1199 The Practice Field

1199  The Practice Field

(STATE COLLEGE PA) -- This town has more meteorologists than Sing Sing has felons.

It’s a good thing, too.  Because this town is a weather practice field.

The regional joke is if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes and it’ll change.  Except it’s not a joke.

Someone “up there” is sitting at the controls.  One minute it’s sunny.  Next, it’s pouring.  A minute later and it’s sunny again.

The control operator changes every hour on the hour as students and trainees leave the classroom and the next class files in.

Here’s a listing of the various prediction centers:

1.  The US Weather Bureau has a full-scale operation here.  It’s a big bureau.

2. AccuWeather the private service is headquartered here and all the meteorologists you hear on your local radio station are right here, even if you’re listening in Los Angeles or New York or Right Shoe, Kansas.

3.  Penn State University has its own weather bureau.  It’s a teaching thing.

4. The Weather Underground has an outpost here.

5. The Weather Channel is available on basic service from two cable and two satellite TV providers.

So while the town is best known for the Jerry Sandusky Little Boy scandal and Penn State Football and drinking, it should also be known for weather.

The forecasters keep a low profile.  You would, too, with a track record like they have.

It’s sometimes hard to tell whether our weather comes from the atmosphere or the practice equipment.  If -- and this is rare -- a weather system stays with us for any length of time, chances are it’s “organic” or natural.  But most don’t.  So you have to think the weather is dependent on that learning equipment that controls the test field.

There’s some thought that this training facility violates the anti-trust law because students from all five bureaus share it.

And it’s hidden.  No one can disclose where it is.  Not even the NSA knows, and it knows everything.

Shrapnel:

--This is post 1199 and it reminds that local 1199, now the core of the National Health Care Workers Union has been doing a bang-up job since it was a small group of drug store employees at its founding in 1932.  1199 was a leader in desegregating health care in New York, carved out a niche for nurses in the then-forming middle class and spread health care unionization nationwide, forming mini 1199s, some affiliated, some not.  These are the people who take care of you when you’re sick and because they organized make a halfway decent living at it.

--You want to read the obits for the wife of folksinger and activist Pete Seeger, Toshi Seeger, who died 7/9 at age 91, there are plenty of places to do that.  But one aspect of her life and their lives that no one seemed to wonder about now was how a German born Japanese American woman and a white guy from upstate New York made their way through the early years as a couple.  America was at war with Germany and Japan and herding Japanese Americans by the boxcar load into “camps.”  Couldn’t have been easy when they wed in 1943.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

1198 On the Job Training

1198 On the Job Training

A trainee in the cockpit.  Flying in too low.  Flying in too slow.  Three factors in the San Francisco crash landing of Asiana Air Flight 213.  “Only” two fatalities, maybe fatalities under the wheels of rescue trucks and not because the slow moving plane tripped over a seawall at the end of the runway and caught fire as it tore itself apart and self immolated.

Asiana is not a dippy little nothing of a carrier, though many thought that... because who ever heard of them?  The Boeing 777 is not some slapped together tinfoil movie set version of a passenger plane.  It’s an accomplished and sophisticated machine with all the latest geegaws modern large scale aviation requires.  And make no mistake: moving 300 people at a clip over thousands of miles at high speed and high altitude IS large scale aviation.

But many pilots don’t like this plane.

Back in 2010, writing from Taipei, we talked to George the pilot.

(TAIPEI) --  He’s regaling us with tales of his two decades as a pilot for China Air, and he is scaring the daylights out of us.  He points out that the new Boeing 777 widebodies use only two engines.  This, he says, is less than a perfect way to traverse the Pacific.

Yes, the thing can fly on one engine, but not as high or as fast as normal.  Yes the engines are the most reliable in the world.  Yes, they are well maintained.  But still…

George is a huge fan of the earlier 747, gargantuan king of the commercial sky.  Four engines.  Much better odds if one falls off or decides to eat a bird and chokes.

