CHAPTER SIX -  Journalism, An Eye Opener








Your phone can house games and emails and you can text till your fingers fall of and you can be part of a large club called Facebook or you can Twitt your life away  just like the moron in the White House.  He has no brains either.

Actually, driving and twitting or texting at the same can take your life away and it has happened quite often and recently more often.  In fact it in 2017 replaced DUI as the major cause of accidents:

  It was expressed as “ Honk if you love Jesus !” 
  Text if you wish an immediate audience !

And the Games you can excel in and brag to your friends, senseless idiots do that a lot.  It’s called waste. Just when your crowning achievement was shooting fifty guys with a 30-round clip, you get new levels to achieve. Tougher, you are challenged by a higher level. To accomplish what?  Bragging rights, self-indulgence, no wonder we are training a nation of idiots.  

From first in the world in math and science to:
   XXXX 2015 will be updated with 2018 around 3 December 2019

Our source, one of the biggest cross-national tests is the “Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The PISA is part of the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment.  Every three years it tests 15-year-old students from all over the world in reading, mathematics and science. The tests are designed to gauge how well the students master key subjects in order to be prepared for real-life situations in the adult world. 

Why choose 15-year-olds? Because in most countries, at the age of 15, students can decide whether or not they want to continue their education. They therefore need to be equipped for adult life. PISA publishes the results of the test a year after the students are tested to help governments shape their education policy. PISA cycles are referred to by the year in which the students were tested. 

Over half a million 15-year-olds from 80 countries and economies took the PISA test in 2018. They were tested in reading, mathematics and science with a focus on reading. In addition, students in some countries took tests on financial literacy and on global competence. Results of this PISA round (PISA 2018) will be released on 3 December 2019.

The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the US an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the US ranked 30th in math and 19th in science. It’s worse as the world develops quicker, not better in some places but quicker.

When kids in Kazakhstan are smarter than our kids I shudder.  And every day more and more of our kids are playing out these games in the streets with real shootings, car jacking’s, and gang violence. And that's just the top selling game.  Games imitate life with the shoot them ups, or war games, they are the most popular.

Sports, next year, like a broken record will restart and will again be a clean slate. Time to speculate and critique the teams looking for the edge and opinions. Reality shows aren’t real,  Hollywood gossip is either pre-programmed or an invasion of privacy like TMZ,  sitcoms are getting stupider, and soap operas exhibit a different life style. No one dresses or looks that good every day, and do these people ever work for a living?  

I predicted the problems with hacking and stealing of valued information because in the hands of the incompetents nothing good ever comes forth from it and that is what is going on today.  Electronics built  the house but we forgot about the doors and windows and the rain came in...


Conversation requiring lots more removal of hatred and information not on the best interests of America period.  
Opinion and first amendment right to be respected but not played with nor abused, twisted or misrepresented.  And hacking and selling your name and information to anyone and anybody has cost you the consumer his privacy. How stupid can we get thinking we are better for it  and how stupid are we to give the right pf privacy away.

What started as a great idea in communication has supported hundred of miles of trash, lies, slander, fake news and just about everything wrong with a good amount of corruption thrown it.  How stupid the supporters are!  And the grinning jackass just makes excuses because billionaires never apologize,  you made him, you live with it...


It was simplistic truth, killing was a favored passion !  In the old days of the Roman version of PlayStation, or Gameboy, you bet on the Lions vs. or the Gladiators vs. the Christians. My money and 100% of those attending probably bet on the Lions.  

A truly great movie, "Gladiator" finds in the end, the leader needed pacification to control the masses.  Russell Crowe won many awards for his role in the Gladiator. A great movie and story...  Much was taken from the recordings of the life of Commodus.  Yes, honor, bravery, revenge, love, loyalty, good looking gals, ambition, glory, are woven into the movie script. But the gladiatorial games were for keeping the masses entertained. 

In Roman times the games were big time entertainment. No HBO or Showtime. The plebeians ate it up.  So did the Lions, Tigers and Bears…It’s just like a T-Rump Rally, the plebeians, adore his lies and deceits.  The failed T-RUMP Parade, his trips and photo-ops all bullsh*t.

But in the movie end Commodus had the right idea to keep the masses busy and distracted till he meets his end mano-un-mano in the gladiatorial ring with Maximus. Many will speculate that Commodus upon his death and the shape of the coliseum had a lot in common. It might of been responsible for the elliptical ring shaped device called the throne and the phrase “ He's in the "shitter now". That’s why we call them Commodes.

Maybe one day, the assassinator will rid us of him…

And as history tells us like many of the empires, not just the Romans, many things come to an end. The Roman Empire was dying, it was not of the people anymore.  Sound familiar?  Just like the NRA, not of the people, they are the gun lobby.

