KNOWLEDGE PICKER'S ARCHIVE

Pick 64 - One Word

I don't know what overly ambitious person invented the practice of making New Year's Resolutions. I am sure that person was well-intentioned and many have benefited from this yearly run for perfection. I used to think that a new year could magically throw out a lifeline to keep me from sinking into the "not enough" sea of desperation. All of my resolutions were rooted in feeling like I was not enough—not working hard enough, not slim enough, not spiritual enough, not fit enough, not a good enough friend or parent and not carrying my own weight in the world. Now that I am older and wiser, I realize that a new year doesn’t change old thought patterns. If anything, the passing of time tends to reinforce them. The longer my to-do list got each year, the more I began to feel powerless and to believe the person I was in that moment was not enough. There's no hidden value in that. It just fosters self incrimination and shame.

Nowadays, I do not set New Year’s goals or make resolutions to lose weight, gain patience, grow rich, or be more than the person I already am. I just pick One Word to frame my life.

My word for this year is FAITH. On January 1st, that word begins to frame my attitude and my life for the next 365 days. I will remember that word every time I begin to feel fearful or that I do not have the right stuff to succeed. I will meet fear with faith at every dark corner of this year. I will stop worrying about the future and obsessing about past failures. I will live in the moment with the serenity that God can do for me what I have not been willing or able to do for myself. In that way I will see the hidden value in every person I meet and in every thing that happens throughout the year.

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Pick 63 - Pagers

A pager also known as a beeper is a device that is essentially a small battery operated radio receiver that when the proper signal is received will set off an alert (either audible or vibrating) and display either a numeric message such as a phone number or a word message if the pager is alphanumeric capable.

If he had not responded to a Page from the Grim Reaper on June 9, 2009, John Francis Mitchell would be celebrating his 86th birthday on New Year's Day 2014. Unless you have worked for Motorola or are imbued with communications technology , you may never have heard of John Francis Mitchell. However, if you use a mobile phone or pager, you should realize that Mitchell developed this essential tool of urgent communication in 1960--long before Steve Jobs came along. During his 45-yerar career with Motorola, Mitchell shaped the creation of nearly all of the wireless communications industries in the latter half of the 20th century.

In 1960, he combined elements of Motorola's Walkie Talkie with evolving features of AM transistor radios for automobiles. The result was the first transistorized pager. Although mobile phones were also evolving, they were expensive and not well supported. However, paging technology was affordable and well supported by the various telephonic Paging services that had sprang up across America since the 1950's. Pager technology continued to expand, until the early 1990s when cellular technologies became cheaper and more widely supported. Still, the Pager has not yet been relegated to the Smithsonian. It has hidden value in the way it operates that has yet to be disrupted by the cellular industry.

Pagers reached their peak popularity in the late 1980's through late 1990's. Around the year 2000, cell phones became smaller with a longer battery life and cell phone plans became less expensive which enabled the average consumer to switch from paging to cellular communication. At the peak of pager popularity, there were well over 60,000,000 pagers in use worldwide.

Pagers are still in use where mobile phones have no signal, and in places where the operation of the radio transmitters in mobile phones is prohibited. This includes hospitals and airport hubs, where cellular coverage is weak or nonexistent, and radio transmitters can interfere with sensitive electronic equipment yet there is a need for 24/7 communications with service and emergency staff.

Any facility handling classified information, precludes the use of transmitter or data storage devices to ensure no information can leave the facility undetected.

The 2005 London bombings spurred user overload and subsequent shutdown of all SMS systems during the resulting panic. But pagers, which do not have to "answer" before a message can be received, continued to operate as usual. Moreover, they operate at very low signal level that causes no interference to other communication devices such as radio and TV. For this reason, Volunteer Firefighters, EMT, and Rescue squad members carry pagers to alert them of emergency call outs for their department. These pagers receive a special tone from a fire department radio frequency that is not susceptible to jamming or hacking.

Pagers have a growing customer base in the restaurant and hospitality industry. Customers who may wish to shop or visit the bar while waiting for a table get a portable beeper that alerts them when their table is ready. Some restaurant kitchens use beepers to alert wait staff when meals are ready to serve. This frees them to take new orders or provide other service instead of hanging out in the kitchen to ensure prompt service.

Modern paging systems typically use multiple base transmitters to modulate the same signal on the same RF channel, a design approach called simulcast. Simulcast systems can use satellite feeds to distribute identical information to multiple transmitters. This coverage overlap, plus the broad reach of satellite communications, makes paging systems more reliable than ground based cellular networks that are easily disrupted by severe weather or terrorist activity. This hidden value has led public safety agencies to adopt pagers over cellular and other commercial services for critical messaging.

