And then there were two

The other day when Carolyn and I dropped in, we thought we were seeing double. Did Chuck get caught in a Xerox machine?

Chuckie has been a great dog for Ed and Tiffany and the boys. He's playful, attentive, and generally well behaved. But Tiffany was worried that he might be lonely on those days when the boys are both in school or pre-school, she's at school, and Ed is at work. So they began a search for Chuck's playmate.

With the help of Craig's List, Tiffany was able to find Toby at a home not 10 miles away. The folks there cried at selling their dog but with a baby on the way and limited budget and space, they felt they had to consider another home for Toby. They were delighted that they could place him with a family who already knew and loved the breed.

It's still easy to tell them apart as Chuck has a shorter tail and is a bit chubbier. And of course their personalities are as different as Tim's and Jake's.

Jacob takes the fifth

Birthday, that is. Yup, Jake is now 5 years old and for his friends' party this year his folks invited everyone over to Chuck E. Cheese's for an evening of fun and pizza.

He managed to go on all the rides that he was interested in, often with two or three of his friends along with him.

He enjoyed opening some of the presents with his friends and some of them after he got back home.

And we all got to enjoy the birthday cake.

Signing up for a new dentist

Our previous dentist (my cousin) recently retired almost coincidentally with our losing insurance coverage under my employment and having to switch to Carolyn's plan. The dentist who purchased my cousin's practice isn't in the group covered by our new plan. So we set out to find a new dentist. Unbeknown to us, the plan had actually assigned us to a dental office about 3 miles away from us but they had neglected to inform us of this assignment.

I called and visited several offices covered under the plan but didn't have much to go on. All were obviously acceptable to the plan and none had any black marks from state licensing. Some were in office complexes that weren't attractive or in run down strip malls. Another looked really good as it advertised "Spa Dentistry" where they can give you aromatherapy, a foot scrub, or even a massage while you're getting your teeth worked on. But it turned out they were no longer accepting new patients with this plan.

Another one that looked nice and had a great web site was staffed by members of our church but when I called the front office, they said they weren't accepting new patients covered by this plan. This time Carolyn took over, asking our friend in the church how to circumvent this restriction. He said simply, "Ask for Renee and tell her Ralph sent you." It worked.

Sacramento Organization for Rational Thinking

Our Critical Thinking seminar leader recently invited the class members to attend a meeting of the Sacramento Organization for Rational Thinking (SORT). I probably wouldn't given it a second thought because I'm not much of a "joiner" and I couldn't imagine how attending such a meeting would enrich my life or what I would be able to contribute. I was concerned that it would be something like attending a meeting of atheists discussing the non-nature of God.

But the meeting place happens to be the La Sierra Community Center, which is less than a mile from our house. I could walk there in a pinch. And I had a free evening. Carolyn was out of town so I couldn't even use the excuse that I needed to stay home with her. Plus, looking at their web site, I enjoyed their article on "Misinformation at Your Fingertips".

So what do "rational thinkers" do when they get together? Well, this time at least, there were about 20 members of the group (including some like me from the Critical Thinking class) who sat around a rectangle of tables discussing "health care in the United States". I guess I expected a little more structure such as a short presentation or a panel presentation followed by response and/or discussion - sort of like they do at symposia. Instead, the discussion leader opened the meeting by stating the topic and everyone who wanted to, said their piece - sometimes in response to previous speakers, often not. One member of the group tried to sort out and announce who was next to speak so everyone didn't try to speak at once but his system of sorting that out was not obvious to me or my neighbor who was constantly raising his hand but rarely called upon.

After close to two hours of random digressions and personal opinions the discussion leader announced that time was up and we adjourned for coffee, soft drinks, and cookies. A very strange meeting indeed. But rational.

A Bright by any other name ...

