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.