This has not been a good week. Or to be more exact, the past three years since 9/11 have not been good but ony because of over reaction on the part of the Bush administration.

Some people seem to think I am angry, well, I am. I admit it but one gets over anger. Can one get over ignorance? Perhaps if one tries but then one must realize that he or she is in error and try to make amends. My complaints about Bush & Co. have less to do with his policies than the man himself. I could have voted for John McCain for president very easily. I have voted Republican at times in the past and they were people I respected. Unfortunately I do not see George W. Bush in the same light. Even our bumbling and dishonest Richard M. Nixon was not so irritating. In fact, he was amusing at times. Also, I seldom agreed with George H. W. Bush but the old adage of "like father, like son" certainly does not apply in this family. I respected the elder Bush but not the son.

Unfortunately, since Bush decided to go it alone and not listen to the governments in France and Germany, there has been a lot of Francophobia in existence and it still exists to this day. I even had one person tell me about all the important things our country has invented at which points he names a few and then goes on to say that these are things to help and improve the life of people all over the world and that no country on earth has done so much. Well, we did end up with a lot immigrants from Europe in the 18th and 19th Centures and beyond so it is natural that during these fast changing times of the industrial revolution and later the age of electronics, that this fast growing nation produced a lot of new inventions. Unfortunately this denigrates the inventions and discoveries in other countries. Since one person really seem to have it in for the French in a recent e-mail to me, I would like to list major inventions coming out of France.

They are, in alphabetical order:

*Adding machine - 1642 - Pascal

Airship - 1852 - Giffard

Balloon - 1783 - Montgolfier

Braile printing - 1829 - Braile

Gyroscope - 1852 - Foucault

Hydrometer - 1768 - Baume

Lamp, neon - 1909 - Claude

Microcomputer - 1973 - Truong, et al

Oleomargarine - 1869 - Mege-Mourlies

Parachute - 1785 - Blanchard

*Photography - 1816 - Niepce

*Photography - 1835 - Daguerre

Piano, player - 1864 - Fourneaux

Rayon (cuprammonium) - 1890 - Despeissis

Rayon (nitrocellulose) - 1884 - Chardonnet

*Steamboat, experimental - 1778 - Jouffroy

Steam Car - 1770 - Cugnot

Stethoscope - 1819 - Laennec

Storage Battery, rechargeable - 1859 - Plante

*Thermometer - 1730 - 1730 - Reaumur

Turbine, gas - 1849 - Bourdin

Wind tunnel - 1912 - Eiffel

* indicates item was developed by several people in several countries at differing times.

The most important invention for many people however is paper and that was invented in China in 105 by someone named Ts'ai.

If I had listed German inventions here this list be twice as long. As it turns out, I don't have any lists of medical advances to go to but most people are familiar with Louis Pasteur I am sure.

So it really irks me when people hold up this country as being the only one to have contributed to the welfare of the world. A country's value should be tied to the number of its inventions. And remember, it was France who helped the new colonies win the Revolutionary War against England and it was France that gave us the Statue of Liberty.

I sincerely hope that the divisions in this country can be healed but I honestly doubt that Bush is capable of doing that. Karl Rove is behind a lot of the shenanigans of the past four years and as long as he and the conservative Christian right are in charge, they will run roughshod over everyone and everything. This is what worries me most.

One question at this point. Once the dust settles how are they going to treat Iran and North Korea with regard to their nuclear capabilities?