Pet Peeve #2 – Incredible!

The stock market crash is incredible.  I don't want to talk about it.

I hear the word “incredible” used 100 times or more per day.  The other day in the car I heard a commencement address by Michelle Rhee, whom I really like, but she used the word at least 20 times.  It seems to be the adjective of our lifetimes to express many other things that could be said.

If you remember the film Princess Bride (1987), the character played by Wallace Shaun often exclaimed “Inconceivable!” perhaps in ironic mimicry of those who continue to cry “Incredible!”  (Shaun is the guy below Mandy Pitankin and Andre the Giant.  See Wallace in My Dinner with Andre and Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street.)

There was even a film called The Incredibles!

No word seems to show our laziness about words than “incredible.”  We could stop and think and use another word.  How about “inconceivable” or “unbelievable” if that is what we mean.  I tend to use “amazing,” “astonishing,” or “astounding” more frequently instead.  How about improbable, unlikely, unconvincing, baffling, befuddling, mystifying, bewildering, or stupifying?

A thesaurus search generated these additional options, depending on the situation or your actual meaning:  absurd, far-fetched, fishy, implausible, impossible, improbable, outlandish, preposterous, questionable, ridiculous, suspect, thin (some of these must be said ironically), unconvincing, unimaginable, unsubstantial, untenable, marvelous (be like Billy Crystal!), awe-inspiring, awesome (on rare occasions), extraordinary, fabulous, glorious, great, prodigious, superhuman, unreal, wonderful, fascinating, marvelous, prodigious, shocking, stunning, surprising, extraordinary, strange and wonderful, bizarre, boss (outdated), curious, exceptional, fab (also outdated), fantastic, flash (my Australian son-in-law uses this), gnarly, heavy, outstanding, phenomenal, remarkable, stupendous, unprecedented, or merely – terrific.

I'll bet we can  surprise each other with even more creative and improved vocabulary.

Econ Made Simple

I studied economics for two years, until the math got me.  I like it when someone can make the dismal science
understandable and useful.

Robert Frank of Cornell does a good job of this.  The following is from transcribed videos and written articles:

“The problem is that there is not enough demand to put people to work.  Businesses aren’t spending and consumers aren’t.  There is more production capacity than needed.  People fear losing jobs and hold back on spending.  Businesses and consumers won’t lead the way.  Only government is left.

“Government can invest in public works; the workers are there.  Markets are eager to lend to our government [Does this surprise anyone?]  The US has always been a good investment.  [If we say we are going to build for the future, the bonds will sell.]

“The cost of government debt compared with the cost of continued or worsening unemployment is very low.  A trillion dollar deficit costs us $25 billion a year to pay the interest on that. If we have an extra ten million people unemployed that’s $250 billion lost forever each year, so it’s a 10 to 1 tradeoff. [This replaces incorrect figures posted earlier.]


"Two things we can do: Declare a payroll tax holiday and exempt employers from payroll taxes for the first year of new hires’ employment.

“If we could put just half of the people who are either unemployed or underemployed back to work, national income would be larger by more than ten times the interest we’re paying on the 2011 deficit.

“The extra income tax revenue alone would be enough to cover the interest on last year’s debt.  Extra spending right now will not impoverish our grandchildren.

"According to the Nevada Department of Transportation, repairing a damaged 10-mile stretch of Interstate 80 would cost $6 million if we did the work today.  But if we postpone repairs, weather and traffic will continue to damage the roadbed.  If we wait just two years, the cost of bringing that same stretch of road up to par rises to $30 million.  There are thousands of similar projects crying out to be done.

“The Nevada cost inflation estimates, by the way, take no account of the special circumstances associated with the current downturn.  There are idle machines and workers who could do the work today, for example, but if we wait a few years, we’ll have to bid them away from other useful tasks.  Materials are cheap in world markets now, but if we wait, their prices will rise as the global economy recovers.

"Interest rates on 10-year T-bills are near record lows.  [Even if rates go up, they will be low by historical standards.]  They’ll be higher if we wait.

"No one proposes to allow the interstate highways to deteriorate back to gravel.  We either fix them now or we fix them later.  Fixing them now is MUCH cheaper, AND it will put unemployed workers back on the job.  If we REALLY wanted to impoverish our grandchildren, it would be hard to come up with a better strategy than failing to undertake these projects right away.”

