On Running Amok

From Malaysia, the English language borrowed a word that describes the many shootings in the United States. The word is amok, as in running amok, without rhyme or reason, intent upon violence. This strange tendency has percolated up from ancient times and is by no means a modern novelty. People run amok for reasons having to do with long-repressed anger and rage, often aggravated by mental illness, especially depression.

What is modern is the widespread availability and popularity of firearms. Guns have changed the equation of running amok for the worse, from society's viewpoint, although for the killer, the gun is a godsend. If you run amok with a scimitar, your victims can at least run away if they see you coming. There is no adequate defense against a stranger with a loaded gun. Every one of us is vulnerable, from rich to poor, unless one chooses to live in a fortress for life.

Should we make guns illegal? No, because making things illegal just creates a huge black market, as we can see today where drugs and prostitution are concerned. Guns have permeated so far and so deeply into the U.S. population that it seems unlikely they can ever be removed. There's also the risk of the government being taken over by a military coup. The availability of guns to the people helps to safeguard liberty. Liberals who favor making guns illegal should bear in mind that freedom is not guaranteed. There could come a time when the homegrown Taliban here in the U.S., the religious right, takes over and begins building concentration camps for all the people that they hate. At such a time, guns may be the only thing standing between you and becoming a statistic to their religious fanaticism.

The answer to gun violence is to remove the "cool" factor and reduce the prevalence of violence in the American psyche. Instead of movies that glorify gun violence and recommend killing as the solution to all problems, we should watch movies that better reflect our ethics and social values. This is a recommendation for people to make informed choices about their entertainment, not a prescription for censorship.

Raising awareness is key. Media sources that exaggerate the severity and prevalence of crime, like FOX news, tend to make people afraid for their safety and to think that they need firearms for self-defense. Right-wing outlets also tend to glorify war, and if war is acceptable, murder cannot be half-bad--as long as you're murdering the "right" victims.

If you want to reduce gun violence, turn off FOX news and quit subscribing to right-wing media outlets like USN&WR. Turn to media sources that place a value upon peace and thoughtful and mature behavior. Choose entertainment that reflects your values, instead of mindless militarism.

Wars Profit Us Nothing

I can't think why the United States is focused upon Iran, other than myopia from lingering in Iraq too long. China has taken many of our jobs with our explicit consent and the connivance of our leaders. China threatens Taiwan with war and holds Tibet in thralldom. Toward its own people, it is one of the most repressive states in the world, without the personal freedoms that we take for granted in the United States. In China, the media and even the Internet is tightly controlled. The government is so corrupt that it bears a close resemblance to organized crime. In such a society, starting a war would be easy, very easy. The Chinese are a highly indoctrinated people. Only one thing stops the fascists over there, and that's the presence of the United States.

Should we challenge China now? No. But we should be aware that economic strength, including manufacturing capability, is more important in the long run than short-term military superiority. How will we supply our military twenty years from now?

Recall World War Two. What was the deciding factor in the victory of the Allies over the Axis forces? Could it have been our superior manufacturing capability? We supplied our allies with so many tanks, bombers, fighters, guns, bombs, and ships that the Axis powers were overwhelmed in the end.

We are being worn down in a slow and methodical fashion by our own strategic blunders. The United States has been grinding its nose in the Middle East and Afghanistan for no apparent reason other than pride. While the U.S. bleeds billions of dollars a month in various cesspools around the world, within the U.S., jobs are being lost, particularly manufacturing jobs.

People have lost confidence in the ability of this country to lead. That is because George W. Bush was a poor leader, a puppet for Republican criminals that hoped to gain wealth through his myopic policies. If any of them became rich, they should share their gain with the rest of us, who profited nothing from the war. But I wouldn't hold your breath on that one.

Right-wingers feel that their money makes them morally superior to the rest of us. After all, Ayn Rand provides a philosophical justification with her Objectivist philosophy, which holds that money equals morality. The more money you have, the more ethical you are as a person. Another way of putting this is that money is all that matters, a common Republican mantra. Those who have less money are worth less. The only possible reason that the poor are poor is laziness, immorality or stupidity. Their blood is cheap. Let's send them off to die in a war. That way, government spending will go toward the companies we have invested in. Our shares will rise in value. Don't you believe in evolution? Survival of the fittest. What defines "the fittest?" Simple. The amount of money you have. This is the repulsive Republican philosophy in a nutshell.

Many private companies have proved themselves to be mismanaged by CEO's who only thought about short-term gain for shareholders rather than long-term strategy. These CEO's waged class war upon working people. They were rewarded for cutting jobs, benefits, and wages. That is the ultimate limit of skill among American CEO's. They are only good when it comes to harming workers. For this peculiar skill, they are the highest compensated CEO's in the entire world. Problem is, they just don't know how to manage a business. For that, they need outside consultants, market wisdom, and finally when all of that fails, taxpayer money. Those who are paid the highest contribute the least and cause the most harm.

Who should be paid the most? Those with the most skill. The engineers, scientists, and workers whose skills truly are irreplaceable. You could replace most CEO's with an 8-ball and get better results for less cost.

---

Any politician who does not appreciate the need to cut military spending and redirect it toward domestic concerns is a politician that needs to be sent back home in the next election. The era of invading little dunghills around the world for little or no reason is over.

Concentrate upon building up the United States economy through a focus upon research and development and job creation. Business as usual under too many Administrations has meant excessive military spending upon fancy gadgets in a time of peace. The U.S. needs big ideas and big dreams, not business as usual.

Stupid wars waged by stupid men has run up much of the eleven trillion dollar debt that Republicans now pretend to be concerned about. Debt can be incurred for good or bad reasons. If you incur debt in order to buy a car that will take you to work, debt is good. If you incur debt just to buy a gun and shoot people at random, then debt is counter-productive.

Let other nations go about the dreadful business of starting wars. If we ever engage in an overseas conflict again, we should be recognized as the white knight, with the support of the international community--including their financial support.

Dumbed-Down Journalism

US News & World Report is a hard-right magazine that appeals to the Rush Limbaugh crowd. They are pretty consistent in supporting all of the religious-right and conservative Republican causes.

USA Today is a nationwide newspaper that tries to be as apolitical and inoffensive as possible, covering more than just one perspective on their editorial page.

Compare these two recent headlines covering the same bit of news:

"Study: Hospice patients feel abandoned by doctors" - USA Today

"Dying Feel Abandoned by Docs in the End" - US News & World Report

The USN&WR writer feared that most of his readers would not know what the word "hospice" means, and had to replace it with a weird substitution, "dying". Certainly hospice patients are in a bad way, but they are not going to die this very day, are they?

Abbreviating doctors as "docs" adds a weird levity to the situation, as if it's all a big joke, like Bugs Bunny saying, "What's up, Doc?" To me, this betrays the emotional disconnect within the thought processes of right-wingers. They simply don't care about people, and it shows in their choice of words.

Why should the "dying," as USN&WR puts it, feel abandoned just in the end? Why not in the beginning or the middle? In the end, hospice patients feel nothing at all. Think about it.

Should we be surprised that conservatives digest the dumbed-down journalism of USN&WR? I am. Maybe I shouldn't be, but I am. I don't know how they can stand it.

Warning Signs from Your Service Provider

When your service provider acts in a nervous fashion, sending you dozens of mailings pleading with you to buy more or tell your friends to buy more, then you know something is amiss with their finances. The last refuge of a CEO is to make a ton of mass-mailings, cross his fingers and pray that the suckers bite.

I subscribed at one time to Vonage, an excellent VOIP (Voice Over Internet Provider), through which unlimited long distance calls are made in exchange for a low monthly fee. Back in 2007, they began flooding me with offers through the mail. Ugly shiny decals to put on my car, and ugly cards to hand out to all of my friends. If I recruited a new customer, I would receive something like two months free. Well, I tried, I really did, but most people just don't make that many long distance calls to begin with, and those who do feel like they can just use their cell phone.

Upon receiving my fifth mailing containing marketing spam from Vonage, I became suspicious. It's that horse sense of mine. Something was just not right. I did a search on Google news and there was my answer. Vonage was in big trouble! In fact, many financial analysts predicted that it would fold in the first half of 2008! That did not turn out to be the case, as far as I know. At any rate, I called up Vonage to cancel my service, because it turns out I didn't make many long distance calls myself. The Customer Service Representative was such a nice lady with a pleasant sounding voice that I changed my mind. She had quite a way with words. I remember her saying, "If you keep the service, we will cut your bill in half!" Swayed by her feminine charms, I stayed with Vonage another six months.

