How many children is too many?

I did a Google search for this question recently and was stunned by the overwhelming popular answer: two is too many. Or maybe three. Certainly more than that is too many.

Points made in some comments I read:

People with a lot of kids are selfish and irresponsible.

The world is already over populated and people should aim for 0% population growth.

Please, give me a break!

I'll tell you what selfish is. Selfish is blowing your 50k-100k salary on frivolous material possessions. Selfish is having a full freezer and refrigerator while watching starving third-world children on the news.

And how about those starving children? Why are they starving? Because there are too many of them? Or because the the governments of their nations strive to keep the populations uneducated? Maybe because even when first world nations do give charitable donations, those government officials keep most (or all) of the gifts for themselves?

What about the agricultural industry that has managed to place patents on enhanced seed and grain while pushing the original, natural seed and grain almost into extinction? So that if a third world nation wanted or could grow its own grain, they have to purchase the seed from the patent holder? In North America, private farmers are sued all the time when some stray, patented seed migrates to their fields.

Fresh water requires an infrastructure to clean waste and direct the water where it is needed. But it doesn't matter if your nation has one billion people or twenty billion people, if the government does not want to spend money on that system, or they are so corrupt that no private industry can afford to stake a claim, than any number of people becomes too many.

No, parents of large families are not guilty of selfishness (ok, I'm sure some are) but rather they are guilty of living a fantasy where people are free to live how they want to live.

Land of the free? More like, land of the gotta-have-it-alls and want-mores.

What these population control freaks often neglect to share in their published comments or articles is the number of parents who look back and wish they had dared to produce more children.

Even church is not a safe harbor for Christian families who would like to have more children. But the number of Christians who wish they could have more is steadily growing.

The truth is, having a large family is time-consuming. Do you have hobbies and self interests? A pile of kids is going to change that. You can still have hobbies, you can even get away once in a while for some quiet time. The problem is that many parents just can't fathom sacrificing for a family and when they see another set of parents who appear to be successfully raising lots of kids, jealousy abounds.

It's funny how all these educated people say we need to control the population and reduce growth. Vasectomies should be handed out to everyone. What a bunch of slackers. Here's some science for you, straight out of the Theory of Evolution, if you don't use it, you lose it.

Self-Loathing

In my life, I have tried not be too proud or arrogant. I really have no reason to be either. However, there appears to be a fine line between humility and self-loathing that I have managed to cross over.

My wife and I recently scheduled an appointment with the Pastor of our church. It is the first time we have done this in several years. He asked if we would like to meet him right away, he had an appointment, but he could post-pone it for us. I said no. We wound up scheduling the meeting for the following week.

When the phone was hung up, my wife asked if I was sure we shouldn't meet him sooner (we had some personal issues that needed to be addressed quickly) and I said that he was certainly willing to put off his plans and drop everything for us, but I didn't feel I was important enough for that kind of attention.

My wife looked deeply into my eyes and said, "You ARE that important and I wish you could see that."

This is potentially my greatest struggle. Do I have the right to stand up and declare that I am important enough to warrant special attention from anybody? I confess that I have begun to believe that doing so might be better than believing that I am worthless. My self-loathing could be the greatest threat to my family that we will ever face.

Am I up to the task to change this?

Am I man enough to demand respect?

I just don't know...

Swing Vote

The short and sweet of it is that this movie ALMOST makes a good point.

You see, someone has to choose the questions that are asked at the presidential debates. Have you ever asked yourself WHO is doing the asking and WHY the questions seem to be the same every four years?

I thought for a moment that this movie was going to have bite. That it was going to be about what happens when the nominees are forced to look an actual working American in the eyes and answer HIS questions.

Unfortunately, this movie ends with only one question asked and we don't even get to hear an answer. Instead, the movie takes the more obvious turn and shoves the lethargic voter issue down your throat.

We fade out with an image of a very pleased, finally happy, previously apathetic voter doing his civic duty. Yes, sometimes 2+2 can equal five. Yeah, I went there. And why not? The movie does not deserve a more thoughtful and intellectual comparison than the overly cliched 1984 novel.

As for Kevin Costner, I thought his acting was well done. He's not Hollywood's greatest or most popular face to put to film, but I do think he does well here. If you want to see a decent Kevin Costner film, go ahead and give this one a shot, although he does an awful lot of cussing, but it makes his role more believable here. Just don't get fooled into thinking that you are watching a meaningful political commentary, the end message is simply, "Get out there and vote!"

A Business Needs More

When I re-read my last post it occurred to me to touch on the concept of MORE. I ended the last post with the idea that a business must consume ever more resources to make ever larger profits and is not satisfied with a steady line.

Some would argue that a business must always demand more because the cost of materials always only increase.

Yet, this is exactly the problem. A mining company wants MORE, the raw materials foundry wants MORE, the materials fabricators want MORE, the assembly shops want MORE, the shipping companies want MORE...

When one company demands more, it affects all other companies and their workforces.

If a company were to draw a line and say, "We are satisfied with our current profit margin and will only ask for more if needed."

Unfortunately the shareholders always say "Yes, MORE is needed."

