I was going to lay all the blame for everything I'm about to talk about on facebook. But really facebook is a Johnny-come-lately, a newcomer to a paradigm shift that was already well underway when facebook hit the scene.
Letter writing is falling way off as electronic communications become more and more prevalent. Now, this doesn't mean that people aren't talking to each other, but what it does mean is that a lot of what is getting said doesn't need saying.
Writing a letter was, at one time, a project. You needed to set aside a small block of time for it, gather materials, find an envelope and a stamp, get it to the mailbox or, if you're like me, to the Post Office. It wasn't a spontaneous thing to do, and with so much other effort bound up around it, the things that got conveyed in a letter were things that mattered. And since so much effort was bound up around the letter, if you were going to send a page, you might as well send several. If I recall, you could send as many as six or seven pages on one stamp.
Even with her largish, loopy handwriting, a friend who corresponded with me in college could send over 1,000 words on one stamp - and she did. I might have enjoyed a closer relationship with her since we were good friends in high school, but as it turned out her conservative religion - and similarly conservative father - would have prevented it. And I have no regrets with how my life has turned out so far, so no worries there.
But if you want to send 1,000 words now, it's not so easy. Twitter aggressively prevents such in-depth reporting, limiting each message to 140 characters. Not words, characters. Twitter bills itself as a "short message service," which is definitely true. I'm already well beyond 140 characters in the first two lines of this paragraph.
How much can you get said in just 140 characters? Average word length varies depending on whom you ask, so that's a tough call. Let's assume 4.5 letters per word for your typical person, add one (for the space, which counts), and we're at 5.5. That's about 25 words per tweet.
Can't get a lot said in 25 words. Sure, there are all those iconic "25 words or less" contests that some of us over a certain age would recognize from our youth, but really - you can't say much.
It's no surprise that "twitter" is defined as "an inconsequential sound," is it? And reading some of the tweets that have made it to the news, it's amazing that they're even put on the news. Isn't the producer embarrassed afterward?
Read some tweets from celebrities, and they're just pointless bits of noise. Inconsequential, indeed. It's one thing to have idle thoughts - do you have to share them? Hell, no.
So now, with twitter, with facebook, with email, we're training ourselves away from the letter writing skill, the letter writing tradition. We can dash off a note with any of those technologies, a quick little missive that doesn't dig into the meat and bones of whatever it is we're talking about. And even though it's awfully convenient to have those, I don't think they're as good. We're communicating a lot but an awful lot of the communication is just babble.
It's as if we were all buying newspapers, but only reading the headlines. The actual story isn't getting out.
My address:
PO Box 552
Norris TN 37828
Write me. Write me something a bit longer than just 140 characters.
Or, if you prefer, you can write something lengthy and in-depth in the comment box below. Give it a try, share something meaningful.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Is This the Afterlife?
So, no Apocalypse, huh? If you had big post-humanity plans, bummer.
If you, like many others, kept your head as the Mayan Long Count Calendar came to its long-awaited end, then the winter solstice of 2012 was simply an opportunity.
Some folks held huge parties. That the party took place in a gigantic nuclear Cold War Doomsday bunker was just fortunate happenstance.
Some folks stocked up on the essentials.
Even the Vatican, whose stock in trade is belief in what some would call the unbelievable, will tell anyone that predictions of the end of the world aren't worth discussing. That's the Vatican's own head astronomer, Rev. Jose Funes, saying that.
Okay, I was going to make a link taking you to a couple of references I found to Funes, but they took me to a site called "Falling Angels," which is full of utter nutjobs. People insisting that the ancient Sumerian planet "Nibiru" is real and is where Lucifer is assembling his army, that reptiles are Satanic and that - oh, what the heck. I can't swallow enough bile to keep repeating what these idiots are saying.
You can bet they are disappointed the world didn't end.
If you, like many others, kept your head as the Mayan Long Count Calendar came to its long-awaited end, then the winter solstice of 2012 was simply an opportunity.
Some folks held huge parties. That the party took place in a gigantic nuclear Cold War Doomsday bunker was just fortunate happenstance.
Some folks stocked up on the essentials.
