READING IT’S GOOD FOR YOU
March 16, 2014
Jeff and I have decided to put some of our book reviews up on this blog beginning soon. Jeff has read just about three hundred books and reviewed over a hundred he only reviews the ones he liked and thinks other people might enjoy. But today he wants to talk about reading, writing and you imagination. Do you think hat Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Beneath The Sea had anything to do with the invention of Nuclear Submarines or Nuclear power for that matter? I do after all the first Nuclear Sub was named after the one in the book. Writers Imagination has always predicted the future and their ability to tell us about past events have helped us learn about ourselves. But sometime even great nonfiction books can be interpreted to do wrong or be self serving. Look at the Bible and The Koran for examples and some authors use their writing to influence people into their way of thinking Like Che, Mao, Marx, and Lenin not everything they wrote about was bad but how the reader interprets it can make it evil. For how books can predict bad things in the future read Orwell’s 1984 and then look around you. Well I going to close the curtains and put fats back to bed for the day he’s not feeling all that well and we’ll see what we come up with tomorrow. This is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin, Colombia.
ENGINEERING
March 14, 2014
Let’s talk a little bit about engineers and how they affect our life shall we. I don’t really understand the different classes of engineer I do know we aren’t going to be talking about the gut driving the train although we will be talking about trains. For the second time in the last three months the metro system in Medellin is experiencing a shutdown of some of its stations do to the collapse of sections of river bank along which the Metro runs. Engineers are great at building things but they seldom take into consideration things that are outside their discipline in the case of the Metro it’s surprising that they would underestimate the power of water or the effects of vibration on old concrete, but that appears to be the case here. The other possibility is they never sought or listened to geologists that may have said the ground wasn’t as stable as they think. The more news I see the more I’m convinced that Colombia might be a very highly advanced technical country but they seem to not want or don’t a lot of geological expertise. From what I’ve seen they have built roads in slide zones discounted the effects of man on nature and based abound the building techniques I see are short sighted as to how something can last. The area in which we live can be subjected to extreme differences in weather on a daily bases you can wake up to rain in within an hour can have bright hot sun, this is one factor that contributes to the geology of the area the other of course is man. People are constantly causing brush fires which may not damage the trees but do damage to the vegetation that hold the dirt to the side of a mountain. In some cases the erosion is as violent as a mud slide but you watch as a tree here and there falls for apparently no reason or just slides down the side o f a hill. Engineers are not infallible anywhere in the world they have built bridges that have collapsed because the underestimated mother nature. I think all the discipline invoked in an area should have better communication like the guys that design engines for cars and the guys that design the body should talk to the guys that might have to repair or maintain them. Well my ADT is starting so this is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin, Colombia.
IS OR ISN’T IT TRUE
March 13, 2014
There’s a tragic story coming out of New York about the loss of life from what they’re saying is a fire resulting from a gas leak. But I’m just wondering is the gas leak story true or was it something else. Ever since 9/11 I wonder if the news isn’t censored in some way so new terror attacks won’t be called terrorist attacks. I know they called the Boston marathon bomb attack terrorism but they had little choice to many people saw it happen on live TV. Now that doesn’t mean that the incident in NY isn’t what they claim it to be. It wouldn’t be the first time major explosions weren’t caused by gas leaks, it’s just since 9/11 I’m a little skeptical about what the government and the news industry tell us. In the last few years we’ve seen TV and print new have become extremely bias in their support of politicians. I find it hard to believe that with 39 million lost or stolen passports floating around we haven’t let a few nut cases into the country. I guess the government doesn’t want the rest of the country to be paranoid we discover more domestic spying by them. Well this is Flounder, who is always looking over his shoulder, saying CIAO from Colombia.
PAY ATTENTION
March 11, 2014
Over the weekend a Malaysian plane with close to 240 people vanished it was a huge story and was everywhere. Now 5 days later it has become a second rate story and has been replaced by an interview with the father of a killer, a story about how much tax money the state of Colorado has made form pot sales, Elephants and there keen hearing for survival as well as other stories that would have been classified as human interest not really news in the old days. People have developed a very poor attention span now I don’t know if this is caused by information overload from the instant access we have to news, but it would appear that way. There’s nothing wrong with instants access to news it might even save your life, but what people don’t do is discuss the issue and try to form an opinion. They react to whatever information exists in the first few minutes of a story and unfortunately they are likely to say well that’s pretty far away and doesn’t concern me. Well if they had read the details they would of found out for instance that there are 39 million lost or stolen Passports floating around out there and that airlines and airport security don’t check for that. Which means a terrorist or drug dealer or some other criminal could be sitting in the seat next to you on a plane. These little side facts are only found when you get involved in reading the whole story not just the Twitter version. Well my attention is now being drawn to a nap so this is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin Colombia.
