559 The Start Button

559 The Start Button and Other Contradictions

You think you have it all figured out, right? To start a machine going, you push "on," or "start." And to stop it, you push "off" or "end." Seems like a no-brainer, and at one time, it was.

But in a world of Microsoft and mobile telephones, off can be on and on can be... well, something.

Start with the computer programs. Vista and its predecessors have a "start" button. But you can't start the computer with it because it's invisible until you start the computer. Brilliant! To turn the computer off, you push the start button, which IS visible but really isn't a button, but more like a picture of a start button. Brilliant (squared.)

So you have to use something other than the start button to start the computer, but to stop it, you use... the start button.

Same thing on the cell phone. There is no "on." But there is an "end" button. And (will wonders never cease?) It’s an actual button. Of course, you can't just push it. You have to push and hold it. Then your phone turns on. Yes, it turns on by using the off button.

To turn it off, you start and hold the "end" button. Someone has obviously not thought this completely through. If you're looking to get things backward, you need to have an "on" button that turns the phone off. Next generation of phones, maybe.

What if this lunacy catches on? What would that mean for, say, the light switches on your wall, or the TV remote? Or the little gizmo that opens and locks your car doors?

What would it mean for your kitchen cabinets, your padlock or the laces on your shoes? Or your alarm clock? How about your checkbook, your supply of medicine, your blood pressure, your automotive forward speed or your blood alcohol level?

Getting things backward is one of the hallmarks of the era.

Backward is beautiful.

But it's confusing.

Shrapnel:

--Very few businesses put their street address on the front of their buildings. But a local Walmart just renovated and put up ITS address in big numbers, which seems kind of supererogatory. Especially since... who can miss seeing a 200,000 square foot Walmart sitting alone in a parking lot with little else around it?

--The builder of the Wessays Secret Mountain Laboratory put the address on the front of the building. But it's a trick. The number and the plaque in which the number is engraved are the same color and therefore cannot be seen from more than two feet away, kind of a stealth address sign.

--The former Wessays Secret Seaside Laboratory had a two digit address. But no one paid any attention and no one was able to spot it. That's because the buildings on either side of it had four digit addresses, and when you see four digits on one building, you're unlikely to guess the next one has only two. (It's true. You can't make this stuff up.)

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

©WJR 2009

558 The Hate Industry

558 The Hate Industry

Quick, what's the difference between a right wing wacko who talks on the radio and your average right wing wacko in the street?

The answer -- a favorite topic here -- plausible deniability.

Quick, what's another difference between a right wing wacko who talks on the radio and your average right wing wacko in the street?

The answer: the former is the inspiration, the latter is the inspired.

In Wichita, a guy who hears voices commits a murder of an abortion provider doctor in a church where, presumably, they strongly advise against shooting people dead (see Wessay #554.) Soon thereafter, a similar guy with a long gun walks into the Holocaust museum in Washington and shoots a guard dead.

Are these events connected? Of course.

The abortion shooter guy was a well known lunatic and a murderer-in-waiting. A lot of folks knew that.

The museum shooter guy was a well known anti-Semite, a pathetic little creep who made his living by running pathetic little franchise for the hate industry.

You might argue that these nutballs might have made their bones in said industry without goading from the radio or TV or the Internet. But maybe not.

They're like the anti-American Middle East terrorists, operating in discrete cells, not talking to one another but burning the same fuel.

What's the difference between a Middle East suicide bomber on a bus in Tel Aviv and a doddering old hate monger who shoots in the Holocaust Museum? Only the number of victims in the particular incident.

Meantime, in broadcast/internet land, the owners of the hate industry sit in their underground bunkers and put on innocent faces and say "who me? I've never advocated violence." And in most cases they're right. They haven't. Not in so many words.

But the constant anti-American drumbeat they produce has its effects. Sometimes it's tough for the gunslingers to distinguish between the voices in their heads and the voices on the broadcast spectrum.

Unfortunately there's only one real practical solution, which is giving both these motivational speakers and their followers their own medicine. And that is something real Americans would never contemplate, let alone do.

Shrapnel:

--The first "Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" was a jolting movie when it first appeared. It's the kind of thing this space calls "good junk," meaning nothing much but fun to watch or read. Now we have the remake, which is kind of like revivals of Broadway plays, as in "why change a good script when you have one already?"

--Headline: "Banks Cheer Escape from TARP Money..." Escape, indeed. They walked into the cell when it opened, then complained they were locked in.

