About the free cell phone,..

Recently we were told about a free cell phone that was being given out by the U.S. government to people below the poverty level, or for people on food stamps, and we thought that was wrong. (It just seemed that giving someone free phone minutes every month is a waste of money.) After doing a bit of research we have changed our minds.
We assumed the money for this program was coming out of the tax payers pocket and thought they might be a little bit miffed about it. But it seems the money for this program has been paid for by we citizens since 1934. The U.S. government and the phone companies got together in 1934 and added a fee to any company phone services. All the phone companies have been taking this money since 1934 and using the funds to extend phone lines to remote farm lands and back country areas. But since the United States is almost entirely covered by cellular service the government decided that it would be cheaper to simply give cellular phones to these people rather than build phone lines. And they will give 200 free minutes a month to all users. The phone you receive will be a basic cell phone, with no extra add ons, No camera, no free texting, no email. Simply a phone for use when required and of course for emergencies. There will certainly be some people who will abuse this offer, (although the application seems to have a lot of safe guards) Anyway just a quick note see if we can appease the far right a bit. (Not likely)
Ciao for now.

We have writers block... big time... no really..

It's been a week and a day since we last posted here at The Crazy, we have been busy doing all the little things that are required in life. Laundry, Dishes, Cleaning, when we have a little spare time we have been watching a little television, (our shame is great, don't look at us!). Today was going to be lawn mowing day but the weather is not cooperating. Speaking of laundry, Anyone who has entered our basement knows how low the ceiling is, (I can barely stand upright between the floor joists.) The exit door to the basement is lower than that. So I guess the point I'm trying to make is that even though I am a fairly intelligent human being, I never seem to learn that I must duck when exiting the basement, I have clocked my head probably twenty times in the last five years, and not just a gentle tap mind you, we are talking a bell ringing vision blurring slam of skull against brick. I did it again today but as I was wearing my leather hat I was saved from the worst effects. It shames me to know that even a baboon would have learned to duck it's head by now. While I am seriously considering buying a helmet to do the laundry. Ok, going in a different direction here, we recently came across an article by a Russian scientist who thinks that time is slowing down, he bases his theory on the fact that deep space objects seem to be accelerating, (we are talking galaxies here folks) so he believes that this is an illusion brought about by time distortion. It is an interesting theory and could have some merit, the final outcome of this would of course be complete stoppage of time. At some point everything and everyone in the universe would just stop... my theory is that even if it were to happen we would never know, we would spend the rest of eternity caught in a moment, like a bug in amber. So everybody... start thinking about what you want to be doing for the rest of eternity and do it... now!
Still here? Oh well, maybe tomorrow. By the way, remember, this is just a theory, and there is no way to prove it's happening empirically. Have a good weekend everyone, remember to enjoy the smallest moments as they are the majority of our existence, except for sleeping of course which takes up 1/3 of our lives. That's about it, ciao for now.

Too busy to blog...

We at the Crazy have been too busy to update our blog lately. (As we imagine you may have noticed.) So we thought we would put forth a little something mid week to carry us through to the weekend. What to write about? Who knows? How about this, we recently read a news story that was on the main page of the Google news search engine. It was an article on the BP disaster. In the article the gentlemen who wrote it suggested that there is a huge methane bubble coming up through the ocean floor (under the gulf oil debacle) that will soon erupt and destroy all life on earth. Two things we would like to point out about that, firstly, Why is this actually on the news pages with serious news? (Not that the end of the world isn't serious, but c'mon folks this kind of thing should be on the back page of the enquirer.) And secondly, what!? huh?, who is this moron and why are they letting him write news stories. The guys name is Terrance Aym and he recently also predicted a financial collapse of the world economy and recently wrote an article called "Why is Vegas dying?" Needless to say this guy seems to have a bit of a gloom and doom thing going. So let us put your mind at ease, the recent false news stories about the gulf floor cracking and giant bubbles of methane coming to the surface and killing us all are untrue. (The methane beneath the gulf is buried beneath tons of solid rock and will not be escaping anytime soon.) Terrance Aym is a nut. Simple as that, and somehow he is making money off the poor idiots who are buying into his doomsday bullcrap, (selling articles to online news places, as if they are actual news.) Hey wait a minute, we can make money doing this? Why didn't somebody tell us? Let us give it some thought and we'll get back to you with our own doomsday scenario. Ciao for now.

