tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57921332026-07-24T02:06:57.769-04:00<b>Tilting the world a little more to the left.</b>Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.comBlogger1317125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-58484335425420993162014-03-20T14:16:00.000-04:002014-03-20T14:16:11.179-04:00

Neil Gaiman, writer of the most sublimely frightening fiction, was asked recently what scared him. His answer is illuminating and thought provoking: The ghosts of today that terrify me mostly are actually ideas that are uninspected and continue to haunt us. It's like the feeling, sometimes, that you'd start talking to people and you're going, "I don't know if what you're saying is true. It may

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-84132141772854065552014-02-03T09:15:00.001-05:002014-02-03T09:15:41.939-05:00

What if a well-known company were to release a new hammer to your local big-box hardware store? And what if that hammer proved to have a design flaw that caused the head to separate catastrophically from the handle resulting in scores of deaths and hundreds of injuries to users and bystanders? What would happen? You might consider the question rhetorical because you know what the answer is; it's

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-71073871334605672192012-09-13T09:29:00.000-04:002012-09-13T09:29:51.844-04:00

I've read plenty of analyses of how the American conservative right captured the hearts and minds of the faithful. These have been mostly discussions of the tactics; appeals and alignment on social issues (abortion, women's rights, gay rights), making sure that each and every Republican candidate makes the appropriate obsequious noises to god and country, prayer breakfasts and prayer meetings.

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-61732320707407763742012-03-19T16:57:00.000-04:002012-03-19T16:58:18.593-04:00

The media, especially those who claim to be experts in financial matters, like to say that the markets don't like "uncertainty," I think they are wrong. Some investors don't like uncertainty, but that creates opportunities for other investors. All-in-all, as usual, the big players win. The rest of us? We are the ones who really don't like uncertainty. Even in a so-called recovery - where all of

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-24602030477290091832012-03-09T16:36:00.000-05:002012-03-09T16:36:12.801-05:00

If you've visited here for long enough you know that I've occasionally posted photographs. Photography has become quite important in my life; maybe someday I'll make a business of it. But for now, I do it for fun, for relaxation and to scratch that creative "itch" I've had all my life. To help myself along that path, to try to learn a bit more and to widen my audience a bit, I've started a photo

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-13909038669754037172012-02-07T15:16:00.001-05:002012-02-07T15:54:12.787-05:00

I borrowed most of the headline right off of the MSNBC site; but given Newt's recent comments and the general hatred on the right for any kind of social contract it could be true some day here as well. The real headline: "Millions pushed into child labor in Pakistan." And if you think it sounds Dickensian, well...

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-7049631805815668362012-01-31T17:09:00.000-05:002012-01-31T17:09:04.415-05:00

Dick Tufeld with The Robot I remember rushing home from school in the late 60's so that I could catch "Lost in Space" on the local UHF TV station. The early episodes were in black &amp; white and the later ones were in the gaudy, over-saturated colors of the 1960's. The special effects were pretty bad, the acting was even worse. But it was the only afternoon science fiction I could get; Star

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-42419861779952500722012-01-27T13:27:00.001-05:002012-01-27T13:27:43.715-05:00

Conservatives are upset at the number of references to "fair" in the SOTU speech. "Life's not fair!" they claim. On that very narrow point, I agree with them. But here's where their argument falls apart. Life is not fair. In a strictly Darwinian sense, life in the jungle, life in the caves, life on the African savannah was not fair. But one of the reasons that we are all here, able to have this

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-44541811016296702962012-01-27T09:07:00.000-05:002012-01-27T09:07:13.744-05:00

News of my demise is greatly exaggerated. The last time I wrote an "I'm back!" post, I really thought I'd be able to keep up with The Fulcrum again. The job I found, and worked at for nearly a year and a half, wound up taking almost literally all of my time. Working 10 hour days was common; weekends too. Even holidays were not safe from it's reach. Now I'm back on the job-hunt. And there's

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-3327231128841983682010-08-17T07:32:00.000-04:002010-08-17T07:32:02.074-04:00

A community center is not a mosque. Yet liberals have allowed the Tea Baggers and the rest of the xenophobes on the right to frame the discussion around a "mosque at Ground Zero." As Keith Olbermann stated, it's not a mosque and it's not at Ground Zero. But Keith is the only person of note saying so. If the (absolute) least common denominator gets to set the frame how is it possible to have an

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-74054801065263397132010-08-04T08:41:00.001-04:002010-08-04T09:10:18.549-04:00

This post on Tom Dispatch by Bill McKibben is worth the read. Why aren't more people enraged by the lack of progress on Global Warming? McKibben lays out 3 things that need to be done to move forward in a meaningful way on what is literally a life and death issue. One of those things is that we're going to have to get loud; we may have to get arrested. His last paragraph: Mostly, we need to

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-17314183481241137102010-08-03T10:57:00.000-04:002010-08-03T10:57:27.127-04:00

I recently attended a briefing about a company here in the Rochester area that I'd like to work for. They are a relatively new company with a great product. I've read recently that the economy is - slowly - turning around, but I've also heard that so far this is a "jobless recovery." There's a phrase that belongs in the Oxymoron Dictionary. In any case, the HR director for this company stated

