Believe

Posted on 10/11/2023 by Grumpa Joe

If you were to ask me what I think about the war in the Middle East, I would more than proudly proclaim that I hope the Israelis do as well in this war as they did in the past when Egypt invaded them. They call it the Six-Day War. That is how long the Egyptians lasted. I don’t like or believe in the genocide of a race, but I do think eliminating a murderous, hate-filled cult from existence is appropriate to save the world. The cult in Palestine is called Hamas. If we in America want to see peace in the world, we must do all we can to eradicate this mentally diseased order of people.

I received this article from a friend, and it deserves a reading. It is truthful and insightful. I remember when General Dwight D. Eisenhower visited a Nazi death camp, he informed the photographers to take pictures. He said

“Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.” 

― Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower predicted the future correctly. Today, we have the Muslim community believing that the Holocaust never happened and countries in Europe recommending that all mention of the Holocaust be removed from being taught in their schools for fear of offending the Muslims. My take on the matter is that Muslims should be eradicated from the face of the Earth. If that is considered hate speech, so be it. I am a hateful person when it comes to a religious belief system bullying the world toward their doctrine.

With what is happening in the Middle East now I feel this should be passed along …

 Who really died at Auschwitz?What really died at Auschwitz? Here’s an interesting viewpoint. The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper. It doesn’t take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe, and possibly to the rest of the world. I walked down the streets in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a terrible truth: Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a group of people who represented culture, thought, creativity, talent.We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who made great contributions to the world, and thus changed the world.The contribution of today’s Jewish people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. Look at any donors’ board at any symphony, art museum, theatre, art gallery, science center, etc. You will see many, many, Jewish surnames.These are the people who were burned. Of the 6,000,000 who died, how many would have grown up to be gifted musicians, doctors, artists, philanthropists?And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the diseases of racism and bigotry, Europe opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs. What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it “offends” the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.It is now approximately seventy years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This email is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, and nineteen-hundred Catholic priests who were murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated. Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming The Holocaust to be “a myth,” it is imperative to make sure the world “never forgets.”This email is intended to reach 400 million people. Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center “NEVER HAPPENED” because it offends some Muslim in the United States? If our Judeo-Christian heritage is offensive to Muslims, they should pack up and move to Iran, Iraq or some other Muslim country.Please do not just delete this message; it will take only a minute to pass this along. We must wake up America, England, Australia and Europe before it’s too late.
“If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.”                                                      —Plato  
Holocaust-denial graffiti was spray-painted on one of Seattle’s largest synagogues, Temple De Hirsch Sinai.Rabbi Daniel Weiner

Filed under: Aging, Conservative, Education, family, muslims | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

The Battle For ORCAM

Posted on 07/11/2023 by Grumpa Joe

I’m attending a Frankfort Lions Club Board of Directors meeting this evening. I resigned from the Board a few years ago after fifteen years. It was time to let the young people direct the club. I have switched my efforts to the BOD of OASIS, which serves those with vision problems. The issue on the table is that OASIS inherited a device called ORCAM from someone who passed. It is well over ten years old, and now we are trying to determine what to do with it. A quick call to the ORCAM distributor gave us some information that was in error. We were told that the old device needed to be upgraded. Like most computers, it requires some serious upgrading to handle today’s software. The cost was quoted at $1600.00. A brand-new one costs $4500. It was my job to sell this upgrade to the Lions Club. They, of course, are much smarter than I am and challenged the cost. The list of questions fired at me, the messenger, were too many and too complicated for me to answer. I went home with my tail between my legs, head down, and a bleak look.

I am not a total dummy, so I sought help getting answers and recruited two more Lions to assist. Happily, this evening, we will present a happier picture. The story has changed from $1600 for an upgrade of a 2011 unit, which will make it function only slightly better, to $1600 for a new unit with all the bells and whistles of 2023.

I believe the Distributor’s Representative tried to discourage us from seeking the upgrade, and has changed his original story from upgrade to buy a new unit, and since he screwed up so badly he is willing to give it to us at cost. If we (I) fail tonight, we will merely dig our heels in deeper and devise a new plan to secure an ORCAM for a deserving person.

