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Many Now Fear Common Sense |
By
Ted Twietmeyer |
| It does not matter what the topic is. Most people are absolutely TERRIFIED
of anything with common sense. List of proofs for this is nearly endless.
Consider those who do base jumping. These people jump off cliffs, high rise
buildings and live radio towers. They hope the small drogue chute they throw
when jumping will pull out the bigger parachute - and save their life. But
these same people will tell you it's just common sense not to put your hand
on a hot stove burner. People buy "smart phones" that cost hundreds of dollars, become addicted to them then go into a tailspin when their precious electronic toy lands in a toilet and permanently goes dark. Common sense? You wonder if I own a cell phone and practice what I preach? Yes - its a VERY cheap phone worth about $10.00. I never carry it, and it sits on the bench. No games, no FoolBook. Just a plain cell phone. It's used as a business line and nothing more. Life is filled with enough dangers. Is it really smart to tempt death? One man was followed in a TV documentary about base jumpers. He had a decent which ended badly. Not only was he fined by authorities for breaking the law, but he broke so many bones he was still in a hospital bed during his final interview. He was smiling and in traction when asked if he would do it again. He happily replied, "As soon as I get out of here I'll do it again!" Does that answer indicate any minuscule amount of common sense? Does it show any indication that he cares about driving up health care costs for everyone else? Skate boarders are no exception to missing common sense, although this is considered a sport today which does not (usually) require a parachute. Rarely do they die from their stunts. But many end up in emergency rooms when stunts go wrong, driving up health care costs for the rest of us. NEVER try the following - it will kill you. This is a accurate, true story at Kodak where I worked decades ago: There was an electrician who worked at Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, NY where paper and film were manufactured. This man (we will refer to him as Mr. Electric) made money in the most insane way: he carried around a lamp cord with a AC plug on one end and two bare wires on the other end. How did he earn money with this? Mr. Electric would let someone make a wager for how many seconds he could hold on to the two bare wires with the plug in an 120AC outlet. Then he would plug the cord in the wall, grab the two wires and begin shaking like a leaf. There was no shortage of workers who would place bets or simply stand around to watch and see if Mr. Electric wins or dies. Kodak had more than 50,000 employees at that time with no shortage of people to participate. When anyone is being electrocuted by holding onto 120VAC, all your muscles in your arms involuntarily contract. It is impossible to let go of the wires. Mr. Electric would yell out when he reached his pain limit for someone to unplug the cord. Incredibly he never died during one of these bets. Remember that 120VAC is entering one arm, flowing across the chest through the heart and all organs and structures and exits the other arm. Consider that the heart works by receiving signals from the brain on the order of thousands of a volt, not 120 volts. On the last day of work before his retirement, Mr. Electric dropped dead on the floor of a heart attack while walking down the hall. Those of us who work with electricity in our careers are taught this in the very beginning: RESPECT it. Clearly Mr. Electric did not respect electricity nor was he scared of it. Perhaps he was scared of entertaining even the tiniest amount of common sense. Maybe the thought of his endless bets and easy revenue coming to an end was too much to handle. All of this was of no real comfort to the wife and family he left behind. His tombstone should have been constructed to look like an appliance cord and plug; making money with bets and lethal shocks was more important to him than his family missing him. Mr. Electric proved a lack of Common Sense can kill. After working almost a lifetime in defense and aerospace engineering, I spent 13 years in academia designing new high end instrumentation systems from scratch. It included building them and programming with occasional informal teaching of doctoral students. I still do custom instrumentation work. When I asked the department head during my job interview at the university why he wanted someone like me, I never forgot his reply: "We need you to provide a measure of sanity to our work." Time proved his statement to be quite correct: I found that "providing sanity to their work" was far more than just a full time job. Over my lifetime I empirically found this fact about human beings: The higher the college or university degree someone has, the less common sense they will retain. When someone has TWO doctorates to their name, the loss of common sense becomes exponentially worse. One vivid memory of academia was the first project I was asked to design and build at the university by an experienced scientist, soon after I started working there. My first reply was, "Do you have a project schedule?" Her reply was, "What's that?" I then asked, "What is your budget for this project?" Response from her was, "I can't tell you that." Over my 13 years at the university I never did get an answer to any of these questions. Most people are unaware of this, but the job of being a professional politician is taught in universities just as professional wrestling is taught. For a prospective politician, the end goal is to first earn a degree in political science. Proof of successful brainwashing is required to earn that degree too, whether it be a Masters or PhD. A lifelong friend of mine I grew up with attended George