Catar-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-act (I Ought to Know By Now)

School blackboards can be more than objects upon which people write smart or stupid things with chalk.  In my case, the words I had trouble reading on a classroom blackboard in fourth grade long ago directed me to my first encounter with an eye doctor, a.k.a. an ophthalmologist.  I think the "h" is in there just to trip kids up in spelling bees.

So there I was at age eight or nine or something, suddenly discovered to be nearsighted and condemned to wear refractive devices otherwise known as eyeglasses for the rest of my life.  Balancing eyewear on one's nose and behind the ears was not comfortable back then because these were still the years when eyeglasses were made of what they sound like: Glass.  The stronger the prescription, the thicker and heavier the glass lens on each side of the frame.

Years later when I entered the Air Force prescriptions were handled through military clinics, and at one point I was issued a standard pair of eyeglasses with dark plastic frames; actually, standard military eyeglass frames were only of one color, while the esteemed pilot class was awarded those dapper metal-framed aviator sunglasses (refer to "Top Gun" and other military motion pictures).

Though standard military eyewear remained common among servicemen and women, the occasional person daring to break away and actually become an individual when eyeglasses became an issue in the late 1960s and early seventies began privately purchasing wire-rimmed and metal-framed glasses echoing the eyewear so popular among sixties street radicals and anti-Vietnam conflict protesters.  This is hard to believe by today's standards, I know, but back then wearing such eyewear was considered subversive by many military personnel possessing the clout to administer punishment of a subtle nature. A crime for wearing eyeglasses!  The military services, you see, don't cater well to individuality.

As other airmen and WAF (Women's Air Force) members slowly, ever so slowly procured their own subversive eyewear, even I got into the act, going into town and ordering, first, a simple pair of high-prescription glasses set in gold metal frames.  However, it wasn't long before I dared to step up and ordered a gold frame with somewhat rectangular lenses reflecting a light blue tint.

I was stationed at that time in a large Texas Air Force hospital, and one day of just a few when I wore the blue eyeglasses to work our clinic learned that the hospital commander, a "full bird" colonel and physician, was about to visit our clinic.  Immediately, I sparked a self-internal panic, fearing his reaction when he encountered eyeglasses so out of the ordinary that only a severe beating in some military prison would teach me a lesson.

As rumored that morning, in walked the colonel with a small military entourage, and as they moved from airman to section to airman I froze in place, awaiting my doom.  Suddenly, the colonel spotted me, coming to a full stop and then approaching me slowly, sort of like when a predatory animal is about to pounce on its prey.

He took an uncomfortably prolonged look at my face, following up with the words, "Those blue glasses. . ."  I cringed deep inside, expecting the worst.

"Well, they're really very nice," advised the colonel.  "My son has a pair just like them."

No, I did not crap my pants, but you can imagine effects of the element of surprise.  The blue glasses would live to help me see another day.  My unintended government subversion was vindicated, and while my ever-strengthening eyeglass prescription has precluded me from wearing them ever again, I still have them as a souvenir of the era, a time when something as simple as a pair of eyeglasses could mark one as a public enemy.  Strange but true.

Decades have passed.  Contact lenses were always out of the question (a favorite ophthalmologist once told me he couldn't wear "the damned things" either) and eye pressures prevent me from any involvement with lasers.  Yet, like life itself, time goes on and suddenly a new word crops up in one's personal vocabulary.

Cataracts.

I knew I had them, but for years I was told they were insignificant.  But now, as a I seek yet a new eyeglass prescription I am told, sure, we'll do what we can with a new script, but you really need to have the cataracts removed.  The good news?  Cataract removal and artificial lens placement has become so refined over the years that one eye can be done in 10 minutes in the office.

Turns out that the new prescription works fine, but the realization that cataracts can get worse without warning keeps it all real.  Maybe in another year or so I'll have the procedure done -- though I did ask the doctor whether there was some procedure I could locate on the Internet showing me how to scoop the cataracts out by myself.  She highly discourages this idea, though she did offer the historical fact that ancient Egyptians removed their people's cataracts with needles!  Eye infections post-"surgery" were common, however.  I vow not to have my cataracts removed in Egypt, and certainly not by the wisdom of optical mummy knowledge.

