Potato and Potatoe and Going Down In Flames

This is not a defense of Vice President Dan Quayle’s infamous correction of that student spelling of “potato”...Or is it?

 

He was wrong...Or was he?

 

Potato is not spelled with an “e”...Or is it?

 

This is the same mistake a whole bunch of the people who were laughing at him would have made.

 

Personkind has gone through the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Age of Enlightenment, the Dark Ages and a bunch of Other Ages I could list, if I took the time to Google It.

 

Today we find ourselves in the Age of Unceasing Political Attack. If you make the slightest error, you are toast!

 

I’m not saying Dan Quayle is the American equivalent of Winston Churchill but allow you mind to wander with me for a Foolish Moment. The scene is the Conference to Find World Peace before We Blow All of Us to Smithereens Tomorrow.

 

The panel consists of the three smartest men who have ever lived and Foolishness...Or Is It joined the conference as the obviously disappointed moderator sums up the results of the conference with these words...

Ø Mr. Albert Genius the world appreciates your Herculean Efforts to save it but it is obvious that what you have proposed will not work in a thousand years much less will it work by tomorrow.

Ø Mr. Smartfella you are acknowledged by the entire world a the foremost expert on Foolishness and its fellow traveler Silliness. The world appreciates your getting serious in the face of tomorrow’s World Ending Calamity. We all agree that you are one smart fella and you are probably smarter that Mr. Albert Genius but your plan to save the world is also definitely unworkable.

Ø Mr. Dan Quayle, the world owes you a Gargantuan Thank You for the plan you have presented here today. We all agree that there is no way your plan will not work and, if it were implemented, it is certain to save the world from destruction. However, since you can’t spell “potato”, we are hereby rejecting your Plan of Certain Prevention and we have decided that we are just going to resign ourselves to the reality that tomorrow is the End of the World.

 

It was nice knowing you.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

A Very Long Lagniappe:

Oxford Dictionary

Spelling potato ‘potatoe’

In the modern era, no gaffe of the spoken word quite reaches the heights of Dan Quayle’s misspelling of a certain tuber. And it also occasioned one of the most unfair responses; Dan Quayle got a bad rap (for potato, at least).

 

Potato P-O-T-A-T-O Potato

In June of 1992 Quayle was still the vice-president of George H. W. Bush, and as vice-presidents often find themselves performing tasks that no one else wants to do, he was officiating at a spelling bee. There are various reports on whether he was reading a cue card with erroneous information supplied by the school, or made the mistake on his own, but what is incontrovertible (and posted on You Tube for posterity) is that Quayle incorrectly corrected a student’s spelling of potato.

 

The vice-president averred that the correct spelling had an –e at the end, a statement which engendered no small amount of ridicule. In fact, he is still being mocked for it to this day. After all, the fact that ‘potato’ has no –e at the end of it is something that we all pride ourselves on knowing with every fiber of our being. Isn’t it?

 

Not the only one

But why do we know this so well? Is it perhaps because Quayle was so relentlessly excoriated that this particular spelling lesson has become learned on a national level? The spelling of potatoe, while not terribly common, existed for almost the entire 20th century. For example, the New York Times was still occasionally spelling potato with an –e in 1988. In fact, one can easily find spellings of potatoe all the way up to 15 June of 1992, at which point they suddenly drop off or become used in an ironic way, referencing this incident. Quayle may have misspelled the word, but in doing so perhaps he taught the rest of us how to not make his error.

 

It happens to the best of us

It has always seemed to me that there was an overreaction to this flub. We all make such mistakes, obviously, and potato is a bit of a tricky word (the Oxford English Dictionary lists 64 variant spellings that have existed over the ages, including pittayatee, pertaayter, and pertater).

 

Why is the former vice-president still being teased over his failure to spell a word on the spot, while the New York Times, Washington Post and others are escaping censure for routinely printing the plural incorrectly (spelling it without an –e)? (Examples of this can be found here NYT, here Washington Post, and here The Oregonian). This improper spelling of ‘potatoes’ is so entrenched in our spelling brains, that what is needed is for one of the current presidential hopefuls to spell it improperly on television, so that the public can then publicly mock this failure, and in years to come we can say to each other “everyone knows that potatoes has an –e in it”.