For those of you who don’t know what an ORCAM is, I’ll explain to the best of my ability.

ORCAM is a company in Israel that invented a device that attaches to a pair of eyeglasses. The body of the ORCAM holds a tiny camera, a computer, and a speaker. The wearer can hold up a document, and the camera sees it for him. It then reads the printed words and transmits the sound to the wearer’s ear via a speaker built into the rear of the body. Between the eye and the ear a computer recognizes the words and converts them to sounds. The unit can also recognize faces to tell the wearer who he is talking to. That feature requires that pictures of people be entered into the ORCAM memory.

Filed under: Education, health care, Lions Club | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

A Late Start

Posted on 05/11/2023 by Grumpa Joe

During my college days, I studied to become an engineer. The entire curriculum was steeped in math. One subject, in particular, used excessive mathematics, and that was Physics. The subject was so large that it was broken into three parts, each one semester long. My interest was in mechanics, and I was adept at the math involved in solving problems involving mechanical machines. I began to lose it when we reached nuclear physics, especially astronomy. Atomic physics was still on the cusp of discovery and development, so I wrote it off as something I could blow off because I would never use the knowledge to make a living, which was wrong. One project we worked on was developing a cable tie for nuclear power plants, specifically in the reactor exposed to heavy radiation.

Dresden Nuclear Power Plant 1960, Illinois

Somehow, I managed to eke my way through those subjects with a passing grade. In the above-mentioned radiation-resistant product, we designed and produced a successful cable tie and had it certified by the nuclear power industry. We invented and conducted a series of tests on our product to prove its efficacy in the reactor. It took two years and a lot of effort to do this. Then our competitors came along and talked the approvers into approving their products merely by showing they used the same material as we did. Thank you, Uncle Sam, for stealing our work and giving it to all of our competition.

What I find strange is that throughout my career, I used every bit of knowledge taught in my engineering courses. Whenever I counseled high school kids about engineering, I emphasized the importance of studying every course being taught in their syllabus because somewhere along the way, they will be called upon to use all—that useless stuff they were forced to learn. Even today, I am amazed that conversing with friends and peers helps to have a deep knowledge base. Except that I am deficient in atomic physics and astronomy. To offset this deficiency, I am now, at a ripe old age, finding intense interest in all things space. The Hubble and Webb telescopes have allowed astrologists to learn more about the nature of the universe in twenty years than man has known since the beginning of time. Remember when the argument was about the Earth being the center of the universe?

!960’s telescopic photo of Mars

I have read many articles about the universe and learned I am sixty years behind in the terminology. The space age and our drive to put a man on the moon have forced us to invent new terms and ways to express time and distance units. I left school at a time when the term “Light Year” was little used. Since then, physics has expanded the study to include the universe beyond our solar system, and the distances between stars and planets are so huge that even Light Year is too small to express the distances between stars and galaxies. An example is the unit AU, or Astronomical Unit, which defines the distance between the sun and the planets of our solar system. The AU of Earth is one. The AU of planets closer to the sun is smaller, and those beyond Earth are larger. It is easier to say or write the Earth is 1 AU away from the Sun than the Earth is 93,000,000(million) miles from the Sun. Another example of the system’s simplicity is that planet Neptune is 30 AU from the Sun instead of having to write Neptune is 2,795,580,000(billion) miles from the Sun.

Every day, I use a GPS in my car to locate and navigate to places I want to get to. Imagine traveling into space in a rocket ship, and you are flying above the Earth’s GPS. One needs a new and more expansive way to navigate. Modern space travel has already invented the system but relies on heady technology to make things happen. Remember when Columbus and Magellan traveled by boat to explore the vast, unknown expanse of planet Earth? You can’t follow the coastline like they did when you were exploring the universe. I wish I were young enough to start from scratch to learn all the new stuff I would need to explore and find new civilizations around space.

Although I like studying astronomy, I am still trying to understand the new language I must learn. I know I became obsolete as an engineer when I became a manager, and I never became proficient in using a computer to design products. I am from the pencil and paper age. However, I can still free-hand draw a three-D product as well as anyone using a computer. I can’t translate the geometry into machine tool instructions into a Numerical Controlled machine tool to cut a mold cavity like a computer-generated geometric model can. Imagine my degree of obsolescence in astronomy, where it is a struggle to become conversant.

Where will we be one hundred years from now?

Exploring new planets?

Living on a colony on Mars or the moon?

Trying to get the Muslims to accept the Jews?

Learning how to live off the grid after destroying the planet and mankind?

Living in underwater cocoons and eating seaweed because man forced the polar ice caps to melt.

James Webb Space Telescope
James Webb first image

James Webb-2022 Mars

Filed under: Biography, Education, Science, Technology | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Cash? Who Needs Cash?

Posted on 30/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Today, I realized that I don’t need cash anymore. I remember a time when I couldn’t buy anything if I didn’t have cash in my pocket, and credit cards weren’t invented yet. Then came the period when I got my first credit card, and I never used it because it was a high-interest loan. The next period in my credit card experience is the one I’m in now. Use the credit card as much as needed, but pay the whole thing every month. This period has been the best because I use the card to pay for everything and never worry about having cash in my pocket.

The only time I take a loan is when the total purchase is too large, like a house or a car. Whenever I take a loan of this type, I try to get one that charges zero interest if the loan is paid by a specific time. Then, I set the payment to be automatic from my checking account to avoid interest and penalties. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m a cheap bastard who hates to pay usury to banks and loan companies.

What makes me nervous is hearing talk about the government wanting to set us up in a cash-free system. I already use a cash-free system, and Uncle Sam only wants to get his sticky hands into my bank account. I’m sure he is scheming a new system of income re-distribution to help out his law-breaking allowance of foreigners into the country. These new people will break the back of the unions by accepting lower pay than law-abiding citizens, but they will also allow profit-thirsty companies to pay their employees lower wages. This makes me more nervous than hearing stories about artificial intelligence being used to eliminate jobs. Uncle has a plan for this, too. He will begin paying people who are unemployed by AI from something called Universal Basic Income. I never heard how this Universal Basic Income thing will be funded. We all know it will be by taxing somebody who still has money. Now, who would that be? My intelligence is not artificial, but I think I know that artificially intelligent machines will not be earning any money, but their owners, the companies who let all of us go, will be raking in the dough. The problem with that notion is who will pay for their products and services. Yes, you are right, the people who still have money. But, will there be enough people with money to support all the AI businesses? I have a vision in my non-AI brain of a German Shepherd chasing his tail, and another scene that shows an endless trail of non-AI unemployed people standing in line with a soup cup in one hand and an empty Universal Basic Income envelope in the other.

The liberals will argue that all we have to do to solve this dilemma is to import more child-rearing people from poor countries. What the Libs fail to understand is that when these hungry poor people get to Artificially Intelligent America, there will be no jobs for them, and if they do get jobs, the first thing they will realize is that they need to self-actualize, and you can’t do that by working and raising babies at the same time. That damn Shepherd keeps chasing his tail, and when he finally catches it, he has to spit it out.

Filed under: Aging, Education, Satire | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Still On Schedule

Posted on 21/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Every year, I set a goal to read four books per month, and I am happy to report that I am still on schedule. The most recent is titled “Life in Five Senses” by Gretchen Rubin. Ms Rubin is a remarkable writer with a vocabulary she is not afraid to use. Yet, her writing is completely readable, understandable, and entertaining. In this work, she does an outstanding job of reporting the results of her research to explore her five senses. In one experiment, she sets a goal to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art daily for a year. In another, she visits five delicatessens with her daughter and mother-in-law to explore different tastes. This is an easy trip for her because she lives in New York in Manhattan, where everything is in her immediate neighborhood. For me, this would be an all-day adventure involving driving over a hundred miles to five different towns near me. The same goes for visiting the Chicago Art Museum, which requires a forty-five-minute drive and a twenty-dollar parking fee. Nevertheless, I enjoyed her narrative of the many experiments and descriptions of how she involved her five senses. She also makes a great point that we too often overlook the small things in life that make it more exciting and enjoyable.

I recommend this book if you want to know where you stand in paying attention to your five senses.

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