Too Much Worry About Terrorists

No doubt you heard about that terrorist attack the other day, this one at a marathon road race in Boston, Massachusetts. There are so many threats to our security these days, it's hard to keep track of them all- those terrorists, the Apple and Microsoft nations,  the Kardashian girls.... Why, you can't even go to the men's room anymore without some guy or gal with a phone camera documenting and Yu tubing your business. And that's just the beginning. You think riding those planes at airports is risky? Well, there was that incident monkey sneaked inside the security area of New Delhi's international airport, forcing the closure of the VIP lounge.

Anyway, I think I should worry more about human terrorists than the monkey genre. But how much should we worry about terrorism? Since childhood when I quickly became being enamored with Mad Magazine's alter hero Alfred E. Neumann I say "not much". Alfred as the guy who lived by the motto, "What Me Worry?" Alfred and I agree about many things. Worrying about things we have little control in changing is not a healthy life choice. So I worry about terrorists bombing me about as much as I worry about monkey terrorists in airport lounges. It seems that I am a minority of only a few because, based on media coverage of "terrorists attacks" and the receptiveness of the public to not only watching and reading repetitively about the tragic events,  most people worry a lot about such things. It becomes an obsession with many to worry about the improbably and uncontrollable.

Need an example of how the concept of terrorism replaces reason. The Department of Homeland Security  a couple of years ago said the nation's chicken houses could be added to the list of potential terrorism targets because most use propane gas for heat.  Pity the chicken farmers on that one..but then, if the chicken farmers are smart this stupid government of ours will probably give every chicken farmer $100,000 to protect their egg laying bins from terrorists.

There is profit to be made in "preventing terrorism". Entrepreneurs make sure you are afraid enough to buy their anti terrorist preventive merchandise to be...uh.."safer", the media saturates us with their ridiculous analysis of the most recent terrorist event (newspaper and TV news cats are the terrorists best friends), and humans become irrationally afraid of some crazed Muslim terrorist or other social misfit who they think might take over the world. To that I just ignore the hysteria, live life oblivious to the pretend threats and remember Alfred's refrain....."What, me worry?"

Cell Phones Are Middle Aged Now

It's already been 40 years!  In  April, 1973, the most important (and in n my view, annoying) phone call in technology history was made. Using a prototype Motorola inventor Martin Cooper made the first call on a mobile phone that he created.  Shortly thereafter, tech savvy Japan became the first battlefield filled with cell phones as that country widely adopted them. The world has not been the same since...unfortunately.  Except for anywhere on my presence,  cell phones are everywhere now. A United Nations study says that today the world has 6 billion cell phone subscribers. And more of them are moving use the so called "smart phones". I have a theory that the dumber the human the more likely he or she will have a smart phone. But that's a subject for another day. Anyway, most sellers of them claim the global smart phone population topped 1 billion this year.

It's astounding how fast cell addiction has taken hold. Given that the total world population is about 7 million, 6 million cell phones in use works out to at about one for every human on earth (given babies and toddlers have not yet been introduced and addicted to cell phones).  This might be the world's fastest acceptance of a new technology, even more so than the land line phone. Given that cells are heap and within economic reach of almost everyone, this is easier to understand.

I used to claim that the invention of the automobile was the world's single most affecting technology. It promoted the mobility that changed the way the world lived, thought and behaved. But much of that change was a good thing. Cell phones seem to me as much a negative addiction as a positive one.  They have promoted a mindlessness and triviality in behavior and  altered the way humans relate to each other (we now relate as much from a distance, not personally to those we can see and touch in our immediate physical environment). Amazingly, the cell phone is still a novelty, as makers keep introducing modifications to further addict users. The makers frantically try to keep users anxious to own the latest cell modification.

Despite all the convenience of cell phones, they have made the world a more impersonal place.  It does seem that humans now value convenience over quality of life and social etiquette The trade-off for the convenience of the phones is the deterioration in personal relations and the hardening of society. It makes me wonder whether the cell phone is not the single greatest impact of how we relate as humans. Sadly, I think that impact has been more a negative than beneficial.

Is Face book Fading Or Evolving

I recently read an article about that social meeting place darling of the internet, Face book. It seems that Face book is getting too old and stodgy for many of its younger users. and they are leaving or using it less. Use among the Face book crowd has dropped dramatically and those who do log on are using it mostly for what E mail used to be, a way to easily communicate and then leave. Anyway,  according to 'Inside Face book', a web site that studies and analyzes all of those crazy social networks  in the United States, Face book loses about 6 million users each month (of course, world wide it picks up millions of new users as it loses the older ones). It has about 700 million users world wide.

