The Persuasive Wizard

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas, for the low price of $12.95.  Now available in Kindle e-book for $7.45.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone seeking a better job, a raise in the current job, investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.

If you work for a technology company, your company’s technology budget is a leading indicator of where your company is headed.  Watch those expenditures closely, both by how much is being spent, and on what projects.  You do not have to be a genius to make some basic observations that will help navigate your career.

Nationally, the picture is not a good one.

Battelle Memorial Institute is a US nonprofit company that performs its own research, farms out its researchers, and evaluates the research industry around the world.  They manage or co-manage seven of the US National Laboratories.  This month they completed a report analyzing R&D spending around the world.  Their data include private and government spending.  Projected R&D spending for 2012 reveal the following:

US             $436 billion,         up 2.1% over last year

Europe     $338 billion,         up 3.5% over last year

Asia            $514 billion,         up 8.6% over last year.

This sounds positive for the US, but it is sad, as I shall show.

The historical increases for US R&D have been 6% – 8%, three times the projected 2.1% for 2012.  Government R&D expenditures are expected to decrease across all the agencies.  Pharmaceutical investments are expected to decrease by as much as 10%-12%.

So, where is the growth?  Statistically, the projected growth of US corporate R&D is 3.8%.  However, in the past five years, the R&D increase in multinational US companies shows 85% of their new R&D workers to be hired outside the US and working outside the US.  Dollar-wise, the overseas portion of the US multinational companies’ R&D budget is about 27% and increasing.  If you want to live and work technology in the US, that casts a long shadow on your chances.

As if those numbers were not sufficiently troublesome, I disagree with the one bright spot pointed out by Battelle.  Their projected growth in the US corporate R&D expenditures is obviously predicated upon companies rising from the current recession and investing optimistically in the future.  I do not expect that to happen in 2012 based on three observations:  the market problems in Europe, the concerns about the decreased rate of Chinese business expansion, and the current US administration’s barriers to business.

The National Science Board also announced this week that the US is rapidly losing high technology jobs as American companies expand their R&D labs in China and the rest of Asia.  That confirms that the growth numbers projected by Battelle, even if they materialize, undoubtedly mean expansion of US companies outside the US, as I indicated.

George Buckley, Chief Executive of 3M Co. remarked that 3M is rapidly expanding R&D outside the US, saying, “Given the moribund interest in science in the US, this is strategically very important.”  Important for 3M, undoubtedly, but catastrophic to technologists here in the US.

The supply and demand picture is not favorable, either.  Three years ago, only 4% of the world engineering degrees were awarded by US universities, compared to 56% awarded in Asia.  Plus, a majority of the engineering and science degrees granted by US universities went to non-US citizens.  Specifically, 57% of the US doctoral degrees in engineering were awarded to foreigners.

In the last ten years, US employment in high-technology manufacturing has decreased 28%, to about 1.8 million jobs.  Most of these jobs went to Asia.  Sadly, these numbers are driven by companies like GE, Caterpillar, and 3M – traditionally considered very pro-American companies.

Five years ago, the US was home to approximately 1,000 of the world’s 2,500 biggest public corporations.  That number has fallen below 750.  China’s numbers increased from zero to 250 in the same period.

What does this mean for you as the persuasive wizard?  It becomes ever more essential to hone your skills in persuasion because selling your ideas will become harder and harder, at least in the foreseeable future.  I make very little money when I sell one of my books, but you stand to make a great deal if you learn and use the techniques I disclose.

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas, for the low price of $12.95.  Now available in Kindle e-book for $7.45.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone seeking a better job, a raise in the current job, investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.

I started “public speaking” as a boy.  My debut was at church, giving a flannel-board lesson to the younger children.  Flannel is wool or cotton, milled and raised slightly to give it an overall loft.  Felt works also.  To make the flannel-board, I stretched it across a sheet of thin plywood, which I then positioned on an easel for viewing.  Using colored pencils, I painted a background on the flannel of what I supposed Israel looked like.  (I had help, of course, from my ever creative and very pushy mother, as all mothers should be.).  A flannel-board kit came with little colored Bible figures, Jesus, the disciples, and baskets of food, for example – someone else’s idea of what all that looked like in 30 A.D.  I cut them out.  The little kids sat in front of the board.  As I told the story of Jesus feeding the five-thousand, I would place the little figures on the flannel.  The paper figures stuck to the flannel and, as the story progressed, were moved about or replaced with other figures.

I was scared out of my wits.

My second attempt was Cub Scouts, describing our Den’s recent project to cut out wooden pigs, etch them with a hot iron, sand, spread varnish, and make cutting boards for our moms’ kitchens.  When all the parents gathered for the monthly meeting, I explained how we did it.  That presentation was easier, mostly because I received a great deal of unasked-for, but much needed, help from my giggling cohorts.

Then, came my big debut.  I had to make an announcement at our school’s parent/teacher meeting.  Forty to fifty parents were present, and lots of students.  I memorized my announcement.  I was shaking in my little boots.  (Contrary to the thoughts of most of those who live outside the Lone Star State, not all Texans wear cowboy boots.  Only real Texans wear cowboy boots.)

My father gave me this advice, “Don’t look at each individual,  That will make you nervous.  Just look over the audience, right over the tops of their heads.  They will envision that you are looking at them, and it will help you with the stage fright.”

Like so much of the standard advice you get about making presentations and public speaking, this one was was well-meaning, but poor advice.  It was wrong, as I have since learned through years of training and practice.  You do not look over your audience and you do not look down at the floor.  You look them “straight in the eye.”

In my book, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas, I discuss the techniques for persuasion.  In my book, I make it a point to emphasize that persuasion requires different skills than public speaking; vastly different skills, and vastly different techniques.

For example, whether you are trying to persuade your boss for a raise, sell Avon products, or address an audience of fifty technical experts, you must ensure that every person in that room believes you are talking to them and only them.  Thus, you must do just that.

I was in a recent meeting with Newt Gingrich.  There were about forty people there.  Gingrich spoke about twenty or so minutes and then took questions.  Whether you vote for him for president or not, whether you agree with his politics or not, he is a master communicator (as are many of the candidates).  He made eye-contact with “every” one of us.  I thought Gingrich was talking to me and me, alone.  So thought everyone else in the room

When I instruct you to look at “every” person in the room, I put the word “every” in quote marks because you do not usually look at “every” person, and certainly not in turn, not sequentially.  What you do is look to the left, for instance, and make eye contact with one individual for about 1-3 seconds.  Then, you look elsewhere, maybe left-of-center and look at another person for about the same amount of time.  Then, look at someone in the front, near the center, maybe.  Then, about half-way back on the right.  You keep doing this throughout your presentation, looking at individuals.

