Does Jesus cause weird weather?

Some 20 years ago, there were seven years when California rainfall was much below normal. Meteorologists claimed the drought coincided with higher than average temperatures of Pacific waters around the time of Christmas. when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus; the Spanish influence in California caused the naming of the meteorological phenomenon as "El Nino" for the infant Jesus. This year, the opposite condition, cold Pacific waters, called "El Nina" (Unless we got it backwards)seems to have led to some great skiing on Thanksgiving.

Now, those with good memories may be thinking, is not this writer the incurable punster who is fond of saying "Isn't a meteorologist a person who can look into a girl's eyes and tell whether?" Jokes aside (temporsrily)that drought had severe and unexpected consequences; not only did farmers appropriate the water that could grow grass in Beverly Hills, but electrical consequences were surprising. Normally an 8 foot copper rod is driven into the earth as "ground" at the supply pole, another is driven in at the user's pole. It is expected that grounding currents can flow through the earth because there is a lot of it, but conduction may fail IF THE EARTH IS TOO DRY. The result was that a lineman atop a 40 foot ladder yeached for the ground wire and got a jolt that knocked off the ladder. He was very lucky to survive;
this safety engineer was never told whether he returned to full effectiveness when his fractures mended.

In about a week, the Arts Director of this house leads a group of nearly 30 to an opera named "El Nino", by a MUSIC PROFESSOR at Berkeley. Now we are very acquainted with the rainstorm Beethoven wrote into his Pastoral Symphony; Rossini seems pleased to make people carry embrellas in several of his operas. We may report, post facto, whether there are "shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night". Several years ago, this same opera company presented an angel with one wing in an opera about "Francis of Assisi". What next?

I choose Edgar

On Wednesday, there were two news artricles concerning middle-aged men shedding tears of gratitude for their recent successes. John Boehner(rhymes woth "no-brainer") was pathetircally grateful that Republican victories sending them to the House of Represesntatives would make him eligible to be elected Speaker of the House, thus eligible to be President ahould sudden death overtake President Obama and VP Biden. His success is strongly rooted in his ability to make consecutive statements which absolutely contradict one another. e.g. "The Stimulus Plan is a failure" and "I have brought all these jobs to Ohio". Is it any wonder that politicians are uniformly distrusted?

Monday evening, it was pretty thrilling to us neighbors of San Francisco to look at the tv screen as the left and centerfielders of the baseball team formerly owned by George Bush watched the ball hit by one Edgar Renteria as it flew over the fence. For that hit and for otherwise inspiring his team, Edgar was chosen Most Vauable Player of the 2010 World Series.(Edgar's body is so damaged that he will probably never play another game of baseball. Indeed, the next day he received a severance package from his team.) It is left as an exercise for the student to guess which tears of joy your blogger identifies best with.

clarence thormas should apologize

to the people of the United States for accepting a seat on the Supreme Court without visible qualifications or contributions to the work of the Court. He has shamelessly given his proxy to Justice Scalia. He has published utterly no (zero)original opinions. He is complicit in the most shocking dereliction of judicial oversight in Supreme Gourt history. I might have accepted his performance only as the worst visible manifestation of the evils of affirmative action, had not Mrs Thomas, with astonishing effrontery, chosen the moment to urge Anita Hill to apologize to HIM for her testimony, in the confirmation hearings, concerning his sexual proclivities and his violation of Ms Hill's civil rights in exposing them to her. I believe you, Anita Hill.

The Beginning of Wisdom

Yours truly encountered the publoications of both Hugh Hefner and Chaeles Schulz at roughly the same time in his life. He arrived at the cow college of Michigan at age 17 and very quickly found a cigar store/magazine stand which stocked (until the supply ran out) a glossy new publication named "Playboy": as bait for the normally sex-obsessed teenage male, it contained a number of photos of busty young women. Shockingly, the writer observed there were also word articles on pertinent topics of the day and even clever cartoons, such as two hairy guys peering over a snow bank and one is saying,"here comes another one of those abominable moiuntain climbers". But the most famous scrap of wit casme from Mort Sahl, who almost invented standup comedy. He foresaw an entire generation of young American men who would arrive at the marital bed expecting their brides to have staples in their navels.
Schulz clearly absorbed a lot of scripture during his up=bringing in Minneapolis. It is heartwarming to people of faith to hear Linus quoting "There were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. Still, he was frustrated by the existentialism of being his parents' second-born. "I didn't ask to be born second. I didn't even get to fill out an application!"
And so, a naive but voraciou-s reader of a boy arrives from the orchards of north-western Michigan and begins to learn unimagined beauty, unimagined sordidness and poverty and, gradually, the complexity of human society. Some boys (and girls) go where their hormones lead them, some are delighted to learn of philosophers and are attracted to a life of the mind. Some are so overwhelmed by the sheer number of human beings that they are ready to apply statistical mechanics to their behavior. We become more careful about choosing our gods; it was Albert Einstein who said "My God does not play dice games" and a Japanese named Esaki who said "Electrons trapped between two hills have a finite proabability of tunnelling out. If we believe that, what could we build? Tunnel diodes, anyone???

What hath Facebook wrought?

In a more pious age, Samuel F.B. Morae invented telegraphy; his first message was
"What hath God Wrought?" More than a century has passed and your writer and his erstwhile colleagues hath wrought vacuum tube signal boosters, teletypes, fake baseball broadcasts by the likes of Ronald Reagan, television, radar, the transistor and many other things including recently, Facebook. In connection with that last item, it is a little staggering how many people want to be a "friend" of an old geezer.
All of this leads inexorably to a very pertinent question, to wit; In God's Green Earth, How does Sarah Palin get on my Facebook page? The other night I checked to see my lastest Facebook requests, and there she was, the former governor of our largest and coldest state, over which Russian ICBM's would probably fly, on their way to kill us all.
It would be nice to hope for some rational thought from such a celebrity but it is not to be. The woman may look a lot like Tina Fey but has much less talented writers. It is not that I have any hopes if being hired for the gig. Just keep reading the blog; some good vibes will surely come to me.

It worked!!

By this time, you would have top be living on Walder Pond not to know that the rescue capsule that NASA furnished to fish the miners up that 2000 foot shaft to their patient families (and one mistress) was a success in getting all the entrapped miners out. Then the tv cameras were turned off and up came the heroes who voluntarily went down there to show the miners how to ride it up. So now,they say they will seal the hole and go elsewhere for gold and copper. Good Show to all. and thank your various deities and your ingenious human friends.

A moment in History?

As I start this, the crew is yet to send that rescue capsule to the trapped Chilean miners. We have very few eye-witness reports of history being made. I did see on tv the astronaut Neil Armstrong go down that ladder onto the surface of the moon. I do not remember any interviews with Frenchmen who saw Charles Lindbergh land in Paris. I suppose many thousands of us have heard the transcription of the fatal landing of the Hindenburg in Lakewood, N.J. It is very close to starting time; will it work? Tune in to tomorrow's blog.

Give us this day our daily Mondegreen

A certain number of us hear the first line of "America the beautiful" as "Oh beautiful for spacious guys". This line has great appeal for us fat guys or any one us for whom the 105 year old excerpt from the Northport (Michigan) leader mentioned the return of a noted of my grandfather businessman from downstate saying "All his friends gathered to speak to 'Fat Charlie' " Those wishing to research "Mondegreens" in depth are recommended to all ten years of Jon Carroll's archive under "SFGate", the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle. You might also be titillated by his Hemingwayization of a trip to IKEA to buy a table.

I guess I have been a "spacious guy" ever since I was champion weight-gainer in the 7th grade. I did reach a local minimum attending Ordnance School at the beginning of my compulsory military service; having no wheels, I habitually skipped lunch and was at 150 in my Detroit aunt's house on the way home for Christmas. At home, I am sure I sang that car0l in which "Round John Virgin" appears; being on the farm, I was also much captivated by that carol "Silo at Night".

I caught the train to Huntsville, AL and rode into town with a bird colonel, soon to be a general and executive officer for the post. On New Years Day we greeted the post commander and I had my first caviar. My reaction was that of a subsequent state university colleague from Minnesota who said "I don't eat bait". I stayed pretty steady until the night before I was wed, when my mom prophecied "Well, if you marry that German girl, you're going to gain weight". (From Mom's language, you could wonder if she thought I had an honorable alternative choice)
Well, in fairness, my mother-in-law, whom I dearly loved, was also important. I did carry my bride over the threshold of our first rented house but I am no longer the man I once was; to be complete, she is no longer the girl she was. However, neither of us has gotten an ultimatum from our doctors; Spacious is okay, one hopes.

Sarcasm, or an overdeveloped sense of irony?

I can't remember what led to it, but one day the prettiest girl in my confirmation class said to me,"You're too sarcastic!". I was a bit nonplussed; I figured I said things because of the Norwegian gene pool and this girl was just as Norwegian as I, which is to say 50%. Still, I could always stun my contemporaries with vocabulary, and maybe they misunderstood me; the result was that a neighbor cousin dubbed me "professor", a destiny that illustrates her prescience (unless it was the idea of her good friend, to whom I later sold a car.)
I will freely say that the most useless things I learned back then were the rules of grammar, which have been falling by the wayside every since at the cow college I took what we called "spitten and broken English." The first doggone day, the blooming professor, in a three-piece suit, yet, miss-spelled a word on the blackboard, before our very eyes. Still, I really enjoy vocabulary, if only for the anecdotes and jokes. There was the day Mrs Noah Webster caught him in the pantry kissing the maid. She said, "Noah, I am surprised!" and he replied, "No, my dear, you are astonished. I am surprised.
Just one more and then I must go. An English professor walks into a lunch place and orders
"Figs and cream, please" She brings a dish of figs covered with cream and he says, "I ordered figs and cream." and she says that's what I brought. He says,"This is figs with cream" She starts to stammer, "Aren't they the same thing?" He says, "would you say a woman and child is the same as a woman with child?"
Shalom.

Does Father still know best? Did he ever?

My dad has been gone for more than 28 years, but I would be hard put to fault him on any economic decisions he made. He presided (officially) over raising 6 kids to maturity and was able at the end to turn over the farm, on which he may still have owed some money, to my two brothers, one of whom still owns it. Now, my mother was pretty smart and seldom complained of the difficulty of keeping us fed and bringing some beauty into our lives. Precisely when women became eligible to vote, she voted, probably for Harding, but one has to understand, down on the farm, we believed in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Republican party, which we were taught was full of hard-headed businessmen. who knew what was best for us. One of the most valuable things we learned in the second half of the 20th century was that women are much smarter than we had thought. I am confident that all of my sisters have been full and equal participants in their family decisions. One can doubt the wisdom of having six children in one family, but four of those were conceived in the euphoria following victory in World War II.

Now, from the perspective of a man who will soon score fourscore years, I say we must concentrate this century's efforts on educating our females equally with the males; both need to learn that numbers can be much more usefull than simply keeping score in a football game, and that there are superstition-free ways in which the sciences work. They should learn that babies are animals with extremely trainable brains and that no matter where they were born, they are entitled to air that is pure enough for their survival, and that no matter in what nation they are born, they deserve the resources of this earth sufficient for their survival. Climate change must be seen as an obstacle to civilized society and headed off asap,

The Celebrated Clarence Darrow of Leelanau County

Calaveras County. CA celebrates its jumping frogs; Suttons Bay, MI, has "still kicking and screaming" Dean Robb, who is proudest of his history of "sticking up for the little guy". To be successful in the courtroom, an attorney needs finely honed dramatic skills. Counselor Robb hones his by impersonating Mark Twain, complete with white Southern gentleman suit. Not a minute too soon, he and his son are about to publish his memoir; to get the true measure of the man, we must read his book to see how he stood up for the little guy. I await the publication with great difficulty, but much anticipation.

Does the AT&T Network have a dress code?

In the sober Midwest, where this writer grew up, one is apt to encounter many businesses, mainly restaurants, with a sign at the door, saying "No shoes, no shirt, no service". In a far from complete traversal of the contiguous 48 states, carrying an IPhone 3, the writer has been often been disappointed to see the notation at the upper left corner of the screen saying "No service".After long experience, I have given up checking the adequacy of my wardrobe: with tender feet, I am always wearing shoes; being sheepish about the non-sheep nature of my chest(No hair),I am always wearing a shirt. No, one has to doubt the completeness of the AT&T coverage.

The author spent the first ten years of his professional life working on projects related to the interception of missiles coming over the horizon. It was related to this that the GPS system was developed; there should be no place on earth that is not "seen" at any time by four GPS orbiting satellites. However,several days ago, the author and his spouse were approaching a collection of houses named Copperopolis, CA and the question was, "How far are we from our sleeping place?" The message on the IPhone's screen was "Unable to determine your present location" Thus, a sobering rhetorical question arises, to wit,"Suppose Copperopolis os being attacked by mussiles fired by terrists (giving it the pronunciation common to the speakers on the Fox network}from the former Soviet Union or the Moorish Kingdom, how are the citizens of Copperopolis to defend themselves from missile attack?"

What hath facebook wrought?!

In a more pious age, Samuel F.B. Morse invented telegraphy and the first message he sent was "What hath God wrought?" In 166 years since then, your writer's forebears and then his colleagues invented wire less transmission, then commercial radio, then the first television, then radar, then in 1948, the transistor, followed by the integrated circuit, large scale computers, global position systems and now vast amounts of trivial communication on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and so on. He was thus nonplussed today to find his speaking to colleagues and children on the same Facebook page as Sarah Palin's familiar face. I knew it was Ms Palin because it looked like the spitting image of Tina Fey, who, I am compelled to say, has much better writers. Those million monkeys seated at keyboards are going to write down the complete works of Shakespeare any day now; either that or the entire production of Johann Sebastian Bach. One must hope for the best.

East by Northeast can also be Hairy

The reader may remember North by Northwest, in which the debonair Archibald Leach, later known as Cary Grant, and the beauteous Eva Marie Saint, Hitchcock's blond of 1959, are talking to an idler in the Dakota territory, and he says "Funny thing. That crop-duster is dusting where there aren't any crops." Soon they are strolling down the highway and the plane comes behind them acting like he will land right on them. So they hit the asphalt, without noticeable damage to either Oscar-earning face.

A similar thing happened to this writer last week, and his helpmate, the saintly NEN, who was driving her late engagement gift (Beamer SAV) on I 80 where it skirted a rice field nearing the state capitol of Sacratomato. Suddenly, a chopper appears about 20 feet away and 20 feet up. "Sacre Bleu!", exclaims the saintly madame,"That character is usurping my right of way" Fortunately, the guy turns his machine on a dime (Remember, a dime no longer mails three letters and returns a penny change). The pilot cries,"Those blighters will never give the blight to this rice crop" as he sprays a swath in the opposite direction. This story must end without the vivacious NEN and her spoonerism-quoting emeritus professor chasing the bad guys over Lincoln's face on Mt. Rushmore.

How did we fail you, Steve Jobs?

I know exactly what was our failure, actually. The idea has arisen that electromagnetic waves are a form of black magic; indeed, was not Sam Morse's first telegraph message "What hath God wrought"? In fact, radio and its ilk have always seemed a bit magical. Indeed, this writer remembers introducing FM to a batch of young men the airforce sent us; there were heard muttering to the effect that "f" stood for the standard obscenity and "m" meant magic. Like many of the engineering arts, good teachers can convey how to enhance desireable phenomena and how to minimize the undesirable. However, most engineering schools cop out on the enhancement of electromagnetic propagation.

