Roger's View of the World, Love and Seafood Gumbo!
Seize the Day! Put no trust in the morrow! — Horace
Sometimes I do think Laura likes to mess with my head. She sent me a story about ‘X-Men’… or I should be more accurate and say ‘XX-Men.’
So, just when I think I have finally gotten ‘my arms around’ some of the complexities and contradictions of our limited understandnig of genetics… she throws me — excuse the pun — this ‘curve ball’:
A genetic switch that produces testes has been found. —
What is it with these rich guys?
After George Soros made all of his money he set out to change the world… in some ways we might agree… in others it just sounds plain stupid. So whether the name is Kennedy, Turner… or Soros, they just can’t resist playing with the lives of us ‘little people.’
“Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in 2003 in the foreword of Soros’ book The Alchemy of Finance: “George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game.”
Okay, so a smart guy who made a lot of money and now wants a new game to play in.
His war on the ‘War on Terror’ is another scheme that makes one wonder what his real legacy will be when he is finally done:
“Billionaire financier George Soros, whose opposition to President Bush’s conduct of the war on terror caused him to pour millions of dollars into the effort to defeat the president, made a substantial donation to the defense fund for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart, who last week was found guilty of giving aid to Islamic terrorists.”
The Sorry Tale of George Soros
Here’s what a few others report on Mr. Soros:
Flopping aces
Supporting Israel
Targeting Republicans in Congress
Snapped Shot
Lynn Stewart sentenced to 28 months?
George Soros SPEAKS!
George Soros and MoveOn.Org
Well… you have to admire someone who has enough money to be able to push the world around… most dictators work the same way, but they usually have countries…. as for me… I think I’d spend my money much differently.
Roger Freberg
Most Conservative people… in fact most people it seems… have never listened to the ravings of ‘Air America’ or their self proclaimed d.j. , Al Frankin. As an actor, I sort of liked Al Frankin as the continually drunk baggage handler in ‘Trading places.’
‘Trading Places’ was a story centered around the concept that anyone put into the right or wrong ‘environment’ would predictably turn out either ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ As scientists are now demonstrating, environment is not the entire picture… heredity is a significant fact… certainly more than zero, as implied in the movie.
So, Al Frankin must be upset with the fall of the vaunted Air America… I can hear the jokes… ‘too much hot air’… ‘they burst their balloon’…’to AIR (err) is human”… interestingly enough, seems like the checks were a little light to Al as they still owe him $360,749.98. I am a little disappointed… I didn’t realize that this was a ‘money making’ venture for old Al. I thought he actually BELIEVED what he said…. hmmmmm
Here’s what others say:
Sensible Mom
Ace of Spades
Schadenfreude
Al Franken: not much profit in stealing from the poor
Marathon Pundit
Conservative Talk Shows doing Well
Okay, what AIR AMERICA really forgot — and why they failed — is that we already have a heavy group of folks advocating for the extreme left in the media… they are called NBC, CBS, ABC, CNBC and MSNBC… not to mention their local affiliates.
In my opinion, AIR AMERICA offered hate instead of hope, mediocrity instead of excellence and prozac instead of any solutions.
Roger Freberg
Ted Turner is a true ‘existentialist’… he does what he wants and he says what he wants…. but it always leaves me shaking my head.
Take a look at his life… he built CNN and made a ton… but then he marries Jane Fonda… which has got to be one of the weirdest things to do… I guess it probably helped that you both saw eye-to-eye politically. Talk about ‘sleeping with the enemy.’
Recently, he has made a few more typically strange statements…
First, he says the ‘media’ has no place in showing an American Flag. AaaAaah, Ted, you bought the United Nations with a billion bucks, so should they be showing your flag? Frankly, the blue beenies have yet to serve and protect anyone, dude.
Your other statement about not having decided what side you are on in the war on terror is just plain wacked. Although I know you own a huge part of the frozen north in Montana or the Dakotas… a place where Osama has little or no interest… you might think about the rest of us. If you haven’t seen Ted’s interview, check it out on Youtube.com.