--Speaking of prisoners, voluntary and otherwise: Roxanna Saberi has fallen off the front page now that she's home from captivity in Iran. Was this only a one or two week story, or is there more we haven't yet heard? And if there is more, do we have to wait for the book?

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

©WJR 2009

557 Limited Lifetime Warranty

557 Limited Lifetime Warranty

That's what they all say. Then comes the fine print. You read the fine print, and they STILL don't tell you whose lifetime they're talking about. Is it yours, or is it the expected lifetime of the product or service and if the latter, how do they figure it out?

Salt has an UNlimited lifetime warranty, implied if not expressed. Put it on a shelf somewhere and a million years later the shelf may be gone, but the salt's still there.

Lands' End, the clothing company says "Guaranteed. Period." And if your no-iron shirt comes out of the laundry wrinkled after the 35th wash instead of the 50th, they'll replace it. Actually, if it comes out wrinkled after the 100th, they'll likely also replace it.

But what about other stuff?

Some musical instruments have lifetime warranties good only to the original owner. So when you croak, your Martin D-28 guitar no longer qualifies. But what would happen if your heirs wanted to fight it?

One of the big 2.5 car makers has a limited lifetime warranty on its transmissions and some parts of the engine. Uh...WHOSE life? If you bring the thing back to the dealer (if there still IS a dealer) after, say 60-thousand miles, will he say "60- thou is the lifetime of the transmission."

Or will he say "no problem. We'll just pop a new one right in. Can you wait 20 minutes?" Sure!

What else is or isn't in the fine print? Probably there's a list of exceptions. Probably you need a magnifying glass if not a microscope to read it. Probably even if you CAN read it, you won't understand it.

"We're glad you chose All American Fresh Mackerel. Your satisfaction is guaranteed!" (Does not apply to fresh fish exposed to sunlight or left unrefrigerated for more than 30 minutes.) "Your Roof-o-Matic faux thatched roof comes with a lifetime limited warranty. (Not responsible for acts of God, acts of war, tornadoes, hurricanes, brush fires or holes.)"

There are limits, and there are limits.

Shrapnel:

--New York's Park in the Sky has opened after umpteen years of planning and prep. It runs along the west side from Gansevoort St. to 20th and eventually stretch further north on an abandoned rail "El" once used to transport cattle. Don't play Frisbee to close to the edge and watch out for airborne muggers.

--Newt Gingrich bumped Sarah Palin off the top of the speakers list at a big Republican Party fundraiser this week. Obviously the good ole boys network (or newt-work) lives. What they need is a wise Latina not some hick town ditz and then maybe the newt-work won't work anymore.

--Please note the addition of a new link to your right. Or click here: Alan Colmes -- talk show host and old pal from the lean days. And somehow, he remains lean despite our aging, and will not disclose his secret.

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

©WJR 2009

#556 Chrysler Round 26

556 Chrysler Round 26

Stuff about Chrysler has appeared in this space 25 times since these commentaries starting taking this form in October, 2005.  Here's the 26th.

The company celebrated, or at least observed its 84th anniversary this month, making it 22years younger than Ford and 17 years younger than GM.  In this age range, it's not much difference.

But Chrysler has had more lives than a cat.  And it looks pretty much like the one that's looming now will be the final straw.  Chrysler is under attack from all sides, and there no longer are enough wagons (or mini vans) to circle.

It's a war on how many fronts?

Well, about 800 dealers are about to be closed and they're in court.  The current factory owner, Cerberus, wants to sell or give or will a good chunk of the company to Fiat.  But pension funds with Chrysler stock are fighting that.  Heaven knows what benefit they expect if the sale doesn't sail through and the company goes bust.

Of those dealers, a lot of those on the line leading to the firing squad were told to buy extra inventory back a few months or a year or so ago.  Now, they're unloading their remaining stock at fire sale prices.  That sounds like bad news for the dealers and good news for the customers.

Perhaps.  But, then, whatever price you pay, you're still getting a Chrysler. Check out the reviews on Edmunds.com for critical concepts like "sub-par interior"  "Frumpy." "Outclassed by every competitor."  "Poor build quality."  Don't like Edmunds? How about US News?  They don't like 'em either.

Contrary to the Cerberus news releases of two years ago, the old "partnership" with Daimler did not "move the company forward."  Daimler was so busy playing corporate games, internal and external that it never "got" the American car business.

Cerberus appears to have figured that managing an auto manufacturer was the same as any other final project in MBA class.  It ain't.

So, now they're trying to pass this outfit around like a half-finished joint, and the Italians want a hit, or say they do.

