Time to ‘Man Up’ and to Admit I’m a Straight Male

Good Day World!

In the spirit of fairness, I’m coming out as a straight male.

Inspired by other recent stories about people coming out I decided it would be appropriate to announce my sexuality. This decision didn’t come lightly.

I talked to family and friends to get their advise, and was encouraged that they were all so supportive. After all, when was the last time you heard about a straight male coming out?

We just never make the news. Unlike other genders/persuasions, we are ignored in the mainstream news, and social media trends. Unlike:

World champion skier Gus Kenworthy, who won a silver medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games, who recently has come out as gay.

Or, the revelation that Bruce Jenner came out as a transgender male and changed his name to Caitlyn.

Or, when Robin Roberts (Good Morning America anchor) came out as a lesbian at the very tail end of 2013.

On behalf of straight males everywhere, I would like someone more famous than I (that’s not hard) to step forward and “man up” about his sexual preferences so that straight guys everywhere can feel the love!

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Bengazi Hearing A Waste of Everyone’s Time: But It’ll Help Get Clinton Elected President

Call it the Benghazi hearing, or the Benghazi persecution.

Same thing.

No one with half of a brain can come away from listening to those tedious hours of testimony without understanding it was all about attacking Hillary Clinton like a group of vicious toddlers.

If you watched the trial hearing, like I did for 11 hours, it was as apparent as glass.

Not one important piece of information was revealed from the partisan questioning – like a magician’s sudden appearance of a white rabbit leaving the viewing audience gasping with wonder.

Insults flew from one side of the aisle to the other like raw meat for the press. I thought Gowdy and Cummings were going to duke it our for a moment. (Good theater there).

Every Republican on the committee treated Clinton like a criminal (did you see Jim Jordan’s face?) and made little, or no attempt, at being civil. Some were outwardly hostile, rudely interrupting her answers.

Probably for their constituents benefit – “Hey! Look at me. I dissed Hillary.”

But as the hours withered away during this pathetic partisan onslaught – one thing became clear…Trey Gowdy and company came off looking like a bunch of delinquent children throwing erasers at the teacher!

Facts are hard for Republicans to accept, especially when they have an agenda to make sure Clinton doesn’t get elected president of the United States.

One thing I’m confident about, after millions of Americans have viewed this kangaroo court they going to be pissed that they paid 4.7 million dollars for nothing more a partisan persecution.

The upside, of course, is this kangaroo court is going to get Clinton elected president. Mark my words.

Time for me to walk on down the road… 

 

GOP vs Trump: ‘Are You Ready to Rumble?’

Good Day World!

In the past, Republicans have trusted a Hollywood entertainer/actor, Ronald Reagan, enough to make him president. To many Republicans he’s still considered the very personification of conservatism.

But these days the Republican establishment is turning it’s back on another Hollywood entertainer/reality show host, Donald Trump. Apparently they don’t think he has the right stuff to sit in the Oval Office.

Plus, they’re getting tired of being made clowns of by Trump. It’s been like a Turkey Shoot as The Donald verbally tears apart his competition. Jeb Bush has been like a deer caught in the headlights every time he tries to exchange words with Trump.

Enter former South Carolina Republican Party chair Katon Dawson (a former member of The Whites Only Club). Just call him the Trump Killer. He’s out to ruin the reality star before next year’s election.

Dawson is busy forming a Super PAC devoted to attacking Trump’s credibility and ability to lead the country. He’s got his hand out for donations from establishment Republicans who are getting increasingly uneasy about Trump’s popularity.

Dawson is getting help from another source that fears Trump.

The head of the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group, told the Washington Examiner this week it is also trying to raise millions to fund some kind of broader effort to defeat the real estate mogul. The group already spent $1 million in ads this summer arguing that he is not a true conservative.

Does anyone think Trump would take all of this sitting down?

Trump Campaign Reportedly Threatened To Sue Washington Post Over Super PAC Story

As Michael Buffer so often says, “Let’s get ready to rumble!”

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

 

Underestimate elderly people at your own risk

Photo -Elderly woman fights off attacker by grabbing his balls and squeezing them!

Good Day World!

In some circles my age, 65, is considered elderly. I’m actually pretty spry for a an old guy.

Which leads me to today’s topic – don’t underestimate old people, they can surprise you.

How, you ask? (I’m glad you did)

* When a teen armed with two large knives threatened his young chess students, 75-year-old Army veteran James Vernon sprang into action. He kicked the guy’s ass!

* Ruth Lampe isn't letting her age slow her down. The 102-year-old volunteer got her high school diploma recently… after cooking a meal for a senior center.

* 93-year-old Louise Edlen had been waving to passing students for years. See how she teaches kids compassion.

* Unstoppable 100-year-old works 6 days a week. This woman is amazing!

* Would be robber fended off by 95-year-old WW II veteran who used his cane.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

A Look at Big Feet… Not Bigfoot !

"Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot.”

-Sherlock Holmes

                                       Good Day World!

Some of my earliest memories were people telling me that I had big feet.

“Look at those big boats” my father often commented. “Don’t worry,” he’d say, “You’ll grow into them.”

Or, my siblings calling me “Frog,” because I had “big flippers.”

I now know that I got a bad rap back then.

Those supposedly big feet of mine ended up being a size 11 extra wide. Not very impressive by today’s standards. Two of my three sons have bigger feet than I do. One of my grandsons has a size 12 extra wide.

And, just look at some of the professional athletes today. Shaq O’Neil, and every center in professional basketball, have gunboats that start around size 16.

But if you want to talk about really big feet – world class examples – then you have to see Jeison Orlando Rodríguez Hernandez’s massive foundations!  Hernandez, who lives in Venezuela, has feet measuring nearly 16 inches each and his shoes are size 26.

