OT: Writing in general

[SundialMan]

Skiracer, there were hundreds of kibbutzim in Israel 30 years ago. I did not meet the sisters you mention. I don't recognize the names or the descriptions.

[skiracer]

Skiracer, there were hundreds of kibbutzim in Israel 30 years ago. I did not meet the sisters you mention. I don't recognize the names or the descriptions.

I thought it would be a stretch, but you never know. I never saw them again after that. But years later, I should know the exact date and year as it was a pretty serious situation for me, but around 1988 I had taken a blow to the head in a John Wayne type of barroom brawl that broke out in a pub that I was having a drink in after work one Friday afternoon. I never saw what or who it was that hit me but afterwards someone told me that a very large individual hit me on the side of the head with a beer bottle and that I went down backwards striking my head on the floor and bounced back up like one of those blow up punching bag characters with a weighted bottom. I then fell backwards to the floor a second time and lay unconscious for several moments before coming around. I was told that they thought I was dead at first. There is a very slight line between life and death and in instances like this you could be dead and not know what hit you or that you are dead. Luckily I came to and when I did the police were there sorting things out, the fight had been stopped, mainly because everyone thought they had a death on their hands, and I walked out of the joint on my own after giving my side of the story of what had taken place beforehand to the police.
In all honesty I had had a few beers and a shot or two, I was still drinking in those days, and although I didn't start the brawl or get a chance to hit anyone I always loved a good fight and most likely would have jumped right into the fracas. Anyway I go home and the next day I have a terrible banging headache, which I am complaining about to my wife, and she has no sympathy at all because of the situation and the headache persists over the weekend and into the beginning of the week and seems to be gaining momentum in intensity rather than going away. It continues on like that for a good couple of weeks until one day while I'm sitting in another pub in Elizabeth, NJ where my construction company is building a church for a black Baptist group, having lunch, and the headache is so excruciatingly intense that I drop everything and get into my truck and drive like a madman back home to Toms River, NJ and go right into the emergency room at Community Memorial Hospital pleading that they do something for me to get rid of this throbbing in my head. Like I said you never know from one moment to the next what life will bring. I survived the blow to the head and walked away thinking nothing of it but the hospital performed a CAT Scan later that afternoon and the guy that runs the show comes in and shows me a picture of my brain and in the center of the picture is a large grey mass which he thought was at least 3 inches in diameter and about 1 inch thick. I had a blood clot the size of a Mrs. Wagner's pie in my head. His advice to me was to get a good neurosurgeon to come in and talk to me. My head was banging so badly that I hadn't even called my wife to let her know where I was at and what was going on.
Well to make a long story shorter I didn't leave that hospital for at least another four weeks. My first cousin is the head of the Pharmacology college at St. John's University and she hooks me up with a top notch guy who comes in and performs the operation to remove the blood clot. The blow to the head caused a sub-dural hemotoma that was leaking for about two weeks before I decided that I had better go to the hospital. I have led a blessed life and been near death and in a number of situations where the outcome was iffy but have always come through and landed on my feet. I've been blessed that way. The surgeon was astonished at my casual attitude and outlook towards the entire event. He couldn't believe my blood pressure was stable and normal during the entire process.
Going into surgery the last thing that I remember is being in the operating room pre-surgery prep area and the anesthesiologist, a Korean guy named Dr. Park that looked exactly like Charlie Chan's number 1 son, looking down at me and giving me a shot of sodium penothol with that big toothy grim before they roll me into the operating room and turn on the anesthesia and it's lights out. My wife tells me later that the surgery took six hours. It could have taken six days because I never felt a thing and don't remember or recall anything that happened during those six hours. Just blackness and nothing at all. No bright lights or brilliant light of any kind. No revelations, no God, nothing at all.
The first thing that I do remember is that someone is smacking me across the face kind of hard and saying come on Ed come out of it and repeating this with the smacks several times before I feel myself starting to get an attitude like I want to strike back and in fact do try to raise my arm to do so and someone grabs my arm and now I'm coming out of the fog and who is the first face that I see calling out my name and smacking my face is Laurie Monesson's mom. The mother of the girls I had posted about in an earlier post that had gone to Israel and joined a kibbutz in 1968. I hadn't seen her in at least 20 years and didn't even know that she had become a nurse and was in fact the head surgical nurse for that shift and was in on my operation. When I was first coming around from the anesthesia and looked up into her face and recognized her I thought for sure that I had died and she was greeting me on the other side.
3 or 4 weeks later I'm home and back to work in another two weeks. I haven't seen Laurie Monesson's mom since that day either. I remember the first thing I said when I came around was that I was starving. They don't let you eat anything for 12 hours or so before surgery. I was hungry and realized that the headache wasn't there for the first time in weeks. My wife made me promise to give up going out to bars and drinking like I used to. I still drink in moderation but no more saloons like I used to.