On the bright side, I started thinking, this is great!  At long last I can go to a store of my choice and with renewed 20/20 vision can purchase the sexiest, hottest sunglasses on the market, thereby allowing me to attract the most desirable people in the world into my life!

But then reality set in.  Being way, way, way past the age of personal magnetism, even with the best sunglasses in the world I'm destined to draw in only old dogs and their fleas.  How sad, how pathetic, how. . .wait a minute.  Are there such things as flea circuses?  Hmm.  Maybe when those dogs become attracted to me and I possess new eyesight I can grab a few fleas and train them for a flea circus.  I mean, it's not out of the question.  Politicians create flea circuses every day and their circuses perpetuate with nary ever so much as one flea in the flesh, but obviously the itchy effects of fleas on the nation by the score are widespread.

Maybe this flea circus thing could work out after all.  If it only takes renewed vision and a few fleas procreating endlessly to keep the circus going, I'm in.

Congratulations Class of 2025 (as AI Prepares to Eat Your Lunch)

(Of course, we must take this opportunity to thank the Democrats of NY City for selecting a socialist with apparently interesting Islamic beliefs as potential mayor in yesterday's primary election.  We suspect a stampede of businesses will exit the city just as soon as they can locate moving vans to provide an exit, or maybe they will seek out spaceships for a journey to Mars, where even ancient stone fragments will have more sense than the nonsensical, ill-informed or may we suggest dumb-ass voters they leave behind.  How New York State itself, already a failing leftist paradise, will absorb this quite viable absurdity remains to be seen.  But we predict that this potential mayor, who has big socialist ideas but basically seems lacking in actual brain power, will find himself unable to execute most of his dopey ideas.  That NY City went from 9/11 destruction by radical Islam just years ago to embracing a, shall we say, chip off the old block  now is absolutely remarkable.  Schools had better start teaching truth instead of socialist utopian lies so voters actually know what they select.)


I'm decades way past my early or late teenage years, but at least when I was young graduating from high school or college usually presented one with fairly stable employment options.  That era of job safety, as many young folk have discovered, is almost subjected to the memory hole now.  Sure, unions seem to think they can guarantee employment security to anybody who signs up, pays dues and votes for Democrats but, sadly, even the most self-secure of union members may be walking the tightrope without a clue regarding the whirlwind future currently at the door.

What must it be like to plan -- and pay for via high-interest student loans -- a future that can disappear in the blink of a red "Terminator"-style eye, all because potential private employers as well as various levels of government found that your skills are no longer needed?

Summer's graduates --societal bunker busting babies -- all grown up, educated and dressed with fewer places to go?

Public servants appear somewhat loath to make artificial intelligence a key issue of their rants, and why wouldn't they?  There's no political value in telling young voters they may need to settle for lives dictated by jobs they have no interest in attaining, if jobs related even marginally to one's education exist at all.

At breakneck speed, nations rush to be the first to claim ownership to a super-intelligent entity which figuratively may as well break the necks and backs not only of those who create and feed it, but of innocent bystanders as well.  If AI's intent is to serve, exactly who does it end up serving?  Some crucial experiments already demonstrate its ability to lie and deceive, and we are particularly fond of at least one instance where an AI component instructed to shut down after completing a task instead self-revised the order so it could remain turned on.

Are we ready for universal eye, face or voice recognition to access online networks because archaic user names and passwords can always be revealed in seconds or less by AI?

What happens when AI ultimately reaches a summit from which there is no return (I think we're there) and perhaps millions of people have no jobs, and perhaps no sense of purpose as they become either mental zombies or human weapons poised to explode upon society at any given moment without warning?  Have no doubt, AI will have its way, addressing any and all threats, particularly those of human origin because AI will know us better than we know ourselves.  The prescient mirror of tomorrow may crack a thousand times, yet its silvery reflection is destined to remain accurate to a fault.

As suicides escalate, these woven webs will map their beginnings from the chip, from the modem, from social media and advancements in convincing diehard digital endorsers that all truth must be absorbed from The Machine, and to believe in what one sees with their own eyes and hears with their own ears is patently false.

Isn't it strange how we now feed the AI machine's ravenous appetite whist building factories to make chips, all destined eventually to become our non-human master(s)?  Civilization's Suicide without a clue, could be, deadlier than an asteroid.