The skill is to do this slowly, so that it is captivating, but unnoticed.  You must not resemble a bobble-head.  Take your time.  Talk to each individual.

Never falter in your presentation.  Just keep taking.  Never look at someone so long that they feel uncomfortable.  Never keep coming back to the same person until you have made the rounds with everyone.  Of course, if there is only one person in the room, that means you look at them all the time.  If there are ten, you will average looking at each one 10% of the time.  In a very large audience, you may not actually look at “everyone” during a short presentation.

The point is this.  Look at your audience. Do not look down at the floor or over their heads.  Make them know that what you have to offer is for them and them, alone.  You need them.

Do this, and you will find that they will also need you.  Persuasion is an art you can learn.

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas, for the low price of $12.95.  Now available in Kindle e-book for $7.45.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone seeking a better job, a raise in the current job, investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), cumulative student-loan debt now totals $848 billion.  That is billion, with a “b.”  Furthermore, over half of the students matriculating (56%) will require six years or more to graduate, sending costs skyrocketing further.  To make it all worse, the NCES points out that even after six years, these students will lack essential skills for the changing workplace.

I am a member of the Board of Regents for a public university and a past chief technology officer of Raytheon, the nation’s fifth largest defense contractor.  I have taught at high school, in industry, and in college.  My experiences corroborate the NCES findings.

What to do?

First, let us review some paths taken have not led to success.

Wrong Path Number One: In order to reduce the number of years taken to graduate, some states have mandated a reduction in the minimum number of hours required to achieve a bachelor’s degree.  The result?  This reduction clearly cheapened the value of the degree while having no effect on cost and no  reduction in the number of years to graduate.  Requiring 120 hours to attain a degree as opposed to requiring 125 or even 130 hours is not the problem.

Wrong Path Number Two: Some states have forced universities to drop low-enrollment courses and teach only “mainstream” courses.  While I wholeheartedly agree that some subjects are more politically correct than academically pertinent, constraining the university to teach only readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic, plus the courses that are popular with the students is anathema to the fundamental premise of a university education.  An uneducated student is hardly qualified to judge what subjects constitute a meaningful education.  The university is not a trade school.

Wrong Path Number Three: Some states have reduced the number of universities that can grant degrees in fundamental sciences, like physics.  The expressed reason is that such action will more efficiently utilize state education funding.  This does not accomplish the desired goal as the courses still must be offered at those universities (although not the major) and students seeking that particular major are forced to transfer to other colleges.  The result?  In the end, it costs the student more, increases the student debt load, and saves the state nothing.

Why are today’s students taking almost six years to graduate?  Why are students not ready for the marketplace?  Why are student-loan debts soaring to frightening heights with no end in sight?

The real reasons are known and verifiable, but the answers are not popular because they require fundamental changes.

Students require six years to graduate, in large measure because they must take remedial courses in English, mathematics, and science during their first year or two at the university.  The reason?  They were not adequately taught these subjects in High School, but were graduated anyway.

Right Path Number One: Require standardized testing of all students before they can graduate from high school and be accepted at a university.  The standard must be universal and sufficient to ensure that students do not require remedial classes in college.  Exceptions should be rare, rare.  This will push the responsibility back onto the High Schools to step up to the plate.  What specific actions the High Schools might take is arguable, but what is not arguable is that a huge majority of High School graduates are simply not prepared for college-level courses.

Students require six years to graduate, in part, because they register for only 12 hours per semester.  Even then, some of these courses are dropped before completion.

Right Path Number Two: We should no longer define twelve hours per semester as a “full-time” student.  Assuming no courses are taken in the summer, 12 hours per semester would require at least five years to graduate, as a minimum.  A full-time student should be required to complete 15 hours per semester.  (Of course this is not easy.  That is why it is called a university.)

Another reason for extended graduation times is the changing of majors.  When a student changes the major, additional hours are required and some completed hours do not qualify for the new major.

Right Path Number Three: Increase the counseling at colleges to help direct freshmen to their desired career goals.  Increase skill testing and professional evaluation among matriculating freshmen.  Ensure that freshmen know what jobs exist, what effort is required to achieve success in those jobs, and how long it will take.  While these “helps” are  available, in some measure, at all universities, this is an area that needs considerable enhancement and needs to be made a requirement.

I will publish other recommendations and ideas should you care to contribute.

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas, for the low price of $12.95.  Now available in Kindle e-book for $7.45.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone seeking a better job, a raise in the current job, investment funding, or just needing to persuade others

Asteroids are “rocks,” sort of, that orbit the sun.  There are hundreds of them, mostly in orbits that lie between Mars and Jupiter.  Some asteroids are the size of earth rocks, but Ceres, the largest asteroid, is 950 km (595 mi) in diameter.  Vesta is the second most massive at 530 km (331 mi) diameter.  Ceres and Vesta are more like miniplanets than rocks.  (For comparison, the diameter of the Earth is 7,925 miles).

In September, 2007, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) launched the $460 million Dawn spacecraft whose mission it is to investigate Vesta and Ceres. Dawn is currently at its closest approach to Vesta and will take 3-4 months photographing and analyzing this little world.  Three years from now it will arrive at Ceres and perform similar analyses.

Small meteorites strike the earth all the time.  Most are so small that they burn up in the atmosphere.  On a given night at most any location, a meteorite (“shooting star”) can be seen to arc across the sky every several minutes.  It is estimated that as many as one in 20 of these may be tiny fragments that once were part of Vesta.

The asteroid that struck the Earth and formed the Barringer Crater in Arizona is determined to have been only about 150 feet in diameter.  The Chicxulub Crater, whose perimeter is at the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula, was formed by an asteroid only 6 miles or so in diameter.  Some collision models show that an asteroid no bigger than this may have caused the world climate changes that brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs.  Neither Ceres or Vesta are going to strike the Earth, of course.  They orbit the sun, just like the Earth does.

