Berlin Wall - May 1968

This was originally published in the Northland Reader now the Reader Weekly, November 11, 1999.

Last Tuesday, November 9th, was the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Not being much of a TV viewer, I did not get the full thrill of seeing it come down.  But 21 years earlier I did get the full impact of seeing it up close.

In 1968 I transferred to Europe with Sperry Univac and was assigned to work in Basel, Switerland.  Within two weeks of my arrival I went to Berlin for a user conference.  I arrived early the day before the conference began and spent the day sightseeing.

I went through parks, into shops, and up into buildings to look out over a thriving city.  Unlike other cities, there was one place I was blocked from seeing the whole city: The Wall.  Unlike the green parks, the elegant shops, and the modern buildings that invited you in, the wall was grey, shabby, old-looking and uninviting.

The Wall was a combination of grey concrete and the façades of old buildings.  The concrete was topped with barbed wire.  Mounting one of the many observation platforms, one could see more fences and walls, with tank traps and other impediments between them.  There were light towers and watch towers in both directions.  It was a gross caricature of a high-security prison.  On some streets the wall joined the fronts of a series of apartment buildings.  But there were no apartments behind the fronts whose doors and windows had been filled with concrete.  Every so often there would be a cross with flowers and ribbons; the cross marked the spot where somebody had been killed crossing over the Wall.

My wanderings took me to a large park that had a sign pointing to the Brandenburg Gate.  Over a half mile from the gate was a little gate house.  An unarmed guard indicated that we should follow the walkway that went way around the barricades on the road leading to the Brandenburg Gate.

Halfway to the Gate and on the other side of the broad street there was the Monument to the Soviet Soldier.  Two Russian soldiers marched stiff-legged back and forth.  Two others did some repair on the paving.  The only thing separating us was a normal crowd-control barricade on my side of the street.

About three-quarters of the way to the Gate, I encountered the first armed West Germans that I had seen.  Two policemen with machine pistols were chatting in the street.  They didn't even look at me when I took their pictures.  Behind them and on the other side of the street was the Reichstag, an imposing building with almost no activity around it.  And right behind it was The Wall.

In the middle of the street, a few yards before The Wall, was a block house with the main floor about a half-story above the ground.  It had large windows in front, and a balcony.  On the balcony stood an American soldier looking over The Wall with a pair of binoculars.  The Wall made a great semicircle around the Brandenburg Gate.  In that semicircle stood a number of East German soldiers looking back over the wall, some with binoculars.

I was free to walk in front of the block house to either side of the semicircle.  Inside the semicircle it was barren except for grass between some of the cement blocks and the soldiers.  Outside the semicircle on the "west" side of The Wall there were numerous small trees and many propaganda signs directed to the east.  Among them were a quote from Bertold Brecht and a count of the number who died trying to cross The Wall.

Back at my hotel I met three people from one of our Swiss customers.  They said they were going to go to Checkpoint Charlie (one of the few openings in the wall); they invited me along.  We hopped in a taxi and went to what appeared to be a normal European mixed residential/business district.  That is, stores below and offices and apartments in the one to three stories above.

However, right in the middle of the street was a white frame bungalow.  It was the office of the American soldiers who monitored that section of The Wall.  And beyond it was The Wall.  Nobody paid any attention to us as we walked towards The Wall.  I don't remember how it looked as it crossed from one side of the street to the other.  I just focused on the little overlapping opening that we walked through.

On the other side we were met by an armed East German soldier who handed each of us a numbered ticket off a roll of tickets.  He directed us to a wooden building on the right side of the street.  Inside we had to write out a customs declaration, and give up our passports and the numbered ticket.  When we did this we were given another numbered ticket and directed to the next wooden building.

In the second building our passports were called out by number, in German, no name.  We turned in our second ticket and were given our passports back with a third numbered ticket.  Each ticket was a different color.  We were then directed to a third building.

As we walked between buildings we saw a car parked in front of the wooden building on the other side.  Several soldiers were around it and one soldier was on his knees looking under the car with a mirror on a stick and wheels.  We didn't watch long enough to know if the car was allowed to pass or not.

In the third building we turned in our ticket and ten West German Marks (about $2.50 at the time) in exchange for ten East German marks (almost worthless).  I put my East German ten-mark bill into my passport.  We were given a fourth ticket and allowed to go outside.  We were met by a soldier who took our tickets and allowed us to proceed down Friedrichstrasse.

What a difference met our eyes.  When we got out of the taxi, we were in a neighborhood that has been normal in European cities for a couple of centuries.  Not elegant but well-kept.  In front of us on the other side every other building was just as it had been at the end of World War II.  A few partial walls and a pile of rubble.

Every now and then there were some buildings undamaged or restored.  One of them was the Berlin Comic Opera which displayed playbills for coming performances.

We continued on to Unter Den Linden, before World War II one of the most fashionable streets in Berlin.  Now it had some rather plain looking shops with nothing much in their windows.  We continued on to the Brandenburg Gate but we were not allowed to get as close to The Wall as I had from the other side.  We were stopped by a line of crowd control barricades.  Nothing more was needed because there were plenty of soldiers around The Wall.

We returned to Friedrichstrasse down the other side of Unter Den Linden.  At the intersection we found a popular restaurant, at least among East German soldiers.  They seemed to be about one-third of the customers.  We found a table and ordered our food.  When it came it had a medium sized portion of meat with potatoes and vegetables filling almost all the space left on the plate.  I thought the restaurant was trying to show how good life was under Communism.  It was many months before I learned that serving style was typical of ordinary restaurants all over Germany.

We finally finished our meal and paid in West German marks, which pleased the management very much.  When we got outside it was late and dark, and so we took a taxi back to Checkpoint Charlie.

We were met again by a soldier who gave us each a numbered ticket.  We went into the wooden building on the right side of the street leading to The Wall.  We handed our tickets and passports to the sergeant behind the single, long counter.  He opened mine and saw ten East German marks.  One was not permitted to export East German marks.

A long conversation ensued between my Swiss companions and the sergeant.  With not 200 words of German vocabulary yet, I could only turn my head from speaker to speaker.  Finally, the sergeant looked me directly in the eye and asked, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"  I responded without hesitation, "Nein!"  This brought out laughter from everyone.

Just as two officers came in the door, the sergeant pointed to a Red Cross box at the far end of the counter.  The Swiss told me that I should deposit the ten East German marks in the box.  I later dubbed it the "Officers' Coffee Fund".

Now all our passports disappeared through a window to a back room.  After several minutes they were returned to us with yet another numbered ticket.  We left the building and went to another overlapping opening in The Wall.  We handed our tickets to the soldier at that opening, and walked through.  Nobody in the white frame building on the other side paid any attention to us.

It is amazing to think that we walked into freedom by entering a city that was completely surrounded by The Wall.

What did I learn outside school?

Last week I asked what did I learn in school, with an emphasis on how much I had forgotten of what I supposedly learned.  What I really learned in school was to learn.  I had teachers who excited me about a subject, and I had subjects that excited me even if the teacher didn’t.

I also had many other people outside school who enticed me to learn, something too many kids don’t have.  The high point of this seems to me to have been when we lived with my mother’s aunt and uncle, especially between the ages of 9 and 14.  My environment was rich with printed publications.

They subscribed to the morning Cleveland Plain Dealer and the afternoon Cleveland Press.  They subscribed to Saturday Evening Post or one or two of  its competitors.  They may have even subscribed to National Geographic.  I loved comic books and subscribed to Walt Disney Comics and bought Looney Tunes from time to time.  But we also had books.  I remember having a set of “East Wind Stories”, a set of stories about fictional animals.  I borrowed books from the school library and the downtown public library.

We also listened to the radio.  I remember that Aunt Gertrude had to have the station changed five minutes before Walter Winchell came on: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea. Let's go to press.”  We also had 78 rpm records and listened sometimes to the station that played some classical music.  Was that WDOK?  I remember preferring piano music to violin music because the pitch was often lower.  And of course, lots of pop music.

We had no TV then.  I remember a when TV cameraman came to the sledding hill I often went to. He filmed me going down the hill with hands and feet in the air.  To see the newscast, we stood outside a TV store.  We also went to the TV studio where they graciously showed it to us.

I had many more outside school learning experiences before I graduated from high school, but in interest of space, I’ll skip forward to the summer before my senior year of college.  I wanted to learn about computers and found a summer job at Ohio Oil Company (Marathon).  Because I was put in a clerical job rather than a computer job, I borrowed Elliott Organick’s “Programming the IBM 650” from the company library.  With that knowledge, I wrote a program to calculate the square root of any number.  I gave it to my supervisor who passed it on to others. Within days I was transferred to a group more closely involved in computers.  Eventually I was given the task of writing a program to process quotas for gas stations and others.  I had lots of help from others on details of how the IBM 650 worked.  On my last day, I handed in the manual for how to use the program.  I think it was used by Ohio Oil for a year or two.

When I graduated from Ohio Wesleyan, Case took me back for a masters program in mathematics. Not only that, but I was given a graduate assistantship in the Computer Center that covered tuition and paid $75 a week too!

One of the jobs of Computer Center assistants was to provide help to sophomores who were taking the mandatory numerical analysis course.  We started in July, were given the ALGOL manual for Burroughs 220 and let loose.  In the fall, we were answering all kinds of questions for the undergraduates.

We also learned the assembler called SAVE written by a PhD candidate.  As a project for the only computer class I took, I wrote a simpler assembler called HELP, of which SAVE was the answer. Darned if there wasn’t somebody using HELP long after I left Case.

