Week in Review
Week in Review – February 28 - March 6, 2010: Olympic hockey, healthcare, opportunity
08/March/2010 11:47
Can
you believe it just a week ago last Sunday the
winter Olympic Games came to an end? The men’s gold
medal hockey game in which the Canadians defeated
the USA in overtime was the best final in history.
The problem with hockey on television is that it
shares with baseball the excitement of watching
grass grow, except the grass field has been flooded
and frozen into an ice rink. This is contrasted
with live games, where speed and subtle moves can
make hockey one of the most exciting spectator
sports.
At the end of it all, the United States won more metals than any nation in history and the host Canadians won more gold, again setting a record. The games now pit professionals against professionals, which in our age should be because of the dedication required to perform at such a high level of skill.
The same cannot be said of America’s politicians. Sometime this week we expect the final redux of the Democrat’s healthcare reform package. The only thing for sure is that with or without ObamaCare, within a few years American’s will be paying 20 percent of GDP for health services. Then either reform, or reform of the reform, will and should be the nation’s top domestic priority.
It is true that most Americans are happy with their current coverage and don’t want it to change, simply because they get it for free or cheap with their job. So while they can see the doctor of their choice for routine matters, they never really understand the limitations of their current plan if they seriously need something called major medical.
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At the end of it all, the United States won more metals than any nation in history and the host Canadians won more gold, again setting a record. The games now pit professionals against professionals, which in our age should be because of the dedication required to perform at such a high level of skill.
The same cannot be said of America’s politicians. Sometime this week we expect the final redux of the Democrat’s healthcare reform package. The only thing for sure is that with or without ObamaCare, within a few years American’s will be paying 20 percent of GDP for health services. Then either reform, or reform of the reform, will and should be the nation’s top domestic priority.
It is true that most Americans are happy with their current coverage and don’t want it to change, simply because they get it for free or cheap with their job. So while they can see the doctor of their choice for routine matters, they never really understand the limitations of their current plan if they seriously need something called major medical.
Read More...
Week in Review – February 21-27, 2010: Olympic bobsleds, Chile earthquake, Obamacare
01/March/2010 12:31
Three
obtusely related things peaked our interest this
week. Those three were an episode from the
Vancouver Olympic Games, the earthquake in Chile,
and Obama’s healthcare summit in Washington DC.
Now you may be asking yourself how these three events are related at all, even if the obtuse modifier is used? The thing that ties together all of our points this week, relate to how people respond to an opportunity or a crisis, in our terms stupendous change.
Our zenith of this report was the results of the four man bobsled event at Whistler in which the United States won its first Gold medal since 1948. While that was a worthwhile achievement, what I found really interesting was what happened after the medals presentation, where the Americans were joined by the Silver medal winning Canadians and the Bronze medal Germans.
Before TV cameras all three teams sort of scrunched together for a group photo and in the process you had over 1000 kilos (2200 lbs.) of competitive alpha males getting up close and personal, all smiling like they sort of liked one another. I have searched for a picture of that happening but it doesn’t appear to have gotten significant press attention.
Read More...
Now you may be asking yourself how these three events are related at all, even if the obtuse modifier is used? The thing that ties together all of our points this week, relate to how people respond to an opportunity or a crisis, in our terms stupendous change.
Our zenith of this report was the results of the four man bobsled event at Whistler in which the United States won its first Gold medal since 1948. While that was a worthwhile achievement, what I found really interesting was what happened after the medals presentation, where the Americans were joined by the Silver medal winning Canadians and the Bronze medal Germans.
Before TV cameras all three teams sort of scrunched together for a group photo and in the process you had over 1000 kilos (2200 lbs.) of competitive alpha males getting up close and personal, all smiling like they sort of liked one another. I have searched for a picture of that happening but it doesn’t appear to have gotten significant press attention.
Read More...
