My posting will be light today as I am already up to my armpits in brined baby back ribs, making BBQ rub, and a big batch of my Kansas City Style BBQ Sauce for our festivities at the pool this afternoon.
I plan to slow cook/smoke a couple of racks of ribs, thaw out some left over BBQ Boston Butt Pork roast that I cooked a couple of weeks ago, maybe a few Hebrew National Hotdogs for the stray children wandering around the pool, and generally burn a whole lot of charcoal and hickory chips--all served with sides of home made slaw and potato salad.
There might be some beer and vodka consumed also.
Check out my other blog, The Redneck Gourmet for the details later this weekend
Let's not all forget the real reason that we have Monday off from work...our Veterans.
My family has a proud military history that includes not only my father Virgil Jr. who served as a Test Pilot in the peace time Army Signal Corps, but also my Mother's father John Rushing who served as an Army infantryman in WWI and her brothers John and Merce who were both in the WWII Army Air Corps. There's also my cousin Jim that is a General in the Marine Corps Reserve and flew Cobra helicopters of a carrier in the 1980's.
I also did two years of Navy Reserve time in the 1970's, although my service time was mostly fooling around in college and doing neat stuff like aviation orientation in Pensacola or screwing around on the USS New Orleans (LPH-11) out of Subic Bay Phillipines. "Love you long time..."
Any way, y'all have a good holiday and be safe.
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Friday, May 27, 2005
I want A Tractor With An Autopilot
"She thinks my tractor's sexy..."
My grandfather Rushing probably turned over in his grave this week. The reason for his unrest would have been the occasion of me paying $5 for a little over 2 pounds of raw peanuts. I think that I got ripped off, but I wanted them any way. I love boiled peanuts--1/2 cup of salt, 1 gallon of water, and three hours later and I was in business. I've already eaten them all.
My “Pa” Rushing was a farmer in south Alabama back in the early and mid 1900’s. He grew crops like cotton, corn, sugar cane, and peanuts in the days before the US Department of Agriculture got into the business of telling a farmer what crops they could plant on THEIR FAMILY’S LAND and how much of each crop they could plant on THEIR FAMILY”S LAND.
“Pa” did things the old fashioned way, by his wits and hard work. To clear his fields and pastures, he cut the timber by hand, pulled the stumps out of the ground with a mule team, and hauled the logs to the sawmill on a wagon to get the lumber to build the house I visited every weekend and for several weeks during the summer each year. He didn’t get a tractor until the early 1940’s—it was mule-power before horsepower back then in our little part of south Alabama. If you have never had the opportunity to spend any time on a working farm, you have no idea what an wonderful experience it is--particularly when you are eight years old.
Now back to my five dollars worth of peanuts…let me tell you about the peanut…
The peanut is a legume- like a pea or bean that grows together with its brothers and sisters inside a “pod.” The weirdest thing is that peanuts start out as blooms on stems of the plant above ground, but after they bloom the peanut plant sticks the developing peanuts into the ground around its base. You have to dig the peanuts out of the ground when you harvest them.
A famous African American named George Washington Carver did a bunch of research on peanuts in the early 1900’s and almost single handedly converted the south from a cotton economy living and dieing under the siege of the Cotton Bowl Weevil to a multi-crop farm economy after the dust bowl years of the mid 1930’s.
Today, if I wanted to grow peanuts, I would plow my field and harvest my crop with my $156,000, five-hundred horsepower John Deere 9620 tractor. Here’s a photo:
My next car will be a tractor
Imagine driving that baby down to the grocery store to pick up few things for dinner...
In addition to the 26 speed transmission and eight-wheel drive, it has the the Greenstar Ag Management System that is basically a Global Positioning System autopilot. All you have to do is drive your tractor around the perimeter of the field you wish to plow, manually drive the first few rows, and the tractor takes over and finishes the rest of the job with you spending your time just hanging out watching the latest Star Wars movie on your in cab DVD player.
No wonder my peanuts cost five dollars…
My grandfather Rushing probably turned over in his grave this week. The reason for his unrest would have been the occasion of me paying $5 for a little over 2 pounds of raw peanuts. I think that I got ripped off, but I wanted them any way. I love boiled peanuts--1/2 cup of salt, 1 gallon of water, and three hours later and I was in business. I've already eaten them all.
My “Pa” Rushing was a farmer in south Alabama back in the early and mid 1900’s. He grew crops like cotton, corn, sugar cane, and peanuts in the days before the US Department of Agriculture got into the business of telling a farmer what crops they could plant on THEIR FAMILY’S LAND and how much of each crop they could plant on THEIR FAMILY”S LAND.
“Pa” did things the old fashioned way, by his wits and hard work. To clear his fields and pastures, he cut the timber by hand, pulled the stumps out of the ground with a mule team, and hauled the logs to the sawmill on a wagon to get the lumber to build the house I visited every weekend and for several weeks during the summer each year. He didn’t get a tractor until the early 1940’s—it was mule-power before horsepower back then in our little part of south Alabama. If you have never had the opportunity to spend any time on a working farm, you have no idea what an wonderful experience it is--particularly when you are eight years old.
Now back to my five dollars worth of peanuts…let me tell you about the peanut…
The peanut is a legume- like a pea or bean that grows together with its brothers and sisters inside a “pod.” The weirdest thing is that peanuts start out as blooms on stems of the plant above ground, but after they bloom the peanut plant sticks the developing peanuts into the ground around its base. You have to dig the peanuts out of the ground when you harvest them.
A famous African American named George Washington Carver did a bunch of research on peanuts in the early 1900’s and almost single handedly converted the south from a cotton economy living and dieing under the siege of the Cotton Bowl Weevil to a multi-crop farm economy after the dust bowl years of the mid 1930’s.
Today, if I wanted to grow peanuts, I would plow my field and harvest my crop with my $156,000, five-hundred horsepower John Deere 9620 tractor. Here’s a photo:
My next car will be a tractor
Imagine driving that baby down to the grocery store to pick up few things for dinner...
In addition to the 26 speed transmission and eight-wheel drive, it has the the Greenstar Ag Management System that is basically a Global Positioning System autopilot. All you have to do is drive your tractor around the perimeter of the field you wish to plow, manually drive the first few rows, and the tractor takes over and finishes the rest of the job with you spending your time just hanging out watching the latest Star Wars movie on your in cab DVD player.
No wonder my peanuts cost five dollars…
Political Transference
(the usual suspects)
I admit that I spend a good deal of time picking on the political left and the Democrats. For those of you that don’t know, I consider myself to be a Libertarian in my political beliefs, but I favor the historical philosophies of the Republican party over that of the Democratic party.
In an effort to be “fair and balanced” I feel that it is time to speak out about the Republicans recent political performance.
First, I have to ask this question: “What the heck were those seven Republican Senators thinking when they joined with seven Democrats to prevent the “nuclear option” from being invoked on Tuesday. Can you say “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?”
And the answer is: “They were either naive or they were stupid…that’s what.”
All they have gotten in return for all the pomp and circumstance is a confirmation vote on Pricilla Owen. Guess who voted AGAINST Owen’s confirmation when it came before the full Senate? The usual suspects—
Biden, Boxer, Cantwell, Corzine, Dayton, Dodd, Dorgan, Feingold, Kennedy, Kerry, Lautenberg, Levin, Lincoln, Murray, Reed, Sarbanes, and Stabenow.
Any surprise here?
And it has taken less than 72 hours for the deal to be broken because Bill Frist decided to schedule John Bolton’s confirmation for UN ambassador ahead of that of Janice Rogers Brown for the Federal Court. Now the Democrats have thrown a wrench in the works again, saying that Bolton wasn’t part of “the deal”—“the deal” was on judges.