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Pick 62 - Blood Types

I have Type O-negtive blood. Depending on how you feel about blood transfusions, this can be a blessing or a curse. It is a blessing to be able to donate blood to anyone else regardless of their blood type. The American Red Cross calls me a "universal donor" meaning they can transfuse my blood to anyone regardless of the recipient's blood type. It is also a curse. I can only receive blood from donors having O-negative blood--and we are not in the majority by any means.

The discovery of the ABO blood group system is widely credited to Austrian scientist Karl Landsteiner, who identified the O, A, and B blood types in 1900. Understanding the ABO blood group system has enabled safe and predictable transfusions which was not the case prior to 1900. According the Landsteiner, Type A and Type B blood groups are associated with anti-A and anti-B antibodies. They are produced in the first years of life by sensitization to food, bacteria, and viruses.

Landsteiner originally described the O blood type as type "C", but in parts of Europe it was renamed as "0" (zero), signifying the lack of the A or B antigens.In persons with Type A or B blood, these antigens or sugars physically exposed on the exterior of red blood cells are unique to each individual--similar to fingerprints. Each person's Immune System uses these markers to distinguish between good cells and bad cells. Any cell that does not have the correct marker is destroyed as a defense against germs and harmful bacteria. This is all well and good until a person with Type B blood receives a transfusion of Type A blood. The Immune Systems goes on general alert and begins all out war on the "foreign" red cells. This harsh response, though an adaptive reaction useful against infection, can cause death when large amounts of such cells are encountered after blood transfusion.

Prior to 1900, all blood was thought to be the same as long as it came from another human being. The success or failure of a blood transfusion was hit or miss depending on the prevalence of blood donors who coincidentally matched the blood type of the recipient.Once the role of antigens was understood, it was not long before scientists determined that the O-negative blood type had no markers. The red cells are, in effect, stealth cells that are ignored by the human Immune System. That is the hidden value in O-negative blood. However, the down side of that for me is that my Immune System does not expect red cells to carry any antigens. So if I happen to receive a transfusion of Type A or Type B blood I am SOL. Thanks to Dr.Landsteiner, that is very unlikely to happen.

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Pick 61 - Remote Viewing

As a freelance writer searching for new opportunities, I never know what hidden value I am going to discover. I have already covered "curator" as a 21st century upscale career path. Today I discovered "remote viewing" opportunities. Like me, you may already be associating concepts like Peeping Tom, CIA Operative, or a Reviewer of YouTube clips with this opportunity. Like me, you'd be totally off base. Here is what the requester was actually seeking:

This position requires someone who is fluent in Remote Viewing and able to determine current targets.
The interview will consist of you being randomly assigned a Target and you will need to demonstrate your proficiency in correctly documenting the details of the event

Given the news we have been hearing lately about UMV strikes against terrorist leaders, my thoughts focused on "current targets" and "correctly documenting the details of the event" but I dismissed those thoughts because I was searching a site dedicated to freelance writers not drone operators or mercenaries.

To get a handle on the hidden value in this new opportunity I turned to Wikipedia. As usual, Wiki had the information I needed:

Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using subjective means, in particular, extra-sensory perception (ESP) or "sensing with mind".
Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object, event, person or location that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance. The term was coined in the 1970s by physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, parapsychology researchers at Stanford Research Institute, to distinguish it from clairvoyance.
If I actually had any RV ability, there was someone out there willing to pay me for a demonstration. The freelance writing opportunity was to document the details of each demonstration. But that is not the hidden value in this opportunity. The hidden value lies in the personal and unique nature of remote viewing. It cannot be outsourced, it has financial value that does not need Union Protection, and it brings entitlements that no Government agency controls.

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Pick 60 - Wristify

MIT students are always churning out the latest in innovative technology. While most of their projects are complex in nature, Wristify is not so much. This is a device that is placed on a person’s wrist and is supposed to help regulate their body temperature. In theory it will allow us to be more comfortable during cold mornings and possibly even be able to cut back on electric bills if it works as tested. So I did some research to see exactly what this device does and how it does it.

First off, the prototype, just like our cellphones, must be charged periodically to do what it does. This means we need to plug it in for a charge every day.

