What to do about the person who feigns credentials?Instinct tells me to stay away, but maybe that isn't a final solution. Education tells me to instruct and by that I may get a turn of events and create a happier individual, or am I just looking for material gain? Well such as happened in the artistic milieu with someone I know who called themselves producers or directors. Turns out some would vaunt what they've done, but ask for written proof and you wouldn't get any. I would ask myself how far do individuals think they'll get before someone gets the wiser to say, if you can't show your worth what kind of professional are you. It is so imperative that people conduct themselves as professionally as possible especially in the artistic milieu. People will eventually catch wind of the story telling and your credibility drops!
Lastly if that individual continually has no money, and the public is largely aware that funds get productions going, that's another strike against a person's capability.

Won't go as far as rebut too many people on the question of foreign occupation in another country. Seems whether I am a hawk or dove they'll always be armed intervention in foreign places. I am discontent with bullying practices by the powers that be and the way the media covets their leadership skills at persuading the general public how a continued military presence overseas will thwart terrorist threats. Maybe on a small scale do protect civilian installations, but it doesn't address the resentment of a progressively complicated foreign entanglement. Aggression begets further aggression and goes back to the grandest book of all...the bible.
Another issue I have is a docile United Nations which really has no clout when it comes to a world power politics. It gets derided as being inefficient. But who's is to blame but the same people who elect the politicians that enter higher offices. That world organization is probably seeing what the League of Nations saw earlier, its own inefficiency and yet people are free not just to vote for peace but to actually set it into motion. But its easier for someone else to pick up the tab on foreign aid, its also easier to criticize the wealthier nation for the ills of the poorer one.

Am now face with the issue of confronting a director with a potentially fragile ego regarding his work in a community play
that may go on the rocks unless the actor is integrated into the play. As far as directing a play is produced the actor is aware that the director must direct the actor's actions...I take it that some novice directors think all they have to do is have the actor read is script and then wait for blocking to be done after lines are remembered...not the case in professional theatre or if you want to get anywhere near that.
One approach to coping with the disorganized director is to speak to the producer whose backing is responsible for the release of the play in the first place. And it is the method of approach that is a key element in the social discourse and harmony that should be addressed in the play development in the first place. The actor is also a human being and has the right to question why the director has not blocked his actions yet, or why he has held back and if his views are conflicting than maybe the latter should rethink his tactics especially if weeks are running by, the actor is still not off book and has no or little sense of how to enter into a particular character role...or what types of interpretations might be available to him. And still the director still has the notion that the blocking is somehow secondary to the learning of the script!!?
The same approach to facing the director could be applied to a variety of situations where expertise comes as a matter of getting involved with new learning experiences. A new director like a new craftsman has to be open to constructive criticism which will benefit him/her in the end. Or he can stay where he his and pout with a wounded fragile ego and say to himself that nobody wants to accept 'his method'.

As far as table tipping is concerned I was rudely reminded that it should be gratuitous and that I am under absolutely no obligation to provide one especially when proper table service was lacking. When faced with an obnoxious restaurant management I will listen to their reasons for being tip but I won't be coerced. And people should be more discerning where they dine any complain about the shortage of proper service if it is lacking.
A group of us went to eat at a local oriental restaurant and after asking to add an additional chair to a table to seat 5 we were flatly refused. The maitre d' didn't even bat an eye or acknowledgement our upset at the proposition of having to sit at two separate places. And it was the lack of acknowledge that caused me to decide on not leaving any tip whatsoever. No amount of prodding would sway the management they were bent on keeping all the tables the way they were with the excuse that the public would have to pass.
Was it worthwhile discussion the issue with the lady at the cash. Absolutely not. To add fuel to the argument after he others had already refused to leave a tip, as I was the last she had refused to forward a receipt to me unless I cover everyone else's tip! I distinctly remember the broken English but I had to cover the tip, to which I remarked with a rhetorical question: "Do you expect me to pay the tip even though our request to sit together was flatly denied ?" This was besides the fact of having waiters flying by and picking up plates without asking whether we had finished or not! She adamantly replied
yes and her reason was to be able to pay her staff below minimum wage!

