OK, I did write the article in which Barack Obama played the magnificent part of Basset Ball Jones. Yes, I do think it was one of my finest imitations of Mario Cuomo anyone has ever done. Yes, I do think it is the nearest thing to a clear choice since Thelma and Louise.

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Do not get me wrong. I never spent much time watching late night television. And I would be the first to resist the idea that late night TV, well, any TV, would be a place to develop the skill of Second Level Opinion.

But, I would be the first to suggest that cruising all sources for analytic fodder is favorable to chasing one’s own tale or any other method of making one’s physical self a Mobius Strip look alike.

I fondly remember Johnny Carson, part time magician, flipping that pencil while admonishing, in his own inimitable manner of not admonishing, that it IS all in the timing.

I doubt Obama spent much time watching late night television either. I surmise he learned Johnny Carson’s invaluable lesson in pick up basketball games. What better training ground, what better place to gain experience, which, wink wink, we all know he has none of, wink wink. The winning jock knows that timing is everything. Or, at least, seemingly everything, when the winning Jock is already lean, lithe, quick, nimble enough to apply the winning effort when the time is right, in the time that is left. And, unhunh, honey he got riddum. Two times. Two kinds. Kenya and Hula.

What one attentive player can gain from hobby basketball experience some player’s cannot gain ever. Not in 26 years in Congress, (have you seen some of these committees at work on CSPAN?), nor in the crashing of six navy fighter jets at thirty million per crash, nor in five or five hundred years of POWdom.

I have long considered that following, spectator like, every court long trot from basket to basket is unnecessary to the assessment of how the game is going.

Marvelous. As in an adjective that provokes one to marvel. I am in that mood. That mood of double marvel.

Marvel One

The media know how to trot the spectator, not a jock at all, from one end of the court to the other, over and over, bring them nigh to ecstasy, then trot them back to the other end of the court, ooh almost ecstasy again. Over and over and over and over. By the end of the game the spectator has already, deep in the heart, purchased every gadget, gizmo, gas saver, financial planning scheme, insurance policy, legal drug plus encyclopedia of side affects, lawn kitch, weight loss program, cosmetic, pet shampoo, redecorating project just prior to foreclosure, that TV media magicians lure them to, ecstatic and ready to buy.

No matter that the media muckrakers don’t know the objective case from a can of corn nor a diphthong from a consonant. No matter that the combined team of journalists from five networks, demonstrating their ability to withstand 100 mph rain driven winds, cannot come up with one sailing, swimming, surfing, fishing, flotsam or jetsam metaphor while employing repeatedly two or three hackneyed land roving metaphors like “up hill battle” and “ride it out.”

No, but these couch potato motivators can dazzle the spectator into queueing up for the next exciting invitation to spend their money at the commercialism altar better than a 1940s revival tent evangelist could provoke the sinner to hit the sawdust trail for Jesus.

Marvel Two

The Jock’s timing is everything. The media reaches the end of the court and everything pivots but nothing pivots as rapidly and perfectly as the Jock with the “bassetball Jones” who suddenly is a court length away, launched attack unfurled, body extended toward heaven, an arm extending even higher from the body in a flawless slam dunk as every eye, every media magician, every father, every mother, every other jock, every fatherless pickup game basketball player in the entire world sees the worthlessness of boulderdash and rhodomontade and chutzpah and hubris collapse before timeless truth flying on perfect timing.

Holy Moly! He IS LeBron!

And somewhere up there some see a wispy aurora containing a ghostly late night television host, come magician, flip a pencil into the air and catch it with deft fingers while their owner smiles forty five degrees away at the audience with that goofy grin in concert with Ed McMahon’s rising crescendo of “The Tonight Show - Starring Johnny Carson and Johnny’s guests, Truth, just returned from a hi at us, and The Statue of Liberty by satellite remote from Ellis Island, and tonight, ladies and gentleman, that celebrated star of Hope and Change, produced by Yes We Can, Barack Obama.”

—jack luna MOTH—

I try to help people develop the ability to resist low level, first level, bottom feeder level, opinion. I persuade people to form logical conclusions without jumping to concussions.

Sometimes logic does not even make sense to one who lives by and almost routinely employs logic and reason because the overwhelming masses of pseudo evidence confronted seems to make logic and the logical look stupid to the masses while making media magicians look like they know something, to the masses.

