Carpe Diem

"You Didn't Build It"

     President Obama seemed to say that entrepreneurs do not deserve any special credit, or payment, for starting and building businesses because they could not have done so without the ingenuity and work of a multitude of discoverers, inventors, suppliers of goods and services and builders of roads. 

     He's right, of course, and that applies all the way back in time.  People no longer living had to invent the wheel, the printing press, the steam engine, the telephone, the gasoline engine and on and on in order for folks like Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Bill Gates et al., to endow the world with their inventions and discoveries. Therefore, what, they do not deserve to receive exceptional compensation?

     If you either work for someone else or for yourself you expect to be paid not for the sum total of human enterprise going back to the wheel but for the incremental value of your contribution to that total.  

If you happen to be Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey or Walt Disney the value of your incremental addition is substantial and will be compensated so long as, and to the degree that, there is a marketplace demand for what you have to offer.

     This has nothing to do with whether you are a jolly good fellow, a scoundrel, or Saint Bernadette, which can be addressed by society in other ways.  Therefore, the reasoning of Barack Obama is defective, misleading and in the longer run, dangerous.

Thought for the Day

Ah, Love, Could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire
Would not we shatter it to bits, and then
Remold it nearer to the heart's desire?
                                    The Rubyiat of Omar Khayyam

Infidelity --- by Richard Plato (Freddie's Brother)

I am Freddie's older brother, and this is about being 'in love' and is addressed to heterosexual males, of which I am one.  The subject is important and practical, because most people have had or will have the experience of being in love, or think they have.  While directly addressing males this applies to females also, and equally.  Freddie has authorized me to tell you that she concurs in these views entirely.

     When a man falls in love with a girl (and all women are 'girls' when you're in love with them) what is it like and how is it distinguished from lust?  The test is this; ironically, if you are 'in love' you think very little about sex.  That's not what you want.  You want the girl, not something she can give you or withhold from you.  You are in love if you can say "I would rather be miserable with her than happy without her".  You can confuse lust and love but they are quite different.  The way to distinguish love from lust is to think honestly about what it is that you really want.  That should give you the answer without trying very hard.

     And here's the danger, in either case, when you try to fool yourself into thinking that you are motivated by something high-minded.  You may let your imagination run away with you.  If the object of your affection is married to someone else, or if you are, you are likely to think that there's something almost spiritual about your emotion.  That's when you tell yourself, and then others, such nonsense as "We didn't want "it" to happen, as if you were considering something coming at you from somewhere else, something you could not avoid, not your fault or responsibility.  "We didn't plan it.  We were just good friends and just wanted to have lunch together and reminisce about old times" --- and all that garbage, for that's what it is.  The only reasonable and honorable course you can take is to put it aside.  If you don't, it will lead to something else, and much worse than you imagine.  Infidelity produces misery beyond measure, not only for the immediate victims but their families, their friends, frequently their employers, and everyone else who is touched by it.

     Don't let it start.  No, you are not "just friends".  No, you did not "just have lunch" or "just talk" about football, or the weather or anything else.  You did not "just" happen to run into each other in the mall.  It was planned, consciously or sub-consciously.  Turn around and walk the other way.  Forget about a lunch date, for that's what it is, a date, whether you call it that or not.  If you have already made the date, cancel it.  This is the only decent, honorable path you can take.  Never make the fatal mistake of assuming that you can resist temptation.  You can't. 

Wake Up and Greet the Day

. . . and watch your weight

The Visiting Grandson

     A grandson of Harry Truman is in Japan where he plans to visit, or has visited, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to meet with the mayors of those cities.  From what we can tell this is a mission of peace and friendship, and that's fine.  Apologies and assurances that America is always wrong, would certainly not be.
     Harry Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, had to decide whether to use the atomic bomb or not.  It was not an easy decision.  But he made a fully defensible one.  The best military minds in the United States believed that had the bomb not been used something on the order of a million lives would have been lost.  The Japanese would have fought on fearlessly for an indefinite period.  More cities might have been destroyed than were destroyed with the bomb.
     He could have asked for a truce and a negotiated peace, but American boys had died in massive numbers for what President Roosevelt had stated firmly was the object of the war, Unconditional Surrender.  That's what we fought for, with blood, treasure, energy and dedication for almost four years.  To accept less than the attainment of President Roosevelt's stated goal, which the American people accepted, for failure to use a weapon which was to accomplish that goal was not the chosen course  At last we avenged the men on the Arizona, and many, many other men at sea, in the air, and the  mosquito-ridden islands which dotted the Pacific across endless horizons.
     Various Japanese VIPs have acknowledged that Japan itself would have dropped the bomb on the United States had the situation been reversed.
     Because of a flawed sense of acceptable military behaviour, the Janpanese committed horrific atrocities in the War --- the rape of Nanking, death marches, abuse of POWs among others.  The Japanese are an enterprising and able people and these misdeeds were cultural, not a reflection of any ethnic or racial circumstance.  We can hope that the Japanese are more civilized than they were then, and there is good reason to believe that they are.  The past is past.  As the Bible says "Let the dead  bury the dead".

Who's Intolerant?

     The definition of the word  "marriage" has been confined to males and females in every country, every nation and empire, every region, religion, culture, political and legal system in the world since the dawn of human history.  Nowhere has same-sex marriage --- two males or two females --- been accepted with approval until very recently and even then only by a minority in the more than 30 states where it has been submitted for a vote.  To say that anyone who opts for traditional marriage is a 'bigot' or 'homophobe' is beyond absurd.  Such abuse and name calling is simply an attempt to intimidate and silence opposition and amounts to saying that virtually all the world has been populated by bigots and homophobes all along even though no one knew it.