Hype-eractive

In these days of information access, people who want your attention for whatever reason seem to always go to the extremes to get it.  Fear mongering and over exaggeration have become the means of advertising by which they draw people in to watch their show or click their link.  Often these hyped up headlines are used to deceive as well. 


In a way, the internet has turned into this side show carnival with all of the callers out there trying to get you to stop at their booth and play thier game....  maybe you will win a prize.  If you enter their tent, you just might see the most amazing freak you have ever seen.  Go to the big top and see all the entertainment to excite and amaze you.  You will be amazed by what you see.


A lot of these hype headlines are hooks to draw you in.  See this little puppy.  What he does next is amazing.  then you waste 2 minutes of your life watching some dog play with a bird or something or other.  Or in the political realm you might see something like, what Obama just did will make you mad.  Then of course you have to click and find out what it is.  Sometimes it is not even a story, but just a headline.  Other times you find out, maybe after believing it, that it was a fake story put out by some sort of "satire" page.  Yet other times it ends up being a propaganda piece trying to convince you of the evils of the other party.  There is so much bull it is hard to tell where the grass is.


The problem with this sort of thing is that it makes people jaded.  It all begins to look alike and people tune it out.  Then when something comes along the really IS important, nobody believes it, nor are interested in it.  They just think it as being more bologna.
 

Most people just buy their own brand of bologna.  They believe what they want to believe and any evidence to the contrary is just denied offhand because they see it as just a different brand of bologna that they don't like.  The left will never believe anything from Faux news, nor will those on the right accept an MSNBC description.  It is all the hyped up and dishonest propaganda that makes people like this. 


Similar things happen in my favorite genre of weather.  News outlets put out scare tales of some impending doom coming from the next storm that never come to pass or live up to the hype.  Then after a while, people just stop believing it.  That can cost lives. 


Perhaps it was the memes that began this whole thing.  I remember when people first started using them.  A picture with a little phrase on it seems to hold more sway on peoples thoughts than any television advertisement ever could.  People pass them around like crazy in the social circles.  It doesn't matter whether it is truth or not, just that it sends out the right messages and puts thoughts into peoples heads.


Most of it really boils down to money.  All those clicks and reads generate revenue for the things being promoted.  Money is power.  Power is control.  Control is money.  It is an endless circle, just as any carnival is, to separate you from your money... and control. 


Ephesians 4:25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

We Are The Evil Empire

There was a time where the United States of America stood for freedom, justice, Godly morals, love thy neighbor, and that which was good in man.  It really was not that long ago.  It was in my lifetime.  When I look at the country now, I don’t know who we have become.  We are unrecognizable now from the moral super power we once were.  Not only are we unrecognizable; but we are living a delusion, thinking we still are the moral super power.

IN my lifetime, we used to believe that every child had the right to live.  That changed in 1971 and now we have slaughtered over 50,000,000 people on the alters of liberalism.  How can we speak to others of human rights when we do not even value the lives of our own humans?  The souls of the murdered scream for vengeance.

In my lifetime, we used to value ourselves and our bodies.  Sex was viewed as a sacred thing given only in love to a partner of the opposite sex in a lifelong bond.  Now we live in a society of sexual deviants that only cares about self-gratification in the moment.  We have devalued the bond between two people of the opposite sex that we feel it is ok to have intercourse with anyone, without consequence or responsibility.  Entire industries have sprung up to serve the self-serving instant gratification seeking spoiled brats, including the murder factories mentioned above. 

In my lifetime, you could not even show a belly button on the screen.  Today it is almost impossible to find a movie without a pornographic sex scene between unmarried people.  The themes of movies were once good vs evil where the good triumphed in the end compared to today’s films of special effects and gore where you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys and you are never quite sure which one won.  How can we speak of being a moral people when our pop icons are barely more than porn stars who have flashed their private areas to millions to gawk at?

In my lifetime, sex between two people of the same sex was considered a perversion and a mental illness.  Today, not only is it considered normal, but we are redefining our social institutions to accommodate this perversion of nature.  Now that this is normalized, we have people who want to have sex with little children wanting to be recognized and accepted into society as normal as well.

In my lifetime, Foods could be mostly trusted to be what they were naturally.  The beef, chicken, fruits and vegetables were closely related to the exact same things we had eaten naturally since our beginnings.  Today we have these scientifically produced monster foods that are destroying the very environment we need to survive in and may even be killing us off slowly.  In a sick need for greed we are putting our entire existence on this planet in jeopardy just to create a few more bucks into a corporations coffers.