The human wrist acts as the alert center for this device. It senses when a person is feeling cold or warm. Anyone who has ever worked in an office building knows there no perfect temperature for everyone. Some people will be hot at 75 degrees and some will complain it is too cold. This is what Wristify does about that: When sensors on the wrist determine that the person is FEELING hot or cold, it sends a pulse of cold or warm air to change that person's perception of room temperature. According to researchers at MIT, this person’s body will be tricked into thinking that the temperature is more to their liking...even though the room temperature has not changed one degree.

Does it work? I am not sure, but it seems that everyone who has tried it experienced positive results. Engineers are still trying to determine the best temperatures to use for the air impulses so that a user will not feel shocked or be taken by surprise when the whisper of air hits their wrist.

Thermal body temperature is an interesting concept and MIT may be on to something that will help people feel more comfortable without paying a high utility bill. The hidden value is rather apparent with Wristify. The human body is complex and is able to take care of itself in ways that we have yet to understand. Through a simple device, we can change the way our entire body feels. It is amazing how our body can take care without outside intervention. But, will the body learn to adapt to these heat impulses and eventually ignore them? That is one detail the MIT folks are trying to determine.

For now, I am skeptical. I would bet that the body sensitivity to heat and cold is not limited to the wrist alone. For this concept to work we may have to wear cloths that do what the Wristify watch does. However, it still might be better to keep us feeling warm or cold as individuals than to heat or cool an entire building in a feeble attempt to meet the demands of everyone at the same time. Who knows, someday soon we may be able to instruct our smartphones to tell our body to cool down when we start to get hot flashes.

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Tour 59 - MindDrive

MindDrive, conceived by former president of Atari, Ron Gordon, has achieved what many thought was impossible. When working at Atari, Gordon came across the idea of making games that could be ran by using one’s mind. This was a concept that many had dreamed of, but technology simply was not capable of producing. Now, however, MindDrive has set the platform in which these aspirations can finally become reality.

Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash

The Other 90%

Ron Gordon, after his departure from Atari, was still obsessed with the notion of the brain. This led him to create the non-profit institute dubbed, “The Other 90%.” This institute was responsible for researching the regions of the brain that seemed to be unused in the average person. Through all of the research conducted at this institute, one of the most revolutionary results has been MindDrive.

Delving into MindDrive

MindDrive is an interface in which a person is able to control devices with nothing other than their mind. Through this, it is possible for people to control computers, wheelchairs and a plethora of other technologies. While this may not be of importance to some people, it has opened up an otherwise closed world to others.

Disabled Advancements

Being disabled means that a person will not be able to partake in many tasks that the average person is able to enjoy. With the use of MindDrive, however, it is possible to play games or become mobile without functioning limbs. Quadriplegic individuals will receive the most benefit from this technology as they will simply be able to move their wheelchair or play their favorite games with the use of their mind.

Video games have been the advancement that many people have truly benefited from. While it has always been possible for the disabled to use other forms of wheelchair control or to be pushed around, being able to play games was impossible. MindDrive allows for this to be done with precision. MindDrive has created their own computer games that can be controlled through the interface. This opens up the possibility of playing many family games together, or simply playing the games solo.

MindDrive requires sensors to be placed on a user’s fingers so that the impulses felt through the skin can be read and the appropriate action taken. This is a dream that is continually evolving for Ron Gordon and one in which will pick up traction with developers in the future. Now, games are accessible to everyone. While Gordon may have known his aspirations would help many people, he could never have realized the hidden value that MindDrive provided for the disabled.

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Pick 58 - Collateral Cleanup

As the only child in my household, I was the goto kid for all chores that might normally have been shared by brothers and/or sisters if I had them. As the first-born and only son, I was on the top of my father's short list for cutting the grass, washing the cars, weeding the flower beds and whatever other chores he thought I was old enough to handle. However, nothing on his list pre-empted the chores my mother gave me. These included clearing the table and doing the dishes, dusting and vacuuming and putting away the finished laundry. I did not dare to ask for an allowance as did most of my friends. Instead I was expected to earn my money. Each chore had a non-negotiable value. Washing the car was worth 25-cents. Cutting the grass with our push mower was also worth 25-cents. Most everything else was worth 5-cents unless I was the main beneficiary of the service. Folding and putting away laundry might be done per gratis if most of the laundry was mine. Although I may have resented it at the time, I came to appreciate the sense of responsibility and understanding of productivity that this early childhood training gave me for adult life. I also learned the hidden value of collateral clean-up.

