New Year’s Eve 2012

For my New Year’s Eve post, I was going to make a list of all the things that didn’t happen this year, but I can already see it won’t be ready to publish before midnight. Every time I think I’m done, I think of something else that didn’t happen. It’s like there is no end to this list!

For next year I think I’ll put together a list that will be shorter. Maybe I’ll keep a list of the weirdest things I read about each week. For instance, this week’s winner would be black ivory coffee. In case you aren’t familiar with this coffee, it is prepared from coffee beans that have been pre-digested by elephants. Elephants eat the coffee beans and a day later the beans are “harvested” from the elephant dung. These coffee beans that have been pooped out by elephants cost $500 per pound. The coffee is only available at the most upscale hotel restaurants around the world. The wealthy world traveler can buy a tiny cup of black ivory coffee for $50. So there is an upside to not being a wealthy world traveler.

This sounds like the perfect home business. I’m seriously considering making my own special coffee beans. Of course, I don’t own an elephant. But what’s so special about elephants, anyway? A colon is a colon. All I have to do is borrow my neighbor’s dachshund. That animal will eat anything and it already poops in my yard, so harvesting the beans shouldn’t be a problem.

I have a list to finish. So g’night y’all, Happy New Year, and be safe.

Diet and Exercise

I hope people are wrong about that whole “diet and exercise” thing being necessary for a long, healthy life.

I don’t exercise. I could be the poster child for the word “sedentary”. If you look up “sedentary” in a dictionary, you’ll find my picture.

I tried exercise. I didn’t like it. It was too much like high school Phys-Ed class. It was a lot of work. Worse, it was a lot of very boring work. I tried putting a television in front of my treadmill so I could watch it while jogging in place. The television helped a little but not enough to keep me on the treadmill.

I do get some exercise. I have to walk to my car in order to drive to the store to buy groceries. I stand at my sink and move my arms while I wash dishes. Sometimes I walk around the neighborhood, but I’ve done that so much it’s gotten boring so I don’t do it much any more.

My sofa is in a bad location: it’s inside my house. I constantly trip and fall onto it. Sometimes it takes me a couple of hours to get back up.

My diet is not much help, either. For example, this Thanksgiving I had hotdogs all day. Breakfast was hotdogs with chili and onions. Lunch was hotdogs with mustard and relish. Dinner was a replay of breakfast: hotdogs with chili and onions.

Day before yesterday, I ate pizza, and only pizza, all day. At least it was a “supreme” pizza, so in addition to pepperoni and sausage I got black olives and sliced tomato. They’re healthy, right? I don’t want to overdo this vegetable thing.

I had pizza yesterday, too, but only for lunch. I had tubular-shaped sausage with sautéed onions for dinner. There you go: another veggie.

I had pizza for lunch today and I’ll have it for lunch tomorrow. I’m about to go and cook up my last sausage for dinner. I’ll sauté onion rings in oil, add a dash of soy sauce and a sprinkle of hot pepper flakes, cut up the pre-cooked sausage and after the onion is cooked I’ll add the sausage and some diced garlic to the pan. It will be tasty. I don’t know what I’ll have for tomorrow’s dinner. I might go to the deli and buy chicken wings for lunch and move the leftover pizza to the dinner time slot. I’ll ponder that.

My doctor tells me my lipid levels are off the chart. But they’ve been high my whole life. One time I asked her why, with those high lipid levels, was I still alive? She replied, “Some things we don’t understand.” Thanks, doc, for the comforting words. I’m a medical mystery. Just what I wanted to hear.

Cars and Carbs

No, not carbohydrates. Carburetors. All cars used to have them. Now, thanks to EPA standards for fuel economy and emissions, car makers use fuel injectors instead of carburetors.

I realize many of my readers don’t know a carburetor from a crabapple, and that’s okay. The carburetor is a device that blends air and fuel to provide a precise mixture to burn in the engine. But it’s really just the McGuffin in this post. Hitchcock would understand. The story is the thing.

This story started with a mischievous teenager (probably) who dumped a quart of milk into the gas tank of my dad’s Buick Electra. This was before gas filler door locks became common on cars. Where did he get the milk? Well, milk in glass bottles was once delivered to many people’s front porches early in the morning. Our house was no exception.

The vandal left the bottle sticking out of the fuel filler tube, which was located behind the rear license plate. When he saw the empty bottle, dad realized what had happened. Rather than start the car and risk sucking contaminated fuel into the fuel line, dad had the car towed to a service station so the fuel tank could be flushed. Not only did a quart of milk contain almost a quart of water, but the milk solids were converted to a solid, brownish residue when the milk hit the gasoline.

The service station did a poor job of flushing the tank. A lot of milk residue remained in the tank and got into the fuel line. When the contaminated fuel got to the fuel filter in the engine compartment, it stopped up the filter and the engine stalled. When that happened, someone (dad or me) would have to open the fuel filter, remove and clean the filter element, and replace the element back inside the fuel filter.

One day news came of my dad’s brother’s death. We drove from central Virginia to St. Petersburg, Florida to attend the funeral. The morning of the funeral I prepared the car for the day’s events. I raised the hood, disassembled the fuel filter, cleaned out the brown milk residue that had accumulated during the trip, and reassembled the filter. Unbeknownst to me, I got the filter element slightly misaligned in the filter body with the result that contaminated fuel could get past the filter and enter the carburetor.

