B4027-2 So Smart She's Dumb

I noticed a chirpy 22-year-old talking about her new car.  She is a recent graduate of a prominent U.S. Midwestern university with a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing.  Her tuition, room-and-board, and incidental fees for the four year program was a cool $40,000 per year (give or take a bit).  I’m not sure exactly, but I suspect that this bright girl went to school on a full ride scholarship - that is, someone else paid her freight for her schooling.

Well, now she’s graduated and employed at a nearby hospital making the big bucks.  So she bought a brand new Japanese car, or to be more accurate, she entered into a long term financing agreement to take part of her salary each month and to send it (ultimately) to Japan.

I’m sure in her old age, Japan will pay for her pension and retirement costs.  Her problem - the same one facing countless Americans who throw good money after bad at China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc.  - is that of staying employed until it is time to retire.

Oh, did I mention that she’s a bright girl?

B4027-1 The "Progressive Program"

Watch the Chameleon at work in the next few months:

1.    Begin by citing some quasi-legitimate environmental concern, i.e., the massive ‘BP Oil spill” in the Gulf of Mexico.

2.    React to that concern by, say, banning all off-shore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, on the East Coast, on the West Coast, in Alaska, etc.  Even where oil spills are minimal or non-existent (say in South Dakota), slow down the permitting process to prevent crude oil from coming to the market.

3.    Wait until drill rig operators tow their rigs to West Africa or other profitable locations around the world.  Pretend to be “very concerned about environmental spills.”  Direct Federal agencies to “study the problem.”

4.    As the “economy” recovers a bit and gasoline prices begin to rise, keep a very firm choke hold on domestic crude oil supplies.  Continue to purchase foreign crude from nations that actively hate the United States, i.e., Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, etc.  Make sure that U.S. treasure is transferred to nations actively seeking to harm the U.S.  Give them the funds to make that destruction happen.

5.    Then when the prices go north of $3.00 per gallon (12-27-10: on this date average U.S. gasoline prices are $3.05 per gallon), begin demonizing the oil industry as greedy and rapacious.  Call for congressional investigations of “windfall profits,” etc.  Pretend to be concerned that “the oil industry is destroying the economic recovery.”

6.    Give endless - doltish -  left-right, left-right, left-right Teleprompter speeches decrying the fact that the United States of America is being held hostage by the oil industry.  Tell everyone that you “are very concerned.”  Pretend that the United States should “invest in affordable alternative energy,” such as, wind turbines (manufactured in China), or photovoltaic solar cells (manufactured in China).  Did I mention that  China is another country that hates the USA?  When pertinent criticisms are offered, dismiss them all as “failed Republican policies of the past."

7.    Begin a Federal take-over of the oil industry in the United States.

8.    Wait for the USA to become a Third World nation.  It will not take long.

9.    Just in case you weren’t counting, folks, we are on Step #5 right now.

C3001-62 Thankfulness: Contentment & Joy

 I am thankful for every cheerful person who crosses my path and touches me with her contentment and joy.  And like a melody stuck in the mind, those notes of contentment and joy play throughout the rest of the day.

B0637-1 Drinking in Wisconsin

Recently my sainted son-in-law sent me the following piece by comedian Lewis Black:

    “I love Wisconsin. I love coming here. I perform here a lot, because I've discovered that you people apparently have some sort of federal grant for drinking. It's - you're insane! You pay less for liquor than anybody I know anywhere in the country. Nobody pays less for liquor than you! What'd you, wh- ho- HOW? I don't know if you're using that farm subsidy money, or if you're just hijacking liquor trucks, but this is insane. (from the audience) "It's volume, Lewis!" Is it volume? It's unbelievable. It's staggering! I come here 'cause basically if I spend four days here drinking, even with the plane ticket it's cheaper than drinkin' in New York! How do you know when it's New Year's? That's the big mystery to me! What's the difference? I've been in bars here, and it's like New Year's every night! Oh, New Year's, that's when w-w-we drink with hats on. Now I've been drunker here than anyplace else I've been in my life. And remember this: you are not, you are not alcoholics. You, and my hat is off, are professionals.”

     I’m really surprised that someone could still write about Wisconsin’s drinking culture.  I was almost certain that the binging had ended there some 30 to 40 years ago.  If it still exists today, that’s amazing in light of the Nanny State’s efforts to ban anything and everything that some dyspeptic drudge thinks is harmful in any way, shape or form.
     I told my friend a few Sundays ago about the drinking culture in Wisconsin that I remembered from my younger days.  He laughed and told me that his Virginia teen and young adult years were filled with the same wild insobriety.  But then he added that things had changed there because of drunk driving laws.  On balance, he thought that the DUI laws were beneficial because they had saved lives.  When I told him that I didn’t agree with him, he was shocked.  “I don’t believe you,"  he said.
     You see, my high school years were filled with trips to Olsen’s Gas Station in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin to look at wrecked cars.  Back then, the word would spread quickly that someone had “totaled his car,” and everyone would flock to Olsen’s to review the remains.  In some eerily Darwinian manner, the inept drunk drivers had rolled their cars - six times bumper to bumper was always a very good number - and took themselves out of the gene pool.  And that only made things more secure for the better adapted drinkers.  Our comedian friend is so right about Wisconsin drinkers not being alcoholics: little by little, many there learned to function adequately with a belly full of beer and to display a behavior that would be considered woefully beyond the pale in almost any other state.
     It was a cultural thing.  I'm told that Wisconsin drinkers consumed 10 million cases of brandy per year back then.  Understand that: it was one quarter of the total annual production of brandy in the United States.  And it was consumed in just one state!
     I remember going to Connecticut on a field service trip for a machine tool company I worked for, and like any good Cheesehead, I found myself in the Holiday Inn bar late at night.  One of my co-workers was a big beer-gut Wisconsin farmer and he had ordered “a shot of brandy.”  The bartender didn’t have any shot glasses and, after looking at his display of liquor bottles, he told him that he didn’t have any brandy as well.  The farmer pointed to his bottle of Courvoisier.  He told him that Courvoisier was brandy.  “Just give me a shot of that,” he said.
     The bartender didn’t have any suitable glasses and he finally settled for one of those double old-fashion glasses.  The farmer told him to “dump a couple of shots” into the glass.  He picked up the glass, sniffed it, and poured the contents down his throat.  “Do it again,” he said.  The bartender stood there, shocked, with his mouth open.  He poured again.  The farmer tossed that down as quickly as the first glass.  The bartender called out to another man sitting at the bar and said, “Hey, Charlie, check this guy out.”  He poured another double and told the farmer to show Charlie how he drank.  The farmer pounded that one down as well - just like it was an everyday thing.  Those folks in Connecticut had never seen anything like it in their lives.  People there drank mixed drinks one after another.  But nobody ever drank anything straight.  Pretty soon different patrons were vying to buy the farmer glasses of brandy just to see him drink them.  He had become a circus act.  When he had knocked off half a fifth of booze, the farmer stood up and told everybody he was going to “hit the hay,” and sauntered out of the bar as if he hadn’t had a single drop to drink in a fortnight.  Yeah.  A true professional who had survived Olsen’s wrecked car collection.
     I suspect that the Wisconsin drinking culture has now changed.  Perhaps it still exists today as it once was in a slightly edited form in remote and isolated areas.  But it cannot be the same as it was when I was tending bar for my father in the 1960s.  All of the “regulars” then were functional alcoholics, and it never occurred to me that there was anything the least dysfunctional about those people at all.  It’s what you did: you stayed mellow pretty much throughout the day.
     Now, it’s all changed.  The nannies have taken our cigarettes away.  The cops are chasing drunk drivers.  The lawyers want a piece of McDonald’s keister, or at least the fat that fills it out.  Oh, yeah.  No asbestos, no leaded paint, no smoky chimneys on those electrical generating plants - the list goes on.  Always some shushing librarian-type telling the rest of us to shut up and to sit down, or to eat our vegetables and to jog five hundred miles a day.  They really don’t care just what you might happen to think about all that.  And that is the real problem: their concept of a healthy lifestyle is being crammed down your craw without so much as a by-your-leave at all.  Does any one of those nannies ever ask you if you mind?  Do you really think your bacon is safe in the sequestered darkness of your refrigerator?  It’s just a matter of time before those health-nut nannies break into your house to nab your sugar-cured, apple-and-hickory smoked bacon.  Check out the movie, Demolition Man, if you want to see how nannyism is building our aseptic future one silly law after another.
     But sometimes I wonder if all that shushing and hand slapping is really getting to the point.  Recently an Ohio State Highway Patrolman picked up another patrolman and the two of them went speeding down the highway with sirens whining and lights flashing.  They were responding to a call.  A woman ahead of the cops pulled to her right to let them pass and the Highway Patrolman driving the cruiser rear-ended the lady.  All three people were killed in a fiery crash.  Subsequent investigation revealed that the driver of the cop car had a 0.8 percent alcohol content in his bloodstream - legally drunk here in Ohio - while he was on duty!  Yeah.  While he was on duty.
     So, what’s the point of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) when cops booze it up on the job?  The point is not drinking per se.  Hundreds, even thousands, drink every day in Wisconsin and drive without hurting a single person.  And the point is not driving per se, either, because thousands die each year dead sober, like the lady who pulled over to let the speeding cops pass by.  The real point is responsibility in drinking (or driving) that is consistent with human freedom.  Right now the MADD-inspired laws are draconian in the extreme because they do not allow that responsible discretion in drinking.  Have one drink and the cops will arrest you on a DUI charge.  It’s insane.
     So I say, here’s to those Wisconsin drinkers.  Keep your freedom and have one on me.  And while you’re at it, pass me those donuts, will ya?