[jiesen]

Wow, fantastic writing, Ski! You must have been through hell and back in Vietnam to have kept your cool like that when you found out you had a life-threatening subdural hematoma.

[SundialMan]

Wow, Skiracer. That was some story. There's an ex-policeman named Bob Weir who writes at American Thinker, often about his experiences on the NY City force, who captures the kind of intensity I see in your story.

I've got an unpublished true story that I'm recomposing here that has a few similarities to yours, a bit of the intensity.

When I was twenty, I had a summer job in Manhattan and rode the Long Island (commuter) Railroad home each evening. One evening, while reading a book and riding past the housing projects in Rosedale, Queens, I felt a ringing in my right ear. I saw a small circle in the window glass and people sitting next to me told me that blood was running from my ear. Later in the afternoon, I found out that the railroad had installed thick bulletproof glass and what I had were glass shards from the impact of some projectile. I was fully awake when the train stopped at the next station, Rosedale, within the New York City limits. Two NY policemen said they had called for an ride for me and suggested I go to an emergency room on nearby Long Island, where I lived, rather than returning to a NY City hospital in Brooklyn. They also claimed it was a bb gun that hit the window, but I suspect it was a true bullet.

I don't recall if I arrived by ambulance or police car, but at the hospital they picked shards of glass out of my outer ear. An attendant called my parents and told them that I was shot in the head. I was feeling dizzy and didn't want to fight with him or yell into the phone. My father had the presence of mind to tell my mother that I was shot in the arm because he knew she would get hysterical if he repeated what he heard. Later, when they came to the hospital to pick me up, they quickly saw me in my work suit and sitting in a chair, greatly calming their nerves. Many years later, I retold this story at my father's funeral, as an example of who he was.

[SundialMan]

My non-political story read by Rush Limbaugh

First some background about the piece of mine Rush Limbaugh read last Dec. 20th. One subject I have written about numerous times is the War on Christmas and its displays and saying "Merry Christmas," stating it was an attack on organized religion that was a stalking horse for further attacks on all religions. Dennis Prager and Barry Farber and I wrote various pieces in 2004. Mine was rather long and serious, and can be found at

xxxx://www.americanthinker.com/2004/12/christmas_hanukkah_and_politic.html

remove the "xxxx" and replace with "http" to access it.

Farber coined the term "Jews for Christmas." for Jewish writers defending Christmas displays. Prager's original article stated that every society needs it formal traditions publicly displayed and, for example, even though your wife knows you love her, trying to do without an anniversary gift and dinner would not be a wise or good idea, to say the least.

Anyway, I saw a news story on Dec. 19th about a school bus driver from Long Island, New York, who had a natural white beard and liked to wear a Santa hat while working during the Christmas season. Notice I didn't say "holiday season." Someone complained and he was told to remove it, which he refused to do, resulting in the bus company eventually backing down. I dashed off a quick piece to the American Thinker, not knowing whether it had been accepted for publication. The next day, I heard Rush Limbaugh reading many of my words around 20 minutes into his program. Below is the full text that I wrote, followed by an unpublished follow up paragraph. Once again, substitute "http" for the "xxxx" in the website address.

xxxx://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2006/12/political_correctness_flips_it_1.html

December 19, 2006
Political Correctness flips its lid
Jack Kemp

Newsday, a Long Island news daily, informs us that a Commack, L.I., school bus driver named Kenneth Mott, who has a white beard and bears more than a passing resemblance to St. Nicholas was ordered to remove his Santa Claus hat. It seem that:


"Mott said he was told that a parent of a child complained to the district about Mott's headgear, saying that the child doesn't believe in Santa Claus and was bothered by the hat."

Gee, a man with a beard wearing a hat who looks religious, minding his own business, upset them. I guess these parents won't be taking their kid to see Fiddler on the Roof, either. Or when they show the Greek Orthodox Christmas services on New York area television stations, they will have to change the channel. How about bearded motorcyclists with a red helmet? The possibilities for "upset" in this child's life are endless.

