It Started With My First Car And Went Downhill From There

It was an innocent (Are any of them really so innocent though?*) Facebook question about your first car.

Mine was a brand new 1983 Toyota Tercel.  I wanted to wryly comment on how underpowered it was and guessed a 0-60 of about 18 seconds.  But this is the information era, there is no need to guess anymore, about anything.

The 12 Slowest Cars of 1983

18.3 Seconds, not bad guessing!

Just a click away, was link to the fastest cars from 1983:

Porsche 911 SC Cabriolet: 7.0 seconds

Which got me thinking about how fast the fastest car we ever had was?

The 2007 SAAB 9-3 Aero Sport-Combi

"The 2007 Saab 9-3 Sportcombi Aero accelerates from zero to 60 mph in 6.9 seconds"

So that car may not have been the hottest thing on the road when we owned it, but it was hotter than anything from a couple of decades earlier.  It was over a second faster than the 1983 Ford Mustang GT, which had a 5.0 Liter V8!  And it beat the Pontiac Firebird by almost 4 seconds.

Naturally, I wanted to see how some of our other, not so hot, but maybe pretty impressive compared to 1983, stood up:

1996 Buick Regal 3800 0-60 8.7 seconds  Not bad for a 4 door family sedan and quite a bit faster than the 1983 Porsche 944: 9.2 seconds.

1997 BMW 318ti 0-60  "Pressed hard, our 318ti managed a 0-60-mph best of 8.9 seconds" About 1.6 seconds faster than the 1983 BMW 528, which had an in-line 6 and an extra liter of displacement.

*Those Facebook thing is probably an attempt to scrape-together enough information to guess a few security questions.

CDC Data On Deaths By Age

 According to KFF, 23.6% of US Residents are 0-18, which is significantly more than those 65 and older, 16.5%.

Over the span of the Covid pandemic, 3,906,056 people 65 or older died from all causes.  Of these, 485,290 died of Covid.  At the other end of the spectrum, there were a total of 53,193 children under 18 who died from all causes.  So, as a kid, you're about 1/70th as likely to die in a given couple of years as a person who is older than 65.  Of that 53,193, how many would you guess were from Covid?

361   

Likelihood of a 65+ person dying in a given period/Likelihood of under 18 dying of Covid = 15,476

Also, the total percentage of Americans who have died of Covid has yet to reach 1/5th of 1%.

CDC Data On Deaths By Age

Linda and Phillip

If you're a fan of Phillip K. Dick, you also likely know that he was obsessed with Linda Ronstadt.  So far as I've been able to determine, she never met Mr. Dick and possibly never knew he existed.  When he first heard "You're No Good", he thought she was speaking directly to him.  He wrote about her directly in "novels" like VALIS and she appeared pseudoanonymously in other works, as a galactic diva.

Ms. Ronstadt didn't live entirely in the music industry--she dated the Governor of California.

At the peak of her career, she was extremely well known, but now--It's dubious if many young people have heard of her.  Too bad. She had a distinctive voice and many of her covers are the best known versions of songs.

Over the decades, probably starting with Blade Runner, Phillip K. Dick has slowly become a legendary figure--even though all the films and shows, so far, have only glanced off-of what made his work brilliant.  As a side note:  Each of Galactic Pot Healer, We Can Build You or Martian Time Slip, would be great material for a streaming series, with 10 1-hour episodes.  Don't change anything, just use exactly the dialog from the books.

I can't be the only one to imagine that eventually, Ronstadt will be more known for Dick's fervid ideations of her, than for Ronstadt's own considerable music career.

Dick's thoughts, probably.

Everything Is Temporary. That Doesn't Mean It Isn't Worth Doing.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 

And then is heard no more. 

It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 

Signifying nothing.

 ― William Shakespeare, Macbeth 

We read, again and again, how the last 20 years in Afghanistan was a waste since all has fallen into chaos so quickly.  I say, nonsense!  Those 20 years mattered!  In those years, evil and backwardness was held at bay and the people had more space to thrive.  Those years count.  They represent 1/4 of a long life and 100% of many young lives.  That means something.

We can debate if the cost of remaining was worth-it to the US national interest.  I think it was clearly worth it to have a secure base of operations next to the Stans, Iran and Pakistan.  We could have kept this up for 100 years and had a side benefit of an excellent training ground for our military.