We kind of scoffed at George as we jointly drained a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue and a pack of Marlboro Blacks. But this is a man who spent a lot of hours behind the stick, trained fighter pilots in maneuvering and flew thousands of passengers and tons of freight during a long career with the Air Force and with China Airlines.

Maybe the Asiana 777 had some previously undetected flaw.  Maybe the autopilot was on the fritz -- the latest available excuse/revelation/theory. Maybe the trainee -- certified as a captain on other types of planes -- was at the controls.  We don’t yet know that.

We will, though, soon enough.

Well, not soon enough.  But maybe soon enough to prevent a sequel.

Shrapnel (Social Network Edition):

--A large number of Facebook “friends” post reams of pictures of food.  Some of it is odd stuff... but most of it is just, well, pictures of food.  Boring, but at least there are no calories.

--Twitter has taught us a great lesson.  You CAN say plenty in 140 characters.  Would that the lesson be applied elsewhere.

--Linkedin endorsements abound these days.  Does it really mean anything when someone endorses you as a Jell-O expert?  And has anyone ever actually landed a job because of a Linkedin profile?

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

Portions © 2010, The McClatchy Company. Used by permission.

1197 Rockefeller's Trick

1197  Rockefeller’s Trick

Maybe he didn’t invent the idea, but John D. Rockefeller showed us the way to kill the competition.

His Standard Oil Company would sell its crude cheaper than anyone else, willingly taking losses even early on when they couldn’t afford to.

After awhile, the competition went broke and went away.

The biggest of the big box stores operate a modified version of the game.  Wal-Mart, Lowe’s and Home Depots aren’t quite as direct as Rockefeller, but their squeeze-’em pricing has emptied many an American downtown.  Try to find a real hardware store anywhere.  Sure they exist.  But not in great numbers.

The latest merchant to climb aboard this train is Amazon.com.  Admit it; you have a personal relationship with this faceless online giant.  You feel it serves you personally, just like they used to at Bob’s Books down the corner.

People who use the Amazon website think of it as someone who knows them well (it does) and who can anticipate their needs (it can) and who likes them; welcomes them.

Amazon is more than just another shopping site, it’s a gathering place where people exchange views, freely express unpopular opinions or support popular ones.

Touchy-feely 21st Centurions as they play on the web, Amazon has started using a decidedly 19th century approach to its few remaining competitors.

As the New York Times reported the other day, Amazon is raising prices and diminishing the discounts that put it on the map.

They’re not doing it in a big way.  Not yet.  But discounts on best sellers often shrink before your very eyes.  And some cases, according to the report, there are no discounts at all.

Amazon owns the e-reader market.   No one else even comes close.  So it has complete control over the price of much of the content.

And it’s getting so that it is dominating the physical book trade, too.  

The cited report says there’s no way to track the price changes with the same certainty you can track temperature readings or how much fuel you use for heating. It’s wrong.  There is.  But you have to fight computers with computers and somewhere, there’s someone writing a program that will give you Bloomberg Terminal-style fluctuation reports in real time.

Shrapnel:

--That price cutting trick doesn’t work for blogs.  No matter how free this one is, it’s not gaining the kind of circulation you’d expect. But over time, we have crept into the top five million for reader attention.

--With the menus spread open before us, the waiter asked if we had any questions.  Yes, we do... like “which side should we be on in the Egypt conflict?” “where is Eddie Looselips?” and “why are hummingbirds so small?”  Probably, though, she meant questions about the food.

--Little stirs the anger of the word police like finding “waiter” applied to a restaurant worker who is female, as in the above shrapnel entry.  But calling her “waitress” is old fashioned and possibly sexist.  And calling anyone server is demeaning.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

1196 July Fourth

1196  July Fourth

Okay, we’re over it now.  Independence Day, July 4th has come and gone and we’re all feeling patriotic and in need of Tums and anti-bite salve after a day of picnicking and barbecuing.   We oohed and aahed about the fireworks displays we fought traffic and crowds to see and we all flew the flag.