Preliminary gravity measurements suggest that Vesta has an iron core surrounded by layers of mantle rock and crust, much like the Earth and Mars.  Photographs show a pockmarked surface more rugged than the moon and a mountain three times the height of Everest.  Around the perimeter of the asteroid is a band of grooves that make it look like it was formed by rolling it along the ground.

The analysis of Vesta should prove quite interesting.  Will it have the same relative composition as Earth?  If so, what might that mean?  What is the age of Vesta as compared to the age of the Earth?  What would you consider the most thing to find out?

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas, for the low price of $12.95.  Now available in Kindle e-book for $7.45.  The Persuasive Wizard is a must for anyone seeking a better job, a raise in the current job, investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.

On Monday of this week, my mother’s sister passed away, Wanda Lee (Dougherty) McClure of Electra, Texas.  She was 83 years old.  Her husband, Henry Edward McClure, asked that I perform the eulogy at her funeral.  While my blog is neither about eulogies or family, every life is precious.   Genealogists will appreciate my divergence so they might find the information if they search. Below is what I presented at her funeral.

I visited with my aunt in 2007 and asked questions about her childhood.  As she answered the questions, I busily typed away recording her comments.  I took her  responses and put them in textual form so here, so that, in her own words you can hear about her childhood.

I, Wanda Lee Dougherty, was born in Quanah Texas, June 28, 1928.  My parents were Lillian Love (Hamrick) Dougherty, 24 years old, and John Presley Dougherty, 28 years old.  I was the third child.  My brother, Johnny Ray, was three years old at the time and my sister, Janice, was two years old.  Six years later, my younger brother, Harold, would be born. We lived on 13^th street in Quanah.

In Quanah, my father worked at a drug store and then later at Wey’s Hardware and Furniture store.  At the top of the main store was a second-hand store where he repaired the furniture.  He did it all by hand.  I started to school at Quanah’s Reagan Elementary School.  We were living on 6^th street, then, in that little house by the Norris’s, our neighbors.  There was a hill near us and we slid down the hill on paper boxes we would find.  I went to Travis School until the sixth grade and then went to High School in the seventh grade.  We only had eleven grades at that time.

On a typical day in Quanah, mother and dad got up early.  Dad would light the fire in the pot-bellied, wood-burning stove in the dining room.  He would gather up the wood around the area; we were not really downtown so there were houses, but lots of trees and brush.  The stove in the kitchen was a coal-oil cooking stove.  Daddy had a cow.  I was afraid of the cow.  At one time, we also had a goat.  When Mother got up, she had Harold to take care of and she had to cook for all of us.  She mostly made biscuits and gravy for breakfast.  Much of the time it was water-gravy, instead of milk-gravy.  Sometimes we had oatmeal.  I wouldn’t eat the oatmeal because I said it had “stickers” in it.  Mother tried to make me eat it because I was so skinny.

Because of my ways, Mother said I was “nicer than clean.”  She called me “Wanda Lee” most of the time.

My grandparents on my father’s side were James Alfred Dougherty and Tempie Ophelia (Brazil) Dougherty.  They lived in Dougherty, Texas, about six miles northwest of Emory.

My grandparents on my mother’s side were Charlie Love Hamrick and Lula Bell Hamrick.  All I know about them is that they came from Tennessee to East Texas and settled in Emory.  That is where my mother said she met daddy, in Emory.  He worked in a drug store when they met.  We stayed with our Hamrick grandparents a lot.  They were good people.  Grandma had a bathtub we could slide in it.  It was a big old bathtub.  Because water was expensive, Janice, my sister, and I usually took a bath together.  Charlie preached some and had a little farm.  Grandma Hamrick did a lot of canning.  She dipped snuff.  She had little glasses of snuff.  She and grandpa both dipped.  They would take a stick and keep their teeth clean to keep the snuff from staining them.  We got to keep the snuff glasses.  Grandpa chewed tobacco with a little tin mule about a half-inch long stuck on his tobacco tin.  We got to keep the little mule. My dad always chewed tobacco, too, Brown Mule tobacco.  I knew dad’s brothers, Uncle Jim and Uncle Henry and his step brothers.

We usually played outside.  As we grew up, we started washing the dishes, standing up on something.  We helped set the table.  When we got older we helped take care of the house.  I remember seeing our sheets hanging on the line, but I don’t remember changing them.

When we were at Quanah and I was in about the third grade, my oldest brother, John, played a prank on us.  He and a bunch of boys were outside and we always bothered them.  He had this big old wash tub and he put some trinkets under it.  He said, “Girls, all gather around.  I’m putting trinkets under this, now, you see me?  Now, when I lift the tub you grab those trinkets as fast as you can.”  He did that and when we grabbed at it, there was a fresh pile of cow manure under it.  One of the little boys went home crying.  Johnny played mumble-pet and we had to get the knife with our teeth.  We played outside a lot and played under the house with doodle-bugs.  We sang, “Doodle-bug, doodle-bug, come out of your hole.  Your house is on fire and your children’s at home.”  While we sang this we wiggled a stick around his hole.  We caught horned toads and called them our cattle.

One day they brought Bonnie and Clyde’s car to Quanah and we got to see it.  I was scared to death of that car.  The Quanah sheriff, Sheriff Wheat, lived kitty-corner from us.  He parked Bonnie and Clyde’s car on a vacant lot next to his house.  It was on a trailer.  I don’t know why it was there.  We had a big old street light on that corner and at night we would play under the light.

Since our birthdays were only two days apart, Janice and I had one big birthday party together.  We usually got clothes for presents.  Mother’s youngest sister, Aunt Gladys, would usually bring us clothes because she worked at Perkins and Timberlake there in Quanah.  On about my sixth birthday, I got a new dress with a little cape on it. Later, when I had to go to the toilet outside, I ripped that new dress on the toilet.

One year, the Elk’s Hall gave Christmas presents to the whole town, well, for the poor people.  A man came out to the house and talked to mother about how many girls she had, how many boys, etc.  We went to the Elk’s Hall and we got a stocking with candy, fruit, and other things. The stocking was ribbed and thick and Janice and I wore the stockings to school.  Janice rolled hers down at school because she was embarrassed since most of the kids didn’t wear stockings.  I didn’t roll mine down because I was afraid to.  My mother told me not to because I was so sickly.  I almost died of pneumonia when I was in the first grade.  Another year, the Elk’s brought us a big Christmas basket for Christmas with fruit and presents; Janice got a glass doll and I got a baby doll.