I think that Arizona’s Senator John McCain is a complete self-serving idiot and deserves to suffer the wrath of the Arizona voters in 2006. Apparently he inhaled too much Agent Orange while tied up in those Vietnamese prison camps. Southern Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina also deserves a butt-whooping at the polls when he comes up for re-election.
I say that everything is back to square one in the Senate. Nuke ‘em…
I admit that I spend a good deal of time picking on the political left and the Democrats. For those of you that don’t know, I consider myself to be a Libertarian in my political beliefs, but I favor the historical philosophies of the Republican party over that of the Democratic party.
In an effort to be “fair and balanced” I feel that it is time to speak out about the Republicans recent political performance.
First, I have to ask this question: “What the heck were those seven Republican Senators thinking when they joined with seven Democrats to prevent the “nuclear option” from being invoked on Tuesday. Can you say “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?”
And the answer is: “They were either naive or they were stupid…that’s what.”
All they have gotten in return for all the pomp and circumstance is a confirmation vote on Pricilla Owen. Guess who voted AGAINST Owen’s confirmation when it came before the full Senate? The usual suspects—
Biden, Boxer, Cantwell, Corzine, Dayton, Dodd, Dorgan, Feingold, Kennedy, Kerry, Lautenberg, Levin, Lincoln, Murray, Reed, Sarbanes, and Stabenow.
Any surprise here?
And it has taken less than 72 hours for the deal to be broken because Bill Frist decided to schedule John Bolton’s confirmation for UN ambassador ahead of that of Janice Rogers Brown for the Federal Court. Now the Democrats have thrown a wrench in the works again, saying that Bolton wasn’t part of “the deal”—“the deal” was on judges.
I think that Arizona’s Senator John McCain is a complete self-serving idiot and deserves to suffer the wrath of the Arizona voters in 2006. Apparently he inhaled too much Agent Orange while tied up in those Vietnamese prison camps. Southern Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina also deserves a butt-whooping at the polls when he comes up for re-election.
I say that everything is back to square one in the Senate. Nuke ‘em…
Religious Countroversy Contradictions
I’m ready to pull the last fifty hairs out of my head over the recent “Korangate” controversy.
Does anyone but me believe that this is a totally ridiculous non-story? Does one single sane, well informed individual actually take any time to give a damn about this issue? Think about this with me for a minute…
Newsweek has issued a half-hearted retraction of the two week old story, the case should be closed. But noooooo sir, the balance of the media has “circled the wagons,” refusing to give up on the issue--using the old “but it could be true” refrain when mention is made of the obvious errors in the “Newsweak” reporting.
As a result, the US military has been forced to publicly re-evaluate their own records of potential “Koran abuse” in Cuba and elsewhere and there are almost daily news stories like this one printed in newspapers and read on TV news.
What is amazing to me is how sensitive and concerned the American leftists can act over the treatment of foreign nationals when it comes to their religion and religious beliefs, while at the same time demanding that our government run roughshod over the religious beliefs of our own citizens’ and their religion in the name of separation of church and state.
Show a leftist elitist intellectual a copy of the Koran and they will bow down in respect. Show that same pompas know-it-all a cross or a copy of the ten commandments and they pee their pants and melt into a blithering pile like a vampire in a cheep 1950’s black and white horror movie.
Why the disparity? Because the leftist intellectuals hate our country and they despise Christianity and Christians. They believe that any government run by conservatives (Republicans) is inherently evil, and the military is the evilest part of this evil.
Where are the news stories on that? Where is the outrage?
I want to make a deal with the rest of the world and our own leftist intellectuals that will solve everyone’s problems once and for all. You ready?
Lets swap citizens.
That’s right, let’s pack up the America-hating leftists, our domestic socialists and communists, and throw in the staff and supporters of the UN to boot and ship them all off to Europe or Africa or Asia or anywhere they can agree with the political policies. We'll invite an equal number of the politically repressed, self-sufficent, freedom loving foreigners to come here and take their place.
As they sail out of New York harbor on their way to the “promised land,” I’ll change the quote inscribed on the plaque on the base of The Stature of Liberty in NY that presently reads:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
My version would read something like this:
Here are our tired, our wealthy,
Our stupid asses yearning to stop being free,
The wretched refuse of our intellectual whores.
We send these, the soon to be homeless, tempest-tossed, to thee:
I lift my boot and kick their asses out our golden door.
Does anyone but me believe that this is a totally ridiculous non-story? Does one single sane, well informed individual actually take any time to give a damn about this issue? Think about this with me for a minute…
Newsweek has issued a half-hearted retraction of the two week old story, the case should be closed. But noooooo sir, the balance of the media has “circled the wagons,” refusing to give up on the issue--using the old “but it could be true” refrain when mention is made of the obvious errors in the “Newsweak” reporting.
As a result, the US military has been forced to publicly re-evaluate their own records of potential “Koran abuse” in Cuba and elsewhere and there are almost daily news stories like this one printed in newspapers and read on TV news.
What is amazing to me is how sensitive and concerned the American leftists can act over the treatment of foreign nationals when it comes to their religion and religious beliefs, while at the same time demanding that our government run roughshod over the religious beliefs of our own citizens’ and their religion in the name of separation of church and state.
Show a leftist elitist intellectual a copy of the Koran and they will bow down in respect. Show that same pompas know-it-all a cross or a copy of the ten commandments and they pee their pants and melt into a blithering pile like a vampire in a cheep 1950’s black and white horror movie.
Why the disparity? Because the leftist intellectuals hate our country and they despise Christianity and Christians. They believe that any government run by conservatives (Republicans) is inherently evil, and the military is the evilest part of this evil.
Where are the news stories on that? Where is the outrage?
I want to make a deal with the rest of the world and our own leftist intellectuals that will solve everyone’s problems once and for all. You ready?
Lets swap citizens.
That’s right, let’s pack up the America-hating leftists, our domestic socialists and communists, and throw in the staff and supporters of the UN to boot and ship them all off to Europe or Africa or Asia or anywhere they can agree with the political policies. We'll invite an equal number of the politically repressed, self-sufficent, freedom loving foreigners to come here and take their place.
As they sail out of New York harbor on their way to the “promised land,” I’ll change the quote inscribed on the plaque on the base of The Stature of Liberty in NY that presently reads:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
My version would read something like this:
Here are our tired, our wealthy,
Our stupid asses yearning to stop being free,
The wretched refuse of our intellectual whores.
We send these, the soon to be homeless, tempest-tossed, to thee:
I lift my boot and kick their asses out our golden door.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
If This Doesn't Cause You To Cancel Your Subscription
Nothing Will...
Translation of the Febuary 2nd Japanese Edition headline: "The Day America Died"
Do you still believe that Newsweek doesn't carry a strong anti-American bias?
Translation of the Febuary 2nd Japanese Edition headline: "The Day America Died"
Do you still believe that Newsweek doesn't carry a strong anti-American bias?
Leaf Blower = Brain Vacuum
So what is it about the use of an ordinary leaf blower that apparently makes the operator lose their mind? I mean, perfectly normal looking men (and a few women) will do some pretty dumb stuff while holding a leaf blower.
The most common form of “leaf blower insanity” involves believing that grass trimmings and leaves become invisible or otherwise are not your responsibility if you can blow them out of the yard, driveway, or sidewalk you’re working on and into the road in front of the property.
It makes no sense to me.
