Many of the world’s greatest inventions are credited to Americans, from the telephone to the computer. Anesthesia, the miracle of painless surgery, is among the greatest gifts that American medicine has given to humanity. The invention of the safety device on passenger elevators by Elisha Otis in 1852 led to the construction of skyscrapers and encouraged metropolitan growth around the world. Nylon , the first man-made synthetic fiber, invented by the du Pont company, has forever changed the lives of people around the world. The impact of Bill Gates’ MS-DOS is not even measurable. Some attribute Americans’ genius to their … Continue reading Yin/Yang And Creativity….

I have heard the statistic that the people in congress who represent less than 10% of the population are the ones who are stifling most of the legislative progress needed in this country.  I am thoroughly aligned with the concept of “The tyranny of the majority” where it is necessary to prevent the majority of people from doing substantial harm to a minority group simply by their majority status. But now it seems that we must fear the “tyranny of the minority”.  Did our founding fathers intend for so few of us to have so much control? I think not… … Continue reading How Did The Mostly "Empty" States Become States??

We ask all Republicans to come together to defeat extremist Hollywood liberal Allison Lundergan Grimes this fall.” SOURCE: Conservative Groups Spin a Loss in Kentucky Senate Primary – ABC News. I see where Mitch McConnell escaped the attempted siege of the Senate Minority leader recently. The words above are part of his victory speech. Even though this quote is about politics, this post is not in that vein but instead about the loaded words some choose to use in their rhetoric. With some people you can tell right up front what their worldview is all about with just a few … Continue reading Those Words…

Nothing is more distinctive than Americans’ disbelief in impossibilities. Every day Americans receive invitations to dream big dreams, and they give the traditional exuberant American answer, “Why not!” In contrast, many Asians believe that things happen as a result of fate: their success or failure in life, work, and marriage is determined by the year, month , date, hour, and place of their birth. Because they believe that their futures were laid out at birth, many people passively accept undesirable conditions rather than try to shape or alter their destinies. Interestingly, in Chinese, the word for destiny consists of two … Continue reading The Yin/Yang Differences Between America And Asia – Dreams

Meet the Johnsons, a family of five recently profiled by The Washington Post. The Johnsons live in Culpepper, Va., and bring in $90,000 per year — a full 55% above the median household income for the town. Based on this alone, you might think mom and dad are prime candidates to retire early. Then again, the family has to pay the bills. All three daughters have a computer in their room, the family shares a laptop and three iPads, satellite TV is available on three flat-screens throughout the house, and all family members except the youngest have a cellphone. Their … Continue reading Want to Retire Early? Ditch the Middle-Class Mindset…

The New York Times took a look at the results for Bill O’Reilly’s show, which remains popular with overall audience of 2.1 million viewers. But in the key demographic, he averaged just 313,000 viewers, a small percentage of his overall pull. His show’s median viewer age is now 72.1, which is a high. That’s part of a trend. Fox News’s viewership is aging out of that key demographic, even as the overall median age of cable news viewers remains high SOURCE: Fox News’s Old Viewership Is Getting Even Older – Yahoo News. I’m sure that anyone who has read anything … Continue reading Fox News’s Old Viewership Is Getting Even Older

    The above graphic gives a pretty simple view of yin and yang.  The characteristics on the left side are Yang and the right side Yin. As indicated a healthy balance is required for a happy life. Too much of either Yin or Yang is toxic. I must admit that I have modified this graph in that I removed the words Masculine and Feminine and replace them with Yin and Yang. In the Asian culture Yang is identified as male characteristics and Yin as female. Things are changing in that part of the world but it is still a … Continue reading Yin and Yang – The Basic Charactistics….

The spokesman for South Korea’s defense ministry told reporters in Seoul on Monday, in an unusually confrontational comment, that their northern neighbor exists solely for the benefit of its strongman Kim Jong Un and is not a real country SOURCE:  South Korea Says North Korea ‘Must Disappear Soon’ | TIME.com. What is truly sad about Korea is how one dictator and his privileged, although wacky, son have prevented the reunification of Korea for so many years. I’m sure if somehow they could wrestle control of the country from this egotistical young man that Korea would go the way of Germany … Continue reading The Reunification of Korea….

So we’re going to start in 1941-’42, right in the middle of World War II. And the reason for that, you see a lot of the mixing here. Now, these dots that you see on the screen, they represent individual members of Congress and how they vote. Over on the blue side is more liberal, over on the right more conservative, and the higher up you go is the more orthodox they voted, whether conservative or liberal, and voted together as a party. So, you see a lot of people mixing and a lot going further down the line. But … Continue reading The Widening Political Divide….