What Would Jimmy Do?

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Seems like every year I think it’s necessary to write something about St. Patrick or green, or beer, or Ireland, or something….
Well, might as well carry on the tradition, even though there is a limited amount of material and most of whatever winds up here has already been said — probably even by me.

Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, even though he wasn’t Irish. His real name was Maewyn Sccat — his Romaniciaed name was Patricius, that later became Patrick. He was born in Britain to wealthy parents and was taken prisoner when he was about sixteen by a group of Irish raiders that attacked his family’s estate. He was taken to Ireland and pretty much kept as a slave for six years. He wrote about hearing God’s voice in a dream telling him it was time to leave Ireland. He escaped and walked nearly 200 miles to the Irish coast.

After returning to Britain, Patrick has a second dream in which a angel told him to return to Ireland as a missionary. Based on that dream, Patrick began his religious training, studying more than fifteen years, becoming a priest and later a bishop. He was sent to Ireland where his mission lasted more than thirty years. St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated on the day of his death (March 17 in AC 461.)

The significance of green — while pretty much universal around here, in Ireland identifies you as Catholic. Irish Protestants are identified with orange…
Just before the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland if you wore a shamrock in your hat, it signified your support for the Rebellion. That contributed to the saying, “the wearing of the green.”

So here’s to St. Patrick and his day….
Here’s to a long life and a merry one.
A quick death and an easy one
A pretty girl and an honest one
A cold beer – and another one!
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A few days ago I wrote about curmudgeons and pretty much admitted that I might actually be one (not that that’s a bad thing.) One characteristic or trait that possible curmudgeons have is that they want things like they used to be.

One thing I’d like to be like it used to be is knobs. Yea, knobs — have you noticed they’re disappearing? I’ve been aware of the trend for quite some time, but it’s getting worse. I first noticed it becoming a problem shortly after we moved to West Virginia. During the move, a cheap plastic knob on our washing machine broke. No big deal — knobs are cheap and easy to replace…. Well, I couldn’t get a knob in West Virginia; I was able to find a replacement in Fairfax, Virginia, but it had to be special ordered and I had to drive 50 miles to pick it up. Because it was a special order, I had to pay shipping, stocking fees, and who knows what else — the 99 cent knob cost almost $10, not counting gas. Now remember, I wasn’t being picky about the knob — just about any old knob would do — didn’t have to be a Maytag or even a washing machine knob. I went to Radio Shack. They used to have a whole wall of knobs — all colors, big ones, small ones, round ones, pointed ones, plastic, metal, you name it — you could always find a knob at Radio Shack. Do you know how many knobs Radio Shack had? None!! Not one knob. How could that be? Little did I know it was about to get worse.

When I was growing up, everything had knobs. As you entered the house, the front door had a knob (our front door doesn’t have a knob — in fact, none of our doors have knobs.) Radios had knobs — one to change the station, one to adjust the volume, some even had knobs to change bands to short wave or FM and to adjust the bass and treble. Television sets used to have knobs. If you wanted to adjust the volume or change the channel, you got up out of your chair, went to the TV and turned a knob. Kelly and Chris’ kitchen cabinets don’t even have knobs — I never know which side of the door to try to open… and then — there’s cars. My car is 12 years old and it has maybe three knobs. It’s got a lot of buttons, switches and levers and levers that contain buttons that you flick, push, pull, twist and apply every other movement known to man (some having to be accomplished simultaneously) to get the desired results. And it’s got a touch screen. Claire’s car is a couple of years newer than mine and it only has one knob – maybe two. I have no idea how the windshield wiper lever/push/turn/button control works — I’ve finally just set it on automatic and take my chances. Claire’s car has also upped the number of functions controlled by a touch screen.