Would you take a half-wheelbarrow load of lawn trimmings and dump them out in the road in front of your house? Then why would someone think that they can take a leaf blower and blow a half-wheelbarrow load of stuff into the road?
I was driving down the street this afternoon on my way to run some errands and what did I see but one of our neighbor’s lawn contractors standing on the edge of the lawn merrily blowing the grass and leaves across the road into the neighbor’s yard. It wasn’t a big pile of stuff, mind you, but still—what was the guy thinking?
Another thing that makes me absolutely pissed off is when you park your car in a parking lot at an office park or some commercial establishment like a restaurant and the lawn crew comes by with their leaf blowers.
I had a black Nissan Maxima back in the early ‘90’s that I kept covered and garaged at home. It looked brand new for the first four years I owned it. I remember embarrassing myself one day having a “shit-fit” in the parking lot at one of my vendor’s office when I came out after a meeting and found my shiny clean car absolutely covered with dust and grit. To make matters worse, I had left the sunroof open and the INSIDE was full of crap also. The car was parked by itself adjacent to a tall retaining wall that had served to concentrate the dust storm produced by the mindless leaf blower guy(s).
I ran through the parking lot, found the idiots with the leaf blowers, accosted their “boss,” and basically received a big old “screw-you” because they said that their job was to blow off the parking lot. After I calmed down a little I called the company’s owner and threatened to sue his ass off for stupidity and any damage to my paint job. Yeah right…
You know what? After that incident the “leaf blower” guys always came in my vendor’s office and told the employees that they needed to move their cars if they didn’t want dust and debris on them.
Friends don’t let friends (miss)use leaf blowers—they're dangerous to your mental health…
The most common form of “leaf blower insanity” involves believing that grass trimmings and leaves become invisible or otherwise are not your responsibility if you can blow them out of the yard, driveway, or sidewalk you’re working on and into the road in front of the property.
It makes no sense to me.
Would you take a half-wheelbarrow load of lawn trimmings and dump them out in the road in front of your house? Then why would someone think that they can take a leaf blower and blow a half-wheelbarrow load of stuff into the road?
I was driving down the street this afternoon on my way to run some errands and what did I see but one of our neighbor’s lawn contractors standing on the edge of the lawn merrily blowing the grass and leaves across the road into the neighbor’s yard. It wasn’t a big pile of stuff, mind you, but still—what was the guy thinking?
Another thing that makes me absolutely pissed off is when you park your car in a parking lot at an office park or some commercial establishment like a restaurant and the lawn crew comes by with their leaf blowers.
I had a black Nissan Maxima back in the early ‘90’s that I kept covered and garaged at home. It looked brand new for the first four years I owned it. I remember embarrassing myself one day having a “shit-fit” in the parking lot at one of my vendor’s office when I came out after a meeting and found my shiny clean car absolutely covered with dust and grit. To make matters worse, I had left the sunroof open and the INSIDE was full of crap also. The car was parked by itself adjacent to a tall retaining wall that had served to concentrate the dust storm produced by the mindless leaf blower guy(s).
I ran through the parking lot, found the idiots with the leaf blowers, accosted their “boss,” and basically received a big old “screw-you” because they said that their job was to blow off the parking lot. After I calmed down a little I called the company’s owner and threatened to sue his ass off for stupidity and any damage to my paint job. Yeah right…
You know what? After that incident the “leaf blower” guys always came in my vendor’s office and told the employees that they needed to move their cars if they didn’t want dust and debris on them.
Friends don’t let friends (miss)use leaf blowers—they're dangerous to your mental health…
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Just in case you were wondering...
Michael Jackson
American Idol
Martha Stewart
Just don't give a damn...
American Idol
Martha Stewart
Just don't give a damn...
There Aught To Be A Law--Part IV
(Florida Swampland Stolen?)
I’ve already written several times about the local and national governments' meddling in our citizens’ property rights with things like eminent domain condemnation of land and ever changing zoning laws.
Here on St. Simons, all of the “haves’—existing owners of houses and commercial buildings—want all of the “have-nots” held at bay by new county ordinances limiting property density and building heights. The price of land is spiraling upward as a result.
I have a conversation almost every day with some long time islander who laments the “good ole’ days” when the roads were dirt and the traffic jams were non-existent. In my opinion, a busy summer day here surrounded by our buldging population of new residents and gawking tourists beats the hell out of my morning commute on I-285 in Atlanta back in the late 1980’s.
The favorite form of government meddling is the State Department of Natural Resources and the US Army Corps of Engineers expanding control over our “wetlands.” Having learned their lesson from allowing the “Sugar Barrons” to drain half of the Florida Everglades in the early 1900’s to farm Sugar Cane, now the bureaucrats in Washington DC want to swoop down on a national basis and regulate every creek and mud puddle and they don’t give a darn who actually owns the property.
Emboldened by the federal policy, the states are in on the act and all of the environmental, eco-fascist tree-huggers are singing kumb-ba-ya and dancing folk dances in a steady drum-beat of enchroachment on my right to fill in MY mud puddle, enlarge MY mud puddle, or build a dock on the banks of MY mud puddle.
In reality, it’s all mostly about money, not saving any Snail-Darters or endangered Turtles. Look at this story about the “loss” of 84,000 acres of Florida wetlands.
“ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Despite a federal preservation policy touted by every president since George H.W. Bush, at least 84,000 acres of Florida wetlands have disappeared since 1990, according to a St. Petersburg Times report.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, charged with executing the presidential "no net loss" plan, approves more permits to destroy wetlands in Florida than in any other state, the newspaper found. From 1999 to 2003, the Florida corps approved more than 12,000 of the permits and denied only one.
"We're not protecting the environment," said Vic Anderson, who recently retired after 30 years with the corps. "It's a make-believe program."
In Florida, the agency trained employees to presume the permits were "in the public interest" and did not keep track of how many acres it allowed to be destroyed until 2003, the Times reported in its Sunday editions.
To determine the size of the wetlands lost, the newspaper analyzed satellite images of Florida, which has more acres of wetlands than any state but Alaska. Totaling 11.2 million acres in the mid-1970s, the state's wetlands have shrunk to cover 10.5 million acres.”
There are two things that I want to say here.
If I own the land, it’s not the Imperial Federal Government of the United States’ or the State of Georgia's job to tell me what I can do with it. If they want to control the use of the land, let them buy it and pay fair market value for it--build a new park or national forrest.
Secondly, I’m afraid that the article is based on complete and total BS data because I can’t see how they can rely on an analysis of satellite images by NEWSPAPER REPORTERS to make intelligent conclusions about changes in Florida’s overall land mass. Did they hire outside experts? Then say so in the article...sheesh!
Meanwhile, I’ve got to go get dressed because I'm going out to look at some satellite pictures to see if I can find some ocean front property in Arizona…
I’ve already written several times about the local and national governments' meddling in our citizens’ property rights with things like eminent domain condemnation of land and ever changing zoning laws.
Here on St. Simons, all of the “haves’—existing owners of houses and commercial buildings—want all of the “have-nots” held at bay by new county ordinances limiting property density and building heights. The price of land is spiraling upward as a result.
I have a conversation almost every day with some long time islander who laments the “good ole’ days” when the roads were dirt and the traffic jams were non-existent. In my opinion, a busy summer day here surrounded by our buldging population of new residents and gawking tourists beats the hell out of my morning commute on I-285 in Atlanta back in the late 1980’s.