This is not stuff you can blame on the UAW, though everyone's tried.  This is not something you can blame on market conditions.  This is a top heavy, over managed, under engineered industrial icon about to be reduced to a pile of milled aluminum corrosion. Walter P. Chrysler is rotating in his grave.  But not at an RPM great enough to generate a recovery.

Shrapnel:

--The New York State economic development office is looking for a new chief. Again.  Would you take developmental advice from an outfit that can't seem to advise itself well enough to function?

--Fifteen hours after the wedding, the bride and groom are outside the house, chatting with neighbors.  Must have been a short "wedding night."  Or maybe it hadn't yet started.

--Apparently, there was a reunion of WRFM radio people the other day.  Word didn't get around until after the fact, which may have left a lot of us long-timers wondering why no one told us.

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

©WJR 2009

555 History By Committee

555 History By Committee

There's a book on the desk, now, a college text book.  In part, it's about the years in America since 1945, the end of WWII, and it was written by a committee.  When you have a committee of academics writing a book, you get a book written by a committee.  An unattached historian, one professor from the University of Delaware, another from Harvard, one from Bard College and one from the University of Texas at Austin.  The Gang of Five.

You can find almost anything on Google.  But not the days of birth for this crew.  Which unfortunate, because if you could, you be able to verify whether any of these folks were actually alive in 1945 or any of the other years about which they write.

It doesn't seem so.  Or, more accurately, it is strange to look at an academic view of something one has lived through.

The facts, well -- they seem to get much of that straight.   There is, for example a long piece about Harley Earl who was the design maven at General Motors (back when it was private enterprise.)  They picture a late 1950s Cadillac and call it an example and a metaphor for the excesses of that decade, which it was.

They tell us that the move from the cities to the suburbs which began right after the war and continues to this day impoverished the major cities.  They tell us that the cold war sucked up a lot of resources, maybe unnecessarily.  The erection of and then the erectile dysfunction of the Berlin Wall.  The establishment of the Interstate Highway system.

But there's an awful lot of academi--quacking about feelings.  They are trying to explore one era through the prism of another.

In the late 1940s and the 1950s you never heard much about feelings.  We went to war.  Tough on lots of us.  But we went.  Did our duty.  After victory, we rebuilt and then embraced the enemy and started a ping pong game with our then-ally, the Soviet Union.

While so much attention is paid to feelings today, we didn't think in those terms.  If we had, we'd probably never have escaped the Great Depression and would all be speaking German and Japanese today.

The death of a loved one on a battlefield?  How could that not make you grieve.  Having a Chevy in the driveway instead of a Lincoln?  Maybe that made us feel envious.  But it wasn't talked about -- and scant little attention was paid to it.  We were too busy recovering and trying to get our lives in the order we wanted.

Also missed in the book, one of the two greatest culture-changing pieces of technology since the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel:  TV and the computer.

By 1947, television was becoming the cultural center of our universes, to be replaced 40 years later by the home computer.

Without adequately explaining the impact of those two machines, it's impossible to adequately explain the era.

Maybe the committee should have another meeting.

Shrapnel:

--Chet Currier's take on "protective" investing in gold:  You can't eat the stuff, and if it comes to the point where you'd have to no asset's an asset.  Chet's gone some years now.  But his wisdom lives on.

--Adversity breeds opportunity.  Maybe they could turn all those closing car dealers' showrooms into banks.  You can never have enough banks.

--Funny the stuff people keep.  Guy passed along a letter the other day, letter from a guy in the lockup.  Letter from the guy in the lockup was requesting that a radio station play a song, the letter was dated 11/26/57, so the guy's probably out of jail by now.

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

©WJR 2009

554 Hearing Voices

554 Hearing Voices

"Thou Shalt Not Kill."  -- Exodus (King James version.)

"Thou Shat Not Commit Murder."  --Exodus (Original Hebrew.)

Pretty simple instruction regardless of which translation you use.  Even Sarah Palin gets it.  America's Hokey Hockey Mowm issued a statement berating the guy who shot the doctor in a Kansas church last Sunday.

Killing -- in church?

Great publicity for the anti-abortion wackos who insist they be called "pro life."  Sure to attract hordes of new crowds to The Movement.  

What crime drew this punishment to 67 year old George Tiller, MD of Wichita?  He performed abortions.  Sometimes, even "late term" abortions.  Which are legal. And rare.  So let's look at what passes for the logic of an attack like this.  Early term abortion docs get assassinated fairly regularly, too.  Which means the assassins consider the blob of protoplasm inside a woman's uterus is a life, but the doctor who would remove it is not?

