Archive for August 30th, 2011

Irene post-script: Obama breaks still another campaign promise …

August 30, 2011

Remember when he said:

Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when  … the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

Obama’s Nomination Victory Speech In St. Paul June 3, 2008.

And, the silly people in Vermont and NJ believed the hogwash and and voted for him.

Fool them once. shame on him;  fool them twice, shame on them.

 

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Hurricanes and power outages … somethings not right.

August 30, 2011

Since Hurricane Irene wasn’t as bad as predicted … and since my electricity has been out … I’ve had plenty of time to sit and ponder the power outage.

Some semi-random thoughts:

  1. Though the storm was of relatively low severity  (for a hurricane), over 2 million homes lost electrical power.  Why isn’t the system more robust than that? What if the storm had been worse?  Or, what if the system had been targeted by terrorists? It’s frightening how fragile the system is.
  2. Yeah, yeah, yeah … I know that trees fell on the power lines and knocked them down.  It’s 2011.  Why aren’t all the power lines secured underground.  Before you tell me that it costs too much, add up the cost of resetting the fallen lines …. over & over again.
  3. Head-scratcher: Why do utility companies have to be called to tell them that power is out?  They put boxes on sites to throttle back usage when demand is peaked.  Can’t those boxes tell them when power is out?
  4. Head-scratcher: When attempting to drive to a nearby friend’s house yesterday, I was blocked by a down power line.  I u-turned.  Behind me was a BGE repair truck.  He u-turned, too, stopped and called the dispatcher.  The down line that he was assigned was beyond the one he encountered – so the dispatcher sent him (after about 15 minutes) to another site (I hope).  Why didn’t the jabrones just fix the line that the repair crew literally ran into?  Geez, that’s why it takes so long to restore power.
  5. On the same trip, I passed a couple of homes with really big trees fallen on them.  Big time damage, Had sympathy for the folks and stopped whining (for a few minutes) about my power being out, I guess the storm’s severity depended on how hard YOU got hit.
  6. Damn generators.  Yeah, power out is an inconvenience.  But, enough to warrant an auxiliary generator?  My view: not unless there’s a medical reason. And, there’s a social cost: Those things are so loud that even I – the soundest of sleepers – had trouble dozing off.  Now, that’s an issue for our crack Congress to go after.
  7. I figure that I spent about $250 on rope, batteries, etc., that – it turns out – I really didn’t need since the storm didn’t match the hype.  Hope that stimulative spending saved or created a job or two.
  8. Still amazed by the job Home Depot and Wal-mart did positioning product for hurricane prep and recovery.  Shouldn’t all retailers be on the same type of program?

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"Don’t touch that dial!" … what dial?

August 30, 2011

Once in class I made reference to “the TV’s fine-tuning knob”.

Students looked at me like I was, well, pretty old.

Glad to see that a variant of the cliché made Beloit College’s Class of 2015 “Mindset List” which gives a snapshot of the world view of the incoming freshmen class.

Note: Most students entering college for the first time this fall — members of the Class of 2015 — were born in 1993.

Here are more of my favorites:

1. There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.

4. The only significant labor disputes in their lifetimes have been in major league sports.

9. “Don’t touch that dial!” . what dial?

10. American tax forms have always been available in Spanish.

12. Amazon has never been just a river in South America.

15. O.J. Simpson has always been looking for the killers of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

24. “Yadda, yadda, yadda” has always come in handy to make long stories short.

28. Jimmy Carter has always been a smiling elderly man who shows up on TV to promote fair elections and disaster relief.

30. Dial-up is soooooooooo last century!

33. Faux Christmas trees have always outsold real ones.

34. They’ve always been able to dismiss boring old ideas with “been there, done that, gotten the T-shirt.”

37. Music has always been available via free downloads.

38. Grown-ups have always been arguing about health care policy.

39. Moderate amounts of red wine and baby aspirin have always been thought good for the heart.

48. While they’ve been playing outside, their parents have always worried about nasty new bugs borne by birds and mosquitoes.

57. They’ve often broken up with their significant others via texting, Facebook, or MySpace.

61. Major League Baseball has never had fewer than three divisions and never lacked a wild-card entry in the playoffs.

64. Altar girls have never been a big deal.

71. Refugees and prisoners have always been housed by the U.S. government at Guantanamo.

Source: 2011 Beloit College Mindset List

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