Forward Ever Forward

Amelia Earhart was a noted American aviation pioneer. Earhart was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for becoming the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937 in a Purdue-funded Lockheed Model 10 Electra, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island.

Earhart was born July 24, 1897 and went missing July 2, 1937; twenty-two days before her 40th birthday. She was declared legally dead January 5, 1939.

On the 73rd anniversary of her disappearance, this post honors Amelia Earhart’s courage!

Jefferson in some cases could be called a prophet.

“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.”
Thomas Jefferson

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
Thomas Jefferson

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
Thomas Jefferson

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
Thomas Jefferson

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
Thomas Jefferson

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
Thomas Jefferson

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”
Thomas Jefferson

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Thomas Jefferson

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
Thomas Jefferson

In light of the present financial crisis, it’s interesting to read what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

A Spanish Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

‘House’ for instance, is feminine: ‘la casa.’
‘Pencil,’ however, is masculine: ‘el lapiz.’

A student asked, ‘What gender is ‘computer’?’

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer’ should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men’s group decided that ‘computer’ should definitely be of the feminine gender (‘la computadora’), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

(THIS GETS BETTER!)

The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (‘el computador’), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model..

The women won.

Send this to all the smart women you know…and all the men that have a sense of humor.

Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honor at a recent Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
—–

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practicing at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” [work makes you free] was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

These are photos from the 1920s. Oh, how the times have changed!

It may lack the intimacy of a self-portrait by Rembrandt or Van Gogh, but this newly reconstructed coin bust provides the clearest look into the face of Herod Philip II that we will likely ever see.

Herod Philip II (4 B.C–34 A.D.), one of the sons of Herod the Great and ruler of the eastern Galilee and the Golan during the time of Jesus’ Galilean ministry, was the first Jewish ruler to have his portrait emblazoned upon a coin.

Coins with portraits of Herodian kings are extremely rare because of the Jewish religious prohibition of graven images. Only a handful of Philip’s coins have survived, and even these are well worn with largely indistinct busts.

Biblical coin specialist and researcher Jean-Philippe Fontanille has developed a new technique to recover the original minted impressions of ancient coins. Using the latest in computer imaging technology, Fontanille superimposes digital images of multiple ancient coins from the same issue, adjusting for differences in size and orientation. After keeping the best-preserved parts of each coin image, digitally removing worn or missing areas, and then merging and blending the remaining elements, Fontanille produces an “idealized” composite of the coin as it would have appeared in ancient times.

Thought you might find these photos very interesting; what quality from 1941. Pearl Harbor photos found in an old Brownie stored in a foot locker. And just recently taken to be developed.

THESE PHOTOS ARE FROM A SAILOR WHO WAS ON THE USS QUAPAW ATF-11O.

I THINK THEY’RE SPECTACULAR!

PEARL HARBOR

December 7th, 1941

Pearl Harbor

On Sunday,  December 7th, 1941 the Japanese launched a  surprise attack against the U.S. Forces  stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  By planning  his attack on a Sunday, the Japanese commander  Admiral Nagumo, hoped to catch the entire fleet  in port. As luck would have it, the Aircraft  Carriers and one of the Battleships were not in  port. (The USS Enterprise was returning from Wake Island, where it had just delivered some  aircraft. The USS Lexington was ferrying  aircraft to Midway, and the USS Saratoga and USS  Colorado were undergoing repairs in the United  States …)

In spite of the latest  intelligence reports about the missing aircraft  carriers (his most important targets), Admiral  Nagumo decided to continue the attack with his  force of six carriers and 423 aircraft. At a  range of 230 miles north of Oahu , he launched  the first wave of a two-wave attack. Beginning  at 0600 hours his first wave consisted of 183  fighters and torpedo bombers which St ruck at  the fleet in Pearl Harbor and the airfields in  Hickam, Kaneohe and Ewa. The second strike,  launched at 0715 hours, consisted of 167  aircraft, which again struck at the same  targets.

At 075 3 hours the  first wave consisting of 40 Nakajima B5N2 ‘Kate’  torpedo bombers, 51 Aichi D3A1 ‘Val’ dive  bombers, 50 high altitude bombers and 43 Zeros  struck airfields and Pearl Harbor Within the  next hour, the second wave arrived and continued  the attack.
When it was over, the U.S.  Losses were:

Casualties
US  Army: 218 KIA, 364 WIA.
US Navy: 2,008 KIA,  710 WIA.
US MarineCorp: 109 KIA, 69 WIA.
Civilians: 68 KIA, 35 WIA..

