I Assume

The important stuff is being taken care of, right?

Just maybe, we all take too much for granted.  We assume that the important things are being taken care of, or maybe even the things that might someday be important are as well.  In 1572, with his naked eye, Tycho Brahe noticed a super nova (a tiny star that suddenly wasn’t so tiny any more) in the constellation Cassiopeia. This observation more or less proved that the heavens were not unchanging original works of God.  In 2014, this information has informed our astronomers where to aim their very high tech instruments and we are still learning a great deal from this one small point in the sky.  As the kings pondered the deployment of their armies and the farmer milked his cow, do you think that they too, assumed that the important things in our universe were being observed and recorded?

We take advantage of discoveries made by people who are trying to understand our world, but for every researcher there are a thousand soldiers and the American government alone spends as much money on armaments as the rest of the planet combined.  Are you sure that there are enough people paying attention to what is really important?  We just might miss something if too many of us attend to the wrong things most of the time.  I wonder if Tycho was hungry back then.  What if he had been very very hungry?  

What if he had been drafted to fight in a stupid war?  Now, that Louis Pasteur guy and Jonas Salk...

Pundits

On August 4, 2011, gold closed at about $1650 per ounce. That's about 22% in six months. This is likely reflects the level of confidence so many folks have in our House of Representatives. Unfortunately for us little investors, the really big investors and Governments don't have to pay that 15% charge every time they buy or sell something (nor the tax on transactions), so they're in a position to push the price up and down to their advantage.

The financial pundits are always making fun of the "cash under the mattress" people. Burying stuff in your back yard ala Erskine Caldwell may seem dumb; right up until you pick up the paper and see that your NYSE stocks have lost thirty percent of their "value" in a week, and then they lose another 20 % over the next month or so... Don't we wish we had had all our money in gold in September 2008 (when it was about $700.)?

We need to remember that those same pundits called "no money down, no principal paid the first year loans" for super over priced houses _SECURITIES_! (House prices propped up by Greenspan's super low interest rates.  "Hey! I can afford to pay for more house than I can use for more money than I have because the Government has interest rates WAY below the inflation rate! And I get to deduct the payments from my taxes! And the house will double in value in three years.*" And the real estate people obliged by hawking the "no risk" investment potential of houses and there were TWO TV shows about "flipping houses" for big bucks.) Now let's bundle the loans and sell them to other banks! Oh Boy!

SECURITIES! Secured by what? A promise to pay made by someone who is spending 130% (average American family debt) of their income on restaurant meals, cars, and vacations? (Also "secured" by a family home "equity" loan. Equity that only exists and only on paper because the real estate sales people SAID the house would sell for big bucks because *see above*). SO, does anyone ever ask just exactly where the big bucks sales commissions for Realtors come from? Or where the two billion dollars came from that the Sandler couple walked off with just prior to the implosion of their World Savings Bank? Their bank was so Ponzied with fake "securities" that it brought down Wachovia, the purchaser.

The worst thing in the world that can happen to you is for a realtor to tell you that your house is worth twice what you thought it was IF YOU AREN'T PLANNING ON MOVING! And maybe even if you are, because you have to live somewhere and you'll have to buy another house that's probably over priced by the realtors."Everything is worth what someone will pay for it." said Publilius Syrus about 2100 years ago. But that is only true if there is money out there. How much money disappeared in the fall of 2008? Everything is worthless in dollar terms right up untill it's sold. A house (realestate) is two things; an investment and a place to live. don't confuse the two.

We give lip service to the fact that everything comes from somewhere and you don't get something for nothing, but if you're just buying and selling things, houses, and companies, you're not creating anything, you're just moving money around so fast you get to keep some of it (Ayn Rand). Now, just where did all those "profits" come from? It's too complicated, say the pundits, you wouldn't understand.
Back in the 17th century there was a bubble for tulip bulbs in Holland. You could buy two or three houses with the right kind of tulip bulb because the bulb was GOING TO BE WORTH SO MUCH MORE TOMORROW! Forever and ever.
I'm still reading that the housing industry isn't back to "normal". Normal like what was going on in Las Vegas? I wouldn't live there if you gave me a mansion.

If it's worth saying, share it.

After plowing twice yesterday, I went out with the tractor this morning (a little hard starting at 10 degrees, I had starting fluid, ether [spell check?]).  Myrtle, the tractor, got hot (she was low on coolant) and I got cold (wind chill is real, and people, if your boots are tight, you are not improving the insulation factor - I know, I did it with my gloves inside of gloves today.  I can't remember when my fingers have been colder).  But we are in great shape, the County even plowed the road and the mail came too.  No wind here either (this is what spell check kept giving me for ether).

Wednesday is our hearty breakfast day, eggs and grits and lots of toast.  It helps to put fuel in the belly on a cold day.  I have had to put a little extra wood in the shop stove too, I didn't drain the "plumbing" and I've got some Jerusalem artichokes in there...  But I melted some lard from my disastrous attempt to make cracklin's at the store the other day, and I've made some high fat cakes for the poor little birds out there in those single digit temperatures.  Man!  How do they do that?   Those little tiny fluff balls.

Plus I've spent some highly inappropriate time on some American chestnut staffs (with silver soldered reinforcement rings, aluminum spikes in the bases, hand checking, and melted bee's wax wood finishes).  My wife, Chris, writes books that will be around for centuries (if the human race survives) and I try to make a few thingies that someone will want to keep a hundred years from now (if the human race survives) because they might appreciate the time, trouble, materials, and attention to detail, that I put into them.