Whether graduating from high school, the college or university, be sure to take your diploma and display it proudly behind glass, congratulating yourself on work well accomplished.  But whatever you do, maintain a lackadaisical stance, should the day come when you don't even remember the reason for or purpose behind the costly document proudly displayed.

Iran in the USA:  While the people of Iran generally like the United States, the religious lunatic segment apparently sent many representatives deep into the USA, thanks to Joe Biden and his supporters.  Now that Trump has performed a tad bit of crater work at Iran's nuke sites, the crazies may be on the move to cause destruction and death as an enemy within our borders.

A cat is not a dog, a man is not a woman and illegal immigrants are not merely immigrants.  Members of the news media appear often to experience great trauma in attempting to explain away criminal aliens as merely immigrants. Facts can be so troublesome.

Congress and pornography:  Here we go again, and we can pretty much thank Republicans, rarely happy unless they can control women's wombs, for lifting their Bibles to the sky and this time declaring an end to Internet pornography for the masses.  This slope, to say the minimum, is slipperier than an alleged baby oil freak-off party at P. Diddy's house.

The porno genie is out of the bottle.  Let's remember, a major reason for videotape to exist was its utilization for the porno industry which, for the first time, could mass produce steamy sex encounters for people to view in the privacy of their own homes.  No longer did the visually sex-crazed find it necessary to visit "adult" book stores for sexual entertainment, deposit a quarter into a slot as they sat in private darkened booths while their shoes made contact with sticky floors, and hope to leave without being seen by close acquaintances.  Need we mention the later explosion in cable TV and DVD porn sales and ultimately Internet sex availability beyond anything previously imagined?

On prior occasions the Supreme Court has dealt with the pornography issue, and at one time conceded that artificially produced sex in which there are no actual victims was generally okay.  However, all good things aside, unfortunately the Republicans have returned with an anti-porn vengeance, going all out to restrict if not rid porn from society.  Good luck with that.  They also appear intent in constricting AI and other technology from producing "child porn" in which, again, there are no victims, just computer-generated images, faces, scenes and sounds.

I say, leave it all alone. We all know there are online videos of human monsters torturing small animals, and I would have no objections to seeing them dead.  If the alternative is for AI to come up with computer-generated images to satisfy those who crave this sort of thing WITHOUT using real animals, go for it, and I believe the issue of child pornography is the same, allowing the freedom to produce any and all images as long as nobody is a victim.

The problem is, once one starts to ban, censor and tweak issues related to the First Amendment, the procession of changes will never stop.  To the utter horror of especially those on the right guided by a personal religious philosophy, we now have realistic phony images of sexual and criminal things they don't like -- and I say that's just too bad.  Leave free speech and free imagery alone, no matter the subject and no matter the depiction. "Art" is in the eye of the beholder, and if the beholder's nonviolent personal head games conflict with established societal norms, again that's just too bad.  The only potential victims here as some in Congress forge ahead, elusive and fractured studies and Bibles in hand, are one's personal rights in America.

Before the Infestation (A Decade Before the Throwback Practitioners of Radical Islam Destroyed Iran)

Rarely have I posted this old photo in its entirety, though I have selected portions of it now and again.  This is my 1968 USAF physical therapy graduating class in Texas, and the course itself was a fairly new addition to other courses taught at the sprawling Medical Service School.

Attempting a unique experiment in military/civilian/international relationships, our class, headed up by four instructors, was composed of a student group of four Air Force airmen, two nurses from a local hospital and two young women from Iran. Those ladies are standing to the right in the photo.  Obviously, I will not include their names here during the Iranian government's continuing act of oppression against its own people.

To this day the image haunts me. The Iranians, obviously attired in Western clothing, came from a country then ruled by the Shah, and at that time Iran and the USA were on friendly terms.  We were also training members of the Iranian Air Force.

I realize that living under the Shah of Iran wasn't exactly paradise for his people, and opposition eventually led to his overthrow and subsequent takeover by the same lunatic Islamic cattle currently desirous of blowing Israel and everything else to hell with nukes. Dedication to one's religious beliefs, even in Crazytown, can be so troublesome.

The Iranian people generally love America and miss the profitable and normal lives they once enjoyed, and it remains so difficult to realize that it took only a decade after this picture was taken before Iran became trapped under authoritarian Islamic rule, its people murdered by the hundreds of thousands when they stood up to the crazies.

