Pawprints From Space

Okay, I'm a little confused and slightly annoyed. All this brouhaha over Mr. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his underwear bomb (there are plenty of jokes in this situation but at least for now I am not going there)... let's step back a bit here and look at some details at least as I understand them: 1. The TSA was created after September 11th - during the Bush Administration; 2. The Terrorist Database, Watch List and No Fly List were all part of the September 11th response - during the Bush Administration; 3. The boy boarded the plane in Amsterdam (NOT at an American airport where we have control over the security process), was screened and went through security in Amsterdam - they didn't use a full body scanner and the normal scans showed nothing; no dogs were used to sniff out anything odd because this was not part of the normal procedure - body scans over there are possible but were on that day voluntary (they are now going to be mandatory it appears at least for flights ...

Funny thing about sinus trouble... there are times when it isn't pain that makes you feel odd it is a pressure that makes you feel a bit drunk, the difficulty breathing that adds a light-headedness. And to think people probably pay great sums of money to achieve this floating strangeness. Add that sensation to the year coming to a close AND toss in the fact that New Year's Eve offers up a blue moon this year and you've got a tendency to ramble, wax philosophical and wonder where the "funny" brownies went. The year in review... it began with excitement, a new president and a sense of hope and change. Eventually the economy did begin to turn somewhat and the stock market seems intent on ending the year on a positive note (of course I have just now jinxed it). Throughout the year there were friends who dealt with awful health problems, the fun of a high school reunion, the joy of taking in a wonderful abandoned kitten, great book club reads, not nearly enough time to...

We are now a mere week away from the new year. Lower case so as not to be confused with the "holiday" of New Year's Day. Strikes me funny at times that we celebrate the end of the year when the calendar itself was created by human beings, revised a number of times over the centuries and different cultures actually follow different calendars... so which is the REAL day the new year begins? Should it matter? I say no it shouldn't because why should we limit ourselves to resolutions, new beginnings, promises and hope for the future to one arbitrary point in time? Couldn't we be hopeful and determined to make our lives (and ourselves) better for more than one day? Or maybe two? Be honest how often do your resolutions last longer than that? How about we attempt to do this, to have an attitude of hope all year long? Yes! Let's endeavor to do that.... let's decide to be positive and hopeful and determined to be better people every single day. Adopt the ancient cu...

For some odd reason I was up at 5:00 a.m. for those who know me even only slightly you know this is beyond rare... we had a guy in college who touched off odd happenings and disasters when he got up too early (e.g. one day when he got up before 8 a.m. the Pope was shot) hopefully nothing like that will happen today. It wasn't kitty craziness that got me out of bed today, just a general sense of "eh" and the need for more cold medicine. Hitting the paper I saw where the State Legislature has decided (at least in the Senate) not to enact the latest round of scheduled income tax cuts for 2010. Meaning that the taxes in 2010 stay the same as 2009. Status quo. No change. The same. But when you listen to the Republicans and our local loony paper they are screaming that this is a tax increase, OMG your taxes are going up! Four words: No. They. Are. Not. Not going down is not the same as going up. And this is not a matter of perspective, this is fact. Q: Are taxes increasing? A: ...

Here were are about a week from Christmas and yours truly - Ms. Ultra-Organized - has not finished shopping, has not put up the tree and has barely decorated. What decorations I did put up were torn up by the high winds of a week ago. Hopefully tomorrow I can repair the damage. Despite the insanity, I have had time to ponder. Thanks to a conversation at book club last night, I have been pondering religion, faith and spirituality. These are not all synonyms you know. Religion is an organized belief system, it has traditions and structure. Faith is highly personal and hard to define - something you have or you don't. Something you can find and lose several times in the course of your life. Spirituality is more of a sense of being, a connection to something greater than the self, those rare moments of awe... this is where the soul lives. A person could be highly spiritual and yet not participate in an organized religion. Could be a profound and "deep" person of great compass...

Okay, I need $200,000. Not to pay medical bills or pay off loans or credit cards... okay I could use it for that too but that's not the urgent need of the moment. I need $200,000 to go into space. Yup... space. Okay near Earth orbit, the edge of space but you get the idea: SPACE!!! ME!!!! The NASA junkie, the kid who loves all things to do with space, astronomy, etc. For a mere $200,000 Virgin Galactic will take you into space. Around 300 people have already plunked down the cost of the ticket to reserve their seats. Now this would make a fabulous birthday present people... that big one is coming up in 2011. HINT HINT HINT But seriously, think about it. For those of us who were wide-eyed kids in the late 1960s when Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar surface, those who believed that by the 1990s there would be a lunar colony, flying cars and other technological wonders thanks to the space program... this space tourism thing is a dream come true. What stinks is that the dream is onl...

