WOW!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10347315.stm

and you say your life is difficult?!

options/choices

http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retirement/article/109847/places-to-retire-on-social-security-alone?mod=fidelity-readytoretire

increasingly i hear from people who cannot afford to live in america. they can no longer afford the basics. and health care?! that is a whole other bloody mess.

more and more people are moving to another country. and why not? if your life is better there, then i understand why people are leaving here.

still, it seems more people come to america than any other country.

i have toyed with this idea myself and it is frightening. i was born and raised in america and the thought of living someplace else is, well, completely foreign to me.
as foreign as shooting a deer. i've never done either.

i have no idea what the stats are about americans living abroad. i am sure they are significant. i do know this stat. more people leave israel than move there. and by the way, israel is a country that offers tremendous benefits to those wishing to move there. so does mexico, china, panama, thailand, etc...

i haven't seen much of the world outside america. i've been to mexico for sure, and possibly canada. i can't remember. i cannot say if life elsewhere would be better. i would have to live someplace else for a year, at least, to even form an opinion. i've lived in america for 56 years and i love it here, but perhaps i love it because i haven't lived anyplace else? i don't know any better.

i hear italy's awesome! new zealand too!

like with all of life, there is good and bad with everything. i am positive this applies to living abroad even though i've never lived abroad.

but the main point here is, it is an option.

life is full of options and choices.

good luck with yours.

:-)

Hmmm...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/10241715.stm
interesting...

501

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/music/newsid_10210000/newsid_10212700/10212786.stm

500th POST!

you simply can't make up a better story than this!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/automobiles/collectibles/23BUGATTI.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&en=f4858c8bf631e842&ex=1290484800

WOW!

good and bad

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10138831.stm

as with everything, there is always good and bad.
hopefully more good.
we'll see.
stay tuned!

OK by me!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/dining/19pot.html?8dpc

I Can

I Can
Or Soapy Water
Things I can do…

I can go slowly.
I can say I am a SAG member.
I can be silly.
I can still grow hair on top of my head.
I can change the world, starting with myself.
I can sit on the front porch swing listening to and watching the birds.
I can conserve.
I can read.
I can shop when necessary.
I can feed myself.
I can often be social.
I can live just fine without alcohol.
I can play.
I can occasionally understand other people.
I can pretend.
I can cook (in my opinion).
I can change.
I can sleep at night.
I can use a cell phone.
I can miss a meal.
I can honestly say I never inhaled.
I can clip my own fingernails.
I can stop and smell the flowers whenever I want.
I can see the ocean sometimes.
I can have a really good BM most days.
I can chew my own food.
I can surf the Internet fairly competently.
I can remember my name, today.
I can speak a very little Spanish.
I can overeat.
I can swim.
I can live with less.
I can concentrate sometimes.
I can make a positive difference in this universe, one person at a time.
I can write pretty well sometimes.
I can laugh at myself.
I can make the time to watch the sunrise and sunset.
I can definitely live on a cruise ship.
I can help people.
I can fail.
I can find peace.
I can create art.
I can drive a golf cart.
I can remember where I’ve been.
I can always use a Popsicle.
I can usually smell a rat.
I can seem vague.
I can care about others.
I can be happy 99% of the time.
I can take care of myself.
I can remember where my shoes are.
I can text.
I can go the distance sometimes.
I can party.
I can do my own laundry.
I can feel sorrow.
I can go kite flying when it’s windy.
I can be sedate.
I can try.
I can get up out of bed every morning 99% of the time.
I can heal myself.
I can recycle, reuse, and reduce.
I can forgive.
I can only go forward.
I can smell and taste.
I can remain silent.
I can understand some things.
I can go to the movies every week.
I can eat whatever I want.
I can be a taxicab driver twelve hours a day.
I can walk alone when I want to.
I can hear the wind.
I can use my mind.
I can be still.
I can walk to work.
I can generally tell a fake.
I can sometimes find what I’m looking for.
I can enjoy new experiences.
I can be blind.
I can believe in world peace.
I can sew, kind of.
I can never hurt anything.
I can walk to the park across the street whenever I want.
I can volunteer.
I can be compassionate.
I can sit with my eyes closed.
I can be patient.
I can afford to do whatever I want.
I can take a shower indoors or outdoors.
I can talk with almost anybody.
I can see.
I can make music.
I can clearly see where I’m going most of the time.
I can sometimes say the wrong thing.
I can wear whatever I want.
I can count to my age.
I can be flexible.
I can give to charity.
I can pray.
I can be polite.
I can see misery and pain.
I can have fun.
I can probably survive anything.
I can write another 600 words, but do you really want me to?
I can call my sisters anytime I want and probably get their voicemail.
I can survive a tornado.
I can skate a marathon.
I can shoot the breeze.
I can spell.
I can tell you where to go.
I can find a needle in a haystack.
I can learn.
I can grow.
I can play blackjack.
I can end this here and now.

