Ignorance is Bliss? OR Let's Pretend We Have Solutions!

Robert Reich, my political and economical voice, has a blog that concisely lays forth an explanation for our economic woes. Does anyone pay attention? His latest post should be submitted to every print and electronic news source as an editorial. Well, with a little fact checking it could actually be journalistic article.

Fair Warning: I am going to state some personal opinions formed by my interpretation of real facts, which I will back up very soon in another post. My intent here is to start a conversation and bring attention to important issues.

The opening of "McCain's Budget Whopper":

"George W. Bush took the largest budget surplus in history and transformed it into a giant deficit. McCain's economic plan, announced today, will to even worse. McCain says he’s going to balance the budget by the end of his first term (actually, he didn’t literally say that – he just “demanded” it – implying that a Democratically-controlled Congress would be ultimately responsible if it didn't happen). And then McCain came up with numbers that will blow the deficit into the stratosphere."

Question is: Will MSM (main stream media) pick up on this and give the topic serious consideration? OR will they believe McCain is going to make the impossible happen?

I am afraid for my son. Unless he marries into big money (like McCain), he will not fair well economically. Lowering taxes for the economically advantaged and promising to reduce this country's insanely high debt is just not possible.

For 5 years, I have known I need to learn Mandarin Chinese. I have taken classes. It seems many are not aware that starting over a year ago, China and Russia have been forging a close relationship. Are some Americans so short sighted that they don't see where this is going?

Here are problems that have become crises because of either lack of understanding, or the short-sightedness of Americans to make decisions based on short term profitability rather than on long term losses to our limited resources.

1. The US government is financed by China, Japan and United Arab Emirates. (I'll add my sources soon). We are digging ourselves deeper every day. Our military was dictated to win a non-war, (my stance is that we are not at war with Iraq, so how can we win a war that does not exist, and what is the definition of success for that war?) while still fighting a different important war that has taken a back seat, and preparing for another. All while we ignore the real threat to the American way of life.
   
2. Young American citizens are not being educated. I have personal experience in seeing that some public schools are just a breeding ground for future prison inmates, not tradespeople, entrepreneurs and future leaders.
   
3. We have a huge population of retirement age, with a very small pool of educated and talented new recruits.
4. The state of Florida had to make huge cuts from an already crumbling school system (ranked 49th in the nation), losing essential staff and hard won teacher raises. This has to be happening in other regions. What is going on with education for the victims of the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina?
5. Our infrastructure is not going to last. The Building of America was the cornerstone of the building of our economy. That was a very long time ago. There is much work to do. We need to replace existing structures as well as build new systems for mass transportation.
6. I was at a young and impressionable age when Carter was president and there was the beginning of a "green" movement. I learned about picking up litter, taking care of our environment and using less energy while I was in elementary school. Seeing all the green talk now seems almost ridiculous. What happened?
   

While I appreciate the true stewards who are genuinely trying to make a difference and bring attention to devastation caused; the only reason this has become a movement at all, is that media and marketers have latched on and wear a green badge of honor, to both present a panacea solution and promote corporate agendas and products.

The panacea solution is willingly accepted by consumers. Talk to a scientist and you'll only hear that we can attempt to mitigate some additional damage, but the dramatic changes caused by our ignorant and gluttonous behaviors of the past have only been set into motion and are gaining momentum. This cannot be undone.

Voicemail Purgatory No More

I've always had a dislike for voicemail. This post on TechCrunch inspired me to write about it.

A long time ago, in a career far, far away, I was guilty of deliberately letting calls go to voicemail just so I could later go in to get the answer or needed info without having to have a live discussion. (Was I the first to commit Hide Behind the Voicemail before it became acceptable to let it go while you really work?)

Then email appeared (Really, it did- I remember LBE - Life Before Email). It's great. You get detailed information and have complete back and forth conversations and get things done around the clock. You also have archival records, without having had to record a phone conversation, as a bonus.

Then the arrival of mobile phones- and the beginning of Voicemail Purgatory for my callers. Multiple voicemail accounts to manage. (What perplexes me to no end about this arrival is that it has become an unexpected continuous pouring-in of every new relation and descendant of that first phone.)

For many years, I've been a big fan of RingCentral, OneBox etc to manage your multiple numbers and visually manage your voicemail.

However, only recently have I taken charge and no longer subjected my callers to Voicemail Purgatory. It took a very long time to come together:

It was the perfect combination and timing of desperation, frame of mind, research and tools.

• Desperation: No time or patience to check my cell phone voicemail, home voicemail, multiple business voicemail accounts. They piled up. I dreaded cleaning out the boxes. I discovered a guilty pleasure when the box was full and no more could be left. Wow, it was like, well, when there was no voicemail!

• Frame of Mind: My search for the Total Personal Productivity System- I was open to a new way.

• Research: Research for my Total Personal Productivity System Project led me to out of the box concepts and the rejection of common beliefs and practices.

• Tools: Newly discovered cool simple tech tools.

I'll expand on this in more detail in a future post. For now, here is a short outline of how my system works:

1. I disabled voicemail on all phone lines. (Trust me, it feels great)
2. Google GrandCentral: it's free, I give that local number out as my main number. It rings my various phone lines based on rules I can set by caller, caller group and time of day or day.
3. GrandCentral can email (with voicemail attached) or SMS me a note with caller's number and time they called. At the website you have visual voicemail. If you have a smart phone like my blackberry, you have access to the visual voicemail. Visual voicemail means you see details of the call and only listen to those you want, as opposed to calling your voicemail and having to listen to all messages in the order they were left.
4. I use Jott to transcribe and do other cool things like add stuff to my Google Calendar and Remember The Milk lists.
   
5. I get more done. More on that later.

I recommend taking a look at the tips in the TechCrunch Blog Post "Think Before You Voicemail."

Out of courtesy to the people I call, I have stopped the practice of calling when a short email will do. I now also request ahead, via email, to set a convenient date and time for a phone conversation. I don't like it when I get a call from someone expecting me to stop what I am doing to have a 15 to 30 minute discussion without having scheduled it ahead of time. How would anyone get anything done?

Track Storms, Animal Migrations with Google Earth

For some, this may just be the another cool contribution to the Collective thanks to Google and the Google Earth application. (Post on storm tracking. Post on animal migrations.)

Even though I knew it was in development, read many articles on the possible uses of Google Earth, and regularly watch Google TechTalk on their YouTube channel; I experienced something I have difficulty verbalizing. I'll give it shot here by building my perception and thought process here. It is my wish that there are a few of us in agreement. Let me know.

• This is free. I mean to anyone, anywhere in the world with internet access.
• It is something that scientists only dreamed of or could not even dream of having- even in my lifetime.
• It's for everyone. Not just scientists, weather experts, storm chasers, biologists, climate change enthusiasts, students, teachers, politicians, socialites, corporations, reporters, developers, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, authors, gurus, consultants, parents, children, land exploiters, land protectors, democrats, republicans, musicians, artists, ANY-ONE.
• It's not another social tool to let everyone know what you are doing, it totally has nothing to do with "look at me" tools.
• Most people will not even give it a look.
• Most won't even consider the additional layers that can and will be added. The potential uses are inumerable, both commercially and for the global good (Collective).

Nothing else in recent years has caught my attention with a strange brew of awe, geeky giddiness, ominous and overwhelming God-like power of viewing the earth down to animal movements and simultaneous big picture-local view of close to real-time movement of the weather elements.