Random Thoughts Wednesday - Of Ships & Planes

Powered ships have been plying the seas successfully for 150-years or so. And Boeing has been making reliable planes for over 80-years. Wonder what the problem is now? Maybe it's just more examples of leadership by accountants and financiers.

Falling Interstate highway bridges, massive electric grid failures, airlines shutdown in good weather, and other massive failures. Something is going on here...could be lousy FBG leadership. Based on my own observations of them, I tend to think so. Have I mentioned before that I don't like those people?

Another factor is what seems to me to be an overly aggressive migration to computer control of everything possible.  The Boeing plane was carrying something like 20+ computer technicians in the back.  They were lucky that the pilot had enough control left to get the plane back on the ground safely.  Some of these computer proponents are pushing hard for the elimination of pilots in the cockpit altogether...let the computer fly it, they chant, just as they are now doing with the drones.

Personally, I like the notion of having pilots aboard who have the same vested interest in completing a flight safely as I do.  A computer dweeb on a joystick thousands of miles away as with the current drones just doesn't have the same chips in the game as do the passengers.  Note that the "Dreamliner" has only 2 engines--I like 'em with more motors.  And as we all know by now, computers aren't perfect, nor do they behave themselves as advertised in all situations.  I would have no interest in flying beta.


Adios

HELL EXPLAINED

A friend sent me this recently – engineers will like it, maybe some others, too: HELL EXPLAINED BY A CHEMISTRY STUDENT

The following is an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry midterm, and an actual answer turned in by a student.

The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely... I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct..... ...leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God, Oh my God.'

The student received an A+


Oh god

Sham Wow

Already figured the wipes were a scam, but wife needed something to do some light chopping...how about a Slap Chop and its little cousin, the Graty? How badly could they screw up a blade and a spring? Pretty damned bad...the thing is NFG! Went out in today's garbage.

Yeah, yeah, I know that all I had to do was to evaluate the sleazy looking character doing the commercial to figure nothing about these products were worth a damned. Maybe the kid is available to make nomination speeches for Democratics...might be a good fit.. 


Adios

Rejecting Big Brother & Sis

An interesting development in the full body scan wars today. "The president of the Allied Pilots Association, which represents 11,500 pilots, many of whom work for American Airlines, has urged members of the union to revolt against the devices."
I'm glad I got wanderlust out of my system years ago.

Travel started becoming ponderous in the late 1970s when airline deregulation was thrust upon us. Air travel was great before that, though.  I recall when the airlines rarely sold the center seats which allowed for the center seat back between you and your fellow traveler to be folded down and used as a convenient drink stand--much more civil than that obnoxious little fold-down in front.  You could cross your legs and ride in relative comfort.  Flight attendants were gracious, pretty, and well trained...even the heshees.

Airline food was never outstanding, but it was pretty good then...yes you got a reasonable meal if your flight took place during a meal time.  What's changed?  Well, a couple of things that come to mind are the ascendancy of financial and accounting people to corporate leadership (I don't think they were never suited for leadership by lack of personality alone) and overreaching Democratics favoring egalitarian travel access for all.  Well, we have it, and the airports are more and more resembling bad bus stations.

Glib and unfair?  Sure...but like we gave "Peace a chance" perhaps we should give "Profiling" a chance, too.  Grandma and Grandpa aren't the problem.


Adios

Hamburger Stands - The Clover Drive-in - Poly

While thinking about the Hawthorne "A" a few posts back, it struck me that I left EH right after graduation and never really spent much social time in the local drive-in stands.  Dates were usually to something else, somewhere else, so except for the early trips to a stand with my family, I missed the East Side hamburger stand experience.

If I recall correctly, there was a Lone Star, a Char-Bar, and a couple more I recalled from the Riverside area on Belknap.  The picture above is probably a rare one of the Clover Drive-In in the Poly area, taken sometime in the early sixties (credit and thanks to a Poly reunion site).

Kids with cameras were fairly rare in those days.  Even if you could buy a camera, there wasn't often enough money to pay for the processing and taking a night picture like this one requires a bit of special know-how...all contributing to a scarcity of pictures taken of drive-ins at night, which is how we would all remember them best.

However, as I was doing some searching for representative pictures of hamburger stands sometime back, I found those pictures to be scarce.  Not surprisingly, what pictures did exist were taken in large population areas where there were lots of professional news photographers, like Los Angeles...and Ft. Worth in the 1950s and 1960s was still a pretty backwater place.  Seems that the West Side tended to have most of the neat eateries--all 2 or 3 of them.  Of course, the West Side was only a 15-minute trip from the East Side in those days--especially after the Toll Road opened in 1957.

Even though the drive-in experience occupied most of our youth, in a larger sense, they were fairly short-lived...done in by McDonalds and the fast-food genre as they came on line in the 1960s.  Too bad, the variety was amazing and for some, the social experience was also memorable.  I saw a slight resurgence in the 1980s when some of our peers started opening retro hamburger stands...often using the same names as the original oldies.

But things had changed.  We visited the new retro stand near our home, backed the car in, called the car-hop, got the food, turned on the radio, and settled in for a pleasant automotive retro dining experience--which we accomplished.  It happened that our retro hamburger stand lacked the open acreage of the originals, so they painted a row of parking spots right against a two-story building on the adjoining property.

You had a choice--back in so you could see what was going on, or head-in and stare at the blank wall.  We, a card carrying boomer family, backed in of course and there were no other cars in the row.  All too soon we had another car containing a young FBG family pull in right next to us (don't they always?) only they parked facing the wall.  They were oblivious to the fact that their lights would not be available to signal the carhop, nor could they see the carhop, and their horn might not be very effective either.  We were delighted--watching members of the FBG squirm has always been entertaining for us.  Dumb bastards.