Doesn’t it seem a little odd that today, in the country we once considered the evil empire just 30 years ago, Russia, Bibles are allowed and taught in their schools, and sex is at least recognized as only normal between a man and woman?  And that this evil empire considers what we are doing to our food supply so dangerous to the existence of people on this planet that they are saying war may result from our tampering with the food chain?  Maybe Russia is not the evil empire any more.  I think we have taken up that role, and most don’t even see it.

We Want Information

A while back I turned off my TV.  I haven't been listening to the talk radio much either.  The only real news I get is from people posting on the Facebook pages.  During that time of not having any talking heads whispering in my ear, I have found a difference in the way I am viewing things.  It is a little more discerned, I think.


This is what I am seeing when it comes to information lately.  I see a lot of people making personal attacks.  People attack the President, congressmen, some guy in a court case, whoever they don't agree with.  When I say attack, I mean that they will not say anything about a policy, a position,  but it will be just like, they guy is a bum (or many worse things)because I disagree with him.  That type of thing goes nowhere.  It does not advance anything, build anything, or mend anything.  It just destroys and divides.


The other thing I see going on is the promotion of news that isn't news.  There are numerous sites out there that put out ridiculous stories that are just flat out not true, or are only partially true, and people are reposting these things all over the internet as if they were true.  These often revolve around political and/or religious issues dealing with conspiratorial type subjects.   I've been fooled by a couple of these myself from time to time mainly because I want them to be true.


These types of things in their volume make it difficult at times to discern what is really true and what is not.  It all just becomes a big clanging bell that everyone just becomes deaf from.  Information has become so watered down that people get to where they don't believe anything anyone else says and only believe what they want to believe, deceiving themselves and others.


Philippians 4:8 says, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."  It would be wise to examine what we are posting and passing along to see if we are meeting this mark.  Are we sharing truth, honesty, justness,lovely, virtuous, praise worthy items of good report?  Or are we sharing trash that isn't true, unfairly puts down, ugly, questionable things from questionable sources with no virtue?

Difficult Questions

I'm sure that by now that we all have heard about the horrible tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma on Monday, May 22nd.  It was a disaster beyond which words can adequately describe.  It hits me especially hard because I am a storm chaser.  It hits me double because I am a Christian.  Why do these parts of me make it especially hard?  Let me explain.

As a storm chaser, I have a strong understanding of storms.  I understand the ingredients that go together that can produce storms of this magnitude.  Unfortunately we cannot predict exactly where these storms will strike and why one storm goes completely nuts like this while another doesn't.  We can, and did accurately predict the general area days in advance.  Still, people died.  Many were injured.  It is frustrating.


As a Christian, it becomes a little more complicated.  We have people asking why God would allow something like this to happen.  Why would little children be allowed to die such a horrible death?  It becomes further complicated when we have some Christians saying that this is Gods judgement upon us for our sinful ways.  These are hard questions and ideas. There are no easy answers. 


As a storm chaser, you look back at what could have been done differently to prevent loss of life and property in the future.  We look at our forecasting, trying to learn how to better predict such an event to give more time in our warnings and more precise predictions as to where they might occur.  We look at building construction, what can be done to better withstand such storms.  We look at shelters, and why people may not have them.  We look for ways we can get people to better respond when a warning is put out.

As a Christian, you have to look at those tough questions you might get asked.  How do you respond to a person who lost a loved one who asks you why this had to happen?  And how do you do so in a way that doesn't turn them away from God, but instead, draws them to the Lord? 

In both arenas I find myself in, the tragedy presents some very heavy issues.  I can look to the science to learn how to help minimize the affects of such an event in the future, and I can look to scripture to help me find comfort and strength in dealing with what has happened.

Romans 15:15 Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.  I think that is what is appropriate at the moment.  There will be a time for dealing with the deeper issues. 

Ecclesiastics 3:1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Drought and the Blizzards

On Thursday February 21st 2013 an Associated Press article written by Josh Funk went over the wires saying, "Climate experts say the drought affecting more than half of the nation will persist in the Great Plains and West through the spring and spread over more of California, Texas and Florida."

http://news.yahoo.com/drought-forecast-linger-spread-plains-west-171327123.html

Since that story went out, there have been two major blizzards in the plains Totaling over 3 feet of snow and major flooding rains in the southeast US with over 5 inches to even 10 inches of rain, with more on the way.  The western great lakes have seen snow totals approaching double their normal February as well as a couple rain events.   

In the article, it says we are at 56% drought in the US, which is actually down from 67% in the mid-summer last year.  This is an improvement.