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-25901814257612865602010-08-02T15:08:00.001-04:002010-08-02T15:10:06.818-04:00

On January 24th of 2009, I almost died. A patch of black ice in the middle of the road ended an otherwise ordinary winter weekend in upstate New York. My Honda CR-V crossed the center line and hit, head-on, a logging truck. I don't remember anything until about two days later. I spent two weeks recovering in the hospital, spent a month in a wheel chair and then another month on crutches. There

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-3114971682756612912010-07-31T21:53:00.002-04:002010-07-31T21:55:11.379-04:00

It's been over a year and a half since I last posted to this blog.I was curious to see that there are still an average of 19 visits per day here. So... who's out there still stopping by? Leave a comment and let me know. Maybe it's time to resurrect The Fulcrum!

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-75371192427773846882008-12-15T10:32:00.003-05:002008-12-15T10:46:59.095-05:00

The holidays are stressful enough, even in the best economic times. This year, with the economy tanking in the third and fourth quarters, pink slips are just as likely to show up in your company distribution as a holiday card. With the down turn being so horrible in so many industries, we can probably be expecting to see a lot more stories like this:A man has been charged with first-degree murder

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-25639890970631730112008-12-09T12:42:00.003-05:002008-12-09T12:59:02.736-05:00

The actual term is archaic; it first described those front line soldiers, in the time of linear warfare, who marched straight into cannon fire during an attack. Unfortunately the phrase has never been given the time to truly fall into disuse. And BushCo. have done their best to make sure it didn't go out of style in their time.That most dangerous and feared weapon of the insurgents in Iraq and

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-7065650368102312312008-12-02T11:04:00.003-05:002008-12-02T11:18:14.151-05:00

The U.S., once again, thumbs its nose at the international community (along with, surprise, Russia) by refusing to ratify or even attend talks on a treaty to prohibit the use of cluster bombs. To quote perhaps the most germaine line in the article:But that kind of warfare has become obsolete, he (Ollie Pile, an operations manager with de-mining charity The Halo Trust) said, and cluster munitions

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-44883313098124189242008-12-01T09:52:00.003-05:002008-12-01T10:02:13.348-05:00

How many times did we hear that from BushCo. over the past eight years? Too many to count about too many things. Here's another one to add to the list; seems that they were warned about the mortgage crisis and financial meltdown:"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-56394850814522149992008-11-25T11:55:00.002-05:002008-11-25T13:51:23.629-05:00

Ann Coulter's mouth wired shut.I kid you not.There is a Santa Claus.

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-41719117781028569222008-11-13T12:11:00.002-05:002008-11-13T12:25:50.520-05:00

Deregulation. Self-regulation. Cost-benefit analysis. Free market solutions. De-funding regulatory agencies. Non-enforcement of regulations.This is what the GOP has pushed on the American people and BushCo., not content with the damage already done, is actively pushing this same agenda on the rest of the world. Fortunately he doesn't have much time left to wreak more havoc on the world.But can

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-4074767000270078242008-11-11T08:17:00.003-05:002008-11-11T08:26:37.695-05:00

It's where lots of pundits are saying the GOP will spend the next several years. And it wouldn't be a bad thing if that stretched into decades. But to me it's where I wish the media would leave Sarah Palin.Please.She cost McCain - if not the election - at least a lot of votes. She cost the GOP what little credibility they had left. And most of all - she's an idiot.On Hardball last night, Chris

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-29311447139682925792008-11-10T12:43:00.002-05:002008-11-10T12:56:04.205-05:00

We've won.It feels great to say that! And it's wonderful thinking about the Obamas in the White House; the return of adults to government. But as tough as the last eight years of BushCo. have been, as rough as the campaigns were, the really hard work remains before us. Being invlolved really made me feel empowered, like I have a stake in what's going to happen. But I know that can fade as the

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-72107043745547991522008-11-05T09:24:00.002-05:002008-11-05T09:37:32.847-05:00

History.It was worth waiting for!Now the question that only the future can tell: What kind of change have we wrought?Will this be incremental change; bending the arc of history ever so slightly in our continuing attempts to create a more perfect union? Or has this election been a true breach, a discontinuity, in the path our country will take into the future?BushCo. and all of its hangers-on have

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-71053600428606459772008-11-04T07:58:00.002-05:002008-11-04T08:05:44.705-05:00

"No nine hour wait to vote here, dear."That's how I was greeted this morning at my polling place. And while there were certainly more cars and people at the fire department in my little town than I ever remember seeing, there was no line to "pull the lever." So I walked right over to the machine - the old-fashioned, curtained, mechanical lever machine - closed the curtain, flicked the appropriate

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5792133.post-1662981045533059422008-11-03T10:24:00.003-05:002008-11-03T10:34:52.996-05:00

There are hopeful signs everywhere that things are about to change. Obama remains ahead by way more than the margin of error nationally. Pundits and poll watchers are already saying the "L" word.But the past two Presidential Elections have proved nothing if not that the Republican machine - levers firmly in the grasp of the likes of Cheney, Rove and their PNAC friends - will do anything to

Charles Perezhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00962971909029829821noreply@blogger.com0