Carburetors are a wonder of design and precision. The inside of a carburetor has small passageways to allow fuel and air to flow to various chambers; everything works off air pressure. Fuel is sucked through “jets” which are small, metal plugs with tiny, precisely drilled holes through them. There are idle jets, off-idle jets, high speed jets. There are cams and fuel bowls and mixture screws and all kinds of ways to screw up a carburetor if anything other than fuel gets into it. A small engine uses a one-barrel carburetor, so called because it has one “venturi” containing a choke plate, throttle plate, and fuel jets. Larger engines use a two-barrel carburetor, which is like having two carburetors in one assembly. Dad’s Buick Electra with its large V8 engine required a four-barrel carburetor. It was like having 4 carburetors fused into one assembly.

It was a sunny day when my mom, my dad, my younger brother Ken, and I got into the Buick Electra and headed for the funeral. Dad, Ken, and I wore suits and ties, of course. This was olden times and showing respect for the deceased’s family was the custom of the day. We were driving down a busy highway when the engine stalled. We knew immediately what the problem was.

The Buick coasted to a stop on the highway shoulder. We cleaned the fuel filter element but the car wouldn’t start, and we realized that the carburetor was plugged up with milk residue that had gotten past the fuel filter. Dad went nowhere without his toolbox in the trunk, so we got out tools and started the process of removing the carburetor from the intake manifold. We disconnected the fuel line, rubber vacuum hoses, the throttle linkage. We removed the carburetor to the side of the road. We disassembled that 4-barrel carburetor right there on that busy highway under a hot, central Florida sun with traffic passing by us a few feet away. We cleaned out the carburetor’s fuel bowl and all the little passages. We reassembled the carburetor and installed it onto the intake manifold and hooked up the vacuum lines and fuel line and throttle linkage. We started up the car and drove to the funeral. We got there on time.

When I was young it seemed like that kind of thing happened all the time. You just pushed forward. You did the next thing. You didn’t complain. You did what you had to do.

That wasn’t the last carburetor I worked on. If I thought my car was sluggish because of a dirty carburetor, I didn’t hesitate to disassemble the carburetor and soak it in carburetor cleaner. After you’ve disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled a 4-barrel carburetor beside a busy highway while wearing a suit and tie under a hot sun, carburetors don’t intimidate you.

Bad Water Bill

When I lived in Roanoke, Virginia, I had a friend and co-worker named Steve. One day our boss sent us on assignments to a company in Maryland. We performed our assigned tasks and after a few days we left one morning and headed back to Roanoke. Steve drove while I rode shotgun and watched the beautiful Shenandoah countryside roll by on I-81. Around noon I saw a faded billboard advertising “Bad Water Bill’s Barbecue Barn” and realized I was getting hungry. According to the billboard, Bad Water Bill’s was at the next exit - the Strasburg exit. We were still 160 miles from Roanoke and that’s a long way to travel on an empty stomach. I mentioned the billboard to Steve. “Let’s stop and get some barbeque.” Steve agreed and we took the Strasburg exit.

We traveled only a short distance from the Interstate before we came upon Bad Water Bill’s. The place looked closed. The front windows were boarded up. There were two doors. We tried the first door and found it locked. We tried the second door. It opened.

We went inside and it was like walking into a motion picture auditorium while the movie is playing. Which is to say: dark. As my eyes adjusted to the change from daylight to dim light, I saw that the only light in the room was coming from florescent fixtures hanging above pool tables. The patrons, all men, were either sitting at a long bar near the back wall or standing around pool tables.

It’s hard to describe the men inside Bad Water Bill’s. Have you ever seen the animated character called Yosemite Sam? I’m not saying the men looked exactly like Yosemite Sam. I’m only saying that that’s the impression I got. Yosemite Sam has a longer beard than most of the customers I saw. Plus he flaunts a couple of six-shooters. The men in Bad Water Bill’s were mostly armed with pool cues. They were bikers. Bad Water Bill’s was a biker bar.

Steve and I walked up to the bar and Steve said to the bartender, “You feedin’ people today?”

The bartender thumbed over his shoulder, motioning toward a closed door behind the bar. “Through there,” he said.

Steve and I walked around the bar and through the door. On the other side of the door was a most amazing sight. There was a Mexican restaurant, brightly lit by large windows on three walls. We learned that a Mexican family ran the restaurant and every week genuine Mexican food ingredients were flown up from Mexico City. So Steve and I sat down and had authentic Mexican meals. This was not Tex-Mex food, nor was it the tame food often served to Americans in so-called Mexican restaurants.

I enjoyed the meal but I never returned. In October, 2003, an arsonist burned down Bad Water Bill’s. Supposedly, he did it to earn respect from a motorcycle gang. What he got was five years in lockup. Bad Water Bill’s owner Mary Fisher said the fire destroyed her life. She had owned the bar for three years, and had worked there for many years before. Maybe she had fire insurance. Maybe not.