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet." --From Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

I've always been fascinated by reason and rational thinking. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I have both a BS and MS in mathematics. The rationality of math is just so compelling. And it is certainly one of the reasons that I have subscribed to Scientific American and Free Inquiry for a number of years and why I am currently enrolled in a Critical Thinking seminar in connection with the Sac State Renaissance Society.

In connection with the Critical Thinking seminar I have become reacquainted with a movement I heard about some months ago. This movement, called the Brights includes people who subscribe to a "naturalistic world view". The movement specifically declines any attempt to further define those words or to subdivide Brights into more specific subgroups. Like homosexuals who hi-jacked the word Gay to describe their sexual orientation, Brights have hi-jacked the adjective bright, turned it into a noun, and wish to use this term to describe their world view. Although some detractors have quickly complained that this seems to make the rest of the world population "dim", Brights counter that the opposite of Gay is Straight, not Sad or Unhappy. Thus, the opposite of Bright could be something like Super referring to those people whose world view includes supernatural or mystical components.

I applaud the Brights' attempt at defining themselves in a way that is positive and affirming rather than NOT this or NOT that. And the human brain being as flexible as it appears to be, I'm guessing that many people will claim they have a "naturalistic world view" and a "supernatural world view" as well. These people could perhaps call themselves Super Brights.

Volunteer Coordinator

A couple of weeks ago I reported an incident with Meals on Wheels where the number of meals delivered to me was about half the number I needed to deliver. Recently the same thing happened to Richard Haines, another driver at our pickup point. However, in this case Richard was escorting County Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan. Apparently March is national "March for Meals Month" and the good supervisor was showing her support by actually riding along to see how the operation runs here in Sacramento and to talk with some of the drivers and meal recipients. Well, she got to do that as well as see how a driver handles a glitch in the system.

There is probably no better person to demonstrate the system than Richard. While the rest of us volunteers are content to show up on our designated driving day and deliver the meals we've been allocated, Richard goes the extra mile and makes sure that all the routes are covered. When they must miss a day, some drivers get their own substitutes while others don't feel comfortable doing that. In either case, Richard keeps on top of the schedule and lets everyone know through frequent updating and emailing of the schedule. Where necessary, he steps in and substitutes himself if he cannot find others to do it. That might mean he drives 3 or 4 times in a week. He does this without compensation other than knowing that the organization runs better because of him. He's even been known to undertake small home repairs for MOW recipients and, in one notable case, play matchmaker.

Thank you, Richard, for being an outstanding, if unofficial, volunteer coordinator.

Cleaning service

There it was on our front porch, a white business envelope with the careful handwritten words "Lisa's Housekeeping". It might just as well have said "Free enterprise in America is alive and well". The enclosed flier answered the questions:

How Often Can I Have My Home Cleaned?

Do I Leave a Cleaning List?

What Type of Service Do You Provide?

Does a Team or an Individual Clean My Home?

How Much Does Housekeeping Cost? and

Are the Housekeepers Bonded?

It was all very professional looking as it should be for a company that claims to have been in business for over 12 years. But I did worry a little about the last sentence on the page: "Each housekeeper is bonded up to five thousand dollars upon conviction."

Another Daffodil adventure

We enjoyed our trip last week up the hill into Daffodil country so much that Carolyn persuaded a group of church members and friends to join us on another expedition this week. After a delightful drive through the hills of Amador County and a stroll through the blossoms on Daffodil Hill, we took a slightly different road back home which led us through the village of Volcano.

Volcano was apparently so named by the miners of the 1849 Gold Rush because they thought the valley was the caldera of a live volcano. Fog rising from some of the lower sections of the valley lent some credence to the idea as did some of the strange rock formations in the area.

But we didn't go there to see a volcano. We went to enjoy lunch at the General Store, as near as we could tell the only place in Volcano to get a bite to eat. Someone told us that the Store, built around 1850 of stone construction, is the oldest continuously operated general store in California. We did find the hamburgers which were cooked on a stone grill in the small dining room delicious. The service was brusque but sensible since there's such a small staff to take care of whoever comes in. Our sandwiches were served on "genuine" plastic gold panning pans.