Bus company officials told Mr. Mott to remove his Santa hat and, much to his credit, he refused. Kenneth Mott stated,


"Nobody is going to tell me what I can do and can't do," said Mott, who added that he doesn't pretend to be Santa Claus while driving, nor does he play Christmas carols or decorate his bus. "This is America. I'm not hurting anybody."

The bus company has relented, apparently deciding privately that they couldn't win any lawsuit brought by Mr. Mott - and so the hat stays.

This farce, the type of thing one sees in the plot of a $7 Christmas movie you can buy off the rack at a drugstore chain, has mercifully ended for now. It seems there are two major schools of thought about unusual people with odd hats. One is that we should all learn about other cultures and be tolerant of them. The other is that we now in America have the Guaranteed Right not to be made uncomfortable by anything that doesn't suit our fancy, be it a person with an unusual hat or a with only one leg or who is obese or doesn't wear designer jeans - or is obese AND wears designer jeans. These two opposing viewpoints are increasingly headed for confrontations. And the winners will be those who come to the conclusion that we are all entitled to our reasonable public displays of our culture that don't interfere with public safety.

Let us hope that this youngster - and his parents - realize soon that just because you are smart enough to file a complaint, that doesn't mean your complaint is worthwhile. If this youngster grows up to work and live in today's Long Island, realizing this will serve him well. And if he seeks work in the nearby Big City with 83 neighborhoods and even more languages, that attitude will serve him even better.

Then maybe he can file a complaint against his parents.


(Jack Kemp is not the former politician of the same name.)

Here is the unpublished extra paragraph:

Many years ago, sociologists wrote about the conformity and blandness of the suburbs - and the political left concurred. Vance Packard once told a story in one of his books about a child from the suburbs who saw his first black person on a trip to the city and said, naively, that the boy had a very dirty face! Now, when someone from the suburbs is looking to make the world uniformly bland with political correctness, they are celebrated by leftist theory and uncriticized by the press for their "reasonable request."

Jack

[SundialMan]

Parody Song: No CNBC

When I used to write a lot of stock comments on AOL, I often posted a marked Off Topic Parody Song about an individual stock or the Market in general. Someone called me the "Weird Al Yankovic" of the stock boards, and I guess they were right. This one is a takeoff of "Under the Sea," from the Academy Award winning score of the cartoon movie The Little Mermaid. The original was sung by Sebastian the Crab in a Jamaican accent. Further down, there are references to various posters' screen names on the AOL stock boards, starting with DR. PEDICLE. I even included $$MR. MARKET$$ in my version in that list/verse. "The BEAR trades a dare" is about a trader whose screen name was BEARMOVE, a reference to martial arts, not down markets.
Anyway, here goes.

Jack

NO CNBC

The trades look always greener
When you watch a blow dried fake
You dream about ending the Bear
But that is a big mistake

Just look at the world around you
Crazy - like the trading floor
Such outrageous things surround you
Show Cramer and Kudlow the door!

No CNBC,
No CNBC
Darling, it’s better
they shant make you a debtor
Take it from me

Up on The Street they work all day
Passing stories that make you slave away
While we devotin'
Full time to currency floatin'
No CNBC

Out here all the traders happy
As through the Elliott Waves they roll
The fish watchin' Maria ain’t happy
They sad ‘cos they stocks down the bowl

But stocks in the bowl is lucky
They in for a worser fate
One day when the pols get greedy
The Fed flush them down the sewer grate

What, no!
No CNBC,
No CNBC
Nobody beat us,
with stock rumors to eat us in fricassee

We what the Story-Mongers love to cook
No CNBC - we won't get the hook
We got no troubles
Life is the bubbles

No CNBC, No CNBC
No CNBC, No CNBC
Turn off the static
They are autocratic
Believe you me

Even the neighbors on the eBay
They get the urge and start to trade away
We got the spirit, you got to hear it
No CNBC

The PED trades the FED
The BEAR trades a dare
Dave plays the E-Wave
And they trade with no care
WASM Man has a plan
BrendaAnn - no also-ran
OKMEANS trades in his jeans
Psorell gives 'em hell
MR. MARKET's in your face
CoolCat's getting fat
And 40's smashin' an ace
Ralph trades in the day
And then goes huntin' away
And Greenhugh gets his due

No CNBC, No CNBC
No CNBC, No CNBC
When the uptick is no sign of trick
It’s music to me pick

What do they got?
A lotta noise
We got gold by the Troys

Each little gamer say no to Cramer
No CNBC
Each of us learnin' say "I'm cutting out Kernan"
No CNBC
Each little trader know how to fade here
That’s why it’s hotter
DOW's under the water
We are in luck here
Holdin' on to a Buck here
NO CNBC!

