2016 THIS AND THAT  # 2

Gobble, Gobble, Give Us All Your Stamps

     In New Jersey a letter carrier, that's a postal worker, was trapped inside his truck by, guess what, several wild turkeys. The mail carrier called his postmaster, who called the police, who sent two officers out to chase the turkeys away. Now some questions come to mind. Is this mail carrier a wuss or not? And when did postal workers stop carrying automatic weapons?

What Were They Thinking
     In Philadelphia, nine men wearing ski masks stole $2,000 worth of jeans from Bloomingdales. What's the deal with that? At the price of jeans, that's probably not even a pair apiece. Evidently several of them don't like jeans, or they don't know how to count, or it was just a case of poor planning. And why did it take nine of them to carry out this heist? The report didn't say anything about alcohol being involved, but come on, how can you explain it otherwise?

2016 THIS AND THAT

Well, There They Are, Finally

  

A recent headline read “Scientists Figured Out Where Aliens Might Be Hiding.” This headline was over an article written by Max Plenke. I’m not sure if Max supplied the headline or not, but after reading it I starting thinking. Why would these aliens be hiding? What do they have to be scared of? What are they trying to keep secret?

Maybe after observing us, like a patch of flesh-eating bacteria on the sidewalk, they just want to avoid us.

A Bad Day? Well, Maybe

           

A bad day is when you find your house parked on a railroad track. You say, “Yeah, like that could happen.” In Canada, a house was being moved when the moving-truck had a tire flat, right when the house was sitting astraddle a railroad track. The report sort of alludes to the fact that it took until the next day before the tire was fixed and the house hauled off the train tracks. Not a good day for the home’s owner. The only thing worse that could have happened would have been to hear the sound of a train whistle in the distance, getting closer and closer.

    An aside  -  this report, written by Daniel Uria, had a posted location of Alberta, British Columbia. Yeah, it was new to me also.

It’s Nice When a Person Can Depend On Things Being Consistent

    During my career, Lorraine and I spent two different stints in the state of Wisconsin---one three- year hitch in Rice Lake, which is in the northern part of the state, and another eighteen months in Shawano. That’s close to Green Bay, for those of you who are keeping track. In those parts of Wisconsin the winters get cold. The lakes freeze over to the point where the ice will support the weight of cars and whole communities of ice-fishing shacks.

    Let me digress: From where we lived in Rice Lake, we had to drive around the end of the lake to get to work or into downtown, about three miles. During the winter, we would drive across the lake on the ice, saving ourselves several minutes. During heavy snowfalls, the city would plow several ‘streets’ across the lake. It was rather exhilarating, knowing what you were doing, and also being able, when the snow was thin on the ice to spin a couple donuts, if there was no other traffic close by.

    Let me digress again: Just to show y’all how used to this phenomena we could get---One winter day Lorraine left for town and decided to cross on the ice. It was snowing hard, and had been accumulating on the ice for part of the day so was six or seven inches deep. Lorraine was dressed in a knee-length dress, heels, and a nice coat. Not a parka mind you, just a coat. The wind-chill was around ten below. 

Normally this kind of weather was no big deal. Everyone dressed for it and if we were driving anyplace away from other traffic, would carry sleeping bags, water, and a few emergency rations in the car.

So here was Lorraine heading across a mile of ice, during a heavy snow, dressed so that if she had to get out of the car, which nobody up there in their right mind would do, would have only a short time before frostbite, and hypothermia killed her. On the way across the lake on this trip, she lost sight of the graded road twice and had to work her way out of the deep snow.

The amazing part of this digression is that Lorraine thought nothing of this adventure. A little indication of what too much cold will do to the brain.

Anyway, back to what I started out to say. I recently saw this news story saying that in Wisconsin, fifteen cars had fallen through the ice on Lake Geneva. These drivers had been there for some function.

The thing that this brought to mind was that every year in the fall, a number of people, anxious to get on the ice, usually a pickup pulling a fishing shack, would fall through the ice which was not yet thick enough to hold the weight. It never failed. Those vehicles were usually just left there until spring, and then removed. Most of the lakes are not that deep.

In the spring, the same thing would happen. A couple people felt that they just had to get out on the ice one last time for some reason or another, and thinking the ice could not have melted that much, would fall through. The only difference between fall and spring was that in the spring the drivers didn’t have to wait as long to recover their vehicles.

Other people contemplating using the ice used these two instances to gauge whether the ice was safe yet, or whether the safety feature had melted away. No pun intended.

It’s nice to see that people are still miscalculating the ability of Wisconsin ice to hold the weight of their vehicles.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In a way, it’s comforting.

Purses versus Pockets or Where Did I Put That Ferret

     Today I was standing in line at the Post Office, which happens to be the only one in this metropolis. We have good clerks, they seem to get along, and they handle business expediently, so it’s not one of those Post Offices where you need to wear a Kevlar vest. However, that’s not the point.

     The lady in front of me moved up to and put a package on the counter. The clerk weighed the parcel, filled out an insurance slip, asked about stamps, (they’re always going for the upsell), and announced the amount it would take to consummate the transaction. The lady seemed surprised that a payment was required. She dived into a large purse. When her elbow disappeared, I knew we were in trouble.

     She stirred around in that purse for a couple minutes, without finding what she was looking for. Then she started taking stuff out and putting in on the counter. One of the items was a picture wallet, so she had to show the clerk pictures of her grandchildren, and explain what outstanding things they were up to. Luckily she only two of these intellectual giants, or we would still be in the Post Office.