Go look at a new car and you can bet that almost everything is controlled by a “touch screen.” Now I’ll be the first to agree that all this touch screen technology looks way cool, but the curmudgeon in me says it’s not a good thing. Here’s why — if you’re using the touch screen on your iPad or iPhone, you’re looking at the screen and interacting with it — directly. When you’re driving, ideally you’re looking out that big window in front of you (I know, most people you meet are eating, texting, fixing their hair, or something else, but that’s another issue) and you operate most controls by “feel.” At most, they only take a quick glance. The problem is touch screens have little buttons on a glass screen — there is no “feel” and you have to take your eyes away from the big window to find the right “button.” If you’ve ever looked in the cockpit of an airliner, you’ve probably noticed a lot of levers between the pilot and co-pilot seats — those levers all have different shaped knobs. Pilots manipulate those levers by touch, they don’t have to look to see which control they’re moving.

Most of the cars I’ve owned (until the last few) had a knob on the dash that had the word “LIGHTS” printed on it. You pulled it out and the lights went on. You pushed it in and the lights went off. Our current cars have the light control on a lever on the steering column and they all work differently and you have to work to get the lights off or on when you want them on or off — apparently the car now knows better than you to not turn the lights on if the ignition isn’t on or the car isn’t running and that they shouldn’t turn off for 40 seconds or some amount of time the car thinks you need the lights for…. I’m still not sure what was wrong with the knob — pull, they’re on; push, they’re off.

A number of years ago, you’d sometimes hear people say, “Don’t you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence?” Well, guess what? There is no knob!
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In my “working days” when one of my projects needed money that hadn’t been budgeted, I found that when I went to the boss or the board it was always easier to get more money than less. If I indicated that I needed $5000 or even $500 to complete a project, I was deluged with questions about how it was to be used, why didn’t I foresee the need for it earlier and on and on. However, if I needed $5 million for the project, I got the usual grumbling but not near the number of questions. The fact is it was easier to ask for more money.

I attribute this to the fact that $500 means something to most people — but most people really can’t comprehend larger amounts, like $5M. Most people are not very good at comprehending large numbers. Each year at Antietam they light a candle for each causality of the battle – about 25,000. I thought I had an idea of the magnitude of the number 25,000. The first time we went there for the luminary event, I had trouble comprehending what I saw. I think most people have a handle on numbers and quantities until some arbitrary number is reached and then their brains default to “a lot,” “a bunch.” “gargantuan,” “humongous” or some such description of something incomprehensible. Once a person reaches that number, it’s almost impossible to get past it.

Now, all that aside, on to the subject of this blog — the National debt. Ever since I can remember, its been big, humongous or whatever term you’d like to use. It always seemed fairly serious to me — I know if I owe money, I worry about it. But apparently most people, and certainly the people in Washington aren’t terribly concerned. The reason, I think, is that no one can begin to comprehend the magnitude of the problem. Most people’s minds can’t comprehend numbers in the trillions. I’m guessing here, but I’d bet that no person, organization, or country has ever had a debt as large as the U.S. does today – ever – in the history of the world!

I’m not sure what the National debt is — it’s gone up since I started writing, but it’s at least $15 or $16 trillion. The media tries to explain it using examples like, if you spent a dollar a second, $15 trillion would last close to 470.000 years, or if you turned $15 trillion into a stack of thousand dollar bills, it would reach over 943 miles. Another interesting observation that attempts to put these huge numbers in perspective — if you had gone into business on the day Jesus was born, and your business lost a million dollars a day, day in and day out, 365 days a year, it would take you until October 2737 to lose a trillion dollars — and our debt is many trillions. I haven’t done the math, but I bet these scary examples are fairly accurate — the problem is it’s still hard to relate to the numbers. It’s a serious problem and Washington takes long weekends….

I don’t have an answer, but I blame everyone in Washington. Everyone should blame them and maybe we ought to work on that number thing — a trillion is a lot; 16, 17 or 18 trillion is mind boggling.

Even if we can’t get our head around the numbers, we should all agree that this is a serious issue. Maybe if we can just equate it to our not being able to pay our American Express bill it will become ‘real’ to us. Thomas Jefferson once said that if he could add just one more amendment to the Constitution it would be a complete ban on all borrowing by the federal government. Think things would be different today if we’d taken his advice?
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Claire often refers to me as a curmudgeon. I seem to have noticed that she uses that term more in the past few years — maybe that’s because I’ve been trying to listen to her more lately — expanding my sphere of selective listening. To be perfectly honest, I really didn’t know what a curmudgeon was — I’d heard the term, but when it became apparent that I might be one (in some opinions) I thought I better extensively research it.