[skiracer]

Wow, fantastic writing, Ski! You must have been through hell and back in Vietnam to have kept your cool like that when you found out you had a life-threatening subdural hematoma.

Or just to stupid to realize a life threatening situation when it is front of me.

Actually, and this is the God's honest truth, in whatever situations in life that I've found myself in I always leave it in the hands of the Lord. I find myself praying to him to take it out of my hands and telling him that I'll go along with whatever his decision is. That's it in a nutshell. I'm no hero by any means but I am a true believer in God and Jesus. I truely believe that once I turn it over to him it's out of my hands and I don't have to deal with it anymore. He'll take care of it one way or another and I can concentrate on the task at hand.
Any strengths that I have come right out of that.

One other thing that I was told, from my earliest recollections, was by my dad who always said that when your back is against the wall you have to be at your best to get through it. I've carried that with me since I was a little kid. We are all going to leave this life sometime and the only thing of value that we will leave is how we conducted ourselves while we were here. Sun Tzu hit the nail right on the head with everything he wrote centuries ago. You can be a Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever and live and believe according to their doctrine but you can still live your life in the fashion and principle that Sun Tzu illustrates in his writings.

I've been blessed, I think because of my faith in God, and that's it.
Sometimes I think that it sounds like I'm preaching but I hope I'm not coming off to corny. I say leave everything in his hands because we cannot change anything except the way we conduct ourselves.

I'm real glad you enjoyed that little story. Like Jimmy Durante used to say, "I've got a million of them".

[SundialMan]

Democrat majority excites ethanol companies

When a financial newsletter sent me word of an ethanol startup co. hiring disgraced fomer Clinton Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy to its Board, I found myself staring at a national news scoop which I then got posted on American Thinker. I have not seen anyone else write about this online or in newspapers. This is the first and only time (so far) that I have broken national news.

The ethanol company will probably be looking for a Federal "clean energy" subsidy from the Democratic Congress. Can stock shares to leading figures be far behind?

I want to say something now as an investor. I don't think ethanol companies are the sure thing quick buck trades that they were a year or two ago (if you caught the right point in their cycle). The hiring of Espy could be a sign of desperation, not a well planned expansion of influence.

This published piece below is very political, critical and skeptical of Democrats who see ethanol as the "Holy Grail" of fuel independence, a "feel good" project, and a source of new government project money for their districts. Yes, Republicans have also overdone pork barrel projects, but when Pres. Bush talks about alternative fuels, he is playing to a body of guaranteed Democratic votes.

You can't even put ethanol in a pipeline: you have to transport it by truck or rail to distant states. I think oil shale technology is further along in its development, but time will tell. But the political opinions in this piece are backed up with documentation and the story relates to the Stock Market, so I thought it was a story worth repeating even though it is "in your face."

After writing the first draft of this post, I see that the new Barron's has a story on p. 19 called "Out of Gas: Potholes abound for overhyped ethanol stocks."

I have substituted "xxxx" for "http" in all the internet website reference links.

Jack

xxxx://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2006/12/democrats_ready_to_cash_in_on.html

December 27, 2006
Democrats ready to cash in on green biz
Jack Kemp
Robert Novak reports
xxxx://www.suntimes.com/news/novak/185298,CST-EDT-novak25.article

that the Democrats (and bill co-author John McCain) in Congress are ready to push through Kyoto-like clean air penalty legislation, despite the objections of Detroit Congressman John Dingell who will become the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The article states,

"According to industry sources, Dingell has privately advised auto industry lobbyists to prepare for the worst. House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi is making carbon emission legislation a priority, and Dingell has warned Detroit that she expects him to move a bill through his committee."
But the article offers a ray of hope in its conclusion. , a public level of understanding that might not occur until the environmentalists and their Democrat friends in Congress may not agree to adjust to until after a new environmental overkill creates its own set of problems. Mr. Novak concludes,