G4001-2 Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

     The local newspaper had an article recently about a man who went back to school to get his degree. Life and circumstances had intervened some years ago to keep him from completing his college degree.  Now, at age sixty-eight, he finally finished his degree and recently graduated. Shown in the same article were his two adult daughters who were also college graduates with master's degrees. All in all, it was a happy family circumstance.

     The more cynical and jaded among us - and that would certainly include me - would find something grotesque about the father and his two daughters moving the tassels on their mortar board caps from one side to the other. You see, these graduations are not things for which we should be especially proud.  They are, in fact, representations of an enormous waste.
     The father, retired from the world of work, has completed a degree that has no practical employment implications. He has been trained for something - but something that he will never use. His degree is nothing more than a flowery garland around his neck, a glittering decoration, an anachronistic chest full of ribbons: in short, it represents a profligate waste.  He will never use any of the training and education behind that degree.  The reasonable question, then, is this: Why would he put in all that time and effort for something he will never use?
     Every now and then we read about some elderly woman completing her fifth doctorate degree in the university at age ninety-five. We are expected to stand back and admire her accomplishment. But I'm always taken back by that, however.  To what end would a ninety-five-year-old woman seek another doctorate degree? What would she do with four such degrees, much less five of them?  More to the point, why should the citizens of the state pay for her pointless narcissism? If she wishes to pursue even more advanced degrees in her dotage, why are others being asked to pay for it?
     Those two daughters with masters degrees share in the same narcissism. When those two women were unable to find jobs after completing their baccalaureate degrees, they decided "to continue their education" by pursuing masters degrees at a state university school. Their thinking then, as it is with many students today, was to mark time by getting a master’s degree while the job market improves enough so that they could find a job. Again, the cost and expense for that education was largely paid by others.
     What I find interesting is this: the particular state I live in has lost 400,000 jobs since Obama became president. There are no jobs available in this state. And yet the state is pouring enormous resources into higher education for students who will take their degrees and move to another state to find employment. The reasonable state taxpayer should ask this simple question: Why are we training people for employment in, say, Texas?
     What is the true price of narcissism? Maybe it’s a lot more than we can afford.

G4001-1 Paying for the Entitlement State

     I noticed this morning a young woman reacting to an appeal for a modest amount of money to be added to a retirement fund for certain types of retired clergy.  Her main argument seemed to cluster around the concept of affordability: she and her husband were living on limited means, and even a modest donation to that retirement fund would have been difficult for them. Her's is a situation that will increasingly come to be seen as the typical situation for most working people in this country. Most of them will begin to question why they are funding a lavish retirement for someone else when they are unable to fund their own retirements. At that point the Entitlement State will begin to disappear.
     I am not suggesting that the clergy retirement fund is lavish by any means. It is not. By the standards of most people it is entirely inadequate to the needs of those who have served their church faithfully for many years and are destined to retire in relative poverty. But the principle holds nonetheless. What is at stake here is the social cohesiveness wrought by one group of working persons paying for the retirement of unrelated, non-working, persons. Stories in the news recently of persons retiring on $600,000 per year in California do not make the average working schlub happy about funding someone else's retirement.
     The real question many people will ask in future years is this: "Why am I working to pay for your retirement?"  It’s a good question.
     Some years ago, in a city nearby, public housing units were demolished and hauled away. Those housing units were originally erected for the benefit of those "living below the poverty line."  But the residents of those units systematically destroyed the buildings, the plumbing fixtures, and generally made those public housing units unlivable. In time they were bulldozed and the land was returned to a state of nature.
     The displaced persons ‒ the persons who destroyed that housing in the first place ‒ demanded that new housing be built for them. And, of course, new housing was built for them. That's how we do things in the United States: we reward the destroyers with new stuff because we feel sorry "that they have to live below the poverty line." Yet, we cringe slightly whenever we drive through their neighborhoods and notice the well-kept lawns (city crews do the yard work, you see), the tidy homes, and better-than-average automobiles in their driveways.  It must be nice - especially if one happens to be driving a older, rather shabby, car through their neighborhood.
     The more prescient ones among us begin to wonder who is really the fool here: those who trundle off to work each morning, or those who lie abed until noon each day? Quite soon, in the next several years or so, something called Resentment will rise up to gobble up the Welfare State, when young workers come to understand that entitlements ultimately destroy opportunities for those workers to get jobs, to raise their families, and to plan for their own retirement. Working for a lifetime to pay someone else's freight may not seem like a bargain to them anymore.
     There is an incredibly delicious irony in all of this, is there not?  Those young people who worked so hard to elect Obama will be his very first victims.  Then they will discover how difficult it is to kick one’s own keister.

