Sunday, March 25, 2012

What Do Patrons Do at Cat Cafes?

     I can't believe all of the things I've found on the Internet.
Some may suggest that I shouldn't believe anything I find on the
Internet.  Without all the information that flows from the Internet
I fear that my mind would be like an empty filing cabinet.

     Much of that information ends up filed under "U", like in
"Useless Information."  For variety I could put some under "I"
for "Information, Useless."  Another option is to pass it on to
you and let you worry about where to file it.  Guess which
option I choose today.

     Last week I didn't know there were cat cafes in Japan.
Now I realize they may be on the endangered species list.  The
cafes that is, not the cats.  The Japanese government is
protecting the cats from the cafes.  Is PETA behind it?

     Before PETA has a coronary, perhaps I should point out
that cat cafes don't serve cat burgers.  Then again it might be a
public service if I drove PETA into cardiac arrest.  I can't wait
to see the letters claiming I'm bigoted against PETA.

     I recently discovered a web page charging me with being
narrow minded and bigoted against witches.  The posts were
made seven years ago regarding a column I published in 2003.
If I ticked off a bunch of witches and survived to tell about it,
Why should I worry about upsetting PETA?  Then again, Do
you suppose that witch thing had any part in my spending three
years as a frog?

     As far as I know casting spells and making curses are
among the few things PETA hasn't done to endear itself to the
rest of the human race.  PETA does sometimes provoke others to
hurl a few curses in PETA's direction.

     So far I haven't heard what PETA thinks of cat cafes.  I
don't really know if PETA is responsible for the law that
threatens the cat cafes.

     Cat cafes don't serve meals for cats.  What do they do?
They serve live cats.  Again, don't panic.  Customers pay the
cafes $12 an hour or so to play with the cats.

     Apparently, to some in Japan a big night on the town is
going to the cat cafe, drinking tea and playing with a cat.  This
certainly gives new meaning to high living.  Instead of living
high on the hog, Do they get high playing with cats?

     Actual, it seems that rather than going out to play with
the cat, people stay out to play with the cat.  They often stop at
the cat cafe to play with a cat and unwind on the way home
from work.  Perhaps cats are a substitute for drinking.  Someone
should tell Alcoholics Anonymous about this.

     Back to how government is threatening the cat cafes.
The cat cafes attract many customers after 8:00 p.m.  A new law
makes 8:00 p.m. the witching hour for cats.  There I go ticking
off the witches again.  Cats will not be allowed to work past
8:00 p.m.  At that magic hour all cats must go back into the bag.
I wonder if anyone told the Japanese government that cats are
nocturnal.

     Cats will be allowed to work only from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00
p.m.  Apparently the politicians and bureaucrats haven't been
able to wrap their minds around the concept of second shift.

     What will the Japanese facing cat withdrawal do?  Will
they meekly comply with the 8:00 p.m. bagging of the cats?  Or,
will they visit dingy back rooms where exploited cats are forced
to play into the wee hours of the morning?  Did you ever try
forcing a cat to do anything?  Will purveyors of cats walk the
streets at night carrying bags and whispering, "Do you want to
play with a cat?"

     To stay up to date as the saga plays out, stay tuned to the
Internet.  Hopefully I will never mention it again.  On the
Internet someone will.

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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284

Friday, March 23, 2012

Uhmmm

How to lead
Government leadership in a majority rule democracy is a matter of guessing where the heard is headed and getting there first.  (3/23/12)

Stop digging?

If digging deeper doesn't get us out of a hole, How will more taxing, borrowing and spending get us out of the hole created by taxing, borrowing and spending?
(3/9/12)
Are they fireproof?
When the politicians and bureaucrats who claim to be public servant spend most of their time and effort bossing the public around, Why doesn't the public fire them?
(3/3/12)
What should we ask?
If by spending billions of dollars government can put a man on the moon, Why can't it provide quality education by spending billion of dollars? Why shouldn't we instead ask, If government can't dent drug use by spending hundreds of billions of dollars, Why shouldn't we question government's ability to spend our way out of problems?
2/29/12

2/27/12

What to Do?
"If the majority is dominated by bad ideas, nothing can be done about it except to try to change the bad ideas." -- Ludwig von Mises http://www.mises.org/
2/24/12
 
Causing Trouble 
If you owe the bank $10,000 and can't pay, you are in trouble. When you owe the bank $10,000,000 and can't pay, the bank is in trouble. There is a corollary to this principle. If government issues an oppressive edict and most people obey, the people are in trouble. When government issues an oppressive edict and no one obeys, the government is in trouble.
 2/22/12

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Words Gone Wrong

     Comments by the always mild mannered, quiet Rush
Limbaugh brought insults and "bad words" to center stage.
Limbaugh called a woman a slut and a prostitute.  This brought
on a fire storm of outrage.