Drive-in hamburger stands were mostly warm climate establishments for obvious reasons.  So, northerners you encounter from time to time simply didn't have the same experience.  Most of the pictures accompanying this piece were in California.


Adios

We The People

These color graphics clearly display where we are as a country.  Of course, in most places, except where there are heavy concentrations of great diversity, the electorate is fairly evenly split with the matters solved by a gadfly group of "Independents" moving from one side of the middle to the other, depending on which issue moves them.

The green circles are areas where I would not want to live and the Xs are places where I don't want to do business.  People in those areas are simply not my kind of people and the representatives they keep sending to government do not represent my view of right and wrong.  Looks like most of the ground is held by the Rs.

Gridlock should keep us out of too much government induced trouble for the next couple of years.  The Founding Fathers were awfully bright people, weren't they?

If you are looking for a good read, find a copy of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" online.  Although written about 234 years ago, the language reads much like today's. 


Adios

Election - 2010 - Results

A fresh start this morning.  Conservative compromise is not the lesson of yesterday's election.

Adios

JFK - The Declaration of Independence

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

Goldie Hawn - Like a Hawk

Classic Goldie...


The FBG was 21-31 years old when this film came out in 1984...maybe they missed it.


LIKE A HAWK

Update - Approved News Vendors

After leading their enterprises into a propaganda wilderness, CEOs of NBC, ABC, and CNN were fired in September.  I doubt their enterprises will recover...I know they won't in this house.  An insurance company irked me 40-years ago--despite going through a succession of new owners over those 40-years, they never convinced me to spend another penny with them.  And I've managed to pass my boycott notions on to another generation. 

Capt. Sully Sullenberger referred to the USAir revolving door management as being a substantial factor in the problems plaguing his industry. That so-called management style got its start in American industry during the early 1970s even before the Captain started flying.

For at least the past 40-years in my memory large businesses have been "run" by a succession of "professional" managers who mostly come from the financial disciplines, supplied by the "investors" who owned the large enterprises. But that's another story apart from this one.

The breath-taking credibility decline in America's news businesses has reduced once-mighty world news reporters to shadows of their former substance--staffed by people who quite visibly lack the substance of their predecessors.  Soon after the first and second generation owner/managers retired or sold out to "equity investors" came the implementation of professional business controls on the formerly entrepreneurial enterprises, including the arrival of professional managers, and the "mission" to make the news divisions profitable.

Veteran newsmen howled at the thought of introducing the profit motive to the news divisions claiming that it would inevitably lead to the loss of objectivity.  They were right.  What masquerades as "news" these days is mostly propaganda put forth by one corporate entity or another.  And the corporate goal is the same as it always is...vanquish the competition and gain a monopoly until the people rise up against it.  Fox is about all we have left.


Adios

Evil - 2

During the 20th Century the collection of thugs shown at right were the personification of EVIL for at least 2-generations of us.  Several of them were lawyers, a couple had advanced degrees, a couple were high-ranking generals...together, all of them were responsible for the deaths of over 50,000,000 people. 

We tried them, then hung 10 of them on 16 October 1946.  They generally ranged in age between 45 - 55, with only a few of them older than that.  Until they were brought to justice, they had about 10-12 years of living a high life, leading the massacre of millions, and causing the destruction of their country.

They probably didn't set out to become  the bastards they ultimately became, but some people have trouble managing power.  Be that as it may, their faces and names are forever inscribed on the roles of the truly evil. 

As I mentioned in the last posting, people like this intrigue and puzzle me.  I wonder why they became what they became and I also wonder if it is possible to determine anything that could be applied to living people among us.  Beats me, but its worth keeping the knowledge of this kind of evil available to teach our young and hopefully enable them to become even more cautious in their daily dealings with others.

As teaching American History in our schools seems to be a declining imperative we might consider helping our own learn some of the things they need to know.  In 1974 the BBC made a 26-part series that put a tremendous amount of WWII history into video format.  Nothing like it has been done since, nor is it ever likely to be.  The World at War included interviews with a number of high ranking leaders of the USA, Britain, and Germany who have now taken their places in history...should that history continue to be learned.  It's a good investment and much more meaningful now than it was when I recall seeing parts of it on TV over 35-years ago.  There are 11 DVD discs in the set and it is readily available on eBay. 


Adios

Evil - 1

Evil is intriguing...it's dangerous, insidious, and not worthy of too much thought.  However, ignoring it doesn't strike me as being very wise either. 

Bundy and Dahmer we know.  This Assange character puzzles me.  He seems to reside somewhere between noble and evil, depending on who owns the gored ox. 

There is little doubt that releasing some of our military secrets to the world could harm our people, but it would seem that putting such sensitive information in the hands of an Army private who then gave it away is pretty negligent also.  The responsibility for that lapse in judgment lies within our own military management structure who may now be seeking to deflect their own culpability. 

Any larger business organization will have people who, after screwing up, would go to great lengths to cover up their own negligence and responsibility.  There is some sense that they must be perfect in all matters.  An experienced manager will back his or her people, even when they screw up, providing they don't make a habit of it or try to cover up.  Unfortunately, it seems more and more that we lack experienced managers these days.

Well, we know 2 of the stories illustrated.  The third one will clarify in time.  Can anything be inferred from the faces?  I don't know.


Adios 

The Finger

Blah...blah...blah.

