The Really Big Sentinel 200511

The Sentinel All the news that's fit to print and some that's not.
Arbitrary Language This thought occurred to me this morning. I have to take Joyce to sign some papers today. When I asked what time we should be there, the reply was, "mid-morning." Okay, what exactly is mid-morning? Would that not depend on another persons idea of that time? We are up at 4 am, so my thinking of mid-morning would be 8 am, but many places aren't even open at that time. Joyce's instructions for taking her medicine say "evening." So what time is that? 6, 7, 8, 9 pm? What exact time is early evening? When is late evening? Aboard ship I started at 7 pm, ended at 7 am. At Litton I started at 7:30 am ended at 3:30 pm. There was no mid-morning or early-evening time frames. This reporter thinks we should have some hard and fast rules for mid-morning, early evening and those times should be definitive. As it is, we are living in chaos. Bosses used to say, "I'll be back to check in on your progress in a while." How long is a while? When I was working to locate a failure at work, managers would ask how long would it take me to find the problem? At that time I did not know how long it would take to discover the problem, so I felt the proper answer at the time was, "it will take me a while to find it." That was the proper term because there was no answer other than it is unknown. Maybe it's just me that is troubled by arbitrary language, but I believe we could be better if we would use a definitive time, such as, "I'll be there at 7 pm." Maybe I am just too regimented, opinions welcome. It was back in 1981 when one of our daughter's friends said, "your dad is the most up-tight man I have ever met."	Entitlements The government always talks about cutting entitlements. This article in the Atlantic magazine speaks about the economic benefit of food stamps in that every dollar spent on food stamps generates 1.7 dollars in gross domestic product, and the well known Moody's investment services confirmed that was true except they said the figure was 1.8 dollars for 1 dollar in assistance and they went on to say that food stamps is a good was to boost the economy because poor people spend every dollar they get to live, while more wealthy people take a windfall payout and then put it away instead of spending it. This reporter believes that the same is true for Social Security to elderly people. We old folks spend that money, every dime of it to live on and that pumps up the economy. We buy groceries and that creates jobs for people working there, jobs for farmers, jobs for dairy men, jobs for truck drivers, jobs for accountants, jobs for salesmen who promote sales to stores, jobs for printers who print sales fliers, jobs for banking people who process checks and handle receipts from grocery stores. We old timers also buy alcohol and that supports (God love them) distilleries, beer companies and farmers who grow corn and hops and the list goes on. In many if not most cases the jobs are all local and that supports our towns with taxes paid. Lest I forget all of those jobs require fuel for vehicles and as we can see right now with people not working or are staying in place, kills the companies that make gasoline.	Progress It is amazing to me how much things have changed in the last 30 years. The internet was something most people had little access to or knew how to use it. Telephones were for most people something that hung on a wall or sat on a table. Internet speeds were measured with a few thousands of bits per second, web pages took an agonizing period of time to load. Now speeds are measured in tens of millions of bits per second. Now everyone has a cellular phone that they carry in their pocket. 30 years ago long distance through AT&T cost a small fortune. Now, a person can call across the country for no more than that to call a neighbor. Children are using laptops for school work. 30 years ago seems more like a century ago as far as progress goes. The big thing I wonder about is what will be available 30 years from now? I will never see 30 years from now, but the majority of world population will. I hope and pray that our school systems will be up to the task of educating our children so they are prepared for the future.