A trip to Indian Grinding Rock State Park completed our adventure for the day.

How to Dunk a Doughnut - book review

Okay, so the book isn't really about "how to dunk a donut". The subtitle of the book "The Science of Everyday Life" just doesn't have the same eye catching appeal as How to Dunk a Doughnut. The author Len Fisher, in addition to being a winner of the Ignobel Prize in Physics has written more than 80 scientific papers and book chapters as well as made more than 200 radio and television appearances discussing the science of everyday life. Many of us think of science as something which affects our life only when a new invention hits the market or a new way of killing our enemy is shown on TV. But Len would have us know that science matters - everyday.

The book has chapters on dunking (cookies actually, not doughnuts); boiling an egg, evaluating, and possibly improving, various tools in our garage; estimating a grocery bill; throwing a boomerang (now there's an everyday act for you); catching a ball; observing foams in your bath or your beer; examining how taste and smell works; and even on the physics of sex. His humor and language is definitely British which sometimes works and sometimes needs to be translated for us Americans.

I liked the anecdote about Viagra. It was apparently being developed to treat angina, heart pains. The dramatic effects it had on the rigidity of the penis was only discovered when someone wondered why all the male participants of the experiment had failed to return leftover pills once the trials had ended. He then goes on to explain that of the 10 most significant medical advances of the twentieth century, 7 arose from research completely unrelated to the eventual application. In other words, targeted research is fine but we often benefit even more from untargeted research.

Electronic banking

The Internet has allowed us to do some marvelous things with our money that we used to have to do (gasp) in person. You know, things like deposit payroll checks, pay utility bills, and transfer funds between accounts. Why just recently I moved money from our savings account into 3 CD accounts whose maturity dates were spaced out 3 months apart. I expect a transaction like that in person would have taken a half hour at least instead of the 2 minutes it actually took.

But there is a danger in being too automated. I pay most of my bills through a program called Microsoft Money which has an arrangement with my bank to pay bills through Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) where feasible and by "bank check" when not. I've been doing this for 7 or 8 years. Although we've lived in Sacramento for almost 6 years, these "bank checks" still had our address from Long Beach. Thus, many of the companies I paid through the bank received checks with an address they couldn't match to their records. And since the whole process was automated neither I nor our bank realized the address was outdated. Of course the bank had changed the address of our account years ago but not the address on the automated bank checks.

Graduation Announcement or ??

We were happy last night when our daughter-in-law Tiffany gave us one of those chocolate bars wrapped with a personalized message wrapper. It appeared that she was getting a good head start on preparing announcements for her upcoming graduation in May. Sure, it seemed a bit early to send out announcements but there's nothing wrong in being prepared ahead of time.

Then I saw the small print on the right side of the graphic:

Accepted to Graduate School for Speech & Language Pathology at CSUS, Fall 2007 Semester!

That was what this was all about. We knew she was going to graduate this spring but it was not a foregone conclusion that she'd be accepted into the Graduate School and especially this fall semester. She was even starting to develop "plan B" for getting in in the spring or having to apply next year. So we were all thrilled and excited at this news.

Congratulations, Tiffany! We're proud of your accomplishments and delighted that your plans can go ahead this fall.

LibraryThing.com

When I began working for Harbor Regional Center in 1985, I discovered that the main Torrance Public Library was on my route to work and was, in fact, only about a mile from the office. That made it a perfect place to visit at lunch hour or on my way home when I wanted some reading material. Up to that point in my life, I had been an avid reader and regular purchaser of books. The bookshelves in our house overflowed with the evidence of my eclectic taste in books. But with the discovery of the Torrance Library I discovered the joy of letting someone else purchase, maintain, and store my books for me. However, not having the physical book on the shelf meant that I had to create and maintain a database of the books I had read in case I wanted to refer back to them.

