Another Day

Woke up and The Commander was talking to Cheech on the phone.  Cheech made fun of Kadizzle because he has an Amazon echo.  This is the device you can yell at and say " Alexa, what time is it?".   Cheech pointed out that the father in law has two and does the same thing.  It does seem a little simple minded.

Today we must be sitting in the victory seat. The yard is mowed, the boat is put away for winter, what shall we do?  Could was the truck and car, could walk in circles, could go to a crazy club meeting.  A whole day to waste, and Kadizzle is an expert at wasting a day.

One good thing about this time of year is all the fruits and berries have been harvested.  This means women get desperate and bake apple pies, apple crisp, and so many goodies.  This all works great for Kadizzle to lose some weight.  Yes, I will have ice cream with that pie.

The secret signal.

All of a sudden the brain comes alive. Try as you might you cannot calm it, so you look at the clock beside the bed. The clock says 5:30 A. M.  What the hell may as well get up and have coffee. Hoping for a sane world the coffee is made and it is time to sit down and check out the world. Well, here comes the world. Why not go to facebook and see what the crazies are up too.

Someone make up a crazy story as a joke. They think they are doing a spoof. They put out a story that Hillary has a secret signal for Lester Holt.  When Hillary scratches her nose, Lester is supposed to let her get a zinger in on Trump.  Sure enough the right wing dingers get a hold on this comedy piece and believe it as reality.  Now across the web, the Google, it spreads.  One right wing dinger emails it to another.  What started as a joke is now the documented truth.  Oh no, Kadizzle woke up in the same world where he went to bed.  The idiot population has exploded. Trump can say Ted Cruz's father helped kill Kennedy.  Yup, Trump really did say that.  Do the right wing dingers question such insanity, no, Trump is their guy.  If you want to believe you can get a greaseless hamburger cooker for 19.95 plus handling and shipping, then you are going to believe it. The truth, and even the concept of the truth has evaporated. We live in a scary world where someone makes up something, and everyone who wants to believe it accepts it as fact.  First the Donald said Obama was born in Kenya.  For five years The Donald says Obama's birth certificate was fake. Then one day The Donald says.  Obama is a United States citizen and he was born here.  No one seem to notice what the Old Donald was saying for five years before that.  The Donald will lie to millions of people with the most outrageous lie imaginable, he will contradict himself in the same speech, and people just do not notice.  The Donald said the reason he did not pay the architect for his work on his golf course club house was because the work was unacceptable.  The same Donald goes around telling everyone how beautiful the club house is.  The man is totally nuts, and people just don't notice.

Sparks and fireworks

Kadizzle wakes up like a sloth he blossoms like some kind of skunkweed flower.  Every step is a chore, and he is a lumbering lump of lard. Not so for the Commander.  The Commander jumps out of bed shouting orders like a drill sergeant.  Shut the window, raise the shade, fire the cannon.  You know those fourth of July things that spin and go into the air, that is The Commander in the morning. 

Kadizzle likes to come alive slowly.  The Commander does a flip out of bed and lights every fuse.  Kadizzle tries to concentrate and have a train of thought. The Commander runs in circles barking orders and laying out her plan of attack.  Kadizzle cannot get a whole thought put together before the little bumble bee buzzes and drives the train of thought of the track.  So here we go the spring is wound, and steam is flying out her ears. Cut the grass, polish the camper, go, go, go. 

Taking the pulse

Kadizzle jumped on the bike and checked the pulse of the dingers after the debate.  Information is not important.  Several dingers said they did not even watch the debate.  The concrete in their minds has cured and there is no changing.  The editor of The Hazen Star is a young right wing conservative, however, he knows Trump is nuts and opposes him.  However, he of course has no use for Hillary.  The way it plays out is the Republicans that do read and think will admit, and they do know Trump has mental problems.  Most amazing is the reluctance of anyone to change their mind based on factual information. No matter what Trump does there is some way they can rationalize and go along with his insanity.  The real clincher is Fox News, to the absolute amazement of so many Fox seems to be admitting Trump is hopeless. Now this will take some shake and bake to understand.

Shot out of the saddle.

A sigh of relief. Hillary shot trump out of the saddle in the debate.  Only a hardcore dinger would feel Trump did ok. Hillary threw out the bait and The Donald took it.  The Donald said not paying taxes was good business. The Trumpster is amazing, he can lie so blatantly and his followers just do not notice. Hillary pounded him with the birther issue.  Donald danced and sang, but he got the stage hook.  People are saying, as Trump likes to say,  even Fox News thinks The Donald took some shots that will sink him.  However, when you try to change the mind of a dinger, ain't goin to happen.

There will never be enough wine to save you from the bottom of the glass

Old Kadizzle got up this morning and ran across this song. So much wine is the name of the song. It is by The Handsomes. To really enjoy it, you have to listen with the music. With the commentary and music somehow  you just have to laugh.

I had nothing to say on Christmas Day
When you threw all your clothes in the snow
When you burnt your hair, knocked over chairs
I just tried to stay out of your way

But when you fell asleep
With blood on your teeth
I got in my car and drove away

Listen to me, Butterfly, there's only so much wine
You can drink in one life
But it will never be enough
To save you from the bottom of your glass

Where the state highway starts, I parked my car
I got out and stared up at the stars
As meteors dived and shot across the sky
I thought about your sad, shining eyes

I came back for my clothes
When the sun finally rose
But you were still passed out on the floor

Listen to me, Butterfly, there's only so much wine
You can drink in one life
But it will never be enough
To save you from the bottom of your glass

Monday

Tonight is scary.  It is almost unimaginable that we have a presidential candidate that is such a liar, with such serious mental problems, and so willing to insult, bully, and deceive.  Donald Trump has revealed how many ignorant people exist in our country.  There is no way a person could be exposed to science, logic, reality, history, or common decency and embrace Trump.  All my life I wondered how did the people of Germany fall into the trap of Hitler.  Right before my eyes the answer is being laid before me. Most Americans do not know Hitler was elected. With lies and hate he was elected.  Hitler told people the exact thing Trump has been saying, he would make Germany great again.  Yup, as Berlin went up in flames did those people who elected Hitler think " Wow, we were complete idiots".

Just like Hitler, Trump wants to blame Muslims, Mexicans, and we all know he is a shill for racism.  We may be about to see Democracy lynched.  So many polite people will not confront those poor people drawn in by the sideshow barker.  You could go up to a confused dinger and do your best to show them that thinking people don't vote for a clown that climbed the ladder to success by demeaning women, war veterans, and anyone who stands in his way.  What could possibly go wrong?

Sailing days are over.

