Having Some Online Issues…

I do not set out to make enemies.  At least, not usually.  I am not trying to here.  But, I have to say it because “blatant” just grabs me the wrong way.

There are two online sources of articles I read a lot of.  I will say their names:  The Huffington Post and Upworthy.  Both have provided me a lot of enjoyment and understanding in the last several (5-7) years.  The problem I find now is that both sources seem to be almost totally and predominantly against President Trump.  It’s not that they have come out and said it; it’s that a good portion of their articles have that slant to them.  I won’t say they are Democratic papers; I just look at them as, well, this year, I seem to have Conservative and Liberal mixed up.  I just took the shortest political survey : Shortest Political Survey and I seem to be a centrist leaning toward liberalism (nothing new to me).  I have said before that I don’t agree with everything President Trump proclaims.  But I agree with him more than with Hillary or any other political candidate I listened to.  I have stated that I support LBGTQ, for the most part.  My problem lies in the details.  I don’t agree with everything from any of them.  This world seems to be made of two factions:  Black and White (about 90%) and the Gray (about 10%).  People settle and then dig in with those who believe some of the things they do.  The problem I see is that none of the parties, factions, groups, or entities seem to have all the answers.  None of them looks at the gray.  All 9/10s of our US sees is B/W, no gray.  The world is not split like this.  If I ask you if you like ice cream and you give me a resounding “Yes!” and then I start naming exotic flavors, you will, most likely, curl your nose up at a few of the flavors.  It’s not that you don’t like ice cream, you just only like some ice cream. The same can be said for almost everything.  When the question is “Should government remove all drug laws?” I say “no”, but should the government allow medicinal Marijuana? Yes, I agree with that one.  Should the government allow consenting adults to do as they will about sex?  Sounds good on paper, but tell me how you would feel if your 7 yo and you were walking down the street and two people were nude and having sex in front of the grocery store?  It all depends and I think somewhere we are missing that.  It’s not B/W, it’s two million colors.  I just want people to think.  I get so tired of being on FaceBook and hearing tirades that just look at one side of the problem and insult or defriend anyone who does not totally agree with what that post stated.

Just venting.  But, it’s a real problem…how do you feel?

Namaste,

Scott

Giving Back!

Source: Google Image Search with license for reuse. Click pic for page THIS is, OF COURSE – LINKED DATA!!!

I have felt a bit remiss lately.  I have not visited many of your blogs to read all the fascinating stories and tales you spin and share.  They are well-worth the time; I simply have not had much of it.  I find that, by the time I get around to my blog (even before yours), it is very late and I am tired.  It is no fun reading the posts of others when your eyes keep falling shut (this also plays havoc with the keys as my head tilts forward and may strike the board!).  So, I decide to try tomorrow – yet the same thing occurs.  It is also my spotty recent memory that causes me to forget, sometimes even the most important items.  As of today, I have lost my cell phone.  I believe it to be in my home, but the “where” eludes me.  I will keep looking and, for what it is worth, I will keep thinking about it.

However, to help my feelings of guilt or whatever they are, I would like to propose that all of you who visit my post here and have your own – please link to your post in the comments so others may see all the great posts I am missing out on!  At least, then, I can feel a bit like I am passing on a bit of  you to all those who are following me!

Please link!!! Namaste,

Scott

Interesting Results – Dull, but Interesting…

Well, this is the fourth day since I posted my poem using the most popular Google terms and pics.  I wasn’t sure what I expected.  It’s an experiment and I know the results could change anytime in the next, well , whatever, but it seems I should have an idea by now.  So, here’s the results of views for four days:

2/19  37

2/20  37

2/21  73

2/22  39 (as of 3:18pm)

I checked the searches and there wasn’t much there.  No big hits…nothing.  I wonder if WordPress has a way of suppressing the tags and such so that my type of “spam” won’t overly effect it.  I didn’t think so, obviously.

Now, the thing is the last three days have been normal.  The 73 views was for a Friday Fictioneer day and was normal.  Today, 2/22, is the most unusual with 39 during the laggiest part of the day (I  know, not a word, but I like it).  I suppose it could take off tonight.  If it does before around 9pm, I will add to this post.  I intentionally didn’t stick in the minotaur picture that started this mess.  I figured that would give results on something I already knew could do a job on my numbers.

