Think About Thinking

"Once you understand that what you think about is what controls your life, you start getting real carefu1 about what you think about," Wayne W. Dyer, Ph.D.

the gambler

an original on the dharma--------- what draws a man to madness ?---what makes him think that he---can harness light and darkness---to create that which is free ?---what makes him think there's light and dark ?---what bounds define what's free ?---whatever makes him disembark---on 'you' and 'them' and 'me' ?---two worlds he has before him---one earthly, one unseen---each has it's pleasure in the swim---each has it's own smokescreen---i pose the question to all concerned---from sacred to obscene---why can't a man fill the fire that burns---and still be self redeemed ?---does one so drain the other---for he who drinks to the hilt ?---is it really divine mother---who so entwines this quilt----of man's existence---to truly make us side---between the worldly appetence---and the meditative bride ?---the problem leaves me baffled---helpless and forlorn---the freest minds then shackled---not one of us freeborn---to take what life can offer---and still fulfill the soul---making every man a gambler---between wants and self control----what draws a man to madness ?---what makes him think that he---can harness light and darkness---to create that which is free ?---what makes him think there's light and dark ?---what bounds define what's free ?---for all this man can leave one mark---and that is just to BE !

Indicate Never Specify

For years I have subscribed to a theory I call: "Indicate Never Specify". I discovered the concept while reading about East Asian ink wash painters.  They carefully limit their brush strokes to the minimum required to capture the mood and texture of a landscape. Detail is absent; allowing the viewer to fill in the intentionally missing visual information. 

Sales people sometimes employ this technique to help shape their offering to meet a prospect's needs by limiting information to only that which is absolutely necessary to close the sale. There is a potential ethical danger with this technique, as it may lead some sales people to mislead a prospect into an unwise purchase.

The other day, Bill Bonner an investment advisor who posts a daily diary entry, http://bonnerandpartners.com/the-age-of-trumpismo/ explained why it has been so easy for Donald Trump to embrace the Goldman alumni he has appointed to his cabinet after vilifying them during his campaign.  

I guess he didn't mean what I inferred from what he said. He indicated but never specified. Aside a few "bumper sticker" phrases he offered no specifics, except to say he will solve the country's problems. He said "Trust me it will be tremendous".

I pray that in four years The Donald will have done such a "tremendous" job that I will enthusiastically want to vote for him. My concern is that during the campaign he beat the drum about how cozy HC was with Goldman and how the speaking fees she collected were obscene. How she said one thing in public and another in private.

I feel as if a Jedi mind trick is being played out on a national scale. Something like a cosmic three card monte.

Politics - ONE FINAL TIME!

This is a copy of my response to a Facebook post about Aetna abandoning The Affordable Care Act (Obama Care).

WOW to both of you. You clearly have your minds made up but I will simply state my case ONE FINAL TIME!

Donna, you will remember I introduced you to Alex Jones and PrisonPlanet,tv.  I have very broad and varied sources for my information and Alex Jones is just one of them. So is Noam Chomsky.

For the record, I am not a democrat or republican.  I feel as though I am at a party and the host tells me I can have anything I want to drink; then asks if I want Coke or Pepsi.  I ask, "Do you have ginger ale?" and he repeats, "Do you want Coke or Pepsi."  That is the difference I see between the two ruling parties.  I emphasize RULING PARTIES.

Politics today is presented to us by the mainstream media and the whores in Washington just like the "bread and circuses" the Roman Empire fed the plebs right before the Roman Empire collapsed.

I read and followed Ayn Rand when Paul Ryan was still in his diapers. I understand and ascribe to the libertarian principles she wrote about many years ago. Unlike the Tea Party fanatics, who rage "We the people", "Take our country back"; I also am a realist and businessman who recognizes we are out of control FIRST as a society.

Government is a construct of our society.  There ARE free and democratic socialist republic countries in the world today, but our media scoff at their success because the media and government is controlled by lobbyists for the power elite, not for the people of the country.  The people are simple chattel who are enslaved by banks and government privatization which is turning our world into a version of a bad futuristic Sifi book or movie.

Getting government out of education, health care and the economy is exactly what the rulers who REALLY run this country want.

I have friends in education who cite numerous examples of corporations making hundreds of millions of dollars from Charter schools while abandoning less profitable neighborhoods and children. Education is NOT something that should be treated like a business with measureable outcomes and standardization.  You can read my post on this subject at http://efficiency-expert.blogspot.com/

The collusion between the health care providers, big pharma and the insurance companies is a disgrace to our nation.  EACH and EVERY ONE is a private company.  Today, corporations are no longer corporate citizens of America, They are international entities focused on short term shareholder value. They move their jobs and revenues across the globe to find the best tax rates and the cheapest labor.

Have you given any thought to the disgrace private prisons are in this country. We have a prison-industrial complex made up of companies who operate prisons simply for profit.  Last week the justice department ruled that the federal government would no longer support private prisons. The mainstream news reported about how this will impact the profits and share price of these public companies.  That was the focus of the story they fed us as if running prisons for profit is a "good" thing.

