HAVE BEEN DOING OTHER THINGS

I just realized that it has been over a week since I turned on the computer.   I must have been doing other things, but I can't think of anything that I accomplished.  

I have been wondering and meaning to ask the question:  Do you remember toothpaste tubes before plastic?   Were they lead?  

I remember rolling those tubes up from the bottom - and they stayed rolled - perhaps lead ingesting is why I wonder about such things.

I'm just saying
the Ol'Buzzard 

FUTURE SHOCK

Alvin Toffler back in 1970 wrote the book Future Shock claiming that human beings were not genetically capable of processing changes at a rapid pace.   He claimed that changes must come slow for humans to be able to adapt, and therefore the future would not greatly differ from the past in any one lifetime.

This seemed to make sense at the time because it had taken decades for a transition from radio to television, and from black and white television to color television; 

from telephone operators to dial phones…

And then along came computers and disproved his entire premise.

In 1960 I was introduced to computers in the Navy and they were analog – wheels, diodes and punch cards

In 1964 the Navy bought aviation navigators in VP-26 anti-submarine squadron hand held calculators for $300.   They were about the size of a small book and could add, subtract, multiply and divide.  

Prior to that navigators and technicians used slide rulers.

In 1985 I was introduced to the Apple-2e computer.  It ran 48k of memory and could read six-inch floppy disk.  

 In 1988 I bought an apple 2c with a smoking 500k memory that could read three-inch hard disk.  For $550

In 1995 I bought a Dell computer with 250 megabytes of memory for almost a thousand dollars. 

I just bought my wife an HP laptop with one trilobite of memory for $350.  

Since 1985 we have gone to computer regulated cars, cell phones with more power and more features every year, the internet, GPS, driverless cars, DNA, cloning, satellite television, portable computers that can talk with you, intergalactic space probes and a technology that seems to be advancing in gargantuan steps almost monthly. 

Where in 1947 we were talking about the Bell-X-1 rocket ship breaking the sound barrier, 

today we have space probes traveling to other universes.  

Some of us older people do have trouble keeping up; but to young people this is conventional. 

I have seen more changes in my lifetime than people in a hundred generations prior to me experienced. 

We tend to forget this is an amazing time.

the Ol’Buzzard

IN DEFIANCE OF AGING

Ever wonder why I would call myself ‘Ol’Buzzard?’   It is in defiance of aging.  It is in your face to young people – fuck them.

At a younger age Mohave Rat would have probably called himself the Desert Fox, and The OldFat Man might have easily called himself Ulysses; I use to call myself the Mountain Man on the CB.    But now we are old – we know it – but we don’t accept it -  we call ourselves what other people would likely call us – but in defiance.  

the Ol’Buzzard

THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE UNPACKED

This is how it is suppose to work.

What could possibly go wrong?

Remarkable scientific achievement.
the Ol'Buzzard

THE LAST GREAT BASTION OF CAPITALISM…

We live in a capitalist society and it is time we quit crying about the inequality of income.   By definition, money created in a Capitalist Society goes to the people with money.    Capitalist Societies do not exist for the benefit of the poor or the middle class.   Workers are meant to create wealth that goes to the top.   In a Capitalist Society it is not the people that generate wealth, but the people that accumulate wealth that are respected.

America is the last great bastion of Capitalism.  Our government works as it is supposed to, passing and respecting laws that generate wealth for the wealthy, and relying on trickle-down economics will provide cake for the unmoneyed classes. 

Once Capitalism is in force, you can’t change any part of the structure without destroying the concept of capitalism, and by extension the economy of the country.    Our whole economic structure, and therefore our social structure, depends on business thriving at the expense of labor. 

If the pharmaceutical industry was replaced with socialized, price controlled medicine, millions of people working in and supporting that industry would become unemployed.   If the military industrial complex was downsized millions of people would become unemployed.  If the insurance industry was replaced by Medicare For All…    if the fossil fuel industry was replaced by clean and available solar, wind, water and tidal… 

The creation of wealth by these industries go to the Barons of industry, and as long as these industries are profitable the rest of us get to eat cake.   