Now it appears that I may stop keeping this database current. I have just discovered (with the help of the Sacramento Bee) a new web site called LibraryThing.com. This site has all the advantages of my old database in allowing me to enter when I started the book and finished it, my thoughts or review of the book, and call number. In addition, it looks up the book on Amazon and other major book databases and fills in the information I might be too lazy to enter or add the cover image that I didn't even have access to when I start my database.

I can also choose to share my database with others or find other people who also have this book in their library so that we can discuss our thoughts. It's like a gigantic, worldwide literary club. The site is even designed to offer suggestions "If you liked this book, you may also like this one..." sort of like Amazon does with your purchasing habits. Of course unlike the official library database, you don't have to add books to your LibraryThing catalog unless you want to so there is not an issue of privacy. You can even create a "public" catalog to share with others and a "confidential" catalog that no one else can connect to you.

The only problem I see right now is that a free account only allows 200 books to be cataloged. We have more than 2,000 books in our physical library and I have borrowed, read, and cataloged more than 2,000 books from the library. But maybe it will prove valuable enough to pay $25 for a lifetime membership.

Imperial Life in the Emerald City - book review

Reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran created some unusual feelings for me. On one hand I felt disgusted at the waste of money and personnel as well as the bubble of non-reality that was created in the Green Zone. But then I realized just how much the book consists of sour grapes and Monday morning quarterbacking. It's easy to poke fun at the insular life inside the Green Zone but anyone who has lived abroad on a military base knows that is common, maybe universal. The whole concept is to allow the personnel temporarily assigned there feel as much at home as possible. I've know people who have been stationed in Germany who never met any Germans, for example.

Less easy to forgive is the idea that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CAP) could and did act as if they were running a game of Sim Country, setting up the country as if it were a simulation or a classroom exercise. But again this is par for the course in the military and probably for the secret thoughts of the overachieving politician. We know what's best for Iraq. We make the decisions. We get them back on course. Some of the members of the CPA were even delighted that so much looting and destruction took place after the invasion because that left a clean slate to build upon.

I think our education system deserves some of the blame as these well educated men (for the most part men) sought to impose "ideal" American solutions on a ruined economy and a devastated country with wildly different societal norms and historical values. Complete privatization of industry hasn't even been accomplished in the U.S. but the CPA was desperately trying to switch Iraq's economy from heavy government subsidization while at the same time trying to get it kick-started. But, here again, it is easier to point the finger after the fact. Events described in this book make it clear that there just wasn't much prior planning for post-invasion nation building and what little there was wasn't coordinated between U.S. government agencies and certainly not with the Iraqis.

I think the book is an excellent eye-opener for just how difficult it is to rebuild a country that has been so spectacularly damaged, especially if you have a team that is long on ideology and short on expertise. It reminds one of the Communist effort to rebuild post revolution Russia.

Daffodil Hill

About 55 miles ESE of us there is a delightful location called Daffodil Hill. According to the handout we received at the Hill, Arthur and Lizzie McLaughlin bought the Hill in 1887. The former owner Dutchman Pete Denzer had planted all around the ranch daffodils from his native land. These daffodils became Lizzie's most prized possession and she carefully divided and replanted the bulbs until they filled her garden.

Following Lizzie's death in 1935 her children decided to plant more daffodils in her memory. As the numbers of tourist stopping to admire the flowers grew, so did the number of plantings. Soon, instead of hundreds, there were thousands. Each year approximately 7 to 8 thousand new bulbs are planted. There are about 6 acres of daffodils - 300 varieties and 500,000 blooms. Actual new plantings depends on the donations from visitors as there is no admission charge. Community volunteers help with the traffic control and parking.

St. Patty's Primary Pancake Party

Our local church just started a new tradition this year called St. Patty's Primary Pancake Party (for Senior Saints). Of course to a Primary child (ages 3 to 12) anybody older than high school qualifies as a senior so it wasn't too hard to get an invitation. The children participated in the decorating, the cooking, the serving, and even the games and entertainment. It was a delightful event.