Week in Review: February 14-20, 2010
22/February/2010 12:30
We will comment on three events from the last week
that have ties to a continuing angst, not reported
currently in either the blogosphere or more
traditional media outlets. This anxiety relates to
how the individual handles, or hoped to handle,
events that test the individual’s moral compass.
“Moral compass? I don’t need no stinkin’ moral compass, I make my own way in this world and I am proud of it.”
This was evident in the Austin, Texas happening on Thursday where Joe Stack, a disgruntled former software engineer, crashed his small plane into the local IRS building, leaving behind his house he set on fire, and a reported 3000 word manifesto on the Internet.
What makes a person do such a thing?
Read More...
“Moral compass? I don’t need no stinkin’ moral compass, I make my own way in this world and I am proud of it.”
This was evident in the Austin, Texas happening on Thursday where Joe Stack, a disgruntled former software engineer, crashed his small plane into the local IRS building, leaving behind his house he set on fire, and a reported 3000 word manifesto on the Internet.
What makes a person do such a thing?
Read More...
Week in Review: January 31 - February 6, 2010
08/February/2010 17:06
Well,
after a lot of happenings in the last couple of
weeks, this week was less hectic, except in terms
of stupendous changes. The first being the proposed
budget sent to Congress by President Obama. The
second being the weather in places a lot of people
live on both the left and right coasts.
Last Monday President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2011. The proposal listed $3.83 trillion in spending, much to fight the continuing economic malaise, all of this showing the biggest deficit percentage since 1945. It is hoped this year’s deficit will come in around $1.6 trillion to be followed with something around a trillion in 2011.
As discussed by the spin-doctors and pundits, this is either the salvation or the end of the economic world, as we know it. What all these people are hoping for – is through the budget, or changes to the budget, we can return to the prosperity that the nation and the world we hoped would continue forever, namely the 1990s.
What no one seems to understand is that the ‘90s were funded basically by the housing bubble, monetarily securitizing that debt, and selling it to the rest of the world. To believe that we can do it all again, with some other zero risk – get rich scheme, borders on stupidity, if not insanity. I suppose the good news, as bad as the United States economic woes; the dollar has rebounded, thanks to things being worse elsewhere.
What the world really needs is money in the old fashioned sense, like a medium of exchange for goods and services, not a Ponzi Scheme of central bankers, politicians, and various leveraged market makers. That real money will not be loaded on the world’s economic ship until sometime in the unknown future. In the meantime the world will continue to be awash in an ocean of non-energetic debt money, with no real place to go, because the players, either don’t seem to care, or they haven’t got a clue.
On the left coast, Southern California slowly continues to wash into the Pacific Ocean. On the right coast massive snowfalls have broken trees, power lines, and frozen transit, creating economic ice. One town in Maryland is said to have received over 40 inches. The area is expected to receive another winter blast toward the middle of the week. Here in the northwest, the record snows of the last two winters have been replaced with almost an extended spring, with just freezing nights and pleasant days.
El Nino is the climate culprit in all of this. Warm ocean waters in the Pacific have shifted storm tracks to the south, so we see more rain in the arid southwest and as it moves east this moisture laden air becomes essentially an ocean effect snow, similar to the lake effect snowfalls around the Great Lakes, but this time over a lot larger area.
In all the climate change debate about global warming, nothing in the models fits this happening, but many creation scientists, believe that just more massive events as these, were the underlying reality that brought on the ice age after a period of warmth following the Biblical Genesis Flood.
Last Monday President Obama released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2011. The proposal listed $3.83 trillion in spending, much to fight the continuing economic malaise, all of this showing the biggest deficit percentage since 1945. It is hoped this year’s deficit will come in around $1.6 trillion to be followed with something around a trillion in 2011.
As discussed by the spin-doctors and pundits, this is either the salvation or the end of the economic world, as we know it. What all these people are hoping for – is through the budget, or changes to the budget, we can return to the prosperity that the nation and the world we hoped would continue forever, namely the 1990s.