 

The opinions and other information contained in OxfordWords blog posts and comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University Press.

 

How Would You Like To Go To The Moon Depending On The Guidance Capabilities Of A Commodore 64?

In preparing for this bit of Foolishness, I found these 4 paragraphs...

 

On September 12, 1962, in front of a packed crowd in Rice University’s football stadium, President Kennedy was willing to propose the building of a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of a football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch.

 

In 1969 at the top of the Saturn Rocket was the Apollo spacecraft. One of the most important components inside of the Saturn was its guidance computer. The computer capacity of the mainframes in the Control Center [of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston] was smaller than that of the desktop systems of the 1980s, and the onboard computers in the command and lunar modules had less capacity than some pocket calculators.

 

The Apollo Guidance Computer, which weighed 70 pounds, had only 36K of RAM and 2K of ROM. But it was able to guide 27 men to the moon’s orbit and bring them back safely.

 

These billion-dollar satellites and spacecraft went into space with computational power that’s the equivalent of a Commodore 64 Home Computer (introduced in January 1982).

How Big Is Big?

 

A Million is big (a thousand thousand). Congress loves to spend Billions of Dollars (a thousand million). They are getting all too familiar with how easy it is to throw around Trillions of Dollars (a thousand billion). Once they find out that there is such a thing as a Quadrillion (a thousand trillion) all is lost.

 

In the world of computing there a measure of computing speed called a Petaflop or the equivalent to One Thousand Trillion Calculations Each Second.

 

The Italian Oil Company ENI has a Supercomputer (the HPC4) that has capacity to do 18.6 Petaflops, and when combined with the existing HPC3, the system reaches a computational peak capacity of 22.4 Petaflops.

 

I may have lost you. Allow me to bring you back…

That’s 22.4 Thousand Trillion Calculations Each Second

 

If Apollo 11 had this kind of computing capacity it could have gone to the moon and back without leaving the launch pad.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe: This Blog Posting was first published in July, 2018. If we would say to a 2023 Computer Smart Guy, "Man O Man, 22.4 Thousand Trillion Calculations Each Second! That's really fast!", he would probably come back at you and say to you, "That's nothing. Let me tell you about today's computers..."

 

The Fella’s Business Hall of Fame

In Case You Forgot, I’m A Noticer.

In the world of business there are many Champions of Commerce. Since you are not as observant as Fella, you probably have not noticed some of the ones I consider obvious.

There are two kinds of categories of people that make it into the Fella Business Hall of Fame

Makes A Lot of Money For Their Employers Category...

Ø Shallow Soup Bowls... > The guys who came up with the Shallow Soup Bowl was responsible for Millions of Soup Bowls being sold into the restaurants of the world which already had (except for breakage) all the soup bowls they would ever have needed.
> When a Shallow Soup Bowl is placed in front of a diner, that diner is really impressed.
>He thinks to himself, “Wow! What a big bowl of soup! I really like this restaurant!”
>Then he gets into eating and talking with his fellow diners and he takes no note of the fact that the bowl stops being a bowl right below the surface of the soup.
>The diner eats his soup, pays $7.95 for $0.27 worth of soup, goes away a little confused (but he does not know why he is confused) and he returns to the Shallow Soup Bowl restaurant again and again.

Ø Congratulations to Our High School Graduates Signs at the Entrance to Every Subdivision in the Good Ole USofA...
> The Sign Maker who came up with this Sign Selling Idea was a Sign Selling Genius.
>The only people who read the Named Graduates on these signs are the Named Graduates and their Relatives and they already know that the Graduates are Graduating.
>Now the Sign Makers have started putting the Logo of the College the Named Graduates are going to attend next to the Named Graduate’s Names.
>A Missing Logo from the names of those not going to College is humiliating those who are not going to College and puts more pressure on the Not Yet Graduated High School Students to go to College when they just might really be more suited to Trade Schools (if they still exist).
>In the past I have blogged about the fact that we are facing a shortage of Butchers, Bakers and Candle Stick Makers in the Good Ole USofA and are being covered up in an over-supply of 2 Year Drinking-Proficient College Dropout “Students” with huge 2 Year Drinking-Proficient College Dropout “Student” Student Loans.
>The Sign Maker who came up with the Generic High School Graduates Sign (did not have the names of the Graduates Listed but only said “Congratulations To This Year’s Graduates”) which could be used year after year was found floating in a river near his sign shop.