The Republicans understand and support this Capitalist concept; while we Democrats live in a Capitalist world while dreaming a Socialist dream.  

Reality sux
the Ol'Buzzard

A NICKLE AIN'T WORTH WHAT IT USE TO BE

We wake every morning into our mundane life worrying about finances, relationships and Donald Trump.   We move through this venn diagram of intersection relationships and concerns with the idea that if a tree falls in the forest and we don’t hear it – it doesn’t exist.

And then there is a moment of awakening where we realize how small and insignificant we actually are

Yesterday I was listening to Maine Public Radio in our car and the discussion was on the possibility of alien life in the universe.   Noted astronomers, including Stephen Hawkins, made the case that the chance there is not life scattered throughout the universe is so small as to be discounted.

Our Milky Way galaxy is believed to contain upward to one hundred billion stars, and with the discoveries of the Hubble and Kepler telescopes we have found that most stars have orbiting planets, which brings the estimate of planets in our Milky Way Galaxy into the trillions.   

It is also estimated that at least ten billion of those planets are located in what astronomers call the ‘sweet spot.’   This is a location relative to its star where the temperature and conditions could support life forms.    

Beyond our own galaxy there are hundreds of billions of other galaxies containing trillions of stars and uncountable planets, many with the possibility of supporting life.  

The soon to be launched James Webb telescope will expand our knowledge ever farther - to the first light of the universe - and the possibility of defining actual life habitable planets

The idea that only the earth, among the expanses of the cosmos, could develop life (and what in our egocentric idea is intelligent life) verges on the ridiculous. 

And that's jinga
the Ol'Buzzard

RV ODYSSEY

 Chapter 1

All of our life together my wife and I have moved from one adventure to another, but for the last three or four years we have stagnated.  

Don’t get me wrong.   Retirement is good.  We have a nice post and beam cabin, very few bills and we are able to keep the wolf away from our door.   

But there was nothing on our horizon.   So last December we purchased (got a loan) a 1998 Four Winds Class C RV that is thirty-one feet long.   We have left it sitting in our driveway waiting for spring to get it ready for the road.

Kulkuri and Nan call their smaller RV the Guppy – I guess we will have to call this one the Whale.  

 It is at least six feet longer than I would like, but it was the right price, has new tires, rear brakes less than two years ago, new ball joints about three years ago and a ten-cylinder Ford engine with sixty-eight thousand miles on it.   It is nearly twenty years old so there is some wear; but nothing we can’t patch and repair.   It is actually in pretty good shape. 

That brings us to why I am sitting here exhausted, back and legs aching, just had a BC powder and sucking down my first Bloody Mary.  

The ladder on the back of the unit was not secure and needs replacing.  I ordered a generic replacement ladder from Camping World and this morning about nine-o-clock I decided it was high time to start repairs: beginning with replacing the ladder.

No sweat, I told my wife, a couple of hours job. 

Then I began: thirty-two screws holding the ladder in place.   Sixteen of them rusted and the heads stripped – or I stripped them.    After getting tools, losing tools, hanging off my extension ladder, cursing, sweating, cutting up the ladder with a hacksaw I finally removed the RV ladder and all the screws about one-o-clock.  

Wife called me in for lunch.  Back out after lunch and assembling the generic ladder, but not all the bolt holes line up.   The RV itself slopes just below the tail lights so I will have to modify the ladder to mount it.   The ladder mounts are different from the ones I had just taken down so I had to fill the holes with caulk and put flat head screws in where the old screws were – must keep it water tight - and will have to reposition the new mounts.   

I have never used the special RV caulk before and that stuff is good: It glues my fingers together and the screwdriver to my hand. 

It is five-o-clock and I am beat.   Fuck it.  I’ll finish it tomorrow.  It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. 

Must make a second Bloody Mary.

the Ol’Buzzare