Tag Common Sense

Real life advice for real life

Michael 12 Comments

I would like to wish the fathers out there a belated Happy Father’s Day, those celebrating a Happy Juneteenth, and to everyone, the words of life advice from a father who has served many years of life.

I got this idea from last week’s post when I suggested one who serves food would be better received (and probably better tipped) if that one did not have a tattoo of a spider on the back of their hand. I realized then that I had a wealth of advice just waiting to spill forth from my brain and what better place for it to spill than on here? Just some morsels of common sense sprinkled over some of the nonsensical things I’ve lately noticed.

For example. If you own a bar, restaurant, bar and restaurant, diner, pizza parlor, sandwich shop, or similar, and you find yourself a little short staffed, don’t mount on the largest sign you can find “Servers, cooks, bartenders, dishwashers wanted” in the largest letters you can find and post said sign outside your main entrance door. You would be better served to post a sign that says “Please don’t come here to eat unless you enjoy waiting hours before being served.”

Likewise to the local auto repair shop owner with the sign “Mechanics needed” and is wondering why business has taken a sudden downturn.

I’m not sure anyone ever put “Spam Spreader” on their resume, but someone must write and distribute those aberrations to polite electronic mail correspondence. My advice to whomever it may be, don’t use flags, up arrow notations of urgency, or more than 4 emojis in the subject line. I can’t think of one legitimate email I’ve ever received that came with 🔈😮🔥🚨 as part of the subject that had me thinking “Oh my gosh, I better open this email before I do anything else or the world may end!”

While I’m thinking about resumes, if you should happen to think about applying for one of those open waitresses, cooks, or mechanics positions, leave “content creator” off yours. I’ve actually seen that on resumes and it didn’t impress me, and to honest, I’m usually quite impressionable.

Also apropos resumes, if you are employed as one who gets to send emails, text messages, or even real mail to potential job candidates and you start your spiel with “I found your resume on line and know you would be perfect for a position we are trying to fill,” please read the resume, or the next time someone wants to hire me as medical director at some hospital in a “world famous tourist location,” I may take you up on that, especially if you’re covering travel and expenses (including a plus one, naturally).

Finally, to those seeking a position in government like, I don’t know, maybe President, it’s in bad taste to put out TV, radio, internet, and mail ads suggesting your opponent is “dishonest” if you’ve just been found guilty of a few dozen felonies. Just my opinion.

Have a happy week everyone – and a happy federal holiday to those in states where it’s not illegal to celebrate it.

One way to survive in this crazy world is making the most of every hour. Not with a strict schedule and sticking to a to-do list. It’s implementing a to-don’t list. Yes, the secret to doing efficiently and effectively is knowing what not to do. We know  we said so in the latest Uplift!

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This Person’s Intelligence Does Not Exist

Michael Leave a comment
There is a site on the Internet that displays pictures of people. Just pictures of different people. Every time you open the site or refresh the page a new picture is displayed. Picture after picture. Never a duplicate. Person ever person. Never a real one. Not one a real, live person. They are images generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Yet they are so lifelike you might imagine you actually know some of them.
 
Artificial Intelligence is making great strides but it still can’t anticipate the unexpected. You need Natural Intelligence when things happen that you don’t expect. That because Natural Intelligence is more than smarts, memory, and logic. It is that and intuition, discernment, situational awareness and sometimes illogic. Natural Intelligence is what you use when you have to do something you’ve never done before…like living through a pandemic.
 
How has the battle against CoViD-19 altered your lifestyle? Are you doing home schooling? Are you doing home working? Have any roles shifted? Has your daily schedule been adjusted? 
 
Most of the people I have spoken with have done pretty well making their way through this time. They are adjusting, accommodating, adapting, all the things intelligent people do when confronted with an unexpected situation. Even those who are struggling are doing well compared to the ones who have decided their life will go on as usual, nothing to see here, it’s all a hoax. Those are the ones with artificial intelligence. They’re very good what they do, as long as what they are doing is what they are programmed to do.
 
Yes that is still the limitation with artificial Intelligence. It seemingly adapts, it appears to be adjusting, it looks like it learning. In truth its intelligence depends on who programmed it, who set its limitations, who designed its algorithms. In other words it might look good on the surface but when you really look at what it’s made of, look for it’s original thoughts, seek out its compassion, explore its sense of duty, look for its heart, you find there is really nothing there.  
 
Kind of like a lot of politicans.
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Image from thispersondoesnotexist.com

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Death, Safety, Money

Michael 2 Comments
O. M. G. I  am  soooooooo  ashamed  of  being  an  American!  
There really can’t be places in the world so bad that people actually want to come here. This has nothing to do with racism, statues, flags, guns, veganism, atheism, or people taking 15 items through the 12 item or less checkout lane. It’s that all of a sudden we are deciding the fate of the populace based on the twenty-first century version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. I call it Death, Safety, Money. 
 
You all know about Rock, Paper, Scissors? It is the ultimate decision maker for matters of extreme importance like when best friends can’t decide between Jimmie getting the neat, new catchers mitt or Johnny buying a hot fudge sundae with the quarter they found on the walk home from school. Under those circumstances it is marginally appropriate and usually works out pretty well. Most often by the time children reach the age required to drive in South Dakota (go on, look it up, I’ll wait) they have replaced RPS with more reasonable decision making processes. Although … there was that time when Takashi Hashiyama couldn’t decide between Christie’s or Sotheby’s to handle an multi-million dollar art auction and had reps from each auction house compete against each other thusly for the right. But I digress.
 
In general, when it comes to major life and death decision, Rock, Paper, Scissors is not the way to go. And yet, we’ve turned what was a pretty decent plan with a mostly adequate execution for survival in the COVID years over to the pre-teens and their flying fingers to decide our next step against the virus with a game of Death, Safety, Money. To review, in RPS Scissors cut Paper, Paper covers Rock, Rock crushes Scissors. In Death, Safety, Money (DSM) Money covers Safety, Safety beats Death, Death crushes Money. 
 
Here’s how DSM has replaced GOFCoM (Good Old Fashion Common Sense) and not for the better. Not at the very beginning of the Corona Crises (Death) but early enough to make a difference, the US finally followed the lead of other civilized nations and imposed quarantine like limitations on activity (Safety). This protected many millions of people but a few resisted with complaints, threats, and mockery claiming the cure is worse than the disease and we’ll all soon regret it. Safety prevailed and in what was becoming a nominal norm the curve appeared to be flattening. Perhaps it was time to provide a little freedom to the people, Death was seemingly being beaten down well by Safety and as a reward restrictions were loosened. Pouncing on the opportunity that here was a chance to live life again as Fat Cat Americans rather than in hermit like seclusion, business and sports and recreation areas threw open their doors to re-welcome the hoards with their pockets bulging from all the cash saved during their time of pseudo-isolation (Money).  
 
But was it too much too soon in too many places too often? A new curve is rising. Not to worry though. We’ve been through this before, we know that Safety beats Death, we can implement distancing and semi-isolation again and live to spend another day. But having had a taste of the good life the livers want to continue living their outside lives and the providers of the distractions aren’t going gently into another good night. Money is covering Safety across the land.
 
Throw and throw, seemingly ending in virtual ties after weeks of playing DSM Money and Safety are thrown with equal vigor, but is equal enough or is it just one hand away from Death being thrown crushing Money leaving only a few people trying to keep it contained under the shrinking cover of Safety.
 
I don’t like this game. Can’t we please go back to GOFCoM instead?
 
psr

My State of the World Address

Michael 9 Comments

Tomorrow President Trump will deliver the State of the Union Address. Later tomorrow news and social media sites (which sound remarkably alike lately) will parse and criticize either Trump’s or Joe Kennedy’s (who will present the Democrats’ rebuttal) comments.

ResidentialSealSo in the spirit of annoying at least half the people out there, and as an official Resident of the United States, I’m going to make my comments on the state of the Union now. You see, I can do that because I don’t need a Trump or God forbid a Kennedy to tell me how my state is fairing. Unlike their addresses, mine is actually based on universal truths. So universal that you don’t even need to be from the United States to relate to them, thus I am considering this the State of the World.

The world is in trouble mostly because people want to believe it’s in trouble. It really isn’t. Without sounding like a t-shirt, keep calm and pray if you got ’em. What the world needs is a good dose of common sense. Here are some reasons why.

We are our own worst enemies. This weekend’s local news was filled with the city’s school’s teachers who are threatening to strike. They want to be paid more and to contribute less to their benefits. They will probably strike and eventually a compromise will be approved and they will get more money and a lower contribution though not as much or as great as they would like and will grudgingly return to work. Like labor unions that represent workers who make or sell something, the teacher unions don’t take into consideration that the extra money that must be spent on their increases must come from somewhere and it won’t be from profits. It will be from higher prices or to compensate for the teachers’ and other government employees’ windfalls, higher taxes. These will turn into reasons for next year’s higher pay demands by other unions, cost of living adjustments demands by non-union workers, and increased minimum wage proposals by politicians and thus the cycle continues. This is why although the average wage has risen from $7,300 in 1967 to $73,300 over fifty years to 2017, a tenfold increase, the average new car that in 1967 cost $2,750 cost $33,500 in 2917, 12 times as much as from 50 years prior, and the average house that cost $14,250 in 1967 rose to $377,100 in 2017, 26 & 1/2 times greater. Don’t even ask about insurance rates.

Big Pharma is not out to get you and all doctors are not pill mills. Yes, drug companies manufacture and wholesale opioid narcotics. Yes, opioid narcotics are an addictive nightmare and some abused opioids began as prescriptions. But most opioid that are being abused are being manufactured in illegal labs by criminals. Heroin and heroin/fentanyl combinations are by far the largest abused, and deadly, opioids. But, opioid by class are only the fifth most abused substances coming in behind alcohol, marijuana, methamphetamine, and cocaine. Prescription drug abuse ranks higher only when you include the prescribed opioids with benzodiazapines (anybody remember “Valley of the Dolls”), codeine and codeine derivatives, anabolic steroids, and the prescription stimulants methylphenidate (Ritalin) and amphetamine (Aderall).

It should not come as a surprise that efforts to fight opioid addiction are misdirected since every other addiction is being mistreated or outright ignored. Oooh, oooh, drugs are bad, drugs are bad say the sheep. Ooh, ooh, Marijuana is soooo good and it cures all kinds of diseases so we should all be allowed to have some say the same sheep. Drinking and driving is clearly bad. Sixty-five percent of fatal single vehicle accidents involve alcohol, 29% of all fatal accidents involve alcohol. Three drinks will impair an average build adult. Don’t drive if you drink that third drink! Cigarette smoking is evil. Period. The nicotine will get you every time. There is nicotine in those vaping thingies! That’s why people crave them. Duh!

Guns don’t kill people. But they sure do make it easy for people to. Especially those that fire 150 rounds a minute. Without taking the all or none approach can we agree that automatic weapons don’t belong in the hands anybody not currently and actively serving in the military in a combat zone? Hunting and target shooting can be accomplished quite nicely one bullet at a time.

Climate change is real. It’s also inevitable. The world changes. It has changed. It will continue to change. That’s how we got here. That’s how we’ll leave. Deal with it.

We are own worst enemies, part two. Data breaches continue and will so. Some of the biggest you may not have even know. The ten biggest data breaches by number of people’s information exposed are Yahoo (twice for number 1 and 2 at 3 billion in December 2016 and 500 million in September 2016), My Space (360 million, May 2016), Equifax (145.5 million, September 2017), EBay (145 million, May 2014), Target (110 million, November 2013), LinkedIn (100 million, May  2016), AOL (92 million, 2007), JP Morgan Chase (83 million, October 2013), and Anthem Health (80 million, February 2015). Just for grins, do you know who comes in at #11? The Sony Playstation network with 77 million exposures back in April of 2011. And who even knew that My Space still had 360 million users two years ago? Our privacy and our money are at risk every time we access the interwebs. Yet we continue to use digital financing at increasing rates. Starbucks now has stores that do not accept cash joining a growing trend of restaurants and convenience stores in large metropolitan areas that have gone cashless, and Internet sales in 2017 represented over 9% of all retail sales in the U.S. up from 3.6% in 2008.

I could go on. And on and on. But I won’t in the hopes of keeping a few readers. If you want an improving future it’s clear what we have to do. Rekindle common sense, invoke rational thinking, and pray if you got ’em.

NB: Salary and cost figures by USA Today; drug use figures via National Institute on Drug Abuse; drinking and driving statistics via Father’s Against Drunk Driving (FADD), data breaches and rates by USA Today, E-commerce statistics by U.S. Census Bureau.