+

Rants February 13, 2011

+

1. I just read that "22 percent of former students defaulted on their government student loans in 2007." Looks like some folks have promising futures as Wall Street bankers.

+

2. Radio friend Bev in Belfast sent me a video of a toothless young man who swims in a swamp and catches snapping turtles with his bare hands. Bev writes, “This is a genuine red neck performance. It doesn't get much redder than this!” I would have to guess that Bev has not read any of the letters to the editor in the Bangor Daily News blog.

+

3. Thanks to you, I get to read many educational books and articles. A book called Deadly Spin by Wendell Potter is the best I have seen this year. The author started out as a poor boy who one day found himself Spin Meister for the insurance industry. You can’t believe how scared insurance companies were when Michael Moore’s movie Sicko was released. You won’t believe all of the things Potter did to try to discredit Moore and his whistle-blowing movie. A visit home where he saw hundreds of his old neighbors stand in the rain all night to attend a free medical clinic snapped Potter around and motivated him to write a book about the sordid insurance business. You already know how they operate, but in Deadly Spin I got to read in the words of the repentant Spin Meister himself. Thank you for calling it to my attention.

+

4. There came a day when I called a representative and cancelled my Vonage account. I wasn't sure I had to call to cancel but I thought it would be nice if I did. I've been happy with the service, but when the price for a year went from $306 to $371 it nudged me into signing on with Ooma, which Jack in Waterville told me about last year. Also, had Vonage mailed me a paper bill for $371 I would have looked for a sponsor to pay that, as I am not the only one who uses the phone. When I called Vonage a couple of weeks ago the rep said there was no way I could get the $306 rate that I paid last year. But today, now that I have already signed up with Ooma, I understood the supervising rep to say I could get the $306 if I'd come back. I begged her to speak slower so I could understand her (which she couldn't do) so I could be confused on that point of giving me the old rate if I’d come back. I told her that management should empower the employees who make the first contact with the public to agree to a negotiated price so we wouldn’t have to jump through all these hoops. She said I was the first person to ever complain about her accent. I tried to explain that she had a lovely accent, I had not said a word about her accent, but had only asked her to speak slower so I could understand what she was saying. Ed Muskie spoke to the Maine State Legislature one time and told the legislators to slow down when they speak. People not only need time to hear the words but people also need time to process the information. We are all guilty of dropping the last word, the punchline if you will, of our sentences. This is why the congregation often does not laugh at the minister’s jokes. I was guilty of it last week when in my television program, I dropped my voice on the word “quart.” One of the first words a language student is taught is, "Please speak slowly" in the target language. Ar du snall pratter dig inte sa fort. Habla mas despacio por favor. Sprechen zie nicht so schnell. I can think of several languages that I can understand if I can get the native speakers to slow down the phonemic current, and English is one of them.

+

5. Here’s one of those harmless lies that get distributed over the Internet. It says, “After stopping for drinks at a bar, a bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting had wandered off. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital and told the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.”

+

6. Who hasn’t heard of Oil of Olay? There is no question in my mind, that if a woman uses Oil of Olay between the ages of 30 and 50, at the age of 50 she will have the same complexion she had at 30 --- as long as she doesn’t smoke and has doesn’t sit outside in the sun. I present to you this evidence that women who use Oil of Olay do so with the understanding that it is not a panacea and that eventually more drastic steps will be necessary. Please listen closely. A woman who was in a remarkable state of preservation sat one day at our breakfast table. One wondered why this woman was traveling with a man old enough to be her father, until it was revealed, with fanfare, that she was 55 years old. I was not surprised that anyone 55 could look so much younger, and to prove my point I brought up the web page that contains pictures of my Radio Friends and showed her a picture that was taken of me when I was 55. I looked like a little kid. I told her that she would soon discover, as I did, that there comes a day when crow’s feet do come home to roost. I told her that I didn’t know exactly when it happened, but on one quiet, unannounced day within the past 15 years I suddenly looked my age. And that woman smiled at me and said, “Well, that’s why they made paper bags.”

+

7. Because I haven’t seen this for a year or two it warrants our attention. Someone on a blog wrote, “… what good would it be to have term limits for Congresscritters, if the verdamnt Lobbyists are still around? Imagine a nice tender new-baked Congressperson Goes to Washington, and here comes the Big Bad Wolf waving seduction under their virgin noses.” Does this make sense? What would happen if the only experienced people in Washington were the lobbyists? Is there anything to be said for tribal knowledge? Does it take as long to learn how to become an effective congressperson as it takes to learn how to teach school? What do you think would happen if teachers right out of college didn’t ask experienced teachers what to do? And what would happen if new people weren’t constantly entering every profession?

+

8. I just read. I must do a lot of reading because you must notice that I preface many of my remarks with, “I just read.” I just read that Isaac Asimov was a long-time member and Vice President of Mensa International. He described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs.” If you were to read hundreds of letters to the editor you would see that no matter where a person is on the IQ or educational ladder, the minute they write they broadcast their exact position on that ladder. When you read many of those letters you can’t but help wonder how many extra holes some of them had to drill in the bathroom wall to put up their towel racks.

+

9. I just read that the English and Dutch eat too much meat. Some scientists have figured out that eating meat is not as good for the planet as eating veggies because you have to put too much valuable grain and hay into the cow to produce the meat. In Holland you can’t turn around but what you see a small farm sporting half a dozen fat cows that chomp here and there on carefully manicured fields. But in Maine you can’t think in those terms. I see the cow as a friend that eats small trees and bushes and converts into protein things that would soon grow into wild unmanaged forest.

+

10. Did you read about the man who flew through the air with the greatest of ease and cracked up a snowmobile while filming some kind of stunt? I was going to write something about it and post it below the article but couldn’t bring myself to do it --- because some wide-eyed sports enthusiast had already written below the article: "Nevertheless, I am still looking forward to seeing this on YouTube."

+

11. What kind of a world do we live in when a former President of the United States can’t go to Switzerland for fear of being arrested as a war criminal? And then in the same article we read that Sarah Palin’s appearance in Colorado has been canceled because of safety concerns. I can understand why Mr. Bush doesn’t dare to go to Switzerland but am puzzled why Ms. Palin would fear for her safety in Colorado --- she’s always well armed.

+

12. Here’s a very revealing letter to the editor which you might have heard me read last week. It is about wind power and says, “Just another should be, could be, might be, list of very speculative prophecies about the future cost of energy created by yet another wind power project. This is a failed technology. The Europeans, who invested heavily in wind power, both land based and off shore, are publishing press releases very routinely now saying that they're backing away from future investments, cutting subsidies, and generally admitting they were sold a bill of goods.” My comment to this letter was: If you have recently read any scientific articles or textbooks about wind power, you know that scientists say just the opposite. Would this letter not strongly suggest to you that too much of what Americans think they know about science now comes from talk radio? In response to my comment, a dentist wrote, “humble- A few years ago I came across an item which said that the Right had discovered it could avoid the "mainstream media" to get its message (propaganda) out by taking advantage of nighttime talk radio. They found that the audience and callers fit their "philosophy," so they figured it would be stupid to pass up the opportunity. So they played it up, to the point of having their operatives pose as "ordinary folk" callers. Of course they had a script to work from, prepared by the Republican National Committee, but they got their word out, nationwide, all the while making it appear as if it were "the voice of the people." Really rather clever, but still frightening.

+

13. Isn’t it great that you can go on line now and get the answer to most any technical question? Today I tried to find out how to make the base of the vacuum cleaner drop down and I filled out three pages of the on line questionnaire before I was told it would cost me $18 for the answer. I finally solved the problem by kicking it and jumping on it.

+