Thinking about this prompt, I thought I might want to take a bunch of people from the past and put them all at the dinner table and see where it went. One would think that it might get awkward putting Jesus Christ at the same dinner table as Thomas Jefferson, but actually, I think those two might get along fairly well.
So then, how might I get a better mix of people to create the ultimate awkward dinner party. Then it hit me. Just pick some random people off of the Internet from a social media site and have them come together for just one night. The only requirement would be, I get to set the dinner conversations. That would work.
All I'd have to do is throw out one political or social football, like abortion, or Obamacare or the death penalty the rest would be just entertaining to watch. See? That's where the problem lies. I'm sorry if this is becoming redundant, but it just seems like people forget common decency and societal norms when they get on social media.
Even though my parents didn't outright tell me, I knew about the three things that you just didn't discuss in polite society: Religion, Sex, and Politics, or any combination of those, which might be all three sometimes. Granted, I'm speaking in generalities here, but we seem to have lost our moral and social filters when it comes to social media. We feel we can just post whatever we want and we don't care who the hell we piss off.
And the sad part is, when most people post stuff, either they're looking for someone to troll, so they can pontificate their side more and bring in other like thinking people, or they actually think they're going to convince the other side to change their own though process.
Newsflash. You're not going to convert anyone and all it's going to accomplish is to get every one just madder at the other side. And for what purpose? As far as I can see, there is not real purpose that's going to have any positive outcome. It's probably one of the reasons that I try not to get pulled into political discussions. Notice that I said try, because sometimes I don't succeed in avoiding the discussion.
However, from now on, I'm just going to avoid them all together. It's not worth my blood pressure and I have better things to do than to validate someone else's viewpoint that I already agree with, or argue with someone who's not going to change their opinion just because I think I can convince them that they're wrong. I already know the answer to that one. I'm not.
Dear friends,
I posted this back in May 2012. I still think it's appropriate today and so I'm repeating it for today. I doubt it will make a difference, but I'll feel better after posting it, so that's what counts right now.
I have many friends, due to the social media giant Facebook, plus other sites.
In fact, any site where there's a discussion board, you can learn about people that share similar interests. I've also been able to connect with a lot of long lost friends because of these social networks.
One thing I've found through the years is that people like to spout off on discussion boards about their political leanings. This, in my opinion, is a bad thing. Mainly because most of the time, all those political discussions do is cause arguments to start. And although a good flame war can be very entertaining from time to time, it's not something that I relish, nor something that I seek out.
I like you as a friend. I liked you when we were in school together. We talked about a lot of different things, but we really didn't talk about religion or politics. Those were the things we were told as kids that we shouldn't talk about. Hmmmm. Maybe our parents were right.
I would prefer to maintain these friendships in the coming years. Talking politics makes that more difficult. Social media has brought many of us closer together and helped us reconnect with our past friendships that we let drift apart over the years. I would really love it if I didn't know the political affiliations of my friends. I just want to be friends with them. Now, that might make me appear to be like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. At the moment, that's OK with me.
So here's my plea to all of my friends and I fully expect to be flamed for this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Please keep your politics to yourself. Think about what you're posting. There's too much vitriol out there to add to it. Your position on almost any political or religious subject is not going to convince anyone on the other side to change their position on the given subject. All it's going to do is cause an argument where everyone will believe they're right and the other person is wrong.
Yesterday's post originally was entitled Thanksgiving. I changed it after I started writing, so since today is the actual day this year, I'll be posting some of my thoughts on what I'm thankful for. You may not agree with all of them, but that's your right.
This will not be a post about being thankful for friends, family, etc. I'm always thankful for them. I want to show some thanks for other things that I think many of us take for granted. And while it's true, we may take our family for granted, I hope that I don't.
First off, I am going to say I'm thankful for our health care we have here. My dad was an "orphan" by the time he was 27, my mom was "orphaned" before she turned 40. Both of my parents are still alive as is my father-in-law. Without advances in medicine that we've had in the last 50 years, it's very likely that they might not be around to enjoy their grandchildren. While it weirds me out a little to realize that I'm now the father of three adult children, my parents have seven adult grandchildren. I don't believe my dad's parents even got to enjoy one adult grandchild.