Case had ordered a Univac 1107 and I learned its assembler and instruction set from a manual. When I completed my master’s work I applied for work with Univac and was hired.  I was first set to some mathematical project that I had no idea of how to proceed.  Luckily for me that group was dissolved and I was moved into the FORTRAN compiler support group.  My boss never learned to write FORTRAN but he was a crackerjack at solving problems with the compiler.  I wound up solving problems with the FORTRAN library, pieces of code called on by users that did things not part of FORTRAN itself, like mathematical functions.  I never took a class in the compiler or the assembler it was written in.  We just jumped in and started solving problems.

Because I did have experience (or was it interest) in ALGOL, I was given the responsibility for fixing problems in the compiler, written by somebody else.  A Norwegian customer wrote an extension for simulation, called, surprise, SIMULA.  Without any training except the manual and trial and error, I fixed problems in SIMULA and its library.

I spent nearly twenty years at UNIVAC and kept learning things on the fly and even giving classes in what I learned!  I’ve lost track of the software I learned.

Then I went off on my own and learned more and more computers and software.  Even now with thirty years experience with the Macintosh, I learn something new with every release.  I’ve lost track of the number of software programs I’ve learned.

With these I’ve learned three things: software can be easy, software can be obtuse, and we ain’t seen nothing yet!

Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-08-14 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/08/21/3928_what_did_i_learn_outside_school.

Let’s you and him fight

The Middle East is in turmoil because there are fanatics who think their way is the only way and those who disagree should die.  Many seem to think the United States should take responsibility for this mess and clean it up.  But as we have seen from Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military cannot solve local and cultural political problems.

We are sending billions of dollars to Egypt, sell billions of armament to Saudi Arabia, and ostracize Iran.  All three plus Turkey have a greater interest in regional stability.  Why not encourage them to take leadership in attempting to solve the regional problems.

Consider also, that U.S. involvement in Middle East just encourages the recruitment of the susceptible for direct attacks on the United States.

Muslim opposition to ISIS is growing because ISIS is the anti-thesis of Islam.  See “Top Saudi Cleric: ISIS is Enemy No. 1 of Islam, ‘Destroying Human Civilization’”.

Now if the Muslim states in the area would take more action than words in curbing ISIS.

Defense and Education - More newspeak

Yet another loose note from the Bush days:

The Dept. of Defense is headed by Terence Bell.  Defense of a nation is the passing of traditions and knowledge from generation to generation.

The Dept. of Education is headed by Casper Weinberger.  The U.S. seems to be trying to educate lots of people that the U.S. government knows best by hitting them over the head with a big stick.

Addendum on 2014-08-21:

Have we learned anything since then?  We still have many who think the U.S. should be responsible for hitting others over the head with a big stick.

Bipartisanship - Newspeak

From a loose note on my desk from the Bush days:

Bipartisan - the President’s way

Now it seems to be the Republican Party’s way.

Or in Solomonic terms: Let’s cut the baby in half:(

What if the horseless carriage hadn’t been horseless?

From the loose notes on my desk, my cartoon about designers’ efforts to make systems backward compatible:

Quote of the day: Suburbia

“Seriously, nothing good ever came out of suburbia.”

I’m cleaning out my Outlook email, and the folder is my clippings file going back to 2011.  One that I had to write a blog entry on was “‘Detroit,’ Meet Detroit” by Toby Barlow, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/toby-barlow/detroit-meet-detroit_b_1097133.html especially after I posted “You’re not from there; I am from there!”
http://magree.blogspot.com/2014/08/youre-not-from-there-i-am-from-there.html

Barlow gives a long list of interesting spots to visit in the City of Detroit.

I don’t know about Detroit, but I think one thing that deters people from going into a downtown is lack of “free parking”, even if they are only paying 25 cents for a twenty-minute stop.  The other is that public transit has become less frequent making it more inconvenient.  My mantra about bus service into downtown Duluth is that you’re either five minutes late or twenty-five minutes early.  Many buses arrive downtown at x:05 or x:35.  Maybe offices should make appointments for x:15 and x:45.

Divided we are conquered

We have not been conquered by an external force but by an internal force, namely “The Funders”.  Laws are made more for the benefit of the donors from large corporations than for the benefit of the people.

From one of my Outlook attic messages:

“Like a fever, revolutions come in waves. And if this is a revolution, then it broke first on November 4, 2008, with the election of Barack Obama, second, on February 19, 2009, with the explosion of anger by Rick Santelli, giving birth to the Tea Party, and third, on September 10, 2011 with the #Occupy movements that are now spreading across the United States.

“The souls in these movements must now decide whether this third peak will have any meaningful effect -- whether it will unite a radically divided America, and bring about real change, or whether it will be boxed up by a polarized media, labeled in predictable ways, and sent off to the dust bins of cultural history.”

This is the opening to “A Letter to the #Occup(iers): The Principal of Non-Contradiction”, Lawrence Lessig, Huffington Post, 2011-10-13.

Lessig calls on people to stop opposing each other and look for common ground, laws to benefit people rather than laws to benefit corporations.

Race - the unenlightened Enlightenment

I’m cleaning out my attic of old Outlook messages.  One is a link to “The Enlightenment’s ‘Race’ Problem, and Ours”, Justin E. H. Smith, New York Times, 2013-02-10.

My note with it is “This is something for both racists and unfair-campaigners to think about.”

The basic thrust of this article is that it is environment that determines achievement and not an artificial construct such as “race”.

Interestingly, the Enlightenment was bracketed by the likes of Anton Wilhelm Amo and Alexandre Dumas, both famed writers with ancestors in Africa.

What did I learn in school?

I learned a lot but I’ve forgotten most of it.

I find I remember the classroom setting more than I do what was actually taught.  Maybe this is why so many of us think we were never taught about certain things.  I can still picture my first elementary school, buying Victory stamps, and the VE banner that was displayed.  I remember reading Dick and Jane and writing the numbers out to 200!

I remember many things about my second elementary school, but the classroom scenario that sticks out the most is the vote on the distance to the moon.  What, a vote on a scientific fact?  I remember a fourth-grade substitute science teacher doing this.  For years, I thought she didn’t know and was asking the class.  But she may have only been sampling the class.  I remember that incident more than I do how far is it to the moon.  Without looking it up, I’d say 250,000 miles. With all the moon shots in the news, you would think that number would stick better in my head. Is this one of those facts that get forgotten because we can always look it up if we really need to know?

I do remember learning typing and driving, probably the two most important life-long skills most of us need and use.  I do remember taking French in 8th grade, but I didn’t continue because I would rather learn printing.  How many people set type by hand now?  I took Latin in high school because I was advised that it was the basis for many other languages.  All I remember of that two and half-years was that I was elected president of the Latin club, and we read an abridged “Aeneid” and “Horatio at the Bridge”.  I remember a music teacher telling us that anyone with intelligence can learn to sing.  I didn’t get around to learning until I was in my 60s, and now I don’t practice enough to keep my voice in shape.

I don’t remember learning much about World War II in school.  That may because we might have been using textbooks that hadn’t been updated.  Also the teacher was not very inspiring.  The only history I remember from that whole year is a picture of the Haymarket Square riot in a text book. The picture was on the right-hand page of the small but thick orange textbook.  The picture was an engraving from some archive; I don’t remember if it was a photograph or a drawing.  And I don’t remember much about the Haymarket Square riot other than there was lot of police violence.  It was probably labor related and took place in Chicago.

Was I taught about Hiroshima and Nagasaki in my American History class?  I don’t remember.  I had that class in 1954.  It could be that the textbook hadn’t been updated.  These events have been reported over and over for almost 70 years, and so it is hard to remember where I learned what.

Another digression: “, and so…”  Mr. Conrad, my 11th grade English teacher, frequently told us how to use "and so", but I don’t remember exactly what he prescribed.  This particular piece of grammar was almost the only thing I remember from the class.

I had Mister Rush for trigonometry and another class.  I don’t remember much of the material but I remember his punctuating his remarks with “When you go to Case…”  meaning Case Institute of Technology, now part of Case Western Reserve University.  Darned if five of us didn’t go to Case. Only two of us graduated, yours truly not being one.  But I got to come back for graduate school.

Now, Miss Palmer, I remember her well.  She was a fearsome taskmaster, but she taught Shakespeare well.  I enjoyed reading an act each day for homework for both “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”, and then we would reread each act a few scenes at a time.  She gave me a lifelong love of Shakespeare, but I have yet to read all of his plays.

Interestingly, I don’t remember taking much homework home.  I had two study halls most days and got most of it done in one of them.  The rest of my study hall time I read science fiction from the school library.

College and graduate school are also a blur.  I remember translating “Clementine” into French,  I remember reading Candide (English, condensed) and “Brothers Karamazov”.  On the latter, what did I care what the meaning of the mortar and pestle was?

How much do you remember of school?  For most of us, that is only what we use on a regular basis.  I have a Master’s in mathematics and I don’t remember anything from “Functions of Complex Variables” in graduate school.  I do remember the book was blue, I think the author was from India, and it is still on the right hand side of my book case, first shelf above the bottom shelf.

What we really learned in school was to learn.

Back to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I remember reading about the horrible deaths both immediate and years later.  I remember that prisoners of war were killed in the blast.  I remember the justification that lives were “saved”.  I have long questioned how many kids’ lives is one soldier’s life worth.

Where I think I learned this is from reading newspapers regularly.  If your only news source is radio or TV you’ll never have time for all there is to know.  With newspapers, you have a larger selection of stories, you read them at your convenience, and with the Internet, you have a huge selection to choose from.