The dictionary definition is “a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.” Now I don’t really see myself fitting that description. I’ve never been accused of being a “yes man” or always agreeing with everyone. I express my opinion and think that is often interpreted as being difficult or cantankerous. Actually I’m just being honest.

Curmudgeonry (not sure if that’s a word, but it should be) is — falsely —believed to apply to grumpy old men. In fact, a curmudgeon can be any gender or age. It is basically a character trait. A true curmudgeon is absolutely convinced that almost all the current problems are caused by young people — another point for me not being a curmudgeon. I think a couple of problems were the fault of middle aged people.

So here’s some reasons I think maybe people think I’m a curmudgeon — and — some reasons I think I’m not.
Sometimes I’m accused of being crabby — I’m not; I tell the truth, and of course some people don’t like that.
I’m sometimes accused of being negative — I’m not; I don’t like, or dislike, something just because it’s popular or “trendy.” If a great new restaurant opens and I don’t like it, I say so — I don’t care that everyone else is raving about it.
Some (most) people think I dress like a curmudgeon — I don’t; I dress for comfort. After years of “business dress” I can do without those ties, button down shirts, shoes that have to be polished… I wear things that feel good.
Sometimes I’m accused of thinking I know better than anyone else — — well, ok; that’s usually the case and it’s difficult to stand or sit by and see mistakes being made. I usually have the solution to most problems. I am a supremely independent thinker and very wise with the belief that such power should be used for the good of mankind.

A lot of people are classified as curmudgeons along with me — Andy Rooney, Ebenezer Scrooge, Oscar the Grouch, Maxine, the cartoon character (see, a female), Archie Bunker, Dr. House on TV, Grumpy of the Seven Dwarfs, all cats, the Grinch…. I’m not sure that’s necessarily bad company to be in (except for the cats.)

Obviously you can tell I think Curmudgeonry has gotten a bad name — people should spend more time listening to curmudgeons; they’d learn how to solve real world problems.
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The last update to this blog made sport of weather forecasters because they had forecasted snow of historic proportions. I’ve often heard people refer to a blizzard and I realized I’m not sure what constitutes a blizzard — except when I’m at Dairy Queen, of course. So I figured it was time for some extensive research. I discovered that snow is an extremely complex type of precipitation — snowflakes are agglomerates of a lot of frozen ice crystals and most snowflakes are less than a half an inch across. The water content of snowflakes is extremely variable with the “average” snowflake being made up of 180 billion molecules of water. The number of molecules in each flake is dependent on temperature, crystal structure, wind speed and lots of other things.

Before I get too carried away with my new-found knowledge, let’s get the blizzard thing out of the way. A blizzard occurs when visibility is less than a quarter of a mile, the winds must be at least 35 miles an hour and the storm must last at least 3 hours. If any of these conditions are not met, it is only a snowstorm.

I think I learned in school that all snowflakes have six sides. I didn’t check yesterday, but in the past all that I’ve checked did indeed have six sides. If you happen to find a snowflake that has more or less than six sides, I’m not sure what it means….

Snowflakes aren’t really white — in places where the soil is red clay, snowflakes often look pink because red dust from the soil is blown into the air and absorbed by the clouds and when factories burned a lot of coal, the coal dust entered the air and the snow was often gray. Snow in various locations seem to have colors that range from yellow and orange to green and even purple, but the fact is that snow is actually colorless. Sometimes it picks up dirt or particles in the atmosphere, but the complex structure of snow crystals have countless tiny surfaces from which visible light is reflected. Usually what little sunlight is absorbed by snow is absorbed uniformly over the visible wavelengths and gives the snow its white appearance.