F2101-1 Great Uncle Jake

     You know, I'm kind of happy to know that my family has its roots in the Holy Land (Note: not that Holy Land.  This one’s in Fond du Lac County Wisconsin).  I've always felt some ill-defined attraction for that place and never knew quite why.  It goes deeper than the memories of spending that summer at Albert and Florence’s farm, or the fish dinners on Friday nights at Steffes' Tavern in St. Peter.  It's  almost as if the land itself had some metaphysical allure that went beyond the shallow experience of merely driving through it's winding roads and admiring the rugged scenery.  Rather, to me, the red till on the backs of the rolling drumlins seems to say that they have been shaped by that scrappy horde of my ancestors who felled the trees and cleared the land so long ago.  And I suppose that Great-Uncle Jake got his incredible toughness from that effort at defining the land and not from long hours spent dreaming about a better life as he dozed on the wicker chair on his front porch.
     And believe me, Jake was tough!  I remember that cold day in January, 1964, when a storm blew through Fond du Lac and walloped the city with 16" of snow.  Nothing was moving that day.  The streets were too deep in snow to permit anyone but the really foolish or the really hardy to venture out of their homes.  And yet, as I trudged those four blocks to the tavern to tend bar that day, I kept thinking how utterly useless it was to leave the comfort of the house to go to a tavern that surely would have no customers.  I had to walk down the middle of Main Street to get there, knee-deep in snow, and if it wasn't for the fact that a stiff and snarly wind was blowing straight out of the north, I would have turned and walked back home.  And I wouldn't have felt guilty at all.
     A few minutes after 8:00 o'clock in the morning Uncle Jake was beating on the door of the tavern and demanding to know why I hadn't unlocked the door.  He had walked some eight blocks from over on North Park Avenue to the tavern.  He was the only pedestrian on the streets that day.  His face was fiery red from the biting wind.  But he was his usual impish self - that special impishness that only Uncle Jake could display.  "Where the heck is everybody, Billy?" he asked.  "They aren't nuts like you and me, Uncle Jake," I said.  "They're home standing on the register instead of flopping around in the snow like a bunch of clowns."  He was about eighty-six years old at that time.  Toughest man I ever knew!
     He had a full head of dark hair and he used to challenge people to grab a hold of his hair.  "Hang on tight," he'd say.  And he would pull you over the bar if you hung on long enough.  He was one foxy sheepshead player and used to embarrass a lot of wannabe players who mistook him for a doddering old man.  "Kid can't play," he'd say.  "Guess the old man showed him how, didn't I, Billy?"  Ah, yes, that he did!
     He had a reverential way of talking about his wife Annie.  You could tell at once that he deeply loved her.  He told me once, "I rode the rails from Iron Mountain, Michigan and then I married Annie." I pretended to appear stupid, "You just got off the train and then you married her?  Didn't you court her first?"  "Of course I did, you darned fool," he'd say.  And then he would tell you about his wonderful bride.  "Oh, what a woman my Annie was!"

B8005-1 Moron Ideology: The Giddy Conceptualizer

THE GIDDY CONCEPTUALIZERS: Persons who believe that something “is true or correct or desirable in principle” - even though the abject failings of such principles are plainly seen by everyone -  generally cannot be dissuaded by logical arguments because they firmly believe the principled items ought to be true even when they are not.  There is no effective argument against something that “ought to be true.”  The adherents of such conceptions (magical thinking) today are exemplified by closet communists and socialist chameleons; social justice advocates; environmental whackos; PETA; ACLU; Wind Power; Alternative Energy advocates, and Global Warming enthusiasts, etc.

DISMISSAL OF PERTINENT CRITICISMS:  If one argues, for example, against a scheme for generation of electrical power by solar cells alone and brings out the inconvenient fact that such solar cells do not function in the dark, the Giddyists will ignore this argument as if generation of incremental quantities of power during daylight hours is sufficient to replace all coal-fired power generation.  Notice the high tolerance for the absurd on the part of the Giddyist. In principle, clean alternative electrical power generation should be desired over dirty, coal-fired electrical power generation.  No one would argue for the dirty alternative if all things were equal.  But all things aren’t equal.  The pitiful quantities of electricity generated by solar cells cannot replace conventional coal-fired or natural gas-fired electrical generation and it cannot meet the practical needs of society in its current manifestation.  Why, then, would anyone pretend that true alternatives are being examined here?  Solar cells are not alternatives at all.  They are “cute” raised to some artificial power by their apparent attractiveness - often stated as “affordable, renewable electrical energy.”  Yeah.  When the sun goes down, however, their real effectiveness is plainly seen by all: they simply do not work at night.  Then the conventional generation turbines had better be rolling to provide the demanded power.  As a society, why would anyone pretend that solar cells (or wind turbines) are meaningful alternatives to that coal-fired power plant down by the river?

CHANGING THE TERMS OF THE ARGUMENT:    When the Giddyists are shown, to cite yet another example, the world-wide failures of communism, they resort to the defense that enlightened communism by competent leaders would have produced the nirvana described by Marx and others.  In other words, failure is ascribed to the incompetence of past participants rather than to the basic problems inherent in the system itself or in its fundamental clash with the limitations of human psychology.
      Notice that the Giddyist advances his argument by changing the terms of the argument in his demanding some additional, utopian preconditions: “If you supply [wildcard condition], then [wildcard ideology] will work.”  Hardly.  Mr. Fidel Castro has spent more than fifty years searching for that elusive [wildcard condition=police brutality, coercion, re-education, bribes, etc.] that might make his cherished [wildcard ideology=communism] work.  He’s still looking for the winning formula.  North Korea and Venezuela are continuing experiments in the quest to sequester similar [wildcard condition(s)] that might make communism work.  The record to date: consistent and uniform failure everywhere communism is attempted.

CRITICISMS VACATED BY AGREEMENT: Returning to our power generation example, those who oppose coal-fired electrical generation can be silenced by agreeing with them.  Since coal-fired electrical plants are undesirable (to the Giddyists) for a multitude of reasons, it is illogical for them to rail against those plants while they consume electrical power from those plants.  Their arguments can be silenced by merely pulling the power meters from their meter sockets and letting them sit in the darkness to ponder what power generation method ought to be used instead of that nasty, dirty, coal-fired generation.

B5014-4 Moron Science: How Low Can You Go?

THE LANDSCAPE: One of my favorite places to visit on my walks with the dog is the lowest spot on High Street next to the moraine wash-out channel.  In the summer, it’s always ten degrees (F.) cooler there than anywhere else.  So, it’s actually a very refreshing place to visit on a warm and muggy day. 
      It looks very much like an old river bed: flat bottomed, with steep banks on either side that are covered in old-growth trees.  All the brush and small trees have been removed from the wash-out channel as if someone had seriously considered building a house there.  They would have been quite unwise to do so, however.  It is, after all, a wash-out channel that could suddenly come alive with flood waters during the next major rainfall.  As some have discovered when they built homes on alluvial fans in the American Southwest, there is a sound reason why such landforms look the way they do: they were formed by the action of flood water.  The little low spot on High Street is no different.  It’s attractive and beautiful and cool on a hot summer’s day.  But it’s a sleeping giant just waiting for the next deluge.

THE DRAINAGE WINDS:  Nonetheless, it is a place of magical refreshment.  I often pause and face “upstream” whenever I pass by that low spot on High Street.  The very slight breeze flowing down that channel is cool and filled with a rich, earthy, loamy heaviness.  When it reaches the street, the air ponds in a layer five or six feet deep.  One can feel the cool air enveloping himself as he walks through it.  And it is always difficult to resume my walk with the dog after being caressed by that refreshing air.
      It is, of course, what the physical geographers call a “drainage wind.”  Usually they refer to a much more profound wind in, say, the Dinaric Alps, where a flow of cold, dense air from a higher elevation to a lower elevation occurs under the influence of gravity in the winter months.  Such winds are also called katabatic winds, and other examples include the bora and mitral winds.  It may be a stretch to call those lazy breezes at the low point on High Street “drainage winds.”  But the underlying principle is precisely the same: dense air always seeks the lowest spot in the landscape.
 
DEATH BY FORKTRUCK:  Some years ago I read about an industrial accident that killed several men.  They were workers in a facility that bottled and stored industrial gases.  Often such gases are used by welders as metal-cutting gases (propane, acetylene, etc.) or as MIG-welding shielding gases (argon, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, etc.).  The facility where the accident occurred had a large building for administrative offices.  On a dock outside the offices were several very large storage tanks of refrigerated nitrogen and carbon dioxide.  Normally those gases are stored in a liquid form at very low temperatures.  And it is the customary practice, as I understand it, to pass that liquid through an evaporation radiator and then to compress the gas to the appropriate pressure when filling smaller tanks.  The filled tanks or bottles are then stored in an open yard for later sales.  This particular facility had a storage yard that was five or six feet lower than the dock, and the yard was completely surrounded by a sheet-metal wall.  Think of a shoe box lid turned upside down and you'll have a fair approximation of what the storage yard looked like.
      One fine day, a careless fork truck driver inadvertently backed into the carbon dioxide storage tank and damaged the discharge valve on the tank.  Liquid carbon dioxide spewed from the tank without the fork truck driver noticing it, and the liquid cascaded over the dock wall into the “shoe box” storage yard below.  Once the cold liquid hit the warmer surfaces of the storage yard, it evaporated quickly and filled the yard with carbon dioxide gas.  The sheet-metal walls of the yard contained the gases.  Unfortunately, two men were working in the storage yard and they were quickly overcome by the carbon dioxide gas and were asphyxiated.  This was not an entirely unheard of sort of accident.  Such things happen five or six time a year.  It is common enough that industrial safety people often teach and advise of its insidious dangers.

