Given that President George W. Bush pushed military service to the forefront in the past two presidential elections it is something that is now a subject that people are going to look at. Unfortunately it is something to be used negatively due to George W. Bush since he belittled McCain’s years as a P.O.W. and then belittling Kerry’s swift boat record.
In my opinion, it should not be up to the general public to pass judgment on someone who actively served in the military. This judgment should be reserved to those who are serving, that have served and the immediate family of those serving and of those who have died.
The whole subject what brought into play eight years ago when a now sitting president who decided to use McCain’s status as a former P.O.W. against him calling into question where his loyalties lied since he was held captive and tortured. Then he used Kerry’s swift boat experience against him, saying that there was no way he could have gotten the amount of medals he did with such a short time in the military.
Those who have served should be ashamed of themselves if they come out against someone’s military service for the sole purpose of garnering support for the person going against him. If you are going to belittle someone’s service then belittle it solely on merit of service not for political posturing. If they are that intent on belittling their own then it should be an open field to play both ways and they should be dealt with in the same manner to see how it feels to have a peer belittle them for serving as they did.
In the end they need to act like adults who have commanded respect of others not as children who don’t know any better.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Ideas on how to deal with social networks and children
Ideas on how to deal with social networks and children
Where the minimum required age to join most social networks is the age of thirteen, there has to be to be programming implemented that would prevent people from taking advantage of children on the social networks.
Right now there is nothing stopping children from trying to posing as adults and despite efforts to keep adults that prey on children there is no way of tracking them if they haven’t been caught and even when caught unless they are kept from going online there is no guarantee that they would fulfill their requirement of staying off of the internet or away from children online if permitted online if they can’t help themselves.
I do not know how hard it is to prevent adults from going onto the internet but in areas where there are known to be children there should be safeguards in place, like when the child’s parents set up their child’s internet access and like in social networks we can have each social network put in programming that is designed to safeguard children.
Here are some ideas:
· Make it legally mandatory to have any internet access settings for children set up over the phone rather than through the parental controls on the computer so that the child if tech savvy enough cannot get around the parental controls on the computers. The parents would still have to protect the information used to set up the access for the child’s ability to access the internet so that the child cannot call up the internet provider.
· With social networks where there is an age requirement have access geared around that age provided. If an age is given to the social network that is eighteen and above require some sort of identification like that of a state ID or a social security number to prove that the person is over eighteen which if their real state ID number or social security number are used could be sent to authorities if they have suspect content on their personal pages on that network.
· When adults set up their homepage they should be required to answer questions as to what type of content they are looking for and what they will be looking to put on their page so that the social network would have some idea as to who can access that page. If there also should be periodic checks for content on the sites to make sure that the information provided corresponds to the content on the site.
· Complete separation of children from adults on social networks shouldn’t be required but rather how they can interact with each other should be restricted due to the possibility of actually communicating with family through that social network. The restriction should be based primarily on content and age appropriateness of the person trying to look at it so that even that if someone tries to provide access to content that isn’t age appropriate to someone that shouldn’t be viewing it can be prevented from viewing the content.
· With the internet in general, the children should be able to go online and be prevented from interacting with adults who they don’t know through a way of identifying in coming emails to the child’s email address even if it means that the ISP’s have to rewrite their email protocols to include a standardized marker regarding age that can be picked up by the ISP’s network that it is ultimately going to with it being able to send an automated response back that cannot be blocked stating that they cannot send emails to that email address. Anyone not on a list of email address of adults approved by the parents should automatically be blocked and the child cannot send to anything to an adult that isn’t on that list.
Where the minimum required age to join most social networks is the age of thirteen, there has to be to be programming implemented that would prevent people from taking advantage of children on the social networks.
Right now there is nothing stopping children from trying to posing as adults and despite efforts to keep adults that prey on children there is no way of tracking them if they haven’t been caught and even when caught unless they are kept from going online there is no guarantee that they would fulfill their requirement of staying off of the internet or away from children online if permitted online if they can’t help themselves.
