Sageman's Blog

For those in the know with regards to the fantasy genre, Terry Pratchett's name is uttered up there with J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. He is the creator of the fantasy world known as, "The Discworld." A flat disc shaped world floating through space on the back of four elphants sitting a top the back of a giant turtle "The Great A'tuin." Though his novels have been immensly successful, to date no movie had yet to have been made based on his works. Even though the rights to several of the books had been sold and some even bought back, no final movie had met production till now.

With the Hogfather we are presented a wonderful parody of your typical Christmas tale. Yet it's not so typical because this story is about Hogwatch a holiday that even the movie proclaims is reminiscent of our very own Christmas. It follows the journey's of "Death" and his Grand Daughter "Suzan" as they try to stop the Assassin "Teatime" from killing the Hogfather. The tale takes us on a journey that embraces the strength of belief and the very nature of the holiday of Hogwatch, which as I mentioned is very similiar to Christmas.

I think the thing about this movie I like most is the cinematagrophy, the production for this movie rivals some of the best fantasy movies out there. This is not your typical direct to dvd production. This movie has put a great deal of effort to keep the special effects on par with any successful feature film. Combine this with some wonderful acting, from the likes of relative new comers Michelle Dockery and Marc Warren, and it even builds this movie up further. To top it off you add in the voice acting of Ian Richardson and you have an eary and original portrayal of Death that is probably the best performance in the film.

The movie does a great job of putting a new spin on the often stale Christmas story and in doing that alone makes it a great option for one of your Christmas movie picks. I feel the movie is suitable for the whole family. There is some violence but nothing to bloody and the language is kept to a respectable level.

This is only available on DVD and well worth purchasing or at least renting from your local video store. If you are a fan of the fantasy genre then do yourself a favor and get a copy while they are still available. Like I said Terry Pratchett will one day be recognized as this generations J.R.R. Tolkien.

It's important to note the quality taken into producing this book which was made for TV in the UK. Vadim Jean did a wonderful job putting in more than most would have expected in producing this feature.

Now I await Vadim Jeans next release of "The Colour of Magic" on DVD, also one of the Discworld books of Terry Pratchett. It is to be released in the UK in October 2008. Don't know when it will make it here but I think it will be worth a watch as well.

Ok love her or hate her this is funny.

Click the link.
http://cdn.funnyordie.com/videos/4178033806

What's your opinion?

So here is what I've been thinking. With gas prices at the point they are now maybe it's time for us to look at the positive behind rising prices. As well as a solution that involves less gas consumption rather than implementing plans that would only provide a stop gap solution to the biggest problem facing America today.

Positives

Higher prices will force people to focus on alternative means of travel; Public Transit, Car Pooling, Biking, Electric Scooters and Segways etc....

Will make people be more sensible in their housing purchases. Just think about this, the average round trip commute of 20 miles costs about $4.00 a day. That's $20.00 a week and  $1040.00 in gas a year just to go back and forth to work.  That's just going from work and back, not including your every day drive to the store, school etc...

Also higher gas prices will eventually level out, when that occurs, wage and other costs will balance out. Creditors will begin giving more credit when the economy stabilize and this will stimulate the economy and we will once again see economic growth. I thought of this theory the other day while thinking about economics. I personally think it holds true when we look at the past.

Research has increased on alternative fuels so fast that people are no longer looking 10 years in the future many are saying 5 years. Look at the history of trend setting products, the Internet, PC and Ipod, all took less than 3 years to meet the needs of consumers with infrastructure. Some analysts have stated that when alternative fuels become profitable you will see an implementation nation wide of less than 2 to 3 years.


Big Oil Companies and the politicians they pay are promoting off shore drilling to pump more oil but experts have said this wont lower prices at all. What republicans are arguing is a price plateua but history has proven this will happen even if we continue to rely on foreign oil. Where in fact if we drill offshore the only people to benifit will be the people drilling the oil. If we don't save any more money but provide a cheaper source of oil then who profits? Oil companys, and for those that argue competitive pricing, well my friend no oil company undercuts another by more than 10 cents on average. Keep that in mind.

Here is an article I ran across. What do you think about the restrictions on what can be asked or what can't be asked? A lot of people are finding this amusing, how about you?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcb_china/20080722/wl_mcb_chin
a/theeightdontasksoftheolympics

Enjoy.