That’s big enough to be recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest feet.The previous record was held by Sultan Kösen, his feet measuring 14 inches.

We should all be proud of our feet. Without their foundation we’d be crawling. I agree with Leonardo da Vinci who said, “The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art.”

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

 

Investigations Agree: No Corporation in the World Has Done More Damage to the Earth Than Exxon

Good Day World!

No matter where you live on this planet, you’ve been affected (one way or another) by the misdeeds of Exxon.

In the last three weeks, two separate teams of journalists—the Pulitzer-prize winning reporters at the website Inside Climate News and another crew composed of Los Angeles Times veterans and up-and-comers at the Columbia Journalism School—have begun publishing the results of a pair of independent investigations into ExxonMobil.

Though they draw on completely different archives, leaked documents and interviews with ex-employees, they reach the same damning conclusion:

Exxon knew all that there was to know about climate change decades ago and instead of alerting the rest of us denied the science and obstructed the politics of global warming.

To be specific

I don’t know how that makes you feel, but it angers me. Monumental greed has led to nearly irreversible climate damage.

Exxon management knew what was happening and even circulated internal memos admitting that “human-induced climate change” was taking it’s toll on the planet.

I have one question for all the governments in the world…

When are you going to put Exxon out of business and try all of it’s mangement team for crimes against humanity?

Time for me to walk on down the road… 

Oh Snap! Fox commentor arrested for lying and fraud

Good Day World!

It’s an open secret that Faux Fox News is not the place to go if you’re looking for credible reporting.

Here’s the latest example of the quality of commenters it hires:

Wayne Simmons, a 62-year-old who lives in Annapolis, Maryland, was arrested by federal authorities following his indictment by a federal grand jury for allegedly committing major fraud, wire fraud, and making false statements to the government.

Simmons has been interviewed by Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto and has appeared on "Fox & Friends." He has discussed a wide range of issues on the network, including CIA interrogation techniques and, ironically, a former CIA official found guilty on fraud charges.

Simmons claims to have worked for the CIA from 1973 to 2000, and "used that false claim in an attempt to obtain government security clearances and work as a defense contractor, including at one point successfully getting deployed overseas as an intelligence advisor to senior military personnel," according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia.

The question is, doesn’t Fox vet it’s people for at least a modicum of truth?

Federal prosecutors say that Simmons had a "significant criminal history, including convictions for a crime of violence and firearms offenses, and is believed to have had an ongoing association with firearms notwithstanding those felony convictions.”

Another faux pas for Fox…another day in the “Spin Zone” for the Republican Party.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

Silence is Golden in World’s Quietest Room

“I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down…”

-Buffalo Springfield

Microsoft File Photo

                                          Good Day World!

In our noisy world the lack of sound can be golden.

You might think that a library reading room or well-insulated basement is a quiet place, but compared to the anechoic chamber in Microsoft's audio lab, they're about as quiet as a jumbo jet.

The chamber, housed in Building 87 on the company's Redmond, Washington, campus, was recently verified by (who else?) Guinness as being the quietest place in the entire world, reaching an eardrum-bending -20.3 decibels. (Source)

Microsoft and others use chambers like this to test equipment for noise levels, to provide a perfectly silent environment for training voice recognition, and so on.

You can learn more about sound ratings and the B87 anechoic chamber at Microsoft's website.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

If I had a hammer, I’d…

“If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning,
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land…”

-Peter,Paul, & Mary

Good Day World!

Marvel Comic fans know all about the Norse Thunder God, Thor.

His hammer – Mjolnir – can not be picked up by just anyone. They have to be worthy – like Thor. As far as I know, the hammer has never found someone else worthy enough to fling it…but that’s another subject.

Enter…Allen Pan, aka Sufficiently Advanced on YouTube, who decided to replicate Mjolnir. The guy is an electrical engineer and pretty darn clever!

He used powerful magnets, and a microwave oven transformer electromagnet in the head. This creates a very strong magnetic pull, strong enough that the hammer, when placed on a metal surface (that can't be lifted, such as a locked manhole cover), feels too heavy to lift.

So how does Pan lift it?

The handle is attached to a capacitive touch sensor, which in turn is attached to an Arduino Pro Mini and a solid state relay, which serves as a switching device. As soon as someone grasps the handle, the electromagnets switch on, attaching the hammer to the metal surface.

The hammer can be turned off via a fingerprint sensor keyed to Pan's thumbprint. When Pan grasps the hammer, the magnets switch on. When he moves his thumb over the sensor, it switches off again, allowing Pan to lift the hammer.

Apparently Pan has a sense of humor and took his hammer to Venice Beach, California, and put it on a manhole and challenged people to pick it up.

All Pan has to do now is harness lightning (it shouldn’t be a problem for an electrical engineer) and train his hammer to come back to him when he throws it!

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Why lower gas prices this year will hurt millions of Americans next year

                                     Good Day World!

Lower gas prices this year has been good news for the American consumer.

But, those low gas prices are going to take an unexpected toll on over 70 million people, more than one-fifth of the nation's population, next year.

Why?

The main reason for no benefit increases next year for millions of people is…believe it, or not, low gas prices.

By law, the annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, is based on a government measure of inflation. This year, because gas prices have dropped, no one will get a cost of living increase in 2016.

It’s Official: No COLA in 2016

That affects retirees, disabled workers, and spouses with children, who get Social Security benefits.

That also goes for 4 million disabled veterans, 2.5 million federal retirees and their survivors, and more than 8 million people who get Supplemental Security Income, the disability program for the poor. (Source)

It seems ironic to me that when something good happens for consumers in this country, it comes with a caveat.  

Time for me to walk on down the road…