I do not know how hard it is to prevent adults from going onto the internet but in areas where there are known to be children there should be safeguards in place, like when the child’s parents set up their child’s internet access and like in social networks we can have each social network put in programming that is designed to safeguard children.
Here are some ideas:
· Make it legally mandatory to have any internet access settings for children set up over the phone rather than through the parental controls on the computer so that the child if tech savvy enough cannot get around the parental controls on the computers. The parents would still have to protect the information used to set up the access for the child’s ability to access the internet so that the child cannot call up the internet provider.
· With social networks where there is an age requirement have access geared around that age provided. If an age is given to the social network that is eighteen and above require some sort of identification like that of a state ID or a social security number to prove that the person is over eighteen which if their real state ID number or social security number are used could be sent to authorities if they have suspect content on their personal pages on that network.
· When adults set up their homepage they should be required to answer questions as to what type of content they are looking for and what they will be looking to put on their page so that the social network would have some idea as to who can access that page. If there also should be periodic checks for content on the sites to make sure that the information provided corresponds to the content on the site.
· Complete separation of children from adults on social networks shouldn’t be required but rather how they can interact with each other should be restricted due to the possibility of actually communicating with family through that social network. The restriction should be based primarily on content and age appropriateness of the person trying to look at it so that even that if someone tries to provide access to content that isn’t age appropriate to someone that shouldn’t be viewing it can be prevented from viewing the content.
· With the internet in general, the children should be able to go online and be prevented from interacting with adults who they don’t know through a way of identifying in coming emails to the child’s email address even if it means that the ISP’s have to rewrite their email protocols to include a standardized marker regarding age that can be picked up by the ISP’s network that it is ultimately going to with it being able to send an automated response back that cannot be blocked stating that they cannot send emails to that email address. Anyone not on a list of email address of adults approved by the parents should automatically be blocked and the child cannot send to anything to an adult that isn’t on that list.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
some thoughts for and ideas on how to power water desalinziation
When dealing with the Earths population having a shrinking water supply as the population grows, we have to deal with an issue that people think will need to happen but think it will not have to be done in their lifetime. This is desert farming; this has to be taken serious due to the fact that if we choose not to entertain the idea now we will lose even more of the rainforests which help maintain our various geographical climates.
We also have to couple this with large scale water desalinization which would primarily be for the desert farming while making sure that the water desalinization plants that are built for the sole purpose of purifying water for farming are as self sufficient as possible which would mean utilizing the power of the water as a power source.
Water desalinization has to be a top priority for every country with out regard to whether they have a coastline to utilize for the process and is especially needed in arid areas. As for the areas with established farmland where the water has to be split between crops and drinking water should have large enough quantities of desalinized water available for the farmers so that those municipalities that have to deal with the water issues don’t have to worry about finding the water to maintain their populations and the farms.
Given the facts surrounding deforestation and diminishing rainfall as a result, we need to reseed those forests with the types of trees and plants that are in that forest while making sure that we give the quantities of water that have been shown to grow and maintain those forests while making sure that the local populations that are willing to destroy the forests for money are shown that the forests if properly maintained can sustainable profits by finding markets for the stuff that the forests continually produce that is easily renewable and sustainable.
Here is a plan of action for designing desalinization plants:
· Design the system to have two aqueducts types, one for the intake of ocean water that is basically a holding tank for the water waiting to be treated, and the other for water that has been treated and waiting to be loaded into the vehicles that are meant to carry it to farms. Do this while making sure that the rate of the water flow for both the intake an outtake are at the same flow rate.
· When designing the power system, design it so that way the water itself is creating as much of the energy as possible starting with the intake. Design the intake to be a siphon to reduce the power needs while designing a water turbine that is meant to be used horizontally instead of vertically to be specifically used in the siphon. When designing the outtake design it to be like a dam with vertical water turbines that feed the plant like the turbines would on a normal dam but instead of feeding a river they would feed the desalinization plant at a constant rate that the plant can handle.