Chionophobia is the fear of snow – there is no known cure. About 12% of the Earth’s land surface is permanently covered with snow and ice. People buy more cakes, cookies and candy than any other food when a blizzard is forecasted. The average snowflake falls at a speed of 3.1 miles per hour. Fresh snow is an excellent insulator. Ten inches of fresh snow with a density of 0.07 inches, seven percent water, is approximately equal to a six-inch layer of fiberglass insulation — with an insulation value of R-18.

So as I ponder all this information, I’ve come to the conclusion that snowflakes are a lot like people — no two are alike. Everyone is different and that makes us who we are. But people don’t have six sides.
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When I went to bed last night, all the weather forecasters were predicting a snowfall of historic proportions. When I got up this morning, we had snow on the ground and it was snowing, but it was only of “historic proportions” because it was the largest snowfall this year. I guess it’s easy to criticize and make fun of weather forecasters but they’re wrong so often it kind of takes all the sport out of it.

They say everybody talks about the weather but no one does anything about it. That’s true — but I’m not sure how you’d do anything about it. Weather forecasters don’t do anything about the weather, but  they talk a lot about it — the problem is that the talk is mostly wrong.

I’ve noticed that no matter how the forecast turns out, there’s always another forecaster who “knew it would” but the forecaster who “knew it would happen that way” never told anyone about it beforehand. I’ve also noticed that heavy snow generally ends once a winter storm warning is issued.

I’ve always wondered a few things about the weather that have never been answered to my satisfaction. For instance….
Does a tornado have to be bigger around than whatever its picking up? If our body temperature is normally 98.6 degrees, how come when it’s 98 degrees outside everyone complains because its hot? If you see a heat wave, should you wave back? (I just made that up.) If heat rises, shouldn’t hell be cold? When you see the weather report and its says “partly cloudy” and you see another that says “partly sunny” — what’s the difference?

The problem with weather forecasting is that it’s right just often enough that you can’t completely ignore it but wrong so much that you can’t rely on it. Some years ago I had what turned out to be the best indicator of weather that I’ve ever seen — it was an Old Indian Weather Rock. It basically consisted of three sticks stuck in the ground and tied at a point forming a triangle — from that point a rock was suspended in the middle of the triangle by a leather strap. If the rock was wet, it was raining; if the rock was dry, it wasn’t raining; if the rock was white on top, it was snowing; if the rock was swinging, it was windy; if you couldn’t see the rock, it was foggy; if the rock was gone, it was a tornado. Amazingly enough, the rock was almost never wrong. If I ever find another one, I’m going to get it.

So since our historic snowstorm has ended, here’s the forecast for tonight: Dark. Probably some widely scattered light by morning…..
—30—

The most famous asteroid ever is the one that hit Earth 65 million years ago. It is believed that the asteroid threw so much moisture and dust into the atmosphere that it cut off sunlight, lowering temperatures worldwide and causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Maybe the latest events and near misses have people thinking about asteroids and the Earth’s vulnerability, because I read in yesterday’s paper that after the asteroid explosion over Russia, a United Nations panel took up — again — how to keep a far more damaging space rock from hitting Earth. Apparently this is suddenly an urgent topic for the UN. The panel met last week in Vienna and according to the article, is finally close to endorsing a plan for countries to share asteroid warnings and prepare realistic mission designs to deflect a rogue object. The Science and Technical Subcommittee’s Near-Earth Object Working Group and its expert panel, Action Team 14, have been debating the details of an international approach since 2001.

Now I don’t know about you, but if the Earth is about to be hit by a giant asteroid, I’m not sure the United Nations is the first place I’d look for help. Right after the asteroid broke apart over Russia, I found some information about work being done at the University of California and California Polytechnic to create an asteroid defense system using lasers. One of the scientists working on the system said, “All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we’d need — scaling up would the the challenge — but the basic elements are all there and ready to go. We just need to put them into a larger system to be effective, and once the system is there, it can do many things.” The problem, of course, is that the system is hypothetical and has yet to be created — but it sounds pretty cool.

