I think we should be more concerned with AI.  Microsoft, Google, everyone is trying to force it on us.  Even the writing group I’m thinking of working with is trying to get everyone to use AI for assistance in their writing!  Well, then isn’t that then the computer doing the writing?  Everything that I write comes from my own head and fingers, not from me punching a button and letting a computer write the words.  

And now we’re talking about letting AI make decisions as far as policy and such goes?  I don’t think so.  

The flip side to look at is that Israel has AI to thank (mostly) for their “Iron Shield” which took down the 300+ missiles and drones that Iran launched at them. 

There are positive uses. 

The problem is, there are an AWFUL lot of negative ones and the possibility of harm and evil is WAY too likely…in my opinion.

I’d like to know what you guys think.

In the meantime…

Hey, me too!

Where Did The Phrase Smart Aleck Come From?

One day, a man from the Czech Republic came to visit his friend in New York.  

When asked what he wanted to see, the visitor replied, “I would like to see one of the zoos in America.”

To his delight, the New Yorker took him to the Bronx Zoo.  They were touring the zoo, and standing in front of the gorilla cage, when one of the gorillas busted out of the cage and swallowed the Czech whole.

Shocked, his friend from New York quickly called over the zoo keeper.  He quickly explained the situation and the zoo keeper immediately took steps to save the man’s friend.  The zoo keeper got an axe and asked the man, “Okay, which gorilla did it?  Was it the male or the female?”  The New Yorker pointed out the female as the culprit.  Quickly, the zoo keeper split the female gorilla open and found nothing of the Czech.

He looked at the man from New York, who shrugged and said, “Guess the Czech is in the male.”

On February 2, 1905, American philosopher and writer (Russian-born) Alissa Zinovievna, better known in the literary world as Ayn Rand, was born in St. Petersburg, died in March 1982 in New York.

 

THESE WERE HER WORDS:

When you notice that to produce you need to get permission from those who do not produce anything; when you check that money flows to those who do not deal with goods but with favors; when you realize that many become rich by the bribery and for influence more than by your work and that the laws do not protect you against them, but on the contrary, they are the ones who are protected against you; when you discover that corruption is rewarded and honesty becomes a self-sacrifice, then you can assert, without fear of being wrong, that your society is doomed

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”  ~ Psalms 122: 6-7 NIV

Just in case you were wondering what the Bible reference was.  David exhorting visitors to Jerusalem to pray for the city.

That is such a cool picture, especially when you start noticing the details…the clothes (the son has on a pumpkin shirt in both pictures!!) he has a baby blanket under his bottom in both pictures, etc.

This is uncle Ho.  He has a bit of Oriental Dragon in him, as you can readily see.  He works as a chef in a very fine restaurant in New York.  His specialty is Fiery Chicken 

This was sent in by Lynn.  It’s unclear whether it’s her personal story or someone else’s.  Regardless, it’s somebody’s story and it just goes to prove the point we’ve been saying all along.  The whole electric car push is not going to work.

EV

Buy an electric car they say. Get rid of fossil fuel they say. I rented an EV to drive to Rochester. Kid at Enterprise says “you’ll be fine to drive to Rochester and back.”

Got to hotel, it had a charging station, car showed 70 miles left on batteries. Plug car in for $5 and got barely any charge at all. Get up this morning, drive to where I was working, very evident I’m not getting home without having to stop somewhere.

Finish job, time to head towards home…Jump on thruway, they have these fancy new rest stops! I’ll be good! Driving down Thruway and the car tells me hey there’s a charging station coming up! Wahoo!

Get off thruway at one of these fancy new rest stops (that replaced the perfectly fine old rest stops.) Pull up to a bank of 8 EV chargers to plug my car in, I’ll charge up and be on my way! Wrong….none of the plugs fit this car (A Hyundai). Because why would you make all EV plugs universal?!

Get back on thruway with 20 miles left on my “tank” and only 78 miles to go to get to Syracuse. Drive 8 miles to next exit get off thruway drive 10 miles off thruway so I could sit for a half an hour to charge up.

This charging station had more different variations of plugs, this time luckily it had one that fit my car. Not sure what you do after that if it didn’t fit… anyway… Put in $16.33 worth of electricity which got me a “half a tank”.

Pulled into the airport with 30 miles left on my batteries. Yeah I’ll run right out and buy one!

 No wonder no one wants all the EV trucks that are sitting on lots everywhere. Moral of story. Every single gas pump nozzle in America fits in my gas tank.

And if my VERY rough estimates on costs are anywhere NEAR correct, the author was paying about 18¢ a mile for electricity, where I pay roughly 14¢ a mile in my beat up 11 year-old Equinox.  I could be very wrong and the author could have made many more trips. 