682 words.

frank landfield
palm desert, ca
Mother’s day, 2010
www.hcz.org

YAY!!!

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20100429/NEWS05/4290308/Desert+Ice+Castle+rink+expected+this+fall+in+Cathedral+City

hmmm...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100428/sc_livescience/noahsarkrerediscovered

dirty dishes

this is mostly about what i can't do, and less about other things.
i cannot leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight UNLESS they're submerged in soapy water so that when i finally do get around to washing them it will be easy.
i cannot use something and NOT return it to the place it belongs.
i cannot go to bed angry, hurt, or upset. or smelly.
i cannot sleep on an airplane.
i cannot cancel an appointment.
i cannot be late.
i cannot listen to nonsense.
i cannot have a conversation with a brick wall.
i cannot go to the beach without some expectations.
i cannot go to the beach without going barefoot.
i cannot remember the next thing i was going to say.
i cannot forget the first time i shot and killed another living creature.
i cannot inline skate any longer. LOVE my hips in one piece too much.
i cannot understand what that tea party is all about.
i cannot figure out our tax system.
i cannot recall the last time i was sad.
i cannot quite accept that i don't have as much money as i deserve.
i cannot remember the last bet i won.
i cannot find my keys. just kidding! of course i know exactly where they are!
i cannot look forward to going to the dentist.
i cannot imagine planet earth ever at peace.
i cannot stop volunteering.
i cannot attend a kid rock concert.
i cannot be accepted into the armed services. something about flat feet and not being able to do a sit-up, push-up, or pull-up.
i cannot see a thing without my glasses.
i cannot hear myself snoring. as far as i know, i don't.
i cannot wear my hair too long.
i cannot get off coke. original formula.
i cannot give up my screen actors guild membership. one day...
i cannot live in new york city unless my apartment costs ten million dollars, or more.
i cannot live in los angeles.
i cannot drive so well at night.
i cannot speed.
i cannot intentionally lie.
i cannot eat spicy thai food more than ten minutes away from a clean bathroom and shower.
i cannot walk a marathon, yet!
i cannot see my great-niece too much.
i cannot help people enough.
i cannot donate too much money.
i cannot transform without visiting israel.
i cannot go back.
i cannot change dramatically from who i am.
i cannot tell the future.
i cannot figure out soduku.
i cannot believe i am 56.
i cannot wait for universal health care.
i cannot stand rude people.
i cannot walk by a can without picking it up.
i cannot live in clutter.
i cannot shovel snow.
i cannot shop at target.
i cannot take too many cruises.
i cannot be responsible for the actions of others.
i cannot afford some of the toys i desperately want.
i cannot hate.
i cannot overpay for anything.
i cannot waste my time. or yours.
i cannot think of much else i cannot do although i know there are many.
i cannot end this without saying...
namaste.
:-)

on YouTube under "franklandfields"
www.coachellavalleydrumcircle.blogspot.com
www.hcz.org

palm desert, california
april, 2010

link of the day

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/07/bob-mcdonnell-leaves-out_n_528733.html

shame, shame, shame

shame on you virginia.
i will officially boycott your state.

please help if you can

www.hcz.org
this is an organization that WORKS!

SpOnTaNeUm...

is coming!
stay tuned!

:-)

yes we can and we did

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpOUctySD68

:-)

green zone

great movie.
i endorse it.
i recommend it.
enjoy.
:-)

The "Oh My!" File

Richard Lardner, Associated Press Writer, On Tuesday March 16, 2010, 11:51 am EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.

U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.

Think you know who's behind that "friend" request? Think again. Your new "friend" just might be the FBI.

The document, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, makes clear that U.S. agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips.

Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree -- people posing with jewelry, guns or fancy cars -- can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the Justice Department document when it sued the agency and five others in federal court. The 33-page document underscores the importance of social networking sites to U.S. authorities. The foundation said it would publish the document on its Web site on Tuesday.

With agents going undercover, state and local police coordinate their online activities with the Secret Service, FBI and other federal agencies in a strategy known as "deconfliction" to keep out of each other's way.

"You could really mess up someone's investigation because you're investigating the same person and maybe doing things that are counterproductive to what another agency is doing," said Detective Frank Dannahey of the Rocky Hill, Conn., Police Department, a veteran of dozens of undercover cases.

A decade ago, agents kept watch over AOL and MSN chat rooms to nab sexual predators. But those text-only chat services are old-school compared with today's social media, which contain mountains of personal data, photographs, videos and audio clips -- a potential treasure trove of evidence for cases of violent crime, financial fraud and much more.

The Justice Department document, part of a presentation given in August by top cybercrime officials, describes the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other services to government investigators. It does not describe in detail the boundaries for using them.

"It doesn't really discuss any mechanisms for accountability or ensuring that government agents use those tools responsibly," said Marcia Hoffman, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The group sued in Washington to force the government to disclose its policies for using social networking sites in investigations, data collection and surveillance.

The foundation also obtained an Internal Revenue Service document that instructs employees on how to use Internet tools -- including social networking sites -- to investigate taxpayers. The document states that IRS employees are barred from using deception or creating fake accounts to get information, a directive the group says is commendable.

Covert investigations on social-networking services are legal and governed by internal rules, according to Justice Department officials. But they would not say what those rules are.

The Justice Department document raises a legal question about a social-media bullying case in which U.S. prosecutors charged a Missouri woman with computer fraud for creating a fake MySpace account -- effectively the same activity that undercover agents are doing, although for different purposes.

The woman, Lori Drew, helped create an account for a fictitious teen boy on MySpace and sent flirtatious messages to a 13-year-old neighborhood girl in his name. The girl hanged herself in October 2006, in a St. Louis suburb, after she received a message saying the world would be better without her.

A jury in California, where MySpace has its servers, convicted Drew of three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization because she was accused of violating MySpace's rules against creating fake accounts. But last year a judge overturned the verdicts, citing the vagueness of the law.

"If agents violate terms of service, is that 'otherwise illegal activity'?" the document asks. It doesn't provide an answer.

Facebook's rules, for example, specify that users "will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission." Twitter's rules prohibit its users from sending deceptive or false information. MySpace requires that information for accounts be "truthful and accurate."

A former U.S. cybersecurity prosecutor, Marc Zwillinger, said investigators should be able to go undercover in the online world the same way they do in the real world, even if such conduct is barred by a company's rules. But there have to be limits, he said.

In the face-to-face world, agents can't impersonate a suspect's spouse, child, parent or best friend. But online, behind the guise of a social-networking account, they can.

"This new situation presents a need for careful oversight so that law enforcement does not use social networking to intrude on some of our most personal relationships," said Zwillinger, whose firm does legal work for Yahoo and MySpace.

Undercover operations aren't necessary if the suspect is reckless. Federal authorities nabbed a man wanted on bank fraud charges after he started posting Facebook updates about the fun he was having in Mexico.

Maxi Sopo, a native of Cameroon living in the Seattle area, apparently slipped across the border into Mexico in a rented car last year after learning that federal agents were investigating the alleged scheme. The agents initially could find no trace of him on social media sites, and they were unable to pin down his exact location in Mexico. But they kept checking and eventually found Sopo on Facebook.

While Sopo's online profile was private, his list of friends was not. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Scoville began going through the list and was able to learn where Sopo was living. Mexican authorities arrested Sopo in September. He is awaiting extradition to the U.S.

The Justice document describes how Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have interacted with federal investigators: Facebook is "often cooperative with emergency requests," the government said. MySpace preserves information about its users indefinitely and even stores data from deleted accounts for one year. But Twitter's lawyers tell prosecutors they need a warrant or subpoena before the company turns over customer information, the document says.

"Will not preserve data without legal process," the document says under the heading, "Getting Info From Twitter ... the bad news."

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

The chief security officer for MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, said MySpace doesn't want to be the company that stands in the way of an investigation. "That said, we also want to make sure that our users' privacy is protected and any data that's disclosed is done under proper legal process," Nigam said.