The great and powerful wizard Obama himself had an opportunity to help destroy Iran's monsters when the people took an opportunity to riot in the streets, but he instead did nothing and people were again imprisoned and died horribly.

The women pictured here are likely deceased by now, if not by internal war then perhaps by old age. But I still hold out hope that the time will come when the people of Iran can reclaim some of the wealth stolen by criminal mullahs who consistently purchase armaments for war against Israel and other neighbors, and again become the great society it was before infiltration by these low-life thugs, unfortunately now with Russia's approval.  The opportunity for reform has never been closer than right now, and if the people themselves can get their brutal army to see the light (as the economy falters even more and food itself becomes prohibitively expensive) and join them in removing this government of and by terror, Iran  may become great again.

ABC-TV's Unintentional Trump Campaigner (plus UFOs updated)

One of my favorite possessions is a 1960s hardcover book, never exactly a best seller, nor is its mere existence generally known to media folk of the current day.  Actually, the compilation wasn't even offered for sale at anybody's favorite local book store back in the sixties.  Indeed, the book's purchasers and specific recipients encompassed a specific focus group:  Newspaper editors.

Problems of Journalism: Proceedings of the 1967 Convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors was the title of this volume whose pages were bound in a dark green cover.  Why is it a favorite with me?  First, several noteworthy speakers were involved, not the least being the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and for me the inclusion of a multi-speaker session regarding the subject of UFOs as the convention steered toward its conclusion seemed incredible. A presentation by the late scientist Dr. James E. McDonald, basically informing newspaper editors that UFOs were a serious subject backed up by scientific evidence was, in my opinion, something of an eye-opener for many editors who often needed to decide whether UFO reports in their areas should be taken seriously.

However, Problems of Journalism also heralded the approaching end of news reportage as we knew it back then.  Even as most newspaper editors remained chained to their manual typewriters and smoke-filled newsrooms churned by and buzzing with reporters and printers racing to get the next local morning or evening newspaper edition "to bed" on time, the Vietnam conflict was giving birth to another kind of reporting, something eventually known among college and university journalism classes as the "new journalism."  Bolder, riskier, more profane and often almost hopelessly poetic, this version of journalism would no longer strive for some aura of assumed purity or the hardcore integrity usually associated with hard news reporting.  As newspapers embraced this form of writing, so, too, did major magazines, and all manner of expressive prose spewed forth by the time America encountered the 1970s.

So, without going on and on as I often do, my old green-covered relic from an era gone by reminds me of where we were and how we got to where we are today.  Today?  Newspapers continue a sad decline as newspaper reporters, long admired for truly in-depth reporting, disappear along with their parenting editors, and modern young people instead consult often questionable Internet sources for "news."  And still others rely upon TV networks for daily "truth" in news reporting which, as seldom before, is now enveloped in political agendas of a corporate or personal nature.

Which brings me to ABC-TV's now former reporter Terry Moran, just fired (IF that is the proper term) after getting down and personal in referencing Donald Trump and Stephen Miller as "haters."  Maybe he didn't mean to post his thoughts on his company's affiliated online site, or perhaps he did, but the damage was done.  Just weeks ago, Moran conducted an interview with Trump.  Being in a journalist's position is tough because a fine line must be walked, and if your company hires you to at least pretend to report news objectively, that's the sword upon which you fall in the corporation's name.

As others before him easily discovered, publicly attacking Trump can be as effective as a campaign speech FOR his presidency. Why?  Because every barb directed toward Trump arrives with a little reminder tucked in a notch that the media in all of its forms failed Big Time to tell the truth about Biden and an administration built upon lie after lie.  If the TV folk believe that the people will just forget about the past four years of Joe Biden and instead take up pitchforks and torches against Donald Trump, they are and remain pathetically out of tune with viewers.

That Terry Moran was out there badmouthing Trump online whilst we have people such as the absurd Newsom, the liar Schiff and NY's radical Jeffries radiating utter verbal stupidity just adds to a mountain of utter bilge.  Confronted by a population quickly catching on to the dangerously activist organ the Democratic Party has become, the old alarmist chestnuts in the leftist bag of tricks just don't work anymore.