TOTAL:  2,403 KIA, 1,178 WIA.
————————————————-

Battleships
USS Arizona  (BB-39) – total loss when a bomb hit her  magazine.
USS Oklahoma (BB-37) – Total loss  when she capsized and sunk in the harbor.
USS California (BB-4 4) – Sunk at her berth.  Later raised and repaired.
USS West  Virginia (BB-48) – Sunk at her berth. Later  raised and repaired.
USS Nevada – (BB-36)  Beached to prevent sinking. Later repaired.
USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) – Light damage.
USS Maryland (BB-46) – Light damage.
USS  Tennessee (BB-43) Light damage.
USS Utah  (AG-16) – (former battleship used as a target) -  Sunk.
————————————————————————————————————————–
Cruisers
USS New Orleans (CA-32)  – Light Damage..
USS San Francisco (CA-38) -  Light Damage.
USS Detroit (CL-8) – Light  Damage.
USS Raleigh (CL-7) – Heavily damaged  but repaired.
USS Helena (CL-50) – Light  Damage.
USS Honolulu (CL-48) – Light  Damage..
————————– –  —————————-  —————————————————————
Destroyers
USS Downes (DD-375) -  Destroyed. Parts salvaged.
USS Cassin – (DD  -3 7 2) Destroyed. Parts salvaged.
USS Shaw  (DD-373) – Very heavy damage.
USS Helm  (DD-388) – Light Damage.
———————————————————————————————————————-
Minelayer
USS Ogala (CM-4) – Sunk  but later raised and repaired.
———————————————————————————-
Seaplane Tender
USS Curtiss (AV-4) -  Severely damaged but later repaired.
————————————————————————————
Repair Ship
USS Vestal (AR-4) -  Severely damaged but later repaired.
————————————————————————————
Harbor Tug
USS Sotoyomo (YT-9) -  Sunk but later raised and repaired.
——————————————————————————————–
Aircraft
188 Aircraft destroyed (92  USN and 92 U.S. Army Air  Corps.)

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BUT PROBABLY DON’T

1. Money isn’t made out of paper, it’s made out of cotton.

2. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp (marijuana)
paper.

3. The dot over the letter ‘i’ is called a ‘tittle.’

4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and
down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

5. Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller .

6. 40% of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

7. 315 entries in Webster ‘s 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.

8. The ‘spot’ on 7UP comes from its inventor, who had red eyes. He
was albino.

9. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents,
daily.

10. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.

11. Chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system; a few ounces
will kill a small-sized dog.

12. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the
shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

13. Most lipstick contains fish scales (eeww).

14. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn’t
wear pants.

15. Ketchup was sold in the 1830′s as medicine.

16. Upper- and lower-case letters are named ‘upper’ and ‘lower’
because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters,
the Upper case’ letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored
the smaller, ‘lower case’ letters.

17. Leonardo Da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the
other at the same time, hence multi-tasking was invented.

18. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War
II were made of wood.

19. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

20. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan; there was
never a recorded Wendy before!

21. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange,
purple, and silver.

22. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years
to paint Mona Lisa ‘s lips.

23. A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go
mad and sting itself to death

24. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original ‘Halloween’ was a
Captain Kirk’s mask painted white..

25. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you
have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being
able to make change for a dollar (good to know.)

26. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can’t
sink in quicksand (and you thought this list was completely useless.)

27. The phrase ‘rule of thumb’ is derived from an old English law,
which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your
thumb.

28. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record
player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was
the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

29. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a
piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It’s the same with
apples.

30. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!

31. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

32. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book
most often stolen from Public Libraries.

33. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into
space because passing wind in a space suit damages it.

I NEED TO REMEMBER THIS.

34. George Carlin said it best about Martha Stewart, “Boy, I feel a
lot safer now that she’s behind bars. O. J. Simpson and Kobe Bryant are still
walking around; Osama Bin Laden too, but they take the ONE woman in America
willing to cook, clean, and work in the yard, and they haul her off to jail.”