The invention of the transisstor and the integrated circuit have led to formerly undreamed of miniaturization in electronics. However, antenna optimization may depend upon the wavelength of the carrier frequency; the idea of miniaturizing the wavelength seems to elude the bright young people surrounding Steve Jobs. A number of generally excellent universities lie within fifty miles of Cupertino, but their graduates seem unacquainted with the basics of antenna design. This writer finds the topic of antenna system design fascinating and stands ready to bring it to those who need it. Down through the years Steve Jobs has been generally sure-footed in the introduction of new products. However, these useful devices are put to use by average people who perhaps need just a small amount of training in their use.

Can a boy from Brooklyn wrtie cowboy music?!?

There we were in Stern Grove waiting for the sunday afternoon music to start, namely Aaron Copland's Rodeo, when this blogger was assailed with existential doubt. This was not the first time the writer has doubted the versimilitude of of Copland's inspiration; his opera, The Tender Land, takes place at Commencement time and contains two migrant workers who want to work the "spring harvest". Now, the blogger grew up in northern Michigan, where about the only things harvest in late May was the occasional radish or green peas from the lucky gardener who dodged the bullet of late frost. But then he became aware of a Jewish early harvest festival, named, amazingly, Pentecost. The storal to the mory seems to be, "Artists grab their inspiration wherever they can"

Sure, we're unique

Everybody in Northport, MI, says so. She overflows with energy and ideas. He has a remarkable vocabulary and can be funny. One way in which they are not unique is that there can be traumatic failures of communication. He may utterly miss the clues as to what is important

to her. Several years ago she greatly enjoyed a tea party (Real, not political) for which she and the wife of one of his childhood friends dressed in late 19th century styles and other gentility. This year she received another such invitation, for the very day before we were scheduled to leave the state. He saw the invitation more than once, but failed to(1) note the date and time and (2)recognize her high hopes to enjoy another such elegant event. A famous San Francisco columnist had a saying, often repeated, "Husbands are a sorry lot". He should have known, having experienced four separate ladies, before the cancer carried him off. I have only failed this one lady, but I know pain and frustration when I see it, and resolve to make renewed efforts not to overlook important clues, even those in which the key word seems to be missing.

News from the land of No-Starbucks?!!

Your reporter has lost track of the number 0f years he has listened for the News From Lake Woe-be-gone. It was thus a matter for steep disillusionment when, some 50 miles into the state of Lake Wobegun, his helpmate inquired of a counterperson,"Is there any Starbucks near here?" The answer was, "Gee, I think you wouldn't find any this side of Duluth." Such backtracking was not in the cards, but one wonders, given the Norwegian addiction to caffeine, has Garrison been joshing us all these years? (Sorry Joshua, sometimes it is irresistible for us standup comedians occasi0nally to take your name in vain.) Further discrepancies abound; with a father, brother, nephew and brother in law all named Ralph, we have yet to find Ralph's pretty good Grocery, having to settle for an LA-area supermarket chain. We from Michigan have of course long since given up looking for a Bertha's Kitty Boutique. Our cats lived in the barn, caught the occasional mouse or pigeon or milk on the fly; Those who survived to adulthood slept ATOP the cows on a winter night. Homecoming Queen honors pale to insignificance compared to National Cherry Queen. Certainly we expect no used op septic tank to cruise through the town; the last one has been replaced, at monumental expense by a municipal sewer system.

Spies Like Nice Things too!!

An acquaintance of a lady now accused of being a Russian spy remonstrated "She can't be! She does such nice things with hydrangeas." The lady in question cartainly was not hard to look at but did not remind one at all of Pussy Galore; instead, it telegraphed "middle-aged Slavic". The observer obviously did not understand that a person in the spying trades oughtnot to advertise his/her occupation. He/she ought to look very average and not appear any smarter than those surrounding him/her. If he is surrounded by sports fans, he should cultivate his knowledge of the NFL, of soccer, tennis orwomen's volleyball. A woman ought to do a little gardening if her neighbors do. If everyone drinks beer, your spy couple might do well to forsake aged in oak Chardonnay for a time. If the neighbors are careful buyers, a wine-loving spy would do well to learn to love "Two-buck Chuck".

What is the flavor of seven?

Yours truly was responding to the super buy on soda pop down at the local Safeway. He scanned the ingredients of several and found that for Seven-up. they had listed "natural flavors" Thus the question arose, what is the flavor of Seven? One certainly has some rational expectation of how orange soda should taste, as well as lemon, lime and others. Actually, the flavor of 7-up, by experiment, has a bit of suggestion of lemon and lime, but is this what one is supposed to taste? In the words of the king of Siam, "Is a puzzlement."

Travel is not only broadening, it's thickening

The licensed engineer, former scientist and language fanatic, tends to look at physical objects as having length, width and perhaps, thickness. Speaking of the human body, its length is called the height, width is largely dependent on bone structure, but if one thinks of the German excuse for not having dessert, "Er macht dicke", we see that a trip to Vienna may indeed make the torso thick. Thus, travel may greatly improve ones knowledge and broaden perspective, but one is well-advised to limit exposure to cream sauces, Belgian waffles and "Das Beste von der wurst"

The name is NOT the thing

I understand that General Motors is seriously requesting that their lowest price full-size car not be called a "Chevy any more, but the whole word, with adopted French pronunciation "Shev-ro-lay". One can somewhat sympathize or understand the thrust of this plea. Calling a boy who named James "Jimmy" is a well-known diminutive, emphasizing the boy's immaturity or lack of importance. GM shoould grow up and acknowledge Chevy's history; in 1955, they put a gasoline-hungry V-8 into some Chevrolet's and sent a shudder into the souls of Ford-lovers who began to lose drag-races. "My Chevy can take your old (Whatever) and day of the week gave no hint of minimizing the power of the GM product.

It is in the area of politics where the art of sloganeering achieves its most pernicious use to disguise real consequences. It is commonplace for Republicans to characterize Democrats as "Tax-and-Spend Liberals"; this implies that spending on highway buildup, the military or public education wii continue, financed by mortgaging more of the national treasure to China.

I guess I find that the deception of many without consequence which saddens me most is the practice of pregnant women who wear T-shirts with the abdomen emblazened, "It's a baby, not a choice." This implies that the choice to have unprotected sex has been sanctified by t rumping the entire gamut of unanswered questions: how will the unborn child be fed and otherwise cared for, educated in the human necessities to speak, bcome part of society, become part of society, work to continued feeding and growth to eventually pay taxes. Americans, like too many people of the world, need to be more aware of the consequences of their acts.

Late Mother’s Day thoughts

How do you celebrate Mother’s Day? Would your mother be proud to see you in a motorcycle caravan of 50-100 machines on I 80 just west of Lincoln NE on Mother’s Day Eve; the oncoming lane had more headlights than many funeral processions. I know the mother to whom I an (still) married would not be very thrilled to know our son was so involved. I am confident that outside of our observation he has been involved in many activities that would take us aback if we had timely knowledge. He has only admitted about two things that have caused us to shake our heads in retrospect. After an Ultimate (Frisbee) competition in Boulder, CO, a carload of athletes had 20 hours to get back to Santa Barbara via Santo Cruz. They needed to do a lot of 100 mph, so they agreed they would share the speeding fines. They got nailed once (not our son) in barren Nevada,of all places.

The other alarming incident (that got reported) came when he and buddies went surfing in the Sea of Japan with the waves whipped up by a distant typhoon. His board came floating in without him and the current girlfriend pleaded with his friends to paddle back out and look for him. Before she could convince them to go, he came swimming in. Later inspection of the board, which clobbered his head smartly enough to crack the board, showed hairs of his head imbedded in the crack.

` As those of you with daughters know, their exploits are less alarming. Ours is wanting to hear from us daily from the highway, lest she call out the Parent Police to check on our progress from our trek from San Francisco to the little finger of lower Michigan. We just found out this morning that the vaunted AT&T 3G network lacks coverage for most .of the state on Nebraska. Hope you had a happy Mother’s Day.

Rampant Immorelity!!

It's been a funny year, the locals say, but aren't they all? Cherry blossoms were pretty much gone

before our (the Californians) arrival a week or so into May. For this blogger, the harvesting of the local mushroom with French name "morels" has always been an existential thing. Many people are better at it than he. Still, neither he nor his helpmate have found one in two weeks. There may be fungus among us but they seem to be staying underground. However, those of us who would be standup comedians find some punchlines too good to pass up. Hence, our tital. Enjoy. Bon appetit even, if you find some.

To everything, there is a season

"Local conditions may vary". On Norwegian Independence Day. the Asparagus Goddess of Leelanau Township ventured into the field which could once have provided 20 pounds of produce at this stage of the year. A determined reconnaissance yielded 21 stalks total. "Another proof of global warming, we say". The simple-minded response is certainly satisfying. to wit: "If, as you say, the earth is warming up, why is the wather so cold, with several feet of new snow in the Rockies and floods other places?"
Nothing is simple, folks. Green-house gases in the atmosphere cause it to absorb a higher percentage of the sun's radiation. Averaging over the whole earth, including many acres of ocean without weather stations, it is warming up, providing the energy to produce violent results, such as tornadoes, typhoons and hailing taxicabs. (Beg pardon. the blogger could not resist a third grade joke) Thus, although an asparagus festival was held Sunday some 25 miles to the southwest, perhaps they shipped produce in from semitropical Southern Michigan.
A somewhat more enlightening expression than global warning might be "climate change". Unless we make substantial changes in the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the air. we may not see what we expect as an asparagus season, or smelt runs or the alewife plague. And unless we quit mortgaging our land to the Chinese, our grandchildren may curse the day we resolved to ignore the warning signs

Do you mean power or energy??

Now and then a person who can speak with authority should do it. This blog has entertained you(we hope) with chit-chat for more than half a year. It is time for the emeritus professor to say something worthwhile. It is also hoped that someone knowledgeable can clear one of his nagging doubts.

