Another Good Book, etc

     In addition to my standard comment "it's all crap" regarding the bureaucracies and inefficiencies of modern life, I also say "well, people don't farm anymore, so what are they supposed to do?"
     This book offers a detailed analysis of why modern society has become the way it is and why 37% of people say that what they do is meaningless-hence the title of the book. Bullshit jobs are jobs that if they disappeared, no one would really notice, and include mostly white collar paper pushing administrative type vocations that have proliferated in the last 30 to 50 years. Mr. Obama gave this informative description of them while formulating the Affordable Care Act:
      " Everybody who supports single-payer health care says,

  'Look at all the money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork'. That represents one million, two million, three million jobs filled by people who are working at Blue Cross, Blue Shield or Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?"
        Which, as author Graeber ( a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics)  states, is precisely why the present inefficient system was/is maintained...Because to some decision makers it is "better to maintain those millions of basically useless office jobs than to cast about trying to find something else for the paper pushers to do."    (...like I said...nobody farms anymore..)
       Personally, I have always thought the farmers and plumbers and child care givers and all the genuine Workers in a society should be the highest paid, because what they do has the highest value. If all of the 'illegal' immigrants were deported, society would quickly notice the lack of food, housing, clean hotel rooms.etc etc.. In "Anti-Clock" I wrote that the true worth of manual labor is revealed when it's time to move a refrigerator up a flight of stairs. No lawyer or doctor or banker or writer will be of much help then, or when the electricity goes out. .This book helps explain how priorities have gotten so skewed.
          At any rate...one example of a job that is Not bullshit is a dentist, because one can directly see the productivity. I had a broken, infected tooth pulled last week, the first in my life. My reasoning at age 63 is that saving some of them with root canals and crowns no longer makes economic sense.
  

Buzzard Swamp

  Walked a few miles at Buzzard Swamp today, a preserve about 30 miles from here, which I visit 6 or 7 times a year. I enjoy the open land there and it is a good spot to see wildlife and fish for large mouth bass. Today I saw bald eagles nesting ( that spruce tree in the closeup is the same one that is in the panoramic picture, so I had to zoom in without a tripod...) The beaver pond borders the dirt access road and fortunately did not flood the road. The Allegheny forest that surrounds this open land and is mostly mountainous, which makes the flat, watery refuge all the more rare and valuable. Beavers and bald eagles are relatively common in western PA,   although neither one is a daily sighting unless one knows where to look. Eagles frequent the rivers that flow right though town, but beavers dam the smaller creeks in the valleys further away. Trappers keep the latter population down but not so much that I do not see the animals regularly.
   As in much of the country, winter came fast around here with cold and snow jumping a month ahead of normal...perhaps that is

the new normal.

Reading,Writing and Critical Thought

            Have been reading a book by Maryanne Wolf, professor at Tufts University, titled   “Reader, Come Home- The Reading Brain in a Digital World” in which she analyzes the effects of new technology on the brain. Her fellow professors of literature and social science have noticed two trends at the college level:

            “The first is that students have become increasingly less patient with the time it takes to understand the syntactically demanding sentence structures in denser texts and increasingly adverse to the effort needed to go deeper into their analysis. The second is that student writing is deteriorating”

              Cursive writing is no longer taught in some states and only partially in others, which means that many people will not be able to read the American Declaration of Independence or Constitution as they were originally written. My thirty five years of cursive journals might be incomprehensible to my own granddaughter and other descendants. Maybe translation software will make cursive legible to future generations, just as Latin and other lost languages remain viable, but even when they can be read, intricate works of literature might be incomprehensible to future generations if the lack of attention span and critical analysis continues.           

            As a person who has spent many years walking and thinking in solitude, it is not difficult for me to discern the lack of critical analyisis in otherwise intelligent people. The proliferation of biased news sources and the manipulation of video and print to promote propaganda has made the immersion in self fulfilling ‘group think’ easier than ever. It is impossible to articulate the complexity of a subject in a ‘tweet’, but that seems to be the extent of some peoples critical thinking. If they limit their sources of information to others who think like them, they will never find the truth.