CYCLING IN THE DESERT:  Each year during Le Tour de France cyclists ride several "mountain stages," where they encounter very high elevations. The alert observer will often notice a rather barren terrain at the very summit of such mountains: hardly anything seems to grow there. And for good reason: there isn't enough carbon dioxide up there to sustain an abundant plant life.
      Now, of course, there are those who will say that the Alpine climate itself does not favor plant life and that carbon dioxide has nothing to do with.  That's a fair point as far as it goes - were it only true. But what many seem to forget is the fact that the Alpine setting is also a carbon dioxide desert.  Carbon dioxide would struggle mightily to hold its position on the side of such steep hills.  Instead, it rolls down hill, seeking the lowest spot in the terrain.

HEAVY STUFF:  But why should that be so? Carbon dioxide is heavier or denser (1.997 weight of one liter at N. T. P.) than the other common components in the atmosphere - nitrogen (1.25 weight of one liter at N. T. P.) and oxygen (1.429 weight of one liter at N. T. P.). For the sake of argument, I will not discuss the minor components of Earth's atmosphere (argon, neon, radon, and other rare gases) since they do not affect the calculations being discussed here. Therefore, in still air conditions, carbon dioxide will sink down to the lowest level it can find and will remain there simply because it is more dense than the other components in the air column.
      Although some might be loathe to admit it, the gases in the atmosphere are exquisitely proportioned for plant life on earth, not only in composition as physical substances, but also in the physical characteristics of the gases themselves that facilitate efficient usage. At some very intuitive level, almost everyone understands that: if carbon dioxide is a necessary component for plant life, then it's quite important that that component be right next to the plants and not brushing up against some supposed "greenhouse" ceiling at the top of the atmospheric column. It would be quite foolish for God to design plants that require carbon dioxide for life, and then to put the carbon dioxide where it is inaccessible to the plants. That's pretty basic stuff, guys.

GREENHOUSE GASES:  But haven't we all been told that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas? That's what many seem to say. But actually, it's not going to be up there against a greenhouse ceiling as you have been told. Those folks lied to you because they make their living pretending that a problem exists where none exists.  The "greenhouse" they speak about is merely a metaphor and not a physical structure existing "out there." So, there's no place for the carbon dioxide to collect "against." More importantly carbon dioxide is denser than other air components, so we're unlikely to find it up there "against the ceiling" in the first place. Or if it does make it up there through the updraft of volcanic eruptions or smokestacks, it will not stay up there. It cannot because physically it's too dense to ride at the top of the atmospheric column.  How many lead fishing sinkers do you see at 33,000 feet when you are flying to Chicago?  Yeah, I thought so.
       On a related note, some years ago there was a great deal of alarm about acid rain. The thinking then was that smoke from public utility generation plants contained excessive amounts of sulfur dioxide, and that substance combined with water and fell as "acid rain" on the lakes in New England.  It sounded so logical.  The response was to install sulfur dioxide scrubbing units on the smokestacks - at a great expense - in order to lessen the amount of sulfur dioxide getting into the air. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and subsequent experience seemed, oddly, to confirm that hunch. What no one wishes to speak about, however, were the concurrent volcanic eruptions that actually caused the acid rain.  Acid rain did not come from public utilities as such.  Remember, acid rain suddenly became a problem after years and years of electrical power generation by coal-burning plants.  That should have told people something.  Rather, it came from the massive amounts of sulfur dioxide emitted by the volcanoes.  And once the volcanic eruptions ceased, the acid rain problem also ceased.
      Today, the catalytic converters on our automobiles spew an acetic mist that combines with moisture in the air to accomplish the very same thing. But all of us feel considerably better knowing that catalytic converters are removing that awful sulfur dioxide from our internal combustion engine exhausts. Again, as with carbon dioxide, the density of sulfur dioxide (2.264 times heavier than air) should drive it right into the ground. So we drive around in an ever-increasing soup of hydrochloric acid and wonder why the marbles in our cemeteries are being eaten away by "acid rain" in places where there is no rain, e.g., Los Angeles.

JUST ONE QUESTION...:  But I digress.  And I leave you with a very simple question: how dumb would it be for carbon dioxide to mix with other gases in the air and to drift upward away from plant life and to collect against the "greenhouse" ceiling? If that were so, the human race would have died of starvation long ago and you and I would not be sitting here right now having this discussion. When they speak to you about greenhouse gases, smile at them as if they didn't have any sense at all.  Then ask them how much the university pays them to write such nonsense.

EXTRA CREDIT: If the "greenhouse" is merely a metaphor, then global warming takes on a brand, new dimension. How is it possible for a metaphor to "cause" global warming?  Hmm?  You may use your book to find the answer, boys and girls.

C3001-103 Thanksgiving: Flowers

      I see an enormous variety of plant life on my short walk near the Coke Ovens behind my house.  I see an elaborate and profound sense of order that one would hardly expect to find in a field of pure randomness.  I see a consistency from plant to plant: everywhere the species-specific sameness of morphology and habitat; and all of that in the same precise sliver of time and season; and all of that, too, with an extreme profusion where I would have expected to find only paucity and want.  I see a commonality in the plan to produce seeds, with multiplied and endless examples of sameness, as well as extended and astonishing examples of variety.  I smell the aroma of Canada Thistles and I am surprised at just how kind and thoughtful it was that God had scented something so common with such an exquisite fragrance.
      They may tell you that all of those wonders came from random mutations and natural selection.  I smile at their naïveté and I find it strange that they have never actually looked at the miracles surrounding themselves.
      I find it far easier to thank God for planting his flower garden in the field behind my house, and I content myself to look at it with praise and wonder and thanksgiving.

B5014-3 Moron Science: Life from a Wildcard

   “An obscure compound known as pyrophosphite could have been a source of energy that allowed the first life on Earth to form, scientists now say.
   “From the tiniest bacteria to the complex human body, all living beings require an energy-transporting molecule called ATP to survive. Often likened to a ‘rechargeable battery,’ ATP stores chemical energy in a form that can be used by organic matter.
   " 'You need enzymes to make ATP, and you need ATP to make enzymes,' said researcher Terence Kee of the University of Leeds in England. 'The question is: Where did energy come from before either of these two things existed? We think that the answer may lie in simple molecules, such as pyrophosphate, which is chemically very similar to ATP, but has the potential to transfer energy without enzymes.'" (Macintosh, 12 June 2010, LiveScience.com)

a.    Stated in Other Words:  Let’s recast Zoë Macintosh’s initial sentence, “An obscure compound known as pyrophosphite could have been a source of energy that allowed the first life on Earth to form...,” into a generalized popular science formula, thus:

[wildcard] + [subjunctive operator] + [necessary condition] >[(filter) result]

In this instance:     a)    “Pyrophosphite” is the [wildcard];
                            b)    “could have been” is the [subjunctive operator];
                            c)    “source of energy” is the [necessary condition];
                            d)    “first life on Earth” is the [result].

b.    The Unstated Assumption: When considering explanations in modern science, all explanations of substances, processes, or methods must pass through the [filter] of  purely physical explanations - please do not drag God or supernatural beings or the Bible into these “explanations.”  Necessarily, all explanations gravitate toward this physical basis, and explanations of any other sort are rejected out of hand as “unscientific.”