The political arena currently, well almost always, is a case in point. When the TV pol. polls tell you the top two candidates are neck and neck and one of the necks, let’s call it the red neck, fits the description in the following paragraph, the other neck is going to have to accept the responsibility of ensuring that it carries well the head that is riding on it. Let’s call that the blue neck. The blue neck has to be tenacious about finding the strategy that will win and not get lost in iffing whether the polls are wrong or iffing how if the polls are right then how can the red neck and the blue neck be running neck and neck. Are the voters stupid or are they just stupified by all the misleading media shell game and well planned corporate backed distortion? Now, there is a logical crowd.

Assume the following conditions exist.

• Assume that fifty percent of the polled people:
• determine their values based on unworthy sources who would not know a logician from a lunatic
• long ago sacrificed reason for the cozy warmth of family pressure
• are coerced into accepting they can do nothing reasonable when every one they are united with are politically unreasonable
• when they must appear (so they do) to bow to pressure — for example the boss at Mall Wart has told all “his people” they will be fired if they do not think and vote the Mall Wart way
• Assume that the main candidate has convinced the people described above, the fans of the red neck candidate, that he is a hero with the assistance of hero seeking media, because far more important than getting good government is the viewer misleading continuity of the blow by blow action that makes heroes of “newspeople” whose reading of the teleprompter, computer seeded, text raises advertising revenue.
• Assume it is going to be impossible to convince the red neck voters of the truth which is that the hero could not fly a navy jet without being hopped up on hubris and that the hero’s flight record is his crashing of 20 percent of his missions, at 30 or so million dollars per aircraft and that five years as a POW has nothing to do with whether the hero is really a hero and that the hero actually did break under torture which is just human and not just heroic, but, hey, nobody is perfect. The logical person can’t help but calculate stuff like how much the hero’s POW status saved the taxpayer. Let’s see, now. The number of jet planes crashed times $30,000,000. And who misunderstood the hero’s placement at the Naval Academy? 790 out of 795 means he placed better than 5 people not 789.
• And the secondary red neck candidate (and any decent blogger couldn’t resist at this point seeing the red of the neck somewhat more vivid. The logician probably calculating how many times more lives were destroyed by the secondary red neck candidate than the primary red neck candidate as calculated by the damage done to the environment, to constituents, to her employees, by her and her holy rolling church whose mission is to conquer the world ostensibly on behalf of a kind of Jesus that never existed. The logical person is probably drifting off into mind mapping the amount of money JESUS CAMP TWO would bring in if it starred the secondary red neck candidate and her glossolalia gibbering “brothers” and “sisters” and “elders.”

Stay the course, logical people. Thousand points of light are just a bunch of bioluminescent fungi found in Brazil.
—–fin—-

Check Lists - the most useful tool in almost any effort.

One item in our product offer check list is named for a song. STILL THE ONE. It covers whether the product is still viable, needed, relevant, etc. Etc is a big sub-check list.

We have been putting up SOLUTION ONE, DRIVEN TO PERFECTION AND LIFE TRANSFORMERCATOR we kept checking whether gas fuel prices were coming down due to the status of some of the indicators.

The answer is the prices do not come down significantly without some kind of major catastrophe.

The Devil will always be pushing you to consume. Salvation is not just resisting the Devil but retwisting the Devil so that you reuse the abuse of the Devil to get you where you need to go … and less expensively.

Sol One - that’s the link to the many mall.

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whichgassaverswork When you see Ducky Hot Lips click the link to get the post/article in downloadable, poddable, audio by the author.

After analyzing a lot of data on gas saving devices I am confident about what works and does not work. So we can divide the world of gas savers into two groups: group one - what works, and group two: what does not work or does not work well enough to bother with. Then we can divide the world of what works into two groups: group A - what works as advertised, and group B - what works but is dangerous and costly.

I figure my best approach is to begin with the warnings, groups not withstanding.

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reviewingthewheel

Click the link above for a playable, podable, downloadable audio version of this article.

Electrolysis is the process of passing an electrical current through water to which has been added a medium to make the water electrically conductive rather than electrically resistant resulting in a degree of separation of the water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen.

The derived hydrogen and oxygen are then available as energy sources.

This has long been known. Almost as long as it has been known that electricity can be used as an energy source. Specifically with regard to an energy source that can drive a motor.

click that ‘more’ or ‘continue reading’ tag to discover how we let them genocide us with impunity, er almost …

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To get where we want to go with an article subsequent to this one, I need to tell you a story. Do not be frightened. Reminiscing can reveal things you haven’t reminisced enough to get full value from an experience. It can also be fun to step through stuff you think you have always known but have not thought through sufficiently to reveal new ideas and uses that can be immensely profitable. This is the process by which great ideas are discovered - thinking through great ideas you are already familiar with.

