Tuesday, August 31, 2010

College Days

On this blog I usually only list links to other people’s articles. But I learned that one of my college friends left us. So it made me think of what my days were like way back then. So here is a rare article that I wrote…

What I remember from college is that I was poor. There were times when I didn’t have a car. There were times I slept on the cellar floor of an apartment of a friend. One particular day I needed a place to stay for the night and my friend Bill said I could stay at his place. I took a bus to my friend Bill’s place. His apartment was in the black projects. Walking in I got the glance from the locals that told me “what are you doing here white boy”. When I arrived I discovered two things about Bill’s place: One, he shared a bathroom with the rest of the floor (and it took 2 hours to get in there with all the crack heads vomiting) and two, he had no door on his apartment! I said, Bill you’re a white Jew and you’re living in a black slum and you have no door on your apartment. Aren’t you worried that someone will steal you stuff? His response was that he had no stuff. And it was true, Bill only had a small bag of cloths that he used as a pillow at night. I stayed there for a week and I found out his neighbors were mostly drug addicts and prostitutes. But then no one bothered us. I think everyone thought he was crazy and worried he might snap and kill everyone in the complex. I really think that’s what kept him safe. I on the other hand, emanated a sense of fear. My only salvation was that I was with the crazy Jew, and no one wanted to cross him.

As a side note, I was chemistry major and a pre-med student, Bill was biology major. We shared some common courses. Bill told me he was studying biology because without Bio and evolution we would not be here and we would have no need for a knowledge of chemistry. That along with some philosophical questions I developed during biochemistry, I decided to take on another major of biology.

Being I was so poor at the time, I got a state work study job in the Biology department as the manager of life science. Sounds impressive, but my job really was to change the rat cages. Well I discovered there was a whole room in the Science Building filled with fish tanks and equipment. No water and no fish, just tanks and equipment. Now Bill was working at a department store in the pet department and as such had access to lots of fish and I had the keys to the Science Building. This gave us an idea that turned out to be how we paid for our last two years of college. I would show up and buy several dozen fish at the pet department. Bill would charge me for a couple of guppies. I would then go back to the Science Building, where we had set-up most of the tanks and deposit the fish. Over the next two years, Bill and I would breed fish and sell them back to the department store. By our senior year we were the major supplier of fish stock to the whole department store chain!

Bill and I once had a course in Ethology (the study of animal behavor). The year before Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch jointy won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in Ethology so the field was exciting at the time. I don’t even remember what my course thesis was, but I do remember I got a B+. I’m sure it was some safe, center of the road subject. Bill on the other-hand was always pushing the edge. He decided his thesis would be on inter-spieses communication. WHAT? His idea was that all Chordates (animals with a backbone) yawn. And we all know that when someone yawns, it induces others to yawn. So Bill would sit for hours and yawn at the large fish tank in our secret fish factory. Did the fish yawn back? Thick about it, did they?... I have no idea. I don’t even know if the fish could see him. But he got an A in the course. Our professor thought that his project was the most original he had ever seen from an undergraduate student. Yes indeed, Bill was an original.

Another great college friend was Jamie. Another Bio major that was also a Physics major. It was his cellar apartment floor I used to sleep on. It was Jamie’s love of physics that made me sign on and take up physics as my minor. Jamie always told us that the men in his family don’t live to 50. So he always thought he needed to move fast though his life. No time to waste. We always thought this was bullshit.

Jamie was the cram master. He taught us how to cram for exams. One of us would read through the material and the others would interrupt and ask to have that subject explained. It was through this question and answer process that we really would master the subject. Bill, Jamie and I always did well on exams and were always in the top five of all our classes. I recently learned from a mutual friend that Jamie died of a massive heart attack several years back. He was 48. I guess it wasn’t bullshit.

I got a $500 grant from the physics department to develop a golf program. At the time I worked on a printer terminal that was connected to a large main frame computer at Princeton University. Hit the ball with a stated amount of force at a stated angle. Big whoop. I had some money left over so I wrote a Star Trek program that was such a big hit that Prinston took the program off the system do to overuse. At the time, I thought everyone would be working from a terminal and communicating with a large computer. As of today, I don’t think I was so wrong. Today, and in the future, the concept is to use a thin wire client to connect to databases in what is known as the cloud. This will put an end to the PC dominance. My advice is to buy stock in Google. Times, they are a changing.

