WISH I HADN'T SEEN THAT

Have you noticed how many advertisements today make you blush, especially in mixed company?  Most advertisements are meant to sell something, but I've seen one (too many times) that didn't tell you what they were selling does - called AndroGel.  You see a crane lift big letters around but not why.  What makes it more odd was that they told you the strength of the product and the cost per month.  I decided it was some sort of pomade to grow hair on the head.  Finally, however, they got a competitor advertisement, and it turns out that the product is to enhance testosterone by rubbing a gel in your arm pits.  Fortunately, they do not show a demonstration of applying the AndroGel,* but I didn't need to see this commercial, especially 100 times.  Is enhancing testosterone levels a good thing?**

Of course an old advertisement showed Sen. Bob Dole shilling a product for Erectile Disfunction (ED).  Of course we are all familiar with advertisements for Cialis.  I guess we are lucky that we don't see the product of taking this drug but for some reason we a shown a man and a woman in separate bath tubs.  Just what does this mean?  Don't answer, just get the advertisement off the air (or cable as the case may be).

And women are not spared.  In fact they have been bombarded with embarrassing ads longer than men.  A recent one is for Vagasil wipes.  I'll leave the use of these to your imagination.  Fortunately there are no demonstrations of its use - YET.  In one program, an ad for this product is followed by one for sanitary napkins.  We are shown women jumping all around the place to let us know how foolproof the product is.    These sorts of advertisements have probably been with us for the longest times - e.g. Kotex is almost a synonym for sanitary napkins.  At least we don't see advertisements for tampons anymore, or at least I don't. Thank heavens for that much, but I would just as soon not see any of this.

Then there are the ones for toilet paper.  Charmin shows cute bears rubbing the toilet paper against the cheek, face cheek that is, to tell you how soft it is.  But this one has a variant that comes too close to a demonstration for my tastes.  It shows a young cute bear with a red hinder that is cured though use of the brand toilet paper.  Can't we be spared anything in this day and age?

I could also do without the advertisements on colon health (Good Grief).

This article is not intended to recommend any product mentioned herein or to comment on their effectiveness.  Just spare me the advertisements.

Then there are a group of advertisements that aren't offensive but where the purpose is unclear.  GE may be the champion of these with one showing a driverless car followed by a presumably driverless locomotive.  They mention a speaking car and, more impressive, a talking locomotive though neither talks so far as I can hear.  GE does not make automobiles but does make locomotives, but how many of us buy a train engine?  Then there is another one in which a robot inspects a large jet engine, and they tell us how many bits of information are produced in a short time.  Are you in the market for either a robot or large jet engine?  The strange thing is that GE does make things that we might buy like stoves and the like.  So what is the purpose of these ads?  Just to impress the heck out of us?

* I regret to say that I have seen a competitor's advertisement (Axiron) complete with the underarm application (April 4, 2013).  Testosterone supplements are a big business estimated to be $1.6 billion in 2012 and growing.
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone:
A 2009 study of 25 male subjects found that men with artificially raised testosterone were 27% less generous while playing a test game than they were at their normal testosterone level. The authors concluded that "What we have found is that T[estosterone] appears to play a role inducing men to change from being selfless to being selfish.

TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 2ND IRAQ WAR

There is abundant discussion of the misrepresentation of information that brought us into the Iraq War-II.  There has been less discussion of the ruthless manipulation of mass hysteria in the dark age leading up to the war.  The French, for example, that were with us on Afghanistan were demeaned because they were not with us on the Iraq War-II.  Remember even the childish renaming of French fries to Freedom fries in the congressional dining rooms?  Anyone who spoke against the war was implied to be unAmerican and cowed the opposition.  And then there was Presidential candidate John Kerry who was for the war before he was against it.*  There were some congressmen who did manage to say that it was an "optional war" and get away with it.  The administration exercised a masterful manipulation of mob psychology over using "bogus facts" to promote an uncalled for war.  There was the chilling announcement by Condoleezza Rice** that we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud when there was no evidence of an Iraq effort on making nuclear weapons.  The period should rank beside McCarthyism as a dark period in modern U.S. history, but will it?

So we entered a war where 1-1/2 times our troops were killed as died in 9/11 with more than 30,000 injured, many with life changing disabilities at a huge financial cost of more than a trillion dollars.

The way it looks today is that Iraq will eventually split into three countries: a Shiite country, a Sunni country and a Kurdish country.  Perhaps there will be some lose confederation between them or maybe not, but the outcome won't be what we wanted.  Despite our objections, for example, the Iraq administration still permits overflights of Iran arms to the Syrian regime.

