DOMAIN, URL, PROTOCOL, PATH, YIKES!

Creating a compelling website for people who wish to learn how to make better use of the Internet is more difficult than I thought it would be. It requires the development of new skills and mastering new software programs. I am learning a whole new vocabulary of terms, such as: Hyper Text Markup Language, Cascading Style Sheets, FTP client, Host, Server script, Search Engine optimization, Key Words, and “Oh Shit!” The list goes on and on. The physical construction of an attractive site is demanding but then you have to worry about content. It has to be fresh, continuous, useful, and of high quality. That will entail a great amount of research and work. However, I am glad that Pat and I decided to take on the task. I think it will be rewarding. Also, the teacher of a subject usually learns more than the students. I am looking forward to my own increased knowledge! So, anyway, we are off and running (not the website, yet) with the project in the works. I will be reporting on our progress. Happy navigating!

A NEW HELPFUL WEBSITE!

The Internet is a huge, dynamic, overwhelming place. Too many choices and the choices change every day. There are millions of websites covering all sorts of subjects. How does one make sense of it all? You need a guide to help you find meaningful, high quality, easy to use websites. Soon, you will have one! A team of geezers is building "awesomegeezer.com". This site will be your wizard to help you navigate the Internet. My long time friend and retiree from the National Security Agency, Patrick D. Fero, and I will soon have the site up and running. Pat comes from a high tech environment of code breaking and code making. I come from the confusing world of insurance. We are both amature computer geeks looking for a challenge. Pat has built a number of websites and I recently built my first one. This new site will be for you! Consequently, we would really like to hear from you. Please tell us what you would like to see on our site. We value your opinion and you will be our most important critic. Let us know what is on your mind. We will be grateful for some feed back. In the near future, awesomegeezer.com will be available. We hope to have your support!

THE GEEZERS' CRUSADE

This Op-Ed column by David Brooks appeared in the February 2 issue of The New York Times. It is so good, I want to share it with you. I am substituting it for my Weds. blog because I am taking a snow day. Enjoy the Article!

We like to think that in days gone by, the young venerated the elderly. But that wasn’t always so. In “As You Like It,”Shakespeare’s morose character, Jaques, calls old age “second childishness and mere oblivion.” Walt Whitman hoped that the tedium and pettiness of his senior years would not infect his poetry.

Developmental psychologists, when they treated old age at all, often regarded it as a period of withdrawal. The elderly slowly separate themselves from the world. They cannot be expected to achieve new transformations. “About the age of fifty,” Freud wrote, “the elasticity of the mental processes on which treatment depends is, as a rule, lacking. Old people are no longer educable.”

Well, that was wrong. Over the past few years, researchers have found that the brain is capable of creating new connections and even new neurons all through life. While some mental processes — like working memory and the ability to quickly solve math problems — clearly deteriorate, others do not. Older people retain their ability to remember emotionally nuanced events. They are able to integrate memories from their left and right hemispheres. Their brains reorganize to help compensate for the effects of aging.

A series of longitudinal studies, begun decades ago, are producing a rosier portrait of life after retirement. These studies don’t portray old age as surrender or even serenity. They portray it as a period of development — and they’re not even talking about über-oldsters jumping out of airplanes.

People are most unhappy in middle age and report being happier as they get older. This could be because as people age they pay less attention to negative emotional stimuli, according to a study by the psychologists Mara Mather, Turhan Canli and others.

Gender roles begin to merge. Many women get more assertive while many men get more emotionally attuned. Personalities often become more vivid as people become more of what they already are. Norma Haan of the University of California, Berkeley, and others conducted a 50-year follow-up of people who had been studied while young and concluded that the subjects had become more outgoing, self-confident and warm with age.

The research paints a comforting picture. And the nicest part is that virtue is rewarded. One of the keys to healthy aging is what George Vaillant of Harvard calls “generativity” — providing for future generations. Seniors who perform service for the young have more positive lives and better marriages than those who don’t. As Vaillant writes in his book “Aging Well,” “Biology flows downhill.” We are naturally inclined to serve those who come after and thrive when performing that role.

The odd thing is that when you turn to political life, we are living in an age of reverse-generativity. Far from serving the young, the old are now taking from them. First, they are taking money. According to Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institution, the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children.

Second, they are taking freedom. In 2009, for the first time in American history, every single penny of federal tax revenue went to pay for mandatory spending programs, according to Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute. As more money goes to pay off promises made mostly to the old, the young have less control.

Third, they are taking opportunity. For decades, federal spending has hovered around 20 percent of G.D.P. By 2019, it is forecast to be at 25 percent and rising. The higher tax rates implied by that spending will mean less growth and fewer opportunities. Already, pension costs in many states are squeezing education spending.

In the private sphere, in other words, seniors provide wonderful gifts to their grandchildren, loving attention that will linger in young minds, providing support for decades to come. In the public sphere, they take it away.

I used to think that political leaders could avert fiscal suicide. But it’s now clear change will not be led from Washington. On the other hand, over the past couple of years we’ve seen the power of spontaneous social movements: first the movement that formed behind Barack Obama, and now, equally large, the Tea Party movement.

Spontaneous social movements can make the unthinkable thinkable, and they can do it quickly. It now seems clear that the only way the U.S. is going to avoid an economic crisis is if the oldsters take it upon themselves to arise and force change. The young lack the political power. Only the old can lead a generativity revolution — millions of people demanding changes in health care spending and the retirement age to make life better for their grandchildren.

It may seem unrealistic — to expect a generation to organize around the cause of nonselfishness. But in the private sphere, you see it every day. Old people now have the time, the energy and, with the Internet, the tools to organize.

The elderly. They are our future.

INTERESTING PEOPLE I HAVE MET

I enjoy smoking a fine cigar, drinking a pint of Guinness, and having a conversation with a friend. However, I am not allowed to smoke a cigar inside my house and very few public establishments will allow it. However, in the heart of down town Adrian, there is a cigar friendly Pub called the Barley House. It is where I go when I have the urge to indulge. The proprietor of this fine place is an interesting fellow. His beautiful, voluptuous barmaid, who has a charming Russian accent, is also his wife. I asked him how they had met and he told me the story.

Several years ago, while vacationing in the Southern Ural Mountains, he visited a tavern located in a small village. Because he was attracted to the barmaid, he wanted to get to know her but he had a problem. She did not speak English and he did not speak Russian. Fortunately, he had a comprehensive phrase book with him. It had English/Russian and Russian/English sentences. He would point to a sentence and she would respond by pointing to a sentence. In this manner they became acquainted and fell in love. He asked her to marry him and she said yes! He bought a computer for her that could translate Russian to English and vice versa. He went back home to Adrian and they began an e-mail conversation that lasted for a year. That is how long it took them to get through all the red tape necessary to allow her and her two children to emigrate to the U.S.A. He bought the Airline tickets and the rest is history.

Look around you, be friendly, strike up a conversation, and chances are you will meet some interesting people. I did.