Was 2013 the Best Year in Human History?

Actually, in most ways it was.  Here are some numbers which show that although the planet is over-populated, running out of resources, and facing climate change, we humans are also less impoverished,
healthier, longer lived, better educated, and less violent than at any time in history.  Check it out:

Foggy Here Today

Santa shouted in despair,
"It's all IFR out there."
I'll call Rudolf, The Red-nosed Raindeer,
Or Pat, The Pink-nosed Bat.
Either can guide me safely,
Or I'll stay right where I'm at.

Warm Winter Day.

When you get a warm,  sunny day in December,  it's like getting a text message from Persephone---Not quite a visit, but more than a hello.

Income Inequality Worries Wall Street

     According to an article by Justin Lahart in the Nov 11, 2013  Wall Street Journal entitled "Worry Over Inequality Occupies Wall Street," Hedge fund managers are beginning to worry about the rising level of income equality in the United States.  Since they are on the receiving end of this outrageous unfairness,  why should they be concerned?   They are concerned because the last year that inequality reached the present level was 1928---just a year before the crash that triggered the Great Depression. When inequality reaches a certain point, the system breaks down and becomes unstable.  But any remedy to this instability would involve  raising working class wages, and raising taxes on the rich.    But low wages and taxes are the main reason that wealthy investors are making their present rip-off profits.  So any action to avert  a financial disaster in the long term would require the super rich to give up money in the short term.  And no matter how worried they get, they probably won't do that.
     There is a short story called "The Monkey's  Paw"  which begins with an anecdote about monkey trapping.    According to the story,  monkeys are sometime trapped by hollowing out a coconut and boring only one small hole in it.  The hole is just large enough so that the monkey can just barely put his hand through it if the palm is open. But if he is grasping something is his fist, it won't fit through the hole.  They chain the coconut in place and place a piece of fruit inside it.  The monkey smells the fruit and puts his hand in and grabs it,  but then he can't get his hand back out.  He could easily extract his hand if he dropped the fruit--but he won't ever do that.  Even as the hunter approaches to seize him, he cannot let go of the fruit once he has it in his hand---he is hard-wired to keep it.  I suspect that the hedge fund managers have the  same problem.

Do We Eat Petroleum?

            Actually, that's what we mostly eat nowadays.   A chemical analysis would not show the presence of petroleum in anything you usually eat, but in a sense, you are eating it.   Your food comes from a machine that turns oil into food.   If I could show you a black box, made such that people were pouring oil into one end, turning the crank, and food was coming out the other, would you then agree that we turn oil into food?   After seeing such a machine, you might say, "Let's test it.  Stop putting oil into it."  So the man stops putting oil into the machine, but continues turning the crank.   And before long, food stops coming out.  At that point, you would concede, "Well, I guess it turns oil into food."   Do we have such a machine?

            Actually, we do.  It's the largest machine in the world, and almost all of our food comes from this machine.   The entire food production, processing, and distribution infrastructure of the civilized world can be considered a single, huge machine, and into it we feed a large percentage of all the oil produced in the world.  And most of the world's seven plus billion inhabitants consume  commodities disgorged from this device. We who live in the developed countries consume almost nothing else.   Without it we would all starve.  But petroleum is a finite resource and will eventually be gone. We don't know just when, but the point of peak global production is already behind us.   We have already quit using oil for some of the things we used it for 40 years ago.  So--how will we eat when it's gone?  That's a good question and perhaps it is time we began thinking about it.

            We got a good wakeup call just this weekend.  All of the papers carried a piece about the delayed corn harvest.  This is the kind of headline that scares the hell out of anyone who understands the food supply.  Corn is the starting point for almost everything we eat---everything from pork chops to cooking oil to bourbon whisky---it all comes from corn.   We had a record corn crop this year, but half of it is still in the field, and no one is straining to get it out.  Why?   In order to be stored in a bin, the moisture content of corn cannot exceed 15%.  But this year, we had an unusually rainy spring, and planting was delayed almost a month all across the corn belt.  We still got a large crop, but the point in the life cycle of the plant where the seed is set and starts drying down occurred a month late---well after the hot, dry, sunny weather of late summer was past.  The corn now standing in the field has a moisture content of 19% to 24%, and before it can be put in a bin, it must be artificially dried.  Most farmers have the grain dryers  to do this,  but this year, they cannot obtain the propane to operate them.  The reason that we now have a shortage of propane is due to the unusually large amount of grain drying that has already taken place---yet half of the crop is still in the field.  Even when propane supplies are available, every wet autumn we must decide whether to let half the crop rot or buy absolutely massive amounts of petroleum to dry it.  And when we decide to buy the propane  and save the crop, which we always do, we are turning oil into food.  But what happens when the petroleum isn't there to buy?   

