The arrival of one of Elaine’s boys and his soon-to-be-Mrs. for Turkey Day went off without a hitch. Elaine picked up the kids (anyone under 40 is a kid here lately, but I’m thinking about moving that up to 50 very shortly) while I schlepped the last of the remodeling tools, equipment, paint, plumbing parts, carpet scraps, caulking guns, and such safety into out of sight piles.
I’d like to take a second or two to wish you – and yours – a very happy Thanksgiving Day and let us hope that things will be better next year. But seems the odds of the Easter Bunny showing up are as good – or better.
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Conversation around the dinner table is something I always enjoy…I was lucky enough to grow up in a family. People ate together every day and that was that. Didn’t take a state occasion – just that’s how things worked. You were either there for dinner, or you did without or with cold leftovers.
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I think we lost something as a nation when women went to work and family dinners went to hell – especially since it was once possible for a single head of household to earn a living while the wife was able to stay home and do the vastly more important work of raising kids, cooking to save money, and generally be a stabilizing force.
To be sure, I’m all for the women’s right’s movement and women’s rights, but somehow I find myself wondering if it wasn’t little more than a fraudulent corporate ‘get-to-work’ program designed to fatten corporate revenues streams, and more importantly further segment the US marketplace and boost consumption – doubling car sales, for example. A few baubles and trinkets, a few marches and magazine article was all it took to convince America that buying things was more important than family. There went the nuclear family and here came the corporate yoke. Women are now obliged to labor since the system has become so double-income oriented and prices reflect it. Corporate Tricksters: 1 Humans: 0
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Families actually got by (one upon a time in America) with one car, one TV, no cell phones, and the family ate dinner together in a setting where no one had secrets and everything was open for detailed discussion. The ‘final word’ on whatever topic was offered by Mom, or Dad, depending on topic – and that’s how values were passed down.
Bit by bit, that’s been stolen. First, the TV on a roll-around stand slid closer to the dinner table. Then the insta-fied cooking systems beginning with TV dinners took the clock off eating time. Bit, by bit, people wandered away from the dinner table.
Of course, back then we actually had a middle class. Seems we are getting more and more stratified into upper, lower, and protected classes. The only middle getting bigger is the one the belt goes around.
It’s on holidays like this that I’m reminded that America got hoodwinked starting in the early 1960’s – maybe late 1950’s. Materialism has gone rampant, women were suckered onto the corporate treadmill, and the net result is we are a nation where something like 40% of people have to take mind-altering drugs just to cope – and my son tells me that as many as 9% of Americans have been hooked on synthetic opiates at some point.
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The “Thoughts on the Business Life” section in Forbes Magazine has a little reminder that goes to the idea “With all your getting, get wisdom.”
Failing that, we get seconds tomorrow and figure it’s all gonna work out.
Increasingly, the world seems to be taking on a surreal caste: Spending our way into prosperity, eating our way to health, working harder so we can work more, conserving by consuming, and all the rest.
The turkeys to keep an eye on aren’t the ones served with gravy & dressing. It’s the ones wearing wool to avoid.
The Future of Cookies
Our friends at www.maxa-tools.com which supplies the Maxa Cookie Manager I’m so fond of (because it removes unwanted cookies so well) sent me a link to an article that “Consent will be required for cookies in Europe.”
This ought to be a fine conflict to watch develop since there’s all kinds of discussion about use of cookies to track people that file-share. See: “EU’s Cookie Law Should Crumble“.
We’ll keep you posted on this.
Honestly, despite the high tech protests, I don’t see why anyone would mind giving approval for cookies – since they are essentially programs run on your computer and in some malicious cases, they track your consumer behavior and report them back to a mother-ship somewhere.
What the law might put a dent in are those non-essential third-party cookies that lots of blogging sites and smaller online retailer sites install in order to fatten up their revenue streams.
