YEAR ONE

[A New Year’s Message to our readers from the Editorial Board]

January 17, 2015 marks the first anniversary of the Billy Lee Pontificator. During the past year we published more than fifty posts on over thirty topics of interest to Billy Lee — like economics, history, humor, politics, religion, gay rights, literature, race, music, culture, technology, science and many others.


Billy Lee celebrates his blog’s one-year anniversary.

WordPress, our blog-site administrator, reported in year-end statistical summaries that readers clicked on Billy Lee’s Pontifications 7,000 times.

Although some people might consider the number small compared to the tens-of-thousands of hits received each day by commercial web-sites, Billy Lee prefers to compare his numbers to what he might expect were his articles posted on the front of his refrigerator with little door-magnets.

It’s unlikely that more than a handful of visitors to his kitchen would take the time to read even a few of his posts during the year. Measured this way, it is clear to the Editorial Board that the Billy Lee Pontificator has been a spectacular success.

Billy Lee sometimes tells people he started his blog to entertain and inform readers. Not true. We know him. We work with him. He created his blog, because he needed a reservoir for his crazy ideas.

Billy intends to leave behind a public anthology of utter nonsense to his loved ones. He is convinced that the heart-palpitations he experiences every time he writes will kill him someday, probably prematurely. He doesn’t want to leave an empty legacy of a wasted life.

But let us face some harsh realities. Writing a blog is agonizing, thankless work. A famous person once said: no one who blogs is ever happy (or famous). Bloggers can sometimes suffer criticism, but more often than not, people ignore them. And it hurts.

The public seems not to care about bloggers and the useless self-indulgent crap they write. Blogsters who believe in what they do (and that includes Billy Lee) writhe beneath the stab-wounds of rejection every time they push the publish-button and sit glued to their computers to wait anxiously for their site-stats to dribble-in.

Most of the time the numbers confirm their worst fears — they really do suck at what they do. They bleed. They suffer. And everyone knows they self-inflict their own self-righteous agonies.

No one does it better than Billy Lee. Only when a blogger stops blogging, does the bleeding stop. Billy Lee has suffered and bled for twelve months now. Yes, he bleeds, but no, he’s never bled-out.  

It seems that more and more blogsters are abandoning their sites and moving on to other meaningless projects. We hope Billy Lee never does. As boring and irrelevant as he is, we still want our paychecks!  Stand up, Billy Lee. Keep on blogging!

Sincerest Regards,

The Editorial Board

P.S.  One more thing. Some readers may have heard the news by now. Security guards arrested Billy Lee during his speech last night at the “New Year’s Eve Homage to Year One” Gala and Ball. The Board hosted the plaid T-shirt affair at the exclusive Rubber Chicken Dinner Club in Metamora.

Billy Lee has apologized.  

Guess what?

We don’t care! 

A transcript of his remarks is reproduced below.


 

happy new year smiley face year oneHelloooo, everybody!  Happy New Year!

(burps loudly, spills drink)

(audience applause)

I’m Billy Lee, the Pontificator, and I’m drunk as a skunk!

(Audience laughter, applause)

What’s my New Year’s Resolution for 2015?  Who wants to know?  Yeah?  Oh yeah? You’re all a bunch of gnarly swamp rabbits…That’s what I think!  I’ll pickle ur… Whoaaa!  Easy big fella.  Not you. Not you.

(Scattered laughter.  Room quiets)

Ok, Ok… it’s an easy one, my comrades.  Hold on.  I’ll tell ya.  I’ll tell ya.  

(Stares wildly into the room)

I resolve… I resolve… in two-thousand one five… to be sexy all the time!  Two – oh – one – five!  I be sexy all de time. Yeah!  

(hiccups, burps, takes a drink)  

(gasps from audience, a few catcalls)

I resolve to be of good cheer, most of the year, and for god sakes don’t tell ’em I’m qu…

(stumbles, grabs podium)

Don’t tell ’em I’m qu…

(twirls a 360 and throws drink glass, shattering it)

Don’t tell ’em I’m qu…

(falls into microphone setting off loud reverb)

Don’t tell ’em I’m qu…

(sprawls onto stage floor, face down, butt in the air)

don’t tell ’em… don’t tell ’em…

(scattered screams, folks covering their ears, expressions of outrage in audience)

Note to our readers Let’s just say, things escalated.  Billy Lee decided to belt out a slurred and soggy rendition of Take Me to Church. He demanded that male volunteers come up on stage to kiss him on the lips.

Some in the audience rioted. People began throwing things, including chairs and salt shakers. Finally, marshals stormed in to escort Billy Lee out of the building. He was hand-cuffed and dragged. He began bawling like a baby. Some say he mouthed the words, worship like a dog! worship like a dog! as the marshals threw him into the paddy-wagon.

An hour or so later, members of the Editorial Board — they shall remain unnamed — posted Billy Lee’s bond, and all of us, together, asked that he submit his formal remarks — in writing — today. We demanded that he include an apology.

Billy Lee complied. We have attached his written “homage” (an e-mail) below.  The Editorial Board.


January 1, 2015

To: the Billy Lee Pontificator Editorial Board

May I offer my profoundest apologies to anyone I offended last night by my outrageous behavior, inappropriate comments, and lewd singing? I am so sorry.

I am so ashamed.

I know it’s the tradition for people to drink small amounts of alcohol on New Year’s Eve, but last night I clearly exceeded the reasonable and customary limits of insobriety.

Under the influence of what some said was “excessive” consumption of liquor, it seems I offended both the gay community and those Christians in the audience who prefer to drive gays to suicide. For this, I am truly sorry. I said and sang stuff I didn’t mean.

My question to the board members is this: Can you forgive me? Or will you use my weakness as your excuse to torment, humiliate, scandalize, censor, and shun me?

Your silence seems to speak for itself. You forgive me. And you torment, humiliate, scandalize, censor, and shun me. Thank you so very much.

Let me reassure you. I am not myself gay, nor have I ever been. Do you believe me? Again, your silence speaks for itself.

You don’t believe me. I feel it.

And you shun me. I feel that, too. Ok, then. Now that it’s settled, can we move on?

And again, may I prodigiously apologize for playing the fool and making you hate me?

I am grateful for each of you: for each member of our illustrious Editorial Board and the over-weighted bureaucracy that supports you and makes up the backbone of the Pontificator team.

Thank you to the staff of sycophants, apple polishers, and suck-ups who inspire all of us to do our best work.

And thanks also to our black janitor and the two sluts who hang out in the parking-lot before work every morning. Thank you to everyone.

It is now my pleasure to present my homage to our first year and to discuss many of the articles I wrote that might have enriched all our lives had you taken the time to read them.

It’s no secret to me that you didn’t read my articles. Yet you call yourselves the “Editorial Board” !!! The only thing you edit is your paychecks. I’ve caught more than one of you erasing “ones” and “twos” and writing in “eights” and “nines”. It’s not right, people. Can’t you see that?

Well, enough apologies. I’m admonished and chastised. I get it. And no. I’m not dropping my pants, so you can spank me. It’s enough, already, Editorial Board!  Let’s move on to my Homage to Year One! 

I’ve included the following written transcript of the remarks I would have made last night had I not been drunk. And I made some changes to more accurately express my feelings after your reaction to last night’s sorry debacle and my role in it.  

By the way, I’m thrilled to reveal the five most read Pontificator articles for 2014. Can you guess?  They are… (May we have the envelope, please?  Drum roll…)

1 – Sensing the Universe

2 – The Church and the Gay People

3 – Is Something Wrong with America?

4 – Gay Love and Christian Pride

5 – Capitalism and Income Inequality

Since you’re reading this report in your e-mail, Editorial Board, click on the links and read all five, right now!

The best article of 2014 (and far and away my favorite) is Bell’s Inequality. It packs a huge wallop for those who dig science. Not to totally pander to science freaks, but a close second is Conscious Life.  Site stats say few people have read them. I know the Editorial Board didn’t read them.

Read them now!  

Our best (worst) day of the year was May 3rd, when church leaders — alarmed by my famous Gay Love post — swarmed our site and eventually shut it down — for six weeks!

I never suffered emotionally in my life like I did during those weeks — they turned into months!  Details of that unnerving fiasco are described and preserved in Writing Free.

Of course, I can’t expect any of you to read it. It’s 2,000 words. It has paragraphs!