If anyone has been reading the blogs here you will see a lot of really interesting articles written by people eager to open a discourse about the news that interests them. This is often impossible to do as of late because of certain individuals hijacking the blogs.

By taking a blog off topic to put forth your own agenda you are hijacking a thread. Doing this on most boards will get you a warning or two, then an IP ban (Internet Protocol I.E.  Your Internet Address). MyFox is unusually lenient with regards to this but I wanted to make a point.

All the people griping about there being a delay on your post's generating, keep in mind how many times your perfectly wonderful post was turned into a forum to bash a political figure, religion or other topic. Taking a post on these tangents detracts from the blog and it is rude.

If you want to push your own agenda do it by writing your own blog and putting forth your views there. I just hope no one comes and hijacks your thread like many have done to myself and others here.

You don't always have to agree with what's being written but at least respect the writers blog. I don't even mind the little greetings and the responses to those greetings when people write something that also pertains to the post but please be conscientious of the time and effort many put into righting their blogs.

Not trying to whine but I know others have the same opinion about this as I do.

Thanks

Let freedom ring, from the highest mountain to the lowest sea, let freedom ring! For it is in our hearts and minds where freedom is truly found. From the the depth of our heart freedom is allowed to reach heights unimaginable. It soars so much easier when others of like minds are able to come together, put aside their political biases and live together, proud of the fact that regardless of political affiliation, we are all the Sisters, Brothers, Mothers and Fathers that make America what it is. We are those living in the land of the free, the home of the brave, we are all proud Americans.

God bless the United States of America.

Independence Day is here and I was wondering what it means to you? To me I see it as a celebration of the freedom we have all been able to enjoy. To me it is a day to be thankful for the sacrifices so many have made so that I might be able to live the life I do. To me Independence Day is a day to think about those in the world who are not as lucky as us.

(Lets try to be positive in our posts in honor of the holiday, we have a bunch of other days to be negative.)

With wages increases at an all time low while productivity at an all time high, do you think that the federal government is ignoring the plight of the working man? As corporate executives’ wages and bonuses are increasing at a record high for certain industries do you think that the federal government needs to hold these companies accountable?

The theory behind corporate tax breaks are that companies take the money they receive from tax breaks and reinvest those savings into their employees as well as providing new jobs for their communities. This is not the case for most companies, in fact it’s the exact opposite. Most companies are laying off or cutting employee wages while providing bonuses (most of the time due to increases in productivity) for their executives. They are also shipping jobs overseas or outsourcing for positions. With many corporations moving their factories overseas, investing less in research and development and as a result letting our national infrastructure lag, the United States has the highest rate of poverty on any industrialized nation, and the highest level of inequality of wealth as well.

Comparing us to the rest of the industrial world, we have a declining education system, a lower life expectancy and a higher infant mortality. All of these are just the tip of the iceberg when we are also looking at a sagging economy. Experts have a few ideas as to what is causing this, low wages and a lack of health care.

The federal government has kept minimum wage down to an amount that is lower than the average wage 40 years ago at $5.85 per hour.  That means that we have lagged behind the cost of living increases by over $4.00 per hour. Also the amount of money put into taxes has lagged behind as well and failed to keep up with the cost of living increases as well.  Many experts state that to improve our economy we need an increase in minimum wage and we need to provide national health care plans to those working for small business unable to provide health care for their employees.

Do you think that federal guidelines need to be declared to protect employees and hold corporations accountable for their tax breaks.

With the recent news of the Army kicking out troops who are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PST) for Misconduct, do you think this is unfair? With a bipartisan bill in place to investigate the mistreatment of its own troops, no one is sure how far up the chain of command this procedural decision goes?

In many of the cases those who suffered from PST were given recommendation from doctors for a medical discharge, instead of discharges, these recommendations were ignored. The Army failed to treat the soldiers and which caused many of the soldiers to continue to deteriorate and eventually led to discharges for disorder conduct. This means a loss of all benefits for the soldiers discharged for misconduct, regardless of their tenure in the service.

My question is this, who do you think should be held responsible for this and how can we make restitutions to these soldiers?