Waking with something in my head....

Ok, woke up this morning with verses from the poem Gunga Din by Rudyard Kipling running around in my head. The line in the poem where the narrator is saying "He'll be squatting on the coals, giving drinks to poor damned souls, and I'll catch a swig in hell from Gunga Din." I haven't read that poem in almost 20 years, (maybe longer) and I'll be damned if I know why it showed up now. (Has it been bubbling around loosely in my brain for 20 years, just waiting for the right moment to vex me.) After I climbed out of bed more of the poem came unbidden to my memory, the last line of the poem which is the part most people remember, "though I've belted you and flayed you, by the living gawd that made you, You're a better man than I am Gunga Din." (Kipling spelled god that way, don't look at me.)I have supplied a link to the poem here. It's a short one, I recommend you read it, then maybe you too will wake up with this thing in your head. The human mind is a strange contraption. For example, the spot where your nerve endings go back through your eyeball has no rods or cones in it, which means there should be a big black spot in the middle of all of our vision, but our brain sees the area around the black spot and fills it in for us. Or when we see color for example, if you are looking at an object and it is blue, it is because the object is absorbing the light in the blue wavelength and reflecting all others. So we see blue. But think about this, what you see as blue, and what I see as blue could be completely different things, after all, we have been trained all of our lives that what we are looking at is blue. But I have know way of knowing what you are really seeing, our perceptions of the world could be completely different. And no matter how I try, I can't show you the world I am seeing. And you can't show me. We could trust that the make up of the human mind is standardized and therefore what we see could be standardized. But all we need do is look at a cloud, and some will see the face of Jesus, some a ducky and a horsey, it is simply a matter of perception and paradolia (mentioned in an earlier blog). The mind sees what it wants to see. And our brain interprets the world the way it was taught to do. For example, the air we breathe is made up of molecules that are moving constantly, (at about a thousand miles an hour) yet we don't see them, feel them, or taste them. Yet we need them to survive. The floors we are standing on, and the ceilings over our heads are made up of innumerable molecules that are constantly moving, protons and photons are passing back and forth to hold it together. In constant motion, yet we perceive none of it.
(Maybe that's for the best, imagine if you could see it and you were hung over.)
Sir Arthur Eddington (English astronomer 1882-1944) said it best, "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." (Italics mine) Or as the Greek philosopher Democritus said "Nothing exists, but atoms and empty space. All else is conjecture."
(Don't ask me how a man who died in 370 BCE (Before current era) knew about atoms.)
What's the point of all this? I don't really have a point, I'm just trying to get that Gunga Din thing out of my head. In the words of an unknown philosopher, "We thought we knew the answers, but it was the questions we had wrong" Just a little early morning philosophy to start the day. Entirely unrelated but also interesting is a quote a news reporter once said "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila" which isn't really philosophy, but it's funny. Ciao for now.

History is written by the winners...