             Fortunately, there are always independent thinkers who challenge the culture. If the digital age lowers peoples ability to think deeply, then I suppose we cannot invent Artificial Intelligence soon enough for it to pick up the slack. I cautiously trust that humanity will adapt as needed to compensate.

  

Misc Babble...

                           This is an 84 year old patient's daily medications schedule. The person suffers from Dyspnea, diabetes, COPD, obesity, sleep apnea, coronary heart disease and was a smoker until 25 years ago. The paper medical records for this person measure 6 inches thick. This is just one of the 40-50% of people most responsible for the high cost of health care. You draw your own conclusions; mine have been articulated in earlier posts.
                            My thoughts on Mr. Trump 2 years on are as follows:
     A master at manipulation and self promotion who will do what it takes to accomplish his agenda regardless of moral or ethical considerations. For that reason he relates well to similar leaders in the world; they understand one another on a visceral level.  There are Trump supporters who believe the entire government is corrupt and that Mr. Trump at least is stirring the pot. His detractors believe he is destroying all civility for decades to come. Unfortunately, support for one side or the other has 'trumped' the search for Truth as an ethical scientist would describe it-with verifiable facts and repeatable experiments. As one recent example, Mr. Trumps rhetoric has stated that "If you want your Stocks to go down, I strongly suggest voting Democrat." In truth, Binky Chadha, chief strategist at Deutsche Bank, noted that the three-month period running from a month ahead to two months after the (midterm) election has produced a median 8% gain, (regardless of party affiliation of the winners and losers) And that includes only one decline, a 4% drop in 1978, over that period in the last 21 midterm elections.") Personally, I think Trumps most lasting legacy will be the supreme court nominees; they alone will survive several election cycles. The tax changes, EPA decisions and other policy commitments may or may not survive depending on the choices of voters in the future.
                         Overall, what happens in the back rooms affects the planet as much as what we argue about publicly; there is a big wheel rolling secretly that nothing is going to change.  Do I believe democracy will survive the present commotion? Yes. But the planet and humanity are bigger than democracy and human nature is very messy thing.
                                  
                                           

Humility

     Beth and I have been golfing a lot this year, and it is a wonderful opportunity to walk together and enjoy the day while also engaging in a sport that is relatively cheap.

As beginners we have experienced the frustrations of bad swings and other difficulties of the sport, and sometimes get disproportionately discouraged relative to what should be an enjoyable pastime. On Monday, Oct 1^st, while returning home from the Allentown area, we stopped at a new course to play nine holes and were humbled to see a man on the 3^rd green stumble from his golf cart onto the grass. From a distance his body movements resembled the stick like motions of a marionette figure whose elastic joints were unsupported by the puppeteer and he crumpled to the ground in a heap of human flesh. But that was normal for him and he dragged himself into a position sufficient to push a ball towards the hole with a club. With great effort he dragged himself back into the cart and sped off to the next green where he did it again. He allowed us to “play through” the fifth hole, and politely wished us well as he sat hunched over in his cart. We returned the pleasantries as we inwardly admonished ourselves for the petty troubles that sometimes bothered us.

    Golf is a combination of mental and physical abilities that challenge even the best players, and this humble man shamed both Beth and I with his determination to accomplish the most basic of tasks. We are improving due to help from friends (…thanks Bob) but hopefully we always will remember that it is just a game, and always be thankful for being alive, and outside, and healthy.

Chelsea

   Had to "put down" Chelsea this morning after 5 1/2 months of decline related to old age and kidney failure. She turned 12 on August 23rd and by this morning was unable to keep food in her stomach nor control her bowel movements. Along the way she had slowly been unable to jump, then climb steps and the past week was unable to walk without stumbling and falling. She was mostly deaf and becoming what in humans would be called senile and distracted. A friend allowed me to borrow a rifle with which I put a bullet into the back of her head. Death was quick and humane while she was lying in the grass calmly. The friend helped me bury her in a shallow grave in the woods on his property. The pictures show her living the wonderful, free and loving life she knew for most of her time, and those of us who knew her will remember her as smart, tough, loyal and as patient as a stone. Without doubt she was the best dog  Beth and I have ever been privileged to know. Our faith is certain that she is in a better place happily wagging her tail, just as she deserves.

