Sarah Palin is about eight miles north of Camp J, signing books in WalMart. I'm cleaning up paperwork, enjoying a nice fire of oak and ash, and waiting for her heartborken email lamenting my absence .
I'll reply -- with all the compassion and sensitivity I can muster -- that I always avoid groups of more than 5,000 people when I can gracefully do so and remind her that I already saw her once.
Dec 2, 2010
On a Bike Trail Built for Few
Sill looking for an explanation of how we destroyed our economy so badly? Come visit. On a five-minute drive I will illustrate it for you.
We'll be motoring along the busy two-lane state highway which has just been graced by a new bike trail.
First, however, kindly permit me a brief personal aside. I am a fan of the trail concept. People who walk and ride bicycles instead of driving cars and trucks become healthier and wealthier. When protein-based locomotion is substituted for fossil fuel, we reduce our overseas cash-exodus and debt problem. Our world becomes a little cleaner. It's all good, or would be if (a) trails were built with a degree of intelligence and (b) they actually went somewhere.
The one I refer to starts at the driveway of a big church well outside of town and ends a couple of miles away near the entrance to a lakeside park. Aside from a country convenience store mid-way, there is no reason travel it except to look at pretty scenery on one side and the highway on the other. So virtually no one uses it.
Which is not related to the three other primary absurdities, the least of which is that about a third of the trail goes through a public hunting area. Before long some lonely yuppie will be biking along on his Koga Kimera and notice a guy with a gun. He will make a horrified complaint to pliant authorities who will then be faced with a dilemma. Do they close down hunting, or do they offend the hoplophobic wailers, noisy all out of proportion to their numbers? You get one guess, and it will be right.
It is more ridiculous that this trail -- and all others in this part of the world -- are built to standards more often associated with roadways for Freightliners, fully paved with (most likely) over-specified concrete. Someone with access to the public tit missed the point that a trail, by definition, is intended for Nikes, Schwinns, and baby strollers. Call it, generously, GVW limits of of 600 pounds, and those would be tandems piloted by the couples who badly need the exercise.
The best for last: One and-one half miles of this trail are easily visible from the highway, and just for the Hell of it I counted the traffic control signs -- on the trail and meant only for all those bikes and baby strollers. Forty-two in the mile and one-half. Some warn of curves, the sharpest of which limits visibility to maybe 300 yards. Some alert the soccer moms to the beginning and end of the trail. But most, and I swear to the gods this is true, are incline markers, cautioning that the trail drops or rises 10 or 20 feet in the next couple of hundred yards.
Ignore the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on the underused trail bed itself Just multiply 42 by a couple of hundred dollars, the minimum imaginable cost of buying the treated posts, the signs, and people and equipment to install them. You get $8,400.
So what, Jim? You're bitching about a pittance.
No, I'm inviting attention to the reason why our Leaders this week are stumbling around Washington, wall-eyed with the realization that we have nearly borrowed ourselves into Third-World debtor-nation status; why an American plea for IMF bailout loans in the next decade is no longer unthinkable. Why you may wake up one morning in the near future and discover that your stash of well-hidden C-notes, totaling a thousand dollars, for emergencies, won't buy your hungry kid a Happy Meal, even if they remain legal.
Bike trails built to Interstate Highway standards, a million or two to dissuade kids from eating Cheetos, a few billion to send an extra $250 to each of the nation's old farts. They are linked to a pervasive political attitude: "Dream up something -- damned near anything -- that sounds nice and green and healthy and friendly, and, of course, badly needed. Hire a lobbyist. We'll find a way to make you happy by extorting your neighbors, Of course, they're broke too these days, but we'll just borrow what you need and sign their name to it."
We'll be motoring along the busy two-lane state highway which has just been graced by a new bike trail.
First, however, kindly permit me a brief personal aside. I am a fan of the trail concept. People who walk and ride bicycles instead of driving cars and trucks become healthier and wealthier. When protein-based locomotion is substituted for fossil fuel, we reduce our overseas cash-exodus and debt problem. Our world becomes a little cleaner. It's all good, or would be if (a) trails were built with a degree of intelligence and (b) they actually went somewhere.
The one I refer to starts at the driveway of a big church well outside of town and ends a couple of miles away near the entrance to a lakeside park. Aside from a country convenience store mid-way, there is no reason travel it except to look at pretty scenery on one side and the highway on the other. So virtually no one uses it.
Which is not related to the three other primary absurdities, the least of which is that about a third of the trail goes through a public hunting area. Before long some lonely yuppie will be biking along on his Koga Kimera and notice a guy with a gun. He will make a horrified complaint to pliant authorities who will then be faced with a dilemma. Do they close down hunting, or do they offend the hoplophobic wailers, noisy all out of proportion to their numbers? You get one guess, and it will be right.
It is more ridiculous that this trail -- and all others in this part of the world -- are built to standards more often associated with roadways for Freightliners, fully paved with (most likely) over-specified concrete. Someone with access to the public tit missed the point that a trail, by definition, is intended for Nikes, Schwinns, and baby strollers. Call it, generously, GVW limits of of 600 pounds, and those would be tandems piloted by the couples who badly need the exercise.