Scientists have a lot of ideas about how to deal with this asteroid problem, but none of them have really been tested in the real world. Probably the most popular idea is to launch a space craft to actually slam into the asteroid. The thinking is that if you can nudge it just a little bit off course, it probably won’t hit the Earth because just a small change in its orbit will put it in a little different trajectory.

As I think about this, it sounds reasonable — assuming you have everything ready to go. If you have to build a spacecraft, you’d probably need a few years warning that the asteroid was coming. One problem with asteroids is they don’t glow, they’re just these chunks of rock. We can see them because they reflect sunlight, but they’re fairly small and we don’t see them too well until they come close to the sun — and us.

So would we have time to pull this spacecraft collision feat off? On one hand, I think if we discover one too late, there’s little we could do — in fact we might not be able to do anything even with plenty of warning due to filibusters, fiscal cliff, debt limit, and the sequester. But then on the other hand, I think we can build that spacecraft in no time — we just have to put together a diverse team to build it and ensure that it is environmentally friendly. Once the environmental impact study is complete and we’ve sent a scout vehicle on a fly-by of the asteroid to be sure there are no endangered species on it, we’ll be ready to knock that asteroid into another orbit. Good old American ingenuity will save us.
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Well, here it is March. When I was a kid, in March you flew kites. I remember all the 5 and 10 cent stores (subject of another blog) had kites for sale and we usually got a new kite — no one ever saved a kite from the previous year — saved the string sometimes, but not the kite. I remember being a reasonably good ‘kite flyer’ but I always had better luck with a box kite rather than the ‘regular’ kinds. I didn’t realize until I was much older that there were more than two kinds of kites — regular and box. You could buy a regular kite for about a dime — box kites were expensive, going for around a quarter. I tried making kites, but was never very successful, and usually wound up with the “store bought” variety.

I think March is acknowledged as Kite Flying Month, but for some reason Kite Flying “Day” is allocated to February — why on earth that should be is beyond me — its so screwy it must be some kind of congressional mandate or something.

Arguably, the most famous kite flyer was Ben Franklin — his kite experiment has grown into an American legend. Ben hypothesized that lightening was an electrical phenomenon and that its effect could be transferred to another object (a key) that could be recognized as electricity. Of course his hypothesis proved correct and led to the development of lightening rods among other things. If you’ve been to the Air and Space museum, you probably learned that the Wright Brothers did a lot of experimenting with kites and that knowledge contributed to the development of the airplane.

The exact date and origin of the kite isn’t known but evidence points to kites being flown in China more than two thousand years ago. One Chinese legend suggests that when a Chinese farmer tied a string to his hat to keep it from blowing away in a strong wind, the first kite was born.

Kites have played key roles in technology development, wars, weather and even transportation. In 1822 George Pocock (a schoolmaster) used a pair of kites to pull a carriage at speeds of up to 20 miles and hour — some of his kite trips were recorded at over 100 miles. At the time, road taxes and tolls were based on the number of horses pulling the carriage, so clever George was exempted from any tolls…. In 1862 there was a stage coach service between London and Bristol using kites instead of horses.

During World War I kites were used for enemy observation and signaling…. in World War II, the U.S. Navy pilots lost at sea used box kites so they could be found easier.

We’ve spent a bit of time in Asia and kite flying there is much more popular than in the United States, especially among the kids. Asia has a long history with kites and they seem to be much more a part of their culture than in other parts of the world. Kite flying was banned in China during the Cultural Revolution; there are 78 rules pertaining to kite flying in Thailand; kite flying in Japan was banned in 1760 because too many people preferred to fly kites rather than work. The Chinese believe that looking at kites high in the sky maintains good eyesight and when you tilt your head back to look at a kite in the sky your mouth opens slightly, which gets rid of excess body heat, giving you a healthy yin-yang balance. The Chinese name for a kite is Fen Zheng, which means wind harp. In Asia, kites are given to someone to bring them happiness, good luck, prosperity and cure illness. In fairly recent times, kites were banned in East Germany because of the possibility of one being used to lift over the Berlin Wall.

