Thursday, October 31, 2013

Zombies At Maverick's Thrill(er) The Crowd For Halloween 2013

It's way too easy for me to put off going to the gym, so I was intent on getting over there yesterday afternoon, just after I got rid of a computer problem. Well (a deep subject), you know how that can go! 

Several hours later I was on my bike for the half mile jaunt to the gym, by now a little nippy for shorts and t-shirt, the day before Halloween. When I got there, a woman with a bike and trailer with a couple of kids was trying to figure out why her rear wheel was loose. The nut for the quick release hub was missing, so there was no way she was going to be riding home on her bike. Sometimes you can get lucky solving things so I just asked what was her route, figuring the nut must have come undone fairly close with all the weight from the bike trailer. So I backtracked 100 feet and found it sitting on the sidewalk, fixed it and sent her on her way with smiles all around.

 So as I went into the gym, there were 20 or so zombies doing a live performance of Michael Jackson's "Thriller", so I caught a little of it on my phone. Then I found out there was a buffet with soft corn tortillas, plenty of meat, chicken, onions and cilantro. Yahoo turned out to be a great day! :-) 

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Porto di Maratea, a bordo del caicco North Star. Tyrrhenian Sea

I love Italy and Rocco Giove has some great views in Southern Italy.  I don't speak Italian either, but even if I don't understand it, it's authentic though incomprehensible.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

The Math Doesn't Add Up; So Who's Minding The Store?



 Government jobs are overhead expenses.  Just how is that sustainable?  Imagine if you had 6 cleaning professionals looking for work around your 1700 square foot ranch house and you couldn't send anyone home by mandate.  Even if you found something to do, if it didn't help your bottom line down the road, you couldn't afford them.  Would that be sustainable?  Common sense dictates that unless you're altruistic and or independently wealthy, you'd have to recover your losses somewhere down the road.  That is the simplicity of it. Governments are irresponsible if they operate differently.

Let's take a household with an annual income of  $24,500
and their annual outlay is                                    $35.370

Annual Credit Card Debt is 35,370-24,500  =  $10,870
With an existing Credit Card debt of                 $16,750 

What would you say to them if they asked for advice?


John Stossel printed this on a board and showed it to passers by in Manhattan.  When he flipped over the board, he revealed that if you add a few zeros,
you're looking at the Federal Debt:                  $2,450,000,000,000
with a Federal yearly budget of                      $3,537,000,000,000

Annual Credit Card Debt is                           $1,087,000,000,000
and an existing Credit debt of                        $16,750,000,000,000 

Won't anybody get serious out there in Washington?

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Richard Dawkins, Avid Atheist, Discusses Faith Studiously With Jon Stewart Who Honors His Guest Gratiously

Dawkins and Stewart do a fairly good job revealing two viewpoints on religion and atheism resulting in no real resolve other than that Faith has blindness as an aspect that accepts an abandonment of logic at some point. We all have our opinions and since we can only factually prove our current existence as our life span, what comes before or after are conjecture. I personally "believe" that life is infinite and it's presumptuous to assume that there is a beginning and an end to "everything", such as "the big bang" theory. Couples of stars and or suns rotate around each other and one shattered and created our end of the milky way in our Universe, but it's self centered to think that that was the start of everything. I don't think anyone can put a nice little bow on beginnings and endings, but the viewpoint that observes is indeed infinite, a part of some divine entity. But that's just conjecture and I know it.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Google Developers Live at I/O 2013 - GoogleX

I love being a Google Business Photographer! It has been such a blessing to have learned the process and implement images onto Google Maps. Subsequently I have met others exhuberant in their implementation of their efforts within this evolutionary path we know as Google.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Trying To Understand Why One Might Demonize Milton Friedman's Theories.

Milton Friedman's miniseries, "Free To Choose" in the late 60s put economics on the layman's radar and introduced the underlayment of forces behind out daily lives. I propose that there was healthy prosperity for decades before the dark forces of corruption hobbled and ultimately closely annihilated this fragile house of cards we call society. By the time any strategy has hit it's sunset region it's natural for finger pointing, since no one would have believed that such a brilliant beginning would end in "x"!

