Right wing commenters on the inter webs love to do their little adolescent dance about how global cooling was all the rage back in the days when they didn't have man tits and could still see their penises. But Doug Struck's recent piece in Scientific American (you know, that magazine for scientists that has been published for nearly 170 years with past contributions from people like Albert Einstein) details exactly how the Church of the Climate Denier has lied about this theory.
For example, the author of the global cooling piece...
"When I wrote this story I did not see it as a blockbuster," Gwynne recalled. "It was just an intriguing piece about what a certain group in a certain niche of climatology was thinking."
And, revisionist lore aside, it was hardly a cover story. It was a one-page article on page 64. It was, Gwynne concedes, written with a bit of over-ventilated style that sometimes marked the magazine's prose: "There are ominous signs the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically..." the piece begins, and warns of a possible "dramatic decline in food production."
"Newsweek being Newsweek, we might have pushed the envelope a little bit more than I would have wanted," Gwynne offered.
Oh really? I'm most shocked that they would leave out these details...
Friday, February 07, 2014
The Explanation
Herewith is the explanation that was asked for:
Corporate boards are populated by executives of other corporations. To set salaries for executives they form "compensation committees" consisting of themselves and their underlings. They conduct "salary surveys" of other corporations to determine what appropriate levels of compensation should be.
The boards then tell themselves that to attract (or maintain) marvelous corporate leadership, they need to set compensation a bit higher than the median. CEOs are constantly fired when the stock doesn't perform. But every time CEOs change seats in their game of corporate musical chairs, no chairs are removed: the salaries are just increased.
Thus, companies see an endless parade of CEOs whose salaries just keep getting higher and higher, while cycling the same old cast of characters through various executive suites and boardrooms across the country.
This inflationary spiral would be deemed completely unsupportable for maintaining a high quality labor force, but since each large corporation only has a few dozen execs, keeping the best talent around is "worth it."
The problem is that, when you add up the cost of all that compensation for the entire executive team, it starts to add to hundreds of millions to billions of dollars for the bigger companies. To pay for it, employees are laid off. Wall Street rewards the company by running up the stock price, lauding the CEO for his "tough management style" and "increasing productivity."
And the thing is, the average CEO is simply not worth what they're being paid. I've personally known CEOs, and they're just regular guys. The vast majority of them are not any smarter or faster than you or me. Most of them got where they are by being someone's son, someone's college roommate, or someone's drinking buddy. A rare few got there by being brilliant, innovative, hard-working. Almost all of them created nothing; most are just hired guns.
The only people who can make a claim that they deserve the big bucks are the real innovators, like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. But those guys are usually ill-suited to running a corporate bureaucracy; innovators and entrepreneurs are frustrated and stifled by the demands of shareholders and "Wall Street expectations."
The one thing most CEOs do have in abundance is the ability to project confidence. Corporate boards just love a CEO who projects confidence. But, just like all those confident and exciting boyfriends that so many women seem to fall in love with, only to find out they make absolutely terrible husbands, these supremely confident CEOs make absolutely terrible managers.
Corporate boards are populated by executives of other corporations. To set salaries for executives they form "compensation committees" consisting of themselves and their underlings. They conduct "salary surveys" of other corporations to determine what appropriate levels of compensation should be.
The boards then tell themselves that to attract (or maintain) marvelous corporate leadership, they need to set compensation a bit higher than the median. CEOs are constantly fired when the stock doesn't perform. But every time CEOs change seats in their game of corporate musical chairs, no chairs are removed: the salaries are just increased.
Thus, companies see an endless parade of CEOs whose salaries just keep getting higher and higher, while cycling the same old cast of characters through various executive suites and boardrooms across the country.
This inflationary spiral would be deemed completely unsupportable for maintaining a high quality labor force, but since each large corporation only has a few dozen execs, keeping the best talent around is "worth it."
The problem is that, when you add up the cost of all that compensation for the entire executive team, it starts to add to hundreds of millions to billions of dollars for the bigger companies. To pay for it, employees are laid off. Wall Street rewards the company by running up the stock price, lauding the CEO for his "tough management style" and "increasing productivity."
And the thing is, the average CEO is simply not worth what they're being paid. I've personally known CEOs, and they're just regular guys. The vast majority of them are not any smarter or faster than you or me. Most of them got where they are by being someone's son, someone's college roommate, or someone's drinking buddy. A rare few got there by being brilliant, innovative, hard-working. Almost all of them created nothing; most are just hired guns.
The only people who can make a claim that they deserve the big bucks are the real innovators, like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. But those guys are usually ill-suited to running a corporate bureaucracy; innovators and entrepreneurs are frustrated and stifled by the demands of shareholders and "Wall Street expectations."
