I'm waiting here for the Direct TV guys or gals to come and install their satellite dish, hoping that the ones assigned to come here haven't been blown off a roof on one of their previous calls. The wind is positively raging out there. I wouldn't be surprised if it's gusting to sixty miles an hour as the weather people warned.
We used to restrict access to the flight deck on the Enterprise when winds over the deck exceeded 50 miles an hour, not an uncommon thing if we were steaming to get somewhere at twenty-five or thirty knots. At those kinds of wind speeds there was a real risk that an eddy would pick up a light sailor and fling him over the side. Not a good thing, even if he could swim and he was seen to go overboard. The flight deck was about sixty feet off the water.
At lower wind speeds we were often treated to the sight of a tall slim black sailor who liked to. . . Wow! I just saw a tree down by the pond break about ten feet off the ground and fall. That tree is about fourteen or sixteen inches in diameter, but it may have been weakened by rot. It's been dying and I've been thinking of cutting it for firewood for a couple of years. That's the first time I've ever witnessed the fall of a tree that I didn't cut myself or watch a neighbor cut.
I watched our neighbor on the right hand side as you go out the driveway fell an almost twenty four inch in diameter tree onto his house one day a few years ago. He didn't look like he knew what he was doing, and I almost went over to talk with him about the danger; but I didn't know him, so I figured it was best to keep quiet. He was lucky that the top of the trunk of that tree was rotted almost through because that caused the top to break off when it hit the house. If that top hadn't broken off it would have done a lot more damage. A two foot in diameter tree that's maybe eighty feet tall weighs a lot.
Anyway, that slim black guy on the Enterprise liked to position himself in the very center of the flight deck at the bow like a hood ornament. He would lean forward into the wind like a ski jumper. I never saw him from deck level but many was the hour that I glanced at him periodically from the bridge, wondering what was going on in his mind. When we were steaming up along the coast of South American toward San Francisco after going around the Horn he used to be out there much of the day almost every day that it was sunny.
Later, when we steamed across the Pacific he was again out there almost every sunny day, to the point where it was a standing joke for his status to be passed along to me when I relieved the Deck, and for me to report it on to my relief, along with course and speed, any expected changes of course or speed, any new standing order, any unusual conditions and such.
"The ship's hood ornament is in position and maintaining an approximately thirty degree lean into the forty knots of wind over the deck. The Captain is aware of his status." That's what I reported if the Captain had been on the bridge to personally observed the fellow during my watch as was usually the case. If the Captain hadn't been on the bridge I would tell my relief that "his status has not been reported to the Captain."
Captain Peterson used to glance at the hood ornament with his binoculars from time to time when he was reading message traffic or doing paperwork up in his chair on the Port wing of the bridge on such quiet days. The reason we knew for sure that the hood ornament's habit was okay was because the Captain had seen him and said nothing. And he wasn't the least bit shy about mentioning his preferences if he saw something he wanted changed. He had, for instance, given some very explicit direct orders the day we both noticed Seaman Recruit Johnson being escorted off the flight deck.
Johnson was still ambling around, obliviously taking pictures, quite a while after I had had the word passed over the 1MC for all nonessential personnel to stand clear of the flight deck. The Captain noticed Johnson from up in his chair. My Junior Officer of the Watch had the Conn and there was nothing except our escorts anywhere around the horizon; so I was free to quietly and discretely watch Johnson from a position a few feet behind the Captain's sea chair, hoping that he would get below before he was noticed by anyone else except the flight deck personnel who were assembling to do a FOD walkdown.
Very shortly thereafter Seaman Recruit Johnson was personally escorted to the bridge by the Chief Master at Arms and a Flight Deck Boatswain's Mate Chief after I informed the Captain that there was no reason to pass the word for his Division Officer to report to the Bridge since I was his Division Officer. Johnson was well meaning and willing, and more or less harmless; but he was also easily the dullest knife in my 50 man Deck Division, which was saying a lot. Captain Peterson merely grunted very meaningfully after I informed him of those facts in the appropriate technical human relations and supervisory terms.
A bit later Captain Peterson, who could become a bit volatile at times when provoked, had a surprisingly calm and quiet personal chat with Johnson, who had surely been coached by the Chief Master at Arms to properly request permission before entering the Bridge and whose chambray shirt was fully tucked fully into his pants, clear evidence of coaching. He was somewhat winded from his hasty several deck climb up to the Bridge. The two chiefs were less winded than Johnson; but they were a bit red-faced as they waited with me on the Starboard wing of the Bridge for the Captain to finish with Johnson. None of us would have been altogether surprised if the Captain had summarily ordered his Marine Adjutant to shoot Johnson right then and there; but as I said, the conversation stayed very calm; and it ended quite peacefully with Johnson marching over in an almost military fashion to report that the Captain wanted to talk to the Chief Master at Arms.
While we waited for the Captain to finish with the Master at Arms Johnson told me that the Captain had mostly asked him questions and talked with him about his home town, and why he joined the Navy, and how he liked the Navy and why he had been on the flight deck. Johnson also reported that the Captain had said he thought Johnson could be a real asset on the Mess Decks. He had also counselled Johnson that he really must make a special effort to listen up when announcements were made over the general announcing system, especially when he was on the flight deck or the hangar deck.
After Johnson and the Cheif Master at Arms left the bridge the Captain had a pointed little chat with me. Seaman Recruit Johnson, the Captain told me, was to be sent TAD to work with the mess cooks; but that would not to change the fact that he would remain a part of my division and thus my special responsibility. I was to meet with him briefly at regular intervals for counselling.
Thus it was that I got to know Seaman Recruit Johnson as well as I got to know any of the sailors in my Division. I met briefly with with him every couple of weeks for the remainder of the time I served in Enterprise; and I passed on the counselling duty to the Ensign who relieved me as Second Division Officer. If Johnson has continuously re-upped in the Navy for the past thirty- seven years he may still be mustering with the Second Division of the Deck Department; and he may still be being sent, every day, to do temporary duty assisting the mess cooks. He turned out to like that duty since he liked to eat and there were always sailors passing through the mess decks at all hours of the day and night to talk to.
As far as I'm aware Johnson got into no further trouble in the Navy except for the time when he was fingered as the sailor who almost surely opened a large valve in the salt water washdown piping system which he had no business touching. That earned me an invitation to briefly visit with the Engineering Officer in Main Control after a damage control party traced out the entire piping run and figured out why certain things happened which were not supposed to happen when the system was tested.
I had a somewhat intense counselling session with Johnson after that incident in which he admitted in his whipped puppy dog way that he "might" have turned the valve handle a little "to see what it did." He and I then walked the entirety of the area where he worked in the forward crews mess compartment looking at and talking briefly about every valve, switch and control that didn't have a lock on it. I extracted a very solemn promise from him that he would never again so much as touch a valve, a switch or a control without direct orders from a petty officer, and that further he would promptly report any such touching to me immediately. I warned him that the next time he came to my attention for any reason except muster and our regular little counselling sessions, I would take him up to the Bridge to see the Captain. I had no idea what sort of duty the Captain might assign him to in such an eventuality, I told him; but I was sure it would not be something pleasant like helping out on the mess decks.
From time to time thereafter Johnson would report to me that he had been required to touched a valve in the course of cleaning or painting or such, and I would have him lead me to the valve so I could inspect it and make him explicitly say that the valve wheel had not moved so much as a millimeter during the course of his touching it. Once when the valve involved was part of the aviation gasoline piping system I had Main Control send up a damage control technician to check the valve setting after thinking about it a bit despite Johnson's assurance that he had not turned the valve but had only polished it's brass nameplate as instructed; but I didn't let Johnson know that I doubted his word.
I never learned what division the hood ornament sailor was in. On the Bridge we suspected he was an aviation bosun's mate or some such in the air group from the fact that he had so much free time when aircraft weren't being moved around. He always left the flight deck before we passed the word for nonessential personnel to stand clear of the flight deck due to heavy winds. And he never lost his balance and fell over that I saw or heard of. He used to lean amazingly far forward at times.
Update 3:30 PM: On the other hand former Seaman Recruit Johnson may now be working for Direct TV. So far I've received about seven calls from their dispatcher asking me if their technician has arrived and I've received four calls from two different technicians assuring me that they're on their way; but there has as yet been no sign of either or any technician.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
We have a winner!
A fellow named Leon, the Sheriff of Richland County, South Carolina has conclusively won the title of World's Greatest Jackass. I'm not going to list the last name that the magazines and newspapers have been giving for him because jackasses don't have last names.
Sheriff Leon has now parlayed that picture of Michael Phelps smoking a bong into eight arrests, and he appears very willing to continue his crusade.
If someone slaps him smartly upside the head with a two by four to get his attention they would not be guilty of assault. At most they would be guilty of disorderly conduct and cruelty to animals.
http://www.wistv.com/global/story.asp?s=9814127&ClientType=Printable
People are being murdered, Congress is spending hundreds of billions, Geese are flying into the air intakes of jet planes; and half the news media in the country are spending their time on the fact that Michael Phelps went out and had a little fun after spending fifteen years of his life training and working more intensively every day than Sheriff Leon has ever worked a day in his life.
Come to think of it, hitting Sheriff Leon upside the head with a two by four would be a waste of effort. He's hopeless, entirely too stupid to pull a cart or carry a pack load. Somebody ought to walk him out back behind the barn and put him out of his misery.
Sheriff Leon has now parlayed that picture of Michael Phelps smoking a bong into eight arrests, and he appears very willing to continue his crusade.
If someone slaps him smartly upside the head with a two by four to get his attention they would not be guilty of assault. At most they would be guilty of disorderly conduct and cruelty to animals.
http://www.wistv.com/global/story.asp?s=9814127&ClientType=Printable
People are being murdered, Congress is spending hundreds of billions, Geese are flying into the air intakes of jet planes; and half the news media in the country are spending their time on the fact that Michael Phelps went out and had a little fun after spending fifteen years of his life training and working more intensively every day than Sheriff Leon has ever worked a day in his life.
Come to think of it, hitting Sheriff Leon upside the head with a two by four would be a waste of effort. He's hopeless, entirely too stupid to pull a cart or carry a pack load. Somebody ought to walk him out back behind the barn and put him out of his misery.
Nirvana
I'm happy to see that the Congresscritters are addressing the the nation's most pressing needs with this new stimulus package. Hopefully, The Villages will get in on some of the boodle to replace its rental fleet of gasoline powered golf carts. I've found that the annoying noise of a gasoline golf cart engine makes it hard for me to maintain a perfect sense of driving around in a dream when I'm down there.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02112009/news/politics/congress_hopping_carts_154496.htm
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02112009/news/politics/congress_hopping_carts_154496.htm
Throw another shrimp on the barbie
Back in the old, old, days the big men of the tribe used to react to problems by placating the gods. When the rains failed, or when there was too much rain, or when the tribe was faced with some other sort of disaster the big men would have their goons grab a virgin, or two or three, and throw them into the volcano where they believed, or professed to believe, that the gods lived. They did this to soothe the worries of the tribe. And, of course, they did it to preserve their own positions of power and prestige.
In these more enlightened times the big men no longer throw virgins on the barbie. Instead they burn great quantities of your money as their answer to worries on the part of the great herd of the common people. Deep down almost everybody knows that burning great quantities of money will have no more effect on the problems than burning virgins would; but it makes people feel better to see the government "doing something." And, of course, it dampens down the urge on the part of the common people to put the blame for problems where it belongs.
Last fall fifty plus percent of the American people very properly rose up and kicked out the tired old Republican administration that dithered while our current economic problems developed. But they failed to toss out the Congressional Democrats who were every bit as responsible, and perhaps even more responsible, for the problems.
In October, to placate the economic gods, the then Republican President and the Democratic Congress made a midnight rush deal to burn 700 Billion Dollars. Half of that money has already been burnt up with virtually nothing to show for it except for allowing incompetent bankers to party on for a few more months. Ironically, the very same politicians who voted to burn up that money are now the loudest in complaining that the money is going to banks that were and are run by incompetents. The other day the President proposed that the incompetent executives who ran their banks into the ground should be limited to no more than $500,000 a year in compensation. That, of course, begged the question of why those incompetent executives are still in charge of the banks.
And now, the new Democratic President and those same Democratic Congressmen who voted for the last big virgin burning are running around saying that it's urgent that they act quickly to burn up another 900 Billion Dollars. The Democrats in Congress who are fueling up the great big barbie on which to burn the $900 Billion are the very same Democrats who did a very great deal toward creating the economic problems by fueling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with unlimited money to pour into the mortgage markets and by requiring Fannie and Freddie and the other banks to make loans to people who could not afford to repay those loans.
So, thus far they've burned up about $700 Billion, and shortly they will start burning up another $900 Billion. By the time they're done these two rounds of virgin sacrifices they will have burned up about $5,300 for every man, woman and child in the country. Think about that, they could have sent out checks for over $5,000 to you and every other person in the country. They could have sent $20,000 to every family of four; but instead they decided to burn the money.