Yesterday the Sovereign came out of the water along with two other sailing vessels.  The season shot by.  Kadizzle has been plowing the waters of Lake Sakakawea since 1984.  For 32 years the wind has been blowing Kadizzle's brains out.  The very first sailing craft was nothing more than an exotic piece of foam with a sail, but it was as much fun as any.  The camping with two little girls started on the Starwind, a 19ft little craft that served our needs and created the addiction for two years.  Next came the Xanadu a 27 foot boat we owned for 12 years.  The kids grew up on that boat and it was one of the best things ever for the whole family.  The Sovereign came into our life in about 1992.  The Sovereign has put a lot of nautical miles on Lake Sakakawea.   Always when reflection on the lake Kadizzle thinks of all the bays he has been in, and to this day so many of the little inlets have not been explored.  The best friends we ever had are sailors.  Sailors are unique, at least the ones that leave the dock. Sailors depend on each other, and that unity is one of the great pleasures.  It is almost like a cult. When two sailors meet friendship is assumed.  Have never seen it fail.  In all these sailing years have never seen a sailor fail to come to the aid of another ship in peril.  The first thing a sailor learns is you have to work with the world.  You don't get to turn the wind on or off, you don't get to pick the direction of the wind.  Sailing, you play the cards you are dealt.  The best magic of sailing is the quietness.  No boom boom of a belching engine interrupting your silent movement through the universe.  So we end up with sayings like " You need to take a different tack" or " I don't like the cut of his jib".  Of course there is the saying " Two sheets to the wind".  God knows just about every sailor has been two sheets to the wind many times.  So the transition is here.  Kadizzle will change into Earth Module mode.  The Earth Module will be loaded and follow the sun south.  The boat will sit and wait in the cold for our return. The Earth will spin and it will start all over.

A Requiem for the American Dream

Old Kadizzle was sitting as usual in front of the television.  A critical part of the day is watching Jeopardy.   This test the function of the brain.  The phone rings and it is Shaneka.  Old Shaneka ask Kadizzle if he knows who Noam Chomsky is.  Kadizzle knows Chomsky strikes terror into the heart of idiots.  In many word battles right wingers will fire out Chomsky as the devil.  Shaneka has just watched a Netflix program " A requiem for the American Dream".  Shaneka insist it is the whole nine yards.  So Kadizzle and The Commander decide to watch Chomsky after the regular news.

Now Kadizzle highly recommends this documentary.  Watching this concise description of what goes on is like blowing the cob webs out of the brain.  Chomsky points out that the United States was never meant to be a country that promoted equality.  Now this seems impossible until you watch the documentary where he underlines what the original thinkers and documents actually say.  Our founding fathers feared the masses and did not want them to have a true democracy.

It is nice to have a breeze go through your mind once in awhile.  The puzzle is how can you present information to someone that contradicts their world view and have it actually change their world view? People love religion because you just believe, you don't question, you don't think, you don't test, you just believe.  How simple, how convenient.  So many times Kadizzle has confronted Mormons, 7th Day adventist and the whole host of believers with logic.  It just will not penetrate.  Now we live in the time of Donald Trump.  The same people who believe there is a carburetor in Detroit that will get 100 mpg, and the oil companies are keeping it off the market, believe in The Donald.  Facts, history, information, logic, statistics don't matter.

Over and over the thought kept going through Kadizzles mind.  What if you sat beside a hard core right wing Republican and watched this documentary, what would happen in their mind?  Of course the answer is nothing.  So many times Kadizzle has handed Mormons a book that totally refutes their insanity, what happens?  Nothing.  Give a person a well researched set of information that reveals the fraud of their thinking, what happens?  They run into their safe place and blame the devil for trying to open their eyes to reality.  That cocoon feels so good.

A poem to watch and listen too.

Go to this youtube

If you want to wake up your brain, and really enjoy some poetry watch this video.  Bob Dylan hits it out of the ball park.  Dylan says in one poem what Kadizzle wanted to say in two thousand post.

The definition of stubborn

Frequently old Kadizzle gets into a kerfuffle with someone on the other side of an issue.  How do you get someone to consider a different point of view?  Sometimes when you read something from an authoritative source you just have to say " Well, I guess I was wrong".  Now Kadizzle thought he might have a solution. Kadizzle went to a friend on the other side of the fence and said "  If you read this article I will donate $20 to your church".   All you have to do is read the article and underline the parts of the article you think are untrue or wrong.  The good church going fellow crumpled up the article and handed it back.  No way was he going to read anything he disagreed with, even if it meant some poor person might benefit from such a simple act.  Today Kadizzle made the same offer.  The results have not come in yet, but the results are predictable.  People do not want to even consider evidence that contradicts firmly held beliefs.  People gather information.  The Commander and Kadizzle have both worked for the Census.  We went door to door and gathered information about peoples income, jobs, and other information. Many organizations gather real data.  You can find out how many people donate blood, you can find out if the rich or poor pay more in taxes, you can find out if the rich or poor donate more to charity.  The IRS puts out data.  They do not make it up.  The State of North Dakota will release information gathered in a careful manner.  So there is such a thing as reliable, real information.  Do most people on welfare work?  You can find out.  On a percentage basis do the rich pay more or less to charity?  You can find out.  Do Canadians like their health care?  You can find out.  

One of the simplest ways in the world to get information is to gather it yourself.  Kadizzle for years has done two surveys.  Kadizzle often ask strangers " Do you know people making over $118,000 don't have to pay any social security on that money earned over $118,000".  Kadizzle has found out most people are unaware of the cap.  Kadizzle has interviewed 95 Canadians about their views on health care.  90 them said they would not give up their system for ours.  So what do you do when you seek the truth?  Do you tune in Rush Limbaugh,  do you believe Donald Trump, do you find someone who you think will agree with you?

The other day Kadizzle was trying to polish his Earth module.  In his mind he wondered which polish worked best.  A friend said this stuff called Flitz worked best.  Kadizzle tried it side by side with the old 3M product he often used.  Looking at it the 3M seemed to work far better.  You can actually test things.  An important question is where did you get your answer?  Trump always says " People say, or I heard".  When people cannot point to the source of their information or it turns out to be a bogus survey like the NRA does you have a problem.  What is a bogus survey?  There are statistical and scientific ways to gather information from the public.  There are bogus surveys where you ask people from a certain group a question.  In the end it all comes down to how do you know what you think you know.