In this instance:     e)    “purely physical explanations” is the [filter];

Notice however, that on the sole basis of physical explanation, the statement, 1) “The moon is made of vanquished dreams,” is considered “unscientific; whereas, the statement, 2) “The moon is made of green cheese,” is considered scientific (albeit somewhat fanciful and open to further investigation).  Unfortunately, the scientific “filter” often leads to absurd and/or unsatisfactory results, as the second example appears to indicate.

c.    The inherent Shakiness of the Subjunctive: The far greater problem with using the subjunctive in science is the ease with which a person can render the argument totally moot: one only has to affirm the contrary in order to put the “scientist” in a rather unenviable spot.  Consider this: Zoë Macintosh’s sentence, “An obscure compound known as pyrophosphite could have been a source of energy that allowed the first life on Earth to form...,” can be instantly contradicted by saying, “An obscure compound known as pyrophosphite could not have been a source of energy that allowed the first life on Earth to form...”  Then Ms. Macintosh would be forced to present...evidence...for her assertion, which is, of course, a rather heartless thing to demand of that poor, struggling science writer.  For, you see, the subjunctive is always used when, 1) There is no presentable evidence worthy of the name, or, 2) There is no possibility of falsifying the assertion being made, or, 3) When it’s impossible to know when we “have arrived at our destination of truth.”  In short, the subjunctive is used to spout nonsense - “scientific” or otherwise - in the guise of a reasoned argument, and it is another way for a scientist to say, “I don’t know.”

d.    Deus-Ex-Machina and Other Quandaries:  The question all scientists must answer about first life on earth is one of genesis without the deus ex machina: how is it possible to account for life as we know it without resorting to creation-by-God (or whatever other deity/magic/process you might want else to consider)?  Somehow, many modern scientists regularly shun God-as-creator as an inadequate explanation; instead they settle for highly improbable explanations as more “scientific.”  Go figure.  But that’s what happens when they swim in the pond of knowledge wearing the leaden jacket of the physical world.
   Even if one pretends that pyrophosphite is the magic bullet that allowed energy-transportation in the primordial soup, how does life itself arise from that?  Energy transportation by means of ATP is a process of life.  But it is not life itself.  Do you see the difference?  How does this one tiny sliver of process integrate with the countless other slivers of process to create the life of an organism?  What is missing here is the matrix of the organism itself.  ATP energy transportation, as assisted by pyrophosphites or other [wildcard] substances, does not occur with any meaningful use outside of the organism.  Instead, one relatively useless organic compound is changed into another relatively useless organic compound.  The primordial soup just gets a little thicker, friends.
   There is a principle involved here: the discovery of a single rivet does not an Eiffel Tower make.  And you can try as hard as you may, but you can’t get that ATP energy transportation process to stand up and salute the flag by itself.

e.    Improbable Beliefs Riding on Horseback While Walking on Stilts, and Other Nonsensical Things:  We are dealing here with the extrapolation of principles from known processes to probable origins based upon those processes or upon fugues of vivid imagination.  And, of course, both are always silly endeavors.  For example, observing people crossing the street at a busy intersection does not say anything about the origin of life from some primordial soup eons ago.  Each one of us understands that intuitively.  It is always a mistake to pretend that it is possible to look at something we think we know (say, energy transportation via ATP), and then make suppositions about something we actually do not know (say, the origins of first life).
   The two things are not only different in kind; they are different in teleology.  Notice the difference in kind: one is a process (energy transportation via ATP) and the other is a genesis of origin (life from simple chemistry alone).  Then notice the difference in teleology: ATP as a means of transporting energy for life processes, and the origin of life itself for [wildcard] reasons (which may be unstated, or random, or deus-ex-machina, or as fanciful as gilded unicorns crossing the Rainbow Bridge to prance in the Field of Dreams on the other side).  Pick one and run with it.  However, it is always acceptable to say, “It beats the hell out of me,” when dealing with questions about the origin of life by purely physical means. 

   Just don’t say, “An obscure compound known as pyrophosphite could have been a source of energy that allowed the first life on Earth to form...”

B5014-2 Moron Science: Internet Science Writers

Some random comments about people who write popular science articles for the internet:

Sophomoric: They are, if one may generalize, a people who tend to have a sophomoric and starry-eyed understanding of science and what science can do in the lives of people.  One gets the impression when reading one of their articles that one is speaking with a 12-year-old nerdy sort of boy explaining the intricacies of atomic particle accelerators.  A single, pertinent question will often stop their narrative cold - as if they hadn’t thought it through.

Uncritical:  The writing often comes across as a Mechanics Illustrated, Gee Whiz, Who’d a Thunk It sort of writing, lacking in elegance and grace, and without the requisite skepticism that would prompt other writers to look more critically at the subject matter. At times, popular science writers fulfill the role of cheerleaders; other times, they function as ordinary mystics. Always, they come across as unthinking, uncritical, and undiscerning writers - clownish, really, if I may say so.

Shibbolethic: Certain words seemed to appear with monotonous regularity in their writing, especially words such as, “peer review.”  The writers often give the impression, that by using such words, they have “nailed” those who might raise objections to their silly writings. Of course, nothing is further from the truth. “Peer review” simply means that like-minded people have looked at a document.  Period.  Peer review does not mean that knowledgeable people have expressed independent opinions about an article.  Rather, it means that like-minded people have looked at a document and nodded their heads in unison. Peer review’s nearest analogue would be something more akin to American Legion members holding both, 1) pro-military views, and 2) saluting the American flag on Memorial Day. In both cases, it would answer the simple question, “So, what else would you expect?”
            To state that a particular piece of scientific work “has been peer-reviewed” is not to make an argument for the efficacy or merits of an actual scientific work.  “Peer review,” to be sure, is not a magical incantation, although it is often used as such.  Rather, it is a description of misplaced enthusiasm for a particular scientific project. Most tellingly, it is an assertion of one’s complicity in current scientific beliefs.  In itself, it is harmless and simply reflects the boot- polishing mindset of the modern, popular science writer.  “Peer review” is an abbreviation for the longer, more complex argument that seems to say, “We just know better, so don’t argue with us.” Its effect is to tell us to close our mouths and not to question what is being said.  “Peer review” is a science writer’s way of telling others to shut up because, hey, this is...Science.

Useless: Ultimately, the modern science writers’ articles are useless.  And that is because they hardly ever express scientific facts and principles.  Instead they present wild fantasies that cannot be verified. There is always some Big Bang that travels through an evanescent Wormhole and gets lost in a Black Hole in some outlying Nebula so remote in history as to be incomprehensible. We are expected to sit there and nod our heads up and down slowly as though we understand what is being said and as though we agree with the nonsense being spouted.  The popular science writer’s audience is filled from sea to shining sea with naïf dolts who possess an extensive science jargon and - this is the important part - an empty empirical platter.

Magical Thinking: There is a catechism among science writers which seems to teach that even the smallest instance of water on the planet is proof in itself that life once existed there. How happy they are to report that a piece of ice the size of a man’s fist was found on some remote planet that has no hospitable atmosphere and gravity strong enough to sink a man to his armpits in the barren soil.  And, of course, they postulate that an abundant zoology exists there without any evidence other than that dirty chunk of ice the size of a man’s fist.
            There is such an insistence upon supposing that life exists among the billions and billions planetary systems beyond our own. Logic and reason alone suggest as much. And to doubt that postulate itself is to doubt the very foundations of science.  But all they can show us for evidence is that dirty chunk of ice the size of a man’s fist. Then, they pretend that we are really weird because we don’t believe their asseverations. Show me life (as we know it) on that planet with a 900̊F surface temperature and an atmosphere mostly composed of ammonia gas - and I’ll eat my hat.