They will tell you that "The Treasury" is providing the money they've been burning and the further money they plan to burn; but there are only two ways "the Treasury" can lay its hands on Benjamins to throw onto the barbie. It has to borrow the money, in which case somewhere down the road you're going to be taxed to pay that money back. Or it can print the money, in which case somewhere not very far down the road you're going to find out that inflation has reduced even further the value of your retirement money.
Once the Benjamins are burned up they're gone, just like those virgins.
In these more enlightened times the big men no longer throw virgins on the barbie. Instead they burn great quantities of your money as their answer to worries on the part of the great herd of the common people. Deep down almost everybody knows that burning great quantities of money will have no more effect on the problems than burning virgins would; but it makes people feel better to see the government "doing something." And, of course, it dampens down the urge on the part of the common people to put the blame for problems where it belongs.
Last fall fifty plus percent of the American people very properly rose up and kicked out the tired old Republican administration that dithered while our current economic problems developed. But they failed to toss out the Congressional Democrats who were every bit as responsible, and perhaps even more responsible, for the problems.
In October, to placate the economic gods, the then Republican President and the Democratic Congress made a midnight rush deal to burn 700 Billion Dollars. Half of that money has already been burnt up with virtually nothing to show for it except for allowing incompetent bankers to party on for a few more months. Ironically, the very same politicians who voted to burn up that money are now the loudest in complaining that the money is going to banks that were and are run by incompetents. The other day the President proposed that the incompetent executives who ran their banks into the ground should be limited to no more than $500,000 a year in compensation. That, of course, begged the question of why those incompetent executives are still in charge of the banks.
And now, the new Democratic President and those same Democratic Congressmen who voted for the last big virgin burning are running around saying that it's urgent that they act quickly to burn up another 900 Billion Dollars. The Democrats in Congress who are fueling up the great big barbie on which to burn the $900 Billion are the very same Democrats who did a very great deal toward creating the economic problems by fueling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with unlimited money to pour into the mortgage markets and by requiring Fannie and Freddie and the other banks to make loans to people who could not afford to repay those loans.
So, thus far they've burned up about $700 Billion, and shortly they will start burning up another $900 Billion. By the time they're done these two rounds of virgin sacrifices they will have burned up about $5,300 for every man, woman and child in the country. Think about that, they could have sent out checks for over $5,000 to you and every other person in the country. They could have sent $20,000 to every family of four; but instead they decided to burn the money.
They will tell you that "The Treasury" is providing the money they've been burning and the further money they plan to burn; but there are only two ways "the Treasury" can lay its hands on Benjamins to throw onto the barbie. It has to borrow the money, in which case somewhere down the road you're going to be taxed to pay that money back. Or it can print the money, in which case somewhere not very far down the road you're going to find out that inflation has reduced even further the value of your retirement money.
Once the Benjamins are burned up they're gone, just like those virgins.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Stop the xenophobic mass murderers in Scotland
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090210/wl_uk_afp/environmentbritainanimalssquirrels_20090210131617
Who is to say Red Squirrels are better than Gray Squirrels? They're both skinny little rat like things.
And another thing - how can the world ever get along when the English insist on spelling things wrong? The crayon in the Crayola box was "gray" not "grey."
And yet another thing - all manner of European vermin were introduced into North America, so it's only fitting that tough American gray squirrels managed to make their way over to England where they have been kicking ass on their red cousins.
And a final thing - I bought my last ever pack of cigarettes a little while ago. I'm only allowed five butts today. I'm feeling about the way Cujo did when he first started noticing how tasty looking the legs of the children seemed. Along about the day after tomorrow I'll be ready to go over there to Scotland and bite the heads off as many gray squirrels as they want.
Who is to say Red Squirrels are better than Gray Squirrels? They're both skinny little rat like things.
And another thing - how can the world ever get along when the English insist on spelling things wrong? The crayon in the Crayola box was "gray" not "grey."
And yet another thing - all manner of European vermin were introduced into North America, so it's only fitting that tough American gray squirrels managed to make their way over to England where they have been kicking ass on their red cousins.
And a final thing - I bought my last ever pack of cigarettes a little while ago. I'm only allowed five butts today. I'm feeling about the way Cujo did when he first started noticing how tasty looking the legs of the children seemed. Along about the day after tomorrow I'll be ready to go over there to Scotland and bite the heads off as many gray squirrels as they want.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Withdrawal
I just put the Plum Duff on to steam for this afternoon's dinner with Dory and Phil. I'm making it in honor of Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin. It's their favorite ending to a meal. Linda rejected my suggestion of Lobscouse as the main course for today's dinner or we would have a complete old British Navy feast. I suspect that Linda will be getting Lobscouse for dinner one night this week or next week.
I'm about one week into withdrawal after finishing all 6,528 pages of Patrick O"Brian's twenty-One novel series. It's hard to believ that I averaged almost 200 pages per day; but the novels were very gripping. Taken as a whole they are very arguably the "best historical novels ever written," as that one reviewer asserted. Reading them in sequence was a rare treat and one day I'll return to them with a good world map at hand. They're well worth rereading.
But now I'm suffering withdrawal pangs. Over the past few days I read The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey; but it was a poor substitute. And now I've started Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg; but it doesn't have the same gripping quality as the Aubrey/Maturin series. I may pull out some of the old standbys and reread them as a palliative. I haven't read Shogun or The Winds of War or Shibumi for quite a while.
I'm also beginning to suffer withdrawal pangs as a result of my new and final smoking cessation plan. I'll only have seven cigarettes today. Tomorrow I get six cigarettes. By this time next week I'll be smoke free. I'll go on the patch at that point; but it would be a good idea to keep your distance from me for a while.
Linda should probably hold her tongue if she doesn't like the Lobscouse.
Update: The Plum Duff came out very good, especially with the Amber Sauce that Betty Crocker helpfully suggested. Betty's looking pretty good, even sexy, if you haven't noticed. Back when I was a kid she looked motherly. It's surprising how one's perspective changes over the years.
Anyway, the Plum Duff and the Amber Sauce were actually pretty easy to make. The main hassle is the three hours that the pudding has to steam. I used the recipe you can find by searching for Plum Pudding on the Gold Medal Flour website, mostly because all the British recipes called for Suet and the only place I could find Suet in the supermarket was in the bird seed cakes in the pet aisle. I briefly considered melting down one of the bird seed cakes and straining out the seeds but decided not to go there.
Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin ate Plum Duff that was made with "slush" that the ship's cook skimmed from the cauldron where he cooked the crew's Salt Pork in the galley. He was required to turn over some of the slush to the crew, who used the slush to grease blocks; but the cook was protective of it because he got to sell the saved up barrels of slush at the end of a cruise.
I'm about one week into withdrawal after finishing all 6,528 pages of Patrick O"Brian's twenty-One novel series. It's hard to believ that I averaged almost 200 pages per day; but the novels were very gripping. Taken as a whole they are very arguably the "best historical novels ever written," as that one reviewer asserted. Reading them in sequence was a rare treat and one day I'll return to them with a good world map at hand. They're well worth rereading.
But now I'm suffering withdrawal pangs. Over the past few days I read The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey; but it was a poor substitute. And now I've started Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg; but it doesn't have the same gripping quality as the Aubrey/Maturin series. I may pull out some of the old standbys and reread them as a palliative. I haven't read Shogun or The Winds of War or Shibumi for quite a while.
I'm also beginning to suffer withdrawal pangs as a result of my new and final smoking cessation plan. I'll only have seven cigarettes today. Tomorrow I get six cigarettes. By this time next week I'll be smoke free. I'll go on the patch at that point; but it would be a good idea to keep your distance from me for a while.
Linda should probably hold her tongue if she doesn't like the Lobscouse.
Update: The Plum Duff came out very good, especially with the Amber Sauce that Betty Crocker helpfully suggested. Betty's looking pretty good, even sexy, if you haven't noticed. Back when I was a kid she looked motherly. It's surprising how one's perspective changes over the years.
Anyway, the Plum Duff and the Amber Sauce were actually pretty easy to make. The main hassle is the three hours that the pudding has to steam. I used the recipe you can find by searching for Plum Pudding on the Gold Medal Flour website, mostly because all the British recipes called for Suet and the only place I could find Suet in the supermarket was in the bird seed cakes in the pet aisle. I briefly considered melting down one of the bird seed cakes and straining out the seeds but decided not to go there.
Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin ate Plum Duff that was made with "slush" that the ship's cook skimmed from the cauldron where he cooked the crew's Salt Pork in the galley. He was required to turn over some of the slush to the crew, who used the slush to grease blocks; but the cook was protective of it because he got to sell the saved up barrels of slush at the end of a cruise.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Why spend $87 Million on a new icebreaker
The so called "stimulus bill" put together by Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic cronies includes $87 million for a new icebreaker. But why in the world would they want to waste money on an icebreaking ship?
Those same Democrats kneel down and kiss Al Gore flippers everytime he waddles into Congress to testify. And Al Gore has told us many times that we need a hugely expensive and cumbersome (not to mention delightfully susceptible to corruption) carbon trading scheme because global warming is going to cause all the ice in the arctic to melt.
I would think that true believers in global warming would want to put a healthy budget for sunscreen and ice makers into the stimulus bill instead of wasting money on an icebreaker that won't have any ice to break.
Incidently, President Obama's team has provided a helpful tool for planning meetings to discuss the nearly $1,000,000,000,000 (I'm pretty sure I have the number of zeros correct, but I could be wrong) that he and Nancy Pelosi want to blow on icebreakers and condoms and community organizers and other critical needs. I'm thinking of becoming a community organizer by scheduling a beer and bratwurst lunch to bring together folks to discuss how we can snarf up some of the loot because I couldn't find any meetings scheduled for the Collegeville area.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/economicmeetings/
Those same Democrats kneel down and kiss Al Gore flippers everytime he waddles into Congress to testify. And Al Gore has told us many times that we need a hugely expensive and cumbersome (not to mention delightfully susceptible to corruption) carbon trading scheme because global warming is going to cause all the ice in the arctic to melt.
I would think that true believers in global warming would want to put a healthy budget for sunscreen and ice makers into the stimulus bill instead of wasting money on an icebreaker that won't have any ice to break.
Incidently, President Obama's team has provided a helpful tool for planning meetings to discuss the nearly $1,000,000,000,000 (I'm pretty sure I have the number of zeros correct, but I could be wrong) that he and Nancy Pelosi want to blow on icebreakers and condoms and community organizers and other critical needs. I'm thinking of becoming a community organizer by scheduling a beer and bratwurst lunch to bring together folks to discuss how we can snarf up some of the loot because I couldn't find any meetings scheduled for the Collegeville area.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/economicmeetings/
Fairness, The Lodi and Zaberers
Back in the 1950's and very early 1960's our annual "vacation" was a day at the beach in Atlantic City. We changed clothes for bathing suits at The Lodi. Then our mothers would stake out a spot somewhere on the hundred yard deep beach between the Steel Pier and the Million Dollar Pier. The lighter skinned among us, like Sam, would acquire a near case of sun poisoning since we stayed on the beach from about ten in the morning to four or five in the afternoon. There were sandwiches and sodas to enjoy for a brief lunch; but we kids spent almost the entire day in the water or getting thoroughly sanded at the water's edge.
Life doesn't get any better than a perfect day at the shore at ten or twelve years old. Heating up out on the sand, cooling yourself in the water, testing yourself against the waves. Wondering if there really are sharks out there. So hungry by two or so that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich tastes like Ambrosia. So exhausted by four that the back seat of the car is as restful as the womb. The shore at ten or twelve years old is as near to heaven as any of us ever get here on Earth.
Pop, and the rest of the fathers, escorted us to the beach and got us all set up. They had no time for the beach. For they had to spend the day working, carefully investing in the horses at the Atlantic City Raceway. After the last race they came to get us.
In good years, when one or a couple of the Redpeppers hit big at the track, we went to Zaberers where the big winners treated the whole crowd to dinner. In so-so years we ate a much less expensive meal at The Lodi. If you've been to Maggiano's or Buca de Beppe you can easily visualize those meals because The Lodi served family style; huge platters of appetizers, huge bowls of soup, huge platters of just like home made ravioli, lasagne, spaghetti, meat balls, veal parmesan, etc. served until nobody could eat another bite. There was no problem sleeping in the back seat of the car during the long drive home up Black Horse Pike and Ridge Avenue after a meal consisting of fifteen or twenty meat ravioli plus at least some of everything else.
Zaberers was a much more formal type place. There you ordered individual meals with the prices almost no object; although Matty got a dirty look from Uncle Froggy for ordering lobster one time. He got the lobster though. Doc, who was paying that year, laughed about it and said something about it being only right that kids should get a taste of the good life. But, as I said, we only ate at Zaberers in exceptional years, maybe twice or three times, when Doc or one of the boys hit really big at the track.