The one thing most CEOs do have in abundance is the ability to project confidence. Corporate boards just love a CEO who projects confidence. But, just like all those confident and exciting boyfriends that so many women seem to fall in love with, only to find out they make absolutely terrible husbands, these supremely confident CEOs make absolutely terrible managers.
America Is Owed An Explanation
I think America needs an explanation as to why it's so difficult to raise the minimum wage yet incredibly easy to raise the pay of CEOs. Take a look at this recent piece in the LA times about CEO pay.
The great management guru Peter Drucker advised companies to stick to a ratio of about 20 to 1 between the pay of the CEO and that of the average worker. That's "the limit beyond which they cannot go if they don't want resentment and falling morale to hit their companies," Drucker wrote, according to a comment on the CEO pay rule submitted to the SEC by Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. Drucker's standard was in line with the ratios of the 1970s and early '80s, when he wrote those words. Today they seem positively quaint.
The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2012 was about 350 to 1. That's down somewhat from where it was before the 2008 recession, but it would have to come down a great deal more to return to the non-obscene range. It's plain that this ratio typically has little to do with an executive's performance. The CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio of the 250 largest companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index ranges from 1,795 to 1 (J.C. Penney's Ron Johnson) to 173 to 1 (Agilent Technologies' William Sullivan), according to Bloomberg, which ran the data for 2012.
My wife used to work for Supervalu. They went through a few CEOs during her tenure there and it was always the same thing. Somebody would be brought in to "fix" the company. They would be paid millions of dollars. They would fail. And then they would leave with their millions, accomplishing nothing, with dozens (if not more) of average workers being laid off. The information in this link details how something similar happened with JC Penney. In so many ways, this is complete bullshit. If the CEO fails to do is or her job or makes it worse, they shouldn't get any amount of money. Take the money you are paying the CEOs and keep the average workers longer.
At least the SEC seems to be doing something about it.
I wholeheartedly support this new rule and think that the public (especially the investing public) needs to be aware of how these companies are doing business. Firms like Penney's don't seem to understand, as Drucker noted above, that the health of a company springs from its employees, not from the top. They aren't going to be successful unless they start paying better wages to everyone. Worse, the social cohesion in our society is fraying as a result. There are a lot of people hurting out there and seeing wealthy people bitch about poor people while they themselves are getting something for nothing is really FUBAR.
The Right likes to scream about "class warfare" but that's really code for desperately wanting to maintain aristocracy.
The great management guru Peter Drucker advised companies to stick to a ratio of about 20 to 1 between the pay of the CEO and that of the average worker. That's "the limit beyond which they cannot go if they don't want resentment and falling morale to hit their companies," Drucker wrote, according to a comment on the CEO pay rule submitted to the SEC by Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University. Drucker's standard was in line with the ratios of the 1970s and early '80s, when he wrote those words. Today they seem positively quaint.
The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2012 was about 350 to 1. That's down somewhat from where it was before the 2008 recession, but it would have to come down a great deal more to return to the non-obscene range. It's plain that this ratio typically has little to do with an executive's performance. The CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio of the 250 largest companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index ranges from 1,795 to 1 (J.C. Penney's Ron Johnson) to 173 to 1 (Agilent Technologies' William Sullivan), according to Bloomberg, which ran the data for 2012.
My wife used to work for Supervalu. They went through a few CEOs during her tenure there and it was always the same thing. Somebody would be brought in to "fix" the company. They would be paid millions of dollars. They would fail. And then they would leave with their millions, accomplishing nothing, with dozens (if not more) of average workers being laid off. The information in this link details how something similar happened with JC Penney. In so many ways, this is complete bullshit. If the CEO fails to do is or her job or makes it worse, they shouldn't get any amount of money. Take the money you are paying the CEOs and keep the average workers longer.
At least the SEC seems to be doing something about it.
I wholeheartedly support this new rule and think that the public (especially the investing public) needs to be aware of how these companies are doing business. Firms like Penney's don't seem to understand, as Drucker noted above, that the health of a company springs from its employees, not from the top. They aren't going to be successful unless they start paying better wages to everyone. Worse, the social cohesion in our society is fraying as a result. There are a lot of people hurting out there and seeing wealthy people bitch about poor people while they themselves are getting something for nothing is really FUBAR.
The Right likes to scream about "class warfare" but that's really code for desperately wanting to maintain aristocracy.
Thursday, February 06, 2014
Obama Mental Meltdown Syndrome (And The Lying It Produces)
I didn't get a chance to catch the Bill O'Reilly interview with the president but apparently Dana Millbank did.
O’Reilly devoted nearly 40 percent of his time to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, 30 percent to the Obamacare rollout and 20 percent to IRS targeting.