The favorite form of government meddling is the State Department of Natural Resources and the US Army Corps of Engineers expanding control over our “wetlands.” Having learned their lesson from allowing the “Sugar Barrons” to drain half of the Florida Everglades in the early 1900’s to farm Sugar Cane, now the bureaucrats in Washington DC want to swoop down on a national basis and regulate every creek and mud puddle and they don’t give a darn who actually owns the property.
Emboldened by the federal policy, the states are in on the act and all of the environmental, eco-fascist tree-huggers are singing kumb-ba-ya and dancing folk dances in a steady drum-beat of enchroachment on my right to fill in MY mud puddle, enlarge MY mud puddle, or build a dock on the banks of MY mud puddle.
In reality, it’s all mostly about money, not saving any Snail-Darters or endangered Turtles. Look at this story about the “loss” of 84,000 acres of Florida wetlands.
“ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Despite a federal preservation policy touted by every president since George H.W. Bush, at least 84,000 acres of Florida wetlands have disappeared since 1990, according to a St. Petersburg Times report.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, charged with executing the presidential "no net loss" plan, approves more permits to destroy wetlands in Florida than in any other state, the newspaper found. From 1999 to 2003, the Florida corps approved more than 12,000 of the permits and denied only one.
"We're not protecting the environment," said Vic Anderson, who recently retired after 30 years with the corps. "It's a make-believe program."
In Florida, the agency trained employees to presume the permits were "in the public interest" and did not keep track of how many acres it allowed to be destroyed until 2003, the Times reported in its Sunday editions.
To determine the size of the wetlands lost, the newspaper analyzed satellite images of Florida, which has more acres of wetlands than any state but Alaska. Totaling 11.2 million acres in the mid-1970s, the state's wetlands have shrunk to cover 10.5 million acres.”
There are two things that I want to say here.
If I own the land, it’s not the Imperial Federal Government of the United States’ or the State of Georgia's job to tell me what I can do with it. If they want to control the use of the land, let them buy it and pay fair market value for it--build a new park or national forrest.
Secondly, I’m afraid that the article is based on complete and total BS data because I can’t see how they can rely on an analysis of satellite images by NEWSPAPER REPORTERS to make intelligent conclusions about changes in Florida’s overall land mass. Did they hire outside experts? Then say so in the article...sheesh!
Meanwhile, I’ve got to go get dressed because I'm going out to look at some satellite pictures to see if I can find some ocean front property in Arizona…
Comment Trolls
In my nine-month career as a Blogger I have been required to develop a new set of computer skills and learn some new terminology. I had fooled around with HTML code editors a little before last August, but now I have an everyday reason to keep my HTML code in order on my Blogs because a little errant code here or there in the “Blog Skin” template or in the code of a new posting can result in a complete disaster in how the Blog pages look when you stop by to read my writings.
Can’t have that, can we?
In addition to links to other Blogs and Websites, I have added and learned how to use site meters to monitor my readership and gloat over my success or failure on a weekly basis. I have been surprised to learn that I have readers not only here in the US, but also across Europe, Asia, and the Pacific rim.
The one section of my Blog that is disappointingly under-utilized is the comments section. Either I am so on target with my writing that all I get from my readers is a mental “Amen Brother” or I am so laughable that most of my readers refuse to believe that making comments could possibly do any good. I wish that I got more sincere comments.
There is one phenomena out there in Blogdom that I have had very little experience with—“Comment Trolls.” “Comment Trolls” come in two forms. There is the “Drive-by Comment Troller” that stops in once and delivers an explicative laced comment rant that might or might not make any logical sense, and there are “Stalker Trolls” that adopt a Blog and pester the heck out of the host Blogger with multiple mindless missives.
I got this gem from an anonymous “Drive-by Comment Troll” today:
“your f(**)king stupid, the players that have recently received the MVP award have earned it due to their hard work and talent on the court. This has nothing to do with what race they are. Don't feel bad that more African Americans have won the award than whites have, it might be that they are more talented, that is why most of the players in the NBA are black.”
This lovely piece of mental flatulence was in response to my May 10th posting titled Racism-In The NBA?
Here is the core of my argument:
“In a league populated largely by gigantic, sweaty, foul mouthed, overpaid black men, sportswriter Dan le Batard of the Miami Herald Herald writes this article questioning racism as a factor in Canadian Steve Nash beating out Shaquille O’Neal for MVP of the National Basketball Association.
I did a little checking, and out of the past 24 NBA MVP’s, Bob Pettit, Bob Cousey, Dave Cowans, Bill Walton, Larry Bird, and now Steve Nash are the only white boys on the list.
So what is le Batard crying about any way?”
My Anonymous Comment Troll obviously can’t read because they missed my point entirely. In arguing gainst Steve Nash's MVP title, Dan le Batard (not me) is the one quoted as asking:
“How much of this has to do with race?
A lot?
A little?
Or ''zero,'' as Miami Heat president Pat Riley said before the little white guy beat the big black guy for MVP?
My point in my earlier writing was that no white player since Larry Byrd had won MVP, and once the league fully integrated and moved into the “modern era” of the “hip-hop rapper thug” NBA that some of us refuse to enjoy today that the MVP’s had been exclusively black—that is, until Steve Nash won the title this year.
I personally have no argument with the number of black and white NBA MVP’s and never made any comments to that effect in my posting. I did add that the liberal media and race warlords Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson would be all over the NBA if the MVP ratio was reversed on the basis of whites and blacks.
Finally, I will point out to my “anonymous comment troll” that Nash’s Phoenix team is still winning in the NBA playoffs, as is Shaq’s Miami team. Nash is still a factor in the categories of scoring, stealing, and assists that won him the MVP title and his team is benefiting as a result.
I would suggest to Mr./Miss/Transgendered “Comment Troll” that if you want to call somebody “f**king stupid,” that you direct your (f)e-mail to Mr. Dan le Batard ( dlebatard@herald.com ) at the Miami Herald. It would also help if you actually attempt to read and understand what I write next time you get your boxers in a bunch.
And by the way…Y’all come back now, ‘ya hear?
Can’t have that, can we?
In addition to links to other Blogs and Websites, I have added and learned how to use site meters to monitor my readership and gloat over my success or failure on a weekly basis. I have been surprised to learn that I have readers not only here in the US, but also across Europe, Asia, and the Pacific rim.
The one section of my Blog that is disappointingly under-utilized is the comments section. Either I am so on target with my writing that all I get from my readers is a mental “Amen Brother” or I am so laughable that most of my readers refuse to believe that making comments could possibly do any good. I wish that I got more sincere comments.
There is one phenomena out there in Blogdom that I have had very little experience with—“Comment Trolls.” “Comment Trolls” come in two forms. There is the “Drive-by Comment Troller” that stops in once and delivers an explicative laced comment rant that might or might not make any logical sense, and there are “Stalker Trolls” that adopt a Blog and pester the heck out of the host Blogger with multiple mindless missives.
I got this gem from an anonymous “Drive-by Comment Troll” today:
“your f(**)king stupid, the players that have recently received the MVP award have earned it due to their hard work and talent on the court. This has nothing to do with what race they are. Don't feel bad that more African Americans have won the award than whites have, it might be that they are more talented, that is why most of the players in the NBA are black.”
This lovely piece of mental flatulence was in response to my May 10th posting titled Racism-In The NBA?
Here is the core of my argument:
“In a league populated largely by gigantic, sweaty, foul mouthed, overpaid black men, sportswriter Dan le Batard of the Miami Herald Herald writes this article questioning racism as a factor in Canadian Steve Nash beating out Shaquille O’Neal for MVP of the National Basketball Association.
I did a little checking, and out of the past 24 NBA MVP’s, Bob Pettit, Bob Cousey, Dave Cowans, Bill Walton, Larry Bird, and now Steve Nash are the only white boys on the list.