Many people told me the post they liked best was Hearing Loss. It is a true account of real-life exchanges between me and my hill-billy wife, Beverly Mae. It is always good for giddy guffaws and lots of laughs. Next July, when you are all taking your six-week vacations, why not set one week aside to read it, Editorial Board?!

Another funny post, at least to me: Why Do Humans like Music?  I belly-laugh every time I revisit it. It’s that good. You wouldn’t know!!!

I don’t know how many of you Board members know this, but The Billy Lee Pontificator got it’s start, believe it or not, from a desire to showcase an article I wrote titled, Horemheb, Exodus Pharaoh?  I loved that essay. I loved the title. Wow. Horemheb, Exodus Pharaoh? Really? Everybody will read that one!

To my amazement, and through the tears of self-humiliation, I discovered — after I published it on my blog-site — Horemheb needed a re-write. Some family members may remember how much the re-writing of Horemheb dragged-on during its prolonged infancy on Facebook, before I blog-published it. It’s why we hired our Editorial Board team.

Maybe someday some of the Editors might want to read Horemheb to see if I missed something. If it’s not inconvenient or too much trouble, Editorial Board!!!

Anyway, sloppy execution of my article, Horemheb, led to the policy elucidated on our Billy Lee Process Page, best summarized as follows: re-write it ’till it’s right.  People hate the policy, but I like it. In my bad heart, I know it’s right. And since my Editorial Board — yes, that’s you! — won’t spell check my stuff, I have no choice.

To sum-up: I can’t say I enjoyed my first year blogging, but I’m proud of the articles I wrote. I’m glad some people say they read them — even if my Editorial Board refuses. I regret the controversies, but it’s how we stay alive, stay engaged and grow. Does anyone agree?  

And yes!  I’m not gay. 

Billy Lee  

ELECTION 2014

In an effort to bring common sense to government, citizens of the United States voted yesterday to restore control of the Senate and House of Representatives to the Republican Party. Barack Hussein Obama, the Kenyan usurper — the first modern president to misplace his birth certificate called the vote, idiotic.


Kenyan Usurper Barack Obama (KUBO)

Republicans have vowed to quickly demonstrate their ability to lead by promising to impeach both President Obama and VP Joe Biden so that sobbing John Boehner — the House Majority Leader (and next in line) — can ascend to the Oval Office.

Boehner, for his part, pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act and return health-care in America to what it has always been — unaffordable.


Sobbing John Boehner
Sobbing John Boehner

The Grand Old Party promised to eliminate taxes on anyone earning over one-million dollars per year to “free up the economy” and bring prosperity to America — like was done in 2008, at the end of the Bush administration.


St Andrews
The GOP pledged to improve racial segregation by offering low cost loans to gated communities, exclusive golf resorts, and home-schoolers.

Triumphant GOP honchos guaranteed they will annihilate ISIS, totally eradicate diseases like Ebola and the dreaded GAY, and make Ted Cruz a household name. They pledged to intensify the national campaign to improve racial segregation by offering low-interest loans to gated-communities, private golf-resorts and home-schools.

And — in a bold election year tip-of-the-hat to Alaska, Wisconsin and Michigan — they swore to raise the temperature of planet Earth to a more comfortable setting by ignoring silly scientists who are always belly-aching about global warming.


GOP leader promised mandatory firearms training for preschoolers.
GOP leaders agreed to work with Democrats to fund firearms training for preschoolers.

GOP paladins vowed to construct a half-mile wide oil-filled ignite-able moat (you know, the kind they dig around castles) to stop the huddled Mexican masses yearning to breathe free from ever crossing the border into the United States again.

Last (but not least) they agreed to work with Democrats to fund firearms training for preschoolers.

happy-Jesus
Not Jesus.

Christian leaders praised today’s election results: it pleased Jesus, it really did, to learn that responsible, rich people with good values were finally going to fix things in America.

No more Muslim presidents, GOP preachers asserted confidently.  Nor brown-skinned, another giggled.

Billy Lee

TOP TWEETS

twitter 1Last month we published tweets from my first thirty days on Twitter. This month, we publish a sampling of my best tweets ever, gleaned from the three years I tweeted regularly. A lot of thought went into each tweet when it was composed, and more thought has gone into selecting the “finalists” which made it into this new collection.  I hope readers find them entertaining and thought provoking. 

I’ve come to regret tweeting some of my original tweets, which, in retrospect, seemed to me too emotional and extreme. My son once told me my tweets were dumb. After reviewing all of them, it’s clear he was right about at least some of them. I no longer tweet regularly on Twitter. 

Anyway, get ready for a controversial ride. These tweets are hot.  If you disagree or have doubts or if you’re simply curious, click on the many embedded links to learn more.  

Note: links have been added to some of the original tweets to provide readers with background and context. A few tweets have been edited for clarity. 


If acorns tasted better, there’d be no need for farming.

The squirrels in our neighborhood have opposable thumbs & sometimes stand upright.

An airline CEO told a friend that 24 Al-Qaeda crews were active on 911.  I know, sounds crazy.

Where’d daddy go? He died, momma.  When’d he die?  Two months ago, momma.  Oh, did I kill him?  Alzheimer’s 101 

In the old days cigarette butts were everywhere.  Now you rarely see one.

Living forever, or just one day, feels the same.  We live in the present.

Going for a walk.  Hope the packs of wolf-coyote hybrids NatGeo says are out there don’t eat me.

Has it occurred to anyone else that the Restasis lady may, in fact, be an alien?

We have freedom of speech as long as nobody listens.

If USA GNP was divided equally, every family of four would get $200,000 per year.  [($15.2 T/309 M) * 4 ].

Clean coal is only clean before you dig it up and actually touch it.

During the next 25,000 years, containment structures for nuclear weapons will corrode & release plutonium killing all life on earth.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 40 – Son: Dad!  Stop Twitter now!  You sound loopy!  Me: You don’t understand, son.  I’m free.

What we learned during the past 10 years: throwing an election has consequences.

Have waited 50 years to vacation on a Cuban beach.  Still waiting.

Love this animation showing how DNA/RNA works…  http://t.co/rYaG8cau

Michigan has thousands of clear-water lakes.  Fish got there from geese and ducks carrying sticky fish-eggs on their webbed feet.

Solar bottle-bulbs provide free light to folks in dark houses.   http://t.co/1Hk01AA1

Only a nation asleep would allow individuals to accumulate billions of dollars.  Are you kidding me?!?

Permitting the wealthy to go into the prison business presents incredible dangers to our freedoms.

If aliens are the size of grasshoppers, we might not notice an invasion until it’s too late.

Ayn Rand destroyed America.

Nuclear plant meltdowns are almost certain during earthquakes above 8.0.  Since 1900, 100 have occurred, none in the USA.   http://t.co/KUhuFw88

tend to lie about the effectiveness of their drugs.

USA GNP is 7% of its accumulated wealth.  It’s why small changes in GNP don’t affect us much.  http://t.co/PmHlp5xL

Billionaires harm democracies.  You know they do.  Set max. worth at $150 million.  Those who have more must divest.

During slavery, plantation owners were the job creators. They created millions of jobs.

Research seems to show that brains decide seconds before humans are aware they’ve decided… http://t.co/1yngCw7b

The only threat to our freedom greater than billionaires is a government controlled by billionaires.

How differential gears work is hard to grasp.  This video can help. http://t.co/GyR0ht6z

No such thing as trace amounts of plutonium.  It gets passed around in wind & rain forever.  You will never see the speck that kills you.

All drones are piloted by somebody.

I’m old and cold and not very bold; my teeth are inlaid with gold. My chin has a fold; I’m covered with mold; when I go, my nose I must hold.

We don’t need a revolution.  We just need to limit how much people can steal before they have to divest.  No more billionaires.   http://www.theguardian.com/video

Pre-Civil War plantation owners were some of the most effective job-creators in our nation’s history.

Ayn Rand Objectivism is a modern day Divine Right of Kings written to convince the gullible that billionaires have a moral right to rule.

Squirrels have developed agriculture.  They plant trees and store walnuts which they eat out-of-season.

Favorite Spartacus video clip…  http://t.co/IsedM4xD

Copyrights that last years after an author’s death are un-American.  People get money for what they didn’t write?

I love the smell of marijuana in the morning. It smells like freedom.

Capitalism is the plantation system of the old South renamed & repackaged for modern wage earners.

