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Rants May 9, 2010

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1. There were very few years in my life where I earned enough money to pay an income tax, which automatically meant I could not afford to have children. I am not alone, and because incomes in America are now so low among so many people, they are going to have to look for another means to tax us so we can all pay our fair share. Do you think a yearly tax on each pre-college child would be a good start?

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2. You know that I like to tell you things that you might find entertaining even as they enrich your life. But this is the most useless piece of economic information you will ever hear from anyone, and because that includes myself, please listen carefully. You probably know that “Shaken, not Stirred” is one of the top 100 movie quotes of all time. Last week while buying my wife a gallon of ceiling paint, I told the girl behind the counter I had an academic question for her. And as she fastened the paint can into the machine, I said, “How many people --- in one day --- say to you, ‘Shaken, not stirred.’” She said, “Only five or six.” Would this not indicate to you that there has been no economic recovery and that paint sales are down?

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3. My neurologist friend writes, “OK. About new brain cells. This has been a revolution in our understanding that has happened in the past 10 years or so. When in graduate school, I was taught you had all of the neurons you would ever have when born, and you tried to prevent them from dying over time by living a healthy life. Now we know that even in mammals and humans, new cells are born all the time and that these neurons are functional. In fact, we know with fair certainty that you need to continuously produce new neurons in certain brain areas in order to be able to function normally. Dementia can be considered not just a loss of neurons through cell death, but also a failure to produce new ones from stem cells. Exercise, especially aerobic, has a profound effect on the brain. We think this is because, in part, exercise increases the production of specific proteins that stimulate the production of new brain neurons. My work has been centered on the study of one of these - nerve growth factor. This is one of a family of proteins that are active in the brain, involved in memory, new neurons, regulating connectivity, etc. How many new neurons you need to make a difference is not known, but these experiments were performed with mice. It is almost certain that they need fewer to make a difference, especially if you spend your life in a cage less than 1 sq ft and not much to do. I am not at all surprised you feel better all day if you get out and work up a sweat for an hour or so. The general guideline for humans is moderate exercise for a minimum of 30 min at least 3 times per week. I swim for at least 30 min 5 times per week and have been since 1986 - without it I feel droopy and sad. It does not have to be running, just a good, active life involving regular exercise. Also, an active mental life - learning new things, stretching your mental muscles - but you already do that.” End of quote. If you’d like a copy of those comments on the benefits of exercise, you will find it posted on my web page.

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4. Almost every time I tell you something, you tell me that you already knew it. And then I ask you why, if you already, knew it, why you didn’t tell me. I just learned that Curtis Gates, known better as Festus in Gunsmoke, performed with the Sons of the Pioneers. Can you see Festus in your mind? Did you know that back around 1941 he replaced Frank Sinatra as vocalist for the Dorsey band? I’m humble at humblefarmer.com. Tell me that you already knew it.

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5. (PRX 100504B) You are missing something if you do not read the online version of your local newspaper. Listen to this item from our big daily in Bangor, Maine. A gubernatorial campaign helper resigned after it was revealed that the campaign had utilized plagiarized material. This is a political campaign. Since when have candidates been required to say something new?

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6. “Truth no longer stands unassailable upon its pedestal, but rather waits in line for the outcome of the latest poll.” Someone sent me that in an email. I thought it was a well-known quote, but I couldn’t find it when I Googled, so you might be the person who thought it up and sent it to me. Thank you. “Truth no longer stands unassailable upon its pedestal, but rather waits in line for the outcome of the latest poll.” If you agree with this, send me an email saying, “Yes.” If you disagree, send me an email saying, “No.” If you don’t know what it means, join the club.

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7. (PRX 100406B) I just listened to a piece on the radio that I think was written and narrated by a Minnesota high school girl. It had to do with classifying students by the kind of clothes they wear. She used three words in the piece I had never heard before. I think the words had to with clothes or stores where one buys clothes. You can learn a lot about what to wear by listening to young people. When I started high school in 1949 I remember wearing a pair of my father's pants that my mother cut down to fit. They were black and shiny. I remember that because the pockets had worn out, mother sewed the pockets shut at the sides. I remember that there were holes in the bottoms of my shoes. I put cardboard in there so I wouldn't wear out my socks, but soon shifted from cardboard to a piece of tin from a tin can because tin lasted longer than cardboard. It must be tough nowadays to be a kid and go to a high school where you are known by the kind of clothes you wear. I never realized how good we had it in school until I heard this piece on the radio. As I recall, when we were 13 we all dressed just about the same.

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8. (PRX 100406) Milt is 97 years old. He rode his bicycle over to our house for supper the other night. In the course of the evening I said, “I heard that Tiger Woods had a press conference today. I don’t know why the press should be so interested in Tiger Woods. And this nice 97 year old man said, “They were probably after his notebook.”

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9. If you’d like to know what most of the people in your community are thinking, you should go to your local newspaper’s blog and read the comments your friends and neighbors have posted below the articles. I read many of these blogged letters several times a week because it puts me in touch with people I would probably not see unless I happened to be at Union Fair after closing time. Here’s a sample from last week. It says, “Of course he couldn't have anything of value to say unless he went to college. College, where mush minds are programed with progressive dogma.” Isn’t that is a great comment? Don't forget that spending a year with a family in Europe could be just as mind bending as reading history in college. Doesn’t everyone agree that the only Maine adults able to think clearly can't read and never left home?

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10. You probably know that you can help heat your house with hot air from solar boxes that are attached to the side of your house. A little fan blows the hot air in the boxes into the house. I want to build two of them for each side of my house --- to use both morning sun and afternoon sun --- so I am presently studying the situation. One testimonial from Massachusetts says, “I’ve had 2 panels on my house for 12 years now. On real cool mornings, my panel fans kick on around 7:30 am and they remain on until roughly 4:00 pm, heating the first floor of my house throughout the day, maintaining between 70 -75 degrees, even when the temperature is in the single digits.” But this is the testimonial that got my attention. It is from an elderly woman who raised 8 children. She says she heated her domestic water with solar panels for over 20 years and is now putting in some solar air heaters. She says she enjoys doing her part to save the environment for her 15 grandchildren. My question to you is, who did more for this planet --- an old woman on solar power with 8 children and 15 grandchildren, or an old man who burned oil and left neither chick nor child?

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11. If you migrate from Maine to Florida like a bird, you already know that it can sometimes be a struggle to get your cable service activated. You can call ahead and ask them to flip the switch or type in the numbers or do whatever it is they do that will enable you to make telephone calls and receive junk mail from lonely Russian women. And sometimes they do, and you are up and running the instant you plug in your computer. Happy days. But sometimes you can’t get on line to save your soul. That’s when, in sheer desperation, you agree to let them send a technician out to your house. He puts a meter on your cable line that tells him if there is any power coming into your cable line. If there is no signal there, the technician gets on the phone with someone down in the head office. And this is when you might get the impression that turning on the power to your house is a hit or miss operation. In other words, somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing and they chatter back and forth trying this and that until a half an hour later they get lucky and discover that their computer lost the number of your modem. You know that I did not invent Ethernet and that I have no idea of why or how the system works. But, like Don Corlione, I am a superstitious man, and because the most brilliant computer guru on the coast of Maine was treated to the same song and dance last week I have a pretty good idea of who to blame. And now that I think of it, I don’t know why I spent 30 minutes writing this rant, when I could have simply done a search in my computer and recycled the one I wrote when they messed me up last year.

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