Groundhog Day. Again.

January 31, 2019Michael 2 Comments

With Groundhog Day approaching I was certain I could count on welcoming an early spring. Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, home of the master prognosticator Punxsutawney Phil, is just a hair over 90 miles from my front door so the weather isn’t much different. I don’t have Phil’s innate forecasting power but I could do a reasonable imitation of him by crawling out of my home and looking for a shadow and we would be working under the same sun. Well, naturally it would be the same sun but you know what I mean.

Anyway … I was certain I could count on Phil not casting a shadow because I am certain he is smart enough to stay inside in weather like this. For the past two days I woke up to -5° temperatures. Not fit weather for man (that would be me) or beast (Phil, of course). Then this morning I heard on the morning weather guess (they like to call it a “forecast” but we know better) this Saturday we will be waking to temperatures in the 30s. That’s above freezing! In fact, if you are to believe the amateur prognosticators, Sunday temperatures might be in the 50s, Monday close to 60, then the back the teens and 20s by Tuesday. This is a week after days that never got out of single digits followed by a couple 60° afternoons then this latest foray into sub-zero land.

I think everybody in the world (except San Diego) can honestly say “if you don’t like the weather just wait a day, it will change!” but this is ridiculous. It’s also not uncommon. Without trying to annoy the climate change crowd or those who feel climate change is a socialist plot, the world is not made for stable weather patterns. It’s a not quite spherical orb spinning at a not quite constant speed on a tilted axis while revolving around a not consistent heat source on a not quite regular ovoid orbit. If you don’t believe me I give you from prehistory the Sahara Forest, from modem tourism the Great Lakes, and from calendar makers’ nightmares throughout time leap year.

But forget the long range consequences of our planet hurtling through space with the surefootedness of a vertiginous ballroom dancer. We feel earth’s uncertainty every day. Every single day sunrise and sunset happen at a different time. And not even consistently. Every. Single. Day. Seasons “officially” change on a different day every year. We can’t even figure out how to divide a year into even proportions. We say there are 12 months in a year but they are of three different lengths. We say there are 52 weeks in a year but then ever year starts on a different day of the week. We say there are 365 days in a year yet there’s that leap year thing going on.

So in the midst of all this terrestrial and celestial turmoil we put our trust in a furry woodland creature to tell us if we should plant the corn early this year. Eh, he has a better track record than the guys getting paid to do it so why not? But if those hotshot weather forecasters are wrong about Saturday morning and we wake up to -5° again and Phil wants to stay in, let him take the day off. Spring will get here even without him. Eventually. We’ll just not be sure exactly when but then why should this year be any different? It’s already different enough anyway.

My State of the World Address

January 29, 2018Michael 9 Comments

Tomorrow President Trump will deliver the State of the Union Address. Later tomorrow news and social media sites (which sound remarkably alike lately) will parse and criticize either Trump’s or Joe Kennedy’s (who will present the Democrats’ rebuttal) comments.

ResidentialSeal So in the spirit of annoying at least half the people out there, and as an official Resident of the United States, I’m going to make my comments on the state of the Union now. You see, I can do that because I don’t need a Trump or God forbid a Kennedy to tell me how my state is fairing. Unlike their addresses, mine is actually based on universal truths. So universal that you don’t even need to be from the United States to relate to them, thus I am considering this the State of the World.

The world is in trouble mostly because people want to believe it’s in trouble. It really isn’t. Without sounding like a t-shirt, keep calm and pray if you got ’em. What the world needs is a good dose of common sense. Here are some reasons why.

We are our own worst enemies. This weekend’s local news was filled with the city’s school’s teachers who are threatening to strike. They want to be paid more and to contribute less to their benefits. They will probably strike and eventually a compromise will be approved and they will get more money and a lower contribution though not as much or as great as they would like and will grudgingly return to work. Like labor unions that represent workers who make or sell something, the teacher unions don’t take into consideration that the extra money that must be spent on their increases must come from somewhere and it won’t be from profits. It will be from higher prices or to compensate for the teachers’ and other government employees’ windfalls, higher taxes. These will turn into reasons for next year’s higher pay demands by other unions, cost of living adjustments demands by non-union workers, and increased minimum wage proposals by politicians and thus the cycle continues. This is why although the average wage has risen from $7,300 in 1967 to $73,300 over fifty years to 2017, a tenfold increase, the average new car that in 1967 cost $2,750 cost $33,500 in 2917, 12 times as much as from 50 years prior, and the average house that cost $14,250 in 1967 rose to $377,100 in 2017, 26 & 1/2 times greater. Don’t even ask about insurance rates.

Big Pharma is not out to get you and all doctors are not pill mills. Yes, drug companies manufacture and wholesale opioid narcotics. Yes, opioid narcotics are an addictive nightmare and some abused opioids began as prescriptions. But most opioid that are being abused are being manufactured in illegal labs by criminals. Heroin and heroin/fentanyl combinations are by far the largest abused, and deadly, opioids. But, opioid by class are only the fifth most abused substances coming in behind alcohol, marijuana, methamphetamine, and cocaine. Prescription drug abuse ranks higher only when you include the prescribed opioids with benzodiazapines (anybody remember “Valley of the Dolls”), codeine and codeine derivatives, anabolic steroids, and the prescription stimulants methylphenidate (Ritalin) and amphetamine (Aderall).