The only problem we saw was that it was held at 8:00 on a Saturday morning, a day and time by which we seniors find it really difficult to get out of bed let alone venture out into the world for breakfast. But we made it and wish to thank the Primary children for their thoughtfulness.

Popcorn popping...

... all around our neighborhood. What a dramatic sight to see so many trees in the neighborhood suddenly pop overnight into glorious white blossoms.

A week earlier it seemed all the pink trees in town popped overnight. Just gorgeous. But it won't last long, you can already see the green leaves peering out between the blossoms.

An Inconvenient Truth - movie review

Since the movie An Inconvenient Truth, starring Al Gore received so much positive commentary prior to and during the Academy awards, I was prepared to be disappointed, and I was. But not with the movie.

The movie was everything that I could have hoped for - informative, fact-filled, humorous, entertaining, moving. I couldn't believe someone could take a slide presentation, even a great slide presentation, and make an entertaining movie but director Davis Guggenheim did a masterful jog. The story line - that human activity has pushed the world to the brink of cataclysmic climate change - is depressing but somehow the movie leaves you with the impression that all is not lost, that we're still in charge of our destiny, and that with immediate and appropriate action we can still maintain the earth as we know it. Of course, the movie also makes it perfectly clear that doing nothing will result in major changes in the world's climate, continental shapes, and even ocean currents.

Al Gore takes on the idea so common in the popular press that "we just don't have all the data we need" and properly puts it in it's place. We'll never have all the data we "need" but we have more than enough to justify changing our habits and our lifestyles. And if we don't, they'll be changed for us by Mother Nature in ways we probably won't be happy with.

Not knowing whether I even wanted to spend the $3.85 to rent the movie from Hollywood Video, I borrowed it for free from the local library. But I feel so positive after seeing it, that I'm going to buy it or ask for it for my birthday.

So how was I disappointed? I was made so aware of the fact that we came so close to having an intelligent, knowledgeable, competent President elected in 2000. I feel really cheated and let down by the American electoral process. And although that wasn't the theme of the movie, it is "an inconvenient truth".

John Brown's Body Lies a Mouldering in the Grave...

Just when I had made up my mind to be cremated and was about to pick up the phone to call the Neptune Society for details about how to go about making pre-death arrangements, an article in the Sacramento Bee caught my attention. Officials at UC Davis and Cal State University Chico are seriously looking into developing a "body farm" somewhere in northern California. In case you haven't heard, body farms are large open areas with a variety of vegetation, water features, and soil conditions where dead bodies can be left in various states of exposure to the elements which would also include small animals, bugs, and bacteria of all sorts. The idea is to simulate real situations where people are killed and left to return to the earth without benefit of embalming or cremation or the kind services of an undertaker. Local and state law enforcement is interested in this venture because all the "good" data on decaying bodies now comes from a body farm in Tennessee. Another farm recently opened in North Carolina and there is already a waiting list of 2,000 people hoping to not be buried there.

While I understand the need to have scientific forensic data, running experiments out in mother nature's laboratory seems about as smart as allowing a bunch of high-school seniors to test the safety features of a nuclear power generator. Science is usually done best under conditions that are carefully controlled and monitored. I hope the body farmers understand that.

Google Me, Google You

Ever since Google has been around, it has been a popular sport to "Google" friends, business contacts, potential dates, etc. to get a little "low down" on the person in question. Not exactly like a fighter "sizing up" his opponent but not quite so flagrant as one dog sniffing another either. It certainly surprised me to find a couple of my teachers at American River College knew stuff about me that they could only have discovered by googling me.

Almost as much fun for some people has been the act of googling themselves to find out what others would be able to find out and sometimes to discover their "Google Twin". I was a little shocked to find that I have 274 entries with one form of my name and 114 entries with another. And not a single "twin".

