TIME FOR A BOOK REVIEW

A few years ago, a Swedish writer and journalist, Stieg Larsson, published The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. This detective novel was so good that Mr. Larsson became the bestselling author in the world. Now, another Swedish writer and journalist, is on his way to becoming another international publishing sensation. It seems the Swedes have a real talent for storytelling. This author’s name is Jonas Jonasson (Swedish authors all have an extra ‘s’ in their names). The name of his book is, The 100-year-Old Man Who climbed Out The Window And Disappeared. It is a hilarious satirical look at international relations in the 20^th century through the eyes of an old man who has seen it all.

The book makes fun of politics, religion, espionage, communists, fascists, capitalists and historical figures such as Mao, Truman, Stalin, Franco, Johnson and Churchill. It is a celebration of absurd humor. It is a completely crazy and incredibly funny story. It made me laugh a lot! It also made me feel good about getting older. If you want to have a fun time, read this book.

AN UNBIASED ANALYSIS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

We have only two choices: An incumbent President who is a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican challenger. It seems reasonable to me that we should make a judgment based on their political philosophy because that is the best indication of what they will do. You certainly can’t believe their speeches or their TV advertisements. So, let’s compare their political philosophies based on commonly accepted definitions.  

Democratic liberals believe in more government control and more regulations. They believe in extending current entitlement programs and creating new ones such as free health care. They want to increase taxes on high income citizens and print and borrow money to pay for these public benefits. They do not appear to be concerned about the increasing national debt or unbalanced budget. They want to redistribute wealth from those who earn it to those who do not work and to those who work but earn less. In other words, they want to take from the rich and give to the poor.

Republican conservatives embrace the conviction that government must be as limited as possible. In this view, much of what government spends is wasted. Conservatives want to reduce regulation and make cutting taxes the highest priority. They believe in privatization, contracting out, and a private sector freed from the intrusive hand of government will be the engines of a stronger society. They want to take strong measures to reduce the deficit and balance the budget. As Ronald Reagan said, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is our problem.

So, those are our choices. Neither political philosophy is perfect and your personal philosophy will not be perfectly in agreement with either one. However, you must choose the one that you think is the most needed one at this time in our history.  My opinion is we should vote for the philosophy, not the man.

WHY DO I BLOG?

I do it because I think it is important to express my opinions and feelings about life. I like to think that I am not a hypocrite and the world would be a better place if more people were honest about how they feel about important questions and issues. The human inclination is to be guarded about what they really think. Therefore, it is difficult to have meaningful discussions. Everyone is afraid of the criticism that might result from a disclosure of how they think. For example, I am not a “believer” of the Christian religion. But I have the highest regard for those who are believers. My wife is one of the most passionate and faithful believers that I know. And I love her dearly.

The fellow members of her church recently did a very big act of kindness for her out of respect for the work she does for the church. I am in awe of that generosity. I consider them to be good people and good friends. The Christian tradition of religion has done many fine things for humanity and I am grateful. I wish that all religions could be so altruistic. Unfortunately, many awful things are done in the name of religion and I am sorry to see that. To me, God is inscrutable and hard to understand. There are many mysteries in life!

DDinesh D’Souza’s blockbuster documentary”2016: Obama’s America”  has created quite a sensation. For an interview of Mr. D’Sousa go to: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/dsouza-responds/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20120911

TOO MANY CONNECTIONS CAN BE DANGEROUS

Everywhere you look people are checking e-mail, browsing the Internet, checking social media, shopping, reading books, or watching videos and playing games online. All of this connectivity via the Internet is fraught with peril. We may be reaching a tipping point that leads to disaster. Because every bank is interconnected with every other bank we have destabilized the banking system. Because of automated trading controlled by powerful computers interacting with each other, we have had a “flash crash” in the stock market that evaporated $600 billion of equity in a few minutes! Increasing connectivity, speed, and complexity, can have surprising results that lead to horrible events. A strongly-networked system of smartphones and computers has the potential to eliminate privacy and expose us to identity theft.

Smartphones connected by networks to computers is a recipe for disaster!. Cyber researchers have invented a device to extract the memory of a mobile phone. Computer software can extract the phone’s memory consisting of call history, text messages, email, images, video, and banking information. Yes, it could be helpful for police as evidence in crimes but it would also be very useful for criminals to steal your identity and your money. Even the government could use it to spy on its citizens. My advice is to be careful how connected you get and be vigilant about keeping your eyes on what the Internet is capable of. There will soon be computers as powerful as our brains and that sounds dangerous to me. If they are able to make computers that have empathy, sympathy, and emotions then humans will be obsolete.