None of what she liberated from the bowels of that bag was what she needed. The clerk looked at me and gave a minute shrug, apologizing with her eyes. Finally, the purse lady found what she wanted and then started counting out some bills, and then some change. Of course, the bills and change were not in the same container so the change took another search.

     When she was finished with the transaction, she reloaded her purse, and then struggled with the clasp, which probably had not worked since the Clinton administration.

     Now in her purse she probably had something to handle any possible situation. Finding it in time to be of consequence in that situation would be another matter.

     Purses are carried because women don’t like pockets. I’ve come to this conclusion by observing my wife’s clothing. Pockets mess up with the look.

     Men don’t carry purses. We have pockets---the more the better. Shirt pockets---two, pants pockets---from four to eight, coat pockets---at least three or four. Therefore, we have plenty of room to carry all the stuff we need or might need. Of course, walking down the street we look like we’re smuggling a large family of ferrets. We can usually find what we need because we have a system, which is not universal but custom designed by each man depending on the number of pockets he has available. If you see a man in a situation where he needs something from a pocket, slapping himself all over, you can guess he’s forgotten his system.

    

Will It Really Help?

     While watching the Super Bowl and working on my taxes, I saws this ad telling me that if I let the water run while brushing my teeth, it wastes four gallons of water. Then the ad told me that four gallons of water is more than many people on this earth have available to them in a month.

     I’ve been thinking about that. Two main points bother me. Before I launch into this tirade let me establish the fact that I know what four gallons of water looks like. I’ve hauled five gallon buckets of water and other things around enough in my life to recognize about what four-fifths of that bucket full of liquid looks like. I don’t know how most people brush their teeth, but there is no way the water I let run during my teeth brushing amounts to four gallons. Now maybe they meant that I waste four gallons in a week or a month, but they didn’t say that. They made it sound, maybe on purpose or maybe not, that the four gallons was per brushing.

     I hope their statement about some people in the world having to live on four gallons per month or less is not misleading and I have no reason to dispute that claim. Now I’m guessing that these unfortunate people live in hot, dry climates. Four gallons equals 512 ounces of water, which leaves that person surviving on about sixteen ounces, or two eight-ounce cups of water per day. I guess an individual might be able to survive on that, although a quote from the Mayo Clinic website says this, “So how much fluid does the average, healthy adult living in a temperate climate need? The Institute of Medicine determined that an adequate intake (AI) for men is roughly about 13 cups (3 liters) of total beverages a day. The AI for women is about 9 cups (2.2 liters) of total beverages a day.”

     Three liters equals 101 ounces of water per day.  2.2 liters equals 74 ounces of water per day. And notice that’s in a temperate climate. So we’ve established that these four-gallons-per-month people are probably not doing well at all, unless they have other beverages available to them.

     This situation is depressing and unfortunate to the extreme. But just what does it have to do with my shutting off the water when I brush my teeth. Here in Central Oregon we have plenty of easily accessible fresh water, at least at this time. If Central Oregon were in a drought situation, my conserving water would not only probably be mandatory, but make sense.

Is my using less water going to increase the supply of water in areas where they have less accessible fresh water? My cursory research says, I think not!

Where do those water molecules go that I let slip down the drain? Or, for that matter the ones that I happen to swallow while brushing my teeth. They go through the Redmond Water Treatment Facility, get cleaned up along with some other water molecules that have become involved in some even grosser activities, but are still water molecules and worth saving. These cleaned-up water molecules are eventually dispatched into a clean water source and head downhill looking forward to their trip to the sea. However, on the way any one water molecule may be kidnapped and made to serve in an irrigation project.

So what happens then? If the water molecule escaped being sucked up by some plant, it will either evaporate up into the atmosphere, or sink down until it joins many of its cousins in an aquifer.

Most of the water molecules sucked up by a plant are passed into the atmosphere, transpiration or evaporation. A small portion, like 5%, of the sucked-up water molecules go toward creating glucose and oxygen or what is called photosynthesis. Evidently, half of the this 5%, get sacrificed in this way.

Like humans, plant life is made up mainly of water. For instance, on the higher end, an apple is 84% water, a lettuce leaf is 96% water. So, in the food you eat you are acquiring lots of water which begins the whole journey again.

If the water does reach the sea, it evaporates, falls as rain, usually back into the ocean, but occasionally on land, where it becomes part of the planet’s fresh water supply and starts that journey again.  

What I’m trying to say is that a water molecule is a water molecule, is a water molecule. Except for certain instances, it stays a water molecule, it does many jobs, but it does not disappear off the planet just because it goes down my drain. Now for a disclaimer – I’m not an hydrologist, so my understanding of this issue may not be 100% accurate. At best, this is a very simplified version of a very complex system, so please don’t use this to teach your children.

My immunity to feeling guilty because I have something that someone else doesn’t have, probably goes back to my childhood. And I’m probably not alone in this. Did your mother ever say to you, “Eat your mush, (or whatever), there are starving children in China who would love to have this.”

Even at a young age, this argument seemed flawed. In my case I would have loved to donate my mush (cooked oatmeal or some other unfortunate grain), to those children, knowing all the while that there was no way in the world to get my mush over to China, and distributed to those poor children. And I always thought the claim that these kids would love my mush, was extremely overly optimistic. Just my opinion.

Now my donating some of my resources to buy mush for somebody who cannot afford, but wants mush, or help some village dig a well for fresh water, that’s a whole different issue, and a whole different level of personal responsibility.