So what is le Batard crying about any way?”
My Anonymous Comment Troll obviously can’t read because they missed my point entirely. In arguing gainst Steve Nash's MVP title, Dan le Batard (not me) is the one quoted as asking:
“How much of this has to do with race?
A lot?
A little?
Or ''zero,'' as Miami Heat president Pat Riley said before the little white guy beat the big black guy for MVP?
My point in my earlier writing was that no white player since Larry Byrd had won MVP, and once the league fully integrated and moved into the “modern era” of the “hip-hop rapper thug” NBA that some of us refuse to enjoy today that the MVP’s had been exclusively black—that is, until Steve Nash won the title this year.
I personally have no argument with the number of black and white NBA MVP’s and never made any comments to that effect in my posting. I did add that the liberal media and race warlords Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson would be all over the NBA if the MVP ratio was reversed on the basis of whites and blacks.
Finally, I will point out to my “anonymous comment troll” that Nash’s Phoenix team is still winning in the NBA playoffs, as is Shaq’s Miami team. Nash is still a factor in the categories of scoring, stealing, and assists that won him the MVP title and his team is benefiting as a result.
I would suggest to Mr./Miss/Transgendered “Comment Troll” that if you want to call somebody “f**king stupid,” that you direct your (f)e-mail to Mr. Dan le Batard ( dlebatard@herald.com ) at the Miami Herald. It would also help if you actually attempt to read and understand what I write next time you get your boxers in a bunch.
And by the way…Y’all come back now, ‘ya hear?
There Aught To Be A Law—Part III
(Channeling my inner Sam Kinnison)
We live in a nice old brick condo complex here on our little island—built back in the mid 1970’s. Big rooms, pocket doors, lots of glass, and we only have 48 units on about 5 acres of land. There is actually more green space than there is area covered with the buildings, parking lots, the swimming pool area, and covered parking spaces. The average age of our neighbors is 104. (OK, maybe it’s actually about 75.) Did I mention that it is VERY quite out here?
Like all Condo developments, we have our own version of “The Condo Nazi’s.” You know --the Condo Board and a few other “activist” owners who have nothing else to do other than spend their time reading and quoting the Condo Association’s Covenants to unsuspecting tenants and new owners. They are ever vigilant, their brows deeply furrowed from worrying about the aesthetic degradations caused by a few beach towels carelessly hung to dry on your balcony railing or what appliances and other personal items they can see sitting on your screened sun porch.
I am generally respectful of these concerns because the Covenants have been in place here from the beginning. When you buy or lease in a given development you are legally required to accept the rules because they come with the property. From personal experience I can tell you that it’s a good idea to understand the rules before you sign on the dotted line and move in if you don’t want nasty notes taped to your door once a week.
I don’t, however, agree with municipal governments and homeowner’s associations substantially changing the rules imposed on residents on an arbitrary basis, after the fact.
For example, the busybodies out in the suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee have enough time to start worrying about when and for how long residents should be allowed to leave their garage doors open.
“GERMANTOWN, Tenn. (AP) - Some residents of this upscale Memphis suburb say ordinances have gone to far. The final straw may have been rules proposed about when garage doors can be opened.
Among other directives, the city codes would tell homeowners to open their garage doors only when entering or exiting or for "short periods of time" for cleaning and maintenance.”
(Pause…sigh…taking a deep breath)
In the words of the comedian Sam Kinnison…”OHH OHHH AAAAAHHHHHHHHH…THEY WANT ME TO DO WHAT?”
Can you believe this crap? OK, I have a few questions and comments…
Are they willing to pay me for the cost of my garage door?
If I come home late from work and need to open my garage door, do I have to have a police escort?
Will the city inspectors come out once a year and inspect the contents of my garage to make sure that I am not storing anything offensive like empty beer cans, old copies of Playboy Magazine, or ashtrays full of cigarette butts?
What are they going to do if I tell them to “bite me”? Fine me?
This is an insane abuse of government power. If they insisted on enforcing this ordinance, I would either take my garage door completely out of my house, else paint a cartoon caricature showing the responsible city officials in compromising poses, naked, on my garage door and illuminate the scene with floodlights every night of the week until they rescinded the law.
It’s not enough that the government morons have brought us Global Warming, the UN, holes in the Ozone Layer, and “the nuclear option,” now we have a “garage door crisis” in Memphis.
Can we all just GET A GRIP?
And by the way, back in the 1980’s my favorite Sam Kinnison quote was one he stated while talking about a central Africa crop failure due to drought…
“Yes, we have deserts here in the United States…
We just don’t TRY TO LIVE AND FARM IN THEM…”
We live in a nice old brick condo complex here on our little island—built back in the mid 1970’s. Big rooms, pocket doors, lots of glass, and we only have 48 units on about 5 acres of land. There is actually more green space than there is area covered with the buildings, parking lots, the swimming pool area, and covered parking spaces. The average age of our neighbors is 104. (OK, maybe it’s actually about 75.) Did I mention that it is VERY quite out here?
Like all Condo developments, we have our own version of “The Condo Nazi’s.” You know --the Condo Board and a few other “activist” owners who have nothing else to do other than spend their time reading and quoting the Condo Association’s Covenants to unsuspecting tenants and new owners. They are ever vigilant, their brows deeply furrowed from worrying about the aesthetic degradations caused by a few beach towels carelessly hung to dry on your balcony railing or what appliances and other personal items they can see sitting on your screened sun porch.
I am generally respectful of these concerns because the Covenants have been in place here from the beginning. When you buy or lease in a given development you are legally required to accept the rules because they come with the property. From personal experience I can tell you that it’s a good idea to understand the rules before you sign on the dotted line and move in if you don’t want nasty notes taped to your door once a week.
I don’t, however, agree with municipal governments and homeowner’s associations substantially changing the rules imposed on residents on an arbitrary basis, after the fact.
For example, the busybodies out in the suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee have enough time to start worrying about when and for how long residents should be allowed to leave their garage doors open.
“GERMANTOWN, Tenn. (AP) - Some residents of this upscale Memphis suburb say ordinances have gone to far. The final straw may have been rules proposed about when garage doors can be opened.
Among other directives, the city codes would tell homeowners to open their garage doors only when entering or exiting or for "short periods of time" for cleaning and maintenance.”
(Pause…sigh…taking a deep breath)
In the words of the comedian Sam Kinnison…”OHH OHHH AAAAAHHHHHHHHH…THEY WANT ME TO DO WHAT?”
Can you believe this crap? OK, I have a few questions and comments…
Are they willing to pay me for the cost of my garage door?
If I come home late from work and need to open my garage door, do I have to have a police escort?
Will the city inspectors come out once a year and inspect the contents of my garage to make sure that I am not storing anything offensive like empty beer cans, old copies of Playboy Magazine, or ashtrays full of cigarette butts?
What are they going to do if I tell them to “bite me”? Fine me?
This is an insane abuse of government power. If they insisted on enforcing this ordinance, I would either take my garage door completely out of my house, else paint a cartoon caricature showing the responsible city officials in compromising poses, naked, on my garage door and illuminate the scene with floodlights every night of the week until they rescinded the law.
It’s not enough that the government morons have brought us Global Warming, the UN, holes in the Ozone Layer, and “the nuclear option,” now we have a “garage door crisis” in Memphis.
Can we all just GET A GRIP?