Ringing the Bell

Perhaps you have heard about the outrage playing out in Bell, CA, a suburban town of about 36,000 in the Los Angeles area. This is where the City Council and its Manager have been stuffing their own pockets with millions of dollars taken from the blue collar residents in the form of exorbitant property taxes and fees.

They have been arrested and charged now, but still, one can only wonder how many other small towns across our nation are in the grip of similar corruption.

Troy, NY (pop. 49,000) made the news this week involving what has the appearance of a systemic practice of corruption where the local political machine is accused of casting phony ballots for itself. Of course, this is the political silly season.

How bad can things get? Well, if you were a resident of Naples today, the answer is, pretty darned bad.

Our Savior

Citizens of Nevada: Sit him down, wipe the oatmeal from his chin, pin a note to his sweater, and please spare the rest of us.

Post election: The citizens of Nevada returned him to our Senate.  He represents a majority of Nevadans.  I am through with Nevada and Nevadans.  Phooey.
 

Bravo - Michael Roberts

I flew a few weeks after 9-11, the planes were mostly empty and it was a good time to use some of my frequent flier miles. Security was very tight and the sparse passengers eyed each other intensely. Over the period of a few years, the TSA was formed and began to define its job. I clearly recall standing with my arms apart while some dink ran a wand all over me, thinking...I'm a veteran, my father was a veteran, so were my grandfather and his father, and so was Grandpa Jim who served in the Revolution. All of us volunteered for service and all of us saw combat...and these low-level slugs, who probably never served, are running a wand all over me?

Well, that was the thought going through my mind. A week ago something like that went through pilot, Mike Roberts' mind when he declined to submit to a full body scan while going to his Expressjet plane in Memphis. Bravo, Mike. Here's the story in case you might have missed it:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (CBS/AP) — A Tennessee pilot who says he’s tired of being manhandled by security agents is waiting to see if he will lose his job because he refused a full body scan.

ExpressJet Airlines first officer Michael Roberts was chosen for the X-ray scan Friday at Memphis International Airport. The Houston-based pilot says he also refused a pat-down and went home.

The 35-year-old Roberts told The Commercial Appeal newspaper he wants to go to work and not be “harassed or molested without cause.”

Transportation Security Administration spokesman Jon Allen says a person was turned away after refusing to follow federal security procedures but declined to say if it was Roberts, citing privacy considerations.

Roberts says he has safety concerns, but called TSA a “make-work” program that doesn’t make travel safer.

“I just kind of had to ask myself ‘Where do I stand?’ I’m just not comfortable being physically manhandled by a federal security agent every time I go to work,” he told the Commercial Appeal.

Earlier this week, CBSNewYork reported that full-body scanners have not yet been installed at New York City area airports, despite plans that were in place to have them installed at Newark Liberty International, John F. Kennedy International, and LaGuardia airports by September.

The Transportation Security Administration told The Star-Ledger of Newark the installation is complex and the scanners would arrive “in the coming weeks.”

Passengers who prefer not to be scanned can choose to be patted down and pass through a metal detector.

TSA spokesman Ann Davis says passengers are no less safe. She says the scanners are designed to be faster and less physically intrusive than metal detectors and pat-downs.

The TSA has installed 259 scanners at 59 airports nationwide.

Bravo Michael

NPR - Juan Williams

The daily flush of raw so-called news sewage came through today as an NPR item. A left-leaning commentator, Juan Williams, who I actually don't mind listening to, was fired from his NPR job night before last for saying on Fox News something that he was thinking with regard to Muslims.

Ellen, his titular boss, called him to say he was terminated from his 10-year association with NPR and that nothing he could say in person would change the decision. Vivian, Ellen's feckless boss, publicly defended the reprehensible decision today. If you want to know more about this silly stuff, there are enough names and facts included here to Google for more information.

No offense ladies, but I'm grateful that I never had to work for a female boss, pee in a bottle at work, or submit myself and my SSN for harebrained background checks.  I would probably have taken the same path Michael Roberts, an Expressjet pilot took yesterday at the Memphis TSA check point. Fukit. Bravo Michael.

Juan, you chose your own poison, bud. Time to pull the plug on tax supported NPR, it is nothing more than a Liberal-Progressive blowhole sucking a tax-supported teat.

Followup note:  Ellen was forced out about 2-months after this event (and she most likely didn't initiate Juan's firing even though she made the phone call...she was probably Vivian's designated scapegoat).  Vivian was forced out about 4-months after Juan's firing, as a result of another NPR scandal.  Juan is doing well, 



Adios

The Beach

My uncle worked for an oil company in Corpus Christi which gave us a free place to stay during our 1950s summer vacations to the Padre Island beach. The beaches were pristine, the surf small, some hammerheads, and there were very few people out there.

You could drive for miles directly on the beach at surf’s edge until you found a completely empty spot without another car in sight. I roasted myself on every visit and searched for treasures amongst the sand dunes. You took a couple of big ice chests full of food and drinks and cooked over an open fire. At day’s end, you couldn’t wait to get into a shower to wash off the sand and salt. These were the days before kids had the resources or permission to go to places like that on their own, so the parents were always along.

Meanwhile, out in Hawthorne, the Beach Boys were growing up and going to their own beaches…the ones just down the street a short distance from their house…and starting to write songs about it. Their LA county beaches were different in several ways. There were abundant hamburger stands nearby, much larger waves, a few Great Whites, and a ton of people out there…upwards of a half-million beach goers some summer days.

Without doubt the first culture shock a sixties Texas kid got after walking out on a sixties California beach was the clear recognition that you weren’t in Texas any more. The first thing you noticed was that there wasn’t a funky swimsuit in sight. Unlike our demure Texas girls at that time, the California girls had embraced the relatively new bikini, and everywhere you looked was a sea of skin and long, straight hair, much of it blonde.

