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The Irony of 'F'

When you are a student in elementary school
the letters 'A' and 'B' seem the most important
because those are the grades that please your
parents and may end up with some kind of a reward.
Those grades make you feel good about yourself, too.

On the other hand, the letter 'F' is shunned,
and may indicate a sorry state of affairs.

In one of life's little ironies by the time you reach
60 you may have realized that the letter 'F' is possibly
the most powerful letter in the English alphabet...

Here is a list I made one morning during the commute
to prove my point:

F15
F16
F17
F/A-18

fact
factor
factory
factotum
fail
fail-over
failure
fame
familial
family
famished
fan
fans
fast
faster
fastlane
fat
fate
Fatima (St.)
fatso
fatwa

fear
fearful
feast
feat
feathers
features
feeble
feeble-mindedness
feed
feed-store
feet
f*l*t*o
fend-off
Fender-amp
Fender-guitar
fender-bender
Ferrari
fester
fetish
fetus
fez

fib
fibonacci series
fiddle
files
finally
finals
find
finder's fee
finish
finished
finish-up
fire
fired
fir tree
fit
fitness
fizz

flick
flickers
flint
Flintstones

foal
fob
foe
foil
folders
foo
foobar
food
fool
foolish
foot
football
foot fetish
Ford
form
formality
formalize
formula
formulae
fork
fortune
foul
foul-ball
foul-smell
foul-taste
found
foundry

fracture
fractured-flickers
freak
"freaking weird, dude."
freakish
freak occurrence
freaks
freaky
Fred Flintstone
free
freebie
freedom
freight
freighter
freight train
french fries
Fresca
frescoes
fried
friend
friendly
friendlies
friends
friday
fright
frightful
frightened

fubar
f**k
FUD
fuel
full
fully found
fumble
fun
funds
funk
funky
funny
fun-time
furry-friend
furs
future
futures
fuzz
fuzzy logic

Now, tell me true, don't the 'F' words
seem to be the most powerful to you, too?

-- Cal Crowley, 30 Sep 2010

What's next?

Entropic Maelstrom Or Maelstromic Entropy?

We met with our new broker at Edward Jones the other evening. Our previous broker quit to take a law enforcement position with the state department of fish and wildlife. So, I suppose poaching is up since the economy is down, huh? At any rate, our new broker informed us that the stock market has been in the red for the past 10 years! The first time that has happened since they started keeping records about it back in the 1800's. I suppose it proves that the economy is really, really down, huh?

When the stock market goes to hell everybody moves their positions to bonds, paper, and gold which is just exactly what has been happening the past couple of years. Now the broker says everyone is worried about a bond bubble -- which if the feds screw up and allow run-a-way inflation will really mess us up. Nothin' will be worth nuttin' so to speak.

I remember meeting the grandfather of a friend of mine once. He lived next to the ferry dock on Shaw Island, Washington. His words of wisdom for us two young men amounted to this: "I came into this world stark naked and if I go out flat broke I'll figure that I about broke even."

Now what's troubling about this "Aw, shucks" wild west attitude is the seemingly fatalistic acceptance of mediocrity as the standard. I seem to remember Jesus mentioning something about withered vines? If your family tree becomes unproductive then it just withers and dies, doesn't it? Do you suppose it's just the same for an individual's life? Or, how about the life of a country? Or a church? Empires fall. They always have. Rome supposedly fell in a day. Ok, I know that's not entirely true, exactly, because it's still falling ... as we speak.

-- Cal Crowley, 19 Oct 2010

Obama says, "Osama is dead". Long live Obama.

Irony 101. Was it setup this way or not? Apparently, the day the U.S. Government killed Osama bin Laden was 1 May 2011, same day his death was confirmed. Hitler died on 30 Apr 1945 but his death was confirmed on 1 May 1945, some 66 years earlier than Osama did. That is too weird. Additionally, May 1 aka May Day is the traditional, often left-leaning day for labor or working person celebrations around the world. But, May 1, 2011 was also the date Prince William and Kate Middleton tied the knot in all the pomp and circumstance the royals could muster. So, the question is this: who upstaged who?

-- Cal Crowley, 02 May 2011

I have long contended that the Republican party is destroying the USA...

"Paul Starr suggests in his analysis of the American health care system (i.e., The Social Transformation of American Medicine) that Richard Nixon was the first mainstream political leader to take deliberate steps to change American health care from its longstanding not-for-profit business principles into a for-profit model that would be driven by the insurance industry. In 1973, Congress passed the Health Maintenance Organization Act, which encouraged rapid growth of HMOs, the first form of managed care." [ Managed Care ]

Similar effects from similar causes have occurred to our higher academic systems, banking regulations, utility infrastructure regulations, unions, ..., in fact everything that was put in place to get the USA out of the Great Depression has been "de-regulated" or "union busted" and now we are back to the late 1800's in a "boom-or-bust" economy that has gone "bust" and you wonder why? Hah!

-- Cal Crowley, 24 Oct 2011

They knew about offshoring, outsourcing years ago and did nothing to stop it?

I worked at Boeing in Seattle in the 1990-1995 period, and I remember my big boss John telling me back then that soon in the future most software development jobs like I was doing would be off-shored to China and India. He knew. That means others in power knew. So, my questions are these: (1) if they could see it coming why didn't they stop it or at least ameliorate it? (2) couldn't they see that it would destroy our economy to lose so many high paid positions? (3) why haven't those responsible for allowing or encouraging or causing it to happen been rounded up and prosecuted for being "traitors to the people of the United States of America"? Huh?

-- Cal Crowley, 25 Oct 2011

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

-- Cal Crowley, 26 Oct 2011