Subjunctive Mood: Have you ever noticed how often modern science writers use such words as “could,” or “might,” or “may,” or “possibly,” or “maybe,” or “probably” whenever they write about planets hundreds of light-years away from our own. Granted, they do not flaunt the subjunctive mood when they talk about their big-as-life neighbor next door. That’s because anyone can knock on his door and take a good look at him.  But when they consider something that is so far away that nothing can be verified, then they lapse into thinking that is wondrously sprinkled with coudas, wouldas, and shouldas: “Life could have arisen from that expanse of sand and rock so far away because we have found a chunk of dirty ice the size of a man’s fist nestled in the penumbra near the pole, and that probably means that there is life on that planet.” Indeed. But how could we ever disprove such ineluctable logic?
            The subjunctive mood seems to work best when its object can’t be examined close up. The part of the universe that is so remote and so far away - both in terms of distance and time - is often found to be dotted with subjunctive descriptors as numerous as the pimples on a teenage boy’s face. Happily, all of those remote and distant planets and objects are beyond practical observation and examination. Science, which normally cries out for empirical examination and experimentation, simply cannot be performed on something so remote and so far away. The so-called Big Bang Theory is the most pertinent example I can imagine that is wholly beyond the possibility of examination and experimentation.  It is, to be sure, a theory that falls completely outside the realm of science.  And yet, it is treated as a serious scientific theory and is taught regularly in the science classroom.  Have these people got any idea what science really is?

C3001-7 Thanksgiving: The Scent of Yesterday's Prayers

I am thankful for the stuff of silence and the scent of yesterday’s prayers in the cathedral, before others forget where they are and begin to fill the hollow there with noise and fluff, and tat raucous footsteps on the stairs.  And in that brief interval of silence, I can see You standing there.

F2005-1 Stara's Flight

        "We're running a little late today, aren't we?"
        I looked at him and saw his mirror sunglasses and his half-nazi smirk.  I could feel the rhythmic burn of his strobe lights against my neck.  He had me.  He was a weekend fill-in and you could tell that right away because he had turned on the siren.  The regular cops never did that.  All I could hear was some fat Brünnhilde wailing behind me, "Ho-jo-to-ho! Ho-jo-to-ho! Hei-a-ha! Hei-a-ha! Helmwige! Hier!  Hieher mit dem Ross!"
        "Looks like you really got them horses trotting today, huh, cowboy?" he asked.

        In a way the lights reminded me of O'Hare.  I recall being caught in the glare of the lights there and had turned and saw her sitting in the golf cart.  We had flown back from Hartford together and she was scared to death all the way.  Her children had talked her into flying for the very first time.  Certainly, she wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea of flying and you could see that on her face.  She was a seventy-three-year-old grandma and she was the lead actress in a drama of her own making: Stara Bubba at 30,000 feet.
        Anna sat by the window and stiffened at every creak and crump of the aircraft.  She clasped a small religious icon in her hands, looking at it intently.  "The Bohorodice," she said, showing me the picture, as if I would understand.  "The Mother of God."
        She let out a muffled cry once when the left engine belched a sudden, huge ball of orange fire.  "Bozhe moj!" she said.  "My God!  What was that?"
        "Oh, they do that every now and then until they get warmed up really good.  Ain't no big deal, lady"  I said. 
        But her eyelids kept twitching in a spate of nervousness.   She didn't believe me at all.  "No big deal?" she asked in disbelief.  "That was fire coming out of that engine!  Do you hear me?  That was fire!"
        Of course it was.  An airplane was nothing but a kerosene stove with wings.  You had to expect a little smoke and fire from time to time.  "Ain't no big deal, lady," I told her again.
        The flight into Hartford had been rough.  We came through an awful thunderstorm and the blue-gray cumulus clouds slapped the aircraft around like a drunk arguing with an old battered wife.  The plane lifted and dropped fifty or sixty feet at a time.  Many were very quiet in the plane and, for the very first time, even those half-drunk, smart aleck salesmen were silent.  Some were scared.  Others were serious.  Everyone looked out the windows at the angry clouds around us and studied them like the teacher would ask about them on the test.  I kind of liked it, though.  I like a rough flight.

        "Bogey at one o'clock.  Watch it, Brubaker!  Get him!  Get on him, Brubaker!  Get on his tail, Brubaker!  What the hell are you doing, Brubaker?  Get Him!"

        Anna didn't say much during the flight.  She stared out the window the whole time we were in the air except for the time when the stewardess gave her that bag of peanuts.  She devoured the peanuts quickly and then she turned again to the window.  "I'm not supposed to eat these things, you know." Anna noticed that the wing tips were moving up and down about six to eight inches at a time.  She studied them intently.  "Are the wings supposed to do that?" she asked.

        It was just a small ripple in a very big pond.  A couple of inches, what was that?  She should have been on that Convair out of Milwaukee the time the pilot asked the guys if they wanted a nice smooth flight or if they wanted to get home early.  I would guess that there were only a dozen men on the plane and everyone opted for the quick trip.  When the plane passed over the airport at Sheboygan, the pilot put the port wing down at a sixty-degree angle and let the plane slip toward the earth.  It went down like a rock, mister!  We went from 8,000 feet to the ground in about 35 seconds.  I mean, that plane went down like the gas gauge in a loaded, stretch limousine.  I had my face plastered against the window and I couldn't pull myself back into my seat.  We were still making a left turn when the wheels hit the tarmac.  The stewardess told us later that the Captain thought he was still "in Korea with his F-1 fighter." - the crazy coot!  But I loved it!
        "Pull up, Brubaker!  Pull up!  He's on your tail!  Left, Brubaker, left!  Hard port!  Put your foot into it, man!  Ooh, damn!  Damn, that was close!"

        "Ssshhttt!"
        I heard the squelch from the radio he had attached to his lapel.  Oh, he looked the part all right: black shirt, badge, name tag, night stick, Mace, "Sgt. Johnson,"  He had all the right gear.  A big cop.  Yes, he was a really big cop!
        "I said, give me your driver's license, mister.  Now!"

        Sister Mary Felicita stood by with her arms folded.  She was right in front of me and all I could see was that ruler in her hand.  I knew I was going to get it.
        "Knuckles, young man," she demanded.
        I hadn't done anything.  That goofy Frazier was talking and I had gotten blamed for it.  Now, she wanted to smack me on the knuckles with that ruler.  "But, I wasn't talking,"  I protested.  She glared at me.

        "Ssshhttt!"
        Did you ever notice how they always jump on you like you broke their own personal law?  Sergeant Johnson's Speed Limit: 35 miles per hour.  God help you if you go faster than 35!  "You ain't dealing with no ordinary speed limit here, cowboy.  This is Johnson's Speed Limit, mister.  You speed and I'm gonna bust you so bad you gonna feel like a dime bag of pretzels.  You hear me, boy?  You speed and I'm gonna bust you like an old fruit jar in the city dump."
        I was driving out of town.  The speed limit there was 35 mph.  But it changed to 50 mph at the train bridge.  I guess I was anticipating that bridge too much or maybe I was just daydreaming a little bit.  He came out of the fog on the far side of the bridge and his radar caught me.  God, he had me!  He turned on the gum ball machine and the light cut right through me like a hot knife.
        He did a one-eighty and came up behind me.  I sat in the car as he talked on his radio.  The sharp light from his beacons cut my car into little red and blue ribbons.  Fat Brünnhilde wailed in the background: he wouldn’t turn off the siren.  A rookie week-end cop.
        I waited.

