Tag / History

by Greg

Record Books

When it happened yesterday, I was fairly sure that the 98-yard touchdown connection from Ryan Fitzpatrick to Terrell Owens was a Buffalo Bills record. Turns out that I was right. The record for longest touchdown pass in Buffalo Bills history now belongs to a substitute QB and a player who will likely be a Buffalo Bill for only one season! 🙂

The best part was when I read the article today at BuffaloBills.com confirming that the play was indeed a record, they of course mentioned the previous record in the same sentence. Anyone want to take a guess?

Go ahead.

Kelly to Reed? Nope. Kelly to Lofton? Nope. Kelly to Beebe? Nope. How about Bledsoe to Peerless Price? Nope. Kemp to Dubenion? Nope. (Wow, you know your Bills history!)

The previous record for longest TD pass in franchise history was 95 yards and was accomplished by:

Todd Collins to Quinn Early.

So now, the top two longest plays read like this:

Longest Pass for a Touchdown:
98 – Ryan Fitzpatrick to Terrell Owens
95 – Todd Collins to Quinn Early

I’d almost guarantee you that in a few months (maybe even right now!) you could win some money with that trivia knowledge under your belt!

by Greg

On Restructuring Large Government

Another quote from the book I am currently reading, this time referencing several (failed) attempts (or non-attempts) to restructure an overly large, lethargic, unproductive government. This quote is regarding an attempt in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan:

“The Grace Commission,” Created by Ronald Reagan

This commission was tasked to work “like tireless bloodhounds” looking for ways to get the government “off the backs” of the American people. their report to President Reagan summarized their findings:

“We came up with 2,478 separate, distinct, and specific recommendations… for practical purposes, these savings if fully implemented, could virtually eliminate the reported deficit by the 1990s versus an alternative deficit of $10.2 trillion in the decade of the 1990s if no action is taken.

Equally important, the 2,478 cost-cutting, revenue-enhancing recommendations we have made can be achieved without raising taxes, without weakening America’s needed defense build-up, and without in any way harming necessary social welfare programs.”

And? What happened? Hellooooo? Was anyone in Congress listening or were they all too busy looking for ways to spend more money?

How sad. The book has given example after example of any business that government is financially responsible for failing miserably. Losing millions and even billions of dollars. The post office, AmTrak, etc. The biggest failure perhaps being the ridiculous deficits and ever-growing debts.

Over the years, many attempts were made at eliminating some of the bureaucracy that at best slows down (usually cripples) the federal government and its programs … but they failed, or were not even attempted. (Never made it through the system they were attempting to correct, I suppose.)

The author concludes with this:

I think it might be time for Grace Commission Part II… and I nominate Ted Nugent and Chuck Norris to head it up. I dare Congress to get in their way.

Bonus! We could rework some of those famous Chuck Norris facts to be “Nugent/Norris Committee Facts.” For example: “There’s no such thing as government bureaucrats—just a list of politicians Nugent and Norris have allowed to live.”

by Greg

The Role of Government in Charity

Check this out… long quote from a book I just picked up from our library. I read this part with Jen last night and we both thought it was pretty astounding.

In 1887, Congress passed a bill appropriating money to Texas farmers who were suffering through a catastrophic drought. These days, that funding would not only be authorized, it would probably be done so under an emergency program that gave more money to the farmers than they ever dreamed of. But not in 1887. Not with Grover Cleveland as president.

Here’s how he answered Congress’ request:

“I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan, as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose. I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner related to the public service or benefit. A prevelant tendency to disregard the limited mission and duty of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people.

[…]

“The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bond of a common brotherhood.”

(I omitted the author’s comments in between the two Cleveland quotes above, and the emphasis in the second paragraph of Cleveland’s response was mine.)

What I found so fascinating (aside from the stark contrast to how our government is thought of and run today…) was the part I emphasized in the second paragraph. Not only was it a misappropriation of public funds, thought President Cleveland, it was also harmful to our country’s character. Who says that today? No one seems to even think of such things today. How sad. But how true this man’s words are. If not given the opportunity to think of other people (by choice, rather than coercion … taxing) how will we ever be charitable? How will we exercise our “character”?

The author added “the rest of the story” at the end.