This explanation of ozone is very good…  http://t.co/cwRrYIQo

Chances of being eaten by a mountain lion are 1 in ten million — unless the lion is 100 feet away & hungry.

This notion that somehow people are entitled to unlimited wealth is destroying civilization.  Soon, we’ll be serfs again.

Big Tobacco — when they advertised in the 1950s — talked 70% of men into smoking. We can be brainwashed. https://watch?v=sxrCjmqRTz0

Advocates of nuclear energy are like the people of Easter Island who destroyed their civilization for a few more hours of campfire.

America has a permanent over-class. Until we deal with it, we are serfs.

Atheists would rob me of any hope against death.

Incandescent bulbs — now banned — are hot.  We need them in winter.

40% of electricity bill is wasted charging AC/DC electronic devices.  This fix is cool.  http://t.co/8gWRO1l6

Plutonium escaped at Fukushima.  How dangerous is it?   http://uploads/1997/07/no-3.pdf

At the heart of every fortune lies a dark secret.

The wealthy have divested the middle-class & limited our incomes.  It’s time to turn the tables.

USA politics consists of arguing about how aggressive the financial shake-down of the middle-class should be.

It’s the redistribution of wealth to a permanent over-class that we’re fighting against. #occupywallstreet

Fantasy-nightmare vision of Ayn Rand was a poison apple.  It ushered in a facist USA, where billionaires now rule us.  #ows

Gated communities are another form of segregation.

Homework in elementary school demoralizes students, short circuits passive processing, dampens creativity & makes kids dumb.

RT @pdjmoo: THE LIONESS AND THE CALF: Lovely Watch.  A short documentary that will open your eyes. –  http://t.co/S8okiyJ2

Baby Boomers are the Greatest Generation. They ended racial segregation & the Vietnam War.  They started the high-tech revolution.

Rage and old age make a sage.

If humans were the size of squirrels and lived in people’s yards, could they survive?

RT @nytimesscience: Bursts of Fission Detected at Fukushima Reactor in Japan http://t.co/lZsThJNT

JFK fired the CIA Director who later sat on the Warren Commission.

It’s easier to control un-informed people.  Education will never be cool while billionaires rule.

Nice one-minute explanation of GPS & effects of special & general relativity
http://t.co/T1z6gUm4

Twenty-three million government workers in the USA.  No way private sector can provide full employment.  See pg 30.  http://t.co/2Btdfbjs

Tea Party types don’t get that government is all that stands between them & tyranny by billionaires.  Divest billionaires.  #ows

Billionaires build their power by corrupting our representative government.  Divest them.  #ows

Well, Gitmo prison is going strong & we’re killing Americans with drones.  What good is Obama besides not being a Republican?  Just asking.

That country singer who used to crow, wanna watch some football?  & called Obama Hitler was on CMA tonight.  He got a standing ovation.

Billionaires seduce consumers into supporting “free markets” which they rule as personal fiefdoms. #ows

Billionaires used the tax cuts we gave them to solidify their vice-grip on our “democratic” institutions. #ows

Cults of personality never work out well.  #Paterno

MSNBC reporting that the District Attorney in the #Paterno sex crime scandal went missing in 2005.

How many of those who laughed at Howard Hughes for using Kleenex boxes as shoes ever tried it themselves?

USA psycho-terror:  Bahgram, Gitmo, SuperMax, rampant solitary.  Sick minds created these nightmares.

Many billionaires are tied to drugs (legal/illegal) & the military.

Earth is broadcasting itself on all EM frequencies.  If aliens are out there they will find us.

After Vietnam, anti-war activists were black-listed from top jobs.  The consequences for the USA have been devastating.

If billionaires won’t agree to tax fairness, what other reasonable requests will they crush?

TWITTER-LOG: Day 117 – been following some celebs like Vonnegut & Von Braun.  Even tweeted them.  Wife just informed me, they’re both dead.

Portraying oppressor as victim is as old as human tyranny. #ows #OccupyEarth

Quantum physicists & priests approach absurdity in different ways: one through reason; one through faith.

Am passing by hundreds of hyperactive squirrels on my walks.  Thus far, none have mindlessly attacked me.

Successful revolutions never have popular support until they’re won.

Rupert Murdoch of Fox News bought the Wall Street Journal.  It’s Fox propaganda now.  Don’t read it.

You treat us like dirt & live safe behind gates.  The least you could do is pay some taxes. #ows

The Bush tax cuts gave more money to the average millionaire than a lifetime of social security checks.

Cuba has one of the best health care systems in the world.  Our sick can’t go there.

Bell’s theorem is irrelevant if entangled particles are single wave-particle objects (like oscillating bubbles).  http://t.co/qzWRDLqx

Carbon dioxide is heavy, so the little there is stays close to the earth where plants can breath it.

The notion — main-streamed by Ayn Rand — that taxation is theft ruined all that was fair & good about the USA.

If life is distributed over the widest range of temperatures then typical civilizations might be cryogenic & radio-wave sensitive.

The dilemma of the rich is they can only live in one place at a time, operate one transport at a time, make love to one person at a time.

People understand the Universe the way smart goldfish might understand the Earth.

Earth’s neighbors are small with little gravity. We can visit & come back.  We have the perfect spaces to learn.

First thing women did after getting the vote was enact Prohibition — because their husbands drank & beat them.

This could be huge — esp. regarding intelligence & learning.   http://t.co/8OEbNOtd

How did paper planes launched from a small number of boats & dropping unguided munitions sink so many ships at Pearl Harbor?

GOP repealed Michigan unit-pricing.  At check out, we can’t tell if stuff rang up right.  At home, we can’t review what we paid.

No black man has ever led a major world power until Barack Obama.

Kirk Douglas reflects on life in letter to Christopher Hitchens…  http:/?2011/09/kirk-douglas-201109

Billionaires will be passing 30 trillion dollars to their kids in coming decades.

Somewhere in the oceans are a few genius dolphins.  We should find them.

When looking into the eyes of war-dogs returning from Iraq, one can’t help feeling that some have seen too much.

Christopher Hitchens said his biggest fear was — near certain death & in pain — he might cry-out to Christ Jesus to save him.

North Koreans fake-cry better than citizens of any other country.  http://t.co/qg3LFCWz

If private companies could create full employment, they would have to hire 13M unemployed & 23M govt workers: 36M people.

Government should provide free basic-food to anyone who wants it: potatoes, rice, beans, oil, corn.  It would cost almost nothing.

Drew USA flag billowing in the wind. Teacher said: you can’t draw straight lines?  Art career died that day.  In kindergarten.

You never hear about good marriages, because the people in them aren’t talking.

All trees fall down, yet few people have ever seen one fall.

We could put direct-current fuel cells in every neighborhood in the USA for the cost of a few nuclear power plants.

People who make sure they eat at least three balanced meals per day are usually fat.

25 dimensionless constants make our universe work the way it does.

Nothing smells better to me than my own armpits.

If the current Social Security tax rate was applied to all income, it would provide $25,000 per year to every old person.

Genes, like those for intelligence, can be passed between species by viruses.

Didn’t watch GOP debate but am certain it was the stupid-est thing on television tonight.

RT @cracked: 5 Absurd Solutions to Huge Problems (That Actually Worked): http://t.co/RpJpSWYL

Einstein’s statement that God does not play at dice flies in the face of Proverbs 16:33.

Billionaire propaganda station, NBC News, is reporting Romney family origin was in Mexican poverty.  That should work.

The Siberian wilderness in Russia has 35% more land mass than the contiguous USA.

Billionaires destroy democracies.

Assume reality is an [n x n] matrix.  Then the least expensive # of dimensions is when (n^3 / 3) = n^2 .  So n=3.   http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Romney said his speaking fee ($375,000) wasn’t much.  It’s about what the President is paid per year.

RT @QuotesByArtists: There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love. — Christopher Morley

The Romney Flat Tax (15%) works out to a 300% increase on low wagers; 50% decrease on the 1%.  Typical GOP idea.

Obama can sing like Al Green.  Makes me feel happy.  http://t.co/GspEqOEd

Never understood why anyone would put themselves on a boat with thousands of people they don’t know.   http://www.cnn.com/travel/carnival

We don’t know the names of the billionaires who rule us.

Until we get it — that billionaires we don’t know rule us — nothing political will  make sense.  It not about us.  It’s about them.

Insiders who killed Kennedy want us to know he was a monster.