I'm reminded of this because the fuel for those meals at Zaberers was the general sense among the Redpeppers, a band of brothers from the East End of Norristown who became teammates on a very short-lived semi-pro baseball team that they formed in the late 1930's, that at least some of any instance of good fortune (Bona Fortuna) had to be shared.
The Redpeppers did the same sort of sharing when one of them hit the daily number or when one of them hit big on a long shot horse - those were the days before some unsung genius invented the trifecta - but still there would occasionally be one of the boys who would hit ten bucks on a thirty to one shot. Doc, especially was a long shot bettor, a very scientific bettor, carefully studying the racing sheets until he had a good prospect and then even going to the track to observe the horse before putting ten or twenty, or even a hundred, down on it, spending the rest of the day placing a disciplined two dollar bet on one of the horses in each of the other races just to maintain interest. Pop always said that Doc was the only horse bettor he ever knew who beat the odds on the horses; and Pop knew a lot of horse bettors, a lot. He knew pretty well every horse bettor in Norristown.
I'm reminded of all this because I came across the article I've linked to below on aldaily.com which is the best general purpose reading site on the web that I've ever found. I don't agree with this guy that the special sense of fairness he writes about is unique to the so called Anglosphere because, after all, Pop and his buddies were only products of the Anglosphere on the surface. Underneath they were actually still more or less Italians, at least in those days, even though they all spoke English as their native language. Most of them could understand Italian from exposure to their parents; but they never or seldom spoke it. They wanted to fit into the general run of Americans. Their wives, for some reason, were much more open about understanding and speaking Italian, which may say something about women being less conformist than men; but that's a subject for another day.
http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/01/fairs_fair.php
And, since I've mentioned that The Redpeppers were a band of brothers, here, by chance is another article that's near the top of the aldaily.com site. It's about the battle where that phrase was coined, at least in the version Shakespeare told of it - putting these words in Henry V's mouth. "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. . ."
As a bonus it's my theory (and I'm sure that of others much more learned) that the development of the English peasant into a longbowman by virtue of required archery practice by most of the peasant men every Sunday was critical to the existence and evolution of the egalitarian institutions that developed earlier in the Anglosphere than in other societies in the modern age. You're never again gonna keep 'em quite so firmly in their place once they've learned that any one of them, pressed too far, can kill any one of the armored knights who are their "lords" using weapons they're more or less capable of making themselves.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123267111434808365.html
Life doesn't get any better than a perfect day at the shore at ten or twelve years old. Heating up out on the sand, cooling yourself in the water, testing yourself against the waves. Wondering if there really are sharks out there. So hungry by two or so that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich tastes like Ambrosia. So exhausted by four that the back seat of the car is as restful as the womb. The shore at ten or twelve years old is as near to heaven as any of us ever get here on Earth.
Pop, and the rest of the fathers, escorted us to the beach and got us all set up. They had no time for the beach. For they had to spend the day working, carefully investing in the horses at the Atlantic City Raceway. After the last race they came to get us.
In good years, when one or a couple of the Redpeppers hit big at the track, we went to Zaberers where the big winners treated the whole crowd to dinner. In so-so years we ate a much less expensive meal at The Lodi. If you've been to Maggiano's or Buca de Beppe you can easily visualize those meals because The Lodi served family style; huge platters of appetizers, huge bowls of soup, huge platters of just like home made ravioli, lasagne, spaghetti, meat balls, veal parmesan, etc. served until nobody could eat another bite. There was no problem sleeping in the back seat of the car during the long drive home up Black Horse Pike and Ridge Avenue after a meal consisting of fifteen or twenty meat ravioli plus at least some of everything else.
Zaberers was a much more formal type place. There you ordered individual meals with the prices almost no object; although Matty got a dirty look from Uncle Froggy for ordering lobster one time. He got the lobster though. Doc, who was paying that year, laughed about it and said something about it being only right that kids should get a taste of the good life. But, as I said, we only ate at Zaberers in exceptional years, maybe twice or three times, when Doc or one of the boys hit really big at the track.
I'm reminded of this because the fuel for those meals at Zaberers was the general sense among the Redpeppers, a band of brothers from the East End of Norristown who became teammates on a very short-lived semi-pro baseball team that they formed in the late 1930's, that at least some of any instance of good fortune (Bona Fortuna) had to be shared.
The Redpeppers did the same sort of sharing when one of them hit the daily number or when one of them hit big on a long shot horse - those were the days before some unsung genius invented the trifecta - but still there would occasionally be one of the boys who would hit ten bucks on a thirty to one shot. Doc, especially was a long shot bettor, a very scientific bettor, carefully studying the racing sheets until he had a good prospect and then even going to the track to observe the horse before putting ten or twenty, or even a hundred, down on it, spending the rest of the day placing a disciplined two dollar bet on one of the horses in each of the other races just to maintain interest. Pop always said that Doc was the only horse bettor he ever knew who beat the odds on the horses; and Pop knew a lot of horse bettors, a lot. He knew pretty well every horse bettor in Norristown.
I'm reminded of all this because I came across the article I've linked to below on aldaily.com which is the best general purpose reading site on the web that I've ever found. I don't agree with this guy that the special sense of fairness he writes about is unique to the so called Anglosphere because, after all, Pop and his buddies were only products of the Anglosphere on the surface. Underneath they were actually still more or less Italians, at least in those days, even though they all spoke English as their native language. Most of them could understand Italian from exposure to their parents; but they never or seldom spoke it. They wanted to fit into the general run of Americans. Their wives, for some reason, were much more open about understanding and speaking Italian, which may say something about women being less conformist than men; but that's a subject for another day.
http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/01/fairs_fair.php
And, since I've mentioned that The Redpeppers were a band of brothers, here, by chance is another article that's near the top of the aldaily.com site. It's about the battle where that phrase was coined, at least in the version Shakespeare told of it - putting these words in Henry V's mouth. "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. . ."
As a bonus it's my theory (and I'm sure that of others much more learned) that the development of the English peasant into a longbowman by virtue of required archery practice by most of the peasant men every Sunday was critical to the existence and evolution of the egalitarian institutions that developed earlier in the Anglosphere than in other societies in the modern age. You're never again gonna keep 'em quite so firmly in their place once they've learned that any one of them, pressed too far, can kill any one of the armored knights who are their "lords" using weapons they're more or less capable of making themselves.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123267111434808365.html
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The zoos need to think creatively
Suddenly the news is filled with zoo directors angling for a bundle of the boodle that Washington is getting ready to hand out. The zoo caretakers claim they aren't taking in enough revenue to properly care for their animals.
Linda had a worthy idea on that subject. If the zoos have too many animals to take care of with their current revenues why don't they auction off the right to hunt some of the animals? There are many hunters out there who would be glad to relieve them of the need to feed a lion, or a tiger, or an elephant or two.
My thought is that the zoos should auction off the chance to hunt in the enclosures with spears like the Maasai do. Whenever some loonie jumps into the enclosure with the lions or the bears it makes national news even if the guy only gets his arm or leg a bit chewed up. Imagine what the television rights would sell for if a zoo were to let someone into a lion enclosure dressed in a loincloth and carrying one of those Maasai spears.
The TV audience for the first hunt would rival that which watched the Superbowl.
http://www.authenticafrica.com/maaslionspea.html
Linda had a worthy idea on that subject. If the zoos have too many animals to take care of with their current revenues why don't they auction off the right to hunt some of the animals? There are many hunters out there who would be glad to relieve them of the need to feed a lion, or a tiger, or an elephant or two.
My thought is that the zoos should auction off the chance to hunt in the enclosures with spears like the Maasai do. Whenever some loonie jumps into the enclosure with the lions or the bears it makes national news even if the guy only gets his arm or leg a bit chewed up. Imagine what the television rights would sell for if a zoo were to let someone into a lion enclosure dressed in a loincloth and carrying one of those Maasai spears.
The TV audience for the first hunt would rival that which watched the Superbowl.
http://www.authenticafrica.com/maaslionspea.html
Monday, February 2, 2009
Another thing to remember as April 15th approaches
It turns out that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is a piker when it comes to cheating on his income taxes. Geithner only cheated to the tune of a mere $48,000 or so. Now we learn that Tom Daschle, President Barry's nominee to manage the hundreds of billions of dollars that is spewed out by the Health Education and Welfare Department honey pot cheated to the tune of over $150,000. At first Daschle tried to make it seem that he was "only" guilty of not reporting the use of a company car and driver that was provided for him by a special friend who no doubt did that for purely selfless purposes; but now we learn that Daschle also didn't report $83,000 of cash income that he was given for "consulting services."
Change we can believe in. . . income taxes are optional, reporting cash income is optional.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/01/more-daschle-ta.html
Change we can believe in. . . income taxes are optional, reporting cash income is optional.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/01/more-daschle-ta.html
Saturday, January 31, 2009
How much is enough? How much is too little?
Below is a link to an interesting article putting our current living standards into perspective. Most interesting is his assertion that most people think of spending levels of more than three times greater than their own to be excessive, and they think that living on an income of less than one-third of theirs as being impossible.
Personally, I can easily imagine surviving quite reasonably and more or less contentedly on quite a bit less than one third of our current income, not that I would like it. On the other side of the coin I can easily imagine spending ten or twenty times our current income without having any problems with thinking of it as excessive.
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/92638/Our_economic_appetite
Personally, I can easily imagine surviving quite reasonably and more or less contentedly on quite a bit less than one third of our current income, not that I would like it. On the other side of the coin I can easily imagine spending ten or twenty times our current income without having any problems with thinking of it as excessive.
http://www.theweek.com/article/index/92638/Our_economic_appetite
Friday, January 30, 2009
Makes me think of Monticello
Talk about a rookie mistake. President Barry's press secretary let the thermostat out of the bag by revealing that The One like the Oval Office kept at subtropical temperatures. He'd better let his staff in on the fact that it won't do to rub the noses of the little people in the smelly fact that he's like most leaders in wanting us to "do as I say, not what I do."
At some level we realize that our leaders are eating high on the hog off of fine china in front of roaring fires up in the fancy rooms of the big house while we're eating scraps out of wooden bowls in our drafty little quarters in the basement; but that doesn't mean it's wise to say it out loud.
Makes me think President Barry shares some of Thomas Jefferson's ideas and attitudes with respect to social hierarchies. I hope he turns out to be as good a President as Massa Tom.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/01/obama_flinty_chicago_oak_or_de.asp
At some level we realize that our leaders are eating high on the hog off of fine china in front of roaring fires up in the fancy rooms of the big house while we're eating scraps out of wooden bowls in our drafty little quarters in the basement; but that doesn't mean it's wise to say it out loud.
Makes me think President Barry shares some of Thomas Jefferson's ideas and attitudes with respect to social hierarchies. I hope he turns out to be as good a President as Massa Tom.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/01/obama_flinty_chicago_oak_or_de.asp
Some policemen have no sense of humor
http://billingsgazette.net/articles/2009/01/29/news/wyoming/26-ifyouwannaride.txt
They're taking all the fun out of life.
Meanwhile, is this a great country or what? The other day Bank of America offered me a loan at zero interest until next January. Most of these sorts of offers have a semi-hidden transaction charge of 3%, but this one had a maximum transaction charge of $75 so I naturally called them and snarfed up on the maximum amount they were eager to give me.
There was one catch though. The fussy bankers wouldn't let me use the attached check to pay off the 2.99 percent loan that they so graciously gave me last January. But they had no problem with sending the cash to my checking account. And they have no problem with me paying off last year's loan from that checking account. Because they've been so nice I may put the remainder in a nice safe 4% CD with Bank of America and make a few hundred bucks on their money. That's some small change I can certainly believe in. You'll never catch me saying that those TARP funds the government has been showering on the banks aren't going to good causes.
I'm sure Bank of America is very wise and prudent in it's lending practices, so I didn't feel it necessary to mention to the nice woman on the phone that rising unemployment levels have a pretty negative effect on the job market for corporate recruiters like me. I'm hoping that next January they'll actually pay me interest to take a new loan to pay off this one.
Disclaimer - Don't do this at home unless you are very reliable in opening your mail and paying bills on time. Nice bankers like those at Bank of America get very nasty very quickly if you miss a credit card payment.
You say that I may get in trouble kiting credit lines like this. There's an old, old story that's relevant.
Once upon a time a new prisoner was sent to the death row section of a Sultan's prison. The other prisoners, who were pretty negative about their situation, noticed that this new fellow was as optimistic as could be.
"You're doomed just like us," the other prisoners said, "so why are you so cheerful?"
"Because I made a deal with the Sultan," he said, "I got him to agree to grant me a pardon if I can do him a little service by this time next year."
"What service can you possibly do him," they asked.
"I agreed to teach his horse to sing," he replied, and that explained to them why every day this new prisoner spent an hour in the courtyard of the prison talking and singing to the horse.
"But you're never going to be able to teach that horse to sing," one of the very negative prisoners said, "it's hopeless."
"Ah, but it isn't hopeless," said the man, "for many things can happen in a year."
"What sort of things," they asked.