Drought itself is a situation that builds upon itself.  When you have a dry period, it dries the ground moisture.  This reduces the amount of water available for further precipitation, which further dries ground moisture.  At the same time, the lack of cloud cover the available moisture produces increases temperatures in the region.  This also, in turn, reduces ground moisture further.

This month we have had a pattern shift in the weather.  This shift has set the stage for the two very large storms that have taken place in the Great Plains.  While some sit around and wonder what crazy stuff is going on to create these mega storms, and how these are disasters; in another sense, these storms are really a good thing.

What these storms are doing is replenishing the lost moisture from the drought period.  Sometimes these droughts are broken with a tropical system that gets stuck in the region brining huge rains.  This isn't always the best as lots of rain in short times creates flooding that washes away soils.  Having these snow storms is very beneficial.  The moisture contained in these snows will melt back into the ground, replenishing it with much needed moisture.

With increased moisture in the ground, we can have the reverse effects of the drought in place as greater moisture leads to greater rains.  Greater moisture will lead to more cloud cover and lower temperatures.  This could further help reduce the drought conditions, slowly returning the area to normalcy.  This in turn helps everything else, crops, cattle, food prices, and the economy.

While I would not say that these two events alone are enough to be a drought breaker, it could be enough to start reversing the trends.  It is worth watching.  I wonder if these events will be taken into consideration of the released spring forecast in the article that called for further drought.   “below-average precipitation is expected this spring in most Western states and the southeastern United States.", is the prediction from NOAA climatologist Dan Collins.  What we have seen in the last week is quite the opposite.  Of course spring has not really sprung yet.

Watch the drought shrink:
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/6_week.gif

Offering Solutions for Health Care

I just read a blog where the blogger was complaining about people opposing the government paying for her health care. Her argument was that she had a child with mental issues and the bills were piling up despite her job having insurance coverage for her that she pays $300 out of $900 a month on. The first part of my response was as follows:

Who pays the government for the government to pay your medical expenses? Taxpayers. Your advocating taking more money out of MY pocket so YOU don't have to pay YOUR expenses? No Ma'am. I feel ya but I got enough of my own expenses. Maybe the govt can get a car insurance option that will keep my car running for free?

Not being the kind to just complain, I offered my opinion on what would make things more affordable in health care. I will delve deeper into the details here.

If they really want to drive down cost, let insurance companies cross state lines and compete with one another. People will choose the ones with the lowest cost/best quality. Currently insurance companies have to be licenses state by state and cannot cross state lines without holding multiple licenses. This stifles competition and causes prices to rise, especially in states where they may be taxed more. Why should the same insurance coverage cost 30% more than the state right next to it? Competition drives down prices.

Get rid of HMO's that limit your care options to certain doctors and hospitals so people can shop around for the best prices in health care. Prices will drop to stay competitive. Again, we go back to free market economics. If you need an operation, why should you pay $30,000 for said operation when the hospital in the next town over you can get the same operation for $25,000? And so on. You will go where there is both lower price and equal quality. In an HMO, you cannot. For my stomach problem I had to see 5 different doctors because they kept leaving the HMO or changing to a different one. As a result I had to repeat the whole process each time and it cost much more money.

Take regulations off insurance companies to cover elective services like face lifts and sex changes. Keep insurance for those who really are sick. It used to be that insurance would only be for catastrophic issues such as car accidents and operations, broken bones or serious illness. Now every little doctor visit is covered. We used to have to pay the $50 for a physical ourselves. Now that same physical costs $300 plus dollars, but we only pay maybe $25 of it. If we had to pay for it, we would be outraged at $50 for an aspirin, and other such outrageous charges. We’d buy our own aspirin for $5 for a whole bottle at the Osco. Elective surgeries were just that, elective and not covered. Part of our insurance payments go for tummy tucks and adadicktome’s. That’s fine if people want to do those things, but having it covered by insurance means I am paying for it in my premiums.

Insist that doctors fix problems instead of prescribing pharmaceuticals that just mask symptoms. If we took the time to really find the problem instead of just writing prescriptions, we would have healthier people long term. This would drive down cost as less people would need care. What they call it is managed care. In other words, keep the people on the pills for life and never really fix the health issue. Pharmaceuticals are making billions on people being sick, not people being well. We don’t complain though when we only pay a $5 co-pay to just feel better. If we had to pay the $25 per pill, we’d be up in arms and want to be healed so we wouldn’t have to take and pay for the stupid pills.

The more insulated we are from the costs of health care, the more out of hand the cost will get. We all pay for it in the end, whether it is higher premiums or higher taxes. Nothing is for free