What would you do when some distant relative calls you out of the blue from your country of origin and says its urgent,
call back? Easy, call back and see what the problem is, right? But what would you do if that distant relative who carries the same family name calls you from your country of origin at a distance of lets say 50 years since the last attempt and that occurred only through older relatives who have long passed away and had emigrated overseas to Canada or the US almost a century ago. Some would have jumped on the situation and gone to work immediately to get in touch. I held back. Such was a situation that faced me again after about 30 when I last got a call from someone looking for lost relatives.
Then that person was reticent to explain to me the connection. It was a lady who claimed to have the same family name as my father, but when I asked her about her other relatives to get a family tree out of the situation, she backed down. It seemed she was disillusioned with the prospect of finding some connection. I on the other hand had already lost my father and my mother wasn't in to speak the same language that would have likely made her feel more comfortable.
The latest episode began with a strange ring on my phone that had to be a long distance call which broke up. Some after I got a message that was either Russian or Ukrainian, since it sounded from that neck of the woods. I thought the person must have been overly assuming his lost relatives would only be able to understand those languages. After all the years have passed; all my older relatives have long gone from my father's generation and mother is well on in years. Sure enough a few days pass and I get a call, this time in good English from a young man introducing himself with the same family name as my father had before emigrating to Canada in the mid 1920's. He said what city he was calling from only I wasn't sure if I had understood that well but failed to say what country. Lets not forget the ex-Soviet Union is now splintered into many republics and the city could be in White Russia, Bielorussia or the Ukraine for all I know. Iwas given his phone number without the area code which we are so used to having here at home. So even if I were interested I would have had some research to do before being able to call back. Who was this young man with the same family name? There are many on the web with same current family name living in the US and Canada who are not related to me, so why would he be related even though he has the same family name? And after so many years, not speaking the same language and not having any direct connection to who would have decided to call "urgently" I wasn't interested in becoming a sponsor overnight . I no longer had the drive I had 30 years earlier to investigate the nature of calls such as these.
Others will argue that one should keep in touch with your family and relatives, that's a good thing. But I believe in keeping in touch with family while they are alive not when they are generations removed and there has been an absence of contact except for an 'urgent' call every 30 years. Experience has taught me that it would be likely the young man was directly looking for support either in his travel to Canada or in being sponsored by a relative such as myself, if indeed I was a relative.
I also wanted to get the opinion of my older siblings who also share the same family name. None were interested and for the same reasons. I would have liked to be a little more responsible in making some initiative but how well would that have looked knowing that I am just making ends meet in Canada as a writer, artist and teacher.
What is my message in all this? Many of those would have arrived from Iran and other countries over the years have lost some contact along the way with family that decides to stay. It would be best to keep in touch with them while they are still alive and instill that process into the next generation if these relatives are ever going to reunite with those that have emigrated. This may be wishful thinking, most often I think a family split is inevitable especially when large geographic distances are in between, the older connections have died off and the new generation living in the 'new' country has values completely different from what was in the old.

Many people believe that additional Vitamin C will ward off the common cold. Again if this is not taken in conjunction with an healthy food intake, there will be no substrate for the vitamin to act as a cofactor for. In other words without a correct diet, the extra vitamin already found in fruit will be useless. And what about Vit D supplements now found in milk which allows for the absorption of calcium. To much of this would result in too much calcium reabsorption and the result of brittle bones. And of the increased presence of Vitamin E in adult vitamins? Who id to say that the increased dosage compare to that found in regular tablets is going to benefit the user. Also where drug companies mention the I.U. or international unit, wouldn't this just be an arbitrary figure that may vary from one pharmaceutical to another based on their latest findings? So as to which company is marketing the right dosage, I wonder sometimes.