That post could, though, somewhat affect all my numbers from here on out.  I mean, during any day, people could search out some of those terms.  I did realize that they could be looking at them now in a Google list and just not going to my post.  I didn’t think about that particular possibility when I set this up.  See?  That’s what good experimental analysis is about.  I did quite a bit of that in Psychology in college, but I didn’t create the experiments.  I don’t think there is any way I can see how often these terms bring up my site unless people go there.  So, I guess we shall see.

Let’s change gears for a moment.  Speaking of probability, there was a good probability that we were going to get stomped by an ice storm last night.  We did get some ice, but not horrible.  Let me give you a few pics just to round everything out.

My drive wasn’t bad at all.

The backyard just looked like a little snow had fallen.

Car didn’t get iced enough to even be noticeable today.

The birds got hit worse than we did.

Now, I didn’t go out and walk on the drive yet; it may be really slick out there, but it doesn’t look like it.  I am thankful for that.  Ice is not my friend.  Hopefully, then, I can get out a little this weekend and enjoy myself.  It isn’t that cold right now.  I went out, for a few minutes on the porch, in my shorts and a sweatshirt.

Enjoy things, everyone, spring is coming soon.

Namaste,

Scott

Wow! I can’t Believe it – Well, Almost…

No, probably not all of these, but, at least, part of them!

Sometime Sunday night to early Monday morning, I passed another milestone.  This one is very special to me because I have a hard time even believing it.  During that period of time, my blog has now been viewed by 102 countries!

When this blog began, I am not certain that I even knew there were over 100 countries.  I never thought I would have had at least 1 person from over 100 countries look at my lowly blog.  I have come to the realization that it is you who are responsible for this wonderful goal being met.

I know what had to have happened.  I watched as you viewed my posts.  I viewed your posts.  Then people who had viewed you viewed me.  Then people who were viewed by you viewed me.  Then the search parameters based on my blog posts and my tags kicked in.  Little by little a country was added here and another one added there.

There are, at the time of this post, 196 countries in the world according to about.com .  Many of these countries I had never heard of.  The full list of ones that have viewed me so far is below.  I decided I would post it when I went over 100.  I will try to get back to my story and its conclusion in the next few days.  At the moment, I would like to give a bit of information on one country I had never heard of:

Myanmar  – Now, actually, this is the second time I have read through and typed all of this.  Just as I went to hit “update” after typing in the entire report, my Internet company lost connection to me for about 3 hours.  We were having rain, but I did not think about the power to the net going out.  It did not seem that bad.  It, evidently, was not quite local as the company knew it was down and left that message for our zip code on their phone system.

Back to Myanmar.  Okay, it is the country of Burma, now called Republic of the Union of Myanmar, but some countries don’t like that, so they still say Burma.  I didn’t even pronounce it correctly.  I clicked on sound and it said, Mee-on-MAR.

It has a perimeter of about 1200 miles and a population of 60-61 million people spread out over 65,000 villages.  The two largest cities – Yangon and Mandalay have a combined population of just a little over 5.8 million.

It is very rich in resources, but quite poor, partially because a lot of countries have put economic sanctions on it (including the US) because the country has violated human rights so much.  These violations are in things like genocide, rape, child labor, and human trafficking, along with others.

It is a military state.  HIV/AIDS is fairly common throughout the country.  It is mainly Buddhist and Bamar culture.  It is a country of civil war and unrest; the people are treated poorly and a lot of things given out about the country may be false coming from the military regime.

The wiki entry for this small country was huge and well worth reading if you can make the time.  Simply click on the name at the beginning of this account.

The list of countries which have had at least one view of my blog is below.  I find it more than a little fascinating that Myanmar was one of them.  YouTube was just recently unbanned from the country’s view.

