In the spring of this year, one was invited to attend a conference and seminar concerning the joining of a firm to sell financial investments to others. The financial company was owned by a major world corporation. A film was viewed and lectures were presented to convince the attendees to join the company. A repeated statement in the lectures and in the film was that financial investments offered by this corporation were “not a pyramid scheme”. The frequent number of times this phrase was repeated made one suspicious that perhaps this was a pyramid scheme and the corporation was attempting to brainwash the participants through the continuous repetition of the above phrase. Through careful scrutiny, one recognized and concluded that these financial investments were pyramid schemes where the majority of people lose their money invested while those involved with the firm from the early stages, gain the money lost by the majority. Of course most can recognize this system as a clever way to steal, and is in violation of a Commandment.
This year, I noticed that most all of the school busses in the community had changed the former clear glass windows of a few years earlier and replaced them with very dark, almost black tinted glass. Since the weather in this area is not particularly sunny, such as in South Florida, I contemplated the possible reasons for this likely expensive change to the windows of the school busses. Throughout the former years and in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, I noticed at times children fighting on school busses as I was driving my car around town. I recall complaining to spouse about this bad behavior of some of the youths and remarked that it is difficult to operate the school bus vehicle under these circumstances. Years ago when I attended public school, students’ who caused altercations on school busses were banned from riding the bus. I then thought that perhaps the clear windows on the busses were changed to a very dark glass to prevent others in the community from viewing what was transpiring inside the school busses.
During this year, one noticed an extraordinary amount of litter and other garbage strewn along roadways in the area of our residence. I wondered aloud to spouse why suddenly there appeared to be so many slobs in our community. Shortly thereafter, one read about volunteer litter removal crews being established to clean up and dispose of this unsightly and incredible over abundance of garbage strewn. Coinciding with and possibly because of this uncommon amount of garbage scattered along roadways, the area became inundated with very large and aggressive black crows. I observed one of these birds knock over a bird bath in our backyard. However, once the litter problem was resolved by the volunteers, the crows left the area.
In the autumn while grocery shopping one day, I viewed a long line of people that stretched horizontally from one end of the large supermarket to the other. Curious about the reasons for this line and expecting that food sampling was in progress I was aghast to observe an individual on line being immunized with a syringe, for as it became known to me was an immunization against the influenza virus. I believed this practice to be unsanitary, unpalatable, and completely inappropriate based on the food environment of this business establishment. It also occurred to me that perhaps in the future, people would be standing in line inside this supermarket for a euthanasia shot.