Big Business

Assume we have some huge product or service we want to make available to the US population that is hungry and eager to buy it. Let's assume it's a service rather than a product to make it easier to discuss. Since almost everyone wants it we could look to government to provide the service, charging a fee and using tax revenues to insure the costs are covered. We all know that Government provides more services than any non-Government Big Business. Could this be the most efficient way to achieve the highest quality service for the US population or could Private Enterprise provide a higher quality service more efficiently at a lower price? What do you think?

I am so very sorry, because this is a trick question. The results are in. This Christmas the Private Enterprises like Fed-Ex and UPS delivered 1.5+ Billion packages. They together with Private Enterprise retailers led by Amazon did what the United States Postal Services could not do even though they were the first to deliver packages. They did this offering Next Day Delivery. Even some packages shipped Christmas Eve were delivered Christmas Day by volunteer workers. How many Postal Workers volunteered to work on Christmas Day?

Private Enterprise will always provide a higher quality service at a lower price. So when does it make sense to have Government provide a service? Well how about landing a man on the moon and returning him to Earth. No Private Enterprise in the 1960s would have taken on this mission.  In the short term this project lost a lot of money with little hope of a return, much less a profit. However, today space travel innovation and missions are performed by Private Enterprise and the Government is one of the many customers for these Private Enterprise services. 

The US Government is a huge and very important business. It needs to balance its budget and in this process having services performed by Private Enterprises evaluated as an alternative to Government employees should be performed. 

The Martian

Yesterday we watched the movie "The Martian" and it stimulated a flood of memories from my past that took place in the 1960's. I graduated from high school in 1963. Spent the next 2 years on full football scholarship at Sam Houston State in Huntsville, Texas. In the middle of this 2 year period Donna and I started dating. On June 12, 1965 we were married and I took a job at Control Data's Core Labs during the day and enrolled as a full time student at the University of Houston night school. Core Labs started out as a data center providing computer processing services to the huge Houston oil industry. Slumberger, a worldwide provider of oil field services, would use sound waves to log drilling sites, collecting data as the sounds reflected from levels in the oil well. Core Labs would use it's supper computers to turn this sounding data into contour maps depicting a picture of underground that reviewed the probability of finding oil and an indication of how much oil; thus Core Labs produced Core Maps. During 1965 and 1966 the NASA Johnson Space Center was being built. 

First NASA used a Core Labs application, Critical Path Method, to manage the construction of the Johnson Space Center. The entire project was finished in record time. NASA had its own computers, the same computers used by Core Labs. During the Mercury and Apollo launches NASA would just take over our data center to process all data they collected during the mission. A few of the Core Labs' employees were processed through secret clearance including me to help. We would work non-stop for the duration of the missions. I learned a lot about how NASA works, we would fill many boxes of computer printout, you know the big pages. These boxes would be transported to the Johnson Space Center to be stored in a large warehouse. Weeks later some engineer would come in and dig through the carefully marked boxes and rip a few pages from some box and scurry away to his office.

The most interesting and emotional experience was during the Apollo 13 Launch. Everything was normal until the spacecraft exploded on its way to the Moon. We hosted a number of telemetry engineers including a 16 year girl who we called the blond genius; I think she had an advanced college degree at 16 years of age. Long hours of tension ended when the experts left to return to NASA with a solution. The solution had a lot in common with the one used in The Martian movie.

Christmas Blessing

Christmas Blessing

Every year at a time of the longest nights and the shortest days we gather together to renew our 

spiritual energy. It is a time for family, friends and large amounts of kindness and love. We are 

Christians we are not at all politically correct. We celebrate Christmas not just a Holliday. We 

celebrate the birth of a baby that you God sent as a a part of yourself to live among us,  to touch 

our lives and to make us aware of the spirit and the energy in each of us that existed before our 

birth and will last beyond our death into eternity. You came as Jesus to teach us how to live our 

lives to nurture and care for our eternal spiritual energy. 

Please bless all the friends and family spirits that are not here today. Bless each of us so we 

may live our lives through the coming year to nurture and care for our spiritual energy. Bless this 

meal to energies our bodies.

