People used to say, “Do right and fear no man; don’t right and fear no woman.” And now e-mails have supplanted old fashioned snail mail, but yet, no such caution seems to be involved. It seems that people feel that when they sit in front of their computer alone at night and type out all sorts of nonsense, somehow they are removed from responsibility for their missiles.
Currently, the Governor of New York appears, perhaps rightfully, perhaps wrongly, disinclined to release his e-mails that may be part of the scandal du jour, and, the Governor of New Jersey appears to be in trouble because of e-mails concerning his girlfriend, which he now, pursuant to a court order, has to turn over. All of this is quite an apart and aside from the fact that any divorce lawyer will tell you about half of the people who come into their offices have a briefcase full of e-mails sent or received by a formerly believed-to-be-faithful spouse. Various laws have been passed, such as one in New York, making it illegal to look at somebody else’s e-mail, but that doesn’t seem to deter jealous spouses. They apparently operate under the proposition that if the computer is in their home, it is open season on whatever’s in it.
Best advice: don’t send e-mails of a personal nature unless you have no problem with your spouse – and eventually a judge – reading them.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
If The Hsu Fits… Give It Back
Don’t you think you would be pretty sore if somebody decided to take your money and make a charitable donation with it and not even ask your permission, nor even tell you to what charity the money was to go. But that is exactly what Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer did.
Norman Hsu was an on-the-lamb businessman who had been wanted by the State of California on grand larceny charges and just surrendered to authorities. Simple enough story! But wait, it gets more involved. Hsu had given $62,000 to Governor Eliot Spitzer’s and $23,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. A fundraiser for Mrs. Clinton called him “a bit of a political junkie.” The media revealed his criminal background, and both Hillary Clinton and Governor Spitzer then said that they would take the money given to them by Hsu and donate it to charity. Now really! Hsu never intended that money to be given to charity. He intended to donate it to two political campaigns. The proper thing to do would have been to return the money to its source, not volunteer to be charitable with Mr. Hsu’s money. But then again, politicians are good at spending other people’s money.
Norman Hsu was an on-the-lamb businessman who had been wanted by the State of California on grand larceny charges and just surrendered to authorities. Simple enough story! But wait, it gets more involved. Hsu had given $62,000 to Governor Eliot Spitzer’s and $23,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. A fundraiser for Mrs. Clinton called him “a bit of a political junkie.” The media revealed his criminal background, and both Hillary Clinton and Governor Spitzer then said that they would take the money given to them by Hsu and donate it to charity. Now really! Hsu never intended that money to be given to charity. He intended to donate it to two political campaigns. The proper thing to do would have been to return the money to its source, not volunteer to be charitable with Mr. Hsu’s money. But then again, politicians are good at spending other people’s money.
Friday, August 31, 2007
GLOBAL WARMING
Obviously, anybody this side of a lunatic asylum would not suggest that all the poisons, automobile omissions, factory smoke, and cow flatulations that go into the atmosphere could be doing any of us any good. Of course, the cow flatulation problem could easily be resolved by mixing substantial amounts of Gas-X in with the hay. But there is apparently a substantial amount of scientific authority (ranging from the scientists at NASA, the Brookhaven Laboratory, and various universities) that cannot merely be ascribed to payments from financially invested corporations suggesting that global warming is more hype than reality. But one thing should be plain to even non-scientific types, and that is, simple arithmetic.
In 2003, there was a monumental heat wave across Europe killing approximately 35,000 people – 2,000 in the U.K. alone. This is an awful and painful statistic. But worse is the fact that many more people die from the cold each winter. In England alone, approximately 25,000 people usually die each year from the cold. In Europe, over the same period that approximately 200,000 people died from heat, approximately 1.5 million Europeans died from the cold. Also, probably because of expanding use of air conditioners, the death rate from heat is continually being reduced.
Logically, the same global warming, whether one believes it is something we cause, or it is just one of those ebbs and flows that happen in the history of the world, at the same time saves many more lives by reducing the greater number of people who would otherwise die from the cold winters. The arithmetic, though cruel and unfair, is simple, and suggests we need more research, and the fact that we should not facilely accept the fact that global warming is a people-created killer – or even is an unnatural phenomenon
In 2003, there was a monumental heat wave across Europe killing approximately 35,000 people – 2,000 in the U.K. alone. This is an awful and painful statistic. But worse is the fact that many more people die from the cold each winter. In England alone, approximately 25,000 people usually die each year from the cold. In Europe, over the same period that approximately 200,000 people died from heat, approximately 1.5 million Europeans died from the cold. Also, probably because of expanding use of air conditioners, the death rate from heat is continually being reduced.
Logically, the same global warming, whether one believes it is something we cause, or it is just one of those ebbs and flows that happen in the history of the world, at the same time saves many more lives by reducing the greater number of people who would otherwise die from the cold winters. The arithmetic, though cruel and unfair, is simple, and suggests we need more research, and the fact that we should not facilely accept the fact that global warming is a people-created killer – or even is an unnatural phenomenon
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