Down at the Crazy Club

At the Crazy Club Kadizzle walked in.  Shiny's dog did not seem to recognize old Kadizzle, maybe it was the shower soap with a different smell. Stroupini has been late for just about every meeting this week. As usual Kadizzle had to call him and tell him to report. First order of business was to be prayers for Stoupini's trip west. Stroupini is taking off today for the west coast. Kadizzle would have gone, but the good ship has to come out of the water.  Once the meeting got underway the topic came up of the recent Indian uprising.  This lead to the possibility of having an Indian Casino in Hazen. One major problem no Indian reservation here.  So the Crazy Club cooked up and idea.  Right beside the bank is an empty lot.  Kadizzle would dress up as an Indian Chief and demand the land, that is the empty lot the bank owns, be given back to the Native Americans.  The bank could protest, then give in. Now we have a very small independent nation in Hazen, which of course can have a casino.  More land can be donated back to those it was stolen from and we can have tax free gas, cigarettes, and whatever the reservation can provide.  Now we need to draw the national media into the fray, and soon business will prosper in the smallest Indian nation in the world. As Stoupini pointed out we can demand federal assistance, and all the benefits of being a suppressed people.  Now we do need a name for the tribe.  Locally we have the Mandan, the Hidatsa  and many other tribes. Perhaps we could be Hazandan, or the Hazdatsan.  Hopefully as we dig for the footings for the casino there are no artifacts.

Now the bank will be right next door to the casino.  There will be some slot machines which will accept bank deposits.  There is a catch. Either ten times your deposit will go in the bank, or nothing will. Pull the handle and see what happens. 

The Kadizzle Kastle

An old saying is " A man's home is his castle".  Slowly the Kadizzle home is becoming automated.  Alexa lets us yell at her to give us the weather or an update on the news.  Kadizzle is in the process of setting up Alexa so one can ask to have the lights on or off and so on. It has been nice just to tell Alexa to turn on public radio in the morning while you just lie in bed.  Last night Kadizzle read about the steam engines on the Titanic. Kadizzle did not realize there was a steam turbine that drove one of the props on the Titanic.  Curious about when the Titanic was built,  Kadizzle asked Alexa.  1912 was the answer.  Alexa is the Amazon Echo device that voice connects you to the internet.

So what does the future hold.  Soon we will all become lumps that lay in bed and shout out orders to our toaster, our radio, and our TV.  Nothing did more to turn us into lumps than the automobile.  Of course the television was not far behind. We are evolving into vegetables. No longer will we need to move. Things will come to us. Right now the probability is Kadizzle is a potato.  So Kadizzle sits in the kitchen where his phone controls Sonos, and The Commander has Alexa at her service in the bedroom.

A peculiar question

Warning. To fully understand this diatribe it is critical you read the Richard Dawkins post.  You may want to do that first. Richard Dawkins letter is right below this post.

Two days ago someone asked me the question " Do you think Republicans are stupid?".  How do you decide the intelligence level of anyone?  The ability to admit you are wrong or made a mistake is critical to going forward.  Unless you do you will go down the wrong path for a long time.  Certainly there are a lot of Republicans with great intellect.  Ironically they have denounced Donald Trump.  Some of the best and most prominent conservative commentators have called Trump what he is, a mentally unstable, narcissistic, bully, without the competence to be involved in government.  For over five years Trump has insisted Obama was not an American.  About three days ago Trump unequivocally said Obama was born in our country.  Now, if you still think Trump has an ounce of credibility, and you support him as a Republican, then unfortunately, your intelligence would have to be questioned.

On the state level the Governor, Hoeven, and Cramer all refuse to denounce Trump.  Either they are extremely self serving, or they are ignorant.  If you live in North Dakota and are willing to follow the philosophy of these men who demonstrably have no morals, then your intelligence has to be questioned.

Republicans believe tax breaks for the rich lead to a better life for everyone.  If you examine the economic statistics this idea can clearly be proven wrong with numbers.  The numbers say that the middle class does the best when the rich are taxed the most.  If you absolutely refuse to believe what the numbers say, what would one call you?  Numbers enable people to measure things. You can measure how many children live in poverty, you can measure what the average retirement account for an American holds. When you do the measurements and everyone of them tells you Republican policies do not work, yet you believe in those policies, how do you explain that?

George Bush did unmeasurable damage to our economy.  Now the stock market is a near record highs, the unemployment rate has dropped to a twenty year low.  After electing one of the most ignorant men ever to the presidency, George Bush, would you want another one except worse? Donald Trump has proven to have no expertise in anything.  He sells himself as a great businessman.  The reality is if Trump had invested the money his money in treasury bonds he would have done better.  Trump is the litmus test.

Certainly all conservatives are not ignorant, but no matter what  your political beliefs are you have access to data.  96% of scientist believe from studying data global warming is a real problem and threatens our life on Earth.  If you are willing to go against scientific knowledge and follow people who tell you there is no problem, then your thinking is questionable.  The data shows almost every European country surpasses the United States in education, health care, less gun violence, longevity, infant mortality, and in so many other important aspects of society.  If you simply refuse to believe this, then numbers, and data mean nothing to you.  What do you say about someone who refuses to believe there are 12 inches in a foot?

If you examine anything based on observation, and analysis and you come to a conclusion, you have done the intelligent thing.  However, if more information becomes available, and proves your previous views wrong, yet you refuse to change your conclusion, you have a serious problem.  The simple examination of facts and data show that countries with strict gun laws have fewer gun deaths.  Obama has not take a gun away from anyone. These are simple, provable facts.  If you insist Obama is after your gun, and guns make people safer, then please explain how you came to that conclusion.  If you can give a rational explanation then you are not ignorant, but if you have no explanation based on facts or evidence then your ability to reason is questionable.

Richard Dawkins published one of the best diatribes on truth Kadizzle has read.  It will be republished on this blog.  It is the standard by which Kadizzle judges truth, and intelligence.  In conclusion Kadizzle would say that if you agree with Richard Dawkins dissertation on truth and you are a Republican, then you are not ignorant.  If you feel there is some way to reach truth other than what is laid out by Richard Dawkins then Kadizzle would have to say your intelligence is questionable no matter what your political party.

Richard Dawkins Letter

Richard Dawkins letter to his 10 year old daughter (how to warn your child about this irrational world)

Submitted by RichardDawkins on September 20, 2006 - 11:58am.

The following is a letter that Richard Dawkins wrote to his daughter when she turned 10. Richard is one of the worlds most renowned scientists who is known for speaking out against the dangers of religion.

To my dearest daughter,

Now that you are ten, I want to write to you about something that is important to me. Have you ever wondered how we know the things that we know? How do we know, for instance, that the stars, which look like tiny pinpricks in the sky, are really huge balls of fire like the Sun and very far away? And how do we know that the Earth is a smaller ball whirling round one of those stars, the Sun?

The answer to these questions is ‘evidence’.