Wow. Talk about playin' the hits for the hardcore fans. Does he actually think that most people give a shit about any of these issues?
Of course, this is their modus operandi. We now live in a society where you are not only entitled to your opinion but your own facts as well. Case in point...
Anti-Obamacare, facts be damned
“Sick kids denied specialty care due to #Obamacare,” his Twitter feed proclaimed on Saturday, linking to a conservative blog post based on a TV news report out of Seattle. His Facebook page weighed in on the same story, calling it “heartbreaking” and vowing that House Republicans “will continue working to scrap this broken law.” There’s just one problem: The shocking claim — that the President’s health reforms resulted in sick children being denied care — was flat-out false. Which Boehner’s staff must have known, assuming they actually read the material they were helping to spread across the Internet.
The anger and the hatred towards the president is so irrational that the Right is simply lying now and they don't really care.
O’Reilly devoted nearly 40 percent of his time to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, 30 percent to the Obamacare rollout and 20 percent to IRS targeting.
Wow. Talk about playin' the hits for the hardcore fans. Does he actually think that most people give a shit about any of these issues?
Of course, this is their modus operandi. We now live in a society where you are not only entitled to your opinion but your own facts as well. Case in point...
Anti-Obamacare, facts be damned
“Sick kids denied specialty care due to #Obamacare,” his Twitter feed proclaimed on Saturday, linking to a conservative blog post based on a TV news report out of Seattle. His Facebook page weighed in on the same story, calling it “heartbreaking” and vowing that House Republicans “will continue working to scrap this broken law.” There’s just one problem: The shocking claim — that the President’s health reforms resulted in sick children being denied care — was flat-out false. Which Boehner’s staff must have known, assuming they actually read the material they were helping to spread across the Internet.
The anger and the hatred towards the president is so irrational that the Right is simply lying now and they don't really care.
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
How The Gun Laws Will Change
Last Friday, Bill Maher and his guests wondered on Real Time what it would take for our nation's gun laws to change to suit our current challenges. If Sandy Hook didn't change things, what possibly could? I kept waiting for them to say it and they didn't. Here is how it will happen.
There will be a mass shooting at some sort of gun event in which powerful people in the gun lobby will be affected personally and very deeply. They will lose family members and friends and will realize their own hubris played a part in causing this. And that's when the gun cult will completely fall apart.
Americans don't move to change until they are affected by things in an overwhelmingly personal way. Sandy Hook and the other shootings we've had in the last year haven't done that because they were incidents that occurred outside of the sphere of the gun lobby. Once they start happening within that sphere, things will change and very rapidly indeed. One need only look at the issue of gay marriage, for example, to see how it will happen. Republicans were very anti gay marriage until family members, friends and donors started coming out. The sphere was no longer closed. Cigarettes were nearly identical, as I have mentioned previously. When the pro smoking crowd started losing people to cancer and heart disease, it all fell apart. The same thing will happen with climate change.
So, we will see incremental changes, with people like Gabby Giffords and her husband making small gains, for what seems like a far too long of a time and poof! Suddenly, it will all change and we will wonder why we didn't have enough common sense in the first place. I realize this isn't much solace for the citizens of our country that have to endure the pain of losing someone to gun violence because a minority of people in this country are mentally unbalanced. People should take some heart, though, that we have made progress in identifying the underlying causes of mass shootings (in particular, school shootings) and talking about them more frequently. Check this recent article out.
Bill Bond, who was principal at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., in 1997 when a 14-year-old freshman fired on a prayer group, killing three female students and wounding five, sees few differences in today's shootings. The one consistency, he said, is that the shooters are males confronting hopelessness. "You see troubled young men who are desperate and they strike out and they don't see that they have any hope," Bond said.
We can give the young men in our community hope right now. We don't need altered gun laws to do this. In addition, we can make sure that these troubled young men don't have access to firearms. If we can pursue this vigor and care, we will reduce the number of school and mass shootings in this country. This could be the beginning of a very necessary sea change in this country in which we wake up to the fact that American culture has some very deep flaws in terms of gun competency.
There will be a mass shooting at some sort of gun event in which powerful people in the gun lobby will be affected personally and very deeply. They will lose family members and friends and will realize their own hubris played a part in causing this. And that's when the gun cult will completely fall apart.
Americans don't move to change until they are affected by things in an overwhelmingly personal way. Sandy Hook and the other shootings we've had in the last year haven't done that because they were incidents that occurred outside of the sphere of the gun lobby. Once they start happening within that sphere, things will change and very rapidly indeed. One need only look at the issue of gay marriage, for example, to see how it will happen. Republicans were very anti gay marriage until family members, friends and donors started coming out. The sphere was no longer closed. Cigarettes were nearly identical, as I have mentioned previously. When the pro smoking crowd started losing people to cancer and heart disease, it all fell apart. The same thing will happen with climate change.