When we were children we got chicken pox, scarlet fever, and measles.  We didn’t have scars from the pox because mother kept us greased down with Vaseline. They put a quarantine sign on our door and we thought it would never come off.  We got to sleep on mother’s lap because we hurt so bad.  I got pneumonia from the dust storms.  We hung dry sheets over the doors to try and keep out the dust.  Uncle Marshall was the only drinker in the family and he went to Oklahoma to get me some liquor because this was thought to help me sweat the fever out.

We moved to Childress when I was in the second grade.  We moved into a store and lived in the back.  We always did that, lived in the back of daddy’s store.  We almost starved to death there.  One time they were giving away groceries and mother had the winning ticket.  Sometimes, the man with the fruit stand would give us some fruit.  When we were at Childress I found a candy bar on the way to school that already had a bite out of it.  I was so hungry I ate it all – which was a big deal for me since I was so picky. There was a fruit stand behind us.  I believe we moved to Childress because Uncle Jim recommended it as a good place for furniture repair.  That didn’t turn out well.  I don’t remember Uncle Jim, himself, ever being there.  He lived at Dougherty.

Then, we sold out everything, piled everything in our car and moved from Childress to Lone Oak, about 15 miles northwest of Emory.  Our trip to Lone Oak was full of flat tires.  We ran out of gas outside Greenville.  Money too.  We’d have to stop at water holes and get water for the steaming engine.  We must have run out of money, too, because dad had to get work and earn some money for awhile.  We lived in a tent outside Greenville for several weeks.  It was during the time school was out.  There were other people there also living in tents.  We, kids, just played, so we thought it was lots of fun.  All we had to eat was black-eyed peas and when we got to Lone Oak that’s all they had to eat, too.  I remember putting mustard greens in the peas to try to make them taste better.  We were poor, but we had lots of fun in Lone Oak.

I remember being in the fourth grade at Lone Oak.  Daddy worked in the furniture store at Lone Oak.  Uncle Jim made rockers in his front yard and daddy would put chairs on the rockers.  Again, we lived behind a shop daddy had in front of the building.  I remember we all got a nickel for Christmas.  We thought this was a great gift.  We could buy an entire bag of candy for a nickel.   We made a merry-go-round on a wagon wheel we found and I got deathly sick there.  Where we stayed was just one big room so mama hung sheets up for room partitions and privacy.

One year, aunt Gladys had to send us some shoes so we could start to school.

Mother was sickly all her life.  We were always told it was “female problems.”  She finally had a hysterectomy and she got much better.  I think she had several miscarriages.

We left Lone Oak and went back to Quanah.  I remember going to the 6^th and 7^th grade in Quanah.  Uncle Jim was selling rockers and came to the Darter Furniture Store in Electra and the Darter’s said they were looking for a good repairman.  Uncle Jim told them about my father.  Willie Lee and Ed Darter came to Quanah and asked Daddy if he would work for them in the furniture store because good repairmen were hard to find.  We moved from Quanah to Electra using the Darter Furniture truck.

We came to Electra in 1942.  I was 13 years old.  I was behind a year in school because I failed the second half of seventh grade and had to take the whole grade over.  I went to Waggoner Junior High, three stories, where the Catholic church is now off Highway 25.  Then, I transferred to High School.

We went to the Church of God on Electra street.  We went there because daddy worked for Darter Furniture Store and that is where the Darters went to church.  I met Henry Edward McClure at church.  It was December, 1945.  I remember being on the church steps and he took us out to get something to drink at the White Rose Cafe.  Donald Givens and Charles Pannell were there also.  We all sat at the same booth.  Henry had hot chocolate.  Charles always got buttermilk.  I always got a cherry coke or cherry milk.  I ate almost nothing but pimento cheese sandwiches and cherry milk because I needed to gain weight.  I wouldn’t eat breakfast.  If someone had touched any of the food, I wouldn’t eat it.  Sometimes I saw mother taste the food and then I wouldn’t eat it.  I could never eat a piece of water melon that someone had taken a bit of and mother would never cut me off a piece by myself.

Henry and I started dating.  We mostly went to church to date.  When I was a girl, church was our main activity, and people getting together at the house.  At the Assembly of God in Quanah, mother had played the piano so we had to sit on the front seat and listen.  Aunt Norah Richardson led the choir.  Janice and I sang all the time.  Mother would sing with us at home.  Janice and I sang some in church.  Mostly, we sang church songs, but I don’t remember any specific ones.  Daddy didn’t sing, but he would play the violin while we sang

Daddy worked very hard.  When he was repairing furniture he would also go and pick fruit and then sell it.  Janice and I went to sell it.  I always stood back and made Janice go to the door

I weighed only 95 pounds when Henry and I married.  I was 5’5” and was 17-and- a-half years old.  I was taking finals and Henry came about 2:30 in the afternoon.  He asked if I would wait for him while he went to Bible School at Cleveland.  I told him I wouldn’t wait, so he asked me to marry him them. Henry was 24 years old.  We got married about three hours later at 7:00 PM.  We went to Vernon to get the marriage license.  My mother had to sign for me.  Henry didn’t have the two dollars for the license so my mother paid for it.  (Henry never paid her back.)  Mother then took a suit I had just bought and we fixed that up for a wedding dress.  I had paid it out at $1.98 a week.  We got married at Willie Lee Darter’s house over on Ida Street; she was Henry’s oldest sister.  She helped Mother to fix the dinner – although, we had the actual dinner at the house of Henry’s grandmother, Fannie and H.B. Scales.  Janice and Donald married two weeks later.  We spent the first night at Willie Lee Darter’s house.  Henry and his brother Avril Jay took off to Tennessee Bible Training School and College in Sevierville, Tennessee to be an accountant and I followed two weeks later after Janice and Donald were married.

When I went to Tennessee, Henry and I lived in one room we rented in the attic of a house.  We had to come downstairs to go to the bathroom.  I finished High School there.  I was really homesick because I had never been away from home.  We got to travel to the Smokies.  It was really enjoyable.  We would get on the bus on the weekend and travel. We later on moved downstairs in the same house with one bedroom and a kitchen and we shared the bathroom with the rest of the house.