     Is it a bit strange that in the day of anything goes, any
two words, neither of which starts with, or even includes an "N,"
could provoke this much outrage?  Why do some words upset
people?

     Most insulting words fall into two categories.  There are
the all purpose insults such as "jerk."  Calling someone a jerk
does little to tell how the person earned his jerkhood.  Did he
rob banks or merely have a weird haircut?  Calling someone a
jerk mostly means the speaker dislikes something about the
"jerk."

     Other insults, such as moron or slut, appear to have more
substance.  Taken at face value they say something about the
nature or conduct of the recipient of the honorary title.  Usually
that substance is mostly illusion.  The person who calls another a
snake doesn't likely mean the caller believes the other person
literally slithers through the grass.

     Neither is calling someone a moron or an idiot likely
intended to infer that the person really is a moron or an idiot.  If
the person was a moron or idiot, he wouldn't care what anyone
called him.

     The main thrust of insults is to express irritation with or
contempt for someone.  Describing actual conduct is usually far
from the thoughts of the person hurling the insult.  Those who
hurl insults commonly have overreacted.  The response to insults
is also likely to be over the top.

     In the midst of the brouhaha over the Limbaugh insults
others brought up the matter of media personalities who have
routinely hurled insults that many consider more offensive than
slut and prostitute.  Some suggested that there might be a double
standard.

     Of course, there is a double standard.  Limbaugh is a
highly visible target.  Many are willing and eager to hurl any
stone or mud they can grasp. The other insulters are minor
figures few notice or concern themselves about.  Naturally
Limbaugh draws the most flack.

     This doesn't excuse the double standard, though it does
explain it.  There is nothing surprising or unusual in people
ignoring faults in themselves or their friends, while attacking
others for having the same or lesser faults.  This is all part of
being human.

     When the attackers are called out for their double
standard, they shouldn't complain and fake outrage.  People who
live in glass houses shouldn't complain about being heisted by
their own petard.  How is that for a mixed metaphor?

     Limbaugh's statement was ill advised, and he eventually
admitted it.  That may be a first for Limbaugh.   His opponents
over reacted and, as  far as I know, haven't admitted it. The
fallout is a public relations battle that generates far more heat
than light.

     One of the insults used by some on television to slur
various women has nearly a thousand years of history.  The
word was so common in the military I tend to think of it as a
military term.  I didn't realize it had drifted into such common
use.

     I was surprised to learn that some consider it to be the
most offensive word in the English language.  I don't find the
word shocking.  This is mostly because the familiar simply isn't
shocking.

     This led me to ponder the matter of insults.  If you call
someone a foot or an ear or most any other body part is he
likely to be insulted, or only puzzled?

     Yet, many of the insults considered most vulgar, or
obscene, are only slang terms for body parts, usually of the
genital persuasion.  Many of these words weren't even
considered vulgar at first.

     This raises another question.  When two words mean the
same thing, Why is one considered vulgar and insulting while
the other is just a word people use to describe something?

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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Serendipity Again?

     Many discoveries are accidental, such as Columbus
discovering the Americas.  Seemingly bad occurrences can yield
great success.

     Railroad tracks were originally laid on stone slabs.  A
shortage of stone slabs threatened to delay completion of a rail
line.  Someone had an idea.  They could temporarily lay the rails
on logs.  The use of logs was so successful that for nearly 200
years railroads were built on wooden ties.  Many rail lines today
are still on wooden ties.

     Hydraulic fracking of horizontally bored oil and gas wells
has greatly increased the recoverable oil and gas reserves of the
USA.  The US may be able to produce most, or even all, of its
needed energy in the near future, if government allows it.  The
next best alternative is still only speculation.

     In spite of all the promise from fracking, worrywarts
fight to stop it in its tracks.  Fracking uses high pressure fluid,
mostly water, to make small cracks in the oil or gas bearing
rock.  The cracks allow the oil and gas to flow out.

     Standard practice is to inject the used fracking fluids into
rock formations deep beneath the ground.  Both fracking and
injection of fluids have been common practices in the oil
industry for over half a century.  Secondary recovery operations
often inject water into the oil producing formations to flush out
more oil.

     Now anti frackers claim that the injections into the layers
of rock are causing earthquakes.  They don't explain why it took
them over half a century to figure this out.

     Recently Ohio closed down an injection well because of
several small earth tremors in the area of the well.  I expect that
the anti frackers and the Middle East oil sheiks are jumping for
joy.

     I'm not ready to bet that water injection caused the small
quakes.  Let's assume it did.  What on earth should we do?

     The water was injected near a fault line.  Fault lines are
where the rock layers are broken. One side of the fault moves
causing an earthquake.  The simple solution is to inject the waste
water far from fault lines.

