Hi John,

You know that song that says, "sometimes it's hard to be a woman?" Well, its all true. One day I think I'll write one that says, "Sometimes it's hard to be a scientist" only with a little tongue in cheek.

For a group of people who earn very little money, the ego factor is extremely high. I have yet to discover why that is. One of my first thoughts this morning was that the USGS needed a little help in the "world of color." In looking at the earthquake maps I saw only red, blue and yellow and thought, geez, its good scientists aren't artists.

Imagine earthquakes of various magnitudes in other colors, rather than by length of time since an earthquake occurred. We could for instance have 4.0 quakes as purple, 3's as green, 2's as orange and 1's at pink. Then when you have a swarm of quakes its easier to tell what the sizes of the aftershocks are by the colors. In the Internet medium, with a world of color at arms length, why should be limited to only 3 colors?

Anyway, as you haven't been around here very long, you missed out on my commentary about my escapades with Ford Motor Company. I got my first ticket ever after having stereo unit #2 installed in my car. I'm driving down a large street in Santa Rosa and suddenly the information bar goes crazy and my CD literally flew out of the machine. Of course right about then I approached a cross walk. Being in the left of two lanes, just as my tires reached the yellow line, a young man who was about 20 put his foot onto the pavement. I hit the brakes and he came up to my car, hit it with his hand and said, "you're going to get yours." Immediately I did, it came with red lights and a siren and a police officer screaming at me and asking if I saw the flashing yellow light." I didn't think it was a good time to tell him my stereo unit went crazy, so I took the ticket.

Unbeknownst to me after paying the $136.00 fine, $55.00 for traffic school and attending the school on a Saturday did I learn it was a police sting and it had been all over the papers and the TV. It was an deliberate effort to write more tickets.

So after that I went back to Ford and told them their little stereo netted me a lot more than I expected and the service rep said, "you know, if you keep putting the CD's in upside down, they will keep flying out." I was not pleased.

Unit #3 wouldn't work when cold, or when the car got warm either.

Unit #4 upon delivery didn't work at all. As I sat there the night before Thanksgiving checking to see if it worked before I left the dealership, I put in a brand new CD I unwrapped at that very moment and it wouldn't work. I tried a used one, it didn't work either, so I went back inside and told the jokester it didn't work. He comes out to the car, I showed him the performance of the other two CD's and he says for me to wait. About 3 minutes later after having walked to his car and getting one of his personal CD's in puts it into the car and says, "you're right, it doesn't work." He promised to order another one. (thank goodness they hadn't worked on the brakes and delivered a car without checking them.)

Of course he forgot and two weeks later the customer service person called and wanted to know how satisfied I was with my service. You can imagine my response.

So a week later Unit #5 was installed. It worked for 3 months until the information bar went out. So I thought long and hard about the problem and decided for nearly a year I would just ignore it. I wasn't up to what might happen again.

But I decided a few weeks ago I was going to get another car and yet I didn't want to lose any money on a stereo that didn't work, so I went there again. This time writing the top service manager a letter and telling him I would not return to his dealership for installation and to have a unit shipped to Sonoma. Guess what, no response. (can you imagine?)

Well, being persistent as I am, I called him. Within a week, the stereo unit #6 arrived, was shipped and I got it installed in 10 minutes at the other dealership. Not the usual 45 minutes to an hour and gosh, they were nice to.

In American woman have more buying power than men, yet more often than not we receive the worst service. Often ignored, nearly shoved into the back of the bus, and all the while we keep singing "I know I'm not in Dixie, hurah, hurah."

It is no wonder the world is upon the brink of war again. In the majority, people don't wish to take responsibility for anything they do, or should do and don't. We have come so far in so many area's of life and yet there are miles to go because the majority just doesn't give a horses ass about the important part of being a citizen on planet Earth.

I would never in my life want to be a scientist because it is so limiting in so many respects. From Gallileo who became a prisoner in his own home because of his scientific discoveries of the universe, limits placed upon a scientist are so vast it would be difficult not to write vast volumes on their hardships in their work environment to their personal convictions.

Unlike most people who research and study science, I've been looking at the life of scientists for 4 years. I wanted to know what made a scientist chose that occupation, what makes it attractive, not so, and how they live a life in that environment. The results will be published at a later date. Fortunately, I am not limited in my research or my opinions. But I do have a very large heart and though I see a group wearing a substantial suit of armor, inside, they are just people.

Remember the Beatles song that said, "All You Need Is Love.?" That's the answer. If we all did everything in life because we loved what we did and we treated everyone else with respect because we loved them, there would be no war, no consumer issues, no starvation and no crime.

And so it goes....Petra hoping for Utopia, but knowning the path to getting there is very long.