It wasn’t a complete nirvana though. There was a lot of jailbait which was difficult to accurately identify. Nevertheless, the scenery was striking and the waves were often large and powerful. It was a good place at a good time and the Beach Boys had it right in their songs. Understanding the surfer slang was something else, though.


Adios

The Hawthorne "A"

If you had a friend living in southern California about the time we graduated from EHHS, and were able to spend a few summers visiting there, you would consider yourself lucky. I recall a cute blonde girl named Sandra Fish at Meadowbrook Jr. High who moved out to California about 1960 and when she came back to visit a year or so later, her speech patterns, dance moves, and mannerisms were so different from ours that it was amazing. After a short time she was no longer a naive young Texan, she was pure surfer girl.  In those few years we were at EHHS, Southern California brought forth Gidget in 3 incarnations, several Beach Blanket movies with Frankie and Annette, and the Boys...the Beach Boys.

My first summer out there was a real culture shock. It took me almost 2-years to figure out how to effectively communicate with them. The sixties California youth culture was a combination of a number of different interests; fast custom cars, surfin, hobie cats, cutting edge rock music, long-haired beach-bunnies, hip-huggers & bell bottoms (thanks, Cher), and sports cars of all kinds. Long-haired hippies and drugs were still 2-3 years away; preppie and surfer-style was still in.

Add about 8 or 9 other youth cultures, all doing their things at break-neck speed, and you had a massive amount of living going on—all of it being done within the confines of each culture…they didn’t mix with one another and there was very little conflict between them.  Back in Ft. Worth, we had just begun to consider that we might just grow together with Dallas and become an "area" but Los Angeles was already an "area" containing a population about 600% larger than DFW.

Besides the daily treks down to the beach to look fruitlessly for Gidget and Annette, my friend said we should go up to the Hawthorne "A" one weekend and watch the cars drive through.  I had no idea what he was talking about.  However, to the "A" we went one Saturday night, getting there early enough to claim a rare parking spot.  The show that night has remained burned into my memory for almost 50-years now; and finding a picture of the Hawthorne "A" is a rare accomplishment, indeed--it was torn down long ago.

Hawthorne is a smallish blue-collar community about 5-miles inland from Manhattan Beach, just southeast of the LAX airport.  It's where the Beach Boys grew up and went to high school.  And by the time I got to see it, the "A" was famous throughout the Los Angeles youth culture, drawing kids from the furthermost suburbs in all directions who came with their custom-built hod-rods just to drive through the "A" and show-off.

The show was amazing...candy apple paint jobs, big motors with cut-outs pulled, a lot of chrome, and one of every kind of car imaginable.  Off-duty Hawthorne police handled traffic control, lining the cars up along the curb as far back as the kids wanted to line-up.  And the endless parade would start...once through slowly, and then out the back, down the alley, back onto Hawthorne Blvd., up to the end of the line, and start the process again.  This went on for hours every Friday and Saturday night.

The Beach Boys had moved to the fancier part of town, Brian was starting to screw himself up, Sonny & Cher had just started singing their stuff, Caroll Shelby was building his remarkable cars a few blocks away, and the current crop of LA kids were completely caught up in the surfer culture--it was their life, that and the fast cars.  Some of the lyrics of the Beach Boys song, Fun-Fun-Fun are said to refer to the Hawthorne "A".

Well, she got her daddy's car
And she cruised through the hamburger stand, now

Seems she forgot all about the library

Like she told her old man, now

And with the radio blastin' goes

Crusin' just as fast as she can, now

And she'll have fun, fun, fun 

'Til her daddy takes the T-bird away

(Fun, fun, fun, 'til her daddy takes the T-bird away)

Bitchin'

Atomic Bombs

Almost immediately after WWII ended in 1945, the Berlin blockade began, followed by the Berlin Airlift, and in quick succession came Yeager breaking the sound barrier, the introduction of jet aircraft, Von Braun’s missiles, and the Korean War. In 6 or 7 short years our society had been transformed from an active war footing to a so-called “Cold War” footing.

Our 1950s workforce was filled with young, energetic men who had just recently been a part of a regimented and powerful organization that had vanquished some real villains. They came home and went to college or work in record numbers, and they stood ready to take on new threats without hesitation. They built an Interstate Highway system, an all-jet commercial airline industry, a space program, massive new suburbs, and along with all that, a vibrant “military-industrial complex.”

For those of us who grew up in North Texas during those years, tangible examples of their military industriousness took the form of frequent sonic booms overhead, missile launches brought to our homes via the nightly TV news, and unknown to us, a few Carswell-based B-36 bombers flying around the DFW area carrying nuclear reactors aboard them.

The evening news in those days frequently told of an atomic bomb detonation at the Nevada Test Site as there were just over 1000 bombs detonated there over an 11-year period. The last of them was set off during our last summer as a Highlander—July 1962.

Thankfully, we didn’t have any exposure to anything like those tests in the DFW area. To me, the West in those days seemed like another country…somewhere way out there…

I am very familiar with the Los Angeles basin as a result of doing some projects out there. Recently, as I was looking for some old pictures of the LA area, I happened on the picture posted above. It was taken at night in 1955 from downtown Los Angeles—see the lights turned on inside the buildings? The white glow above the buildings is the flash from an atomic bomb detonated over 300 miles to the northeast. This was one of about 100 atmospheric detonations that were included in the over 1000 bombs set off in Nevada during the years 1951-1962. Guess the sonic booms we had to contend with were much less nerve wracking than this startling scene.

