THANKS TO ELLEN, ET AL*

She showed us that Silicon Valley is deliberately ignoring women's voices. Let me tell you some of the mistakes LARGE companies have made because they do NOT listen to women.

Adobe's professional printing program will not allow artistic fonts. This is because men usually do not deal with the printer. I had to print my cards on my office printer, because I do not like corporate fonts.

Windows will not allow you to globally turn off auto formatting. For me, presentation is an important part of my document. Good thing there is still WordPerfect, which has a better thesaurus anyway.

Microsoft dropped its best product, which was a dictionary that pronounced the words for you. It was an excellent learning tool.

My favorite websites do NOT require me to remember a password in order to buy things. Yet somehow they still are not hacked. Male techies seem to think that all security problems can be solved by a more complex password. This is not a good option for those of us who can not even remember a phone number for sixty seconds.

IT IS GOOD BUSINESS TO INCLUDE WOMEN IN THE DISCUSSION.

* Ellen Pao lost her case against her old venture capital firm. Her firm is one of the one most welcoming to women, but she showed us that the welcome mat did not go as far as to let her into the boy's club.

It should be noted that the teacher in the famous monkey trial got convicted of teaching evolution. Sometimes a lost trial can do more to change things than winning a trial.

POWER OF PROPAGANDA

Richard, III, of England, was buried today with honors. British textbooks still call Richard a murderer. All written historical records show that Richard was a good king, passing laws protecting civil rights.

To please a Tudor Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare wrote an amazing play about an evil King Richard, III.  NONE of the play's accusations against Richard can be proven, and many have been shown to be total lies.

FOR OVER 500 YEARS, HISTORY HAS BEEN IGNORED, WHILE FICTION IS ACCEPTED AS TRUTH.

Now we are spending BILLIONS of dollars trying to eradicate an herb that has never been proven to kill a single person. To please the followers of Nancy Reagan, we are IGNORING AMAZING EVIDENCE OF MARIJUANA CURING CANCER. This is like saying, "LET THEM DIE!"

We need those billions of dollars to investigate the origins of the disturbing plane crashes. It looks like someone has been hypnotizing pilots. Or maybe it is electronic hacking, along with poisoned coffee.

Putin may have a policy of funding rebellion in oil rich countries in order to keep the price of oil high.

SO WHERE DO WE SPEND OUR MONEY?

ORIGIN OF THE GLASS SLIPPER

People talked about drinking champagne out of a glass slipper. (I know that all you wine aficionados are rolling on the floor with laughter.)*

It did not take long for the drunk and stupid to demand a shoe shaped drinking glass. No reputable hostess would accommodate this crass request.

So the "ladies of the evening"**, ordered shoe shaped nick nacks*** in order that the young, drunk and stupid could take a drink from a slipper shaped like a shoe.

AND A LEGEND WAS BORN!

* A glass slipper is pretty much what we all use to drink champagne. It is a type of glass with a wide bowl so you get full advantage of the bubbles.

** Prostitutes. The expensive kind with fancy clothes and fancy houses of ill repute.

*** The little decorations you put on shelves and tables.

A SPECIAL SPRING*

Today we have the first day of Spring, along with a total solar eclipse. Few people could see the Eclipse, so the Northern night skies have been covered in sheets of perfect colors in Firebird patterns.

All this beautiful phenomena adds to the human celebration of Spring.

We should all do some Spring cleaning, have some parties, and then try to agree on a mutually beneficial path into the future.

Now is the time to make compromises that lead to Peace and Prosperity.

* The Southern Hemisphere is starting Autumn. Good luck should spread with the winds. :)

APPALLING SILENCE FROM US NEWS

Sunday, the Chinese Premier stated that his government supported the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. There were NO headlines in the New York Times, nor in the Washington Post.

US news has largely IGNORED the increasing proof that marijuana may cure cancer. US news is willing to let people die in order to hide this amazing research.

WHY?

IMHO, the silence regarding China and Ukraine comes from the enormous power of the former Republican PR firms who are being paid by Putin. Shouldn't these guys have to register as lobbyists?

IMHO, the silence regarding the health benefits of marijuana comes from the enormous advertising power of the alcohol industry. As marijuana grows in popularity, the sales of alcohol are decreasing. (I will remind the liquor industry of what happened to the tobacco industry when they were caught manipulating news.)

Now Putin is so desperate that he keeps threatening thermonuclear war, forgetting that, in his greed, he did not fund his nuclear program well enough for it to be safe. It is SO EMBARRASSING if a nuclear device goes up in flames, rather than flies to a target.

Which reminds me. Why was it OK to rebuild Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but it is unsafe to move back to the area around that power plant?

BETRAYING YOUNG PRINCESSES

In the new Cinderella movie, a live girl is made to look like a cartoon girl.

The tiny waist is achieved by squishing a live girl until she can barely breathe. The six inch heels on the glass slippers are so dangerous with that dress, that I bet they hired a stunt woman to run down the stairs.

For a lifetime, many girls will want to look like Cinderella. The horrible shoes will ruin their feet, making them into crippled little old ladies.

The dieting to be thin will cause their teeth and hair to fall out.

The only way to stop this is to refuse to participate.

Stay home and watch Ever After, a Cinderella to be admired.

PROTECTING AMBASSADORS

Mankind could not have built cities if early man killed any stray male who wandered into the family cave.

In the beginning, travelers were protected under a "guest privilege". The visitor would be wined, dined, and gossip from far away lands would be the topic of all conversation, sometimes for years.

Eventually, these travelers became representatives of governments. Their embassies became places protected by both governments. A leader who killed ambassadors was treated as a totally uncivilized person who needed to be eradicated.

History has taught us that we all gain much more when we work together.

When people trash embassies and kill ambassadors, they are telling us all that they are too uncivilized to be part of the modern world.

Sometimes people are mislead into doing evil. They think their needs of the moment are more important than the ancient rules of civilization. When that has happened, they need to acknowledge their mistake. But there is ALWAYS a price to be paid for violating the ancient rules.

EVERYONE SHOULD ALWAYS BE GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE.

WHAT SPOCK TAUGHT ME

Spock taught me that when everyone was being emotional, logic could often solve the problem. A raised eyebrow and a blank look can convey the lack of logic in emotional reactions.

Currently, Russia is being emotional.

Cool logic tells us that a Putin opponent was shot in the back under the walls of the Kremlin, in the moonlit shadow of the domes of the cathedrals. It took security 11 minutes to show up. There is almost no video of the murder, which took place in one of the most secure places in Russia. Who has the power to make that happen?

Putin has betrayed Ukraine. Ukraine gave its nuclear weapons to Russia. Putin backed a total idiot to rule Ukraine, then backed and financed a fake revolution in an attempt to steal land from Ukraine.

Putin is betraying Russia. Putin can not admit that Ukraine will fight him to the last Ukrainian breath. Putin can not admit that he can not rule Ukraine without the agreement of the Ukrainians.

Now Putin is encouraging Russia to spend all of its savings on a doomed attempt to pretend that the totally valid Western sanctions are not going to harm Russia. It is easy to pretend you know how to run a country when oil is over $100 a barrel.

I did not enjoy the seven years of recession caused by the interruption in the flow of money in the Western world.

Russia is not going to enjoy the more than seven years of recession caused by the sanctions imposed by the West.

You can blame the West for the sanctions, just like Putin is blaming the opposition for killing their own leader. I guess Putin thinks that Russians are such idiots that they will believe anything.