THEMCKAYPOST

Polar Bear (little Berliner)

I love animals. All kinds of them. I feed the birds and squirrels near my house, and in the parks in New York City, although there is a dumb ordinance against doing this in the parks here. I photograph animals often, and I love to observe their habits and mannerisms, which can sometimes be almost human like. I stop my vehicle for squirrels in the street, and I feel bad when I see “road kill”.

I first saw this story on MSNBC, about a young polar bear at the Berlin zoo, who was abandoned by it’s mother (I believe that when animals do this, it is some form of PPD, similar to what human mothers are sometimes afflicted with.

Now I find out that a small group of animal rights folks have called for this cute, cool little guy to be euthanized because he has been acclimated, and sensitized to the care of humans. Since the controversy this sparked, the animal rights group has backed down a little, but still hold that the bear should have been euthanized right after the mother abandoned him. This is absolutely absurd! This bear will never be placed in the wild. He will live out his life in the care of well trained, animal loving workers in a zoo.

Leave this bear cub alone! Other bears have been raised the same way and they aclimate just fine when intrduced to their fellow inhabitants at zoos. The people caring for it are professionals. They know how to do this, and it has been done many times before.

You can read the story, and see some great videos of this little guy at MSNBC.

Keep your eye on this one (second update)

Since this is the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I felt I should provide a glimpse at the number of our active and reserve troops who have signed the Appeal for Courage, an appeal for redress on behalf of the of the troops in support of our mission in Iraq. The petition was started online on February 12 of this year. As I said when I first posted about the Appeal for Courage, given the viral nature of things like this, and the close knit military community, I would expect a lot more e signatures than we are seeing as of this date, if in fact the troops truly believe in the mission. These people are not allowed to speak out publicly against the mission, or their Commander in Chief, but their silence, when offered the opportunity to speak in support of the war is truly golden.

China proposes broad property rights law

I posted previously about how the gradual introduction of western, capitalistic practices will insure a better understanding of these principles by the masses, and make for what I believe will ultimately be a relatively smooth and complete transition from communism to a democratic, capitalist state.

Of course the proposed law would require additional changes in government in order for it to work completely, but every move in this direction is a good one. You can read more in this article at the International Harold Tribune.

My extra ten

Earlier, our friend Howard Lindzon (trader, angel investor, and executive producer of WallStrip) posted a list of his top twenty favorite films. I couldn’t agree more with his choices. All are among my favorites as well, and you can see them here, but I would add a few, and I told Howard that I need to have a top 30 list (he says that‘s because I‘m older, Ha), as there are too many good flicks out there. Here are the ten I would add to Howard’s list, each title links to the corresponding IMdB web page:

The Incident

Panic in Needle Park (gritty, subculture type flick, that really put Pacino on the map, pre Godfather).

Klute

A Clockwork Orange

Serpico

Play Misty for Me

Colors

Clockers

Heat

Boiler Room

There are many more, but I said I would limit this to ten.

If you like movies (who doesn’t), here is a recommend:

We watched the movie Gladiator on TNT earlier today. We have seen the full, uncut version several times (DVD, and HBO), but decided to watch this one even with some cuts because it is a great film.

This is one of the true modern day “epics”, the likes of which we don’t see so often anymore (Star Wars, Gangs of New York, Brave Heart, but they don’t come about that often). The story is well told, and although I don’t recommend missing any of it, you don’t have to try too hard to figure out what is going on (I like the other kind of pictures too, psychological thrillers, such as M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, etc., but this is not one of them. This one puts everything in an easy to understand, although often brutal, format). If you have ever been to Rome, you will know how well the computer generated coliseum came out (can see where everything would have been, etc.)

We watched part of it on the kitchen TV while we cooked, as the movie ran from 5:00 to 8:00 PM here on the east coast.

If you like the classics, and if you liked any of the Star Wars films, I recommend this one. The barbarism of the future, or another place in the universe vs. that of our own past.

PS: TiVo’d 60 Minutes, as we are both news junkies.

Upcoming changes to this blog

I have decided that it’s time to take this blog to the next level, and will be implementing some minor changes over the next few weeks. Some will be noticeable, such as adding a few more advertisements (only for products that I actually like, and believe in), but most will not be visible to the reader. They will have to do with increasing readership using the various social networks and other methods like press releases, etc. to spread the word, and attract page views. I will be watching closely and monitoring the effectiveness of the campaign.

Here is an update to a recent post where I accused most bloggers of having too many categories and by doing so making it hard for readers to find specific posts. I purposely looked at many blogs and their categories lists this morning and found that in actuality, it’s about fifty-fifty, with half of the bloggers restricting the number of categories and half of them with endlessly long categories lists. For me, having too many categories just makes things confusing.