"Well, for one thing, I might die sometime during this next year;" he said, "and for another thing the Sultan might die, or he might get a new concubine who will brighten his mood and cause him to issue pardons; and who knows, maybe the horse actually will learn to sing."
They're taking all the fun out of life.
Meanwhile, is this a great country or what? The other day Bank of America offered me a loan at zero interest until next January. Most of these sorts of offers have a semi-hidden transaction charge of 3%, but this one had a maximum transaction charge of $75 so I naturally called them and snarfed up on the maximum amount they were eager to give me.
There was one catch though. The fussy bankers wouldn't let me use the attached check to pay off the 2.99 percent loan that they so graciously gave me last January. But they had no problem with sending the cash to my checking account. And they have no problem with me paying off last year's loan from that checking account. Because they've been so nice I may put the remainder in a nice safe 4% CD with Bank of America and make a few hundred bucks on their money. That's some small change I can certainly believe in. You'll never catch me saying that those TARP funds the government has been showering on the banks aren't going to good causes.
I'm sure Bank of America is very wise and prudent in it's lending practices, so I didn't feel it necessary to mention to the nice woman on the phone that rising unemployment levels have a pretty negative effect on the job market for corporate recruiters like me. I'm hoping that next January they'll actually pay me interest to take a new loan to pay off this one.
Disclaimer - Don't do this at home unless you are very reliable in opening your mail and paying bills on time. Nice bankers like those at Bank of America get very nasty very quickly if you miss a credit card payment.
You say that I may get in trouble kiting credit lines like this. There's an old, old story that's relevant.
Once upon a time a new prisoner was sent to the death row section of a Sultan's prison. The other prisoners, who were pretty negative about their situation, noticed that this new fellow was as optimistic as could be.
"You're doomed just like us," the other prisoners said, "so why are you so cheerful?"
"Because I made a deal with the Sultan," he said, "I got him to agree to grant me a pardon if I can do him a little service by this time next year."
"What service can you possibly do him," they asked.
"I agreed to teach his horse to sing," he replied, and that explained to them why every day this new prisoner spent an hour in the courtyard of the prison talking and singing to the horse.
"But you're never going to be able to teach that horse to sing," one of the very negative prisoners said, "it's hopeless."
"Ah, but it isn't hopeless," said the man, "for many things can happen in a year."
"What sort of things," they asked.
"Well, for one thing, I might die sometime during this next year;" he said, "and for another thing the Sultan might die, or he might get a new concubine who will brighten his mood and cause him to issue pardons; and who knows, maybe the horse actually will learn to sing."
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Swinging is as swinging does
Last evening Linda and I practiced the new West Coast Swing moves we learned at our Monday night lesson up at the Ballroom on High. Unlike the heedless young kids who make up much of the class we're serious students. And we've learned in the past that if we don't practice the new dance moves faithfully they'll go in one foot and out the other, and we'll end the five lesson course as clumsy and wrong footed as when we started.
But I'm not here to write about West Coast Swing today. I'm here to write about the South East Coast Swing, or more precisely South East Coast Swingers. All because of a salacious web article that caught the attention of both Linda and my dear sister Marianne on Monday. I missed the article because I was diligently stoking the wood stove between sessions of reading substantive stuff about world affairs and such. The bright sun coming in both direct and by reflection off the snow has the house heated to something like seventy six degrees today; but on Monday it took pretty regular feeding of the stove to keep it in the high sixties.
I would be completely innocent of the latest report of, uh, concupiscence among the geezers down in The Villages if Linda hadn't emailed the article below to me on Monday afternoon. And I probably wouldn't be writing about it if Marianne hadn't called to alert me to it on Monday evening.
Where do the two of them find time for such fluff?
I'm reminded of the time Uncle Mill was visiting Pop and Mom in the 1980's. Me, Sam and Jas successively showed up on a weekday for coffee, and breakfast, and then conversation which stretched to the point at which it made no sense to go elsewhere for lunch, what with Mom right there to make potatoes and eggs. I can never get potatoes and eggs to come exactly the same as Mom could. Sometimes the simplest recipes are the hardest.
Anyway, there was a lot of catching up to do that day in the 1980's. I had met Uncle Mill one time in the early 1970's when I stopped and stayed a night at his house on the way out to Chicago; but I don't believe Sam and Jas had ever met him before at that point. He was a slightly beefier version of Pop. Such a good version of Pop that there is a picture of him driving Pop's golf cart that I wrongly identified as a picture of Pop for a long time until Mom set me straight.
"Doesn't anybody work around here?" Uncle Mill finally asked. I won't get into the fact that this was a surprising question from a fellow who left Norristown rather suddenly in the late 1940's and rode the rails for a couple of years before he quietly settled in Ohio to work in the steel mills. All through the fifties and sixties he pretty much laid low, occasionally contacting only Pop to stay in touch; and he never visited until that time in the early 1980's.
Have I ever mentioned that we folks of my generation have a first cousin who grew up in Bridgeport? She would be a second cousin to you younger folks. I forget her name just now, but there are a couple of electronic pictures of her that I believe are correctly labelled. Her existence isn't the only interesting factoid to be discovered in the electronic picture labels by someone who is alert to nuance.
Ah, the naivete' of the young, always believing that everything is new and different. I believe it was Shakespeare who first wrote that "there is nothing new under the sun;" but I may have that wrong. Shakespeare may have been quoting some fellow who composed the Old Testament in 800 or so BC. I'm too lazy to google the phrase. Shakespeare also wrote, this time I'm sure, "lechery, lechery; all wars and lechery, nothing else holds fashion."
And while I'm on the subject of dating conventions and innocence of history, I noticed the other day that Spike Lee mentioned the idea of labelling the years before 2009 as "BO" and the years after 2009 as "AO," or something like that. Talk about clueless chutzpah! Someday I'm going to reacquaint myself with the number of centuries that elapsed after certain events in Jerusalem before the world decided to begin labelling years by the convention"BC" and "AD." "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini," for you folks educated after politically correct idiots began referring to "BCE" - before the Common Era - and "CE" - the Common Era.
I suspect I've completely messed up the punctuation of that last sentence, at least by conventional punctuation rules which bored me almost as much as the diagramming of sentences back in grade school back when they still taught punctuation and the diagramming of sentences; but I'm the author here so I'll use any damn punctuation marks I please.
Anyway, back to the web article that both Linda and Marianne curiously noticed. "Why are you calling me about that?" I asked Marianne, "I'm only an occasional visitor to The Villages. It's your other brothers who bought houses down there."
She said she expected me to write about it. So here goes.
I think the ten to one ratio mentioned in the article is an exaggeration; although I might possibly believe that a given hot spot on a given night might have that ratio. I doubt that the ratio in The Villages as a whole is more than two to one. I'm also considering the reliability of the writer. Sixty plus year old hips may still move somewhat creakily; but they very rarely "gyrate." And, just what does the term "hot spot" means in a community where they turn the streetlights off at 9:00 PM and the loudest noise to be heard by ten is the sound of snoring? I would think that the most frequented hot spots in such a community would be the heating pads in the arthritis pain clinic.
Talk about a mixed up world. I'm just realizing that "PM" stands for "Post Meridiem" and "AM" stands for "Ante Meridiem." These are said to be latin phrases, although I question that "Post" in there. "AD" stands for "Anno Domini" which is certainly a latin phrase. But "BC" stands for "Before Christ" which is definitely an English phrase. So why is the english phrase mixed up with the latin phrases in those usages? Another excellent timewaster for another day.
But back to the article about The Villages. I've noticed during my visits to down there with Sam and Jas that there is a somewhat substantial pool of widows; although I don't think that's why the mailing address is Lady Lake. Who is the lady? Or is it a reference to a lake of ladies?
Finally, I'm very skeptical about most of the folks I've met down there doing anything much more strenuous than sitting on the bench seat of a golf cart. If very many of them are attempting the kind of golf cart hanky panky mentioned in this article I would hate to see the length of the waiting line at the back pain clinic.
Here's the article. If you have questions about it I suggest you address them to Sam and Jas. For myself I have to get going to the monthly meeting of the technical recruiters association to commiserate with the other folks who are out of work in this first year of the age of Obama. Is this the year One or is it the year Zero? I'll need to check out that Spike Lee reference.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,482785,00.html
But I'm not here to write about West Coast Swing today. I'm here to write about the South East Coast Swing, or more precisely South East Coast Swingers. All because of a salacious web article that caught the attention of both Linda and my dear sister Marianne on Monday. I missed the article because I was diligently stoking the wood stove between sessions of reading substantive stuff about world affairs and such. The bright sun coming in both direct and by reflection off the snow has the house heated to something like seventy six degrees today; but on Monday it took pretty regular feeding of the stove to keep it in the high sixties.
I would be completely innocent of the latest report of, uh, concupiscence among the geezers down in The Villages if Linda hadn't emailed the article below to me on Monday afternoon. And I probably wouldn't be writing about it if Marianne hadn't called to alert me to it on Monday evening.
Where do the two of them find time for such fluff?
I'm reminded of the time Uncle Mill was visiting Pop and Mom in the 1980's. Me, Sam and Jas successively showed up on a weekday for coffee, and breakfast, and then conversation which stretched to the point at which it made no sense to go elsewhere for lunch, what with Mom right there to make potatoes and eggs. I can never get potatoes and eggs to come exactly the same as Mom could. Sometimes the simplest recipes are the hardest.
Anyway, there was a lot of catching up to do that day in the 1980's. I had met Uncle Mill one time in the early 1970's when I stopped and stayed a night at his house on the way out to Chicago; but I don't believe Sam and Jas had ever met him before at that point. He was a slightly beefier version of Pop. Such a good version of Pop that there is a picture of him driving Pop's golf cart that I wrongly identified as a picture of Pop for a long time until Mom set me straight.
"Doesn't anybody work around here?" Uncle Mill finally asked. I won't get into the fact that this was a surprising question from a fellow who left Norristown rather suddenly in the late 1940's and rode the rails for a couple of years before he quietly settled in Ohio to work in the steel mills. All through the fifties and sixties he pretty much laid low, occasionally contacting only Pop to stay in touch; and he never visited until that time in the early 1980's.
Have I ever mentioned that we folks of my generation have a first cousin who grew up in Bridgeport? She would be a second cousin to you younger folks. I forget her name just now, but there are a couple of electronic pictures of her that I believe are correctly labelled. Her existence isn't the only interesting factoid to be discovered in the electronic picture labels by someone who is alert to nuance.
Ah, the naivete' of the young, always believing that everything is new and different. I believe it was Shakespeare who first wrote that "there is nothing new under the sun;" but I may have that wrong. Shakespeare may have been quoting some fellow who composed the Old Testament in 800 or so BC. I'm too lazy to google the phrase. Shakespeare also wrote, this time I'm sure, "lechery, lechery; all wars and lechery, nothing else holds fashion."
And while I'm on the subject of dating conventions and innocence of history, I noticed the other day that Spike Lee mentioned the idea of labelling the years before 2009 as "BO" and the years after 2009 as "AO," or something like that. Talk about clueless chutzpah! Someday I'm going to reacquaint myself with the number of centuries that elapsed after certain events in Jerusalem before the world decided to begin labelling years by the convention"BC" and "AD." "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini," for you folks educated after politically correct idiots began referring to "BCE" - before the Common Era - and "CE" - the Common Era.
I suspect I've completely messed up the punctuation of that last sentence, at least by conventional punctuation rules which bored me almost as much as the diagramming of sentences back in grade school back when they still taught punctuation and the diagramming of sentences; but I'm the author here so I'll use any damn punctuation marks I please.
Anyway, back to the web article that both Linda and Marianne curiously noticed. "Why are you calling me about that?" I asked Marianne, "I'm only an occasional visitor to The Villages. It's your other brothers who bought houses down there."
She said she expected me to write about it. So here goes.
I think the ten to one ratio mentioned in the article is an exaggeration; although I might possibly believe that a given hot spot on a given night might have that ratio. I doubt that the ratio in The Villages as a whole is more than two to one. I'm also considering the reliability of the writer. Sixty plus year old hips may still move somewhat creakily; but they very rarely "gyrate." And, just what does the term "hot spot" means in a community where they turn the streetlights off at 9:00 PM and the loudest noise to be heard by ten is the sound of snoring? I would think that the most frequented hot spots in such a community would be the heating pads in the arthritis pain clinic.
Talk about a mixed up world. I'm just realizing that "PM" stands for "Post Meridiem" and "AM" stands for "Ante Meridiem." These are said to be latin phrases, although I question that "Post" in there. "AD" stands for "Anno Domini" which is certainly a latin phrase. But "BC" stands for "Before Christ" which is definitely an English phrase. So why is the english phrase mixed up with the latin phrases in those usages? Another excellent timewaster for another day.
But back to the article about The Villages. I've noticed during my visits to down there with Sam and Jas that there is a somewhat substantial pool of widows; although I don't think that's why the mailing address is Lady Lake. Who is the lady? Or is it a reference to a lake of ladies?
