2012 conventions 2012 election 2013 session 2013 special election arts arts and culture author ballot measures basketball bomb books boy scouts budget bullying business charlie hales children clackamas climate change coal college courts crime culture culture club democrats drugs economy education environment family film fluoride food gay rights guns handguns health health care health insurance high school history housing immigration international internet kitzhaber law legislature lgbt literary arts living marijuana marriage media medicine mental health military minor parties mohamed mohamud movies music native americans news newspaper obama olympics oregon our town parenting pers photography police politcs politics port portland portland business journal president prevention public safety religion republicans rnc romney rural salem sam adams sandy hook schools science shooting sports suicide supreme court taxes technology television terrorism theater third parties transportation union university of oregon washington wildfire women

An excellent point that Judy makes here which is quite factual. I have been intensely interested in how we learn since I was a child, furthermore after hired to teach as an adjunct professor of astronomy at a local university some years ago. As a child in the 1960’s I never liked watching TV. I instead gravitated to a shortwave radio as a 12 year old, bypassing American journalism to discover that a more intelligent BBC programming awaited me; unknown by many of my grade school classmates.

There is an underlying  prevalent attitude that any individual who believes that online screens, television, radio, whatever media is being absorbed is good regardless, and that more of it is necessarily better. Americans will always be drugged on the idea that simply more is better.

Many people here in the discussion I am sure have not read Jerry Mander’s highly acclaimed and respected books touted by media experts and psychologists for many years; The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television c1978 and In Absence of the Sacred- The Failure of technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations c1991. [especially pg 84 par 4 ‘Perceptual Speedup and Confusion’. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/AoS/theSun.html

The reader will be shocked at what they learn from Mander and his contemporaries such as Noam Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media

Do not take my word as I am only a retired mere observer, an astronomer and acclaimed artist for many years. One other commenter mentions here “I hate to see the day when people are only able to communicate via telescreen, like the world imagined by the late Asimov for his Robot stories”. I’m sorry to say that day has arrived long ago already.

Also reference a short film by the noted producer of Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio- Evidence >         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuI_nCADnW0

-Mark Seibold

posted 3 years, 1 month ago
view in context

Kueijin

I know, I get it all the time. People just want to deny the reality of left handed people and especially if they are right handed, they take offense to it. That is why I say start with the Wikipedia chapter. Ask your doctor if you want a certified medical opinion of this. Don't take my word for it. I have only lived through 55 1/2 years of this. . . ??  (;  I could tell longer stories here but they limit the sites comments now to 2,500 words. Do you think Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Einstein, Feynman, Pauling, Gates, Jobs, Wozniak, etc. is not enough of a list to rest the case? Read more in researched sites.  Good luck and enjoy,  -Mark

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
view in context

I commend Emily and the TOL staff for this great discussion today but they forgot the left handed people, who are most of autistic high order type that fall under this classification. I just talked randomly to a couple in a restaurant the other night. They told me of their three year old son is reading medical journals already at his age but that he does not go well with the others in social class settings. He has too much energy and is too creative but is strangely disconnected with others his age. He talks excessively. He is aloof and disconnected when with a group his age. I asked, he’s left handed isn’t he? Yes! His mother answered, how did you know? Earlier a few months ago, I saw a young lady sitting in a restaurant appearing to read several books at once, fiddling alone. I feared she was imitating me sitting a few seats away as I went over to ask her that she dropped something she could not find, wearing thick glasses not aware she dropped a book under the table. She immediately introduced herself and added the term high order Autism or Aspergers. She said she was left handed but they forced her to become right handed. 

I was brought to tears today when I listened to the earlier guest describe his conditions in grade school as it sounded exactly like my early life and experiences labeled as the artist, intellect, bullied by others. Then suddenly fired after 20 years in my career, unable to explain why. Persecuted is the word that comes to mind.  I was recently evicted from the home I designed and built, after twenty years. Do I get it back soon when they decide now through new diagnosis that they abused an Autistic person by making him homeless?

The language of diagnosis seems flawed- Why not the following term? “Awesome Incidental New Order All Encompassing Cosmic Spectrum.” *See >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-handedness

It is surprising to find that the highest achievers in life seem to be left handed people- and ironically it includes all the greatest artists, thinkers, writers, leaders, etc. who also run a high chance of being Autisic-Aspergers but why are we are eventually persecuted for this?