Well, everything has a life span. And when people who log on every day realizes that their life is really not going to change much when using Face book, the appeal of it will wane. Also, many of those leaving Face book say it is too cluttered with junk, all that "like me" nonsense, the photos and  the endless  and mindless postings of what someone is thinking or doing every minute of their lives outside of sitting on the toilet, the ads that are always along side the pages the user navigates, and that (mostly teen users) have reduced their use of Face book in favor of other services and apps (I hate that word!) that avoid the presence of....say... granny... that Face book allows has made it less appealing.

I think Face book has lost it's cool somewhat. It is a normal thing for electronic applications to come and go. Other applications have begun to replace it for many people. Like people, electronic devices and programs get old fast. Remember "MySpace", once also the rage of teens and now hardly a footnote among them and used by few people of any age?  The youngest users are the ones who set the trends in electronics today. Because they have a short attention span and little loyalty to what they have used in the past they like changes. Maybe this will mean that Face book will become more of a program that oldies use as their own, surely not as profitable a platform for the Face book of today but manageable financially for them.

I doubt Face book will disappear as a relevant program any time soon. Older users like me who still embrace original technologies like E mail also need something to use for communication. We don't like the cutsie aspects of today's Face book and will see a more conservative Face book as a better one. I suspect an older and leaner Face book will be amore appealing one for those who will stick with it, because they already know it and are less adventurous electronically. Much of the silly applications in Face book will vanish and the platform may evolve into a simpler basic platform. That's good enough for me, maybe even a big improvement. Thank God someone won't ask me any longer to farm animals on line....

No More Cash Registers

Another iconic part of our lives the past 150 years or so (it was invented in the late 1800's as a way of keeping employees from stealing from the boss) is dying a technological death.  It's the cash register. Stores across the country are replacing the cash register machine and having salespeople ring up sales on smart phones and tablet computers. Stores like smart phones and tablets because they take up less space than registers and free cashiers to help customers instead of tied to one spot in the store. They also are cheaper than registers (About $4000 per cash register as opposed to about $1500 for the phone or tablet).

I am nt sure how much space difference it makes, as little can be displayed in the amount of space required for cash registered. And consumers have to ask themselves a questions. "Do I want to check out a little faster but be bothered by roving sales people or is privacy and less pressure while in the store more important than speed at the check-out." I would choose the latter...but then older people would and the stores know the younger customer is more important to their profit margin. So I lose on that argument.

Americans increasingly want the same speedy service in physical stores that they get from shopping online. Online shopping is growing at such a fast rate that buyers are getting less patient when going to physical stores. In the past 10 years here self checkout areas that enable customers to scan and bag their own merchandise have become common in grocery stores. The big cash register makers now merge with the iPad. This allows store clerks to leave the iPad from the keyboard at the counter and use it as a mobile checkout device.

But there is one big problem with getting rid of the old fashioned cash register. 'What about people like me who pay cash for everything"? No retailer yet is accepting cash payments on their mobile devices. But if they start to do so, where will they put the cash that would normally go into a register? Hmmmm It is a problem because it means trusting employees too much. Theft could be a bigger issue. And I doubt stores would ban cash sales.

Being the slightly cynical guy I am I can only wonder if the end result of this process will be fewer employees and lower business costs, which is why employers are adopting the technology.

Cheesecake

I love cheesecake that has been well made. It is said that the first cheesecakes, which are vastly different from the modern ones that were invented in the U.S. and that use commercial pasteurized cream cheese, those first cakes came from Ancient Greece. They weren't at all like the ones we eat today, but I think we should thank those Greeks as much for their cheesecake as for that democracy thing they gave us. In fact, if I had to choose between democracy and cheesecake it would be a tough choice.

Anyway, in the late 1800's when a guy from New York named William Lawrence invented the first commercial cream cheese, the modern cheese cake became a possibility. William Kraft (of the famed Kraft food corporation) then came up with an idea in the early 1900's for pasteurized "Philadelphia Cream Cheese" and that same Philly Cream Cheese is what the best cheesecakes are still made of . I know the Germans, Dutch and Polish use Quark cheese, the Italians use Ricotta and a few less distinguished cheese cakes use other varieties of cheese, but once you eat a cheesecake made with Philly Cream Cheese you will want that style most of the time.