The analogy I return to, is the idea of giving a diabetic insulin.  If you give the treatment for 20 years, the patient lives a fairly normal life.  If you suddenly decide to stop providing insulin, he will quickly become ill and die--which is sad and unnecessary and shouldn't be done.  But say it was done.  He gained 20 years of life that he wouldn't have gotten, had you never provided the medicine.  

Biden:

Two Signs, Seen In One Day, Both Could Screw Me

 On the drive up to Burlington VT, I saw a sign on a truck:  

Not Responsible For Broken  Windshields.  Thoughts which went through my head, in order.  This is BS! A stupid bumper sticker couldn't possibly relieve an operator from liability if something falls from his vehicle and damages another!  Or maybe, the sign simply reflects that the law doesn't generally hold operators liable--this also seems dubious.  Final conclusion--the driver is communicating that HE thinks it isn't his fault and will fight you.  This makes me all the more willing to press the case!  He knows that he's caused broken glass and his solution is not to load more carefully, but to buy a sticker.  What An Asshole!

Later that day, we had a flat tire.  I decided to borrow the full sized spare from my daughter's car and put the compact spare in her trunk rather than drive 200 miles on a doughnut. Even though the spare was a real tire, exact same size as the rest, it still had the 50 MPH speed limit stickers all over it.  There was no way I was going to drive 50 on the freeway, all the way back!  So, I was thinking--is this warning legally binding?  Like, could a cop have a legal right to give me a speeding ticket if I drive faster than 50 MPH?

Point Blank

 A terrific neo-noir film, but take a look at some of the actors:

Carroll O'Connor, as an accountant for the mob--four years before he became Archie Bunker.

Angie Dickinson, looking great at 36 and showing huge acting range.

Finally, Lee Marvin!  Walker, no first name: Double crossed by his wife (Dickinson plays the wife's sister) shot and left for dead by his best friend.  On a determined mission to confront them both and get his half of the money!

How old would you say Marvin is here?

43 years old! What did life throw at you sir?  Why do you look 63? Not frail, but old and strong and driven.

Walker walking:

Sister in law troubles:

She loves him, but he can be frustrating.

It's not all fights:

Hey, It May Not Be The Cover Of Rolling Stone, But At Least It's A Middle Section From Leatherneck

 

Coincidences

 Maybe we live in a simulation or maybe so many things happen, that there are bound to be coincidences...

--When I was an undergraduate, I met a young woman in astronomy 101.  We spent a fair amount of time together, but not much happened romantically.  She liked to hold hands on long walks, we went to the movies a time or two and kissed once.  Anyways, she was a Hotel & Restaurant Management student and spent a summer in India, working at a large international hotel.

--After I graduated, I spent a year and a half living in Sun Valley.  One one of the many drives between Sun Valley and Spokane, I picked-up a hitchhiker who, I discovered later, had dropped a ball point pen in my car, which was from the Von Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe Vermont.

Also, while living in Sun Valley, I developed a deep friendship with a woman who had gotten a degree in Journalism at University of Idaho while I was in Pullman.  One of the many things I remembered was her telling me she dated a guy with the memorable last name of "Custer".  He attended WSU and they met because she spent a Summer as a lifeguard at the public pool in Pullman.  She noted that he--even though a STEM guy, could really write--which was kind of a mixed blessing since he wrote beautiful but rather mean post-break-up letters to her.  The name was familiar to me:  I took a Science Fiction lit course under the legendary Paul Brians and in this small-ish class, we would review each other's papers.  There was a Custer in the class, IIRC he was stem and he was an amazing writer!

--After Sun Valley, I returned to Pullman to prep for grad school, via a degree in Biology.  One of the first courses I took was Organic Chemistry.  It was an equipment/glassware intensive lab and each student had a row of drawers of their own stuff.  A label on a piece of glassware read "Custer".  I became friends with the Indian-American TA and through her, met my Indian-American wife.  She grew up in the Boston area, which is how we got into the vicinity of Vermont.  We got into Vermont itself because we figured that since entry-level jobs paid so little, we might as well live someplace with a lower cost of living. It happened that UVM advertised in The Boston Globe.  We ended up living in Vermont for 8 years.

The Progression of the Deck Shelter Project

 

Imaginary Dialogue

Mom: How did you sleep last night dear?

Me:  Pretty good considering that I felt as if The Eye of Sauron was on me all night.

Mom: The flood light from next door is really something isn't it?  I need to get some curtains for that room...

How it went:  After I mentioned Sauron, Mom stared at me blankly and I didn't know if she didn't hear me (she's hard of hearing) or didn't get the reference.

