Things to Know - 2 October

The Most Ridiculous Tea Party Protest Signs

1.  I am very sorry that I missed sending this yesterday.  It is a great story.  From "hopping over the fence", working the agriculture crops, and two decades later as a Medical Professional in Brain Cancer Research at Harvard.  Is this the American Dream or What.   To Alabama and all those other wannabe Alabama states, you are part of the brain that this Doctor wants to remove:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oe-morrison-hinojosa-20111001,0,5771904,print.column

2.  George Orwell, if alive today, would be seeing all of his worst fears being realized.  Here is a bit about technology watching and plotting your every move.  I can see the day coming where the county tax board will be billing all of us for sewage services based upon the digital readout report of bar-coded excreta data resulting from an individual pill that we take that categorizes what we eat, digest, and process for elimination in a person-unique profile (like a fingerprint).  You will be billed on what winds up at the treatment plant.  I S--t you not:
http://www.truth-out.org/print/6972

3.  A very good article on the what the "founders" had in mind when they laid out the road map.  The Conservatives and the Tea Party have their interpretation, and then there are others who hang on the interpretation of the "regulation of commerce" clause which has been used to straighten out many of our past messes.  However, it is the last sentence in this article that is, at present, the most chilling:
http://www.truth-out.org/print/7018

4.  Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times brings clarity and suggests a purpose to the mission of the Wall Street Occupiers:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/kristof-the-bankers-and-the-revolutionaries.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

5.  All  you Thomas Freidman fans should not be disappointed.  He blames the digitally-monitored robot for our unemployment ailments.  I suppose he could also write an article on the Predator Drones being used in the Middle East, with big successes (and a lot of tragic mistakes), and how they are contributing to the lack of need to build bigger and faster fighter planes, or even training more fighter pilots.  I mean we also have a Medical Professional who can electronically monitor visual and vital signs on his/her desk for a whole host of hospital patients and direct EMT assistance when an electronic signal indicates the slightest trauma on any on of the patients being monitored.  This is amazing, but can it be effectively argued that this is a great factor in creating unemployment? :
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-did-the-robot-end-up-with-my-job.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

6.  Steve Lopez gives a journalistic landscape of a 102-year old woman, still working as a therapist, and telling others that there is no magic on her vibrancy and drive to keep working and helping others.  There must be something about the Austrian-Czech DNA:
 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-1002-lopez-bolgar-20111002,0,4212723,print.column

--
Juan Matute

"A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire."
       -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"The higher the buildings, the lower the morals."
       -- Noel Coward

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy."
       -- Ernest Benn

"Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level."
       -- Quentin Crisp