If you find yourself driving past Strasburg on I-81, consider taking the Route 11 exit headed east. Drive for a mile. If you see Bad Water Bill’s—it was on the left side of the highway—stop and eat. And leave a comment here. Let us know it’s back.

Go Figure

The blog I posted yesterday began with this comment: “It’s very quiet in the house …” and ended with this comment: “It is really quiet.”

This morning I awoke to a cacophony of crashing and tinkling sounds right outside my bedroom doorway (the door was open). More accurately, I had awakened earlier but had drifted back into a semi-sleep reverie. When the sounds began, I quickly rose to one elbow and faced the doorway, trying to understand what I was hearing. It seemed like the noise was coming from the living room or from just around the corner – in the hallway between my bedroom and the living room. The noise sounded like a bunch of aluminum pie plates and glass jars falling onto the floor. It lasted about 5 seconds. I live alone, so my first concern was: is someone in my house? I mean, besides me.

I got out of bed and listened; all was quiet again. I walked to the living room and looked around. I saw nothing unusual. Everything was in its place. I checked all the rooms but found nothing to explain what I just heard.

You may be thinking “hypnopompic”, as I was partly awake. Or “hypnagogic”, as I was drifting back to sleep. And you may be right. But when the sound began, I shot into full wakefulness in an instant, but the sound continued for a few more seconds.

This happened once before, not long after I moved into this house. I was working at my computer which, at the time, was located in a back room, when suddenly I heard a series of loud, crashing sounds. It sounded like pots and pans tumbling to the floor. That sound also lasted about 5 seconds and seemed to originate near the kitchen. Because I was awake and alert when it happened, I didn’t think someone else was in my house. I just thought something in the kitchen had fallen and somehow triggered an avalanche of cooking vessels. But when I inspected the kitchen, I found nothing out of place. I never discovered what caused the sound.

One night I heard someone kick my front storm door. My porch light was on so anyone on my porch or running from it could be seen. I got to the front door fast, because I wanted to catch the person who kicked the door. The street is well lit and I looked in both directions but there was no one to be seen.

My mother passed away on a sunny day in June, 2003, after living her last years alone in this house. That night several guests, including me, stayed at the house. During the night I awoke with a strong feeling of a presence in the room. The feeling was so strong that I turned on my bedside lamp and looked around. Of course, I was alone. I went back to sleep. But I didn’t sleep long.

I awoke with the bedside lamp flashing beside me. It flashed on and off in groups of three: Flash, Flash, Flash…Pause…Flash, Flash, Flash… I reached over to the lamp and turned it on and then off. It stayed off. “Weird,” I thought, and I went back to sleep.

My visitors left the next day. I half-expected something odd to happen that night, but nothing happened. The next morning I got up, went to the kitchen, and made tea. The window blinds were closed and the living room was cool and dim. I took my tea to the living room and sat in a chair in front of the dark TV. Suddenly I heard the noise: a powerful BAM! that definitely originated in the kitchen. What the hell? Did something explode? I went to the kitchen and looked around. I even looked inside the refrigerator. I found nothing amiss. It was hours later when I realized what had caused that sound.

The kitchen at that time had 1940s-era sheet metal cabinets. One of the cabinets had a broken latch and would not stay closed. You could close the door but as soon as you moved your hand away, the door would drift open a few inches. The BAM! was the sound made when the cabinet door was forcefully slammed shut. The sound of the metal door slamming hard against the metal cabinet was unmistakable.

When I mentioned this event to the preacher next door, he said it was probably caused by a breeze. But there were no windows open; it was summer and the a/c was on. And no “breeze” would have slammed that door that hard. But as they say, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”

How do I explain these events? The first two – the flashing lamp and the slamming cabinet door – I like to think of as my mother’s just-released spirit saying goodbye to the house and to me in the only way she could. As for the others, I don’t know. The Germans have a word: poltergeist. It means noisy spirit, and it’s part of the folklore of many countries. But these are modern times. I can only shrug and say, “Go figure.”

Post Christmas

It’s very quiet in the house, a few minutes past midnight on the day after Christmas.  The only sounds I hear are the tinnitus that never leaves my head and the very faint whir of a fan in my computer.

I got up late Christmas morning, having gone to bed around 5 AM.  I planned on fasting. And if that worked out, I planned to fast the next day. And the next day. Maybe I would fast until New Year’s Day. That was my plan. The only thing missing from the plan was willpower.

My plan lasted until I remembered that I had a pre-cooked sausage patty in the fridge in an already-open package and I should eat it today. I hate to throw out any food and especially a sausage patty, but I knew if it lingered in the fridge another day it might become iffy, spoilage-wise. So I put a pan on the stovetop and poured grapeseed oil into it. When the oil became dimpled from heat, I turned the heat down and cracked two eggs into the pan. While they cooked I heated the sausage patty in the microwave oven. I turned to the stovetop and contemplated the slowly cooking eggs.

