Norway killings is the world unsafe?

I'm still trying to get over the insane and tragic news of this weekend with the Norway killings. How a peaceful country like Norway can be the victim of such a killing spree. I've lived in Copenhagen for a long time and I've always regarded Denmark and Norway as some of the most peaceful countries in the world. 

But this incident is beyond me. My condolences go to all the victims their families and to the people of this country whose minds have been scarred by a psychotic guy (or several). 

Now I see comments on twitter and in the news how the world has become unsafe because of this? And that we're all in danger etc etc. Here are people taking advantage of some psychos to spread chaos to everyone. As long as there are psychos around (and unfortunately it's not tomorrow that they'll all be gone) of course we can be victims of such insanity, but that does not mean the world is unsafe. 

There have been psychos for thousands of years, yes I agree that since those that are meant to fix the problem (psychiatrists) are now just feeding them mind bending drugs then telling the world "there's nothing that can be done about it" and worse letting them loose on the population with statements like "well nobody really knows" or crap like that. BUT that doesn't mean we all need to run around feeling unsafe and terrified of our lives. 

Societies work because everyone in them make them work. If we're all aware of what is happening around us and aren't looking the other way when we see someone being weird we can make our area safe. It's not luck or fate that determines how safe we are. It's us as individuals that create the safety, it's us making sure that our neighbors, co-workers, friends, acquaintances and what not are doing well, helping them in times of need, lending a hand and building an atmosphere of safety that's what makes us safe. 

When some nut who should have been locked up long time ago, does go loose he stands out like a sore thumb because he will inevitably not be part of that neighborhood or workplace and these guys will be seen before they do such insane acts. 

And if and when they slip through and commit such atrocities, then we better get even closer and help each other make it safer. Not dish out classic merchant of chaos statements that we're all unsafe.

Let's try and make our world a better place for our kids and for their kids. It starts with us and we make it safer.

Wikileaks and Operation Payback

I've been following the Wikileaks and Operation Payback a little recently and have a couple of viewpoints to share about this.

Wikileaks, a service like that can actually be quite practical. In theory it could help put pressure on governments around the world that possibly forgot that they are there SOLELY in order to help the people (sometimes it seems they think the people are there to help them). Well such a site would help keep the moves of governments in line. Somewhat like Yelp or Qype does for restaurants and hotels. They can't mess around anymore since they know future customers will find out.

Unfortunately it seems Wikileaks is turning into another merchant of chaos system of who can create the biggest scandal. For example the last release - well how much of that actually helps anyone?

Haven't we all told a friend about how stupid the waiter was? Now show those comments to the waiter, wow did you help anyone?

Such sites should be careful and keep a real ideal, something that helps the people.

The second point is Operation Payback. Yet another Terrorist move by the Anonymous banner. That Wikileaks hasn't distanced themselves from that bunch sort of tells us where they are at.

Terror, destruction, intimidation, these are just not healthy ways to lead the world for a change. For example the French revolution, did it bring more freedom to France... well if Napoleon was freedom.

But look a Gandhi, he actually did make a change. Look at Nelson Mandela, he actually managed to get his message through.

I agree that free speech tools need to be used to make known what is happening in those "secret" places like corrupt governments. But it's got to be done right.

What this Operation Payback is going to do for Wikileaks is classify it as an extremist "conspiracy" site for the people and lose it's credibility.

Ash Cloud - really that bad?

The recent ash cloud has been the story for several days. There is something about it that doesn't quite make sense.

Shutting down almost all European airports for 4 days? I have never seen that happen in all my years.

How is it that no planes can fly another route? The sky is huge, there's got to be a way to fly around the cloud.

Then on TV they announce that "unfortunately there is no rain to push away the cloud" which is just another non-sense since the cloud is seemingly over 10,000 meters.

Frankly there is something about this whole shutting down of airports that makes no sense. Who is going to benefit on this?

Well if someone knows more about this please comment as I am sure many others don't understand this either.

H1N1 Swine flu virus - what about those healed?

What's happening with all the people that had swine flu and don't have it anymore?

TV reports daily about the increase and increase of people infected. It just goes on and on, but what about those not infected any more?

The kid of a friend of mine had it. She is totally OK now, TV didn't mention anything.