Actually, that's not completely correct. I knew from past experience that there is an Arnold W. Loveridge in Henderson, Nevada but he doesn't come up unless I google my first and last names separate. And when I do that I get all sorts of entries of Arnolds and Loveridges that aren't even connected. I tried to call my "twin" once when we were passing through Las Vegas but got no answer.

Until just a short while ago, the only person in our immediate family who had a Google Image was my son Lee. Now Steven and I show up in the Google Image search.

Daylight saving time

Leave it to the government to mess with a good thing, this time creating a "mini-Y2K crisis". By now you've all suffered through yet another switch to Daylight Saving Time. I use the word "suffer" because losing either an hour of daytime activity or nighttime sleep is a bit of a sacrifice. I won't repeat all the details about Benjamin Franklin's first proposing Daylight Saving Time or the various configurations it has gone through including this latest version as part of the United States Energy Policy Act of 2005. You can find the gruesome details on Snopes.com or Wikipedia if you want to do a report in school. Snopes even includes a description of a cute prank that one newspaper editor pulled on his readers regarding "saving" daylight time.

The "mini-Y2K crisis" I mentioned, occurred because we are so used to computers making life easier for us we want the computers to remember to automatically change all our clocks as well. Indeed, I was pleasantly surprised this year to find out how many of the clocks in our house did change automatically. They did this because they were connected to a phone or TV network, a properly programmed computer, or by radio to a central time stations. But at least according to one systems programmer we know, it didn't go smoothly everywhere. He had to deal with "dueling servers" each of which wanted to control the network time.

Rub a dub dub, 4 kids in a ... dump cart??

When my daughter Jessica saw the picture on this blog of the dump cart we recently purchased at Costco, she suggested that it might make a handy way to transport several of the children in her day care to church or school.

Not wanting to leave anything to chance, Grandma picked up another dump cart the next time we were at Costco and prevailed upon Ed and Tiff to haul the rather large box to Long Beach when they went down there last week for a conference. This picture testifies to the fact that Jessica was able to put the cart together and verify that it does indeed provide good transportation for four little ones. They don't have a lot of room to rattle around and you probably wouldn't want that anyway.

I suspect this is one wagon that will get a lot of good use.

Spring is in the air

If there's one thing I enjoy more than the feel of spring in the air, it's seeing Carolyn out in her garden enjoying the coming of spring. We're expecting temperatures in the 80's this weekend and into next week so this is the perfect time to get out and start those outside projects.

While Carolyn was enjoying digging in the dirt, I managed to do a couple of projects of my own including mowing both front and back lawns, checking the sprinkler system to see that we haven't developed some major problems over the winter, and spread some pre-emergent crabgrass killer and lawn fertilizer on our lawns. There was one break in the sprinklers but it was fortunately just a riser that was easy to remove (with the right tool) and replace.

Content creator

This morning I learned a new computer term to describe myself: Content Creator. The Sacramento Bee carried a short "filler" article which claimed that 57% of American teens "have a web page or blog or have posted pictures on the Web. The referenced source, the Pew Internet & American Life Project, elaborates with additional statistics. The survey report is 3 years old and in Internet terms that means a lot could have changed since then.

According to this report:

A mere 2% of Adult Internet users maintain Web diaries or Web blogs, according to respondents to this phone survey. In other phone surveys prior to this one, and one more recently fielded in early 2004, we have heard that between 2% and 7% of adult Internet users have created diaries or blogs. In this survey we found that 11% of Internet users have read the blogs or diaries of other Internet users. About a third of these blog visitors have posted material to the blog. Most of those who do contribute material are not constantly updating or freshening content. Rather, they occasionally add to the material they have posted, created, or shared.

I guess this confirms, yet again, that I'm an odd duck.