Um, about that patriotic thing... what does that mean these days, anyway?

Patriots.  Members of the professional football team based in Foxboro, Massachusetts?  Members of the hate groups that wrap themselves in the flag and defend themselves against the attack of government black helicopters that are waiting in hidden valleys just waiting to take away their freedoms at gunpoint?

Are they the scholars who believe that the founders of this country were all knowing, all seeing and capable of dealing with centuries worth of new situations hundreds of years after their deaths?

There’s no doubt that was some group, those founders.  But they were neither omnipotent nor omniscient and they likely knew that.

Do you?

Of all the things the founders didn’t foresee, two stand out.

First they could not or did not imagine the immense geographical and technological growth the US has managed since their day.  And even more damaging, they did not see that we are not as grand as they were and don’t act as they did.

They wrote a grand constitution but realized before the ink was dry (ink really DID need to dry in days.) amended it to fill holes they didn’t see in the original.

So are true American patriots the people who are constitutional fundamentalists?  Or is there patriotism in dissent as well as in rote following of every word?

They appear to have believed in the latter, else there wouldn’t be a mechanism to change things, a mechanism they designed and left for us.  They appear to have believed in the latter or they wouldn’t have given the three branches the powers to change things.

But what would they have made of what’s going on in Washington today?  What would James Madison say to John Boehner?  What would George Washington say to Barack Obama or any of our other recent Presidents?

What would Thomas Jefferson say to Harry Reid?  Or to the Klan-like “Patriot” groups that sponsor domestic terrorism?

We have no clue.  But you can bet it would not be “get in there and tear down the evolving United States by wholesale killing of legislation aborning.”

In that way, they were -- even in their disagreements -- correct.

So, if we want to honor the founders, sure... celebrate.  There’s still plenty of reason to do that.  Give them credit for the astonishing thing they put together, us.  Give them credit for great foresight.  Great, but not unlimited.

Meantime, certain elements of our “democratically elected” government are trying to run the country as if it were a small town and they’re using small town tactics, naturally, to do it.

When there’s a money shortage in Right Shoe, Missouri, the local government cuts the most visible and most basic things first:  Firefighters, cops, teachers and road repair.  Somehow they manage to keep their government-issued cars.  Their spokesman and his office run as normal.  Their salaries remain untouched.  The courts continue to pour revenue into the treasury and the trout stream still gets stocked.

This July 4th, the Pentagon eliminated fireworks shows at most if not all of the big military installations.  The sequester.  No money.

Now THAT’s patriotism, 21st Century style.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

1195 Eddie Loose Lips

1195 Eddie Loose Lips

Okay, okay, everyone calm down now.  We’re not in a crisis over Snowden the bean spiller.  It’s just a passing thing.

Eddie Loose Lips has neither done us a huge disservice nor is he a well sung hero.

Life and spying go on without him.  Be assured that the National Security Agency has not stopped checking your phone logs, nor has it pulled back any possible toes it has in the waters of our friends and enemies.

Anyone shocked by Snowden’s disclosures is living in some kind of dream world.  It was something you could have assumed for more than a decade.

The Obama administration wants to bring him back alive.  Eddie Loose doesn’t want to come back.  But as of this writing he’s not finding a big welcome anywhere.  

He’s kind of like Philip Nolan, star of Edward Everett Hale’s “Man Without a Country” short story from the Atlantic Magazine in 1863.  Nolan, tried for treason, is sentenced to serve a life sentence at sea and barred from hearing any news from  or of America.

Eddie is so far unconvicted, but appears to be heading for a life sentence in the supervised play area of a Russian airport.  He stays there much longer, he’s going to get really tired of what the feed him from the Ustensky Food Court or Kopeyka which is kind of like  McDonalds only with nostalgic posters of Stalin and Khrushchev on the walls.