I was now a senior and was looking at the job market. I went to college on a full scholarship so I really had no debt but I also had no money. Medical school was big bucks. My advisor told me about a new program in Medical Technology. A medical technologist is a specialist in laboratory testing. Sounded like a good idea because there was a huge demand in the job market, but the opportunity to get a spot was really limited. I submited my application but didn’t really give it much thought. It turns out that the Medical Technology program at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, NJ had opened up two spots that year. Normally the MT program at Beth Israel took in 12 students from Ruckers, the state university. This year they were taking ten students from Ruckers and two from other colleges or universities. One was to be selected from outside New Jersey and another was to be selected from one of the other NJ colleges or universities. Out of the hundreds that applied, I was fortunate to be selected. So I was looking forward to no summer vacation and full year of internship. For the first time I found myself surround by students who were all really, really sharp. There were no coasters in this program. We were 12 people who were selected out of about a thousand who applied. I was defiantly the least focused and least prepared of the class. I really had to step up my game to get through this. We started at 6AM by drawing blood from patients and then performing the tests on these samples. This would be followed by 4 hours of classes. Our days Monday through Friday would start at 6AM and end no sooner than 6PM. On Saturday, I would also work 10 hours doing admissions and testing. Work and classes was 70 hours a week and then there was studying for exams in a very competitive environment. I would never be able to do this now but at the time you were just in it and that was the way it was.

One of the brilliant things that the program did was to pair up the students. You would draw blood together and move through the various departments together. If your partner called out, you would have to do all the work yourself. No one ever called out sick all year. My partner in crime, the student I was paired up with was Mitch. Mitch was the other non-Ruckers student in the class. He was from the University of Kansas.

So I finally graduated after 5 years with 3 majors (the last one was Medical Technology) and a minor in physics. College life was tough but I wouldn’t have changed a thing. By the way, I now write computer programs and manage the computer systems of a medium size non-profit. So much for the study of chemistry, biology, medical technology and physics. So much for college life looking back 30 some years.

Our Clueless Government

Some countries have taken the opposite approach from Obama to their economies.  They cut spending and government. Guess who's right.

India's economy races 8.8%...
Russian economy grows 4.0%...
German unemployment rate 7.6%...
The Party of Know-Nothings

WTF - Administration halts prosecution of alleged USS Cole bomber.

Obama to give ‘Direct Access’ Stimulus Grants for the Muslim Brotherhood

Obama tells the U.N. how great he is

Give credit where credit is due (Watch tonight to see Obama take credit for Iraq)

Education secretary urged his employees to attend Sharpton's rally

Terror Suspects Held On Flight From Chicago (Just confirmed, suspects not Amish)

48 HOURS: 21 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan...

China goes organic after scandal of cooking oil from sewers

Monday, August 30, 2010

Glenn Beck Rally in Washington

Glenn Beck crowd: Not so white as advertised



Mr. Beck Goes to Washington




There was a huge "Restoring Honor" rally at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday, but you couldn't tell hours later given how clean the National Mall was:





Compare that to how this area looked after Inauguration Day on January 20, 2009:







The Left in our nation is always depicted by media sycophants as concerned with the environment.
By contrast, these same people always paint a picture of the Right being exclusively focused on profits with total disregard for nature and ecology.
What do these two videos say about this "conventional wisdom," and will Obama-loving media members in the post-rally coverage of this event point out to readers and viewers just how clean our National Mall was left by these awful, greedy, right-wing extremists?



Barrack Obama, Wife living like a King and Queen!



How Bad Is It For Obama? Look How He's Completely Lost The New York Times

Saturday, July 24, 2010

I miss Ronald Reagan.

North Korea Warns of Nuclear Response to Naval Exercises. What! Give me a f***ing break. If North Korea is thinking of using a nuclear weapon against the forces of the United States or South Korea, our President should simply say “If we or our allies are attacked by a nuclear weapon from North Korea, the United States of America will turn the area of the Earth formally known as North Korea into glass”. Period. It’s time Mr. Obama grew a couple. God, I really do miss Ronald Reagan.
Peace out,
Don
------

About Arizona:
On this blog I usually just link to published stories that I think the mainstream media is ignoring. But it’s Saturday and I have a little time on my hands so I thought I would put my own two cents in here about the Arizona illegal immigration law. I’m not a lawyer (and never even played one on TV) but I have studied the Constitution and the basis of the Federal lawsuit is that the Constitution gives the Federal Government total control of immigration law. But Arizona is not determining immigration law or policy. Arizona is not saying who can immigrate to the United States; they are not establishing points of entry or issuing visas. They are not determining rates of immigration based on country of origin. They are not doing a damn thing regarding immigration policy. The Arizona law simply follows Federal law and requires the reporting of illegal aliens to the Federal Government.

There are Federal laws against bank robbery and child abduction too. Should Arizona not enforce these laws? If you think about it, the cities that have designated themselves as “sanctuary cities” are in direct violation of Federal law, but I don’t see the Obama administration suiting them!

