Wanna Laugh?

Ok, so I go to the movies with my blushing bride last weekend. We called the babysitter and had her come over to watch the kids for the evening. Did I even look and see what movie I wanted to take in? No. Last minute internet check of what is playing... hey here's that one "The Wedding Crashers" got panned real bad by the critics. Just the reason to go. Critics are smart enough to know what they are talking about, but stupid enough to think that it matters. If you want to go to a movie without any bearing on global politics, a message, or any other crap that would make it "worth seeing", please go see this movie. We just sat there for a couple of hours and laughed our asses off. It was stupid slapstick humor with a good dose of political incorrectness. Don't expect to be enlightened. Just go and have fun. Remember movies are supposed to do that sometimes.

Later.

Quick addendum

This article from the NY Times China Retreats Now, but It Will Be Back underscores my point about how we don't get the LONG term planning that eastern philosophy represents. The stock market is a glaring example. We worry about the minute to minute changes in stock prices while we should be concentrating on the long-term trends in the market itself. This is the micro-intense, short burst attention span that our sound-bite media has trained us to be satisfied with and expect. Eastern philosophy, on the other hand, plans for generations in the future. This Amazon interview our interview with author Thomas L. Friedman of "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" is a great primer for insight into this type of thought process. Each generation sees itself as a link in the continuum. A rather non-western narcissistic view of life eh? Not that I'm saying we will see, in our life time, the Germanic hordes streaming over the seventh hill before the gates of Rome. However, we may be witness to the direction they could be coming from.

China

My hope is that we have some REALLY sharp people working on this issue. What do I mean? China is plowing more and more money into it's "defence" budget. They have an army that could walk into any country it wanted. They have nukes. They are becoming an economic powerhouse that will blow away OPEC in it's ability to influence the world's economy. Getting the picture? My point is this, they have a very different culture and value system than we do. Trying to apply ours to theirs is not a smart move. Look what it has done for us in the middle east. When I was in the military the big threat was the Soviet Union. We should have been looking at China. Maybe I'm just a canary in a coal mine, but a large amount of our manufacturing and production capability is, even now, sitting over in China.

Let's just keep our eyes open, ok?