Finally, I'm very skeptical about most of the folks I've met down there doing anything much more strenuous than sitting on the bench seat of a golf cart. If very many of them are attempting the kind of golf cart hanky panky mentioned in this article I would hate to see the length of the waiting line at the back pain clinic.
Here's the article. If you have questions about it I suggest you address them to Sam and Jas. For myself I have to get going to the monthly meeting of the technical recruiters association to commiserate with the other folks who are out of work in this first year of the age of Obama. Is this the year One or is it the year Zero? I'll need to check out that Spike Lee reference.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,482785,00.html
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Like father like son
This is pretty near to unbelievable unless you reflect on just how close to stark raving mad many actors and actresses are to this very day. It turns out that the father of John Wilkes Boothe wrote a very explicitly threatening letter to Andrew Jackson. The story is fascinating, as is the wikipedia entry which details the very real, if somewhat comic opera-ish, conspiracy of which John Wilkes Booth was a part. The part about the fellow who tried to assassinate the Secretary of State is especially fascinating.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/jan/25/letter-threatening-jacksons-life-determined-writte/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_assassination
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/jan/25/letter-threatening-jacksons-life-determined-writte/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_assassination
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Remember this when you do your Federal Income Taxes
The President of the United States and Sixty United States Senators (50 Democrats and 10 Republicans) believe that blatantly cheating on your Income Taxes up to the level of tens of thousands of dollars is fair game. They further believe that "I forgot" is a perfectly good excuse and enough to absolve you of penalties if the IRS happens to catch you.
Six Senators believe that the question of whether government officials should pay their income taxes is not worth leaving their mistresses beds, so they didn't show up to vote.
Thirty Four Senators believe that someone who fails to pay their income taxes for four years should not become Secretary of the Treasury and the boss of the Internal Revenue Service.
Remember that when you do your taxes this April. If you use Turbo Tax you are especially absolved of all responsibility for any lying or cheating you do because that's what Timothy Geithner used to do his taxes when he purposely failed to pay his taxes from 2001 to 2004. When he was caught by the IRS in 2005 he paid the taxes he evaded (with no penalties) for the years 2003 and 2004. Only when he was nominated to be Secretary of the Treasury by President Barack Obama did he decide to pay the taxes he evaded for the years 2001 and 2002.
Aunt Mary R used to refer to politicians as "whoremasters." She was far too mild.
"I forgot" and "I made a mistake" are now perfectly good excuses for not paying your taxes. If that's not "Change we can believe in" I don't know what is.
Update - Michelle Malkin has helpfully provided a list of the 50 Democratic Party and 10 Republican Party Senators who just spit in the face of all common sense and decency by voting to confirm a demonstrated tax cheat as Secretary of the Treasury. If you know anyone who is related to or has ever worked for any of these shameless horse thieves you would be well advised to watch your wallet in the event you need to deal with them. If you live in a state that foolishly elected them to the Senate you could do worse than to remember their name and vote against them no matter who they are running against when next they stand for election.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/01/26/the-bo-republicans-who-voted-for-geithner-and-video-of-inhofes-statement/
Six Senators believe that the question of whether government officials should pay their income taxes is not worth leaving their mistresses beds, so they didn't show up to vote.
Thirty Four Senators believe that someone who fails to pay their income taxes for four years should not become Secretary of the Treasury and the boss of the Internal Revenue Service.
Remember that when you do your taxes this April. If you use Turbo Tax you are especially absolved of all responsibility for any lying or cheating you do because that's what Timothy Geithner used to do his taxes when he purposely failed to pay his taxes from 2001 to 2004. When he was caught by the IRS in 2005 he paid the taxes he evaded (with no penalties) for the years 2003 and 2004. Only when he was nominated to be Secretary of the Treasury by President Barack Obama did he decide to pay the taxes he evaded for the years 2001 and 2002.
Aunt Mary R used to refer to politicians as "whoremasters." She was far too mild.
"I forgot" and "I made a mistake" are now perfectly good excuses for not paying your taxes. If that's not "Change we can believe in" I don't know what is.
Update - Michelle Malkin has helpfully provided a list of the 50 Democratic Party and 10 Republican Party Senators who just spit in the face of all common sense and decency by voting to confirm a demonstrated tax cheat as Secretary of the Treasury. If you know anyone who is related to or has ever worked for any of these shameless horse thieves you would be well advised to watch your wallet in the event you need to deal with them. If you live in a state that foolishly elected them to the Senate you could do worse than to remember their name and vote against them no matter who they are running against when next they stand for election.
http://michellemalkin.com/2009/01/26/the-bo-republicans-who-voted-for-geithner-and-video-of-inhofes-statement/
Here's a guy who says what I said yesterday - only much better
The video is only six minutes long; but it's an excellent capsulization of the problem with what happens when politicians get together to conspire on ways to spend your money to supposedly solve problems. He's not shy of criticizing President Bush, by the way, so this is not just an anti-Obama thing.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/01/26/obamas-so-called-stimulus-scheme-good-for-government-bad-for-the-economy/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/01/26/obamas-so-called-stimulus-scheme-good-for-government-bad-for-the-economy/
Monday, January 26, 2009
Even the economists have lost their heads
Robert Samuelson makes a lot of scary sense in this column (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/25/AR2009012501772.html) ; but the scariest thing in the column is his opening phrase.
"We all want President Obama to succeed in reviving the economy. . ."
That phrase indicates that even this top notch economist has been panicked into completely misunderstanding the problem. Ultimately President Obama can't "succeed in reviving the economy." At best he can limit the damage that the government will do to the economy as it flails around rapidly printing money and wildly spending future tax dollars doing things that make it look like the the politicians down in Washington are doing something they believe will be helpful.
No politician can revive the economy. The market economy that has made us all so unbelievably wealthy is so complex and interdependent that tinkering with it is almost sure to make things worse. Economic activity will slow to a bottom no matter what the government does; and economic activity will eventually bounce back from whatever bottom it reaches no matter what the government does. Almost any action likely to be decided upon in the great sausage grinding machine down in Washington will make things worse. The more intervention there is the slower the real economy will revive and the less fast it will grow.
At their very best the wisest politicians in Washington will be like moderately thoughtful teenagers shaking a stopped precision watch in the hopes of making it run better. At their worst the mostly dim witted politicians in Washington will be like impatient nine year olds prying open such a watch and pulling out its gears while indulging in the fantasy that they can reassemble it. I doubt that one in ten of the politicians down there has any understanding of the complex workings of the system that reliably delivers eggs, bacon and grits to their breakfast table. I'm certain that not a one of them has any appreciation of the complexity and sensitivity of the system that reliably delivers over a million of ten thousand different kinds of parts to the factories that assemble jumbo jets.
George Will did a column some time ago (http://www.newsweek.com/id/158752) that gives some sense of what I mean about complexity. Will wasn't being especially original in this column because a long time ago Milton Friedman used the same example in his book Free to Choose, and Adam Smith, of course, wrote similar things first a couple of hundred years ago in The Wealth of Nations.
"We all want President Obama to succeed in reviving the economy. . ."
That phrase indicates that even this top notch economist has been panicked into completely misunderstanding the problem. Ultimately President Obama can't "succeed in reviving the economy." At best he can limit the damage that the government will do to the economy as it flails around rapidly printing money and wildly spending future tax dollars doing things that make it look like the the politicians down in Washington are doing something they believe will be helpful.
No politician can revive the economy. The market economy that has made us all so unbelievably wealthy is so complex and interdependent that tinkering with it is almost sure to make things worse. Economic activity will slow to a bottom no matter what the government does; and economic activity will eventually bounce back from whatever bottom it reaches no matter what the government does. Almost any action likely to be decided upon in the great sausage grinding machine down in Washington will make things worse. The more intervention there is the slower the real economy will revive and the less fast it will grow.
At their very best the wisest politicians in Washington will be like moderately thoughtful teenagers shaking a stopped precision watch in the hopes of making it run better. At their worst the mostly dim witted politicians in Washington will be like impatient nine year olds prying open such a watch and pulling out its gears while indulging in the fantasy that they can reassemble it. I doubt that one in ten of the politicians down there has any understanding of the complex workings of the system that reliably delivers eggs, bacon and grits to their breakfast table. I'm certain that not a one of them has any appreciation of the complexity and sensitivity of the system that reliably delivers over a million of ten thousand different kinds of parts to the factories that assemble jumbo jets.
George Will did a column some time ago (http://www.newsweek.com/id/158752) that gives some sense of what I mean about complexity. Will wasn't being especially original in this column because a long time ago Milton Friedman used the same example in his book Free to Choose, and Adam Smith, of course, wrote similar things first a couple of hundred years ago in The Wealth of Nations.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
In case my anthropophagy post made you think I'm weird
In case you think it's only my mind that makes strange associations here's Ethan Barron, a newspaper reporter, on his reaction to a crowd of Canadians who apparently became quite aroused while watching Tuesday's inauguration ceremony.
Barron wrote, "I haven't seen a group of people wearing their fervour so completely, and so uniformly, since a guy I used to work with brought me to visit his weird sex cult in California."
". . . wearing their fervour so completely, and so uniformly. . ." It's probably even colder up there in Canada than it is down here. Barron has me wondering if those Canucks were wearing anything else.
He also has me wondering whether I've been too hide-bound and unimaginative in my mockery of the Obamatons. It never crossed my mind to imagine them as a "sex cult". And, had that notion crossed my mind, even I am too politically correct to have gone there in print. I'll go no further with this train of thought than to wonder whether Ethan Barron's Freudian slip is showing. He may have read a little too deeply into a Kyle Onstott novel in his youth.
You should read Barron's whole unbelievable story. Those folks up north of the border are passing strange.
http://www.theprovince.com/news/power+love+force+change/1201049/story.html
Hat tip to Jonah Goldberg of National Review, who always comes up with the best strange stuff.
Barron wrote, "I haven't seen a group of people wearing their fervour so completely, and so uniformly, since a guy I used to work with brought me to visit his weird sex cult in California."
". . . wearing their fervour so completely, and so uniformly. . ." It's probably even colder up there in Canada than it is down here. Barron has me wondering if those Canucks were wearing anything else.
He also has me wondering whether I've been too hide-bound and unimaginative in my mockery of the Obamatons. It never crossed my mind to imagine them as a "sex cult". And, had that notion crossed my mind, even I am too politically correct to have gone there in print. I'll go no further with this train of thought than to wonder whether Ethan Barron's Freudian slip is showing. He may have read a little too deeply into a Kyle Onstott novel in his youth.
You should read Barron's whole unbelievable story. Those folks up north of the border are passing strange.
http://www.theprovince.com/news/power+love+force+change/1201049/story.html
Hat tip to Jonah Goldberg of National Review, who always comes up with the best strange stuff.
Serving Man
Those of you who remember the old Twilight Zone know, of course, that Serving Man was revealed to be an alien cookbook at the very end of one of the best episodes. That ending was a cultural shocker even to us old folks who grew up in the era of cannibal and missionary jokes like this one.
"Two cannibals meet one day...The first cannibal says, "You know, I just can't seem to get a tender Missionary. I've baked them, I've roasted them, I've stewed them, I've barbecued them, I've tried every sort of marinade. Just can't seem to get them tender."
The second cannibal asks, "What kind of Missionary do you use?"
The reply, "You know, the ones that hang out at that place at the bend of the river. They have those brown cloaks with a rope around their waist and they're sort of bald on top with a funny ring of hair on their heads."
"Ah, Ha!" the second cannibal replies, "No wonder--those are fryers!"
As it turns out the cannibals in the joke were pretty ignorant, or perhaps they didn't live in Fiji. For yesterday I came across a reference at about page 4,800 of the continuing Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin saga I've been reading that provided a perfect solution for their dilemma when Dr. Maturin mentioned a plant the British naturalists named Solanum Anthropophagorum which sent me to the internet to do a few clicks.
We think of cannibals as primitives. But it turns out they were pretty sophisticated, at least in Fiji, where they had special recipes, special utensils and even maintained a special plant for their occasional feasts on so called "long pig". Solanum Anthropophagorum turns out to be a real plant which was purposely cultivated near the special long houses where Fijians ate their battle prizes. The leaves were exclusively used as wrappers for roasting and the tomato like berries were used to make a special sauce. Google helpfully digitized the botanical volume where you can see it's picture if you page up after going to the link below; and you can read a lot more in English about the plant's uses if you page down to below the Latin. If you spend a while trying to puzzle out the Latin, using the English translation as a sort of Rosetta Stone, you have much too much time on your hands.
http://books.google.com/books?id=tOIWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA5424&lpg=PA5424&dq=solanum+anthropophagorum&source=bl&ots=lPDb4HSzzz&sig=EgWOw2TrAksWe-E4CGU2hm4UbjA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA5423-IA3,M1
Why I was moved to post on this matter is a very good question. Why you should not google "long pig" and then click on the link to The Church of Euthanasia is one very good answer to that question. The universe has been said to be not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we can imagine. That goes double or triple for the internet. There's a lot of stuff way out there that you just don't want to know.