Sometimes evidence means actually seeing (or hearing, feeling, smelling….) that something is true. Astronauts have traveled far enough from the Earth to see with their own eyes that it is round. Sometimes our eyes need help. The ‘evening star’ looks like a bright twinkle in the sky but with a telescope you can see that it is a beautiful ball – the planet we call Venus. Something that you learn by direct seeing (or hearing or feeling…) is called an observation.

Often evidence isn’t just observation on its own, but observation always lies at the back of it. If there’s been a murder, often nobody (except the murderer and the dead person!) actually observed it. But detectives can gather together lots of other observations which may all point towards a particular suspect. If a person’s fingerprints match those found on a dagger, this is evidence that he touched it. It doesn’t prove that he did the murder, but it can help when it’s joined up with lots of other evidence. Sometimes a detective can think about a whole lot of observations and suddenly realize that they all fall into place and make sense if so-and-so did the murder.

Scientists – the specialists in discovering what is true about the world and the universe – often work like detectives. They make a guess (called a hypothesis) about what might be true. They then say to themselves: if that were really true, we ought to see so-and-so. This is called a prediction. For example, if the world is really round, we can predict that a traveler, going on and on in the same direction, should eventually find himself back where he started. When a doctor says that you have measles he doesn’t take one look at you and see measles. His first look gives him a hypothesis that you may have measles. Then he says to himself: if she really has measles, I ought to see… Then he runs through his list of predictions and tests them with his eyes (have you got spots?), his hands (is your forehead hot?), and his ears (does your chest wheeze in a measly way?). Only then does he make his decision and say, ‘I diagnose that the child has measles.’ Sometimes doctors need to do other tests like blood tests or X-rays, which help their eyes, hands and ears to make observations.

The way scientists use evidence to learn about the world is much cleverer and more complicated than I can say in a short letter. But now I want to move on from evidence, which is a good reason for believing something, and warn you against three bad reasons for believing anything. They are called ‘tradition’, ‘authority’, and ‘revelation’.

First, tradition. A few months ago, I went on television to have a discussion with about 50 children. These children were invited because they’d been brought up in lots of different religions. Some had been brought up as Christians, others as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs. The man with the microphone went from child to child, asking them what they believed. What they said shows up exactly what I mean by ‘tradition’. Their beliefs turned out to have no connection with evidence. They just trotted out the beliefs of their parents and grandparents, which, in turn, were not based upon evidence either. They said things like, ‘We Hindus believe so and so.’ ‘We Muslims believe such and such.’ ‘We Christians believe something else.’ Of course, since they all believed different things, they couldn’t all be right. The man with the microphone seemed to think this quite proper, and he didn’t even try to get them to argue out their differences with each other. But that isn’t the point I want to make. I simply want to ask where their beliefs came from. They came from tradition. Tradition means beliefs handed down from grandparent to parent to child, and so on. Or from books handed down through the centuries. Traditional beliefs often start from almost nothing; perhaps somebody just makes them up originally, like the stories about Thor and Zeus. But after they’ve been handed down over some centuries, the mere fact that they are so old makes them seem special. People believe things simply because people have believed the same thing over centuries. That’s tradition.

The trouble with tradition is that, no matter how long ago a story was made up, it is still exactly as true or untrue as the original story was. If you make up a story that isn’t true, handing it down over any number of centuries doesn’t make it any truer!

Most people in England have been baptized into the Church of England, but this is only one of many branches of the Christian religion. There are other branches such as the Russian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic and the Methodist churches. They all believe different things. The Jewish religion and the Muslim religion are a bit more different still; and there are different kinds of Jews and of Muslims. People who believe even slightly different things from each other often go to war over their disagreements. So you might think that they must have some pretty good reasons – evidence – for believing what they believe. But actually their different beliefs are entirely due to different traditions.

Let’s talk about one particular tradition. Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was so special that she didn’t die but was lifted bodily into Heaven. Other Christian traditions disagree, saying that Mary did die like anybody else. These other religions don’t talk about her much and, unlike Roman Catholics, they don’t call her the ‘Queen of Heaven’. The tradition that Mary’s body was lifted into Heaven is not a very old one. The Bible says nothing about how or when she died; in fact the poor woman is scarcely mentioned in the Bible at all. The belief that her body was lifted into Heaven wasn’t invented until about six centuries after Jesus’s time. At first it was just made up, in the same way as any story like Snow White was made up. But, over the centuries, it grew into a tradition and people started to take it seriously simply because the story had been handed down over so many generations. The older the tradition became, the more people took it seriously. It finally was written down as an official Roman Catholic belief only very recently, in 1950. But the story was no more true in 1950 than it was when it was first invented 600 years after Mary’s death.

I’ll come back to tradition at the end of my letter, and look at it in another way. But first I must deal with the two other bad reasons for believing in anything: authority and revelation.

Authority, as a reason for believing something, means believing it because you are told to believe it by somebody important. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope is the most important person, and people believe he must be right just because he is the Pope. In one branch of the Muslim religion, the important people are old men with beards called Ayatollahs. Lots of young Muslims are prepared to commit murder, purely because the Ayatollahs in a faraway country tell them to.

When I say that it was only in 1950 that Roman Catholics were finally told that they had to believe that Mary’s body shot off to Heaven, what I mean is that in 1950 the Pope told people that they had to believe it. That was it. The Pope said it was true, so it had to be true! Now, probably some of the things that Pope said in his life were true and some were not true. There is no good reason why, just because he was the Pope, you should believe everything he said, any more than you believe everything that lots of other people say. The present Pope has ordered his followers not to limit the number of babies they have. If people follow his authority as slavishly as he would wish, the results could be terrible famines, diseases and wars, caused by overcrowding.

Of course, even in science, sometimes we haven’t seen the evidence ourselves and we have to take somebody else’s word for it. I haven’t with my own eyes, seen the evidence that light travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. Instead, I believe books that tell me the speed of light. This looks like ‘authority’. But actually it is much better than authority because the people who wrote the books have seen the evidence and anyone is free to look carefully at the evidence whenever they want. That is very comforting. But not even the priests claim that there is any evidence for their story about Mary’s body zooming off to Heaven.

The third kind of bad reason for believing anything is called ‘revelation’. If you had asked the Pope in 1950 how he knew that Mary’s body disappeared into Heaven, he would probably have said that it had been ‘revealed’ to him. He shut himself in his room and prayed for guidance. He thought and thought, all by himself, and he became more and more sure inside himself. When religious people just have a feeling inside themselves that something must be true, even though there is no evidence that it is true, they call their feeling ‘revelation’. It isn’t only popes who claim to have revelations. Lots of religious people do. It is one of their main reasons for believing the things that they do believe. But is it a good reason?