My favorite cheesecake is the plain one. That means no flavorings in the filling and no toppings on the finished cheesecake. Putting toppings on cheesecakes is like putting too much salt on a steak. It kills the flavor of the cheese and confuses the palate. I can always tell a cheesecake terrorist by watching what he or she eats. If it's not a plain cheesecake the terrorist just doesn't know what a real one is about. The best ones are simple and bring forth the taste of the cheese.

A proper cheese cake must have eggs, cream cheese, cream and sugar in the filling. Adding a little sour cream is to some cheesecake lover's taste and is ok, but I don't like it in mine. Instead, I use sour cream in the topping to give it a contrast.  It tends to bring more creaminess but less texture to the cheesecake. For me, texture trumps creaminess in cheesecake. That's probably why I also don't like the no bake style cheesecakes. No bake Cheesecakes are like a Mc Donald's hamburger....suspect in taste, texture and depth.  The novice or non cook will make no bake cheesecakes but a real chef would rather take a bullet than  make one.

Ok, I think I have you curious about or even desirous of eating a cheesecake. So here is my recipe, passed down from my grandmother to my mom and then to me. Unlike most recipes, except for the crust which I changed from the traditional graham cracker crust to an Oreo cookie crust,  I never changed a thing about the contents or baking style of it. It's that good. If you decide to make it read all the directions first and follow the baking technique as written. Otherwise you will make an inferior cake.  Remember too, that just because you don't live near a bakery doesn't mean you have to skip the cheesecake tonight.

CHEESE CAKE Use a 9x9x2 metal pan
Ingredients for crust:
15 Oreo cookies crushed (use vanilla Oreos for regular crust and chocolate Oreos for chocolate crust)
3 tablespoons melted butter
Preparation
1) Crush Oreos and add melted butter to form crust. Press mixture evenly in the bottom of the lightly buttered pan to form crust
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Ingredients For Cake:
4 eggs
1/2 lb (3  8 oz. packages) Philadelphia Cream Cheese
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoons cream
Preparation:
1) Beat eggs and sugar together well-set aside
2) Beat the softened cream cheese and milk with mixer until smooth.
3) Add the sugar and egg mixture and beat
4) Pour into the prepared crust and bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 45 minutes
5) Turn off oven! Cool in oven for 40 minutes
6) Take cake out of oven, set aside, and turn oven back on at 450 degrees while the cheese cake cools

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 Sour Cream Topping:
Ingredients:
1 pint all natural sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup sugar
1) Stir together all three ingredients and put on top of cooled cheesecake
2) Return the Cheesecake to the 450 degree oven  and bake for another 10 minutes
3) Remove cheese cake from oven, cool  and then place it in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours

How To Be A Bad Parent

What's the most difficult and most important job any human being can do? It's, of course, being a proper parent. But that job may be too difficult for too many these days. Cases of bad parenting proliferate today, which may explain why we have so many bad kids..who turn into even worse adults.....who probably produce more bad kids. Need some examples?

Having been banned from the Family Dollar Store after employees say she was stealing, Delaina Garling returned to the establishment and began pepper spraying the workers there. She then  handed the pepper spray can to her 7-year-old daughter, saying, "You know what to do, baby. Spray it!"  The 7-year-old apparently realized this was one of those times that mom is too stupid to know best and refused.  When police searched Dumb Delaina, she had a bag of marijuana and eight clonazepam pills on her thieving carcass. She was arrested and charged with simple assault, possession of a controlled substance and related offenses. Garling's children were placed in the custody of their father.  Uh, I am afraid to find out if dad is as awful as mom.

Hmmm I am going to nominate Delaina for 'Worst Parent of the Year' if there is any such award for the worst of parents out there. There are plenty of other candidates too. Take these examples of incidents that have occurred over the past six months and see if you can determine a trend in bad parenting, some similar elements in all of the garbage below that some call human beings.

-Carron Washington allegedly fed his 2-month-old daughter bleach because a friend from school told him it was a great cure for breathing trouble.
Her daughter is, but Washington recognized her own stupidity with a telling comment,  "It's probably be the dumbest decision I ever made in my life."