Are you familiar with the case in Pennsylvania where a judge was colluding with a private prison to receive a kick back for every young person he sent to their facility.  It was a fabulous marketing scheme,  In business we call this a spiff.  GREAT marketing, and the more actions  the government declares illegal, the more people get arrested and sent to prisons.  These modern day Bastilles are  run by corporations who bring jobs and stimulate the economies of the former industrial towns where they build them. 

Maybe someday they will be stormed just as the original was stormed in 1789.  Unfortunately, our government has insured this will never happen; not because they have corrected the injustice, but because they have financially, chemically and electronically sedated the public so they no longer have the desire to revolt.

So please don't tell me about, "We the People", or getting the government out of the very activities in which the government SHOULD be involved. 

Open your eyes.  Democrats, Republicans, Tea Party, Clinton, Trump, Sanders, Paul, Cruz, Bush, Kasich, Biden, Obama, Fiorina, McConnell, Ryan, Reid, Cheney, Conservative, Liberal, Moderate: It's all bull. A puppet show set up to give you the illusion that your vote matters and that you have a choice.

So what will it be, Coke or Pepsi?

https://www.facebook.com/martin.amadio.75/posts/10210150169734790?comment_id=10210154454641910&reply_comment_id=10210166976114939&notif_t=feed_comment&notif_id=1471995377622082

Mr. Holland's Opus

Sunday, August 20, 2016

I just caught the last 15 minutes of the movie Mr. Holland's Opus on Showtime.

Normally I would have just clicked to the next choice on my multi-channel cable feed which constantly shows movies I have no desire to watch.

I stayed with Mr. Holland’s Opus because I knew that Jay Thomas played a supporting role and I love Jay Thomas on Sirius/XM radio. He is a very funny guy.  The scene I clicked into was the very scene, where Jay Thomas, who plays “the buddy” to Richard Dreyfuss was saying goodbye to him in the music room.

I stayed with the movie past this scene as I was getting dressed and the TV was just on as background.

Now Mr. Holland’s Opus is a very well made mainstream movie. There should be more movies like this but marketing and sales dictate what gets made.

The movie was perfectly, emotionally manipulative, and hooked me right into Mr. Holland.  It romanticized the role of Humanities in education in the same fashion that Hollywood movies like An Affair To Remember or You’ve Got Mail romanticized love and relationships.

Mr. Holland’s Opus presents the pleasantly romantic, even innocent, notion that our school systems are or should be, places of enrichment and development of our youth. The movie’s climax illustrates the fact that teachers, and music teacher, Mr. Holland in particular, shape our young people into adults who create tomorrow’s society.  This is an idea which should be at the core of our education system.   Unfortunately, one could not recognize this sentiment when one looks closely at the reality of the educational system in America.

I'm sure we'd all like to believe how important the humanities are to a person's education and development but as a nation we continue to cut budgets for education because we view education as an expense which needs to be streamlined and made to run efficiently.  I cannot help but think that this view is hurting our society.  The humanities are far more important than school boards realize.

Believe me, I am a true capitalist.  I recognize the importance of the vocations and training our educational system provide to prepare students with the skills they will need to keep the capitalist society going forward.  But education should be more than glorified job training.

Like so many things in life, and in business, something’s dollar value sometimes is not really equivalent genuine value.

I just heard a quote but cannot find to whom it is attributed.  "Not everything that can be measured is valuable and not everything valuable can be measured.”  I struggle with this everyday in business.

The moral of Mr. Holland’s Opus, although the movie is a fairy tail, a fable if you will; is that under appreciated teachers all over our country are indeed touching our youth’s lives with subjects such as art appreciation and music who’s value cannot be measured or tested.

Education, at both the high school and university level needs to be much more than preparation for the jobs our society needs filled.  Yes that is important, but the true value of education cannot be measured on tests.  There is no metric for the love of learning that comes from a well rounded education.

100 Years After Immigration

There has been much talk in the news these days about immigration and the illegal immigrants coming into our country.  This has prompted me to examine my roots and my family's journey to and assimilation into America after 100 years.

After all, I am only a second generation American.  Although all four of my grandparents were admitted into this country legally, both of my parents were what today would be called "Anchor babies".  Coming to America at the beginning of the 20th Century was entirely different proposition than coming to America today.

Back then it was easy for the our government to manage the tens of thousands of people who came to this country from Europe by steamship in the early 20th Century. They were cataloged, registered and processed at Ellis Island where immigration officials could decide who came in and who didn't.  Back then Italian immigrants were called WOPs, a term which meant With Out Papers. This was the early 20th Century equivalent of the derogatory term Wetback.  BUT they were accepted into the country and a process to gain full citizenship was started.

The Atlantic ocean is a formidable barrier to illegal entry.  The distance from Naples, Italy to Ellis Island is 4400 miles and required a two week ocean voyage in 1914.  By contrast a person can literally wade across the Rio Grande river to get into America making our southern border much more difficult to manage.  The 90 miles of ocean which separates Cuba from Key West, FL is littered with the remains of the thousands who attempted to get to America but never made it.