Although kites don’t seem as popular with the kids of today, they’re still ingrained in our society — you hear the term in books (The Kite Runner,) songs (Kite Dance, Kites in the Wind, Kites Without Stings) and we’ve all heard phrases like. “higher than a kite” and “go fly a kite.” The “go fly a kite” phrase actually came up in our conversation a few months ago on the golf course. During the discussion, everyone seemed to agree that it meant that someone was really annoying and just go away — like, “go jump in a lake,” or “go climb a tree.” In other words, find an activity like flying a kite to keep you busy for awhile so I can get some work done. Naturally I couldn’t just agree with everyone, so I suggested that the phrase came from the idea that while flying a kite, Ben Franklin discovered electricity, so “go fly a kite” was suggesting that someone get a better idea or make a new discovery. I don’t care that I was voted down — I like my view better.

Anyhow, don’t let March pass you by without some serious thinking about kites — if you don’t want to go out, imagination is the highest kite you can fly.
—30—

As both you readers know, the Pope resigned on February 11 and since then I’ve been doing extensive research into all things Pope-ish. One of the more fascinating things I’ve discovered is a prophecy that the next Pope to be elected will be the final Pope. This may turn out to be just like the Mayan calendar, but its an interesting topic for extensive research.

This prophecy was new to me — turns out that Saint Malachy was an Irish saint and Archbishop of Armagh, to whom were attributed several miracles and an alleged vision of 112 Popes later attributed to the apocalyptic list of Prophecy of the Popes.

It seems that in 1139 AD St. Malachy was visiting Pope Innocent II in Rome. He saw a vision of all the 112 Popes who would follow Innocent II. He wrote down a short sentence of cryptic words about each one as a means of describing them, making what today is called the Prophecy of the Popes. It’s interesting to note that Benedict is the 111th Pope after Innocent II, making the next one the last.

So if the next pope will be the last, some are convinced that Judgment Day is quickly approaching. The prophecy offers brief descriptions about each pope, and some of them appear to align with reality is some way — much like Nostradamus’ predictions. For example, St. Malachy described the 111th pope (Benedict) as the “glory of the olive,” and the Olivetans are affiliated with the Benedictine Order. He also described John Paul II (110th) as ‘from the labour of the sun.’ Turns out that Pope John Paul II was born the day of a solar eclipse and buried on the day of a solar eclipse 84 years later. Something to hang your hat on if you really want to believe….

The Prophecy of Popes stops at the 112th pope and ends with this cryptic warning of doomsday: “In the extreme persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit…Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations: and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the terrible judge will judge his people. The End.”

Wow! It turns out that Rome is known as the city of seven hills, and there don’t appear to be any Roman-born cardinals in the running to be be the next pope, but Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana bears the same name as the person mentioned in the prophecy.

You have to admit that God gave important visions to a number of highly dubious people down through the years, so maybe he did give the Prophecy of the Popes to the church through Malachy….

Even though this is fun to speculate about, the fact is there is no original manuscript of the prediction. Malachy’s “vision” was allegedly discovered and published by Benedictine Arnold de Wyon in 1590. Prior to then, there is no mention or record of it. Church historians and clerics have considered it a forgery since the 18th century. I guess you could say that Malachy’s prophecy is considered malarkey by the church. But — as they say, we shall see…..
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Yesterday I mentioned that one trait (I like to refer to them as talents or gifts) that I have is selective listening. Another talent of mine (probably one of many) that seems to puzzle Claire on occasion is my ability to completely shut off my mental faculties and think about absolutely nothing. She’ll ask, “So whatcha thinking about?” And I say, “nothing.” She says, “nothing??” like it’s hard to believe I can think about nothing. I seriously doubt that Claire could think about nothing — even if she tried. I think this may be a safety mechanism, like selective listening. If my brain is strained too much, it goes into a sort of protective mode. After the crisis or strain has passed, it just reboots. The danger of being in protective mode or the nothing zone is that that you have to avoid a complete system shutdown. Claire is pretty good at getting me out of protective mode, and avoiding any system shutdown — often just the suggestion of a drink or ice cream will do it. She seems to have the knack and knows how to get me out of the zone. How could you not love someone like that?
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