"The unemployment problem is much more important than the deficit problem.  Deficits need to be reduced, yes, but not in the midst of a deep downturn."

SNAP! Intermission (from other concerns) for the Poor

I learned Friday on a Fox News crawl line that a record number of Americans are now receiving food stamps, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In May, there were 45.75 million recipients of the aid, up 2.5% from the previous month and 12% from May of 2010.

Food stamps are now called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and are now used by 21,581,234 households.

Much of the 1.1 million increase from April 2011 comes from the state of Alabama, in which food stamp usage shot up 120% from 868,000 to 1,762,000. New Jersey, Nevada and North Carolina all saw jumps in the 20% range. Every state posted a percentage increase, save North Dakota , which was essentially flat (where they are in an oil and gas boom).

The past three fiscal years have show a tremendous growth of SNAP usage. [All figures are approximate.]  In 2008, 28.2 million people used food stamps which grew to 33.5 million in 2009 and 40.3 million in 2010. In order to be eligible for SNAP, a single person must make less than $1,174 a month.  A family of four would need to make less than $28,000 a year; a senior couple less than $14,600. A single person can get as much as $200 a month in food stamps; and a family of four can get about $600.  Other factors apply, e.g., whether or not someone in the family is over 65 or disabled.

And this is a huge discretionary federal budget item that certain people would like to cut.  Imagine a country with more and more hungry people with less aid, fewer jobs, less unemployment benefits, no investment for further growth, etc. The population of the United States is around 311,907,122, meaning that almost 15 percent of U.S. residents use food stamps.

And of course, 30,000 children died in Somalia last month.  So how is your 401k doing?  How much will you save if the Bush tax cuts aren’t renewed?  And what is really important again?  For all of you who dislike politics, THIS is politics – how we decide who gets what and for what purposes.

If these things are not addressed at your church this morning, you should find another church.  Or stand up in church and tell the others about how the poor and hungry ought to come first.

War II – Tumbler-Snapper or Upshot-Keyhole?

When I was eight years old in 1952, my family bought our first TV set, a big 17" console.  Wow, a brand new medium for a curious kid.  I watched the political conventions and learned to “like Ike.”  (Adlai Stevenson didn't appeal to eight year olds.)  The biggest impact however was the live early morning broadcasts of atomic bomb testing from Nevada, just north of Las Vegas.

Imagine the effect on my eight year old brain of seeing this massive explosion, while at the same time, at school, being told to “duck and cover” because another country might drop those bombs on us.

This photo is something no one will ever see.  It is the millisecond of detonation of one of the televised explosions in 1952.  The detonation tower is visible faintly below the fireball.  The tests were given cute hyphenated names, and I think the one I saw was Tumbler-Snapper.  This photo is not the way we usually see atomic bomb blasts.

This, from Buster-Jangle in 1951 is similar to what I saw:

Area 51 may not be the most important part of the very large federal government lands in Nevada.  Area 7 is where 928 atomic bombs were detonated from 1951-1992.  All but 68 were above ground, sending clouds of radiation across soldiers and reporters to the midwest and to the northeast.  (Don’t worry, the government tells us not to.)


There is now an Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas.  When they opened a few years ago, I wrote them for information on the televised bomb blasts.  They had little info, but said it was probably KTLA in Los Angeles that skipped the broadcast signal to WOW-TV in Omaha which broadcast it to me in Sioux City, Iowa, on the edge of the Great American Desert, as some of us thought it.

I had serious nightmares about nuclear warfare.  As I got older I read Hiroshima by John Hersey, and saw documentaries on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Today, August 6, is the anniversary of dropping “Fat Boy” on Hiroshima.  Isn’t that name cute?  Something like 100,000 to 150,000 people died that day and about as many in the years that followed.  Did it end the war early and save thousands of American lives?  Maybe.  One thing we know is that communications between our governments were very bad and confused in July and August, 1945.  Japan was worn out and defeated before we dropped the bomb(s).  And another thing we now know: American patience with the war had worn thin.  There was little motivation to keep fighting after four years of devastating warfare.  See Clint Eastwood’s film, Flags of Our Fathers, mostly about the battle of Iwo Jima, for insight into the mood of the US at that time.  Patriotism had given way a lot to simple grief and sadness.