And by the way, back in the 1980’s my favorite Sam Kinnison quote was one he stated while talking about a central Africa crop failure due to drought…
“Yes, we have deserts here in the United States…
We just don’t TRY TO LIVE AND FARM IN THEM…”
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
There Aught To Be A Law--Part II
(The Government Pooper Scooper)
I have a love-hate relationship with the Europeans.
I know that my ancestry is European, but it seems that my family must have taken all of the brain cells with us across the Atlantic back in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s—leaving behind a meandering, self-defenseless, quivering mass of people looking to their government and the UN to solve even the simplest of life’s problems.
I also generally could care less what the Europeans think or do, except that I worry about some of the hair-brained laws that they pass leaking across the ocean to screw up our lives here in the US.
For instance, did you know that they have a Dog Tax in Vienna? Yes, you heard me right…
Vienna taxes dog owners--$0.15 per day.
Being from Alabama, I have to ask: “Is there also a tax on cats, ferrets, raccoons, ‘possums, and gators; or is it just down right illegal to own a pet rattlesnake in Vienna?”
What about armadillos?
Do they put little license plates on the rear ends of dogs in Austria like we do on our cars here?
Actually, they’re having a problem with unregistered dogs, which makes the recent proposal of a new law requiring DNA registration of dogs even more absurd.
“A local Vienna politician wants to use DNA technology to chase down owners of dogs that leave their droppings on streets and sidewalks.
Manfred Juraczka, a councilor in a Vienna district, said Monday he wants the city to register all dogs' DNA so that droppings left where people walk can be tested and the owner of the guilty dog punished.
"This method offers a multitude of unbeatable advantages," Juraczka said in a statement, adding that all who fail to pick up after their dogs "must count on being caught."
Vienna's sidewalks are littered by dog droppings, and campaigns trying to persuade owners to pick up after their pets have made little difference. The city is home to almost 50,000 registered dogs, but the true number is believed to be much higher as many owners ignore the registration requirement.”
See, here is yet another example of the typical government reaction to their own inability to enforce their existing laws. What do they do?
They pass yet ANOTHER law and make the cost of compliance for the existing law abiding citizens even more expensive, at no cost to the people already breaking the law. The dog owners who have already complied with registration law are probably also cleaning up after their pets.
Meanwhile, the owners of the unregistered pets are merrily watching their mongrels poop illegal steaming piles all over the city and they could care less about the new DNA law. Their illegal cost of pet ownership stays the same, while the cost of the legal pet owners rises substantially, and I bet people will still be cleaning stinky stuff off the soles of their shoes at the end of the day.
The bottom line here is this. Whether it's "gun control laws" banning certain scary looking weapons or "hate crime laws" trying to control what you are thinking when and if you decide to blow someone's brains out, a crime is a crime and you can't be deader than dead. Shooting people is already illegal--what size the bullet is and how many bullets the gun will shoot in ten seconds is irrevelent once you bleed to death.
I suggest that our European friends go after the owners of unregistered dogs rather than raising the cost of legal ownership.
Or maybe they could just find something that actually matters to worry about...here's a quarter, call someone that gives a damn.
I have a love-hate relationship with the Europeans.
I know that my ancestry is European, but it seems that my family must have taken all of the brain cells with us across the Atlantic back in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s—leaving behind a meandering, self-defenseless, quivering mass of people looking to their government and the UN to solve even the simplest of life’s problems.
I also generally could care less what the Europeans think or do, except that I worry about some of the hair-brained laws that they pass leaking across the ocean to screw up our lives here in the US.
For instance, did you know that they have a Dog Tax in Vienna? Yes, you heard me right…
Vienna taxes dog owners--$0.15 per day.
Being from Alabama, I have to ask: “Is there also a tax on cats, ferrets, raccoons, ‘possums, and gators; or is it just down right illegal to own a pet rattlesnake in Vienna?”
What about armadillos?
Do they put little license plates on the rear ends of dogs in Austria like we do on our cars here?
Actually, they’re having a problem with unregistered dogs, which makes the recent proposal of a new law requiring DNA registration of dogs even more absurd.
“A local Vienna politician wants to use DNA technology to chase down owners of dogs that leave their droppings on streets and sidewalks.
Manfred Juraczka, a councilor in a Vienna district, said Monday he wants the city to register all dogs' DNA so that droppings left where people walk can be tested and the owner of the guilty dog punished.
"This method offers a multitude of unbeatable advantages," Juraczka said in a statement, adding that all who fail to pick up after their dogs "must count on being caught."
Vienna's sidewalks are littered by dog droppings, and campaigns trying to persuade owners to pick up after their pets have made little difference. The city is home to almost 50,000 registered dogs, but the true number is believed to be much higher as many owners ignore the registration requirement.”
See, here is yet another example of the typical government reaction to their own inability to enforce their existing laws. What do they do?
They pass yet ANOTHER law and make the cost of compliance for the existing law abiding citizens even more expensive, at no cost to the people already breaking the law. The dog owners who have already complied with registration law are probably also cleaning up after their pets.
Meanwhile, the owners of the unregistered pets are merrily watching their mongrels poop illegal steaming piles all over the city and they could care less about the new DNA law. Their illegal cost of pet ownership stays the same, while the cost of the legal pet owners rises substantially, and I bet people will still be cleaning stinky stuff off the soles of their shoes at the end of the day.
The bottom line here is this. Whether it's "gun control laws" banning certain scary looking weapons or "hate crime laws" trying to control what you are thinking when and if you decide to blow someone's brains out, a crime is a crime and you can't be deader than dead. Shooting people is already illegal--what size the bullet is and how many bullets the gun will shoot in ten seconds is irrevelent once you bleed to death.
I suggest that our European friends go after the owners of unregistered dogs rather than raising the cost of legal ownership.
Or maybe they could just find something that actually matters to worry about...here's a quarter, call someone that gives a damn.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Paul Krugman is a %#@*& Idiot
Just in case you were wondering, I disagree with virtually everything that NY Times columnist Paul Krugman writes and says. I wouldn’t be surprised if Krugman believes that the sun revolves around the Earth and that our planet is actually flat, surrounded by an ocean full of sea monsters and other swimming dragons.
Just look at his latest editorial in today’s NY Times entitled “America Wants Security.”
“It was a carefully staged Norman Rockwell scene. The street was lined with American flags; a high school band played "God Bless America."
Then, under the watchful gaze of Wal-Mart's chief operating officer, Maryland's governor vetoed a bill that would have obliged large businesses to spend more on employee health care…
As I have asked many times before: “who owns businesses—the stockholders or the government?” Who the heck is the government to tell businesses how to pay their employees?”
And there is more…
“The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed what the pollsters called an "angry electorate." By huge margins, voters think that politicians are paying too little attention to their concerns, especially health care, jobs and gas prices.”
Ok, I know that you might be getting tired of me asking, but I defy you to show me where in the US Constitution it says “…life, liberty, health care, high paying jobs, and $1.25 a gallon gasoline.”
Paul Krugman is a %#@*& Idiot. Did I say that already? Actually, he’s an ignorant partisan %#@*& Idiot.
Krugman keeps on blithering and arguing with himself on wages…
“At the state level, many, though by no means all, politicians are responding to those concerns. The push to raise the minimum wage is a useful political barometer: seven states have raised the minimum in just the last two years.
True, there are limits on what state governments can do: they fear that if they do too much for workers, they'll drive business and jobs away. I'd argue that the fear is often exaggerated. For example, Wal-Mart may avoid states that force it to provide health insurance, but given the hidden subsidies the company receives - one way or another, taxpayers end up paying a lot for uninsured workers - this may not be such a bad thing. Still, any major strengthening of the safety net will have to come at the federal level.”