One of Mel's high school classmates said, "Learn something each day."  Mel often wishes he wouldn't forget it the next day.

Also published in Reader Weekly, 2014-08-14 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/08/14/3890_what_did_i_learn_in_school

Quote of the day: Humanities are still relevant

“So, yes, the humanities are still relevant in the 21st century — every bit as relevant as an iPhone.”

Nicholas Kristoff, “Don’t Dismiss the Humanities”, New York Times, 2014-08-13
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/opinion/nicholas-kristof-dont-dismiss-the-humanities.html

He discusses that thoughts of Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, and Peter Singer and their relevance to ideas today.  He points out that “the humanities are not only relevant but also give us a toolbox to think seriously about ourselves and the world.”

The value of an iPhone is not the same as the values that guide our lives.  For the first, we need the technologists.  For the second, we need the philosophers.

Oligarchy by apathy

Many are worried about corporations running our government, giving us an oligarchy, government by the few.  But we already have an oligarchy because too many eligible voters don’t bother voting.

In the Minnesota primary on August 12, the turnout was about 12 percent.  That means 88 percent didn’t give a damn about who was elected.  In other words, that 88 percent is giving government power to the 12 percent who showed up.  That is no democracy, rule by the people, but an oligarchy, rule by the few.

If you were one of the few anywhere, remind everyone you know to vote in the next and every election, no matter where in the world you live.

Always vote because every vote always counts. If you stay away you give the election away.

See also “Politics: Don Givadam wins again”.

You’re not from there; I am from there!

The following was inspired by “Why You Lie About Where You Are From” by Jake Flanagin, New York Times, 2014-08-08.

My wife often says that she is from Cleveland and that we lived in Philadelphia.  I reply that she is not from Cleveland and that we lived well outside Philadelphia.

Until I went to college I lived mostly within the borders of the City of Cleveland with a couple of years in a rural area and a few years in one of the largest suburbs, East Cleveland.  On the other hand, when my wife lived in the Cleveland area she lived in farther out suburb and a small city, Berea.  It wasn’t until we were married that she actually lived in the City of Cleveland.  Maybe that makes her eligible to be “from” Cleveland.

When we came back to the U. S. from living in Europe, we lived in a township outside the city of Norristown, an exurb of Philadephia.  In Whitpain Township, nothing was within walking distance; we had to drive everywhere and there was no public transportation.

Now we can truly say we live in the City of Duluth.  Lots is within walking distance, but not so much anymore.  Even five years ago I thought nothing of walking home from downtown (mostly uphill).  Now I wonder how many years before I’m unwilling to take the slight uphill walk to UMD.

“The Prisoner” – different versions

When we lived in Sweden we saw a few episodes of “The Prisoner”.  This was probably '71 or '72; we think our TV was taken in a burglary before Christmas 1972.  One episode that stood out was when No. 6 listened to identical LPs and declared that one was too fast and another was too slow.  I have been trying to remember what the piece was for years.  I do know that I bought a copy of it later based on hearing it in “The Prisoner”.

I have been working through the DVDs from Netflix and finally watched the LP episode.  It is the second episode on Vol. 7, “Hammer into Anvil”.  But No. 6 doesn’t make comments on the speed in the shop, he just looks at his watch.

Another difference I remember is that in the opening of the BW version we saw, the guy in the top hat sticks a cane or an umbrella to knock out the soon-to-be No. 6.  In the Netflix version, we only see the cloud of gas coming in the keyhole.  The BW version had No. 6 caught in the big bubble; in the Netflix version we only see it coming out of the water and bouncing along the beach.

The LP?  “L’Arlésienne” by Hector Berlioz.

From http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0679180/trivia I learned why “L’Arlésienne” was chosen.  If you haven’t seen “Hammer into Anvil” yet, see it before you check this link.

Is business experience a qualification for government office?

Some Republican candidates are running for statewide office in Minnesota.  See
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/270538031.html and http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/270412441.html.  They claim that their business experience makes them better qualified for government service.

Adam Smith seems to have thought differently.  He said that those who live by profit are not to be trusted because they have often “deceived and oppressed” the public.

See “The Invisible Adam Smith” for more about this.

Why?

Why?  Of the reporter’s “who, what, when, where, and why”, why seems too often used and too often not used enough.

“Why can’t I stay up?”  “Why do I hafta eat…” are among the persistent questions of children.

“Why don’t they …” is one of the persistent questions of adults who absolve themselves of any responsibility for actions of governments and corporations.

And sometimes we can’t really do much about many activities except ask, “Why?”  Here are a few of my annoying why’s.

Why do so many people complain about city workers standing around doing nothing but so few people complain about private contractors standing around doing nothing?  I often see more of the latter than the former.  In both cases they are generally doing one of three things.  One, they have to wait for more trucks to arrive to deliver or take away things.  Two, they have to discuss the next steps.  Three, like all of us, they need a break.

Why do people in dark cars speed through parking garages without lights and ignore people who are backing out of spaces?  Why do they think the backing drivers can see through the other parked cars?  When I was a bus driver, one of the “yard rules” was that backing buses had right-of-way.  There is no way that a driver backing a 30 or 40 foot vehicle could see through all the intervening buses.  Think of the driver of a compact car trying to see through a pickup truck while backing out.

Why do people insist on talking on cell phones while driving?  A few days ago I was walking across a parking lot and a driver was so busy on his cell phone that he didn’t even notice me.  Had I said “Boo!” he might have swerved into a parked car.

Why do drivers turning left stay behind the crosswalk, but drivers turning right go over the crosswalk?  The first may keep others from turning left on that light cycle.  The second never look to their right for pedestrians.

Why do people have to have car stereos so loud that they can be heard a block or more away?  I have been stopped alongside driver’s whose radios drowned out the sound from mine.

Why do sound systems have to be so loud that the words are distorted?  I didn’t enjoy the excellent singing of “Les Misérables” because the distortions of the over-amped sound system garbled words.

Why do sound systems have to be so loud that they can be heard a mile or more away?  Anybody with a car stereo that loud might get a ticket.

We can hear the Chester Bowl concerts over a half-mile away.  Years ago we enjoyed concerts by Willowgreen and by the Downbeats within a few dozen feet of the stage.  Then somebody decided to crank things up.  The last time I tried to go to a Chester Bowl concert, I wouldn’t even enter the park.  The sound was so loud that my ears hurt at the entrance on the Skyline Parkway.

The Bayfront concerts are even worse.  I could understand some of the words of a recent performer while standing in front of Darland Hall at UMD!  What’s that, about two miles away?  I gave up going to Bayfront concerts years ago.  I think the last time I went was when a friend was playing, and even his music was too loud.

Why do so few people show up to vote?  Don’t they realize that by not voting they get us farther from a democracy and closer to an oligarchy?  That is, “rule” of the people gives way to rule of the few.  Even if your favorite candidates are not favored by the polls, if you show up at the polls, the “winners” will have a smaller margin of “victory”.  There wouldn’t be so much talk of “landslides” if candidates won by 100,000 votes to 95,000 votes instead of 100,000 votes to 50,000 votes.  Also remember polls can be very, very wrong.  Jesse Ventura was predicted to come in third for governor, but enough people didn’t pay attention to the polls that he came in first.

Why do so many people complain about large corporations and then clammer to buy their products?  I know, I know, we need large corporations for our cars, computers, and cell phones, but we can at least get our coffee at locally-owned coffee shops.  I am amazed at the number of liberals who get their books at Amazon when they can get those same books at a locally-owned bookstore.

Why do so many people complain about government inefficiency and mistakes but ignore corporate inefficiency and mistakes?  If corporations are so good why are there so many complaints on customer support blogs?  Why are there warranties other than a revenue source?  Why are there so many typos in books and newspapers?

Finally, why do so many writers keep writing columns to change the world?  Far better writers than they have tried changing the world, but very few of them succeed.  Even then, things still go badly again.  Why?

Mel asks why is he getting older but not wiser.

Also published in Reader Weekly, 2014-08-07 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/08/07/3861_why.

Big critters vs. little critters

Last week I wrote about the violence done intra-species, something most of the readers of the Reader Weekly abhor.  This week I would like to write about violence done inter-species, something most of us do everyday.

The prime violence we do to other species is eat their flesh.  Except for those who hunt or fish, we don’t participate directly in that violence.  Isn’t your mouth watering thinking about a hamburger or a plate of shrimp or …?  Mine is watering just writing this, and I’ve given up eating meat.  Not because of what’s done to the animal, but what the meat does to me.

The strongest practitioners of avoiding violence to other species are Jains.  Not only are they vegetarians, but they sweep the ground in front of them as they walk.  They do this so they don’t crush any insects in their path.  For more, see “Ahimsa in Jainism” in Wikipedia.

Few of us would go so far as to only walk and only on swept paths.  In fact, many of us think nothing of the killing of other critters, willingly or accidentally.

Think of our smeared windshields in the summer, especially when we drive in rural areas.  Are we going to drive more slowly so that insects have a better chance of getting out of the way?  I think not.  If a fly or bee gets in our car, we open a window to let it fly out; otherwise we could run off the road trying to smack it.

Some of us may brush mosquitoes or flies off ourselves rather than smack them,  Probably more of us give them a good whack.  At least that one won’t be biting us. Some of us put out bug zappers to attract all kinds of bugs, friendly and unfriendly.  I don’t know how effective these zappers are, but bigger ones can annoy neighbors with the constant ZAP! ZAP!

My favorite form of mosquito control is the dragonfly.  It is nifty to watch them darting around - up, down, and backwards.  A dragonfly can eat its weight in other insects in 30 minutes. Unfortunately, mosquitoes are more prolific and the two or three dragonflies will not get rid of them in our yard in any given night.