Even the Vatican, whose stock in trade is belief in what some would call the unbelievable, will tell anyone that predictions of the end of the world aren't worth discussing. That's the Vatican's own head astronomer, Rev. Jose Funes, saying that.
Okay, I was going to make a link taking you to a couple of references I found to Funes, but they took me to a site called "Falling Angels," which is full of utter nutjobs. People insisting that the ancient Sumerian planet "Nibiru" is real and is where Lucifer is assembling his army, that reptiles are Satanic and that - oh, what the heck. I can't swallow enough bile to keep repeating what these idiots are saying.
You can bet they are disappointed the world didn't end.
Friday, December 21, 2012
It's The End of the World (as we know it)
But not because of the Mayan Apocalypse.
As I said over and over, what happens isn't the end of the world, it's just the end of the calendar. So everybody just settle down. Now we turn the Mayan pyramid over and start back at the beginning of the calendar, no problemo.
But in other news, Speaker of the House John Boehner's own so-called "Plan B," the counterproposal from Boehner's own mind to Obama's assorted proposals to fend off the upcoming "fiscal cliff," never racked up enough support to even go to the floor for a vote. It was, in effect, stillborn.
A couple of interesting things come out of this. First, it sharply undermines Boehner's stock in Congress. If a challenger shows up to unseat him, he'll really wish he hadn't stuck his neck out quite so far with this Plan B. Secondly and this is probably a lot more important, it leaves the ball flat in the Republicans' court. Not only did their golden boy's proposal not gain any traction, but it was the Republicans themselves who let it fail.
So all the teeth-gnashing conservatives out there can rant and rave and rail against that bleeding-heart liberal, socialistic commie wannabee Obama all they like, they can froth and fume at how the liberal Democrats are ruining the country, but at least the Democrats aren't doing it by squabbling amongst themselves. We're, you know, trying to help. Meanwhile, the Republicans are bickering amongst themselves: one faction of the Republican party is saying, "we can allow the severely rich to hoist a slightly heavier load because they don't have to wait for sales at the grocery store," while the other faction is saying, "no, we don't need to raise their taxes any higher than they already are, not even for the people who make more than twice as much as the severely rich." In that impasse is where Plan B crashed, burned, and embarrassed John Boehner.
Frankly I'm pretty disgusted at all of them. Social Security should be rolled back a little bit. Not much, just a little.
There are too damned many people receiving food stamps, and many people who do receive them are doing it fraudulently. Get those people under control and you start saving a lot of money right there.
Encourage people to settle for lower wages, working at an assembly line, doing things that aren't exciting or especially engaging. Having a job - any job - is a good thing. Paying your own way for what you eat, where you live and what you want in your off time, that's a good thing. Get off your butts, Americans. Get back to work. Sick and tired of seeing everything that passes through your hands being made in China? Well, whose fault is that?
You don't deserve $10, $20, $30 per hour. Nobody deserves anything. And for doing a job that could as easily be done by a robot, you'd better be thrilled to get the job at all, at any wage. Suck it up, get to work. Pay your own bills.
Pay the taxes on the wages you earn. Be willing to pay a little more. If it means you have to eat a little bit less for a few weeks, well, 30% of Americans are obese, we could afford to lose the weight. Take the job, pay the taxes, work a full, healthy life and continue paying into Social Security so you can expect a little support in your sunset years. Suck it up.
This country needs a paradigm change. The Fiscal Cliff is an opportunity for the short, sharp shock that people need, to make them aware that the way they've been living, the expectations they've had, are unrealistic and unsupportable.
The time has come for a whole new world. Let the old one die.
As I said over and over, what happens isn't the end of the world, it's just the end of the calendar. So everybody just settle down. Now we turn the Mayan pyramid over and start back at the beginning of the calendar, no problemo.
But in other news, Speaker of the House John Boehner's own so-called "Plan B," the counterproposal from Boehner's own mind to Obama's assorted proposals to fend off the upcoming "fiscal cliff," never racked up enough support to even go to the floor for a vote. It was, in effect, stillborn.