When I was a child, my parents fried bacon in a cast iron pan on the stovetop (microwave ovens were still science fiction). After the bacon was cooked, the eggs went into the pan and were fried in the bacon grease. Cooking bacon and eggs was easy. I could cook eggs sunny side down without turning them over. It was just a matter of tilting the pan and using a spatula to toss hot grease over the yolks. Afterward, the grease went into a round, metal container beside the stove. The container was made specifically to hold used bacon grease. It even had a filter in the top to catch small bits of bacon that may have broken off in the pan. Bacon grease accumulated in the container until it was needed to cook another food. My favorite was fried corn: awesome. There are probably people who still fry eggs in bacon grease and use bacon drippings in cooking. And that’s okay. That’s why God invented coronary bypass surgery.

Many times I’ve cooked eggs in butter, though the milk solids burn easily which leaves a brown residue on the eggs. Clarified butter or ghee would have been better. For a while I used olive oil for frying and sautéing. Of course, it imparts a slight olive taste. Now I use grapeseed oil, a byproduct of winemaking. It’s nutritionally similar to olive oil but with a neutral flavor, twice the vitamin E, and a higher smoke point.

The eggs were done. I put them on a plate with the warmed-up patty. I ate in front of the TV, then dumped the plate and fork into the sink. I powered up my TV and my computer. I checked my email, watched some TV, read the news and surfed some web sites.

Around 2:30 PM there was a knock at my front door. My neighbor had brought me a Christmas card. I thanked her. She was in a hurry to get someplace so she didn’t stay and chat. When I opened the envelope I discovered a prepaid store gift card. That was sweet – an unexpected gift. Suddenly I decided to go to a Chinese buffet restaurant. I had already blown my fast all to hell. It would be my Christmas present to me: instead of a fast, I would have an anti-fast. And that’s what I did.

Hot buffet food is supposed to be kept at a temperature of at least 140° to prevent spoilage. The food on this buffet was barely warm. Oh well – in for a dime, in for a dollar. I ate three plates of the tasty but tepid food. I knew that if I returned it wouldn’t be until next Christmas, at least. I left a tip for the waiter/busboy, despite not seeing him at any time during my meal. (I had to ask someone else to bring me water and I got my utensils from a nearby wait-staff station.) And, there being nothing else open and nothing else to do, I returned home. And I watched some TV. And I surfed the web. And I wrote this little thing. And now I’m going to post it to my blog.

It is really quiet.

The Dream Animation

In the wee hours of Christmas Eve, I lie in bed, dreaming. In my dream I reach up with my right arm to grasp something. The situation is dire, lives are in danger, and I almost jump off the ground as I reach up over my head. At the same time, my actual right arm mimics my dream arm and my hand hits the headboard forcefully enough to awaken me. Sunrise is hours away. I lie in the dark a long time, thinking I might go back to sleep. But sleep does not return. I walk to my dark living room. I sit in my chair in front of the dark TV. For a moment I consider turning on the TV. But I leave it off.

Aren’t we supposed to be immobilized during dreaming just so that kind of thing doesn’t happen? I’m sure I read that somewhere. But sometimes it – the paralysis system – doesn’t work properly. Hence, sleep-walking, and sometimes sleep-eating or even sleep-driving. Sleep-walking and other sleep activities happen when part of our brain is awake and part is asleep. The part of our brain that makes us conscious and aware is fast asleep, but the rest of our brain is awake, enabling us to perform many kinds of activities while asleep. I had a college roommate who would get up in the middle of the night, pee on the floor, then go back to bed. I would be awakened by the sound of urine hitting the floor. By the faint light coming through our dorm-room window I could see his silhouette standing in the middle of the room and peeing on the carpet. Of course, it fell on me to get towels and soap and clean it up as best I could. My roommate slept through the entire event. Later, when I accused him of wetting the floor, he was adamant that it never happened. He insisted that he never sleep-peed. If those days were now instead of then, I would video him doing it and prove to him that he was a floor-wetter. But that was long ago, before home camcorders and video players existed, and long before smart phones with cameras were invented. Fortunately, it didn’t happen often.

Birds that migrate long distances fly non-stop for days. They sleep while flying. They have the ability to put one half of their brain to sleep while the other half is awake and navigating. Then the part of the brain that was asleep awakens and allows the part of the brain that has been awake to get its nap time. I wonder if birds dream … and what would they dream about?

Anyone who has owned a dog knows that dogs dream. My last dog, Shadow, used to dream. Her feet would twitch as if she were running, and she made whimpering sounds or growls as she ran in her dream world. I don’t know if she was chasing or being chased, but it was intense to her. When she awakened she apparently knew she had been dreaming, just as you or I would know. Sometimes dogs sleep-walk. I saw a video of a dreaming dog that stood up and ran straight into a wall. The dog awakened looking slightly sheepish, as in, “Did I really do that?”

I pondered all these things in my dark living room. Feeling a gnawing hunger in my stomach, I fixed a hearty bowl of oatmeal. Oatmeal is said to be a “stick to your ribs” food. Which means it’s satiating – “filling”. Oatmeal has complex carbs that produce serotonin, and the milk I mix with the oats contains sleep-inducing tryptophan. But to be sure, I followed up with a shot of liquor. I turned up the heat in my chilly house and lay on the sofa. I went to sleep right away, and I dreamed. My dreams were long and complex and interwoven. Must have been the oatmeal.

Pork Story

In yesterday’s post I related the story of a central Florida man who was shot twice because he complained about the slow service in a pizza restaurant.