When my mother cooked a meal, she tended to leave the pots, pans and utensils for clean-up til after the meal. This made doing dishes a real challenge for me. When my father cooked, he usually cleaned up the pots, pans and utensils as he prepared the meal. By the time the meal was served, only the meal dishes remained for me to wash, dry, and put away. Seems he had done some stints as a cook and dish washer in his teen years. In a busy restaurant, pots, pans and utensils are in constant use. You either clean up as you go or risk having food orders back up while you are waiting for something to be cleaned.

The hidden value in collateral cleanup goes beyond food preparation. My mother's general rule of household organization was: "A place for everything and everything in it's place." I may have had to do more dishes when she cooked but there was never any doubt about where to store them once they were washed and dried. My father, on the other hand had no such rule. If I was not available to help him with clean-up he would usually put stuff wherever it might fit. I don't know why he operated this way, but apparently in those busy restaurants, there was never a need to store anything since it was in constant use the hours he worked in the kitchen.

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Pick 57 - Smartphones

A few months ago, I did not even know what the term "smartphone" meant. I knew it had something to do with cell phones but assumed it was one of those cleaver marketing terms used to create a need for something we never knew we needed until a team of smart marketeers got us up to speed.

Then, Verizon offered a deal on the new Android that I could not resist. And, within a few days I became a smarty myself. At least I felt a lot smarter knowing that my cell phone could not only deliver my e-mail but could respond to verbal commands and take dictated messages that it would whisk off to the few friends who could read them on their smartphones. What I did not realize was the hidden value my ownership of a smartphone conveyed to those marketeers.

Photo by Matam Jaswanth on Unsplash

Then I came across a report prepared by Live Science*. It compares smart phone brands with user profiles.
The most significant comparison: Apple vs Android. Live Science found that iPhone users tend to be over 35, female, educated, liberal, and earning an income of more than US$200,000 per year. They may or may not be tech savvy, but don’t have time to “tinker” with menus. The iPhone may also be regarded as a status symbol with a reputation for being the highest end product sold.

Android users live in more rural areas, are more politically conservative and are much more likely to be male. Many have never traveled outside of their home country, love pets, Comedy Central, and for whatever reason, Yahoo Mail. A university professor told Live Science that Android users may be forming an iPhone counter culture as a backlash against the people that they perceive to be Apple users aka city living limousine liberals.

The Live Science report noted that Blackberry users tend to be highly introverted urban dwellers and are equally distributed across the sexes; Windows Phone users are politically moderate suburban moms. Users of both brands may be daring and individualistic; others might perceive somebody who is using older generation devices to be a luddite from a bygone era.

Now I know WHY I traded my old Blackberry for an Android. The marketeers had convinced me that sturdy and reliable were out; smart was the hallmark of the next generation. Now I just have to convince myself that it is worth the extra bucks to be smart.
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*Live Science information provided by David Worthington

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Pick 56 - Easter Eggs

To this day I still cannot make the connection between Easter Eggs, chocolate rabbits and the Christian message which is celebrated on this day. I have fond memories of coloring hard boiled eggs with my mother when I was around 7 years old. I also remember hunting around the house for chocolate eggs that were allegedly left for me by the Easter Bunny. That was always on Easter Sunday morning after church services where I learned about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

goodhousekeeping.com

The hidden value in that message was that, like Jesus, we do not have to turn to dust at the end of our life but under certain conditions, we can go on living in a different way. Whether that different way was better or worse than the life we left behind depended on whether we obeyed God or not. If not, our chances were pretty slim to none. When we die, we are dead...period...end of story. However, if we believe in God and try our best to obey the laws of God as Jesus did, then we can rise from the dead like Jesus and go on living forever like the characters in that Twilight movie. I never fully understood it but I could accept it because no one I had known ever came back from death and told me whether it was true or not.

Easter Eggs are a different story. First of all, they are delivered by the Easter Bunny and everyone knows how prolific bunnies can be. Start with two and before long you have a dozen. It will not take long for that dozen to turn into a lot of dozens and that is a lot of life from just two rabbits.

I am not sure how the Easter Bunny got tied up with the chickens that produce colored eggs, but I do know that chickens--unlike rabbits--come from eggs. I used to think that those live colored Peeps you could get at Easter came from colored eggs but now I know better. Anyway, since every egg is a chicken in the making, it is easy to see that eggs represent the cycle of life. Each egg is the rebirth of the chicken that laid it. But it is also true that rotten eggs cannot produce a chicken. That is not true for people. Rotten people can produce more people, but they do not have to be rotten people. I guess that is the hidden value of the Easter Message. But I still can't tell you why the Easter Bunny holds the patent on Easter eggs.