Even more impressive was that Cleveland turned out to be a hundred percent right. Those “fellow-citizens” that he put so much trust in donated ten times more money to those farmers than the amount the president had vetoed, once again proving that when individuals personally sacrifice to help each other, it not only makes us better people, it makes us a better country.

Amazing. I sure wish our current government leaders would realize the truth of this. (Rather than spending more and more “money” that doesn’t exist.) Eventually… we’ll be held responsible for these trillions and trillions of dollars in debt. It’s hard to imagine what that will look like. But I suppose we’ll be bankrupt in both finances, and character.

by Greg

Instant Message, Facebook, Texting and Twitter

Means of communication

Recently I was pondering this crazy social and technological trend our society has taken toward communicating in short bits of strangely coded information. We no longer speak to each other in the English language. We’ve shortened it to strange acronyms or just improperly spelled words (often incorporating numerals) and we’ve also limited ourselves to 140 characters.

And that’s not even why I don’t like it. (OK, a little, but not totally.)

I actually took to instant message communication right away. All the way back to my days as an AOL subscriber. (I shudder a bit to admit that, but come on, in 1995 everyone was an AOL subscriber! Just pop in the free disc you got in the mail and away you go! You’re on the internets!!) Instant message was a quick and easy way to send someone a message, discuss current plans, even send files to each other. And, we quickly learned to transition from well-crafted, complete thoughts in e-mail (like when we used to write letters by hand or by type writer… man, I am dating myself in this post…) to short bursts of thoughts, line by line, to the person who we knew was on the receiving end at the same instant we were sending them. It was cool.

Instant Messaging led to texting via mobile phones. As mobile phones became more ubiquitous (and much tinier! [Digression upcoming…] Does anyone remember car phones? My family had one that literally was the size of a large office desk phone that I believe was plugged into the vehicle in at least two or three ways, had a cord(!!) and a large antenna – on the outside of the vehicle? – to boot. Wow.)

So, as cell phones became all the rage, we transitioned instant message communication to phones. You could chat instantly with people wherever you were. And, being like and IM conversation, they could respond whenever they were able. A less intrusive way to communicate. Very cool.

But since the medium of communication was these phone keypads (remember when phones had just a number pad on them? you had to hit buttons two, three, or four times to get the letter you wanted) the words we communicated got even crazier. You’ve seen the shorthand. lol (“laugh out loud”), rotfl (“roll on the floor laughing”), brb (“be right back”), etc. There are so many, many more. It makes sense why, via this mode of communicating, we would need to shorten and abbreviate, but the interesting issue here is that these abbreviations have almost become the standard way to communicate.

Now that we are used to quick, non-English communication, enter social networking sites. First it was MySpace who was king of the hill. MySpace was nasty. As a web designer, I was appalled by the design of the site and its user’s pages. I was equally appalled by the user-generated content of the pages. Because of this, I stayed away.

But then Facebook opened up its pages to the world, and I was curious, so… upon investigation, seeing a much cleaner design, less offensive content (at the time, and to a degree, it still is) and some good privacy controls that limited who could see what on my account, I set up an account in May of 2007. (Yeah, I was a little late to the party, but as you’ve already seen above… I’m old!)

As Facebook grew in popularity in 2008, so did social networking in general. Lots of different sites offering ways to instantly communicate with friends, co-workers, even just people you don’t know. The biggest name to pop on the scene, probably mid-late 2008 is Twitter. You’ve certainly heard of Twitter. What began as a tech-geek adaptation of text messaging has now literally been adapted into our culture and even language. We were watching the NFL Network last night and they unabashedly use the verb “Tweet” throughout their broadcasts.

Crazy.

But why not? It has been a rather natural progression. Letters and memos and notes to e-mail. E-mail to Instant Messaging. Instant messaging to texting. Texting and Instant Messaging to status updates and “wall posts” on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. And then “status updates” via your mobile phone (which goes back to texting) through Twitter.

The difference for me—and the reason why I don’t use Twitter—is the target of your communication. I still use instant messaging… a lot. Probably mostly. But I do use my Facebook account pretty often, letting people know (in brief statements, though not limited to 140 characters) what I’m doing, or thinking, or feeling. The thing is, I know who those messages are going to. When I say something about me or our family, I’m saying it to a group of people I know. If I were to “Tweet” (I can’t believe I just wrote that…) my thoughts, they are literally blasted out publicly to the entire world (at least, available to the entire world) even if I am directing them to a certain person or group of people. The difference with the Twitter platform is that, the target audience.

This blog is broadcast to the whole world. So, it’s similar in that way. But I don’t post things here that I do post on Facebook. Because this is a public forum. I’m not sure if that’s completely it, but I really think that’s the main difference and reason that I still haven’t found a use for Twitter. (And why I am so fascinated by how widely it has been embraced… why are we such exhibitionists today? Perhaps it’s just easier to do, and on a bigger scale today.)

So, pick your poison: IM, texting, Facebook, Twitter… they’re certainly here to stay, and shaping the way we communicate. I’m not sure it’s for the better, but it’s certainly more than a fad. And when these particular ones fade, I’m sure new ones will crop up.

Communication will continue. I’m hoping that coherent, English, grammatically correct, well-presented thought will.

we’ll have 2 c …

by Greg

Theodore Roosevelt: This Will Destroy America

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
Theodore Roosevelt

Got that from my dad via email today, and I’d say it’s pretty spot on. Unfortunately, it also seems to describe our current culture in America.

I copied that quote from a website with lots of quotes. Including, more from Teddy Roosevelt.

by Greg

Aló Presidente! : The Hugo Chávez Show

I came across this documentary while browsing that category at Netflix. Having lived in Venezuela for three years as a kid, I do notice anything pertaining to that country, and this one intrigued me. I didn’t know much about Hugo Chávez, just that he doesn’t like America. This is still true (although he is buddies with his socialist friend, Obama – per his own comments) but this documentary showed a side of Chávez that I didn’t know. He kind of comes off as a bumbling fool … yet with just enough smarts to definitely play (read:manipulate) the system.

It’s a fascinating look at Venezuela (loved hearing the Venezuelan music and the people speaking, and seeing a view of Caracas that looked similar to the view I remember from our apartment building!) and the her history since Hugo Chávez has been involved.

(For example, did you know that years before he was elected, he was part of a military coup attempt … that failed miserably? Then that he was removed from the office of president (by the military) after he was elected … only to return two days later? Crazy stuff.)

Also, the title of the documentary (and title of this post) is from his weekly Sunday TV show (by the same title). Chávez does a live show from various locations around Venezuela (and of random durations) every week to connect with the people. Much like our own president Obama, he certainly knows the power of the media. He is very similarly a “information age” political leader.

I believe this documentary was produced by a media guy from Venezuela, and I thought it was well done. If you’re interested in such things, the video embedded above is the first segment. The entire documentary is available online here.

by Greg

Speaking of Inaugurations…

Hulu has over a dozen of the most recent presidential inauguration speeches uploaded to their site (Eisenhower’s was the oldest one). Pretty cool to watch history like that. Unedited, uninterpreted. But looking back after we know the outcome. It was the present – speaking of the future – when they were giving those speeches. Pretty fascinating.

Here’s a link to the page with all of the speeches:
hulu.com/inaugural-speeches

by Greg

Hiroshima: Part 2

HiroshimaOn the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima – Aug 6th – I mentioned that I picked up a book by the name of the city from our local library. It was a fairly short book, detailing the events of the lives of several survivors of the horrible day. It was fairly objective (quite unlike what a similar literary work would be today, I’m sure!) and just told the story plainly, as experienced by those witnesses, and tragically coerced participants.

The most interesting part was that the author visited one year after the bombing to get the stories, and even then, no one (according to the author) was really debating the morality of the atomic bomb. Whether out of a fear of all that had transpired, or truly just not questioning the ethics of such a weapon, there apparently was not much discourse regarding whether or not it “should” have been used.

Funny, cause that’s all I can think about.

I mentioned in my previous post that it had been a long war. War is ugly, and I’m sure it numbs you to the reality of what you are doing. But still, I can not fathom making the decision to obliterate a city and 100,000 of its inhabitants with one swift, instantaneous motion.

I can understand the people who made the weapon. There had been credible rumors that the Germans were working on such technology, and if they had gotten it first – the “Master Race” – it could have been beyond disastrous. So, it made sense for us to race to complete it first. And, we did. (I think it was later discovered that the Germans were not near as close as we had feared.) So, perhaps once the scientists had completed their work – in the form of a functioning “atomic” bomb – they had time to debate the moral implications of their achievements. But I can also see there how not attempting to “discover” the weapon first would have been equally (or perhaps even more) morally questionable.

But once the bomb was ready, and able… that’s where I am glad I did not have to be the decision maker.

From President Truman deciding to drop the bomb on a real city, with hundreds of thousands of people. (And then three days later to drop another one, even after seeing the total devastation!) To the pilots who left the ground, with the knowledge that their mission was to wipe out a city with one bomb. To the technician who had to activate the weapon once they left the ground. (They had not activated it for fear of any sort of accident at take off… would have been messy.) Once he activated it – or even while he was in process – how must that have felt? Knowing he was, by his weapon activation, condemning up to 100,000 people and their city, even their history, to death? What of the pilot(s?) who actually “flipped the switch” (or whatever they did) to drop the bomb?

I’m just glad it wasn’t me.

In retrospect, you can say, “Look, within days the war was over. So, the end justifies the means.” Well, yes. You can say that. But it’s just so hard to swallow when you think that the bomb was used on real people. Not a target. They were not “casualties”. They were moms and dads, children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters… just people. The book was very interesting. Reading how people reacted to such sudden catastrophe, helping each other out as much as they could… too fractured and instantly plunged into chaos to even question really what happened, or why it happened… they just kicked into survival mode. Which included helping the nearest stranger to survive.

One interesting thing after the Japanese surrendered, was the assistance of the Allied forces (likely led by America) in rebuilding Hiroshima, as well as attempting to understand – and find a cure for – the mysterious radiation sickness that had afflicted so many survivors. It seemed so ironic that we who had invented – and implemented – such a device, were right there in the aftermath trying to help “clean up”. I think that is the “American Spirit”, but I’m not sure what the big bomb part was.

I just wonder why we couldn’t have bombed some more remote part of their mainland… wiping out some trees or something? I’m sure many have considered and debated all the possibilities for decades now. But, wouldn’t that have demostrated the same power as actually blowing up cities? Maybe not.

So, anyway, I think I’ll read a few more stories from that time. It’s fascinating to me how we can do that to each other. We continue to do so, just not on that grand scale. Yet.

I may see something even worse in my lifetime. Who knows, it may be here in our own country. That doesn’t seem possible right now, but you never know.

Some day war will end. For now, perhaps we can remember the atrocity of it, and avoid similar atrocities in the future?

Probably not.

by Greg

Hiroshima: August 6th, 1945

HiroshimaAfter recently watching those two movies about the battle for Iwo Jima, I found it intriguing when I discovered that today is the anniversary of the day the US dropped the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. I clicked on the link in my “This Day In History” widget, and read about this day 62 years ago. I listened to President Truman’s speech following the decision to drop the bomb. I watched some videos from the history channel online. Again, I was fascinated.

What most blew my mind was the position of Harry Truman. How do you actually ever feel you have the authority to make such a decision? How did he actually pull the trigger? I read one article that reminded me that the America of the 1940s was not the same one as today. In many ways that’s really sad. But perhaps in the way of viewing people of various ethnic backgrounds as equals… we are certainly better off today than we were then. So some have suggested it was easier because they were just “Japs”.

I should hope not, but certainly a possible explanation.

Because really, how do you decide to do that? The logic given in his post-dropping speech was that the Japanese would fight to the death. Killing up to “half a million” US soldiers. Dropping the bomb saved lives. While I agree that this is true, I do side with critics who believe that estimate is ridiculously high.

When he gave the order to drop the bomb, I’m sure it was not taken lightly. I’m sure agonizing thought went into it. And, it had been a long war. It was time for it to be over, and this weapon could pretty hastily ensure that it would be.

But at what cost?

I am not sure I could ever make such a decision. In retrospect, you’re glad it ended the war, but as is everything surround a war, it’s just so sad and ugly.

I borrowed a couple books from the library tonight on Hiroshima. One is just named Hiroshima by John Hershey. Supposed to have some eye witness accounts. Was written as the rubble was still smoldering. The second is a series of two books, The Memoirs of Harry Truman. That, too should prove interesting, as the hardest thing about Aug 6th 1945 for me to grasp is what actually was going on in Truman’s mind? How do you make that call??

I’ll likely share some thoughts from the books soon… just thought I’d post this on the day we dropped the bomb.

Happy 62nd anniversary of the first atomic bomb! (Now there’s something to celebrate!) 😉