Found Mastodon Tooth at Edisto Island

I found a sizeable mastodon tooth fragment yesterday on the beach at Edisto. That was a thrill. There are lots of Pleistocene bone and tooth fragments here. This was the biggest and most thrilling fossil find for me.

There are lots of interesting things to find on Edisto Island. On an earlier occasion I found a really nice projectile point.

Kiting at Edisto Beach

The whole family gathered at Edisto for Christmas. It was damp outside but cozy inside. We enjoyed my mother, sister, son, daughter, granddaughter, and all extant spouses. You can click any of these little pictures to enlarge them. At risk of sounding sappy religious, I felt blessed by the good loving family fellowship.


Today, the day after, it was sunny with a nice moderate breeze on the beach for kite recreation. Son James gave his Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary Garland a kite. It's a trainer kite at about a quarter scale of the type that people use to go kite boarding across the water. By practicing first with a trainer kite you can avoid those silly beginner errors with the full size version that we enjoy on You Tube where people slam into jetties or hard objects on the beach. What a hoot! Actually nobody thinks Tom and Mary will eventually start launching themselves into the sky over the water with the big kind. It just happens that the trainers are lots of fun just for dry land kite flying. James put a video of the kiting festivities on his blog.

Christmas Eve fun at Edisto Beach

We had a rather stormy Christmas Eve afternoon at the beach down the block from our Edisto house today. That was a delight to son James the windsurfer dude and granddaughter Ayla. She now stands on her little plastic boat, holds her hands out, and says, "Sheew sheew sheew".


Landing in the surf looked a little tense...at least to me it did.


I took some video. James edited it, replaced the wind noise, and put it on his blog.

Electric Radiant Slab Heated Cat House

We recently rescued a cold stray cat that was hanging around our home at Edisto Island. I wont go into the ugly details of that story but it reminded me of one of my most clever and successful inventions, the electric radiant-slab-heated cat house. This should be shared with all humankind for the benefit of our animal friends, or at least the ones we keep as pets but don't let into the house. The illustration above shows how you can build this home for your animal companion. You can of course modify this with your own ideas to fit the size of your pet. Here's what I did:

Start with a cheap plastic round garbage can of about 35 gallon capacity.
Cut the bottom off straight and square.
Cut out a circle from rigid foam insulation like you use for foundation insulation.
Sit the bottomless top half of the garbage can on it.
Cut out a circle of hardware wire and place it on the surface of the foam insulation to act as concrete reinforcing.
Stick a bunch of little galvanized finishing nails at diagonals through the hardware wire into the foam to help ensure that it is held on after the concrete is poured.
Stick a bunch of roofing nails laterally into the sides of the can an inch from the bottom to help ensure that the concrete slab attaches securely to the plastic of the can sides.
Weave in an electric bedding plant heater cable such as a six foot Gro-Quik Soil Warming Cable with integral 74 degree thermostat. Tie it to the hardware wire so it doesn't pucker up above the concrete that you are about to pour.
Mix up a bag of Redi-mix concrete, pour it in the can to about 1.5 inches deep, and let it set up for a day.
Cut a barely cat-sized hole in the side of the garbage can a couple of inches above the slab surface.

Plug it in and keep it plugged in. It is low wattage and even begins to cycle off and on after the slab warms and the thermostat starts regulating to 74 degrees. I added a thin towel for the cat to have something soft to snuggle onto but you shouldn't add a big wad that insulates the cat from the heat below.

Kite-boarding at Edisto

My son came into Edisto Island for the Christmas vacation last night. There wasn't quite enough wind for good windsurfing so he decided on his 2nd favorite water distraction, kite boarding. This is in the sound where the south fork of the Edisto river approaches the ocean. You can also see a video that I took and he edited on his blog.

No Boeing in South Carolina Please

A new Boeing assembly plant may be coming to North Charleston, South Carolina. At least that's what everyone seems to expect and hope for. Not me. I grew up in South Carolina and was recruited to Boeing right out of Clemson University. I lived in Seattle and its surrounding communities for 38 years. I worked for Boeing for six of the early years. I shall list the ways Boeing was a bad employer and bad neighbor.