Suppose I told you that your dog was dead. You’d be very upset, and you’d probably say, ‘Are you sure? How do you know? How did it happen?’ Now suppose I answered: ‘I don’t actually know that Pepe is dead. I have no evidence. I just have this funny feeling deep inside me that he is dead.’ You’d be pretty cross with me for scaring you, because you’d know that an inside ‘feeling’ on its own is not a good reason for believing that a whippet is dead. You need evidence. We all have inside feelings from time to time, and sometimes they turn out to be right and sometimes they don’t. Anyway, different people have opposite feelings, so how are we to decide whose feeling is right? The only way to be sure that a dog is dead is to see him dead, or hear that his heart has stopped; or be told by somebody who has seen or heard some real evidence that he is dead.

People sometimes say that you must believe in feelings deep inside, otherwise you’d never be confident of things like ‘My wife loves me’.

But this is a bad argument. There can be plenty of evidence that somebody loves you. All through the day when you are with somebody who loves you, you see and hear lots of little tidbits of evidence, and they all add up. It isn’t purely inside feeling, like the feeling that priests call revelation. There are outside things to back up the inside feeling: looks in the eye, tender notes in the voice, little favors and kindnesses; this is all real evidence.

Sometimes people have a strong inside feeling that somebody loves them when it is not based upon any evidence, and then they are likely to be completely wrong. There are people with a strong inside feeling that a famous film star loves them, when really the film star hasn’t even met them. People like that are ill in their minds. Inside feelings must be backed up by evidence, otherwise you just can’t trust them.

Inside feelings are valuable in science too, but only for giving you ideas that you later test by looking for evidence. A scientist can have a ‘hunch’ about an idea that just ‘feels’ right. In itself, this is not a good reason for believing something. But it can be a good reason for spending some time doing a particular experiment, or looking in a particular way for evidence. Scientists use inside feelings all the time to get ideas. But they are not worth anything until they are supported by evidence.

I promised that I’d come back to tradition, and look at it in another way. I want to try to explain why tradition is so important to us. All animals are built (by the process called evolution) to survive in the normal place in which their kind live. Lions are built to be good at surviving on the plains of Africa. Crayfish are built to be good at surviving in fresh water, while lobsters are built to be good at surviving in the salt sea. People are animals too, and we are built to be good at surviving in a world full of … other people. Most of us don’t hunt for our own food like lions or lobsters, we buy it from other people who have bought it from yet other people. We ‘swim’ through a ‘sea of people’. Just as a fish needs gills to survive in water, people need brains that make them able to deal with other people. Just as the sea is full of salt water, the sea of people is full of difficult things to learn. Like language.

You speak English but your friend speaks German. You each speak the language that fits you to ‘swim about’ in your own separate ‘people sea’. Language is passed down by tradition. There is no other way. In England, Pepe is a dog. In Germany he is ein Hund. Neither of these words is more correct, or more truer than the other. Both are simply handed down. In order to be good at ‘swimming about in their people sea’, children have to learn the language of their own country, and lots of other things about their own people; and this means that they have to absorb, like blotting paper, an enormous amount of traditional information. (Remember that traditional information just means things that are handed down from grandparents to parents to children.) The child’s brain has to be a sucker for traditional information. And the child can’t be expected to sort out good and useful traditional information, like the words of a language, from bad or silly traditional information, like believing in witches and devils and ever-living virgins.

It’s a pity, but it can’t help being the case, that because children have to be suckers for traditional information, they are likely to believe anything the grown-ups tell them, whether true or false, right or wrong. Lots of what grown-ups tell them is true and based on evidence or at least sensible. But if some of it is false, silly or even wicked, there is nothing to stop the children believing that too. Now, when the children grow up, what do they do? Well, of course, they tell it to the next generation of children. So, once something gets itself strongly believed – even if its completely untrue and there never was any reason to believe it in the first place – it can go on forever.

Could this be what happened with religions? Belief that there is a god or gods, belief in Heaven, belief that Mary never died, belief that Jesus never had a human father, belief that prayers are answered, belief that wine turns into blood – not one of these beliefs is backed up by any good evidence. Yet millions of people believe them. Perhaps this is because they were told to believe them when they were young enough to believe anything.

Millions of other people believe quite different things, because they were told different things when they were children. Muslim children are told different things from Christian children, and both grow up utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong. Even within Christians, Roman Catholics believe different things from Church of England people or Episcopalians, Shakers or Quakers, Mormons or Holy Rollers, and all are utterly convinced that they are right and the others are wrong. They believe different things for exactly the same kind of reason as you speak English and someone speaks German.

Both languages are, in their own country, the right language to speak. But it can’t be true that different religions are right in their own countries, because different religions claim that opposite things are true. Mary can’t be alive in the Catholic Republic but dead in Protestant Northern Ireland.

What can we do about all this? It is not easy for you to do anything, because you are only ten. But you could try this. Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: ‘Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?’ And, next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: ‘What kind of evidence is there for that?’ And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

Your loving,

Daddy

Life Goes On.

Cold air is filtering down into the hull of the boat.  Outside The Commander and Rodger are discussing something.  The peaceful morning has begun and a lot of the sailors are just waking up.  The boats are nudged against the shore in Butcher Bay.  Last night the conversations went on long into the night under the stars around the campfire.  The small spit of land that separates the bay from the lake is an ideal spot to sit and sip your wine while the driftwood fire warms you.  Yesterday the wind was plentiful, but today the boats will have to slog East with little or no breeze.  A good possibility there will be a lot of motoring.  Fall has come and you can see it in the trees, feel it in the air, and mentally you must prepare for change.  Living amongst retired men and women means the migration will begin.  Some will head south to escape the cold others will slowly be forced out of the Dakotas to seek a different climate.

As we sat around the campfire Kadizzle made the observation out loud we live as some of the most privileged people on Earth.  Of the billions occupying the spinning planet how many have so much while so many have so little. We work when and if we want to.  We travel where and how we want to. We eat and drink as we like.  We decide when to sleep, what to watch, and how many gizzmos to buy.  Meanwhile most of the people on Earth live on less than ten dollars a day.  So many are sleeping in the streets.  The average person in India uses two gallons of gasoline a year.  In one jet trip we spew 800 gallons out the back just to get us to a ball game in Denver.  We throw out more food than many countries consume.  Our military budget is ten time that of the next ten countries combined.  There is a tanker ever three miles headed to our country to fuel our addiction to oil.  Every 15 minutes a coal train leaves Gillette Wyoming to help belch smoke into the air all over the country.  We have 6,000 planes in the air in any give moment taking us to see the grandchildren.

So we live in the top half of the top one percent of the people on the planet, but Kadizzle is a little disappointed because he has a cold.

Protected in the cove.

