Pity for the Rich

Today's blog is about Thursdays ruling from Massachusetts supreme court allowing secretary of state William F. Galvin to continue to probe into the sale of Gillette company to the Proctor and Gamble company. The buzz around Gillette today was a small amount of excitement as if this ruling may mean some type of victory for us employees who are disappointed and worried to lose our 100 years of independence. I'm not sure we realize that this was just as much of a victory for Proctor and Gamble due to the fact that the ruling only allows Galvin to investigate the transactions between Gillette and the two banks hired by Proctor and Gamble (Goldman Sachs Group and UBS AG ). These banks were basically involved to asses the value of Gillette. The ruling was handed down because of the argument that Gillette may be worth more than 70 billion and not the 57 billion that the company's agreed on. Galvin is not allowed to look into the 173 million that James Kiltz will receive for orchrestrating the deal.
Being a bit on the conservative side myself, I cant argue with a company's decision to sell or another's decision to buy. This is all part of free enterprise and their god given right as far as I'm concerned. What bothers me is how it can be legal for a hired CEO to receive 173 million to sell a company he was he was hired to repair. James Kiltz can argue all day that this is good for Gillette and the consumer. Are we to believe that if he doesn't receive 173 million that this tranaction would have taken place? There is no conflict of interest here? Someone gives you 173 million dollars and this has no effect on your decision making process? How is this legal? It is legal because a CEO originally meant the owner of a company. The Law is set up for that definition of CEO. If the owner of a company receives money for its sale, all the power to him. The problem here is James Kiltz is not the owner of Gillette. This is a conflict of interest! James Kiltz was hired by Gillette, but paid by Proctor and Gamble. The law should be changed to reflect the current definition of CEO
The first CEO in the 100 years of the Gillette company that was hired from the outside was James kiltz. Every other CEO came up through the ranks. This is price of hiring from outside. Although I have only been with the company for 8 years. The first 4 years without Kiltz were much better than the second 4 with him. I know people that have worked for Gillette for 40 years that haven't seen such an unmotivated work force as in the past 4 years. I remember the pride that came with being a Gillette employee. We were the best. The best Pay, the best benefits, the best work environment, the best technology, the best engineering, THE BEST EVERYTHING! That was Gillette. Gillette was the last company you worked for, no matter what! When I started at Gillette, Schick was a joke .... Not a competitor. When I started at Gillette, every single employee put 100% of their 401 K into Gillette, even though every investment broker would tell you not to, we did it anyway, why? Because we were different. We were not like other company's. We were special. When I started at Gillette, my fellow mechanics and myself would run around the machines to get them fixed, and I mean RUN! Imagine seeing you plummer run down your stairs, fix a pipe then run back up the stairs fix another pipe then run back down the stairs and turn the water on. Then the next time he came back to your house to fix the same problem he would try to beat his record time for fixing your pipes. This was the Gillette enviorment. We were a team. I'm not talking about the cliche word "team" that is thrown around every company like wet rag. I'm talking about the Boston Red Sox team that came back from three games down. I am a privliged man for having taken part in it. I have worked for many other manufacturers, and at every one all the employees would complain about everything from management to pay. Not at Gillette, we bragged about how smart our upper management was and how much money we made. I'm sorry to say that the complaints heard at my other company's now echo down Gillette's hallways like the sound of fingernails across a chalkboard. Mr. Kitlz , You made the company look pretty good on the outside, but on the inside you gave it cancer. 6000 people will loose their job so you can pocket 173 million dollars.
Your an old man Mr. Kiltz, you will be leaving this planet shortly. When you die, you will have to answer for this to god. If your lucky and your health is good, you'll probably live for another 20 years. I hope that is enough time to spend 173 million dollars. At first I was very angry with you Mr. Kiltz, but when I think about it.....What your eternity may have in store for you, I have pity. Imagine that I have pity for a man with 173 million dollars.

Will robots lie?

I have been following the two mars rovers, Opportunity and Spirit since they left us almost 2 years ago. I was like a little kid waiting for the first one to touch down January last year. They have been scooting around the red planet for 15 months now sending back all kinds of data. Just last Friday Spirit send back crude movies of small little dust devils traveling across the surface (check it out http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/ ).
The one thing about this mission that's driving me crazy is the bad science that is being done with the data being sent back. From the moment the rovers left earth, JPL's scientist stated that one of the main mission goals was to find out if mars has or has had water. Well guess what, if you want to find evidence of water on the sun, you will find it. They believe spirit has found hematite, and since we believe that hematite is usually formed by water on Earth, then this is evidence of past water. The "golden nugget" which is a rock discovered by one of the rovers is supposed evidence of water, even though one of JPL's leading scientist admits "I don't know how it was formed, and it's driving me crazy". This is a whole new world were dealing with. I'm sure Mars has processes we probably know nothing about. Lets just allow the data to show us what ever it may. Not try to find certain data.
I'm not saying there was never water on Mars. For all I know the movie "Water World" was filmed there. All I'm saying is collect all the data, then come up with the theory. Since two out of three missions to Mars has failed (all the way back to the 1950's), I can't help but marvel at what JPL has accomplished here. We are actually controlling robots on another world, we shouldn't allow them to lie to us.

