Do What You Live For

#Standards

Balls2SayIt - The Book!

An equal opportunity offender of gays, rednecks, women, Christians, millennials, and people of color shares his brazen rants, jokes, and random thoughts suitable for the age of social media. The slogan worthy one-liners on drinking, sex, stupidity, stereotypes, rudeness, apathy, and anti-social behavior are political, provocative, immature, and hilarious.

Balls2SayIt

Neil deGrasse Tyson Selects the Eight Books Every Intelligent Person on the Planet Should Read

Tyson's Eight Books for Intelligent People

1. The Bible (public library; free ebook), to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself
2. The System of the World (public library; free ebook) by Isaac Newton, to learn that the universe is a knowable place
3. On the Origin of Species (public library; free ebook) by Charles Darwin, to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth
4. Gulliver’s Travels (public library; free ebook) by Jonathan Swift, to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos
5. The Age of Reason (public library; free ebook) by Thomas Paine, to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world
6. The Wealth of Nations (public library; free ebook) by Adam Smith, to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself
7. The Art of War (public library; free ebook) by Sun Tzu, to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art
8. The Prince (public library; free ebook) by Machiavelli, to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.

If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.

Generation Minimal Effort

People are learning less to earn more by taking every short cut they can. Motivated by money and status, Americans no longer value in themselves actual knowledge or experience. Generation Minimal (effort) doesn’t want to read, study, or truly research. Unbeknownst to them, this is where all the great learning occurs with labyrinths of other explorations. One cannot get to experience all of that with a mere search on Google that brings one simplified possibility. And Google it they will. Colleges are willingly going blind to the tricks of students and their techogadgets that allow them to cheat in every way they can. Employers are left with no choice but to pick from a herd of whiny, short cut taking, non-thinkers.   The age of robots/computers taking our jobs has arrived. The question is – when will corporate America realize the bottom line will be less costly and less aggravation to adopt early?

Where We Are, Where We Are Going (?)

In the 1930s, Langston Hughes wrote a poem, "Lenox Avenue Mural":

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

The following is from the compelling book, "A People's History Of the United States" by Howard Zinn.

With the Establishment's inability either to solve severe economic problems at home or to manufacture abroad a safety valve for domestic discontent, Americans might be ready to demand not just more tinkering, more reform laws, another reshuffling of the same deck, another New Deal, but radical change. Let us be Utopian for a moment so that when we get realistic again it is not that "realism" so useful to the Establishment in its discouragement of action, that "realism" anchored to a certain kind of history empty of surprise. Let us imagine what radical change would require of us all.

The society's levers of powers would have to be taken away from those whose drives have led to the present state-the giant corporations, the military, and their politician collaborators. We would need-by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country-to reconstruct the economy for both efficiency and justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most. We would start on our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces. Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the work force-children, old people, "handicapped" people. Society could use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available-free-to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation.

The great problem would be to work out a way of accomplishing this without a centralized bureaucracy, using not the incentives of prison and punishment, but those incentives of cooperation which spring from natural human desires, which in the past have been used by the state in times of war, but also by social movements that gave hints of how people might behave in different conditions. Decisions would be made by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods-a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another, a neighborly socialism avoiding the class hierarchies of capitalism and the harsh dictatorships that have taken the name "socialist."

People in time, in friendly communities, might create a new, diversified, nonviolent culture, in which all forms of personal and group expression would be possible. Men and women, black and white, old and young, could then cherish their differences as positive attributes, not as reasons for domination. New values of cooperation and freedom might then show up in the relations of people, the upbringing of children.

To do all that, in the complex conditions of control in the United States, would require combining the energy of all previous movements in American history-of labor insurgents, black rebels, Native Americans, women, young people-along with the new energy of an angry middle class. People would need to begin to transform their immediate environments-the workplace, the family, the school, the community-by a series of struggles against absentee authority, to give control of these places to the people who live and work there.

These struggles would involve all the tactics used at various times in the past by people's movements: demonstrations, marches, civil disobedience; strikes and boycotts and general strikes; direct action to redistribute wealth, to reconstruct institutions, to revamp relationships; creating-in music, literature, drama, all the arts, and all the areas of work and play in everyday life-a new culture of sharing, of respect, a new joy in the collaboration of people to help themselves and one another.

There would be many defeats. But when such a movement took hold in hundreds of thousands of places all over the country it would be impossible to suppress, because the very guards the system depends on to crush such a movement would be among the rebels. It would be a new kind of revolution, the only kind that could happen, I believe, in a country like the United States. It would take enormous energy, sacrifice, commitment, patience. But because it would be a process over time, starting without delay, there would be the immediate satisfactions that people have always found in the affectionate ties of groups striving together for a common goal.