MySpace requires a search warrant for private messages less than six months old, according to the company.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company has put together a handbook to help law enforcement officials understand "the proper ways to request information from Facebook to aid investigations."

The Justice document includes sections about its own lawyers. For government attorneys taking cases to trial, social networks are a "valuable source of info on defense witnesses," they said. "Knowledge is power. ... Research all witnesses on social networking sites."

But the government warned prosecutors to advise their own witnesses not to discuss cases on social media sites and to "think carefully about what they post."

It also cautioned federal law enforcement officials to think prudently before adding judges or defense counsel as "friends" on these services.

"Social networking and the courtroom can be a dangerous combination," the government said.

Link to Justice Department document: http://tinyurl.com/yjc6mq

===============================================
Sounds a bit like a novel I read once. 1984.
Whoever is reading this, thank you.
And I've moved.
===============================================
:-)

Purpose

Purpose
Or
What The Hell Are You Talking about?!

For years now I’ve been hearing people say:

“You’ve gotta find your purpose in life.”

And I’ve asked:

“Why? Why not simply live each and every moment to the fullest?”

For as long as I can remember people have told other people that it is vital they find “their purpose” in life. I took a different approach. I believed my purpose would find me.
And as it turned out, it did.

But enough about me, and more of what this essay thinks it is about.

Purpose. What is it? What is it not?
What other words can be found from within p-u-r-p-o-s-e? Rose; sup; pose; pup; purp; rope; pop; and probably more. Let’s deal with what we have, one word at a time.

Rose: Is there any sweeter smelling flower? There are certainly many flowers that smell as sweet, but sweeter? This only you can decide.

Sup: As far as I know, this is slang for: “What’s up?!” Cool people use this word a lot. I use it myself sometimes, depending on whom I’m speaking with, but that is a whole other essay.

Pose: “to adopt a particular physical posture for a photograph or painting, or position somebody or something for this purpose”. There’s the word! PURPOSE. “to pretend to be somebody or something else”.
Enough said.

Pup: Who doesn’t LOVE a pup, short for puppie?

Purp: As far as I know, a purp is “somebody responsible for a crime”. I think it’s also spelled “perp”.

Rope: They say if you give a person enough rope they may very well hang themselves. I don’t know anything about that.

Pop: Remember when we called our Fathers, “Pop”? Remember when we called a can of Coke, “pop”? Oh, the good ol’ days.

But just what does any of this have to do with purpose? I don’t know. I think one of the reasons people tell us we must find our purpose in life is because they are still looking for theirs. I think. I’m not certain. This is a lifelong journey of discovery.

Why do people become doctors? Is it to help heal people? Is it to earn a good living? Is it because their Jewish Mother told them to become a doctor, or else?! Yes, yes, and yes.

Why do people become plumbers? Is it to help people? Is it to earn a good living? Is it because their Father was a plumber? Is it because they just LOVE dealing with shit? Yes, yes, and yes.

Why do people become musicians or actors? Is it because they enjoy bringing the joy of music to people? Is it because they want to lead a life never knowing where their next paycheck is coming from? Is it their calling? Do they want to help people through theatrical performance? Yes, yes, and yes.

And why does somebody want to be President of the United States? Is it because they want to make a positive difference? Is it because they want to help people? Is it because they feel obligated to serve their country? Is it because they have a vision and a calling and a purpose? Yes, yes, and yes.

We are all called to something.
Most of us are called to something.
Some of us are called to something.
A few of us are never called.
A select few can’t hear the phone ringing.
There are those among us who never answer the phone.
Tiny minorities of us don’t have a telephone.
Can you believe that?

Whatever your purpose in life, I’m pretty sure it involves helping other people. Or at least it should.

By helping other people, we help ourselves. This fact cannot be escaped. Like it or not we are all interconnected. So find your purpose, or let your purpose find you, and always remember to have a good time each and every moment, no matter what situation and challenge you find yourself in.
By doing this, your purpose truly will be realized.

Or not.

March 12th, 2010
Palm Desert, California
On the Road To Purpose

good news

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/19/us/AP-US-Gay-Marriage.html?_r=1

this is a step in the right direction.
one day we may all really have equal rights.
we must continue in that direction.
namaste