Boom

Chicken Shit

During my Vietnam military service it seemed that a tremendous amount of time was simply wasted. I suppose it’s just the nature of it—better to waste time than getting your ass shot off. With so much time available to observe things, you couldn’t miss seeing a lot of both funny and dumb stuff.  And sometimes, just for your own amusement, you made something up to see how someone would handle the situation.

The WWII Sad Sack comics lampooned military silliness; so did Bill Mauldin’s Willie & Joe; but for me the less well known Private Breger in Britain comics made some of the more lasting impressions. A couple of my favorites are included in this posting.

Is it any wonder that when we went off to Vietnam service, the military establishment had trouble figuring out how to deal with us? A significant percentage of us had either a degree or part of one. And with our having been exposed to the WWII attitudes of our fathers, is it any wonder that we took certain notions into the service with us?

The term chicken-shit came out of WWII and wasn’t lost on us.  For a great example of chicken-shit illustrated in film, take a closer look at John Larroquette's Captain Stillman character in Stripes. Pay special attention to his odd salute, repeated several times…that’s chicken-shit.  Guess you had to be there...and I think that at least one of the sceen writers had been.


Adios

General George S. Patton & Sgt. Bill Mauldin

While I was growing up, there were 3 small WWII cartoon books in our home library that Dad had purchased while he was in the Army Air Force. I discovered them sometime in the mid-1950s when I was about 10 and many times went through them cover to cover. Those little books no doubt had a significant part in shaping my sense of humor.

The books were: Sad Sack, by Sgt. George Baker, who worked for Yank, the Army Weekly; Private Breger in Britain, by Sgt. Dave Breger, who also worked for Yank, the Army Weekly; and the last one was Up Front, by Sgt. Bill Mauldin, who worked for Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper.

Bill Mauldin’s book was the most interesting of the 3 because Mauldin drew the most attention from the Army brass and most especially, the attention of General George S. Patton. A Wikipedia article rightly relates, “Those officers who had served in the army before the war were generally offended by Mauldin, who parodied the spit-shine and obedience-to-order-without-question view that was more easily maintained during that time of peace. General George S. Patton once summoned Mauldin to his office and threatened to "throw his ass in jail" for "spreading dissent," this after one of Mauldin's cartoons made fun of Patton's demand that all soldiers must be clean-shaven at all times, even in combat.

But Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander European Theater, told Patton to leave Mauldin alone, because he felt that Mauldin's cartoons gave the soldiers an outlet for their frustrations. Mauldin told an interviewer later, "I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes.”

Mauldin described walking into Patton’s office for that meeting as “gazing into four of the meanest eyes I had ever seen.” The extra pair of mean eyes belonged to Patton’s dog, Willie. The Mauldin cartoon of the magnificent scenery is one that particularly rankled Patton.

Mauldin wrote, ”The ideal officer in any army knows his business. He is firm and just. He is saluted and given the respect a man who knows enough about war to boss soldiers around in it should have. He is given many privileges, which all officers are happy to accept and he is required, in return, to give certain things which a few officers chose to ignore. I try to make life as miserable as possible for those few.

”Since I am an enlisted man, and have served under many officers, I have a great deal of respect for the good ones and a great deal of contempt for the bad ones. A man accepts a commission with his eyes open, and if he does not intend to take responsibilities as well as privileges, he is far lower than the buck private who realizes his own limitations and keeps that rank.

”I never worry about hurting the feelings of the good officers when I draw officer cartoons. I build a shoe and if somebody wants to put it on and loudly announce that it fits, that’s his own affair."


Adios

General George S. Patton

You've probably seen the 1970 film, Patton, many times over the years since it was first screened in the theaters. I was so taken with George C. Scott's portrayal of Patton that I read a couple of books about Patton and determined that Scott had really captured Patton's character about as well as could have been done. Scott's physical appearance was eerily similar to Patton's as the photos above show.

Military historians generally credit General Courtney Hodges, commander of the First Army, as having carried a much larger load in Europe than General Patton had with his smaller Third Army. However, Patton was much better at garnering publicity. Men who served in Patton's Third Army were often mixed in their appreciation of their former commander. Nevertheless, Patton was, without doubt, a soldier's soldier.

Sharp portraits of General Patton are difficult to find online. He was tragically killed in a car accident in late 1945 and was buried in the Luxembourg American Cemetery with his grave symbolically placed at the head of his former soldiers, most of whom died in the Battle of the Bulge.

If you are a fan of well-done war movies, this one is one of the best and it is faithful to the man it portrays.

Peace

Pretty Girls – Part 2

Continuing with the thought started in the last post (and here), these HQ portrait scans support the notion that pretty ladies have always been among us. The oldest portrait is one taken by Matthew Brady in 1865, implying the attractive young lady was born in the 1830s or 1840s.

Choices of hairstyles and cosmetics clearly varied over time. Paul Harvey, the noted radio commentator of years past, liked to say that, “times change, but human nature doesn’t. The young Roman lad driving his chariot to town had exactly the same thoughts when he saw a good looking young lady along the road as a young lad has today.” 


And so it goes

Pretty Girls – Part 1

Let’s face it guys, we’ve been wired all our lives to appreciate a pretty girl when we see one. It started sometime around the 6th or 7th grade and to a greater or lesser degree has been with us for over 50-years now. I have little doubt that if we are blessed enough to live a decade or two longer, we will have been a captive of that part of nature for upwards of 70-years before we check out.

Our problem is that for the most part we never advanced our taste in women much beyond that 18-40 year age range. That problem has gotten us into trouble with wives, elicited an “eww” now and then, and has generally caused us to suppress a portion of our fundamental nature…probably for the best, all things considered.

