Yes, you can have both of these at the same time, on different parts of your old body.
The Ethereum London Hard Fork is in the Google News roday. And I am staring at it, trying to make some sense of it.
And I am reading Limits to Growth: the 30-year update.
Things don't look good.
This what I became, when I could no longer be an Electronic Engineer.
The Tech part came from my father, and the Writer part cam from my Mother.
People who have never heard of a Tech Writer before, can easily understand this description.
Not Being can be very handy. It can help us ignore things we do not want to see.
But too much of it, makes us stupid.
I recently discovered Lucy Smith Millikin, a Sister of Joseph Smith. The Wikipedia article I sent you contains her photograph, that shows her to be slightly wacky.
This is probably why no portraits of Smith exist. He did not want other people to see his face.
When Joseph Smith died at the hands of a mob in 1844, there were many people who took his place. The most successful was Brigham Young, but there was also the RLDS church in Northern Illinois.
They were rich farmers, who would gladly have given Emma and her sons a good home. She could of hired someone elae to represnt her interests in Nauvoo.
This was a huge mistake that made everything that followed much harder.
During WWII.
Dad's Photography Studio, which was nothing, became a gold mine. And so did every other business in town. There were plenty of jobs for everyone.
This booming economy continued for twenty years, while people spent the money they were forced to save during the war.
When that money was gone, in the Fifties, America stopped growing. And was forced to accept a steady-state economy, which was more difficult.
Anyone who wanted to survive left their hometown. and never came back.
Every Advanced Technology is a Miracle. And this is certainly one of those.
The person using it has to be something of a miracle himself - but we will overlook that.
It has many clever components to make you smarter. But you can take them apart, and put them back together.
And it makes coffee. Maybe not the best, but good enough!
This is where I was born and grew up, in Ft. Madison, Iowa. Right on the intersection of Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri. As Midwestern as I could be.
Where half of the world's manufactured goods were once produced. And where nothing is now produced.
Trump was a success because he recognized this.
The Midwest was won in the 19th Century and lost in the 20th Century.
And hard to detect.
l lived through the destruction of America myself, and never thought to notice it.
It is so common now, it cannot be noticed.
We cannot even say "Life is difficult now" when it certainly is.
We have to say "Everything is fine!" when we know that is a lie.
I did the r.ight thing when I went to college: I became an engineer. I wasn't interested in engineering (most of us were not). But this made us valuable property.
For example, I was once stuck in Fairbanks, Alaska, with a lot of other college kids looking for a job. But when I mentioned I was an Engineering student, they said "Here is your sleeping bag, jump on the next plane to Nome (Alaska)."
I had a job in a gold-mining camp. I worked 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. But I took enough money back, I didn't have to work the next school year.
I got the latest Android laptop (they call it a Tablet PC) and it sucks!
To begin with, it has the smallest manual ever made. and there is no online manual.
It has a wireless mouse, but no way to plug it in.
It needs something to hold the display upright, but you have to pay extra for that.
This article, from the New Yorker, is the best I have seen.
This has been a struggle!
I wish I was rich and could hire someone else to do this for me, whenever I wanted it done. I wouldn't mind if the private parts of my body were exposed, diring this process.
These were common a few years ago, and they were adding American Dollars to the pockets of the Cuban people. But the American government shut this down, claiming some strange diseases were occurring that were never heard of before or since.
And claiming Cuba was a dangerous Cold War enemy. as shown by the Cuban Missle Crisis. And the Bay of Pigs event.
Cuba forgot that America helped it win its War of Independence from Spain and that America was its friend in its backyard.
I am thinking of Cuba. Lots of Americans want to help them - who doesn't? But How? When their own government cannot help them.
We should help Americans go to Cuba (as tourists) but not help Cubans become Americans.
A good start would be widespread Internet access, using fiber optic cable. Smartphones could be used for Internet access. This would move them into the Computer economy in a hurry! Maybe too much of a hurry. but they could always back off when they want to.
This is a watch./phone combo., using the Google Wear OS.
I will download the software to my Android Phone, and let it control the Watch.
I was born (in 1936) and raised in this town. It used to have many companies in it, that hired many people.
Not anymore, it is part of the Rust Belt, that Americans cannot understand, and resulted in the election of Trump, who promised to Make America Great Again. But made the situation worse than before.
I have a cousin, Betty Trip, who still lives there, but cannot understand, in the least, what is going on there, She only asks why her sons cannot get jobs.
Ray says I smell terrible, in my urine-soaked clothing, and he is going to buy adult diapers today and make me wear them.
I am incontinent, one of the effects of old age. but I cannot smell myself.
It took over 10 years for my doctors to understand this.
It started when I was running downhill in a wilderness area in 1999. All of a sudden, I had no legs, and I fell to the ground. Two men on their b\icycles saw me fall and rode off to notify the ranger.
I managed to get back on my feet again and staggered off towards the trailhead, where I met a fire engine (In California they are the first responders). They gave me some oxygen that made me feel much better. They called an ambulance, that took me to a hospital.
I am not sure what happened next, but soon I could not talk, only make strange noises. I passed out and woke up the next day, tied down to a hospital bed. This was frustrating!
But eventually, I could talk and demanded to be released, which they did. I went back to my usual life, which included working out at a fitness center. Where I passed out again.
They called an ambulance, that took me back to the same hospital. This time, the doctors were determined to find out what was wrong with me, and they did many tests on me. And told me "You have low blood sodium."