The Last Days of Dead Celebrities - book review

I freely admit that I often judge a book by its cover, or by the title. And you'll have to admit that this one is catchy on both counts. With The Last Days of Dead Celebrities, author Mitchell Fink has brought together about as unlikely a grouping of celebrities as one could imagine. About the only things they have in common is that they were celebrities and they are now dead - hence the title.

Some of them, such as tennis great Arthur Ashe, knew for months that death was imminent. Thus the story becomes a biography of how he handled the delicate process of notifying his fans when he'd rather have kept his AIDS private. (He was infected with HIV through a possibly unnecessary blood transfusion before blood banks knew enough to screen for the virus.)

Others, like John Lennon, died very unexpectedly - in his case at the hands of an assassin. Then the story reads more like a murder mystery where each little action prior to the murder asks the question "what if this hadn't happened this way?"

There's no particular moral or message from the book. If anything it is that each of us will die in our own way on a timetable that we seldom control. Even the suicides (of which celebrities are certainly not exempt) seem to be the result of forces just a little beyond the individual's ability to cope.

This is not a happy book.

$1,000,000

... is still a lot of money. Yes, I know I've been the Chief Financial Officer of various companies whose annual income ranged from $25 million to $200 million and I should be sort of immune to the impressiveness of numbers with six zeros in them. But now that I'm retired I don't see those kinds of numbers or sign that size of check any more. So I was a little breathless when, as treasurer of the Friends of the Sacramento Public Library, I did my part to accept and transfer the funding of our Endowment Investment Account to the tune of $1,000,000. I'll never see the actual funds, of course, even if I wanted to. It is being conservatively invested with a reputable investment manager. The money was a gift from a Mrs. Willoughby Lyons, a former board member of the Friends, who wanted to ensure that the Friends can continue to assist the Sacramento Public Library for many years to come. Thank you, Mrs. Lyons!

Too good to be true!

A friend recently e-mailed me (and several others) an article pointing out all the amazing things that your cell phone can do including:

Contact emergency support even outside your own service network

Unlock your car remotely

Tap reserve battery power in your cell phone

Disable a stolen phone

Access 411 information without incurring charges

Unfortunately, my friend sent out the information without checking the source or the facts. A quick reference to Snopes.com would have informed him that at best a couple of these items are partially true while others are completely erroneous.

Just a reminder - if something seems too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

Some thoughts on the US Postal Service

You know, just when you're about to give up on government agencies one comes along that is a pleasant surprise. This week I've been impressed by the US Postal Service.

The first instance was a news announcement that first class postage rates will likely be going up 2 cents in May. That is neither surprising, nor pleasant. But along with this announcement was the announcement that the Post Office would be selling "forever" stamps with no denomination that would be good for first class postage "forever". This is a brilliant, and long overdue, idea. Since they have the money paid up front, the longer between the stamp purchase and use, the more the Postal Service earns on the money. The "forever" stamp would be a hedge on inflation for both customers and Postal Service. The pessimist in me says they'll mess it up somehow, but for now it looks good.

The second instance came about as the result of my signing up late for a Critical Thinking Seminar with the Renaissance Society. I missed the group purchase of our textbook so I ordered it through Amazon.com. I was prepared to wait 5 to 9 days to receive the book per the Amazon shipping instructions. Not only was I surprised and delighted that it took only 3 days but I received detailed tracking information from the time I placed the order until it landed in our mailbox. They didn't lead the way, but the Postal Service is trying to keep up.

Fart Proudly - book review

Fart Proudly edited by Carl Japikse does indeed contain "writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School". Many of the pieces are delightful satire or political jabs at the established government or religion of Franklin's time. It is delightful to see that many of them, with minor changes only, would be equally on the mark today.

Franklin was not hesitant to speak frankly or about subjects we would deem too bawdy to discuss in public now. In one of the first pieces he challenges the scientists of his day to develop something we could eat to make our farts enjoyable to others, or at least pleasant. We do that now with deodorant and breath freshener. Why haven't we met Franklin's challenge?