Okay, so I thought…if there was only some place I could go and look this information up…as I type on my laptop that is connected to the internet … some place where information like that is readily available … Yeah, I’m a little tired this morning.  So, my figures above must be wrong because everything I checked online says that EV cost per mile is about 3 to 5 cents and my gasoline price was dead on.

It had been predicted!!!

From the book Dumbing Down Our Kids, by Charles J. Sykes, 1995 (almost 30 years ago), and is directed at high school and college graduates.

Rule 1:
Life is not fair – get used to it.  (I have been preaching this one for longer than that!)

Rule 2:
The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3:
You will NOT make $40,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.  (As an E-1 in the Air Force, I made $5,000 a year right out of high school!)

Rule 4:
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. (Try a Drill Sergeant!)

Rule 5:
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping – they called it opportunity.  (Nothing is beneath your dignity when you are providing for your family)

Rule 6:
If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.  (Take responsibility)

Rule 7:
Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rainforest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8:
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades, and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9:
Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time!

Rule 10:
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11:
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Indiana, Evansville  Law

While driving on Main Street you may not have your lights on.

That is an awesome picture in so many ways!

I wonder what they are doing now?

It should

These next ones are from Joe in NJ.  Most of them, as the Old E indicates, are oldies. And you’ll notice right off that I don’t say that they are oldies, but goodies.  And you’ll also notice right off that I am quick to blame them on Joe from NJ.

 

QUICKIES

1. A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it is two-tired.

2. What’s the definition of a will? (It’s a dead giveaway.)

3. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

4. A backward poet writes inverse.

5. In democracy, it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism, it’s your count that votes.

6. She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.

7. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

8. If you don’t pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.

9. With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

10. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft, and I’ll show you A flat minor.

11. When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

12. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

13. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

14. You feel stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.

15. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.

16. He often broke into song because he couldn’t find the key.

17. Every calendar’s days are numbered.

18. A lot of money is tainted. It taint yours and it taint mine.

19. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

20. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.

21. A plateau is a high form of flattery.

22. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

23. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

24. Once you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.

25. Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.

26. When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she’d dye.

27. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to- know basis.

28. Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.

29. Acupuncture is a jab well done.

30. Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.

31. The poor guy fell into a glass grinding machine and made a spectacle of himself.

32. Hear about the man who ran into a screen door and strained himself.

I really love that one.  It’s so simple and elegant.

There was once a sheep farmer who needed help with the difficult task of castrating some of his inferior male sheep to keep them from breeding with the females. He hired a French guy who didn’t speak English, but was a very good worker.

After the first day, they had successfully castrated 14 sheep and his French worker was just about to throw away the parts, but the sheep farmer yelled, “No! Don’t throw those away! My wife fries them up and we eat them. They’re delicious and we call them ‘sheep fries’.”

Later that day, the French hired hand came in for supper and indeed, the ‘sheep fries’ were tasty.

The next day, they castrated 16 sheep, and the following evening they all settled down to another supper of ‘sheep fries’. The third day, however, when the sheep farmer came home, he asked his wife where the French hired hand was.

She said, “You know, it was the weirdest thing! I told him since there weren’t very many ‘sheep fries’ this evening, we were also going to have French fries. Then he screamed and ran like hell.”

Doesn’t coffee look expensive to you?

Sheldon, a butcher just out of trade school in Canada applies for and gets a job, skinning and cutting up the kills of local hunters.

The first project he gets is to cut up a moose to put in the freezer.

Sheldon finally gets the moose cut up and is putting it into bags and marking them carefully with the contents: chops, rump steak, ribs, sirloin, etc, etc. When he finishes with the stuff he knows, he is still left with a pile of unidentifiable moose parts.

At a loss as to what to do with them, he finally puts them all into one large bag and labels them… “Moosellaneous.”

I was sitting around yesterday at lunch, with a few of my co-workers, when the subject of (what else,) sex came up. 

Now Billy-Bob (he runs the fork lift) says “Last night I made love to my wife three times!  

This morning, she was so happy she made me my favorite breakfast of eggs and grits.” 

Now Jim-Bob, (the fertilizer inspector) not to be outdone by his cousin Billy-Bob, he says, “That’s nothing.  

Last night I made love to my wife five times.  She was so happy, she not only made me my favorite breakfast of biscuits and gravy, she told me I was the best in the world and she could never love another man.” 

Well, they then looked at me, waiting for me to say something. 

Finally, I just said in a quiet voice, “I just made love to my wife once last night, and she didn’t fix me anything for breakfast.” 

Well, they started laughing, and finally Jim-Bob asks me, “Well, hell, did she say anything to you this morning?” 