Tim Russert passed away suddenly today. I for one enjoyed "Meet the Press" and felt it was one of the few objective and open forums in the media today. With his passing we lose one of the great political analysts as well as one of the most recognized and  finest journalists on the air. His insight towards politics have helped many understand the complex political process as well as the points of view of both sides of the party lines.

I for one will miss his professionalism, his observations and the humanity he gave to the political process. In this day, I think it fair to say that he died at a young and untimely age.

I think one point that needs to be made is that a lot of times our economy is influenced by the support we place in our president. If there is no faith in the ability of our president to perform his job then we will see that reflect on our economy.

The impact may be small but it's still there. What that means is that when elections are over in November, we will see a new president in office and the confidence we place in that president will indirectly impact our economy. Something to think about either way.

Anyone think there is any validity to this theory? What impact do you think McCain would have and what impact do you think Obama would have. Try to be ojective and not ruin the thread with rants about either please.

So when we get down to understanding economics and we try to talk about interest rates, cost of living, credit ratings it all comes down to one thing, money. The fact is that we base our whole economy and faith on the dollar. A piece of paper that logically should be worth what ever a piece of paper sells for, right? Well no because we whether we want to think about it or not this piece of paper is being substituted for gold and silver and as such the federal government goes to lengths to insure that money in your pocket is backed up with an equal amount in our treasury. In theory at least, the actuality of it even becomes more complicated.

Yet here is where we get to the illusion of our economy, we are basing our whole well being  fiscally  on the assumption that money is the deciding factor in whether our economy exceeds or fails where as in actuality it's not money at all but rather whether people are willing to give us as credit that defines the strength of our economy.

See everything comes down to how much people are willing to invest in each of us. If the economy is booming people will give you money for anything, because in their eyes, we have an excess and as such by giving credit it will cause people to spend more and as such improve the economy. Where as this is a good system it is dependent on whether or not people are spending money.

See if no one is spending money, then there is no room for growth in economy. As such you have either an economy that is stagnant, or even worse, in recession! So the key is to get people to spend money thus giving it a much needed shot to arm! Remember those economic stimulus checks you received recently? Those were that shot in the arm the feds were hoping would boost our economy.

Yet here we come to the conundrum, there are certain factors that will always affect the economy. One is employment, simply because if people aren't working, they aren't spending money. If  they're not spending then, there is nothing to gauge their worth credit wise. Second is the housing market, mainly because out of everything a person owns, the house is the most expensive and as such it is the largest definition of your credit worth. Though many would agree it took the last year to bring this to it's true impact, Oil is another major influence on our economy!  Oil impacts so much its almost hard to fathom! What we sell, how what we sell gets from place to place, how people get from place to place, so much is impacted by oil! I'm amazed that how much we spend on oil has never impacted an individuals credit rating? Now we move on to inflation.

Well everything I've mentioned above is the end cause of inflation. Inflation is defined by the prices people are willing to pay for goods and services. As a result it directly impacts the value of an economy's money, thus it also impacts credit and is also affected by credit. Simply put if no one is using their credit then no one is spending money and as a result we see inflation drop this is not as good as it sounds. The reason being that when inflation rises, it is usually a sign that people are injecting money into the economy. When it drops then people are not spending money which in turn lowers the value of the money they do have, which in turn effects the health of the economy.

So the biggest thing is that the illusion of our economy is all based on one simple thing, credit and how much faith creditors feel is worth investing in the people the economy is built upon. If people aren't spending then there is a lot less faith in the economy and as such we see unemployment rise, the housing market slump. It seems that the biggest impact lately as too spending has been oil. I don't think I need to explain what that did to the economy. I hope that cleared it up a bit. It's no way doctoral thesis but it is a simple way of understanding economics.

I read the article where George Soros made some comments that oil prices were ,in large part, due to speculators driving up the prices. In my opinion, he's absolutely right. Though I noted he didn't mention that a lot of hedge funds and college investment funds are buying oil up and stashing it away. This is also causing the demand for oil to rise which in turn gives the speculators even more reason to raise the price of oil. Whats this mean over all though? This is what I predict for the future.

I agree that with what George Soros said when he commented that only when we are in a recession will we see the price of oil drop. Yet with that said I still don't see a serious recession for two maybe three years, by that time the price may have risen to $350.00 per barrel. If it does drop the price will be close to $266.00 per barrel. With this in mind, you will see an average of $8.00 a gallon and that's being optimistic.