I once knew a man named Junior in a small town. He was the uncle of a friend of mine. As far as I know he never did a day’s work. He would observe some local situation. He would have a drink in one of his favorite bars and start a discussion about the situation. Or vice versa.

After observing and talking or talking and observing he would go away and think about it until he came up with a money making solution or not. His solutions were primarily win-win. So people usually listened to him and discussed things with him. I knew him because he was the uncle of a friend. I remembered him, though, because of a phrase he used whenever he began working toward a Second Level Opinion. I made a habit of incorporating the phrase into my own thinking. Often when someone discussed a thing, Junior would ask, “but, what does it do?” The other reason I remember Junior is that I was often involved in one of his solutions. That is, I was the one who did the work. And Junior always paid. OK, the work was harder than the money was worth sometimes, but, I did the work and I got paid.

And I learned. I learned to think through simple things I already knew to get to complex solutions I did not already know. Fortunately, I had already learned to respect anyone from whom I could learn a lesson. Junior became my favorite consultant, negotiator, “bar fly,” broker, and pseudo uncle.

Mind you, Junior had no formal education. But, he taught me a lot. I had a lot of formal education. And experience. When I met Junior, I had two degrees, eight years of college and eight majors, four years experience in communications and electronics and six years experience as a systems analyst and systems programmer in the dynamic world of defense spy satellite systems. So, another thing I learned was that an “uneducated” person could often teach an “educated” person a thing or two.

You would, I hope, be surprised to find how often the question, “what does it do?” can be used and how much can be learned from its employment.

Wherever you are, Uncle Junior, thanks for all that hard work you finagled me into doing. And the beer wasn’t bad either.

You will not like this - at first.

That statement is one of many reasons why you will not survive this article. This statement is one of many reasons why you will never learn to formulate Second Level Opinon (SLO).  Those two statements will point to the third of many reasons why you will quit this article before finishing it and buried in the third reason is why you will probably not get to the fourth reason ever.

Without going to any more reasons a good bet is that you will die clinging to the First Level OPinion habit. An acronym lies there but, tells the truth there, punnily. The acronym is FLOP — First Level OPinion. As you depart the article prematurely your First Level OPinion will probably be that all MY opinions are FLOPs. That will be the salve for the wounds I have inflicted on you so far.

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Last fall (no, wrong - soooo many falls). Last autumn the television went on at my house for the first time since September, 2001.

SLO did not mean Second Level Opinion around here back then. But I exercised it anyway. Whenever I mention the phrase, Second Level Opinion, I get one of two reactions you would expect. One, silence. It could be may to unsound like an understanding silence as though one were saying to me “for sure.” It could be the kind of silence that says, “I do not know what you are talking about but, have you ever seen such a blue sky as that.” Two, I get an audible response like, “what is a second level opinion?”

Let’s start there. What is a Second Level Opinion? A blanket answer would be something like this. A Second Level Opinion is anything other than your first opinion (that one your brain serves up immediately because it has spent years NOT thinking about the issue.) It is also any opinion that is not a first level opinion. And first level is any opinion that did not involve a single question of yourself from yourself.

Second Level Opinion starts with your stepping out of yourself and asking yourself some questions about the subject. Here is a typical question stream.

• What is your immediate, off the top of your head, response in reaching an opinion?
• What are five  reasons why that response is your first opinion?
• Are all five of those reasons acceptable to you now after voicing them?
• Are you excited about analyzing the ones that you now find unacceptable?
• Are you spurred to formulate some research questions that will guide you toward a real Second Level Opinion?

Any time you seriously ask yourself questions that make you dig for an answer that you cannot toss on the trash heap, no matter how hard you analyze it, you are well on your way up the stairs to a Second Level Opinion.

But, just pretend you are a holy roller in church. Start babbling whatever comes to mind. Just ensure each babble has a question mark on the end.

Observe the title of this post. Rather than following through with those reasons, let me take the title and offer it to you as an assignment.  Please give me a few reasons why you need a Second Level Opinion when an opinion needs to be voiced.

Be bold! Put your reasons in a comment to this post.

Thanks for going through this exercise with me.

jack MOTH

Here are some points to consider under the heading of Tags and Labels and Titles

• You do not always have control over how and what you are labelled, tagged, titled
• Tags etc. are almost always indefinite
• Tags say as much about the tagger as they do about the tagged, maybe more
• The purpose of tags may be multiple
• The tagged can use the tag for personal advantage

You do not always have control over how and what you are labelled, tagged, titled

An old adage says “Let me change the things I can change; let me not try to change the things I know I cannot change; let me develop the wisdom to know the difference.”

