We Have Gone Mad

So the economy is in the tank. After spending $700 billion on the last bailout, the powers that be are proposing another $850 billion. Tucked into that $850 billion spending plan are such things as $4 billion for community organizations (read: ACORN) and $75 million for smoking cessation programs. What that spending has to do with "stimulus," the purported objective of the plan, is beyond me.



Let's think about how much money this is. It's a trillion and a half dollars in total, money that will be repaid by my children and grandchildren. Either that or the inflationary impacts of the bailout, and the ensuing tax policy, will make the payback affordable by eroding the value of the dollar so much that...well, we all know what happened in Germany as a result of the hyperinflation that followed WWI.

But let's put some context to it. The weight of one million one-dollar bills is a little more than 2000 pounds, or about the same weight as a large draft horse. The weight of one trillion one-dollar bills is more than 2,000,000,000 pounds, or about the same weight as the human populations of London, Washington and Singapore combined.

If you laid one million one dollar bills end to end, they would stretch about 100 miles. That's enough to reach from the Ohio Statehouse to the Sandusky Bay, or from Chicago to Milwaukee, or from Leeds to Leicester. If you laid one trillion one dollar bills end to end, they would reach the moon and back 200 times. Our you could send them in the direction of the sun and they'd go right past it, by about 5 million miles.

One trillion is an incomprehensibly large number. And that's why people don't understand the sheer magnitude of this so-called bailout. Not even the people who are foisting this on us.

Here is one more thing to think about. One million seconds is 12 days; one trillion seconds is roughly 32,000 years, which is about how long our lawmakers must think we have to pay for this shameful waste of resources.

This Art Is Cool

Actually, cold would be a better word.

We drove yesterday to Charles Mill Lake to enjoy the scenery. It was very cold yesterday, although not nearly as cold as it was earlier in the week. We took the back roads to get there, and we were rewarded with beautiful winter scenery in the rolling hills of the Mohican Forest. It took us nearly 2 hours to make the drive, but that was due as much to the state of the roads as anything else. The snow was blowing and drifting, and I suppose we could have made it in 90 minutes or less in good weather.

The Mohican is a popular destination in these parts. There are ski trails, white water rapids, miles and miles of walking trails, and some of the most beautiful scenery in Ohio. Malabar Farm is in the Mohican Forest, and is probably best known as the place where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were married in 1939.

We made our first stop at a little place near the Charles Mill Dam, the Wayside Inn: The Best Bar By A Dam Site, as it was explained to us. There were just a few locals there, and it was obvious to them that we were from somewhere else. The people were friendly, though, and through them we learned that there were ice sculpture displays in Loudonville, about 12 miles away. We had a couple of cold ones to go with our bratwursts, then we took a drive around the lake and the marina, then we set out for Loudonville, which is known as the Canoe Capitol of Ohio.

The merchants in this little town must have loved the weather. You'll see from the pictures below that there are not a lot of people walking down the sidewalks to view the ice sculptures. That doesn't mean there weren't a lot of people in town; they went into the stores to stay warm.




These are just two examples of the sculptures. They were lined up on both sides of the street, and I would guess there were probably 30 in all. It's still well below freezing, so anyone in the area who wants to see them, now is your chance. I hope they'll be gone by next week, but based on the weather forecast, they'll probably be around another couple weeks or so.

More Despair

This is just too much fun...

Despair

You've probably seen some of the demotivational posters that are sold by Despair.com. As one of the founders of Despair says, motivational posters don't work, and Despair's demotivational posters don't work even better.

There is a new feature on the site that allows you to create your own demotivational posters. You can order prints of your creation from the website, or you can save the images to your own computer. I tried my hand this morning, and here is my first original demotivational poster:



If you'd like to create your own posters, here is the link to the do-it-yourself area of Despair.com. There's even an instructional video to help you along.

Zzzzzzzz...

Ten things you might say when caught sleeping in the office:


1. They told me at the blood bank this might happen.

2. This is just a 15 minute power-nap like they raved about in the last time management course you sent me to.

3. Whew! Guess I left the top off the liquid paper.

4. I wasn't sleeping! I was meditating on the mission statement and envisioning a new paradigm!

5. This is one of the seven habits of highly effective people.

6. I was doing a highly specific Yoga exercise to relieve work related stress.

7. Someone must've put decaf in the wrong pot.

8. Boy, that cold medicine I took last night just won't wear off!

9. Ah, the unique and unpredictable circadian rhythms of the workaholic.

10. Amen.

It's Only Words

What a great tune by the Bee Gees (Words), but this is about actual words.