One set of critters that I am after now is hornets or wasps.  A hive has formed under the peak of a shed.  I didn’t notice until I went into the shed two weeks ago to get some tool.  Buzz! Ouch! Buzz!  Ouch!  I gave up on a task because I wasn’t willing to open the shed door.  This must be the sixth or seventh that has been around our cabin, probably the third in two years.

Last year I used some spray that shoots a stream of poison up to twenty-five feet.  I used it under the peak of our cabin and then at a hole nest right along a path I used.  The next day they were all gone.  Well, not quite.  After I sprayed the hole I covered it with dirt.  The next day there were a few confused hornets flying around:  “Our nest used to be here!”

This year the spray I used wasn’t so effective.  First, I used it with a screen hood that reduced my ability to see at dusk.  I think I missed the hive completely.  The next time I tried the stream almost petered out before it hit the nest.  The next day hornets were crawling all over the nest repairing it.  If the hornets are still there, we’ll try again this weekend.

Next up in pest size are mice.  I don’t mind them crawling around in the grass and eating thousands of insects, but I don’t want them making nests in our sheds.  I use “The Better Mouse Trap” from Intruder.  No bait, reusable, and generally no mess.  Just throw the carcass in the woods for predators of all kinds.  Unfortunately, there are a few Arizona/Texas style executions where I have a live mouse dragging around the trap.  Enough said!

A couple of years ago these traps were catching shrews.  I had never seen a shrew since I lived in Sweden in the seventies, and I’ve been setting these traps for over fifteen years.  I think I caught thirteen shrews that year.  Since then I’ve seen none except one scurrying through the grass a couple of weeks ago.

Next up in pest size are squirrels.  We had gray squirrels in our walls in Duluth until we cut down a tree that ran right up the side of the house.  When we had the bathroom remodeled, the carpenters also put a better vent in the attic.

In Brimson squirrels are not a problem for us, but a constant source of amusement.  They chatter and scold each other and us, and they chase each other, especially in mating season.

Squirrels are a problem for a neighbor.  They get in under his roof, and he shoots them with a 22. I think it would be easier to fix the roof.  After all, he is only making room for our squirrels to expand their territory to his property.

The biggest critters that are a problem are groundhogs or woodchucks.  They dig big holes that can trip a human.  Fortunately, we see most of them and fill them in again.  A bit of soapy water keeps the groundhogs from coming back to that spot.

Mel is a gentleman when it comes to ladybugs.  He coaxes them onto a piece of paper and then gently blows them off outside.

This was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, July 31, 2014 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/07/31/3821_big_critters_vs_little_critters.

Has ’1984’ come to Apple’s Macintosh?

The first Macintosh ad was for the 1984 SuperBowl.  You can find many copies on YouTube such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UZV7PDt8Lw.  The final line was “why 1984 won’t be like ’1984’.

The whole idea of the original Macintosh was that you didn’t need to type in complex instructions to get anything done.  You selected your choices from a menu and you got a window.  In the window you got pictures to look at and icons for any warnings.  Whether disparagingly by PC users or lovingly by Mac users, it was called WIMP.

Several years later, Apple produced the “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” ads.  These stressed the multitude of fun things that could be done on a Mac right out of the box and implied it was difficult to do these things on a PC without add-ons.  You can see some of these at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCL5UgxtoLs.

To me, as an almost 30 year user of Macs (September 1984), the Mac was a delight to use and program for.  Then the new whiz kids decided that it should be programmed in C rather than Pascal.  To me, C stood for complex, and I had programmed mainframes with line-at-a-time assemblers.

It is mind-boggling how much more I can do now than thirty years ago, but with OS X things seem to have gone downhill.  Or rather it is an uphill job to figure out what is going wrong.  The response time seems to get worse with every new operating system.

I’m not alone with this judgment.  Apple’s “Community” seems filled with complaints about things that don’t work correctly.

Advice to correct the problem includes:

Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR..; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_; sudo chmod -R

In the 1980s it was said that Mac users didn’t read manuals.  I often found that the only reason I needed a manual was for how to type letters with diacritical marks, such as å, é, î, and ö.  Now I find I am going to the “Community” at least once a month for some problem.

These kind of problems may be happening to users with two or more year-old computers; Apple’s programmers are likely to be using computers that are less than a year old, and they probably don’t have the time to test the new software on older computers than those on their desks.

I may be on to something here.  My wife’s iMac is a year newer than my MacBook Pro.  Other than updates within a major level, she is still using the same operating system that came with her computer.  Meanwhile, I’ve updated two levels since I bought mine, skipped one level because of the problem I mentioned in the last paragraph, and then fell for the enticements to move to the latest OS, Mavericks.  This had many benefits, but I keep wondering if they do outweigh the problems.

When the big boys play, the little kids get hurt

I’m not talking about playgrounds but battle grounds.  And too many big boys want to make everywhere a battle ground.

Does anyone really know what Vladimir Putin’s game is with Ukraine and other countries bordering Russia?  Is he on a power trip or is he concerned that the West is encroaching on Russia and is a threat to the existence of Russia?

If it is strictly a power trip, then he is following in the steps of the Tsars and Stalin.  The Tsars and Stalin used their populations as cannon fodder for their own ends.  How many people are going to die before Putin’s goals are met.  Will the shooting down of Malaysia Air 17 give him pause in his power trip.

If he is concerned with the West encroaching on Russia, maybe he should join the West in providing a parliamentary and economic framework for all of Europe.  Major threats to Russia have all but disappeared.  Napoleon is dead and today’s France has no interest in attacking Moscow.  The Kaiser and Hitler are both dead and today’s Germany has no interest in attacking Leningrad or Stalingrad.

Whatever Putin’s game is with Ukraine, let’s hope that he takes to heart that his big boy play has really hurt lots of “little kids” who have nothing to do with his game.

Israel is a parliamentary state with many political parties.  No party ever seems to gain a majority of seats.  In order to govern, parties have to form coalitions.  Too often these coalitions include some religious party that believes that God gave Israel to the Jews about 3,000 years ago.  About 2,000 years ago the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and Jews fled to Europe and Africa.  Others moved in and eventually became today’s Arabs.

About eighty years ago Hitler with his big boy games decided that Jews were not part of these games and started executing them in obscene numbers.  Those Jews who could fled the areas Hitler controlled, some of them fleeing to Palestine.

To simplify history, all hell broke loose when the big boys of the European and American powers declared through the U.N. that a certain part of Palestine would become the new state of Israel. Now another set of big boys is playing various games that never seem to end.  The latest games are kidnapping and killing teenagers for no other reason that they were of the “other”.  Now that game has escalated with all the “little kids” in Gaza wondering where they can flee to escape the violence of the game..

Nicholas Kristoff wrote a good column on how the intransigence of both sides perpetuates the problem.  See “Who’s Right and Wrong in the Middle East?”, New York Times Sunday Review, July 20, 2014.

Mosaddegh was the duly elected prime minister of Iran.  He decided that Iran wasn’t getting enough marbles from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and nationalized it.  The big boys in Whitehall and Foggy Bottom arranged to have Mosaddegh overthrown and have Reza Pahlavi reinstated as Shah.  Among other things the Shah did was have his secret service, Savak, take out the little kids that didn’t play the Shah’s way.
Savak’s dirty tricks were no secret.  In fact, a colleague who was supporting a Univac computer in Tehran asked me to join him.  No way did I want to move from Sweden to a country like Iran.  In fact, in the last year I was in Sweden (1974), Iranian students were demonstrating in Stockholm against the Shah.

By 1979 Ayotollah Khomeni had overthrown the Shah and set up a new set of big boy rules; many of these rules were not to the little kids’ benefit.

But the big boys in Washington were not happy with the overthrow of the Shah, especially when the U.S. Embassy was taken over and diplomats held prisoner.

And matters got worse.  First, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran, even when he used poison gas on Iranian troops.  Second when the U.S. decided Saddam was not to its liking and went to war against him, the U.S. shot down an Iranian airliner with over 200 “little kids” on board, few if any who were part of the big boy games.

And still the games go on, although in a more civilized manner than for the last two decades.  Iran is negotiating with the U.S. and others about how much nuclear capability Iran should have.  But the big boys like the U.S. and the U.K. aren’t offering to reduce their nuclear capability, a capability that some hawks wouldn’t hesitate using to flatten Iran, including all the “little kids” who have nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear capability or intentions.

Another big boy game going on is China’s assertion of sovereignty over offshore islands.  I recently read an article by a Chinese or Vietnamese author who said that China really has more to gain by playing nice than by throwing its weight around.  It is ironic that China is still holding a grudge about another nation that threw its weight around to gain supremacy in the Western Pacific: Japan.

The “little kids” sing, “When will they ever learn” and the big boys never do.

This was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, July 24, 2014 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/07/24/3781_when_the_big_boys_play_the_little_kids_get_hurt.

Good Service

Good service is something we often take for granted.  If we get bad service we often don’t return.  If we get good service, if convenient, we return again and again.

Many almost make a career of bashing government.  Government is “bloated” and “inefficient”.  Little do they consider all the ways that government makes their lives easier.

Two favorite targets of government bashers are the Postal Service and the Internal Revenue Service.  So effective are these government bashers that others parrot their complaints without considering how necessary and effective these services are.

Five days a week, our mail carrier Sarah comes to our door and deposits mail in our box.  She almost always has a smile, whether she trudges through knee-deep snow bundled up for minus twenty or she easily strolls across mowed grass in shorts.  This attitude is found throughout the Postal Service, at least in Minnesota.  If you stop at a Post Office with a long line at Christmas, the clerks treat each customer as if they were their only customers.  When they have finished with your request, they ask, “Anything else?”

