If you aren't conflicted, maybe you are not listening hard enough

When we are young, life is so simple and we see with a great clarity. But, age brings on a lot of skepticism, whch I now see as healthy. See, I grew up in outstate Michigan, which is about as rock-ribbed Republican as you are apt to see. One article of faith was that FDR was as close to the antichrist as any of us are apt to see. Walter Reuther and those auto workers in his union were practically communists, at least socialists. The Republican party, on the other hand, was full of hard headed realists whose fondest desire is worker welfare and thus to maintain their place at the public trough.
Recently, the hot topic of debate has been Reform of health care. 100 % of Republicans maintain that what was passed is prohibitively expensive, and they may be right. However, they have seemed at ease with paying for a monstrous tax cut for those who have the most and a very expensive war that was entered under false pretenses. What is a trusting farm boy to think?

Question for my golfing friends

The report is that a neighbor of one Eldred Woods said Woods' injuries ar 2:30 A.M. last Friday don't look like what would be caused by a 9-iron wielded by a female Swede of a blond persuasion. What would a wound from a 9-iron look like?

Karma is greatly overrated

Well, see, we scheduled a trip to HMB to get any money and then give it for gas at a place that is 20=40 cents less than it takes in SF town. Now, I did not notice right away that two of the six pumps had orange cones next to them, so I waved a guy into one of the good ones and then
found out mine didn't work. So I spent 15 minutes trying to maneuver to a vacant one, getting yelled at by some redneck who seemed to think I did not give him enough room to turn around, that seeming to be his main reason for coming off the street. Presently I spoke politely to a young woman was occupying one useable space, having fueled and made an cell phone call and then seemed to be just sitting there. I inquired if she was spending the day and she said not any longer, so finally. Good thing I had given madame my Visa back at the 99 cent store. By the time I returned, she had moved on to our WholePaycheck grocery ripoff, where the qeezer set gets 10% 0ff. However, had I not given up that first place, what would I write on today?

Wisdom if the aged

Every now and then, you have to remind people of some things that "Go without saying", such as "There is no free lunch" Meaning you can expect to have to pay, somewhere, sometime. Of a similar sentiment, paraphrased (My daughter will love me for this) He who wants to dance must arrange to pay the musicians.

One liners and the dawn of paperbacks

You see, during world War II we had to conserved unleaded gasoline, sugar and meat and kids were sent out to harvest milkweed seed pods to replace the kapok in life preservers. They also wanted to save paper, so paperback books came out, so that the soldiers could relieve their boredom with light-weight (Literally and figuratively) reading matter, hence paperbacks. One recalls Bill Mauldin's cartoon soldiers, Joe telling Willie, "You're carrying too much weight, Willie. Throw the joker out of your deck of cards."

So it was that yours truly, growing up on a farm near a township library, full of Zane Grey western novels and Nancy Drew for his female classmates, spent his first bit of discretionary income (5 cents a bushel for picking up the potatoes the machine had dug up or 25 cents a lug for picking cherries) for a slim book called "A Pocket Book( as they were called in those days) of Boners." This was a collection of schoolboy errors, many hilarious, which gave the writer small glimpses of the world of culture, which egged him on to a small amount of good stuff, along with shocking amounts of trash. These may sound like one-liners because of their terseness and hilarious impact. Some of the writer's favorites follow:

Woodrow Wilson believed in open convents openly arrived at.
King Solomon had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
Napoleon gave Josephine a jewel box with her entails carved on the lid.
In the French Revolution, many of the clergy and nobility were gelatined.
The followers of Christ were called the 12 opossums.
The epistles were the wives of the apostles.
Benjamin Franklin produced electricity by rubbing cats backward.
The American Indian travelled in birchbark canoes on little streams of water, which they made themselves.
Queen Victoria was the longest queen on the throne.
Sir Walter Raleigh died in 1580 and started smoking.
Drake was playing at bowls when he was told the Invisible Armada was in sight.
Abraham Lincoln was shot by one of the actors in a motion picture show.
Syntax is the money collected by the catholic church from sinners.
Caesar was murdered by a group of contractors.
Rome was conquered by the Goths, the Visigoths and the osteopaths.
Martin Luther died a horrible death; he was excommunicated by a Papal Bull.

Nothing resonates for me but resonators

My faithful (to this point) readers may wish to inquire "where are these one-liners you promised on the first day?". My dodge is just that line was a teaser, meant to capture your interest, and that I will trot one out whenever needed to make a point in this rather rambling message. These do not need to be the traditional one-liners that professional joke-tellers have numbered so that one can simply call out a number, moving the audience to laugh as though you had told that joke.

You see, this entry was coined by yours truly to introduce his academic rant of today. He has long been scornful that expressions creep into the into the popular vernacular until we lose sight of their original respectable origin. Thus, "a point in time" migrated from the Space Program into Lawyer lies during the Watergate hearings. Now, many heads not utterly filled with profound ideas may observe one or two that seem pithy or otherwise memorable and say the ideas "resonate". Hence, on with the academic rant.

Yours truly considers his profession (with academic avocation of English language fanatic.) to be applied physics, also known as engineering. A resonator is a device which, once it is excited, may carry on its response for seconds. But one does not need to be a physicist to recognize a number of resonators in everyday life: a bell may ring for several seconds after it is struck; this is also true of a stretched string or a violin or guitar. And while it may take a few seconds to get the knack, you can get a tone from blowing across the neck of a soda bottle until you run out of air. Thus, it turned out that William Hansen at Stanford led the way to stringing more than 50,000 electromagnetic along a straight line 2 miles long to smash target atoms into tiny,tiny pieces. If that idea does not resonate, what in the world does??

On Being Norwegian

To be mathematically precise, I am but 50% Norsk; my dad's genes and sunny disposition spring from the barely sunnier British Isles, with even perhaps a continental contribution from the likes of Germany. Please try to picture the guy on the top of the tall tower in Trafalgar square and add to it my dad's longing for green beer on March 17. My first draft of the annual Nelson end-of-year report is always religiously edited by my helpmate to remove dark Norwegian references. A major part of her religious inspiration is that line in Home on the Range, "Never is heard a discouraging word". One can inquire of Madame, (also designated as Ye Ed in that publication) why she eschews dark humor from one whose ethnic makeup comes from a nationality whose best-known work of art was captioned by San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Bizarro as "I can't decide whether to call it 'The Scream' or 'I can't remember if I turned the iron off'".

Now for many Americans, their knowledge of Norwegians comes from PBS radio between 6 and 8 on Saturday evening. Garrison Keillor has captured the psyche of Norwegian bechelor farmers better than other public figure. Like him, they are shy persons, who require "Powdermilk Biscuits, to give them the strength to do what needs to be done". Keillor will admit that there are occasional examples of the extroverted Norwegian, who looks at your shoes, instead of his own, while he is addressing you. All of us from the rural Midwest can remember several examples of this life form. Your writer is moved to say that his own sister has raised up two examples. While both men eventually married, one cannot expect that ceremony to dramatically change their behavior. Of course one could accuse Garrison of at least a small amount of exaggeration; after all, he is in Show Biz, and if he fails to amuse, his audience may go off to Public tv looking for Lawrence Welk reruns.

A true Norwegian is apt to be a ver-r-r-r-r-y slow man with a dollar. Your writer's mother,(his
100% Norwegian parent) insisted he fill both sides of the stationery page while thanking her for the nice present, to deserve expending a 3 cent stamp. Such thriftiness sticks with one; professionally your writer wrote countless lectures on Electromagnetism on the reverse side of memos from the University president. Still, his speech, which has drastically influenced that of his offspring, is pure Midwest; He remembers his great amusement at the speech of a native Norwegian grad student colleague, who must have learned his English in England; he combined his Broad A's with the upward inflection which makes every Norwegian's statements sound like questi0ns.

In sum, after inspecting those Viking ships, seeming to have no area sheltered from the weather and were provisioned with dried codfish and sauerkraut as they set out to discover Greenland? and the New World, one is moved to say, "You don't have to be crazy to be a Norwegian, but it surely helps."

You can (hardly ever) have too many facts

When I was entering teenage, I learned from reading cereal boxes that vitamin B-1 has a scientific name, thiamine. Sixty years later, with a partially barren building lot to furnish, I also learned that the stuff also promotes root growth and is thus very useful for transplanted bushes. Hence, a few mornings ago, I strolled into Ace Hardware, with the vivacious young women to check you out (financially) and asked where I would find thiamine. For my previous bottle, several years ago, I walked up to the more experienced garden lady and a fair estimate would be 15 seconds she took to walk 20 steps, grab a bottle, and return. This time, a different lady was there and she had no opinion. I looked over all the planting-transplanting supplies and found it labelled vitamin B-1. Mission accomplished, after a little groping. (NO, NOT THE KIND OUR MUSCULAR GUBERNATOR DOES!)

On negatives having no positives and other anomalies

I once had this student who was fond of unusual constructions. He would listen very carefully to my explanation of a difficult phenomenon and if satisfied, he would say, "Okay, I'm
gruntled". My mind simmered an appropriate rejoinder until one day, after several rainy days, the sun began peeking out and I said to him, "Well, do you think the weather is turning clement?" He had no oral reply; maybe his French had receded too far for him to say
"Touchee". Where are my foreign punctuation marks, Bill Gates?

As a language fanatic, some of my worst scorn is reserved for those who say,"I could care less" when they mean, literally, "I could NOT care less". Some of the fun of being a language fanatic is thinking up new and amusing constructions; thus "always the more" is synonymous with the recognized word "nevertheless". In the spirit of my student inspirer, shortly before my departure from my industrial career, one of my reports to my boss said that certain experimental results were "evitable".

Of the anomalous nature, I would like to begin with the words "payor" and "payee", meaning respectively, the person who pays a debt and the person to whom it is paid. Thus, I am moved to most disrespectful language by the news reporters who speak of the person who by subterfuge gets out of jail without authorization. The reporter is apt to call the person who escaped as an "escapee"; I say he is an "excaper", whereas the jail he left early deserves to be called the "escapee". I would be interested to hear calm and cogent arguments refuting my stand here.

On being Norwegian

To be sociologically accurate, I am but half Norwegian; my father sprung from the marginally more sunny British Isles (Think of the guy on top of the tall tower in Trafalgar Square) with enough Irish filling in to make Dad hanker for green beer on March 17, and perhaps an unsung but large fraction of German. Thus this blog is serving as an outlet for a large reservoir of dark Norwegian humor which would be promptly edited out of the annual Chuckles and Nina report. Really, I say, what you can expect of a nationality of which the most famous work of art was captioned by San Francisco cartoonist Bizarro. He has the painter saying, "I can't decide whether to name it 'The Scream' or 'I can't remember if I turned the iron off'

Hello, Daylight Wasting Time

Last night, just after the trick-or-treaters ended, all the clocks in the house fell back and this morning was my mother's favorite day, the day that daylight saving time ended. She always considered daylight savings to be another vast Rooseveltian conspiracy and was especially put out every other year when the pastor we shared with the church in the next town served us at 9:30 and then jumped in his car to drive 12 fast miles south and do it there. She also felt put upon for about three weeks in October when school ran from 8 to 12 so that kids could spend the afternoon picking up the potatoes that the machine dug up in the morning. In the past year's class reunion one of the Bohemian guys expressed the sentiment with which I agreed completely: "I'll tell you one thing; I have never cared for the experience of walking behind a team of horses." My dad loved them, which meant that as soon as we got a tractor, a son got to drive it. Now, of course the horses did provide extra fertilizer, but at the expense of lots of hay that cows need to make milk. Well. that was Dad's call. I don't remember him complaining about Daylight Saving Time. So I learned an important rule for wedded harmony: If you marry a strong-minded woman, (and not many guys don't,) you let her make most of the decisions

Americanische Sprache Uber Alles

The titles was intended to make you think of Hitler; his motto was, "Deutscheland uber alles" the German sentiment that the world would be a better place if Germany ruled. Now, your writer has the distinct understanding that the constitution of the state of Illinois is based on the "American language"

Not having an "official" definition of the American Language,I will feel free to (Oops, dunno where Google put the tool bar to remove the italics that my fickle fingers gave me)express my impression of some of its characteristics. First, its pronunciation is conscientiously phonEtic. This has the advantage the spelling is pretty straightforward. There are of course a few glitches, for which Bill Gates and his minions do not always have the right answer. Nevertheless, the beginning of the college year is when your reporter is apt to spot notices in the Student Union saying "Roomate wanted" to which he habitually inserts another "m" and the addition, "preferably one with a spell-checker". Phonetics are justified by my big brother who was amazed to find that his obviously bright daughter was not learning to read. Her teacher was using a California education fad called the "look-say" method. He taught her that using the alphabet, one could sound OUT the words. She has never looked back and now she teaches him how to use his computer.

The gentle reader may object,"Isn't that just English you are talking about?" I say, "Mercy, no!!" The Englishman says the third ingredient in his Bloody Mary is "Wooster sauce" We American Speakers use a 4-5 syllable word to marinate our steaks, called Worcestershire sauce, (which is five syllables, if we say the word "ire" is two syllables.)