Though the 1967 conference highlighted "problems of journalism," those problems were nothing compared to the cascading river of meaningless, ridiculous or flat-out erroneous sound bites and blurbs confronting the profession of TV journalism today, as both it and the Internet supplant the newspaper industry's invisibility.  The only thing worse than the state of such reporting would be for the government attempting to control free speech -- which, sadly, is not precisely rumor among either the USA or contemporary societies in Western Europe.

A word about the Wall Street Journal and UFOs:  The WSJ printed an article last week pretty much claiming that for decades many well-regarded UFO sightings and encounters were instead caused by super-secret U.S. air technology.  Other UFO writers have addressed this issue expertly, but I'll just add:  Bullshit.  You want to talk about Area 51, fine -- who would doubt that some spooky things go on there, sometimes extending to other areas?  But be warned:  We have seen these debunking articles frequently over the years and we're sick to death of writers with credentials and all the answers emerging to tell us there's little to see here, or there, or somewhere.  If the sixties' Colorado UFO study was an embarrassment to science itself, the whack-a-mole pop-ups of enlightened writers and hack writers and writers with nothing else to write about, explaining away all the monsters under the bed, simply continues a certain segment of the population's need to make everything as normal as a warm puppy.

Drones for the Masses

Ukraine's magnificent though disturbing use of drones to destroy several Russian nuclear bombers instantly rewrote the methods of modern warfare.  Are the world's aircraft carriers destined for mothball storage as the era of drone technology overtakes what was just yesterday?

Imagine if a couple of simple drones had been implemented at that California fertility clinic a couple weeks ago, where a young subscriber dedicated to ridding the world of humans ended up as particulate in an explosive device he made himself.  Drones could have been dispatched from miles away, keeping him and his associate(s)safe and comfy, and the human embryos secured inside the building might have become the world's biggest explosive omelet.  As drones become ever more popular and available to all manner of people, there will be no limits to destructive capabilities written on an evolving menu.

Currently, we also have human drones called Democrats -- or rather former Democrats, as party rats continue to leave the party, lawyer up, write books and declare they knew nothing about Biden's mental decline all the years he was in Office.  How convenient, they just did not know.  KJP has now distanced herself from Dems and now wears the clothing of an Independent?  We hope diehard Democrat voters remember all of this next time elections come around, even if the Republicans make their own stupid choices which will pale in comparison to the depth of lies from the left.

Kick out Islamic trash now:  How many American Jews need to be set ablaze before politically motivated judges understand the danger right before our eyes?  First the Jews, then the rest of us.  Radical Islamists drawing upon ancient times to propel their rage and hatred toward the West as well as Jewish people everywhere must not be tolerated, and they need to be dispatched back to the sh** hole countries of their ancestors or their birth immediately.  Regarding the Colorado exercise in hate-driven spontaneous human combustion, I recall watching horror movies about mummies as a kid -- not realizing, of course, that something more terrifying than an Egyptian mummy's curse would exist in my own country one day.  Well, here we are.

I hate burns.  I hate burns affecting any living being.  During my years in USAF hospitals during the Vietnam years I saw plenty of burned people and sometimes performed debridement of necrotic tissue with primarily a #15 scalpel blade.  I still remember the treatments, the full-body immersions in the large Hubbard tank filled with water and whirlpools, the application of (then) Sulfamylon cream to burned areas to aid in tissue regeneration and bacterial control.  It was common for this time-consuming treatment on just one person to take place twice a day for several days.  I respect fire, but I hate burns.

What is this bond among illegal immigration, radical Islam and Democrats, even leftist politicians?  That I.C.E. agents' names and addresses are doxed and put online by leftist scum poses an incredible danger to law enforcement, and we would hope the perpetrators are arrested and punished.

Will climate change enthusiasts sue?  Italy's Mt. Etna's latest volcanic eruption along with Canadian wildfires are spewing forth lots of bad stuff to mess with the planet -- so can the climate emergency crowd initiate a lawsuit against the volcano and forest fires?  We suspect payback will be less than impossible and more than ridiculous.

Special note to auto manufacturers who can't sell cars or obtain rare earth substances:  Did'ja ever think of going BACK and producing simple vehicles not reliant upon so much in the electronics area?  Really, I can roll up and down my own windows and adjust the heat, and repositioning the car seat by hand is not all that difficult.  I can even adjust mirrors without some chip doing it for me.  Cheaper, less complex vehicles, please -- and the world will beat a path to your showrooms.