Ø TVs in Restaurants...
>If you Google “TVs in Restaurants” you are will find them referred to as Restaurant Clutter.

>The guy who came up with this Stroke of Genius did not know how large the revenue bonanza he was creating truly was.
>He hoped he was going to sell a single TV to every restaurant.
>Little did he know that the restaurants of the Good Ole USofA were going to be populated with somewhere between 2 (Chinese Take Outs) and 53 (Sports Bars) TVs in each dining place.
>Some of these restaurants used to actually be places of relaxation (Sports Bars never were relaxing).
>Hardly anyone pays any attention to what is playing on the TVs (Sports Bars excluded), but everyone is continually distracted by what’s going on on these TVs.
>No one can hear what the TVs are saying to us but every one of us periodically loses track of the table conversation because we find ourselves staring at the silent TV thinking, “I wonder what he just said?”
>The TVs do an excellent job of destroying what little Person to Person Interaction remains after the Smartphone has had its way with us.
>An example of the few people who are not distracted by the TVs during the meal are those that are telling their fellow diners that, since no one pays any attention to them, they are going to commit suicide when they go home tonight because they feel so utterly ignored.
>The people who are told about the impending suicide do not get alarmed because they are distracted by the TV they are not watching and, therefore, are not listening to the future suicidee (yea, I know that’s not a word).

Ø Porch Chairs On Porches...    
>This is a hold-over useful idea from the Good Ole Days when people used to actually sit in porch chairs and talk to their neighbors who were out for their nightly strolls.
> Today every porch has several porch chairs stationed on them but no one ever sits in them because the potential sitters are all inside their Air-Conditioned Houses sleeping in front of their Big-Screen TVs.

Ø Bottled Water...
>The person who came up with the idea to sell something that people already had an unlimited supply of in their kitchen faucet was probably the Greatest Look Into the Future Guy of all time.
>Actually the first guy to come up with this idea died penniless because he never got over being fired for wasting his company’s Board of Directors’ Valuable Time by presenting to them such a Hair-Brained Scheme.
>The second guy (the Chairman of the Board’s son who presented his Brilliant Bottled Water Idea 20 minutes after the Future Penniless Look Into the Future Guy had presented his Stupid Idea) has a Statue Dedicated to him in the Altoona National Marketing Hall of Fame.

Stupid Idea But Now We Are Stuck With It Category...

These are the ideas that at first seemed to be the Work of Genius but turned out to be a humongous waste of money because, as soon as the idea was implemented, the competition duplicated it and no competitive advantage was obtained.

Ø Frequent Flyers Programs... What airline does not wish that the Frequent Flyer Program had never been invented?
>Any airline that would have had the Frequent Flyer Program all to itself would have been in the Catbird Seat but no Cats or Birds are anywhere to be seen.
>This has turned into a tremendous business expense since a huge number of personnel had to be hired to administer the program.
>The airline’s customers are now in a continual state of anger at the airline because of the mind boggling number of rules and regulations that have been implemented to keep the customers from taking advantage of the airline.
>If the word “confusion” was not in the dictionary before the Frequent Flyer Program was invented, it certainly would have been put there by the Frequent Flyer Program.

Ø Children Play Areas at Fast Food Restaurants... >These Fun Play Areas were envisioned to be the reason why Children and their Parents would flock to any fast food restaurant that had them.
>Now every restaurant has them (except the new fast food restaurants which are now being constructed without them) and all competitive advantage has been lost.
>Actually they are now seen as a competitive disadvantage since restaurants started putting up signs that read,“Parents, if your child licks anything inside this enclosure, your child will not survive the next 24 hours”.
>Now parents are wrapping their children in plastic bags, duct taping their mouths shut and shoving their terrified offspring into the Fun Enclosure in order to keep them protected from the filthy in there.

I told you I was a Noticer.

I bet you are glad you are not me.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Training Government Sector Employees To Work Hard Is Hard Work...Or Is it?

My Lazy Summer as a Public Employee

By 

Jason L. Riley

June 19, 2018 7:04 p.m. ET

Below are FellaErpts (excerpts) from the article.