Henry had saved $3,000 – $4,000 while he was in service four years and had sent it to Willie Lee, his sister, to keep for him.  She put it in savings so Henry and I lived off that while he went to college.  Money was not really a problem.  We stayed where we were because that was all we could get.  It was a tiny town.  Henry had gone one whole year there already at the college before he went into the service.  Willie Lee had sent him up there and paid for it so after the naval service, he wanted to continue.  We stayed a half term from January to May.  I graduated from High School there and Henry doubled up and got credit for a whole year of bookkeeping.

After school was out, we had to come home because there was no summer school.  I was pregnant with Hugh Edward.  We came and stayed a week or so with Mother and Dad in Wichita Falls, the house Daddy built on 30^th street in the Hillcrest addition with 7-foot ceilings.  Daddy drove back and forth from Electra to build it.  We then went to Olney and Henry worked as bookkeeper for Chriswell and Duggan, a construction company.  First, we lived in some apartments that were once barrack buildings.  They built a section of houses in Olney.  You couldn’t get wood so they made block houses with the blocks the construction company made.  We were there until 1955.

Chriswell and Duggan folded and Henry took a bookkeeping job with Shamburger Lumber, Co. He was manager at the Mergargel store.  Mergarel is halfway between Olney and Seymour.  He did this for several years and then came back to the Olney store doing the same job.  When the old man Shamburger died, his wife began to sell out the business, so Henry went back into the service.

… At this point, Aunt Wanda grew tired and the conversation shifted to something else…

But their lives went on.  Another child was born, Rusty McClure.  They lived in Norfork, Virginia and San Diego, California.  Henry retired from the Navy and they came back to Olney to work for awhile managing a motel.  Finally, they moved back to Electra to their current house on South Main Street.

Wanda Lee (Dougherty) McClure passed away, Monday, January 2, 2012 at the age of 83.  She lived her life as a homemaker.  She was the last of the children in her immediate family, being preceded in death several years ago by younger brother Harold Gene Dougherty, and only within the last two years by sister, Lillian Janice (Dougherty) Givens, and older brother Johnny Ray Dougherty.

She is preceded in death by her youngest son, Ira Andrew (Rusty) McClure.  She is survived by her husband of almost 66 years, Henry McClure of Electra.

She is also survived by her oldest son, Hugh McClure of Coalinga, California; four grandchildren, Clifford, Tiffany, Harold, and Eddie; four great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is expert at garnering public favor.  With competitive budgets on high alert, Congressional approbation strides front and center.  That is why you hear so little about the International Space Station; its astronomical expenditures are so disproportionate to its accomplishments that even Congress is aghast.  At this time of the year, NASA announcements lean to the exciting, usually the exaggerated.  Some might say, the optimistic futuristic.

Such is the case with NASA’s announced discovery of “earth-like planets.”

The search for planets and the search for life on other planets has always caught the imagination of the public, so that is where the NASA give-us-more-funding-press-releases gravitate.  Two years ago, it was searching for evidence for past microscopic life on Mars.  Now, it is the search for planets that might nurture carbon-based life.  So, what has been done?  Are there other planets like earth?  Is there life on other planets?  What are the facts?

First, what is a planet?  Astronomers now consider that a planet must satisfy three criteria,

1. It must orbit around a star (like our sun).
2. It must have sufficient mass to assume a mostly spherical shape.
3. It must have sufficient gravity to “clear” the space around it.

Poor little Pluto could not accomplish number three, so it has been demoted.  It does have four moons, though, the largest being Charon.  However, Pluto and Charon orbit around each other a lot like two ice skaters clinging and slinging one-another around in circles.   That leaves our solar system with eight planets, named in order of increasing distance from the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Measured to within a few degrees, all eight planets orbit the sun in the same plane, called the ecliptic.  In layman’s terms, the sun and eight planets would fit into a giant celestial pancake, not very thick.  All the planetary orbits lie inside the pancake.

In the 1980’s, Carl Sagan was a popular guest on talk shows.  He was an astronomer whose style, if he were not an atheist, might be confused with a televangelist.  Sagan was the first president of the Planetary Society.  Sagan promoted SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).  Sagan was prominent in designing the contents of the NASA time capsule sent out into space.  A common Sagan “sound bite” was “billions and billions of planets out there, in space, just like our Earth that might have life.”

Here is how he came to that number.  The current estimate is that there are about 250 billion stars (like our sun) in the Milky Way, alone.  The Milky Way is our galaxy, a spiral; it is the bright band of light seen on a dark night.

Scientists further estimate that the universe contains about 200 billion galaxies like the Milky Way.  That would mean there are fifty thousand billion, billion (50 x 10²¹) stars out there like our sun.  Each star might have several planets, but some stars might have no planets.  Even if a star had planets, those planets might be too close or too far from their star to sustain life.  Maybe only 1 in every 50,000 stars has a planet orbiting it with life on the planet.  (That number is just plucked out of the thin air but keep reading.)  That leaves you with roughly a billion billion (1 x 10¹⁸) planets in the universe that might have the same conditions as earth.  Thus, Sagan came up with the “billions and billions.”  Is this a true estimate?

For reference, a person with 20/20 vision, on a dark night, standing in a dark place, can see about 3,000 stars.  But, that is just on one side of the earth.  So, count the other side and then realize there are about 6,000 stars visible to the unaided eye.  Buy a reasonably priced pair of binoculars and you will increase the number to around 100,000 stars.  A few calculations and studying the Hubble telescope pictures will convince you the number of stars in the universe is truly astronomical.  How many?

Well, the number of stars in the Milky Way, 250 billion, is probably a reasonable estimate based on what we can see and estimate.

The number of galaxies in the universe, estimated to be 200 billion, is a much more “iffy” thing, but that number also is based on what can been seen on earth and with the Hubble telescope.  It is the best estimate we can make until we get more data.  Whatever the correct number, the number of galaxies is large beyond current measure.

How many of these galaxies have planets that might sustain life?  That is anyone’s guess.  In the last 20 years, evidence seems to indicate that the conditions for sustainable life may be far rarer than we originally thought.  Thus, Sagan’s estimate is probably very much on the high end, but the number of possible planets that might have sustainable life is still billions or greater.

So, back to NASA, what evidence do we have that other planets even exist?  In March, 2009, NASA launched the planet-hunting Kepler telescope with the specific purpose of looking for other planets.