Meanwhile, back on real planet Earth and still on the subject of why I came to write about cannibalism, I don't yet fully have my mind around the fact that National Review, which is supposed to be a conservative magazine, has suddenly changed its comfortably musty look and feel by adding color photos. As is my custom I opened the latest issue to the last page to read Mark Steyn's Happy Warrior column and was greeted by a color picture of Frank Sinatra in the middle of the page. Curiously, Steyn's column, adorned with an unwanted color photo, is in some measure a rant against change. After reading the Steyn piece I turned to Richard Brookhiser's City Desk column, next to last at the back of the magazine, and found a photo of a palm tree, again in color. That got me thinking about botany and Doctor Maturin. And that led me by a roundabout route to The Church of Euthanasia, to which I now wish I had never gone, for now I will always know that the author of that website is out there, somewhere.
"Two cannibals meet one day...The first cannibal says, "You know, I just can't seem to get a tender Missionary. I've baked them, I've roasted them, I've stewed them, I've barbecued them, I've tried every sort of marinade. Just can't seem to get them tender."
The second cannibal asks, "What kind of Missionary do you use?"
The reply, "You know, the ones that hang out at that place at the bend of the river. They have those brown cloaks with a rope around their waist and they're sort of bald on top with a funny ring of hair on their heads."
"Ah, Ha!" the second cannibal replies, "No wonder--those are fryers!"
As it turns out the cannibals in the joke were pretty ignorant, or perhaps they didn't live in Fiji. For yesterday I came across a reference at about page 4,800 of the continuing Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin saga I've been reading that provided a perfect solution for their dilemma when Dr. Maturin mentioned a plant the British naturalists named Solanum Anthropophagorum which sent me to the internet to do a few clicks.
We think of cannibals as primitives. But it turns out they were pretty sophisticated, at least in Fiji, where they had special recipes, special utensils and even maintained a special plant for their occasional feasts on so called "long pig". Solanum Anthropophagorum turns out to be a real plant which was purposely cultivated near the special long houses where Fijians ate their battle prizes. The leaves were exclusively used as wrappers for roasting and the tomato like berries were used to make a special sauce. Google helpfully digitized the botanical volume where you can see it's picture if you page up after going to the link below; and you can read a lot more in English about the plant's uses if you page down to below the Latin. If you spend a while trying to puzzle out the Latin, using the English translation as a sort of Rosetta Stone, you have much too much time on your hands.
http://books.google.com/books?id=tOIWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA5424&lpg=PA5424&dq=solanum+anthropophagorum&source=bl&ots=lPDb4HSzzz&sig=EgWOw2TrAksWe-E4CGU2hm4UbjA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA5423-IA3,M1
Why I was moved to post on this matter is a very good question. Why you should not google "long pig" and then click on the link to The Church of Euthanasia is one very good answer to that question. The universe has been said to be not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we can imagine. That goes double or triple for the internet. There's a lot of stuff way out there that you just don't want to know.
Meanwhile, back on real planet Earth and still on the subject of why I came to write about cannibalism, I don't yet fully have my mind around the fact that National Review, which is supposed to be a conservative magazine, has suddenly changed its comfortably musty look and feel by adding color photos. As is my custom I opened the latest issue to the last page to read Mark Steyn's Happy Warrior column and was greeted by a color picture of Frank Sinatra in the middle of the page. Curiously, Steyn's column, adorned with an unwanted color photo, is in some measure a rant against change. After reading the Steyn piece I turned to Richard Brookhiser's City Desk column, next to last at the back of the magazine, and found a photo of a palm tree, again in color. That got me thinking about botany and Doctor Maturin. And that led me by a roundabout route to The Church of Euthanasia, to which I now wish I had never gone, for now I will always know that the author of that website is out there, somewhere.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
What's all the hubbub about?
Some of the news lately has been very bad for my state of mind.
For instance, until the other day I used to enjoy watching the squadrons of robins turn over leaves on the lawn. And I used to enjoy watching flocks of crows harass a hawk. But then Linda pointed out to me that the news experts have been reporting that a "flock of birds" caused that airliner to crash up in New York last week. How can I look with equanimity on those flocks of robins and crows now?
Then again, I used to enjoy watching the local youths skate on the pond in former winters. But I can no longer look on them with such equanimity since the news media began reporting that generic "youths" were responsible for the rioting and burning of thousands of cars in France. For all I know those youths down by the pond will become riotous one day and burn my car.
And further, as I've been pondering on this matter of the news media limiting it's descriptions to such broad terms as "youths" and "flocks of birds," I've been moved to wonder what all the hubbub is about on the national scene. For surely, if it's sufficient to blame a generic "flock of birds" for the airliner crash and a generic group of "youths" for the riots and mayhem in France, it must also be sufficient to describe the current turnover of power down in Washington in terms that render it no big deal.
What's all the hubbub about? Why is everyone so excited about this inauguration being a historical event? In terms that CNN and The New York Times use in other contexts the ceremony at noon today will result in no more than one mammal replacing another mammal atop the great dungheap down in Washington. Heck, the two mammals involved even belong to the same genus and species.
For instance, until the other day I used to enjoy watching the squadrons of robins turn over leaves on the lawn. And I used to enjoy watching flocks of crows harass a hawk. But then Linda pointed out to me that the news experts have been reporting that a "flock of birds" caused that airliner to crash up in New York last week. How can I look with equanimity on those flocks of robins and crows now?
Then again, I used to enjoy watching the local youths skate on the pond in former winters. But I can no longer look on them with such equanimity since the news media began reporting that generic "youths" were responsible for the rioting and burning of thousands of cars in France. For all I know those youths down by the pond will become riotous one day and burn my car.
And further, as I've been pondering on this matter of the news media limiting it's descriptions to such broad terms as "youths" and "flocks of birds," I've been moved to wonder what all the hubbub is about on the national scene. For surely, if it's sufficient to blame a generic "flock of birds" for the airliner crash and a generic group of "youths" for the riots and mayhem in France, it must also be sufficient to describe the current turnover of power down in Washington in terms that render it no big deal.
What's all the hubbub about? Why is everyone so excited about this inauguration being a historical event? In terms that CNN and The New York Times use in other contexts the ceremony at noon today will result in no more than one mammal replacing another mammal atop the great dungheap down in Washington. Heck, the two mammals involved even belong to the same genus and species.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Sheepherders
Linda reported that the sheepherders who live cross the creek in Mom and Pop's old house had a couple of their goats out on the ice on our pond this morning. The goats are usually in a pen next to the shed I built for our horses twenty-nine or thirty years ago. Meanwhile the noble shed has been reduced to being a shelter for two exceedingly dirty off-white sheep and one less obviously dirty brown sheep. Bah!
The horse shed has held up amazingly well over the years, and I'm pretty proud of its post and beam design. I suspect that the trunks of the cedar trees I used for its supports have rotted off underground by now; but the thing still stands proud. If only I had built it on our side of the property line rather than on Mom and Pop's side. It would make a great drying and storage place for wood although it wouldn't be very well sited for that.
It's been about as cold as it gets around here for the past couple of days and we've been burning wood at a prodigious rate. Jas was talking yesterday morning about those electric space heaters they've been selling all over the place; but those surely can't hold a candle to a nice hot woodstove. It's not only physically luxurious to sit near; it's also morally luxurious to contemplate. The trees take the carbon out of the air and we put it back into the air.
The horse shed has held up amazingly well over the years, and I'm pretty proud of its post and beam design. I suspect that the trunks of the cedar trees I used for its supports have rotted off underground by now; but the thing still stands proud. If only I had built it on our side of the property line rather than on Mom and Pop's side. It would make a great drying and storage place for wood although it wouldn't be very well sited for that.
It's been about as cold as it gets around here for the past couple of days and we've been burning wood at a prodigious rate. Jas was talking yesterday morning about those electric space heaters they've been selling all over the place; but those surely can't hold a candle to a nice hot woodstove. It's not only physically luxurious to sit near; it's also morally luxurious to contemplate. The trees take the carbon out of the air and we put it back into the air.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Shaped like a pringle?
I was going along OK in this article even though it was reinforcing my sense that many physicists are more than a little nuts. But then I got to the part about the five dimensional space shaped like a pringle. . .
Anyway, if we're living in a hologram I want a crack at the remote control.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Anyway, if we're living in a hologram I want a crack at the remote control.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Perspective
Looking forward to Barry O's inauguration and the expected crowds, the government has officially declared that Washington D.C. will be a disaster area on January 20th.
I think that's a little over the top, openly declaring it to be a disaster area I mean, even though I started thinking of D.C. as pretty much of a disaster area at about the time Lyndon Johnson won reelection when I was a sophomore in high school in 1964. I was pretty ill informed back then. As the years went by I became better informed. I did enough reading about American history to attain some perspective and realize how naive I was back in high school.
Now I know that Washington D.C. has been a disaster area since at least July 4th of 1826 when both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died and the corrupt rapscallions down there realized there were no more of the founders around to look over their shoulders. July 4, 1826; that was the date when they started losing all shame. Not that they had a heck of a lot of shame to lose, because they were the natural product of democracy. And American Democracy, like all democracies, was doomed from the start. The amazing thing is how long it's more or less lasted. Even more amazing is that it seems well enough established to have at least a a certain amount of limping life in it, thank God.
For Winston Churchill was right on the money on the subject. "It has been said," he famously pronounced, "that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Which sort of gets me back to my point about officially declaring Washington to be a disaster area. It's much too late in history to take that step. And it's much too early in Barry Obama's contribution to history to make his inauguration seem like the reason for doing it.
Meanwhile, here's a pretty funny article by Robert Ferrigno of National Review that puts some perspective on the changeover from George Bush to Barack Obama.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWQ0YTk4YWY5ZDU5ZWE4ZGU1YTk0YWU3NzYyNzY4OTM=
I think that's a little over the top, openly declaring it to be a disaster area I mean, even though I started thinking of D.C. as pretty much of a disaster area at about the time Lyndon Johnson won reelection when I was a sophomore in high school in 1964. I was pretty ill informed back then. As the years went by I became better informed. I did enough reading about American history to attain some perspective and realize how naive I was back in high school.
Now I know that Washington D.C. has been a disaster area since at least July 4th of 1826 when both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died and the corrupt rapscallions down there realized there were no more of the founders around to look over their shoulders. July 4, 1826; that was the date when they started losing all shame. Not that they had a heck of a lot of shame to lose, because they were the natural product of democracy. And American Democracy, like all democracies, was doomed from the start. The amazing thing is how long it's more or less lasted. Even more amazing is that it seems well enough established to have at least a a certain amount of limping life in it, thank God.
For Winston Churchill was right on the money on the subject. "It has been said," he famously pronounced, "that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
Which sort of gets me back to my point about officially declaring Washington to be a disaster area. It's much too late in history to take that step. And it's much too early in Barry Obama's contribution to history to make his inauguration seem like the reason for doing it.
Meanwhile, here's a pretty funny article by Robert Ferrigno of National Review that puts some perspective on the changeover from George Bush to Barack Obama.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MWQ0YTk4YWY5ZDU5ZWE4ZGU1YTk0YWU3NzYyNzY4OTM=
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
What's this world coming to?
Yesterday the Times Herald reported that a college student and her boyfriend were arrested for killing her father. It seems the boyfriend shot the old man with her .357 magnum pistol. Shooting him was, of course, a pretty drastic action; but at least the boyfriend chose a proper tool for the job.
Later though, the two of them showed shockingly poor judgement when it came to disposing of the corpus delicti . First they dithered for a couple of weeks while the body ripened, so to speak, which was probably not the wisest course of action. Then they proceeded to buy themselves a chainsaw. . .
They probably got that idea from watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre; but if they had watched that movie a bit more closely, or if they had given even the barest amount of thought to how wide a kerf a chainsaw cuts and what the saw necessarily does with the removed material, they would have realized that it perhaps wasn't the best tool for the job. Talk about making the chips fly! Even Linda, who has never used a chainsaw, immediately commented that an ax would have been a much better choice of tool for the job.
What's the youth of this country coming to?
In national news it's been revealed that Barry's nominee for Treasury Secretary failed to pay his social security and medicare taxes for the years 2001 to 2004. Sounds like the perfect guy to put in charge of the IRS. It reminds me of when Philadelphia Mayor John Street nominated his brother Milton to head up the Philadelphia Gas Works and it was revealed that Milton hadn't paid his gas bills for fifteen or so years.
It's not only the youth of this country that's capable of making poor judgements.
Later though, the two of them showed shockingly poor judgement when it came to disposing of the corpus delicti . First they dithered for a couple of weeks while the body ripened, so to speak, which was probably not the wisest course of action. Then they proceeded to buy themselves a chainsaw. . .