So, we will see incremental changes, with people like Gabby Giffords and her husband making small gains, for what seems like a far too long of a time and poof! Suddenly, it will all change and we will wonder why we didn't have enough common sense in the first place. I realize this isn't much solace for the citizens of our country that have to endure the pain of losing someone to gun violence because a minority of people in this country are mentally unbalanced. People should take some heart, though, that we have made progress in identifying the underlying causes of mass shootings (in particular, school shootings) and talking about them more frequently. Check this recent article out.
Bill Bond, who was principal at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., in 1997 when a 14-year-old freshman fired on a prayer group, killing three female students and wounding five, sees few differences in today's shootings. The one consistency, he said, is that the shooters are males confronting hopelessness. "You see troubled young men who are desperate and they strike out and they don't see that they have any hope," Bond said.
We can give the young men in our community hope right now. We don't need altered gun laws to do this. In addition, we can make sure that these troubled young men don't have access to firearms. If we can pursue this vigor and care, we will reduce the number of school and mass shootings in this country. This could be the beginning of a very necessary sea change in this country in which we wake up to the fact that American culture has some very deep flaws in terms of gun competency.
Robots Saved Steeltown
Politico has an absolutely fascinating piece in their magazine about how robotics literally saved the economy of Pittsburgh. In many ways, it's rebirth should be the model for how our economy should be transformed to fit the age of globalization.
Tuesday, February 04, 2014
Obamacare = More Freedom and Job Opportunities?
The Congressional Budget Office issued a report saying that up to two million Americans will quit their jobs because they can sign up for a policy under the healthcare exchanges.
Republicans have been quick to characterize this as "two millions jobs will be lost!" But the reality is that corporations are really losing two million employees. "Employees quitting" does not equal "jobs lost."
You could just as easily characterize this as two million jobs that pay well enough to provide health insurance are opening up for the unemployed.
When these people quit the companies that they were being forced to work for just to get health insurance, many of those companies will need to hire additional workers.
Some of the people quitting will move to part-time work. Some will retire early and leave the workforce completely. Some will open entrepreneurial small businesses because they're no longer shackled to the corporate/industrial health care complex.
This could also lead to higher productivity. People locked into jobs for fear of losing health care coverage are probably not the most motivated workers. If they quit, they'll make room for people who actually want to do that job.
The report says that some smaller companies may try to downsize in order to duck under the employee limit for businesses to provide health care. That might cause some short term pain, but in the long run that's what should happen overall.
Companies should not pay for their employees' health care, any more than they pay for food, clothing and housing. The health care mandate is a huge expense that companies in other countries don't have to pay, one that makes American businesses less competitive.
Eliminating the requirement for companies to pay for health insurance should be a goal that everyone can embrace, Democrats, Republicans and Independents. It will make healthcare providers more responsive to their actual customers -- rather than their bosses -- put everyone in the country on equal footing when it comes to health care. And it would end the perverse motivation for costs in the health care industry to always go up.
Republicans have been quick to characterize this as "two millions jobs will be lost!" But the reality is that corporations are really losing two million employees. "Employees quitting" does not equal "jobs lost."
You could just as easily characterize this as two million jobs that pay well enough to provide health insurance are opening up for the unemployed.
When these people quit the companies that they were being forced to work for just to get health insurance, many of those companies will need to hire additional workers.
Some of the people quitting will move to part-time work. Some will retire early and leave the workforce completely. Some will open entrepreneurial small businesses because they're no longer shackled to the corporate/industrial health care complex.
This could also lead to higher productivity. People locked into jobs for fear of losing health care coverage are probably not the most motivated workers. If they quit, they'll make room for people who actually want to do that job.
The report says that some smaller companies may try to downsize in order to duck under the employee limit for businesses to provide health care. That might cause some short term pain, but in the long run that's what should happen overall.
Companies should not pay for their employees' health care, any more than they pay for food, clothing and housing. The health care mandate is a huge expense that companies in other countries don't have to pay, one that makes American businesses less competitive.
Eliminating the requirement for companies to pay for health insurance should be a goal that everyone can embrace, Democrats, Republicans and Independents. It will make healthcare providers more responsive to their actual customers -- rather than their bosses -- put everyone in the country on equal footing when it comes to health care. And it would end the perverse motivation for costs in the health care industry to always go up.
The Imperial President?
The Christian Science Monitor had the following cover story last week.
Is Barack Obama an imperial president?
As is usually the case with their reporting, it is very balanced and offers some very interesting critiques of the president. It's a lengthy piece but worth of a serious read as we, once again, debate the limits of presidential power.
My take on this issue is this. If Republican leaders in Congress are going to bitch about the limits of presidential power, then they should offer alternatives to what the president wants to do. It's easy to be a critic (which is essentially all the Right does these days...take a look at my comments section) but let's see some serious policy proposals to tackle the major issues of the day. Saying the government should just stay out of it isn't the answer either.
The president and the Democrats also need to bear in mind that Republicans are going to loathe to the core anyone who is the leader of this country and not a member of their tribe. They did it with Bill Clinton, they are doing it with Barack Obama, and they will do it with Hillary Clinton, if she runs and wins. They may bitch about government authority but when it's their guy, they love it and can't get enough of it. They want their Reagan-esque, father figure to tuck them in at night and say that it's all going to be OK.
So, whatever they do, the Right is going to irrational motivated by fear, anger, and hatred leading to bitching without any viable solutions of their own. They've essentially become like pop stars in which they sing the hits for their fans and then exit stage left. What they don't realize, though, is that most stars are famous for only 15 minutes. If they want to stay relevant, they are going to have to produce. That means that if the president produces (and this is mentioned at the end of the article), the debate about whether or not he is imperial will fade away.
Is Barack Obama an imperial president?
As is usually the case with their reporting, it is very balanced and offers some very interesting critiques of the president. It's a lengthy piece but worth of a serious read as we, once again, debate the limits of presidential power.
My take on this issue is this. If Republican leaders in Congress are going to bitch about the limits of presidential power, then they should offer alternatives to what the president wants to do. It's easy to be a critic (which is essentially all the Right does these days...take a look at my comments section) but let's see some serious policy proposals to tackle the major issues of the day. Saying the government should just stay out of it isn't the answer either.
The president and the Democrats also need to bear in mind that Republicans are going to loathe to the core anyone who is the leader of this country and not a member of their tribe. They did it with Bill Clinton, they are doing it with Barack Obama, and they will do it with Hillary Clinton, if she runs and wins. They may bitch about government authority but when it's their guy, they love it and can't get enough of it. They want their Reagan-esque, father figure to tuck them in at night and say that it's all going to be OK.
So, whatever they do, the Right is going to irrational motivated by fear, anger, and hatred leading to bitching without any viable solutions of their own. They've essentially become like pop stars in which they sing the hits for their fans and then exit stage left. What they don't realize, though, is that most stars are famous for only 15 minutes. If they want to stay relevant, they are going to have to produce. That means that if the president produces (and this is mentioned at the end of the article), the debate about whether or not he is imperial will fade away.
Delusions of Failure
Paul Krugman has a great piece up detailing how the Right lies about the Affordable Care Act. Some choice cuts.
But isn’t Obamacare in a “death spiral,” in which only the old and sick are signing up, so that premiums will soon soar? Not according to the people who should know — the insurance companies. True, one company, Humana, says that the risk pool is worse than it expected. But others, including WellPoint and Aetna, are optimistic (which isn’t a contradiction: different companies could be having different experiences). And the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has run the numbers, finds that even a bad risk pool would have only a minor effect on premiums.
Ah, so no boiling pit of sewage. Just the usual free market stuff.
Bette’s tale had policy wonks scratching their heads; it was hard to see, given what we know about premiums and how the health law works, how anyone could face that large a rate increase. Sure enough, when a local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, contacted Bette Grenier, it discovered that the real story was very different from the image Ms. McMorris Rodgers conveyed. First of all, she was comparing her previous policy with one of the pricier alternatives her insurance company was offering — and she refused to look for cheaper alternatives on the Washington insurance exchange, declaring, “I wouldn’t go on that Obama website.”
Even more important, all Ms. Grenier and her husband had before was a minimalist insurance plan, with a $10,000 deductible, offering very little financial protection. So yes, the new law requires that they spend more, but they would get far better coverage in return.
Wouldn't go on that Obama website...I don't get the personal hatred toward the man. If it's not racist, what is it?
But isn’t Obamacare in a “death spiral,” in which only the old and sick are signing up, so that premiums will soon soar? Not according to the people who should know — the insurance companies. True, one company, Humana, says that the risk pool is worse than it expected. But others, including WellPoint and Aetna, are optimistic (which isn’t a contradiction: different companies could be having different experiences). And the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has run the numbers, finds that even a bad risk pool would have only a minor effect on premiums.
Ah, so no boiling pit of sewage. Just the usual free market stuff.