So I'm curled up with the ill kitty last night watching TV and this commercial comes on... It is a weight loss ad (surprise!) for a local "medical" practice that claims to be able to design a plan that can help anyone whether they want to lose 20 pounds or 200. The kicker? Both of the practitioners in the ad are quite overweight themselves. In fact, in one vignette you can't tell which is the patient and which the practitioner, both look to need to lose at least 75 pounds (or more) in order to prevent heart attacks, etc. So I'm shaking my head and rolling my eyes and it got me thinking.... Years ago we had a family doctor who kept after my mother to stop smoking. All the while puffing away on cigarette and cigarette in his office. And he was not the thinnest person around either. Go to any hospital, any floor and a good number of the medical professionals are not just overweight, many are actual candidates for that Biggest Loser program. Why is this? Weird shifts,...

I was reading postings on Facebook this morning from friends far and wide and some of the content got me thinking. We've just crossed the Thanksgiving threshold into the holiday season, "Black Friday" has expanded to a weekend madhouse of shopping (pushing, shoving trying to get the 'door buster' specials) and we will soon be bombarded with holiday "cheer" every which way we turn. There will be those insisting that there is a campaign out there to kill Christmas - how DARE you say "Happy Holidays" after all, it's "Merry Christmas" damn it. Personally I find that rather amusing since Christmas isn't the only holiday that occurs this time of year. There's the celebration/observance of (in no particular order) Guru Tegh Bahadur Martyrdom, Samhain, Eid-al-Adha, the Ascension of Abdu'l-Baha, Hanukkah, the sacred month of Muharram begins mid-December, there's Kwanzaa, Boxing Day (okay not religious but it is a holiday), ...

Every day we are bombarded with information, advertising and out-and-out "spin” on the issues. It seems as though every organization out there is yelling for our attention. One of the greatest strengths our nation can bring to bear is an informed electorate but how does one become an informed voter and citizen? Thanks to the Internet there are a lot of options, perhaps too many. The following list compiles a few of those web sites that attempt at least to provide an unbiased look at the issues: The U.S. Senate: www.senate.gov The U.S. House of Representatives: www.house.gov The Library of Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov (track legislation as it moves through Congress) Congress in general: www.congress.org (these guys have a great email newsletter you can sign up for too) To research the issues: www.factcheck.org (they beat up folks on both sides of the aisle) Now most of you have figured out I tend to run a bit left of center politically and otherwise, so for t...

So... late last night after our local paper went to bed the US House voted to pass their version of health care reform. No one should celebrate just yet. The Senate has not yet brought its bill(s) to the floor yet - for some reason I thought they had but that must have been all the hype over the Baucus bill. In any case, the Senate needs to pass something before any reconciliation of the bills can happen. And reconciliation is usually a LONG process. Things can change a lot during this process, compromise can rewrite all sorts of things. So the battle is far from over and both sides are going to gear up and flood the airwaves with all sorts of spin and insanity. There will be polls, and commentary and all sorts of silliness on the various talk shows. The funny thing is that prior to this vote the majority of the polls were reported as indicating that the public did in fact want a public option and yet the opponents of health care reform kept (and still keep) saying that "the Ameri...

Okay I think we need a tiny bit of perspective here. When I graduated from college in early May 1983 the unemployment rate for that month wasn't out yet but in April that rate was (brace yourself) 10.8%. Today it is 10.2% Okay so a 0.6% difference may not seem like much but translated into jobs that's a lot of people. Yes! That's right! 10.8% in 1983. And even then the numbers did not include those whose unemployment had expired, those who were no longer actively looking, just the way the numbers don't include them now. Now think a minute folks... which president was called upon as a beacon throughout the entire campaign last year? Ronald Reagan. Who was president in 1983? Ronald Reagan! He was half-way through his first term then (or nearly so) and we had unemployment that high. Inflation was at 6.68% in May 1983. Today that rate is - 1.29%. Can you see the difference? When I was first entering the "real" work force in 1983 unemployment was higher, the rate o...

As you know by now the voters in Ohio have passed a ballot issue to allow casinos in four major cities in the state. This was the fifth time the idea was on the ballot and even though this was a constitutional amendment the thing passed. By a decent margin. So now the state legislature is having a fit. Some of them are putting together a ballot initiative for 2010 that will amend the casino issue to charge higher fees to the casinos claiming that other states charge more for licenses etc. than Ohio will according to the amendment that passed on Tuesday. Yup, the Greedy Gus Guys are already at work to torpedo the whole thing by wanting more money. So we could potentially have the ability to have casinos here and yet charge so much in fees, etc. that no one will want to build one. Again Ohio is doing everything it can to scare business away no matter what the voters want. The ironic thing is just last week it was I think that one of those organizations known for ranking such things liste...

Well "silly season" is officially over for another year. The Mayoral race is complete... and the "good guy" won. Unofficial final count called in to headquarters was 55% us, 45% them. Funny comment heard from several people in the room: "oh thank God, now we don't have to move!" Of course this would not have been funny if we had lost. Literally more than half of my neighborhood would have been out of a job come January and would have had to move, the rest of us would have left because living under a "my way or the highway" style of mayor would have been intolerable. We can now look forward to the sheriff and police chief continuing to work together, someone with vision leading the administration and my company gets to keep a client (can you say "win win"?). The school levy passed. Folks seem to finally understand what a renewal levy is... took only HOW many tries on the ballot? Sales tax in the county however did not survive. Once a...