A homophone is a word that sounds like another, but is spelled differently and has a different meaning. Examples:

eye - I
so - sew
dough - doh!

You get the idea. I won't patronize you.

To patronize is to explain more than is necessary because you assume the other person doesn't quite understand what you are trying to say.

There is another class of words known as heteronyms (thanks to several readers who supplied the term). The idea here is that two words can be spelled the same way but be pronounced two different ways and have two completely different meanings. An alphabetical list of every such word I have found follows. If you can add to the list -- please do so:

Appropriate
Axes
Bass
Bow
Close
Content
Console
Contract
Converse
Desert
Does
Dove
Entrance
Incense
Intimate
Lead
Minute
More
Number
Object
Pate
Present
Produce
Putting
Refuse
Resume
Row
Sewer
Sow
Tear
Wind
Wound

Note that lame doesn't work because it uses more than letters in one sense. Resume and pate are OK because alternate spellings allow only letters.

Then there is the Holy Grail of the English language: one pronunciation, three spellings, and three meanings. The challenge is to find more of these gems. I have only these, but no doubt there are many more:

by, bye, buy
freeze, frieze, frees
flew, flu, flue (contributed by Liz)
four, for, fore
hi, hie, high (contributed by Liz)
I'll, aisle, isle (contributed by Liz)
knew, gnu, new (not fair using a Greek letter to get to 4!)
meat, mete, meet (contributed by Liz)
pear, pare, pair (contributed by Liz)
reign, rain, rein
sees, seas, seize (contributed by Liz)
sew, so, sow
sight, site, cite (contributed by Liz)
there, their, they're (contributed by Liz)
to, too, two
wind, wined, wynd (contributed by Liz)
you, ewe, yew

And if three meanings is the Holy Grail, then four meanings must be a true rarity, kind of like finding Yeti hiding in your garage:

do, dew, doo, due
aye, eye, I, ai
rite, right, wright, write (contributed by Liz)



Game on...

The sights and sounds....

Our hotel is visible on the left in this panoramic view of the Cocoa Beach Pier. That's Dorothy in the middle in the orange sweatshirt. Trust me when I say it was warm, she is fair-skinned and needs to cover herself while in the sun.



And of course, no Cocoa Beach post would be complete without a small movie taken from the beach. Enjoy -- and if you want to see how much camera technology has improved in the past few years, see a similar movie posted on March 22, 2008.

Cocoa Mole Crabs

That doesn't sound very appetizing, does it?

We had a great trip to Cocoa Beach, arriving around 8 PM on Friday. The trip down was long...we had smooth sailing until we got near Orangeburg, South Carolina on I-26, where the traffic suddenly stopped. It took a long while to get around the obstruction, which turned out to be a car that had burned up on the edge of the freeway.

We finally got to I-95 for the last leg of the trip, and that's when the real trouble started. For almost 300 miles, we were in stop and go traffic. Mile after mile through South Carolina, and the traffic never let up. When we hit the Georgia state line, things finally broke out. But not for long. We ran into a construction zone and continued the stop and go driving until we finally hit the Florida state line. The remaining 200 miles or so were a breeze, but it took us every bit of 16 hours to arrive at our destination, about 2 hours longer than it should have taken.

The weather was ideal, with Cocoa Beach having a record high of 81 on the day we arrived. Every day was sunny and pleasant.

But back to the mole crabs. If you've ever walked along the beach in Florida, you've probably noticed the little holes that form in the sand after the waves recede. Those little holes are caused by mole crabs, also known as sand fleas. I managed to film some of them as they burrowed into the sand, and here is one of the better examples. This one must have been intent on moving, as he stayed on the surface until a wave came in and moved him along the beach.

You really have to watch for them, and the larger ones that are used as bait by the surf casters are even harder to spot. Their shells look exactly like rippled sand, and they burrow into the sand so deftly that they are nearly impossible to spot. That's why you won't see any here.

See next post for the sights and sounds of Cocoa Beach...