Now, considering the fact that I believe that when I die, the “me” will be as ephemeral as the bacterium that you obliterated with some soap and water when you washed your arm pit this morning…  Why am I still trying?  Why does anybody still try?

Crazy is as Crazy Does

Well I did it again.

I did something crazy, I gathered dried bean pods from our garden green beans that we’d ignored for the last 6 weeks.  I think about my friends Claudio and Cruz whenever I do this, and I’ve written about it before:

http://somelightsomeserious.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-do-you-remember-when_25.html

"People call me crazy doing what I’m doin’,   Well they give all kinds of advice, to keep me from ruin…”

This afternoon I spent a half hour gathering a gallon of dried bean pods (and I’ll spend at least an hour getting the dry beans out of the pods so that we can soak and cook them).  And I spent more just a little time picking individual beans out of the soil where they’d fallen, all the time bent over.  Many of these beans were smaller than any bean you have ever purchased, by the pound, by the bag, at the grocery store.

So am I crazy?  Maybe.  Unlike people like Ted Cruz, and Mitch McConnell the senators, who work tirelessly 120 days a year trying make sure that things don’t happen; I’ll work two or three hours and get a cup of beans to eat.  

You can call me crazy.

A Note to the Fifth Graders taking SOL Tests

What am I supposed to remember?

Every day, friends, parents and teachers tell you stuff and you have to ask yourself; am I supposed to remember this?  Am I expected to remember this?  Will I be tested as to whether I remembered this or not?

The answer is: You'll never know which are the important things and which aren't.  I'm not a young person any more, but I remember something said to me when I was 11 years old, way back in 1958...   My friend's mom told me that she could write any number in the world with nothing but 0's and 1's.  Like, 101101 (which is 45 in our numbers).

We write our numbers in decimal: (base ten: our 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9     We've got ten fingers so we chose ten).  Or they can be written in binary: (base two:  0 1).  Or we could use three: 0 1 2 , or four: 0 1 2 3, or any base we choose [even sixteen:  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 x y z a b c ].   Computers use electricity and that only sees ON and OFF,  computers can only see two kinds of digits (fingers).  They count with only 0's and 1's but they do it really fast!  Computers are running the world, they are in every product that uses electricity.  They have changed the world.

My friend's mom was a very funny looking lady and you probably would say the same thing about her.  She was way over six feet tall and she looked like a man and didn't wear womanly clothing.  If she hadn't been my best friend's mom, I would have been afraid of her and probably never would have listened to, much less remembered, anything that she said.  But what she told me that day was true.  She and her husband were helping to invent computers back then and I was there on the computer's first birthday.  Why do I mention that she was funny looking?

You never know where the really important things will come from so you should want to remember everything, not just the stuff you think will be on the test.

That lady told me something that I didn't think I would ever have to remember, and that something turns out to be pretty important today.


Good luck, work hard and remember everything, you just might need it on a non test day.

Mr. B

To Niggle is a good thing

Occasionally, things do work out for the best.  The other day while volunteering at the elementary school, when I heard that "my kids" in the 5th grade would be having a test and I wouldn't be able to help, I said to another tutor, that I'd sit and read the dictionary while they worked.  I told her that there was a wonderful quote that went: "Most of the things that I've learned were when I was looking something else up."  That's a paraphrase, I can't seem to find the correct original quotation.

As luck would have it, I flipped open the dictionary and the first thing I saw was: "niggle".  (niggle; v. i. To work fussily; to pay too much attention to details, to putter.)  That's ME!  I make thingies!  I will obsess over details and processes and parts that will never show (or likely make any difference in the long run).  I can niggle for hours in my workshop, making parts for thingies out of copper and brass and searching for just the right kind of home made wood for this or that part (and certainly not using up a piece of wood than is 20% bigger than I need).  Not to mention that the thingy itself has a very questionable reason to be made in the first place.

Many years ago, I read a story by J. R. R. Tolkien called: "Leaf by Niggle".  I never knew whether I was pronouncing the name: Niggle correctly and I didn't connect it with a real word.  I recall that the story was about a man that worked his whole life on one single painting and that at the end of his life, "The Powers of the Universe" kept one little part of his painting: a single leaf.  And they laughed.  I have a home made guitar stool in my shop that I have been building for more than a decade.  It has seven or eight different kinds of wood in it (all made from trees, not purchased wood from the hardware store).  Years ago I stamped the words:  "Leaf By Niggle" on one leg.  On top is written: "Worlds Ugliest Guitar Stool".  I'm not done with it yet.  Now I need to stamp "Leg by Ralph" on one of the other legs.

Donald where are you in our hour of need?

I am relying on people everywhere to use all possible means to contact Donald on this vital mission: 

The only rational explanation of how crazy the things that Wayne La Pierre is saying is that he is a "mole". That as the central part of a vast conspiracy, he was planted by foreign interests, likely African or East Asian, about 50 years ago so that he could be raised American and someday be elected to the Presidency of one of the most powerful institutions in America: The National Rifle Association. From this position, he could then impose his and his masters' mission which is the utter destruction of the very institution that he heads. 

In so doing, he will then destroy the essence of America, freedom, and everything that we hold dear. We can only hope that Donald Trump will help us in our hour of need by exposing these facts to the nation.  Maybe a reward for a birth certificate?