Rants March 25, 2011

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1. Thank you for listening to The humble Farmer. For the next hour or so you’ll be hearing old fashioned music and --- I’d like to say you will be hearing scraps and bits of 70 years of accumulated wisdom but I can’t, because instead of getting smarter, I only seem to have more questions about the peculiar things you and I see or hear every day For example --- Is it fair to categorize people by watching the way they wipe crumbs off the table with their hand? One type of person rubs the crumbs across and into the crack where the table leaves come together and the other type doesn’t.

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2. When Angus said he's running for Olympia's seat in the Senate someone snarled: "If we send King down there, he'll be a democrat within a year." The Senate must be a place where one gets educated very quickly. In even the best universities the making of a democrat can take four years.

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3. One morning I opened an email from Leeworden, which you know is a town a little bit to the west of Groningen. And this letter said I had won half a million euros. I copied four words and pasted them to see what I would find and it turned up a web page of a man who claimed to be the luckiest person ever. He had won this lottery in the past and his web page contained a list of all the lotteries that he had won and beneath that was a copy of all the letters from the lottery companies to prove it. If you don’t believe it, you can get the web site in my Whine & Snivel newsletter.

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http://www.incompetech.com/gallimaufry/lucky14.html

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Within two days in November this man won 10 lotteries, but I don’t know if this automatically validates his claim to be the luckiest person ever. If you are a man 70 years old who has recently seen a woman who refused to marry you 50 years ago, you might know what I’m talking about.

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4. Have you ever booked an airplane ticket on line? --- going through your computer? I have. I’ve done it several times. Usually it goes right through. But one night I spent almost two hours going round and round on a web page representing US Airways. Before they would let me buy the ticket, they wanted a user profile and a password. So I filled in the user profile page and entered a password and user name and pin number. And I wrote all these things down on a piece of paper but when I entered them, the computer balked. It kept telling me I had entered the wrong user name. But --- they know that there are simple old people who forget those things so right there on the page was a button that said, “push this if you have forgotten your user name.” So I pushed it, and sure enough, here comes an email --- with my dividend miles number. I spent enough time on the project to fly from Bangor to Detroit before I was finally able to find a telephone number for US Air. For only an extra $5 fee, a kindly woman was able to help me buy a ticket. I didn’t mind paying the extra five for help --- but --- I didn’t like the salt they rubbed in my raw wounds. You see, while I was on hold a recording kept telling me how much quicker and easier it would be if I’d simply hang up and book the flight on line.

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5. Here’s a letter that quotes my recent Whine & Snivel newsletter: Humble, did you run out of apostrophes? From Dennis. No Dennis. My computer changes apostrophes and letters. I catch the you’re your from time to time but sometime I don’t. The one I don’t like is the capital H it puts in humble when I sign it small h humble and the way the comptuer indents the numerals one, two and three. A computer is like a wife. A man can’t be responsible for everything it says and does.

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6. You might have read that Governor LePage says Maine is a leader in helping businesses to succeed by streamlining regulations. Unless you have a very short memory, you know quite a bit about streamlining regulations. You certainly remember when George W. Bush streamlined regulations by cutting down on the number of inspectors who kept cow manure out of meat in meat packing plants. Which could be why so many people become vegetarians during Republican administrations. Drat those regulations that eat into profits. If you’ve read the investigative reporter Molly Ivins you know that the Republican Party is the party of unregulated meat and poultry. Then we see that LePage says fuel prices remain a big worry. State Senator Phil Bartlett of Gorham says lawmakers must address the crisis of cost and dependence on fossil fuel. Is LePage is wrong in abolishing renewable energy incentives and funding for energy efficiency programs? Should a real American have little gizmos on the side of his house that pump free hot water and electricity into the home directly from the sun? Or does it sound too much like those cagey Northern Europeans to suit you?

