Major Mike’s Musings

And philosopher, too. Read my daughters blog entry today. Whew. Great Stuff.

Local 6 News in Orlando, FL, reports that STDs are running rampant in my retirement community, The Villages. As my brother, Dan, says, “There must be a joke in here somewhere.”

As a youth leader in our church, we find that the biggest fear of teenagers in relation to sex is pregnancy. Their fear is mis focused. Their greatest physical fear should be STDs. Pregnancy is not permanent and it’s fixable. Birth usually cures pregnancy, and I’ve know several teens who have made the pregnancy mistake and are now doing nicely, thank you.

Some STDs, however, are more permanent. In the 50’s there were three known STDs, today there are 30 and 30% of those are incurable. Some forms of STDs can make the STD sufferer sterile.

People who have multiple sexual partners (or those who have sex with someone who’s had multiple sex partners) are four times more likely to contract an STD than get pregnant.¹

Obviously, retired folk have the same mis-conception (pun intended) that teens do.

1. They’re 10 times more likely if they’re on birth control [↩]

That’s what troubles me, this notion we have to take sides in this country, now. You’re either for us or against us, Republican or Democrat, red state or blue state. Nobody looks at an issue and struggles over the right position to take any more. And, yet, our ability to reason is what makes us human. Lately, why do we seem so willing to forfeit that reason in exchange for the good feeling of belonging to a group? We all just take the position of our team. I’ve certainly done it and hated myself for it.

Well, I’ve checked all my accounts and so far nobody’s cleaned me out. You know the funniest thing about this VA fiasco of the theft of 26.5 million veterans’ personal data is that the VA, FTC, FBI, and the media keep saying, there’s no evidence that the perp even knows what he’s got. Sheesh. Do you suppose the perp doesn’t watch TV?

Enough of that. I’m having a ball fiddling around with this site. WordPress, the tool this blog is written in, is very powerful. It has lots of themes and plugins available to make it more powerful.

One is a tool to allow you to subscribe to this blog so that you get email updates when I publish stuff. I promise I won’t use your email address to send you spam or pretend I’m the VA and allow someone to steal it. I won’t give it away, either. You can click the above link or the one in the sidebar. You can also unscubcribe any time you want. Like if this blog gets too boring for you.

Anyway, “toodles,” until next time.

On Monday, all of the news agencies, inclucing Fox News reported that 26.5 million veterans’ social security numbers and dates of birth were stolen. While I haven’t received a letter, yet, my records are in the range of those stolen.

The VA says they’ve “set up a call center at 1-800-FED-INFO and Web site, http://firstgov.gov, if veterans believe their information has been misused.” Well, the first piece of advice they give you there in their “Deter, Detect, Defend” tactic is, “Deter identity thieves by safeguarding your information.”

Well, dah, what are we supposed to do when the federal government can’t even protect our information?

The Time cover story from March 27, features an article on how media saturated and incessantly multi-tasking most of today’s teenagers have become. Researchers studied 32 families in LA for four years looking at how today’s families interact. One of their findings shows that electronic media consume considerable amounts of a family’s time, greatly affecting regular interactions in ways unheard of 20 years ago. In addition, children, especially teens are fitting more media into the same amount of time as their predecessors of a decade ago. Watching TV, talking on a cell phone, and chatting online simultaneously, they cram 8.5 hours of media use into 6.5 hours of real time. Researchers point to studies that show that output and depth of thought deteriorate as a person attempts to attend to multiple tasks. Teachers and professors also believe students are becoming dependent on their media stimuli, with many unable to walk from one class to the next without pulling out their phones or iPods to absorb the 4 minute passing time. While the current generation has become very good at manipulating information, using visual and audio clips in multi-media presentations in class, many college professors feel writing and critical thinking skills are suffering in the media saturation.
(Time.com March 27, 2006)

Quoted from The Ivy Jungle Network Campus Ministry Update May 2006.

My friend Mark Waltz cites examples of poor service from companies that should know better and opines whether we do the same in the church. He asks, “Are we serving what we’re selling?” (more…)

Apparently commitment isn’t all a man is avoiding by living with a girlfriend outside of marriage. Among cohabitating pairs, women contribute more than 70% of the couple’s income. Both formal and informal surveys indicate that in such situations, most women expect the relationship to lead to marriage, while most men do not. (Touchstone April 2006 p. 48)

Quoted from The Ivy Jungle Network Campus Ministry Update May 2006.

Graves Family

Charlene and I were privileged to visit the Graves Family in Grand Prairie, TX, last week for the birth of their new, precious daughter, Emily Faith. At 9 lbs. 2 oz., she was ready to be born, and Kathy was ready to have her.

We’re happy to report that mother, baby, and family are all doing well. We were also surprised that Kathy’s mom, Linda Hurt, was able to be there as well. She was able to hitch a ride with Uncle George at the last minute. He was moving to Arizona and was happy to drop her by. She’s a fun lady.

What a wonderful visit we had. We love Scott and Kathy to death, and their kids are a joy to be around. They are well behaved, smart, and enjoy talking and “playing” with us. We had an engaging and satisfying visit.

John and Cara

My nephew, John Erickson, is getting married in July in California. We don’t have all the details, yet, but we know it’s on the 7th and it will be in Southern California.

We’re trying to decide how to get there as we have another wedding in Indianapolis on the 22nd.

We examined flying, but that is too expensive at this time. Besides, we want to see Charlene’s family in San Jose, up north. Round trip visiting both locations is around $450 each. Yipes!

Soooo… we may drive, even though the round trip is over 6,000 miles. We’d probably take the whole month of July for the trip. We haven’t done that before, but it will allow us to see some sights we haven’t seen in our many travels across the country.

I the past we’ve been in too much of a hurry to see much, so this may afford us the chance to so some site seeing.

Of course there’s no way we’re taking the bus. I’d never get Charlene on one.