We at the crazy love to read, pretty much anything we can get our hands on. (Although the reading of novels has declined recently. It is summer after all.) So in a bleary eyed, coffee slogging attempt to wake up this morning we stumbled across a couple of little known historical facts. These are things you won't find in your history books, (at least most history books.) For example we have all heard "Remember the Alamo." But a lot of us are unaware of the cause of the battle. You see Texas wanted to be independent of Mexico. (Understandable, as the Mexican government treated most Texans rather harshly.) But the main reason Texas wanted independence is because Mexico had just abolished slavery, and wanted Texas to do the same. And Texas wanted none of that as slave trade was profitable. We are not denigrating the fine men who fought and died for liberty. And Santa Anna would surely have overun Texas had the battle at the Alamo not taken place. But the Mexican Army freed the remaining slaves held at the Alamo after vanquishing the Texans. (Including a slave named Sam who was owned by James Bowie, and Colonel Travis Slave Joe.) We at the crazy do love our country, but don't agree with the phrase "Our country right or wrong." As all conquerors we took this nation by force.
The indigent people who resided here for centuries were simply moved, or wiped out.
Do we want to give it back to them, No, But reparations are being made and we at the crazy agree with them. Destroying the culture of the previous residents of this country will come with a cost. And that is a bill we should pay without question. As a civilization we are learning, we are less likely to destroy a culture when we stumble upon it. (Recently we discovered a tree dwelling tribe in the Papua New Guinea, and a few years ago another in the Amazon jungle, the local governments are doing everything they can to preserve the lifestyle of these people.) So maybe there is hope for us yet. (That is unless an advanced Alien race perhaps lands on Earth someday and decides we need to live like them.) Just a little non-revisionist history. We are Americans and as such we should take responsiblity for our failures as well as our successes. Have a good week, ciao for now.

Windy with a chance of melting....

Another hot day here in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan if someone other than the few people we know are reading this.) And again we here at the crazy are doing our best to deal with it. Kenton is hiding in the house sitting in front of the fan and trying not to melt. Wolfie is laying on her bed upstairs and eating a little, while playing solitaire on the computer. Connal is in his air conditioned room watching Angry Beavers on T.V. According to the weather report we are going to get a little wind today so perhaps we can all get outside before the rain hits. (Rain is forecast for this afternoon. About 20% chance around noon to a 100% chance around five. But meteorology is an inexact science so we aren't counting on it. (Our garden needs rain.)
Still, all in all it's been a decent weekend. Wolfie and me stood on the front step for a while and watched the Ishpeming fireworks display. We could see them first, then hear the boom, then hear the ooohs and aaaaahs of the crowd while the next one was launching. (They were about 2 miles distant.) If my math skills were better I could have timed the difference between the sight and the sound and told you exactly how far away they were, but as my math skills are sorely lacking, (and my brain is in the process of melting) it's not going to happen. Anyway so far it's been a good summer, we have suffered the scourge of the chipmunk in our garden, the birds have taken all the cherries as we did not protect the tree this year. (Ok, it was my job but I was busy and it slipped my mind.) Our yard is looking a little better than it did last year, and all the new peonies we planted look like they are coming up, next year they might bloom. Now if only we had money so we could do some things to our house. (I don't know? an indoor pool in the basement.) Actually just some more insulation in the living room would be good, and possibly some roof repair. It's budgeted in for late summer and if nothing goes wrong we should be able to get it done. Anyway that's about it, not much to talk about today, just another day in paradise. Everybody enjoy your summer, and we shall enjoy ours. (I wonder what chipmunk tastes like?) Ciao for now.

Happy 4th of July.... (er ok 3rd then.)

Here we are at the seminal event of the summer, the 4th of July in which we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. (Although in a letter that John Adams sent to his wife he mentions signing it on the 2nd of July, and many signed it on August 2.) When John Hancock signed it with huge letters he said, "There, I guess King George will be able to read that." Benjamin Franklin said, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately." Which was the truth, they were committing an act of treason against the King of England at the time. And of course Thomas Jefferson who insisted they place the right to bear arms as one of it's tennets later said "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." We have included a link to the Declaration of Independence HERE. (We would also like to point out that although God is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, Christ is not. As our founding fathers were not Christians in any sense of the word.) It should also be noted that neither God nor Christ are mentioned in the body of the Constitution either. (God is only mentioned in the date as in the Year of our lord.)
Our forefathers wanted the people of this nation to be free to practice any religion they chose or no religion at all if that's what they so pleased. Okay, we got that off our chests. Everybody have a happy 4th. Ciao for now.