Maybe there are only a few thousand that still have the flu, maybe it's all cool and nobody is telling us.

A few days ago the French TV media line was that there were very few people showing up to get their vaccines. They showed schools with only 10% people showing up. They showed other places ready to get their vaccines but nobody attending.

Since then the Minister of Heath seemingly got her self vaccinated on TV (was it really a vaccine), the TV media line has changed to promote the howling success of the vaccine and the two recent deaths were specifically announced as being people that haven't been vaccinated.

Can someone do a count of how many people are cured? I know of 1 at least.

H1N1 - Swine Flu remedy?

The daughter of a friend of mine was diagnosed with swine flu some days ago. I was pretty concerned and asked her immediately what she was doing about it.

Her daughter had high fever for several days and was told to wear a facemask and to take Doliprane.

Aside from that I asked what the doctor had told her to do. As far as I know doliprane is a painkiller and as such doesn't actually fight the virus much. She (the girls mother) told me that the doctor told her to give orange juice and kiwis to her daughter for breakfast as they contain C vitamin.

That was it. NOTHING MORE!!!

I was shocked. What about telling her to take C Vitamin? What about the classic flu/infection remedy of taking garlic? What the hell!? Just Doliprane and wait?!

This is sick. Obviously if someone has a virus for several days the natural immune system of the person is fighting the disease, it needs to be helped with elements that make the immune system stronger.

So why in the world does this MD just say "pain killers"?

I'm not even going to get started on the whole hype around the swine flu, frankly I think it's massive media hyperbole and drug companies need something to boost their economy. The French government has already spent upward of 1 billion euros to finance an untested drug.

Wow that's the best "beta product" I have seen released on the market. So what, after many failures we'll see "version 1.0" and then it's another few billions?

Sick.

Exxon, Shell and Fortune 500

On my return from holiday I bought Fortune magazine to read on the 4 hour train ride from south of France to Paris. It's first time I buy the mag and I actually enjoyed it. It changes from the usual bad-news/gossip mags that are out there.

But when going through the global list of fortune 500 companies I was slightly taken aback.

The number one company for profits in 2008 was Exxon Mobil? Hold on a second, I must have read wrong. We had an oil crisis in 2008, the price of crude oil skyrocketed. Low-cost airlines went broke across the world due to skyrocketing gas prices. People were left without jobs, travelers were left around the world needing to pay new flight tickets. And I could go on about the problems the oil crisis.

Yet what am I reading... that Exxon Mobil had the highest ever profits in their history AND not only that, it seems they beat the records for profits of any American company.

Wow, that's slightly disturbing. It's just against any concept of exchange, value for money or service that I know of. If the price of crude goes up, it is understandable that the price to the consumer would raise. But the price of crude went up to about $151 in 2008. It then went back down to $67 today.

That change hasn't been turned over to the consumers.

Now I went through the list of global 500 companies and find the oil companies all over it. It's OK that they make a lot of money and we all heard the story of the Black Gold. The next surprise... Shell is the biggest company in the world!

In fact Fortune's editor puts a little comment "America's Exxon Mobil remains the most profitable company, with income last year of $45.2 billion. In fact, last year's high oil prices allowed global energy companies to dominate this year's list, capturing 7 of the top 10 slots." 

It's a little sad to see that while the world is struggling to find solutions for the incredible pollution problem, for the low economy and incredible job losses.

And in the back of that the oil companies (which make or break many industries since they all rely on oil) are racking in the profits on their backs!

As a Scientologist there is one fundamental datum that is taught again and again. It's the concept of exchange, to always give slightly better service or product than one has received exchange for. I have always lived with that concept and apply it on my work all the time. The results speak for themselves. The companies I work with are all turning around their sales in an otherwise difficult year.

It seems oil companies could learn from these concepts.

French human rights

France claims to be the originators of human rights with their Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which was issued after the revolution in 1789.

The document is good but incomplete. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights as issued by the United Nations after second world war was more complete and covered more rights.

However that the French would claim being the center point of human rights is a bit odd. This is a country that is so anti-religion that muslims can't wear their head-scarves in school. Where the President gets critisized for having spoken to the Pope on his last visit to France (because he is mixing religion and government), where a politician gets heavily attacked in the media because he met with an actor who is also a Scientologist.

How can a government take a religion to court and try to disband it because someone claims there have been mistakes done?