One summer during college in the early 1990s, I landed a cushy job reading residential water meters for the local utility. The pay was excellent—thank you, taxpayers—and I enjoyed working outdoors in the warm weather. But what made the job so memorable were the minimal work requirements.

Each morning after we’d punched in and donned our uniforms, a half-dozen of us summer hires—mostly college kids like me who had gotten the job via our parents’ connections—would pile into a utility van. Waiting behind the wheel was a genial old-timer named Hank, who drove us to the assigned neighborhood, where we would walk house-to-house recording the meter readings. Once we finished our routes, Hank told us that first morning, the rest of the day was ours. Typically, it took only about two hours.

The upshot was that we spent most of the summer devising creative ways to kill entire afternoons, and not a few late mornings. We’d read, nap, hit the beach, shoot hoops, catch a movie, play videogames and engage in various other activities that I’m almost certain fell outside the job description for a water-meter reader.

Hank would drop us off and disappear until it was time to return the van to the dispatcher and punch out for the day. My recollection is that no one on my crew ever asked questions or feared getting caught. And the summer workers on other crews, we eventually learned, were up to the same antics.

When I told my father what was going on, he just laughed and recounted the old joke about why government employees don’t look out the window in the morning. (So they’ll have something to do in the afternoon.) For a summer, it felt like I was living the punch line. The real joke, though, is on the local taxpayers, who fund all the featherbedding. And that joke never gets old.

Last week, Baltimore’s inspector general revealed that over a 20-month period, city meter readers earned $120,000 while loafing on the clock.

Yes, $120,000 is chump change in a city the size of Baltimore, which passed a $2.8 billion budget earlier this month. But you’d be a fool to think that meter readers in Baltimore are the only public employees gaming the system.

Investigators learned that Department of Public Works, which employed the meter readers, had an unofficial policy condoning the practice.

------------------------

The horse is not dead yet so I gonna beat him a bit more.

 

Years ago I wrote this bit of Foolishness about Government Sector Job Training...

They Were Not Trying To Be Funny
July 9, 2009

I was listening to the news on the radio a few days ago.

 

The News Sayer wanted me to worry about the Dire Economic Situation we find ourselves in today.

 

He was reporting on the jobless rate and what the Stimulus Package Money was going to do about it.

 

He went on to say that money was going to be put into job creation and one of the quickest ways to have a beneficial effect on the jobless rate was to create Government Sector Jobs.

 

I guess I understand that but the way he put it was interesting. This is the exact quote…

“Government jobs will have an immediate effect on the unemployment rolls because there is little job training required.”

 

What? They don’t train Government Sector Employees?

 

Is that a surprise to you?

 

The Smartfella is not trying to be a Wise Guy when he says... It Is Not a Surprise to Him.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Robin Williams Would Have Liked This Guy

This Blog Posting is patterned around an article about the Coach of Uruguay’s National Soccer Team.

This guy darn near brings tears to my eyes.

Such Old Fashioned and Greatly Missed (by me, at least) Values!

 

The article was in the Wall Street Journal and is online at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/uruguay-soccers-dead-poets-society-1530264601

 

Fellacerpts (Excerpts From the Article by Fella) are below...

 

Uruguay: Soccer’s Dead Poets Society

Óscar Tabárez, the man they call Maestro, has found World Cup success by running his team like a boarding school.

 

By 

Jonathan Clegg and

 Joshua Robinson

June 29, 2018 5:30 a.m. ET

Sochi, Russia

In the 150 years since soccer was invented on the muddy playing fields of English boarding schools, the sport has changed so much that it would be almost unrecognizable to the blue-blooded boys who kicked around a heavy leather ball.

But it hasn’t changed completely.

Because in a small outpost on the Volga River, a gray-haired 71-year-old who walks with a cane, the man they call Maestro, is still educating young men to carry themselves with character—and win World Cup games.

His name is Óscar Tabárez. And in 12 years in charge of Uruguay’s national team, he has helped turn a country of 3.5 million into the best pound-for-pound team in world soccer by treating his players as if he were a housemaster at Eton or Harrow.

Just as any British boarding school, Tabárez has long said his primary goal was to mold well-rounded men. He imparts lessons about respect, decency, and the importance of good manners.