Setting the stage, consider the following: all night we leave on a CFE (compact fluorescent emitter) rated at 11 watts to help yours truly to find the bathroom without his glasses. Suppose he gets the recommended eight hours of rest; thus, the energy expenditure for the night light is 11 watts times 8 hours, or 88 watt-hours of electrical energy. It turns out that watt-hours are impractically small; we are charged for kilowatt hours, so we move the decimal point left three places and say we used 0.088 kwh. If we are billed 10 cents per kwh, our cost for the night light is less than a penny.

People who newly f ind out you are from California very quickly ask "What about all those earthquakes?" Okay, I have lived in Northern California for more than fifty years. In that time, I have felt about three shakes. About 1960, I was seated at my desk in the Hansen Labs and the floor felt like it was bucking up and down. I heard no more about it, so I guess it was not newsworthy. In the past year, I felt one jolt and the pendant hanging on the mirror was going click-click. I googled geological survey and they said it was near where my sister-in-law lives, 50 miles away. They had not felt anything. During the 1989 World Series, I was at my desk in Sacramento, preparing for my graduate lecture, and my tummy felt a little funny. It broke the Oakland Bay Bridge and postponed the A's humiliation of the Giants for a week. The quake epicenter was over 100 miles away but a number of my neighbors had tsunami's in their swimming pools that sloshed out half the water.

Now, a Cal Tech geophysicist named Richter invented "seismographs", which I understood to measure "intensity" of the quake. Newscasters try to speak of the "energy" using the Richter scale. If it is indeed "energy" that is quoted, there must be some way of factoring in the duration of the shaking. Somebody who knows, clue me in, that I may popularize it to my five readers.

Is God really jealous?

I remember that suggested in the Old Testament report of the gift of the Ten(15, if you are a Mel Brooks fan) Commandments. One result was the military campaign of Joshua, where the Israelites understood they were to slaughter every man,woman, child and cow in the "Promised Land". The result has been a thousands of years of bitterness we still see in the Mideast. Are we to believe that God does not love his whole creation and want us to live in his respect and peace our cocreatees? Maybe the idea of a Triune God, with the promise of the Holy Spirit, who communicates to all, including Buddhists, Muslims, common to many faiths, should be explored, respectfully of course. See, I am not being a deliberate heretic here, but if we loved all our neighbors, might there not be the new millenia of peasce on earth, good will to all? Anyway, this was not a revelation received on top of a mountain, but at about 15 feet abovote sea level on the wrong side of the San Andreas fault. Thus part of my faith is that I will not be aboard to fulfill Curt Gentry's prophecy that land to the west of the fault will slide into the Pacific. See, my love, not all Norwegian thoughts are dark!

cats are people too!!!?

So said the sign on a colleague's door. Now, maybe one of my 4 readers saw the story regarding the whale who was all tangled in a net for some days. Several divers cut off the ropes and freed the whale but he/she stuck around a while "trying to thank us". One has also heard of porpoises who seem very intelligent. This raises the ethical question,"Is a butcherable animal one you don't know personally? I previoualy mentioned my Guernsey cow could shake an apple tree for the enjoyment of her and her colleagues. She, fortunately for my sanity, entered the food chain out of my sight. Maybe the vegetarians occupy a higher moral plain than us "flesheaters". Well, in the words Yul Brynner delivered as king of Siam (now Thailand), "Is a puzzlement"

Constitutional Right to Keep Bare arms

Early this Easter Monday, I am struck that I have not yet seen any Easter Sunday pictures of the presidential family, nor for that matter, I don't remember seeing any last year. Early in the term, much was made of Mrs Obama's sleeveless tops. I. have always said, if they look good, let's see them. Surely the constitution guarantees Michelle's right to keep bare arms, but often we Californians forget that winter may be hanging on in some areas. In early 1975, I was on sabbatical leave and in Rhode Island on baseball opening day, lazy snowflakes were drifting down. For April 19, local radio was saying "Surely you should come to Concord, but don'ts expect to (1)Find parking (2)Find food or (3) see anything. However, Boston TV reenacted the redcoats marching in close formation, and the revolutionairies hiding behind the trees. I am not a real poetry fan, but Emerson's words choke me up a bit, "By the rude bridge arching the flood, their flag to April's breeze unfurled, here the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shots heard 'round the world." Vaya con Dios and God save the United States of America.

Randumb thoughts get posted randomly

One is cursed with random availability of time to write and A COMPUTER THAT RFUNCTIONS RELIABLY.

I surely hope I haven't misled the government

You, see, it's like this: I mailed off the census form today saying who lives at this address as of April Fool's Day and I intend to be at least vexed on that day if the list does not include me and my loved one. Growing up on the farm, I became accustomed to favorite animals going off to join the food chain while I was in school. This happened with "Sha's cow", who seemed a bit brighter than the rest. She it was who discovered she could grab a branch of an apple tree and shake it and down would come numerous apples for everyones enjoyment. She and I went through ringworm together, signs of which thinned the hairs on her Guernsey skin and still can be seen near my left elbow. I left her to go off to the cow college and when I returned, I found she had been judged menopausal, which in a cow means there is no longer any reason to produce milk, so off she goes to become ground beef. When my loved one hears this, she is apt to exclaim,"Enough with the Norwegian fatalism already!" Well, many good things come to and from the cow colleges of the nation. Not many years ago, a professor of some health science vacationing in her native Hungary decided to bring back cuttings of the local tart cherry that grows near Lake Balaton. My nephew and a former classmate planted a quantity of these trees, now named for the lake; I find the fruit spicier than the prevalent Montmorency and here I predict it will eventually be the preferred breed.