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Pick 55 - Spurious Correlations

This Sunday the two best teams in the National Football League face off in New Orleans for Super Bowl XLVII. In addition to bragging rights for the winner, there may be some hidden value in the outcome. Back in the late 1960's a group of geeky data analysts started tracking the correlation between the winner of the Super Bowl and the fate of the Stock Market for the rest of the year. (I told you they were a bit geeky) Perhaps after one too many beers they predicted that the outcome of the Super Bowl could forecast what was going to happen to the U.S. stock market over the next 12 months. So they began accumulating the data each year thereafter and, by golly, there was a clear correlation.

The so-called Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor claims that if an original NFC team wins the prize, the stock market will end the year up, but if an original AFC team wins, the market will end the year down.

This seems like a ridiculous correlation, but from 1967 to 1988 the indicator was right 90.9 percent of the time - 20 out of those 22 years. Since then the accuracy has decreased, but it still hovers at around 76.7 percent - a predictor. When was the last time the advice from your Broker hit the mark 8 out of 10 times?

In geek terms this is called a spurious correlation because the rationale for the correlation is totally off the wall. Yet its track record is as solid as the gold in Fort Knox. Maybe more so because few, if any, investors have seen the gold in Fort Knox. Many who have followed this Predictor have seen their portfolio turn to gold in a couple of years.

The Super Bowl Stock Market Predictor is not the only spurious correlation with hidden value. Has anyone noticed that when the DJIA goes positive on a Friday, the price of gas usually increases a few cents on Monday. The opposite is also true. Use this hidden value to decide whether to fill er up on Friday or Monday and you will be ahead of the game most of the time.

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Pick 54 - Fake Girlfriend

Even if I had thought of this when I was in my youth, it would not have been technically feasible. Yes. I could have conjured up an imaginary girlfriend...many of us had them in high school. But the geeks of that era were always at the bottom of the popularity totem pole so we had to rely on our imagination to assuage our deflated egos. Yet time was on our side. It was not the popular high school jocks who went on to earn six figure salaries, but those awkward geeks that could get us to the moon and back, design awesome muscle cars, and put a personal computer on the desk of everyone that was intrigued with video games or tracking their finances on a spreadsheet.

Of course, things have changed since those days and it seems the jocks are back at the top of the totem pole--at lest those who really are good enough to become stars in college and draft picks for Pro Teams. So it did not surprise me when a certain college football star was apparently duped into a relationship with a fake girlfriend. That was sheer geekery! And I don't think we have seen the last of it.

I just came across this in one of my on-line news letter feeds:

If your Facebook profile is feeling lonesome, or nobody really believes that your unseen Canadian partner actually has the flu (a nod to Broadway’s Avenue Q), a Brazilian service will conjure up a fake girlfriend to round out your virtual identity.
NamoroFake.com will create the appearance of a love interest on Facebook for US$40, or offer up an ex-lover for $19.00 if your deception should be both dishonest and frugal.
Namoro makes the lie convincing through matching you up with your “girfriend’s” fake profile, complete with 30 days of comments and the quintessential relationship status change. Everybody knows that it’s not ‘official’ if your status doesn’t say so. That’s today’s youth’s version of a “promise ring.”

I am not trying to say that there is some hidden value in having a fake girlfriend. We surely have enough true lies to contend with in our current times. Just sayin...geeks may not be popular but they can be very clever--especially when technology is on the playing field.

ez does it!

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Pick 53 - The FED

For nearly eighty years after the charter for the Second Bank of the United States was allowed to expire, America was without a Central Bank controlled by the Federal Government. After various financial panics, particularly a severe one in 1907, many Americans, especially Farmers and owners of small businesses, lobbied Congress for banking and currency reform. They wanted a ready reserve of liquid assets that could be used to expand and contract currency and credit seasonally within the U.S. economy.

In response to this lobby, the Aldrich–Vreeland Act was passed in 1908. The direct result of this act was the establishment of the National Monetary Commission in 1909. Over the next four years, the Commission prepared and proposed major changes in U.S. banking and currency laws. The final report was submitted to Congress on January 9, 1912. Its recommendations ran 59 sections--most of them very controversial in those times. The proposed legislation was known as the Aldrich Plan, named after the chairman of the Commission, Republican Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island.

The Plan called for the establishment of a National Reserve Association with 15 regional district branches and 46 geographically dispersed directors primarily from the banking profession. The Reserve Association would make emergency loans to member banks, print money, and act as the fiscal agent for the U.S. government. State and nationally chartered banks would have the option of subscribing to specified stock in their local association branch.