Amen

How Do We Do Imigration

How do we do immigration? We have always been a country that welcomes immigrants. Immigrants have always melded into our culture adapting to it and helping to change it. Every time I use the guest bathroom in our Rue Du Parc home I see the words: “We shape ourselves to fit this world and by this world are shaped again”.  We are a country of laws including a process to be followed to gain citizenship. We are also a country that is a republic, having a constitution that defines rights of its citizens that can not be taken away by law or democratic vote. During my lifetime there has come into existence a series of ways some people have tried to get around the constitution and the laws passed by our government. One such way is the definition of Political Correctness as defined by the media and social web sites. Secondly, instead of politics being used to influence the drafting and passing of legislation that does not violate the constitution, Politics are being used to rule behavior according to Political Correctness. Do you see how wrong this is, why so many citizens are anti politics.

Obviously, the only fair way to process immigration is to do so by rule of law realizing that the constitution does not apply to non-citizens. How do we make it equal to all the people that want to be citizens that are following rule of law to gain citizenship in our country. How can we sleep at night if we let people illegally cross our border into our country and gain the same benefits our citizens get. It just is not right.

Independence Should be Rewarded

When do we really grow up, become independent and never need a parent ever again? The first quarter of our life should be focused on learning how to be independent, how to be a grownup. In today’s world a person has 2 parents, the parents of the family which you grew up with and the Government that pays you when you can not pay for things you need.

Once you pay for everything you need with at least one dollar left over, you are independent. Be careful that you are honest with yourself. If you get Government benefits for healthcare or tax savings for owning a house or children, you are getting benefit from your Government Parent.

I don’t know about you, but I will always work hard to be independent. My parents and grandparents taught me to be proud to be independent and not someone who needed charity. When I was a child we had a balanced budget both in our home and in the country. The Government was not a generous Parent. If you needed financial help, you had to look for charity from somewhere or do without. The charity givers had to work hard for the money they made available. You had to really be in desperate need to get any charity at all.

Government is not independent; it does not have to balance its budget. Government is not ruled by the capitalistic rules that rule all independent people. When it needs more money it either gets a loan without any hassle or gets more money from higher taxes on productive independent citizens. Government prides itself on being a very generous Parent. More and more of us are willing to go from our family parents to our Government Parents, never becoming truly independent.

If the Government and most of its people are not independent the debt will grow and the country will go bankrupt. To maintain our FREEDOM a super majority of people must be independent. Where do you stand?

I think it would be nice to see statistics on how many people in the US are independent. Furthermore, based on those who have achieved independent success and those that are dependent, how many vote Democrat and how many vote Republican.

Friday the 13th and Paris France

I have had many unlucky experiences on past Friday the 13th. Three or more times I have lost my car and house keys on Friday the 13th. So as this last Friday approached I wondered what what unlucky experience I was in for. The main event on Friday was to purchase a replacement for the AR15 rifle I used to have here, but took to Texas a couple of years ago to hunt on the ranch on the Nueses River. I have wanted to buy a Nevada built AR15 known as the Battle Born piston instead of impingement. I knew is was expensive but it is easier to clean and more reliable in situations where you really need to defend yourself or someone else from the evil we know exists in this world. Besides, I want to exercise my 2nd amendment right to bear arms. I have been into the old US Firearms Academy that used to be on Moana that now renamed as Reno Guns and Range. I was told the Battle Born AR15 was one of the very first piston versions of the popular AR15. However, several manufactures are now building very impressive AR15 gas piston weapons. I ended up buying a very nice patriot colored second hand LWRC AR15. It was being offered on consignment from a guy bigger than me, imagine that; he wanted a higher caliber weapon. I like the AR15 even though it is almost equivalent to a 22 caliber, albeit with larger payload and gunpowder. Used correctly, it is very effective. I purchased 500 rounds of 556 ammunition and committed myself to come back and use my new weapon on the range.

I drove home past the Apple Store to look at the new iPad Pro. I was happy to have exercised my 2nd amendment right and had a capacity to defend myself, my family, my friends and our country against an evil that threatens harm. If enough Americans would exercise the 2nd amendment and have a weapon close at hand it will be impossible to take our country and way of life away from us. My next goal is to pursue gun training for every member of my family and get a concealed  carry permit for all adults.