Just the other day, Putin said he was not going to keep him there in defiance of his good friends and allies in Washington.

Earlier, Hong Kong sent him packing after he expressed a dislike for left over British era fish and chips.

Ecuador apparently doesn’t want him, possibly fearing a combined CIA/KGB operation in Quito that might end badly.  Eddie didn’t think that request through anyway.  Quito is nosebleed city and the air is pretty thin.

Bolivia is on the menu for now.  That might be a problem since the US has revoked his passport.

Hey, how about Cuba?  The Cubans could welcome him with open arms, give him a hero’s parade through the streets of Havana and then disappearing him.

After they stash him in some cane field, they can use him as a bargaining chip to end the US trade embargo.

That’s a win-win for everyone outside the Cuban American community.

In a way, you have to feel sorry for Snowden.  It’s likely he didn’t realize the kind of trouble he’d be in.

As for the US... well we just assume George Orwell was right, but picked the wrong year as a title for “1984.”

Move along, folks.  Nothing to see.  And we know who you are.

Shrapnel:

--The new Lone Ranger movie opens nationwide today and critics are merrily tearing it apart.  Every major reviewer we can find has written his or her funniest report in ages.  Too long, too complicated, too many plots, untrue to the original story line and filled with actors, writers and producers who came from “Pirates of the Caribbean” and should have stayed there.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

1194 Giant Economy Size

1194 The Giant Economy Size

It may be summer.  It may be hot.  But that doesn’t stop the onset of snow jobs.

How’s this one hit you:  The Giant Economy Size -- of anything -- is a myth.  Madison Avenue and economists of every school have tried to tell us that if you buy coffee in the big size can, you’re paying less per pound than when you buy a smaller can.

Most supermarkets use “unit pricing” labels on their shelves.  How much costs what.  The stores don’t want you to know this stuff, but somehow their lobby wasn’t strong enough to prevent most states from enacting the mandate.  Now you know this stuff.   

You can lead a shopper to a label, but you can’t make him read it.

So, are you surprised to learn that, say, Triscuit crackers cost less per ounce in the small size than in the big one?

How about laundry detergent.  Same story.

Coffee.

Soft drinks.

Sweeping cloths.

Paper towels.

Practically anything you want today, you run the risk of paying more per unit when you buy the Giant Economy Size.

Marketing genius.  Check it out.  All you have to do is read the labels.  Not only do you get less for your money but your spatial relations ability is challenged.  You buy the big boxes or cans and you have to store them.

Most kitchen cabinets are not built to handle a 48.3 ounce can of beef stew.  You find new ways to use space, space that you never knew you had.  

The shelf-killer packages the warehouse and shopping “clubs” sell are another matter, entirely.  Usually it’s one size fits none.  But if you need canola oil in 55 gallon barrels, that’s the place to go.

You can buy the Giant Economy Size boxes of berries at Sam’s, Costco and the unfortunately named BJ’s.  Great if you’re feeding a regiment.  But not so good if you’re a normal household.  By the time you get toward the middle of your regimental berry supply, much of what’s left has spoiled.

How’s THAT for savings, shoppers?

Shrapnel (coupon edition):

--It’s mid year and time to clean out your coupon collection.  You know you clip and save a zillion a year but almost never use them.  And it’s an almost-sure bet that half the ones you’ve been hoarding are out of date.

--Coupon expiration times are getting shorter and shorter.  This is a service to checkout people who can torture you by telling you your coupon is out of date.  They have in-store contests for cashiers who collect the most out of date coupons per shift.

--Coupons are a plot, anyway.  They’re designed to make you want things you wouldn’t ordinarily buy in the hopes that you’ll love the product and continue to buy it at sticker price.  Or they’re designed to make you buy store brands instead of the same Bounty or Green Giant or Tide you’ve been successfully using for decades.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2103