Filing taxes is a chore most of us dread.  Why so many details to note?  Did I remember every donation?  Did I remember every dividend check?  And on and on.  As we plow our way through all these details and curse that we still owe money, we curse the IRS.  But the IRS didn’t create all these rules except at the bidding of Congress.  And Congress created a complex tax code to satisfy thousands of lobbyists.  To top it off, Congress doesn’t fund the IRS sufficiently to do all that it is required to do effectively.

A few weeks ago I received an IRS letter.  Oh, boy!  Did I screw up some calculation or miss an item?  Do I owe even more money?  I opened the letter to get the pain over quickly and found that I will be receiving a refund check!  I used a wrong percentage for a calculation and have less taxable income than I reported.

I know most of this is automated but real people had to be involved to double check and order the refund.  As all large organizations do, the letter said I would receive payment in four-to-six weeks.  I think I received it in a week or ten days.

But that same Congress that bashes the IRS bashes the Postal Service.  It saddled the Postal Service with the requirement to fully-fund future pensions, farther out than many corporations are required.  For example, as of the last letter I received about my Unisys pension, it was only funded at 77 percent!

The result of this pension burden on the Postal Service is that it has to cut services.  But if the Postal Service cuts services then what costs will be incurred by the public?  When rural post offices are cut, how many people will have to spend time and money to drive thirty or more miles to the nearest post office?  If the Postal Service consolidates sorting centers, how much longer will it take for businesses to provide service to their customers?

For example, Netflix has a Duluth distribution center.  Instead of two-day turnaround for a DVD, turnaround from the Duluth center could be four days.  That means, Netflix would probably close its Duluth distribution center, taking jobs direct and indirect with it.

UPS often uses the Postal Service for the “last mile” for small packages.  I’m not sure exactly how this works, but if the Duluth postal sorting center closes, then USPS will have to change its procedures to have its center nearest the Postal Center handle these “last mile” packages.  That will take a major reworking of UPS’s operational procedures.

I did not expect to write so much on government service.  This leaves me less space to praise all the businesses local and national, big and small that provide good service.

I’ll start with a few that know me by name or at least recognize my face.

Every so often I buy something from Denny’s Lawn and Garden, but more often I come in with a question or a broken something.  Tom is always ready to answer my questions or explain what has to be fixed.

Across the street at Denny’s Hardware, Yvonne always has a smile and is ready to point me in the right direction or to the right person.  Even when the person is new to me, they seem to know where what I want is located.

Whenever I want to buy a book,  The Bookstore at Fitgers can quickly tell me if its in stock or if it has to be ordered.  Northern Lights Books provided the same service.

I buy boots and jeans every few years at Minnesota Surplus, but Rick and others recognize me and cheerfully serve me.  Similarly, I buy a couple of shirts every few years at Mainstream for Men, and maybe a belt.  Doug and Tom always treat me as if I were their favorite customer.

Oh dear, the word count is going up too fast.  I have some favorite corporate places, but I’ll just end with a bit about Menards.  Often a clerk will walk half-way across the store to show you where an item is.  The king of service at Menards was Roy.  People sought him ought for advice because he always seemed to have the right answer.  He’s been retired for many years, but many still remember him.

Mel buys both local and corporate; he drinks Duluth beer and Italian wine.  And he forgot to mention Brandon and crew at Mt. Royal Bottle Shoppe.

Originally published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-07-10 at  http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/07/17/3739_good_service.

Summer Idyll or Sweat Farm

Here I sit in the screen “house” about noon at our cabin after hauling some chips and cut brush. The sky is blue, the trees are green, the wind is blowing through the trees, and birds are chirping. Do I even want to move?

The weather forecast was for 30% chance of thunderstorms, but I am going by my own weather “advisory”.  If bad weather is predicted, there is often a bigger chance that the weather will be just fine.  This is one of those “just fine” days.

We are here on a too infrequent four-day weekend.  Even though it is the weekend of the Fourth of July, there are surprisingly few neighbors around.  The only thing we heard from neighbors who often shoot off fireworks was some late evening hooting.  Maybe they were watching a soccer match on TV.  Somebody was shooting yesterday in the woods, hopefully not on our land.  The only person who I think might have had access to that area is already gone.

“Don’t make it a sweat farm” was from Bruce Berggren, a DNR forester, who gave us a stewardship plan in the early Nineties.  I don’t remember if we had more than a dome tent, a picnic table, and a tarp then.  We weren’t doing more than cutting brush to expand our “living area” and to make room for planting trees.

Now we have a “yard” that is three times as big as our yard in Duluth and three loops of trails with some side paths.  But, because we found much to occupy ourselves in Duluth, two of the loops and the side paths have grown over.  On the other hand, the “yard” seems to be getting bigger.

Our first major “expansion” was to put cots in our dome tent.  Oh!  We had so much more room. We could put our packs and coolers under the cots.

Our first building was an 8x8 shed that I built probably within our second year here.  We moved our cots into it.  Oh! We had so much room.  We could even dress standing up. We could even put a propane heater in it and stay overnight in the winter.  With each stay, it seemed more and more space was taken up with tools.

A couple years later, I built a cabin with some assistance from others.  We decided that a nominal 12x16 should be sufficient for our needs until we built a house here.   When I first put in a cot, Oh! We had so much room.  Over the years, we have added more and more.  Before the second winter we had a wood stove.  We added a foldout couch and a card table.  We used an Ikea counter for our “kitchen” counter.  I had used it for my darkroom when we lived in Sweden.  I cut a hole in it for a sink which drains into a bucket on the floor.  We added a microwave and a mini-refrigerator.  I forgot to mention that we had electricity and telephone before I put the wallboard up.  We stuck a portable toilet in one corner.

At some point, I built an outhouse.  We can even use it in the winter in “comfort” with a small heater screwed onto a 20-lb propane tank.  Last year I installed a solar shed light.

The same year we moved to Duluth we had a well dug.  It’s only twenty feet deep, but the water was so nice to have.  Then came the drought years and we were back to hauling water.

We built an 8x12 sauna with the help of some friends.  A battery and a solar panel provide lighting.

Other buildings include a ramshackle woodshed built out of scrap lumber and a metal shed where we store our power equipment.  I wish I hadn’t been stingy on the cost.  I’m constantly bumping my head on the low ceiling.

A recent plus is that we have better internet service.  From 25Kbps (that’s right, K not M) with a landline to sometimes 10Mbps with cellular.  As this is off my cellphone contract with Consumer Cellular, my guess is that I’m paying about a third for phone and internet at the cabin than I was for the landline.

One big project I would like to do is get rid of all the “Toimi sand”.  Toimi is the neighboring township and the sand grains are from fist-size to boulders to climb onto.  This area is also called Kivi Country, kivi being Finnish for stone.  I would really like to get rid of many of them because those that stick up only an inch or two are lawnmower busters.  Even bigger ones make it hard to pull a cart over.

Two years ago I really hurt one shoulder using a ten-pound hammer on a 4x3x2 boulder to no avail other than chips flying all over.  I wonder if a small electric jackhammer would work.  Probably I couldn’t take the strain.

Well, I better wrap this up.  It looks like 30% chance of thunderstorms getting closer.  There are more clouds, some even dark, in the sky and the wind is getting stronger.  I hope I can cut the grass on at least one short path.  Oh well, if the rain comes, I still have many books to read and last week’s Reader Weekly.

Mel did get more than one path cut, edited this, and sent it.  The rain still hadn’t come.

This was also published in the 2014-07-10 issue of the Reader Weekly at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/07/10/3701_summer_idyll_or_sweat_farm.

Fools rush in where linguists fear to tread

From a very old undated note on my desk:

What is the percentage of those who speak Spanish advising more military aid to El Salvador and of those advising against military aid?

This still holds in so much of what goes on in the world in 2014.  Fools rush in where linguists fear to tread.

Teacher qualities

From an undated note on my desk:

Empathy
Encouragement
Enlightenment
Excitement

Free market and education

From an undated note on my desk:

Inspired by a letter in the Wall Street Journal (1983-05-05) extolling free enterprise in education.

The free market is not an ideology in itself; it is a realization of a philosophy of diversity of ideas.

The trouble with our free enterprise is that goods and services are judged solely on how much somebody with money (or other barter) is willing to pay.

Political correctness and multiculturalism

From an undated note on my desk:

Tolerance and consideration have been thrown out in favor of assertive support and of prohibition of any words or actions that can be perceived as the slightest insult.

Political speech or bribery?

If I give money to a politician or a bureaucrat to get him or her to do something for me, it is called bribery.  Said bribery can result in a fine or a prison term, for both me and the politician or bureaucrat.

However, if I give money to the political campaign of a politician, in the expectation that he will act in my interests, it is now called "political speech".

A real Republican's Senate career was ended when it was revealed that he was given a Minneapolis condo at discount rates.  I don't remember the details, but I think it was a shame that real Republicans like David Durenberger, Bob Packwood, and Edward Brookes went down in flames because they did things that were small misdeeds compared to the shenanigans that go on now in both parties.

Remember that those who throw millions at elections so far have just as many votes as you do – one!

Please also pass on to all your friends:

Always vote because all votes count.  The only votes that don't count are those not cast.