Bette’s tale had policy wonks scratching their heads; it was hard to see, given what we know about premiums and how the health law works, how anyone could face that large a rate increase. Sure enough, when a local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, contacted Bette Grenier, it discovered that the real story was very different from the image Ms. McMorris Rodgers conveyed. First of all, she was comparing her previous policy with one of the pricier alternatives her insurance company was offering — and she refused to look for cheaper alternatives on the Washington insurance exchange, declaring, “I wouldn’t go on that Obama website.”
Even more important, all Ms. Grenier and her husband had before was a minimalist insurance plan, with a $10,000 deductible, offering very little financial protection. So yes, the new law requires that they spend more, but they would get far better coverage in return.
Wouldn't go on that Obama website...I don't get the personal hatred toward the man. If it's not racist, what is it?
Monday, February 03, 2014
Walking on Water
We got cross-country skis in the 1990s, and haven't been able to use
them since. After almost two decades of wimpy winters, during many of which we haven't gotten any snow until late December or January, we have finally have a normal winter for Minnesota, the coldest one in 30 years by one reckoning.
Some people are using this throwback weather to "prove" that global warming is a hoax. This is a normal winter for Minnesota; the south and east did get a bit of snow and set a few record low temperatures, but it's a different story in the rest of the world: Europe and Alaska have been very warm this winter. All the snow at the Sochi Oympics is being made by machines. Australia was burning up during the tennis tournament, and parts of the American West are experiencing severe drought. Fox News reports that water rationing may be in store for parts of California, Nevada and Arizona. Globally, we're still setting far more record high temperatures than record lows.
But we finally got some snow here in Minnesota, and riding the exercise bike gets a little old. We dug the skis out of the basement, only to discover that the plastic and rubber in the ski boots had disintegrated. I tried to put on my ice skates, but they're at least a size too small now.
Last fall the friends we bike with suggested snowshoeing. I pictured Canadian mounties with tennis rackets tied to their feet. But, what the hell: we got snowshoes. Mine have lightweight aluminum frames; other designs have all-plastic construction similar to a skateboard with bindings and teeth.
I don't know a thing about snowshoeing. But it seems self-evident how to use them: they have two ratchet bindings that go over the toe and arch of the foot, and a strap behind the heel. They pivot at the ball of the foot, so the toe of the shoe stays high when you lift your foot and doesn't get hung up in the snow. There are steel claws on the bottom for traction.
I expected snow shoes to be clumsy to walk in. But once you learn to pick up your feet up high enough to avoid kicking the binding, or tripping yourself up by catching the claws on the surface, you're extremely stable.
The claws keep you from slipping on ice and packed snow. The snowshoes keep the snow out of your boot tops. Going up hills is easy; my snowshoes came with poles, but they seem unnecessary unless you're on really rough terrain. Going downhill is a little trickier: angling your feet and side-stepping seems the easiest way.
A lot of people snow-shoe on trails in parks. We just followed the tracks of a cross-country skier through the woods at the end of our street. I was expecting a quiet snow-bound trek, but snowshoes make a fair amount of noise, between the crunching of the snow and the scraping of the shoes. It was ten degrees, but there was little wind, so we didn't really feel cold.
When we reached the lake beyond the woods, we blazed our own trail. We got four or five inches of fresh powder recently, on top of 12 to 18 inches of old snow. The lake was an untouched expanse of virgin cream. We set off straight across. The snowshoes usually punch through the snow and you sink in six to eight inches. But instead of getting stuck up to your knees and filling your socks with snow, the snowshoes keep you high and dry. Walking in fresh snow is also quieter .
If you do it just right, keeping your weight on both feet, you can walk on the top of the snow. It's like walking on water.
We crossed the lake and came to a sidewalk that had been half-heartedly plowed. We stayed on the icy part because you make a lot better time. Then we crossed a street that had been plowed to the pavement. Walking with steel claws on asphalt is like fingernails on a chalkboard, and the snowshoes make a dreadful racket.
We normally take walks when we can't bike, but we've been walking a lot less because of the treacherous condition of the streets. Earlier this year my wife slipped on an icy spot while crossing a busy street with her arms full of groceries. Back in the nineties my volleyball team lost three setters in a single season to knees torn up from nasty spills in parking lots.
One of the major hassles when it finally gets around to snowing in Minnesota is shoveling sidewalks, parking lots and streets. Even if people do their duty, there are always little slippery spots that form from drifting and melting, creating booby traps.
Is all this energy-intensive technology like snowblowers and snowplows going at it the wrong way? Instead of spending all this time and effort trying to maintain that ever-elusive bare pavement, maybe we should just wear snowshoes.