Time has just about run out for the candidates and issue promoters/preventors, the last flurry of campaign ads is hitting the airwaves and it is not a moment too soon people!! We have mayoral candidates, we have school levy insanity (it is only a renewal they say, no new $$ - but if I have less $$ right now won't it still hurt more?), we have state issues that no one seems to really understand but everyone is yelling about, we have city charter changes that again no one seems to understand even the people working on them, etc. etc. etc. And this is an OFF YEAR. Just wait until 2010 when the congressional nuts come out of the woodwork and this state has its districts redrawn thanks to the census - then the fun will REALLY begin. But it is almost over... tomorrow we vote. And that's where you come in.... Wherever you live, whatever your politics you should get out there and exercise your right to vote. Polls open early and stay open long enough for even us working fools to make i...

It is countdown to the local elections and the silliness continues. Hard to believe it has been a month since last I typed - silly high school reunion took up a HUGE chunk of that time, my apologies. The fourth debate between the mayoral candidates was last week and the final is this week. This would be interesting except that we keep going over exactly the same territory, which can happen in a one-note opposition campaign apparently. Last week's debate was interesting in regards to the questions being asked by the business person on the panel who wanted to know what good the challenger would and/or could say about the city if faced with the prospect of a company wanting to locate here. Apparently nothing. Or maybe the gentleman simply was unprepared for the question. Interesting timing in today's paper however, on the front page TA DA! a new business bringing new jobs and YUP! the current administration was involved and the company in questions was quite impressed with the spe...

As you may have gathered... assuming anyone is reading this... we have a few City elections coming up and thus silly season has begun. Silly season typically starts a month or two out from the election. It is safe to say we are there. We have mayoral candidates and their trusty sidekicks disrupting council meetings with schoolyard taunts regarding various aspects of male genitalia towards those who disagree with them. Followed a day or so later by a threat to file a complaint/lawsuit claiming other council members were in violation of open meetings laws when having a brief conversation prior to the official start of the meeting. So how does this person who feels so violated know what these other two were talking about? Unless he was standing right there. And by standing right there and not calling fellow council-folk to task on the spot (or at least reminding them with a gentle 'hey guys, not a good idea') does this not make him culpable? If not standing right there, eavesdropp...

You may not remember all the back and forth over whether the Hubble Telescope should be repaired or allowed to simply die... how it was too dangerous to send a repair team up to fix it, etc... Well if there was any doubt as to whether or not it was worth the risk, the new images released this week ought to put those doubts to rest. If you haven't seen them, check them out at the Hubble Web Site Of course this service mission is being billed as the last service mission to the telescope - partly because the shuttle fleet itself is being retired not too long from now. It was only fitting that the repair work be done this year - which in case you missed it - is the International Year of Astronomy. So called because this year marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of a telescope to view the night sky. Back then of course HE didn't have to worry about light pollution. Even though I live in small city Ohio and am surrounded by farm land it is still not possible to get far en...

The Mayor's race here is starting to get "interesting". Yesterday we learned that the opposition candidate (and by that I only mean the guy NOT currently in office) was served with a "cease and desist" order by the local NBC TV station because his YouTube campaign ad not only used copyrighted news broadcast footage without permission but it was altered in such a way as to change the meaning of the reporting. Funny that this bit of info did not make it into the local paper this morning. It was on the 6 p.m. news last night, plenty of time to make the press... Today the candidate called yet another press conference (he did that earlier in the week too, code enforcement issue) to rant about a company called Global Energy - a project that is admittedly on hold. I didn't see the entire report as of yet but from what I gathered the gentleman was casting aspersions over the fact that the City's has "dropped the ball" on this thing, that permits have e...

It appears the real audacity of President Obama's hopes was bipartisanship. As the health care reform debate continues to move along - flaring up here and there in town hall meetings, talked about on all the news programs and talk shows (please note, there IS a difference between journalism and entertainment, to whit: The CBS Evening News is journalism; Glenn Beck's radio show is entertainment), ranted and raved over on the editorial pages of those papers still in existence, blogged about, etc. - the one thing that seems clear is that there will be no bipartisan effort on this subject. Over the weekend some administration folks stated that the so-called "public option" might not actually be necessary to passing the bill. This "public option" has been the big beastie under the bed for those opposed to the potential legislation. Republicans have been screaming about the addition to a "public option" from Day One. Some have guaranteed that there will ...

In all the brouhaha over health care reform and the economy; let's not forget about Iran and what its people are going through. In typical agenda setting fashion, the media has turned its attention away (for the most part) from Iran and the aftermath of the elections. By doing so the topic has lost its "top of mind awareness" and when that happens Americans tend to think the problem is over. It is not over. The media has simply gotten bored with it. They are setting the agenda for what we are to think about, not exactly what to think mind you but certainly what to think about. The famine, for example, in Ethiopia hasn't gone away simply because we haven't seen it in the news lately. Those arrested in Iran are facing trials that are travesties of justice. Some of the clerics on the ruling council are calling for the execution of those who have taken part in the protests, people are being killed while in custody, women are being raped and now Mr. Ahmadinejad is sayi...