"Ultimate salvation from U.S. self-destructive behavior may come from the real world. Most European Union countries, suffering higher energy costs imposed by the Kyoto pact, cannot meet that treaty's emission level requirements. Furthermore, China is on pace to exceed U.S. emissions by 2010, meaning that unilateral U.S. carbon controls will have little impact on global emissions while driving American jobs to China. This downside of Pelosi's green determination ought to resonate in union halls and coalfields. However, American industrialists, while wringing their hands, are not making their case."
There is another aspect to this passion for environmentalism: green business and stock profits. We have experienced a sort of green stock boom, even with companies that have little in the way of new, competitively priced alternative fuel or solar power capacity in sales. In the Dot Com 1990s, computer companies that did this were called "story stocks" and their products were known as "vaporware." Recall DNC Chairman Terry McCauliff's profits in Global Crossing's undersea cable bubble stock. The Sierra Times
xxxx://www.sierratimes.com/02/07/23/marti.htm recalls that

"On the other hand, the sleazy Terry McCauliff, chairman of the DNC made eighteen million from a hundred thousand dollar deal with the now bankrupt Global Crossing."
I believe we are experiencing much of the same game today, a slightly different form of old wine in new bottles - from Nancy Pelosi's political vineyard. The difference today is that a software company could not go to Congress and ask for a subsidy based on its non-existing product being good for the environment, for the children of Hillary's "It Takes a Village" to breathe.

On December 20, 2006, Former Clinton Sec. of Agriculture Mike Espy, who resigned that post in a mid-1990s scandal involving allegedly illegal gifts from Arkansas' Tyson Foods, xxxx://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/counsels/stories/espy062798.htm
has been named to the board of Alternative Energy Sources, a startup ethanol producer.
xxxx://biz.yahoo.com/pz/061220/110788.html

According to Yahoo Finance,
xxxx://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AENS.OB
Alternative Energy Resources has no profits, no revenue, cash of $8.75 million, and a share price of $1.10 as of Dec. 26, 2006. The company, founded in 2006, hopes to build ethanol plants, according to its Yahoo Finance Profile. It wants to compete with agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland and other big players. As Zell Miller said at the 2004 Republican Convention, "With what? Spitballs?"

What the company apparently plans to use is a Democrat with friends among the Friends of Bill and Hillary in the Congress. Perhaps they will create some plants at taxpayer expense in the future, but in the meantime a nice government grant which would boost the stock price and advance their "story" for shareholders would help. This could have the makings of another Enron.

To quote Novak's article again,

"Green extremists would prefer the severe legislation proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, the new chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee."

Barbara Boxer was a stock broker before she was a politician. While a Senator, she made some quick profits in at least sixty six energy stock transactions during 2000, including shares of Halliburton. xxxx://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b2bb3fa4860.htm


What a coincidence! Former energy stock trader Barbara Boxer has a new plan to change emissions and energy usage in the US. I haven't seen such a coincidence since a guy named Doc wanted to play me in a friendly game of poker with a deck he "just happened to have on him." I declined and I would suggest the rest of you do the same with this Renewable Energy Stock Crusade. Wait. Can't say "Crusade" these days. Make that Renewable Energy Stock Questionable Project.

(The author is not the former politician of the same name.)

[SundialMan]

When Europe subsidized wind power

I submitted the words below as a short blog piece to American Thinker. Don't know if they'll publish it. It is more of a reference link to an article than a written commentary. But it is fitting to put in a stock traders' forum.

Government windbags

So what would happen if the US had a European style alternative wind energy project, complete with government subsidies in order to help the industry start up fast? In fact, why not have the government both guarantee the price of electricity produced - and buy all the surplus energy?

That is what Denmark as done. The result is a 21.6 billion Danish Kroner loss between 2001 and 2005. That is is equivalent to a 3.7573 billion US Dollar loss over that period - or an annual average loss of $751.4 million.

Read the details. http://www.cphpost.dk/get/100188.html

Jack

[IIC]

I submitted the words below as a short blog piece to American Thinker. Don't know if they'll publish it. It is more of a reference link to an article than a written commentary. But it is fitting to put in a stock traders' forum.

Government windbags

So what would happen if the US had a European style alternative wind energy project, complete with government subsidies in order to help the industry start up fast? In fact, why not have the government both guarantee the price of electricity produced - and buy all the surplus energy?

That is what Denmark as done. The result is a 21.6 billion Danish Kroner loss between 2001 and 2005. That is is equivalent to a 3.7573 billion US Dollar loss over that period - or an annual average loss of $751.4 million.