        We sat on the runway in La Crosse, Wisconsin.  It was a small plane.  I'd guess it might hold 10 to 12 people.  The pilot and copilot were right in front of us and they were sitting on some books entitled,  Airports of the United States.
        "Look at that," Markovich said.  "They need a set of encyclopedias just to fly to Chicago!  Damn, I knew we should have taken another airline."
        Hey, maybe it was true.  Everyone said not to fly Mississippi River Airlines.  "They get lost all the time,"  Mikkelson told me.  He said he would never fly with them.  Once, they landed at an airport and waited for the people to roll out the ramp and finally they called the tower to ask why nobody was taking care of them.  The tower told them they didn't have a ramp.
        "What do you mean, you don't have a ramp?  You had one here yesterday."
        "MRA 105, I don't know where you think you are, but you are in Winona, Minnesota.  You're not in La Crosse or wherever you're supposed to be."
        We sat at the end of the runway and waited.  It was hot and stuffy inside the plane.  The hard sunlight was coming through the windshield of the plane and we sat bathed in it.  A few people were digging through the aircraft picnic cooler, looking for the right brand of beer.  We didn't have a stewardess on the flight, so the cooler was the airline's idea of a cheap, do-it-yourself substitute.  We hadn't even taken off yet and some of the men were popping open their first cans of beer.  Even by Wisconsin's freewheeling drinking standards it was a little early in the day for that.
        "What the hell are we waiting for?"  Markovich asked, tugging at his tie.
        There was a flurry of chatter between the tower and the plane.  Slowly we started rolling down the runway and then the plane started to accelerate quickly.  We were zipping along when Markovich noticed that a Piper Cub was trying to land on our runway.  On our runway, man!
        "What the heck is he doing?  Hey, that sucker's going to hit us!  Captain, there's a plane coming right at us!  Captain!"
        Yes, it was true.  The Piper was fluttering down with his wings tipping from side to side like some rookie was at the stick, practicing his touch-and-go landings.  He was going to land on our runway while we were trying to take off.  And he was coming right at us.  Couldn't he see us?

        "He's in the sun, Brubaker!  Watch it, for God's sakes!  He's coming right at you.  Get him!  What the hell are you waiting for, Brubaker?  Get him!  Don't you see him?"

        “Ssshhttt!”
        It was hard to look at him.  The sun was at a low angle in the early morning sky and it hit me right in the face.  I noticed his gold-capped teeth flashing whenever he talked.
        "You got any idea how fast you were going, mister?"
        I guess that's a cop's favorite question: how fast were you going?  If I knew how fast I was going I wouldn't be speeding.  I thought to myself what a dumb question he was asking.  "Thirty-five," I said.
        "Try forty-nine, cowboy.  I clocked you with the gun at forty-nine."  He smiled.  It was a very smug kind of smile.  "We're running a little late this morning, aren't we?"  He flashed his big gold teeth at me.  "We're in a big hurry, aren't we?  Oh, my, my, my!"
        He had me.

        Sister Mary Felicita had me and Frazier by the ears.  She was pulling us up the stairs to the principal's office and we were both howling like pigs in a slaughterhouse.
        "Shut up!" she said.
        Stupid Frazier.  When I got on the bus that morning I stayed near the center of the bus so I wouldn’t have to sit next to Frazier.  But he worked his way toward the center of the bus and gave me a charley horse with his knee.  A vertical knee lift, he called it.  He watched way too much wrestling on TV, I guess.  And he was always running around pretending to be Hans Schmidt or one of the other wrestlers he saw on TV.  Frazier was an infant who never grew up: a total, imbecile infant.
        Later, in retaliation, I gave him a charley horse on his right leg so hard that he fell down on the bus floor and rolled around in pain half way to school.  Boy, did I get him!  You want a vertical knee lift, Frazier?  Well, try that one on for size.
        As we approached the school, I made my way through the crowd toward the front of the bus.  I got off the bus at the front door and waited for him to get off at the back door.  When he stepped off the bus, I nailed him on the left leg.  I put him right down on the ground and he grimaced in pain in the mud. 

        "I'm hit!  I'm hit!  Scooper, how bad is it?  I'm hit!  Take a look, Scooper.  Scooper?  Do you read me?  This is Brubaker.  Scooper, are you there?  Scooper, where the hell are you?"

        When Frazier finally got to his feet, he chased me into the school building.  We ran around the lockers behind the elevator and back up the stairs in front of the elevator.  He chased me up and down the stairs five or six times until he finally managed to grab the tail of my coat.  I planted my feet and pivoted him right into that big statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the lobby.  Frazier grabbed at the falling statue in horrified desperation, but he was too late.  The statue smashed into a million pieces.  And she was standing there.  She saw it all.  Sister Mary Felicita saw everything!
        She had us.

        "Six hundred miles per hour!" Anna said.  "Why, I had no idea these things went that fast."
    She watched the wings intently.  The ailerons moved up and down rhythmically and you could hear the plane creaking and groaning with each movement.  Her knuckles were white.  She held onto the armrests like a two-year-old kid strangling a puppy.  She was scared.  She kissed her icon and her lips moved in silent prayer.
        "Bohorodice, spasi nas!"  she said,  "Mother of God, save us.  Oh, I don't know why I ever let them talk me into this.  Hospodi pomiluj.  Oh, Lord have mercy!"
        She was a long way from home.  She had watched as the soldiers chased her brother through the house.  He managed to make it to the woodpile before they shot him.  And she saw it all.
        Her family had purchased a steamer ticket and Stefan was supposed to go to America.  But the Austro-Hungarian conscript soldiers had a different idea about his future.  They wanted him to go to the Front instead.  But he didn't want to go.  Why should he fight for the Germans in that senseless war?  He was a Carpatho-Rusin, after all.  So he ran away from them when they came into their village.  And they caught him just as he was ducking down behind the woodpile.  They shot him.  Anna stood by the curtains in the kitchen and she saw it all.
        Back in those days you couldn't get a refund on a ticket, so Anna had to go in Stefan's place.  Her family insisted that she use the ticket because she was the youngest member of the family.  She was the only one strong enough to make the trip.  Everyone else was too old.
        She had only a small amount of money when she left home and she had to work along the way as she went to France.  Everywhere she went, she heard people talking in strange tongues.  She understood none of it and she gestured as best she could to make herself understood.  She milked cows and pitched hay for her supper.  She scrubbed floors and washed windows for her room and board.  She walked from eastern Slovakia to Le Havre, France.  Imagine that!  She walked completely across Europe!  It took her three months to get to Le Havre.
        She was only sixteen years old and scared.  She was scared to death.

        "Have you ever been audited before?"
        Markovich squirmed.  He hated those snotty little reading glasses - those silly half-glasses squatting on the end of his nose.  The man wore one of those Fifties neckties cinched up at his scrawny chicken neck: a tie about an inch wide and made out some kind of fuzzy purple stuff.  All that was missing was the green eyeshade.  He was an accountant with the IRS.  "God, what could be worse?" Markovich thought.
        "I do hope you have all your documentation with you, Mr. Markovich," he said.
        Markovich squirmed.  He was scared.

        "Ssshhttt!"
        "Let's see your registration, cowboy," Sgt. Johnson said.
        I always hated that part.  You had to go to your glove compartment to get your registration papers and you never knew what the cop was thinking.  If you moved too fast, he might shoot you.  If you moved too slowly, well, he might even shoot you if you moved too slowly.  What were you supposed to do?
        I just sat there.  I was scared.

        "Move!"  Sister Mary Felicita pushed me and Frazier up the terrazzo steps toward the principal's office.  "Boy, you two are really going to get it this time!"
        How were we going to lie our way out of this one?  After all, she had seen everything.  I never saw her standing next to the elevator.  She was standing guard there so the students wouldn't use the elevator.  We weren't supposed to use the elevator, you see.  And I never saw her.  But, she had us.  We were dead ducks.  Oh, that stupid Frazier!
        We entered the principal's office and Sister Mary Severia was sitting at her desk.  The bright sunlight was streaming through the windows and her head was silhouetted by her wimple.  I couldn't see her face at all.  It was hard to see her with all that sunlight coming through the windows.  I squinted.
        "Yes?"
        Sister Mary Felicita pushed us toward the desk.  "I have two bad boys here, Sister," she said.  "Outlaws!"
        "What did they do?"  she asked.
        "They broke the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the lobby, that's what they did.  They broke it into a million pieces.  And I saw it all."
        "You broke the statue?  You boys broke the statue of the Mother of God?”
        Frazier squirmed and I tried to make myself invisible.  Sister Mary Felicita pushed us toward the principal's desk.  We stood in a pool of bright sunlight like hardened criminals in a police line-up.  There was no place to hide with all that light coming through the windows.  There was no place to hide, man!
        She had us.

