Tag: Society

Reading Is Fundamental

During the week I have my deeper thoughts and on the weekends I try to be amusing as well as informative….what’s life without whimsy?

I begin my two days of mental clarity with a line from the kid’s TV show Reading Rainbow (I believe)….it was a show that was dedicated to getting children to read more and to enjoy the experience……

Books!  I have an extensive library of about 2500 books more or less and of those numbers only about two dozen are fiction…..to say I am an avid reader would be an understatement of my lifetime……these days because of pain issues I can only get one or two books in a month….if it does not expand my knowledge then I have little use for it….

I tried the Kindle thing……not what I needed…..there is something magical about the physical turning of pages of a book…then there is the smell of an old book……I am old and I do not feel that a book can be replaced with a random electronic gizmo……….

One of the things I am most proud of is that I instilled a desire for knowledge and reading in my daughter who I raised from age 7 to well…….. today……and I am doing the same with my granddaughter….she reads constantly even in these days of instant gratification of the electronic age….(Proud grandpa)……..

With all that said I was sad to see in a recent story about people’s reading habits……

A depressing state for bibliophiles: 27% of American adults surveyed this year said they had not read a single book during the prior year. That’s out of a Pew Research survey conducted in March and April. Seventy-two percent said they had read at least one book in that timeframe (another 1% refused to answer or said they didn’t know), though even reading a book “in part” counted for the purposes of the survey. That’s down from 79% in 2011. Interestingly, young adults aged 18 to 29 were more likely than older adults to have read a book in the past year. The survey also found that the average number of books read per American adult over the previous year was 12.

That is just sad!  But I guess it is to be expected in the age when we have adult diapers, chewy adult vitamins and coloring books made especially for adults……I mean why complicate life trying to get through a book, right?

Do you read?

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What Kind Of Society Produces This?

I have read a bunch of really sick and wierd articles in my time, but this one is just too bizarre for words.

This article was posted by the AP:

A woman charged with murdering her 3 1/2-week-old son used a knife and two swords to dismember the child and ate parts of his body, including his brain, before stabbing herself in the torso and slicing her own throat, police said Monday.Otty Sanchez, 33, is charged with capital murder in the death of her infant son, Scott Wesley Buchholtz-Sanchez. She was recovering from her wounds at a hospital, and was being held on $1 million bail.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said the early Sunday morning attack occurred a week after the child’s father moved out. The child’s aunt and two cousins, ages 5 and 7, were in the house, but none were harmed.

Officers called to Sanchez’s house at about 5 a.m. Sunday found her sitting on the couch “screaming that she killed her baby,” police spokesman Joe Rios said. They found the boy’s body in a bedroom.

Police said Sanchez said the devil told her to kill her son.

That was my first question when I started reading this, “did the devil make her do it?  That question has been answered.  What is it in society that would produce such a sick MFer?

After posting the above story I came across yet more sick people.

This is a story from the Boston Globe:

A Worcester woman’s body, wrapped in bedding, was discovered by her landlord earlier this week. But in a more grisly turn, police said the woman, Darlene Haynes, 23, had been eight months pregnant, and someone cut the fetus from her body.

Haynes’s body was so mangled and decomposed that police said they could not immediately identify her gender.

The body was taken to the medical examiner’s office in Boston, and an autopsy conducted yesterday confirmed that she had been killed and that the fetus had been cut from her womb. The cause of death was not yet known, but Worcester Detective Captain Edward J. McGinn Jr. told the Telegram & Gazette that Haynes had also sustained head trauma.

It seems that the sickos get more and more active as the years go by.  Just what triggers this types of cruelty…that is for the pros to figure out.

The Working Poor

A report released Tuesday by the Working Poor Families Project reveals that more than 28 percent of American families with one or both parents employed are living in poverty.

The report, “Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short,” is based on data for the period from 2004 through 2006 gathered from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.

The report finds that 9.6 million households can be described as low-income or “working poor”—defined as families that earn less than 200 percent of the official poverty level. There were 350,000 more such families in 2006 than in 2002. More than 21 million children now live in low-income working families—an increase of 800,000 in four years.

The report documents the sharp decline in living standards for wide layers of the working class, the result of decades of corporate downsizing and wage-cutting presided over by Democratic and well as Republican administrations. It shows that poverty-level jobs are increasingly common and are held by broad sections of the population. Contrary to certain stereotypes promoted by the media, the majority of families living on poverty wages are neither immigrants, minorities or families with a single parent.

The report notes that working poor families “lack the earnings necessary to meet their basic needs—a struggle exacerbated by soaring prices for food, gas, health and education.” About 60 percent of low-income working families are forced to spend more than one-third of their income on housing, and nearly 40 percent lack health insurance for one or both parents.

These figures seem to go up every year, but few notice, unless you are unfortunate enough to be in the multitude of the working poor.

George Carlin Dies

George Carlin, 71, the much-honored American stand-up comedian whose long career was distinguished by pointed social commentary that placed him on the cultural cutting edge, died last night in Santa Monica, Calif.

Over a career of half a century, Carlin placed himself in the forefront of comic commentators on the American scene. He was particularly known for an album that referred to what he described as the seven words that could not be used on television.

His wit and humor will be sorely missed. As a social commentator, he was one of the best. He will go down with the masters such as Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl , just to mention a few that I recall vividly.

I know wherever his soul winds up, he will be giving somebody hell.

The Fist Bump Heard Around The World

This media frenzy is just plain stupid.  For days, we have been bombarded with visions and explanations over the fist bump Obama and wife exchanged on the stump.  Why?

The affectionate fist bump between Senator Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, before his victory speech last week in St. Paul became an instant source of fascination among commentators in the news media, who for days have tried to decipher the meaning behind this supposedly odd gesture.

But perhaps none went as far afield as E. D. Hill of the Fox News Channel, who, teasing to a segment last Friday on the Obamas’ moment, said: “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.” Media Matters, a liberal group, called attention to her comments that day and demanded an apology on Monday.

The Fox News segment was part of a fist-bump-related media dorkathon that continues, even a full week after the Obamas’ onstage moment.

Um, people: This is a common gesture, and its use is not limited to Democrats with unusual names. In 2001 it was used by Carleton S. Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive — now advising Senator John McCain — and Michael D. Capellas, then the Compaq chief executive, to salute the completion of their merger. And in 2006, former President George Bush shared a fist bump with Anna Kournikova at a celebrity tennis event — and he was 82 at the time.

Is there nothing else the media can focus on……I don’t know…..like taxes, gas, Iraq, and I am sure there is a wealth of subject that need to be covered, and this one is no where on the list.  A fist bump is the new high five….it is that simple and that innocent….please move on to something important.

A Few Societal Thoughts

Just a bit of the info that is sadly missing in the news. Average Americans have known for years that the economy, their economy has been in the toilet, while the media tells them how well the economy is doing; but that is for those with 7 figure incomes.

The income divide between white and black families has grown again and for the last 30 yrs it has continue to widen. The equality that has been promised for a 100 yrs has never quite made it to the mainstream.

Let us look at crime–the number of policemen killed in the line of duty has gone up and those killed with a firearm are as follows:

NY–22
Fla–18
CA–12
LA–8

The deaths are up by 31% and deaths by firearm is up 37%. Something to think about.

Maybe it is just a coincidence, but the top 3 states are lead by Repubs–just saying, not accusing.  So please do not get your panties in a wad!