“He would always say that being a football player is a profession but it is the way you behave as a human being that is important,” said Diego Forlán, a former Uruguay captain under Tabárez. “You can be a talented player, but if you don’t behave well, it’s going to reflect badly on you and your teams.”

 

“A young talent should train and prepare for life’s challenges,” Tabárez has written. “The young person must study, we shouldn’t obstruct that, we should favor it, it increases their sporting potential.”

 

Tabárez organizes trips for young players to attend museums and the theater. He engages his players on subjects as diverse as classical music and botany.

 

Tabárez is also a stickler for good manners. Many a Uruguayan star has run afoul of his no-muddy shoes rule. And there are strict rules about not leaving plates on the table or putting feet up on chairs. The use of cell phones is prohibited at breakfast, lunch, and during team talks or meetings.

Tabárez wants the players to talk to each other, even if it’s only hello.

He says, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t know them, it is a sign of coexistence and respect.”

That also extends to the field. Before Uruguay competes in any tournament at senior or youth level, Tabárez lectures the team on what behavior is expected of them. His message is always the same: No fouls, no bad conduct, and whatever happens, no back talk to the referees.

Again, the link to the article is: https://www.wsj.com/articles/uruguay-soccers-dead-poets-society-1530264601

************************

If an NBA Player were told to not argue with the Referees, he would respond, “If you want me to do that, you gonna have to add on a very big bonus on top of my very big salary and, if I forget, you gonna have to pay me a Forgettin Bonus.”

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Y’all Come!

Immigration is all the rage at present. The poor unfortunate souls who were unlucky enough to be born in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua need to get out of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua and they have chosen the Good Ole USofA as their preferred choice of where they want to live.

 

A lot of Americans think, since We Have Lots of Room Up Here, and, if they want to live with us, we have an obligation to let them move up here if they want to move up here.

 

I say we ought to not wait for them to decide they want to be our neighbors. I think we ought to send planes down there and bring every one of them up here because, as stated above, We Have Lots of Room Up Here.

 

If we were to decide, after we have them all up here, we don’t like what the Good Ole USofA has turned into, we can just move down there because there will be no one living down there and there will be Lots Of Room Down There.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Lagniappe: I can tell that one of you is questioning my use of “Y’all Come” as the Subject of this Blog Posting. Well, Mr. Picky, are not such phrases as “Y’all Come” used in the South? Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua are further South than our South. You All should know better than to question me.

Looking On The Bright Side In Chicago ... Or Is There A Bright Side In Chicago?

So Far This Year (As Of June 24) At Least 233 Have Been Killed In Chicago by Gunfire

Looking on the Bright Side, hopefully, all those being killed, year after year, in Chicago are all bad guys and in 40 or 50 years they will run out of bad guys...Or are they?...Or will they?

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Every Day Many Of The Folks Back Home Say To Themselves, “Thank Heaven For The Inefficiency Of The Social Security Administration!”

Our crack Social Security Administration has a problem with Over Payments to the Folks Back Home...

Being sly, cunning and alert I asked my Congressman to arrange for me to have a face to face meeting with the SSA Big Guy. I drove to Washington D.C. last Thursday and, as soon as I arrived, I was ushered into the Big Guy’s Spacious Office.

Did I just hear you say to yourself, “Self, the Fella must have a great Congressman!” I am shocked to hear you say that to yourself. Don’t you know that all our Congressmen are ready, willing and able to do whatever we ask of them? If you don’t know this, it can only mean you did not listen to their Campaign Speeches when they last ran for office where they promised that they were was ready, willing and able to do whatever we asked of them. (Sometimes they will even accept a “contribution” so they can continue doing things for us.)

After I saluted, I got right to business by saying to him, “Mr. Big Guy, why don’t you simply put into effect the procedures necessary to Prevent Over Payments in the first place?”

It quickly became apparent why he was the Big Guy when he came right back at me and said, “If we put in place the procedures necessary to prevent that $128.3 Million in over payments, it would cost the taxpayers of the Good Ole USofA $423.7 Million. This means we save our Taxpayers $295.4 Million by not preventing the overpayment of a paltry $128.3 Million. We at the SSA are always looking out for ways to save our Taxpayer’s Money. Simply stated by being Inefficient we are Efficient. We are very proud of our Inadequacies. We strive every day to maintain our efficient record of Inefficiency.”

Who can argue with that?