The range of the American language is about the six midwestern states; to Illinois, we add Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin and Minnesota, but eccentric variations can be found in any of them. My brother-in-law grew up in southern Indiana, with a scrupulous ability to change his own crankcase "orl" and playing cards "according to Horle". Fifty years ago, Chicago denizens all sounded like Arthur Godfrey (pronounced by us Spoonerism practitioners, "Odfur Garthe")Eastern speakers can fail even to communicate. In the early days of the space program president JFK was saying "I have not spoken to Nasser today" and I am wondering, what does the leader of Egypt to do with the space program? Some day when the reader has me face to face, I will demonstrate how Californians get all the vowels wrong in saying "Cow Palace".

And on this evening of "Trick or Treating" and falling back with all the clocks, The Bay Bridge is closed indefinitely, and I leave you with this bit of wisdom I just thought up. "Rocket Science is easy; It's getting to your desk that is tough.

Imitation is the puest form of flattery

Very little of my lifetime output has been purely original. Of course, the really creative can get away w ith quoting themselves. Was it not George Bernard Shaw who said, "I often quote myself. I find it adds spice to my conversation" He allegedly is also the guy who responded to his long time lover, who wanted to conceive their baby, saying, " with your brains and my beauty, it would be a wonderful child!" GBS responded, "But what if the child had MY beauty and your brains. What then?

Well, you see, one of my blessings is a long term memory for funny thinking, by anybody who wrote it down. Evidence of this will keep cropping up. Today, we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of an earthquake that fortunately killed only a couple of dozen people. It is sometimes called "The World Series quake", also for its epicenter "Loma Prieta" a location near the modest sized town called Santa Cruz. Damage from the quake was widely scattered. There were no cell-phones in those days, so it was a couple of days before my sister was able to hear from her eldest, at the UC branch there, that mostly all was well. She had to do without hot Water for a couple of days, as the water heater had capsized in her rooming house, . There were long distances between damage, for example, the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge had a non-cable section which broke loose on one end, closing the bridge for a couple months and necessitating that we outsiders get to the City via the Golden Gate, if we must drive, but to get to a convention in the downtown convention center, I drove to the Concord stawtion and got onto the light rail.

But, you may be asking, where is the imitation here? Ain't any. My excuses were apt to be composers of the classics. After all, Bach kept using the same tunes and changing the orchestration. Besides Ravel, several composers have reasonable takeoffs on Mussorgsky's piano piece, "Pictures at an Exhibition", Ashkenazy did a pretty good one, to my mind. I think Stokowski had a good try to his credit. Charles Ives' "Variations on 'God save the King", which we call "America" in the USA, also, "My country 'tis of Thee", which he wrote for organ, are an almost unalloyed delight. Those interested in such fun trivia are recommended to use the internet to call up "SF Gate", "Columns". Jon Carroll, and then in his archive, an item called "Mondegreens" This is really recommended, until i write something really profound or "Hold-your-belly funny".

Why do I write? Why not a book

Down thru the years, a number of people have allowed as how they find my writing amusing, a source of wisdom, or other flattering attention. As I count, I guess I have written about four lengthy manuscripts. To get a phD, is electrical engineering, I wrote a dissertation "Effects of Electron Beam Confinement on klustyron efficiency. For courses i was teaching, put together extended notes to use in lieu if textbooks; the first was "Sound, Acoustics and Noise Pollution."
Then I wrote "Electromagnetics with Design". Finally, for a publisher, I did "Circuit Design for High Frequencies and Microwaves" Worldwide, the latter has sold SEVERAL HUNDRED COPIES!!, meaning that I have yet to be paid minimum wage for the work.
Instead, I think will I get some fulfillment out of posting very small bites of old wisdom I have come upon, or occasional new insights which occur to me. I have borrowed other peoples' insights down thru the years. The first person who really spoke to me was Charles Schultz. His Peanuts comic strip spoke to me a lot. Maybe the midwestern background was a large part of his appeal to me; Like Charlie Brown, I have never place-kicked a football; however I can throw a Frisbie backhaND and taught my #1 son how. which stood him in good stead until he learned to throw it f0rehand at Onterlochen Internati0onal Music camp, leading to world-wide travel to tournaments in Ultimate(soccer with a Frisbie) tounaments in St.Andrews, Stuttgart and Honolulu. I guess the wisdom insight as that you can never predict the consequences of seemingly trivial choices.

We begin

Those wondering about the title of this blog will be informed by the following. I was travelling in Europe with my sister Autumn, having recently put her boyfriend, now her husband, Gary onto the plane to take him home, while Autumn and I took the car, a 1966 Volvo, which we had driven 6000 miles, to those who would ship it home. An egregiously aggressive driver cut me off from my intended progress and I exclaimed "Bilgers Blaggers Blog" whereupon Autumn said, "My, that surely isn't what I expected you to say."