Photography has been with us for little more than a 160-years now, and although it always seemed logical to me that some young women of past centuries were most likely just as attractive as those of that age range today, I’ve never really seen an old picture of one. However, with so much available online today, it is possible to explore the subject a bit.

For instance, the collage above shows a couple of popular and very attractive film stars of the early 1960s and a couple of 1962 Highlanders, Carol Warkentin and Carol Reeder, who I always thought were very attractive. I think our Highlander girls compared very favorably with the best Hollywood put on the screen in those days, don’t you?


Dieu merci pour les jolies filles

Life In Prison

Dude tried to blow up Times Square a few months back. He got a life sentence yesterday, even though his car was a dud. In a last hurrah, he had a few intimidating words to say, but no one seemed too troubled by them.  Then he was removed from our courtroom and from our society--forever.

Reminded me of a couple of other little desperados from our youth who also tried to intimidate us. They were young toughs then…today they are just a couple of little old convicts who have been in a cage for the past 40 or so, years.

On the other hand, they've got free health care, free housing, free meals, no utility bills, free cable TV, maybe even Internet access, and don't have to be concerned about a cop pulling them over for something or a local inspector telling them to mow their weeds.

Adios

Atheists

Outspoken atheists make me cringe.  It's not so much that I'm a devout Christian, although I am a Christian.  For me, it's more a feeling of sorrow for those people who feel it useful in their lives to proclaim their atheist status.  It seems like they are taking a huge risk.  I suppose none of us on this side of the dirt will ever know for certain.

However, sometimes on this side of the dirt you might see some indications of the path ahead for some people.  Christopher Hitchens, 61, who has long been an intelligent writer, commentator, and outspoken atheist has now entered a battle that he may not survive.  Bill Maher, 54, appears to be in good health; however, I've seen him recently going into his own tirades against Christianity and religion.  Time will tell...sometimes the cop is not watching, but sometimes he is.


Adios

Door Day 5,6+

  

It's a solid, heavy door.  The latch engages about 1/4" with an audible click--a vigorous pull won't open it.  Rubbing along a thick carpet presents significant resistance to opening--a light breeze won't open it. 

As I mentioned in the previous post, I found the door open, slightly ajar on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings this past week.  It opened a second time in the late evening Friday, breaking the pattern for the first time.  

Saturday morning...(October 2, 2010), it was not open.

Sunday morning it is not open.

Nor on Monday...

Update:  (October 25,2010), it has not been open since Oct. 1, when the pattern was first broken!

Update:  (January 12, 2011), it has not been open since Oct. 1.

Update: (July 20, 2011), the door was found open on only 2 separate occasions since the last update in January.

Update:   (January 28, 2012), No further activity.

Spirits

Consensus in our house is that we have spirits with us more or less constantly. I’m the skeptic in the house because I haven’t seen or heard them, but other family members are true believers. Over the past 20-years in this house, my youngest became so accustomed to hearing their voices, footsteps, fleeting glimpses, and other unexplained evidences, that their presence simply became an accepted fact of life.

We bought the house from a classmate’s parents and throughout the years, school friends who had been guests in the house before our moving in, told of hearing the same voices…most often a little girl’s, but many others as well. Same for the footsteps.

Although I remained skeptical, I do believe there is enough in this world that simply cannot be objectively explained and I retain an open mind on the subject. The last 3 mornings I’ve found a heavy door leading to the front entry vestibule slightly ajar. It latches securely and will not open of its own accord, even when I pull on it. Yet, for the past 3 mornings there it is, slightly ajar. I’ve satisfied myself that no family member is leaving it that way the night before and that no other force I can replicate will open it. Whatever is going on there will continue until it stops and that will be that.

Over the years I’ve been rousted awake in the middle of the night to patrol the house after my family has heard “something strange” downstairs. I’ve made the patrol numerous times and thankfully, I’ve never discovered any bogeymen and suffered only brief sleep interruptions. My family always knew not to recklessly disturb Dad’s sleep.

During July 2009, I was awakened by my youngest who had seen something in my room. It was about 3:30 A.M. and where I usually awaken slowly with some displeasure, that time I instantly bolted awake. While I was still groggy, Youngest started energetically describing a full-figure apparition she had just seen standing at the foot of my bed, looking down at me. What she described perfectly was a circa 1910-1930 aviator, complete with his leather helmet w/chin straps hanging loose, goggles, a heavy leather coat, riding pants, and tall leather boots, looking much like Max Miller shown above.

Her description was so vivid and accurate in small detail that the clarity of it alone jolted me instantly awake. You see, one of my recent projects has been to research and write the story of the first military pilots that flew the old Wright kites during the years before WWI. My computer is full of text and photographic files and I have a number of old aviation artifacts dating to the period laying out on the nearby desk.

The thing that shocked me awake was that my Youngest had had absolutely no direct contact with my work nor had shown any particular interest in it., yet her description of the man was perfect to the period. He was tall, had angular features and he was just looking down at me sleeping. When he became aware of my Youngest standing out in the hallway about 25’ away, looking at him, he slowly turned his head to the left, looked at her, smiled slightly, took a half-step backward, and vanished. His image was substantial enough to block the view of a large clock hanging on the wall behind him and thus enable my Youngest to make a fair estimate of his height compared to mine when I stood in the same place. He was about 6-feet tall.

We haven’t seen the pilot since last year…and we’ll see if tomorrow brings Day 4 of the open door.  By the way, my youngest has both an undergraduate technical degree and a post-graduate professional degree from two of the country's first tier universities.  She is a competent observer in my book.