The conspirators sat on the Warren Commission.  They put a Secret Service agent on the grassy knoll.  Oswald was a patsy.

Workers need a Bill of Rights.  Take away employers’ power to fire “at will.”  Due process required.

The public lives inside an information bubble created to entertain, not inform.

Politicians are not the best people to teach us about Jesus.

20% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth.  Kudos, USA.   http://t.co/wWdEmDNv

Ronald Reagan accepted a $2M gift from the Japanese after his final term. Why?  Auto imports?

Iran can get a nuclear bomb anytime by buying one from another country.  What they can’t do is buy hundreds.

Expansion of space means our current vehicle technology — given unlimited fuel & time — can take us no further than 1B light years from Earth.

All cars in Iran run on natural gas.  All cars in Brazil run on sugar cane flex-fuel.  Why?  The oil is running out.

Don’t kid yourself.  If you are worth less than $20 million, you are one of the little people.

Most of USA’s best food is exported to wealthy nations.  We import from poor countries to make up shortfall.

12% of voters who earn less than $25K/ yr have no photo ID.  GOP says they shouldn’t vote.

RT @thequotemaster: Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. -Abraham Lincoln http://t.co/J1mB7Eoa  #quotes

The Bible is written for the wretched.  It gives hope to the powerless, the exploited, the poor, the despised, the unloved.

Billionaires have the USA in a vice-grip. They control the media, courts & Congress.  Everyone works for them.

In case you didn’t notice, Florida is still segregated.  They have gated (segregated) neighborhoods everywhere.

The space between Earth & 1B light/yrs from Earth is expanding faster than our fastest spacecraft can travel.

Many Americans seem oblivious to the huge sums spent on ads to get them to accept the agenda of billionaires.

USA police forces are increasingly being manned by Iraq/Afganistan vets.  Caution: these men are “militarized” and “weaponized.”

When someone says they totally agree with you, odds are they totally don’t.

The Bush family unleashed more hell on Earth than any family in recent memory.  Kuwait, Iraq, Afganistan, 2000 election, 2008 crash; etc.

Anyone still remember when Enron & GOP drove Calif Dem Governor out & put Arnold in?  Enron bankrupt & Calif a mess.  Thanks GOP.

Enron’s Ken Lay sat next to Bush at 2000 Inaugural.  Jack-boots in street, protesters on sidewalks.  Anyone remember?   https://www.youtube.com/

Anyone who can donate $100,000 to a politician is, in all  probability, a crook.

Hunger Games shows a world where the wealthy use government to torment the common people for fun. Sounds like the USA.

USA is run by permanent over-class who inherited money, reputation and power from their parents.  Divest billionaires.  Tax them.

If everyone drove cars with Chevy Volt style power plants, we could dismantle pipelines.

Tea Party “christians” let negative ads manipulate them into nominating a Mormon billionaire.

President Obama’s statement about Jesus this AM… http://t.co/NX2ZYha8

Let’s calm down.  No Court worth its salt is going to overturn health-care.  That would be insane.

All wars are wasteful. When we left Vietnam we left billions in air-conditioners, office furniture, vehicles, buildings, etc.

Fibonacci series in music with astronomy graphics in case you missed it…  http://t.co/JbsSsBuO

Either tax twillionaires 92% like Eisenhower did or divest them.  Otherwise lose the country to a permanent over-class.

Even in the contest between beast & man, the outcome is not certain.  No Country for Old Men.

RT @keepingitraw: Radiation from Fukushima Disaster Found in California Kelp http://t.co/E9qNMokO

Earthlings: your puny brains have created a simplified approximation of reality you call “mathematics.”  Free yourselves.

Revolutions never have popular support until they’re won.

What did Castro do?  He threw the Mafia out of Cuba & set up an egalitarian society.  No wonder billionaires hate him.

The Coal Cartel is right about one thing. They have a lot of coal to sell.  They are wrong about this: coal is not clean.

Can’t we all just stop eating bacon…?   http://t.co/HwOCP3gL

Imagine a 28 yr old black man with a gun on neighborhood-watch picking a fight with your son & killing him.  Manslaughter?

Hannity is reporting a Fox News poll that shows Romney beating Obama 46% to 44%.  Might as well forget about truth telling for a while.

RT @Art_Guy1: FACT: Obama’s tax plan raises his tax rate. Mitt Romney’s plan cuts his own taxes in half.

Churchill: I like pigs.  Dogs look up to you.  Cats look down on you.  Pigs treat you like an equal.

We had a leader of the NY Stock Exchange who made more money in one day than Obama makes in a year.

Rush said Secret Service hooker scandal is Obama’s fault, because he overworks agents & keeps them from their wives.

According to Gallup & Fox polls, the election is over.  Romney will be President.

Are we going to throw out a sitting President to satisfy the lunatics…?  Ted Nugent threatens Obama… http://t.co/TeBX54wE

USA has been war-ing Stone-Age peoples since Vietnam.  It never tires.

Make it a felony to possess more than, say, $150M, in cash, property & assets.  Limit yearly incomes to $15M.

RT @JeffDauler: RT @CassandraYoung: Just remember, kids: every time you make a typo, the errorists win.

Communism, Socialism, Capitalism are utopian fantasies that don’t exist & never will in the real world.  The USA is what it is.

The problem with the USA space program was lethality to employees. At least 82 died during its tenure.  http://List_of_spaceflight-accidents

Obama doesn’t look American.  You know.  Fat.

Most prosecutors in the South don’t bring charges against whites in racial cases due to chance of being disbarred.  Like the Duke rape case.

RT @YourAuntDiane: I like to talk to everyone like they’re dying of a dreadful disease. It makes me a better listener.

One thing to remember about the BP screw-up: there are thousands of wells in the Gulf.  They all leak.

Taxes on the one-percenters are one-third of 1960; one-half of 1980.  https://www.yhoutube.com/watch

Mexicans are beautiful people.  Why can’t we open the border & let folks drive back & forth freely?

If we divested billionaires & divided their wealth equally to every citizen, a family-of-four would get $1,250,000.

The price of two wars & tax cuts for the rich has been $60,000 per family.  Could use the money right now.

Does anyone find this explanation of consciousness compelling?  It is certainly fascinating in the extreme.  http://t.co/OqWiKSz4

It would be nice if the equation for the Theory of Everything was found to be less than 140 characters, so it can be tweeted.

Money loses its promise at the point of dying.

Have been hearing that Social Security is going bust for 50 years now.  It’s like a broken record.  The 1% don’t pay Social Security taxes.

Most gazelles in nature never get eaten by lions.  They never even see one.  https://www.youtube.com/

We never hear anyone on television talk about divesting billionaires.  Why is that?

One of the good things Bush did as President was to popularize the now famous lexicon, Mission Accomplishedhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?    https://www.youtube.com/watch

There is always some new disease to worry about and a drug dealer on TV eager to sell a solution.  Only in America.

Americans don’t know the names of the billionaires who rule them.  Who will tell them?

How do they keep black folks out of the Derby?

GM makes the best cars.

There’s this CIA guy named Rodriquez who is going on right-wing television slamming our elected officials.  Weird.

When the wealthy push down wages, skilled labor evaporates.

Safety regulations, which auto firms once fought tooth and nail, have saved over 200,000 lives.

Leonard Susskind said it will take an accelerator the size of our galaxy to see the smallest particles.  We aren’t there yet.

We had hamburgers tonight with no pink slime in them.  What a difference.  So good!  https://www.youtube.com/watch

The game of pushing black men until they finally stand their ground and get killed or imprisoned is as old as America. #trayvonmartin

Honest people who have integrity and are not greedy cannot be cheated.  They can be robbed and sometimes are.

It should be a felony for a private citizen to possess a billion dollars.

#ThoughtsLiberalsHaveAroundConservatives  This guy’s a lunatic.  Hope he doesn’t shoot me.

RT @therightblue: Antibiotic residue in seafood purchased at US grocery stores, experts say:   http://t.co/mIPRDzFX

USA dropped equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb per day for 25 years on Bikini atoll.  Ruined tourism.    http://www.youtube.com/watch

Do you self-censor tweets, because your employer is watching?  That’s not freedom.

God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.  Jesus.

Should we be fishing from the same pond we drill our oil and dump our garbage?

Long after humans, and all we’ve built, have vanished, alien visitors will know we were here from the plutonium we left behind.

Thirty-seven old nuclear plants on the Great Lakes with no place to store high level waste.  http://t.co/Iasqrjn3

A country like the USA comes along once in ten-thousand years.