“Just two words,” I answered. “Don’t stop”

What a GREAT picture!!! Once there, always there!!

From Joe in NJ, 40 Random and Amazing Historical Photographs!  Some of them are pretty cool.  All of them are kind of esoteric.  

You know I laughed at that one and then thought about it and realized how much truth there is in it.

Faith is believing what we do not see. The reward of this faith is to see what we believe.

-St. Augustine (birth unknown, died c. 604)

I wonder how many won’t get that one

’bout right

So when Trump takes out a loan and pays it back with interest it’s a crime, but when you take out a student loan and don’t pay it back, the Biden forgives the loan, steals money from the taxpayers to pay it back it’s not a crime.  Sure, that makes perfect sense to me.

What?!?!

Biden fired over 7,000 military men because they refused the (so-called) vaccine…then proceeded to bring 10 million unvetted, unchecked, unvaccinated illegal alien strangers into our country and spread them to all 50 states.  What a hypocritical, lying piece of garbage.

Imagine we lived in a world where all the cars we ever had were EVs.  And then suddenly, along comes a new invention, the “Internal Combustion Engine!”
Think how well they would sell!
A vehicle half the weight, half the price, that will do almost a quarter of the damage to the road.  A vehicle that can be refuelled in 1/10th of the time and has a range of up to 4 times the distance in all weather conditions.  It does not rely on the environmentally damaging use of non-renewable rare earth elements to power it, and uses far less steel and other materials.

Just think how excited people would be for such technology!  It would sell like hot cakes!

Okay, I have to get this off my chest.  I know it’s an election year.  And I know I’m a generous Dragon, at least I try to be, and for some worthy causes that I believe in, (most of them involving wounded, disabled, homeless or dead Veterans or the families thereof and children that can’t help themselves and a couple of pet charities of my own) I don’t mind getting mailings asking me for money.  I do NOT give to political candidates as a rule.  Mostly because I haven’t found one yet that is worth giving to.  Here lately I have gotten a TON of “Surveys” from this Republican Group or that Republican Organization.  All of them say basically the same thing and all of them ask the same identical, asinine, childish, sixth-grade questions that you have to be an absolute MORON to say no to.  [Although I will say that I did get one today that out of the standard 20 questions this one today DID have one new question on abortion that I didn’t expect since that is usually such a hot button for so many people].  The questions are always like:  Do you agree that it is the responsibility for all the Congressman to make balancing the budget and lowering taxes a high priority?  And then the three choices are:  Yes, I agree, No, I disagree, or I don’t know.

Come on!  Really?  ISN’T THAT ACTUALLY IN YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION???? 

Or another question is:  Please pick the top 10 things you are most concerned about so we know what we should be concentrating on.  And then there are only like 13 choices and at least one of them is way out in left field.  The equivalent of “baking cookies”. 

And it’s all a lead in to making you feel bad if you don’t give them money.  It’s obvious that they couldn’t care less about your answers, because if they did, they’d ask REAL HONEST SERIOUS QUESTIONS.  Not stupid, moronic questions that a 4th grader could tell you what the answer is without even knowing what the real problems are anyway!  Which just goes to show how stupid they really think we are.  

And we must be because it must work because if it didn’t work they wouldn’t keep doing it.  So, someone is sending them a boatload of money.  They have these great little blanks:  Yes Charles, I can send you:  $10,000 ___, $5,000 ___, $2,500___, $1,000___, $750___, $500 🙂 ___, (that was supposed to be a smiley face next to the $500 like that’s the sweet spot or something) and they keep going all the way down to $34 ___ (and they throw in the little jab) that’s just $1 for each of our Republican Congressman who’s up for election this year (with the implication being your a cheap bastard at that amount) and the final block of: or my best gift of: $___.

Come on!  There’s more psychology involved in those last couple of paragraphs then in the rest of the whole mailing combined!

I swear, if I had one candidate who wrote to me and said, “Look.  Yeah, I need your money, but that’s not why I’m writing.  I’m not sending you a premade form or anything else.  I’m just hoping that you’ll write back to me and tell me, in your own words, what it is that’s got you concerned.  Here’s what I’m concerned about and what I’m planning on working on if I’m elected.  But I’m here to represent you, so I’m really going to need to know what YOU’RE concerned about.  Won’t you write back to me and let me know, in your own words, what you’re worried about and what you think I can do to help.  Even better I’m going to be at this meeting hall on this date and we can sit and talk and ask questions for as long as you’d like.  There’ll be coffee and maybe some donuts or something and we can talk and ask questions all night if that’s what it takes.  I think if he or she were honest about it and meant it, I’d vote for that person in a heartbeat.  But when you make it so patently obvious that all you are really after is my money and couldn’t care less what I really need.  I ain’t got time for you.