They probably got that idea from watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre; but if they had watched that movie a bit more closely, or if they had given even the barest amount of thought to how wide a kerf a chainsaw cuts and what the saw necessarily does with the removed material, they would have realized that it perhaps wasn't the best tool for the job. Talk about making the chips fly! Even Linda, who has never used a chainsaw, immediately commented that an ax would have been a much better choice of tool for the job.
What's the youth of this country coming to?
In national news it's been revealed that Barry's nominee for Treasury Secretary failed to pay his social security and medicare taxes for the years 2001 to 2004. Sounds like the perfect guy to put in charge of the IRS. It reminds me of when Philadelphia Mayor John Street nominated his brother Milton to head up the Philadelphia Gas Works and it was revealed that Milton hadn't paid his gas bills for fifteen or so years.
It's not only the youth of this country that's capable of making poor judgements.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
A blast from the past made real
Newspaper opinion columns don't get any more timely than this.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html
Meanwhile, the reason I've been so lazy about posting to this blog lately is that since Christmas I've been spending a lot of time reading much lighter fare than Atlas Shrugged.
First off, I owe somewhat of an apology to Mark Weingardner for the unkind comment I made about him a few days ago after I read the first couple of pages of The Godfather Returns. I stand by my opinion that Weingardner is nowhere near the elegant paragraph by paragraph writer that Mario Puzo was; but the truth is that The Godfather Returns is an excellent novel. It's true to the original characters and it carries forward the original story as portrayed in the novel and movies very darn well. Weingardner presents interesting plot twists that make sense and comport with the motivations of the characters. A very good read.
Talk about a wealth of excuses for not posting blog entries. After finishing that book I started on Patrick O'Brian's collossal twenty-one novel compendium of Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin stories. Linda gave me the five volume set for Christmas. I've read or listened to several of the novels before; but Linda's gift gave me an excellent excuse to start at the beginning with Master and Commander and read the novels in succession, which is the way O'Brian wrote them. So far I've read seven, totalling 2557 pages in all - Master and Commander, Post Captain, H.M.S. Surprise, Desolation Island, The Fortune of War and The Surgeon's Mate. What a treat! Each book stands alone; but reading them in succession is stunning.
A New York Times book reviewer called these "The best historical novels ever written," which I think is a bit over the top given that it puts them above I, Claudius, to pick one example; but they certainly rank among the best historical novels ever written. They're especially neat because O'Brian seeded them with archaic uses and sailing ship naval jargon for atmosphere. These never detract from the stories; but they did apparently detract from the self confidence of the copy editor at the publishing house. And O'Brian himself must never have closely reviewed the typeset books before they were published. The novels are delightfully sprinkled with little gems of error. Coming across a spelling or usage error in a book is even better than coming across one in a newspaper.
Speaking of newspapers, according to The Norristown Times Herald a young fellow robbed a bank up in Limerick the other day. He apparently did a professional job of actually robbing the bank; but he hadn't thought to bring a getaway car with him. Even if he mostly gets around by bus out of concern for the planet that's pretty unprofessional. Anyway, after the robbery he selected a Prius to carjack for his getaway. It's good to see that the young are concerned about their CO2 emissions; but I really think the fellow should bring his own Prius to his next bank robbery. He would have been in a heck of a situation vis a vis the environment if all there was to carjack was a Hummer. He can probably get a deal on a Prius of his own right now because sales of hybrids are way down what with gas down to $1.70 or so a gallon.
In other local news, a muslim woman was convicted of killing her husband after she found out he was planning to go to Morocco to marry a second wife. Thumbs up to her. And thumbs down to the judge who just sentenced her to eight years in jail for a perfectly justifiable homicide.
Re International news, I keep thinking about writing about the Israelis and the Palestinians; but I find that I have little to say. The Israelis are justifiably kicking the crap out of the Palestinians in Gaza after putting up with the hundreds of missile attacks that Hamas has launched at Israeli towns from there over the past couple of years. I don't bear any special ill-will toward the Palestinians because they're as entitled to free speech as anyone; but ever since they celebrated in the streets in the days after 9/11 I really don't give a damn about them either.
And anyway, along with believing in free speech I also believe that serious speech should honored by being taken at face value. The Palestinians in Gaza freely elected Hamas. Hamas openly and repeatedly says that it intends nothing less than the complete destruction of Israel. Given that, I don't believe it's possible for Israel to attack Hamas and the Palestinians who elected it in a "disproportionate" manner.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html
Meanwhile, the reason I've been so lazy about posting to this blog lately is that since Christmas I've been spending a lot of time reading much lighter fare than Atlas Shrugged.
First off, I owe somewhat of an apology to Mark Weingardner for the unkind comment I made about him a few days ago after I read the first couple of pages of The Godfather Returns. I stand by my opinion that Weingardner is nowhere near the elegant paragraph by paragraph writer that Mario Puzo was; but the truth is that The Godfather Returns is an excellent novel. It's true to the original characters and it carries forward the original story as portrayed in the novel and movies very darn well. Weingardner presents interesting plot twists that make sense and comport with the motivations of the characters. A very good read.
Talk about a wealth of excuses for not posting blog entries. After finishing that book I started on Patrick O'Brian's collossal twenty-one novel compendium of Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin stories. Linda gave me the five volume set for Christmas. I've read or listened to several of the novels before; but Linda's gift gave me an excellent excuse to start at the beginning with Master and Commander and read the novels in succession, which is the way O'Brian wrote them. So far I've read seven, totalling 2557 pages in all - Master and Commander, Post Captain, H.M.S. Surprise, Desolation Island, The Fortune of War and The Surgeon's Mate. What a treat! Each book stands alone; but reading them in succession is stunning.
A New York Times book reviewer called these "The best historical novels ever written," which I think is a bit over the top given that it puts them above I, Claudius, to pick one example; but they certainly rank among the best historical novels ever written. They're especially neat because O'Brian seeded them with archaic uses and sailing ship naval jargon for atmosphere. These never detract from the stories; but they did apparently detract from the self confidence of the copy editor at the publishing house. And O'Brian himself must never have closely reviewed the typeset books before they were published. The novels are delightfully sprinkled with little gems of error. Coming across a spelling or usage error in a book is even better than coming across one in a newspaper.
Speaking of newspapers, according to The Norristown Times Herald a young fellow robbed a bank up in Limerick the other day. He apparently did a professional job of actually robbing the bank; but he hadn't thought to bring a getaway car with him. Even if he mostly gets around by bus out of concern for the planet that's pretty unprofessional. Anyway, after the robbery he selected a Prius to carjack for his getaway. It's good to see that the young are concerned about their CO2 emissions; but I really think the fellow should bring his own Prius to his next bank robbery. He would have been in a heck of a situation vis a vis the environment if all there was to carjack was a Hummer. He can probably get a deal on a Prius of his own right now because sales of hybrids are way down what with gas down to $1.70 or so a gallon.
In other local news, a muslim woman was convicted of killing her husband after she found out he was planning to go to Morocco to marry a second wife. Thumbs up to her. And thumbs down to the judge who just sentenced her to eight years in jail for a perfectly justifiable homicide.
Re International news, I keep thinking about writing about the Israelis and the Palestinians; but I find that I have little to say. The Israelis are justifiably kicking the crap out of the Palestinians in Gaza after putting up with the hundreds of missile attacks that Hamas has launched at Israeli towns from there over the past couple of years. I don't bear any special ill-will toward the Palestinians because they're as entitled to free speech as anyone; but ever since they celebrated in the streets in the days after 9/11 I really don't give a damn about them either.
And anyway, along with believing in free speech I also believe that serious speech should honored by being taken at face value. The Palestinians in Gaza freely elected Hamas. Hamas openly and repeatedly says that it intends nothing less than the complete destruction of Israel. Given that, I don't believe it's possible for Israel to attack Hamas and the Palestinians who elected it in a "disproportionate" manner.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
First they came for the toilets that flushed
Some years ago the enviroweenies passed a law banning toilets that flush properly. They said such toilets used too much water. So now you can only buy the new kind that use less water, until you have to flush them three times to make the icky stuff that needs to go down go down to where it needs to go.
Now it turns out that was only the beginning. Those folks are now planning to come after flat screen TVs because they use too much electricity. Linda and I have a primitive old TV because one of us has been resistant to the idea of getting a new one that's the size of the screen at the old drive in movies, like the one a certain brother of mine has. I'm not going to name him because I wouldn't want the environmental police to break down the door of his house up in Limerick just off of Ridge Pike. He better put blackout curtains on the windows of the room where he has that TV.
http://www.greendaily.com/2009/01/05/california-mulls-crackdown-on-kw-hogging-flat-panel-tvs/?icid=200100397x1216782980x1201059834
Now it turns out that was only the beginning. Those folks are now planning to come after flat screen TVs because they use too much electricity. Linda and I have a primitive old TV because one of us has been resistant to the idea of getting a new one that's the size of the screen at the old drive in movies, like the one a certain brother of mine has. I'm not going to name him because I wouldn't want the environmental police to break down the door of his house up in Limerick just off of Ridge Pike. He better put blackout curtains on the windows of the room where he has that TV.
http://www.greendaily.com/2009/01/05/california-mulls-crackdown-on-kw-hogging-flat-panel-tvs/?icid=200100397x1216782980x1201059834
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Walking in the rain
Linda and I returned from our nightly walk a little while ago. I wrote "nightly walk" but truthfully we very rarely walk in the rain as we did this evening. And we almost never walk when there's too much danger of icy sidewalks and streets. But tonight we broke all the usual rules.
On the way back we ran into one of our neighbors and learned that we're not quite so virtuous as we thought we were. We've been keeping the thermostat set at 66 degrees, although sometimes it creeps up to 68 or even 70. It turns out this neighbor keeps their house at 61 degrees, and she said her sister keeps her house at 55 degrees. That's impressive. On a twenty degree night like tonight our woodstove comes very close to keeping the house in the 60s all by itself when I feed it every few hours. And that's without running it seriously hot the way I used to do occasionally back in the day on truly bitter cold nights.
55 degrees! That's serious hair shirt style self denial. You can let Al Gore know from me that the polar bears will all be treading water and the rising ocean will be lapping at the twentieth floors of the buildings down in Philly before we turn the thermostat down to 55 degrees.
We're all done with the poplar from the big tree near the house, which is just as well. Poplar is okay for moderate weather; but it burns up too fast if I run the stove the way I need to for freezing nights. Way back when before we knew better Pop had me cut up and split a big willow that had fallen over behind the springhouse. Talk about a waste of effort. That willow was about as light as balsa wood once it was dry. Pop burned it up; but it almost wasn't worth the effort of putting it into the woodstove. Of course, him and Mom really used their woodstove only to make it toasty warm in the living room since the air couldn't really circulate out of that room at any great rate.
Recently we've been burning the ash from the big limb that fell down and made a six foot high bridge across the driveway a couple of years ago. After that we'll get into the walnut from the tree Alex cut down to get a big enough piece of heartwood to carve his last year's Christmas gift for Christina. And then I have a bunch of apple, maple, cherry and walnut from the smaller trees I thinned out of the woods last year over on the other side of the property.
All in all I still have about two cords of good well dried hardwood stacked out there near the house. And I have another half cord of cured small stuff over on the other side of the property that I'll be bringing over a bit at a time with the tractor on weekends when the ground is frozen.
I already have a couple of cords worth of maple and cherry rounds to split for next winter from the leaning trees that were near the driveway. And I have my eye on the oak grove back of the house. There are a couple of smaller trees in that grove that should be thinned out.
On the way back we ran into one of our neighbors and learned that we're not quite so virtuous as we thought we were. We've been keeping the thermostat set at 66 degrees, although sometimes it creeps up to 68 or even 70. It turns out this neighbor keeps their house at 61 degrees, and she said her sister keeps her house at 55 degrees. That's impressive. On a twenty degree night like tonight our woodstove comes very close to keeping the house in the 60s all by itself when I feed it every few hours. And that's without running it seriously hot the way I used to do occasionally back in the day on truly bitter cold nights.
55 degrees! That's serious hair shirt style self denial. You can let Al Gore know from me that the polar bears will all be treading water and the rising ocean will be lapping at the twentieth floors of the buildings down in Philly before we turn the thermostat down to 55 degrees.
We're all done with the poplar from the big tree near the house, which is just as well. Poplar is okay for moderate weather; but it burns up too fast if I run the stove the way I need to for freezing nights. Way back when before we knew better Pop had me cut up and split a big willow that had fallen over behind the springhouse. Talk about a waste of effort. That willow was about as light as balsa wood once it was dry. Pop burned it up; but it almost wasn't worth the effort of putting it into the woodstove. Of course, him and Mom really used their woodstove only to make it toasty warm in the living room since the air couldn't really circulate out of that room at any great rate.
Recently we've been burning the ash from the big limb that fell down and made a six foot high bridge across the driveway a couple of years ago. After that we'll get into the walnut from the tree Alex cut down to get a big enough piece of heartwood to carve his last year's Christmas gift for Christina. And then I have a bunch of apple, maple, cherry and walnut from the smaller trees I thinned out of the woods last year over on the other side of the property.
