Saturday, December 26, 2009

Wearing a hat indoors!

Wearing a hat indoors offends some people.  Today, it seems the old rule doesn't apply the same as it might have 50 or 100 years ago when everyone wore hats.

The etiquette mongers still maintain that it is disrespectful for a man to wear a hat inside.

No one knows for sure when the custom started, but it is assumed it happened about the same time and way as handshaking began.  Wearing a hat indoors was not a good idea while trying to convine previous enemies of a peaceful intent.

Mossant, c.1935When communities of people began to fight other communities of people, it became important to establish peace, agreements, and alliances to survive.  When one warrior chief approached another for purposes of peace, they would sheath their weapon and offer an empty hand.




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In the same way, it is thought that protective headgear was removed to expose a peaceful vulnerability in order to communicate with words rather than weapons.

So, out of respect, men would remove their hats while indoors.

The authorities on manners established certain rules.  Over the years it became the custom for a man to remove his hat or at least tip it even outdoors during an introduction, a greeting, a conversation, especially while speaking of someone recently departed. 

Men removed their hats during funerals and while a funeral procession passed them by.

Also, a man would remove his hat and place it over his heart during the performance of the national anthem or when the flag passed by.

It was expected that a man remove his hat while in confined inside quarters, but not so necessary in large open indoor areas like malls, lobbies, hallways, airports, train and bus stations.

During the 1950's, pompadour haircuts made popular by Elvis Presley and others, made wearing hats indoors and out a little difficult.  The custom began to disappear.  Soon the haircut styles changed again and ball caps and cowboy hats became a part of our culture.  The old rule prohibiting the wearing of hats indoors became a little confusing to the new generation.

Some people are still offended today when they see a man wearing a hat indoors.  Most people don't care.

People with lots of hair and little tolerance for new customs think bald men wear hats indoors, first to disrespect, and second to hide their baldness.  Now, having been bald for a few years, I can set those confused people straight. 

A great deal of heat is lost through an uncovered bald head.  Covered with primitive hair of a cave man, the hair helps keep the heat inside.  A fully evolved modern man such as myself has no protection from the elements except the hat.

Today, the fragile sensibilities of the easily offended must take a back seat to the demands of our fragile environment.  To save the massive amounts of energy lost through the top of an uncovered head, people need to wear their hats to preserve that precious energy.

The more energy we import, the more money finds its way into the hands of terrorists who hate us.  It is time we keep wearing those hats indoors to reduce the energy we must import.

It's just not green to remove your hat anywhere energy might be lost requiring an adjustment of the thermostat. Saddam Hussein seemed always to hold his hat indoors and wear it outdoors.

I'm a bit of an old man, and old habits die hard.  As much as I want to respect all things worthy of respect, I might, from time to time, forget the need to respect the environment for a few moments.  Out of misguided respect for overly sensitive people I might just take my hat off.  If you see me do that, politely remind me that this rule has been rescinded in favor of national defense.  To starve the terrorists of their ill-gotten energy money which they use to destroy us, we must adopt new ways.  We must protect our fragile environment and reduce energy use.

After 9-11 the world changed.


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Saturday, December 12, 2009

Quantum Rainbows...Quantum Jumping

by Randy Cox
Quantum Rainbow…quantum jumping! What is that? Tonight I stumbled upon a number of threads and websites concerning something Burt Goldman calls“Quantum Jumping”. It was difficult to grasp until the rainbow concept helped me understand what it was all about.



Some believe men have an exponentially larger reality than what we perceive from our own limited perspective. This theory has it that at each juncture of a man’s life, he faces many choices.


A Newtonian view sees a man’s life in a linear fashion with the choice made and the man continuing on to the next choice, the man defined by all his past choices.

Quantum theory, however, allows for the possibility for all probabilities. Imagine that at each turn in the road the man would split and travel all possible directions. Each different probability would become its own reality. Each man would be an infinite sum of realities.

If this were true then as the man ambled along, his total reality would grow to gigantic proportions. Multiply that by all the men, and other creatures, and add all the movements of inorganic objects having multiple probabilities, the concept of that kind of universe is staggering.

The Newtonian concept of a single man traveling through time from birth to death is miniscule compared to the Quantum view.

