World is Ending?

On 2/17/09, the world will end for many people unless the "benevolent" government acts!

As you know one of life's NEEDS is TV.  What would life be like without it?  You might have to talk to people or read books (if you are geeky enough using a Kindle).  Literacy could increase & people might actually figure out what is happening in the world!

It's not as if people have a chance to get convertors; I mean 3 years is little compared to the age of the earth!  But THE ONE (the big O [not Oprah the other one]) might save us by increasing the amount of time to not get a convertor box!

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My daughter sometimes uses little dots to separate different thoughts on her blog; so I thought I might as well do it too.

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More heroes:

Mothers who raised us or our children; fathers who work & still find time for the kids.  These are probably the most important heroes since our society depends on kids becoming adults!

SATIRE, (n) An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the author's enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a soul-spirited knave, and his ever victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent.

Hail Satire! be thy praises ever sung
In the dead language of a mummy's tongue,
For thou thyself art dead, and damned as well --
Thy spirit (usefully employed) in Hell.
Had it been such as consecrates the Bible
Thou hadst not perished by the law of libel.
Barney Stims

Necessity

My daughter was talking about necessity in her blog.  In particular that some say (not her) cable is a necessity.

How many other things are considered necessities but are not?

New car - even though the old one runs fine & would save you $20-30K; new clothes; a new computer (my own fault) - even though all you use it for is email & surfing; etc.

It is like the difference between needs & wants.  Many people confuse them.  Needs like food, shelter, companionship, water; wants like the above "necessities".  When we are young we express most everything as a need; hopefully as we grow older (and hopefully wiser) we recognize the difference.

Reminds me of a Money magazine article that I read long ago.  It was examining the finances of a young family.  The wife "needed" to work to pay the bills.  The magazine added up the extra clothes, transportation, child care, eating out, taxes, etc that were required to allow the wife to work.  In this particular case (not all couples would be like this one) the extra money that the wife's working brought in was basically nothing.  What they thought of as a necessity was not!

ne·ces·sity (n) anything that is inevitable, unavoidable, etc. as a result of natural law; that which is necessary in natural sequence; the compulsion or constraint of man-made circumstances, habit, custom, law, etc.; logical or moral conditions making certain actions inevitable or obligatory; something that cannot be done without; necessary thing: often used in pl.