How did faded denim get to be people's Sunday best?

As your writer grew up on the farm in the Midwest, faded denim was a material one wore to milk the cows, squirt the cats in the face and remove evidence of bovine metabolism from the barn floor. UNfaded denim could be worn to school at a risk of being considered a hick and the necessity of running bases stiff legged until the pant legs would bend. Sunday wear for boys was at least trousers with a crease and perhaps a shirt with starched collar decorated by a necktie, tied four-in-hand by the geezer set or a Windsor knot by the style-conscious younger males. Girls wore frilly frocks; their mothers wore staid dresses or business wear.
Last Sunday, an informal survey in church by yours truly found roughly 50% faded denim among both male AND female, including the pastor's wife. Perhaps the latter made her decision using the Reader's Digest suggestion the lady considering this should seriously consider whether her end truly justified the jeans. Still, the thoughtful Lutheran wonders if such garb shows due respect to God.
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Gotterdamerung, or the twilight of Carly Fiorino

At one time, giants trod the earth. Lew Terman invented IQ and begat Fred. Fred taught everything to Bill and Dave. But there was Depression in the land, and no jobs for even Stanford grads. So Fred said, never you mind; just build a dozen of those neat signal sources and sell them to Disney to build his empire of Fantasia. Meanwhile, I will build the greatest junior university in the world, with its German motto, "Die Luft de Freiheit Weht", which translates to "Make checks payable to Stanford University". And it was done.

Soon, war came and other giants arose, such as Generous Eccentric, I and BM, and Various Associates. To all of them , Bill and Dave sold wide-ranging signal sources, versatile VTVM's and eventually, reverse Polish calculators. After peace returned, I and B.M. said "Let us build monstrous mainframes and sell them for a megabuck each." Then, the Steves said we could put something on everybody's desk and sell them for $5K. Next Bill and Dave said,"We could do that for a kilobuck if we use that virus-prone and hackable operating system from up north. They got bigger and bigger and then they said,"It is not as much fun as it used to be. Let's split it up and split." So they said,"From now on, H.P. will be computers and peripherals. We will call the instrument division Agilent". Meanwhile, in the city, Lotfi, pronounced "God's Grace" in the original Farsi, was wowing the susceptible with musical tales of dwarf gold miners and the follies of trying to woo 1000 ladies all at once.
Women also became giants. DiFi said "I come not to praise Moscone and Milk, but to bury them", which she did. Moscone got a convention center named after him. Milk got an opera, first staged in Texas of all places. Pamela took over the opera but ran low on money and succumbed to the less critical attraction of grandchildren. Bill and Dave put Carly in charge of HP, who wanted to build her kingdom and sought mergers; remembering the difficulties of Eve from swallowing apples, she aimed higher and swallowed Compag instead. Even so, the computer industry got into the doldrums, and the nations Nibelungs, led by young Hewlett, were saying they could sell lots of ink for the price of one computer. So Carly let out a contract on young Hewlett. But even with a spear sticking in his back, young Hewlett was looking better than Carly, leaving her the choice of (1) Walking the plank (2) riding her horse into the inferno or (3) blowing her severance pay on a race for the U.S. Senate. Thus, once again, we see the wisdom that is stated at the end of the story of Ali Theeva and the Forty Babs, "A mool and his funny are poon sarted"
This leaves but one steroid-free giant on earth, Larry the Oracle, who seems to think he is Pavarotti and thus allowed to keep the citizens of San Jose awake until all hours. Those who could, moved to Tracy, where the sleeping is easy, and hired a bus to take them back to their offices in Silicon Valley. At this writing, Larry was dickering to buy a roundball team that no longer has that center that claimed to have successfully wooed 10,000 ladies. Maybe he will go back to racing sailing boats before he blows his fortune.

What is this insame proliferation of apostrophes??

This morning I was occupying my mind with the tv in front of the mill I was treading and seeing the commercial for some financial servi"ce that said "No deposit's ever!" For several years there has been an inexorable increase in the appearance of apostrophes at randumb intervals and a number of questions occur to the inquiring mind, such as "Can't these guys get proofreaders?", then recognizing the use of apostrophes in forming possessives, "what can a deposit own?" and finally "If it looks peculiar as heck, is that a sure sign it is correct grammar?" More and more over the years we have seen violstions in objects of prepositions, such as "At the sexy movie, they refused admission to my little brother and I". How is it possible that they had better English teachers in a tiny school in northern Michigan thsn all those city schools? Of course, the following question begs to be asked, "What is the lasting benefit of being made to read "Silas Marner"?"