But immigration legal and illegal is not solely a United States problem. Everywhere in the world people are risking live and limb to immigrate to Western countries to escape everything from poverty to war and sectarian violence.  I just heard an interview on the radio with a man who is one of the nearly 80 thousand people who illegally migrated to Greece this year alone. This man traveled by row boat to reach Greece so he could......get this, walk to Germany. The problem of illegal immigration in the EU is much worse than here in America because the European Union has lifted many of the cross border restrictions between member countries.  So that guy might actually be able to walk from Greece to Germany. It is only about 930 miles from Athens to Munich. 

We take so much for grated in this country.  Try to imagine what it would take for you leave your home, get on a boat and travel for weeks to a place where you don't speak the language, where the people aren't particularly welcoming, where you will be discriminated against, thousands of miles from the rest of your family to start a new life in a new country.  Think about how much courage this takes.  Sure they are breaking all the rules, but just think about the motivation.

My grandparents all came to America separately as teenagers between 1912 and 1915 on steamships in what was referred to as steerage class.  I did some research with the help of my cousin into what it was like on these steamships.  It was hardly the Amistad but it certainly wasn't the Carnival Cruise line either.  They slept in compartments with hundreds of people divided into women without male escorts, men traveling alone, and families. The sleeping berths were 6 feet long and 2 feet wide and with just 2 1/2 feet of space above.  The voyage was two weeks across the Atlantic.   

100 years later, I bitch when I have to take a five hour plane trip to the West Coast.  I need a window seat, my ipad, my laptop, the right snacks, a neck pillow and I still need a day to recuperate.  I cannot imagine what could make me embark on such a treacherous journey.

My father's mother Elizabetta Sulpizio was 19 years old and traveling with her brother, Ponfilio (Paul) when they came to America.  They departed from Naples on Oct 19, 1913 aboard the steamship "Taormina".  They arrived at Ellis Island on Nov 3, 1913.

On the manifest Paul listed his occupation is as "farmer" while no occupation is recorded for my grandmother. They declared that they are each had $25.  That is the equivalent of about $540 today.  They listed their last residence as the town of Bucchianico in Italy.  On the manifest they had to list their destination in the U.S..  They listed that they were going to stay with their brother, Domenico, whose address was 1022 Catherine St. in Philadelphia.

My father's father Alec, came to America under the similar circumstances on a different steamship in 1915 one hundred years ago.  He met my grandmother Elizabetta in South Philadelphia and they married.  He could not speak any English, only  Italian.  The Italians were considered good with shovels.  So they handed him a shovel and he went to work on a crew digging ditches for what would someday become the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  He was paid about 25 cents an hour.  

Today, one hundred years later, his great granddaughter, our daughter Ayla, has 26 years of education.  She can speak both English and Spanish, but not Italian. She is a PHD candidate in Archeology who has to pay thousands of dollars a year to dig ditches with a trowel.  

This is what an immigrant's assimilation into American society is all about.

Today's Father is Not Your Father's Father

Today's father is not your father’s father.

The changing role of fathers is really tied to the changing role of men in our culture.

As I look back over my life I can see how the role of "father" has transformed in just the last 30 years.  The signs are everywhere I look. 

Today when I go into the men’s room of a department store or airport or even along the turnpike and Parkway I see baby changing stations.  Obviously, I can't remember if my father change my diapers when I was a baby; but all evidence points to the fact that he had very little, if anything to do with that type of childcare 60 plus years ago.  Back then, not many men did.  That sort of thing was considered a mother's job, woman’s work.

Today there is a discussion in some circles to extend the family leave of absence to include men as well as women at the birth of a child.  A few years back,British prime minister David Cameron took time off to spend with his new baby girl, Olivia when she was born.  He became the first sitting prime minister in history of the United Kingdom to take parental leave.  Can you imagine Winston Churchill taking a paternity leave and changing diapers?

Television which either mimics or drives our culture at large (depending on your point of view) is a great way to understand our views on the role of father.

Take the television program Father Knows Best which stared Robert Young and aired from 1954 to 1960. It depicted what was then considered an idealized American family, where the father was the head of the household and he dispensed wise and unerring advice to his wife and children in his cardigan sweater.

Compare this to the image portrayed in the TV series Full House which aired from 1987 to 1995.  This series depicted a widowed sports-caster who is forced to raise his three daughters after the death of his wife with the help of his brother-in-law and good friend.

For the last 5 years the ABC Family network has aired a program (which I must admit I cannot watch) called Baby Daddy. It is about a man in his mid in his 20s, who becomes a surprise dad to a baby girl when she's left on his doorstep by an ex-girlfriend.  I bet he has had to change a few diapers.  The expression “baby daddy” brings an entirely new perspective on the idea of "father". 

Our ideas about father are inextricably connected to our ever changing ideas about family.  And as our culture redefines family, so is the role of father redefined.  

As more and more women enter the workforce, once common expressions like “Wait until your father gets home.’ become obsolete. And frankly “Wait until your mother gets home” just doesn’t have the same impact.

Some things never change.  Every person on earth has a father and a mother, and a  few days ago we had a special day set aside for fathers.  Like millions of people, I took time to fondly remember my father.

I especially remembered that by the time I realized my father was right about so many things, I had my own child who thought I was wrong about everything.