Well here we sit sipping coffee in Heaven Bay.  The little fleet made to Heaven Bay and was tucked in before it got too windy. However, as we sat enjoying a beverage the wind came up and some of the weak anchors let loose.  After the boats were tamed the relaxation continued. We took the traditional climb above the cove and enjoyed the view.

There is no certainty where the fleet will head today.  That is the beauty of a fleet of retired people, it makes no difference.  Kadizzle almost always sits in this wonderful spot and wonders how such nice places can be so overlooked.  Most people have no clue about the treasures Lake Sakakawea holds. My fellow sailors say "Keep it that way".  Isolation is always the best means for preserving things.  The best Indian sites in the Southwest are the ones no one can get too.  The best parts of this lake are not easy to get too.  North Dakota tries to promote tourism. It is a joke to see the state promote fiberglass fish statures, a pile of car rims in the shape of a turtle, and sculptured junk along the highway, when the state has some real treasures.  Being a state of misers, the problem is the state will not spend a cent to open up the really nice places it has, so people drive through North Dakota and curse the flat nothing because we keep the good stuff hidden.

Sailing West

8:12 A.M. the good ship is moving west north of Beulah Bay.   Yesterday the sail to the pirate cove was pleasant and the weather was excellent.  Today all the pirates got up early and by a miracle are moving west. 4.5 to 5 knots are showing on the knotmeter.  The goal is to make it to Heaven Bay before the howling gail hits.  So far, so good.  The Commander in fear of the gail will not allow the main sail to be set. We could pick up a knot of speed with the main sail.  All the ships are trying to get to Heaven Bay where we can hunker down and ride out the wind.  The Commander up on the wheel says she has spotted a wind line.  The game may be on.  Old Kadizzle still has a lingering cold and will motor rather than fight a west wind.

Politics is getting crazier every day.  The Republicans with functioning brains are denouncing Trump.  The hard core are sticking with him.  The NYT has an article on all his tax dodges. 835 million so far.  Any wonder he will not release his taxes.

The Commander says we are doing 5.4 knots. Every mile before the storm is a victory for Jesus. Here Kadizzle sits down below with the computer on the captains desk in contact with the world. Kadizzle has been in a bit of a kerfuffle with the motorcycle dogs. The Harley boys all are drueling over a T Shirt that says " Too loud, Too Bad". Kadizzle chided the idiots for annoying decent citizens with their noise machines. One of the dingers said Kadizzle is too old to ride. Kadizzle pointed out the Harley dog he just rode 3600 miles on an adventure bike. The Harley dogs dress up in their Halloween costumes and don't have the courage to tackle the real mountain roads in the wilderness. Fun toying with the brave motorcycle men.

A Dreary Day

The Commander has been purchasing camping equipment on Amazon and is preparing for a trek in the wilds of Utah. It will be an all woman outing and Kadizzle will be left to fend for himself.  Living at the group home unsupervised Kadizzle will be lost.  However, being lost also means the freedom to roam, sleep, and eat as he pleases.

Back to reality if there is such a thing. Kadizzle spent some time boning up on his quantum physics knowledge, which will neatly fit on the head of a pin.  Kadizzle would not even pretend to understand how the universe works, but Youtube has some very good videos that at least lets one realize how bizarre the world is.  Matter goes back and forth from being a wave to being something that acts like a solid.  What is fun watching these videos is realizing just how intelligent some humans are.  How these people figured out what an atom is doing is an amazing feat.  Einstein was undoubtedly one of the most unique people that ever breathed. Einstein figured out things that no one proved until up to  thirty years later.

So today we will sit around and try to get something done as it rains intermittently.  Stroupini did not show up for the crazy club meeting yesterday, but he better make an appearance today.  Readying  ourselves for the last sailing outing will be a major part of the day.  Also prepping the Earth Module to head south will take up  time during the day.  So here we go, the start of a dreary day.

The Pirates will gather

Every fall the pirates of Lake Sakakawea gather to celebrate the end of the sailing season.  Gathered around the fire they share the loot they have taken from the various ports of call. There will be lying, a little fighting, and several full scale brawls will break out.  After everyone is bandaged up the drinks are passed around and the music begins.  The old sea shanties are sung and the radiant beauty of the pirate queens surrounds the fire.  Down below in the secretive cove the ships sit like horses tied to the rail.  Pity the poor power boat that wanders into this group, unless of  course it is the pirate Doc,  who is in league with the scoundrels around the fire.  Doc keeps the pirates informed of the movements of the large merchant ships so they can be attacked at will.  Nothing makes pirates dance like Doc's Mohito's.  Some of the pirates will make it back to their bunks, others will pass out in their chairs around the fire.  As the sun rises in the dim early morning light it is not unusual to see a parrot opening it's eyes on the shoulder of a crumpled pirate sitting at what is left of the fire.  Withing weeks the ships will be hauled the season will end.  Good men and women of the sea will be land lubbers until the cruel winter passes.  Spring will come again and erase the wicked ice.  Ships will set sail. Again the hardy, the brave, the true people of the sea will launch, and roam the vast world of the lake.

The House that you live in

Go first in the world, go forth with your fears
Remember a price must be paid
Be always too soon, be never too fast
At the time when all bets must be laid
Beware of the darkness, be kind to your children
Remember the woman who waits
And the house you live in will never fall down
If you pity the stranger who stands at your gate

When you're caught by the gale and you're full under sail
Beware of the dangers below
And the song that you sing should not be too sad
And be sure not to sing it too slow
Be calm in the face of all common disgraces
And know what they're doin' it for
And the house you live in will never fall down
If you pity the stranger who stands at your door

When you're out on the road and feelin' quite lost
Consider the burden of fame
And he who is wise will not criticize
When other men fail at the game
Beware of strange faces and dark dingy places
Be careful while bending the law
And the house you live in will never fall down
If you pity the stranger who stands at your door

When you're down in the dumps and not ready to deal
Decide what it is that you need
Is it money or love, is it learnin' to live
Or is it the mouth you must feed
Be known as a man who will always be candid
On questions that do not relate
And the house you live in will never fall down
If you pity the stranger who stands at your gate
And the house you live in will never fall down
If you pity the stranger who stands at your gate

Written by Gordon Lightfoot • Copyright © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Universal Music Publishing Group

Pharaoh puts curse on Trump

Pharaoh Yucun Fucum Trumpum stopped by to discuss world events and the general state of reality. Pharaoh explained that once you get people to believe absurd ideas all things are possible.  The pyramids did not get built by people who did a lot of questioning. Piling up stones was invented by me the Pharaoh said.  Look at the copy cats.  The Chinese and everyone else wanted to build walls.  The Donald wants to pile up stones and build a wall on the border.  People love to believe the absurd. The Donald knows simple people love simple solutions.  Kadizzle asked the Pharaoh why his followers piled so many stones on him when he died.  Pharaoh laughed and explained how historians were wrong.  Egyptians piled stones on the dead because they did not want them to come back he explained.  The worse the Pharaoh the more stones.  When The Donald makes American great again we can start piling up stones.  What brought Egypt down Kadizzle asked Pharaoh?  When you build airplanes and battleships instead of schools roads, bridges, and housing, you are just piling up stones.  In Egypt we could have had the best of everything, but instead we just piled up stones for one person, the Pharaoh.  Where did it get us? An impoverished population, and a pile of stones.  Trump is focusing on the old Pharaoh technique.  " Only I can fix it",  "Trust me, I know the Sun God".  Two thousand years later we are being fooled by the same con.