        "Do you live in Chicago?" Anna asked me.
        "No, I live in Wisconsin," I said.
        "Have you ever been to the Chicago airport before?"
        "Oh, lots of times," I said.
        "Do you know where we will be landing and where Continental Airlines takes off?"
        "I sure do."
        "How far is it from where we land to where Continental takes off?" she asked.
        "Probably two or three miles," I said.
        "Two or three miles?  It can't be that far, can it?"  she asked.  "I can't walk that far with my old legs, you know."
        "It seems like it’s that far.  Well, maybe it's only a mile and one half.  Let’s just say that it's at least a good mile from United to Continental.  A good mile."  I showed her the palm of my right hand and pointed to my pinkie finger.  "We land here," I said, "and you take off here," pointing to my thumb.  She raised her eyebrows.  "It's at least a mile between the two gates,” I said. “Yes, a good mile!"
        "Bozhe moj!  I can't walk that far," she said.  "What if you can't walk that far?  What do you do then?"
        "You get one of those sky caps to take you there on his golf cart."
        "Golf cart?"
        "Yes, they have an electric cart and they'll give you a free ride anywhere you want to go.  Well, it ain't free.  You should probably tip the guy when you get to your gate.  But, he will take you anywhere you want to go."
        "Well, I'm not an invalid!  I can walk a little," she said.  "But I can't walk no mile.  Bozhe moj!"
   
        "Brubaker, you can make it.  You just took a little flack in your tail.  Nothing bad.  Looks like Swiss cheese, but it ain't bad.  Hang on Brubaker.  You're going to make it.  Brubaker?  You read me?  Brubaker?  Where the hell are you, Brubaker?"

        "Ssshhttt!"
        "You live in town, mister?"
        What a dumb question.  Where did I live?  He was holding my registration papers and my license in his hands.  Couldn’t he see where I lived just by looking at those papers?  What a dumb question!  "Yes," I said.
        "Where do you work?" he asked.
        "In Salem."
        "And we're running a little behind schedule this morning, aren't we?"  he smiled, "Heh, heh, gonna be a little late for work today, aren't we, cowboy?"
        "Yes," I said.
        What else could I say?  I was a dead duck.  That cop was going to have me in the Mayor's Court in a heartbeat, mister.  I was going to get a $65 fine just because I was going a little over the speed limit and he was going to nail me just so he could make his damned quota.
        I just hated him.

        "Mr. Markovich, you have a deduction listed here for a personal computer.  Tell me about that computer.  Is it used for business purposes?"
        Markovich shifted uneasily in his chair.  Yes, the IRS man would have to ask about that computer.  Why did he ever think he could deduct it?  His wife used the computer only to play Tetris and never once did she ever use the computer for any business stuff.  It was just a toy for her.  And Markovich had deducted it on his tax form.  Boy, what a dumb mistake that was!
        Markovich rubbed his temples with both hands and pretended to be looking through his file of receipts.  "God," he thought, "he's got me!"

        Anna looked out the window and squinted at the bright sunlight.  We had begun our descent into Chicago.  A mottled blanket of low-lying clouds lay beneath us like bright froth on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.  It was hard to look at all that brightness.  It hurt your eyes.  It always amazed me that the dull overcast on the ground was surprised by the shawl of brightness that tucked around it.  How could the runway be dark when a scintillating zone of light was spread upon the upper reaches of the atmosphere?  That didn't make sense to me.
        The plane plowed through the deck of clouds and you could feel an alternating surge and restraint as the wings chopped away at the banks of foggy mist.  Anna kissed her icon again and a deep groove of worry etched itself into her face.  A staid blanket of tension wrapped itself around the passengers in the plane.  The steady drone of conversation in the plane had been replaced by an eerie sort of quietness.  We were going to land.
        As we broke through the clouds, you could see the full panorama of O'Hare Airport below.  Anna studied the terminal and the utility vehicles below us.  "What are all those little yellow trucks down there?" she asked.
        "They're aviation fuel trucks," I said.
        "Aren't they awfully close to the runway?  What if we hit one of them?  What then?"
        "We'd get cooked up like a dead duck, I guess"
        "Bozhe moj!"

        Frazier started to sweat in the hot sunlight.  He studied the tiles on the floor, brushing them carefully with the tip of his shoe.  He tried to look as innocent as he possibly could.  I didn't do much better than he did, to tell you the truth.  We both squirmed in the pool of sunlight surrounding Sister Severia’s desk.
        "I saw everything," Sister Mary Felicita said, "Frazier was chasing Billy and he caused the statue to get broken.  It was all his fault.  Billy was just trying to get away from him."
        "I see," said Sister Mary Severia.  "Then you'll have to pay for the statue, Mr. Frazier.  Do you understand?  You'll have to pay for it."
        Frazier couldn't believe his ears.  He was going to have to pay for the statue.  And I was going to skate away scot-free.  I exhaled a long sigh, relieved.  Frazier swallowed hard and I could see his Adam’s apple disagreeing violently with Sr. Severia’s decision.

          "Brubaker, you're going to make it.  Just take it easy.  I'll be right behind you.  The bad guys went home, so you don't have anything to worry about.  You hear me, Brubaker?  Brubaker?"

        We were right over the runway and the pilot lowered the landing gear.  There was a whirring sound from the hydraulics and the gear locked in with a loud ka-roomp sound.
        "What was that?" Anna asked.
        "I guess we just ran over one of those gas trucks," I said.
        Anna screamed.  She screamed so loudly you would never think all that noise was coming out of a little seventy-three-year-old woman.  Immediately, everyone in the plane started to yell and scream.  The whole plane full of people just went totally nuts!  It sounded like Alberich terrorizing die niebelungen in Wagner's Das Rheingold: "Eeeeeiiieeee!  Eeeeeiiieeee!  Eeeeeiiieeee!"
        The stewardess ran up the aisle frantically, saying, “It’s all right.  It’s all right.”  Anna wasn’t so sure, though.
        We touched down and rolled to a stop at the end of the runway.  Anna breathed a deep sigh of relief and kissed her icon again.  "Woo!” she said, crossing herself.  “We made it!  Thank God."
        Later, I saw her on the golf cart in the terminal.  She was on her way to Continental's gate.  She was relaxed and smiling as she rode on the cart, holding her purse tightly against her stomach.  I noticed her when the cart came up behind me and the strobe lights burned against my neck. 
        "It wasn't that bad at all, was it?" Anna said to me.  "And I thought it was going to be terrible.  We always worry over nothing, don't we?"
        “It’s just like sitting on your living room couch, lady,” I said.  “The hardest part is staying awake.”      She smiled.

        "Ssshhttt!"
        "Well, let me ask you this, mister," he said.  "If I came through here tomorrow morning would I catch you going forty-nine miles per hour on this road?"
        "No sir, I'd be just like Stara Bubba."
        "Stara Bubba?" he asked.
        "Yeah, I’d be just like an old grandma.  I'd be moving like a three-legged turtle.  Real slow, man.  Real slow!"
        He handed me my license and my registration papers.  He smiled at me.  The gold teeth glinted in the sunlight.  God, I hated that smile.  "You have a nice day now, you hear?" he said.
        I couldn't believe it.  He was going to let me go!  He had me dead to rights and he was going to let me go.  I drove away slowly.  And I mean real slow, man.

        It was bright and sunny that morning and I could tell right away that it was going to be a good day.  As I drove to work, I thought about writing Markovich a letter.  They don't get much mail in the penitentiary, you know.