-Michelle Windgassen, 27, and John Lewis, 32, were arrested on charges of endangering a minor while they were under the influence of drugs at a Louisville restaurant. Officers found Windgassen in the bathroom snorting heroin, and Lewis admitted snorting heroin a couple hours earlier. Fortunately the child was found to be sober.

-Robert Forbes and Christina Forbes have been arrested by sheriffs in Citrus County, Fla. after their 9-year-old son was found with a cockroach in his ear. Those two may not be roaches themselves, but they have to be considered to be rats.

-Officials in Penn Yan, NY, say Kimberly Margeson, 54, passed two Oxycodone painkiller pills to her 30-year-old, William Partridge by french kissing him during a jail house visit. Can we just put those two on an abandoned island somewhere?

-Austin Davis is accused of beating his three children with a belt because one of his kids had passed gas in the car. Austin must have problems with constipation.

-For almost four years, police in upstate New York believed that Karl Karlsen's son Levi was accidentally crushed beneath a truck that he was working on in 2008. But after learning that Karlsen, 52, was the sole beneficiary of a life insurance policy on his 23-year-old son, they came to the conclusion that the father deliberately dropped the pickup on top of him. He was arrested on Nov. 23, 2012 and charged with second degree murder.  The judge in Karlsen's sentencing should tie him to an auto chair and make him listen to Mariah Carey records....forever.

-Koko Nicole Anderson, 21, from Mesa, Ariz., is shown after being jailed on aggravated DUI and criminal damage charges by County Sheriff's Office on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. Anderson was charged after crashing her car with her infant son inside through a gate at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. When Koko fuels she seems to put more gas in her disgusting body instead of in her car.

- Ceasar Ruiz is accused of pouring rum into his infant son's feeding tube in October, 2012 in Belle Chasse, La. Well, some people do start drinking at an early age.

-William Lewallen was arrested after Tulsa police found his 18-month-old daughter locked in a metal dog cage, his naked 4-year old daughter outside on a cold afternoon and him asleep in a drug or alcohol induced stupor.  William would profit if her were to be sentenced  spend about 30 years in a kennel cage.

- Authorities in Virginia arrested 30-year-old Billie Jolene Warburton, of Norfolk, on Oct. 15, 2012, in the parking lot of a courthouse. Police allegedly found Warburton slumped over the steering wheel of her vehicle. Warburton's window was open, the motor was running and a young child was sobbing in a car seat in the back, police said. The officer allegedly observed blood on the center console and fresh injection marks on Warburton's arms. Warburton allegedly told police her child was crying because he had not been fed since the previous evening.  Unfortunately, Billie Jolene thinks she is a parent of her drugs and not a child.

-Arthur Langley has been arrested after leaving his one year old daughter at home alone last October so he could  go out and rob houses in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania. Let's hope Arthur doesn't steal and bring home any more kids.

-Federal agents have arrested Betsian Carrasquillo Penaloza for allegedly prostituting her 14-year-old daughter in Puerto Rico. Uh, it's probably a little too unusual youth job training program.

- 26 year old Jessica Schauer was charged with threatening to discharge a destructive device after allegedly saying she was going to blow up her daughter's elementary school. Witnesses say that Schauer warned, "Don't bring your kid to school that day," and when asked what day she meant, she said, "The day I blow it up." Hard to believe Jessica is smart enough to even set off a bomb.

-Cops found a 2-year-old girl under a couple's care sleeping outside a Florida mall at 2:45 a.m. on Oct. 1, 2012. Stacia Rogers and Jerry Mntavalo were arrested and charged with child neglect when it was found that Montalvo was allegedly on drugs, and Rogers let him leave with her daughter knowing that he was intoxicated. Maybe the kid was just keeping their place in line for that big Christmas sale event.

-James D. Blanchard, 21, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for abusing his newborn son. A medical doctor said that the child has lost his vision and will likely never walk or talk. The doctor also said the injury was common with shaken babies. I doubt the court will ever be able to shake any sense into that idiotic dad.

-Cops say that not only did Diana and Samuel Franklin keep their 15-year-old daughter in a chicken coop, they made her wear a shock collar and used it several times. Maybe they expect their daughter to lay eggs?

-Dario Napolitano is accused of kicking his 3-year-old son at Disney World in late June, 2012.  I say, let's let the Tasmanian Devil loose on Dario.