First Silent Majority, then Moral Majority, now New Majority.  The GOP is always trying to start a bandwagon.

Still remember nuclear engineers telling me in 1977 that nuclear power was safe, and waste storage was no problem.

Seems like China is going to own the moon, it’s helium and rare-earth metals.

This Colbert quote about Christian Nation is pretty good. http://t.co/lZIMNw7j

Yes, it’s hot.  But look at the bright side.  In the next few years, it’s going to get a lot hotter.

RT @QuoteRevolution: The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it. ~John Hay

If you can discourage 1 out of 100 voters from voting by requiring photo ID, you can throw a lot of elections to the GOP.

Are Focus on the Family execs calling the USA to pray for rain at Romney nomination speech like they did for Obama 2008?    http://t.co/XIdXcclo

How they hate Obama.  What’s he ever done to them?

We learned how much the GOP wanted America to succeed when they refused to be led by a black man and trashed our country’s credit rating.

Billionaire-owned media portrays a failed President.  But he saved the USA from collapse, killed OBL, passed medical-care.

We knew the Vietnam war was lost when USA soldiers fragged their officers.  Afghan green-on-blue is same thing.

The political dominance of billionaires is USA’s biggest problem.  GOP’s solution?  Make one President.

The only thing not better than four years ago is right-wing media.  Those morons never shut up.

Everyone fights for the middle-class.  But they’re in the top 20% of income earners.  What about the vast under-class?

It feels like the GOP/right wing/media/billionaires are sucking the air out of America.  They are relentlessly negative.

As we age, our bodies become less like prisons and more like torture chambers.

It is disrespectful to bear-hug the President and lift him off his feet.  The man is lucky he wasn’t shot.

USA should pass amendment making anyone who serves as President more than 3 years a natural-born citizen.  Would shut-up birthers.

Tell the truth.  Weren’t you scared of the Axis of Evil and Saddam’s WMD’s?  GOP scared the crap out of us.  No way we let them back in.

Only one person knows what it’s like to be the first black President.

The six Billionaires who own 85% of USA media have convinced most Americans it is a “liberal media.”  Wow.

Romney said he will end estate taxes, which are the last defense the USA has against the establishment of a permanent royal-class.

GOP hack, John Sununu, called Obama “lazy” on Fox News.

Obama said he wasn’t perfect to counter GOP websites that are saying he claims to be Jesus and, therefore, is the anti-Christ.

Can’t remember an election with no GOP bumper stickers.  Haven’t seen a Romney sticker yet.  Anywhere.  Strange.

Ambiguity is a tactic artists and politicians use to attract a mass audience.

It’s hard to believe that the land of the free and home of the brave would let 400 people sequester 1/8 of our national treasure.

Imagine Obama losing 241 Marines to a terrorist attack; losing an entire Shuttle crew; flooding the USA with Japanese cars…that was Reagan.

If the tax rate was at Kennedy levels, the USA would be awash with surplus cash.

To put things in perspective, Romney will get $4,566 from his annuity during the debate.  Obama will get $91 from his salary.

Romney says his dad was born in Mexico.  I remember when his dad ran for President.  He said he was born in the USA, I think.  https://www.youtube.com/

Today, Federal investigtors revealed more Secret Service agents using prostitutes while on duty overseas.

I don’t want to believe the GOP is strong enough to overthrow a President who hasn’t done anything wrong.

Many Christians turned on Jimmy Carter with a vengence.  Now they rally around a Mormon to destroy Obama who is a convert to Christianity.

I keep waiting for conservatives to come to their senses about Obama — a brilliant and decent man.  They never do.

What good is democracy if the billionaires always win?

Employers threatening to shut-down if Obama re-elected reminds me of  threats to close shop if Civil Rights Act passed in 1964.

Today my pastor preached that Obamacare forces church organizations to participate in abortion or go out of business due to fines.

People think taxes will go down on the middle-class if Romney is elected.  No, taxes will go down on the billionaires.

No one on television or radio or in newspapers or magazines will ever tell us to tax or divest billionaires.  No one.  Never.

How can anyone say USA is free when 400 families have sequestered 1/8 of our national treasure?  Our country is a plantation.

Obama, a born-again Christian, must feel like Jesus himself as Christian leaders desert him for Mormon Romney, a compulsive liar.

Christian leaders showed their true colors this election.  They took sides with the rich and powerful.

Put a Mormon missionary billionaire with strong ties to Mexico who won’t financially disclose in the White’s House?

Romney/GOP convention disrupted by hurricane.  God making statement?  http://thecolbertreport — hurricane-isaac

Seems like during every storm we find hospitals that put their back up generators in the basement where they are disabled by floods.

Four more days until Romney goes away.  Can’t wait.

Female CNN announcer just said “atta boy” to Don Lemon.  Young people don’t get how racist that sounds.

Do white people in Florida stand in four-hour lines to vote, like they make their colored folks do?  Just asking.   https://www.youtube.com/

On C-Span, just heard South Carolina woman say, Obama is the best candidate; and, yes, I am white.

#LieLikeMitt   Jesus is Satan’s brother. Look it up.  And thank you to all Christians who are voting for me.

Hope Romney and Ryan have a sense of humor, because the election tomorrow is going to be a joke.

Romney just lost in NH and Mass. where he has homes; MI where he grew up; and Wisc. where Ryan is from.

Thank you, Jesus.

Christian leaders hate Obama, because “sinners” love him.

Evangelical leaders sided with southern racists and the rich and powerful.  https://www.youtube.com/watch

Romney was going to do a fireworks show in Boston Harbor after being declared winner.  Thank God, it didn’t happen.

RT @A_ThinkingGirl: Boehner and McConnell Dissed Obama on Election Night; Refused Phone Calls from the President   http://t.co/Pw4JkhpE

Thomas Ricks just told CNN that if you haven’t had an affair your not a player in the CIA.  That is disturbing to me.

Getting old.  Tweeted “your” instead of  “you’re.”  Sorry.  Please forgive me.

Officers serve subject to the Code of Military Conduct.  It prohibits adultery.

People who are good at maximizing their personal advantages over others often consider themselves worthy of further advantages.

Any business owner who lays off his workers because Obama won is mean-spirited.  We need a bill of rights for workers.

Always thought embracing Bush holdovers like Betray-us was a mistake. Imagine if he’d been Romney’s VP choice.

Romney thought he was the savior on a white horse foretold by .  Maybe next time.

RT @MariaLiaCalvo: Obama cries as he thanks his volunteers and campaign staff; Romney fires his staff and leaves them stranded.

From our adversaries point of view, Petraeus — who led the fight against them on behalf of the “great satan”  —  is an adulterer.  Ouch.

Paula Broadwell might want to apologize to the nation and to her children and to her lover’s wife.

Never admired Petraeus, because Cheney and Bush pushed him into top leadership.  Obama should have cleaned house, but GOP prevented it.

Got my skills going to school while on unemployment.  Kids can’t do that today.  GOP regulations destroyed this option in Michigan long ago.

Of all the top biographers Petraeus could have picked, he chose Paula Broadwell.  It was a clue.

Would like to know if the Muslim militia got their prisoners back during Benghazi attack.

People love to go to war.  Years later they complain about how it ruined them.

General Allen of Afganistan is now under investigation for links to Lebanese-American, Jill Kelly.  Wow.

What we are witnessing is a high level purge of Bush protégés as Obama finally takes control of USA military and intelligence agencies.

RT @keepingitraw: Sky-high levels of radioactivity in fish from Fukushima means inedible seafood for at least a decade.  http://t.co/vM3IyCbH

The Monica-Benghazi scandal is in full swing on the Hannity show.

Dear God, Barack Obama is in the belly of the beast fighting for what is right.  Thank you for your holy angels who guard him.

Friend of my sister went back to her New Jersey apartment a week after Hurricane Sandy to find it ruined, not by water, but by rats.  Everything lost.

I hate war because you have to choose sides, everyone suffers and, in the end, you compromise anyway.

GOP Generals underestimated Obama.

We need to help our Conservatives heal.  They came within four-million votes of electing a lunatic.  What is the cure?

John McCain, under torture, signed a confession and attempted suicide.  No one blames him, but that’s what happened.

Limiting doctor salaries to $400K/year would discourage greedy people from becoming doctors.  It would help everyone.