The Meaning of Meaningless Words and Phrases

As seen on TV

I think I saw this phrase about a week ago as I flung another of the countless flyers we get in the mail into the recycle box.  So how does “As seen on TV” make any product better than any other product, whether seen on TV or not seen on TV.  The actor John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt was paid to act out a script touting the features of the Okey Dokey Wonder Tool.  Is the Okey Dokey company going to say anything about the faults of their Wonder Tool?  Oh, they might have a small print disclaimer like “results may vary” or “not to be used by children under twelve.”

Did you, dear astute reader, catch my meaningless word - countless?  I am going to weasel on that one and state that countless doesn’t mean without end; it means I am not counting them.

Almost endless

How are the uses of any product almost endless?  Or infinite?  No matter how many uses of a product you find, you will have found only a finite number of uses.  If everybody in the world found found even more uses, they will still have found only a finite number of uses.  If all future generations found even more uses, they will still have found only a finite number of uses.  And when the sun explodes or burns out, the number of uses found will still be a finite number.

Seamless operation

I thought this expression had fallen out of use, but Apple CEO Tim Cook used it at the recent developer’s conference.  He really should visit the online Apple User Community to find out how seamless Apple software is not.  Especially how operations that were once simple and obvious have become complex and obtuse.

It seems to me that the more complicated software becomes, the more glitches and operational quirks there are.  Sure, I can do a lot more with computers than I did even five years ago, but I have an even longer list of problems that I haven’t found a round tuit to resolve.

Perfect gift

This “omniscient” phrase appeared in dozens of ads for hundreds of products before Father’s Day.  “Just what Dad wants.”  First, how do these advertisers even know what each and very father wants?  Second, this father really didn’t want any of the products advertised.  Third, our family doesn’t give gifts on Father’s Day.  Fourth, our family doesn’t celebrate Father’s day.  Fifth, this curmudgeonly father doesn’t even care.

Business friendly

Many judge cities and states on how “business-friendly” they are.  That is, are taxes low, are subsidies given for relocation, are environmental laws relaxed?  Rarely are cities and states judged by the “business-friendly” crowd as to how well the police and fire departments operate, how good the roads and utilities are, and how willing people are to move for reasons other than being moved there by the new or expanding company.

“Business-friendly” often means “corporate-friendly”.  Local businesses are often the losers when a corporation moves in.  What happened to the local stationery store when Office Depot moved into downtown Duluth?  How many other local businesses were disrupted?  How long did Office Depot stay in downtown Duluth?  More and more chain drug stores have been opened in Duluth.  When was the last time you visited a locally-owned pharmacy?

The good news is that there are still several locally-owned businesses in Duluth.  Be truly business-friendly and support them with your business.

Voters decided/Investors decided

I wish journalists would stop using these sweeping generalizations to describe the choices of a minority.  I’ve written over and over how a minority of eligible or even registered voters chose the eventual winners of an election.  When it comes to “investors decided”, the proportion of “deciders” is a tiny fraction of “investors”.

First, how often are the “investors” day-traders?  Second, how often are the “day-traders” computers programmed to look for the tiniest advantage?

The real investors are those who buy and hold for years.  They invested because they believed in the purpose of the company, because they perceived long-term growth, or because they wanted steady dividends.  These investors are not deciding the daily gyrations of the stock markets.

Conservative and liberal

It seems these terms have devolved into if you are one of these then you are on the good side and the other is the bad side.  Conservatives have devolved from those who deliberated carefully to those who believe in a long list of bullet points, even if some of these are contradictory, like abortion is bad and war is good.  Liberals have devolved from those who were generous to those in real need to those who support a long list of groups who they see as disadvantaged.

The “conservatives” have managed to put the “liberals” on the defensive.

Maybe someday we will once again have more conservatives like Ross Douthat and David Brooks and liberals like Paul Krugman and Eugene Robinson.  These and several others in government and journalism look at the “big picture” rather than narrow interests.

Mel would have visited three locally-owned businesses the day he wrote this, but he wimped out when the wind blew dust on his contact lenses.

Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-07-03 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/07/03/3656_the_meaning_of_meaningless_words_and_phrases

Leaky pipes and voting

Voting is as important as tending to leaky pipes.  If you don’t tend to a leaky pipe, you may a flooded basement.  If you don’t tend to your government by voting, you may have flooded streets.

This was inspired in party by John W. Gardner’s statement:

“The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”

and by Jackie Calmes “As Numbers Grow, Single Women Emerge as Political Powerhouse”, New York Times, 2014-07-02

Calmes points out that single women are more likely not to vote, especially in mid-term elections.

For more wonderful quotes by John W. Gardner, see http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_W._Gardner.  I especially like his comment on taxes:

“Handing money back to the private sector in tax cuts and starving the public sector is a formula for producing richer and richer consumers in filthier and filthier communities. If we stick to that formula we shall end up in affluent misery.”

Bear with me as I am mad and sad

I went to our cabin last Thursday intending to stay through Sunday, trying to catch up on all kinds of undone tasks, including lots of un-mowed trails.  Although thunderstorms were predicted, I followed my old habits of weather prediction interpretation.  If good weather is predicted for the day, then the weather will be good.  If bad weather is predicted, then the weather may not be as bad as predicted.

My assumptions proved warranted.  I had gray weather but very little rain.  The grass was too wet to mow mostly because of dew, but I did set to on many other tasks.

No, I don’t make our cabin a sweat farm as a DNR forester warned us years ago.  My preferred rhythm is an hour of some wood cutting, brush clearing, or whatever and then an hour of reading, playing SuDoKu, or browsing the web.

My wife didn’t join me partly because she wasn’t so optimistic about the weather and partly because she had a long list of activities she wanted to do in Duluth.  Also we did have a guest but we often let the guest take care of himself.

Well, it was a good thing my wife stayed behind.  The guest managed to clog the toilet and left for his planned activity.  My wife tried the hot water treatment, the plunger treatment, and the snake treatment.  Nothing worked to unblock the toilet.

When she called me to report this, I decided I should come back to Duluth to help her.  One hour later I was home.

I tried the snake and could not get it in as far as I knew it should go.  Then I pushed the snake while my wife turned the handle.  Success!  We cleared it!

My feeling that I had to come back to Duluth was my first “mad” of the day.

I headed back to Brimson.  I declined making coffee at home and opted to get some at Bixby’s.  I had to wait a bit, chatted with the barista, and was on my way.

As had been true most of the last part of the week, Duluth was foggy, but from Glenwood and north it was clear.  I turned off Jean Duluth Road and proceeded east on Hwy 44.  I passed the marsh and drove among the trees where it was darker.

Then a black shape came from the right.  It was a black bear that walked right into my car which slammed into its head.  I stopped as quickly as I could.  Looking behind me, I saw the bear lying of the side of the road, its head over the solid white line.

I called 911 with a non-emergency call.  I reported the incident and was transferred to the state highway patrol.  The state dispatcher said the DNR would be notified.

Several people stopped to ask if I was OK.  I said I was fine and that authorities had been be notified.  Some said the bear was still alive and that I should stay away from it.  One man said he could get his gun and shoot the bear.

Finally I inspected the damage.  There was a small triangular break in the front bumper and a piece of trim was hanging down to the road on one side.  Later I found that the wheel well plastic was loose and the right side of the bumper was loose.

I walked back to the bear, probably about two hundred pounds and three to four years old.  It was breathing with great quick heaves.

I walked back to my car and picked up lots of pieces of auto debris.  These can’t all be mine!  Many were in shapes I didn’t recognize.  There must have been previous crashes here.

A sheriff’s deputy pulled up by the bear and I walked back.  He checked my auto license on his computer and asked for other details.  He gave me a case number for insurance purposes.

I walked back to my car and got out some tools to get the hanging trim off.  While I was doing this, I heard “crack”.  The deputy shot the bear.

This was both a mad and sad event.  I was mad that it had even occurred and I was sad for the bear.

Finally, I called my insurance company while all the details were fresh in my memory.

As I drove off, I got mad again.  The sun was out and I had missed some good working and loafing time at the cabin.

Sunday the prediction for Brimson was more thunderstorms.  Fortunately, that didn’t deter my wife from joining me.  The weather was a mix of clear and cloudy with only a brief bit of pitter-patter when I was reading in the screen tent.  I got lots of grass mowed and she picked rhubarb for next week’s Rhubarb Festival.

On the way back I noticed how dark the area of the incident was compared to the marsh area to the west.

I also had another mad.  Three drivers behind me didn’t want to go the speed limit and were bunched up behind me, the first car being three or four car-lengths behind me.  If this same group had been behind me when I had stopped for the bear, I would have had rear-end damage as well as front-end damage.

Mel's first Reader article was "Bear Stories", published in the September 30, 1999 Northland Reader..

The current article was also published in the Reader Weekly, June 26, 2014 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/06/26/3622_bear_with_me_as_i_am_mad_and_sad.

As seen on the web is as authoritative as seen on TV

“As seen on TV” as an endorsement of a product always gives me a chuckle.  So what if the product was shown on TV.  It was only there because the seller bought ad time.

“I read it on the web” is even more insidious because we have no idea what the source was and how reliable the source is.  One of the latest stories is that a three-year-old girl and her grandmother claimed they were asked to leave a KFC restaurant because the girl was severely disfigured by dog bites; the other customers “would be upset”.

Counter evidence includes no meal as described was on any register, no security camera shows the two, and the named restaurant had been closed for some time.

See http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/24/report-story-of-toddler-tossed-out-of-kfc-is-a-complete-hoax/

Of course, all you have to judge this is my little entry and the above web site.

Whatever, investigate a cause before you send money or sign a petition or forward a link.  Always!