The closest star to earth (other than the sun) is Proxima in the Centauri constellation.  It is 4.3 light years away.  In other words, if you travelled at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) it would take four years and four months to get there.  That is the closest star outside our solar system.  The reason we can see anything at all that far away is because stars emit light.  We are looking at a “sun” that far away.  Planets do not emit light, they can only reflect light from their parent star.  The light reflected from any planet outside our solar system is too faint to be seen using current technology.  Thus, we can only detect a planet if it passes directly in front of its star, blocking some of the light and effectively “dimming” the star “momentarily.”

You will quickly reason that if someone were looking at our sun in the same manner, you could only see the planets if the edge of the pancake were turned exactly in your direction and you were viewing “edge-on.”  Thus, Kepler can look at many stars, but can only detect a possible planet if the orbital plane of that planet lies directly in its line of sight.

But, once you detect a star that does periodically dim, you can tell quite a lot.

The size of the star is determined by three things, namely, 1.) the amount of light it produces, 2.) its distance (determined from parallax, red shift and other data), and 3.) the (spectral) color of its emitted radiation.  All this also permits you to calculate how much heat the star produces.

The planet’s size is calculated by how long the dimming lasts.  The size of the planet’s orbit is determined by how much time elapses between the “dimmings.”  Finally, you can then tell the temperature on the planet by knowing the size of the star and the thus-derived orbital characteristics of the planet.

To date, Kepler has monitored about 150,000 stars.  It has detected more than 2,000 planets, but those planets are so huge that their gravity would crush any kind of life.  Kepler has found ONE star whose “dimmings” indicate it has two earth-SIZED planets.  But, both these earth-sized planets orbit closer to their parent star than Mercury does to our sun.  The possibility for sustaining carbon-based life on either of these planets is zero because they are far too hot, like Mercury.  Kepler has found ONE other star whose “dimmings” indicate it has a  planet orbiting in the “temperate” zone of its star, but that planet is HUGE and not a candidate for life.  Forty-eight other candidates are targeted as “stars of interest.”

This is  not sufficient evidence to get excited, unless you are NASA seeking Congressional support for its $600 million Kepler telescope.

Are there earth-like planets orbiting others stars with the same relative conditions as earth orbiting the sun?  Are there other planets that might sustain carbon-based life?  Numerical calculations using billions of stars and billions of galaxies would indicate, “Yes, there could be.”  Evidence says, “We do not know at this time.”  If such planets exist, do they or could they support carbon-based life?  That knowledge is still in the future, but we are collecting data to try to answer that question.

At this point, we have not detected a planet with similar conditions to earth.  Detecting one is on the fringe of Kepler’s capabilities.  At this point, we have not detected any evidence of life anywhere else in the universe.  That does not mean there are not planets and there is not life, just that we have not detected any.  By the same token, it does not mean they exist, either.  We are beginning to detect large planets around some stars.  That is about all we can say for certain.

In the meantime, look for more announcements as NASA follows the waxing and waning of the Congressional budgets.  Keep in mind that the operative words, right now, regarding earth-sized, life-sustaining planets, are the words might and could.  New technologies are required to say anything definitive.  By the same token, it is not hocus-pocus.  It is not difficult to understand the concepts.  This is an area of valid, exciting research.  Just keep your scientific mind open and not shuttered by the shining and dimming of Congressional and public interest and NASA’s desire to get budget approval.

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If we collected all the insects in the world and distributed them evenly, each person on Earth would get about 15 billion crawly creatures of their very own.  Married couples would get 30 billion, of course, and parents would get an additional 15 billion for each child.  (This could reinvigorate planned parenthood.)

I think I am on to something.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) conceived the idea of putting remote controls on a flying insect, attaching a miniature camera, and creating the “spy fly.”  Ha, ha, aka lesser known as the cyborg beetle.

The University of Michigan, working on government funding one would suppose, came up with a better plan.  They convert bugs into batteries.  Well, of course, it is still experimental, but they plant little coiled spiral wires on the back of the Green June Beetle, the Cotinis nitida (Linnaeus).  This is a much prettier bug than the cyborg beetle.  The rapidly moving wings of the Green June Beetle (GJB) cause the rods to oscillate, energizing a piezoelectric (pee-AZO-electric) crystal, and produce energy.  This energy can be transmitted elsewhere or used, in situ, to operate tiny electronics.

How long does the bugger (I mean battery) last?  Well, I guess as long as the beetle lives.  That would be about three years, assuming your lawn survives to munch on.

How powerful is this little green giant?  Well, if he is well fed and energetic, he can churn about 45 microwatts (45 one-thousandth of a milliwatt).  That is not much energy, but then again, we have allocated 15 billion bugs to you.  If you are smart and ask for your entire allotment in GJB’s, you can harness your little team (uneducated southerners call them “swarms”) to generate about 225 kilowatts of electricity.  This would be enough enough energy to run an entire community.

(Advisors from the ACLU and SPCA were, of course, on hand during my calculations.  No bug would be permitted to work more than eight hours a day.  The rest of their time would be spent ingesting your lawn and producing little young’uns.  While no bugs were killed in my research the rules of the ADA Act of 1990 had to be swept under the rug because little GJB’s do not take kindly to gluing devices on them.)

Now, an even better idea than the GJB Battery is the use of cockroach spies.  They are not as pretty as the Green June Beetle but more useful, as you shall see.  The cameras are a little large now, but with a tad more miniaturization you would have the perfect spy machine.  Since those nasty creatures can crawl through any crack imaginable, you just release them in the room at lunch time and all the secretaries depart screaming.  A woman’s natural inclination will be not to even get near your R-Team.  You can spy in peace.  Pretty soon your guys are crawling into every file cabinet and drawer and taking pictures of, well, who knows what?  You know, secret documents and the like.  The real truth behind the JFK assassination, what the Air Force did with the Roswell aliens, and where Elvis is.

This idea is going to make it big.

What I like about it is all those bugs that used to bug you can now bug you.

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While the name is neither apropos nor descriptive, the moniker ‘God Particle’ sells newspapers and keeps particle physicists gainfully employed.  It has not the savour faire of black hole or pulsar. The name, ‘God Particle’ was coined by 1988 Nobel physicist, Leon Lederman, current director of Chicago’s Fermilab; he wrote a book by the same title.  (I found the book neither well-written nor adequately informative, even for a lay audience.)  The correct name for the particle is the Higgs Boson, but that lacks the anti-God affectation so seemingly necessary in today’s science.