As I’ve already said over and over again, you cannot expect to raise a family of four working in a minimum wage job. And Comrade Krugman is right, if states screw around and place unreasonable limitations on employers, the employers are forced to do things like move out of the offending state, or worse, ultimately go out of business.
I'd like to see the government and Comrad Krugman to try to force an empty building to pay a "living wage" to a workforce of uneducated, unmotivated union employees.
As I have endlessly written in Its Not My Job, Living Wages-Part II, Tax Cuts For Working Families, and Living Wages; the only organization that seems to be able to pay people more than they are worth is the government—and they do it by financing their folly on the back of the entrepreneurs and owners of profitable businesses in America.
Hey Mr. Paul Krugman, you say America’s “working families” want more security?
Yeah, and people in Hell want ice water too…
Just look at his latest editorial in today’s NY Times entitled “America Wants Security.”
“It was a carefully staged Norman Rockwell scene. The street was lined with American flags; a high school band played "God Bless America."
Then, under the watchful gaze of Wal-Mart's chief operating officer, Maryland's governor vetoed a bill that would have obliged large businesses to spend more on employee health care…
As I have asked many times before: “who owns businesses—the stockholders or the government?” Who the heck is the government to tell businesses how to pay their employees?”
And there is more…
“The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed what the pollsters called an "angry electorate." By huge margins, voters think that politicians are paying too little attention to their concerns, especially health care, jobs and gas prices.”
Ok, I know that you might be getting tired of me asking, but I defy you to show me where in the US Constitution it says “…life, liberty, health care, high paying jobs, and $1.25 a gallon gasoline.”
Paul Krugman is a %#@*& Idiot. Did I say that already? Actually, he’s an ignorant partisan %#@*& Idiot.
Krugman keeps on blithering and arguing with himself on wages…
“At the state level, many, though by no means all, politicians are responding to those concerns. The push to raise the minimum wage is a useful political barometer: seven states have raised the minimum in just the last two years.
True, there are limits on what state governments can do: they fear that if they do too much for workers, they'll drive business and jobs away. I'd argue that the fear is often exaggerated. For example, Wal-Mart may avoid states that force it to provide health insurance, but given the hidden subsidies the company receives - one way or another, taxpayers end up paying a lot for uninsured workers - this may not be such a bad thing. Still, any major strengthening of the safety net will have to come at the federal level.”
As I’ve already said over and over again, you cannot expect to raise a family of four working in a minimum wage job. And Comrade Krugman is right, if states screw around and place unreasonable limitations on employers, the employers are forced to do things like move out of the offending state, or worse, ultimately go out of business.
I'd like to see the government and Comrad Krugman to try to force an empty building to pay a "living wage" to a workforce of uneducated, unmotivated union employees.
As I have endlessly written in Its Not My Job, Living Wages-Part II, Tax Cuts For Working Families, and Living Wages; the only organization that seems to be able to pay people more than they are worth is the government—and they do it by financing their folly on the back of the entrepreneurs and owners of profitable businesses in America.
Hey Mr. Paul Krugman, you say America’s “working families” want more security?
Yeah, and people in Hell want ice water too…
Sunday, May 22, 2005
The Great Molasses Flood
I was cruising the Internet on Saturday afternoon looking for a good recipe for Baked Beans to cook for dinner today. If things worked out, I plan to post the results on my cooking blog, The Redneck Gourmet. The most common recipe I found was for Boston Baked Beans.
In doing this research, what I wasn’t expecting to also find was a story about an engineering disaster that occurred in Boston in 1919, called The Great Molasses Flood.
Have you ever heard about it?
Being a Mechanical Engineer, I couldn’t resist following up on the story, and here is CNN’s account of what happened.
"BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Danny O'Brien looked at a photograph of firefighters knee-deep in molasses trying to rescue people trapped in a collapsed firehouse, and remembered his grandfather's tales of sticky horror.
"Those stories were something ... horses stuck in this sea of molasses, a lot of cars, people stuck, houses smashed to pieces," said O'Brien, looking through a Boston Public Library exhibit commemorating the 85th anniversary of Boston's Great Molasses Flood, which killed 21 people and injured 150.
His grandfather lived in the city's North End, where on January 15, 1919, a gigantic steel vat exploded, spewing 2.3 million gallons of molten molasses. Thirty-foot waves of gooey liquid plowed through the streets, catching men, women, horses and vermin in its sticky flow, crushing freight cars, wagons and automobiles and reducing entire buildings to broken planks of wood.
"They were smelling it for years after that," said O'Brien, whose grandfather volunteered to help with the months-long cleanup.
The tank, 50 feet high and 240 feet around, was built in 1915, just as the demand for molasses -- used to produce industrial alcohol for ammunition as well as rum -- was skyrocketing at the peak of World War I.
Its site on the waterfront was convenient for delivery ships coming from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the West Indies.
But the tank, built in a hurry with faulty design, was at the edge of the city's most densely-populated neighborhood, the North End, where politically-inactive Italian immigrants had little clout, said Stephen Puleo, the author of "Dark Tide," a book about the flood released in September.
The tank leaked constantly, worrying employees and neighbors. But in their rush to keep up with demand, company officials just repainted the tank in the same color as the leaking molasses. "
I’m constantly amazed at the things you can learn from the internet.
In the process of looking for a Baked Bean recipe I found this story, and learned about Boston’s role during pre-prohibition times as the largest distiller of Rum and sugar cane importer in the US.
Who else in my audience knew about this?
Now you’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve got to go check on how my baked beans are doing...
I don't want to cause the Great St. Simons Molsses Baked Bean flood...
In doing this research, what I wasn’t expecting to also find was a story about an engineering disaster that occurred in Boston in 1919, called The Great Molasses Flood.
Have you ever heard about it?
Being a Mechanical Engineer, I couldn’t resist following up on the story, and here is CNN’s account of what happened.
"BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Danny O'Brien looked at a photograph of firefighters knee-deep in molasses trying to rescue people trapped in a collapsed firehouse, and remembered his grandfather's tales of sticky horror.
"Those stories were something ... horses stuck in this sea of molasses, a lot of cars, people stuck, houses smashed to pieces," said O'Brien, looking through a Boston Public Library exhibit commemorating the 85th anniversary of Boston's Great Molasses Flood, which killed 21 people and injured 150.
His grandfather lived in the city's North End, where on January 15, 1919, a gigantic steel vat exploded, spewing 2.3 million gallons of molten molasses. Thirty-foot waves of gooey liquid plowed through the streets, catching men, women, horses and vermin in its sticky flow, crushing freight cars, wagons and automobiles and reducing entire buildings to broken planks of wood.
"They were smelling it for years after that," said O'Brien, whose grandfather volunteered to help with the months-long cleanup.
The tank, 50 feet high and 240 feet around, was built in 1915, just as the demand for molasses -- used to produce industrial alcohol for ammunition as well as rum -- was skyrocketing at the peak of World War I.
Its site on the waterfront was convenient for delivery ships coming from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the West Indies.
But the tank, built in a hurry with faulty design, was at the edge of the city's most densely-populated neighborhood, the North End, where politically-inactive Italian immigrants had little clout, said Stephen Puleo, the author of "Dark Tide," a book about the flood released in September.
The tank leaked constantly, worrying employees and neighbors. But in their rush to keep up with demand, company officials just repainted the tank in the same color as the leaking molasses. "
I’m constantly amazed at the things you can learn from the internet.
In the process of looking for a Baked Bean recipe I found this story, and learned about Boston’s role during pre-prohibition times as the largest distiller of Rum and sugar cane importer in the US.
