And now that it's off my mind

I came out of 40 days of Lent with an issue I had to write about, despite wanting to continue to have a civil discourse. For those of you that don't know, I made a Lenten pledge not to engage in the politics of ad hominem attacks. I kept that pledge (except for a questionable comment) and felt it was something I would continue. When the president released his long form birth certificate, I was compelled to write about it. In all honesty, I didn't know what to expect; uncharted waters perhaps. Except for links to a couple of fact check sites, I pretty much ignored the topic in the birther threads because I was convinced it was just another conspiracy theory. When the president released the birth certificate, I became convinced that it was an obvious distraction to the White House, so it was worth discussing.

Yesterday, I heard Canadian Jonathan Kay, the author of "Among the Truthers" A Journey though Americans growing conspiracies underground; describe the “Birthers” mindset. He said when a normal person is told that their believes are wrong, it would cause them to go back and rechecked their believes. He convinced me, when he compared it to religion. In my old workplace, there were a lot of people who said negative things about my religion and religion per say, and so I had to go back to validate their statements but all I could say was " I still have faith." ....He also said " all the evidence in the world will not change their mind because they will find something else to cling to."Thor found a YouTube of a couple of people trying to prove that the birth certificate was a fake. In fact there were a couple of morons on the Fox Business Channel, trying to say that the birth certificate was Photoshoped because of the green outer edge. ....Mr. Kay said with the advent of the Internet, the conspirators no longer view television news and just keep in social contact with people who share their views.

The local forum's thread on the birther issue quickly became a dumping ground for all things negative about President Bush and Obama.... My blog became so bad that GOP_ LoveChild, said "I sure hope the folks with Caterpillar, we buffaloed into moving here don’t read this thread."... I did get to clear up some issues with some a couple posters, so it was worth my time and effort.

I'm pretty sure the regulars got tired of the "birther" issue because it dominated the threads but the other regulars will be all rested up, come Monday, then they can dominate the threads. It all works out.

Another sign I’m getting old

I pulled up the USATODAY app my iPad this morning, only to find a story about the last typewriter factory selling off their last batch of 500 typewriters. These days their only customers seem to be our prison system. China, Japan, and Indonesia will continue to supply the prisons. The first commercial typewriter was built in 1867 and has served us in one way or another for all these years. Godrej and Boyce, an Indian company that makes the Godrej Prima, stop production in 2009 and won't make any more after it sells the final 500. Until 2009, the company produced as many as 12,000 typewriters a year compared to 50,000 in the 1990s.

I remember my parents renting an old typewriter for my sister. I also remember hearing the sounds of that typewriter as she pounded away while never looking at the machine. She did the same thing with an adding machine as part of her secretarial course. I never mastered the typewriter. It would take me forever (not to mention paper & carbon wasted) to type out one page. I ended paying someone to type my term papers and resumes. I'm not really that sorry about its demise because it was inevitable, but I imagine many households and businesses still have a typewriter, somewhere. The typewriter will find company where old office machines go to die, meeting the dot matrix printers, single function fax machines, and programmable calculators.

Besides the normal ache and pains, night driving, reading the obituary (first thing in the morning) and watching commercials to see if the medicine I'm on has been banned, the constant changing of the way we do things reminds me why my wife now calls me "old man."