Today I ran across another crime gem from central Florida. This one happened about a week ago. Here is how the story begins:

Police: Man fatally shot roommate over pork chop HOLLY HILL, Fla. (AP) - Police in central Florida say a man fatally shot his roommate during an argument over how to prepare pork chops.

I know this is the kind of story you would expect to read in the Onion, but it’s legit. There’s just something about central Florida. Maybe it’s that hot sun they have. If you stand under the midday Florida sun too long, it will bake your bacon for sure.

As for pork chops, you can roast, grill, or fry them, boneless or bone-in.

Is there really a wrong way to cook a pork chop?

I mean, a way so wrong that you’d have to kill the cook?

One Week Later

It’s been a week since the Connecticut school massacre and today I’m reading about another mass shooting. Four dead, including the shooter, and 3 injured. This mass shooting was at least the 62nd in the last 30 years.

This shooting began in rural Frankstown Township near Altoona, Pennsylvania. A man entered a tiny church hall and fatally shot a woman who was decorating for a children’s Christmas party. He got back into his vehicle and drove to the tiny village of Geeseytown where he shot two men who were standing in a driveway. Then he drove off, passing two police cars headed to the crime scene and running head-on into a third. He then engaged the officers in a gun battle. One officer was injured from the collision, another was shot in the chest but was protected by a bullet proof vest, and a third officer was hit in the face by bullet fragments and shattered glass. The officers managed to shoot and kill the perp. I call this kind of shooting your typical ADG – Angry Dumbass with a Gun.

By the way, this was the second church shooting in western Pennsylvania this month. On December 2 a man shot his ex-wife, a church organist, during a service in Coudersport. Churches and schools: not having a good year.

Meanwhile, Florida – not wanting to be outdone in the dumbassery department – had its own ADG shooting. According to news reports, a customer named Michael Jock was waiting in line at a pizza restaurant when another customer named Randall White began complaining about the slow service. The two men exchanged words, which escalated to a shoving match.

( In my mind I can see it happening now …
Man 1: “Don’t like it? Do something about it!” and shove… 
Man 2: “You do something about it!” and shove…
Man 1: “No, you!” and shove… )

Finally Jock pulled out a revolver and shot White in the gut. White tried to grab the gun and was shot in the gut a second time. Jock told officers he was justified under Florida’s “stand your ground” law. He said he believed his life was in danger. It didn’t help; the officers charged Jock with aggravated battery with a weapon and shooting within a building. He was released on bail.

I think the lessons here are:
(1) if you visit Florida … don’t look at anyone, don’t speak to anyone, if anyone speaks to you, run away. And if you go out to buy pizza, wear body armor.
(2) if you visit Pennsylvania or Connecticut … well, don’t visit Pennsylvania or Connecticut.

Amaya

Once upon a time there was a country called Amaya. It was a great country, but it had a serious problem. The citizens of Amaya loved flame-throwers. Unfortunately, every few months an Amayan would enter a building and murder its occupants by spraying them with fire. Sometimes the building was an office building. Sometimes the building was a shopping center or a movie theater. Sometimes the building was a school. Eventually, the people of Amaya became so disgusted by the carnage that they asked the government to hold a referendum.

The referendum had two options, and citizens had to vote for one of the following:

Option 1. The country of Amaya will place firemen and firetrucks at all schools, shopping centers, office buildings, and places of public gatherings such as movie theaters. Because an attack may occur at any time with no warning, firemen must at all times wear fire-proof suits and be armed with a fire extinguisher.

Option 2. The country of Amaya prohibits the sale of flame-throwers.

Which option seems most reasonable?
Which option do you think the Amayans chose?
Which option do you think was successful?

12-21-12

The apocalypse came and went. Yawn.

For those in the northern hemisphere, today is the first day of winter – the shortest day and longest night of the year. The North Pole is tilted farthest away from the sun. The noon sun is at its lowest point in the southern sky. Above the Arctic Circle there is constant night. Below the Antarctic Circle night never comes; there is only day.

Earlier this year, on June 6, a rare astronomical event occurred: a transit of the planet Venus across the Sun. On that day, Venus passed directly between the Earth and the Sun. For a while, Venus became visible as a round, dark spot on the disk of the Sun.  Earthlings won’t see Venus transit the Sun again for 105 years.

However, Venus is transiting the Sun this very day – as seen from Saturn. There are no humans near Saturn to witness the event, but there are non-human eyes at Saturn that are watching. The Cassini spacecraft is at Saturn where Earthlings sent it in 2004. For 8 years, 5 months and 19 days Cassini has been sniffing and tasting and measuring and photographing. And it has been talking to the Earthlings that sent it to Saturn. It’s been telling them what it has found: about Saturn, about Titan, about Saturn’s rings and smaller moons. The Earthlings listen to Cassini. They discuss what Cassini tells them. And then they tell Cassini where to go next, what to watch, what to examine. And Cassini faithfully carries out the orders of its human masters.

In 2017, the Earthlings that sent Cassini to Saturn will order Cassini to commit suicide by diving into Saturn’s atmosphere. Shhhh. Cassini doesn’t know about that part of the plan, yet.