It turned out to be:  Both.

Poor "mom-ing" and errands done on a bike

I normally 'deal with my hair' by shaving my head every so often.  I've been doing this for about 5 years, so it's not a pandemic adaptation.

A concatenation of events induced me to get a professional cut for once:  A barber shop in the middle of our village reopened after a couple of years of being closed.  I had gone there every once in a while and the place was staffed solely by the owner, who was close to retirement and was only open sporadically. I wanted to support him by getting my hair cut there, but often needed a cut and he was closed.  This and my thinning hair probably combined into me making a habit out of the DIY method.

A small story of a time I got my hair cut there:  I kept having the barber take a bit more off, since he wasn't getting it tight enough.  He noted that, "I can take it off, but I can't put it back ".  I replied without much thought, "Maybe someday, in Heaven, you will gain the power to put it back".  He became visibly moved by this. Which made me have "the feels" as well.  He was getting up in age and had recently lost his wife, so his mind would understandably be turning to mortality...

The second reason for going back to the barbershop was that in a few days, I'll be flying out for a wedding.  I would like to make a good impression--we live 3,000 miles away and I don't see these people all that often.

I had some time and the only vehicle available to me was the GMC Yukon XL.  So I thought, why not ride your bike?  If I take the bike path, it's only 2 miles and there are no hills.  Of course, I haven't ridden my bike in months and the tires were flat and got a bunch of dust and cobwebs on myself in the process of pumping up the tires and set-off on my way.

It was a drizzly day, so the path wasn't the usual zoo, but there were a few walkers, joggers and bikers out.  I was in no hurry but still could maintain, what I estimate to be a little more than 15 MPH, with very low effort.  When I needed to overtake people, I would slow to maybe half that for safety reasons.  I noticed a small child riding a bike following his mom on her bike and I slowed as I came closer to overtaking them.  I had to slow even further because the mom turned around and began heading toward me.  It looked as if all three of us would intersect at the same point, so I slowed enough that she could pass her son first.  As she got close to the boy, she instructed him, "somebody is coming up from behind you, so get to the right".  Naturally, he veered sharply and suddenly to the left.  I had to come to a complete stop to avoid him.  The mom either didn't see this or remained ignorant of the accident she had almost caused.

I got my haircut in the nicely re-decorated barbershop and was regaled by a Spanish dubbed (and subtitled, also in Spanish) version of Twilight.  Very compelling cinematography, but even my smattering of Spanish (3 years of high school courses!) I could tell how idiotic it was.

After the haircut, I purchased wedding cards and made it home with no further ado. 

Okay, I'll Explain

 My Wife didn't understand my Facebook post--which was just the picture below:

The FBI seized a "fully constructed" Lego set of the U.S. Capitol from the home of an alleged insurrectionist. 

What does the FBI think they can prove here?  Are they not sure they have enough evidence that the guy was trespassing in the Capitol and the Lego set will put them over the top?

Maybe the FBI has watched one too many 'heist' movies and they think his sinister plot depended on the detailed model, provided by Lego.

Contrast

 

With flat light, you can still kind of see the break line, it runs almost vertically.

When I tilt it a bit, it's really easy to see the etching.

BTW.  These pills are our elderly female dog's incontinence drug--estrogen.  They work like magic. She gets half a pill per day, wrapped in American Cheese, so she will eat it.

Another Accepted Post!

 David writes:

"This may be off-topic, but your post reminded me of something from a few days ago:

"I had been looking into this Knight Professorship program because of the controversy around tenure for Nikole Hannah-Jones at UNC, and found out that Michael Pollan is a Knight Professor at UC Berkeley.

"It seems, on one hand as if it is laudable for a foundation to facilitate getting people, who could be exceptional professors, but who lack the normal academic credentials, in front of students.

"In the case of NHJ, it looks like a colossal mistake—her work doesn’t come close to academic standards, she hasn’t really broken new ground in journalism and hasn’t done any teaching.

"In the case of Michael Pollan, this seems like a perfect example of why the program is great. He is a very compelling speaker and has written a bunch of books which are journalistic and very influential. One thing that comes to mind with Pollan: Was the Knight money really the only thing stopping Berkeley from offering the professorship?"

Althouse posted it Here but my response was to this post.  In fairness, she had two Michael Pollan posts in one day and I was admittedly on a tangent--to both of them.

