When did we stop learning?

I'm not one to brag, but I know a few things.  I know that math and music have more in common that the average person might think.  I know that a trip from my home to Milwaukee, WI will take 15 hours at 20 miles per hour.  I know what a dew point is and what effect it has on weather.  And, I know that June 6 is the anniversary of D-day.

It was on June 6 of this year that I found out that there are some people who don't know about D-day.  They don't know what it was, what it accomplished, or why we should remember it!  I know that it was more than 70 years ago, and that one might think it has little to do with the timeline on your Facebook page, but I just want to scream "Dammit all, didn't you learn ANYTHING in school?"

Veterans of the landings at Normandy, if they're still alive, are pushing 100 years old, and it won't be long before we read the article about the death of  the last survivor of that fateful day.

That's what makes this harder and harder to understand!  Imagine a world where the Normandy Invasion never happened.  It's not hard, if you've contemplated a Trump presidency.

As Americans, the words "Concord and Lexington" are firmly ingrained in our collective memories as important moments in our Revolutionary War.  The same is said for various Civil War battles, including The Siege of Atlanta and the Battle of Shiloh.  We may not remember the dates, but the battles and military actions are important to us as a nation.

While we require that a person who wants to become an American citizen pass a civics exam to be sure they know what our country is all about, we rarely require this from our own, native-born citizens.

We're all worried about how we stack up against other countries when it comes to math scores and science scores, but when it comes to history our educators have allowed our young students to coast through with little understanding of how things like World War II affect our daily lives RIGHT NOW!

Movies like Starship Troopers suggest that one way to become a citizen would be to serve a mandated minimum time in military service to their country.  I like that.  I would also suggest that people should be required to pass an exam, similar to the one that immigrants have to take, before being allowed to vote.

What really worries me, though, is the fact that the children of these oblivious people are looking up from their homework and saying: "Dad, can you help me with WWII history?"  To which Dad replies: "D-day?  What's that?"

Conspiracy Theories and static on your radio.

In the 1980's, I was a young and budding sceptic.  This applied to what I'd heard of conspiracy theories and urban legend.  I was first learning of The Freemasons and The Illuminati.  I was first hearing about fake moon landings, although I'd have thought that they'd have been more believable had "Capricorn One" not been released several years earlier.  And I'm hearing that there has been a resurgence of theorists who believe that one.  And I've always been sceptical.  

"Come on, guys.  You're trying to tell me that they faked all that work, all that time and all of those resources just to fool us into believing that a man walked on the moon?" I thought.  "Who would do that?  And, why?  Nah...I'm not buying that one."

And that brings us to the current dust-up. Just to show that rap music has just as many crazies as the rest of today's music (No, I didn't forget you, Volvique Louis Jean Jr.) here's the latest from rapper B.o.B.

B.o.B (Try typing THAT name quickly and you'll sprain something.) believes that the earth is flat.  He sees it every time he climbs the hills near Atlanta.  He nearly tries to use scientific evidence to back his claims without realizing he doesn't have the equipment and resources needed to make the measurements needed.  

But you know who does?  NASA.  That's right.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  And according to every measurement ever taken by NASA, the earth is not flat.  Bummer, right?  Another rap hero bites the dust.  

Except, B.o.B won't buy that.  He's going to write a rap that calls out fucking Neil DeGrasse Tyson!!  COME ON!!  You're going to dis a national treasure like NDeGT?  This is the guy who brought us the new Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey!!  The guy has a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia University!!  I think he knows a bit more about the subject that I do, or that B.o.o.B has.

Sometimes, the conspiracies that we think we see are smaller scale.  I have a friend who refuses to upgrade to Windows 10 because then Microsoft will own all of his information.  Okay, you know what?  I kinda believe that MS has more information about me than I'm comfortable with, but what is there for me to worry about?  I don't know any top-secret information.  I'm not hiding Jimmy Hoffa in my basement.  And, I don't believe that upgrading my computer is going to give them any more information than they'd get from Google, or any number of other online resources.  My opinion?  Have at it.  If I haven't already been arrested, then we'll just assume that I'm still in the good subset of people on the database.   

Who REALLY killed JFK?  Has HAARP really been a cause of some recent hurricanes?  Has E.T. been up to no good here on Earth?