Obama cried after election, just before news broke on Petraeus.  It may be an indicator he really was just finding out and dealing with it.

Am hearing that Hostess execs looted the company before firing the 18,500 folks who created the wealth they took.

Letting individuals keep unlimited wealth and field private armies is a bad idea unworthy of a free people.

You’d think Obama would have carried more southern states, since large black populations voted 90% for him.  He didn’t carry any.

Surprising to learn that people who couldn’t say who ran for President in the last election knew all about the Hostess Twinkie crisis.

Billionaire media owners drone endless negativity until they get the President they want.  Then messaging gets positive.  Remember Reagan.

The big problem for America is the voracious appetite of our billionaires and the vast underclass they have created in their wake.

What DNA actually looks like.  http://t.co/msEjIPEG

In the 40’s and 50’s most white people saw nothing wrong with segregation.  Today, they see nothing wrong with gated communities.

Executive gangs who pay themselves huge salaries are not creating value.  They are looting.

Billionaire owners of NFL teams don’t get traumatic brain injuries.

NBC reported that Boehner avoided receiving-line at holiday party last night, so he wouldn’t have to shake Obama’s hand.

At the root of our fiscal-cliff crisis is the belief by the GOP that the country is not worth saving as long as Obama remains President.

RT @ReformedBroker: “If Buffett didn’t exist, the rich would have to invent him.” http://t.co/Xz3HHVCj

Billionaire media owners want Americans to think there is something cute and innocent about British-royalty.

The GOP is fighting a war, not for freedom or fairness, but for the idea that a handful of families are entitled to own everything.

All the good jobs go to the children of the wealthy.

Want to limit corruption?  Make it a felony to keep more than $15M per year or own an estate larger than $150M.

Billionaires are every bit as wicked as anyone else.  The difference is, they have a billion dollars.  That’s scary, or it should be.

GOP named Right to Work law to hide its intent to weaken/wreck unions and drive down wages and benefits.

If athletes and actors make millions, what do you think the people who pay them make?

Michigan GOP exempted cops and fire fighters from Right to Work law.   Cops won’t get the “benefits” of working for less money.

Hundreds of cops are standing guard around Michigan State Capitol through Thursday.  Cops exempted from Right to Work by GOP bill.  https://www.youtube.com/watch

Someone said boxing is morally wrong, because one human has to inflict injury on another human to win.

Billionaire advertisers in Michigan are calling RTW “Freedom to Work.”  Yet they won’t free cops and firefighters.  They need them on their side.

Can we please raise taxes on the wealthy to stop the looting?  If you are greedy, go to Russia or Mexico and loot there.

I remember that in the 1960s most Americans thought Nelson Mandela was a black communist thug who should rot in prison.  Times change.

If America was free, most companies would be employee-owned and most companies would have unions.

Lack of limits on the personal wealth of its rulers is what wrecks Capitalism for the vast underclass who must endure it.

GOP leaders are charging protestors who crossed police-lines with felonies.  So, now we have political prisoners in Michigan.

If Right to Work is so great, why did the GOP exempt police and fire unions?  GOP is not interested in fair play, apparently.

The way to balance our budget is to spend more money on the poor, elderly and disabled.  It’s counter-intuitive but always works.

If it weren’t for six billionaires who own 85% of the media, we would be arguing about how much to increase Medicare and Social Security.

GOP deficits are always the result of looting.  Think of all the money wealthy families stole from the USA during Bush years.

Since the Reagan era the wealthy have had no limits on what they can make and keep.  It’s why they loot.

Unless limits are placed on personal incomes and estate size, capitalism always devolves into a kind of feudalism.

GOP advertisers are flooding Michigan with this message: Protect collective bargaining.  Support Freedom to Work.  Right out of Orwell’s 1984.

Amazing how Michigan GOP sprung Right to Work on us at the very moment a mega-million dollar ad campaign for its passage appeared.

It’s already impossible to start a Union in Michigan.  Right to Work will enable business owners to kill off the few that still exist.  https://www.youtube.com/watch

Surprise attack on Unions by Rick Snyder and GOP was well-planned and executed. Felony charges against protestors is the frosting on their cake.

The wealthy work overtime to undermine confidence in elected government.

Billionaires, some tied to drugs and guns, know how to get their way.  It’s not easy to speak truth to them.

People think unlimited wealth is an incentive for innovation.  Not true.  It enables looting and the suppression of competition.

Regular viewers of Fox News don’t get that the joke is on them.  Sad.

It’s un-American to let kids inherit vast wealth they didn’t work for.  It threatens our freedom.  http://t.co/8tsf3aPj

There isn’t a gun made that can defend against a government-sponsored SWAT team.  Get real, NRA.

More Guns = Less Crime; Clean Coal; Right to Work; Virtue of Selfishness; Gated Community; Genetically Modified Food; all wrong.

MI GOP passed a law to allow concealed guns in church, schools, stadiums and daycares.

Am told the shooter was draped in Kevlar.  Teacher with a gun would have been helpless.

Was doing good until the President mentioned a six year old who knew karate and wanted to lead everyone to safety.

Reagan closed the mental hospitals.   http://t.co/D2E9mZ5Z

The Lord sides with the oppressed; feeds the hungry; sets prisoners free; gives sight to the blind; lifts up those who are beaten down…

Jesus was born a baby, so as not to frighten us.

Old age has ruined me, physically and mentally.  But #Jesus renews my spirit, and somehow, I feel better.

Will someone invent an iPhone that can be charged by body heat?  #goodIdea

Would NASA position some colored lights in the sky so everybody can navigate by sight?   #goodIdea

The right to accumulate unlimited wealth has brought corruption and looting on a massive international scale to all areas of human endeavor.

An NRA family member murdered 20 six-year-olds, and they threaten the President’s kids?

It’s time to amend the Second Amendment.

Obama tries to protect kids from gun violence, so the NRA vilifies him and drags his kids into it.

Make a list of legal guns.  Guns not on the approved-list are illegal.  Will prevent work-arounds by gun sellers.

Am reading Oliver Stone’s Untold History, a Christmas gift.  Have yet to read a single page where he hasn’t blown my mind.

Gun makers should be required to get a license to sell each gun-model they manufacture.  If it’s a weapon of war, no license.

This is an impressive crowd — the haves and the have-mores.  Some people call you the elite.  I call you my base.  Bush, 2000.

In 2006, the 25 top US hedge-fund managers earned an ave. $570M each. In 2007, it jumped to $900M.  Oliver Stone, Untold History.

GOP says they are against tax increases, but in Michigan the GOP raised taxes on seniors by $1,000s / year.

Everything written or broadcast is recorded, stored and analyzed.  It’s been going on since the 1950s.  It’s raison d’etre for the NSA.

RT @MiaFarrow: JFK Report to the American People on Civil Rights, 11 June 1963
http://t.co/jZNo5UgYMz

Google has pics of the outside of our homes. The government has pics of the inside — taken through our computer camera-lenses.

Obama taught us, unwittingly, that bad people with ugly thoughts and hate-filled hearts really do live in America.

twitter 1Seems like CNN covers the weather while FOX covers Obama-Care.  Who covers the news?

Christians bearing false witness against a President who says he belongs to Christ makes no sense to me.

Billy Lee

 

TWITTER – MY FIRST THIRTY DAYS


tweeter 4

I started tweeting during the summer of 2011.  It was the summer after the Fukushima nuclear disaster; the Blackberry Riots in England raged; Hurricane Irene ravaged our east coast; the launch of the Endeavour marked the end of the USA space shuttle program; Libyan citizens overthrew and assassinated Muammar Gaddafi; Navy Seals killed Osama Bin-laden; the Tea Party rocketed to prominence in the 2010 elections; Obama-Care ignited its roll-out and a ramp-up of a GOP war of opposition; etc., etc.; on and on. There was a lot to tweet about.

twitter 2In the first thirty days, my follower base grew from zero to over one-hundred. This fast start made such an impression on me that I ended up tweeting for almost three years, trying pretty much everything I could think of to enlarge my follower base even more. But, try as I did, my followers never numbered more than 275. What was most discouraging: three-fourths of them, on closer inspection, didn’t seem to be real people. They were organizations, or marketers, selling things like books and self-improvement programs. 

Today I use twitter to follow lists of people and organizations I’ve collected to help me keep-up in subjects that interest me like science, politics, religion, government and French language. The enthusiasm of the early days has faded. It no longer matters if anyone follows me or not. I rarely tweet anything anymore. 

