Take a Moment on Memorial Day

Photo of Arlington National Cemetery posted on Wikipedia and taken by J.D. Leipold 

With Memorial Day around the corner it's time to take at least a moment in between your barbeques, furniture shopping, or getaways to the beach and give thanks for those who died in battle on behalf of America. Soldiers have given so much to the country that they should be recognized for what they do especially when it costs them their very lives. This is why it's the duty of our politicians to be cautious.

Cautious?

Yes, cautious. With wars going on around the world and 24/7 news coverage, it's easy for our own politicians to feel the need to intervene. Whether it's for personal gain coming for lobbyists or for genuine sympathy toward those who are going through tough times across the world, sending American soldiers should be the last resort option.

Young men and women usually just out of high school or college volunteer to protect their country. If the United States is under attack on our home soil then there shouldn't be a second thought about deploying our soldiers. If it is to intervene with another country and their war torn situation, sending out troops should be handled with care.

Have an exit strategy. Don't jump in every war possible. Make sure that at least one of the sides wants us there in the first place.

It's hard enough entering another country under a less than ideal situation, but when it's in a no win situation for anyone including our own soldiers then they're putting their own lives on the line for no reason.

Now there have been justifiable situations to intervene oversees in the past. Obviously World War II to stop Hitler was a good reason to get involved in Europe; going to war with Japan was a no-brainer since they attacked Pearl Harbor.

The problem is nowadays we get 24/7 news coverage of any remotely negative situation in the world and there is always a politician that wants to get involved. If it is to help the people who are under attack then the urge to help is honorable, but shouldn't be considered automatic. The United States military is not the police force of the world. Sending our own troops to intervene without being able to permanently fix the situation, or worse leaving the country in poorer condition than when we enter means we shouldn't get involved. Especially when the problem is localized.

Some may see this as cold-blooded, but if our soldiers volunteer to put their lives on the line for our country then our politicians have the responsibility to only put their lives in harm's way in extreme cases. Not for the hell of it and not for the profit of a weapons manufacture.

So enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend. Just take that moment whether it's internally or publicly to give those who have died in battle thanks.

Frontier Communications Fail

Companies merge all the time. It's almost the way of American business life. As a successful company you either rise high enough to buy out other companies or you get just big enough to attract the interest of your competitors, getting yourself bought out in the process. Many times both can occur.

One of the largest mergers this year is that of Frontier Communications who bought out Verizon FiOS. Unfortunately for those who had the cable television and internet service from FiOS, your plan took a giant dump on you.

Internet speeds cut in half, channels disappearing, the inability to access video-on-demand channels, and more, all the while charging customers equal or even higher prices than before the merger. It has even been common for them to acknowledge that they are overcharging and insist that you have to call them on a monthly basis to "adjust" the costs to where they should properly be.

Is this wrong? Of course.

What's the reason though? Could it be a disregard for their customers? At this point this appears to be a growing possibility as they have still yet to fix many of their problems. Could it be greed? Maybe...for every customer they overcharge, it only means more money in their bank account. Short term this might benefit them, but this discredits them as a company in the long term and causes the migration of their customers to competitors such as Time Warner.

Some customers have seen the wrong packages appear on their bills. Pre-merger they had 2 television package plans only to find that post-merger it shows they have 3 television plans. Where does Frontier believe these accounted for boxes came from? They don't have serial numbers for the third box. Yet, they are willing to argue that they are in fact the ones in the right.

Many people have spent money purchasing digital versions of movies from FiOS that they can access anytime they want. After the merger though, these purchases disappeared and even the free video-on-demand content such as missed television shows were no longer available. Just for the "free" content the average customer pays anywhere from $6 to $10 a month. It didn't matter that none of the FiOS customers could access this, Frontier still charged away knowing they were in the wrong. Their customer reps will tell you it's your responsibility to call in monthly to fix this. Why can't they charge correctly the first time around?

Even if you were willing to call in monthly or reach Frontier via their internet chat option, it takes forever to get help. On the phone, customers have complained that it has taken several hours of waiting just to finally talk to a rep and that's not taking in account if they are even able to fix your problem (or willing to).