Regardless, what is the Higgs Boson, aka ‘God Particle?’

It is a sub-atomic particle theorized by English physicist Peter Higgs, in 1964.   The Higgs Boson is hypothesized to transmit the force of gravity from one mass to another.  The particle may or may not exist.  That is the reason for the current excitement.  Physicists are on the brink of discovering it.  Or, perhaps not.

When Isaac Newton first published the Principia in 1687, he quantified the force that governs masses, namely gravity.  What keeps the moon in its orbit?  Gravity.  What holds the Milky Way galaxy in a spiral?  Gravity.  What keeps you from flying out of your chair and sailing off into space?  Gravity.  So, Newton came up with some very good equations to describe gravity, but one problem bothered him to the day he died, something he called action-at-a-distance.  Namely, how does gravity get from here to the moon?  How does the moon, being up there, know the earth is over here trying to pull on it?  And, what is it, exactly, that is doing the pulling?  And, why cannot it push as well as pull?

No one had a better answer until, in 1916, Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity.  Einstein said that space (spacetime) is not just an empty construct.  There is a “fabric” to space that governs how masses behave.  (Which, of course clearly means there is no such thing as empty space.  But, save that for another day.)

Then, between 1928 and about 1950, the field of quantum mechanics arose.  We found that nature consisted not just of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but all kinds of things, like neutrinos, muons, photons, gluons, and quarks, to name a few.

So, suffice it to say that at the current time, it is believed that a particle, the so-called Higgs Boson, is transmitted at the speed of light from one mass to another and that is how gravity information gets sent.  But, where are these particles?  Why have we not seen them?  How do we prove they exist?

Simple.  Find the Higgs Boson.

How do we do that?

First, you build something called a particle accelerator and name it the LHC for Large Hadron Collider.  That will take a few billions dollars to build and require several thousand physicists to run.  Not to mentions the thousands of engineers, construction workers, food service, gas stations, and shops to support the people.

The LHC is an underground circle, 17 miles long, that straddles the French-Swiss border near Geneva.  The entire facility and support organization is called by the acronym, CERN, which translates from French as European Council for Nuclear Research.  It is the only laboratory like it in the entire word, probably because most countries do not have several billion dollars to spend on creating real jobs.  The US was going to build a similar accelerator in Texas and call it the Superconducting Supercollider.  But, that would have provided tens of thousands of high-technology jobs for the unemployed in the US and would have brought us to the forefront of international science, again.   But, that idea was scrapped so we could bail out the banks, save the spotted owl, fund more wars, and fatten more pork for Congress.

The LHC physicists at CERN reported this week that they may be on the track of the Higgs Boson.  They believe it is a massive particle, by sub-atomic standards, about 134 times the mass of the proton.  It will be several months before the CERN physicists know for sure.

If they do find the Higgs Boson, it will be the discovery of the century, because that will confirm the current theory of how gravity works.   Which would then mean that we have tons more work to do to refine the theoretical models.

If they do not find the Higgs Boson, it will be the discovery of the century, because that will mean we have yet to discover what might be transmitting the force of gravity and how.

So, Higgs Boson, here we come.

P.S.  At this point in my physics lectures, some students always raise their hands and ask, “But, what it the practical use of all this?”  Practical?  Hmmm.  Let us see.  That same question was asked some years back about electricity.  (Don’t experiment with electricity!  It might not be practical!)  That same question was also asked about the transistor.  (Smash all your cell phones, iPads, and computers, lads!)  It was also asked about the theory of relativity, which is required to run the navigation systems in your car and just about everything else we transmit globally.

Perhaps we should not take questions until we at least know if we have found the Higgs Boson.

P.S.S.  A “boson” is not something you call your spouse.  It is a general classification of sub-atomic particles.  I left that out because it seemed unnecessary to the point.

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While this is the time of the year for Christmas angels, I’m better acquainted with those earth-dwellers known as angel investors.  Angels are affluent individuals who are willing to invest their money in your idea in return for sharing the profits.

Suppose you have an idea and want to make money on it.  In a later article, I will talk about developing the idea.  In my book, you can learn how to sell the idea.  Today, we discuss funding.  How do you get funding?

If you question ten people at random, at least two of them will confess to having an idea (invention concept) that could make “lots of money.”  There are thousands upon thousands of people with ideas, many good ideas.  What makes your idea different?  It has to start with you.

You must be able to ignite your idea.  You must bring it to life, Doktor Frankenstein.  You must build a prototype or develop the concept beyond a pencil drawing on a Big Chief tablet.

How do you get funding for this prototype?  How do you get started?  It requires money to develop the idea and get it off the ground.

Most ideas require a minimum of $50,000 – $100,000 before they can take on any life of their own.  How do you get this kind of money?

Step One: You invest your own money.  Period.  No substitutes.  Forget OPM sales hoopla.  It will be virtually impossible to get funding from someone else if you are unwilling to invest your own dough in your own idea.

“But,” you say, “what if I do not have money to invest?”

Well, you are out of luck, plain and simple.  Trash your idea and get on with life.

People who sell their ideas eat sandwiches for lunch, drive an older car, take a second job, and do whatever it takes to raise the money.  The new Lexus will have to wait until you are successful.  If you are unwilling to discipline your own spending, do not expect others to dish out their money for you to waste.  There are plenty of other people with ideas just as good as yours who are willing to make the sacrifices required.

I am not speaking of borrowed capital.  That is next.  This is about creating and investing your own moolah into your idea. This is the money you did not waste on a second iPhone or the unlimited-texting cell phone plan.  One thing all investors look for is this: is this inventor committed?  Does this inventor have a real plan and can he/she make it happen?  Investors require that you have some “skin in the game.”   Borrowed money is not your skin.  In fact, if you find an investor who does not require skin in the game, run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.  That “investor” plans to take your money.

You must be able to save and put a few thousand dollars of your own money into your own invention or idea

Step Two: You must borrow money.  You will need another $10,000 – $50,000 to get your prototype built, create a marketing plan, and put together pro forma financials.  A pro forma is a time-phased projection of your planned investments, projected sales revenue, expenses, and return on investment.  You will also need to create confidentiality agreements and put other legal protection in place so your idea does not get stolen.