Narcos

What do you do when you have the double epizootic?  One good solution is to sit, drink tea, and watch television. Last winter Kadizzle and The Supreme Commander spent hours watching Narcos.  Narcos is a quasi true story about Pablo Escobar the worlds most famous drug dealer. Once you start it is like candy you cannot resist watching more. Now, keep in mind this is being told to you by a man who rarely gets caught up in TV shows.  You can get the whole thing on Netflix.  What makes it so hard to ignore is that most of it is very true and actually happened.  Once scene that was revealing was the sheer volume of money that had to be shipped back to Columbia.  Escobar literally had mattresses stuffed with money and piles of them sent to him from Florida.  The influence of drug money in Florida is astounding.  To this day Florida must be swimming in drug money.

Sitting here typing NPR is talking about the Koch Brothers.  Now the Koch brothers are the biggest drug dealers in the world.  Their drug is oil. The Koch brothers have purchased the United States government. The Koch Brothers own North Dakota, lock, stock, and barrel. That is why you will never see a Democrat elected in North Dakota. Oh  yest there will be token Democrats, like token blacks, but they will have no power.  Heidi Heitkemp is a perfect example.  She sings with the Republican choir.

The strange thing about our society is that information flows freely.  You can find things out, you can do research, you can get different opinions, yet most people prefer to have some simple minded idiot on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh feed them bullshit.

Never a straight line

One in awhile the wind gods smile and the sailboat moves in a straight line from point A to point B.  Not this weekend, some long tacks got us out and back.  The wind always plays tricks.  For a moment it might let you move and your spirits rise, then it dies and your curse.  All in all we had a good sail. The weather cooperated.  Sleeping on the boat is always better than at home, except when there is wave slap.  Fortunately there was none, and Kadizzle slept up a storm.  Avalon, Hideout, and Sovereign all settled in Moose Bay for the night. Avalon rode on anchor and the other two boats tied up to shore.

Sailing makes one become very much aware of how the wind effects the world. On the water you can often see the wind lines.  It is amazing to see a boat 600 yards north of you moving along at a nice pace and you are becalmed. When you look in a stream you can see all the currents.  After you have sailed for years you realize those currents are also in the wind.

A sailboat is not like a power boat. You do not just point a sailboat where you want to go and sail there.  Instead you work out a strategy.  Going into the wind means you have to plan when to tack and how effective your tack will be.  Of course if you get a wind shift that changes everything.  Well, that is what makes sailing interesting.  Sailing is a chess game with the wind.

So here Kadizzle sits at 5:12 A.M.  Sleep has eluded him, and a cup of coffee seemed to be the answer.  Checking the morning news, the world seems to be relatively calm other than the people in the middle east bombing the hell out of each other.  So here are a couple things Kadizzle learned already.  Women in China are not getting married.  They see men as wimps and want more out of life than the traditional marriage. Chinese women are much better educated than in the past.  Paul Krugman had some interesting insight into Russia.  Russia is just a petrostate, a country that only lives on oil.  The fall in oil prices has left Russia with just a strongman admired by Trump. The article is in the NYT and worth a read.

So here we go for Monday.  It could really happen. Trump could be elected. If he is the stock market will crash. Kadizzle is wondering if he should move to cash until after the election.  If you can buy back in after a crash there could be a nice gain. No doubt a lot of people are thinking the same thing. This could lead to a crash prior to the election.  In that case buy, and if Clinton gets elected you can pick up some quick cheese.  So it seems one way or the other moving to cash is the way to go.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Trump has so many ideas that will bring the economy tumbling. Everything that has hurt us in the past he wants to do more of.  More tax breaks for the rich.  More military spending, more senseless wall building, and more protective trade policies.  Sometimes a crash or a depression is what it takes to wake people up. So fasten your seat belt and lets get on with the circus.

Off to the lake, maybe

Kadizzle is all shot up with a cold, and generally doesn't feel that well. However, we may still make a stab at an adventure on the lake. Fall is rolling down on us like a boulder.  Soon the boat will be put away, polishing the RV has been a bigger job than expected.  Getting the oxidation off has not proven a simple matter.  Oh yes, the garden.  A ton of vegetable matter will have to be removed from the garden.  At some point a few pheasants may die for their country. Life is just one great cycle.  The problem is the cycle seems to be going faster and faster.  Forgot to mention the leaves.  The Commander will soon be going absolutely crazy every time a leaf falls on the yard.  Our army of lawn equipment will be mobilized to defeat the leaves.

Soon the real fireworks will hit the political seen.  NPR had someone on talking about how to melt down The Donald by attacking his ego. The debates should be nothing but complete fun.  No presidential candidate has ever come close to the insanity of The Donald.  The man is absolutely nuts.  If for some strange reason he becomes president our country will enter a world of fantasy never before experienced.  An insane narcissist at the control of nuclear weapons will keep every American on their seat edge.  So here we go off to the silly season.

Danger, Danger, Alert, Bulletin.

Baseball Bob a local right wing dinger  sent out an alert to all the gullible dingers. Baseball Bob alerted the paranoid that there was a 19 second video of Obama that would shortly be pulled from YouTube.  Sometimes these right wing alerts get fouled up and come to Kadizzle.  On its face the whole idea seemed ridiculousness. Why would you tell someone to watch 19 seconds of a speech?  OK, some right wing person took 19 seconds of a speech Obama made in Germany and spliced it to another part of the speech.  The great alert was that Obama was promoting a one world government and he was against common people participating in government.  When you listened to the whole speech, which Kadizzle did you quickly realized how much Obama had been maligned.  It is very sad to see adults so easily brought into these right wing fantasies.  Obama was born in Kenya.  Obama is going to get your gun.  On it goes, then half truths are fabricated to back up this nonsense.

