Author: Doug McCaughan
Father of 5.
Juggler.
Ticked off at blogger.com.
Saturday in the middle of April
It is a beautiful weekend…which I will be spending on the computer. And tax paperwork. And slipping in some cleaning. And medicating the animals.
I would like to be shopping for a new car, working on the yard, working on the house, gardening, adventuring with the children, etc. Such is adulthood.
Today begins a new chapter in my children’s lives
The state of TN is at war with public education. They are out to destroy public education and my youngest two children are on the front lines. We are testing our children to stupidity. The teachers have no time to provide a quality education because we are constantly prepping for the next test. I am pro-gadget, pro-electronic and want my children absorbed in this fascinating digital world with their easy access to all of humanity’s knowledge. However, my ten year old’s generation is suffering as the first generation to be raised from birth with screens in front of them. Their craving for information and multitasking is on par with a cocaine addict, alcoholic, or gambler.
I personally have fallen. I have failed to dedicate time to my children. Today changes that. Today we began meditation and reading aloud (Jonathan Livingston Seagull). Today we began to learn about First Things First with a discussion of the four quadrants and how to live in Quad II. Today is a good day and will be followed by so many more.
Virtual reality has arrived
Not nude but boobies: https://gfycat.com/FixedTightCobra
Formula to create a fascist state
It occurred to me last night that my entire adult life has been an experiment to convert America to a fascist state. How do you that?
- Change the economic system such that the bulk of the populace has to work two or more jobs to make ends meet. This takes away their time for family, self-improvement, self-satisfaction, self-education, personal satisfaction, personal growth, and health. If all the adults in the household are too busy to interact with their children, they cannot further their children’s education and their children grow up disconnected and lacking human empathy.
- Dumb down the public education system by placing an emphasis on testing instead of knowledge.
- Pit the common people against each other. This is easy since they have been dumbed down and lack empathy.
- Create more laws to reinforce 1, 2, and 3. This becomes easy since the public is not educated enough to understand what is happening and they have become divided upon their differences in race, religion, and philosophy.
This is the experiment we living in America.
From the mouths of babes
Me: "I love you Amy. You are awesome!"
Amy: "Thanks. It runs in the family."
From the mouths of babes
Evan, 10 years old: "Dad, I need you to do me a favor?"
Me: "Okay."
Evan: "My friends want you to draw one of those pictures on my lunch bag for the field trip tomorrow."
Our spaceship
I imagine our ancestors’ conversations went something like this:
Scientist 1: “We should explore the universe.”
Engineer 1: “How? It’s so large it would like multiple hundreds of lifetimes.”
Engineer 2: “We’d need a space ship. That could hold a lot of water. I mean like 71% water.”
Scientist 1: “Ok. What about food?”
Engineer 1: “The space ship needs to hold lots of food. Generations of food. Means that we cannot package it. Has to be renewable. That means soil, fertilizer, a lot that water. Oh, and animals. The animals are a food source as well as fertilizer generators.”
Engineer 1: “Damn this is going to require a lot of energy.”
Engineer 2: “That’s easy. Fusion!”
Engineer 1: “That would have the side affect of killing all the people, animals, and plants and contaminating or evaporating all the water.”
Engineer 2: “Not if the Fusion happens off of the space ship.”
Engineer 1: “Off the space ship? That would have to be like 92.96 million miles OFF the space ship!”
Scientist 2: “This sounds great but wouldn’t astroids pose a treat to our space ship?”
Engineer 1 and 2 in unison: “We’d build shielding of course.”
Engineer 1: “Is the Jupiter project still being researched?”
Engineer 2: “It’s ready for production.”
Scientist 1: “Jupiter project?”
Engineer 2: “Basically you take hydrogen gas and package it in an oblong sphere that is approximately 88,846 miles in diameter and gravity will pull all the nearby astroids into the gas cloud obliterating the treat to our space ship.”
Scientist 1: “How do we move the space ship?”
Engineer 1: “We predetermine a course. You will get one relatively straight line so chose wisely. This ship is going to have so much mass that changing direction will be implausible. We will use the fusion energy source as the engine to move the spaceship along.”
Scientist 2: “The energy source that is 92 million miles from the space ship?”
Engineer 2: “92.96 million miles. Yes. That energy source is so massive that its gravity will pull the space ship and the shielding along with it. All we have to do is start with a large explosion, a big bang, to move the energy source along our predetermined path.”
Scientist 1: “Can we have two space ships?”
Engineer 1: “Sure! Tell you what. We can configure them slightly different. And call one Earth.”
Engineer 2: “And the other Mars! That way if one fails, our species continues to explore.”