Twitter announced they would send a complete list of a tweeter’s tweets to any tweeter who requested them. I took them up on it. The following tweets are a sample from the first 30-days of my twitter history. I tweeted a lot of interesting tweets back in the day, it now seems, mostly to bots.


TWITTER-LOG: Day 1 – My first tweet, everybody. Let me know if it worked.

I’m tweeting in bed. Have signed-up to follow lots of cool people & organizations. Seems to be working good.

I think the rich thought they would recoup Iraq war costs thru mineral/oil acquisitions. Oops!

I’m loving Twitter!

Immersed in fields and waves, we create the material world by observing them.

The old Confederacy (the New Tea Party) won’t be led by a colored man.

After WW2, the rich rewarded our young soldiers by loaning money for college and homes. They built the middle class their grandkids forgot.

Khan Academy is brain candy.

People who hate, hate Obama.

If we live long enough, we will lose everything.

Nuclear power plants must be monitored until the end of time — especially important after we shut them down.

Republicans axed unit pricing in Michigan. We can’t tell what something costs after buying it and tossing the receipt!

Fox is nasty!  Surprised they didn’t run a pic of the President eating watermelon.

Africa, if you build it you will own it until the end of time. A nuke plant can be shut down but never abandoned.

Michigan is an oasis on a warming planet.

If life started on Mars and transplanted to earth on debris from an asteroid hit, it might take two planets to advance complex life.

A long time ago the atmosphere was so thick and oxygenated that dragonflies with three-foot wingspans flourished.

When you are ready to retire, lowering the retirement age will seem right to you.

Are tea-bag staples made from heavy-metals? My tea tastes funny.

Do people eat Vanilla Wafers in Britain? There’d be fewer riots.

Five Guys fries, yellow mustard and an ice-cold beer…come on!

Have been tweeting for 8 days and have 35 followers already. If I wasn’t blocking hookers, I would have a hundred!

If Japan could start over, would they build plants to recycle plutonium from NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Aroint thee, thou rump-fed ronyons!” Shakespeare.

Michigan is a clean water refuge on a warming dirty planet. Come to Michigan!

Ducks and geese spread sticky fish eggs from lake to lake with their feet sometimes.

Save yourselves from global warming. Come to Michigan!

I’ve tweeted 9 days now. I have 51 followers, and not one of them is a hooker or a relative. Wow!

Eliminate disease and old age. Eliminate birth. In 50,000 years everyone will be dead due to accidents. We can’t keep ourselves alive.

All I want for you, my son, is to be satisfied. And be a simple kind of man, someone you can love and understand. Good lyric.

For 1,000th time: where’d daddy go? He died, momma. Why’d he do that? He got old, momma.

Manual labor can be euphoric. I mowed my lawn today. My neighbors are euphoric.

Mmmmm….who is this girl with ‘slut’ in her domain-name & no tweets?

Tonight, in CIV5, I will use nuclear weapons to destroy Genghis Khan. Ha!Ha! Ha!Ha! (burp!).

In the 10 days since I started tweeting, I’ve learned there are some wonderful beautiful people in Twitterville.

Rupert Murdoch of Fox News conspired to throw a USA presidential election, it’s alleged.

I am luckier than most men. My wife loves me.

My kids are kind of stupid and kind of rich. It’s not right.

Greenpeace: Our monitoring team in Japan is finding high levels of radiation in Japanese seafood.

Why would you spray mosquitoes when you have an army of frog volunteers eager to eat them? No spray!

This is my 10th tweeter day. Amazed by what I see & learn.

All I want in this life is to be heard. I love twitter!

If we can’t have intelligent conversations with dolphins, how are we going to have them with aliens?

Chimps fight. They have their reasons.

If you become very wise, people stop listening. By then you are insane anyway.

Je n’ai pas confiance des hommes puissantes qui me disent le socialisme est pour les perdants.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 11 – a favorite unfollowed me. Don’t know why.

Accidentally discharged ‘safe for humans & pets’  bug spray into my face, mouth, and eyes.

Corporations, like insects, lack empathy and are constantly feeding.

USA opinion makers hate baby-boomers. Why? They know too much.

RT @YourAuntDiane: I’m walking around taking trash out of public garbage cans, painting the trash, then putting it back in the garbage…

When an ex-girl friend called to say she was pregnant I thought, worse news ever.  25 years later I know it was one of my best days, ever.

I’m the only old person I know who has nice toenails.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 12 – wife complains about possible twitter addiction. Can’t worry about that now. 5 new followers!!

My nightmare: eating fish heads and dirty rice while watching Fox News on 60″ plasma TV.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 12.5 – despite tasteless tweets and mindless prattle with celebrities, follower base is growing.

Frog to his mistress: I want to know you. I want to know every slimy wart-covered part of you…

Romney says corporations are people. Demand to see the birth certificates.

Love letter from a frog: I love your bulging eyes, your fat puffy body…the feel of your webbed feet caressing my warts…

TWITTER-LOG: Day 13.5 – feeling remorse for vulgar tasteless stupid tweets.

We cling to the hallucinations of our brains and see particles instead of waves…

We focus on integers when it’s irrational numbers who rule us…

The only best way to observe a field is to move through it…

Tomorrow might be a better day!

TWITTER-LOG: Day 13.75 – Discovered the tweeter “delete” button, finally! Now, I don’t have to kill myself.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 14 – suffering from TBO [twitter burn-out]. Didn’t tweet today but collected 4 more followers.

My son hasn’t changed the oil in his Camaro for over a year. Commodus, your faults as a son is my failure as a father.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 15 – sometimes wonder if people self-disclose too much.

When Cepheids dim, is it because they become more opaque or more transparent?

In a bubble-chamber, how much larger is the bubble than the “particle” that generated it?

Feynman talks about living in a wave pervasive space… http://t.co/yo443O1

You can describe green by math to a blind person who will then know everything & nothing about it. Feynman http://t.co/yZQRR5J

TWITTER-LOG: Day 16 – where are the sad places in twitter-world? …find the voices…who in this valley sheds the poison tears…?

The less you pay “the help” the harder they work & the more efficient your business. It’s a win/win all around.

Eliminating social security/Medicare helps elderly be more self-reliant & lowers the tax burden. It’s a win/win all around.

GOP leaders know when they smite their enemies on the “other cheek” they not only hurt them, but it’s in the Bible.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 17 – tossed out some “political” tweets. Lost a few, gained a few (followers, that is).

Obama is gracious toward adversaries; works hard; sincere; informed, smart, educated. These are virtues, GOP!

Obama took out Bin-laden, and you didn’t. So shut up! Obama isn’t “the worst danger facing the USA.” You are, GOP.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 17.5 – seems like copious tweeters & celebrities have the most followers.

Lagrangian method to discover differential equations is magic… here’s why it works.    http://t.co/oRlpYc0

TWITTER-LOG: Day 19 – posted a math instructional video… lost followers…

Grand-daughters refuse McDonalds for lunch. Say it makes you fat. What?

@profbriancox   Are there any subatomic particles that can be detected twice?

@profbriancox   In Young experiment, if emitter is moved off-center to one side, do detectors behind slits see changed hit ratios?

@ProfBrianCox   Is it not true that a soap-bubble, passing a phalanx of bubble detectors, will be detected only once by only one detector?

TWITTER-LOG: Day 19.5 – picked up 11 followers today, 7 tweeter-marketers…no hookers, no relatives…

During Depression, USA had 25% unemployed, but women weren’t counted. Otherwise, rate would have been closer to 75%.

Quantum intuition: imagine particles as soap bubbles with oscillating surface waves. Bubble stretches to fill space but can “pop” only once on only one detector. Some paradoxes resolve.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 20 – Sometimes tweeting feels like tossing into the vast ocean a little message in a bottle. Who will find? Who will read?

TWITTER-LOG: Day 20.5 – am thinking there might be a point where twitter peeps reach a critical mass & start multiplying geometrically.

Planck length defined at 35 decimal places. Irrational Pi forces a quantum bubble (that wants to be round) to oscillate.

Genes can spread among species by viruses. Expect hi-level intelligence to become pervasive over next million years or so.

Starving Columbian missionary wakes up to find tape worm crawling out of his throat seeking food, wife just told me.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 21 – seems like tweeters use weekends to cull follower herds. Those culled never told why.