Who else in my audience knew about this?
Now you’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve got to go check on how my baked beans are doing...
I don't want to cause the Great St. Simons Molsses Baked Bean flood...
Potty Parity
You’ll be relieved to know that Mayor Michael A Bloomburg and the NY City Council are getting into the bathroom business.
I’m so excited. I almost wet my pants…
Well, not really (they aren’t ACTUALLY in the bathroom business and my pants are still quite dry.)
What the New York City officials ARE doing is passing a new law that tells business owners how many toilets they must have in their buildings.
“The City Council and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have agreed on proposed legislation to ease an inequality that has plagued women since the dawn of the porcelain age: long lines at bathrooms in public places.
The deal, first reported by The New York Post on Wednesday, would make New York City one of a growing number of jurisdictions across the country to bring so-called potty parity to restrooms in public places.
Officially titled the Women's Restroom Equity Bill, the legislation would require bars, opera and concert halls, movie houses, theaters, dance halls, stadiums and a variety of other buildings to provide roughly two bathroom stalls available to women for every stall or urinal available to men.
"I think it's very important, because New York City tends to set the standard, as they did when they banned smoking, which was immediately followed in many other jurisdictions," said John F. Banzhaf III, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University who has studied the issue. “
Good old New York City--setting another standard. Pluueeaassseee…
I have mixed emotions on this issue. I certainly don’t want my girlfriend, mother, sister or grandmother suffering unnecessarily due to the lack of adequate restroom facilities.
BUT…
For some strange reason I believe that the actual causes of most if not all of this perceived “Women’s Restroom Inequity” are the women themselves, and adding additional porcelain isn’t going to go very far toward alleviating the problem.
SO…
On behalf of men everywhere I would like to ask this question of Women:
WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING IN THE BATHROOM THAT COULD POSSIBLY TAKE SO LONG?
Ok, don’t answer that question in too much detail—but with all due respect, here is my proposed solution to the problem, and it doesn’t involve passing laws, opening the wallets of building owners, or adding any additional toilets.
Ladies, the next time you have to go to the restroom to answer the call of nature (the only reason REAL men go to the restroom,) try taking these steps:
1. Walk quickly and calmly through the door to the bathroom
2. Ignore the mirror
3. Walk to the stall
4. Finish your business with authority and diligence
5. Quickly view your face and hair in the mirror as you wash and dry your hands, then get the heck out of the bathroom, avoiding eye contact and soul searching conversations with anyone else that might happen to coincidentally be visiting the facilities at the same time (after all, there’s probably a Starbucks or Chick Fillet outside around the corner if you need to have a chat and catch up with your sorority sister’s life story.)
See, that wouldn't be so hard to do, you know?
I’m open to criticism, so tell me if I’m mistaken or overlooking something here on this issue. I mean, what can possibly be so darned difficult about going to the restroom and finishing your business in a quick and efficient manner?
If the truth was actually told, is suspect that 90% of the time the reason that there is a line to the Women’s Restroom at places like bars, theaters, and concert halls is because the rooms are full of girls chit-chatting while vainly and unnecessarily screwing around with their hair and makeup. Am I wrong?
If so, why don't they just leave the number of stalls alone and make the building owners hire a couple of "meter maids" to monitor bathroom loitering. Or maybe they could install timers on the doors of the Women's Restroom--sorta like parking meters--and charge by the minute with the first five minutes being free and each additional minute costing a dollar or so?
I think that I'm on to something here, Guys.
And by the way, I have one more suggestion:
Ladies, the next time you pass through the restroom (diligently following steps 1 through 6 outlined above), observe the behavior of the other women using the facility and politely encourage them to “get the heck out” when you see restroom clogging behavior.
And finally, I have to fall back on my favorite old standard canard…
No where in the US Constitution do I see any words that say that American's have the God given right to “life, liberty, and a short line to the restroom.”
Restrooms in privately owned buildings are not now and should not in the future become the governments’ business.
I’m so excited. I almost wet my pants…
Well, not really (they aren’t ACTUALLY in the bathroom business and my pants are still quite dry.)
What the New York City officials ARE doing is passing a new law that tells business owners how many toilets they must have in their buildings.
“The City Council and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have agreed on proposed legislation to ease an inequality that has plagued women since the dawn of the porcelain age: long lines at bathrooms in public places.
The deal, first reported by The New York Post on Wednesday, would make New York City one of a growing number of jurisdictions across the country to bring so-called potty parity to restrooms in public places.
Officially titled the Women's Restroom Equity Bill, the legislation would require bars, opera and concert halls, movie houses, theaters, dance halls, stadiums and a variety of other buildings to provide roughly two bathroom stalls available to women for every stall or urinal available to men.
"I think it's very important, because New York City tends to set the standard, as they did when they banned smoking, which was immediately followed in many other jurisdictions," said John F. Banzhaf III, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University who has studied the issue. “
Good old New York City--setting another standard. Pluueeaassseee…
I have mixed emotions on this issue. I certainly don’t want my girlfriend, mother, sister or grandmother suffering unnecessarily due to the lack of adequate restroom facilities.
BUT…
For some strange reason I believe that the actual causes of most if not all of this perceived “Women’s Restroom Inequity” are the women themselves, and adding additional porcelain isn’t going to go very far toward alleviating the problem.
SO…
On behalf of men everywhere I would like to ask this question of Women:
WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING IN THE BATHROOM THAT COULD POSSIBLY TAKE SO LONG?
Ok, don’t answer that question in too much detail—but with all due respect, here is my proposed solution to the problem, and it doesn’t involve passing laws, opening the wallets of building owners, or adding any additional toilets.
Ladies, the next time you have to go to the restroom to answer the call of nature (the only reason REAL men go to the restroom,) try taking these steps:
1. Walk quickly and calmly through the door to the bathroom
2. Ignore the mirror
3. Walk to the stall
4. Finish your business with authority and diligence
5. Quickly view your face and hair in the mirror as you wash and dry your hands, then get the heck out of the bathroom, avoiding eye contact and soul searching conversations with anyone else that might happen to coincidentally be visiting the facilities at the same time (after all, there’s probably a Starbucks or Chick Fillet outside around the corner if you need to have a chat and catch up with your sorority sister’s life story.)
See, that wouldn't be so hard to do, you know?
I’m open to criticism, so tell me if I’m mistaken or overlooking something here on this issue. I mean, what can possibly be so darned difficult about going to the restroom and finishing your business in a quick and efficient manner?
If the truth was actually told, is suspect that 90% of the time the reason that there is a line to the Women’s Restroom at places like bars, theaters, and concert halls is because the rooms are full of girls chit-chatting while vainly and unnecessarily screwing around with their hair and makeup. Am I wrong?
If so, why don't they just leave the number of stalls alone and make the building owners hire a couple of "meter maids" to monitor bathroom loitering. Or maybe they could install timers on the doors of the Women's Restroom--sorta like parking meters--and charge by the minute with the first five minutes being free and each additional minute costing a dollar or so?
I think that I'm on to something here, Guys.
And by the way, I have one more suggestion:
Ladies, the next time you pass through the restroom (diligently following steps 1 through 6 outlined above), observe the behavior of the other women using the facility and politely encourage them to “get the heck out” when you see restroom clogging behavior.
And finally, I have to fall back on my favorite old standard canard…
No where in the US Constitution do I see any words that say that American's have the God given right to “life, liberty, and a short line to the restroom.”
Restrooms in privately owned buildings are not now and should not in the future become the governments’ business.
