“May you live in interesting times.” Most of us know this to be an old Chinese curse, and for those with a little time under our belts we understand it very well.
I think about an Automotive mechanic of the 1920s. I wasn’t there, but I can imagine it was fairly easy for the inquisitive DIYer mind to keep up with the technological advances of the day. Innovations seemed to happen far more slowly, and even in the late 50s, there wasn’t much under the hood of the standard automobile that a 24 year old hot rod car enthusiast didn’t understand.
As time has progressed, specialists and experts need focus on a far smaller segment of nearly anything in order to have that expertise.
I’ll give you one example, as late as the 1970s, there were still technicians who were training on a type of telephone switch and expecting to retire working on the same technology, this is because the prior technology was installed and set up on 30 year depreciation schedule! By the early 1990s, I think I saw stuff bolted in a rack that didn’t stay there more than six months! A lot of people in the Telco Business struggled to learn that there were no guarentees they’d be needed next week, yet alone till retirement.
I think it is possible that Microsoft currently has some of the best voice communications software and hardware on the planet, it’s quite possible they’ll be selling their solutions to the remaining phone companies 🙂 This may allow the Telcos to junk the outdated class 5 offices they maintain at great expense to them.
But there are changes going on all around us that many if not most are totally unaware of. I’ll even touch on the PMG Generator that I put a lot of effort into. but first let me tell you about Google. A good friend is among thousands who make their living off the WEB. Web hosting, sales referrals, writing detailed information about a service or product in exchange for a small commission from vendors, and far more. Recently Google decided to take a big step forward in monetizing their position as the leading portal for web searches. As you may have already guessed, or maybe even read.. the ordered results of a web search was changed to reflect the relationship of those parties and Google!
Some folks had worked hard to build good ranking with google based on the quality of their content and the search criteria of the time, in some cases this took years of hard work, and constant tuning. When Google made these changes, some small business owners went from $10,000 or more of revenue a month to close to zero, some of these same entities might have $6000 or more of overhead in monthly charges for server space, programing help, and more. The result of tweaking a piece of software at Google will likely mean bankruptcy for a lot of small entities and a boon for the larger business that can afford to buy the relationship with google ongoing.
The Utterpower PMG. Certainty we know we can build a good generator without using Permanent Magnets. But if you believe in the KISS model as I do, there is a small market nitch for such a product IF it could be built to a high quality standard, proven reliable, and of course meet a price point people are willing to pay. I did catch the fact that the price of magnets was on the rise, (now it’s out of site!). It’s very easy to deceive yourself as many do, we don’t need help do we? I may write a full account of what happened as a warning to others.. that may be my purpose in life?
The other day I was reading a facebook post, some young lassie wrote that all the floods, tornados, earthquakes and more was mother nature’s way of telling man that he needed to stop messing with the planet. I have been thinking about what she wrote for a few days. More informed people know we’ve had this stuff going on forever, and floods, dust bowls, hurricanes, tornadoes have been this bad and worse.. we only need read and study a little history.
Some people are so niave or arrogant that they think that their short life on this planet, and what they precieve as normal >is< the standard for normal.
Humans have been here for such a short while, it seems the planet was doing quite well without us.. in fact the planet seemed to do quite well with no mammals at all for millions of years.
The earth’s atmosphere has changed so much, and for millions of years it would support no life at all. What part of the process was abnormal? If a large asteroid strikes the earth and brings an end to all of our lives, will it be an abnormal event according to the cosmos? Our sun is composed of material from stars that died prior to it’s birth. In no way is it timeless, nor is this small rock we call earth, it will surely perish one day according to the interworkings of the cosmos. Our earth’s core is molten, it can’t stay that way forever, and when that core cools, what happens to our poles and the magnetic field that helps protect our atmosphere?
I think there’s two distinct groups of people on the planet. One group fully understands how insignificant they are as compared to the galaxy we live in, and another group so ignorant that they think they have the steering wheel of the entire universe in their hands.
At 63 years of age.. I was thinking maybe it’s time I relaxed a little.. and not let these nuts get me down. No one is getting out of here alive, and maybe it is all right if we stick our kids with the bill? After all, most of them seem to think printing all this money is a good idea 🙂
At the end of the day.. the more self sufficient you are.. the better you’ll sleep.
George B.
The national media caters to the idiots too, George. I’m in north Alabama, and I can tell you that although the tornadoes we had a few weeks ago were bad, we have tornadoes here every year. I was here in 1974 too, and I sat on the back porch and watched two tornadoes pass by within 24 hours. I had friends who died in the tornadoes of 1974.
This past winter we got quite a bit of snow. A lot of the under-30 group think that was an anomaly, because they are accustomed to only seeing small amounts of snow. But we had some big snowstorms in the area during the late ’80s and early ’90s, and I remember several during the ’60s and ’70s too. I also remember summers when the temperature was over 100 degrees every day for over a week, as lately as the early ’90s. Yet three years ago when the temp reached 100 only two days in a row, the news media was proclaiming it “the hottest year on record!” Of course, that was when they were overtly pushing the global warming scam, before it was proven to be a scam.
I guess stuff that doesn’t support their agenda gets left off the record.
Tracy, AL Gore and his friends haven’t given up, they just need to repackage the product 🙂