Little Pigeon

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Education vs Prison

In 2006 California spent $3.5 billion on the state university system during the same period it spent $9.9 billion of the state prison system. Does this make financial sense?

It turns out that 70% or American aging in not real aging. It's just decay. It's rot from the stuff that we do. All the lifestyle diseases...the diabetes, the obesity, the heart disease, much of Alzheimer's, lots of cancers, and almost all of the osteoporosis, those are all decay. Nature doesn't have that in store for any of us. we go out and buy it off the rack.

Dr.Henry Lodge,Younger

Letter to Rep Roe, and Sen Corker and Alexander Republican Party in Trouble

It could go without saying that the Republican party is in trouble. And that the primary cause is there is no party leadership. The party selected a black man as chairman of the party not because he is uniquely qualified or that he has a reputation as a fund raiser or that he brings dynamic leadership to the position but lamely because he is black.

The party has Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and Ingraham saying they have the solution but they do not. They all showed they are not conservative, not Republican just complainers. John McCain is much closer to their ideology than is Barack Obama but instead of supporting McCain they complained. Ron Paul, attempting and failing to make a point he made Obama president.

Third parties are destroying our system. If third parties are to continue the Constitution needs to be changed to require a majority of the votes cast to declare a winner. When no one has a majority of the votes a follow-up election should be scheduled between the top two candidates. No one should be president without at least ½ of the voters support.

Until the Republican party figures out who it is republicans do not need to be concerned about run-off elections. They will not be in the top two. Get rid of the current party leadership including those in congress and those leading the party. Go back to square one. What do you personally stand for and does the Republican party leadership stand with you?

Did You Know?

The active ingredient in Viagra can be found naturally in walnuts.

Oleander. Whatever element of surprise this deadly beauty had was probably ruined when Janet Fitch's 1999 novel White Oleander got big: the mom in the story killed her womanizing boyfriend by smearing a concoction that included oleander sap all over his stuff. I know, you're skeptical: could that really kill someone? The answer: yep. Small amounts can be lethal or nearly lethal for adults, and you definitely want to keep kids and pets away from it. It's pretty uncommon around these parts though: fewer than 1,000 cases of oleander poisoning are reported in the U.S. every year. In places like Sri Lanka, though, suicide by oleander seed is becoming way too common. The pretty plant grows wild by the roadside and people have started taking it for trivial reasons because it's so easy to get. One doctor reported that a teenage girl took a seed because her mother refused to take her shopping. Zantedeschia. If you think this looks like a Calla lily, that's 'cause it is. Every part of this plant is toxic, but only if ingested - so if you're planning on having them in your wedding bouquet or something, don't worry. Touching the stem isn't going to kill you. If you take it home as a post-wedding snack, that's when you're in trouble: eating the Zantedeschia species has been the death of both livestock and children; symptoms include swelling of the mouth and throat, acute vomiting and diarrhea.

Hellebore. There's a good reason it pops up when authors need to make witches concoct potions and powders: it has been known for its toxic properties since ancient times. At least, "black" hellebore (aka Christmas Rose) has been - it causes everything from vertigo and thirst to swelling of the throat and cardiac arrest. But it's also used in some medicines; some historians think that Alexander the Great was taking medicine with hellebore in it and may have accidentally overdosed on it. It was also used in the First Sacred War between the Amphictyonic League of Delphi and the City of Kirrha - Solon of Athens added a bunch of hellebore to Kirrha's water supply and supposedly the city was so sick with diarrhea that they couldn't fight back when Solon's troops invaded. Fool's Parsley is related to poison hemlock. If you're trying to off someone, though, it would be pretty silly to use Fool's Parsley: it's easily detected. It can inflame the eyelids and makes the stomach lining very red and irritated. But like hellebore, it has its good side, too: a really diluted form of the plant can help stop seizures in little kids.

Zantedeschia. If you think this looks like a Calla lily, that's 'cause it is. Every part of this plant is toxic, but only if ingested - so if you're planning on having them in your wedding bouquet or something, don't worry. Touching the stem isn't going to kill you. If you take it home as a post-wedding snack, that's when you're in trouble: eating the Zantedeschia species has been the death of both livestock and children; symptoms include swelling of the mouth and throat, acute vomiting and diarrhea.