God is not a betting man

That is a paraphrase of Albert Einstein, the 20th century thinker who best exemplified thinking about the structure of the universe. He expressed public disagreement with theoretical physicist Paul Dirac, considering phenomena in very small places, such as atoms or even subatomic particles. Such particles may behave very differently from phenomena with macroscopic scales. A famous example dealt with electrons trapped in a potential valley because they lack sufficient energy to get up the hill. Dirac and others postulated that such electrons have a non-zero probability of tunneling their way out. Einstein famously stated he did not believe God would "play dice games" . Yet, creative physicists and engineers were led to invent a tunnel diode microwave generator with electrons using the tunneling effect to escape the potential valley. Your writer remembers Hewlett Packard, (and later the part split off from the company as Agilent) selling instruments containing tunnel diodes. Perhaps one is unable to answer the existential question, "Do electrons actually tunnel their way out of a potential valley?", but real devices act as though they do. Certainly, although Einstein deserves much credit for his theories of general and special relativity, one can wish he had not made dogmatic assertions which are not borne out by physics experiments.

Paraphrasing the Pennsylvania Dutch----

We get too soon old and some of us never DO get smart. I have been hassled by a jumpy cursor and I finally thought Maybe I should slow down my "mouse" I put the speed at minimum, which still seemed plenty fast, but seems not to have had eny effect on the jumpiness. I looked up "Computer Exorcist" in the yellow pages and found nothing promising. I am too old to want to send some guy 20% of the price of the computer to some trouble shooter on a promise. Stay tuned to see how long it takes me to throw out this pile of junk and get a decent computer, namely a Mac.

The burden of a sense of humor

Where did it come from? My parents gave their v0ws on October 1, 1921, in the front yard of the Ole Martinson farm. In the next five years and four months, there came four children, two daughters followed by two sons. Six years, one month and one day passed without further issue. Then, in the midst of worldwide depression, on the very day the incoming President exhorted his audience with "We have nothing to fear but fear itself", the y0ounger of my two sisters looked down through the hot air register meant to transfer warm air from kitchen to the "girls room" and said "We've got a boy baby" Older sister said, "Surely not. you must be imagining things".
Now, my mother, being a purebred Norwegian, had a somewhat limited sense of humor; Some things did seem funnier in Norwegian than in English. Sometimes, her telephone conversations with her best friend, also Norwegian, would be punctuated with hearty laughter and one of us kids would inquire, "What was so funny?" Iy appeared that the humor did not translate.
Despite very difficult economic conditions, my dad could find lots of life to be funny. Much of my dad's background came from the British Isles. It was abetted by the funny paragraph or so filling the page after articles in the Reader's Digest. We six kids varied greatly in our funny bones. Our oldest sister was comparatively serious. The brother born just before me was the family jock, with the athlete's sensibility. Maybe growing up during the Great Depression, we laughed so we wouldn't cry. Whatever the cause, it is certainly a gift. I used to think God had an unusual sense of humor.

Turn the collonpicker off!!!

I am appalled and non-plussed. When I was young just before plywood fighter planes started flying circles around the metallic products of Grumman Aircraft, our knowledge of Japan was largely of cheap knick-knacks made very cheaply. After almost four years of warfare, we put mushroom clouds over Hiroshoma and Nagasaki and a military surrender occurred; Japam rebuilt their tattered infrastructure and began building economical cars. Americans believed Consumers Union's opinion that these cars were safe and reliable and bought them by the millions rather than the Detroit product. Now, we seem to have a rumor that many of the products of Toyota go berserk and run into things on their own. One cannot help remembering the old witticism that part of the car causing the most accidents is the "nut that holds the steering wheel". It is not really believable to me the canny engineers who first built the Zeroes at Mitsubishi have totally lost their way. Maybe they should just borrow some news spinners to mostly close Pandora's box and bring people to take my advice at the top of this blog, find and fix the credible problems. As a native of Michigan Who has received a hug from the present junior Senator from the state, I control my political chauvinism, admit the world has become a world-wide market and urge that we educate our youth to learn how to contribute in it.

Staying Humble-- Are Numbers Important??

As I begin this chapter , this blog has total of two(2) confessed readers. By comparison, a glance at my Facebook entry makes reference to my #1 son. a handsome dude who was an Ultimate Frisbee jock of international reputation, has acted in vicdeos in Japan and writes a column discussing strategy for th Japanese version of Mahjong. Today's Facebook entry reports that some 43,000 hits have been made on his entry. In contrast,my blog has a total of two(2)confessed followers. Yours truly published a technical book "Circuit Design for HIgh Frequencies and Microwaves" and sold perhaps 500 copies worldwide. The kid published several paperbacks to teach California vernacular to the Japanese and sold almoest a million of the first one. To make a fair comparison, he may have earned less on that one book than I did on mine. Still, it does keep a guy humble. That's all for now, folks.

Why hiatus?

Well, after almost two months, I must say rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. So I sit down at my remorseless punisher of fickle fingers. There have been complications; I am trying to get a new(to me) printer on the air, but the design is almost 7 years old and there are no drivers that work for Windows Vista and eventually I decided to upgrade to Windows 7 which is cheap enough with academic discount but the next issue is 32 bits or 64, and I found out that my computer is expecting 64, but I still do not have the two machines communicating. It is enough to make a bookish kid grown old to wonder if his life would be more satisfying had he served time with the blacked out keys in the typing room on the top floor of "The Old Brick School" in Northport, MI.