Posted 11:28 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

I was thankful...

That Thanksgiving went by as no more than a normal Thursday.
That the incessant din of freeway construction took the long holiday weekend off.
That I wasn't part of the Black Friday shopping madness.

It doesn't require a national holiday for me to be thankful for many things:

Two splendid young women who I'm proud to call "my daughters".
Some unusually good friends I look forward to seeing again and again.
A great many acquaintances who diligently fight "the good fight".
Some good "down home" relatives in Iowa.
Fine art and fine music that thrills and inspires me.

I'm a very lucky guy... don't you think?

Posted 4:47 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

the in-betweener generation

If one looks back over the past 9 Presidents, there is an oddity. Five of them were born in the "teens" (Kennedy-1917, Johnson-1913, Nixon-1913, Ford-1913), Two were born in the 20's (Carter-1924, G.H.W. Bush-1924) and two in the 40's (Clinton-1946, G.W.Bush-1946).

None born in the 30's, in fact, none born between 1924 and 1946... a whole generation... missing.

That's my generation (1939). I remember being shocked when Clinton was elected, as the first President younger than me (by 7 years). Before that, Presidents had always seemed like elders, but the last two have seemed (and certainly acted) like juveniles. Both Clinton and W are "boomers", born post-WWII, certainly the most spoiled generation in American history, and they acted like it.

Looking at the crop of presidential candidates, there are three who could fill the 30's gap... Ron Paul (1935) and John McCain (1936), Mike Gravel, 1930. Most of the rest are more boomers, born in the 40's, 50's, and Obama in 1961.

For those who are interested... of the 16 major-party candidates,
5 were born under the sun-sign Gemini (Dodd, Gravel, Edwards, Guiliani,Hunter),
3 are Leos (Paul, Obama, Thompson),
3 are Scorpios (Clinton, Biden, Richards),
2 Virgos (McCain, Huckabee),
1 Pisces (Romney),
1 Libra (Kucinich), and
1 Sagitarrius (Tancredo)
No Aries, Taurus, Capricorn, Aquarius, or Cancer.

Posted 4:00 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

Ever have a day...

...when you just didn't want to do anything? Yep, that's today for me. Have no idea why; I feel fine, no other excuse, just feel like I'm not "with" the rest of the world today. I would make this explanation interesting, but I'm not even with writing about it. Catch me another day.

Posted 11:29 AM by Robert Ronald Smith

What utter crap!

Today is the so-called Great American Smokeout, a day to encourage people to stop smoking. Now, I don't personally give a whit whether you smoke or not. If you want reasons to stop, you probably don't have to go any further than the enormous tax load smokers have to pay just to enjoy a legal product.

But... as I've said so many times, the anti-smokers escalate the issue to unbelievable extremes in their effort to blame smoking for every ill you can imagine... all to increase their own donations.

Today, there is an exhibit of what smoking will do to your looks over time. It's complete bullshit, but it's bound to scare some young, naive people into not smoking, and will intensify the effort to punish smoking in new ways. Somebody decided what effect smoking may have on your looks, and programmed it into aging software. The results are ludicrous and completely unbelievable to anyone who knows older smokers.

People age very differently, depending on a LOT of factors. As far as I can see, smoking really isn't one of those factors. My own appearance, and that of many others I know, directly contradicts in no uncertain terms what these people are presenting as scientific fact. Bullshit only. I'm usually guessed at least 10 years under my actual age, and you'll have to look hard to find anyone who has smoked more than me. Exception? Certainly some aspects of my aging is related to having parents who looked young (one was my father, also a heavy smoker) but if smoking has any effect on appearance, I haven't seen it during my 68 years on earth.

Posted 4:23 PM by Robert Ronald Smith

Busy morning...

Just as I was about to go work out, I got an email from a KSTP-TV reporter, asking if I would agree to an interview about the new anti-smoking campaign targeting apartment and condo buildings. I agreed, and they were here in less than 15 minutes. After perhaps 15 minutes of video of me (and my full ashtray), they hurried to edit (in a truck parked here), and then broadcast from here. Without more filming, they did that again about 45 minutes later. I enjoyed chatting with the KSTP people, who are very good (and fast, and pleasant) at their jobs. Part of what appeared on TV is also on their website. Just look for my full ashtray in the video section.

As if to fill out my already busier-than-usual day, I finally got a fix from iPower to allow me to update smith.mn again. It took weeks, and it was a change on their end, not mine, that kept me from FTPing. After finally getting that fixed, I tried to update my site and found that I was, once again, out of server space (a regular problem). So, as I've had to do numerous times, I deleted some photos and the link to them, then returned to updating my home page. I'm sure my site being out-of-date has inconvenienced and disappointed thousands