-Adolfo Gomez Jr., 52, and his wife, Deborah Gomez, 43, both of Northlake, Ill., were arrested at a Walmart in Lawrence, Kan., after someone spotted a 5-year-old boy sitting outside a sport utility vehicle with his hands and feet bound and a blindfold covering his eyes. Maybe the courts can blindfold and bound those two before they are executed?

-Brittany Hill allegedly tried to sell her 4-month-old boy in a classified ad in June, 2012. Someone was going to try and buy the baby, but decided to call Dallas police instead.

Well, it was a deterrent of sort. Most kids are so bad today that nobody would buy them.
-Brandi Baumgardner was arrested for injecting her daughter with heroin roughly 200 times when the girl was 14-years-old. Is torture too good to use  for Brandi?

- New Jersey mom Patricia Krentcil was arrested after taking her 5-year-old daughter to a tanning parlor. The daughter reportedly received severe burns from exposure to harmful ultraviolet radiation. In the aftermath of the arrest, Krentcil was banned from several local tanning salons.  The judge should sentence Patricia to attend a few Al Gore Global Warming lectures.

-Mistie Atkinson, 32, allegedly performed oral sex on her 16-year-old son and had sexual intercourse with him in a hotel room in Northern California. The two reconnected on Face book after the boy's father had assumed primary custody when the child was 2. Atkinson, whom the boy's father claims had a "boyfriend girlfriend relationship" with her son, also reportedly sent the child nude photos of herself. She pleaded no contest to the charges in a Napa County Superior Court. Yuk! That is too much motherly love.

-On May 17, police found Shana Bishop's 2-year-old son naked in a pile of trash on the floor of her car in South Carolina. The child was found when an unidentified resident called the police, alleging that Bishop was dancing naked in her driveway. Bishop was arrested in Spartanburg and charged with child neglect.  Shauna is nothing but trash herself.

-Misty Lawson, 30, a self described "professional baby maker" on her Face book page, allegedly punched her son in the face and body several times during an in-home, state-mandated anger management course.  Forget looking for Misty's Face book profile. Her baby making business has been closed.

-Elizabeth Escalona is facing child abuse charges after police said she glued her toddler daughter's hands to a wall, kicked her in the stomach and beat her over a potty training issue.  I recommend providing no toilet in Elizabeth's prison cell!

-Kimira Hysaw is accused of using a stun gun on her son after he failed to ask her permission to play basketball. I wonder if that kid's jump shot has been affected by Mom's stun gun?

Ok, despite my smarmy comments about the incidents above, they are all true, and just a small sample, a microcosm of dysfunctional parenting, and should be heart breaking to anyone possessed with the slightest decency in character. But do you notice a common thread in these horrid human beings? It's that all of them possess one or more of the following characteristics. They are either drug abusers, lack education, or are unemployable due to some deviancy of personality.  In this country one who is taker from society (lives permanently off welfare or from criminal behavior)  usually fits a criteria that includes one or more of the following: they are school dropouts, they abuse alcohol or other drugs, they are a parent of an illegitimate child, or they themselves are the products of bad parents. The givers in society (those who work, pay taxes, behave ethically) rarely fit into any if those groups.

Problem is, what can society do about not producing so many of givers? Any suggestions?  Kids need to  fewer takers and more givers in their lives.


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Easter Is Not A Fun Holiday

Another uneventual Easter has come and gone.  Since my child is grown and I am more of a heathen than a devout Catholic Easter was a minor event for me again this year. It's not just that Easter is a religious holiday that turns me off. It's some of the weird aspects of it. The idea of a holiday centered around the crucifixion of someone is bizarre enough.  Those creepy old movies like 'Ten Commandments" appear on TV around Easter Day and we get to see a crazy account of Christ being crucified . Then there are all those crosses with Christ, blood and all...uh, do we need to see that while we eat our chocolate rabbits and peeps? And why do we have to dress in fancy clothes never worn any other time of the year to sit in a church for two hours and listen to some guy speaking Latin about things more medieval than modern.  That's not fun. And that "Good Friday" holiday actually says Friday when Christ was crucified was a "good day". Maybe for theological reasons, but not for those crucified.

Maybe the Church should redesign Easter, more in line with some of the fun kiddy events like Easter egg hunts that function on the periphery of Easter. Anyway, Easter is not serene everywhere.  In some other places they have a more secular, fun Easter time. Here are a few.
Australia- Australians are the largest consumers of Easter eggs in the world, but as the Easter bunny is known to have a bad history of destroying their vegetable crops, the eggs the Aussies eat are provided by the Easter Bilby (an endangered Kangaroo kind of species of Australia). I'll eat any chocolate you give me, endangered or not.