Read the details. http://www.cphpost.dk/get/100188.html

Jack

Perhaps that is why Lye is so rich...The government buys all his excess beef at exorbitant prices w/ my tax dollars.

[SundialMan]

Toxic vaccines and Calvin Klein Ads

This story (or combination of two stories) I wrote has been submitted to American Thinker yesterday. I have doubt that they will publish it, but I think it is worth retelling here.

Jack

Toxic vaccines and Calvin Klein Ads

It seems that The Independent is reporting that UK Muslim officials are refusing to let their children get vaccinations. Quoting the piece, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/hea...cle2193012.ece

"Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, says almost all vaccines contain un-Islamic "haram" derivatives of animal or human tissue, and that Muslim parents are better off letting childrens' immune systems develop on their own. "

The first thought that comes to mind is that Muslim children will get very sick. The second thought is that they may cause a spread of diseases to schoolchildren of all faiths, be it from schools, public playgrounds, children's amusement parks, clinic visits for reasons other than vaccinations, etc.

Because of my limited medical and Islamic knowledge, I interviewed Sevgi, a Turkish Muslim nurse working in New York for a holisticly oriented physician and she brought up some other considerations. Many Western vaccines are bound with mercury, making them somewhat toxic and a suspected factor in Attention Deficit Disorder. American holistic health proponents are also wary of vaccines. People in America have the legal right to refuse vaccines for their children on religious grounds. In fact, Sevgi would do this if she had small children because presenting alternative health studies would not be considered a valid excuse. It is ironic that in America, scientific evidence isn't considered reason for refusing a vaccination, but religious faith is. In other words, people have to accept scientific dogma, even if factual evidence contradicts it, but they can have their differing faiths used as a basis for valid scepticism. I wonder what Avicena and Maimonides would have thought of this.

With what Sevgi told me, I could see why the head of the Islamic Medical Association found it best to protest the vaccinations on religious rather than scientific grounds. I believe both Avicena and Maimonides would have the skill but not the time or patience to try arguing the contrary science with a British National Health beaurocrat. So a religous objection is best for now.

Months ago in New York, a Calvin Klein suggestive ad with model Kate Moss's photo was placed on a small billboard across the street from a mosque in the East Village. The local paper claimed the mosque's directors were upset, period. Since I live near enough to investigate the location myself, I went to there to find out that a) the photo had been taken down b) there was a New York City public school diagonally across the street from the billboard c) there was a large Catholic school Mary Help to Christians around 50 feet east of the mosque on the same street. I could see where any group of parents from these three places would object to a suggestive photo of the former heroin-chic Kate Moss on display for their children to see on the way to and from schools.

What have I relearned? That you can't jump to knee-jerk conclusions and that there are Muslim objections to modern secular culture that are sincere and worthy of consideration.

Jack Kemp

[SundialMan]

My Danish windmill story has been edited by my editor at American Thinker and published online. The link to the original newspaper story wasn't copy here, but is in my post above on this board.

Jack

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/01/in_ill_wind.html

January 30, 2007
In ill wind
Jack Kemp

Subsidies and guarantees are among the favorite tools of governments seeking to manipulate the private sector and untrusting of the market. So what would happen if the US had a European style alternative wind energy project, complete with government subsidies in order to help the industry start up fast? In fact, why not have the government both guarantee the price of electricity produced - and buy all the surplus energy?


That is what Denmark has actually done. The result is a 21.6 billion Danish Kroner loss between 2001 and 2005. That is is equivalent to a $3.7573 billion US Dollar loss over that period. That works out to $692 for every Dane, including the children.


A comparably "effective" program in the United States would cost us around 200 billion dollars, adjusted for our population.


(Jack Kemp is not the former politician of the same name.)

[SundialMan]

The Mt. Vernon Ladies Association

Don't mess with the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association

In early December, 2006, I received a fund raising letter from an organization with an old fashioned name, The Mt. Vernon Ladies Association. They are the people in charge of maintaining George Washington's home at Mt. Vernon, and they wrote to ask for a donation (I gave) and talk about the new History Center they built and opened to the public on the grounds of the Washington's estate. They also are teaching about George Washington and Mt. Vernon using internet seminars.