* http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-646435.html
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice

KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE

You might be interested in what Fareed Zakaria has to say about the Keystone XL Pipeline: http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/07/build-that-pipeline/

He is getting a lot of flack on it.  Here is just one: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Fareed-Zakarias-Unconvincing-Arguments-to-Build-the-Keystone-XL-Pipeline.html  I don't find the objections to the pipeline to be very convincing.  Following are some excerpts from the Zakaria piece.

The U.S. Department of State released an extremely thorough report that tries to answer this question [What if the pipeline isn't built?]. It concludes, basically, that the oil derived from Canadian tar sands will be developed at about the same pace whether or not there is a pipeline to the U.S. In other words, stopping Keystone might make us feel good, but it wouldn’t really do anything about climate change.

...........................................

Rail traffic in this corridor [Keystone XL pipeline route] is already exploding: the number of carloads of crude oil doubled from 2010 to 2011, then tripled from 2011 to 2012. And remember, moving oil by train produces much higher emissions of CO[subscript 2] (from diesel locomotives) than flowing it through a pipeline.

I can attest that Canadian businesspeople and officials are planning seriously for Asian markets–especially since they have come to regard U.S. energy policy as politicized, hostile and mercurial. Whoever uses the oil, the CO[subscript 2] will be released into the atmosphere just the same.

I believe the pipeline would also carry fracking oil from North Dakota and Montana.  Though I am all for increasing the gas mileage of automobiles or even using substitutes like natural gas and I am for public transportation, I want to see us get out of our need for Middle East (and Venezuelan) oil.  It would lower the need for our getting into wars there.  It is true that we didn't go into Afghanistan for oil, but it is the exception.

CONGRESSIONAL RETIREMENT PAY

I was told several times that congressman are governmened by the same rules as Civil Servants for retirement.  It tunrs out that this was not true although starting this year the two will be pretty close.  The floowing is abstracted fom NARFE Magazine:*

"Contrary to rumors, members of Congress have never qualified for a pension equal to their full salary after serving only one term, but previously they did receive better retirement benefits than the average Federal employee."
...................
"The future is now, and newly elected members of the 113th Congress will not be earning retirement benefits as gererous as those earned by their already-tenured colleagues.  They also will be required to contrubute more from their salaries to fund their retirement benefits.  Now, their retirement benefits will be calculated at the same rate, and they will contribute the same amount from their salaries, as other newly hired Federal employees.  .....also required all other newly hired Federal employees to contribute 2.3 percent more of their salary toward retirement benefits."

"Specifically, under the new law, newly elected members of Congress and newly hired congressional staff (and those returning with fewer than five years of service) [They need five years of service to be vested] will pay 1.8 precent more from their pay to fund their retirement annuities, for a total contribution of 3.1 percent of their salary.  In addition they will accrue benefits at a rate of 1 or 1.1 percent per year of service (multiplied by the highest concectuive three years of pay), rather than at a rate of 1.7 percent per year of service (multiplied by the highest concectuive three years of pay), the rate of accrual for already-serving members of Congress and congressional staff."

"Another change in benefits for all members of congress and their personal office staff will occur in 2014.  Instead of receibing their health benefits through the Federa Employees Health Benefits Program, they will recive health benefits through the state-based health insurance exchanges envisioned by the Affordable Care Act."

National Association of Retired Federal Employees Newsletter (March 2013, p. 10)

SIDE BOARDS (Biography)

We moved to a home my parents had built at 736 Ridge St. in St. Paul from 730 Curfew Ave. when I was 1½ years old in late 1932.  My brother, who was 4 years and 10 months my senior, and I shared a bedroom.  We had twin beds.  They had maple headboards with posts on the sides, and posts for a footboard.  The difference between our beds was that I had solid oak sideboards held onto the bedposts by leather straps looped around the posts and screwed together because my mother was afraid I would fall out of bed.  I hated them, I think from the beginning, and I used to pester my mother to remove them.  She finally told me that they could be removed when I was five.  So on the morning of my fifth birthday, I got a screwdriver and maybe some pliers, and with great joy removed the sideboards.  I struggled to carry the boards down to the basement where my mother was doing some laundry.  They were very heavy for a five-year old so maybe I made some noise.  At any rate, my mother saw me and shrieked, “What are you doing?”  I replied that she promised I could remove the sideboards when I was five, and this was my fifth birthday.  She obviously didn’t like it but finally she said, “All right, but, if you fall out of bed, they go right back on.”  I always remembered later in life that she kept her promise even if she had regrets.  Not all parents keep their word.  Oh, and I never fell out of bed.