A couple of interesting things come out of this. First, it sharply undermines Boehner's stock in Congress. If a challenger shows up to unseat him, he'll really wish he hadn't stuck his neck out quite so far with this Plan B. Secondly and this is probably a lot more important, it leaves the ball flat in the Republicans' court. Not only did their golden boy's proposal not gain any traction, but it was the Republicans themselves who let it fail.
So all the teeth-gnashing conservatives out there can rant and rave and rail against that bleeding-heart liberal, socialistic commie wannabee Obama all they like, they can froth and fume at how the liberal Democrats are ruining the country, but at least the Democrats aren't doing it by squabbling amongst themselves. We're, you know, trying to help. Meanwhile, the Republicans are bickering amongst themselves: one faction of the Republican party is saying, "we can allow the severely rich to hoist a slightly heavier load because they don't have to wait for sales at the grocery store," while the other faction is saying, "no, we don't need to raise their taxes any higher than they already are, not even for the people who make more than twice as much as the severely rich." In that impasse is where Plan B crashed, burned, and embarrassed John Boehner.
Frankly I'm pretty disgusted at all of them. Social Security should be rolled back a little bit. Not much, just a little.
There are too damned many people receiving food stamps, and many people who do receive them are doing it fraudulently. Get those people under control and you start saving a lot of money right there.
Encourage people to settle for lower wages, working at an assembly line, doing things that aren't exciting or especially engaging. Having a job - any job - is a good thing. Paying your own way for what you eat, where you live and what you want in your off time, that's a good thing. Get off your butts, Americans. Get back to work. Sick and tired of seeing everything that passes through your hands being made in China? Well, whose fault is that?
You don't deserve $10, $20, $30 per hour. Nobody deserves anything. And for doing a job that could as easily be done by a robot, you'd better be thrilled to get the job at all, at any wage. Suck it up, get to work. Pay your own bills.
Pay the taxes on the wages you earn. Be willing to pay a little more. If it means you have to eat a little bit less for a few weeks, well, 30% of Americans are obese, we could afford to lose the weight. Take the job, pay the taxes, work a full, healthy life and continue paying into Social Security so you can expect a little support in your sunset years. Suck it up.
This country needs a paradigm change. The Fiscal Cliff is an opportunity for the short, sharp shock that people need, to make them aware that the way they've been living, the expectations they've had, are unrealistic and unsupportable.
The time has come for a whole new world. Let the old one die.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Anonymous Smacks Down the Westboro Baptist Church...Again
Once again, the Westboro Baptist Church has been punted off the internet by the hacker group Anonymous. Under normal circumstances the name of the church would be a hotlink but right now there's no point. It doesn't go anywhere.
That's mostly good news, as anything that shuts up the WBC can't be all bad. In the wake of the recent school shooting in Connecticut, the WBC had announced plans to protest at the school of those murdered children. Stay classy, WBC. Way to share God's love.
In response to their announced plans, Anonymous took them down. Google the WBC and click the homepage link and nothing happens. Eventually the connection times out.
But Anonymous is also publishing personal information of WBC's representatives: home addresses and phone numbers. That's pretty hypocritical, for one thing: you'd think a group that calls itself Anonymous would have a bit more respect for the sovereign privacy of individuals.
If Anonymous keeps up its attack and keeps the WBC off the internet pretty much forever, I'm totally down with that. As much as I'm for the First Amendment, I also think there should come quite a bit of responsibility along with such power. And abusing that power to terrorize, demonize and ostracize should result in the loss of that right. It's like prison for your mouth. Commit a few crimes with your body, and society sends your body to jail. Commit a few with your mouth, however, and you get to keep talking. Except Anonymous is meting out a little civil justice - or editing, at least - and I'm totally okay with it.
But while we're talking about abuse of power, Anonymous is robbing itself of much of its credibility by digging further into the WBC's databanks and completely exposing them to all and sundry, essentially exposing those people to retaliation from angry victims.
I'm not saying the WBC's people couldn't stand to receive a few righteous slaps, but we're talking about people who have been insulted and harangued even as they were experienced some of the worst moments of their lives. As bad as the WBC has been, you can see how frustrated rage could stew and fester in a grieving parent and then suddenly Anonymous is holding out this poisoned apple, "look, here's where they live. Go get them, punish them." I can understand where that parent would be coming from even if he/she went through the entire WBC's directory and killed every member...but then imagine the horror and anguish that person would have to go through when it was all over.