A few weeks later, I decided to take a trip over the Christmas weekend to Washington, DC. Seeing most of the major sites in the first two days, I got on the internet and found that I could go on a tour next day to Mt. Vernon. The next morning I went to Union Station and booked a half day bus trip, leaving at 8 am. After driving south from the capitol, through Alexandria, Virginia, stopping to see the smoke scarred gravestones where Revolutionary soldiers lit fires at night to keep warm in the courtyard of the church George Washington attended, we arrived at Mt. Vernon. The people giving the tour were - the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association. Our tour guide was a retired staffer from the Library of Congress. Besides learning about George and Martha, I learned that the Ladies Association was started in the mid 19th century by a woman who visited Mt. Vernon and was appalled by the deteriorated condition of the estate. She formed a women's club which bought the deed to the place, started restoration work, and got the Virginia Legislature to officially charter the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association as the caretakers of the historic property. This was no small feat in the mid Ninteeth Century. They have been running the place ever since. Our guide also told us than into today's world, where children aren't taught American History, when she asks a group of visiting high school students, particularly from California, whether the US won the Revolutionary War, they typically say no. That is a profound misunderstanding of why we don't fly the British Union Jack over our buildings.

In recent years, someone wanted to build a sewage treatment plant and shopping center on the opposite shore of the Potomac, spoiling the view from Mt. Vernon. One of the Ladies Association members was also a member of the US Congress. Getting support from various (mostly) Congressmen, she got a law passed making the opposite shoreline in Maryland a national park 80 miles long. No more sewage treatment plant. No shopping center.

Jack

[SundialMan]

The 7 Best Movies you never heard of

Well, most of you never heard of these seven movies. And not all of them are indie films. I'll give the names and descriptions.

Diamond Men starring Robert Forster and Donnie Wahlberg
Image this situation. A middle aged widower with grown kids is a traveling diamond salesman in small town Pennsylvania. He has a heart attack on the road with his diamond samples. After recovery, he is all but forced out of his job, having to train his young, brash replacement (Donnie Wahlberg) for the next several weeks. A culture clash insues and both these very different men find out they each have something to teach one another about life.

Manna From Heaven starring Shirley Jones, Frank Gorshin, Cloris Leachman (both Frank and Cloris's last roles), Wendie Malik (from 'Just Shoot Me'), Jill Eikenberry, Shelly Duvall and the Mayor of Buffalo.
A great independent film that keeps playing by word of mouth. I found it in a Blockbuster store. The movie is first set in the late 1950s in Buffalo where a group of people are living together in a house. One day, a truck going over a highway land bridge flies open to shower their front yard with money, around $3,300 each. That would have bought you a Cadillac then. After some bickering about what to do with it, everyone listens to the idealistic daughter of the house's owner who says they should use it to better themselves. Years later, the young girl is now a nun and hears the Voice of God tell her the money was a loan, not a gift, and it must be repaid. She gathers all the people together from where they now live across the US and confronts them with her vision. How will they meet the challenge?

Finding Graceland starring Harvey Keitel as a 50ish man who believes he is an older Elvis, tired of show business and on a mission to help people while traveling around the country. The movie also stars Bridget Fonda and some great lesser known actors. "Elvis" confronts a bitter young doctor whose wife died in a car crash and shows him who really is the crazy one. Keitel does a great stage performance of "Suspicious Minds" in a Southern casino.

Goodbye Lenin, a German film with a great story and actors - and English subtitles. In East Berlin just before the end of the East German regime, a young man's idealistic communist mother goes into a comma and comes out of it after the Berlin Wall comes down. Doctors tell the young man that she can't deal with any great shocks, so the young man creates an elaborate hoax to keep her from knowing the communist regime has fallen, going so far as staging fake news broadcasts with a videocam to explain why the streets are full of Western cars (Audis, BMWs, Mercedes). His "news show" says it is because of high unemployment in capitalist West Germany and Party Chairman Hoenicker has graciously allowed these "unemployed West Germans to seek refuge" in the East, as a "humanitarian gesture." Did you ever see someone looking for an old pickle jar with an East German label in a dumpster and later pushing new, imported pickles from Portugal in it? Well it's in this movie.

Around the World in 80 Days, 1980s cable tv version starring Pierce Brosnan, Eric Idle, Lee Remick, Peter Ustanov. I think this is the best of the three versions of this story - and I'm old enough to have seen all three. Beautiful, exotic settings, good acting, funny period comedy. This is a gem.