A Weighty Subject

I’m watching San Francisco play New England when a Toyota Tundra commercial comes on the TV. The commercial shows a space shuttle orbiting high above the planet and an announcer says, “In space, the shuttle Endeavour is practically weightless.” Immediately, I shout at the TV, “What? No it’s not!”

Okay, I didn’t really shout at the TV, but I did mutter emphatically.

When the shuttle is orbiting the planet, it certainly is not weightless. Nor are the passengers inside the shuttle weightless. They feel like they’re weightless because they’re falling at the same speed as the shuttle they are in. It’s like being inside an elevator when the elevator cable breaks. You may feel like you’re suddenly weightless but in reality you are accelerating downward at the same rate as the elevator because of your weight. You might find yourself floating gently off the floor of the elevator as if you were weightless. However, the illusion of weightlessness will end at the bottom of the elevator shaft.

You see, a space shuttle in orbit – or anything in orbit – is actually falling toward the planet. But its great speed parallel to the planet’s surface results in the earth curving away at the same rate as the shuttle is falling. If the shuttle really was somehow made instantaneously weightless while in orbit, it would cease orbiting the planet and fly off  into space on a trajectory tangent to its previous orbital path. It’s the shuttle’s weight that keeps it in orbit around the earth.

San Francisco is up 17 to 3. I don’t even care, I’m a Redskins fan. And that’s why I was rooting for Philadelphia to beat the Cowboys earlier today. Because if the Cowboys lost that would mean the Redskins would tie with the Giants for first place in the NFC East. But because Philadelphia lost to the Cowboys, the Redskins are in a 3-way tie for first place in their division. It’s simple, really. Like gravity and weight.

The Kimberly Factor

When I was a teen, I had a fairly eclectic taste in music: rock ‘n roll (though it was very different from today’s pop music), string orchestra, brass band, jazz. So it wasn’t unusual that I bought a vinyl LP containing piano jazz music. My favorite tune on the record, and the only one I still recall the name of, was a mellow little song titled Kimberly.

There was a time when I wrote a lot of short stories. I wrote all through my middle and high school years, both in school and at home. Several of my stories featured a female character named Kim. I didn’t know anyone named Kimberly, I just liked the name.

Years later, I spent many hours hanging out at a bar in Roanoke, Virginia. One of my favorite people on the wait-staff was a bartender named Kimberly. She was about 35 when I met her. She had entered the Army when she was 17. When I met her she was studying biology at a nearby university. She was smart, pretty, and confident. She had many of the qualities of my fictional Kimberly. Or vice versa, perhaps.

I moved from Roanoke to another city. As I was moving into my house, a single woman with a young son was moving into the house across the street from mine. Her name was Kimberly. In the house next door to mine was a woman with two children; the woman’s name was Kimberly. In the house across the street from mine, next to single Kimberly’s house, there lived a married couple; the woman’s name was Kimberly.

I began eating lunch at a restaurant in my new hometown. There was a bartender working there who was attractive, smart, and confident. I liked her immediately.  One day I asked her name. You know where this is going, don’t you? Yeah. Kimberly. We became friends. At least, it seemed that way to me.

I no longer eat at that restaurant. Kimberly no longer works there. But Kimberly and I are still friends. Kind of.  She’s a Facebook friend now. She doesn’t return phone calls or reply to text messages or respond to Facebook messages. But, she does call me from time to time to say hello. Now that I think about it, I’m sure she called me at least once. Maybe twice, though I’m less sure of that.

Nightmare, Again

Not again! That was my first thought when news of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre flashed on my TV. My second thought was a sentence DH Lawrence wrote in 1923: "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer."

Many years ago I bought a collection of short stories written by Harlan Ellison. The book’s title (and the title of its first story) was The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World. It’s a good story and it won the 1969 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. In the story, a man named William Sterog goes on a killing spree. Later in the story we learn that a race of advanced beings have been draining madness from their world and dumping it on humans. As a reason for mindless killing, that concept works as well for me as any other reason that “experts” may invent.

There are over a hundred thousand schools in America, so even with the occasional school shooting, a student’s chance of getting shot at school is vanishingly small. Schools are safe. That said, one more school shooting is one too many.

Mass shootings are relatively rare, but that isn’t the point. The point is that their frequency and deadliness are increasing. The first mass shooting I remember was the clock tower shooting at the University of Texas in 1966. The next mass shooting was at the California State University, Fullerton, ten years later. Then eight years after that, there was the McDonald’s shooting in San Ysidro, California.

Fast forward to 2012 and we have the Sandy Hook massacre preceded by the shopping mall shooting in Oregon earlier this week, the Sikh Temple shooting in August, and the Aurora movie theater shooting in July. At least one planned mass shooting was thwarted by police. At this rate of increase, in 20 years stepping out your front door will be like stepping into the gunfight at the OK corral.