Ethics on the Job

There is some discussion occurring on some blogs that I frequent about the current bout of lay-offs in the work environment. These blogs refer to other blogs and the discussion becomes somewhat muddied and difficult to follow. However, I've read enough across the blogs to have come up with something to say on the subject.

If anyone reading this wants to follow along (if it's even possible) here is where to go:

The Greedy Goblin

Tobold's MMORPG Blog

Broken Toys

In short the discussion goes from one party lamenting the current lay-offs while another party explains, in pure economic sense, that the lay-offs are justifiable and that the people affected have brought it upon themselves, while the third party says both views hold merit.

I'm left to wonder, where do I stand?

I was laid off for over nine months.

I just happen to live in the city with the worst unemployment rate in the country. The state itself is among the top contenders.

I was one of those guys who had a lot negative things to say about well fare participants, but I did try to keep an open mind. Some people can't help where they've found themselves due to tragic accidents or unforeseen illnesses. I also understand that some businesses can't help their issues either due to natural disasters or corruption from within.

But then I suddenly found myself on the job hunt. I often ask myself if I can try harder or if my circumstances could have been avoided had I performed better. After all, my company is still operational. I do recall that my two hour drive every day was starting to wear on me, but I felt as though my hands were tied. I could not afford to move and any job closer would pay less.

Yes, I chose to take a wife and four home-schooled children so my budget has always been tight. But was it fair for my company to experience 4 years of rapid growth and huge profits that saw it go from 20$ million when I started to over 50$ million when I left and only give two small pay increases in that time? I think it could be argued that I had nothing to do with the increased sales. I also had little to do with the quality and nothing to do with the design process of the product.

For a time I had a tremendous amount of company loyalty. But something happened along the way. I saw how much MORE the executives were making every year. I saw their new cars in the parking lot (while I could barely afford to keep my 15 year old car running). And in the four years of massive profit gains, I received about one dollar more an hour. This minute pay increase over a four year period does not make up for cost of living increases.

Some would argue that a business must meet its bottom line at all costs. I would agree if those businesses were attempting to hold a steady profit. But that is not the case with most businesses. They want MORE and LARGER profit every year. My company was not satisfied with growing from 20-50 million. They demanded 60 million for the following year.

There is something wrong when a company slashes man power and makes the remaining work force work ever harder to achieve MORE. It is not a matter of survival, it is a matter of consumption. How much effort and time can they consume from the work force? A business is like a hungry beast with a stomach that has no bottom. I can eat two sandwiches for lunch and be satisfied to eat two more for tomorrow's lunch. A business must eat ever more.

Quantum Bits

In the physical world that we are familiar with and live in, we understand about the role of molecules and cells, strings of sugars and amino acids, elements and atoms. But at the quantum level, where individual atoms or even parts of atoms can be studied, the natural laws that we adhere to suddenly change.

It has occurred to me that the reason is simple, if not well understood. At different levels of size, things play by a different set of rules.

Imagine if we could observe structural masses that our known universe is actually inside of. What kind of natural rules would play out at that size? What if there is a whole other universe at orders of magnitude smaller than the quantum structures that we can observe or predict?

We know so little about what we can see. Yet we know so much more than when we were skeptical about the existence of atoms themselves.

Words

W O R D S

Grammar is not my strong point. Never was. For instance, I can’t look at a paragraph and tell you where prepositional phrases are or even what a preposition is. I know what a verb and noun are; I know what a subject is. But I know how to craft words into sentences that “sound nice”. Proper punctuation is also beyond me, but if I re-read what I have written I can “feel” if there are too many comas or if sentences are choppy and need a colon or semi colon, though I don’t know WHY they are used in the manner that feels right.

I’m the musician who cannot write his own notes; the guitar tutor who cannot make his own music. Often when the song is writ, it sounds too familiar. This example, I think is a good analogy to how I write. The words feel “right”, the structure looks “good”. I have files of poetry on yellowed pages, partial stories tossed in boxes lost in storage. I must have written volumes worth of love letters. And while I also mostly taught myself to read and write music and play keyboards and even the guitar, I fancy myself a wordsmith.

Both music and words have power, but this is about the words. Words are at the start and end of wars. Words win your lover’s heart or break it. They can shame a person or heal sadness. It was with words that our forefathers drew the blueprint for the most powerful, free nation in the world’s history. Mercy is imparted with words and so too is forgiveness. Comedy, tragedy, parable, knowledge; words can invoke all of these. Shifting sands in desert winds, pulsing tides of oceans; Cosmological mysteries and astronomical wonders can be painted as well with words as with the brush strokes of a painter.

In recent years, the power of words has diminished.

The vocabulary used by our fore fathers is all but lost. Even our current president can scarcely string together a coherent sentence and he even has paid “experts” to do most of the work for him. The poetry of music has been reduced to long, rhythmic progressions of profanities and trendy slang. Sometimes it seems our language is only a step or two away from being reduced to grunts and hand motions.

A person with a confident grasp of an extensive vocabulary can still demand respect and be very successful in life. I hope the digression of words doesn’t go much further. Once we lose knowledge of the power of words we will lose knowledge of a great many other things. Could we write the Constitution today if the Revolutionary War was only just occurring?