Friday the 13th turned out to be a positive day for me, but can you imagine the sadness I experienced to hear about the hundreds of people killed and critically injured in Paris, France. The French people have no way to defend themselves; it is extremely difficult to conceal and carry a weapon on the streets of Paris.
It is OK to have Gun Free Zones such as the rock concert in Paris, but entry should be restricted by detection and a force strong enough to deal with ideological people who are not afraid to die in the process of killing other people.

Radical Muslims think they must kill or convert all the infidels, non-Muslim, people on Earth so that the second coming of their Jesus, Isa, can come and complete the abolition of Jews and Christians. Muslim countries have not reached high levels of capitalistic success for whatever reason. Life on Earth in a Muslim Country for a good Muslim person is not a happy one, true happiness is focused on the afterlife. Therefore, life on Earth is not the most important thing to a Muslim and once radicalized they believe reaching the afterlife by killing infidels is a most blessed thing.

I am a Christian. I value the quality of my Christian Life here on Earth and believe my afterlife will be based on how good a Christian I have been on Earth. Part of being a good Christian on Earth is to destroy evil that is identified by my Christian Faith. There is no doubt that the Jihad actions of the Muslim Radicals in Paris is an extreme evil.

The most important and effective defense against this evil is the action of peace loving, Christian Like behavior, millions of Muslims around the World. They too should bear arms to destroy this evil. I wonder why we do not see more Muslims willing to fight for peace and common understanding. Maybe it is the fact that they are not the ones being targeted by the Radical Muslims carrying out Jihad. Lets face it, if you were a Muslim with a concealed weapon on the streets of Paris Friday night, would you draw your weapon and risk being shot.

Teaching of Value Premises

We have a lot of teachers and teaching life experiences during our life. When we are young we spend a lot of time working with teachers. First there are your parents, but very quickly there are professional teachers and structured school. What I have found is there are a few bad teachers that do not offer much, most teachers try their best offering you an average learning experience and there are a few teachers that are truly great and offer a huge learning experience. 

The truly great teachers do not fill a bucket but build a fire and the learning you get from them lasts a lifetime. These exceptional teachers teach you how to teach yourself.  

You will probably not identify which teachers changed your life until years pass by and you reflect back on what you have learned, accomplished and why.

I was lucky to have my mother’s sister, my aunt Jean, who was a PHD Microbiology Professor at Rutgers University, took a struggling second grade math student and turned me into a straight A math student. I struggled with English class, making mostly C’s until a first year teacher, 4 years my senior when I was a Senior in High School, inspired me to make my first A. Later at Sam Houston State University an English professor, Jewel Gibson who is also an author, inspired me to write. An atomic scientist university professor decided to teach Physics at my high school. He taught me to use math as a scientific method to measure and understand how things and events in our world and universe work.

At Sam Houston State University I had 2 goals, to become a doctor and play football. As it turned out I could not do both. The time it took to study and attend long lab sessions ate into my training time to be a football player. Since I was on full scholarship my coach  called me to his office and said that I had to choose between studying to be a doctor and playing football. I decided to switch to Business Administration and play football. This lasted one year and other than being on a national championship team it did not make me happy. Lucky for me I met Donna, fell in love and decided to give up football and get married, enroll at the University of Houston majoring in Math and minoring in Management.

I love math, but the engineering math courses became boring and uninteresting. I switched to theoretical math and started taking courses from a professor writing the first text book for the point set theory course. This learning experience taught me how to start with next to nothing and build something complex and beautiful using the scientific method.

My minor, management of people, led me to an amazing learning experience under a very capable teacher. He spent his first career as a Catholic Priest and left the priesthood when his values came into conflict with the Catholic Church. He developed and pioneered a new course offered by The University of Houston. The course was Value Premises. The purpose of the course in the management curriculum was to teach you to understand how different cultures and religions structured values that lead people to think and behave the way they do. Then as a manager of people I would become better able to understand and motivate people to be as productive as possible while still meeting the values they desired to live by. As a manager I always wanted a win win relationship with everyone I came into contact with. This included not only employees but customers, partners, stockholders and everyone I had to deal with.

The Value Premises course had us study the Catholic and Protestant Bible as well as the Jewish Torah, Muslim Koran, the Hindu Vedas and the Taoism Tao Te Ching (Laozi). Then we discussed the values that the various cultures practicing these various religions followed.