Ingenious Old Windmills

Ingenious Old Windmills

            Whenever I am driving across western Iowa on I-80, I try to time my trip so that I am near Elkhorn, Iowa at lunch time.  After taking advantage of the delicious and reasonably priced Danish buffet at the Danish Inn,  I always make time to take another look at the old windmill next door.   This mill was built in the early 19th century in Denmark.   Then, in the 1970s,  A group of Americans of Danish descent from Elkhorn, Iowa bought it and carefully dismantled it, numbering every piece.   They took it back to Iowa  and re-assembled it and lovingly restored it.   It stands as a museum, and it works perfectly.   For a nominal fee, you can tour the entire structure.

            If you do tour this mill, walk through the upper floors and see all of the working parts.  At  first everything looks crude, but after you think about it a while, you come to appreciate the ingenuity of the whole design.   All of the huge gears have the following arrangement:  one solid cast iron gear turning against a larger gear with wooden teeth fitted into a cast iron wheel.  The teeth have conical shanks driven into conical sockets, about like a human incisor.  They can be installed with a blow from a hammer.  If they had used two solid iron gears, sooner or later the teeth would be worn and the whole gear set would have to be replaced.  Since the larger gear would weigh several hundred pounds and be several feet in diameter,  this operation would involve tearing the top off the mill and using a huge crane.  But with hardwood teeth wearing against iron, the iron part will never wear away---all the wear would be on the wooden parts.   Any wooden tooth can replaced in a few minutes, and the miller himself can carve as many new teeth as he needs.

            Another ingenious design element is the tail wheel.  This small turbine wheel sits behind the main turbine blades and perpendicular to them. It can turn in either direction, but will not turn at all when the main blades are facing directly into the wind.   Through a deep reduction gear, (probably  with a ratio of several hundred to one )  the little tail wheel spins and slowly rotates the mill to face the into wind.  The whole top of the mill can rotate, being mounted on iron rollers and a huge bull gear.  Whenever the wind changes, the tail wheel starts spinning in whatever direction is needed to reposition the mill.   Couldn't they have just made a huge tailfin to position  the mill turret, as we do on old farm windmills?  Yes, they could have.  But if they did, then on a day with gusty crosswinds, the mill would be slamming back and forth, shaking it to pieces,  and never being pointed toward the average wind direction.    

            Another word about the Danish buffet at the Danish Inn:  I have lived in Iowa most of my life, and the traditional Danish food served at this buffet is some of the best food in Iowa,  and is reasonably priced.  For about the price of a jumbo sized fast food hamburger, fries,  and a malt, you can have the whole smorgasbord.  It's only 7 miles off the interstate.  If you are ever traveling across western Iowa,  don't pass up the chance to pig out on this buffet, or tour this fascinating old mill. 

Real Purpose of the Shutdown

The Wall Street puppet masters who invented the Tea Party and who control it are even more evil than we thought.   Consider this item in the October 11 Wall Street Journal, page 1:
"The Dow soared 323.09 points 15126.07, the biggest one-day point gain of the year, as lawmakers showed signs of breaking their impasse,"  
       How much money was made on a price spike of that magnitude for those who knew in advance it would happen, because they caused it to happen?   We have always known that the Tea Party was invented by Wall Street billionaires for their own purposes, but until now, it was not clear just what those purposes might be. By the way, we can assume that they probably shorted a broad array of stocks before beginning this scare game, so they made money on both ends.  This is a dangerous game, and things could go very wrong.  What if the puppets (who probably do not know that they are puppets) were to cut their strings?  It may be easier to start chaos than to stop it.  And it's also an unbelievably immoral thing, even by Wall Street standards,  to throw the world's largest economy into chaos just to make a quick buck on stock trades.   It's like throwing a thousand grannies under the train to win a bet that the train would be late.