What no one seems to understand is that the ‘90s were funded basically by the housing bubble, monetarily securitizing that debt, and selling it to the rest of the world. To believe that we can do it all again, with some other zero risk – get rich scheme, borders on stupidity, if not insanity. I suppose the good news, as bad as the United States economic woes; the dollar has rebounded, thanks to things being worse elsewhere.
What the world really needs is money in the old fashioned sense, like a medium of exchange for goods and services, not a Ponzi Scheme of central bankers, politicians, and various leveraged market makers. That real money will not be loaded on the world’s economic ship until sometime in the unknown future. In the meantime the world will continue to be awash in an ocean of non-energetic debt money, with no real place to go, because the players, either don’t seem to care, or they haven’t got a clue.
On the left coast, Southern California slowly continues to wash into the Pacific Ocean. On the right coast massive snowfalls have broken trees, power lines, and frozen transit, creating economic ice. One town in Maryland is said to have received over 40 inches. The area is expected to receive another winter blast toward the middle of the week. Here in the northwest, the record snows of the last two winters have been replaced with almost an extended spring, with just freezing nights and pleasant days.
El Nino is the climate culprit in all of this. Warm ocean waters in the Pacific have shifted storm tracks to the south, so we see more rain in the arid southwest and as it moves east this moisture laden air becomes essentially an ocean effect snow, similar to the lake effect snowfalls around the Great Lakes, but this time over a lot larger area.
In all the climate change debate about global warming, nothing in the models fits this happening, but many creation scientists, believe that just more massive events as these, were the underlying reality that brought on the ice age after a period of warmth following the Biblical Genesis Flood.
Week in Review: January 24-30, 2010
01/February/2010 12:15
Three
items we find significant enough to merit inclusion
on this look back toward the week that was.
The biggest change in our world came on Wednesday the 27th with Apple’s announcement of their new iPad. Sure this doesn’t have the earthshaking ramifications of President Obama’s State of the Union Address later that evening – well maybe it does, for the President’s remarks seemed to be more of the same coming out a Washington, but we will get back to that later.
I bought a Mac Plus in 1985, it had 1mb of ram, internal and external 800k floppy drives, an Apple dot matrix printer, and cost about $3300 out the door. Following that Apple developmental line, lest we forget the iPad is really the evolutionary descendent of the Newton which debuted in 1993 and died a silent death in 1998. In that intervening decade we have seen the emergence of our current vast array of PDA’s that have greatly changed the way the world does its business and its pleasure. It seems today that the world has become touch-screen; the new iPad now means we might be able to do something revolutionary with touch-screen technology.
I stopped into the local Apple reseller in Spokane on Saturday and they knew just about what you could gather from reading the press, and they said it would probably be a couple of weeks before they would know if they would be able to handle both the Wi-Fi and the 3G versions.
The significance of the technology will probably have a dramatic effect on both your web interface and how you do your reading of what is generally called print media. The ability to embed video in what used to be solely printed words will open a new frontier in the way we get and manage our information. The most apparent is being an acceleration of the dismantling of traditional books, magazines, and newspapers. Just as important is how publishers and authors are going to get paid for their endeavors. The real need for a laptop or desk computer will be that some of us still need a real keyboard to get information at speed into our pages, pretty much everything else we do, can be done on an iPad with a price point varying between $500 – $900.
Read More...
The biggest change in our world came on Wednesday the 27th with Apple’s announcement of their new iPad. Sure this doesn’t have the earthshaking ramifications of President Obama’s State of the Union Address later that evening – well maybe it does, for the President’s remarks seemed to be more of the same coming out a Washington, but we will get back to that later.
I bought a Mac Plus in 1985, it had 1mb of ram, internal and external 800k floppy drives, an Apple dot matrix printer, and cost about $3300 out the door. Following that Apple developmental line, lest we forget the iPad is really the evolutionary descendent of the Newton which debuted in 1993 and died a silent death in 1998. In that intervening decade we have seen the emergence of our current vast array of PDA’s that have greatly changed the way the world does its business and its pleasure. It seems today that the world has become touch-screen; the new iPad now means we might be able to do something revolutionary with touch-screen technology.