*Ethiopia- Those Ethiopians know how to dress. Every Easter they have a dress up day, the kind we used to have fun with when we were kids. They dress in white, with headbands created from palm tree leaves that supposedly symbolize the palms Jesus walked by on this way to being murdered. And just to make sure they have a big feast that is centered around that Dabo bread African restaurants keep putting before their customers.

*France- The French make huge omelets at Easter in big public displays. In  the city of Nantes last year they made one out of 12,000 eggs.

* Germany- In the city of Saafield in East Germany there is a decorated tree with more than 9000 Easter eggs. This tradition reminds the pagan among us us of the pagan ideas of sacrificing animals on trees, the egg is connected to the ideas of rebirth and resurrection associated with Easter.

*Greece- The Greeks are bloody broke these days, so they dye their Easter eggs all in one color.... RED  Red is the symbol as a symbol for Jesus’ blood.  The eggs are used in making Greek Easter Brioche bread.

*Hungary- The Hungarians have an Easter tradition that would be great fun for we men, but might result in unpleasant consequences.  A bucket of water is poured onto a woman of the Paloc minority, dressed in her traditional clothing, in Holloko, 100 km north-east of Budapest, Hungary. Actually, most men everywhere have had water poured on them Easter or any other day by their ladies after a night of too much drinking. Finally, we can go to Hungary and get revenge!

*Swizterland- The Swiss have an old Easter tradition of decorating water wells in order to celebrate the gift of water: life. They decorate wells with beautifully painted eggs and spring flowers.  Since the Swiss are not exactly the most fun-loving people, this is a big deal, and it does sound better than celebrating a crucifixion.

I hope your Easter went well and you didn't have too many thoughts of crucifying me for writing this kind of nonsense.

New Curriculum Needed

There seems to be crisis in modern education everywhere in the world. But relax. I am here with the solution to solving this crisis (I know I never fix anything, but this time I might get lucky). It's kind of ironic, given my teachers used to consider me a constant disaster waiting to happen.  Uh, forget that part for now and let me first define what this educational crisis is about. The more important crisis is that schools are teaching the wrong things, the wrong way for the wrong way. Didn't you know that as you sat bewildered in Geometry class?

We teach to test kids, mindless tests of memory and useless information that kids are forced to memorize and regurgitate, often without even understanding what they spit out. Those tests are used to verify the fact that we are teaching useful things, but in fact, merely verify that we are insecure and secretly aware that our dopey kids are learning very little while in school (and less at home, I fear).  How many times do we teach an identical math or science concept before realizing that the subject is never going to be understood, used nor should it be. I say leave the high level specialized subjects to the nerdy kids with the glasses and led pencils in their front pockets. The rest of the idiots don't need to know about Quadratic equations....and will probably be traumatized if they actually learned them.

In this modern world of sterile relations between humans we should teach our kids more practical skills.  Ethics and values courses, for instance, should be taught in primary schools, not in universities where the students now take them but who have already had their ethical and value systems destroyed but the corrupt world in which we live.  A 5 year old benefits from ethics courses, a 19 year old only ignores the subject in order to justify impregnating that sexy blonde and taking a hit of cocaine.  Let's bump a math or science course each year in elementary school for ethics courses and in the future the world will be a kinder gentler place. Hmmmm It would be interesting to see a world in which the thugs and criminals were those nerds who got stuck in the science and math classes while the rest of the kids bantered about the subject ethical choices. I wonder. Does a nerd mugger use a a calculator instead of a gun to threaten his victim?

With illegitimacy rampant today and those little bastards kids roaming the streets because there is no parental direction, I also think every school should have courses on parenting. The school could call it 'Responsible Parenting'. Just think how nice society would be if before producing those trophy babies every prospective parent had to have three or four courses in responsible parenting practices.  No courses in parenting....no marriage license...no babies allowed. I like it.

Because both the schools and families fail to teach and transfer the concept of humanity to kids, I have some more course ideas to suggest. There should be classes in respecting the elderly and the disabled, in taking responsibility for one's own economic and intellectual health, in.....sigh. Who am I kidding. Those kinds of courses would never be taught in modern schools. And sadly, it's because they just don't meld with those real base human desires adults model for their kids.....