Washington University (GWU) in WA, DC after high school. I must confess of being jealous of him in high school; he was brilliant in high school with a photographic memory and easily got straight A's without ever cracking open a book. I struggled to get through it, and counted the days until graduation. After high school he went to GWU for several years then dropped out. Why? Because he found out what being a politician really is and didn't want any part of it. After all, politicians are just performers like actors - with one big difference: Politicians lie for a living - yet everyone wants to believe they are telling the truth. With actors, everyone knows that the script is a lie from beginning to end and acting is only meant to serve as entertainment. How do college students get their doctorate degree? I've watched it happen in person and it goes like this: After 8 years of school, they spend about a year doing research and writing a thesis about it. One of the faculty members in the department the student works in is assigned to act as a mentor to help the candidate write their thesis. A long, boring bibliography is a required part of the thesis (even though no one reads it.) When the mentor feels his or her student can defend the thesis, a copy of the thesis is given to every faculty member who will be attending the (grilling) thesis defense meeting with the candidate. Faculty grills the candidate for about an hour, trying to poke holes in the thesis and see how well the candidate knows the material he/she wrote. Several people who went through this told me that it was clear from the questions almost none of the faculty read the thesis. It's just a ritual they are forced to participate in. After the grilling is over, the candidate is asked to step out of the room and wait. Faculty then discusses the candidate's defense behind closed doors. If the candidate has successfully defended his/her thesis, the door opens, a hand shake is given and the candidate is addressed as "doctor" for the first time. Otherwise, they are told, "You can try again in a year." That's all there is to it. To summarize, the candidate must prove to everyone he/she has properly self-brainwashed themselves and earned their PhD. Is not the lack of common sense apparent here? But the candidate has no choice in the matter; he/she has spent about one million dollars. If they fight the system they will never get their PhD. And thus ends the common sense for most anyone who is a newly minted PhD. Indeed, the day of the doctorate award is both a happy and sad day at the same time. It is said in life, "Be careful what you wish for, you might get it." You may also get something else you did NOT ask for - like a huge tuition bill and having your common sense taken away. And so it is... It's not the fault of the student for losing their common sense. It is merely fall-out of the college or university education process. A free fringe benefit that comes involuntarily with a million dollar+ education. One day a recently minted PhD come to my office to ask me a question: "I just bought a home and found a black coating appear on one side of my home." I asked, "Does that side of your home face north?" He thought for a minute, then replied "Yes." I then asked, "What color is the paint?" He replied, "White." I then had to explain to him what black mold is, how it is extremely unhealthy, what to do to kill it and how the mold could eventually penetrate the wall and even appear inside his home. This person also had basic biomedical knowledge, too. Common sense... A discussion about common sense would not be complete without talking about the incoming president. For the first time we will have a new president who is not a "trained" politician (i.e.,performing monkey.) An untrained president scares many people so bad they call Trump "unqualified." But who is qualified to declare "unqualified" really is? Is it a trained monkey? A look at the presidents over many decades is not impressive. Since the 80's the "progressives" (globalists) have been working to screw America every way possible. Our world is so complex today, NO ONE can possibly be considered fully qualified enter the oval office. No one. Being president must be like every job you and I ever had - you grow into it like breaking in a new pair of shoes. To be qualified to be president - does this require someone brainwashed in a university with a degree? Is a bold, globalism-loving-Cheshire-cat-smiling-proven-criminal trained monkey in the white house far better than Trump? Is an overt socialist like Bernie Sanders qualified to lead a democratic republic? Socialist in a democratic country? What's NOT wrong with that picture? It's high time America is run like a BUSINESS which it actually is - The Corporation Of The United States. If you still love Sanders as many young people do, then go read up on the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), known as Russia today. Find out how well the USSR worked before it collapsed circa 1989. We should commend patriotic electoral college members who boldly vote with their good conscious whenever unconstrained by state laws to follow popular vote. No one should condemn any elector for doing the RIGHT THING. But there are groups well funded in the shadows who defy good common sense and want to force a change in the electoral votes. Globalists with their hidden socialist mindset are funding the madness. Many A-list actors are now supporting this madness in video clips sent to electors. Every trick is being tried but so far none are working. Most experts feel that at this point in time an insufficient number of electoral votes will flip against Trump. Let's hope common sense prevails and comes back to towns and cities across America! Drive out the globalists and their brainwashing with it! Ted Twietmeyer tedtw@frontiernet.net |