Anonymous has been reckless with its power in the past and again it would appear a large dose of hypocrisy is evident in Anonymous' activities. The stated motivation behind the above cited attack, for example, was to "teach a lesson in security," without actually teaching any lesson. Anonymous punishes, but doesn't correct or guide.
In the real world, that's called bullying.
In fact, that cited example Anonymous calls out the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for having been compromised by the Russian Mafia. If Anonymous really has serious concerns about that, they might have more and better results by taking down the Russian Mafia's computers.
Just a suggestion.
So silencing the WBC isn't a bad thing, not in my opinion. But Anonymous is bruising its own already damaged image by going too far in this instance. They wield tremendous power with something approaching impunity; I hope they realize they have the potential to do tremendous good, and are wasting it.
That's mostly good news, as anything that shuts up the WBC can't be all bad. In the wake of the recent school shooting in Connecticut, the WBC had announced plans to protest at the school of those murdered children. Stay classy, WBC. Way to share God's love.
In response to their announced plans, Anonymous took them down. Google the WBC and click the homepage link and nothing happens. Eventually the connection times out.
But Anonymous is also publishing personal information of WBC's representatives: home addresses and phone numbers. That's pretty hypocritical, for one thing: you'd think a group that calls itself Anonymous would have a bit more respect for the sovereign privacy of individuals.
If Anonymous keeps up its attack and keeps the WBC off the internet pretty much forever, I'm totally down with that. As much as I'm for the First Amendment, I also think there should come quite a bit of responsibility along with such power. And abusing that power to terrorize, demonize and ostracize should result in the loss of that right. It's like prison for your mouth. Commit a few crimes with your body, and society sends your body to jail. Commit a few with your mouth, however, and you get to keep talking. Except Anonymous is meting out a little civil justice - or editing, at least - and I'm totally okay with it.
But while we're talking about abuse of power, Anonymous is robbing itself of much of its credibility by digging further into the WBC's databanks and completely exposing them to all and sundry, essentially exposing those people to retaliation from angry victims.
I'm not saying the WBC's people couldn't stand to receive a few righteous slaps, but we're talking about people who have been insulted and harangued even as they were experienced some of the worst moments of their lives. As bad as the WBC has been, you can see how frustrated rage could stew and fester in a grieving parent and then suddenly Anonymous is holding out this poisoned apple, "look, here's where they live. Go get them, punish them." I can understand where that parent would be coming from even if he/she went through the entire WBC's directory and killed every member...but then imagine the horror and anguish that person would have to go through when it was all over.
Anonymous has been reckless with its power in the past and again it would appear a large dose of hypocrisy is evident in Anonymous' activities. The stated motivation behind the above cited attack, for example, was to "teach a lesson in security," without actually teaching any lesson. Anonymous punishes, but doesn't correct or guide.
In the real world, that's called bullying.
In fact, that cited example Anonymous calls out the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for having been compromised by the Russian Mafia. If Anonymous really has serious concerns about that, they might have more and better results by taking down the Russian Mafia's computers.
Just a suggestion.
So silencing the WBC isn't a bad thing, not in my opinion. But Anonymous is bruising its own already damaged image by going too far in this instance. They wield tremendous power with something approaching impunity; I hope they realize they have the potential to do tremendous good, and are wasting it.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Repair Parts: update
Well, that didn't work. I may need to open up the chassis and take another look at the control board on the Maytag Neptune washer, but at this time I'm about decided to go ahead and order a new control board and install that. Fortunately since this model is out of production, prices on the control boards have been falling as more of them fall out of use and demand for parts decreases.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Repair Parts: addendum
I have a Maytag Neptune stacked laundry pair. I bought it when I bought this little house I live in; I added a few thousand dollars to the original home loan so I could also afford a few new appliances. The previous owner took all the original appliances with her, and frankly she was welcome to them.