Let me also state that the situations affecting our economy right now, rising food prices and the housing slump, are all tied directly into oil prices. Because of oil prices being so high, farmers are making crops for ethanol rather than food, as a result food prices are rising. Funny thing is though, the rise in food price is not due to a shortage at all, but rather what people are seeing as a shortage in the near future. So prices are being dictated by a demand in the foreseeable future, rather than an actual one, with regards to food prices. The food prices will fall back to the norm in the next year and a half maybe two years in my opinion. Demand will force more farmers to switch back to farming food products rather than alternative fuel products. You will also see people buying different foods as staples, that they haven't in the past. I think oat's, wheat and soy products will supplant corn as the main staple on American tables, thus reducing costs over all for Americans. Corn will continue to be put into ethanol and as feed for farm animals most likely, with a minute portion going towards food products. All this again will be due to rising oil prices.

With a slumping housing market and soaring oil prices, people are correctly linking the two, "hand in hand," with our economy. As a result, people are not buying homes, leaving our already beleaguered housing market in a steady slump. I don't see the housing market getting any better for a long time. Though housing prices are not going to fall any time soon, they certainly wont rise to what they were during the recent housing bubble we experienced. The only increases or drops we will see are going to be, "hand in hand," with inflation.

We are also going to see the biggest slump in unemployment this country has seen in a 100 years. Those Americans in the service industry are going to be the hardest hit due to the looming recession. This is because when people have to make cuts and choices on where they spend their money, they do so at the mall, entertainment centers and restaurants. They also take fewer vacations and if they do take them they are close to home. This unfortunately means that Orlando will be hit tremendously hard by any recession in the near future. In 3 years we will have one that will make the 1970's and the great depression look pale in comparison. Unemployment is going to rise to at least 30% as a national average in the United States within the next 4 to 5 years. So save up your money, watch what your investing in and get yourself a good cushion built, because in the near future you're going to need it.

Oh yeah! For the record I predicted the housing slump 4 years ago due to the housing bubble and the fact that adjustable rate mortgages were being fixed with rates that exceeded cost of living increases. As a result the subprime rates exceeded what people were able to afford and any sane person would see the result in that. People were getting houses that in the long run they could not afford. Also, the simple truth is that, prices for houses far exceeded their actual worth and that in part also caused the Bubble and eventually all bubbles burst. This one burst with a bunch of people having homes and mortgages they could not realistically afford.

Of course I had pointed this out to multiple people, including a girlfriend who was in real estate, selling (over priced) condos and she thought I was insane. I think it just comes back to the fact that people don't really want to hear bad news and as a result they assume people are exaggerating.

I thought I would do this in red, it seemed appropriate, since oil is bleeding everyone dry.

I've been reading a lot of different articles lately and the ones that trouble me the most are those that involve children. I can't really see how people can do what they do to children. From sexual abuse, physical abuse and neglect, it all seems so hard to comprehend. What bothers me even more is how these horrible, horrible things seem to fall through the cracks. What you always hear is, "No one knew this was going on."

I don't believe that for one minute. I think in almost every one of these cases people knew or suspected what was going on but no one had the courage to get involved. As a result they put what they see in the back of their minds and later one day they come around and say to someone that will listen, "I thought things weren't right." So If that's what they thought then why didn't they do anything?

Heres something that happened to me about 8 years ago. I was in a supermarket in a small town in Washington. I was there with a friend doing some shopping when I saw this child pick up a box of something or other and then saw her father strike her on the back of the head so hard she fell to the floor. The girl was little more than a toddler. I looked around shocked that of the four people there, I seemed to be the only one who noticed what was going on. I watched as he yelled at the child (who was laying on the floor crying). It was when he raised his hand up to hit the little girl again that I stepped in and grabbed him. He threatened to have me thrown in jail and for some reason that upset me even more, I had a hold of his wrist so I twisted it behind his back and pinned him to the aisle. I don't know what the reason behind doing this was really, though I suspect it was because if I had let him go I would have busted his nose.