Here is where the simple concept of human rights simply does not exist in that country. Freedom of thought, freedom of beliefs? Where did that go?

It seems some people think they respect human rights because they don't torture people and that's about it. Or that they respect human rights because they don't condone slavery. Ok, well let's pat them on the back for that. Now what about the rest of the points?

With the faith in communism and other "socialistic" systems fading more and more countries are electing more and more right wing governments. I am neither for nor against that, but if the people aren't well educated in human rights the chances are these governments will eliminate them.

The French method of taking it to the streets isn't the solution to everything. Education and integrity will help on the longer run.

My conclusion is that we need to educate ourselves, our children, our neighbours and with that education demand our governments stick to these rights. They can fool the ignorant but not those that know.

Who killed Michael Jackson?

Michael Jackson probably died of medical drugging overdose. But before he started taking medecine to overcome his problems someone or something probably drove him down enough to need to take that route.

In 2003 Michael Jackson allowed Martin Bashir into his ranch, his life and basically everything. He allowed him to film everything, he talked about everything and aside from minimizing the plastic surgery operations, he kept no secrets.

That's a pretty bold move by Michael Jackson - not many stars let a journalist into their lives to such an extent. I mean you probably wouldn't let anyone that close to your life.

If you haven't seen the videos or don't know what I am talking about, I am embedding the first in a series of video interviews that Martin Bashir did entitled Living with Michael Jackson.

There are 10 videos in the series. In these videos Martin Bashir twists facts a la Mad City making great conversations into media spectacle and in the end making Michael Jackson look like a perverted weirdo that would fit with the media line - Wacko Jacko.

How much he twisted these facts comes to life when one watched "Living with Michael Jackson, take two" a follow up documentary made from Michael Jackson's own recordings of the Martin Bashir interviews... a totally different story and a totally different Martin Bashir.

When someone who has been shut off to media for decades, finally opens up and decides to give the media and thus the world, gets stabbed in the back like that, it's a cut that goes deep.

And the audience, who has been dying to get any information about Michael Jackson for year, now is finally given a whole lot of twisted viewpoint making their idol look like pedophile weirdo.

It's no wonder he then secluded himself even further. Following that the drugs became a necessity and a "solution" to avoid the real world and from there it's a matter of very little before he hits the bottom.

It's a misuse of human rights, the right to freedom of speech that give journalists the power to say anything and turn it in any way. But with the internet maybe that right will be taken from them and given to the people that can find out for themselves and separate fact from fiction and truth from opinions.

For human rights... 17th July

On 17th July bloggers from the whole world are going to unite and blog for Human Rights.

It's a cause I believe in. If everyone knew their rights and knew them well (and I am the first to say I could know them better) we would not be finding ourselves in situations like we do.

Human Rights exist, they are based on common sense, they should be made known and put to use!

Join us on http://www.bloggersunite.org/event/bloggers-unite-for-human-rights-2009

Scientology in France

Scientology has this court case going in France. It's annoying as a Scientologist to see someone working at religions again.

Then again that's a bit of French history repeating itself isn't it. Its understandable that there is a bit of a bitter aftertaste in the mouth of some French when one goes through history and what some religions have done to minority groups.

But we're in the 21st century... people have learned to think now and to look and observe (well most have I'm excluding those rabid fanatics that spend most of their time on the internet destroying lives).

Well anyways, back to the post: Scientology in France, the Court case? well really how can one ban a religion? It's a pretty silly thing to even think. It's like banning an idea, so what's next the Thought Police?

Whatever happens - the idea grows as long a people believe it and find truth in it.

Scientology just happens to be going through a very stabilizing phase called the Golden Age of Knowledge where all the basic texts of the religion have returned to their originals plus hundreds of additional lectures released to go with it.

Scientolgists understand and apply it much more.

So... it's not really about to go too far.

The future of Wikipedia?

I've often had my doubts on the value of the Wikipedia. And yet I often find myself using it when searching for information.

My doubts on it's validity started when I saw the text on Scientology. Some true some false but constantly changing and often to the worse. In fact the whole page is quite slanted and really doesn't give a full factual view of Scientology. It's just not really what one would expect from a source that is meant to have some authority. Somehow after reading the article one would expect to have an overview of the subject. The plus and the minus equaling out and in the end being able to make up one's own mind.