So, we have all these distractions today.  A totally corrupt government and a totally insincere bigoted TV reality star as President.  The only problem, the scumbags are winning.  Just like today with the wrong persons in the government.

And as history tells us like many of the empires, not just the Romans, many things come to an end. The Roman Empire was dying, it was not of the people anymore.  Sound familiar? So, we have all these distractions today.  Again, the scumbags are winning.

Another great insight into the past, go to Best-Buy stores and buy the complete HBO series “ROME”. It is well done, incredible realism and excellent attention to detail. You will be able to draw many parallels from this series.

About 84.00 USD. Or watch it ON-DEMAND. It’s the fall of an empire because of the same things we are faced with today. Politics, partisanship, greed, and finally death.  
Many have asked the LORD for the last part, not mentioning names.

We have a lot we can learn from the Romans.  Those games were brutal and so are the games our kids are growing up with today, the games the adults are playing, like the NRA, immigration, prejudice, etc, etc... our place in the sun, is now being trashed with sunspots and flares... do to a major mistake of the ignorance of some voters and corruption in the system.


  With 28 years doing IT as part of my job, working on computers, certified from DOS/WIN 2 to Vista and WIN 10.   I finally gave up on PCs.  Thus my mantra is,  “ PC RETIRED, MAC INSPIRED”. 

PROS:  I converted an entire business and lifestyle to a loaded three computer MAC network in two days, resulting in being ten times faster and more proficient not spending my time fixing things or workarounds. At peak I ran seven websites, two blogs and write storyline articles about everything daily and process what I shoot and dont spend my time on repairs, upgrades and viruses.  Today I am down to three websites, Politics Food and Photography, finishing four ten year Corporate baby-sitting projects for retirement. I sleep better at night now…CONS:  None.


I have for better than 56 closer to sixty years being, creating, owning, designing, and manufacturing, doing my own Photography as a store owner, lab owner, photojournalist and a writer.  It started for me when someone left a paper bag left sitting on a park bench in the Zoo area in NYCs Central Park.   

Today we would call the bomb squad.  I was fourteen, a junior, and was naturally, playing hooky from school.  I grabbed the bag after eyeing it for an hour, artfully dodging the truant officers who carried my picture in their wallets with the number one on the front.  

With no one claiming it, I stood on top of the park bench and yelled the sacred words "finders keepers".   

With the legalities out of the way, and running for my life using every back trail in Central park stumbling over a sleeping body here or there. Finally the subway and home...  

I had mischievously become the owner of an AIRES IIIL 35mm Rangefinder Camera, the first of the Japanese clones of a Leica.  It took nice pictures of the Dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History in NYC, the Statue of Liberty and other sites when I played hooky and got caught.  

The camera saved my ass, showing that I was doing something to help my education got me off easier.   The hot film in those days was Verichrome....Plus-X in B&W more modern terms and flashbulbs.

Today after being involved in several photo operations, I design and manufacture much of my own gear like battery packs, flash cables, brackets and product shooting tables. Tearfully, the little Aires either got lost or I left it somewhere. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Yes , I can be agitating to a degree, I still have the nasty habit of playing the Devil’s Advocate because without a challenge, the adverse or the consequence of things is never discussed with reality, you have to look at both sides today because one side is usually not real.  

The camera was my tool for reality when it bailed me out of a science class I challenged.  It showed a different side of Sara Palin election time, as I followed her around with the Press Pool for six weeks on tour in Florida, I reached for the camera.  In her case backstage, I would have preferred a 12 gauge.  She is the lying arrogant narcissistic female version of Donald T-RUMP and just as sick.  And like Trumps family her family all belong in jail with her. 

Take for example Kelly Conway, T-RUMPS advisor who called his actions an “ Alternative Reality”.  What a frickin stupid,  very ignorant, moronic, sick comment from someone who needs a condom on her tongue due to the amount of crap spewing forth on a daily basis. 

Playing devil’s advocate since most of the story was not portrayed truthfully to the decision makers who had their own agenda.  Thus, it is easy to understand why my teachers hated me.  I took nothing for granted and truth came first. 

T-RUMP was not the first President to lie to the public though no one on this planet can out liar supremo him.  But it exposes through many sources now the lies you were told by Presidents, one after another because the truth would hurt the country.  THE SILENT WAR  So I write on various topics, do a lot of commercial photography and run a small business slide to digital conversion business to keep me thinking.  I delight in building a line of hard working, industrial strength, inexpensive alternatives to the expensive battery packs and power supplies from other manufacturers.  I also build high speed digital converters for those slides laying in shoeboxes. I have a minimalist and simplistic approach to the equation.  Less is more. Less things to go wrong and more power.