Fool's Parsley is related to poison hemlock. If you're trying to off someone, though, it would be pretty silly to use Fool's Parsley: it's easily detected. It can inflame the eyelids and makes the stomach lining very red and irritated. But like hellebore, it has its good side, too: a really diluted form of the plant can help stop seizures in little kids.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Fwd: Sin Discrimination

Hi Al,

In your class last Sunday the subject got around to homosexuals. One of the visitors mentioned that homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness. Today it is considered "the way a person is" which may be closer to reality that we are ready to admit. But either way Christians appear to be afraid of them. I worked with some of that persuasion and at least one died of AIDS or HIV or whatever. I know they are not all perverts, they do not hit on every man they see and while AIDS may be spread it is not contagious.

On the chance of hitting sensitive area, the GSMCOC very possibly had someone who admittedly was an active adulterer leading the singing at GSMCOC and we are none the worse off for it and he just might be better off for it. What if he had looked as if he were Gay, practicing or not?

I do not remember Jesus addressing the subject. Maybe under the Law of Moses they had been wiped out I do not know. Historically, homosexuals have been slaves, servants, teachers, nannies, as well as soldiers and Olympic athletes. When used as cooks they probably made a great soufflé, their uniforms were probably quite stylish and their camp was clean as a whistle. An army of homosexuals would look magnificent and eat very well as would their livestock. They would represent their country well especially at "state" occasions.

It is easy to find where various Bible writers condemn homosexuality and promise that those who participate in such will not be among those saved. Condemnation of a host of other sins is also easily found along with similar promise but Christians have selected homosexuality to detest more than the others.

In your line of work have you ever concluded why Christians abhor homosexuals to the extent they do while readily accepting adulterers, fornicators and other "sinners?" If the GSMCOC girls who became pregnant without the benefit of a marriage license were Lesbian would GSMCOC have been as forgiving and forgetting?

Stop already with the flagrant promotion

The Cable networks owned by the company that publishes Time Magazine should stop promoting the magazine. Apparently they are too lazy to do what Time Magazine's writers do so they just copy. No one cares who Time thinks are deserving to be on their list of 100s. Those interested would subscribe. STOP STOP STOP

--
Regards,
John Jenkins
865-803-8179 cell
Gatlinburg, TN

Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

"Hail to the Chief" was written for James Madison because he was so short that no one ever noticed when he entered the room.

Monday, May 04, 2009

Guilt or No Guilt

Hi Al,

You mentioned children today not feeling guilty for wrong behavior. It seems to me they have no reason to feel guilty and it is unrealistic for us to expect them to feel guilty. Any child of any age, with the click of a mouse, can see naked people performing sexual activities of all persuasions and "meet" complete strangers while in their own homes.

As you have mentioned you drove a school bus when you were sixteen years old. You had a legitimate purpose which most children today do not have. Purposes are devised by getting them to work at McDonalds or Burger King which serves no purpose other than to get money, get out of the house and away for the parents and encourage them to believe they can make it on their own and encourages them to believe they do not need their parents.

Throughout most of the 19th century, the minimum age of consent for sexual intercourse in many of the states was 10 years old. In Delaware it was seven; as late as 1930 twelve states allowed boys as young as 14 and girls as young as 12 to marry with parental consent.
The world has changed. The transition between childhood and adulthood is much longer today than it was less than one hundred years ago, when a boy proved himself a man when he could shoulder and share adult hardships, risks, and responsibility working side by side with his father in the fields. By the time he was a seasoned seventeen or eighteen, he was ready to start his own family. A girl became a woman by the time she reached childbearing age; fourteen or fifteen was often considered old enough to marry. The transition from childhood to adulthood was so short that adolescence---at least as the distinct stage of life we now consider it---hardly existed.

Today the traditional determinations of adulthood---the establishment of occupation and family---are routinely postponed until after college. With the period of childhood innocence seeming shorter and shorter, we've created a new ten-or-twelve-or-more-years-long designation, a no-man's land (or no-woman's land) we term adolescence. Over the past fifty-years or so, this new limbo-land life stage has become an extended period of awkward uncertainty.

Yesterday all a mother had to do to prepare her daughter was to teach her how to perform wifely and motherly functions and to cook and clean the house. All a father had to do was to apprentice his sons. Today they are pressured to accumulate tens-of-thousands or hundreds-of-thousands or dollars for college. Graduates are usually many thousands of dollars in debt before they find their first job.

We have stretched adolescence further than anytime in history. We are fighting, nature and hormones. We think we can succeed by recommending abstinence and saying don't do as I do but do as I say. It will not work.

Saturday, May 02, 2009

What About Malaria

The latest number from WHO is that 750 people worldwide have contracted the Swine flu. Based on world population that means there is less than .0000001% chance that any one individual has the disease. Your chance of winning a one-hundred million dollar lottery are about 10,000 times better than that. On the other hand, 3000 people die each day of Malaria; where are the news headline on that? Do the pharmaceutical companies have a stake in promoting the Swine Flu panic; are the cable media that desparate for viewers; is Obama's Homeland Security Department trying to look like they are doing something?

