Recently, on different days, I have had two visitors, both women, who have commented on the lack of initiative or motivation, not to mention the ability to perceive the relationship between cause and effect, among their young male acquaintances. They mention similar lacks among the older young men they know who are still living (nesting) with their parents, and their teen age acquaintances whose only ambition appears to be to get a higher score or position in an online video game. Everything else is boring to them.

This is a re-run of a popular November 2006 article because of the imminent arrival of the movie this week of the Half Blood Prince. The article was written before the publishing of the last book in 2007 and I have left the speculations in that I made at the time.

Any magician can use the material in the Harry Potter books, though the visual results are not Hollywood fireworks but changes of conscious state, which is the aim of spells. Here we go.

I have been an AARP member for twenty five years or more and their magazine often has interesting material over those years concerning scams that are directed to older folks.

Some are obvious to any alert person who isn’t likely to give Social Security number or credit card numbers to every sweet voiced Southern girl who rings just to check something out for you. Some are harder to believe, like the number of priests who have managed to persuade widows and sometimes widowers to will their property to the ever present and persistent cleric.

Someone who knows I love playing with words sent me this. I pass it on for those who enjoy this sort of thing. The caps were in the original.

1. DON'T SWEAT THE PETTY THINGS AND DON'T PET THE SWEATY THINGS.

2. ONE TEQUILA, TWO TEQUILA, THREE TEQUILA, FLOOR.

3. ATHEISM IS A NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATION.

4. IF MAN EVOLVED FROM MONKEYS AND APES, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE MONKEYS AND APES?

5. THE MAIN REASON THAT SANTA IS SO JOLLY IS BECAUSE HE KNOWS WHERE ALL THE BAD GIRLS LIVE.

Having lived in England for forty years, and in France for a while and Canada for some teaching, I experienced the way the health care was organized. Neither my mother nor myself would have survived in this country where every possible cent is squeezed out of every possible person for health care, except for those making the laws and those breaking the laws.

Well informed people like myself, and I’m not ashamed of being informed and intelligent, do get weary talking to deaf ears, especially when the owners of those ears are in a clearly observable danger situation and yet refuse to listen to any warnings. Yet those same deaf to health advice ears listen intently to well financed scare tactics from groups that will benefit financially from the induced fears. After all I saw it on Tele.

Well informed people like myself, and I’m not ashamed of being informed and intelligent, do get weary talking to deaf ears, especially when the owners of those ears are in a clearly observable danger situation and yet refuse to listen to any warnings. Yet those same deaf to health advice ears listen intently to well financed scare tactics from groups that will benefit financially from the induced fears. After all I saw it on Tele.