An addition to the blog roll

Unlike our good friend Andy Swan, I don’t limit my blog roll (Andy will list no more than eight sites that he recommends at one time). I figure that people will look at the blog roll, and will click on various sites to see what is out there, as they wonder why I like these blogs, and even if it takes them a few visits to get to them all, eventually, if they like my blog and keep coming back, they will.

What I do limit, and no one else does this as far as I can tell, are my categories. I currently have fifteen. I think I will keep it at this level, because if somebody wants to find something on my blog, I want them to be able to do so without having to sort through a menagerie of categories to get there. Things that relate to more than one topic will be listed under multiple categories, but there will never be more than fifteen of them on my blog.

OK enough said about how I administrate this blog. I am adding The Blogging Times to my blog roll, and suggest you check it out. Now truth be told, two thirds of my readers already know about this, but for the five people who don’t, go there now, and keep reading. I think it’s pretty good, and I have a strong feeling it will only get better!

Blogging suggestions from a pro

Developing a blogging style, and fine tuning ones blog is a continuing effort especially for those of us who are new to blogging. I like to say that blogs are works in progress because they do evolve with time and experience, and after all, a blog, unlike a book, is never finished (unless you stop blogging).

Anne Zelenka, Anne2.0 lists some good suggestions on how to make your blog more popular, and keep it that way. I break some of these rules, but I try not to do it too often.

Just a beautiful place

We paid extra to have our suite for the day today (normal check-out is 1:00 PM). Checking out soon, and heading home. It's too cold to be trucking around town taking photos (we were out and about yesterday, and just staying in and relaxing today), but here is a pic of our hotel that I took on a previous trip when the weather was a little more cooperative. We Love the Frontinac!

Living with dyslexia

I am Dyslexic. I have been all my life. In the first grade they wanted to hold me back a year (make me repeat) because I had trouble reading “Spot”. By the fourth grade my teachers were recommending that I be “promoted” up, from the fourth, to the sixth grade (skipping five entirely), because I was doing so well in every subject, and they thought my mental attitude would better mesh with, and be appreciated by an older, more mature crowd (probably why I have always loved older women, but that's another story). My wonderful Mother, with her grand insight, declined the former suggestion, but agreed to the later, and I was promoted from the fourth, to the sixth grade.

I think I was in the second grade when I realized that I had a problem of sorts, and needed to compensate for it.

For those who don’t know what dyslexia is, it is a neurological (brain) disorder where things that we see and hear are transposed as they are being processed by the neurons, and their bundles, within the cortex. For example, I may want to say “I’m going to mail a letter”, but will write; “I’m going to male a letter”, similarly, I may want to write; It’s a male thing”, but instead will write; “It’s a mail thing”. Another good example is numbers. They can be phone numbers, account numbers, numbers in a business plan; it does not matter. “452” will always look like “254” to me, if I don’t check myself. That’s just the way it is for someone with dyslexia. As I’m pecking away at the keys, my brain is, in essence, making these calls for me, and I have to go back and check what I write in order to not look like a nit wit.

Once I started to figure out what was wrong, I began to make minor corrections in how I looked at things, how I processed them, and how I ultimately understood what I was doing. This took a little time, But by the fourth grade I was reading, and comprehending works like “A Tale of two Cities”.

I still struggle with my dyslexia. I manage it very well, and have done so for so long that it is now almost effortless, but f I’m really in a hurry, I do make mistakes.

I’m writing this because there is so much hullabaloo being made today about children with various neurological disorders, and each is important and deserves it’s fair space, but I also think that some of these problems emanate from the family life that surrounds these poor children, and while I am all for psychoactive medications when necessary, we are abusing them today (it's an easy way to deal with a problem, like baby sitters, and in some cases mothers holding the baby over a non-lit gas burner to put them to sleep back in the 20's, and 30's). No, I’m not a Church of Scientology “Wacko” like Tom Curse (that came out naturally, and I am going to leave it alone, both to emphasize my point, and because he is a nut ball). Psychiatric medications for certain disorders are a good thing, but before we load our children up with psychoactive cocktails, lets make sure the diagnosis is solid. In the first grade, my trouble reading could have been mistaken for something like ADD (I'm greteful it was not).

The medication that worked for me was a wonderful single mom, who was smart enough to recognize I was not a nit wit, or a moron, but someone who had great potential, and she was a Mother who read to me every night when I was little, and who knew how to inspire my own individual efforts to achieve.

We were not waelthy (caught the wealthy mistake, but left it alone, again to make the point). My Mom was a secretary. She worked hard. She did the right things.

Dyslexia was never a major hurdle for me to overcome, rather more of an annoyance, but it could have been more of a hindrance and a problem had it not been for someone who recognized and understood it for just what it was.

With children, In some cases all it takes is time, patience, and love. I had all three.