Not, No Signal, But Certainly, Not Much Signal

 If you look at past and current infection rates in the UK, it looks pretty scary:

But let's look at the death rate:

Last time the case rate went this high, the death rate went from high single digits to the high 400s per day.  Now it's jumped from the high single digits to, 21.  I conclude that the vaccine is working, though I would like to see more data about who is getting infected.  An alternate hypothesis is that D is more infectious for those who are not immunized, but less deadly.  And of course it could be and probably is a mixture of this and vaccinated people becoming infected, but having great survival rates from the vaccine. 

The previous death rate was approximately 500 deaths / 25,000 infections, so one in 50.  Now, (with rounding) about 25 deaths / 25,000 infections, so one in 1,000.  A 20-fold difference in this outcome.

I'm Half Italian and Only Now am Realizing

 

That the Italian flag has vertical stripes.  It's not shocking, it's just that it never really occurred to me that there is a flag, almost just like it, but horizontal.

The reason for this was that I had been watching a bunch of Wimbledon over a very rainy 3-day weekend and marveled at how no American men were left and yet Canada and Italy each had two men left.

Well, I was right about Canada, but not Italy.  I thought that a name like Márton Fucsovics didn't sound very Italian, but reasoned that professional tennis players are kind-of world citizens:  They choose a place that is nice to live in and which has the kind of weather which allows you to train year-round.  Italy has pretty nice weather compared to most of the Slavic areas.  Anyway, I noticed his flag was different from the very typically named Italian, Matteo Berrettini's flag.

So I learned something about the Italian flag and something about the Hungarian flag too. 

A Rainy 4th Of July Weekend

But we still got to do everything we wanted to do: 

On the 4th, I got in a run during a break in the rain--I would have happily run in the rain, but it was nice to see the sun.

Later, I fired up the grill when it was mostly sunny.  When it started to rain, I wheeled the grill to a place under the new shelter we just installed and I was able to grill, without the rain drowning the coals or wetting the meat.

After dinner, it got nice again and everyone went outside and lounged under the shelter.  I had wheeled the grill back to its normal place in the sun, or rain.

Much later, some fireworks were set-off and I was kind of glad it was raining again, since one of the small rockets landed in an oak tree branch and a small fire was burning up there.  I'm pretty sure the tree was never in danger and all that was burning was the firework itself.  But better safe than sorry: The garden hose just reached the spot (after I stood up on the deck railing) and after a few tense moments, all was well.  We set off one more large rocket and decided to not test our luck with the arrays of tiny ones.

Another break in the rain came on the 5th and so my wife and I explored a new (to us) trail nearby.  It was very buggy and the trail didn't go far.  But the town forrest had been harvested in 2019--according to a sign I saw on the way to the parking spot--so there was much open area and we found ripe blueberries growing in there.  We braved the deer flies and mosquitoes long enough to enjoy a couple handfuls of the tiny but very sweet and tasty berries, before making our escape.

It Should Have Been An Emergency

 It was Saturday the 3rd of July and we had plans.  I was watching Wimbledon tennis and my wife had plans to either do a cardio class, or treadmill if the class was cancelled.

Either of these plans require electricity, which just went-off around 8:00 AM.  I've done it so often, it was almost too easy:  Open the garage door manually, wheel out the generator and plug it into the outside 220V socket, fire the unit up, go to the basement and shut-off the main breaker and all the other breakers, energize the socket breaker then all the others one-by-one.  Go back out and release the choke on the generator.

I got Wimbledon back on the TV once the cable box reset itself and the wife's class remained cancelled so we decided to find out if the generator could handle the treadmill.  It could!

We were back on track!

An accepted comment from Matt Damon and the Cocoon/Wilford Brimley line

 Here

Matt Damon Is a lucky guy. He’s aged to the perfect spot—as old as Wilford Brimley was in Cocoon, but doesn’t look old like that. Damon was a handsome young man, but had an uncanny resemblance to Hillary Swank. Life is good for both of them, Hillary Swank is still beautiful and Damon is a little less pretty, but in a good way.

I feel a little bad, with everyone picking on Brimley for looking unusually old for his age—he still made it to 85, which is pretty respectable. So I feel like I should point out, in The Natural, Richard Farnsworth was two years younger than Brimley but looks 10 years older:

The Natural

I think a lot of men looked old at an early age back then—of course it could have been Hollywood movie magic. Robert Redford was the same age as Farnsworth in that scene (47), so not everybody looked old for their age back then.