I was about 80 miles into my drive back home before my head stopped spinning.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

Lagniappe: Actually, I did start to argue with the Big Guy but all I got out was “Yea but...” before I was ushered out of his Spacious Office. I was met at the door by my smiling Congressman holding his hand out.

Lagniappe Another: There ought to be a Federal Law against using “paltry” in front of $128.3 Million.

It’s Not What You Say But What You Do That Counts

How many times have you heard politicians say the words you want to hear? Then, when it comes time to do what you heard them say, they do differently from what they said they would do.

 

Here is an extreme example I made up...

What if Abraham Lincoln had said quietly to himself as he freed the slaves in the south (signed the Emancipation Proclamation), “I hate slaves”.

 

What matters is what he did on behalf of slaves not what he thought of slaves.

 

Don’t attack me. I said I made this up.

------------------------

Or said another way:

Before this speech Hitler had told his generals to prepare for an attack on Western Europe...

 

Hitler’s Words on October 6, 1939 (he had just conquered Poland):

“As Fuehrer of the German people and Chancellor of the Reich, I can thank God at this moment that he has so wonderfully blessed us in our hard struggle for what is our right, and beg Him that we and all other nations may find the right way, so that not only the German people but all Europe may once more be granted the blessing of peace.”

 

Notice the nice words like: “I can thank God”, “blessed us”, “our right”, “beg Him”, “the right way” and “granted the blessing of peace”.

 

Repeat of first paragraph above:

How many times have we heard politicians say the words we want to hear? Then, when it comes time to do, they do differently from what they said they would do.

 

Would politicians kid u?

It’s more like lying than kidding.

Smartfella

What John McEnroe Does When He Is Not Broadcasting Tennis Matches

Because he is a Patriot, John McEnroe shuttles back and forth between the House and Senate Galleries shouting down at the goings on below, “You cannot be Serious!”

Remember this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0hK1wyrrAU

Meanwhile Congress continues to poke holes in the air about cutting spending, which they really are not serious about.

 

Proof of this contention is evident because the Senate has decided not to take up a $15 billion Spending Rescissions Bill that the House passed recently. Under the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Congress can claw back spending with a simple majority vote and in May the Trump White House sent a modest package of such rescissions to Capitol Hill.

 

The White House even tried to make it politically easier to pass by limiting the package to money that isn’t even due to be spent. By law this money was appropriated to be spent for certain specific purposes but Congressional Spenders would rather keep that money available to spend on other things as soon as they find “other things” on which to spend it.

 

Don’t get me started about the inappropriateness of passing laws under the guise of the money being spent for Certain Specific Publicly Approved Purposes and then spending it on Whatever Congress Darn Well Pleases.

 

Congress does this all the time. I have blogged about this chicanery before but have accepted the reality that, if Congress won’t pay attention to John McEnroe shouting at them, they certainly are not going pay attention to me.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Lagniappe:

More about John McEnroe...

He has been shouting at Congress so long some say the members do not even hear him any longer. John even began to wonder if this was true, so he decided to run a little experiment. One morning at 11:52 he shouted, “Happy hour starts in five minutes!” The chamber cleared out in about 45 seconds. One Senator even received a small contusion over his left eye as he was knocked down by other wide-eyed Senators rushing for the Happy Hour Exit*.

 

* The Happy Hour Exit leads to a series of Human Size Pneumatic Tubes which members can use to be whisked to Happy Hour in a matter of seconds.

Cicero Was Right On. Be Careful If You Also Are Right On.

I have a folder in my computer where I save Blog Idea for use in future efforts to Enrich Your Lives and Entertain You ... Or do they?  At present there are more than 360 potential future blogs residing in this folder. This Blog Posting was created using the oldest file from this folder. The file was dated November 2008.

------------------------

As a regular reader of my Blog you, certainly know how right I am on darn near everything. I just had a visit in my computer room from Cicero. He warned me to not be so right so often.

 

Knowing his reputation for eloquence I was at first confused about how difficult he was to understand. He just did not form his words well. Then I remembered why that was. As you read on below you will also understand why he was so Tongue Tied.

 

One of the reasons why I appear to be so smart is, as you already know, is I can see the future.