Back to the 80's, where I was contemplating things.  You see, I thought, to accomplish something SO massive as a JFK assassination cover-up, or the "conspiracy" to cover up Barack Obama's birthplace, you need people.  Lots and lots of people.  Remember, any "conspiracy", by definition, is going to include more than one person.   And, I had to wonder why, after all this time, one, just one, person hasn't spilled the beans.  "I was the guy who burned Obama's actual Nigerian birth certificate, and watched while his new one was devised."  

Suzanne Jacobs, at Grist.org, wrote a great article that describes the math behind this.  She says the same thing I'd been thinking for thirty years.  The more people involved in a conspiracy, the quicker that conspiracy is exposed.

Racist Fucks

If you haven't already seen the video, I invite you to check it out.  A "man" in Pennsylvania decided to harass a few protesters.  This guy, who news sources have identified as John Pisone, approached a group who were protesting fracking in Mars, PA, just after Christmas.  

John Pisone - Racist Fuck

Now, Mr. Pisone approached the group, apparently to find out if any of them had ever worked for a living.  "...I do work.  What do you do?"  Because THAT is the one thing that determines a person's right to protest something they believe in.  Many of the folks I saw in the video looked old enough to have retired.  More than once, you can here him telling these people that they are lazy.  

It gets worse within the first minute.  Little Johnny decided that the camera man was a nice target, especially because he was a black man.  After showing everyone his commanding use of the English language by calling him "chimp" and "nigger", and getting admonished by several of the group, he states, "I don't give a fuck.  He's milking my tax dollars."  

Let's consider that the cameraman, Tom Jefferson, HAS a job.  He films and distributes video of events, mainly protests, near his home near Pittsburgh.  His YouTube channel has 311 subscribers as of the time I write this.  People DO make money posting videos to YouTube.  I don't know who his employer is, or if he even has an employer but, my point is, neither does John Pisone!!  He just walked up and started harassing people because HIS job (what job was that?  Oh yeah, "work".) was rained out.

Pisone is the definitive racist, insisting that Jefferson couldn't possibly have a job because the man is black.  He manages to cover most of the racist talking points in the first minute of the video, then prods the cameraman by grunting like a gorilla.  

Patrick Rushing - Racist-in-Chief

Let's move on to Airway Heights, WA, where the mayor turns out to be a bigoted S.O.B.  That's right.  THE MAYOR!  The Young Turks did a piece on this loser back in July that is poignant.    Patrick Rushing is this pud's name, and he was the mayor of this city until August, when he finally caved to pressure to resign.  His explanation?  "...back and forth banter that my friends and I do."  Nice friends, hey?

Airway Heights, according to Wikipedia, is 69.51% White, 10.47% African American, 9.93% Hispanic, 3.20% Native American, 1.84% Asian, 0.38% Pacific Islander, and 1.56% from other races.  I'll lay odds that during the next elections, the people of this city will be asking candidates if they are now, or have ever been, RACIST FUCKS.

More over, as any red-blooded American has done, he's posted his rantings on Facebook, of all places!!  Folks, if you've got something to say that could possibly be considered controversial, YOU DON'T POST IT ON FACEBOOK!!!  Now that he has, though, feel free to run to his page and comment.  In some posts, Rushing also claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ.  There's a real Christian, hey?

And, finally, just because I think it's funny, I present Dumbass number 4,264,994.  (I made that number up.  It's probably higher.)  This one is out of Florida and features this white trash.

Miss Congeniality

Pretend that she has a clue and listen to what she says.  More than once she accuses these gents of taking pictures of planes and calls it a prelude to terrorism.  Never mind the fact that two of the three guys in the video are/were in the U.S. military and served in Afganistan!  BTW, she's putting their faces and license plates on...wait for it.  FACEBOOK!  Oh, and I should mention that she has "Gawd" on her side.

Ignorance comes in many forms and these are only a scant few of the many examples.  "He's black and he's not in a factory between 9 and 5 so, he must be a lazy n--gger."  "She's black and has a 'gorilla face' that only her 'monkey man' could love."  "They're brown so they have to be 'Middle-Easters' and terrorists."

Isn't America great?  More and more, people who have NO clue go out of their way to become real assholes and preach it to the masses.  

In practice, and now, on paper...

In the last couple years, there've been changes to the headlines regarding marijuana.  We're hearing less and less about federal authorities raiding farms, businesses or homes in search of weed.  Most of the time, there's one of two things happening.  One is, they're raiding a place for something different and find the marijuana. ("Dude rolled up to grab Tommy for stealin' Social Security checks and found his stash.")  The other possibility is that the quantity of marijuana just can NOT be ignored.  ("They busted that fucker with $25,000 cash, a new car and 14 pounds of Kush, but he works at Burger Sling!  That fucker's going down for dealing!" or "DEA agents in Miami confirmed that Pablo Ortiguez was apprehended last night by federal agents, and charged with trafficking more than 17 tons of  marijuana from a port in Mexico...")

One other headline we don't see much of, recently, is the local dispensary getting raided and all of their inventory, their computer records, their real estate and their money seized.  

It's been common knowledge for a while that the federal government has bigger things to worry about, when it comes to drugs, than marijuana.  

Graphic by HuffPo.com

 Since 1996, 23 states have legalized medicinal use of marijuana in one form or another, and three states have legalized recreational use for adults.  In the beginning, there were headlines about the DEA's raids on several (state-legal) dispensaries in California, and on outdoor grow operations.  Farmers in Northern California were used to the sight of DEA helicopters flying in the hills, looking for enterprising people getting back to the land.  

In December of 2014, Congress and President Barack Obama ended the federal prohibition on medical marijuana very non-dramatically.  And, just a few days ago, Congress passed a spending bill that now prohibits the feds from messing with states that have enacted their own marijuana laws.  

But, I'm not planning on buying a sea going vessel and a map of the Colombian coast, either.  It is still illegal to import it.  It is still against the law for businesses hoping to cash in on marijuana to use banks to transfer moneys for their business.  You still can't use the interstate highway system to transport it from one state to another.  

One other thing to consider.  Marijuana is still listed as a Schedule I drug.  This means that in the eyes of the federal government, marijuana has NO medical benefits and does NOT treat chronic ailments or acute illness.  Veterans of our armed forces cannot take advantage of medical marijuana and VA doctors can't even mention the term.  

There's more work to be done...

The facts...

One thing that we're going to see a lot of this season is fact-checking.  There used to be a time where Joe Public couldn't access the information that we have at our fingertips.  As little as 30 years ago, you wouldn't have been able to look at "evidence" cited by politicians who were delivering speeches on the campaign trail.  Heck, twenty years back, many search engines would have had a hard time looking at analyses by think-tanks across the country.

But that was then, and this, of course, is now.  So, it makes you wonder if The Don has anyone on his staff with, say, a smartphone?  I mean, if the guy I work for, when referring to the 9/11 attackers', tells my country that "...the people, the animals that did that, they sent their wives and their families back to Saudi Arabia. Most of them went back to Saudi Arabia. Those wives knew what their husbands were going to do.", I want to check and be sure that the statement is correct and that any of the perpetrators had so much as a PET, much less a wife and/or girlfriend.  I mean, that way, The Don doesn't have a delusional moment and quote his most famous line while looking directly at me.  "No, Donald.  I'm not fired...."

Read Politifact's analysis of this very reference.  Then check out the numbers on more of the things he's said.  (Feel free to browse the statements made by, and about, the other candidates on either side of the aisle.)

I found a great video that exposes more examples of "facts" that just don't match reality.  Follow this link and spend five minutes hearing the REAL facts.

Photo by www.prnewsonline.com

This brings me back to the fact-checkers.  These guys HAVE to get it right if they expect to have jobs a year from now.  "I see you've gotten a degree from DePaul University...13th in a class of 210.  Very nice...oops.  What's this?  A stint with Trump for President?  I'm VERY sorry.  Umm,...we filled that position."

And, for those of you wondering where I got my facts from, here's a list of links that will illustrate my point much better than I:

FactCheck.org
PolitiFact
and Flackcheck.org


UPDATE:  Donald, Donald, Donald.  Can you shut the fuck up?

During a recent speech, The Don was heard to say that Hillary Clinton got "schlonged" when she lost NC during the 2012 primaries against Barack Obama.  Not ready to leave well enough alone, he went on to explain himself via Twitter:  "Once again, #MSM is dishonest. "Schlonged" is not vulgar. When I said Hillary got "schlonged" that meant beaten badly."   #MSM refers to "Mainstream Media".  Now, I'm not going to pretend that our media is totally accurate OR honest.  We've been through too much to believe that.  But, then, to say that "schlonged" means "beaten badly"...   First, get a dictionary in the language that you plan to use.  Second, I hope I'm not the first to make the connection between The Don and his badly beaten schlong...