Some people are using this throwback weather to "prove" that global warming is a hoax. This is a normal winter for Minnesota; the south and east did get a bit of snow and set a few record low temperatures, but it's a different story in the rest of the world: Europe and Alaska have been very warm this winter. All the snow at the Sochi Oympics is being made by machines. Australia was burning up during the tennis tournament, and parts of the American West are experiencing severe drought. Fox News reports that water rationing may be in store for parts of California, Nevada and Arizona. Globally, we're still setting far more record high temperatures than record lows.
But we finally got some snow here in Minnesota, and riding the exercise bike gets a little old. We dug the skis out of the basement, only to discover that the plastic and rubber in the ski boots had disintegrated. I tried to put on my ice skates, but they're at least a size too small now.
Last fall the friends we bike with suggested snowshoeing. I pictured Canadian mounties with tennis rackets tied to their feet. But, what the hell: we got snowshoes. Mine have lightweight aluminum frames; other designs have all-plastic construction similar to a skateboard with bindings and teeth.
I expected snow shoes to be clumsy to walk in. But once you learn to pick up your feet up high enough to avoid kicking the binding, or tripping yourself up by catching the claws on the surface, you're extremely stable.
The claws keep you from slipping on ice and packed snow. The snowshoes keep the snow out of your boot tops. Going up hills is easy; my snowshoes came with poles, but they seem unnecessary unless you're on really rough terrain. Going downhill is a little trickier: angling your feet and side-stepping seems the easiest way.
A lot of people snow-shoe on trails in parks. We just followed the tracks of a cross-country skier through the woods at the end of our street. I was expecting a quiet snow-bound trek, but snowshoes make a fair amount of noise, between the crunching of the snow and the scraping of the shoes. It was ten degrees, but there was little wind, so we didn't really feel cold.
When we reached the lake beyond the woods, we blazed our own trail. We got four or five inches of fresh powder recently, on top of 12 to 18 inches of old snow. The lake was an untouched expanse of virgin cream. We set off straight across. The snowshoes usually punch through the snow and you sink in six to eight inches. But instead of getting stuck up to your knees and filling your socks with snow, the snowshoes keep you high and dry. Walking in fresh snow is also quieter .
If you do it just right, keeping your weight on both feet, you can walk on the top of the snow. It's like walking on water.
We crossed the lake and came to a sidewalk that had been half-heartedly plowed. We stayed on the icy part because you make a lot better time. Then we crossed a street that had been plowed to the pavement. Walking with steel claws on asphalt is like fingernails on a chalkboard, and the snowshoes make a dreadful racket.
We normally take walks when we can't bike, but we've been walking a lot less because of the treacherous condition of the streets. Earlier this year my wife slipped on an icy spot while crossing a busy street with her arms full of groceries. Back in the nineties my volleyball team lost three setters in a single season to knees torn up from nasty spills in parking lots.
One of the major hassles when it finally gets around to snowing in Minnesota is shoveling sidewalks, parking lots and streets. Even if people do their duty, there are always little slippery spots that form from drifting and melting, creating booby traps.
Is all this energy-intensive technology like snowblowers and snowplows going at it the wrong way? Instead of spending all this time and effort trying to maintain that ever-elusive bare pavement, maybe we should just wear snowshoes.
Hating On Coke (A Voices In My Head Story)
Apparently, some conservatives got pretty pissed off about the Coke ad yesterday that was in multiple languages. Recall Chuck Schumer's words as they very much apply here.
The second deep-seated force that fueled the emergence of the tea party is the rapid pace of change in America's cultural, technological and demographic makeup. Tea party adherents see an America that's not reflective of themselves, and the America they have known, and they just don't like it.
Here is the ad.
I suppose this all part of that liberal multi culti agenda they are trying to ram down our throats, right?
Fox News commentator Todd Starnes' tweets were completely ridiculous...talking about baiting the race baiters. The best mouthfoam was from Allen West.
If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing “American the Beautiful” in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come — doggone we are on the road to perdition. This was a truly disturbing commercial for me, what say you?
Cue the boiling pit of sewage!
More ironic, though, is why wouldn't conservatives want different cultures singing American the beautiful? Don't they want everyone to love America?
The second deep-seated force that fueled the emergence of the tea party is the rapid pace of change in America's cultural, technological and demographic makeup. Tea party adherents see an America that's not reflective of themselves, and the America they have known, and they just don't like it.
Here is the ad.
I suppose this all part of that liberal multi culti agenda they are trying to ram down our throats, right?
Fox News commentator Todd Starnes' tweets were completely ridiculous...talking about baiting the race baiters. The best mouthfoam was from Allen West.
If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing “American the Beautiful” in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come — doggone we are on the road to perdition. This was a truly disturbing commercial for me, what say you?
Cue the boiling pit of sewage!
More ironic, though, is why wouldn't conservatives want different cultures singing American the beautiful? Don't they want everyone to love America?
