community? The NEA should be setting standards that allow for the greatest amount of information to be passed to a child in the most formidable years of their lives. All that baseline provides is direction to ensure tolerance and kindness are the foundation of our society. If you were born before 1975 you saw a totally different education system than you do today. Today we have required our educators not to paddle, curse, isolate or be unkind to our children. I think that is progression. I have gone through my entire life without reading the ten commandments and I, like the majority of the planet, turned out just fine.
We have to use compassion and tolerance when we look at our education system; it is hard to run and even harder to fix. There is a lot of work needed; it isn't just shuffling money around to different hands. We should all be focussed on creating an education system that promotes progression, not regression. We should encourage our children to look at different points of view and allow them to form into a person that can participate in any human activity with any race or religion. When was the last time you look at the library or the Internet? With all the books that have been written over time by very educated, diverse people how could we be so ignorant to think that one book can be the foundation for raising every child in the world?
To conclude, we need a system to set the standards of tolerance, kindness and acceptance. As a whole our federally controlled education system provides that. Do you ever feel unsafe when your children are in a public school and are you confident that a belief system other than your own will not be taught to your child? Generally, we don't and we shouldn't need to...that is why we are Americans...that is the message we should promote worldwide.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Global Warming.
the subject of global warming is a hot button for many conservative/liberal debates; we all love to get behind something and if the people we call experts tell us something, we latch on to it. we have to think a little more literally about the subject before we segregate one another on a subject we can all agree on...fossil fuel exhaust is poisonous.
the foundation of the idea is:
if you put a hose from the exhaust pipe of your car to the interior of the car, you sit in the car and run the engine; you will die.
we can all agree on this, no more proof needed. fossil fuel exhaust is poison. how that applies to global warming is important; global warming or not...fossil fuel exhaust is poison. there have been many studies that are for and against the idea of global warming. al gore did a fascinating story that gripped our society and was catalyst enough to earn him a nobel prize. the catalyst is not something that should be ignored; the impact of presenting fossil fuel's poisonous properties was and is extremely important.
getting this through to the masses is hard. how do we all pull together and literally agree that we don't want to poison our planet. the drama caused by bringing such catastrophic theories to the masses drives the educated minority crazy. conservatives seem to see the extremely fear driven advertising of global warming as a way to achieve a liberal political agenda or hurt large companies; this is simply not the case.
we live in a society that is guided and inspired by dramatic events, events that pull at our emotional strings. we react dramatically to those events ranging from a conservative talk show host's bashing of the french to liberals marching on washington. we all seem to want to be apart of something even in our freedom of individuality. the only restrictions are to follow the laws, pay your taxes and co-exist compassionately with our fellow man. the unfortunate method of delivering theories as doomsday scenarios needs to be employed to get people who are not as educated to respond. we have different education levels as a part of our demographic differences whether observed or not. generally a garbage collector isn't as in tune with worlds events as a business executive. they are also less likely to vote.
the impact of the minority influencing the majority is a clear opportunity for corruption but that is a subject for another blog.
the point is global warming or not, we can all agree that fossil fuel exhaust is a poison and that should be enough of a reason to try and scale it back. the result of global warming can be argued until we are blue in the face from the poisons we are inhaling being produced daily with our cars. if you put a hose from the exhaust from your car and breathe the exhaust you die...period. it is a common form of suicide; we know this.
please, please, care about youself, your family, your friends and your fellow earthbound inhabitants enough to eliminate the poisons that you produce.
and remember, if you breathe the exhaust from your car you will die...we can all agree on that.
the foundation of the idea is:
if you put a hose from the exhaust pipe of your car to the interior of the car, you sit in the car and run the engine; you will die.
we can all agree on this, no more proof needed. fossil fuel exhaust is poison. how that applies to global warming is important; global warming or not...fossil fuel exhaust is poison. there have been many studies that are for and against the idea of global warming. al gore did a fascinating story that gripped our society and was catalyst enough to earn him a nobel prize. the catalyst is not something that should be ignored; the impact of presenting fossil fuel's poisonous properties was and is extremely important.
getting this through to the masses is hard. how do we all pull together and literally agree that we don't want to poison our planet. the drama caused by bringing such catastrophic theories to the masses drives the educated minority crazy. conservatives seem to see the extremely fear driven advertising of global warming as a way to achieve a liberal political agenda or hurt large companies; this is simply not the case.
we live in a society that is guided and inspired by dramatic events, events that pull at our emotional strings. we react dramatically to those events ranging from a conservative talk show host's bashing of the french to liberals marching on washington. we all seem to want to be apart of something even in our freedom of individuality. the only restrictions are to follow the laws, pay your taxes and co-exist compassionately with our fellow man. the unfortunate method of delivering theories as doomsday scenarios needs to be employed to get people who are not as educated to respond. we have different education levels as a part of our demographic differences whether observed or not. generally a garbage collector isn't as in tune with worlds events as a business executive. they are also less likely to vote.
the impact of the minority influencing the majority is a clear opportunity for corruption but that is a subject for another blog.
the point is global warming or not, we can all agree that fossil fuel exhaust is a poison and that should be enough of a reason to try and scale it back. the result of global warming can be argued until we are blue in the face from the poisons we are inhaling being produced daily with our cars. if you put a hose from the exhaust from your car and breathe the exhaust you die...period. it is a common form of suicide; we know this.
please, please, care about youself, your family, your friends and your fellow earthbound inhabitants enough to eliminate the poisons that you produce.
and remember, if you breathe the exhaust from your car you will die...we can all agree on that.
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