“Dollars don’t vote – you do” - David Brat

The full quote is “What you proved tonight is that dollars don’t vote – you do.”  See
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/david-brat-s-win-143742269.html

David Brat defeated Rep. Eric Cantor in the primary for the Republican nomination for the U.S. House District 7 in Virginia.

What was really proved is that elections are determined by who shows up and who doesn’t show up.

See also Politics: Don Givadam wins again.

I would like to amend my advice about voting with a more positive spin:

Always vote because every vote always counts.  If you stay away you give the election away.

Corporations, persons, tools, and fools

Corporations are persons?  Someone said that you know a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.

How did we get to this situation that corporations have “freedom of speech” and many other freedoms granted to actual living individual persons?

Corporations were originally created to give monarchs and other nobility a piece of the economic action.  As the merchant class rose in the cities, the monarch couldn’t tax them because they had no land.  By creating a corporation of a given business, the monarch could insist on a few shares of a corporation and rake in more in profits than he would have in taxes.  Also, by giving a monopoly to a corporation, he protected it from competition.

These monopolies soon expanded far outside the monarch’s country with colonization of other parts of the world.  An example is how British law forbade the American colonies from producing a long list of items or importing goods through any other organization than the British East India Company.  Was the British East India Company composed of Adam Smith’s “order of men” who “were not to be trusted” with proposing legislation?  The Boston Tea Party was an act of defiance against the corporate monopoly enjoyed by the British East India Company.

Is today’s Tea Party a tool of corporations who want to extract minerals without paying the full cost of such extraction?  These corporations are waging legislative, administrative, and public relations campaigns to allow them to operate on corporate terms.  Are these corporations composed of Adam Smith’s “order of men” who “were not to be trusted” with proposing legislation?  Also as the British East India Company was a “foreign” entity, many of the extractors of today are entities from out of state or even out of the country.

Does “Open for Business” or “Business-friendly” apply to locally-owned companies or to large corporations that will move elsewhere whenever they think an area is not bending to their wishes?  Does it mean that large corporations will be given subsidies, including reduced taxes, that aren’t given to locally-owned businesses?  If we want truth in government, maybe we should insist that states and localities that claim to be “Business-friendly” should admit being “Corporation-friendly”.

Can you find “corporation” in the U.S. Constitution?  That was deliberate.  Many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention remembered well the dominance of a corporation over Colonial affairs and did not want a repeat of that stranglehold.  Many of the national politicians of the time had a vision of craftsman and farmers plying their goods in local markets.

But with advances in transportation, the economic situation changed drastically.  To build canals required capital.  To gather capital, groups of people had to organize to buy shares and/or borrow money.  If the enterprise failed, the shareholders didn’t want to be held individually responsible for the losses of the company beyond their own financial contribution.  Wouldn’t you?  Thus, the limited liability corporation came to the United States.

With the coming of the railroads came ever larger corporations.  The Illinois Central Railroad hired a lawyer to get special privileges for it like breaking unions, hiring foreign workers, and gaining privileges not held by people.  Yep, that lawyer was the “of the people, by the people, and for the people” guy.  Apparently, the Civil War opened his eyes to many things.  This excerpt from one of his letters shows this rather strongly:

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

My, how political parties morph over the generations!  I think only two Republican Presidents have had similar misgivings.

Many decades later another war-time leader worried about the “military-industrial” complex.  But one of his predecessors pulled a corporate branding trick on the American people.  The Department of War was now to be called the Department of Defense.  Now corporations weren’t in the business of selling war machines but were fulfilling “defense contracts”.

One of the political ironies is the political party the claims the federal government can’t do anything right bends over backward to lavish more money on the military-industrial complex.  Do they not know that snafu and fubar are terms coined by the guys in the foxholes?

So, are corporations the tools of the people or are the people the tools of corporations?  If we let the latter happen then we are the fools.

For a lot more about the abuse of and by corporations, see “Life, Inc., How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back” by Douglas Rushkoff.

Mel owns shares in a few corporations and almost always votes against their overpaid executives and boards.

Cars vs. transit - apples and oranges or dollars and cents

Every so often, the newspapers publish a letter or opinion strongly against transit.  The current favorite target is the Green Line between Minneapolis and St. Paul.  At least the critics are writing about the costs and not about “government taking our cars away”.

I would like to turn the last phrase around and say that “government took our street cars, buses, and trains away”.  “Government” did this by building bigger and faster freeways and reducing transit service.  Why take a bus that runs every hour or half-hour when you can arrive at your destination in your car in fifteen minutes?

I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and got around by foot, bicycle, street cars, and buses.  I rarely bothered with a schedule because service was rather frequent.  By the time I got to graduate school, most service had deteriorated to the point that I could walk to school faster than I could take two buses.  In bad weather, I drove.

Those who complain about “government taking our cars away” should look at it as “making room for me”.  If more people took the public transit, there would be more room for those who chose to drive.

Think about how a bus makes more space for drivers.  Suppose a forty-foot bus has an average load of twenty-five passengers.  Suppose a fifteen-foot car has an average load of two passengers.  Assuming that all vehicles are traveling at 55mph with a safe-stopping distance between them, then a bus would need less than fifteen feet per passenger but a car would need sixty-eight feet per passenger.  See, government can be efficient!

I use the load of twenty-five passengers above because that was my usual load driving a bus between Maple Grove and downtown Minneapolis.  If buses were carrying forty passengers instead, which some do, then the comparison would drop to nine feet of highway per passenger.  I’ll let you do the comparison for four passengers per car.  However, my first figure is generous in that so many cars have a single occupant.  Using that figure shows us that a single occupant uses almost ten times as much highway space per passenger as a bus carrying twenty-five passengers.

Think about the parking space needed. A forty-foot bus will need about 360 square-feet of parking space at the terminal.  They would all be jammed together.  A fifteen-foot car would need over 200 square-feet of parking space in a lot or garage.  That is around 100 square-feet of parking space per passenger.  On the other hand, if a bus made three runs, it would only need less than five square-feet of parking space per passenger.

It’s a bit of a slog to find CO2 emissions and fuel efficiency figures, but from Wikipedia I found a 2008 Toyota Prius has a rating of 46 mpg and 55-passenger buses in Santa Barbara have a rating of 6.0 mpg.  Using the previous figures of two passengers in a car and twenty-five in a bus, we get 92 mpg/passenger for a Prius (worse if we use some other vehicles) and 150mpg/passenger for a bus.  If the bus had forty passengers, we would get 240mpg/passenger.

In areas where traffic comes to a standstill and buses drive on the shoulder, the buses would definitely be doing better on emissions.

Every time I drive to the Cities, I marvel at all the land gobbled up by that huge interchange of 35E and 694.  How much tax revenue is lost for that land?  I took an easier sample.  Using Hennepin County’s Property Interactive Map, I selected a few residences on Second Avenue South that were south of Lake Street.  Houses on Second Avenue there overlook I-35W Gulch.  The real estate taxes there are about $2,500 per year.  There are about 31 blocks from Lake St. to the city limit at 62nd Street.  I-35W is one block wide.  The city, county, and school district taxes lost for that section of freeway are over $1.8 million.  For this little article, I am not going to make the effort to calculate the taxes lost for all the freeways that scar the Twin Cities.

Sadly, the freeway is probably used more by people that don’t even live in Hennepin County, but counties to the south.

It wasn’t “government that took our buses away”, but land speculators and corporations.  In the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, railroads and land speculators encouraged people to move to the suburbs to get away from “those people” in the city.  Then the car manufacturers lobbied for more roads for their vehicles.  Roads were a subsidy for cars, but to pay for the roads, governments couldn’t afford street cars and buses.

Ironically, now many affluent are moving back to the cities and pushing “those people” out.  First it was land speculators attracting people out from the cities, and now it is building speculators attracting people back to the cities.  Pst, hey buddy, I have this nice New York City condo for you, only $25 million.

Politics: Don Givadam wins again

Many a commentator is making a big deal about Representative Eric Cantor’s loss to a “Tea Party” candidate in the Virginia Republican primary.  But few look at how many actually voted.

From http://electionresults.virginia.gov/resultsSW.aspx?type=CON&map=CTY

Unoffical results 2014-06-11 15:22 EDT
Eric I. Cantor 28,902  44.45%
David A. Brat  36,120 55.55%
Total votes 65,022

However, there are 473,032 registered voters in Congressional District 7 which means that 13.75% of them voted for either Republican candidate.  Assuming that these registered voters are evenly split between “Republicans” and “Democrats”, then we could say that 27.5% of the registered Republicans bothered to show up.  Does that mean that 72.5% of the registered “Republicans” don’t care for either candidate or just plain don’t care to vote. If there are more “Republicans” than “Democrats”, the percent of “Republican” no-shows is even worse.

But, some who voted for Brat consider themselves “Democrats”.  They voted for him to get rid of Cantor.  See these admissions in the comments to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/us/politics/after-eric-cantor-primary-defeat-house-republicans-take-stock.html  These “crossover” voters are probably a tiny percent of those who bothered to show; still, their votes won’t be there for Brat in November.  Also, how many Cantor supporters will be no shows in November?

I think we should get away from party primaries and have open primaries.  Those who didn’t give time or a dime to a political party should not be choosing a party’s candidates.

No matter your political preference, the lesson here is:

Always vote because every vote always counts.  If you stay away you give the election away.

See also "Dollars don't vote – you do" – David Brat.

God and fossil fuels

If God put all the fossil fuels in the ground, which of these two might have been his will.

1) God put the fossil fuels in the ground to help people prosper when they developed the skills to use those fuels.

2) God put the fossil fuels in the ground to keep people from squandering them and thus destroying his creation.