Later in the early ‘80's I fought the re-establishment of Civil Defense in New Jersey.  I think there were 80+ Soviet nuclear targets in New Jersey.  Yeah, hiding in a basement was going to help a lot.  I was asked several times to preach a sermon I had on war and the need for nuclear disarmament, called A Covenant with Death.  The text was from Isaiah 28: 14-20 --

Hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers
   who rule this people in Jerusalem.
Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death,
   and with Sheol we have an agreement;
when the overwhelming scourge passes through
   it will not come to us;
for we have made lies our refuge,
   and in falsehood we have taken shelter’;
Therefore thus says the Lord God....
I will make justice the line,
   and righteousness the plummet;
hail will sweep away the refuge of lies,
   and waters will overwhelm the shelter.
Then your covenant with death will be annulled,
   and your agreement with Sheol will not stand;

We were the only country that has ever yet used nuclear weapons.  We still have thousands of them and who knows how many Soviet warheads are being traded around the world and to whom.  We have a defense budget seven to ten times that of China and equal to half of the world’s spending on war.  We spend more than a trillion a year now, counting the “off-budget” defense expenses.  (Al Queda, not so much.)  Also, there is not so much talk these days of justice and righteousness.  We have trusted in chariots and horsemen rather than God (Isaiah 31:1) or simple human reason.

Sexual Politics – An Apology

I need to apologize for my use of the word “whore” two posts back.  We need epithets that aren’t sexually loaded when we don’t mean to apply them to women.  Without them we just demean all women when we want to get at one or the people behind the one.  The woman in question is being used at least as much as she is using us.  Listen to this from a reader:

“The term "whore" is objectionable to me all by itself, even when not applied to anyone, but just as a concept that stands for evil intent and moral corruption.  A woman has a right to use her body as she sees fit and it can't be helped that men are ravenous for women's bodies so why not take advantage of the male weakness?  Women who want to accept money for sexual favors ought to be allowed to do so without being equated to the lowest form of life on earth.  I'm not saying that the woman in the ad is not selling something precious for money.  She is, it's just that what she's selling, and distorting/corrupting, doesn't belong to her, but to everyone on earth and she has no right to sully it with lies and profiteering.  If she were selling her own body I'd say, ‘Hey I don't want to see that on tv’ but couldn't fault her for conspiring to destroy the earth.  Whoring is an honorable profession. There are plenty worse things that could be said about the oil spokesperson.”

Everything is overly sexualized in our fundamentally repressed society.  Partly this is just a human problem. But partly it is a cynical use of sexuality and attractiveness by corporate elites and their advertisers, who want to control us or manipulate us into wanting what they are selling.  When you combine oil, coal, and subtle sexuality, and our reliance on all three – wow, what a combo.  I don’t know what to call them.  There aren’t any words strong enough to express my disgust.

A Tangled Web I Wove

One thing leads to another.  And another.

Last week I found the Woodbury County Courthouse on Facebook and “liked” it.  It is an award winning Prairie Style design by William L. Foster, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright’s who designed a number of homes in the area.

A friend told me he went there for his marriage licence.  I said I went there for my driver’s license.  He said “That marriage didn’t last.  Hope your driving went better.”  As a matter of fact it didn’t.

My daughter and I were talking at a big family dinner last week.
“Sonja (who is 3) needs a backpack for pre-school,” she said.  We talked about how things have changed and how she didn’t carry a backback.  She liked floppy bags.
“I was sort of a nerd in high school, carrying a big tan briefcase,” I remembered.
“We have a picture of me learning to stand up on a brief case.  Is that the one?”
“Yup, I and my friends all bought big briefcases at 'Sioux City Stationery,' and I bought one that was like my lawyer’s.”
“You had a lawyer?  What was that about?”
“Well, this is a long story.  In 1962 after I graduated from high school, I bought a car, a ‘47 Chevy, from your Mother’s Brother.  It had bullet holes in it.  He and one of his friends had taken it to a field and shot it up and I now realize he did it with the (non-functioning) 1954 Mossberg 22 which happens now to be hanging on the wall above your Mom’s desk. This is a ‘47 Chevy slopeback; mine was gray:

“Well, I and a friend drove it around without a muffler and were reported to the police.  They came to my house and took me away for questioning.  I wondered what my Mother thought when my sister told her what had happened..”
“So you needed a lawyer for that?”
“No, they thought we had something to do with a car that was left in a park and burned the night before.  But we didn't and they let us go.  My friend and I blew the engine on that car, bought a 260 Jimmy dumptruck straight six engine from a junkyard and put it in the car.  A 260 was 4.25 liters, much bigger than the original one.
“We were so excited to get it running, we didn’t put a muffler on it and we just set the hood on the car without fastening it down.  Must have weighed 150 pounds, fitting snugly within the fenders.  That night we were driving about 60 mph on the new interstate (this was 1963), and the hood slowly lifted straight up, slowly angled upward, and slowly disappeared back over the car.  It landed on the highway and we quickly crossed the median and returned to where the hood was laying, and got out of the car to pull it off the road.
“WHAM!  A ‘60 white Impala hit the hood and stopped with sparks flying from under the car.  The hood had caught under the front of the car.  I went to the car and apologized to the elderly couple.
“It’s a good thing you ‘fessed up,” the man said.  “I am a retired California Highway Patrol officer, and I would have chased you to the ends of the earth.”

I checked at the Chevy dealer on the repairs to his car.  I was told they were about $40 plus towing (abut $20 then).  Then I got a letter from his attorney telling me that he was suing me for $500.

Now during high school I had taken the city bus home from school.  Many days on that bus was a lawyer with a big fat tan briefcase.  Mr. Furlong, whose law firm still exists, befriended me and wanted to know what I thought about politics and life, what my plans were for after high school, and whether I thought it was really necessary to go to college straight out of high school.  So when I got that letter, I knew who to call.

We went to court twice and the plaintiff didn’t show.  I asked my lawyer if the case shouldn’t be dismissed because of this.  He said it was ok.  The third time the plaintiff didn’t show, and my lawyer and the judge conferred.  My lawyer said that I had to pay $500, and when I objected to what had happened in court, he said “I have to practice law in this town, so I have to cooperate with the judge.”  My first lesson in politics and no doubt formative of my cynicism.

The settlement was for payments of something like $7 a month.  I paid for about 2 years and paid some of those payments to the plaintiff’s attorney in pennies.  Never heard from them again.

Pet Peeve: The Energy Whore

That’s what I call her.  We don’t know who she is, but we have seen her for about 5 years on mild-mannered ads for oil and gas drilling, and the cleanliness of coal.  She is so reasonable, saying that we need solar and wind power, and nuclear and all sources of energy.  She tells us that oil companies aren’t rich, we are, because our 401k’s and pension funds are invested in oil companies.  She tells us that there is plenty of oil and gas in the ground and that the only problem is that the government that won’t let them drill where it is.  And they provide 9.2 million jobs!!!  (Someone ought to check that.)  She tells us that hydrofracking is really safe and will save us from having to buy any more foreign oil.

The ad here was run for several years before the BP spill in the Gulf.  It tells how safe and efficient oil drilling is now; why they can drill one hole and draw from multiple dinosaur cemeteries.  This ad was dropped for 9-12 months after the spill but now they have the nerve to run it again.  The way such ads work is that they are repeated very frequently and are so harmless sounding that we don’t pay any attention to them, but we buy the message.

If you believe any of this crap she tells us, I have a bunch of worn out bridges to sell you.  (It used to be that I would sell shiny, new bridges, but there aren’t very many of those now.)  Some of my friends believe in “peak oil.”  That is the theory that there will be no more increases in oil extracted from the earth; that we have hit the max and it is all downhill from here.  I don’t know, but we keep using more, and certain political groups deride wind and solar and all attempts to wean us off this sticky drug.  Note that significant businesses and countries like China are going full out to develop new sources of energy.  They know what’s coming.

Back to the title.  I hate to call any one a whore.   But this woman has sold her soul to the biggest devil in the world, the oil industry.   And she likes coal, too.  But the Johns that pay her are far worse.  They will do anything for money; they are the real whores; maybe even the Biblical whore of Babylon.  All of the ads are available on youtube.com, and many of the comments there are more angry than mine.