What has always had me rather skeptical was how could people who randomly consider themselves experts on a subject decide to update an entry. Sure they have to base it on facts but "facts" are so easily made up.

Unfortunately this affects the dream of the web 2.0 encyclopedia.

I believe in web 2.0 and I have loved it since it started. But it works as long as nobody claims to be an authority on a subject. A blog is perfect, it's an opinion and most people can make the difference between a fact and an opinion.

An encyclopedia can't be web 2.0 its just against the whole concept. Its like calling a meeting with a thousand people and doing a dictionary with them. "The definition of the word computer is:..." and a thousand answers later we have a useless mess or something that is 168 definitions long and equally useless.

If someone were to start an article about me and decide to "factually" spread a bunch of crap about me, dig out somethings I did when I was a teenager and focus on that, I guess I wouldn't be happy. And then when I edit it I am banned from the site because it then becomes slanted? Wait a minute - who is slanted here?

Well the wikipedia has a future and in my opinion it will go either of two ways:
(a) crash and burn and the articles become more and more slanted or
(b) like any encyclopedia, they will need to hire scholars and professionals and get all their facts verified and edited before they publish them.

I hope they take the latter, because it does have some value that everyone in the world can propose articles and we could create a massive encyclopedia that would be much bigger than anything ever done before.


PS: BTW if you really want an honest view of what Scientology is, find a Scientologist and take him/her out for a coffee and find out all about it. Then read a book and make your own opinion. But that will be the subject of another post at another time.

Scientology goes to court in France

Scientology is being sued in France by a woman who claims that the religion has been manipulating her and pressuring her to pay large sums after having been offered a free personality test. The case is against the entire church of Scientology - the belief.

I don't know the details of the court case and am getting more facts on that. But looking at the information I do find, it seems like a pretty ordinary "case" against Scientology.

The scenario goes something like this.
1. Find something about a group that the general public wont understand.
2. Publicize it as the standard thing of that group and give it an angle of evil and bad intent.
3. General public who doesn't have the time to study up on it for real will believe what he hears.
4. Roll out with "evidences" if you can't find any, look for unhappy former members and get their interviews. In most cases for a bit of money or some status reward.

Voila you have a "good" case. Add a bit of controversy, money and big names and you even have a news story! It's not that hard.

In fact there was a TV Program on M6 (French TV station) called "Enquête exclusive" it depicted the story of Senegalese salesmen under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, on tourist locations in Rome and on street stands in New York or elsewhere around the world. Per that piece of journalistic wonder these "salesmen" are part of a "very organized" religion in Senegal and that part of all the money made by these "salesmen" goes to the head of that religion.

The connection between the religion and these salesmen is dubious. The evidence on screen is a bunch of people praying in a medium to small sized, dropping coins in a bag and a few doller bills in a box. Right after that claims are made that "Religion and Business are mixed here" shortly after a member of the church is interviewed who says that any believing member would give everything he had to the church.

And with that and a few more images which the narrator clearly tinges with his opinions, the "investigation" links the street salesmen to a religious group. The street salesmen seemingly being the "money machine" for the religion.

But when you look just about 1 nanometer under the surface - that is what the narrator is saying based on no fact. Unless putting a few coins in a donations bag is part of a secret financial system of a mysterious religion of Africa...

Well back to Scientology now. The court case is about someone who claims Scientology is an extortion and took their money by force. Well if Scientology really did that and if that really was part of the religion it would long since have ended and people (not the justice system) would have shut down the religion long ago.

Could it be that someone (i.e. the media) is only listening to what they want to hear? Could it be that there is something more to Scientology than money? and that the donations made to the church are actually valid donations with a valid purpose?

Could it be that people donate because they truly are feeling spiritual enlightenment?

For some info from the Scientology site in France there is a link here: http://scientologie-espace-presse.fr/ it is all in French but could be of use if you want to hear some background info to what the news says.

Financial Crisis, a great way to justify ineffectiveness

I hear about the Financial crisis all the time, it's a bit tiring after all these month.

And now fellow employees are telling me that the reason for less sales is the Financial crisis - that is when I realize how much the media actually manages to dupe the population.