The wise person assesses the costs of efforts and weighs them against the profit of the results BEFORE taking action. That assessment answers for itself the request for wisdom. Stopping to assess whether something should be done is an “on the job training” way to develop wisdom.

Doing nothing may allow one to apply the energy and time made available by doing nothing to some other project whose success may clearly show a label someone stuck you with to be a lie, a misjudgment, or intentional slander.

Tags say as much about the tagger as they do about the tagged, maybe more

Doing nothing related to the tag while doing something positive about something else can effectively change behavior. Not only in the exposed “tagger.” When the bad label ricochets and injures the tagger instead of the tagged, the exposure encourages others to select and apply appropriate, positive, constructive behaviors.

The purpose of tags may be multiple

Welcome a flag on the play immediately. The earlier a tag etc is challenged the better. The tagged should use the opportunity to assess group members. If someone challenges the tag, good. Honest discussion can ensue.

Often someone who labels someone else is diverting attention from their own wrong doing. When that wrong doing occurs the wrong doer develops a tag for themselves. A tag they do not want. Then the wrong doer is stuck with the “kick me” sign on their back.

At times, tags are applied by people who do not even know the definition of the “tag” they MIS-use. This came up today. When I encountered it again on Yahoo Answers, I knew the time was appropriate for an article.

A said “B is an atheist.” Such times are great times for those who studied “dead languages” in school. A good knowledge of Latin and Greek not only makes one’s own language vocabulary grow immensely and easily but is a great help in learning other European languages.

I said, “what do you mean?” A said “B does not believe in God.”

I said “perhaps B believes in God but is not a theist. In which case you need another tag because atheist will be incorrect.”

A said “HUH?”

Atheist parses into two meaning parts. “A” is a common prefix meaning “not.” Theist means one who believes that ONE god exists. It is unfortunate and possibly meaningful that God of Christianity is both a “theistic” god and simultaneously a trinity - father, son, and holy spirit.

This of course increases the number of courses required in any theology school.

An adherent of the Moslem religion is a theist as well for ALLAH is one GOD. Same for Judaism. Yahweh is one GOD.

Perhaps B is a believer in any one of the many non-theistic religion. Consider pantheism. The word “pan” means all. So a pantheist, strictly speaking believes god is in everything thus making us all one organism and that could play havoc with meanings. Or the pantheist believes many things are gods. Perhaps trees and flowers are gods and rocks are not.

Pantheist dot net says the following. “Pantheists do not propose belief in a deity; rather, they hold nature itself as a creative presence. Pantheism reconciles science and religion through ecology leading to strong environmental awareness.”

Think about all the possible ways A could be right and wrong. Wow!

The tagged can use the tag for personal advantage

This is a graphic example that is not likely to occur as graphicly as we present it but it helps to make a point.

Assume that in a group of workers A tells others that B is LAZY.

Whenever a task comes up that every one ignores and doesn’t want to, B gets out a vest made for the issue. B has used a magic marker to write “LAZY” back of the vest. B puts the vest on a does the disagreeable task and does it well.

B will have people coming up and saying, “hey, LAZY, whattup?” Everybody in the group knows “lazy” has taken on a whole new meaning for this group. B knows that when his colleagues call him “lazy” they are extending a tribute and compliment.

Everyone will always remember as well the person who called B “LAZY” in the beginning. Not calling that person anything is the best rebuke.

When I was a kid we had another adage. “Sticks and stone may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”

We might take that one step further and suggest that those words might even become building blocks. Presto - magic!

Do not label me as an existentialist but one of the most famous existentialists, Jean Paul Sartre said “if you label me, you negate me.”

That is probably so and worth thinking about a while. I would certainly say for the sake of this essay if nothing else, if you label me you limit me.

I laugh a lot at sports, especially professional sports like football. Names are given to teams. The names, I assume, are made to impress, possibly to create fear in opponents.

“May the most terrifying name win.”

Every writer knows to be prepared to leave a metaphor as quickly as it arrived. Because if you stick a team with one name, the primary quality of the critter behind that may be all you have going for you. For example, “The Rams” would be pretty much limited to butting things. And where would they put the ball to carry it down the field?

Is it not surprising that no footballs teams exist who are named “Hydra.” Or “Mastodons” or …

Be well,
Transformercator