Scientist 2: “Will the supplies last?
Engineer 1: “Just in case, let’s throw in 11 more supply ships. Each one can be responsible for a raw material that the primary two space ships may need for subsistence. Let’s call them Mercury. Venus. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Neptune. Pluto, Hercules, Apollo, Zelus, and Priapus.”
Scientist 2: “Make it so number one.”
My head throbs
My head throbs because it is raining outside and I want to be putting down lye and grass seed. My head throbs because I want to go back to yesterday morning and do yesterday completely different. My head throbs because I need to be working on my client’s work but I want to be writing. My head throbs because I have not yet had coffee. My head throbs because I want to be cleaning my house and making repairs. My head throbs because I have dreams I cannot, will not ever fill. My head throbs because I want to be doing my taxes. My head throbs because I am thinking about anything except what I am doing.
May the children and their children be so much better than me
At some point, I just need to accept that I’m a horrible person and hope that perhaps my children can rise above and not be anything like me.
The great destructor of all happy
I fell…
From the mouths of babes
Me to wife: "You’ve made me old with snapchat."
Disembodied 10 year old voice from the back of the house: "Yeah, you are old" "hahaha!" "Get wrecked." "W-r-e-k-e-d"
I play the lottery for fun
Sometimes I see a little fantasy in purchasing a lottery ticket. When I do play, usually I buy a Powerball or Megamillions since the numbers are huge and the dreams match in scale. I rarely buy scratch offs. This week I purchased a $5 scratch off ticket. I enjoyed revealing the numbers needed to be matched and then uncovering the individual numbers. This ticket won $25! Great return on investment. Did I keep the money? An extra $20 in my pocket? NO! $5 was the cost of admission. I purchased a $25 scratch off. Who does that?! $25! I proceed to scratch off the numbers needed to match. Then I under cover each of the potential matching numbers. Sure enough one hits. I uncover the prize to reveal $10. But I’m confused. A friend once told me a winning ticket will never be less than the value of the ticket. Ah, a 2nd number matched! Another $10. Still less than the $25 cost of the ticket. And then a third hit. This $25 ticket turned into a $30 winner. $5 bonus. Wait, my initial investment was $5 so I’m $25 ahead! Do I quit? Of course not. I paid my $5 for this ride. So I turn the ticket in for a $30 scratch off. Alas, my luck ran out and no numbers matched. Was I disappointed? Initially but then I remembered I paid only $5 and received far more than that in the pleasure of playing the game. I walked away $5 poorer rather than $25 richer but I had fun and that is why I occasionally play the lottery.
Today a great man died
My father-in-law passed away today. This note will serve to hold this spot until I can wrangle the whirlwind of thoughts speeding through my mind and put them to words.
29 days in February! Let the mass unfollowings end.
2016 is a Leap Year meaning there are 29 days in February and mass unfollowing of friends occur as United States politics flood the social media networks.
As a reminder, citizenship is not passive. We have a civic duty to participate in politics to shape our nations. That includes voicing dissenting opinions among our peers. An informed citizenry can better shape its respective nation. When the citizenry, particularly the proletariat, can be convinced to not be bothered, corporations and politicians can more easily control the people.
If we decry political discussions on Facebook or other social media as a reason to block people or unfriend others, we are doing nothing less than putting our fingers in our ears and chanting nah nah nah nah nah.
We make progress by listening to ideas foreign to our own. A business meeting where everyone walks into a room and nods heads in agreement and pats each other on the back is a waste of meeting space and salaries. An echo chamber where everyone else says the same thing we already think does not further a cause. Both cases are nothing more than pep rallies and bandwagons.
A diverse population will never be in complete agreement. John Lydgate said, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” If the Left implemented all of their philosophies with blatant disregard for the Right, you would have a significant portion of the population displeased and vice versa. Politics is about finding a happy medium where the Right and the Left find a middle ground which somewhat pleases both extremes. Our politician’s job is to seek this middle ground!
An elected official is supposed to represent the people; not just the people who agree with that politician’s ideals. A Congressman is a professional and should be willing to approach a vote with a Yea to represent its constituents’ wishes even when that Congressman’s personal beliefs say Nay. Consider your representatives’ histories as you go into the voting booths.
Regarding the political arena and social media, I implore you to resist the urge to take a dislike to someone you follow or even go so far as to block or unfollow them over their political posts. Instead, engage them. I did not say “insult them” or “fight with them” or “troll them.” Engage them. Be inquisitive. Try to understand their position even if they are unwilling to give you the same courtesy. Let’s make politics civil again.