I kept falling down but could tell when this was about to happen, and just stopped and rested.
I moved to Costa Rica, where I kept falling down and going to the hospital in ambulances.
My doctor told me I was having a TIA (temporary ischemic disorder) and told me to rest. But could not tell me how this happened, or how to cure it.
This is caused by an insufficient blood supply to the brain. which has several parts. The effect is different depending on the part affected. It took a while for my doctors to understand this.
My last doctor was a neurologist, who could tell my problems were with my brainstem, and he prescribed some pills (Expansia) to control this.
Google should get this under control because now it is not.
I have a Google account with its own password, a huge thing that is tamper-resistant. I have copied it to several paper copies so it will not get lost. Any additional passwords I get should be of this quality: big things the computer makes for me but allows me to view them.
The way things are done bow is frustrating. I get a notice now if some passwords need to be changed. This is fine with me. Google should then change the passwords for me. Simple as that.
If an app asks for my Gmail password, as sometimes happens, it should be easy for me to do this.
Ray has gone to visit his mother in Kentucky. This was supposed to be a two-day visit but, as usual, it is taking longer.
Ray usually takes me shopping, in his car. But I decided to do it myself, using the bus. Bad decision!
The first stop was at a Walmart store, where I bought some coffee. Then to another store, where I bought a watch, The one I had worked fine, but the strap was broken. They had a cheap watch, without any instructions. I bought it and will let Ray figure out how to use it. The strap does look neat.
The next stop, Aeropost, flies my packages from Miami to Costa Rica - sometimes. Amazon sends all my packages to the Aeropost warehouse in Miami. that is supposed to fly them to Costa Rica. This time, as usual, things are all messed up. But I put what I have in a taxi. and head for my bus ride home.
It drops me off two blocks from home. But my legs are giving out, and some neighbors have to help me walk home.
Then they call an ambulance, which askes me all kinds of questions, in Spanish. Fortunately. Sandy shows up, who is bilingual. I tell them I have a Balance Disorder, but they don't understand what that is.
I will have to write a paper sometime, explaining it.
Games are clever, the cleverest thing on your computer. It knows you want to be entertained, and it is doing its best to entertain you - for free!
It knows if you see "It's free!" on your computer screen, you will probably click on it. Not always, but usually - and that is good enough. It has you hooked, and all it has to is real you in, very carefully.
How does it make you stupid? Very cleverly, by rewarding you very easily.
It is telling you "You don't have to be smart to win life's goodies!" All you have to do is click here.
With a Westward orientation.
This was John Neihart, who I was privileged to listen to at the University of Missouri, in 1960.
When I enrolled, I saw this tiny man, with a huge mane of white hair, and a smile on his face.
He was looking at his future students, who would listen to him recite his poetry, about the Winning of the West.
He called this Epic Poetry, which meant it was modeled on Ancient Greek poetry. He had read this in its original language, and he was entranced by it.
He never used a microphone, but he had no trouble being heard. He was like an Opera Singer who could easily overpower a symphony orchestra right in front of her.
He didn't do much singing, but his poetry had plenty of rhythms.
He went to Lamoni, Iowa to manage his church's historical property there. At least that was the plan.
But the Virus has shut everything down. What to do?
He took a closer look at this property, and was not impressed. How could he sell it?
It was used for a variety of purposes, over quite a long period. How could he simplify that?
Could he just fold his tent and go home?
This means it no longer exists, for most people, who depend on the News to tell them what is going on in the world.
Afghanistan (a big chunk of the world's surface) no longer exists?
Not in most people's minds.
"What is this?" I have been wondering. And here is the answer.
Amazon has her.
This gal knows how to write. She makes her misadventures (which are numerous) seem funny!
These are all Kindle books, which you can easily add to your Fire tablet.
I hesitate to write about this, but something is forcing me to do it.
It seems to me there are two forces in the world: good and evil. Forces that atre outside normal reality, and act on us.
This explains a lot: why vast areas of the world are good or evil, mostly evil. Why the Taliban are dominant in Afghanistan. Because evil has great appeal.
In the same way, American voters found Trump irresistible.
Which does not exist, and is unlikely to ever exist. You can put this another way, and speak of the need for a global civilization.
This is also unlikely to exist, and for the same reason: we developed as tribal people, of about 100 people for each tribe (each with its own language). That way, everyone in the tribe knew everyone else.
A tribe of millions of people is not possible.
This hit me in the middle of the night and gave me a bad scare. I can appreciate how severely it can affect those with mental difficulties. Where can they get help?
My wife Beth had severe mental problems and ended up in a psych ward. I got to visit her there and got to see how they treated her, which gave me a bad scare.
When she was admitted, they gave her a shot of a powerful drug that knocked her out for two days. When she recovered, she was a different person and told me our marriage was over. This was progress, I asked them? I got no answer.
What did I learn from this unfortunate episode? Mental illnesses are difficult to cure, in fact, many of them cannot be cured.
But there are plenty of therapists who will try. And a new kind of therapy is invented every week. I have tried many of them myself.
Silicon Valley, where I used to work, has about equal numbers of Mental developers and Computer developers.
And the situation is getting worse.
This becomes apparent as you read his Memoirs, a huge book where he talks about anything that comes to his mind.
I have previously referred to him as the Prophet who never grew up. He made the serious mistake of making his son his successor, instead choosing the best-qualified person, as the LDS do.
