On May 19, 1891, who took jurisdiction of the newly created national park called Yosemite and set up camp in Wawona?
January 22nd, 2010
Need a hint??? How about some choices:
A. U.S. Coast Guard
B. U. S. Forest Service
C. U.S. 4th Cavalry Regiment
D. U.S. Department of Agriculture
Tis a wonderful world we live in. However, are we, as a people, growing up too fast?
Is technology coming at us faster than we can absorb it? Heck, NASA is talking about the new “suit” one can wear to fly to and from any destination. Can you imagine what kind of chaos that will cause? Hell, we have folks who can’t chew gum and walk at the same time. Now we are going to suit them up to fly to work? I hope I am long dead before I see that happen.
Cars are now going to voice command systems, heads up displays(HUD), collision avoidance, wend and weave notifications, drive by wire systems… I’m afraid of looking at just what a HUD in a car would look like.
My new car's HUD
It would have to be simple… yet display all the info I need to make sure I select guns when I am too close for missiles.
Cells phone used to be simple. Push a few numbers, press the green button and you were connected. Now we are wired, geared, texting, twittering, calculating, gaming, posting, GPS’ing, checking e-mail, checking directions, checking messages, playing music…
Uncle Marks early cell phone
Hell, it even takes your picture. Do I know how to do all those things on my cell phone? Puh-leeze…
I have a refrigerator that tells me I’m low on milk and the temperature is a tad bit high because I left the door open looking for something to snack on. I had to call tech support.
Reboot? Its a fridge, ain't it?
The guy at the other end of the line said to just reboot the refrigerator. (WTF?)
My furnace has a LCD screen on it which allows me to put in all kinds of info to tell my home when to heat up and cool down. It’s supposed to save me a boat load of cash. Now when I get home from work early, I freeze to death until “Merlin the Furnace Nazi” tells me it’s time to warm up the joint. It saves cash alright. I’m so cold I can’t even open my wallet to pay the paperboy. Had to cancel the subscription.
In my zeal for new found trinkets, I thought about putting a biometric key lock on my front door. You know, place your thumb on the pad and the door opens without using a key.
How many miles you get with this thing?
The very thought of my in-laws standing on the porch in the cold scratching their heads trying to figure out where to put the key so that they can open the door to feed the kitties while I am out for the weekend, just told me that it was not a good idea.
Somewhere on the web, I found a counter top food processor that microwaves, chops, dices, sanitizes and repackages. And it was the base line model. I’m scared to death to ask what the luxury version does. Maybe it will feed the kitties… Hmmm…
I’m not so sure that the world is ready for all these new fangled techy options. You might have thought I was kidding about the people who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time? I’m not. I see these same people sitting in their Pontiac Super Chief doing 90 on the freeway. Put that person in a new car with todays fancy doo-dads and you’ll have a train wreck involving fourteen cars, two 18-wheelers and a bus full of Alzheimer’s patients coming back from some place they can’t remember.
The argument that all these new ideas are for the younger generation holds only so much water. This “younger generation” can’t even balance a check book without a computer (and even then it involves a software program and an external accountant). Remember, these are the same folks who will be taking care of your heart surgery at Mercy General using a joy stick and game pad sitting in their office in Taos New Mexico. Hell, I haven’t even been to Taos.
The point is this; I am not so sure the world is ready for all of this new fangled gadgetry. How do I know that we are not ready? Let me ask a question. Have you recently used something that is as simple as a kitchen butcher knife, but has more buttons on it than the button you have permanently attached to your torso? Did it work right?
Hmmm… Let me ask one more question. You use a remote to control your TV, right? Do you know how to turn off the TV or adjust the brightness… at the TV?
Point made.
I’d be very happy to tell you all about my feelings toward this over the phone. But my hearing aid is the new digital kind and I haven’t gotten to the page that talks about programming it for use with a telephone. I have it programmed for talking in a moving vehicle and for general conversation at a dinner party. It came preprogrammed with the movie theater and the office environment settings. I had to make adjustments for the quiet outdoors and doctors office settings. However, I love the jet airplane and metro/rapid transit settings. But the page on programming it for use around the house when it’s just me and the missus got torn and it somehow found the fire place…
Until next time…
P. S. The answer was “C”.