 

I don’t really know how far I can see into the future but my friend Cicero is hard to beat when it comes to seeing over the horizon. During this visit he repeated one of his forecasts about the Good Ole USofA which he said in 55BC. This means he could see somewhere around 756,645 days into the future. That’s a lot of foreseeing!

 

His quote references Rome, but he is so dead on about what is happening in our country today that you and I know he was talking about both Rome and the United States of America. Here is what he said about Rome and Us...

“The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.”

Here comes a lie...

As a result of what Cicero said above to his fellow Romans he became the toast of the town. He was praised everywhere he went. When he went into restaurants he never had to pay for his meals because there were always fellow Romans waiting in line to pick up his tab. When he died everyone was sad.

 

Here comes the Truth about what happened to Cicero for speaking the Truth...

Ø He was decapitated by his pursuers.

Ø Once discovered, he bowed to his captors, leaning his head out of his litter in a gladiatorial gesture to ease the task.

Ø By baring his neck and throat to the soldiers, he was indicating that he wouldn't resist.

Ø His hands were cut off and nailed and displayed along with his severed head on the Rostra in the Forum Romanum according to the tradition of Marius and Sulla, both of whom had displayed the heads of their enemies in the Forum.

 

Here is why I had trouble understanding Cicero’s words during his visit with me...

Marcus Antonius’ wife Fulvia took Cicero's head, pulled out his tongue, and jabbed it repeatedly with her hairpin in final revenge against Cicero's power of speech.

 

Since this is the Bottom of this Blog Posting, here is The Bottom Line...

If you must speak the truth, hold onto your head.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella

 

Lagniappe: Cicero was a very precise and proper person. He folded his socks into little balls and arranged them in straight rows in his sock drawer. Even at his death he wanted things to be precise and proper. Cicero's last words were said to have been, "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly”.

 

I just love words.

One Thing Is For Certain, We Will Never Attempt To Diminish Educational Excellence ... Or Will We? ... Or Are We?

In the Good Ole USofA we have many schools that are High Caliber Educational Institutions and they ought to be admired...Or ought they to be?

Here is what is happening to Educational Excellence in many cities in the Good Ole USofA...

Ø Alarm bells are going off because Asian students were being awarded admittance to Elite Public High Schools at a much higher rate than are other ethnic group applicants.

Ø Entrance Exams are seen as the reason this is happening and this happening is being seen as unacceptable.

Ø In the interest of Diversity attempts are being made to eliminate the Entrance Exams for these schools to ensure that more other ethnic group applicants are admitted.

Ø In fact Asian admissions have fallen in some school districts after admissions standards for Gifted and Talented Programs were changed by broadening the definition of “gifted,” (among other adjustments) and watering down Selection Criteria.

Ø Affirmative Action Advocates contend that academically rigorous schools should be more focused on achieving racial balance and less focused on maintaining high standards.

 

Asians are being blamed for outperforming others. That can’t be...Or can it be?

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It is now time for Fella to get to work on the Foolishness of all of this Silliness...

 

Interview Question: Why is it that you were able to pass the very stringent entrance exam to get into this High Caliber Educational Institution when so many others failed?

Interview Question Answer: I studied very hard, concentrated on my weaknesses with a view to eliminating them and worked at minimum wage jobs which gave me an understanding of what it was like to try and get through life without a good education. I saw what it was like to be poor and I determined to do everything within my power to see that I made a success of myself.

Interview Questioner Turns from the Interviewee and With His Hand Cupped Beside the Head of the Microphone Says to the Camera: There you have it directly from the mouth of an Accepted Student, proof that he used trickery to move himself ahead of Less Qualified Applicants.

 

What we need more of in the Good Ole USofA is Increased Mediocrity...

Ø We need fewer Brain Surgeons who are able to find their mouths when they eat ice cream cones. We need to open up this important segment of our medical education system to Brain Surgeons who smash ice cream cones into their foreheads more often than not.

Ø We need to start presenting First Place Trophies to those of us that finish last in life’s never ending race.

Ø We need more Astronauts who are too fat to fit through the hatch when it comes time to go fix that key thingie on the outside of the Space Lab.

 

Mottos of the Future: Pick your favorite...

Ø Failure must be made more acceptable!

Ø Poor performance needs to have its negative stigma removed!

Ø People who can’t Cut the Mustard are people too!

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella