Presidential Politics, 20th Century Man in the 21st Century and Useless Information

                                    

                

Presidential Politics
The nominating conventions and the Presidential election are a long way off, but here are some early thoughts on what is going on in the world of Presidential politics.

The Republicans are a disaster.  There are many candidates but few have the financial resources at this point to stay the course.  Normally, Jeb Bush would be a shoo-in for the nomination, but he is reluctant to fully join with other Republican potential nomineess in wholeheartedly saying that the invasion of Iraq, effected during his brother’s administration, was a mistake and is the cause of much of the disorder in the Middle East today.  His tentativeness on this point hurts him.  In addition, all Republican nomination-seekers must balance their true beliefs with what that have to say in order not to lose the support of the lunatic right wing of the G.O.P. which believes that any function carried on by government is a step toward socialism (indistinguishable from Communism in their eyes) and would prefer a blend of free enterprise and anarchy.   I suspect Bush will manage to eventually get the nomination by reversing his stands on education and immigration.  If he doesn't get it, the nominee will be a G.O.P. governor who at this point has not entered the race.  

                                                       The Reluctant Elizabeth Warren

                                                       The Tentative Jeb Bush

The Democrats are not in any better shape.  Hillary Clinton seems to have the nomination sewed up, but she must run a gauntlet of criticism, some valid and much invalid, on a daily basis from now until Election Day.  This will take its toll on her campaign, her health and her temper.  Many Democrats feels that her time has passed and that her connections with mistakes of the past, including Bill's, as well as relationships with the business community leave them with a sour taste.  Many Democrats would prefer a candidate who stresses bread and butter issues, who will address income inequality in our country, and who would return to the spirit the Party had during the days of the New Deal.  Bernie Sanders, who lacks the resources to get the nomination, let alone get elected, takes these positions as does Elizabeth Warren who repeatedly says she is not running, but perhaps the lady may be denying her ambitions just a bit too vehemently.
Jack Lippman

                                                       

Twentieth Century Man in the Twenty-first Century

Each week I receive a copy of BloombergBusinessweek in the mail.  It is a very interesting magazine dealing with finance, economics, politics, world events, technology and the society in which we live. (I recommend it.  Steeply discounted subscriptions are readily available on the internet.) 

Unfortunately, each week I find that about twenty percent of what is in the magazine is incomprehensible to me.  I have come to the conclusion that here in the second decade of the twenty-first century, I still remain locked into the last decades of the twentieth century.  I really don’t grasp the tremendous impact “social media” has had on our society and the extent to which those younger than myself are involved in Facebook, Twitter and the like.  I know my mobile phone can take pictures and along with serving as a phone, can be used to access my eMail, search for information and access an infinite number of applications which can be used to do all sorts of very useful as well as many frivolous and useless things.  But I consider my phone only to be an alternate way of paying bills, checking my bank account or the standings in the Eastern Division of the National League.  I still prefer more traditional avenues to do these kinds of things. It took me almost a decade to be confident enough to do some of these things on my desktop computer, which I am told is bordering on obsolescence. I still print out boarding passes to present when I fly somewhere rather than join those knowing souls who just take out their phones so that a weird design pattern can be scanned.

And getting back to BloombergBusinessweek, when I read about something that a start-up tech company (usually headed by an Indian, Israeli or Chinese genius in their twenties) is doing in connection with some other part of social media, business or industry and which is being sold to Facebook, Google or some such outfit for several billion dollars, I read and re-read and re-re-read the article and I cannot for the life of me figure out what the company does.  And if the magazine happens to include a picture of one of these entrepreneurs, I cannot understand how they ever even got a job in the first place, considering the strange ways in which they dress.

I read a newspaper delivered at my front door each day, even though its entire content can be read from my smartphone or my desktop computer.  I read books printed on paper even though I can read them on a computer or mobile device, like a tablet, which I don’t yet possess.  I prefer to make restaurant reservations by a telephone call rather than by doing it online.  I watch TV on a TV set and have no desire to do so via my smartphone, desktop computer or tablet (which I will probably sooner or later acquire.) I listen to music on the radio, from CDs and occasionally from vinyl records on a turntable rather than get them from ITunes or a podcast, whatever that is. (If a fisherman uses unshelled peas as bait, when he throws his line into the water, is that a podcast?)  I am annoyed when people, including close (but younger) relatives reply to me on my phone by “texting” rather than by speaking to me which is what Alexander Graham Bell’s invention was all about in the first place.

This is the dilemma of twentieth century people who are trying to make it in the twenty-first century, where suddenly the rules have all changed.  I guess the only solution would be for me to hire some coders to develop an app which would restate twenty-first century technology in terms comprehensible to those still mired in the twentieth century.  I wonder if I could raise enough money do this through Kickstart or Crowdfunding which I hear are twenty-first century ways of seeking venture capital.  But of course, I haven't got the slightest idea of how to do that, although there probably already is an app out in cyberspace which might show me.   I might even sell my app to Google or Facebook for a few million.  Who knows?
JL
                                                 

Useless Information Department

Many years ago, for reasons I cannot recall, I memorized a bit of useless information.  Possibly, I might have thought, it could someday turn out to be the jackpot question in a quiz show sometime in the future, or enable me to win in a game of “trivia.”  Anyhow, the useless information was that the body of water separating Corsica from Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea was the Straight of Bonifacio.  And that was fifty years ago.

On my recent vacation, I realized that the cruise ship I was on was actually going to pass through that same Straight of Bonifacio!  I never expected to personally see the actual version of that bit of useless information I had memorized years before.  But there I was.  Hurrah!

For the record, I saw Sardinia clearly a couple of miles off on the starboard side of the ship but it was a bit foggy and I could not see Corsica, five miles to the north on the portside.  (That was too bad, because I have heard that was where Napoleon Bonaparte came from, so that would have been nice.  I learned, incidentally, that Sardinia is not where sardines come from.)
JL

                                                              

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