Boo!

Send in the Clowns

This kind of silliness might have been funny to me back in the 1968 Laugh-In days when Goldie, Artie, and the others were doing their thing on TV.  Now, it just seems sad that our decaying society tolerates the nonsense in our halls of government.  We have been putting those kinds of people in office for many years now.

  A few postings back I mentioned the thought that if you elect clowns then you should expect to get a circus...and we got a circus this past Friday.  In his testimony, presumably to be on the topic of migrant farm workers, Mr. Colbert, an artist at what he does, made a mockery of our House Judiciary Committee, and by extension, us.  There are 40 people on that committee, each one representing about 640,000 of our fellow citizens--about 25,000,000 people altogether.  Twenty-four (24) of the 40 are Democratics--it was their show.  A few of them are assembled in the collage at right...some familiar faces there.

Those of us having a conservative nature have been quietly observing the degradation of so many of our society's structures that even after having grown up in the sixties when silliness was abundant, and Vietnam service killed 58,000 of our brothers, we are concerned about the future for our own families.  Maybe it's a good sign when NBC and CNN fired their CEOs over the past weekend and the cartoonists reappear to skewer those who need skewering.

But I'm wary.  The serious business of the day Friday was the testimony of Christopher Coates, a second former Justice Department attorney, that took place before the Civil Rights Division.  It had to do with reverse discrimination and centered on voting irregularities experienced in Philadelphia in 2008.  The Colbert circus did a pretty good job of burying that story.  Think it was planned that way...h-m-m?

Please Vote !

Time Line - Search Engines

Communications technology has been racing so quickly for the past 15-years I wanted to try and find a simple graphical representation of what has transpired.  It's not easy to find and the interrelation of several technologies, each dependent on the other further frustrate simplification.

I went online about 1996 and thanks to the WSJ technology section found Google almost from its inception.  Before Google, was a gaggle of other search engines available but none of them really did a good job finding what you wanted.  If I recall correctly, the early search engine algorithms were heavily influenced on who was paying off whom.  Google was touted from its beginning as being free from that and so it seemed.

Everything in those days was dial up...it was several years before broadband would become widely available, so searching was slow and tedious, made even more so if you had to fight a slanted search engine.  Anyway this time line shows the sequence various services came online.


Adios

Voice Mail - Part 2

Years ago, once you accepted that voice mail was here to stay and stopped being frustrated by being shunted away, the game switched from being ready to resolve an issue to one of being prepared to utilize the irritating technology to your own advantage.

Early on, the first people who employed answering machines and voice mail would often be near the phone, listening in and deciding whether they wanted to talk to you or not. Sometime later, they simply ignored the incoming calls altogether and periodically played all their messages back at once, dealing with those needing attention according to their own priority list. It was a reasonably efficient way of preserving one’s own time but was disrespectful of the caller’s time and effort—not really a good way to run a business.

Once that practice became evident, you shifted from being prepared to resolve anything with the person you were calling to simply telling that person (on their voice mail) what you intended to do and advising them to contact you if they had any problems with your intentions. Once you dropped that on their voice mail, you went about your business in the manner that suited yourself. Even if they called back to object, you could tell them they were too late to have a say in the matter…if only they had been available to take your call. It was no longer frustrating…it was liberating. If there were any potential legal or organizational pitfalls, then you wrote a quick memorandum of understanding setting forth your version of the matter and sent it out to confirm that you had left the message. That set in place the only written trace of what had transpired and it had the beauty of being entirely your own point of view.

Taking that thought a little further, if after you had dumped the plan on your reticent target's voice mail, you wanted to better ensure that he or she would have to submit to your wishes, then you shut off your phone and voice mail, thus foiling any possible retort. What a game.

Voice Mail - Part 1

We all use it, of course. And depending on how we use it, we either like it or hate it. We like it if it defends us from the overwhelming onslaught of uninvited intruders into our space…or from Aunt Thelma.

However, we hate it when someone we want or need to speak with uses it on us. I’ve never had much problem with anyone using voice mail to protect their quiet enjoyment of a home life. But for over 20-years it seems that more and more businesses use it to tamp down the ugly onslaught of those pesky customers.

If you’ve worked in a busy business environment, you know what I’m talking about…phone interruptions every 30-seconds which make it nearly impossible to concentrate on anything for more than…well, 30-seconds. You could take it off the hook, or instruct your secretary to hold all calls, or pick up your work and take it to the conference room, leaving instructions that you are not to be disturbed there.

About 20-years ago business managers began to embrace the notion of putting a voice mail box on every phone in the place. That way, they reasoned, they could do with less receptionist and clerical labor to answer phones—a cost savings opportunity…music to any manager’s ears. Of course now the boxes are simply features programmed into all office phone systems.

Not surprisingly, the law of unintended consequences set in when the notion of organizing and instructing their work force in the proper ways to use the voice mail system was overlooked by those same managers. The result was that every member of a work force simply turned their voice mails on and stopped answering their phones. Now, and for the past 15-years or so, when you call someone in a business environment, you expect to get a voice mail recording telling you to leave a detailed message. Very frustrating, but of course the recording often gives you an emergency number or extension you can dial to handle something of an important nature. It’s usually a clerk or secretary…and what happens when you call that number…yep, another voice mail telling you to….

So the result is that you simply suffer yet another degradation of simple person to person communication which once was reasonably effective. In my pre-retirement work I had the advantage of knowing how communications once worked before introduction of our new hi-tech communications technologies. In those ancient days we still had to deal with a range of personalities where the highly competent had to make do with the lesser varieties. We learned how to deal with that range of personalities. With a recording it is essentially impossible to accurately make that kind of judgment, so I consider all of them of the lesser sort.