Some mergers have bumpier roads than others, but the merger between Verizon FiOS and Frontier has been one giant nightmare. I myself was a customer of FiOS for 5 years...the key word is WAS as I will be switching to another cable and internet provider this very week.

New Forms of Media Influence Politics

With the advancement of technology, every President of Presidential candidate that has been ahead of the curve has seen substantial results in their favor if they embrace it before their counterparts do.

FDR embraced radio through his fireside chats. JFK understood how television worked compared to Nixon. Obama embraced a grass roots campaign through the internet.

Even the current candidates have turned to a fairly new media...social media. Current Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders rose from a fringe candidate status to a serious contender for nomination, winning many states in the process. Republican candidate Donald Trump has turned to Twitter to get his message out and gain followers in the process.

Whenever a new medium is released it quickly catches the attention of the American public. The youth are the largest group to jump on new media forms. This is often a key demographic that a political party hopes to capture because not only do they represent a significant portion of the present day voters, but they also represent the future of their political parties for years to come.

At a time of uncertainty, FDR used the 30 fireside chats on radio to promote the Emergency Banking Act in response to the banking crisis, to talk about the recession, New Deal initiatives, and update Americans on our stance during World War II. These radio addresses kept America as calm as possible during one of the darkest times in our history.

How did this work in FDR's favor? He became the only President to serve more than two terms (elected four times), destroying Hoover, Landon, Willkie, and Dewey in the national elections.


Later television would capture America. This worked in the favor of John Kennedy who participated in the very first televised presidential debate against then Vice President Richard Nixon.

Those who watched the debates on television saw a young, handsome looking man who exuded the appearance of confidence. On the other side of the stage they saw Richard Nixon who was rumored to be sick, was noticeably sweating on air, refused to wear makeup, and sported a five o'clock shadow. Nixon was considered the better debater and those who listened to the first debate on the radio thought he won. Those who caught the debate on TV though felt the opposite was true.

Nixon had a slim lead in the polls at the time of the debate, but that was the last time he was considered to be the front runner.

The result of the debate was that presidential staffs learned that they had to strategize on how their candidate and their message would appear on television. Teams of people actually focused on how the President looked now when they appeared in public.

By 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama adapted his campaign to reach those on the internet. Using his website as well as other websites that were created in support of his campaign, Obama was able to reach a youth vote out there without spending a ton of money. His grassroots campaign was something unseen before as Republican candidate John McCain used traditional outlets of media such as television and radio to reach his base. Social media was still growing at the time and the majority of Americans weren't using it yet. Those who were also got to see the early signs of what it could do.

This year, two candidates have not only utilized social media...they've dominated in it.

Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders was considered a fringe candidate at the time he announced his candidacy. At the time he entered the race, he was only polling at 2 to 5 percent of the total Democratic votes. Hillary Clinton wagered her campaign on name recognition and the use of news media. Sanders on the other hand put together one of the best social media campaigns every seen in politics and rose up to be a serious challenger to the presumed nominee.

Sanders' Facebook followers went from several thousand to over 4 million. His posts on Facebook and Twitter have earned thousands of shares and retweets. At the time of this posting (May 7), Clinton is beating Sanders by over two hundred delegates and has won 26 states to his 19. Though Sanders is behind, his results are not bad for someone considered a far-shot. In fact for those under 40 years old, he is considered the favorite. His message has also been mostly adapted by Clinton to prevent him from rising farther in the polls.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump understood the power of social media better than his other opponents. Ted Cruz's social media campaign was weak. Marco Rubio's made him come across as boring compared to the youthful and energetic image he was hoping to maintain. Jeb Bush's social media presence was abysmal. John Kasich's social media presence seems to be ghostly as his posts are rarely shared compared to the other candidates.