Periodically Kadizzle gets one of these insane right wing alerts.  Most of them you can sense a rat right off the bat. In this case the simple clue was, who would have you view just 19 seconds of a speech? Years ago another right wing friend sent out a fabricated story that was quickly going viral.  It had a certain stink to it. Kadizzle checked it out, and again it proved to be a total fabrication.  Now we come to Donald Trump who is just overwhelming the public with his lies.  He lies constantly about everything. He contradicts himself withing minutes and adults say they will vote for the idiot.  Donald Trump claims he has a secret plan to defeat ISIS.  Now if he could defeat ISIS why does he not immediately let everyone know how to do it? Every day that ISIS is not defeated people will be killed.  That doesn't matter to The Donald, he will not reveal his secret plan until he is elected president.  To really mix it up and show what an idiot he is lets examine his logic.  First he says our generals are worthless, then he says when he becomes president he will ask the generals for a plan to defeat ISIS.  Would you ask a mechanic who you thought was incompetent to fix your car?  Now to make it even more insane Trump says that he will combine parts of his secret plan and the generals plan.  If the secret plan works why does he need to modify it.  Trump spouts this insane nonsense every day and people love it.  Have we really reached the point where reality has left us.  In the real world Mexicans are not coming to the United States.  More Mexicans are leaving than are coming. What has happened in Mexico is the birth rate has fallen.  That means there are more jobs for Mexicans in Mexico and they do not have any incentive to come here.  Of course The Donald knows the who idea of Mexicans coming across the border excites ignorant people, so he exploits their fear.  You can do your own reading, your own fact checking, your own research, or you can let the coffee shop guys, Rush, and Fox News fill you full of your favorite fantasy.  If our country goes down the drain with The Donald remember you had a chance to prevent it.

Back in the Homeland

Shortly the Crazy club will meet and Kadizzle can get up to date on local happenings.  Back from the planned community the questioning haunting Kadizzle is why can't our little town do something new, innovative, or more pleasing? Hazen is building housing, just like it always has.  In Denver the streets have median strips with flowers, walkways and plantings. The streets are landscaped.  In Denver neighborhoods have green spaces deliberately laid out.  Back in Hazen developments are still built like they were in the sixties.  Bike paths, green spaces and public spaces make thins go nice. Why not here?

Even the deaf shall hear

The perfect setting to see Star Wars Whatever, Red Rocks in Denver. That is the good news, the bad news was the sound was so loud you could hardly stand it.  Now this is coming from a grandpa who everyone claims is deaf.  Of course the little Ticklepinch enjoyed the show.  She was dancing around as the premovie band played.

Standing in line Kadizzle met a woman who grew up on Wheeling Island, and lived in Elm Grove.  Both part of the old home town.  We cackled about all the old places in Wheeling.  Watching a movie outside in a spectacular setting was a strange new experience.  Kadizzle was last at Red Rocks over forty years ago during a hitch hiking trip across the country.

The Commander is resisting the trip home today, but we must get back to the land of pipeline protest, and sailing.

Riding Cherry Creek

Impatient with the rest of the crew in Denver Kadizzle struck out on his own. The goal was to bike ride in downtown Denver.  The first plan was to take the Sandcreek trail to town, but another biker said there was no trail. Kadizzle bought his $1.30 senior pass for the train and jumped on with his bike.  At Union Station the ride started.  The bike path up Cherry creek was like an interstate of bikes, but it was a pleasant ride. Kadizzle thought he might be able to go all the way back to Stapleton by bike, but did not know the paths well enough. Turning back Kadizzle headed to Union Station to sit and sip an ice tea.

Meanwhile the rest of the crew was riding from Stapleton with Sylvie.  Somehow they found the Sandcreek trail which went through a lot of industrial areas. We all met up at Union Station and Sylvie had a great time playing in the water feature.  We all jumped back on the train with our bikes and headed home.  The train will be a very nice asset for life in Denver.  Clean, comfortable, and quick the mass transit makes going downtown a pleasant and easy experience,.

Inovation

Upside down and backward is the way to describe our mass transit adventure yesterday.  With our daughter Erin the Kadizzles took the new transit train to downtown Denver.  The train should have been put in service 15 years ago.  The train now whisk people to the airport from downtown.  In stead of builing the rail system in the first place Denver built an insane highway to the airport.  So for dozens of years people have been wasting billions of gallons of fuel that could have been saved if the transit system had been built in a timely fashion.

For Erin's neighborhood it is a great new service.  Fran can walk about a quarter mile jump on the train and ride into the middle of the airport.  In the other direction you jump off at Union Station down town. Every 15 minutes a train runs.  Why did we tear up all the wonderful commuter train tracks in every town in the country?  The Denver train allows you to take your bike.  Kadizzle may give it a try.  It would be fun to bike on the many bike paths in Denver.

Erin lives where the old Stapleton airport used to be.  The old control tower is about 700ft  away.  The control tower complex will be made into a fancy eating and recreation area.   Since everything could be planned in this area it is sparkling new.  Many good ideas have been put in place, and the greatest thing is the green belts that surround us.  A short bike ride gets you into the huge park area that has been built along the creek as a natural pathway to downtown.

Turn the street into a yard

It is a comfortable evening sitting on the swing on Erin's front porch.  There are no front porches like this in Hazen.  This front porch is unique.  There is no street.  Instead there is grass.  It is a wonderful social invention. All the kids have a common backyard, which happens to be everybody's front yard.  People mix, children play and the neighborhood comes together.  Why not try this in Hazen?  Well in Hazen we never change. In Hazen you don't see neighbors interacting, you don't see children outside playing.  What is a neighborhood?  A lot of what it is depends on how it was designed.  Was it designed to be a series of small fortresses, or was it designed to be a place where people come together? Way back when communities had a place called the commons.  People gathered on the commons.  Why did that concept go away?

Let the slow race begin

The Snoocher Bear lives in a wonderful neighborhood.  All houses share a common yard in front.  The idea is simple and ingenious.  It makes neighbors, neighbors, and all the kids love to play on the grass.  Last night as the wild children ran about Kadizzle organized a slow race.  In a slow race the last person to cross the finish line wins.  You have never seen a more dramatic raced than a slow race.  The rule is you have to show movement, and one foot always has to be put in front of the other.  All contestants have an equal chance of winning a slow race by being last.  The real fun is watching the racers, and telling the person in front how badly they are losing.

The shortest distance between two points.

Well, here we are in Denver.  Just finished the ride from hell. Traffic was terrible, so The Commander came up with an ingenious idea. To avoid the 19 mph traffic as we approached Denver we would go East, ant then South.  Yup, that worked great. After an hour an a half zigzagging all of hell's half acre we finally got to Erin's house.  Now we get to see Sylvie who cannot seem to remain upright.  As a gymnastics fanatics she is doing cartwheels every second.  Fran just finished wonderful seasoned flank steak and Kadizzle is about to work on his avoid the diet plan.  Mmm here we go