1201 Life in the Gate-o

1201 Life in the Gate-o

Let’s rewrite the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin drama and see how it could have played out.

It’s nighttime in a gated community in Florida. Martin who is black and wearing a dark hoodie is walking along an that odd ghetto way that some call a swagger.  He has a cellphone to his ear and he’s having a conversation.

There’s a neighborhood watch in this compound.  Residents want more protection than the local police can adequately provide, and the watch patrollers drive, rather than walk as they might in an urban neighborhood.

One of these volunteers -- trained by local police and armed -- spots Martin and thinks he’s acting suspiciously. He uses his two way radio to alert the cops.  The police duty officer says there’s a patrol car nearby and it has been dispatched.  He then tells the neighborhood watch guy to keep back. The watcher, Zimmerman, has a complex mixed ethnic/racial background, but appears white. He wants to work in law enforcement and he knows copspeak and that he has just been issued an order.

A few minutes later, the patrol car arrives and spots Martin, rolls up to him with the window down and says “excuse me sir, please stop for a moment so we can talk.”  (Cops usually address any male as “sir,” even if he’s a teen. But the way they say it makes it sound like a four letter word.  And an order.)

Martin stops.  The cop says there have been “some problems” in the area and asks where the kid is headed.  Martin answers “home” and gives the address.  The cop asks for and receives identification.  He calls it in to see if there are outstanding warrants, which there aren’t.

The cop hands Martin back his license and says something like “sorry to bother you, but we’re stopping a lot of people in the area these days.”

End of story.

Don’t you love stories with happy endings?  Think of the grief that would have been saved had the story played out this way.  Think of the life that would have been spared and the lives that wouldn’t have been torn asunder.

Is George Zimmerman a racist?  You could easily think so by his actions.  But probably he’s just some doofus who has been dipped in the syrup of too many stories about gang violence and street violence and such and had an “uh-oh” moment.  Maybe, if you’re charitable, write his real world response off as overreaction.

But racism or overreaction or just stupidity aside, he shot and killed Martin.  Little doubt he didn’t start out intending to.  But by provoking a confrontation -- which he did -- he took a potentially simple interaction and turned it into a dead child and a national incident, wrecked the lives of friends and family, both Martin’s and his own.

We can turn this into a rant about gun control, neighborhood watches, racism and racial profiling, Florida’s “stand your ground” law, prosecutorial incompetence, judicial incompetence, tainted evidence, weasel defense lawyers, and the media.

But it’s not really about any of that.

It’s about a chance meeting of two guys on a normally peaceful street and ended with the death of an innocent and caused a national uproar, neither of which had to happen or should have happened.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

1200 Poisoned Apples: They're Not Just For Witches Anymore

1200 Poisoned Apples:  They’re Not Just For Witches Anymore

Boy, what a relief.  The Food and Drug Administration has cut the allowable amount of arsenic in apple juice.  It makes things tougher for people who want to commit murder by poison.

It means apple juice soon will be no worse for your health than fluoridated water.  We can all continue to believe that drinking fruit juice somehow benefits us.

And we can drink all the apple juice we want without fear of cancer.  We can drink apple juice instead of taking Ex-Lax for constipation.  We can mix spiced apple juice with spiced rum without fear of the former corrupting the latter.

I suppose we now can reduce this to a condition-orange emergency.  Certainly, it’s no longer condition-red. (There he goes again, comparing apples and oranges!)

Is this brilliant detective work?  You know -- like the NSA went through its records and said “Ahah!  So many calls to 911 about arsenic and apple juice!”  No.  This was the work of our ole’ buddy The Great and Powerful Dr. Oz followed by something similar from Consumer Reports Magazine.

Little Elliot Ness wannabes are gearing up as we speak, getting ready to take fire axes to cartons of arsenic-overloaded apple juice as they’re being readied for delivery at wholesale food warehouses.

And this is a boon for the counting house industry.  (Bet you didn’t know there was a counting house industry.)  These people gather in large, airy laboratories, and take one billion part samples of the juice.

Then they count the arsenic parts.  Ten per billion is the new limit down from about 20.  Do you what kind of eyesight it takes to find ten parts among one billion?  The parts don’t congregate in one spot.  They’re all over the map.  And a billion-part map is big, especially when it’s made of liquid.

Already, the protests are starting to roll in.  

AAA: The American Arsenic Association says “Once again we are maligned as a poison.  All we are is a simple natural chemical.  Arsenic doesn’t kill people, people kill people.”

OTHER AAA: The American Apple Association says “See, you import apples from China and look what happens.  Apples from CHINA?  What's the matter with the billions of apples we grow right here in the USA?!”

MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA:  “You reduce arsenic, half of us are out of business.  Arsenic has been the mainstay of our industry since Agatha Christie was in diapers.”

BLUE CROSS OF MOOTE POINTE NY:  “The federal government in its infinite wisdom is taking action that will reduce our caseload by 6.3%.  Our doctors are screaming about fewer fees!”

THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA: “We are the world’s number one producer of white arsenic and this will wreck both our output and further reduce the world supply of finished copper. How do you like THEM apples!”

OLD LACE:  “Who can I turn to when nobody needs me?”

Protests, protests and more protests.  But there are some cheerleaders, too.

THE HOMEOPATHIC HEALERS’ ASSOCIATION:  “We welcome this giant step in the purification of the American diet and hope it starts a landslide of replacing awful chem lab produced chemicals with those of which we approve.  Please do not confuse Arsenic with Arnica.”

OCCUPY GRANNY SMITH: “We are pleased that our months-long campaign has succeeded.  Now we can get out of the orchard and go home.”

DR. OZZIE:  “I am the great and powerful Oz.  DO pay attention to that man behind the curtain.”

Shrapnel:

--Wessays™ “welcomes” Windows 8.  If ever there were a promotion-happy, awkward, forced march operating system, we’ve yet to identify it.  Bring back Windows 3.2!

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

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