Saving $$$ With Obamacare?
Financial adviser Jay Larson has done quite well for himself in life so it makes sense that he would look to save money on his health care expenditures. Guess what he found out?
I am 63 and my wife is 61. Beginning on July 1, 2012, through Jan. 1, 2014, the cost of our MCHA premium was $1,788 per month for my wife and me. This was for a $1,000 deductible plan for both my wife and me, with a maximum lifetime benefit of $5 million. My wife and I have now enrolled in Obamacare via a large, well-known health insurance company with coverage that began Jan. 1, 2014. We are now paying $1,053.98 per month (compared with $1,788 per month in the previously mentioned pre-Obamacare plan) with a similar $1,000 deductible. This is a savings of $734 per month — $8,808 per year. A 41 percent cost savings. Wow!
Wow is right...even the wealthy are saving money now?
I am 63 and my wife is 61. Beginning on July 1, 2012, through Jan. 1, 2014, the cost of our MCHA premium was $1,788 per month for my wife and me. This was for a $1,000 deductible plan for both my wife and me, with a maximum lifetime benefit of $5 million. My wife and I have now enrolled in Obamacare via a large, well-known health insurance company with coverage that began Jan. 1, 2014. We are now paying $1,053.98 per month (compared with $1,788 per month in the previously mentioned pre-Obamacare plan) with a similar $1,000 deductible. This is a savings of $734 per month — $8,808 per year. A 41 percent cost savings. Wow!
Wow is right...even the wealthy are saving money now?
Conservatives Embrace Renewable Energy
Check out this recent piece in the Times.
One would not expect to see Barry Goldwater Jr., the very picture of modern conservatism and son of the 1964 Republican nominee for president, arguing passionately on behalf of solar energy customers. But there he was last fall, very publicly opposing a push by Arizona’s biggest utility to charge as much as $100 a month to people who put solar panels on their roofs. The utilities, backed by conservative business interests, argue that solar users who have lower power bills because of government subsidies are not paying their fair share to maintain the power grid.
Mr. Goldwater and other advocates have struck back by calling the proposed fees a “solar tax,” and have pushed their message in ads on Fox News and the Drudge Report. Similar conflicts are going on in California and Colorado, with many more to come. And as the issue pops up, conservatives are even joining forces with environmental groups. In Georgia, a Tea Party activist and the Sierra Club formed a “Green Tea Coalition.”
Green Tea...love it! And it makes perfect sense when you think about it.
To Mr. Goldwater, the true conservative path lies elsewhere. “Utilities are working off of a business plan that’s 100 years old,” he said in an interview, “kind of like the typewriter and the bookstore.” On the website for his campaign, Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed, Mr. Goldwater, a former congressman, says, “Republicans want the freedom to make the best choice.” He says conservatives are the original environmentalists, especially in the West. “They came out here and fell in love with the land,” he said, and added that his father used to tell him, “There’s more decency in one pine tree than you’ll find in most people.”
Yes, conservatives are the original environmentalists. Let's help them get back to their roots!
Meanwhile, how about yet another severe drought in California? Weren't we warned about this 10 years ago?
One would not expect to see Barry Goldwater Jr., the very picture of modern conservatism and son of the 1964 Republican nominee for president, arguing passionately on behalf of solar energy customers. But there he was last fall, very publicly opposing a push by Arizona’s biggest utility to charge as much as $100 a month to people who put solar panels on their roofs. The utilities, backed by conservative business interests, argue that solar users who have lower power bills because of government subsidies are not paying their fair share to maintain the power grid.
Mr. Goldwater and other advocates have struck back by calling the proposed fees a “solar tax,” and have pushed their message in ads on Fox News and the Drudge Report. Similar conflicts are going on in California and Colorado, with many more to come. And as the issue pops up, conservatives are even joining forces with environmental groups. In Georgia, a Tea Party activist and the Sierra Club formed a “Green Tea Coalition.”
Green Tea...love it! And it makes perfect sense when you think about it.
To Mr. Goldwater, the true conservative path lies elsewhere. “Utilities are working off of a business plan that’s 100 years old,” he said in an interview, “kind of like the typewriter and the bookstore.” On the website for his campaign, Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed, Mr. Goldwater, a former congressman, says, “Republicans want the freedom to make the best choice.” He says conservatives are the original environmentalists, especially in the West. “They came out here and fell in love with the land,” he said, and added that his father used to tell him, “There’s more decency in one pine tree than you’ll find in most people.”
Yes, conservatives are the original environmentalists. Let's help them get back to their roots!
Meanwhile, how about yet another severe drought in California? Weren't we warned about this 10 years ago?
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