These shooters hear voices.  And the voices never talk about the meek inheriting the earth or do unto others or anything like that.  These voices tell them to go out and commit murder.  And they listen and obey and swear by the Bible that they're on a personal mission for God (or for God and country.)  "Abortion is murder," they'll tell you.  "Fetuses have feelings after about two weeks after conception," they'll say.

Of course, some of the voices they hear are real.  Like that of Bill O'Reilly, the Fox rabble rouser who has been yowling about Dr. Tiller for quite some time.  O'Reilly says the guy had blood on his hands and would kill any baby for $5,000 with or without a reason.  Others weighed in as well.  "Deserved to die..."  "Nazi" "Stalinist."  "Mass murderer."

What's almost as disturbing about this whole thing is that it went away in 48 hours.  Barely a word on the story two days after it happened.  It just disappeared.  Oh, it'll be back when the shooter goes to court.  And when he goes on trial.  But something like this usually holds media and public attention a whole lot longer.

Meantime, what ever happened to the "shalt not kill" thing.  Maybe it doesn't apply to everyone.


Shrapnel:

--Ah, the bucolic life.  Small time America thrives.  Pay no attention to that skyrocketing rate of murders, rapes and robbery the FBI reported, as urban crime of the same types sank.

--Who knew?  A study out of Cincinnati Children's Hospital has learned that teen girls who present themselves provocatively on line, they'll be hit on more often than if they present themselves as demure.  Duh!

--Readers of last Monday's post now know how cleverly -- perhaps stunningly -- perceptive it was.  We want to thank President Obama for buying us a nice big car company.  Next time, though, could you buy us a company that stands a chance of making a buck?


I'm Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2009

553 Hello Detroit and Welcome to Moscow

553  Welcome to Moscow

Hello, Detroit.  Welcome to Moscow.  By the time you read this there's a good likelihood that General Motors will have started rolling into court for its chapter eleven bankruptcy proceedings, which eventually will give the United States Government control of the company, thought to be in a financial fender bender, but now, as your insurance company might say, totaled.

The US government has little experience in running a car company and probably should send a delegation to Moscow, where they make the Zil and have since 1916 or 1924 depending on which company history you believe.  

Over the decades, Zil, which became Zis during the Stalin years, then returned to Zil under Khrushchev, has made cars based on OPD, or other peoples' designs.

For example:  in 1939 they started making a car that looked a lot like the 1929 Packard.  And they kept making it right up until the late 1950s or early 60s.  They never quite got the Packard quality thing down, but the thing looked great.  They didn't just make replicas of American cars.  But when you see the 1953 Cadillac and the 1968 Zil side by side, it's hard to tell the difference.  They made tribute cars and they make them today.

The top of the line limo looks like a Benz Maybach.  It doesn't run like one.  But, again, it's only a tribute car.  In between, they've imitated the 1956 Packard, something akin to the 1947 Studebaker, the Chrysler K car, the Rambler American, the 1955 Kaiser and the 1958 Cadillac.  Most of these "tributes" came out a decade or more after the original.

But they're not as dumb as you'd think.  They never tried to reproduce two of the world's worst cars, the Renault Dauphine or the Fiat 1100.

So now, GM is Zil.  And our copycats are much more elegant than those Soviet era lowlifes.  Not to mention your standard-issue UAW autoworker, who's work ethic makes the Russian counterpart look like the kid who gets detention every other day for failure to turn in the homework.  Come to think of it, auto work in Russia IS detention.  

No.  Our government run car company will turn out works of beauty, like Hispano Suiza in its prime.  And maybe they'll bring back the Oakland or the Franklin or the REO.

Let's hope we're better at this than our friends in Moscow where they make a "Lada" that looks like a 1970 Volvo to this very day.

Shrapnel:

--Here's Leno's best parting shot on the last night of his 17 year run with NBC's "Tonight Show."  "People ask me where I'm going and I say to a secluded spot where no one will ever find me.  NBC prime time."

--Leno hosted for 17 years, second only to Johnny Carson's 30.  No one else came close.  Steve Allen, with and without Ernie Kovacs was on for three years and Jack Paar for five, with the rest filling in only in blocks of under a year.

--Conan O'Brien is a fine writer and performer.  Good luck to him.  But the change makes no one happier than competitor David Letterman, himself an NBC refugee now working for CBS.

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

©WJR 2009