The problem with such cookies is that they eat time-slices from your processor and I’ve always held that if I am paying for the computer and internet connection, then I own everything that happens at my end. Takes but a few seconds to whitelist the few sites I use: Amazon, eBay, PayPal, and my banks & brokerage accounts. But, the torrent crowd is not likely to be happy about tracking cookies, since they could become an enforcement tool of copyright police.
Stuff happens.
I, Cyborg
Great read in Computerworld: “Intel: Chips in brains will control computers by 2020.“
Already I’m working on trademarking a new term: thinktating. A cross between thinking and dictating.
Climategate and Cats
This from a reader is all too accurate:
“Dear George:
I kinda gave up about this some 40 years ago, but here goes anyway.
In my mind “global warming” was always the idiot younger brother of “climate change” and climate volatility in general, and it has long been impossible to get people to shut up and think about it. Almost anyone I think of as having any intelligence in this matter (not very many) has clearly distinguished between the two terms. I suspect that any inquiry into who said what will be a similar waste of time and media space because it was always, like “war on terror” a bogus idea to confuse the real issues.
40 years later, and here we still hear of “global warming”, and almost all humans are still stupider than shit. Even my cat seems smarter, if only that she doesn’t add to anyone else’s confusion.
Ask me if I think human beings are ever going to solve this one.
No…but we’ll pay good money and surrender the few liberties we still have left to enjoy in order to get someone else to save us from the non-issues.
Sunny Disposition Department
No sunspots again today on SpaceWeather. Where the hell is Cycle 24?
Say! Maybe we could name present times the Obama Minimum?
It Was a JOKE!
Several people wrote in that next year is not the Year of the Cock…
Sorry George,
This is the year of the Ox,2009, (swine flu)
2008 = Rat
2007 = Pig
2006 = Dog (avian flu)
2005 = Rooster
2004 = Monkey
2003 = Sheep/Ram (mad cow)
Next year is the year of the Tiger,
2010 2011 = Rabbit
2012 = Dragon
2013 = Snake 2014 = Horse
OK, it was a joke, but facts are more important than humor. At least till the second glass of bubbly tomorrow. OK, so 2008 was the year of the Rat and we had what kind of elections? That’s not much of a joke, now, is it?
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Send your comments to george@ure.net
The UrbanSurvival Mall:
Peoplenomics This Week
Increasing Your Personal Efficiency
Without going overboard into the Human Potential Movement, I thought this week I would address a question I get asked with surprising frequency: “How do you get so much done?” The answer is really pretty simple – yet it’s one of those invisible decisions that people generally don’t spend any time thinking through. I have at least 14-weeks a year of productivity (based on 40-hour workweeks) that most people don’t have the sense to reclaim as their own. Since the holiday period is when many people get enough time off work to spend at least a little on introspection, I thought this week I’d share a few thoughts on how we can each increase our ‘personal efficiency’. I don’t claim to be perfect at it – just a little better than average. But thanks to the fact that effort compounds over time almost like interest, it’s a worthwhile study. We then apply this to some disturbing and quite possibly irreversible trends in today’s headlines.
More For Subscribers To Subscribe, CLICK HERE
Maxa-Cookie Manager
Been a while since I’ve updated you on how many cookies and web bugs have been removed from my main computer by the Maxa Cookie Manager from Maxa Tools: 1,602 web bugs and 54,131 cookies so far. It’s amazing.
Take it for a free test drive by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will set you back $35 bucks, but Christmas is coming… Is your privacy worth it?
Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive ‘non-browser specific’ cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster.
Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world….so far. Given Jens and the other engineers time…
“Live on $10,000″ A Year
With another round of layoffs due to start later this month…a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades…might I suggest a preemptive tactical move? Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we’re all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California! A good starting point, at least if you’ve still got $10-bucks is my e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”
It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left… Click here for the index and details.
MyGroPonics
My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It’s an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few ‘dollar stores’ and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space – like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It’s just $10 bucks here…
Pass It On
The business model of this website is base Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list…Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh? Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course….
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Last week’s report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)