Every human being has a set of values that guides everything they do in their everyday life. Studying Value Premises gave me a basic understanding for values used by most of the world peoples working to support their lives.

The fire that this one teacher built in me caused me to explore many different Christian faiths. After several years I landed in the Unitarian Church. I came to the conclusion that while there are differences between all Christian religions the values by which I live day to day could be essentially met by any/all of them. I also found a lot of commonality between Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Taoism. However, day to day I found Christianity the only way I could live a happy value driven life. I think that even if you don’t study value premises you should commit your day to day life based on one of the available faiths.

I think one of the problems the world has today is too many people live their day to day life based on a set of values they have decided are best for them. These people have not studied the various value premises that have developed over thousands of years of human evolution. They have not committed themselves to the values held by one or more of the faiths. They have defined their values on their own or in collaboration with their friends on Twitter, Facebook or some other social media. Value systems developed this way always develop according to nihilism and narcissism, in other words the world revolves around what you and your friends want. 

If you are not living a life based on values developed over thousands of years by the people that came before us, you may well be living an invaluable life.

Value Yourself and Pass on What You Believe to be Fact, not Propaganda.

I have missed writing a blog entry. I did it every day while at sea on Bella Donna crossing the South Pacific. It was easy to stay focused on thoughts and then setting aside the few hours required to write something each day. Bella Donna is a very small island in a very large sea. While standing watch or watching a fishing line you have time to think. I have not been on any recent long passages and I do find it very challenging to think and write at the same time dealing with daily life. 

So, I want to commit some time to reflect on my thoughts that are stimulated by what is in the news each morning. I want to do this every day. We will see how this works for me.

I find that things happen in the world that touch me and remind me of lessons that life has taught me. I want to write some of this down so it may be used by others.  I especially want my grandchildren, when they enter early adulthood to know what their grandfather thought in hopes it helps them to make good life decisions.

Life has been very good to me. People have asked me to write about how to live successful life. There is this huge pile of experiences, lessons, thoughts, values and facts; it could take forever to write it all down. So we will try to do a little every day as the morning news stimulates my memory.

What struck me this week is how people make decisions. As a young boy I totally got 2 things, faith (values) and scientific method. My mother would take me every Sunday to the Methodist Church at the end of the block we lived on where she sang in the choir and I got instructed on how to live a Christian Life; i.e. values and using a moral compass. My father would stay home to mow the lawn, drink a beer and start the traditional Sunday Texas Family BarBQ. I thought my dad did not share the church values. It wasn't until years later that I learned the strength and level of commitment my dad had to values. You see he was a thirty-second degree Mason, a man of great spiritual values which he practiced by giving time to handling the finances for the Shrine Circus every year to raise money for the Shriner's Children's Hospital. He also ran the finances for the Houston Fat Stock Show and Rodeo to raise money for charity. It wasn't until I grew up, got married and moved to California that I learned how hurt my father was that I did not ask about how to become a Mason. You see a Mason can not talk about his Masonry until a son or daughter asks.  

As a young boy I was introduced to the Scientific Method of making decisions.  This means that I would not accept any fact that would be important to my life decisions until I was convinced by proof over an acceptable time period. To this day I do a ridiculous amount of research before purchasing almost anything. For example, I spent 6 months analyzing the Apple Watch before buying one. I did not buy an Apple Watch for a show of style; I bought it for its functionality. Have I made mistakes and resented purchasing something I researched ? Yes, but it happens rarely and when it does I learn from my mistake.

We live is a world flooded with marketing messages, social media, political correctness, propaganda and lots of exercise of freedom of speech. The vast majority of this flood of information does not pass through the Scientific Process. this information would all be interesting, if true. The truth is today, more so than when I grew up, people start with a fact they want to be true and go about collecting only the information that supports their “fact”. Then they flood the news and electronic social media making a marketing/propaganda case to convince as many people as possible. 

My experience is if you allow yourself to make important life decisions based on this marketing/propaganda which definitely forms opinions held by many, you will be unhappy and certainly NOT SUCCESSFUL.  

You are an individual, be a leader of one making your life decisions based on facts you know scientifically to be true. This is why we have our Freedom. Do not become a human robot in the forwarding of marketing/propaganda to others. Take your time to research and verify before giving into social pressure. Feel that what you pass on has value.

A little short for today, i will do better as I get into this.