Qaddafi needs to pursue a new career but unfortunately for him, his views aren’t extreme enough to become a Fox News commentator.

Lied to get away to tweet for an hour…oops! Just got caught.

Let’s do a “maximum wage.”  Set it to 1,000 times minimum wage. Then watch Congress raise minimum wage fast.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 22 – feeling like my tweeter legs are finally beneath me, planted firmly in the twitter air!

Military school used to be where parents sent their sons to avoid desegregation.

To celebrate Bin-laden kill, blocked Fox. Quit Xanax. I feel good!

TWITTER-LOG: Day 23 – Incredible. After 23 days of idiotic tweeting, 84 people I’ve never met follow me. In a year they could be millions!

After USSR collapsed in the 80’s, recall reading USA bought their earthquake weapon to keep it out of terrorist hands. Maybe there were 2.

Tesla earthquake machine… http://t.co/5bfrGJW

Pravda article about HAARP geophysical weapon… http://t.co/VKHFbQb

TWITTER-LOG: Day 24 – sometimes someone follows me who has thousands of followers but no tweets. Who are these people? What do they want?

Y U NO FORROW ME?   CUZ I NO TREET RIKE U?

One of the best non-math explanations of light to be found… http://t.co/2DwMAtm

Cheney said his book would make “heads explode.” He wrote the book to blow up people’s heads! How cruel.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 26 – tweeted about lost dog & fawn. Now receive tweets from animal lovers who don’t follow me. How does Twitter do it?

Since bees are attracted by UV light, would spreading sunscreen on flowers make them invisible to bees? Someone do the experiment & get back to me.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.25 – tweeting a complex idea is not so hard if you leave stuff out & simplify.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.5 – Tweeters cull their follower herds on weekends.

Michigan has clean water, clean air and lakes you can drink from. It does not have hurricanes and 100-degree weather.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.75 – My greatest fear is that someone might un-follow me.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 26.8 – Too immersed in Twitter, wife says. Can’t worry about that now. Finding new ways to enhance follower base.

NBC, CBS, NBC, etc. love to cover weather, because all they have to do is look at satellite pics & make up stuff. Maybe look outside once in a while.

You might be rich if you always take steaks and lobsters to potlucks.

You might be rich if the local swim club holds swim-meets in your family pool.

You might be rich if it takes six guys with moving van a week to steal enough stuff for you to notice.

You might be rich if the only way to your house is by helicopter.

A small piece of light with just the right color can dislodge an electron. Does that make it a particle? No.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 27 – no one in my family follows me. They don’t want to encourage my twitter obsession. Who needs family? 98 followers!

One of the most controversial & censored movies ever. Oliver Reed & Vanessa Redgrave. 1971; Devils. http://t.co/szuL64C

Have contracted either dengue fever, West Nile virus, bacterial meningitis, esophageal cancer, or swimmer’s ear.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 27.5 – got my 100th follower today. Feel serene & deeply comforted.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 28 – added twitter traffic makes hurricane, earthquake, & nuclear meltdown “venues of opportunity” to harvest additional followers.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 28.5 – changing profile pic entails a risk to my follower base I’m unwilling to take at this time.

Anyone who hasn’t figured out that Fox News is a brainwashing mental institution wants to be lied to.

Saw mentally challenged woman splashing at the beach. She kept saying to no one in particular, “I’m having fun! I’m having fun!” Don’t know why I started crying.

When we tweet, though we be infested by lice and every sundry sort of squirmin’ vermin, we become beautiful, like birds.

Wife accuses me of being deaf. What she can’t see is, I’m also blind.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 28.75 – having mastered follower and blocking tools, I am now more confident than ever that only beautiful people will live within my twitter sphere.

If geometry is quantum — that is, granular — then no irrational numbers can exist in physics. They round to 35 places.  Imagine the implications.  http://t.co/AWXKIIE

Objects that want to be round can’t do it in quantum (granular) space. Due to a forced round-off of PI, they must oscillate between two real boundaries.

Quantum oscillations are incredibly small compared to anything we know. But a granular quantum geometry demands them.

We love billionaires, because their PR bureaucracy brainwashes us.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 29 – tweeters keep tweeting me profile pics of people I follow saying they found a hilarious pic of me. I don’t get it.

TWITTER-LOG: Day 29.5 – am finding that tweeters are kind and gentle sorts who encourage my creativity right up to the very moment they block me.

tweeter 6TWITTER-LOG: Day 30 – have gained new respect for what it really means to have two or three hundred followers.

Tweet! Tweet! TWEET!! TWEET!! TWEET!!!  HaHa! HaHa! Tweet! Tweet! TWEET! TWEET! AGAIN, AGAIN!  TWEET. Ha! All done.

Billy Lee

MICROWAVE COFFEE

Bevy Mae and me are coffee drinkers. Bevy used to drink a dozen cups of fully caffeinated coffee everyday.  By her third cup she could boogie with the best of them.  But that was a long time ago, before we got old. Now she drinks about two cups, and it’s decaffeinated. Me, on the other hand, well, I still imbibe the high-octane stuff.  I love it.


I drink the high-octane stuff.

If your marriage is anything like ours, you probably own one coffee-maker, but you and your spouse drink different brands, flavors or styles of coffee. For us it means we have to store the contents of at least one of our coffee-pots off-site away from the coffee-maker in containers and carafes; perhaps cups or bowls or glasses or whatever is handy. The coffee gets cold.


69050_Coffee Maker.37173901_std
My wife and I have one coffee maker between us. It’s not enough.

Only one of us at a time can store coffee in the coffee-pot. But since we have two microwave-ovens, we don’t really need to keep our coffee hot. We can turn off the coffee-maker after we brew each pot to save energy.  Everyday we reheat our coffees in the microwaves more than once; thanks to having two of them we don’t wait in line.


We have two microwaves. It is one of the very few things which seem to have made a difference in our marriage.
Two microwaves: they can sometimes save a marriage.

Bevy Mae and I have an eclectic collection of coffee mugs gathered together over decades of marriage. I’ve often wondered: how is it that no matter how big the coffee cup or how tiny; how robust the mug or how dainty; how full or empty we fill — or even which microwave we choose — my wife and I almost never set the timer  to reheat our coffee more than once?

We always seem to set the microwave to exactly the right number of minutes and seconds to heat our coffee to exactly the right temperature.


coffee 4
                She got the calculation right.

Think about it. Can there be any doubt that the mathematics required to accurately set the timer must be beyond the capabilities of 99% of the people who set these timers to reheat their coffee everyday?

The size of the cup, its thickness and material; the amount of coffee in the cup — these are important variables that are required to be taken into account when setting the timer. Not only these variables, but there is the subjective calculation: how hot do I want this coffee to be today? Real hot? Tepid? Mildly warm?

There are many tricky variables to track and put into an equation. And, if we are reheating coffee for our significant others, we have to anticipate their calculation of what the best temperature is for their mood and state of mind.


differential equations EngMath_DifferentialEq_Terminology_02
It takes a matrix of differential and difference equations plus a super computer to get microwave coffee right.

It really takes a sophisticated matrix populated with complex differential and difference equations to work out what the results might be under all the possible scenarios. And it might require a government super-computer to crunch the numbers.

Of course, I’ve never done the actual work of creating the matrix —  or the equations. Even if I had, I would have faced the daunting task of isolating all the relevant variables, the tedium of tracking all the units to make sure I ended up with seconds only in the answer, and the exhaustive testing of results to see if they match up with my expectations and experience.

Successful creation and application of a workable calculus might involve a lot of tweaking.


drinking coffee
He didn’t bother with the calculation.

Come to think of it, why would I do that? Guessing seems to work better and it’s a lot faster. But I wonder. Am I really guessing? Or is my brain, somehow, doing the math in some far away place inside my brain, behind the scenes and beyond my conscious scrutiny?

It’s kind of mysterious, being right all the time, about something as complicated as getting the number of minutes and seconds correct when setting the timer to reheat coffee.

And my wife, who knows no math, is as good at the mental calculation as me. Go figure.

Billy Lee

P.S.  Note to readers: On Valentines Day, 2015, Billy Lee bought a second coffee-maker for his wife, Bevy Mae. Why it took Billy Lee so long to solve his coffee-problem is a mystery even skilled mathematicians can’t solve.
The Editorial Board.


microwave coffee math graphic 6
Don’t try these calculations at home. Seriously. This man tried; his face froze — for. two. hours.