     The topic deserves more consideration.  It takes a lot of
energy to make a fault line slip and cause an earthquake.  Stress
along the fault line may build up for years, or even centuries,
before the earth moves.  The more energy that builds up before
the quake, the greater the shake.  Small quakes are all but
harmless.  Powerful quakes are devastating.

     There is no way possible that the injection of water into
the rock powered even a small quake.  The most it could have
done was trigger the release of already pent up energy.  If
injecting fluids can trigger small earthquakes, the injectors have
serendipitously discovered a safety valve for earthquakes.

     Injecting fluid along fault lines to trigger small quakes
before the energy builds up enough to launch an earth buster
would be a way to prevent devastating earthquakes.  If this will
actually work as a safety valve for earthquakes, it may be a
discovery even bigger than the oil and gas reserves unlocked by
fracking.

     The likelihood that injecting fluids causes earthquakes is
still small.  The main point is, don't abandon or cripple fracking
and all its promise out of overblown fears that it somehow
triggers earthquakes.  If the fracking operations do prove to
trigger earthquakes, make the most of the discovery to limit and
control earthquakes.


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Copyright 2012
Albert D. McCallum
18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
Springport, Michigan 49284
aldmccallum@gmail.com

Monday, March 5, 2012

To Serve and Protect

      
             A recent "food police" search caused a stir on the
        Internet.  For those who didn't notice, here is a brief summary.
      
             A mother sent lunch to school with her four year old
        daughter.  The lunch inspectors discovered the ticking time
        bomb.  The lunch consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich,
        banana, potato chips, and apple juice.  An inspector pounced on
        the lunch that didn't meet U.S. Department of Agriculture
        guidelines, as interpreted by the inspector.
      
             Perhaps the nutritionally challenged will fail to instantly
        grasp what was wrong with the lunch.  Didn't you notice that the
        lunch was minus a vegetable?  Every meal should include a
        vegetable.  Did you have your vegetable for breakfast today?
      
             The "lunch police" swung into action.  They weren't
        authorized to seize the dangerous lunch.  They did the next best
        thing by providing a second lunch to supplement the defective
        one.  How do two lunches square with the government's
        campaign against obesity?  And, to think that some people claim
        MacDonalds is tricking people into eating too much food.  When
        was the last time MacDonalds forced a lunch onto a four year
        old?
      
             Did the girl eat her second lunch?  Well, sort of.  She ate
        the chicken nuggets.  I assume everyone knows that chicken is
        one of our most nutritious and important vegetables.
      
             Still, the neglectful mother must be punished.  The school
        billed her $1.25 for the lunch.  The ingrate, and others,
        complained so loudly that the school canceled the charge.  Does
        this prove that there really is a free lunch, provided you don't
        want it?  It doesn't if you are a taxpayer.
      
             This incident annoyed me.  It didn't surprise me.  It is
        consistent with the way government control of our lives has been
        growing for ages.  Why would government that controls what
        goes into children's minds shrink from controlling what goes into
        their stomachs?
      
             School personnel in that great bastion of liberty to our
        north (I don't mean Russia) also lie awake nights scheming how
        to protect children from their neglectful and incompetent parents.
      
             The protectors at Forest Hill public school near
        Kitchnener go to the head of the class.  When Jessie Sansone
        arrived at the school to pick up his children he was called to the
        principal's office.  Three police officers informed him he was
        being charged with possession of a firearm.  Then he was
        escorted out of the school, hand cuffed and locked in the back of
        a police car.  Later the father was strip searched.
      
             The article doesn't explain why this depraved and
        dangerous man was allowed inside the school.  Why didn't they
        call a swat team to hurl him to the side walk and subdue him
        when he stepped from his vehicle?  Why did the police wait
        until they reach the police station to search for weapons?
      
             How did the police know the father possessed a firearm?
        School employees tipped off the police.  How did the school
        employees know?  Well, they didn't.  They only had compelling
        evidence.
      
             Exhibit A was a picture drawn by the father's four year
        old daughter.  Maybe school people have a thing about four year
        olds.  Should I attempt to describe the picture in a family
        publication?  I must.  The four year old drew a picture of a, a. .
        .  Do I have to say it?  Yes, I do.  Sensitive individuals and
        those with heart conditions may wish to stop at this point.  She
        drew a gun, a picture of a gun.
      
             To the school Gestapo this meant that the father
        possessed a gun at home.  That gun was a threat to the safety of
        his children.  By the way, the government seized the children for
        their safety and to interrogate them.
      
             When the police searched the home what kinds of guns
        did they find?  Only invisible and imaginary ones.  The abuse
        and humiliation of the father and his children were all based on
        the imagination of a four year old, and perpetrated by adults who
        didn't have the common sense of a four year old.
      
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        Copyright 2012
        Albert D. McCallum
        18440 29-1/2 Mile Road
        Springport, Michigan 49284