Kettle Creek Stae Park

     Beth and I have been camping at Kettle Creek Sate Park the last couple weekends, a beautiful isolated lake and mountainous park located in the north central part of PA. The upper campground offers some great views and is nearly empty on Sunday nights.
     On the morning of the 22nd I was fishing at the lake and noticed something odd floating in the water, which after some observation turned out to be two large snapping turtles mating. From a distance they looked alternatively like an otter lounging on its back or something dead floating in the waves. As I descended the bank for a closer look I was stopped short by a buzzing rattle sound which was this timber rattlesnake only a few feet from my legs. Fortunately this species warns intruders so I was able to stop and back away easily. As I bicycled back to camp for my camera I passed the local warden who returned with me to capture and relocate the snake to another area. She told me that the reptiles are very territorial and do not tolerate being moved more than 100 yards or so, so she released it further up the mountain away from human activity. By the time I had returned with the camera the turtles had vanished.
                                                           All in all an interesting morning, for I had never seen a rattle snake nor mating turtles despite thousands of miles and hours in the woods!

Not Progress

Cheap and efficient, yes, but progress? I don't think so! Lehigh County in eastern Pennsylvania is replacing another one of the wonderful old stone bridges with whatever it is you wish to call the new one. The old bridge is a work of art able to be appreciated by anyone; one need not be a stonemason. The new bridge is able to be appreciated by engineers and accountants and metallurgists perhaps, but hardly an historic structure worthy of preserving. A nearby resident thinks the old one will be torn down rather than restored or saved as a walking bridge, and I will check on this when I return to the east.

Essential Reading

  For all those people who seriously, genuinely think that the world is going to hell and that America is not a great nation, Pinker uses facts and statistics and reason to cut through all the emotion and hyperbole and outright lies and distortions dominating the news and social media. By taking a larger, longer perspective of centuries rather than news cycles, Pinker shows how the standard of living has risen for most of the planet. To every American worker who has lost his job to foreign labor there is a foreign human being who has obtained clean water and enough food to eat and an extended life span and all the other basics that Americans take for granted. Read the book, then refute the pessimists who complain about the world economy while smoking a cigarette in one hand and scarfing pizza in the other as they sit in their air conditioned house watching TV. As I mentioned in my book, we have become a nation dying of our excesses while living better than the kings of old..I did not so bluntly mention that some of us are complaining all the while..We elected a president who emphasized the negative rather than the positive as if that simplistic message told the whole story. The real question is why do so many Americans believe their lives are so bad??
                   
                                       Here is one small excerpt:

                    "Together, technology and globalization have transformed what it means to be a poor person, at least in developed countries.The old stereotype of poverty was an emaciated pauper in rags. Today, the poor are likely to be as overweight as their employers, and dressed in the same fleece, sneakers and jeans. The poor used to be called the have-nots. In 2011, more than 95% of American households below the poverty line had electricity, running water, flush toilets, a refrigerator, a stove, and a color TV...Almost half of the households below the poverty line had a dishwasher, 60 percent had a computer, around two-thirds had a washing machine and a clothes dryer, and more than 80% had an air conditioner, a video recorder, and a cell phone. In the golden age of economic equality ( ...the 1950's and 60's) middle class 'haves' had few or none of these things... The rich have gotten richer...Warren Buffet may have more air conditioners or better ones, but by historical standards the fact that a majority of poor Americans even have an air conditioner is astonishing."     