· When designing the desalinization plant itself, design it to be able to handle a constant flow of water from the aqueduct, while at every step of the way if there is a way of utilizing the water for power generation, design it to do so as long as it doesn’t contaminate the water or re-salt the water. With the areas where there is the possibility of water loss through steam, create a way of reclaiming that water while utilizing the power that the steam can offer to help with power generation.
· With the large structure that would be standing for both the aqueduct and the desalinization plant, position them so that way there are at least two full outer walls of each that has sunlight on it for as long as possible each day so that a solar arrays could be incorporated into the design of the walls making sure that as much of the walls could be covered by solar panels. Also you could design the roofing structure to have solar panels
· If there is extra energy produced by whole process then provide that extra energy to the local municipalities that could use it if they are within the area where the power can travel in the power lines.
We also have to couple this with large scale water desalinization which would primarily be for the desert farming while making sure that the water desalinization plants that are built for the sole purpose of purifying water for farming are as self sufficient as possible which would mean utilizing the power of the water as a power source.
Water desalinization has to be a top priority for every country with out regard to whether they have a coastline to utilize for the process and is especially needed in arid areas. As for the areas with established farmland where the water has to be split between crops and drinking water should have large enough quantities of desalinized water available for the farmers so that those municipalities that have to deal with the water issues don’t have to worry about finding the water to maintain their populations and the farms.
Given the facts surrounding deforestation and diminishing rainfall as a result, we need to reseed those forests with the types of trees and plants that are in that forest while making sure that we give the quantities of water that have been shown to grow and maintain those forests while making sure that the local populations that are willing to destroy the forests for money are shown that the forests if properly maintained can sustainable profits by finding markets for the stuff that the forests continually produce that is easily renewable and sustainable.
Here is a plan of action for designing desalinization plants:
· Design the system to have two aqueducts types, one for the intake of ocean water that is basically a holding tank for the water waiting to be treated, and the other for water that has been treated and waiting to be loaded into the vehicles that are meant to carry it to farms. Do this while making sure that the rate of the water flow for both the intake an outtake are at the same flow rate.
· When designing the power system, design it so that way the water itself is creating as much of the energy as possible starting with the intake. Design the intake to be a siphon to reduce the power needs while designing a water turbine that is meant to be used horizontally instead of vertically to be specifically used in the siphon. When designing the outtake design it to be like a dam with vertical water turbines that feed the plant like the turbines would on a normal dam but instead of feeding a river they would feed the desalinization plant at a constant rate that the plant can handle.
· When designing the desalinization plant itself, design it to be able to handle a constant flow of water from the aqueduct, while at every step of the way if there is a way of utilizing the water for power generation, design it to do so as long as it doesn’t contaminate the water or re-salt the water. With the areas where there is the possibility of water loss through steam, create a way of reclaiming that water while utilizing the power that the steam can offer to help with power generation.
· With the large structure that would be standing for both the aqueduct and the desalinization plant, position them so that way there are at least two full outer walls of each that has sunlight on it for as long as possible each day so that a solar arrays could be incorporated into the design of the walls making sure that as much of the walls could be covered by solar panels. Also you could design the roofing structure to have solar panels
· If there is extra energy produced by whole process then provide that extra energy to the local municipalities that could use it if they are within the area where the power can travel in the power lines.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
thoughts on taxes and the economy
When it comes to the economy and taxes, at the moment the mentality of giving the tax breaks to the wealthiest of individuals and families isn’t working as well as it has in the past and as intended. This is due to the fact that these individuals have the same mentality as others when it comes to more for less, instead of it being product based it is based on how much service can they get for the cheapest possible price, this would include the salaries of the people offering those services along with trying to get the people who provide services to them to do more work for the same money that they have been receiving.