Steve Jobs had a great thing to say about that once:

"A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets."
Steve Jobs

The fact of the matter is that the financial crisis is a great way to explain to everyone that one is ineffective at conceiving a good product, producing it in a high quality and then marketing it and selling it. And this works for anyone on any job. If one is a great cleaner and cleans better than the rest one will be able to sell his product.

Despite the crisis there are still 6 billion people out there and they need products every day. Whether the banks have money or not they will want to buy those product even those considered a luxury!

Where I work we sell luxury goods and we're breaking all records month after month. Why? The product is great, the price is high but competitive and we market the product, people come in droves and they love it!

Elections... please vote!

American elections are always something to behold. The fanfare and hullabaloo that goes on is amazing. The money spent at campaigns is quite amazing too (Actually I hope someday that gets some form of control as it is totally unreal and really doesn't need to be - they would have a president without all that).

I just watched a French documentary movie called "Being W" which was released about one month before "W" by Oliver Stone, it is quite hilarious actually.

You can see the trailer here:

While we can definitely discuss the possibility of a conspiracy to get W on as president - I am sure enough people are doing that already. It is true that due to lack of votes the polls were tight enough to be able to proclaim him president.

I loved the video below featuring an amazing gamut of stars.
(Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Snoop Dogg, Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, Ben Stiller, Will Smith, Steven Spielberg, Justin Timberlake, along with Sacha Baron Cohen as “Borat,” Zach Braff, Colin Farrell, Neil Patrick Harris, Scarlett Johansson, Shia LeBeouf, Tobey Maguire, Ryan Reynolds, and Jason Segal)

Check it out.

Borat's comments sporadically inserted take the video from being funny to hilarious. And the message really comes across well.

I would vote after seeing this.

However what scares me most about this election is the choice of candidates. The two main candidates (Obama and McCain) just fail to convince me on their abilities to lead the most powerful nation in the world. It is like a status race for personal benefit rather than getting the country back on track.

I saw the video of an unlikely winner (Ron Paul) which seems to convince a lot more.

But unfortunately - as usual I just doubt that the ones that really care and who actually mean to make some real positive improvements, just don't get voted in.

Well all I can say to all Americans is VOTE! Your vote makes a huge difference on the world scene!

The financial recession ... en passant

 

Ok so we're being repeatedly reminded by the press that we are in a financial recession. There is probably a bunch of truth in that but I don't understand why the press is so keen to keep spreading the news of the "catastrophe" that is about to happen.

At the end of the day this is their money too!

Which news editor doesn't know that the more one can bring panic to the people the more they will try to take their money out of the banks and the more they do that the worse off the whole situation will go? It is one of the first things we all learned about banks.

Yet they are all too happy to repeat it in the news EVERY DAY and SEVERAL TIMES a day! At the end of the day it is their own savings they are messing up.

If I were an editor I would be slightly worried about my own money - and maybe I would try to find some good news about the financial situation so I could cool the whole thing down a bit.

Sometimes I wonder what really goes on in the mind of a news editor...

Now back to banking. I recently read a simple and excellent text that L. Ron Hubbard wrote about banking to the financial departments of Scientology Churches. It is from September 1982 it's called "AND THAT IS BANKING".

It explains in simple terms what banking is, what inflation is, what the role of a banker is etc. I advise it to anyone who can read.

It is volume 3 of the Management Series by L. Ron Hubbard. In the section called Finance Series. And exists in about 11 languages or more.

ADHD and Michael Phelps

Just like the many millions of others I spent the last few weeks intensely following the Olympic games and seeing the results. The other day when Michael Phelps won his eighths Gold medal for these Olympics he mentioned that his teacher had once told him he would not be able to do anything in his life.

I thought that was a pretty extreme statement from a teacher (shouldn't teachers be encouraging students to become something?) well I checked up on it and found that he had been labeled with ADHD and even put on ritalin for it!

Yet here he goes and becomes not only an Olympic champion but THE Olympic champion of all time! Not just winning by chance but actually setting himself the exact goal and then doing it. In other words a true winner. Deciding to do something and then doing it, is the definition of a win.

It again goes to say how wrong the ADHD label is. Because a student has trouble concentrating (something that is very simply explained in the Study Technology) is no reason to put him on drugs!

They labeled Tom Cruise the same way and look at him now, probably one of the most successful actors of all time.