She also wanted free access to dig up plants from the yard for up to a year after she moved out; we offered to take our purchase offer back and continue looking. She acquiesced immediately as the house had been on the market for over a year and she was well sick and tired of trying to sell it.
My Kenmore refrigerator has had its share of problems. We had to replace the defrost timer, and it currently needs a new something-or-other to get the icemaker back in order. But these are little things that aren't hard to fix.
The Whirlpool stove is on its second oven control. That was easy to replace, the entire electronic module just pops right out and a new one pops in. The hardest part is scootching the stove away from the wall.
The Maytag washer has had a couple of problems. I don't remember precisely what the first one was because I called a tech to come fix it; the price was ridiculously high. So when it stopped spinning out the load of laundry, I started researching it. It turns out there's a known fault with these MLE2000-series washers. If you have the brown-tipped "wax motor" actuator that locks the door, it's likely to get moisture intrusion, short out and blow a couple of components on the control board.
The wax motor is nothing to replace. It helps if you have small hands, and finding precisely where all the screws are to get access to the motor can be tricky, but really it's a small matter of five minutes or so to get the old motor out and a new one in.
But the control board is still dead. The prescribed fix is to replace the control board, which costs $200 or more depending on where you shop. However, digging around on the internet - which is how I found out that this is a "known fault" and not just a random failure - I see that it's a consistent mode of failure that disables the control board, and it's not too difficult to repair.
So I did.
Costs associated:
New soldering iron, $20 (the old one has been repurposed into a woodburning iron)
Solder, $5
New wax motor, $18.50
New 3.9Kohm resistor, $2.50 (for two)
New NTE5657 Triac, $4.50 (plus $8.50 for shipping, for two)
Total, about $50.50 for everything. I could have maybe borrowed a soldering iron from work, but I strongly prefer owning my own tools. About an hour and a half for disassembly and reassembly, a grand total of about 30 minutes clipping out the old electronic elements and soldering in the new ones (and cleaning up my messy soldering job), and that's it.
The washing machine is running at this time. The "Door Lock" light, which had not been lighting up for about a week and a half, is on. We'll know for certain whether I've done the job right when it goes into a spin cycle. If it spins, it's a good fix and I've avoided incurring an unnecessary $200 expense.
Fixing things saves money and avoids lots of unnecessary environmental loading: manufacturing that could be avoided, landfill space that need not be filled, etc. When that cheap $50 toaster oven won't fire up, don't toss it because it was cheap: add to its value by making it last longer. Replace only the broken components and keep using the rest of it.
She also wanted free access to dig up plants from the yard for up to a year after she moved out; we offered to take our purchase offer back and continue looking. She acquiesced immediately as the house had been on the market for over a year and she was well sick and tired of trying to sell it.
My Kenmore refrigerator has had its share of problems. We had to replace the defrost timer, and it currently needs a new something-or-other to get the icemaker back in order. But these are little things that aren't hard to fix.
The Whirlpool stove is on its second oven control. That was easy to replace, the entire electronic module just pops right out and a new one pops in. The hardest part is scootching the stove away from the wall.
The Maytag washer has had a couple of problems. I don't remember precisely what the first one was because I called a tech to come fix it; the price was ridiculously high. So when it stopped spinning out the load of laundry, I started researching it. It turns out there's a known fault with these MLE2000-series washers. If you have the brown-tipped "wax motor" actuator that locks the door, it's likely to get moisture intrusion, short out and blow a couple of components on the control board.
The wax motor is nothing to replace. It helps if you have small hands, and finding precisely where all the screws are to get access to the motor can be tricky, but really it's a small matter of five minutes or so to get the old motor out and a new one in.
But the control board is still dead. The prescribed fix is to replace the control board, which costs $200 or more depending on where you shop. However, digging around on the internet - which is how I found out that this is a "known fault" and not just a random failure - I see that it's a consistent mode of failure that disables the control board, and it's not too difficult to repair.
So I did.