There are 300 million guns in America, so we probably can’t completely stop mass shootings. But we can diminish them. It’s just a matter of coming to a consensus about where, exactly, is our line in the sand. We won’t let civilians buy and sell atomic bombs because we don’t want to have millions of instant casualties. That crosses our line in the sand. You can’t go to a store and buy a pipe bomb because we don’t want hundreds of people to be killed and maimed instantly by a deranged person. That crosses our line in the sand. So how many people do we want to allow a school or mall shooter to kill at one time? A hundred? Seventy five? Fifty? How about less than ten? If our line in the sand is at 10 lives lost in a mass shooting, then clearly a hundred-round magazine should be illegal for the same reason pipe bombs are illegal.

A few months ago I was speaking with a friend who owns a significant gun collection. There had been a mass shooting in the news and he was grumbling that “anti-gun people” were going to use it as an “excuse” to take away his guns. I told him that I was actually in favor of crazy people not owning guns. His reply was, “Take guns away from crazy people today and everyone else will lose their guns tomorrow.”

And there’s the problem: the gun lobby views any restriction on guns as the beginning of a slippery slope. So they fight even the most reasonable and common sense approaches to the problem of mass shootings. Twenty young children are dead and I doubt any significant action will be taken to prevent it from happening again. I hope I’m wrong, but I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Jeep

My old Jeep still runs well. I don't drive it much so it's still under 100K miles. In July I had an auto shop replace the left front axle because of a torn CV boot. (CV stands for Constant Velocity. It’s a type of flexible joint in an axle. A CV joint is covered by a flexible rubber-like “boot” that keeps the grease inside and the dirt outside.) Ever since the axle was replaced I've heard a faint tinkling sound from the left front wheel. It sounded like a ball bearing shaken in a glass jar. After several months of listening to the annoying sound, I took the vehicle back to the shop. At first, the mechanics were as mystified as I, but they found the source of the sound.
 
My Jeep has machined aluminum alloy wheels. Instead of a hubcap, there is a disc about 2 inches in diameter that covers the hole in the center of the wheel. With the cover disc removed you would expect to see the end of the axle, an axle nut, and a castellated nut cover with a cotter pin through the axle. The nut cover and cotter pin prevent the axle nut from loosening.
 
When the mechanic popped off the cover disc, the nut cover was lying inside the wheel! The original mechanic apparently forgot to install the nut cover, and being too lazy to remove the lug nuts, remove the wheel, remove the cotter pin, install the nut cover, replace the cotter pin, put the wheel on the axle, and install the lug nuts, he simply tossed the nut cover inside the wheel’s axle cavity and installed the cover disc. The tinkling noise was the metal nut cover bouncing around inside the wheel’s axle cavity. Unbelievable!
 
If the axle nut had backed off - and there were about 6 threads between the nut and the cotter pin - the wheel would have loosened enough to ruin the wheel bearing and hub race. When you take your vehicle to an auto shop, you're really rolling the dice.

Taxes in America

There is much talk about the fiscal cliff. Obama wants to restore Clinton-era tax rates on the wealthiest Americans. Republicans want to keep current tax rates in place. It’s time to put tax rates in perspective.

Let’s start with the 400 taxpayers reporting the highest income. What is their annual income? How much tax do they pay?

According to the Internal Revenue Service, the average annual income reported by the top 400 taxpayers is $344,831,528 and their effective income tax rate is 16.6%.

What about the top 1% of taxpayers? That’s a much larger group. How do they fare?

The top 1% earn an average income before taxes of $1,873,000 and they pay an effective tax rate of 20.6%.

Interestingly, the super-wealthy have a lower effective tax rate than those who earn “only” a couple million dollars per year. It’s almost like the super-wealthy have some kind of influence over tax policy.

Lately, marginal tax rates are being discussed. The two factors to consider are the highest marginal tax rate and the income threshold where it takes effect. Historically, top marginal tax rates have been well above 50%.

Let’s look at the top tax rate and income threshold for a single person and see how they have changed over the years. I used numbers from the Tax Foundation. If you want to examine the actual numbers, the data is in a table at the end of this blog post.

Using the data, I plotted the top tax rate every two years from 1932 to 2010 and then drew a line showing where the top tax rate would be if Obama is successful in raising it to the Clinton-era rate. You can see that the current top marginal rate is almost the lowest it has ever been. You can see, too, that the amount of increase that Obama has suggested is relatively slight.




From the early 1940s to the early 1960s the top tax rate was above 90% on income above $200,000. Despite that, the 1950s were a period of increasing prosperity. Manufacturing boomed, people earned more and spent more, and the country paid down much of its war debt. And some people became millionaires.

During the 1960s the economy expanded faster. With a tax rate of 91% on income over $200,000 at the beginning of the decade, dropping to 70% on income over $100,000 at the end of the decade, unemployment dropped every year during the ‘60s: from 6.7% in 1960 to 3.5% in 1969. And still more people became millionaires.

In reality, the US economy has grown every year since 1950 except for 2009. But while the economic pie is getting larger, the slices most people receive have not grown. So where is all the extra pie going?

Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy between 1983 and 2004, 42% of it went to the top 1%, and 94% went to the top 20%. The bottom 80% received only 6% of the wealth generated in the United States during the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s. After accounting for inflation, the bottom 80% of earners saw no growth in income, and some earners saw their incomes shrink.

But the top 400 earners, in the period from 1992 to 2007, saw their income increase 392% (in 2007 dollars) and their average tax rate reduced by 37%.