How do they get away with this?

There are real solutions to such lazy labels like ADHD, I am linking to a couple here but I am sure there are more.

http://www.appliedscholastics.org/
http://www.whatcausedmysymptoms.com/

Check them out.

Open-Source Terrorism

I love the internet, it's a great way for people to be able to communicate and for others to remain informed of what is happening. Probably thanks to the internet things like the second world war will never be able to happen again.

Recently I've been seeing these articles about a "group" called Anonymous. And it got me thinking. Who would want to call themselves anonymous leave no traces and just destroy the lives of others "for fun" what fun. The last person I knew who thought that was fun was in Germany and that was in the 1940s.

Well back to my headline. What is this anonymous thing? is it really some sort of organized on-line terrorist group? Or is it just open-source terrorism. I.e. anyone who wants to vandalize something in cyberspace just signs Anonymous and gives the idea that this was some sort of organized activity?

I think it is the latter.

It's so easy now to just create havoc, mess people's lives and assign it to some ambiguous group "anonymous". Some poor student sitting at home being bored can go in hack a computer, crash a window or whatever and sign it anonymous.

Meanwhile a few merchants of chaos can sell the idea, instigate the hate, propagandize the idea a la Goebbles and tell everyone that they are operating off some group called "anonymous".

Well, the bottom line is free speech doesn't mean free messing up of people's lives. And the internet is about free speech not free destruction.

Just an environmentally friendly idea

I had a crazy idea the other day. Maybe it could work - of course it would require someone to lobby the big petrol companies and governments and so forth and while I know by blog is good ;-) I don't know if it is that good yet.

In order to reduce the traffic in the cities we could increase the public transport use. That is a known fact and many big cities are promoting that. However taking a bus, the metro, a subway or train in most countries costs a fortune. And the prices are going up every year. It is like they are trying to get rid of customer!

Now what if the big oil companies did a super PR stunt. They would sell the gas for all buses in the cities at cost. i.e. no profit for them. Even maybe donate some of it (it isn't like they are low on cash - what with all the Iraq resources being opened to them in the last few years). They get a label on the buses saying they have sponsored that and it's great PR for them.

Then we get all the taxes on these buses and metros cancelled, just slash it down to nil. Basically nobody makes profit on the money - but everybody makes profit on the environment sustaining itself a little longer.

The oil companies get good PR on it. The Politicians get good PR on it. The people get less cars and less polution.

We all get to live a few years more on our lovely home.

Well it was a thought, if you have a comment POST it.


PS: It's great to be back.

What's happening to these kids? the contrasts of our generations

I got this on an email. I it pretty fun. And at the same time quite revealing on the social and moral decline that we are living through (and hopefully doing something to change).

I posted a similar fun series of comparisons of the last 30 years called All in the Name of Progress.

And if you don't read anything - at least check out the quote from Jay Leno on the bottom.

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's
and 70's!!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. (That we know of)

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because, WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computer! S, no Internet or chat rooms.

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Not only would our parents spank us, but other adult members of the community would feel free to either spank us or threaten to spank us – AND WE RESPECTED THAT AND THEM!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

If YOU are one of them...CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good.

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:
"With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?"

Tom Cruise, Religion, Germany and the Freedom of Press - or irresponsible reporting in the name of the buck

I was somewhat surprised about all the media stories being run last week about "Germany" not allowing Tom Cruise to make his new film.

At first I sort of wondered if they had really stepped out of line that far. I mean it would be almost as stupid as starting to yell at the person you are doing a documentary on. Then I realised that the article just could not point to any specific source - it was all general statements like "German Government" and other such ambiguous people.

Then when someone starts really doing their investigation it turns out it is one not so tolerant politician that voiced her opinion (It would be like asking Le Pen what his opinion is of the foreigners in France and publishing it as the official statement). The media hid that fact and then had stories to sell for another week.

My point is Freedom of Speech includes a certain responsibility. The Free Press can be helpfull if they are responsible.

But nobody even looks at it that way anymore. "That's just the way it is" doesn't make our lives easier to live. As bloggers we have the power to report the truth no matter what the media says. Let's not waste it!

A fellow blogger, Grahame did a really great post on this whole hullabaloo, called Unfair Treatment of Germany in the Press. Actually an honest piece of "journalism". More people should do this.