Here’s what others think:
Better to keep your mouth shut
Townhall
Brainster
It just is amazing how out of touch some rich guys are… they forgot their roots. After all, it was my daughter in Iraq… and not his.
Roger Freberg
It is amazing what stuff people will put on the internet… whether it is a simple web site, an email or — as we have recently discovered in the Foley case — an instant message.
Recently, top GOOGLE executives “warn politicians of internet power.” The article opens with the provocative statement :
“Imagine being able to check instantly whether or not statements made by politicians were correct. That is the sort of service Google Inc. boss Eric Schmidt believes the Internet will offer within five years.”
Has the world come to this? Politicians that HAVE TO tell the truth??!! Sheeeesh….
Telling the truth is just good business, good for relationships and an excellent way to develope healthy bonds within a family and between people. This does not mean being untactful… as in… “yes, hun, those pants really do bring out the whale in you!” What it means is telling the truth…. don’t exaggerate… don’t evade or avoid… just say what you mean and mean what you say. It may seem difficult at first, but as it becomes habit…well… it is the only way to live and life becomes so much less complicated this way.
INTERNET SEARCHES
I remember once I gave a political speech and an eager beaver reporter decided to see what dirt he could find out on me… so he asked me about myself, primarily to see if he could ‘catch me’ in a lie. Soon I recieved a phone call that he had discovered I was a fraud… a trickster!…. a scoundrel! Hmmmm…. how’d he figure that out sooo fast?
What the Tribune reporter had done is call the then Los Angeles Rams and see if anyone remembered me… no one did, but then I was part of the ‘great forgetables’ that pass through athletic turnstiles each year…. besides, it wasn’t the receptionists fault anyway… it was her first day. Today, he could have zipped along the internet and found me. He busted a gut, but he did apologize.
EMAILS
My wife sued Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and over 1000 documents — mostly emails — were used in setting up her case written between 1991 – 1999 … it still amazes me what people write in a medium that is not confidential. Too many people look at emails as coversation and forget they are evidentiary. Let’s just say that the emails were enough to turn even a hardened stomach … and the university settled seven years ago.
What amazed me most about Laura’s experience was how so many basically ‘good people’ could go so wrong. Philip Zombardo did a ground breaking experiment years ago placing Stanford Students into two groups — prisoners and guards — and over time watched as they morphed into everyone’s worst nightmare.
Today he has a new book entitled: THE LUCIFER EFFECT: Understanding how good people turn evil. The book costs about $18 not including postage and provides a real insight into the evil that can be seduced and rewarded even in the best of us.
WEB SITES / Instant messaging
What can and can not be placed on web sites and in blogs is continuing to be a point of discussion. Where does the rights of an organization stop and an individual’s free speech begin? Here are a couple of today’s articles in the Daily Trojan on a couple of aspects:
New facebook Stalkers: YOUR parents?
Parents are taking more of an ‘inspect what you expect’ approach to watching their ‘adult children’… especially if mommy and daddy are still paying the bills. Parents just want to know what they are paying for.
Students Ignore web danger at their peril
The jist of this:
“In the meantime, students should be aware that the Internet is and always has been a public space, and anything that crosses its connections could end up on the news tonight.”
Here’s some sites you may not have seen:
“SETAC ASTRONOMY”
In a Robert Redford movie in which he actually looked young entitled ‘SNEAKERS”, someone invented a code breaking device that unlocked all codes… the code name was ‘Setac Astronomy’ which incorporates all the letters needed to spell out something like… ‘No More Secrets.”
Today, secrets can still exist… even within the C.I.A. (sometimes)… but with the internet, ‘secrets’ can be leaked from whistle blowers at Eron or displayed by Drudge’s popular Report introducing America to our favorite cigar maiden Monika Lewinsky…. it’s hard for the good old boys and girls to keep a lid on bad news. Gosh, I guess they thought that no one would ever know.
Thanks to the internet, the world is becoming more open, freer and more data can be reviewed by the average person.
Information is power.
Roger Freberg