All in all I still have about two cords of good well dried hardwood stacked out there near the house. And I have another half cord of cured small stuff over on the other side of the property that I'll be bringing over a bit at a time with the tractor on weekends when the ground is frozen.
I already have a couple of cords worth of maple and cherry rounds to split for next winter from the leaning trees that were near the driveway. And I have my eye on the oak grove back of the house. There are a couple of smaller trees in that grove that should be thinned out.
Always look on the bright side of life
There has been a lot of doom and gloom talk lately. It's useful to be reminded periodically that we're living in magical times.
The big heads at this site ( http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_print.html ) consider the question of what coming technologies and social developments may change everything the way electricity and penicillin have. I haven't read all the way down yet; and I may never read all the way down; but the selection I've pasted below struck me as a useful curative for all the negativity we've been suffering because of these trivial economic problems.
JUAN ENRIQUEZCEO, Biotechonomy; Founding Director, Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project; Author, The Untied States of America
Speciation is coming. Fast. We keep forgetting that we are but one of several hominids that have walked the Earth (erectus, habilis,neanderthalis, heidelbergensis, ergaster, australopithecus). We keep thinking we are the one and only, the special. But we easily could not have been a dominant species. Or even a species anymore. We blissfully ignore the fact that we came within about 2,000 specimens of going extinct (which is why human DNA is virtually identical).
There is not much evidence, historically, that we are the be all and end all, or that we will remain the dominant species. The fossil history of the planet tells tales of at least six mass extinctions. In each cycle, most life was toast as DNA/RNA hit a reboot key. New species emerged to adapt to new conditions. Asteroid hits? Do away with oceans of slime. World freezes to the Equator? Microbes dominate. Atmosphere fills with poisonous oxygen? no worries, life eventually blurts out obnoxious mammals.
Unless we believe that we have now stabilized all planetary and galactic variables, these cycles of growth and extinction will continue time and again. 99% of species, including all other hominids, have gone extinct. Often this has happened over long periods of time. What is interesting today, 200 years after Darwin's birth, is that we are taking direct and deliberate control over the evolution of many, many species, including ourselves. So the single biggest game changer will likely be the beginning of human speciation. We will begin to get glimpses of it in our lifetime. Our grandchildren will likely live it.
There are at least three parallel tracks on which this change is running towards us. The easiest to see and comprehend is taking place among the "handicapped." As we build better prostheses, we begin to see equality. Legless Oscar Pistorious attempting to put aside the Special Olympics and run against able bodied Olympians is but one example. In Beijing he came very close, but did not meet the qualifying times. However, as materials science, engineering, and design advance, by next Olympics he and his disciples will be competitive. And one Olympics after that the "handicapped" could be unbeatable.
It's not just limbs, what started out as large cones for the hard of hearing eventually became pesky, malfunctioning hearing aids. Then came discrete, effective, miniaturized buds. Now internally implanted cochlear implants allow the deaf to hear. But unlike natural evolution, which requires centuries, digital technologies double in power and halve in price every few months. Soon those with implants will hear as well as we do, and, a few months after that, their hearing may be more acute than ours. Likely the devices will span a broad and adjustable tonal range, including that of species like dogs, bats, or dolphins. Wearers will be able to adapt to various environments at will. Perhaps those with natural hearing will file discrimination lawsuits because they were not hired by symphony orchestras…
Speciation does not have to be mechanical, there is a second parallel, fast moving, track in stem cell and tissue engineering. While the global economy melted down this year, a series of extraordinary discoveries opened interesting options that will be remembered far longer that the current NASDAQ index. Labs in Japan and Wisconsin rebooted skin cells and turned them into stem cells. We are now closer to a point where any cell in our body can be rebooted back to its original factory settings (pluripotent stem cell) and can rebuild any part of our body. At the same time, a Harvard team stripped a mouse heart of all its cells, leaving only cartilage. The cartilage was covered in mouse stem cells, which self organized into a beating heart. A Wake Forest group was regrowing human bladders and implanting them into accident and cancer victims. By year end, a European team had taken a trachea from a dead donor, taken the cells off, and then covered the sinew with bone marrow cells taken from a patient dying of tuberculosis. These cells self organized and regrew a fully functional trachea which was implanted into the patient. There was no need for immunosuppressants; her body recognized the cells covering the new organ as her own…
Again, this is an instance where treating the sick and the needy can quickly expand into a "normal" population with elective procedures. The global proliferation of plastic surgery shows how many are willing to undergo great expense, pain, and inconvenience to enhance their bodies. Between 1996 and 2002 elective cosmetic surgery increased 297%, minimally invasive procedures increased 4146%. As artificial limbs, eyes, ears, cartilage begin to provide significant advantages, procedures developed to enhance the quality of life for the handicapped may become common.
After the daughter of one of my friends tore her tendons horseback riding, doctors told her they would have to harvest parts of her own tendons and hamstrings to rebuild her leg. Because she was so young, the crippling procedure would have to be repeated three times as her body grew. But her parents knew tissue engineers were growing tendons in a lab, so she was one of the first recipients of a procedure that allows natural growth and no harvesting. Today she is a successful ski racer, but her coach feels her "damaged" knee is far stronger and has asked whether the same procedure could be done on the undamaged knee…
As we regrow or engineer more body parts we will likely significantly increase average life span and run into a third track of speciation. Those with access to Google already have an extraordinary evolutionary advantage over the digitally illiterate. Next decade we will be able to store everything we see, read, and hear in our lifetime. The question is can we re-upload and upgrade this data as the basic storage organ deteriorates? And can we enhance this organ's cognitive capacity internally and externally? MIT has already brought together many of those interested in cognition — neuroscientists, surgeons, radiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, computer scientists — to begin to understand this black box. But rebooting other body parts will likely be easier than rebooting the brain, so this will likely be the slowest track but, over the long term, the one with the greatest speciation impact.
Speciation will not be a deliberate, programmed event. Instead it will involve an ever faster accumulation of small, useful improvements that eventually turn homo sapiens into a new hominid. We will likely see glimpses of this long-lived, partly mechanical, partly regrown creature that continues to rapidly drive its own evolution. As the branches of the tree of life, and of hominids, continue to grow and spread, many of our grandchildren will likely engineer themselves into what we would consider a new species, one with extraordinary capabilities, a homo evolutis.
The big heads at this site ( http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_print.html ) consider the question of what coming technologies and social developments may change everything the way electricity and penicillin have. I haven't read all the way down yet; and I may never read all the way down; but the selection I've pasted below struck me as a useful curative for all the negativity we've been suffering because of these trivial economic problems.
JUAN ENRIQUEZCEO, Biotechonomy; Founding Director, Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project; Author, The Untied States of America
Speciation is coming. Fast. We keep forgetting that we are but one of several hominids that have walked the Earth (erectus, habilis,neanderthalis, heidelbergensis, ergaster, australopithecus). We keep thinking we are the one and only, the special. But we easily could not have been a dominant species. Or even a species anymore. We blissfully ignore the fact that we came within about 2,000 specimens of going extinct (which is why human DNA is virtually identical).
There is not much evidence, historically, that we are the be all and end all, or that we will remain the dominant species. The fossil history of the planet tells tales of at least six mass extinctions. In each cycle, most life was toast as DNA/RNA hit a reboot key. New species emerged to adapt to new conditions. Asteroid hits? Do away with oceans of slime. World freezes to the Equator? Microbes dominate. Atmosphere fills with poisonous oxygen? no worries, life eventually blurts out obnoxious mammals.
Unless we believe that we have now stabilized all planetary and galactic variables, these cycles of growth and extinction will continue time and again. 99% of species, including all other hominids, have gone extinct. Often this has happened over long periods of time. What is interesting today, 200 years after Darwin's birth, is that we are taking direct and deliberate control over the evolution of many, many species, including ourselves. So the single biggest game changer will likely be the beginning of human speciation. We will begin to get glimpses of it in our lifetime. Our grandchildren will likely live it.
There are at least three parallel tracks on which this change is running towards us. The easiest to see and comprehend is taking place among the "handicapped." As we build better prostheses, we begin to see equality. Legless Oscar Pistorious attempting to put aside the Special Olympics and run against able bodied Olympians is but one example. In Beijing he came very close, but did not meet the qualifying times. However, as materials science, engineering, and design advance, by next Olympics he and his disciples will be competitive. And one Olympics after that the "handicapped" could be unbeatable.
It's not just limbs, what started out as large cones for the hard of hearing eventually became pesky, malfunctioning hearing aids. Then came discrete, effective, miniaturized buds. Now internally implanted cochlear implants allow the deaf to hear. But unlike natural evolution, which requires centuries, digital technologies double in power and halve in price every few months. Soon those with implants will hear as well as we do, and, a few months after that, their hearing may be more acute than ours. Likely the devices will span a broad and adjustable tonal range, including that of species like dogs, bats, or dolphins. Wearers will be able to adapt to various environments at will. Perhaps those with natural hearing will file discrimination lawsuits because they were not hired by symphony orchestras…
Speciation does not have to be mechanical, there is a second parallel, fast moving, track in stem cell and tissue engineering. While the global economy melted down this year, a series of extraordinary discoveries opened interesting options that will be remembered far longer that the current NASDAQ index. Labs in Japan and Wisconsin rebooted skin cells and turned them into stem cells. We are now closer to a point where any cell in our body can be rebooted back to its original factory settings (pluripotent stem cell) and can rebuild any part of our body. At the same time, a Harvard team stripped a mouse heart of all its cells, leaving only cartilage. The cartilage was covered in mouse stem cells, which self organized into a beating heart. A Wake Forest group was regrowing human bladders and implanting them into accident and cancer victims. By year end, a European team had taken a trachea from a dead donor, taken the cells off, and then covered the sinew with bone marrow cells taken from a patient dying of tuberculosis. These cells self organized and regrew a fully functional trachea which was implanted into the patient. There was no need for immunosuppressants; her body recognized the cells covering the new organ as her own…
Again, this is an instance where treating the sick and the needy can quickly expand into a "normal" population with elective procedures. The global proliferation of plastic surgery shows how many are willing to undergo great expense, pain, and inconvenience to enhance their bodies. Between 1996 and 2002 elective cosmetic surgery increased 297%, minimally invasive procedures increased 4146%. As artificial limbs, eyes, ears, cartilage begin to provide significant advantages, procedures developed to enhance the quality of life for the handicapped may become common.
After the daughter of one of my friends tore her tendons horseback riding, doctors told her they would have to harvest parts of her own tendons and hamstrings to rebuild her leg. Because she was so young, the crippling procedure would have to be repeated three times as her body grew. But her parents knew tissue engineers were growing tendons in a lab, so she was one of the first recipients of a procedure that allows natural growth and no harvesting. Today she is a successful ski racer, but her coach feels her "damaged" knee is far stronger and has asked whether the same procedure could be done on the undamaged knee…
As we regrow or engineer more body parts we will likely significantly increase average life span and run into a third track of speciation. Those with access to Google already have an extraordinary evolutionary advantage over the digitally illiterate. Next decade we will be able to store everything we see, read, and hear in our lifetime. The question is can we re-upload and upgrade this data as the basic storage organ deteriorates? And can we enhance this organ's cognitive capacity internally and externally? MIT has already brought together many of those interested in cognition — neuroscientists, surgeons, radiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, computer scientists — to begin to understand this black box. But rebooting other body parts will likely be easier than rebooting the brain, so this will likely be the slowest track but, over the long term, the one with the greatest speciation impact.
Speciation will not be a deliberate, programmed event. Instead it will involve an ever faster accumulation of small, useful improvements that eventually turn homo sapiens into a new hominid. We will likely see glimpses of this long-lived, partly mechanical, partly regrown creature that continues to rapidly drive its own evolution. As the branches of the tree of life, and of hominids, continue to grow and spread, many of our grandchildren will likely engineer themselves into what we would consider a new species, one with extraordinary capabilities, a homo evolutis.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Change can happen
This is kind of neat. Hat tip to Rick Brookhiser at National Review.
http://www.flixxy.com/presidents-morphing.htm
And, if you're not in the mood for history and seriousness this ad is priceless. If the thermometer function doesn't make you laugh out loud you're entirely too anal and really need to lighten up.
http://www.flixxy.com/sumsing-turbo-3000-cellphone.htm
Finally, for those of you who can read, here's the first recorded example of tech support. Warning - subtitles.
http://www.flixxy.com/medieval-tech-support.htm
http://www.flixxy.com/presidents-morphing.htm
And, if you're not in the mood for history and seriousness this ad is priceless. If the thermometer function doesn't make you laugh out loud you're entirely too anal and really need to lighten up.
http://www.flixxy.com/sumsing-turbo-3000-cellphone.htm
Finally, for those of you who can read, here's the first recorded example of tech support. Warning - subtitles.
http://www.flixxy.com/medieval-tech-support.htm
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