I remember looking at the little girl and seeing her more afraid of me than her father and I felt a little bad but what made it worse was the fact that she seemed to think it was perfectly normal for her father to strike her like that. I was the bad guy stepping in breaking up what was a normal part of her life. It was about that time when one of the managers came up and asked what was going on? I explained that he had just hit his child so hard that he knocked her to the floor. He denied it and we began to argue. Store security came and stood with both of us while the manager went and reviewed the security tape. It was all there on the tape luckily. So in the end the police came and took the child away to stay with relatives and the father went to jail. The cops debated charging me with assault charges but decided against it. I got lucky in hind sight, Washington state is a lot different than Florida, I wouldn't suggest doing that here or you would sit a couple years in prison.

I 'm also amazed how people are unable to distinguish between normal and abnormal behavior. Case in point, a man I knew in Washington walked in to his neighbors apartment to find his neighbor holding his 9 year old naked step daughter in his lap. My friend asked some of us what we thought he should do and we all said he should report him to be safe. He called Child Protective Services, they investigated and decided that there was nothing bad going on. Which after hearing the whole story I believe it to be true. Even so, It always bothered me that he didn't just call them? I mean seriously, seeing a man holding a naked child in his lap, wouldn't that ring odd to anyone. There may have been nothing going on but I think to most people it would send up some flags or maybe I'm just paranoid.

I asked an acquaintance of mine who works with Department of Children and Families how people seem to get away with abusing children and she told me that many times the child is afraid to tell anyone. Furthermore adults are afraid to tell anyone either for fear of being wrong and causing the parents pain, even worse they might be sued or prosecuted for what they say. Even more disturbing is that many refuse to report suspected abuse because being proven wrong would be embarrassing for them. This stunned me to hear. I can't imagine that someone would be afraid to do the right thing because doing the right thing might hurt someones feelings or embarrass them. I mean seriously it blows me away that people could have the mind set.

I had a friend of mine tell me how she saw some of her neighbor hood kids smoking behind her house. I asked her why she didn't tell the kids parents and she said, why bother, they aren't her kids. This seemed to be the main consensus with most of the mothers there and yet once again I am amazed. Does it take a life or death situation before things become important enough to get involved?

Again it comes down to the "me, me," syndrome in America. People have this idea that everything is about them, and even though it might concern someone else, the final decision will always be based on how it affects them the most. Some people seem unable to act with out seeing if there are benefits in it for them. If there are none, then so be it, let someone else get involved. So tell me, if everyone begins to have this mindset, what happens then?

You remember the woman in Austria held hostage by her father and raped repeatedly, she gave birth to 7 children with one of them dieing. Neighbors all said something was odd but they didn't get involved because it just was not socially accepted to pry in others lives. People don't get involved in other peoples business in Austria. In fact you can know a man for 40 years and he will still call you, "Herr Smith" or "Frau Grisom" as a sign of respect . It's also to say, I don't know you well enough for you to get involved in my life.

I think that's what's happening in America, people are becoming socially ambivalent towards others, for much of the same reason too. We no longer live in  houses with big yards, we are right next to each other, sometimes our houses are feet away from our neighbors. It cuts into our privacy, as a result we decide to cut ourselves off from the neighborhood around us. We might know our neighbor's names but we don't know them, nor do we really care to anymore. It's all about retaining what privacy we have left in our little worlds. To do this we ignore whats going on around us and we expect others to do the same. That is until someone else does something that might shatter this little bit of home we have created. To me this seems wrong on so many levels.

I grew up knowing all my neighbors, and honestly, I just had to sit in the kitchen with my mother and her neighbor friends. In under 10 minutes I would know everything going on for the whole block. It seemed nosy but at least then people seemed to care about what was going on in their neighborhood. It was the odd person that didn't care or didn't get involved. Instead of how it is now, being ostracized for caring, in the old days you were shunned for not caring.

I even remember times when my brother and I were caught doing something wrong and the person who caught us in the act would take us to our parents and tell them what we were doing wrong. O.K. so I'm getting a bit nostalgic here about the, "good ol' days." Still I won't say it was some sort of urban utopia in those days, because a lot of the bad things I've talked about here went on then and was ignored as well for much the same reason.

Yet today we supposedly know better, and these horrible things still get swept under the rug by people who just don't want to get involved or even worse just don't care. That brings us around full circle, anyone got an opinion?