In other words, the rich are getting richer – a lot richer – at the expense of everyone else. The economic pie is getting larger but unless you’re wealthy, your slice of the pie is staying the same or shrinking.

The Gini coefficent is a formula that measures income inequality in national economies. It is reliable enough that it is used by the CIA world factbook. According to the Gini coefficient, the U.S. ranks 93rd in income equality for household income. Among countries with at least a quarter-million adults, only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon are more unequal. Wealthy Americans are living in a new Gilded Age.

---

Marginal Tax Rate Data

Year	Marginal Tax Rate	On Income Over	Inflation Adjusted to 2011
1932	63.0%	$1,000,000	$16,378,075
1934	63.0%	$1,000,000	$16,744,748
1936	79.0%	$5,000,000	$80,712,095
1938	79.0%	$5,000,000	$79,567,243
1940	79.0%	$5,000,000	$80,135,580
1942	88.0%	$200,000	$2,753,124
1944	94.0%	$200,000	$2,549,768
1946	91.0%	$200,000	$2,301,329
1948	91.0%	$200,000	$1,862,072
1950	91.0%	$200,000	$1,862,072
1952	92.0%	$200,000	$1,693,431
1954	91.0%	$200,000	$1,668,250
1956	91.0%	$200,000	$1,649,850
1958	91.0%	$200,000	$1,552,800
1960	91.0%	$200,000	$1,516,079
1962	91.0%	$200,000	$1,485,958
1964	77.0%	$200,000	$1,447,610
1966	70.0%	$100,000	$692,530
1968	70.0%	$100,000	$644,769
1970	70.0%	$100,000	$578,298
1972	70.0%	$100,000	$536,793
1974	70.0%	$100,000	$455,131
1976	70.0%	$100,000	$394,340
1978	70.0%	$102,200	$351,712
1980	70.0%	$108,300	$294,907
1982	50.0%	$41,500	$96,495
1984	50.0%	$81,800	$176,653
1986	50.0%	$88,270	$180,712
1988	28.0%	$17,850	$33,856
1990	28.0%	$19,450	$33,391
1992	31.0%	$51,900	$83,003
1994	39.6%	$250,000	$378,508
1996	39.6%	$263,750	$377,184
1998	39.6%	$278,450	$383,304
2000	39.6%	$288,350	$375,725
2002	38.6%	$307,050	$382,967
2004	35.0%	$319,100	$288,350
2006	35.0%	$336,550	$374,578
2008	35.0%	$357,700	$372,780
2010	35.0%	$357,700	$384,486

12-12-12

Do you really think I’d post to my blog just because the date is 12-12-12?  Well, it’s a little cheesy but I’ll do it.

The next time the month, day, and last two digits of the year (hereafter known as MDY) are the same number will be New Year’s Day, 2101. The MDY of that future day will be 01-01-01. That will be 32162 days from today, counting from the first moment of today’s date to the first moment of that future date. That number includes leap days. Don’t believe me? You do the math.

The next time the MDY equals 12-12-12 will be December 12, 2112. From the first moment of today to the first moment of then will be 36524 days. I bet you would have guessed 36525. It’s true that a full century equals “365.25 x 100” which is 36525. But we have a leap day every four years in February and so the number of leap days in 100 years depends on the date you begin counting time. This year, 2012, was a leap year. But because we are counting from December, we don’t count this year’s leap day and so we end up one day short of a full century.

This kind of thing happens during the first 12 years of every century. It happens because our calendar starts over at the end of every year. If we chose, we could devise a different calendar that doesn’t start over every year. We could use a formula like the TV series Star Trek used and have dates like “Stardate 43989.1”. Or perhaps, “Earthdate 43989.1”.

But as long as we use a calendar that starts over every year, then every century there will be 12 years in which the MDY will be the same number repeated three times. If anyone tells you that today’s date is somehow special, or is imbued with “special vibrations” or other mumbo-jumbo, then let me assure you: any “vibrations” you feel are likely just the refrigerator running.

Heartless No More

This is an update to my July 31, 2012 post, The Man With No Heart. In that post, I wrote about my neighbor’s father, Lennie Nugent. Lennie’s heart was in such bad shape that doctors removed it and replaced it with a plastic and Velcro artificial heart that operates using compressed air. If you haven’t read that post, you should go there now and read it before continuing here. There’s a video on that page showing Lennie giving testimony in his church. If you listen carefully you may hear the artificial heart operating.

Yesterday, a suitable donor heart arrived at the hospital and the family was summoned, the surgical team was assembled, and during the night the transplant team implanted the new heart into Lennie’s chest. Kristie, my neighbor and Lennie’s daughter, posted the good news on Facebook this morning at 4 AM. She says the surgery went well and Lennie’s new heart is functioning as it should. I don’t know Lennie but I wish him well. Being tethered to a machine with plastic tubes going into your body is not a good way to live.

If I could I would ask Lennie, after so long without a heartbeat, does it feel strange to once again have a heart beating in your chest? It must feel especially good to get out of bed and not worry about carrying a machine everywhere you go. No more looking for electrical outlets to charge the batteries that run the machine that keeps you alive: that must feel like a special kind of freedom.