All this takes us far from American history, into the realm of imagination. But not totally removed from history. There are at least glimpses in the past of such a possibility. In the sixties and seventies, for the first time, the Establishment failed to produce national unity and patriotic fervor in a war. There was a flood of cultural changes such as the country had never seen-in sex, family, personal relations-exactly those situations most difficult to control from the ordinary centers of power. And never before was there such a general withdrawal of confidence from so many elements of the political and economic system. In every period of history, people have found ways to help one another-even in the midst of a culture of competition and violence-if only for brief periods, to find joy in work, struggle, companionship, nature.

The prospect is for times of turmoil, struggle, but also inspiration. There is a chance that such a movement could succeed in doing what the system itself has never done-bring about great change with little violence. This is possible because the more of the 99 percent that begin to see themselves as sharing needs, the more the guards and the prisoners see their common interest, the more the Establishment becomes isolated, ineffectual. The elite's weapons, money, control of information would be useless in the face of a determined population. The servants of the system would refuse to work to continue the old, deadly order, and would begin using their time, their space-the very things given them by the system to keep them quiet-to dismantle that system while creating a new one.

The prisoners of the system will continue to rebel, as before, in ways that cannot be foreseen, at times that cannot be predicted. The new fact of our era is the chance that they may be joined by the guards. We readers and writers of books have been, for the most part, among the guards. If we understand that, and act on it, not only will life be more satisfying, right off, but our grandchildren, or our great grandchildren, might possibly see a different and marvelous world.

Percy Shelley was a radical poet, polemicist and political activist. Jacqueline Mulhallen traces the revolutionary thread that ran through this extraordinary writer’s life and work;

Rise like lions after slumber

In unfathomable number

Shake your chains to earth like dew

That in sleep have fallen on you

Ye are many, they are few.

That verse is perhaps one of the best known pieces of poetry in any movement of the oppressed all over the world. The Chartists knew it in the 19th century and so did the striking women garment workers in 1909 New York. It was chanted on demonstrations in Tiananmen Square (1989) and Tahrir Square (2011).

Rise like lions after slumber

In unfathomable number

Shake your chains to earth like dew

That in sleep have fallen on you

Ye are many, they are few.

Speaking Spanish

We live and work in a multicultural world, speaking different languages. However, this notion that I as an USA born and raised citizen should have to learn Spanish to accommodate an ever growing population, a huge percentage of which is in my home country illegally, is outrageous! Americans don’t go to other countries and expect everyone to speak English. I am refusing to speak Spanish. I refuse to even say “Un momento por favor (while I get a translator)”. This is not a racist rant. This is nothing against Spanish speaking people.  I do not get paid extra as Bilingual employees do and if I spoke a single word for my job I should charge per word.  I took 14 years of English, two of which I paid for. I refuse to speak Spanish!

What Are We Learning? What Are We Teaching?

What I'm Learning at State College - "We can't change global warming"

My advertising professor starts every class period by telling us how he can remember riding the horse and buggy to school. He said the man who owned the Weather Channel has convinced him with scientific proof that the said effects of Global Warming are merely natural occurrences and that those who believe in Global Warming have yet to prove otherwise. He further said that even if we did change our ways "we can't stop China or India who make up half the world's population".

What I have realized about retired now adjunct professors is that not only are they set in their ways but they have closed minds and a negative perception when it comes to change. Would it be so bad to believe in Global Warming? I mean all that would result is humans taking responsibility for our waste and excess. Shouldn't we care about the environment and in effect ourselves? Those who strongly oppose the idea of Global Warming simply don't want to take responsibility for the destruction of the planet and are unwilling to change their spoiled ways – give up their SUVs, reduce, reuse, and recycle, and so on.

Maybe I'm too hopeful or optimistic. But I think we should be taught ideals along with reality and that change happens and so can we. I didn't pay for the college of Can Not.

What I'm Learning at State College - Diversity over production?

Retiree now adjunct instructor stated he didn’t understand statement in textbook, “Many managers pay too much attention to numbers and not the diversity of their staff”. He claimed to be all for diversity yet felt numbers should be paid closer attention to otherwise a business would go under without profit. He doesn’t understand the statement or the balance suggested. The whole concept of diversity is about hiring a diverse workforce that the public, prospective customers, and prospective clients can relate to. By doing so, profit increases as the public feels the company is a company of them, by them, and for them.

Christian Colleges vs. Public Colleges

I just wonder if students who graduate from a Christian (or any other religious institution for that matter) enter the world with a well-rounded education. Is their curriculum filtered? Censored? Biased? Are they taught to be objective?