BEIJING, CHINA - AUGUST 27: Usain Bolt of Jamaica celebrates after winning gold in the Men's 200 metres final during day six of the 15th IAAF World Athletics Championships Beijing 2015 at Beijing National Stadium on August 27, 2015. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images for IAAF) Recently I promised to focus on "the bright side" of the news because of the constant onslaught of negative headlines. It's not as easy as it sounds. One of today's headlines at the Drudge Report promises to tell the story of a woman stealing a dog from a man in medical distress as paramedics worked to save his life. Who would do such a thing? More headlines scream that the president is a racist because he's said pretty much the exact same thing about Baltimore as the former major and current congressman (parts of the city are a rat-infested cesspool) because Trump has the wrong skin color: orange. Everything seems to be a controversy, even the first American flag created by anti-slavery Quaker Betsy Ross (because Colin Kaepernick said the flag she sewed was racist.) But I don't want to talk Colin Kaepernick because I don't agree with his politics, and the point is to look for the bright side of a story. For the same reason, I don't want to talk about Megan Rapinoe and her protests as a member of the U.S. Women's National Soccer team when the national anthem was played, even though her attention-seeking gesture upset me more than Kaepernick because Rapinoe represented our nation as a competitor but was allowed to disrespect its most powerful symbol, the flag. Since I can't … [Read more...]
Looking on the bright side
Bill Tush Ted Turner revolutionized the information world when he bought Channel 17, a local Atlanta television station, and started bouncing its signal off of a satellite so people everywhere could watch, and it quickly turned into the first cable "superstation," running content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Before Turner forever changed the industry, the Big Three national networks (ranked in order of their marketshare) were CBS, NBC, and ABC. The three major networks all stopped offering content during the early morning hours and from around 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. every morning, only a test pattern was broadcast over the airways. Ted owned the rights to a lot of old movies and the Atlanta Braves, which meant he had a virtually unlimited supply of content. The FCC decreed that once Channel 17 evolved into a national network, Turner had to broadcast a news program in order to maintain the station's federal license. In a move of sheer genius, Ted didn't even try to go against the Walter Cronkite-style news anchors during the "normal" news hour from 6:00 p.m to 7:00 p.m. Instead, Ted hired a comedian named Bill Tush and offered the news at 3:00 a.m. Turner figured nobody was going to watch his station for the news, anyway, but at that hour of the morning, his SuperStation literally had no other competition, and Tush made it fun to watch the news. Some of his on-air stunts were hilarious and became legendary, as the video below demonstrates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy8MTBxP7no Another brilliant and innovative move was when Turner began … [Read more...]
A slight change of plans
It's all good. Well, okay, it's only mostly good. There was that whole yellow jacket incident. The past 72 hours or so have been very interesting. Almost nothing has gone according to plan, but the best explanation for that is that I didn't really have a well-developed plan in the first place, just a convicted thought about needing to improve my productivity. For a guy who spends most of his time writing, I don't get nearly enough real work accomplished. I had the initial impulse to permanently delete my Facebook account primarily because of my own lack of discipline, as far as productive work is concerned. I announced this decision to the general public before discussing it with my wife, which rarely works out for the best because she's not as quick to jump to hasty conclusions. In case you haven't figured it out yet, she's the real brains in our family. Lisa's first concerns were the pictures of the grandkids our daughter posts on Facebook all the time. Didn't I still want to see them? She then asked, what about your high school English teacher and the friends you've made in Australia, and those connections you truly care about? She reminded me the problem with Facebook isn't the people as much as how I've been using the medium. I'll admit that I was more than a little surprised that her reaction wasn't anything but, "Thank God!" Changes had to be made, though, and changes have already occurred. Changes NEEDED to be made because I just can't spend the rest of my life arguing with idiots on Facebook. It doesn't produce income. Liberals and atheists tend to … [Read more...]
K9s for Warriors
If you've read my book Always a Next One, you know that I'm a huge supporter of our LOCAL Humane Societies because they help homeless animals find new homes. Typically I do NOT provide any sort of financial support national organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States because they are nothing more than professional fund-raisers, and they are raising money to pay six-figure executive salaries, not for helping animals in need in your local community. I also refuse to donate any money to PETA because the people in that organization can't even tell the difference between a dog, a rat, and a pig. I do make an exception for and donate to the ASPCA, because even though they are a national organization, the ASPCA operate the animal shelters in New York City and rescue abused and homeless animals. The reason I adamantly support our local Humane Societies over national organizations because THEY SAVE LIVES. Wonderful dogs like Ralphie the beagle would not be alive today if an organization like Angels Among Us didn't exist, with a small army of volunteers to provide temporary refuge when shelters are overcrowded. What could get any better than saving the life of a dog about to be euthanized, and finding him or her a perfect forever home? How about saving two lives for the price of one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up6Vg70RJnQ That's exactly what the program K9s for Warriors does--they rescue dogs from animal shelters, train them to become service animals, and then place them with military veterans suffering from battlefield injuries and post … [Read more...]