I remember a post on the blogs here not to long ago where someone child was threatened and they commented about the boy who threatened their child with something to the affect of, "Everyone knew that boy, he's from a bad family. They need to throw him in jail." My question is If he's in a bad family and you knew that they were doing bad things, did you ever talk to anyone about it before it affected you and your child? If not, why? I'm not blaming anyone for anything just curious how far things have to go before people do get involved?

Anyone Have any story's on how they got involved or didn't and wished they had when they saw or suspected something bad was going on with a child?

I read this article today and I wanted to get other peoples perspective on it? Do you think it was justice or did he deserve a harsher punishment? The link is below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7404114.stm

I learned quite a bit about religion while I was younger both from college and my travels. all in all, I was trying to be knowledgeable and learn about all the different types of religion there were. I studied up on Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism and a lot more. I came to believe that they all have their place in the world. I still do for that matter. In this knowledge I realized that I never needed to force my belief's down another's throat. I also never understood why some people so adamantly  try to bully others into accepting their beliefs? I never for once thought that my own religion was the only right religion. I learned early on that, that sort of arrogance, is an act of man not God.

I always believed that God has a plan for all of us, I don't believe in destiny nor do I believe that this plan is set in stone but I do believe he and only he knows what the outcome will be and in the end how we get there will be God's will alone. All in all I think we as people are given the choice to get to the right place by God. He gives us the tools to make our lives a success or failure based on the basic principles of right and wrong all people know. These are the "rights and wrongs" that no matter what the religion, deep down inside we know the ethical and moral implications of them. Those alone allow us the knowledge to make the right decisions.

You can see this in all the religions of the world, they profess the base instincts of the human soul. These religious dogmas spoken so reverently all have the same basic principles to them. The pursuit of righteousness, the pursuit of wisdom, the pursuit of happiness and the chance to share our beliefs with others of the same mindset.

I've never been comfortable in saying that any religion is better than any other. I think we are all obligated to follow the religion we can place faith in. When people say that because one is of a different religion, they are automatically going to hell, it disturbs me. I for one don't believe that, I think god and god alone knows who is going to hell and who is not. In fact I think it's arrogant to assume to know this and get profoundly upset when people preach their religious diatribes espousing that they follow the "true religion" thus they are the only one's going to heaven.

I also never liked how people always say that any government was formed by god's will. In fact to me, religion and politics are diametrically opposed to one another, and I could never see the logic of people thinking that God would even want to commingle the two. There for it amazes me how people say that "God blessed this country" or "God is punishing us." I'm not saying that God doesn't do that, but let's face it, 99.99% of the time we do the punishing ourselves, it's just easier to place the blame on a higher power. I find it amusing how some governments are so afraid of religions that they will persecute those that follow them because they are afraid of what's being taught, even when that dogma is benign. I wonder a lot of times if they are afraid of the people or afraid of the entity behind their beliefs? After all, it's human nature to be afraid of that which we do not know.

I think a lot of those professing to be atheists fall into that category, they are afraid of what these religions entail in one way or another. As such they shy away from professing faith in anything but the abject apathy towards their being a higher power. Truly, anyone who looks in themselves will see that there is an element in them that needs something to believe in and deep down inside that need helps nourish their soul. How do you live a life with out believing that there is something afterwards? That is also human nature, every religion in the world expresses the belief in some type of afterlife. So it amazes me how people can try to logically approach religion when seriously, it's not about logic, it's about faith.

I actually told a man off today when he stated that Myanmar and China were being punished by God. I asked him if he lived in a place he knew was prone to earthquakes would he build his house of bricks or straw? He didn't want to answer but I think most would say straw? Why? Because it's logical and we know that these type of geological events happen and there for we have the knowledge of what happens. It's through the wisdom God has endowed us with that we are to take that knowledge and do something about it. So in the end if someone dies from an earthquake, it's people who are really to blame for not taking the right steps to protect themselves, not God. That people make mistakes is natural, to err is human to forgive devine, there for we should have empathy and compassion for those suffering. Why? Because we all make mistakes and god willing, we learn from them.

I guess that's about it. I wanted to right something about what I saw in people and how they approach religion but all in all I just wrote how I view the world and religion myself. Like a lot personal views it probably went blah, blah, blah after the first couple of lines. Anyway thanks for reading.