One, Two, Three starring James Cagney (his last movie), Paula Prentis, Horst Bucholtz. This is a major studio Billy Wilder comedy from 1961 that was released to DVD just a few years ago. Cagney is the philandering, wheeler-dealer head of Coca-Cola's operations in West Berlin. When the chairman of Coke's daughter arrives for a visit and gets mixed up with a young East German communist engineer, Cagney makes sure he gets arrested when he gives him a "gift" to take back to East Berlin: a cuckoo-clock that plays Yankee Doodle, wrapped in a Wall St. Journal. I don't think they had Investors' Business Daily in Europe in those days. When Cagney finds out the Chairman's daughter has been made pregnant by this same guy, a scheme is hatched to get the young engineer out of an East Berlin prision where he is held as "an Amerikanicher spion" (an American spy).

The Final Countdown starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Francioso, Ali McGraw, Charles Durning. Obviously, this is a major studio release from the 1980s, a kind of military science fiction film, a Star Trek episode at sea. Imagine a 1980s aircraft carrier, on patrol out of Pearl Harbor, commanded by Kirk Douglas, going through a storm/time warp like you've seen Captain Kirk of the Enterprise - not Admiral Kirk Douglas - go through. Coming out of the storm, they quickly realise - based on radio broadcasts, an attack on a patrol by a 1940s Mitsubishi Zero plane, and a US Senator and his mistress they pick up in their yacht -that they have been transported back to December 6, 1941 in the same location northwest of Hawaii. And one of the officers is a history buff, having a book with the exact location coordinates of the Japanese aircraft carriers approaching Hawaii. They have the firepower to stop the Attack on Pearl Harbor - and keep America out of WW II. What do they do? What would you do?

[SundialMan]

Learning at the Learning Annex

While reading a paragraph from an American Thinker article today, I was reminded of a real world example of its premise I encountered in 1982. The article stated:
*

http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/02/fitz_the_gullible_the_only_exp.html

*
*"That doesn't mean Fitzgerald is not an intelligent man. The world is filled with smart people who can't see beyond their own noses. They gather in droves in the academy, as Moliere famously pointed out several centuries ago. They can be smart as a whip on their school exams, and they often do well in puzzle-solving jobs like computer programming. But they don't have a whit of common sense; they lack a broad understanding of the world; and outside their well-worn mental grooves they are easily deceived."
*
In 1982, I was considering becoming a computer programmer, which I later did for a number of years. While attending a one evening Learning Annex course in New York,*I heard another attendee, a*woman accountant, tell this story about her place of work. It seems her company was contracted to process the Medicaid accounts for New York City. The computer programmers had worked out a workable beta test model (early*version)*of their program and in order to test its readiness for professional use, gave the accountants blank application forms to fill out with any error they could think up. The accountants filled out these forms which were then keyed into a computer as test records matched to the programmers' beta test logic. On a whim, the*lady accountant decided to enter an application to pay maternity benefits for a pregnant man, i.e., an application marked "M" for the Sex. To everyone's amazement - and the programmers' embarrassment - the test*program paid the benefits.
*
The programmers had failed to construct what is called a verisimilitude test, i.e., a test of reasonable a range of answers, such as they do by not allowing monthly days to be greater than 31 (or 28-9 for February. What the programmers also failed to take into consideration is that many people filling out a Medicaid form in New York don't speak English well or have great test-taking skills, so the questions could confuse them. Obviously, the computer doesn't know a man cannot become a mother, but it is the job of the programmers to tell the machine, via the instructions they write, this isn't possible. Despite all the thought that went into the program, they failed to teach their brainchild the Facts of Life.

Another class I attended at the Learning Annex around this time was a resume writing workshop which required us to exchange resumes with the person sitting next to us and offer a critique with advise. When I was handed the resume of my "partner," I found out he was an Ivy League trained nuclear physicist who at worked at a major atomic reactor. Oh boy. What could I possibly tell this man that he didn't already know? I started by making a stylistic point, breaking the formal resume rules, about placing his training and recent work at the top, where it would impress people. OK, I was faking it, trying not to look like a complete idiot. But looking further, I then caught a real flaw: he had actually written his social security number on his resume which he mailed to perhaps one hundred potential employers. At this point, I had the opportunity to lecture a nuclear scientist, something I didn't expect to ever do. I calmly told him the obvious, i.e., do not include his social security number in his mailings to protect his privacy and that he could and should give it out freely when he was invited to an office for a job interview.
This was before the Internet was established, but there were no shortage of thieves using stolen identifications. A practical, regular person would not need such advice from me.