Within a short period of time I determined that by not answering the phone, the person you were trying to reach was effectively putting your communication at their convenience. They would call you back…maybe. And the implication was that you should standby your phone and wait for them. Bullshit, we said and either turned on our own voicemail and played voice mail tag or just shut off the phone. Of course cell phones have made the standby issue less problematic except when the bastard returns your call when it is inconvenient for you…which is nearly always.

I suppose texting solves some of that inconvenience issue, but I’m retired now and have no spirit for farting around with texting. The buttons are too small for me to readily see…the screens too…and my thumbs are too big.

Besides, these aren’t my kind of people….

Adios

Raising the Flag

It's undoubtedly a right of passage that a few high school youngsters try to do something memorable that would place their mark on the old school and on their classmates.  Late in our senior year my group of co-conspirators determined to glass wax all the windows in the school as a final high school exit statement, but we either decided it wasn't worth the risk to our diplomas or more likely didn't have enough money to buy the Glass Wax, so it didn't get done.

Two years before our aborted prank, a member of the Class of 1961 set a high standard for any class pranks that might follow.  He climbed the 1311-foot WBAP broadcast tower just northwest of the school and hung an EHHS flag at the top.  That tower was about 100' taller than the Empire State Building and just a little short of the World Trade Tower roof.

My recollection of the event was fuzzy, but in digging around Facebook I saw a name that I recalled as being associated with the 1961 prank, so I decided to see if he were indeed the one whodoneit.  He was, and in response to my request, Tony Brogdon ('61) graciously agreed to tell his story...the one that follows:

Putting EHHS on the Map

My buddy Phil Morris and I used to meet in the lunch room and brag about what exciting thing we had done over the weekend.  After getting bored climbing the CNB  bank building fire escape and riding the revolving clock 3 times we knew we needed to come up with a more daring feat.  After discussing it with some of our buddies they dared us to climb the 1311-foot WBAP TV Tower and put our School Initials on top. 
 
David Townsend agreed to make a bed sheet with the EHHS on it.  Phil and I then went and scouted it out the following weekend.  I climbed on top of a Utility building then crawled across a wooden plank to the tower.  There was a ladder that appeared to go to the top inside the triangle built tower.  I excitedly returned to tell Phil it was a go.  We went back to the school and told our friends it was a go.

After thinking about it I got concerned that if something happened to Phil I would not be able to live with myself so I decided to go it alone.  I arrived 30 minutes early and followed the same path as before to gain access to the tower.  I wore sweat pants and a back pack with the flag inside.  After climbing a hundred feet or so I heard Phil's voice below " Brogdon is that you.  I explained why I was going alone so Phil agreed to stand guard.

After reaching the half way mark, ice had formed on the ladder.  Much to my surprise, the ice got thicker the higher I would go.  Not to give up I went up to the last hundred feet to discover that the last 100 feet the ladder was on the outside of the tower.  After thinking it over I realized I needed to go all the way.  I climbed on the outside ladder and made it to the top.  I then took the flag out and tied it to the electrodes sticking out of the pole on top.  As I stood on the top I could see down-towns of both Fort Worth and Dallas. I thought to myself " what a wonderful thing it would be if I could jump off and fly like a bird.  In 1977 I made my first skydive which is body flying.  33 years later I am still skydiving, the latest with one of my granddaughters. 

As I descended down the tower, I was so much in a hurry to get down I slipped a couple of times and managed to catch myself in time.  The adrenaline I experienced was the beginning of my life adventures since then.

I kept watching the WAPB news for the next couple of days and noticed that they did not seem to be aware of the flag being there so I called and said I was an amateur astronomer and noticed the flag.  The receptionist said she would check it out.  That evening I was at a Sagamore Hill Baptist Church get together at Talana Hadsell's house.  At 10pm I asked everyone to gather around her TV to watch the news.  The headline was " They said it couldn't be done".  I let out a yell this is it.

The next day at school the word had gotten around that I was the one who put the flag on the tower, so each class the teacher would have me go to the blackboard and draw how I had done it.  The next day the news station showed a Steeplejack climbing up to retrieve the flag.  They mentioned that everyone at the school knew who it was.  Apparently several people called the station to report me.  At home my mother kept pressuring me and my brother Paul to tell her who had done it.  Finally I broke down and said it was me.  My mother fainted onto the couch.  After recovering, she called Pastor Swank.

A member of Sagamore Hill Baptist Church owned the station and Pastor Swank convinced them not to press charges.  He did tell them I must have hung the flag after the station was shut down since the electrode I hung the sheet on carried 20,000 volts.

As the 20th EHHS reunion was approaching I was an accomplished skydiver capable of jumping off the tower and parachuting into the reunion.  I contacted a good friend, Jimmy Davis, a Hollywood Stuntman and one of the stunt coordinators for the TV program " That's Incredible ".  I asked him if they would be interested in recording it for their program.  He checked with the producers and they told him due to liability issues if I recorded it on my own, they would use it on the program.  After running it by my wife at the time she sternly announced that she would divorce me if I did.  Consequently I didn't make it.  A year or two later she left me anyway to marry her boss.

Meanwhile I have jumped in three countries, out of numerous types of aircraft plus twice out of Hot Air Balloons.  I have arranged and jumped into numerous high profile events such as the Seoul 1988 Olympic Opening Ceremonies, The Rose Bowl 4th of July, Pasadena, Tijuana's 100th Birthday to name a few.  I have made hundreds of friends worldwide related to activities within the sport.

...Tony Brogdon, Class of 1961