Somehow I missed this. Way back in April of this year Obama apparently set forth a goal for NASA. Land a man on a small rock.

“By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space,” he said. “We’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history.”

I’m not quite sure why we would want to try to land on a tiny speeding piece of rock. I’m certainly not questioning the brains of the Great Wise One, but I don’t see that the benefits outweigh the risks. I guess that is why he is president and I am not.

Some Blogging Guy

I have been reading much lately. I would like to share with you some of my experiences.

Marxism

I read several prominent radical left wing websites and blogs. Many of those are unabashedly Marxist, and that led me to go back to my 9th grade civics class to refresh my understanding of the theory that Marx and Engels developed.  After doing so, I arrived at the same conclusion that I did when I was a 9th grader. Wonderful concept, completely unworkable when you add human beings to the theory.

However, if you want to understand clearly the negative attributes of Capitalism, find a Marxist. Essentially one third of their entire philosophy consists of competently tearing apart Capitalism. Trust me, there is plenty wrong with Capitalism. I could dedicate an entire blog to this subject. I may one day.

I think it should be mandatory for all MBA programs to include Marxists criticism of capitalism. They have some sound arguments.

Of course, you can’t make a case for Marxism simply by showing how bad Capitalism is and then offering a default Marxist solution simply because it isn’t Capitalism!  One has to promote the characteristics of Marxists, what it stands for, not what it doesn’t stand for, in order to be fair and honest. But being fair and honest is not what Marxists are about.

Marxists want to ban property ownership and individual freedom in order to promote equality. Everyone is equally poor and equally enslaved. But interestingly enough, there is a disclaimer at the very end of the Marxist agenda. It reads, in 5 point type, that all of the Marxists philosophies applies to everyone, except those who are in power.

But one can learn from Marxism how to improve Capitalism to make it better.

Capitalism

I have been reading about the economy and what led up to the Great Recession. Of course, there are numerous competing theories about this. If you are interested, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has written a 66 page research paper on what he believes caused the meltdown, and offers some vague possibilities about the future. He actually starts his historical analysis at the conclusion of the Cold War. It is very interesting and not as difficult reading as I thought it would be. The link for the PDF document is located here.

This has caused me to read several other articles about the Great Recession, what caused it and what the options are to get us out of it. One of the authors claimed one of the causes was the consumers in America being squeezed by inflation and lack of salary growth, which led them to go out on the credit card debt limb to continue to finance a life style that was unreasonable.  In other words, we went from a society that used credit to finance large purchases to a society that used credit to pay for beer and donuts.

Those of you who are more experienced with life will recall that fifteen years ago one could not purchase groceries or fast food with credit cards. The concept of paying for a burger and fries on credit was absurd!

Honesty

Any political or economic system has to include the human equation. None actually do this well. What I have concluded from my reading as well as my living is that we don’t have a political or economical crisis – we have an Honesty Crisis.

People are just not honest. I think people in America were more honest in previous generations. There really was a time and place where a man’s handshake was sufficient to bind him to his word. Now legal contracts are not enough to do so.

Don’t get me wrong, people have always been dishonest. I just think today we have lost the entire concept of honesty. Our corporations, our political institutions, our elected officials, everyone is clueless about the concept! Forget the practice!

Here is an interesting bit of research that may open some eyes. Sociologist Stanley Presser of the University of Maryland and research assistant Linda Stinson of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics conducted research in the late nineties on church attendance. They came up with two conclusions.

1) Church attendance had dropped from 42% in 1965 to about 26% in 1994 in America.

2) At least 16% of those who said they attended church were liars!

So, I wonder if our society had placed a real value on honesty if we would have the financial crisis we have now? Would we have the political crisis we have now?

Something to think about.

Some Blogging Guy

Has not been invented yet. However, the concept exists in my mind and in my science fiction stories. It is a thin pencil like device that men carry in their shirt pockets and women have in their makeup bags. Or maybe it is on a string and hangs about your neck like a fancy pair of sunglasses.

When you arrive at the coffee shop and sit down with your brew and scone, you simply lay the pencil-like device on the table in front of you. You press the button on the end as you would a pen. Immediately, a virtual image of a computer screen appears above the pen-like device. A holographic computer screen. One that you can adjust to see through or make almost solid in appearance. You can adjust the size too, from 8 inches across to 20.

At the same time, a holographic keyboard is displayed on the table in front of the pencil-like device. It too can take any size. As you poke your fingers onto the table top in front of you, you are typing onto the keyboard. You can activate key sounds if you like.

There is a holographic touch pad too, and maybe even a mouse.

You can also touch the screen aka IPAD and it will work that way too.

The software is universal. It works with everything. MAC, Linux, Windows, whatever.Excel, access, word, photos, everything is compatible with everything.

The device is always connected to the Internet. You can store documents and files there, or in the pencil itself. Bluetooth has given way to RedScoot, a super powerful type of bluetooth, with the range of a five football fields.

When you are finished typing your latest chapter of your novel, or updating the excel spreadsheet from work, or designing the three story home, you turn off your program and it all vanishes. You pick up your pencil-like device and sign your credit card slip for your coffee and scone, place the device in your shirt pocket and leave.

That is what I want.

I wonder how many years I’ll have to wait for that?

SBG

Article talks about college papers being graded not by your professor, but an outsourced company in India???

I thought that was part of teaching?