Interesting Fact of the Day

In 1914 Henry Ford created what is sometimes referred to as the Five Dollar a Day program. This program was designed to pay employees five dollars daily and the creation of an 8 hour work day. For this wonderful gift, Ford felt it was okay to check up on his employees. He created a Sociological Department to make regular visits to make sure his employees were keeping their homes clean and living by moral standards. Like most authoritarian types, he said he did this because he loved his people and he just wanted what was best for them and blah blah blah… (You know the routine.) It turns out when the program became too expensive it was terminated. So much for his undying love. I think Ford must have had some really warped definition of the word Liberty.

It also turns out that Ford was anti-Semitic. Here is the front page of an article he wrote about the Jewish people. And here is a quote he mentions, not from Hitler but from The New International Encyclopedia!

“Among the distinguishing mental and moral traits of the Jews may be mentioned: distaste for hard or violent physical labor; a strong family sense and philoprogenitiveness; a marked religious instinct; the courage of the prophet and martyr rather than of the pioneer and soldier; remarkable power to survive in adverse environments, combined with great ablility to retain racial solidarity; capacity for exploitation, both individual and social; shrewdness…”

This is just a little more proof that contrary to what just about everyone says, the world is actually becoming better and more humane place to live.

"It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil, whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters, who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? 'He is free,' you say. That is his misfortune. These men, it is said, have no master. They have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters: that is, need. It is this that that reduces them to the most cruel dependence."

- Simon Linguet

The movie The Least Among You is being filmed at my work this week. The film stars Lauren Holly (Jim Carrey’s x-wife) and Lou Gossett Jr.

We had a wonderful time in San Diego. The last time I was there I didn’t really have time to look around but on this trip we did some exploring. Downtown San Diego is pretty impressive with lots of cool shops and relatively clean streets.

I’m off to Phoenix in the morning for a quick trip. I’ll be there on Thursday and Friday. Hopefully, I'll take a couple of pictures to post to my Flickr site.

Check out my latest on Flickr!

Mona and I are taking a trip to San Diego tomorrow for our anniversary and the next week we will be heading to Arizona for a quick visit to see the family. I wish I could stay longer but everybody at work is asking for days off.

I’ve been taking pictures again and hope to post some new stuff to my Flickr site. It feels great to get out again and I’ve got quite a few ideas lined up for shots. Unfortunately, I don’t have many people who are willing to model for me.

Yesterday, Scott and I went to see Will Smith put his hands in the cement at the Mann Chinese Theater. Surprisingly, Tom Cruz showed up for the event. Will Smith was pretty excited about the whole thing and spent a lot of time with his fans (who are all insane). Here are a couple of pictures I took.






As a side note, the most underreported story of the month was Chevron settling for its role in the Oil-for-Food scandal. The company paid 30 million in fines. Funny that there was no outrage or calls for a boycott. Actually, tell someone about the story in a year and they’ll think you’re a conspiracy nut even though the source comes from the SEC.

If I told you that Philip Morris paid scientist to do research for them you probably wouldn’t trust the research findings. In fact, big tobacco use to claim that smoking was healthy! So what if a company paid a newspaper millions in the form of advertising? Can you trust that newspaper to do objective reporting?

What if a company paid millions to lobby in Washington? Or what if a company paid both political parties hefty donations over the years? Or what if somebody from the Executive Branch use to be on the board of directors of Chevron?

Do you see a problem with this? This is only one company!