Costs associated:
New soldering iron, $20 (the old one has been repurposed into a woodburning iron)
Solder, $5
New wax motor, $18.50
New 3.9Kohm resistor, $2.50 (for two)
New NTE5657 Triac, $4.50 (plus $8.50 for shipping, for two)
Total, about $50.50 for everything. I could have maybe borrowed a soldering iron from work, but I strongly prefer owning my own tools. About an hour and a half for disassembly and reassembly, a grand total of about 30 minutes clipping out the old electronic elements and soldering in the new ones (and cleaning up my messy soldering job), and that's it.
The washing machine is running at this time. The "Door Lock" light, which had not been lighting up for about a week and a half, is on. We'll know for certain whether I've done the job right when it goes into a spin cycle. If it spins, it's a good fix and I've avoided incurring an unnecessary $200 expense.
Fixing things saves money and avoids lots of unnecessary environmental loading: manufacturing that could be avoided, landfill space that need not be filled, etc. When that cheap $50 toaster oven won't fire up, don't toss it because it was cheap: add to its value by making it last longer. Replace only the broken components and keep using the rest of it.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
The Mayan Apocalypse
Oh, people. Please. Get a grip.
The world is not about to come to an end.
Certainly most of you have noticed that the so-called "Long Count" calendar comes to an end on a solstice. Solstices, those longest and shortest days of the year, were natural stopping places for pre-Christian calendars. When your life revolved around such natural phenomena as seasons instead of the arbitrary phenomena of months, it made perfect sense to make such days special. December 30th being the end and January 1st being the beginning of years is completely arbitrary, a human-made observance.
And observing the end of a calendar is itself arbitary. It doesn't mean a hill of beans, not even a small mound.
The Long Count calendar is thousands of years long. Let's write that louder: THOUSANDS. Long Count, indeed.
When you get to the end of your 2012 calendar and have flipped over the last muscle car or Weimeraner puppy, is it the end of the world?
No. You go to Barnes and Noble and buy another calendar.
If you're Mayan, you've seen this coming for the last few centuries, round up a few thousand slaves and build another pyramid, and have your astrologers start carving a new calendar. That's all there is to it.
It's worth noting that even in such a long calendar as the Long Count, there are individual pages, called by researchers a Ba'k'tun. It corresponds to about 394.something years in our calendar. So if the world really doesn't come to an end on December 21 (and it won't), we can all get together in March, 2407 and see what happens then. Hint: nothing special will happen then, either.
Don't flip out over the end of the Long Count calendar, all you ridiculous sky-is-falling chickens. If the Maya were such accurate predictors of the end of the world, don't you think they might have foreseen their own demise? Just flip over another page on the calendar. The world isn't about to end anytime soon, and all of you who are behaving as if it might are simply embarrassing yourselves.
Get a grip.
The world is not about to come to an end.
Certainly most of you have noticed that the so-called "Long Count" calendar comes to an end on a solstice. Solstices, those longest and shortest days of the year, were natural stopping places for pre-Christian calendars. When your life revolved around such natural phenomena as seasons instead of the arbitrary phenomena of months, it made perfect sense to make such days special. December 30th being the end and January 1st being the beginning of years is completely arbitrary, a human-made observance.
And observing the end of a calendar is itself arbitary. It doesn't mean a hill of beans, not even a small mound.
The Long Count calendar is thousands of years long. Let's write that louder: THOUSANDS. Long Count, indeed.
When you get to the end of your 2012 calendar and have flipped over the last muscle car or Weimeraner puppy, is it the end of the world?
No. You go to Barnes and Noble and buy another calendar.
If you're Mayan, you've seen this coming for the last few centuries, round up a few thousand slaves and build another pyramid, and have your astrologers start carving a new calendar. That's all there is to it.
It's worth noting that even in such a long calendar as the Long Count, there are individual pages, called by researchers a Ba'k'tun. It corresponds to about 394.something years in our calendar. So if the world really doesn't come to an end on December 21 (and it won't), we can all get together in March, 2407 and see what happens then. Hint: nothing special will happen then, either.
Don't flip out over the end of the Long Count calendar, all you ridiculous sky-is-falling chickens. If the Maya were such accurate predictors of the end of the world, don't you think they might have foreseen their own demise? Just flip over another page on the calendar. The world isn't about to end anytime soon, and all of you who are behaving as if it might are simply embarrassing yourselves.
Get a grip.
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