Namaste,

Scott

_____________ List ______________________________

Country Name

Albania

Algeria

Argentina

Armenia

Australia

Austria

Azerbaijan

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Belarus

Belgium

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Brazil

Bulgaria

Cambodia

Canada

Chile

Colombia

Costa Rica

Croatia

Czech Republic

Denmark

Dominican Republic

Ecuador

Egypt

El Salvador

Estonia

Finland

Former Yugoslav Republic

France

Germany

Ghana

Greece

Guam

Honduras

Hong Kong

Hungary

Iceland

India

Indonesia

Iraq

Ireland

Israel

Italy

Jamaica

Japan

Jordan

Kenya

Kuwait

Latvia

Lebanon

Lithuania

Malaysia

Malta

Mauritius

Mexico

Mongolia

Montenegro

Morocco

Myanmar

Netherlands

New Zealand

Nicaragua

Nigeria

Norway

Pakistan

Panama

Paraguay

Peru

Philippines

Poland

Portugal

Puerto Rico

Republic of Korea

Réunion

Romania

Russian Federation

Saudi Arabia

Serbia

Singapore

Slovakia

Slovinia

South Africa

Spain

Sri Lanka

Sweden

Switzerland

Taiwan

Thailand

Trinidad and Tobago

Tunisia

Turkey

Ukraine

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

United Republic of Tanzania

United States

Uruguay

Venezuela

Viet Nam

Virgin Islands

Yemen

I have been Told…

I have been told a lot of things over the years, especially by the “experts”.This has concerned a wide variety of subjects and, even the experts haven’t agreed most of the time.
One of the biggies, recently, for me has been Dreamfield’s Pasta. Since working very hard on my Diabetic Diet concerning carbs, I have looked to labels more and more. When a good friend recommended DF to me, I went to the local Kroger’s and looked for it. The label gave an astounding promise of 5 net carbs per serving! This was simply beyond belief. So, I bought it, took it home, and began eating. Now, I am much more careful since my stroke, so I did continue my research and test on my own. I subscribed to the comments on DF and was devastated to hear that all the “experts” and scientific testing showed that DF was no better than any other pasta and referred to it as the “Dreamfield Fraud”.

I decided to test harder. After conducting some fairly intensive personal tests and redoing them off and on for the last few months, I have concluded that, for me, DF works. I have revised it just a bit (under cook the pasta just a shade – Al Dente) and use a low-carb sauce now. However, it does not raise my sugar and allows me to eat a good portion of spaghetti now when I feel the urge.

What amazed me more was that, after I commented on the website about my findings and conclusions (I always said “for me” and “test for yourself”), I was told that 1) I was wrong; 2) I was a liar 3) I was telling a story to promote DR (I was a rep). I retested and put the findings out again, and, again, was told that I was not a scientist and was, therefore, doing it wrong and so on. People would almost hatefully argue this with me, as if I was calling them liars with their own discoveries.

It did not seem to matter that I kept stating that it was true “for me” and that everyone “should test” for themselves. I pointed out that not everyone was alike and that, only by checking things out for themselves, would they really know.

It’s been kinda funny, but, in the last few weeks, I have had several people comment on the site that, “I tested this and it works for me” and “not everyone is the same”.

The reason I put this here is two-fold:

First, many people take it as a personal attack if you say anything different from their views. I notice this in all areas, but, especially, in religion.

Second, I have also seen that, once someone speaks up, it doesn’t take long before there are others.

My Dad is in the hospital; “experts” (well, one) have said what he needs and dismissed my sister when she asked questions about it all. I find that terrifying that an “expert” no longer considers it necessary to study the situation more and that he/she is not willing to explain the situation to those extremely concerned about the matter.

As I told my students many times, “Science, in my opinion, is a ‘best guess’ thing, in spite of ‘facts’. After all, we were a flat world once. Also, there was no such thing as germs or radiation.”

We change our “facts” all the time. It is now believed that an object (sub-atomic, but an object) can, indeed, be in two places at once. Supposedly, it can be proved. What this all tells me is that an expert should be someone who is continually looking to improve and find new facts, and everyone can learn from others.

I hope and plan to never stop learning. And, a good way for me to learn has been to teach.

All of you have something to teach and much to learn.

Do both.
Namaste,
Scott