The mainstream story....

Trump's foot must taste like Cotton Candy

There must be something about Donald Trump's tastebuds that make him crave the flavor of his own foot.  I mean, he sticks his foot in his mouth so often, that's the only explanation that I can come up with.

CNN has a list of groups that he's managed to offend.  They include the disabled, Muslims, Seventh-Day Adventists, Blacks, Asians and Women.  The list also includes the other Republican candidates but, that's the nature of the beast when you're running for president.  (You think Kennedy and Nixon didn't exchange barbs?)

And yet, he's still the front-runner as the Republican nominee!!   Sure, his numbers have dropped, but HE'S STILL LEADING IN THE POLLS!

Has the Republican voter worn blinders this ENTIRE campaign season?  I mean, I KNOW that there are black Republicans and disabled Republicans and female Republicans.  There HAVE to be.  And yet, 31% of those polled would still vote for him.  Sheep...

UPDATE: (12-14-2015)  The Don has managed to do it again.  He recently introduced an idea that would prevent ANY muslims in the country.  Now, this may seem relatively harmless except, this will include American citizens!!  That's right.  We're supposed to shut down immigration of muslim people.  Then, muslims already in the country must stay in the country because, if they leave the country for ANY reason, they will not be allowed to re-enter, even American citizens who are muslim!!  And, the real kicker, this may not include our muslim Americans fighting in Iraq and Afganistan, but he feels that we should watch them, or, as he puts it, "be ever vigilant".  

Now, where did I leave my swastika armbands?  

Ben Carson, the current runner-up, can't seem to get support from the one group that he should bet on!  While he leads the Republican field with Blacks, Hillary and Bernie get more support than he does.

Ted Cruz likes to misquote others regarding national issues...

Marco Rubio can't seem to find a fact he couldn't distort, as well.  Maybe I'm just super-sensitive to the failings of the Republican group, but DAMN!!  And, let's look at what other groups are saying about the candidate.

Jeb Bush?  Well...  Sorry Jeb.  You seem poised to lose your place at the big-boy table.

Now, let's look at Hillary's records at FactCheck.org regarding recent statements.  Sure, she's a politician so things are a different shade of gray, but fewer outright untrue statements come from her and/or her campaign.

And Bernie?  Well, he may not get his facts straight 100% of the time, but at least his solutions to the nation's ills make sense!  If you look at his campaign platform, I'm sure that you'll find, at least, five stances that can affect you in a positive way.

One more link.   This points to the New York Times and their take on the public statements made by most of the presidential candidates.  VERY revealing!

Christ, folks.  Vote with your brain.  Vote with your wallet.  Just check what the candidates say and apply it to your own lives and experiences.

Grammar Nazis

I am somewhat the Grammar Nazi.  I'm not the best one, I'm sure.  There are, no doubt, several who have read these posts who would attack entire pages of my material with an editor's pencil and kill the entire thing, but I know more of the rules than you might guess.  Punctuation is not my strongest suit, but spelling and usage are.  I try my hardest to use words as they are intended to be used.  "Less" versus "Fewer", for example.  "Good" vs. "Fine", "Your" vs. "You're", and the classic "There" vs. "Their" vs. "They're"...

Compliments of Oxford Dictionary's Twitter page

So it really bugs me that The Oxford Dictionary decided that an emoji should become their Word of the Year.

Can we truly call something that would be unrecognizable as a word without a computer translating it to a visual representation a "word"?  What happens when there is no computer between the person writing the "word" and the receiver of the message?  Then, an emoji just becomes a sequence of symbols that, alone, make no sense.  :-(

We called them "emoticons" until the intervening computer translated them into graphical representations of that sequence.

OD defines "word" as: "A single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed."  I suppose that an emoji can be considered a word if you use this definition.  It seems to meet the requirements.  It is a distinct element, it is often (though, not usually) used as part of a sentence.   But, is it still a word?

A list of the most recent Words of the Year include a hashtag, and the word "hashtag", itself.  While one might fit the definition of "word", I'm not as sure about the other.  Just as nominating a specific emoji might make me wonder if OD should start to use it's own definition of "word" when announcing their "Word of the Year".