Now a lot has been said about the laws propensity for profiling and other forms of possible state harassment. But the Federal lawsuit does not mention that aspect all. The reason no doubt is that the Arizona law expressly prohibits such illegal actions.

The Federal lawsuit is based on Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution which states that the Federal government has the authority “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States”. So if the Federal government wins this court battle, are the bankruptcy laws which are expressed in various state laws to be all overthrown? After all, the authority over immigration and bankruptcy are expressed IN THE SAME SENTINCE in the Constitution!
This whole incident is yet another example of the extreme short sightedness of the Obama Administration. They see a political advantage to this action and to hell with the country. Nice. What a jerk.  God, I miss Ronald Reagan.

Soldier overseas? No voting for you

Rangel Speaks, and Asks for Time

Bankruptcy filings up 25% over last year

Friday, July 23, 2010

More Race and Tax Issues

Try to find this story covered in the mainstream media! Race Played Role in Obama Car Dealer Closures

The Dems love taxes.  That is collecting them from us, not paying thier own.  Here's some examples:

Sen. John Kerry skips town on sails tax

Ethics raps put Rangel on trial

Fifth straight quarterly with a profit and not a dime of bailout money was used. Ford posts another quarterly profit as sales climb
Joe 'the joke' Biden thinks the Republicans are out of step?  Maybe out of step with his Washington but not with the people.  Biden calls Republicans 'wildly out of step' during N.C. fundraiser

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Media cover-up and Racists Rants. This must be Tuesday.

I'm a big Mark Levin fan and drive to work each day listening to Mark's pod cast from the night before.  I thought I'd share.  Listen to Mark Levin's show from last night

Obama: Mr. Incredible

We all knew this but now there's proof  Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Mr. President, are you listening?  Please, No More Government Spending!

Busted: Dishonest Hacks at Think Progress Caught Manufacturing Another Fake Racist Tea Party Story


Government Racists?  It looks like this lady was screwed by the Obama Administration.  A clip (the one below) appeared on the Internet on Monday.  It was taken out of context where she was explaining about an incident that occurred 20 some years ago.  In the full video, she explains how she discovered race was not the issue, poor was the issue and her actions were wrong.  But no one bothered to get her side of the story and she was out of a job by Tuesday.


A nice new shopping mall opened today in Gaza: Will the media report on it?


Government for Sale: How Lobbyists Shaped the Financial Reform Bill

Where the Dollar is heading

Didn't Joe Biden say this is the summer of recovery?  Home construction sinks to lowest level since Oct.

OK. This took place in 1817 so I guess I can't call it news but I like it. - The Character of a President

Monday, July 19, 2010

I will not rest... Really...

Our "I will not rest until..." President is having a party as soon as he returns from his Maine vacation. Obamas find a way to do Broadway at home, hosting star-studded PBS taping.  Is it just me, or is our President resting his ass off?  With 41 rounds of golf, weekly vacations and parties how does he find enough time to screw things up?  How many times has Obama said he will not rest?  Listen for yourself.  I WILL NOT REST
(hat-tip to the Mark Levin Show http://www.marklevinshow.com/)

Lied to again...  Changing Stance, Administration Now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax  but that's not what Mr. Obama told us.  See video below:



Team Obama Braces for Upcoming Story Set to Expose Intelligence Spending

Obama really is clueless.  He is always running as fast as possible in the wrong direction.
Obama’s Michigan trip highlights misguided federal push for ‘green’ auto batteries that cost and pollute more than market-driven competitors.

Joe Biden says everything is great for the Dems...
Biden brushes off talk of big Dem losses in fall
But the Dems don't think so.
Dems Start to Panic as Reality of Midterm Woes Sets In

Oil spill stopped? - Well maybe not...
Engineers Detect Seepage Near BP's Capped Oil Well

A Must Read...
America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution

Not only a racist, but also a rapper?
Unearthed: King Samir Shabazz Rap CD… “I’m a Terrorist Trained By Bin Laden”

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Big Brother on the move...

Here we go people.  If you're overweight, don't expect the same health care. It's starting...
Obesity Rating for Every American Must Be Included in Stimulus-Mandated Electronic Health Records, Says HHS

Better buy some gold or silver, anything that when dropped on your foot hurts will be better than the dollar.
Dollar extends losses on US economy concerns

To screw-up this much, you need to be well rested.
Obama Has Shot 41 Rounds of Golf as President

Just another example of the liberal media hiding news from folks if it doesn't fit their liberal view.
Why the silence from The Post on Black Panther Party story?