NOT MY FAULT
March 7, 2014
Let’s talk about taking responsibility something it appears no one like to do. Governments don’t want to take and individuals don’t either. Look at Venezuela’s president blaming everything that’s wrong in his country on America and its allies. What he should be doing is looking for ways to fix the problems and if still doesn’t want to talk to America that’s fine I don’t think they want to talk to him either. Now here’s an example of an individual; in New Jersey an 18 year old girl is suing her parents for living and educational expenses. You have to know that when she turned 18(which make you an adult in the US) she left home because she didn’t like the rules of the house. Now if you stay at a hotel there are rules you must follow but apparently she felt she since she was 18 she didn’t have to listen anymore and left and now she wants her parents to support her. In both these cases it seems people think it’s easier to pass the buck that to try and resolve the problem. In the case of a country when people get frustrated they just start protest and you know when you put thousands of people together your just asking for trouble. Like in the Ukraine where they ended up having Russian military move in, now some of this can be blamed on unresponsive governments who don’t like to be disagreed with. In the New Jersey case if they were to side with the young lady I’m not sure people would want to have kids. Hey what happened to I Fucked up sorry it was my fault let’s talk this out. Well this is Flounder and I’m taking the rest of today and the weekend off talk to you Monday and this post was all Jeff’s idea CIAO for Medellin. 
WHAT TO YOU THINK?
March 6, 2014
Today I decided to ask the question; what do you think? About what you say anything that comes to mind for instance the Ukraine, the trouble in Venezuela, the weather in California. How about Global warming in general or religion or politics? All these topics have one thing in common there all opinions there are a few empirical facts surrounding all of them but people don’t listen to them it’s more about what they think. Jeff and I have our opinions which we can defend using history and science and when we d owe piss off a whole bunch of people. But what we find difficult to deal with is people who disagree with us but can’t but forth any factual evidence to counter our opinion. Debate is a wonderful way to learn more and get people minds into the subject. When we say debate were not talking about a political one where the questions are all scripted and the participants have time to prepare their answers. It’s our opinion if you’re really passionate about the subject they can defend it without a script. Well that’s our opinion and for once we’re entirely in agreement. This is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin.
NOBODY KNOWS HOW TO TALK ANYMORE
March 5, 2014
Let’s talk about the use and abuse of social networking and before you say don’t you use social networking the answer is yes we do. But we don’t walk around with a smart phone or tablet and constantly tweet or post to any of the other mobile social networks. We use Facebook as way to stay in touch with our friends and family in the US. Twitter started out the same way but now we use it to promote this Blog and Jeff’s books. You must understand Jeff comes from a generation where you either waited till you got home or went over to your friend’s house and talked in person. Jeff has been in social situations where everybody is texting and he wonders what’s so important that it can’t wait. He would become bored with the other person if they kept texting about every little thing. He understand the business use but people should realize that unless you have a lie detecting app on your phone you can’t really tell the emotional meaning of the comments being texted to you. Jeff has probably only used text twice in his life he doesn’t really use his cell phone he has it for the original reason he got his first one emergency situations. Jeff also realizes this is probably a generational thing although he’s very tech savvy. Jeff just doesn’t really care what you’re doing at this moment and thinks texting while there are people having a conversation with you is rude. But he is old so you’ll have to take that into consideration. I could go on manly because it’s fun to make fun of humans and there electronic gadgets. They better hope the power grids and internet never collapse because they wouldn’t have a clue how to talk to each other. This is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin.
SPORTS TIME
March 4, 2014
I think we’ll talk about sports today everything else is way too depressing. In America Baseballs Spring training is in full swing and Jeff doesn’t care. The College basketball season is winding down to march Madness time. Hockey (yes that is a sport) is get ready for the playoff which I think go almost to July same for pro Basketball. And this week there are a bunch of what is referred to as friendlies involving the World cup teams Colombia plays Tunisia. Portugal, Argentina, and others will be pulling there players from the Leagues there in to play for their respective National teams. They have these games so the players can get used to playing with each other since like I said they play in other countries for money. When these teams get to the world cup it’s hard to pick a favorite because some teams are never really seen during the year. Like Japan or Korea so you really don’t know that much about their players and they have a different approach to The World cup because their players aren’t out making millions of dollars playing on European teams. They say Colombia is one of the favorites but right now there best player is trying to make a miraculous recovery from major knee surgery to be ready for the cup. I hope he doesn’t end up ruining his career by trying to come back so fast. The World cup stars in May and we’ll be posting about that and the rest of the sports in the future, that is of course if no one blows up the planet in the mean time. This is Flounder saying CIAO from Medellin.
THE BULLY IS BACK
March 3, 2014
Here we go Russia is invading to Crimea and the rest of the world is upset and telling them to stop. Yeah that’ll work if it does it will be a first for them. When Russia gets mad a t the US and says don’t do that we do it anyway do you expect them to stop. Putin and some of the top people in that country want to see the Soviet Union make a comeback. This world is so screwed up everybody want s power Religions want to tell you what’s right political parties want to tell you what’s right the guy next door wants to tell you what’s right. The problem is you can’t just pull your head into your shell and ignore all this shit because the world has reached a point where we need each other if we’re going to survive. But of course if you try to tell people this you’re labeled crazy. I have no idea what’s going to happen in the Crimea but it looks like the old bullies are trying to make a comeback. I just hope they lost all the launch codes for the big stuff. This is Flounder Saying CIAO from peaceful Medellin
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