The moral of this story is, negotiation sometimes works even with corporations, particularly when they are bleeding customers. They will do anything to stop the bleeding, including chopping your bill with a cleaver. Vonage may still be a good service today. I did not follow what happened to them after I quit subscribing. I think they are still around, because I got an email from them a month ago. Maybe they found a sugar daddy to help them through the difficult times. Most of their troubles stemmed from a lawsuit inflicted upon them by a larger corporation that seemed intent upon destroying them altogether. Vonage was actually a cute and feisty little dog of a company, and I wish them all the best.

Years ago, I used Charter Communications, a cable provider, as my Internet Service Provider. I wasn't terribly happy with them. The #1 problem was reliability. The Internet would go down and stay down for anywhere from ten minutes to TEN DAYS. No explanation would be given, and no refund credited to my account. Is that fair? Of course not. Sometimes, I called their technical department on the phone, but no one knew anything. Other times, I got in my car and drove to the local office for Charter and asked, "Why is my Internet down?" Their local office tells more about Charter than anything else. The employees are all behind bullet-proof windows. They pointed to a red telephone located in the lobby and told me the telephone would answer all of my questions. I picked it up, and a voice on the other end said, "Sorry Sir, we are working on the problem right now." This is about the time I decided to cancel Charter.

Charter then began sending me offers, at the rate of one per week, to come back to their ever-loving arms and embrace mediocrity once again. They were willing, not to reduce my bill, but to increase the services and give me a sweet package deal. They offered internet, VOIP, and basic cable television for $69. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? If I hadn't experienced numerous occasions without any Internet, I would think so, too.

Charter liked to brag about how fast cable was compared to DSL. This misses the point entirely. As with electricity, the main issue with any ISP is reliability. The Internet must be up 99.99% of the time. As for speed, DSL technology has progressed until the speed gap is not what it once was. As for the package deals offered by a cable provider, who cares about television? Passive entertainment is the way of the past. Interactive entertainment--the Internet--is the way of the future. I would rather save $1 than pay anything additional for television. At any rate, the cable provider makes money off the content providers. Why do they need to also hit the customer up for fees? They're lucky anyone subscribes to them anymore. Most of the channels on cable TV are loaded with irritating commercials, and the content itself is abysmal just as it always has been. Cable providers brag about having a hundred channels, but how many of those channels are worth anything?

What ever happened to Charter? Bankruptcy! Am I surprised? Not in the slightest. Their Internet service was lousy, and for me, that is enough reason.

When you start receiving desperate offers in the mail, that's a strong signal that something is amiss. Do a search on Google and find out whether the company is suffering financial difficulties. You should not sign up for services with a company that is about to get flushed down the toilet. It's actually quite irresponsible and selfish for such a company to entice unsuspecting people to sign up with them. They're trying to recruit suckers to take down with the sinking ship.

I Know a Scam When I Apply for One

I answered a craigslist posting offering $25/hr for "testing links to make sure that they work, troubleshooting web pages, etc."

I was just curious. Here's what I received.

---------

From: SEO Developers INC.
To: Glorious Igor
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2009 12:28:46 AM
Subject: Re: job offer

Hi, and thank you for your interest in the link tester position.

To qualify for this position we have a simple screening procedure that we use to find the right candidate.

1. Go to http://xxxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxxxxx.com/

2. Pick out 5 free offers that interests you and sign up for them. You will need to go all the way to the 'Thank you' page for each offer. Please indicate which ones you've signed up for in your follow up email.

3. Answer the following questions for each offer that you've signed up for:

a. What is the url you are directed to when you have clicked *LINK* after the offer?
b. Were there any errors on the way to the ‘Thank You’ page? Please take screenshots of how you got to the errors if there are any.
c. How long does it take for you to go from one page to the next? (Approximate time in seconds and indicate your connection type)

4. Email me the stats of each offer in the following form:
Name of offer
a. www.example.com
b. No errors
c. pg 1-2 (1 sec) pg 2-3 (2 sec) on cable modem

Once the screening procedure is complete we will send you the W2 form to fill out. You will be testing about 20-40 offers like this an hour. The list of questions that we will ask you to answer will be much longer once we hire you. Also, different offers will require different sets of questions to be answered. Sometimes you will need to write a mini review for the offer itself. The wage will start at 25$/Hr.

Thank you for your interest, we look forward to working with you.
-------



Arnold Gray
Resource Manager
SEO Developers Inc.
115 N 34th St, New York, NY

-----------

My readers may be wondering to themselves, "But Igor, this could be legit! Why do you think it is a scam?"

Here's why. What exactly is "SEO Developers Inc.?" That is a rather generic name for a company, isn't it? Located in New York, New York, the city of strangers. Who knows whether they exist or not? Strangest of all, there is no web site listed for them, so I can't really verify their existence, now can I? A search for "SEO Developers" on Google will turn up tons of references, but no company. "Arnold Gray" sounds like a fictional name of a character in a story if I ever heard one. "Resource Manager," indeed.

Worst of all, they expect you to bust your tail doing work for them even before you get paid a skinny dime. Now imagine if they have hundreds of people applying for the position. Why hire anyone? Just let the applicant-slaves do all the work for free. Post new ads when you have more work. Easy!

More sinister is the little info about sending this carrot cake your W2 form, with your Social Security number and all the other personally identifiable info. Can you say Identity Theft, Grandma? I thought you could.

Beware of Craigslist. I see all kinds of scams and fraud on there all the time. If you post a message about a real blog like mine, your message is likely to get taken down within 24 hours. If you post a message about a scam intended to defraud people, your message will survive for eternity. Why? Maybe you should ask the folks at Craigslist that interesting question. Personally I think they are lazy and just don't look into things at all. Posts get banned because some yahoo doesn't like something about the post. My blog being mostly about politics, the right-wing nuts will flag it in a heartbeat.

I'll tell you why I intermingle politics with tech lore on this blog. I don't want to help the right-wingers. I realize they're not going to read me. The liberals will, and those are the ones that will get the other, non-political information stored in my noggin. Those right-wingers that have an open mind and are willing to read the other side, they are also welcome to whatever advice I may have to offer. But the close-minded racists, fascists or Rush Limbaugh fans can go ahead and hit their "Back" button right away. I won't shed a solitary tear. Maybe they can apply for this great job testing links for $25/hr.

On Flag-Waving

I always began with the assumption that anyone who talked with me and spent time with me was a potential friend, which was rather naive. In the corporate world, friendship is a rarity, neutral indifference is the general rule, and hostility quite common. This should not be the way of things, because it's anti-human, but it is. The reason is that, in most offices, people are in direct competition with one another. There is little to be gained by teamwork. If someone looks bad, then you look good by comparison. You could gain approval from management.

Now the right-wingers think that all of this competition is always a good thing. They don't scrutinize it. I disagree and feel that teamwork and cooperation have far more advantages, but that's because I'm a liberal Democrat. I dislike working in a cutthroat environment, despite the fact that I have been rather successful at it. I do not gain any satisfaction in watching others fail. I also don't find any pleasure in pointless conflict that has no basis other than this irrational competitive nonsense. By working together as a team, where there is trust between people, much more can be accomplished than alone.

At work, I was pretty good at my job. There wasn't much that could be said about me other than I worked quietly in solitude and got the job done. However, the minute I let slide that I had any liberal sympathies, Old Man Judgment came a-callin', except she was wearing a skirt. One day, an erstwhile friend began dumping phone books in my cubicle. I asked her why she was doing that, because I honestly thought that she had lost her mind. Up until this point, I had thought of her as a friend. She said, "So you can go recycle them. You're for the environment, right?" She grinned with malice and waited for my response.

When I put the phone books in the aisle for the janitor to pick up, she walked off to tell others what a hypocrite I was. I saw that it was all a ploy she had planned in advance. She wasn't really my friend or anyone's friend. The people she cozied up to were the ones that had power or popularity--the senior ones in line for promotion, and the lesser bosses, who were within reach of her attempts to socialize. I had no power and not many connections in the department. The only way for her to gain was to make me look bad somehow. She couldn't make me look bad based upon my work. Instead, she focused upon other things, like my minority political beliefs. This was back in the day when being conservative Republican was cool.

People like that, engaged in petty competition over petty rewards, are so transparent that once you recognize them for what they are, you're safe. You know what their motivation will be in any given situation. What they care about is personal advancement and personal gain. Anything else does not have much substance for them.

She was the same one that complained because I didn't put a flag on my car or cubicle wall. "What's wrong with you? Why don't you have a flag too?" Of course, she went away to complain to others about my not having a flag on my cubicle wall. I expected that and was not in the least surprised. Actually, this is the only thing she ever said to me that made me reflect. I think she brought up an interesting issue, although I'd never discuss it with her.

In the past, I hadn't bought flags, despite their being fashionable following 9-11, but I hadn't really considered why that was. I'm not the type to follow fashions, for one, and seldom buy anything, because I dislike shopping. I'd rather write or read than shop. But there seems a philosophical reason not to buy a flag and plant it on one's car, cubicle wall, face, et cetera. I just hadn't thought of all the reasons before.

To my understanding, there are not separate nations within the territory of the United States. The entire land area is U.S. soil. Everyone already understands what country we are standing in. Therefore, sticking a flag on my cubicle wall is rather redundant.

What are the possible reasons someone might stick a flag on a cubicle wall? Does this show patriotism? Is patriotism a good thing? It says more about your desire for approval than about who you are as a person. What about waving a flag that says, "Solve World Hunger Now!" I don't see anyone doing that. It just wouldn't be popular, for whatever reason.

What's wrong about flag-waving is that it's part of an "us-versus-them" mentality that leads to war. If they lose, we win. If we win, they have to lose. What about a scenario where both can win? All countries can win. This is the ideal scenario.

One day, the world is going to have to move past the idea that we have to harm other nations in order to be a stronger nation. But that day probably won't arrive until after my time on this earth is over.

Why Can't Republicans Say Four Simple Words?

I have an idea for a great bumper sticker for Republicans, certainly more descriptive of Republican philosophy than "W" ever was. While I'm impressed that Republicans have mastered one of the letters of the alphabet, there are so many more, twenty-five in fact. Better is a slogan that describes their philosophy in a nutshell. "I do not care." This is the ultimate reason behind all positions espoused by the Grand Old Party.

In the weekly Republican radio address, Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri spoke about Obama's plans for the U.S. health care system:

"Some people are spending a lot of time talking about how to spend more of your money on bigger government run programs. I'm concerned that if the government steps in it will eventually push out the private health care plans millions of Americans enjoy today."

What he means is, "I do not care."

He doesn't care about the millions who are uninsured. He doesn't care about the millions who suffer under inadequate and stingy private health care plans. He doesn't care about the way that private insurers squeeze money out of the old, the sick, and the dying.

Private health care is designed to do one thing: make a huge profit for the private company. If people ever get medicine out of a private health care plan, that annoys the private insurer, because it may reduce their profit margin by a thousandth of a percentile.

What's that? You need an operation? That will cost too much. Get a fourth opinion. See another doctor. You're don't really need it. Alright, maybe you need it, but you can put it off for the time being. Save money. Die. You're better off dead.

Capitalism has no place in health care, where people's lives are at stake. If Republicans want to wage war on the old and the infirm, they need to find the courage to tell them the truth. Republicans, find the courage to tell the sick and the dying: "I do not care if you die. In fact, I want you to die. If you die, my shares will be worth a little bit more. What I care about is my money, not about people like you. You're better off dead." Republicans are great when it comes to that peculiar kind of courage. They are great when it comes to war, conflict, and any situation where people are very likely to be harmed. Does this say anything about the moral character of their party?

People Love Simple Answers

A nineteen year-old on Craigslist posted an ad seeking platonic friends in which he bared his dismal situation in life for all to judge:

1. I have no job.
2. I have no car.
3. I have no friends.
4. I like to smoke weed.

Doesn't sound very appealing, does it? My attention was drawn to this ad because I was browsing the "rants and raves" section, where someone had posted a message entitled, "oh, weed is harmless...OH YEAH?" The message contained a link to this guy's plea for friends. The implication is that weed has devastated this guy's life to the point where he is unemployed, without a car, and without friends.

I thought about that, and how the ad plays into the stereotype that many people have concerning pot smokers, an image popularized by Cheech and Chong in their hilarious movies from the 1970's. I'm not sure I would find those movies funny today, but when I watched them as a young man, it was under a thick haze of marijuana smoke, and they seemed funny enough at the time.

The unemployed guy was just nineteen years old, and I didn't find it all that surprising that he had no job and no car. Maybe he is attending college, or maybe he can't find work in today's economy, where few employers are hiring. Is marijuana the cause of his troubles? Certainly not, no more than beer would be.

People use marijuana for a variety of reasons, and no two people are the same. The nineteen year-old could be an addictive personality that uses a variety of substances, where marijuana is likely the least of the chemical cornucopia. He might drink, smoke tobacco, and smoke pot as well. The question then becomes, what causes his problems? Is it the alcohol, the tobacco, or the pot? Maybe it is none of the above. Maybe his problems are even deeper than the substances that he chooses to imbibe. I prefer the last answer, because I have some experience with substance use myself. Marijuana does not alter a person that much, no more than beer. Anyone who has smoked it before can testify to this, and should, in order to counter the misinformation so prevalent in the world.

Besides an addictive personality, what are the other reasons that people choose to smoke pot? Most, I suspect, merely desire inebriation. Thrill-seeking behavior is what this is about. People smoke pot for much the same reason that they visit an amusement park or masturbate--activities that George Castanza's mother (from Seinfeld) associated with each other. It's interesting to note that many forms of thrill-seeking behavior, such as masturbation, firearms, horror movies and video games, receive some level of disapproval from society. Is society becoming boring, a nervous nanny that frowns on fun?

Other marijuana consumers may be self-medicating their depression or anxiety. Actually, marijuana is not a bad choice for that type of thing. I know, because when I smoked pot as a teenager, it was because I was suffering from depression. It's pretty easy for someone who is not suffering from depression or anxiety to look down at the pot smoker and exclaim, "Aha! The marijuana made you that way! If only you quit smoking pot, you would be a better person!" That's the easy answer, and people like easy answers. In reality, if you take their medicine away, pot smokers will simply become more anxious. They may turn to drinking. They will definitely find an alternative of some sort, because human beings are nothing if not resourceful. What needs to be addressed is not their choice of medicine, but the causes of the underlying distress. Heal the wound, don't just rip off the band-aid.

It takes effort and energy to look deeper into the nature of things. Who is willing to take the time to sort out the truth? Many people put their faith in right-wing politicians and die in pointless foreign wars because of a toxic preference for easy answers.

Remember this easy answer from the 1960's? "We have to stop the spread of communism! Let's spend a trillion dollars fighting in the jungles of Viet Nam."

Here's a more recent example. "We have to stop the evil dictator of Iraq! Let's spend another trillion in the Middle East."

Simple reasoning was used in each of these cases. Who will take the time to explore all of the facts? Who will stop in the middle of an angry nation's march to war? It's not easy to stand against the madness of crowds, to be the lone dissenter. You may be called a traitor.

Truth-seeking is the search for the difficult answers, the ones that may be inconvenient. The truth is almost never cast in black and white, good versus evil, and beware of those who claim that it is. Instead, truth often remains obscured in shades of grey. The mystic Osho said, "Nothing is good, nothing is bad." We project those values upon the world in order to simplify reality. We can never have the entire truth with the limitation of two eyes and one brain. The truth is vast and complicated, and we are small and simple. We should try to see as much as we can and never give up searching for answers, because the minute we think we have all of the truth, new information may arise that contradicts old information.

Due to the uncertainty over the truth, we should be reluctant to take life. In "The Lord of the Rings," Frodo expressed a desire to kill the creature Gollum. He asked the wizard Gandalf, does Gollum not deserve death? For indeed, Gollum was an evil creature that had murdered in the past, and he was observed to be spying upon them. Gandalf replied, "There are many who deserve life. Can you give it to them? Be not eager to deal out death. Even the Wise cannot see all ends."

I advise that people question things and never cease gathering knowledge and information. Education is called The Way, because through it, we can understand many things about the world. But remember that there is a difference between real education and indoctrination. Not everything that one reads in a book will be true. Much that we see upon television is false. In school, we were taught to paraphrase what we read. The emphasis was upon memorization. More important than that is critical thinking. Much information must be rejected, because it is false or only half-true. Learning to develop critical thinking is the highest goal of education. Memorization is the lowest, and only fools will stop learning at that level.

Legalize Prostitution

My understanding of crime is that there should be a perpetrator and a victim. In the case of prostitution, there is no victim. Many sex workers seem quite content in their chosen trade and are determined to keep at it. Some are paying for college with their sex work. Others support their families. What happens when the sex worker reaches retirement age? They are neither covered by Social Security nor paying into it. This should change. We should welcome sex workers into the system and treat them in a mature fashion rather than as social outcasts.

Decades have passed since the Sexual Revolution, and the laws still condemn sex workers and their clients. Society needs to get over it. Prostitution has existed since recorded history, and there is no evidence that it causes any harm to society, save those harms that the legal situation brings about. Because prostitution is illegal, sex workers are often subjected to violence from customers and their pimps on the street. Both sex workers and their clients are exposed to the threat of blackmail. These harms can be reduced if society gathers up enough moral courage to legalize it once and for all.

Prostitution can be taxed and transformed into an asset for the state, rather than an unnecessary diversion for law enforcement. Sex workers can find redress for grievances in the court system and in the media. Those who exploit and abuse sex workers will be exposed, as should be the case. Right now, the abusers are being protected by the legal environment. Sex workers are afraid to complain because they could be arrested. The industry hides in the shadows, where many abuses are concealed.

Instead of entrapping sex workers, police departments should be focused upon real crimes. Going after sex workers is one of the easiest ways to increase the number of arrests, a statistic used to judge the effectiveness of police departments. On paper, it looks like the police chief is doing a great job. But take a closer look. Does arresting a sex worker help anyone at all? The customers do not want him or her arrested. In reality, no one receives any benefit. The actual outcome is a needless harm inflicted upon the sex worker and an inconvenience upon the customers.

Why are working people the law's favorite target? Because they are easy to harm. They can seldom hire a fancy lawyer, don't have connections to people in power, and if you hurt them, who's going to know--or care? If you are rich, you are left untouched in your golden palace. The police will take every measure to protect you. If they must trouble you in any way, you will be addressed in the tones of utmost civility, respect and fear. If you are poor, then you are more likely to get arrested for one thing or the other. The police will beat the hell out of you, maybe because of something you said or maybe for no reason at all. There is no health insurance for you. You cannot afford to attend university. The state would actually prefer you to die and get out of the way of the rich people. What are you doing breathing their air? This is the actual conservative Republican viewpoint denuded of all its disguises.

For the record, I've never visited a prostitute, not because I think there is anything wrong with it, but because I didn't want to pay for sex. The very fact that I feel the need to set the record straight on this point says something. People with a tolerant viewpoint are uncomfortable talking about prostitution. They fear being judged either as a frequenter of prostitutes or a prostitute themselves. This is why a majority of the public remains silent upon this and many other issues. Who talks with impunity about prostitution? The hypocrites who condemn prostitution, who want to see more people arrested for it. These hypocrites pretend to be morally pure saints condemning the vices of other people.

Generation after generation, supposed vices continue to be treated like crimes, and otherwise law-abiding people sent to jail. We need to expose all of the fake crimes and remove the bad laws from the books. The net effect of these fake crimes is to sow division, confusion and misery among working people. Respect for the law is diminished. How can the laws be respected when they are wrong in so many ways? Instead of focusing upon real problems, law enforcement spins its wheels pursuing imaginary crimes, and the media spins its wheels reporting upon them. Who benefits? The rich business criminals, who like the idea of the media's attention being consumed upon irrelevant non-issues like sex.

Why Did I Put Ads on my Blog?

The short answer--this blog is an experiment and a learning experience for me. Online advertising is a new development over the past decade. I wanted to experience it from the perspective of the content provider. That's what I am--a content provider. Wow.

Do I provide any content that people want? Questionable. In reality, my blog receives less than five visits per day. Certainly not enough to turn any profit via advertising. In fact, after 617 visits, I have earned exactly zero dollars and zero cents. Why, then, should I trouble myself with ads?

There are certain aspects I like about the ads. For one thing, they are inoffensive, not at all like the "Smash a Monkey Game" that occupied ad banners years ago. If I saw stupid ads like that, I would discontinue the service. Ads seem to give my site a more professional look, as though I'm already successful and commercial, although I'm far from it.

Ads give me subtle feedback on my content. If I see ads for conservative web sites, then I know I've been using words like "conservative" and "Republican" often. I like to guess at the reasoning that the AdSense robot employed to match my site with certain kinds of ads. I also have a suspicion that advertising may increase my ranking on the search engines, although this has not been the case so far.

I relish the stark contrast between my content and the horse crap offered by online advertising. Whereas I make the assumption that my reader is intelligent and educated, advertisers assume the opposite. I use whatever skills I may have in logic and writing. Advertisers rely upon slogans, and--on ads with graphical images--the faces of attractive models. They are appealing to the lower level of the human consciousness, while I am appealing to the higher, I would expect.

Mainly, I'm simply curious about advertising and how it works. At some point, I may tire of hosting ads for free and discontinue the service. If I receive any feedback from people who dislike the ads, then I would be inclined to act sooner.

I only get paid when, and if, people actually click on an ad, and no one in their right mind ever clicks on an internet ad. The only people who might click on an ad would be people new to the Internet who do not understand the ways of the beast. This is why many people, after installing the Firefox browser, add the "Adblock Plus" add-on in order to filter out all of the advertising from the internet. Does this deprive hard-working content providers of income? Not really, because elite users do not click on ads to begin with. Only clueless novices do, for the most part. Yet I have read tirades against Adblock Plus by webmasters who think it will evaporate their precious income.

Who is making money from online advertising? Mainly, people running scams, whereby their associates click on the ads on purpose. This is the main group. The other group consists of people running extremely popular sites that receive tens of thousands of hits per day. I suppose that there is a chance you might somehow click an ad by accident, not meaning to, and this will result in income accruing to the cunning webmaster. There may actually be some users in the world that may click on an ad because they want to.

I don't feel the payment schedule for advertising is very fair to content providers, because if an ad appears at all, it has some influence upon the end user. Brand familiarity is established. Expecting a user to click on an ad to learn more is asking quite a lot. Content providers should be paid by the impression, instead of by the click-thru-rate, which rewards those who market their sites to novices, such as children, who I would expect to click on more ads than adults, especially if they see their favorite cartoon character or television actor.

Does this help to explain why you see ads on a left-wing political blog? I'm not against capitalism, by the way, although I am against laissez-faire. There is only one entity that can stand up to a multi-billion dollar corporation, and that's the federal government. State and local governments can be easily bought or bullied.

What about the Bailouts?

Although a liberal in politics, in matters of personal finance, I am very conservative. I only use one form of credit in my life and that is the home mortgage. I am not in favor of people defaulting on credit or taking on more credit than their budget can handle.

However, over the last ten years, banks overstepped all bounds of prudence and reason, as is now obvious by a survey of today's headlines, where so many banks are now filing for bankruptcy or pleading for a government handout. Why are banks in trouble? Because their top management behaved in a foolish and irresponsible manner, the same trait that conservative Republicans associate with poor and needy people. According to Republicans, the poor remain poor because they are morally corrupt--lazy in some way. The rich are rich because they have some sort of virtue. As the facts now show, the wealthy are just as bad as the poor, only better connected to power and privilege.

Notice those credit offers you get in your mail? I have been receiving them on the order of two per week for the last decade. That is correct, I have received over 500 offers for such things as refinancing my mortgage, car loan, credit card, home improvement, education loan, and probably a few other things that escape my memory. While many of us, like myself, have never responded to such offers, some of us did succumb to temptation. I don't blame the victims and neither should the Republicans. The banks should never engage in aggressive marketing of loans, because loans are a bad idea. Where was the government to stop the banks from making pitches to people who otherwise wouldn't even think of using credit?

The most obscene excess in modern capitalism has been the way the government has stepped back from the fray and let businesses inflict all manner of scams upon the consumer. This is because government was run by conservative Republicans who believed in laissez-faire capitalism. Industry after industry was deregulated, because government interference was always bad, and "the free market" was holy and sacred. We now see the disastrous consequences of Republican economic policy. The solution is simple. Never again vote for a conservative Republican. Only vote for liberal Democrats with a strong sense of ethics.

Many of the corporations, such as AIG, now begging for a handout from the government, I am personally familiar with. I happen to know that AIG is among the worst offenders and that they aggressively market loans to people who do not need them. In addition, the insurance policies that they underwrite are not handled in a fair or equitable manner. Like many corporations today, they are beehives working upon the evil exploitation of the poor, machines of social Darwinism that seek to take advantage of unsuspecting people. My views upon economics have been altered by my experiences with businesses like AIG. Not because I had debt with them, but because one of their insurance customers destroyed my car, and they low-balled me on the compensation for weeks until I recruited my agent to negotiate with them. After that miserable experience, they had the gall to send me loan offers through the mail at the rate of one per month, as if we were best buddies. They even called me on the phone telemarketing their loans to me at dinnertime. As I explained to their telemarketer, I would not touch AIG with a ten-foot pole. They are as crooked as the day is long.

Instead of favoring laissez-faire capitalism, as I did in my unenlightened youth, I now understand that government is the only way to reign in the evil practices of selfish businessmen who care about nothing in this world save themselves and their personal bank accounts. Many CEO's are so devoid of a basic sense of ethics that they would sell their own country out if it meant that they could be richer than their neighbor. This is why so many companies have laid off American workers and moved overseas to exploit cheaper labor in countries lacking environmental protections. It is also the reason the economy is in the shape it is today. Without extensive and pervasive government regulation, unchecked selfishness eventually suffocates in its own poisons.

In my lifetime, I have exchanged about a hundred words with an actual CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation, and in that brief conversation over lunch, I learned that he had cheated in college by paying another student to do his writing. What astounded me was not that he had cheated, but that he was willing to tell me, as though it were quite minor in comparison to all the thievery he had engaged in since then.

Too many people in the financial system are parasites leeching blood from the workers and contributing nothing at all to society. These people can be given an alternative career--farming potatoes. In that role, at least society would get something out of their activity. I suggest that many of these CEO's now begging for money from the taxpayer should be given, instead of money, pamphlets on potato-farming and a plot of land not to exceed one acre in which they can learn the art of subsistence farming. With the skill set they have demonstrated thus far, in all likelihood they would starve to death, but I would not let them starve. I'd be more than willing to share my potatoes with them--although not my money.

What about the bailouts and the economic stimulus? I'm not sure. I believe in Mr. Obama and suspect he is correct that the country needs a powerful stimulus. He has already provided one on a spiritual level and that may be the most important of all. As to the financial stimulus, I would prefer that it send resources to the people in the form of education, mass transit and health care. That would be fairer and help to resolve long-term problems in society. However, helping people is a left-wing concept, and the reality is that right-wingers can stop such a plan through a filibuster, if not an actual vote. Right-wingers hate it when the government does anything for anybody except the rich. Obama, the consummate politician, more than likely had to make compromises in order to win any bipartisan support at all and to carry the conservative Democrats. Therefore, a qualified "maybe."

Stop Harassing Phone Calls

As a liberal, I believe you own your phone number, just like you own the front door to your home. Maybe you're renting an apartment, just like you're renting the phone number--but it's still yours, while you live there. This is why I think the phone company needs to provide better service to customers in the area of controlling harassing phone calls.

No, I don't have enemies calling me, although some of you may have experienced that form of harassment before, only to discover there is little or nothing you can do about it besides complain to your phone company, which will promptly tell you to contact your local police, who have better things to do with their time.

Worse is when the harassment targets your cell phone, because you pay for those minutes. I am fortunate that my victimization occurs only on a land-line phone, where the minutes cost me nothing, although the aggravation remains the same.

Whenever you sign up for new service with phone company, you are playing the lottery. You may get a more or less "virgin" number that no one has ever used, but that is quite unlikely these days with the U.S. population exceeding 300 million people! Expect to answer calls from people looking for John, Jake, Mary, Anita, Todd and so on. If you're very unlucky, like me, you may get a phone number that belonged to a royal turkey with all the fixings.

My phone number used to belong to a person who was heavily in debt. I have received so many calls for this guy, that I now know his name and have begun learning other details about him, such as the various businesses he defrauded. I know that his debt was sold at a discounted rate to collection agencies. These agencies buy large chunks of debt for a huge discount, and anything they collect is theirs to keep. The suckers who pay these companies may, or may not, eliminate the harassing phone calls, and their credit record may, or may not, be improved by payment. At any rate, several of these agencies are absolutely convinced that this individual dwells at my phone number, despite my frequent denials and ignoring my requests that they stop calling me. Debt collection agencies believe everyone is a liar. They do not understand the concept of someone changing their phone number and getting a new one. I can't easily change my number at this point, having given it out to family and friends, nor should I have to do so.

What I think every phone customer should have available to them is a complete list, accessible either by phone or online, of all numbers that have called, along with the owners, complete addresses and business title, if any. Just as no one can be anonymous when they knock on your front door (unless disguised), no one should be anonymous when they call your home. Many of these debt collectors have disabled CallerID on their number. I can't reject such calls, because there are friends who call me from long distance exchanges that also disable CallerID. The misguided debt collectors calling my number do not identify themselves, call early in the morning (a wake-up call), and call on random days throughout the year. Lest you suppose these calls will peter out, this has been going on for over two years and shows no sign of abating.

There should be a method of registering a complaint with a U.S. government entity, such as federal court, when a caller continues making unwanted calls. The harassing caller should be arrested, and the case submitted for criminal prosecution. The owners and upper management of most debt collection agencies belong in prison. Their companies should be liquidated. Whatever financial assets they have obtained may be sold at auction, with the proceeds used to compensate their many victims throughout the country.

Protecting ordinary people against predatory businesses is a left-wing political concern. Right-wingers prefer to focus on ways that poor and middle-class people can be punished. Conservative Republicans want to ban abortion, ban gay marriage, put pot smokers in prison, drug-test the urine of all workers, imprison immigrants, and reduce VISA's to legal immigrants. All of these measures hurt poor people in one way or the other, whereas rich people are completely unscathed by such laws. A rich woman can fly to Mexico for an abortion. The ban on gay marriage troubles a rich man less than a poor one, because the rich man doesn't need insurance or the financial and social benefits of marriage. The last bit explains why there are some gay Republicans--they care more about money than about their fellow gays.

We need to elect more liberals into public office, because they have the right priorities. The time has come to reign in the businesses that exist only to defraud, intimidate and harass consumers. The government should prosecute telemarketers, debt collection agencies, and other businesses that harass people by using the telephone as a weapon. When election time comes, you can fight back against the telemarketers by voting for a liberal Democrat, Independent or Republican (I am told that liberal Republicans still exist in some areas, like the mythological unicorn).

Did Somebody Say They Wanted a Cool Home Page?

This is my home page.



Or click here to see an enlarged version.

This blog entry tells how to make one just like it.

Compare my solution to the solutions offered by ISP's, Yahoo, Google or any other service that has a financial stake in influencing the direction that internet traffic flows.

Which is better?

What do you think about the background? Like it? Hate it? Dark backgrounds are my style, because I prefer high contrast against the brighter font color. Also, I feel that a dark screen is easier on the eyes. While I don't have scientific research to back up that claim, I do know my eyes feel better after three hours of staring at a black screen rather than a white one. The one exception to this policy is on my blog, where I concede to "the experts," who recommend black text against a white background. (I've actually strayed a bit on the background.) Who are "the experts?" Just about every news site in existence.

At any rate, if you think I am full of malarkey when it comes to design issues, then you can select your own wallpaper for your home page background. Take a look at my blog entry on finding quality Windows wallpaper.

Most of our time on the computer is spent using the browser, these days, and so I think a good home page is essential. In fact, it may be the most important item on a computer, save the browser itself. My home page saves me both time and bandwidth. It's also nice to have the browser load a page in less than a second rather than having to access the Internet from the get-go to load a page you may or may not want, such as the Google search engine.

The U.S. Missile Defense Shield: Corruption, Inc.

Russia thinks the U.S. is building a missile shield in Eastern Europe to neutralize the Russians' nuclear deterrent, which would tempt U.S. leaders to engage in a first-strike nuclear assault. The U.S., under the Bush Administration and under the Obama Administration, claims the missile shield is intended to thwart any attack from a newly nuclear Iran. What is the truth of the matter?

I find all the sides miss the point of the shield. As always, follow the money. Who gets rich from the missile shield? Defense contractors, mainly. Big corporations. It's easy pickings for them. Best of all, it does not require a nasty, ugly war as in Iraq.

This is so obvious, I am surprised that conservative Republicans actually believe the propaganda that Iran poses such a huge threat to civilization. Iran could be obliterated in an instant. It's about the size of Alaska (I checked my globe to be sure). That's not very big compared to the U.S. I understand that fanatical Islamists claim to prefer martyrdom to life. However, I doubt the senior leadership in Iran would sacrifice their entire population, and the health of Muslims in surrounding countries, to a nuclear engagement. For the most part, religionists, whether Christian or Islamic, give lip service to God but continue eating food and drinking water, because they prefer life to death, and don't look to God for nourishment.

The idea of a nuclear missile defense is impressive only if you don't think about it very much. People tend to think of ballistic missiles when they think of nukes, only because that has been the traditional method of delivery by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Nuclear arms can be deployed in a variety of ways, including by tactical battlefield groups, such as commando units. They can also be smuggled across borders. The deterrence factor is what keeps nations from using nuclear weapons, because there would be a great outcry for vengeance the moment any nuke was used, whether by terrorists or by a nation.

Instead of squandering hundreds of billions of dollars on new military gadgetry in a time of peace, the United States needs to tend to its own affairs. What good has come out of the U.S. in the last ten years? Most people around the world will say the U.S. just exports wars, violence and hatred, and that is true. We do not build good cars, televisions or computers anymore. Those devices are imported in parts from factories in Asia, and just a few factories in the U.S. where the owners are Asian, not American. Most U.S. college students are majoring in things like Business and Law to perpetuate scams upon the poor and exploit workers. Who is learning important skills such as science and medicine? The emphasis in schools is upon sports, but the world is not going to buy our football players, and football will not conquer cancer or develop the next great method of transportation. Where is the emphasis upon science? Why do people gather together to watch the Super Bowl, but not a science documentary?

The country is a dying wrathful tiger, striking out at the beetles circling about it. The beetles pose no real threat, but the tiger in its delirium thinks they are dangerous enemies. If the tiger would only get up and walk over to the watering hole, it might recover from its sickness and become strong again, but it spends all its remaining energies on striking at foes.

The Get-Rich-on-Ebay Meme

There is a wealth of information on how to start your own business on Ebay, if you want to call it a "wealth." At one time, I bought into the idea that anybody could get rich on Ebay. Are you like most of us, and don't really have a product to sell? No problem! Log onto Ali Baba, the online marketplace that connects Westerners with Chinese manufacturing firms, and you can order supplies wholesale direct from the factory. Then you simply add a profit margin of, say, 100%, design a neat little auction, and post said auction upon Ebay! What could be easier?

Is all of this importing of cheap plastic junk from China really such a good thing for the U.S.A.? Most of the things you find on Ali Baba are computer mice, flashlights, LED lights, keychains, pens, funky toys and gadgets galore, just the sort of thing destined for our nation's landfills and not the type of thing to decompose within a hundred years either. But let's put ethics aside for the moment and focus upon a real world example that involved the author.

I never bought anything from Ali Baba, not necessarily because of scruples, but because I realized there was too much of that sort of junk on Ebay already. But I did get myself into the Ebay game, importing not from Asia but from Europe.

A couple years ago, I purchased about fifty kilos of salty licorice from a Belgium manufacturer with a wholesale division in New York. The manager that I spoke with on the phone peppered me with questions, because I was not one of his usual clients and did not have a business license. He wanted to know how I hoped to sell the licorice. It was not difficult for me to realize that anything that I told him, he would try himself, so I told him I would be selling the stuff at local flea markets and made no mention of Ebay.

I was just testing the waters, as a matter of fact, to see whether there was any profit potential in this Ebay thing. Prior to making the call, I had researched Ebay thoroughly and knew for a fact there was no good source of salt licorice. All the other sellers were offering tiny quantities of 60 - 120 grams at high prices, whereas I intended to sell by the kilo at a quite reasonable price, while still allowing myself a healthy profit.

The licorice arrived right on schedule without any problems and was delicious, although I had no intention of consuming fifty kilos myself, regardless of the current status of my middle section. I designed a cute little auction that looked just like the sort of thing one might find in a gourmet magazine, posted it on Ebay and waited. My feedback rating, it should be noted, was 100% positive, and I knew that my good reputation would encourage buyers.

At first, I was quite successful. I sold several batches with a sweet 25% profit margin. Things were going well, and my head was in the clouds with plans of expanding my business. Years from now, I would be featured in "Fortune" magazine as the guy who built a multi-million dollar licorice empire. I imagined jetting around the world, buying factories and opening up shops in all the major cities. Then my dreams crashed.

After a few weeks, I noticed that my auctions were failing. No one was even bidding on my licorice. What was the problem? My customers had all given me stellar feedback--they loved the licorice, just as I did. I researched licorice on Ebay and discovered that somebody was selling the same stuff at a lower price. How much lower? About 30%, or my entire profit margin and then some, that's how much lower. I sold the remainder of my stock at cost, with no profit. This is when I realized that unless you have a special connection with a manufacturer and can cut out the middlemen, buying in large quantities, then you aren't safe from competitors. I had to get out of the licorice business and get out of Ebay altogether, because I don't have any such business connections and don't have deep pockets either. All I'm good for is computer stuff, and I understand the business side well enough to know that knowledge alone won't take you far on Ebay. Most items up for sale are commodities that are very sensitive to price.

If you want to make money on Ebay, my suggestion is not to negotiate with the Chinese. Why? Because a rich man with ten million dollars is already doing that, and the Chinese are cutting him a sizable discount to secure his business. He can stomp on you with impunity on Ebay. Commodities are the province of the rich, who can purchase in scale. The poor should focus upon products that require knowledge and skill.

What if the Blog is Better than the Book?

Last year, I rediscovered a fantasy author from way back when, Piers Anthony, who wrote the bestseller, "A Spell for Chameleon." As a boy, I read him avidly. In the strictest sense of the word, Piers does not keep a blog, which I define as a place where people may reply with comments, but rather a web site. You cannot post comments to his entries, but you can email him, and he is one of the few celebrity authors in the world still willing to respond even to a stupid message.

He posts a bimonthly opinion piece filled with notes and observations, often concerning his own life but also about politics. I will not comment upon his opinions, although my enthusiastic endorsement probably says quite enough. I'm crazy about his web site! I liked it so much, I decided to start reading Piers again, even though I'm not a big fan of fantasy anymore in my decrepit dotage. Based upon no logic at all, I began at random with a book that I purchased from Ebay, because it cost less than five dollars and I'm a big fat cheapskate.

My selection was the first book in the Tarot series. Talk about disappointment! Dull, dull, dull. I could hardly tell that the same man had written both the book and the web site. At any rate, there's no question for me but that the web site is head and shoulders above the book. This perplexes me, because a web site is supposed to be more spontaneous and to lack the beneficial oversight of an editor or proofreader. All that I can conclude is that Piers may be better at writing about real things than about fantasy. Probably I should give him another chance in the book department, especially with one of his newer creations. Maybe when "Tarot" came out, he was going through a slump of some kind. For my money, Anne Rice has not written a good book since "Memnoch," a turkey which marked the end of her good material. I liked her early vampire, witch and mummy books, and am not sure what happened to her brain to silence the muse.

Piers Anthony also maintains a useful section reviewing a long list of publishers, both print and online, that are willing to work with lesser known authors. If you want to publish your own work, you should definitely visit the site of Piers Anthony, because he has become an indisputable expert in the field. In the past, he has battled various publishers that sought to take advantage of him. When one writer is willing to stand up for his rights and not be trampled over, this helps all writers.

I would like to receive suggestions as to which read PA book to try next, other than the "Xanth" series, which I have already read long ago. I would like to try new material.

How to Synchronize Directories on a Network or PC

You really should create a backup of your valuable data, because otherwise in the event of a hard drive failure, that data could be lost. Today, many people store their photographs in digital format, printing only the choicest ones. The very thought of losing an entire lifetime's worth of digital photos is troubling. Some of us also have journals, diaries, spreadsheets and other personal material stored on a hard drive that would be difficult or impossible to replace if it were ever lost. Everyone knows that hard drives eventually fail and that their time of failure is not always predictable. Therefore, we must all backup our important data.

My method of backing up valuable data relies upon two strategies. For critical files and folders, I burn a backup on DVD, which is the most secure and foolproof method of backup. A DVD placed inside a plastic case out of harm's way can endure for decades, although not forever, according to some research. I believe the lifespan of a DVD ranges from 10 to 50 years. Over time, even DVDs deteriorate, however at a much slower rate than hard drives.

For data that encompasses hundreds of gigabytes, DVD's are impractical. Backing up the contents of a 500-gigabyte drive would require over one hundred 4.3 gigabyte DVD's, though slightly less if you compressed the data. This is not an especially good option, unless you cherish the thought of shifting DVD's in and out of a drive all day long and all night long.

For large amounts of data and for automated backups, I take advantage of the multiple hard drives on various PC's in my network. Hard drives fail individually, rather than all at once. If one fails, I will always have a backup of the important files on another drive. This concept is known as data redundancy. In this case, I am simply using spare space on networked drives. I have not purchased any additional hardware dedicated to making backups, although many businesses do just that. To gain a better appreciation for my particular strategy, examine the prices of dedicated backup systems, such as tape drives.

Always backup your data to a different physical hard drive and never the same drive! The entire purpose is to save your bacon in the event of physical hard drive failure.

The following is a very simple method of mirroring a single folder or collection of folders, but not an entire hard drive. The trouble with copying an entire drive is that it would take many hours in today's world of thousand-gigabyte hard drives. There is no reason to copy Operating System files or Program Files. What most people want to backup are things like their personal family photo album, documents, spreadsheets, and music. The backup should be as quick as possible, and therefore only copy those files that have changed in some way. Longtime readers of my blog will not be surprised to discover that, here also, my solution involves writing a handy-dandy batch file:

igor-quick-and-dirty-backup.bat
-------------------------------

@echo off
cls
echo.
echo.Synchronizing directories...
echo.
echo NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN | xcopy "c:\Photo Album\*.*" "\\kitchen_computer\backup_directory" /D /S
echo.
exit

---------

Due to word wrap, the one truly essential line in the above batch file appears like two or even three separate lines, but you must place all of it on one long line. I refer to the line with an "echo" of a long string of N's followed by the pipe symbol, "|", directing the output into the Xcopy command.

The meat of the batch file is the Xcopy. That's right, the humble Xcopy command is all that is needed to copy all the files within a folder. Some may ask, why not just use Copy? In this instance, Xcopy is better than Copy, because with Xcopy, using the "/S" option, you can access all of the subdirectories as well as the files. The "/D" option instructs Xcopy to only copy those files with a newer date than the ones that may already exist on the destination folder. The first time you run the backup, this will make no difference at all, because all files must be copied. However, on future occasions, this will make a great deal of difference, because only new files will be copied.

However, the Xcopy command is not perfect the way that Microsoft designed it. Even with the "/D" option, I have discovered that Xcopy will sometimes attempt to copy files that don't really need to be copied. These are cases where an exact copy already exists on the destination drive. This highlights a drawback with the Xcopy command. Microsoft failed to provide for what to do if an exact copy of a file already exists. If you always want to overwrite the Destination, a suitable option is provided. If you prefer to answer in the negative, Microsoft would have you press "N" for every instance that this occurs. I overcome this limitation on the part of Windows by echoing a long series of "N," hopefully enough to select "No" at every instance when Windows asks the not-very-bright question, "Do you want to overwrite the destination file, which already exists and is an exact copy?"

Some may argue that by copying a file unnecessarily, at least we create a stronger magnetic impression on the destination disk. If this is your response, please report to the Wienie Registration Bureau and add your name to their list.

This batch file does the trick of backing up your important files with a minimum of fuss and best of all is free. What's that? Thanks? You're welcome. If you wish to control your backup procedures manually, then I suggest creating a shortcut to the batch file on your desktop. If, like me, you prefer the backup to run automatically, then schedule an automatic event in Windows to run the batch file at a certain time every day or once a week. Just visit your Control Panel, go to Scheduled Tasks, and Add a Task.

You Can Buy a Car for $2000

In a better world, we would not need to buy a car. We could get around by hopping on a train. There would be no parking, no stress during the commute, and few accidents. The problem of drunk drivers would not be our problem. Spending money on car insurance, maintenance and gas would become a thing of the past. But we live in a country that has been held back in time by the conservative right-wing for a long time. The right-wing hates mass transit, because it helps the poor and the middle-class. Even talking about mass transit brings up fears concerning "socialism." Worse, mass transit connects non-white areas with white areas, and the racists worry about the exportation of crime from one area to another. For these reasons, mass transit never took off in the U.S. to the extent that it did in other cities around the world. Many of us need to buy a car just to get to work, because there is no mass transit, or the mass transit is inadequate.

The cardinal rule about buying cars is never buy a new one. This should be obvious, yet most of my friends and acquaintances still feel that new cars are the way to go. Upon my asking them why they bought a new one, the usual reasons given are:

1. They don't need all the money up front, but can buy on generous credit terms
2. A new car has no worries about potential mechanical failure
3. A new car looks better and feels better
4. A new car comes with a lengthy warranty
5. A new car has features which old ones do not

I suggest that all five of these advantages pale in comparison to the advantage an old car has of being cheaper. The truth is you can pay one-tenth the price of a new car and still be laughing all the way to the bank. First of all, do not use credit, ever, except when buying a house. Home mortgages enjoy certain tax advantages and other legal advantages, and everyone needs a roof over their head, although there are some that live out in the woods or under a bridge to avoid even that expense, but I'm not going to recommend you go there.

In order to avoid buying a lemon, you need only one thing, knowledge. This is obtained by reading about cars and learning about the differences between them so that you can judge a car based upon its documented advantages, the most important being reliability, rather than mere looks. Appearance means little, although if you are the "dress to impress" type, you should cough up a few thousand dollars extra for a nice paint job.

The best used cars by far will be found from your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances. Spread the word around at parties and at work. You are more likely to get a good deal from someone you know, who will hesitate to take advantage of you because their reputation is on the line. To most people, their reputation is of far more value to them than a couple hundred dollars here or there. They will hesitate to lie to you in any way, because you might then complain to mutual friends. Now car salesmen will talk about how important their reputation is to them, but the reality usually is, you do not mix in their social circles, and they do not mix in yours. Car salesmen cultivate thick skins out of necessity.

If your friends are not in the market to sell a car, you can also find excellent cars that are for sale in the classified ads of your local paper or even on a web site such as Ebay. Try to buy from the original owner rather than a middle man. The original owner does not have to pay taxes on the sale in most states, whereas a car salesman does. Also, the original owner will usually cut you a deal if you can pay in full in cash, because he does not have a financing department, and not many people can pay in cash. Find the market value of a vehicle by referring to Edmunds. Remember, even though you want a cheap ride, the owner does not want to feel like he's being taken for a ride. You should pay fair value--what the market says the car is worth--which is usually very little. Any car over ten years old is likely to be a dirt cheap bargain.

Although you may get lucky with an American car, I have come to the conclusion that buying Japanese is the best plan, despite the fact that American used cars sell at a fraction of the price of Japanese used cars of the same type and year. I used to think that the marketplace was unfair to American cars, but actually the marketplace bends over backwards to assign value to American cars, value that the American cars do not deserve.

Expect to make a few repairs on your used car. Budget a couple thousand for potential repairs. In most cases, you will only wind up paying less than a thousand for repairs. You may be surprised to discover that cars made in the last twenty years have become quite reliable. I bought a fifteen year-old used Toyota Corolla for only $1500 from a friend, and it has been one of the best cars I've ever had, reliable in every way save one--the air conditioning broke. I didn't much care, because all four windows can still be rolled down. Fuel economy? How does 30 miles to the gallon sound? Good? I think so.