Most business’s are looking to find ways of saving money in today’s economy to the point that if they have to choose where they can actually save money given the cost of supplies and the salaries of their workers. At times saving money and actually producing the product or services are at odds with each other and usually the product or the employees loses out, in favor of maintaining or increasing the profit margin for the company.
With the rising prices of products and services the biggest losers are those companies that can no longer sell their products due to the cost of their products or services becoming too expensive for their targeted market stemming from not being able to afford their products any more due to stagnating incomes and rising costs. This is even starting to happen with the everyday household necessities and it was evident with the stimulus package when the middle and lower class’s went to the places that gave them the largest product amount for their money and to stores that enticed those same customers by giving gift cards for a percentage of their rebate check or giving a sale percentage off of the total bill for spending money at their stores.
Tax cuts can be a good thing provided they are in the industries that show real growth potential and are willing to make sure that their companies have what is needed to grow which would be a workforce that is compensated in ways to keep the companies potential growing, this would include salary and health care incentives along with offering various ways of letting their employees save for their retirement.
It would be very short sighted to give blanket tax cuts or credits to everyone within certain income brackets or companies which that have really high corporate profits. A blanket tax cut causes animosity for those in lower brackets especially when those individuals and companies choose not to live up to the premise behind those tax cuts in favor for higher short term profits. Any and all tax cuts which are geared towards those upper income and profit levels should be only allowed when they the individuals and companies are geared for long term profits and corporate sustainability rather than the fast cash that would be provided by such cuts without regards to sharing the wealth to those employees that did the bulk of the work in getting the companies to those profit levels.
The economy may be based on supply and demand to a great degree, but due to the rising costs of even the basic necessities of every day life that demand is going down creating problems for those companies who are producing products based on past demographics, causing those companies to shrink their work force due to a lack of money coming in but that is just a short term fix and ends up hurting those companies long term due to the fact they are adding to the problem by forcing those employees to go on unemployment or take lower paying jobs which causes their former employees to by less of that product if it is an everyday item used by their employees.
We also need to be looking at expanding on industries which can take our economy in new and more productive directions in regards to bringing in new taxes for the local, state and federal government while producing a product that can produce positive job and salary growth. A good deal of this would be to better educate people in general and retraining people to help be productive enough in those industries that need trained people to further the growth potential for the companies. These would be the types of industries where tax breaks and credits would be helpful especially if they are set up be given to those companies willing to train or send their workers to school to learn the needed skills.
All tax cuts for companies and corporations should be set up on an incentive basis geared toward helping the employees rather than helping the pockets of those high up in the chain of command. Ways of setting up the tax breaks should be like giving tax breaks to those companies and industries that provide education incentives for their employees and more of a tax break if these industries and companies are willing to provide education incentives for their employee’s immediate families.
For those companies that have the ability to allow their employees to use public transportation instead of driving should have tax breaks in place if they have position where the hours of operation for the position fall with in the hours of operation for the public transit system and the company actively promoting the public transportation system, allowing the companies to take advantage of the same or similar laws that make it attractive for the employees to utilize the public transit systems.
Most business’s are looking to find ways of saving money in today’s economy to the point that if they have to choose where they can actually save money given the cost of supplies and the salaries of their workers. At times saving money and actually producing the product or services are at odds with each other and usually the product or the employees loses out, in favor of maintaining or increasing the profit margin for the company.
With the rising prices of products and services the biggest losers are those companies that can no longer sell their products due to the cost of their products or services becoming too expensive for their targeted market stemming from not being able to afford their products any more due to stagnating incomes and rising costs. This is even starting to happen with the everyday household necessities and it was evident with the stimulus package when the middle and lower class’s went to the places that gave them the largest product amount for their money and to stores that enticed those same customers by giving gift cards for a percentage of their rebate check or giving a sale percentage off of the total bill for spending money at their stores.