Since the Aldrich Plan essentially gave full control of this system to private bankers, there was strong opposition to it from rural and western states because of fears that it would become a tool of certain rich and powerful financiers in New York City, referred to as the "Money Trust".

From May 1912 through January 1913 the Pujo Committee, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, held investigative hearings on the alleged Money Trust and its interlocking directorates. These hearings were chaired by Rep. Arsene Pujo, a Democratic representative from Louisiana^.

In the election of 1912, the Democratic Party won control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. The party's platform stated strong opposition "to the so called Aldrich bill for the establishment of a central bank." However, the platform also called for a systematic revision of banking laws in ways that would provide relief from financial panics, unemployment and business depression, and would protect the public from the "domination by what is known as the Money Trust."

Now, a full 100 years later, we are still searching for the same relief from the same financial woes. Both political parties appear to have retained their policy positions regarding how to solve these woes, but no one seems to be asking the key question: Is there some hidden value in the function of the Federal Reserve that we have overlooked. The FED has served our financial interests well for most of the hundred years it has been in operation. Why is it failing us now?

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Pick 52 - Character

Back in my school days traits like persistence, curiosity, self-control, conscientiousness, grit and self-confidence were actually taught in school and at home. There were no tests to determine how much character training we had absorbed each month. No text books or other training devices were used to instill these traits but, somehow both our parents and our teachers knew if we were making progress or not.

Looking back, I suspect our parents measured our progress against their own. Like that old saying: "the apple does not fall far from the tree." If our father lacked persistence, he expected us to pick up the slack and finish what we had started. If our mother lacked self-confidence, we were expected to overflow with it. No. There were never any direct scoldings or pressure about persistence and self-confidence. It was more like nurturing; that subtle smile when you finished a difficult task, the words of encouragement whenever you tried out for the team or a part in the school play. They were little character building exercises taught using the activities of daily life.

Our teachers used a different yardstick. They measured us against our classmates and in many cases against the results they had attained with students who had gone before us. These days we consider it unfair and even prejudicial for teachers to make comparisons like that. But we need to remember that in those days incidents such as Columbine and Sandy Hook were unthinkable. And therein may be the hidden value in ad hoc character building lessons. They not only taught us about the importance of character, they taught us how to nourish it in ourselves and in others.

It is too bad that guns are so much easier to obtain than good character.

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Tour 51 - Live and Let Live

I was so depressed last night thinking about Health Care Plans, the

economy, the wars, lost jobs, savings, Social Security, retirement

funds, and the Sandy Hook incident .... I called a Suicide Hotline.

Pick 50 - OFF button

I had just gotten one of those new smart phones and had it with me at the meeting. As requested, I made sure it was off when the meeting began. About 5 minutes into the meeting I heard this strange sound coming from my pocket. I looked around to see who had failed to shut down their cell phone because I did not recognize the ringtone. Gradually all eyes turned to me and I realized the sound was coming from MY phone. With a blush of embarrassment, I fished the phone out of my pocket and desperately searched for the OFF button. There was none to be found. Then I remembered what the Instruction Book said about that. Apparently, this phone is so smart that it just puts itself into hibernate mode when it has not been in use for 5 minutes or when you disconnect at the end of a phone call. This mode saves the battery but keeps enough of the electrons waiting so they can come alive in an instant. Any incoming call or text message will do it. All cell phones I used in the past had a very definite OFF button. Apparently, that concept is gone the way of the 8-hour work day and lights out. In our 24/7 culture we are never expected to sleep--only to hibernate when our services are not required. I was outsmarted by my own Smart Phone and there was nothing I could do about it except find the instruction for silencing my cell phone when I did not wish to disturb others.

I suspect it will not be long before our smart phones will gain the upper hand. We will be able to silence them but that will not prevent gentle vibrations, blinking lights, or any other means of getting our attention when they have been awakened out of their hibernation state. That is the hidden value of having an OFF switch on electronic devices. It was our last hope for breaking away from the always on lifestyle. Oh well...perhaps a new service industry will come about because of this. Instead of Cruises and Sunny Beaches, there will be OFF-line zones where, for a fee, you can roam about completely free of all electronic signals whether from Wi-Fi or Land Line. In the end, many Third World countries may find that is the one luxury they can afford to provide and they will thrive on it.Til then we need to carefully read those instructions for the care and nurturing of our wireless communication devices. Like many of our kids today, they are getting too smart for us to manage without professional help.

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