The Facts on Violence

   If anyone genuinely cares to know the truth about about American violence, which is down substantially since the early 1990's, here is an excerpt from the book:  " UNEASY PEACE- The Great Crime Decline, The Renewal of City Life, And The Next War On Violence"  by Patrick Sharkey, a professor of sociology at N.Y.U.  The book describes the reality about past and present crime in all it's complexities and offers possible reasons and future scenarios.
The pic is where flight 93 was forced down in 2001, in the green field near the woods line.. a whole 'nother form of violence.

                                        These are the authors words:


“Information on police violence has never been collected in a systematic way, so it is impossible to know exactly how often police resort to force, or even how often a police officer kills a civilian. The FBI relies on police departments to report every time an officer kills a felon in a ‘justifiable homicide’, just as they are asked to report every other homicide that has occurred over the course of each year. Efforts by journalists and activists to document every person who is killed by law enforcement have shown that the official figures, reported each year by the FBI, substantially underestimate the total number of individuals killed by law enforcement. Even if these figures are substantially biased, the numbers reported by the FBI are revealing. Data from the ‘Supplemental Homicide Reports’ show that homicides occurring during robberies, drugs or gang disputes, arguments, or during the commission of other serious crimes all fell by somewhere between 40 and 80 percent since 1991. Almost every kind of homicide has become less common over time, but there is one notable exception. From the early 1990’s to the present the number of ‘justifiable homicides’ committed by police officers has been remarkably consistent. In the early 1990’s police officers usually killed about 475 people over the course of a year. Twenty years or so later, officers kill roughly 450 people each year. Pointing out the number of people killed by law enforcement tells us nothing about whether each incident was justified, whether police acted appropriately, or whether unnecessary force was used. What it does reveal however is a very consistent level of police force over time. As just about every other type of lethal violence has subsided over time, lethal violence from the police has remained constant."

Nice Walk Regardless

    Did a 4 mile road walk today near Frewsburg, N.Y., which is just across the border about 12 miles north of Warren. I passed these old farm houses and the funky old truck, and gave my condolences to the robin, who must wonder what the hell is going on. The migrators first returned on February 28th at the end of a winter thaw, but have been dealing with cold and snow ever since. In a normal season there would be gnats and worms and other foodstuffs to eat by now, but not this year. Some farmers have managed to plow a few fields, but planting and harvest will be delayed 2 or 3 weeks.
    Whenever I travel to New York I fill up my gas tank, because gas there is always 15 or 20 cents cheaper than here in Warren. Today it cost me $2.79 a gallon versus $2.99 in town, despite it being from the same refinery here in Warren. There has never been a good explanation other than monopoly and greed, for Warren is a somewhat isolated location so the eight stations in town raise and lower their prices in unison. The state gas tax in PA is 50.4 cents per gallon versus 42.64 cents in N.Y., so that does not fully explain the discrepancy. In Erie the same gas costs 5 to 15 cents less than in Warren despite the transportation costs, so monopoly and greed seem like a reasonable explanation. Letters to the editor by local citizens never get a response from the company.
    More snow is predicted for tonight ( April 18-19th) then a gradual warming, which for millions of people is long overdue.