 -Mark Seibold, forced to retired IT Tech-Consultant, Artist-Astronomy Educator, Portland OR

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
view in context

I commend Emily and the TOL staff for another great discussion.

The gentleman caller, David at the half hour point in the discussion made a very important point. That we as a society place unreasonable importance on numbers rather than people. I would further that this is especially wrongful from governing and business standpoints about the qualifications of a potential employee. No less the millions of tainted and incorrect credit report records.

As a forced into retirement computer IT technician for nearly 30 years, designed and built my own home for my family, the recent debacle of the banks and failed government policies is proof that numbers games, credit records and especially related to jobs in the US, has been a serious mistake about how we scrutinize people and their potential as employees. The banks wrongfully foreclosed, evicted me in a 3 ring circus trial controlled by a local judge and disrespectful desperate lawyer from WAMU’s failed banks. I now have very have unreal information about my filing and dismissed bankruptcy and dated untrue reports of my credit on these so-called credit records that are now all controlled by secretaries in India!

 A credit history is about as valid a dissertation of a real person as reading the checkout line scandal papers. [Read: much in outdated and wrongful information- No less the wrongful reading and misunderstanding of these records.] Employers use this as nothing more than a weeding out system and a weak crutch to deter otherwise valuable employees. Some may not know how wrong their decisions may be about how these records are read and misunderstood.

An important employee with years of artistic design experience, award winning artist, teaching in a local university, a vast record of near 30 years in computer operations for two of the largest computer operations on the west coast, would find nothing in credit records to praise this experienced employees background.

I strongly recommend that this new bill be considered passed, as wrongful credit reports are unlawful. It would help to greatly reduce the redundant, wrongful, and misuse of government information about consumers which does not serve the citizens of our nation in any benevolent or useful way.

Mark Seibold, forced to retirement, artist-astronomy educator, Portland OR

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
view in context

Good points that you make about affordability and pricing. But what can be done when America is losing ¼ Million jobs monthly and this continues today?

Imagine in my comment above that I built my first home for my family in 1988 on a $10.39 per hour job for $54,000. Zero down payment for first time buyers in Oregon. The monthly payments were $564.00 per month including all: 'Principle-Interest-Property Taxes-Home Owners Insurance' [PITI] That is impossible to duplicate today. It is a life loss not to be seen again. Including location-location-location- in southeast Troutdale, 2 blocks from the Sandy River, 3 minutes to Mt Hood Community College, a bike ride 12~15 minutes to the Vista House at Crown Point in the gorge, minutes to shopping, hospitals, etc. yet dark skies for astronomy, no inner city crowding, no 'inner city air'. A prime location difficult to find now. I stayed in the Californicated Beaverton side last month, I am currently staying in the Bend area. These locations are too Californicated for my east county living style in Troutdale, a hidden secret of east Portland.

It was appraised at $250,000 last year as the bank took it away due to unemployment even though I became employed again and offered the bank partial payments; they refused my offer to save the home (that appraised value did not include the landscaping I installed, all the trees that grew for 20 years, now valued at $50,000 alone!) the unique artists designed vaulted ceilings, skylights, real masonry brick fireplace, sky-lighted over patio eaves, accented appointments rarely seen in a modest home. These are the hidden stories that the news is not reporting. How many here have actually lived through this nightmare of foreclosure and eviction. You cannot know the powerlessness you have as a perceived homeowner against the banking authorities and the Feds.

No one today at a $10 per hour job could duplicate this again.

The talk of pricing and returning stability today is anomalous and ridiculous. The Feds have allowed the mortgage businesses, the bankruptcy courts, etc to become criminal in their allowed operations and behavior. It will force free enterprise now into a nationalization process to bring back proper control. Perhaps some moral law of rights of homeownership is in order and should be lobbied for to establish.

posted 3 years, 7 months ago
view in context

For those of us who were wrongfully foreclosed and evicted after 20 years of designing and building our own home; although I received nearly $100,000 back from the bank in equity, now forced into an early retirement pension of $1,000 per month, currently out of work, should those who spent so much time building, maintaining their own homes who lost them in this banking fiasco, not be the first to receive some compensation of being first in line to re-establish to rebuild-replace our homes as we are rendered homeless by the corporate-Fed controlled banker criminals? And why all this "act-now-offers-expires-midnight-tonight-void-where-prohibited-by-law" news? Is this the only perceived reward we are allowed? An $8,000 tax credit? Might be $15,000? Sounds like a farm auction in a 1930 depression. Where's the homestead laws? The founding fathers originally wrote: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property".