The best for last: One and-one half miles of this trail are easily visible from the highway, and just for the Hell of it I counted the traffic control signs -- on the trail and meant only for all those bikes and baby strollers. Forty-two in the mile and one-half. Some warn of curves, the sharpest of which limits visibility to maybe 300 yards. Some alert the soccer moms to the beginning and end of the trail. But most, and I swear to the gods this is true, are incline markers, cautioning that the trail drops or rises 10 or 20 feet in the next couple of hundred yards.
Ignore the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on the underused trail bed itself Just multiply 42 by a couple of hundred dollars, the minimum imaginable cost of buying the treated posts, the signs, and people and equipment to install them. You get $8,400.
So what, Jim? You're bitching about a pittance.
No, I'm inviting attention to the reason why our Leaders this week are stumbling around Washington, wall-eyed with the realization that we have nearly borrowed ourselves into Third-World debtor-nation status; why an American plea for IMF bailout loans in the next decade is no longer unthinkable. Why you may wake up one morning in the near future and discover that your stash of well-hidden C-notes, totaling a thousand dollars, for emergencies, won't buy your hungry kid a Happy Meal, even if they remain legal.
Bike trails built to Interstate Highway standards, a million or two to dissuade kids from eating Cheetos, a few billion to send an extra $250 to each of the nation's old farts. They are linked to a pervasive political attitude: "Dream up something -- damned near anything -- that sounds nice and green and healthy and friendly, and, of course, badly needed. Hire a lobbyist. We'll find a way to make you happy by extorting your neighbors, Of course, they're broke too these days, but we'll just borrow what you need and sign their name to it."
Nov 30, 2010
High-Plains Ugliness
Alternate title: "Just Bitching and Moaning"
From the official gummint guessers:
Today: Scattered flurries before noon. Cloudy, with a high near 22. Blustery, with a northwest wind between 23 and 29 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph.
Tonight: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 8. Blustery, with a west northwest wind between 15 and 21 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph.
D.C. al fine. And there is no "fine" in the forecast furs the eye kin see.
To Hell with winter.
From the official gummint guessers:
Today: Scattered flurries before noon. Cloudy, with a high near 22. Blustery, with a northwest wind between 23 and 29 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph.
Tonight: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 8. Blustery, with a west northwest wind between 15 and 21 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph.
D.C. al fine. And there is no "fine" in the forecast furs the eye kin see.
To Hell with winter.
The Great Princeton Hummus War
Will you join me in a great cause? Hummus eaters at Princeton are being exploited, and a mass protest is necessary.
The problem: Grocery stores operated by Princeton offer only one brand of hummus. It is owned by Pepsi Cola and a subsidiary. A Palestinian student group accuses Pepsi of donating money to support Israeli human-right violations.
The Palestinian kids collected enough signatures to force a student referendum. If it passes the university will be asked to stock its hummus shelves with competing brands which do not contribute to Israeli human rights horrors.
(1) What in holy Hell is a university doing running grocery stores?
(2) If we can find a way to send the complaining kids home when they've finished matriculating, they'll become the rulers of whatever sort of nuisance the Palestinians next establish to misgovern themselves. That is, they stand a good chance of becoming Gaza warloards in L.L. Bean button-downs who can quote Norman Thomas. (Princeton gives great credentials for aspiring rulers, foreign and domestic.)
(3) What in holy Hell do the P-kids kids think they're at Princeton to accomplish, anyway? If one of their goals is to learn to draft carefully thought-out proposals, mark down a failing grade:
"The referendum was originally scheduled for last week but was canceled then because of a goof: The wording called for Sabra hummus not to be offered at university stores rather than for additional products to be sold, too."
---
Hummus: A sort of sandbox salsa of chickpeas, sesame seed paste, olive oil and whatever spices do not violate camel country dietary laws. Suspicions that it diminishes mental capacity are so far unproven.
The problem: Grocery stores operated by Princeton offer only one brand of hummus. It is owned by Pepsi Cola and a subsidiary. A Palestinian student group accuses Pepsi of donating money to support Israeli human-right violations.
The Palestinian kids collected enough signatures to force a student referendum. If it passes the university will be asked to stock its hummus shelves with competing brands which do not contribute to Israeli human rights horrors.
(1) What in holy Hell is a university doing running grocery stores?
(2) If we can find a way to send the complaining kids home when they've finished matriculating, they'll become the rulers of whatever sort of nuisance the Palestinians next establish to misgovern themselves. That is, they stand a good chance of becoming Gaza warloards in L.L. Bean button-downs who can quote Norman Thomas. (Princeton gives great credentials for aspiring rulers, foreign and domestic.)
(3) What in holy Hell do the P-kids kids think they're at Princeton to accomplish, anyway? If one of their goals is to learn to draft carefully thought-out proposals, mark down a failing grade:
"The referendum was originally scheduled for last week but was canceled then because of a goof: The wording called for Sabra hummus not to be offered at university stores rather than for additional products to be sold, too."
---
Hummus: A sort of sandbox salsa of chickpeas, sesame seed paste, olive oil and whatever spices do not violate camel country dietary laws. Suspicions that it diminishes mental capacity are so far unproven.
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