Same old story

I was reading the news paper today and caught yet another story about Abu Ghraib. Apparently 4 top officers were cleared of any wrong doing. Reed Brody of the human rights consul is crying and whining "This proves that the army can't investigate itself". Who should investigate this Reed? Perhaps the U.N.? Perhaps the Iraqis involved? If only Reed really understood what a crime is, such as his crime of helping U.S. solders getting killed.
I would like to share with you a true story from my brothers blog. http://www.how2fish.blogspot.com/


Meet Brian Chontosh.Churchville-Chili Central School class of 1991. Proud graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Husband and about-to-be father. First lieutenant (now Captain) in the United States Marine Corps. And a genuine hero. The secretary of the Navy said so yesterday.At 29 Palms in California Brian Chontosh was presented with the Navy Cross, the second highest award for combat bravery the United States can bestow. That's a big deal. But you won't see it on the network news tonight, and all you read in Brian's hometown newspaper was two paragraphs of nothing.The odd fact about the American media in this war is that it's not covering the American military. The most plugged-in nation in the world is receiving virtually no true information about what its warriors are doing. Oh, sure, there's a body count. We know how many Americans have fallen. And we see those same casket pictures day in and day out. And we're almost on a first-name basis with the jerks who abused the Iraqi prisoners. And we know all about improvised explosive devices and how we lost Fallujah and what Arab public-opinion polls say about us and how the world hates us.We get a non-stop feed of gloom and doom. But we don't hear about the heroes.The incredibly brave GIs who honorably do their duty. The ones our grandparents would have carried on their shoulders down Fifth Avenue. The ones we completely ignore. Like Brian Chontosh.It was a year ago on the march into Baghdad. Brian Chontosh was a platoon leader rolling up Highway 1 in a humvee. When all hell broke loose. Ambush city. The young Marines were being cut to ribbons. Mortars, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades. And the kid out of Churchville was in charge. It was do or die and it was up to him.So he moved to the side of his column, looking for a way to lead his men to safety. As he tried to poke a hole through the Iraqi line his humvee came under direct enemy machine gun fire.It was fish in a barrel and the Marines were the fish. And Brian Chontosh gave the order to attack. He told his driver to floor the humvee directly at the machine gun emplacement that was firing at them. And he had the guy on top with the .50 cal unload on them.Within moments there were Iraqis slumped across the machine gun and Chontosh was still advancing, ordering his driver now to take the humvee directly into the Iraqi trench that was attacking his Marines. Over into the battlement the humvee went and out the door Brian Chontosh bailed, carrying an M16 and a Beretta and 228 years of Marine Corps pride. And he ran down the trench. With its mortars and riflemen, machineguns and grenadiers. And he killed them all.He fought with the M16 until it was out of ammo. Then he fought with the Beretta until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up a dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo. Then he picked up another dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo.At one point he even fired a discarded Iraqi RPG into an enemy cluster, sending attackers flying with its grenade explosion. When he was done Brian Chontosh had cleared 200 yards of entrenched Iraqis from his platoon's flank. He had killed more than 20 and wounded at least as many more.But that's probably not how he would tell it. He would probably merely say that his Marines were in trouble, and he got them out of trouble. Hoo-ah, and drive on. "By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, unlimited courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and utmost devotion to duty, 1st Lt. Chontosh reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service."That's what the citation says. And that's what nobody will hear. That's what doesn't seem to be making the evening news. Accounts of American valor are dismissed by the press as propaganda, yet accounts of American difficulties are heralded as objectivity. It makes you wonder if the role of the media is to inform or to depress - to report or to deride. To tell the truth, or to feed us lies.But I guess it doesn't matter. We're going to turn out all right. As long as men like Brian Chontosh wear our uniform.If you are as proud of this Marine as I am, then send this to EVERYONE YOU KNOW !!


When I read this story it sends a chill down my spine. There is nothing finer that the American fighting man. Imagine if we had men like Reed Brody in the military fighting this war for us. I have been in the military, and you can rest assured, that men like Reed dont join, they become Lawyers.

Whens the bottom gonna fall ?

On Tuesday i sat with my wife and watched T.V in the middle of the day as every network showed the long awaited white smoke rise from the Vatican. My wife being a devout Catholic called for my daughter who was playing over a friends house and made her watch as well. Something struck me as odd at that very moment. The left wing media coverage of all this was as if every reporter has converted to Catholisism. As the final minutes of pope John Pauls life ticked away, The media covered his whole life without any negatives, this is really unheard of. To the media the word Catholic and controversy are interchangable.
So what gives? my wife says their just reporting this way so that all the real stories can come right after. Such as how John Paul had a secret strip club in the basement of the Vatican, or the new pope and the old pope had been sleeping together for years now and the only reason the bishops elected him is because he said he would come clean if they didn't. Perhaps the media is actually realizing that their audience is made up of mostly conservative people that actually believe in god? Nah, can't be. I dont know whats up, I'm just waiting for the bottom to fall out of this one.

Far From Home

Last week on April 16th, The Cassini-Huygens mission (I guess it is just Cassini, since the Huygens probe is sitting on Titan) made its fifth and closest fly by to Titan. There are some beautiful pictures on NASA's web site http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.
I have to say I was a little disappointed with the limited feed back from the Huygens probe. After seeing two robots crawl all over Mars and send back millions of pictures, its tough to get excited about a single probe sitting on Titans surface with limited capability. I guess it's a amazing achievement regardless. For Nasa to shoot of a probe after traveling for seven years and 2.2 billion miles and have it land on Titan without a malfunction . I guess were just spoiled by today's technical capability and expect so much. Anyway the scientist are making ready for The 12th fly by of Saturn and 4th fly by of the moon Enceladus (which we now know also has an atmosphere). Look on the site and enjoy.

First things first

Welcome to my new blog. Although I have been reading many others blogs, never have written one. So I decided to let everone know my thoughts. I will be updating this page from time to time as issues come up. A good deal will be on the latest science. I love to discuss evolution vs. creation. I have been known to take either side on the debate. Depending on who I'm talking to, I usually take the other side. I will also give my view on current events. Feel free to make any comments.