I stopped into the local Apple reseller in Spokane on Saturday and they knew just about what you could gather from reading the press, and they said it would probably be a couple of weeks before they would know if they would be able to handle both the Wi-Fi and the 3G versions.
The significance of the technology will probably have a dramatic effect on both your web interface and how you do your reading of what is generally called print media. The ability to embed video in what used to be solely printed words will open a new frontier in the way we get and manage our information. The most apparent is being an acceleration of the dismantling of traditional books, magazines, and newspapers. Just as important is how publishers and authors are going to get paid for their endeavors. The real need for a laptop or desk computer will be that some of us still need a real keyboard to get information at speed into our pages, pretty much everything else we do, can be done on an iPad with a price point varying between $500 – $900.
Read More...
Week in Review: January 17-23, 2010
25/January/2010 11:51
Today begins this new column focusing on the events
of the last week, and their potential ramifications
on future developments. Whether this week in review
becomes weekly is probably dependent upon the weeks
themselves, well as outside forces directly related
to enterprise priorities. No matter how you choose
to view the stupendous changes of this week we must
agree there was a lot going on in the United States
and her close neighbors.
Last week began recovery in Haiti, where the shift took place from looking for buried survivors in the quake’s rubble, to attempting to recover the now dead and decaying bodies. The last estimate I heard stated that total deaths may approach 200,000. This week, while the recovery of bodies continues, the true survival situation is reaching critical mass. So far the Haitian people have been very well behaved as aid has been slow getting into the country and out to the people. Perhaps that peace was, and is just the shock of trying to mentally cope with these catastrophic events. For the foreseeable future, the extremely difficult job of just surviving date to day, amongst the destruction, disease, poverty, hunger, and thirst of just plain life will begin to take a physical and emotional toll. That is true both within the country's citizens as well as those trying to minister help.
On Tuesday Massachusetts elected Scott Brown its first Republican Senator to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy, which had been in the Kennedy family since 1952. Brown was the first Republican Senator elected in the Commonwealth since the 1970s. Scott Brown is a center right Republican with a constitutional governance philosophy much the same as the recently elected governors in New Jersey and Virginia . While this is hailed as a great Republican victory and the end of the filibuster proof Senate, in a way it further points to the fact that the establishments of both the Republicans and the Democrats represent fringe views of the majority of the American people, which will make for more very interesting times as the Congressional elections approach this fall.
Read More...
Last week began recovery in Haiti, where the shift took place from looking for buried survivors in the quake’s rubble, to attempting to recover the now dead and decaying bodies. The last estimate I heard stated that total deaths may approach 200,000. This week, while the recovery of bodies continues, the true survival situation is reaching critical mass. So far the Haitian people have been very well behaved as aid has been slow getting into the country and out to the people. Perhaps that peace was, and is just the shock of trying to mentally cope with these catastrophic events. For the foreseeable future, the extremely difficult job of just surviving date to day, amongst the destruction, disease, poverty, hunger, and thirst of just plain life will begin to take a physical and emotional toll. That is true both within the country's citizens as well as those trying to minister help.
On Tuesday Massachusetts elected Scott Brown its first Republican Senator to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy, which had been in the Kennedy family since 1952. Brown was the first Republican Senator elected in the Commonwealth since the 1970s. Scott Brown is a center right Republican with a constitutional governance philosophy much the same as the recently elected governors in New Jersey and Virginia . While this is hailed as a great Republican victory and the end of the filibuster proof Senate, in a way it further points to the fact that the establishments of both the Republicans and the Democrats represent fringe views of the majority of the American people, which will make for more very interesting times as the Congressional elections approach this fall.
Read More...