Say What?

Politically speaking, for better or worse as long as I can remember I've had a conservative tilt. I can recall voting for Nixon in my 6th-grade classroom's pretend election. I don't have any idea what it was about the man which had me pulling for him. Maybe I considered him an underdog as he was running against Hubert Humphrey from my home state and most everyone was rooting for the local guy. Humphrey lost the popular vote by only a few hundred thousand but the Electoral College results gave a clear victory to Nixon. Nixon would eventually leave the office in disgrace while my eyes were opened to the world of politics and corruption. Politics is seldom win-win. There's always a price to be paid as you trade away one thing for another. Should I vote for the guy who will place conservative judges to the Supreme Court or do I vote for who I know will be the better choice for my job? In the last election, it came down to that. I got my conservative judges appointed with ...

Random thought time. When I was a kid I used to lay awake in bed at night and try to get my head around the idea of infinity. I used to imagine an ever-extending universe where there was absolutely no end to it. Or I'd ponder the idea of forever, where there is never an end to time. How can it be that time will go on forever? The thoughts these ideas evoke can easily overwhelm my limited capacity. One of the ways to visualize infinity is to imagine a center point within a circle with lines extending out every degree for 360 degrees to the edge of the circle. Fill the space in between each line with more lines extending from the center until you can't draw anymore. Now, extend the lines beyond the edge of the circle and you'll see that more space develops between the lines as they get further from the center. Continue imagining this process over and over again and you get the idea. Infinity blows my mind. Random thoughts end here. When I began working for the FAA in ...

We've been watching L.A. Ink and Miami Ink on The Learning Channel lately. The shows chronicle the inner workings of the tattoo business. They make for interesting viewing as you get a look into the lives of people as they go about having their bodies tattooed and the reasons for their specific tattoo. Oftentimes there is a personal tragedy or triumph which led to their choices. No doubt there are those who get tattooed on a whim but I don't think that would make for good tv. When I was in the Navy we'd occasionally pull into port in Hong Kong while cruising the western Pacific. There was a tattoo parlor called Pinky's and if a tattoo was in your future that was the place to go. I'm not sure that many if any of the tattoos my shipmates got were born out of tragedy or triumph. I think it was more the thing to do after a night spent drinking. I never saw it but there was a Marine on our ship who had his penis tattooed with red and white stripes so that it looked lik...