You will need to mortgage your house, borrow from a friend, take a note at the bank, or sweet-talk your brother-in-law.  Do not borrow from IRA’s or other investments that penalize early withdrawal.  Investors want you to have some financial savvy.  Thou Shalt Not Do Dumb Things!

By the time you finish step two, you will have exhausted all your personal funds and all your friends.  You are in debt, but you still own all the rights in invention.  You have a prototype, a marketing plan, maybe some experimental data, drawings, and other artifacts of value.  None of your creditors, hopefully, has any rights to your idea.  You simply owe them money.  In order to take a product to market, though, most ideas will need an additional $50,000 – $2,500,000.  How do you get that kind of funding?

Step Three: Angel Investors.  Angel investors listen to your idea and determine if they are willing to fund your project to the next step.  They are typically willing to invest $50,000 – $1,000,000.  The average angel investment today, per start-up idea, is about $340,000.  What do the angels get for their investment?  A piece of the action.  They will own rights to your invention.  How much rights is something you negotiate depending upon the size of the investment, how desperate you are, and how quickly you think the “window of opportunity” is closing.

Angels look for a return of about 10 times their investment within the first five years.  Very few angels get this return, of course, but every idea they investigate is evaluated against this standard

Some angels pool their funds and network together to reduce their risks.  There are about 15,000 investors pooled in a number of such entities.  While I am not recommending any particular fund, ARC Angel Fund has such a cute name it has to be included this time of the year.

Step Four: Venture Capital.  Venture capitalists are usually not interested in investments less that a million dollars.  In my experience, venture capitalists look for investments that double their money in 1-2 years.  This is a terribly high hurdle that most inventions cannot scale.  Statistics show that across all venture capital money invested, the average return is only about 13%.  This is because 40% of the ideas succumb to sudden infant death while 30% linger comatose for about two years before they slowly and painfully die.  Only 30% of the funded ideas survive and become self-sustaining.  Those kind of statistics plummet the average.

In today’s environment, venture capital is strained.  Today, almost three-fourths of venture capitalists expect the total investment dollars to either remain the same in 2012, or decline.  That means higher scrutiny for your idea because less money will be available.

If all this sounds formidable, it is.  However, if you do nothing, I can assure that no investor will clairvoyantly contact you begging to channel money into your idea.  To the Persuasive Wizard, “difficult” and “formidable” are merely joyous stimulants.  They doeth good, like a medicine.

Order from Amazon.com, The Persuasive Wizard: How Technical Experts Sell Their Ideas, for the low price of $12.95.  Now available in Kindle e-book for $7.45.  The Persuasive Wizard is an excellent gift for anyone seeking a better job, a raise in their current job, investment funding, or just needing to persuade others.

Since the 1970’s, the military has used drone aircraft for surveillance, targeting, and even attack.  A drone is flown by a certified pilot on the ground using a joystick.  A pilot can sometimes fly two or more vehicles at once.  Initially, these flying spies and weapons were called UAV’s, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.  Such nomenclature was anathema to the feminists, so in 2009 the politically-correct Air Force officially renamed them Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPV).

The more common name is Drone.

Now, a drone is a male honey bee that develops from unfertilized eggs.  His eyes are twice as large as the female’s.  The female bees have stingers and do all the work.  The drone has no stinger and does no work.  The purpose of the drone is solely to fertilize the queen.  Whereby, one must envision feminists ignorant of apiculture.

Most civilians think of UAV’s (RPV’s, drones) as very large aircraft.  UAV’s can be, and some are, very large.  However, in recent years the drone has shrunk to smaller and smaller dimensions and often is only a large model airplane.  Some versions are little helicopters with wingspans of only five or six feet, bodies the size of a file drawer, and a total weight with cameras and sensors of only about 50 pounds (23 kg).

The big news hitting us, today, is that drones are being sold to law enforcement.  Yes, law enforcement.  Vanguard Defense Industries, LLC. (Vanguard), in Conroe, Texas (about sixty miles north of Houston) makes a helicopter drone called the Shadowhawk.  Currently, the one-off cost is about $300,000.  Vanguard has teamed up with Texas A&M University, about sixty miles to the west, to collaborate on research and to secure government grants. Conroe is the county seat of Montgomery County and in that county law enforcement (called sheriffs in Texas) are testing the Vanguard drones.

While, in theory, Vanguard releases specifications only to military or law enforcement, I viewed a video and conclude the following.  The altitude limit is stated to be 8,000 feet but the surveillance video was taken at more like 1,000 feet.  At 1,000 feet, the little helicopter drone could read the license plate of a car and do a credible job at identifying perpetrators.  The night camera was infrared and not nearly as high resolution, but still impressive.  I would think that at 1,000 feet a perpetrator could hear the sound of the rotors without much difficulty.  In the country it would be a problem, but in a busy city the sound might not be so noticeable.  The idea, I would imagine, is to expand the use of the drone to surreptitious surveillance.  For a little more money, I’m certain I could make it quieter.

There is no doubt (in my estimation) that this drone could be made and sold for a few tens of thousands of dollars plus the cost of the cameras.  The Wall Street Journal printed an article on the drones with Vanguard-supplied information and photographs. Vanguard also released videos to the news media.  Clearly, Vanguard is ready to sell the devices for money.  Arlington, Columbia (S.C.), and Miami-Dade law enforcement already have drones in use.  They prefer to call them “small unmanned aircraft,” thinking that sounds better than “drone.”

All this does make 1984 and Big Brother seem apropos of fulfillment.  So, as I implied in my earlier article, even I am now concerned about invasion of privacy.  Is there no place sacred?

Maybe you are not as concerned as I am.  Perhaps I should dilate.  Is law enforcement restricted to using these for chase?  No.  What about surveillance? Does law enforcement suddenly have a right to observe everything you do, anywhere, anytime?  No.  Should each law enforcement group be permitted to make their own rules?  No.

Now that these drones are in the hands of the lawful, how long do you think it will be before they pass into the hands of the unlawful?  Days.  How might drones be used in the creative hands of the unlawful?  Maybe surveillance? Scoping a crime scene?  Blackmail?  Maybe attaching a weapon alongside the camera?

Are you concerned, yet?

P.S.  If law enforcement needs help, and I do not argue that point, then let us put the effort into legal reform, not drone acquisition.