Quantum jumping is a technique used by the “enlightened” Newtonian man, trapped in a life consequential to his choices, to get in touch with his alter realities. A Quantum jumper will imagine himself jumping, temporarily, from his Newtonian single dimension to one of the infinite other dimensions of his choice.

Suppose through poor choices a man finds himself homeless and addicted to wine. In theory, he could pick some version of himself he would rather be, like maybe the lawyer he might have been had he not dropped out of high school.

By getting in touch with his other self, the quantum man might hope to get a better insight into how he could make a future choice that might lead to a more favorable life than the wino reality.



If these quantum probabilities do exist, it should be possible for one to consult with the other. After all, they are the same person, just existing in different realities. It should be no harder than for the Newtonian man to talk to himself weighing different choices within his single linear reality before he actually makes one and moves on.

At first, it would appear that these infinite different choices would split the man and separate him from his other realities, especially as they travel in different spaces. How could they all still be the same man?

As I viewed a picture of a full rainbow on the internet, and remembered once chasing a partial rainbow in West Texas, I suddenly saw the quantum man as a quantum rainbow.

As I drove from Amarillo to Dallas years ago a storm followed us. It was not large. Sometimes it was in front of us, sometimes to our rear. One minute it would rain to the left,the next minute it would rain to the right. At the end of this strange storm a partial rainbow appeared.

We followed the rainbow for several miles. It seemed to travel at exactly the same speed as we did. Sometimes it would be larger, sometimes smaller.

At one point it made a perfect complete half-circle rainbow. It was one of the largest full rainbows I’d ever witnessed.

From my Newtonian perspective, the rainbow I saw moved with me, fast or slow. I couldn’t catch it, pass it, or lose it. It seemed like a simple half arc of color, but really it was everywhere. Of course, a rainbow is light falling upon millions of droplets of mist, each bending the light and projecting a color. Relative to a man it is an arc, but relative to all perspectives it would be many rainbows over a far larger area that the Newtonian man could see.

The quantum man is like the quantum rainbow. From the perspective of the single dimension we live in, man is a simple individual composite of his choices and linear movement in space. From the quantum perspective, a man is all possibilities, multilayers and existing over the full area of which all his probabilites have traveled in space.

The quantum man is like the quantum rainbow.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Adsense Makes Cents!

by Randy Cox




Adsense is a hot topic! As the economy spirals downward, many people are rushing to bury their head in the sand. Those who don’t like the taste of dirt have discovered Adsense.



As everybody knows, Adsense is Google’s program to share ad revenue with anyone who has a website. Why not?



It is a new day in communication. We are no longer bound to the choice of one or two television channels, whichever radio station comes in best, or a couple of local newspapers.



At the beginning of civilization news and information was carried over the grape vine, one voice at a time. With the invention of the telegraph and then the vacuum tube, we used information brokers to spread the news faster.



Today, it has come full circle and information is carried voice by voice, or website by website, once again. Everyone with a website has a gateway to the world. If we can tell our story or illustrate it in an attractive or unusual manner, we can have the eye of the world in a moment. Adsense is our opportunity to monetize our communication.



In America, the visionary is no longer to be found. At the beginning of our nation, we were driven by lofty ideas such as individual freedom, social contract, free enterprise, universal literacy, equal opportunity, and manifest destiny.



Gone are the long term plans. We’ve been to the moon, already! A few years ago we had the Super Collider, but we lost interest in the 60 mile tunnel and cancelled it. Not only were our leaders bored with the whole matter, but they filled it in with rocks just in case the vision returned in a better generation.



As we lose jobs one by one, the only hope offered seems to be Adsense. If we listen to the infomercial we don’t need a job, we can make millions with our website. Google doesn’t make these promises; Google just wants to give the little guy and the big guy an equal opportunity.



Adsense is a great idea, but it isn’t going to replace jobs or forward thinking. America, and the world, needs new long term ideas. Google is doing its part, but the rest of us need to step up to the plate with real solutions. Current leadership is dull and lacking.



Our old leaders can’t stop picking at each other long enough to come up with a workable plan to make anything better. If you have a really big idea, the kind our forefathers had daily, now is the time to “bring it on!”



All you have to do is publish your earth changing idea on your website. Adsense can make you rich and give others a chance to sell their products as the world accepts a new vision for the future.