I'm thankful that I can get up in the middle of the night and get a drink of water if I want. Nearly one billion (yes, you read that right, billion with a B) people don't have access to safe water on a regular basis. According to water.org website, 3.4 million people die each year from a water related illness. The majority of those illnesses are caused by fecal material (still hungry for that turkey dinner?). More people have a cell phone than have safe water to drink. Those are some sobering statistics.
I'm also thankful that I live in a country that allows me to worship, or not worship as I please. Can you imagine living in a country where you could only worship via one religion? What if you didn't agree with that religious philosophy? Think about that the next time you kneel down to pray. Our country might not be perfect in many ways, but it's a lot better than many other areas out there.
Lastly, I'm thankful that we can all share in discourse about what we think is right and wrong with our country and with the way some businesses choose to run their business, which is what I'm going to do right now.
Over the past week, I've seen many posts on Facebook from people voicing their displeasure over certain stores opening for business today. The business of the company is to make money for the company. They don't make money when they're closed. If they believe this will bring in more money for them, then more power to them.
You don't have to go. Yes, I respect your right to voice your displeasure, however, I believe you're wrong. If you don't like it, don't go. When I worked as seasonal help at Disneyland back in college, I never worked on a holiday. Why? Not because Disneyland was closed, but because the permanent employees all wanted to work. They got paid time and a half. Granted some stores might not do that because they aren't unionized, but the employees might need that extra money down the road for Christmas presents.
I also find it interesting that all this complaining has been directed at stores opened on Thanksgiving Day. How many of you watched the Macy's Thanksgiving parade? Do you think Macy's produced that out of the goodness of their heart? Why are there no complaints about the people holding onto the tethers of the balloons at the parade? In fact, why is there no complaints about the NFL playing football on TV? All those poor football players, and referees and stadium employees away from their families on Thanksgiving Day? What a travesty. I think we should boycott that too.
Tongue in cheek aside, I hope all of my readers have a happy Thanksgiving, no matter how you choose to celebrate it. As for me, my plan is to watch the Lions win on Thanksgiving for the first time since 2003, then drive with my wife and boys to my sister's house to gather around the table with the family that's here in Southern California. My thoughts will be with family members (especially my daughter who will be celebrating with her boyfriend and family in San Mateo) who weren't able to make it down. I know we shall be seeing them at Christmas.
Look Ma! I don't have grey hair! This photo was taken in July 2000, the last time we camped as a family in Yosemite National Park. We'd taken a day to drive along the Glacier Point road, stopping at the parking for Sentinel Dome and made the hike up to the top of the dome.
After hiking back, we drove over to Glacier Point, took in the scenery, looked down on the Merced River as it crashed over Nevada and Vernal Falls. We looked across the valley to Yosemite Falls, booming with early season runoff. Obviously, we took photos and enlisted the help of another tourist to get a shot of all four of us.
I thought this shot would be appropriate for Flashback Friday, especially since very few if anyone can enjoy this vista right now.
This is not a article I would usually write, but I stumbled across a website today that had some pretty sobering statistics. According to this site, I was the 2,909,470,267th person alive when I was born and the 76,444,994,032nd person to have lived since history began. In my mind, those are staggering numbers. Think of all the people that have ever been on this earth and 1 in 15 are alive right now. Between the time I was born and my daughter, my first born, was born, 3.7 trillion people were born, including my three sisters and my wife.
Since I was born the population of the planet has more than doubled with the population surpassing 7 billion people in October 2011. If that trend continues, the population of the earth will pass 8 billion in the year 2025 and it could conceivably triple since I was born by the year 2043. With good health, I think I have a reasonable chance of still being alive then and 9 billion people on the planet sounds like just an enormous amount of people.
With the strain from this many people, resources, such as food, water and fuel will become increasingly scarce. Based on the consumption of resources and the population increased, sometime during the 2030s, the UN estimates that we will need the equivalent of two earths in order to support all of the people in it. Of course a lot can change between now and then.
Clearly, this can't happen since we only have one earth. But technology could bail us out. 200 years ago, 97% of people in the United States lived and worked on farms supplying the needs of the entire country. Today, only about 3% of our population lives and works on farms and those farms supply most of the food for the world. Somewhere down the road, there has to be a limit to the amount of food that can be produced. What it is, we don't know yet. Perhaps we've already hit the limit. That food will be a limiting factor on the population of the planet is a foregone conclusion. Fresh, clean, drinkable water will be the other main limiting factor.