Where is the law of compassion and the American Dream about home ownership gone? I'm afraid it is all orchestrated for the corporate investors again to paint a picture of a trickle-down economics of 'lottery winners need only apply'. Do I qualify with all the nearly hundred thousand in savings and $1,000 per month pension?

Those who built, owned and maintained a home properly for 20 years, now in retirement that had their homes wrongfully foreclosed should be first in line for proper compensation to replace them.

posted 3 years, 7 months ago
view in context

I agree wholeheartedly with your final statement but let us not constrain a vaguely specified age range labeled as "boomers". This symbolic labeling of a generation does little or nothing to define the unique qualifications of many who have pursued a passion of immersing themselves into self education of a so needed subject, say of science and art for their entire life, then to share it openly with others [without and monetary compensation to job loss and budget cuts in education.] I have never completed a degree yet I have been providing these lectures and observational astronomy for over ten years now.

I have been balancing roles as a supportive mentor of a needed science and art teaching that is so lacking in the schools (astronomy) and related art [that I believe all students should engage in] and at the same time providing volunteer services as a thorough evaluator of educational systems while performing these lectures and presentations for the public and schools.

Many educational institutions are now cutting funding and many teachers jobs have been eliminated also, due to economic depression. I still offer the lectures about my published, awarded and famous astronomy art as there appear to be a demand for them as this has a known effect and benefit to students in theses subjects, hoping for some minimal compensation but agree to take only a commendation letter as I know that my presentations are worthy to students and the public. I have spoken about this art as it relates to the science on NPR's Talk of the Nation. I receive emails as people want to offer to buy the art [it is not for sale.]

Am I living in a dichotomous world of the proverbial starving artist?

What has not been said enough about this? The public who view the art want to take it for free. Many institutions expect the lecturer to provide presentation for free. How is an artist or lecturer to survive?

posted 3 years, 7 months ago
view in context

Imagine being addicted to reading higher educational books - That was me, self starting about age 8, possibly caused by good parenting [addicted to never watching TV for nearly 40 years now], instead producing great art that inspires others, communicating well with and respecting others, taking proper care of a home that you designed and built yourself, educating others, improving the community and participating with providing for proper care and education of your child and family . . .

Now imagine why some people have become weak to the wrong substance abuses in life and why they would fall into this syndrome. This is why a part of our government spending programs should be exercised to help those who cannot help themselves. Public schools are a good example when managed properly, to instill an interest to self-educate. Part of public schools is also called Health Care [health for the brain first.] Think about it. Then think of the recent arguing about how to invest your tax dollars in health care. It starts with education. Imagine that you have a say in public education and it starts with health [insurance.] Voice your opinion now and learn through discussion.

You have the power to choose wisely. They say we only use 1/10th the human brains potential. What do you choose to do with the other 9/10th's ?

Mark Seibold, Retired Artist-Astronomy Teacher, Portland Oregon

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
view in context

I commend Emily and the TOL staff for raising this issue again for discussion

The people such as myself who have lived and suffered through this are the best to offer discussion because we have all the information. I called in a year ago so I am not sure they would take my call again. I have learned much, such as, a person who designs and builds his own home for his family, maintains it for 20 years, thousands on landscaping self-installed; what the banks did by criminally taking my home away while I approached retirement was wrong. There are stories just making it to the news now that point to this as wrongful. The resolve for this condition has no quick fixes, not even the president's plan unfortunately. It took hiring an attorney to regain my lost equity. This was yet another unforeseen and very costly and painful process but the money regained does not replace the lost home. 20 years of growing and maintaining special landscaping cannot be redone now.

The banks greed and the system running unregulated has destroyed many people lives by taking their homes away, especially after 20 years, this should not have happened. 

Mark Seibold, Retired Artist-Astronomer Portland Oregon  

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
view in context