Quote of the day: Elevez votre voix, pas le niveau de la mer

“Raise your voice, not the level of the sea” is the title of a podcast yesterday from Radio des Nations Unies.  It is about World Environment Day, June 5.  News of this has been “censored” in Duluth.  I cannot easily find it in the Duluth News Tribune.  My top find in the New York Times was a picture of a worker in India wading through recycled plastic bottles.

Is this “censorship” or lack of interest.  I can certainly find many other references in English to World Environment Day.

My translation of the text that iTunes shows me for this seven-minute podcast is:

“Each year on June 5 millions of people across the planet celebrate World Environment Day, at the levels of community, nation, and region to promote a positive action on the most pressing environmental challenges.  The host of World Environment Day this year is Barbados, …”

The top Google search item I found was http://www.unep.org/wed/, UNEP stands for United Nations Environmental Programme.

Barbados was chosen as the host for this year’s WED  because it is considered a leader in solar power.  See http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2788&ArticleID=10851&l=en

BTW, WED is not going totally ignored in the U.S. I did see an item that Secretary of State John Kerry did make a statement about WED.

Censuring Project Censorship

Every year the Reader Weekly publishes excerpts from Project Censored, “The News That Didn't Make The News”, and every year I gnash my teeth over at least half the items.  I’ve already read about them someplace else.  If they were censored, how did they get published so that I already knew about them?  If they were censored stories, how did the authors of these items get all their information?  And if they were censored, how did they get public coverage through Project Censored?  Wouldn’t the “censors” have closed Project Censored’ offices?

This year I’ll try a bit harder to find out where all of these items did make the news.

Widespread GMO Contamination: Did Monsanto Plant GMOs Before USDA Approval?

I am not surprised.  Monsanto has had widespread objection to its products and practices for years.

I searched for “monsanto gmo contamination 2000”.  A History Commons article gives citations from the Washington Post and others from 1999 and from the New York Times from 2000

Pennsylvania Law Gags Doctors to Protect Big Oil’s “Proprietary Secrets”

The Philadelphia Inquirer apparently didn’t know that this story was censored.  In December and January it ran stories on this law in its Philly.com site. The law is being contested in state courts.  That law is even being opposed by local Republican politicians; one even thought all the state Republicans should be turned out of office in the next election.

The Power of Peaceful Revolution in Iceland

I knew that years ago Icelanders turned out the government that let banks run rampant.  The new government did not bail the banks out.  They let the banks take their own losses rather than  “socialize” the losses as so many other countries did.

Food Riots: The New Normal?

I expected that this could happen given global warming and government corruption impoverishing many countries.  But there could also be a bright side.  Education, cell phones, and local electricity are giving many people the power to better their own lives.  And not all live in areas overrun by militant, religious extremists.

Journalism Under Attack Around the Globe

What’s new?  There have been many reports about attacks on journalists.  Reporters without Borders have been working for years to end violence against reporters.  One of the latest was a German photographer shot point blank in Afghanistan.  And an Italian reporter was killed in Ukraine.

The US Has Left Iraq with an Epidemic of Cancers and Birth Defects

This is not surprising considering the amount of toxic junk left by the military.  I’ve seen many stories about the depleted uranium shells left behind and its dangers.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Threatens a Regime of Corporate Global Governance

This title is ambiguous.  Does TPP threaten an existing “regime of corporate global governance”?  Or does it threaten to bring about a “regime of corporate global governance”?

I’ve seen the latter complaint before, many times.  There are many opposed to TPP who have been vociferous in their condemnation of it.  I’ve read many stories about the requested “fast track” authority and the secrecy about what is in the agreement.  Those voting for TPP ought to consider what happened with the PATRIOT Act.  Most did not read it.  I know of one case in which a Senator read the act and refused to vote for it.

What we probably can know for sure is that the “greatest deliberative body in the world” probably won’t deliberate much.

A Fifth of Americans Go Hungry

This headline is a sweeping generalization of the real problem described afterward.  Going hungry once a year is not the same as always being hungry.  Going hungry through no fault of one’s own is bad enough, but generalizations weaken the case for helping those who do.

Another side is that many unwittingly go hungry even though they have plenty of food.  The “American diet” is filled with food that only increases hunger, food brought to you through the “hard work” and “generosity” of big-ag.

Bank Interests Inflate Global Prices by 35 to 40 Percent

There is a simple explanation; it is called compounding.   Most everything we consume or use is produced by a pyramid of suppliers, each paying interest on its loans and expecting profit. 

Mary sells a widget to John.  John uses Mary’s widget to make a thingamajig.  John sells his thingamajig to Carl.  Carl uses John’s thingamajig to make a whatchamacallit. Carl sells his whatchamacallit to Karen.  Karen uses Carl’s whatchamacallit to make “The Latest Great Thing”.

Assuming the value added at each stage was twenty percent and each paid five percent interest on his or her costs, the accumulated interest is 15.5 percent.  The longer the chain of suppliers, the greater the compounding of interest.  And we aren’t including the interest each of these producers is paying for a house, a car, and a credit card.  And all that interest is not going just to banksters.  Many a pension is paid for by interest.  Many colleges, foundations, and charities depend on the interest and dividends paid on invested donations.

Richest Global 1 Percent Hide Trillions in Tax Havens

Many have complained about this.  It seems I see at least one story a week about tax havens.

Bradley Manning and the Failure of Corporate Media

We don’t know the rationale of rejection by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Politico.  These are only three of dozens of corporate media.  This is a sweeping generalization too much like too many other sweeping generalizations of all X do Y.  The Huffington Post did report in 2013 that Manning did reveal he tried to reach these media organizations, but he received no answers.  The real question is did those at the lower echelons who received his messages have any reason to believe his credibility.

Think about it!  How often has your contact with any large corporation gone past the first person you reached?

As far as “corporate media” shunning the story, I can easily find many articles at the time of his trial.  I do know that I got tired of reading about it.

Manning’s sexual orientation was new to me after his trial.

Gogebic Taconite President Bill Williams Faces Environmental Charges in Spain

Wisconsin Public Radio has been publishing stories about the Spanish pollution charges against Bill Williams.  I don’t know how often they have to cover it to have more than “little coverage”.  The Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative has published several stories.  Maybe about 4,000 followers means little coverage, but how many more read these stories without becoming followers?  Other publications reporting these charges include The Daily Press of Ashland, WDIO, Sawyer County Record of Hayward, and Business North (KUWS story),

Police Brutality and Disregard for People’s Rights

These stories are always coming up.  Sadly, these abuses have been going on for a long time.  Joseph Wambaugh, a police officer who became a novelist in the 1970’s, wrote about some of these abuses in his stories.

Protests Everywhere and No One Cares

Who the hell are the Smiley Cyprus and Dustin Peeper mentioned in this section?  I certainly don’t care to read much about their escapades.

I read about the Venezuela protests in the News Tribune or Star Tribune.

Could the Rome protests be about a story in La Repubblica?  La Repubblica reported that the head of the Ukraine Communist Party was accused of being a sniper, beaten, and forced to kiss a cross.  This story appeared in contropiano.org, an online Communist journal.  Contropiano’s story was published March 1, 2014, but La Repubblica ran a correction on February 22 that the party official was not a sniper!

My conclusion

My “censorship” is your “lack of interest” and vice versa.  We would have to spend all day and all night reading all the stories that may have some interest to us.  But we can never keep up with all that others may consider important.

Almost every day I read the Duluth News Tribune, the Star Tribune, and the New York Times.  Do I read everything published in them?  Come on, I would like to do a lot of other things besides read news on a screen, especially news about the doings of Cypress and Beeper.

People are highly selective in what they read.  Some read only the sports; some, the headlines, some, the entertainment, and on and on.  Because you and I take note of economic treaties doesn’t mean everybody else does.

I know this very well! I’ve been beating the drum that Adam Smith has been misinterpreted.  Other than the copy that was in the Reader (“The Invisible Adam Smith”), I doubt if one hundred people have read that article in my blog.  Has my view been censored?  No, it has only been overwhelmed by millions of articles that are more interesting to tens of millions of readers.

Mel is a gullible skeptic.  Sometimes he swallows somebody's line; sometimes he tries to figure out what is really going on.

Published in Reader Weekly, 2014-06-05, http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/06/05/3495_censuring_project_censored

I am a Democratic Party leader?

Way back in 2008 I donated ten or twenty bucks to the Obama campaign.  Ever since then I receive pleas for money and for filling out a “survey” from the Democratic National Party.

“OFFICIAL PARTY BUSINESS - OPEN IMMEDIATELY”

The letter, this time “from” Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, includes:

Melvyn, you are one of a select group of party leaders…

I am a Democratic Party leader?  The last time I was an official party leader was in the 70s when I was a Republican precinct financial chair.  Then came Reagan.  I’ve been wandering in the political desert ever since with a couple of forays to support one or another independent candidate.

Now Reagan looks like a liberal and my only choice is pretty much to vote Democratic.  The Democrats are several steps closer to reality and practical governance than the Republicans.  Where are the likes of John Anderson, Arne Carlson, and Bill Frenzel?

I scribbled on a plea for the 2012 Presidential campaign that Obama should depend on his big donors rather than small donors he courted so well in 2008.  I haven’t sent any money since.

Still the pleas come.

The return envelope is labeled:

SURVEY RESPONSE ENCLOSED – PLEASE RUSH

As with all political surveys, the questions and answer selections are biased toward the bias of the party printing the survey.  They are meant to affirm the party’s beliefs rather than shape them.

Well, I will vote in November.  That is a lot more than I can say about many who call themselves Democrats.