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7. Here’s an email from Ferg who says, “Just a short note to let you know I have enjoyed your radio show in the past and recently saw you repairing the back of the house on tv. It was great entertainment. I am an old fan of 52 years old from Minot, Maine. If down this way let me know as I need a hand in the garage for a couple of projects. We will do a bean supper.” I want to thank Ferg for writing. Isn’t anyone who thinks watching me repair the back of my rotted out 200 year old house is fun really hard up for live entertainment?

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8. You might have heard that some states are now required to prevent welfare recipients from using ATM machines in casinos, liquor stores and strip clubs to spend or access their benefits. This is good. Because I’m a conservative old Maine man I don’t think anyone should even step into a strip club, a casino or a liquor store. So this regulation is a step in the right direction. Here’s another regulation that you might like. Next year folks in the top 1% income bracket must register their cars, boats and airplanes in the states where they use them the most and not in states like Montana where car registration is next to nothing. The top 1% with half a dozen homes across this great land will not be able to change their place of residence to states like Florida, to avoid paying state income tax. And they will be required to deposit their earnings in local credit unions which will help the local economy and not whisk it off to the Cayman's or Switzerland. If they then want to drink, gamble or throw away anything they have left over, are you going to lobby for legislation to stop them?

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9. One of the more interesting chapters in Glyn Daniel’s Archaeology is Champollion’s account of deciphering the Rosetta Stone. The book also contains a few pages by Schliemann on excavating Troy. Perhaps the first terms a child learns when studying archaeology are Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age. Although the nomenclature lingers on, Daniels mentions that the fairly recent ability to affix dates by carbon dating have rendered these terms obsolete. He also points out that while Egypt might have been well into the Bronze Age, their neighbors in Northern Europe were still clubbing each other with stone axes. That the rate of social/scientific advance differs from continent to continent was even more recently articulated by Jared Diamond in his short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. It has not escaped our attention that even today the acceptance of science differs even within the narrow parameters of a small Maine village. For while 49 percent of the population might have consciously moved on to what one might call a Post Darwin Age, 51 percent might cling tenaciously to the mores that developed eons before during centuries of nomad living while raising sheep, or, even later, while dancing in loincloths to bring rain to parched crops. In every city and town these two groups --- these two cultures, if you will --- are found on their respective rungs on the ladder of intellectual development. One has repudiated or has chosen to ignore certain scientific advances made over the past 150 years. The other one is as proud of its grasp of science as the other is proud of its ignorance. You may well ask how these two present-day cultures, each on its own level of social development can exist --- not just side by side, but inextricably intertwined like the white and gray yarn in an Icelandic sweater. The truth of the matter is that the two groups coexist very well --- until it is time for an election.

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10. I look at a lot of web pages in the course of a day so I’m aware of a lot of different ways of thinking. If you’ll review some biblical and theological resources for growing Christians you might quickly learn that having women in authority over men is a violation of the teachings of Scripture.

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11. Here just because you like logic and syllogisms and that kind of thing i’s something I posted on my Facebook page. For a headline, I put up: News from Maine. But because it happens so often, it really isn't news at all. And here’s the story: Authorities say x shot z while hunting in the woods. x was hunting deer. Z was also out hunting deer. Both men were “experienced hunters." The lawyer of x says his client fired after seeing what he thought were antlers and Z dropped dead. Z was wearing bright orange. I asked my Facebook friends to tell me what they thought of this. The best answer to my question came from Sue Ann who said, “Just because Z was wearing bright orange doesn't mean he didn't have antlers.”

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12. You might remember that I like beans and spaghetti and could happily live on them until the day I die. Please hear this communication from Brent: Dear humble, I do find you unusually paradoxical since your erudition, intelligence and academic history come across loud and clear on your show. You have a voracious passion and understanding of the social and cultural happenings around you, which are most often associated with sophistication and depth of knowledge/wisdom.....Whereas your culinary interests seem very basic and working class, that harken to your youth, years of bachelorhood, addiction to your desk top, poverty, an artist caught up in the thrall of his muses??? --- Thank you Brent. My discriminating taste when it comes to meals also applies to women, and is not regretted when I look around and see friends who were obviously hooked by their first entrée.

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