I just discovered...

I can actually blog with my iPhone! This is my first post with the phone, so I hope you all can forgive the shortness of the post. I'm getting a bit faster typing with one finger, though. I'm amazed at how easy it is to use the touchscreen keyboard on this thing! Now does this mean lots more short posts? Only time will tell!

Music in the 21st Century

I was just at the library and they had a bin of CDs that they were selling 2 for $2 and I bought an oldie, but a goodie: "Ella and Basie" put out by Verve records. No hesitation in buying them and if you're reading this wondering who Ella an Basie are, you're probably in the wrong blog.

Anyway, I was listening to this CD on the way home and I suddenly realized how rare it is for my daughters to hear the same music that I hear. We have individualized music so much, that when one person listens to something, the whole family isn't automatically hearing it, too.

Growing up, I heard my parents' music often. To this day I associate Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash with my father. I hear any kind of pop music from the '50s, especially Jerry Lee Lewis and the Coasters, and I think of my mother.

I wonder if my kids will think of any kind of music and think of me. We're always listening with headphones on, in our own private world now.

America is Israel's "Crack Dealer"

Thomas Friedman's Essay re: Israel and Palestine

I was nodding my head so vigorously I just about got a cramp reading the above essay.  The USA needs to just stop with the aid to Israel, the constant attempts at negotiations and let them deal with it on their own:

Oil is to Saudi Arabia what unconditional American aid and affection are to Israel — and what unconditional Arab and European aid and affection are to the Palestinians: a hallucinogenic drug that enables them each to think they can defy the laws of history, geography and demography. It is long past time that we stop being their crack dealers. At a time of nearly 10 percent unemployment in America, we have the Israelis and the Palestinians sitting over there with their arms folded, waiting for more U.S. assurances or money to persuade them to do what is manifestly in their own interest: negotiate a two-state deal. Shame on them, and shame us. You can’t want peace more than the parties themselves, and that is exactly where America is today. The people running Israel and Palestine have other priorities. It is time we left them alone to pursue them — and to live with the consequences

Friedman then goes on to illustrate that the aid that is flowing to Israel could be better used for assisting the many US communities that are having to cut back on basics, such as fire departments and education. We need to realize that we are in a co-dependent kind of relationship with Israel and the aid that we're constantly supplying them with is only lengthening the process.

I'm reminded of a Start Trek episode where Kirk & Co. discover that the war two planets have been fighting for centuries has been fought by computers. The computers do war games and determine the number of casualties. The people are then selected by the computers to go to disintegration chambers. There is no damage to buildings and no famine or any of that ugly stuff that makes war disagreeable.

Kirk destroys the disintegration chambers and asserts that they have to deal with the ugliness of war or negotiate on their own to stop the killing.

This is basically what Friedman is arguing in this essay: We need to just simply stop and let them deal with the ugliness of war or realize they need to negotiate honestly with each other, knowing that compromise will need to occur. If they want US mediators without conditions, then fine, but stop the aid.

Friedman's conclusion:

It’s all a fraud. America must get out of the way so Israelis and Palestinians can see clearly, without any obstructions, what reckless choices their leaders are making. Make no mistake, I am for the most active U.S. mediation effort possible to promote peace, but the initiative has to come from them. The Middle East only puts a smile on your face when it starts with them.

Twitter as Newspaper for 21st Century

I'm now a die-hard Twitter fan, after previously dissing it.  I think sometimes, I get impatient with the new "newness" of something.  I guess that comes with being 45 and a bit of an old grump about change.

Anyway, now I am regularly calling Twitter my "21st century newspaper" to those who wonder what on earth I'm doing with it.  I read the tweets every morning with my coffee and click on the links that I'm interested in, much like scanning the headlines in the newspaper.

I feel like I'm getting a good sense of the world, rather than just the US, by subscribing to tweets from Al Jazeera English, BBC and various Canadian outlets.  It also saves on the time it would take jumping from site to site.

I don't really care who follows and doesn't follow me - I don't find that Twitter always makes for a good chat with someone unless you both happen to be tweeting at the exact same moment.  Replies can often get buried, but I've noticed that I pick up on them a lot faster when I use my iPhone for Twitter.

Anyway, I'm tweeting a lot now and those silly little random thoughts are going out on Twitter rather than on the blog.   For my twitter page, simply click on the link on the right of this article.