Tax cuts can be a good thing provided they are in the industries that show real growth potential and are willing to make sure that their companies have what is needed to grow which would be a workforce that is compensated in ways to keep the companies potential growing, this would include salary and health care incentives along with offering various ways of letting their employees save for their retirement.
It would be very short sighted to give blanket tax cuts or credits to everyone within certain income brackets or companies which that have really high corporate profits. A blanket tax cut causes animosity for those in lower brackets especially when those individuals and companies choose not to live up to the premise behind those tax cuts in favor for higher short term profits. Any and all tax cuts which are geared towards those upper income and profit levels should be only allowed when they the individuals and companies are geared for long term profits and corporate sustainability rather than the fast cash that would be provided by such cuts without regards to sharing the wealth to those employees that did the bulk of the work in getting the companies to those profit levels.
The economy may be based on supply and demand to a great degree, but due to the rising costs of even the basic necessities of every day life that demand is going down creating problems for those companies who are producing products based on past demographics, causing those companies to shrink their work force due to a lack of money coming in but that is just a short term fix and ends up hurting those companies long term due to the fact they are adding to the problem by forcing those employees to go on unemployment or take lower paying jobs which causes their former employees to by less of that product if it is an everyday item used by their employees.
We also need to be looking at expanding on industries which can take our economy in new and more productive directions in regards to bringing in new taxes for the local, state and federal government while producing a product that can produce positive job and salary growth. A good deal of this would be to better educate people in general and retraining people to help be productive enough in those industries that need trained people to further the growth potential for the companies. These would be the types of industries where tax breaks and credits would be helpful especially if they are set up be given to those companies willing to train or send their workers to school to learn the needed skills.
All tax cuts for companies and corporations should be set up on an incentive basis geared toward helping the employees rather than helping the pockets of those high up in the chain of command. Ways of setting up the tax breaks should be like giving tax breaks to those companies and industries that provide education incentives for their employees and more of a tax break if these industries and companies are willing to provide education incentives for their employee’s immediate families.
For those companies that have the ability to allow their employees to use public transportation instead of driving should have tax breaks in place if they have position where the hours of operation for the position fall with in the hours of operation for the public transit system and the company actively promoting the public transportation system, allowing the companies to take advantage of the same or similar laws that make it attractive for the employees to utilize the public transit systems.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
thoughts on water and energy
With the ever worsening oil prices and the water shortages that are becoming more common place and more apparent we have to start looking at new ways of doing things that require less water being used for non environmental purposes, while increasing the drinkable water with limiting the amount of oil based products to clean the water.
We know that eventually we will have to do large scale water desalinization but most people in a place to make sure it actually happens doesn’t see a real need at this time even though we are starting to show a real need now instead of the timetable that the people in power foresee the need.
We also have a real problem with actually desalinating the water due to how energy intensive it is to do desalinate the water and the most efficient power source we currently have is fossil fuels. We have a real need to desalinate the ocean water and a real need to start using the energy sources that are not fossil fuels in larger scales that are already in the mainstream for power generation.
Those energy sources that look promising and that are far enough along in their testing to attempt a commercial venture should be put into commercial use so that we can benefit from the power generation and to allow their developers to see where the real life can and should be for that specific power source.
With that in mind we need to use hydro, solar, wind and alternative power sources to power any and possibly all water desalinization plants with making sure that any heat generated during this process is also used for the water desalinization process through some sort of heat recovery system. We should also think about how to utilize any point where steam needs to be vented as a power source as well along with trying to recapture that escaping water to some degree.
If the power generation exceeds the needs of the water desalinization plants then that power should be diverted to the local municipalities or to the National Grid to offset any power generation that would otherwise be needed for that area. This would permit the power plants to use less of the needed fossil fuels that fuel the power generation.