Trump touched on a the theory that "all press is good press". Often appearing to go "nutty" on Twitter in the late hours, Trump comes off no different than some of those online looking to pick fights with other strangers. He tweeted ugly images of his opponents and their family. He retweeted quotes and endorsements from those who come off as being racist or fascist. He often airs out his opinions without his campaign staff getting a chance to chime in on whether the Tweet should go be tweeted.

Even with that said, he still continues to gain more followers, many of whom feel anger towards what they consider as dirty politics ironically.

But one thing can be said about his social media use...he knows how to gain more supporters using it. Trump understands that social media can be a major factor in gaining supporters and getting his message out there, just as Berne Sanders does.

On the flipside, social media can also tear down a candidate. Democrat Anthony Weiner is a prime example of this.

Perhaps one of the brightest Democrats when it came to policies and strategy, he was about as dumb as a horny teenager when it came to social media. On his Twitter account, he tweeted pictures of his genital area on the internet. Perhaps he didn't realize that this would be seen by the world, but that's not an excuse. His actions knocked him out from probably being a future presidential candidate to someone who could no longer even when a race for mayor of New York City, especially when he was caught again being stupid on social media during his mayoral campaign.

As technology continues to develop it should be interesting on what new form of media will develop and then in turn be used by politicians to help further their careers. Maybe some form of virtual reality will be used to transport people in their homes to feel like they're standing by a candidate on stage as they give a speech.

Whatever new form of media develops, it's almost a guarantee that a future president will use it to win a seat behind the Resolute Desk of the Oval Office.

Alien Life May Already Be Extinct

Photo Credit: Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American AstroPhysical Observatory

We look to the stars hoping to find signs of life elsewhere in our universe. Our search includes listening for audio and video signals, and we have entire agencies such as SETI who are dedicated to this search. The problem is we may have already missed our window to meet extraterrestrial life.

Human civilization is approximately 10,000 years old. Sounds like we've been around for a long time, but Earth is estimated to be a little over 4.5 billion years old. Even if aliens have taken the time to explore and/or visit Earth, they may have done it at a time when humanity wasn't even around. Maybe dinosaurs were the species at a time when alien life visited our planet and if this is a possibility it is possibly safe to assume that alien life overlooked Earth because they didn't deem that our planet had intelligent life.

With the advancement of technologies in the past 100 years alone, we ourselves have the ability to destroy ourselves. Crossing our fingers, hopefully this is something we as a species will never do, but one has to wonder...if another alien species developed at a slightly quicker rate than humanity, could they have already destroyed themselves before we ever had the chance to meet? It is possible that intelligent life that has existed elsewhere has already run into their own extinction.

Even if an organization like SETI found proof via a signal, by the time we could send a signal back or travel to the planet where it originated from, that species could be long gone. Signals can travels hundreds and even thousands of years. It's possible that the species could even be extinct by the time we first detected a signal.

This possibly has already occurred. In 1977, Jerry R. Ehman discovered what is now known as the "Wow! Signal" at the Big Ear radio telescope located at Ohio State University. The signal lasted for 72 seconds and is called the "Wow! Signal" because on the printout he wrote the word Wow. Since then SETI has not been able to find another signal similar to this.

"We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-sourced signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris," said Ehman who doubts it came from extraterrestrial life. The signal came from a location that is estimated to be 17,600 light years away. While Ehman may be right, it is also possible that the species that created it is long gone. This doesn't mean that intelligent life elsewhere doesn't exist. It just means that it just doesn't exist now.

Another possibility is that by the time alien life does get around to being able to visit Earth, we may have already destroyed ourselves through nuclear war or climate change. Will they find archeological evidence of our existence? Possibly. They may also find a barren planet covered in sand. Maybe this is what happened to alien life if any existed on Mars.

Yet even another possibility that should be looked at is if we are the most advanced civilization in the nearby universe currently. The conditions could be right for alien life to develop into an intelligent species, but we may be years ahead of these aliens. We could be looking for signs of their life when in turn, they should be looking for signs of us.

With a universe that is billions of years old and contains billions of stars and planets, it's hard to believe that we're alone. It's just not hard to believe that other intelligent life may have already lived and died off.