So there are reports now that the multivitamins prescibed for years as a health booster mean nothing if the person is not going to eat properly. So my question is will a pregnant woman short on folic acid in her diet be able to recuperate that from a pill? Looks like the answer is no. Some supplements too seem ridiculous to consume externally. One could suggest condroitin sulfate to be ingested for people with arthritis disorders, but if the person suffers from inflammation at the joints, how will the intake of this substance be correctly utilized. My understanding is that chondroitin is a building block for cartilage formation. I wonder how such a large molecule like that can be transported effectively to an arthritic site and promote healing at that joint, although I have been given some case scenarios where an ingested amount has worked. One was in the case of a man's knee cartilage removed during surgery because of a trauma where he recovered from pain around the joint after ingesting this supplement. I still think the best source would be natural, coming form certain shellfish but who am I to argue on the success of taking condroitin pills.
In the meantime fish continue to get hooked on the bottled variety of the supplement instead of looking for naturally occurring sources and no government agency is out there advertising a natural food source that might curb an additional pharmaceutical expense. So many products out there contain elements that would otherwise best not be taken until thorough research has been done. I'm saying this for someone who would be taken advantage of by the system and fall prey to bottled varieties of supplements as in this case without having spoken to a nutritionist first or researching on his own. In the end, since medical science is not an perfect profession, neither are the vitamins or supplements that are prescribed.

I've read a lot about keeping healthy but what about staying young. Should they go hand in hand or am I just being a hopeless idealist by looking for health supplements that will keep me young. And by young am I thinking of just young body, or would young mind do just a s well. This is an issue I debate with others occasionally, and in the meantime we're all aging..hehe.

Have you ever asked yourself what you would do if you knew you had a lot of good
information to share especially about how to run a country but felt that if you gave that out it would end in the wrong hands or you'd be cut out of a fair portion of what you'd deserve as far as being merited for your work effort. I have. And whenever I express that I am most often reminded that I shouldn't expect rewards of any kind. Still I've always wanted to make that fine distinction about expecting and wanting to know if I'm going to get a fair deal out of the process. Aha...Life has its disillusionments and as the lyrics of sweet dreams goes, some of us like to abuse and some of us like to be abused. Maybe that's a little too cynical we don't all consciously like to used but sometimes I can't help thinking I am responsible for my actions, so perhaps I could have made a better choice here and there.

It is said that constant reform is necessary to maintain fairness in the social milieu and I'll leave that statement stand by itself to be as clear as possible to start off.
Recently I've read some proposed changes as to how parents are to administer corporal punishment according to the law and there was one curious point I noticed in the report:
parents are the best judge of what and how to administer punishment. This was something we would have taken for granted years ago. Today it appears the media has expressed the need to reaffirm the special place a family has when a child's misbehaviour is at stake. I noticed the choice of words too given to specify what type of physical punishment should be used. I used to think that was all common sense, I mean like you don't want to hit a 2 year old in the head with a baseball bat and get away with properly administering corporal punishment. I noticed that teenagers were also to be excluded from any potential parental hit list. Times have changed.
Am I better off today that I have read reports on what kind of parental punishment should be given and how it's administered? Am I better off knowing that the teacher has the right to be protected besides the child in an educational milieu when normal verbal exchange isn't sufficient to address an incorrigible child?I believe it does help us see how vulnerable adults can be before the law if we do go outside of what would be accepted as the 'right' punishment to apply either as a parent or as a teacher. And we have come a long way from the abuse I personally witnessed many years ago in the classroom which might have affected my academic performance and sociability back then. I mean it's more difficult for a teacher to have her/his way at applying physical punishment to a child.
On a happy note I wanted to conclude that a judge was referred to as saying that it's okay to use corporal punishment, he could have been discreet about that statement.
Now all I have to do is sit back and watch to see how many parents will take his advise to the letter. You can see I'm cynical about how effective his advise would be for the population as a whole, all it takes is one parent who'll think that any amount of punishment is good. Clearly that is not the case.

Hello

Let me introduce myself as a keen writer of sociopolitical problems and their prospective solutions. Readers are invited to submit their feedback as separate blogs to create a viable forum for alternative solutions to age old social ills.