My favorite piece was one Franklin wrote in 1745 "On Choosing a Mistress" which includes this advice to choose an Older Woman for these reasons:

"1. Because they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stored with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreeable.

2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility...

3. Because there is no hazard of Children...

4. Because through more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion...

5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part... so that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old one from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure or corporal Enjjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of improvement.

6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching of a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.

7. Because the Compunction is less... [you're] making an old Woman happy.

8th and last. [Because] they are so grateful!"

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the book is ruined or at least badly damaged when the editor concludes the book with a piece that he describes as a dream wherein he meets this Benjamin Franklin. Franklin then tells him in no uncertain terms just how far off the track America has gone and in which ways. He suggests that we modern citizens root out the asses in government and meet them stink for stink, farting in their faces, if you will, farting proudly.

Franklin may indeed have seen our world the way the editor claims but we'll never know. And putting words into others' mouths when they cannot refute them, is dangerously close to character assassination. Japikse may have all the libertarian feelings and thoughts that he wants but to have Franklin say them, even in a dream, is a crime.

New supermarket in town

... for us at least.
Because of my going to the Orangevale Community Center each week to pick up the meals to deliver for Meals on Wheels, a store that we probably would never have considered going to on any regular basis, may become one of our favorite choices. WinCo Foods is a huge, employee owned, well lit, well organized, warehouse type grocery store. But unlike other similar "warehouse" stores, you don't have to buy cartons or cases of product.

In fact, because they have a large selection of bulk products for such things as nuts...

and dried fruit, cereals, grains, candy, beans, and pasta, ...

you can literally buy as little or as much of these staples. (Candy is a staple, isn't it?) They have a great produce section, meat section, deli section,... well just everything that a "normal" grocery store has and the prices are 10 to 30% lower. They were even passing out samples of cherry pie today.

I suspect I'll end up shopping here almost every week.

Magazines coming to our house

This is a sample of the magazines that arrive at our house every month. The postman must think we're crazy, especially considering the variety. But these particular ones all have at least one other thing in common - they're free. Sorta. From time to time Carolyn and I have had the opportunity to fly somewhere and it hasn't been available or convenient to fly on the airline that we usually collect our frequent flier miles from. So we end up with some miles on Alaska Airlines or United and then never fly again on that airline or at least not often enough to earn a "reward" by the time the miles start expiring.

But somebody has discovered a way to get some value out of what would otherwise just be thrown away. We've been offered magazine subscriptions to "use up" these frequent flier miles. The offers rarely include magazines that we already subscribe to but some of the offerings really are good magazines. We get a one-year trial subscription, the magazine gets some exposure, and the airline gets to write off the reward miles. Talk about a win-win-win situation. We've already let several subscriptions lapse but it was fun getting the trial subscriptions.

8 Preposterous Propositions - book review

Author Robert Ehrlich, in his book 8 Preposterous Propositions, is not so much trying to convince you of his viewpoint on those propositions as he trying to show the scientific and critical thinking method that we all can (and should) use to evaluate these and similar propositions when we learn about them. In this way, this book is similar to a prior book by Ehrlich titled "Nine Crazy Ideas in Science".

This time around the topics are

homosexuality - heredity or environment

intelligent design

creeping IQ scores

psychokinesis

global warming

extra-terrestrial life - rare or common

the placebo effect; and

cholesterol, health hazard or not

For each topic Ehrlich examines the cases for and against while pointing out the dangers of being too open minded or too closed minded. He attempts to be objective while at the same time warning you in what ways he might not be. He even goes so far as to reveal that in the course of evaluating a particular topic, he has changed his position several times.

The net result is an excellent text in critical thinking and a fairly good book about the scientific method. His scale of "flakiness" (from 0 to 4 flakes) for how preposterous an idea is, is cute but, I think, would tend to indicate that science is rather arbitrary or that scientists somehow "vote" on how acceptable an idea is. I think he could do better describing the real path of scientific progress.