I do not know what the answers to these problems will be and of other problems that plague this planet, but it seems as if we need to work together. I'm concerned about the future of number 80,198,082,265, number 80,520,546,297 and number 81,067,205,912. How we react to this in the future will probably be our legacy to not only our children but our grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond. What numbers are you concerned about? And consider this. In the time it took you to read this short article, the earth's population increased by slightly more than 1000 people.
For those of you who follow this on a regular basis know I write about a variety of things, but mostly this blog focuses on photography and geocaching. It's what I like to do, it's what I'm knowledgeable about and I figure why not?
Today, I just want to feature some of the blogs I read on a regular basis. The list is actually rather short, mainly because I don't have a lot of time in my day to sit and read blogs all the time. Not like that won't change in the future, but for right now, I don't have many.
Latitude 47 is the official blog of geocaching.com. It gets published several times per week. I read the articles and usually watch the videos that are posted there. It usually leads me to other videos which in turn help me create better caches for people to find.
I will readily admit that I don't hide really hard caches. Some of my caches might be challenging because of the nature of the puzzle involved, or the skills needed to find the cache, but once you get to the cache site, it should be fairly obvious where the cache is hidden. This blog highlights some of those caches that are just amazing with regard to camouflage or the type of puzzles involved. If I see something really interesting, I might incorporate it into my next cache hide. That's why I read that blog.
A 'lil Hoohaa is a blog about this and that. P.J., the writer is a geocacher in New York and also a photographer, so you can see why I'm interested in what he writes about. He posts old photos of his family every Saturday on his blog. He's also a frisbee golfer and writes about that as well and although I don't participate in that hobby, I can see the interest. P.J. used to follow me when I was writing Electronic Breadcrumbs which was exclusively about geocaching.
The blog Various Vanities looks very out of place for a guy like me to be reading, especially since it's a fashion blog written by an almost 24 year old woman who's working on her master's degree at the University of Santa Clara in northern California. I'm very proud of this woman, as she also happens to be my daughter.
Puppy on a Roomba is a little blog written by two Corgis dogs with no tails named Ty and Eve. Their secretary mommy is also a geocacher who I met via the geocaching forums. Mostly, it's photos of the two corgi dogs with no tails romping around at their house in Illinois.
Brave Gnu Whirled is a blog written by my friend Steve who used to work with me at my school. He's moved on and now teaches at the community college level in Visalia, CA, but writes this blog about politics with some other slices of life from time to time. Steve was best man at my wedding and we've kept in touch over the years via email and through comments on both of our blogs.
The photos have nothing whatsoever to do with this blog piece today. They are photos of my wife with her flute. The reason I'm choosing these photos is because my wife keeps me grounded. 26 years ago tomorrow on Valentine's day, I took her to Disneyland and proposed to her while riding over Fantasyland in the Skyway. It was the single-most important decision I ever made. I have lived a fantasyland type of existence ever since. Why she puts up with me, I'll never know, but I am truly grateful that she does.
I have many friends, due to the social media giant Facebook, plus other sites. In fact, any site where there's a discussion board, you can learn about people that share similar interests. I've also been able to connect with a lot of long lost friends because of these social networks.
One thing I've found through the years is that people like to spout off on discussion boards about their political leanings. This, in my opinion, is a bad thing. Mainly because most of the time, all those political discussions do is cause arguments to start. And although a good flame war can be very entertaining from time to time, it's not something that I relish, nor something that I seek out.
So here's my plea to all of my friends and I fully expect to be flamed for this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Please keep your politics to yourself. Think about what you're posting. There's too much vitriol out there to add to it. Your position on almost any political or religious subject is not going to convince anyone on the other side to change their position on the given subject. All it's going to do is cause an argument where everyone will believe they're right and the other person is wrong.
I like you as a friend. I liked you when we were in school together. We talked about a lot of different things, but we really didn't talk about religion or politics. Those were the things we were told as kids that we shouldn't talk about. Hmmmm. Maybe our parents were right.
I would prefer to maintain these friendships in the coming years. Talking politics makes that more difficult. Social media has brought many of us closer together and helped us reconnect with our past friendships that we let drift apart over the years. I would really love it if I didn't know the political affiliations of my friends. I just want to be friends with them. Now, that might make me appear to be like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. At the moment, that's OK with me.