It should not come as a surprise that efforts to fight opioid addiction are misdirected since every other addiction is being mistreated or outright ignored. Oooh, oooh, drugs are bad, drugs are bad say the sheep. Ooh, ooh, Marijuana is soooo good and it cures all kinds of diseases so we should all be allowed to have some say the same sheep. Drinking and driving is clearly bad. Sixty-five percent of fatal single vehicle accidents involve alcohol, 29% of all fatal accidents involve alcohol. Three drinks will impair an average build adult. Don’t drive if you drink that third drink! Cigarette smoking is evil. Period. The nicotine will get you every time. There is nicotine in those vaping thingies! That’s why people crave them. Duh!

Guns don’t kill people. But they sure do make it easy for people to. Especially those that fire 150 rounds a minute. Without taking the all or none approach can we agree that automatic weapons don’t belong in the hands anybody not currently and actively serving in the military in a combat zone? Hunting and target shooting can be accomplished quite nicely one bullet at a time.

Climate change is real. It’s also inevitable. The world changes. It has changed. It will continue to change. That’s how we got here. That’s how we’ll leave. Deal with it.

We are own worst enemies, part two. Data breaches continue and will so. Some of the biggest you may not have even know. The ten biggest data breaches by number of people’s information exposed are Yahoo (twice for number 1 and 2 at 3 billion in December 2016 and 500 million in September 2016), My Space (360 million, May 2016), Equifax (145.5 million, September 2017), EBay (145 million, May 2014), Target (110 million, November 2013), LinkedIn (100 million, May 2016), AOL (92 million, 2007), JP Morgan Chase (83 million, October 2013), and Anthem Health (80 million, February 2015). Just for grins, do you know who comes in at #11? The Sony Playstation network with 77 million exposures back in April of 2011. And who even knew that My Space still had 360 million users two years ago? Our privacy and our money are at risk every time we access the interwebs. Yet we continue to use digital financing at increasing rates. Starbucks now has stores that do not accept cash joining a growing trend of restaurants and convenience stores in large metropolitan areas that have gone cashless, and Internet sales in 2017 represented over 9% of all retail sales in the U.S. up from 3.6% in 2008.

I could go on. And on and on. But I won’t in the hopes of keeping a few readers. If you want an improving future it’s clear what we have to do. Rekindle common sense, invoke rational thinking, and pray if you got ’em.

NB: Salary and cost figures by USA Today; drug use figures via National Institute on Drug Abuse; drinking and driving statistics via Father’s Against Drunk Driving (FADD), data breaches and rates by USA Today, E-commerce statistics by U.S. Census Bureau.

Leafed by the Side of the Road

October 23, 2017October 22, 2017Michael 2 Comments

Yesterday, for the fourth time this month I took the little car out of the garage, dropped the top, donned a pair of polarizing sunglasses (one lens Democrat, the other Republican), grabbed the real camera, and set out in search of autumnal magic, fall leaves. And for the fourth time I was disappointed.

The first time, which happened to be the 1st, I wasn’t surprised that not many trees had shifted from their summery green foliage. On the second Sunday I saw some yellowing and was given hope that the following week would be more colorful. Last week’s attempt fell in the middle of what the TV weather forecasters predicted to be the peak for color. The only red I saw was the car’s paint job. (In fairness I should have expected no colored leaves since I was going on a weather person’s prediction. After all, these were the same people who brought us “partly cloudy.”)

But yesterday’s disappointment hit a little on the hard side. There’s only one Sunday left to October. If the foliage is still as dull then as it had been I fear I may not see another leaf as pretty as on a fall tree, given that my medical history and its corresponding future are as uncertain as weather forecasting. (My long range plan is to live to at least 100. I tell my daughter that every chance I get so she won’t get to thinking that she’ll be able to live into her golden years off her inheritance. Of course only I know it’s really because if I were to drop dead tomorrow she’d only be able to live comfortably until next Thursday, so my only chance of not disappointing her in that regard is to grow so old that she herself will be old enough that she forgets that she has anything coming to her.)

It’s been an exceptionally warm fall so far this year. If you are to believe the Farmer’s Almanac (and why shouldn’t you?) it will stay above average in temperature until the week before Thanksgiving, much too late for fall foliage festivities. I don’t know if it’s the extended warm weather causing the poor color spectacle. Those pesky weather people who two weeks ago said it wouldn’t are now saying it is. But then in the past, they have said disappointing color was because it got too cold too soon. Other years it was too dry. During still others, too much rain was the cause for a dull fall.

Last good color I shot, October 2009

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t seen a really vibrant fall for some years now. I suppose the easy thing to blame it on would be climate change. That seems to be a good reason for just about anything we aren’t happy with climatically speaking. Which makes perfect sense since in the truest sense of it, any change in the air can be defined as climate change. Unfortunately we actually believe we can do something about it.

The hardest thing for us to accept is recognizing that yes, people do things that aren’t good for the environment but that the environment is going to change anyway. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be respectful of the environment and do what is good and healthy for it and for us. It is to say though that eventually, the world’s history is going to catch up with it and there are going to be changes that we aren’t responsible for and that we can’t do anything about.

As hard as it is for us and our egos to accept, we aren’t in charge here. The world came before us and had its routine well established before we propelled our first ozones into the ozone. It’s been hot, it’s been cold, it was covered in ice and covered in water. We are here at its invitation and are welcomed to ride the rides while we are here but that’s as far as it is willing to go.

This year’s colors might not be to my liking and that’s going to have to be ok. Colorful or not, the leaves will drop, spring will be back and new ones will bud on the trees. Next fall I’ll again look forward to a day when I can aim my camera at the beauty of the fall foliage.

Until then, like yesterday, I’ll just enjoy the ride.