Also find ways of designing newer power plants that take advantage of the commercialization of those alternate fuel sources in an attempt to move away from fossil fuels and to learn how to make those alternate fuel sources more reliable and more efficient in real life applications, while utilizing hydro power where available, along with solar and wind sources that would all tie in together to produce the energy for the given area.
Moving away from fossil fuels is a hard sell for everyone who is by nature accustomed to using them but everyone needs to realize that in the short term it isn’t as profitable due to having to start the mass production of some of the sources of energy and to build power plants that utilize non fossil fuel energy sources as their primary source of fuel.
With the way oil futures and prices are going which will oil be the most cost effective in producing the energy needs for the industrialized world in a few years?
We know that eventually we will have to do large scale water desalinization but most people in a place to make sure it actually happens doesn’t see a real need at this time even though we are starting to show a real need now instead of the timetable that the people in power foresee the need.
We also have a real problem with actually desalinating the water due to how energy intensive it is to do desalinate the water and the most efficient power source we currently have is fossil fuels. We have a real need to desalinate the ocean water and a real need to start using the energy sources that are not fossil fuels in larger scales that are already in the mainstream for power generation.
Those energy sources that look promising and that are far enough along in their testing to attempt a commercial venture should be put into commercial use so that we can benefit from the power generation and to allow their developers to see where the real life can and should be for that specific power source.
With that in mind we need to use hydro, solar, wind and alternative power sources to power any and possibly all water desalinization plants with making sure that any heat generated during this process is also used for the water desalinization process through some sort of heat recovery system. We should also think about how to utilize any point where steam needs to be vented as a power source as well along with trying to recapture that escaping water to some degree.
If the power generation exceeds the needs of the water desalinization plants then that power should be diverted to the local municipalities or to the National Grid to offset any power generation that would otherwise be needed for that area. This would permit the power plants to use less of the needed fossil fuels that fuel the power generation.
Also find ways of designing newer power plants that take advantage of the commercialization of those alternate fuel sources in an attempt to move away from fossil fuels and to learn how to make those alternate fuel sources more reliable and more efficient in real life applications, while utilizing hydro power where available, along with solar and wind sources that would all tie in together to produce the energy for the given area.
Moving away from fossil fuels is a hard sell for everyone who is by nature accustomed to using them but everyone needs to realize that in the short term it isn’t as profitable due to having to start the mass production of some of the sources of energy and to build power plants that utilize non fossil fuel energy sources as their primary source of fuel.
With the way oil futures and prices are going which will oil be the most cost effective in producing the energy needs for the industrialized world in a few years?
Monday, June 2, 2008
opinion on job hunting
Since being laid off two months ago due to the company I worked for going out of business, I have found that companies even though they need workers for the few jobs they want filled, for the most part they don't make the application process easy.
I have found that most companies that are willing to pay anywhere near what I would need to make expect you to apply online. Most of those companies I have found don't make it easy to apply either. some have questionaires that are as much as eighty to one hundred questions long just to be able to sumbit your resume, while others don't make it easy to navigate their careers pages.
I did however find that a handful of companies who have career pages online would still prefer you to go into one of their locations and submit an actual application. so far most of them you actually had to print out the application then fill it out, I did find one place that I just had an interview with that their application once downloaded you could open up on your computer and fill out any information that has the ability to be typed in. I wish all companies set their downloadable applications like that, due to looking more professional than an application that had been filled out by hand
I have found that most companies that are willing to pay anywhere near what I would need to make expect you to apply online. Most of those companies I have found don't make it easy to apply either. some have questionaires that are as much as eighty to one hundred questions long just to be able to sumbit your resume, while others don't make it easy to navigate their careers pages.
I did however find that a handful of companies who have career pages online would still prefer you to go into one of their locations and submit an actual application. so far most of them you actually had to print out the application then fill it out, I did find one place that I just had an interview with that their application once downloaded you could open up on your computer and fill out any information that has the ability to be typed in. I wish all companies set their downloadable applications like that, due to looking more professional than an application that had been filled out by hand
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