Friday, May 01, 2009

Brutus

Julius Caesar:

BRUTUS: ...whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell, ...!
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.

O, that a man might know
The end of this day's business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end,
And then the end is known.

Who Will Replace Justice Souter?

Attention all Conservatives!!! This is the 2008 election. Not Obama. Not McCain. But it was for the courts. President Obama's influence on the Supreme Court will remain long past his term or terms. Next time, instead of whining, support the candidate closest to your ideology. Limbaugh, Coulter, and Hannity have led you astray. Next time think for yourselves.

-
Regards,
John Jenkins
865-803-8179 cell
Gatlinburg, TN

Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

"Hail to the Chief" was written for James Madison because he was so short that no one ever noticed when he entered the room.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Then there’s the SAT.

Carl Brigham, the inventor of the SAT was a eugenicist. He conceived the test for the military and, to his credit, disowned it five years later, rejecting eugenics at the same time. However several Ivy League schools had begun to use it as a measure of applicant acceptability. For almost seventy years most American colleges have used it or the similar ACT as an essential part of their screening processes, thought some colleges are beginning to rely upon it less.

The SAT, as with standardized tests generally only measures a certain kind of intelligence; it does it in an impersonal way; it attempts to make common assumptions about the college potential of a hugely varied group of teenagers in a one-size-fits-all fashion; and it drives high school juniors and seniors to spend hundreds of hours preparing for it at the expense of school study or other areas of interest. The founder of the Princeton Review writes: "What makes the SAT bad is that it has nothing to do with what kids learn in high school. As a result, it creates a sort of shadow curriculum that furthers the goals of neither educators nor students. . . The SAT has been sold as snake oil; it measured intelligence, verified high school GPA, and predicted college grades. In fact, it's never done the first two at all, nor a particularly good job at the third."

Yet students who don't test well or who aren't particularly strong at the kind of reasoning the SAT assesses can find themselves making compromises on their collegiate futures---all because we've come to accept that intelligence comes with a number. We've come to define intelligence too narrowly.

And then there is Eugenics

Eugenics is "the study of, or belief in, the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).

What is the IQ Number?

Something you may not know about the IQ test.

Alfred Binet, one of the creators of the IQ test, intended the test to serve precisely the opposite function. In fact he designed it (on commission from the French government) exclusively to identify children with special needs so they could get appropriate forms of schooling. He never intended it to identify degrees of intelligence or "mental worth." In fact, Binet noted that the scale he created "does not permit the measure of intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured."

Nor did he ever intend it so suggest that a person could not become more intelligent over time. "Some recent thinkers," he said "[have affirmed] that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased.

In1916, Lewis Terman of Stanford University published a revision of Binet's IQ test. Known as the Stanford-Binet test, it is the basis of the modern IQ test. Terman had an extreme view of human capacity. He wrote: "Among laboring me and servant girls there are thousands like them feebleminded. They are the world's 'hewers of wood and drawers of water.' And yet, as far as intelligence is concerned, the tests have told the truth . . . No amount of school instruction will ever make them intelligent voters or capable voters in the true sense of the word."

Terman was active in the eugenics movement which sought to weed out entire sectors of the population by arguing that such traits as criminality and pauperism were hereditary, and that it was possible to identify these traits through intelligence testing. The movement also claimed that entire ethnic groups, including southern Europeans, Jews, Africans, and Latinos fell into such categories. Terman wrote: "The fact that one meets this type with such frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and Negroes suggests quite forcibly that the whole question of racial differences in mental traits will have to be taken up anew and by experimental methods."

"Children of this group should be segregated in special classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical. They cannot master, but they can often be made efficient workers, able to look out for themselves. There is no possibility at present of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce, although from a eugenic point of view, they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding."

The movement succeeded in lobbying for involuntary sterilization laws in thirty states. This meant the state could neuter people who fell below particular IQ without their having a say in the matter. Each state repealed their law.

IQ tests were even a matter of life and death. A criminal who commits a capital offense is not subject to the death penalty if his IQ is below seventy. However, IQ scores regularly rise over the course of a generation, (by as much as twenty-five points), causing the scale to be reset every fifteen or twenty years to maintain a mean score of one hundred. Therefore someone who commits a capital offense may be more likely to be put to death at the beginning of the cycle that at the end. That gives the IQ test a lot of responsibility.

People can also improve their scores through study and practice. In one case a death row inmate who at that point had spent ten years in jail on a life sentence. During his incarceration, he took a series of course. When retested, his IQ had risen more than ten points---suddenly making him eligible for execution.

While most of us will never be in a situation where we are sterilized or given a lethal injection the question is what are these numbers and what do they truly say about our intelligence?

The answer is that the numbers largely indicate a person's ability to perform on a test of certain sorts of mathematical and verbal reasoning. They measure some types of intelligence, not the whole of intelligence. And, as noted above, the baseline keeps shifting to accommodate improvements in the population as a whole over time.

John
865-803-8179 cell
Gatlinburg, TN

Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

"Hail to the Chief" was written for James Madison because he was so short that no one ever noticed when he entered the room.

Today Fiat tomorrow Italy?

Considering how Chrysler affected Daimler when they were "together" is president Obama trying to destroy Fiat or Italy? When Chrysler eventually separates from Fiat will BMW or Renault be next? Is this the president's attempt at getting even with Europe for their treatment of him

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Invasion of the Rubber Duckies

In 1992, when a cargo ship hit a heavy storm near the International Date Line and a dozen containers plunged into the Pacific, it seemed unlikely that anyone but the maritime insurance adjusters would take note. After all, what did it really matter in the grand scheme of things if twenty-nine thousand plastic bathtub toys bound for the United States from a toy manufacturer in Hong Kong were adrift at sea?

Since then smiling yellow duckies hve been washing up on shores around the globe, pushe merrily along by wind, waves and currents. The plucky duckies are known to have ridden ice packs across the North Pole, and to have surfed the waters of Hawaii. They swam with wild salmon off Scotland, and with humpback whales off Maine. They bobbed up on the Alaskan shore by the hundreds and promptly found new homes in hot tubs across Sitka.

Most people walking along a beach would never give a second thought to a faded plastic bath toy sitting in the sand. But the little toys have a surprising story to tell from their adventures on the high seas.

When oceanographers heard about the cargo loss, they recognized a huge opportunity. Relying on a worldwide network---and hundred-dollar bounties---to retrieve the three-inch castaways, the researchers entered data into a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration computer model to track the toys.

By collecting data on where and when the toys beach, the scientists can better understand where the oceans' currents are flowing , how fast and ho and when they interconnect.

The power of the small.

Would the Chinese buy the products they ship to the United States?

China's Knock-offs

· Knock-off "Head and Shoulders" shampoo contains toxic chemical residue.

· Lenses in counterfeit Oakley sunglasses cause headaches and deterioration in vision.

· Counterfeit power strip starts an electrical fire. Smoke detector does not work because the fake "Duracell" batteries leaked acid all over the alarm system.

· Flu vaccine is just bacteria-laden tap water.

· Your knock-off windshield is struck by a pebble and shatters instead of cracking.

· One of the bottles of a six pack of phony "Budweiser" explodes as it is being opened at a Shanghai super market.

· Knock-off break pads consisting of compressed sawdust or grass fail.

· "Norvac" and "Lipitor" fail because they contain no active ingredients, "Evista" is found to contain nothing but molded chalk.

· Viagra over the internet is found to cause rapid heart beats.

· Tick medicine for you pet contains poison.

· Antipsychotic drug Zyprexa causes patient to go berserk in public and injures people.

· Fake "Durex Extra Safe" condoms burst.

Beware when the Chinese Smile, They know the inside Joke

China's ghost-shift scenario: a factory in China is hired by a multinational to make 1,000 units of a product per day. However, rather than run two regular eight-hour shifts to produce the contracted-for amounts, the factory also runs a third "ghost shift and then ships the extra 500 units out the back door.

Reverse-Engineering: another variation on the ghost-shift is to reverse-engineer Western technology. Through reverse engineering Chinese counterfeiters can get knock-offs of anything from Suzuki motorcycles to Callaway golf clubs on the street just weeks after these new products are introduced to the market.

Start-up Counterfeiter: Investigators discovered a Neobike, competitor of Dahon, maker of the Taiwanese folding-bike, produced bikes almost identical to the existing Dahon models. Three of the five Neobike founders turned out to be former Dahon employees.

Texas Infant Dies from Flu

Reports are that a 23 month old child died in Texas of N1H1. Was he Mexican and was he brought here for our health care?

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Air Force One Buzzing NY

Just goes to show you that 9/11 can happen again. There was to much hesitancy. Air Force One should have been shot down. No excuses. The U.S. does not know what true security is.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Swine Flu Legal or Illegal?

How about having the INS check the Mexicans in the area of Swine Flu outbreaks. Chances are pretty good the Swine Flu came into the country illegally.