For better fuel economy and reliability, I decided to replace all four tires for $200. New tires represent an excellent investment, even more so when gas prices are high. An old tire that leaks air at a higher rate will generate more friction, whereas a fully inflated tire will generate less friction, improving fuel economy. Barack Obama referred to this fact during his presidential candidacy as one way ordinary Americans could reduce their dependence on foreign oil. The Republicans jeered at him, but he was spot-on. If the tires are alright, just inflate them to their recommended capacity. But when acquiring a used car, typically the tires need replacement. Even if the tires don't have obvious bad spots, hidden dry rot in older tires can create a potential for an expensive blow-out. Almost by default, I would recommend replacing the tires on a used car unless they look new or the owner states that they are indeed new tires. I also recommend changing both the oil and the oil filter upon purchasing the car. Every time you change the oil, in fact, you should change the oil filter, because it costs very little but has a strong influence on the quality of your engine's lubrication. You should also check the air filter and replace if it is dirty.

There are few things required to keep a car running these days, beyond the basics of oil, the air filter, and the tires. The rest can be left up to your neighborhood mechanic, preferably an independent shop, because once again you can't really trust the car dealerships, which tend to be thirsty for short-term gain and disinterested in treating customers right. For instance, I took my Nissan to a Nissan dealership and was told that I needed a $600 repair for a leaking valve. I took it to an independent, and he said I needed no such thing, and it turns out that he was right. Independent mechanics grow their business almost solely from word of mouth, and their reputation means a great deal to them. I have found independents to be honest almost to a fault. Remember the air conditioning problem I mentioned earlier in the article? My independent mechanic offered to adjust one of the belts to simply bypass the air conditioner, effectively disabling it, but allowing the car to function, which it was unable to do in the current state (the belt had become paralyzed). What did he charge for this? How about $15! Try to imagine a dealership even offering me the option of bypassing the air conditioner, let alone fixing the problem for under a hundred dollars.

In summary, if you want to save money--and you should--then buy used, buy from a friend, be liberal about replacing those car tires, never forget to change the oil every six months at minimum, and when your car needs work, take it to a reputable independent mechanic, preferably someone that a friend, relative or coworker recommends.

Dear Mr. President...Speaking Out at Twelve

History and politics were constant subjects of discussion between my father and me. My teachers encouraged me to write letters to political leaders, and so I did at the age of twelve. Here are scans of a letter that I wrote to the U.S. President at the time, Ronald Reagan, in defense of Israel, of which I was a strong supporter. Today, I find the letter pompous and naive among other things, but it makes me smile.

Page One of the letter to Ronald Reagan

Page Two of the letter to Ronald Reagan
I am not sure why I have a copy, because it can only mean one of two things: either the White House sent me my letter back for safekeeping, or I drafted another copy for archival purposes, which seems odd for a twelve year-old. But I seem to recall my parents encouraging me to make a copy for my grandmother to keep, because it's from her archives that this was retrieved upon her death.

As a child, my political opinions mirrored those of my parents. My family's support of Israel had to do with two basic facts. First, Israel was a U.S. ally that always supported the U.S. in the U.N. and everywhere else. That made them seem like a loyal friend, although I realize now that the U.S. paid dearly for that loyalty in the form of financial aid. Second, Israel is geographically a tiny country and appears like the underdog next to its larger Arab neighbors. This generates sympathy right off the bat. The atrocities committed by terrorists, such as the kidnapping of Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics, discredited the cause of the P.L.O. in the eyes of many Americans. However, it is true that Israel was guilty of atrocities as well.

Several years earlier, I had written to Jimmy Carter on the subject of the Iranian hostages, which was to erode much of Carter's popularity, but that letter is lost to the ravages of time. The Carter Administration replied with a letter personally signed by an Administration employee that addressed the content of my letter, and may or may not have been a form letter. The Reagan Administration sent me a generic form letter making no reference to my letter's contents, and I can't recall whether it was signed by a human hand or merely stamped, but I felt like my letter spent little time in the open air between emerging from the envelope and being deposited in the garbage can.

Twenty More Answers to Twenty More Questions

After viewing my previous entry, I realized many of the hot-button topics of today, such as the ones I read about in the media, aren't addressed. This list will attempt to target more contemporary issues.

1. Universal health care for all?
Yes, let's join Canada, the UK and most Western European nations in offering health care to all citizens of all ages and all socioeconomic backgrounds.

2. Should high school be trimmed?
Yes, grades eleven and twelve should be eliminated, replaced with practical job experience (apprenticeship) or college.

3. Should college be free?
At public universities, certain fields of study where the nation faces a dire shortage, such as all of the sciences, including the medical sciences, should offer strong incentives to students, such as completely free tuition and fees, but other majors do not merit such powerful incentives.

4. Should we drill for oil in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge or coastlines?
If a method of extraction and transportation is discovered to be free of risk to the environment, yes, but if not, then put the idea on hold until such time as a national emergency.

5. How do we get our energy?
Nuclear fission and fusion, wind, solar, cleaner coal, and hydro, all technologies which our army of scientists, created in (3), should be studying at a furious rate at this very moment in a new variety of a Manhattan Project.

6. Public transit?
Yes, effective public mass transit (trains) should be mandatory in every city with a population greater than 1,000,000, such that owning a car should become optional rather than an absolute necessity, as it is today in most areas.

7. Should green cars be mandatory?
Green cars, trucks and SUV's based upon hybrid technology or other green technologies should be tax-free, with no sales tax or license fees at all, whereas vehicles that are inefficient in fuel consumption should be taxed at tenfold the regular rate (a sales tax between 70 - 100%) to reflect their higher impact on the environment, however this increased rate should be a one-time event impacting sales of new vehicles only and exempting all used vehicles.

8. Legal abortion?
Yes, a woman has the final say on the human being developing within her womb, and until it emerges from the host body, it should be considered a part of the host body from the purely legal perspective.

9. Legal euthanasia (assisted suicide)?
Yes, a person should have the right to end their life for reasons having to do with incurable disease or infirmity using humane and painless methods, assisted by a medical doctor.

10. Alimony?
Women have the opportunity to work in a way that they didn't in times past, and the law needs to reflect this reality, because alimony that consists of half of a man's wages and/or assets is often unfair to the man and unrealistic for him to provide.

11. Immigration?
Punitive measures against immigrants should be replaced by punitive measures against the business owners that eagerly hire them, because on the one hand you have poor, hard-working people that are often exploited, and on the other you have rich, corrupt individuals glad to short-change their employees.

12. The death penalty?
Capital punishment should be abolished in order to keep up with the rest of the world, where it is rarely used except in the most barbaric states, because otherwise we sully our image abroad.

13. Treatment of prisoners?
Prisoners should not be punished for the sake of pure sadism, but should be exposed to free psychological treatment, education and substance abuse counseling, and there should be a strong focus throughout the system upon eliminating violent behavior and thought patterns that lead toward violence.

14. Let prisoners work?
Those prisoners that want to work should be allowed to do so and be paid at the current minimum wage, with half of their earnings taken to compensate their victims or else the State, and a sizable portion used to purchase treasury bonds, which will be saved for their eventual release to give them a nest egg for starting over in the civilian world.

15. Privatization?
Private industry should not intrude into public areas like the prisons, military, medicine, or the highway system, because it opens up pathways for corruption, inefficiency and opaqueness.

16. Gay marriage?
Gays should have the right to marry and receive all benefits pertaining thereto.

17. War?
Those who favor attacking other countries should themselves pay for the costs of the war in full, instead of spreading the financial burden to afflict the majority who prefer peace.

18. Welfare?
Welfare benefits should be reduced, and since most welfare benefits the very rich, the welfare that goes toward businesses and corporations is the only type of welfare that needs to be cut.

19. How to reduce the prison population?
Drug abuse is a medical problem rather than a criminal one, and by legalizing most drugs, the majority of the prison population can be freed and future cases of prosecution reduced by over one half.

20. Space exploration?
Although space exploration is expensive, it represents a better potential return than warfare and engages the public imagination, and therefore we should continue to explore space to answer eternal questions about ourselves, life, the universe, and creation.

Extra bonus question:
21. Should President Obama continue our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
No, he should withdraw from both of these pointless, never-ending overseas conflicts, which closely resemble Viet Nam, within one year, and he should pledge that the United States will never again commit such a grievous, arrogant blunder as represented by those two ethical and financial disasters.