Cars and Climate Change

   Took the snow picture this morning (April 4th) while hiking the mountain, which illustrates the cold, snowy winter that the east and midwest have have endured since late December 2017. This is a record breaking year that reflects the extremes that scientists had predicted years ago as one consequence of global climate change. With transportation being about 27% of greenhouse gas emissions and gas mileage being a critical factor regarding how much pollution an individual is responsible for, I am disheartened that as gasoline prices have dropped Americans have purchased more trucks and SUVs than cars; the gas mileage average is currently around 25mpg industry wide. Now that EPA director Scott Pruitt has lowered future mileage standards, emissions will like go up rather than down. In contrast, that Mitsubishi Mirage I am driving is more than adequate for normal driving and averages over 44 mpg. I cringe when I see people driving huge vehicles with only one occupant because for many of them it is presumed safety or status motivating their purchase. My Mirage is proportionally vulnerable to damage only because people insist on driving excessively gluttonous machines; I prefer to judge status on more substantial criteria than  possessions-such as choosing to value the environment over expensive trucks or SUVs. In many ways it seems that humanity is in damage control as we adjust to the new climate realities, and as always Nature will determine what the future brings.
  POSTSCRIPT:  April 17th- I am still walking with my winter jacket and hood pulled tight against the cold wind in a whiteout of snow that leaves an inch on the ground. Had I not experienced this winter-from the arctic cold of late December to the continued snow and cold of mid-April- I would not have considered it possible. Definitely the consistently coldest, snowiest season I have known in my 62 years.
  Having said that, I expect humanity to adapt to whatever happens, or it won't, and either way we are merely one more species in the long natural history of the planet. I do not subscribe to the notion that we are a superior species, or 'Gods' chosen beings; rather we are simply a more analytical and self aware species. Mindless prejudices such as racism remind me that we are not a more intelligent species, (especially now that genetic science has revealed that we all have a common black ancestor) yet that kind of ignorance often defines public policies and so defines the human condition.  Personally I am grateful for the genuinely good and noble things that humanity has accomplished, but I do not believe they distinguish us from other animals in a qualitative sense.

Social Security

     Signed up for SS in October 2017, three months before my birthday as recommended on the government website. Because of the way the system is administered, I will not receive my first payment until March 23rd, more than two months after my birthday.  Your government at work. Had I waited another 4 years to begin collecting benefits, it would have required 13 years to accumulate the $48,000 dollars I will collect in the interim, which is the $300 monthly difference between reduced benefits versus full benefits multiplied by 48 months. ( $300 x 12= $3,600 x 13=$46,800)
    That money will be accumulating an average of 6% growth in my IRA, which will add another $10,000 by the 4 year mark. Many factors can be considered as to when a person should begin collecting SS, but I personally do not agree with those who advise to wait until full retirement age. I think that is propaganda by a government headed towards bankruptcy because of incompetence, and
I prefer to handle my own money and enjoy life while I am relatively young and healthy.
    The way that the government set up my particular payment schedule( the 3rd Wednesday of every month) is that there are occasionally five weeks between checks rather than the customary 4 weeks in a month.  Although the annual payments are the same, fortunately I am not living paycheck to paycheck as some people are, hence the extra week is a nuisance rather than a hardship. Your government at work.

Pipes

   We had the pipes replaced last week- not because of any leaks- rather because the old cast iron was original to the house and we figured we would circumvent any future problems. After 68 years the pipes had some corrosion and clogging but still functioned surprisingly well. The designers/ builders of this house had kept all the plumbing exposed in the basement which made replacement  simply a matter of removing the old iron and putting up the PEX, then threading it through the existing floor holes into the kitchen and bathroom. Talk about intelligent foresight! In fact this entire

            'craft' style house was well built and remains low maintenance all these decades later. I suspect few modern houses will be able to make that claim.
           

Misc Winter Babble

     It has not been as cold here as in the midwest, but the temperature will not be going above 32F until January 8th, which  will have been about two weeks. Some people of course confuse weather with climate and so try to debunk the global changes that are being measured by scientists, but weather extremes are part of their predictions and so here we are. These are some pics from recent walks I have taken, the lower two at Allegany State Park just across the border in New York. When the wind blows at 15F or less it is difficult to do more than a couple miles, but at 20 degrees and

sunshine the winter becomes a beautiful memory from childhood.
   My only political comment this blog is about the governments (..and I use that term to describe the Bush, the Obama and Trump administrations) intimidation of journalists. It has become common practice for the justice department to threaten and sue journalists in order to learn their sources, or as they call them their "leaks", but to me a free press is the foundation of our democracy. So to see people in power try to shut other people up for exposing the truth is just plain dangerous. I really don't why truth is held in such low regard
by some people but that seems to be the case, and generally such people hide behind lies and deceit in order to conceal what is unethical or immoral behavior. That is why I prefer scientists who at least Try to discover truth, and even when trying their best find Truth elusive.