Alright, I’ve been thinking about that all day, so now, back to the show…

Surround yourself with people who fight for you in rooms you aren’t in.

Finding one of her students making faces at others on the playground, Ms. Smith stopped to gently reprove the child.

Smiling sweetly the teacher said, “When I was a child, I was told if I made ugly faces I would stay like that.”

The student looked up and replied, “Well you can’t say you weren’t warned.”

SHE WAS SO BLONDE THAT SHE……

1. Took her new scarf back to the store because it was too tight.

2. Couldn’t learn to water ski because she couldn’t find a lake with a slope.

3. Can’t work in a pharmacy because the bottles won’t fit into the typewriter.

4. Got excited because she finished a jigsaw puzzle in 6 months and the box said “2 to 4 years”.

5. Was trapped on an escalator for hours when the power went out.

6. Couldn’t call 911because there was no 11 on any phone button.

7. When asked what the capital of California was, she answered “C.”

8. Burnt her nose bobbing for French Fries.

9. Baked a turkey for 5 days because the instructions said 1 hour per pound and she weighed 125.

10. Can’t make Kool-Aid because 8 cups of water won’t fit into those little packets.

11. Hates M&M’s because they are so hard to peel.

12. Got hurt while raking leaves; fell out of the tree.

13. Changes the baby’s diaper only once a month because the label said “good up to 20 pounds.”

14. After losing in a breaststroke swimming competition, complained that the other swimmers were using their arms.

A funny story circulated recently about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

Doyle evidently told of a time when he climbed into a taxi cab in Paris. Before he could utter a word, the driver turned to him and asked, ‘Where can I take you, Mr. Doyle?’

Doyle was flabbergasted. He asked the driver if he had ever seen him before.

‘No, sir,’ the driver responded, ‘I have never seen you before.’

Then he explained: ‘This morning’s paper had a story about you being on vacation in Marseilles.

This is the taxi stand where people who return from Marseilles always come to. Your skin color tells me you have been on vacation.

The ink- spot on your right index finger suggests to me that you are a writer.

Your clothing is very English, and not French. Adding up all those pieces of information, I deduced that you are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.’

‘This is truly amazing!’ the writer exclaimed. ‘You are a real-life counter-part to my fictional creation, Sherlock Holmes!’

‘There is one other thing,’ the driver said.

‘What is that?’

‘Your name is on the front of your suitcase.’

Did you hear about the teacher who was helping one of her kindergarten students put on his boots? 

He asked for help and she could see why. With her pulling and him pushing, the boots still didn’t want to go on. When the second boot was on, she had worked up a sweat. 

She almost whimpered when the little boy said, “Teacher, they’re on the wrong feet.”  

She looked and sure enough, they were.  It wasn’t any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on.

She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on — this time on the right feet. 

He then announced, “These aren’t my boots.” 

She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, “Why didn’t you say so?” like she wanted to. Once again she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off. 

He then said, “They’re my brother’s boots. My Mom made me wear them.” 

She didn’t know if she should laugh or cry.  She mustered up the grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots on his feet again.

She said, “Now, where are your mittens?” 

He said, “I stuffed them in the toes of my boots…” 

Her trial starts next week. 

One night, Tim was walking home when, all of a sudden, a thief jumped on him.

Tim and the thief were began to wrestle. They rolled about on the ground and Tim put up a tremendous fight. However, the thief managed to get the better of him and pinned him to the ground.

The thief then went through Tim’s pockets and searched him. All the thief could find on Tim was 25 cents.

The thief was so surprised at this that he asked Tim why he had bothered to fight so hard for 25 cents?

“Was that all you wanted?” Tim replied, “I thought you were after the five hundred dollars I’ve got in my shoe!”

Top 5 reasons why computers must be female

5. No one but their creator understands their logic.

4. Even the smallest mistakes are immediately committed to memory for future reference.

3. The native language used to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.

2. The message, “Bad command or filename,” is about as informative as “If you don’t know why I’m mad at you, then I’m certainly not going to tell you.”

1. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

 

Top 5 reasons why computers must be male

5. They’re heavily dependent on external tools and equipment.

4. They periodically cut you off right when you think you’ve established a network connection.

3. They’ll usually do what you ask them to do, but they won’t do more than they have to and they won’t think of it on their own.

2. They’re typically obsolete within five years and need to be traded in for a new model. Some users, however, feel they’ve already invested so much in the damn machine that they’re compelled to remain with an underpowered system.

1. They get hot when you turn them on, and that’s the only time you have their attention.

Maine, Freeport Law

Mercury thermometers may not be sold in the city

And that’s it, my friends.  Until next time.