Every successful strategy has a logical core principle that has a limited horizon of effectivity. There is a bandwidth aspect, a delay factor of full implementation owing to critical mass components (the bell curve comes to mind) and interrelationships with other interactive theories and implementations; messy, to say the least, and intrinsically limited in timeline because the forces of human nature without clear leadership seek to corrupt rather than raise the bar as a desired ratchet "upwards" is sought for the good of society when leadership is effective. Unfortunately, the good of society struggles against dark forces intent on their own aggrandizement. So you see, I'm optimistic in a cynical, way. Good leadership instills pursuit towards a greater good, instilling a sense of duty to do the right thing, while bad leadership leaves the good thinking vulnerable to the greedy and self serving. Meet Wallstreet in a period of rudderless leadership; squabbling behind people's backs as they try to recover what they think they lost after the last bubble, because the path to a new bubble is ever building and written on a wall just beyond the horizon, since leadership is weak and lacking definition. Overzealous regulators don't help either. They are just added weight assuming business leader's brilliance is a given. How big is that faction that feels it needs to get before it's taken?

Good leadership would snap our society back into a healthy outlook much like a sail snaps full of wind when it's on a good heading. Harnessing the wind creates the value. The rest are just hanger's on.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Letter to a friend on Wall Street

Thanks for the display of success on Solar City's stock.

  Elon Musk started Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX and has now taken over SolarCity; a problem solver with bold ambitions, but not strictly for personal gain. Elon Musk is one of the most forward thinking, practical, bold and adventurous thinkers who has ever lived. He's got the golden touch because hardly anyone else has leadership skills anymore, such as Charles, your brother.

 Everyone in power in Washington, the place we Americans yearn for and expect practical leadership, is up for short term gains while covering their asses. Their audacity displays itself in a way that shocks us at their greed and avarice (greed squared) as they appear so powerful that they don't see us as anyone who will interfere with their CYA tactics. If gun laws are such a great thing, prove it in Chicago! Show us and convince us with a track record....No that would be too transparent, because they're full of it and don't care if they flaunt it in front of us, because they have absolutely no respect for us. We are just cash cows to set up a platform for the cool kids. And more than half the country is glad to get a replacement for Jacky-O in Camelot. Why did I stick my head in that sewer when I started out praising a leader?  Please recognize that the Chicago way may work in Chicago but reconsider for the country, please?  Chicago is one of the most beautiful and fun cities I've been to.  Visiting in the winter and seeing the ice build up on the edge of the lake is an added bonus.

 Elon's modesty while in practical problem solving mode is appealing. His attention is on where the rubber meets the road, solving problems.  Who ever would have thought a private enterprise could improve on rocket fuel engines that NASA spent years and billions maintaining and has figured out how to reuse a rocket shortly after it has landed? But he's moved on to the next problem because praise is the last thing on his mind. He just wants to get the next thing done! That is the American spirit and that's why he's here!

 Then there's Paypal: Years before anyone saw a need, he had filled it.

Self agrandizement drives many of our so called leaders who, with a smooth and cool manner, lure us in. We can be overwhelmed from time to time and willing to let someone else pick up the slack on their expertise.  We don’t have very many Will Geers or Mark Twains to protect us from ourselves in our hectic lives.  But with a lack luster economy we can feel as though we're slowly sinking in a morass, with  family values pushed to the back burner.  Of course, families are going about their business engendering good values while the visible leadership is hindered by trying too hard to claim the moral high ground to pad re-election campaigns.


 So I thank you for reminding me there are true clear thinkers, Elon Musk, Sergy Brin, Thomas Sowell, Steve Jobs, Larry Elder who ignore the limelight while they're out creating. It was a good tip in more ways than I can describe

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Beautiful Monuments Abandoned In Yugoslavia

I stumbled upon these magnificent structures on the net; fitting because the internet captured these images randomly as someone had presented them on a blog named "cracktwo.com" .

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Margaret Thatcher Crystallizes Conservative Values Eloquently


It appears that when business is demonized, getting a job ironically becomes betrayal to the group.  Is the group more important than individual liberty?  That is the question being asked across this country right now.  Do public services really uplift?  Certainly a business consists of a group working towards completion of a tangible goal and service of some kind; burger, car, bridge.  Aren't those who demonize business choosing a group that can only leech off of success?  Choose to support success and watch the standard of living rise in this country.  Choose social services for recovery and watch sickeningly hobbled businesses contemplate seeking relief which will certainly not include hiring anyone.  Give companies relief and prosper!  The fast track to socialism will dampen enlightenment.  Be a leader, choose a leader to follow, don't follow followers!