Boeing was, and still is, a boom-bust corporation. There was little stable employment for locals. During booms they recruited worldwide, bringing in droves of outsiders with the special technical skills required. During busts they laid off workers drastically, often requiring the survivors to work as much as 16 hours per week overtime because the modest overtime premium was cheaper than paying benefits for a sufficient number of workers doing 40 hour weeks.

When Boeing expanded they never did so in the same place. They went where the land was cheapest. Plants sprawled along 54 miles of the I-5 corridor from Auburn, WA to Everett, WA. They frequently transferred people along that corridor and there was never compensation for moving expense. 54 miles was considered a reasonable commute even though the traffic was usually slowed to a crawl by the glut of Boeing workers commuting in opposite directions. During my tenure at Boeing I was transferred among four Puget Sound cities, Seattle, Everett, Renton, and Kent. I was laid off twice when business slumped.

Boeing finally abandoned Seattle, its place of origin, and moved its corporate headquarters to the Midwest. This left varying reactions of shock and abandonment among the sentimentalists, to expletives of good riddance to a bad neighbor from many others.

Now Boeing might put a new 787 assembly line in North Charleston because South Carolina is so very business friendly. Indeed South Carolina solicits big corporations to come here with almost a blind religious fervor. The October 28, 2009 Charleston Post and Courier (P&C) lists these proposed goodies for Boeing:
Sales-tax break for construction materials.
Unspecified goodies similar to what was offered to Google's data storage facility
Tax exemption for aviation fuel used in test flights and transporting airplane parts
We don't know exactly what all the goodies are. The P&C says the revenue impact study released by the state board of Economic advisors was short of details but "Lewis Gossett, president of the S. C. Manufacturers Alliance said the 'state will certainly come out ahead'". Yeah, right!

South Carolinians need to wake up and be wary of this corporate giant. Otherwise our leaders will give away the store in their giddy glee. Who do we think makes up the revenue when we give all the tax breaks to business? We ordinary tax payers make it up of course. We pay the tax and we enjoy the urban sprawl and traffic jams. In South Carolina we pay both a hefty sales tax and a state income tax, and still endure underfunded schools and other public services. In Washington State they have no state income tax. They don't need one because business pays more of its fair share. Schools are better funded. This is one of the most important factors to produce higher skilled and better educated citizens and to retain and attract businesses that provide employment for higher skilled and better educated employees.

ADDENDUM OF OCT 29, 2009: Well they did it. This morning's P&C says "North Charleston won the fiercely fought battle for the 787…" Won! Ha! "Bought" is a better word. Our lawmakers paid $450 million in incentives. Boeing has to create 3,800 jobs here. The other thing we "get" is Boeing has to invest $750 million here within 7 years. Hmm, lets see, we invest $450 million and we get $750 million in seven years. That's like investing the $450 million at 7.57% interest. Hey wait a minute! They don't have to pay back $750 million in seven years. They just have to locate $750 million of their own assets here. Is this a good deal for us? Apparently I'm not the only one not falling down and foaming at the mouth in ecstasy over this sweet deal. The P&C quotes economics professor, Calvin Blackwell, of the College of Charleston as saying, "Generally this is not a very good strategy for states to employ…It's a race to the bottom: who can provide the most goodies?" Blackwell is paraphrased as saying that companies play localities off one another and that another downside is that jobs created don't necessarily go to current state residents. But, state residents are the ones who shoulder the impact to the tax base. Just how many jobs will actually go to local residents? Apparently that detail wasn't in the deal. Tim Coyle, Boeing VP in Charleston said the labor force should include a "fair amount" of employees from Charleston and from other areas. Tim, please define "fair amount".

South Carolina is about as nuts for capitalism as Michael Moore is nuts against it. I'm cool with capitalism. However, the South Carolina concept of capitalism is sort of the Latin American model, i.e. we welcome the outsiders to come in and exploit us. We beg those with the capital to come here for our business tax breaks, lax rules, cheap labor and paucity of labor unions. For Boeing we really bent over, grabbed our ankles and said, "Kick me…or whatever."

Windsurfing the Columbia River Gorge and Bridging the Cultural Gorge

We went to the Columbia River Gorge. I sailed in it. That confers a certain amount of status since it is the premiere nukin' wind spot of the planet. Of course I sailed in an uncommonly light wind, using my longish floaty board that I can tack. I never got very far into harnesses, foot straps and carving jibes even when I was at the peak of my game about 20 years ago.


Me


Son James near the event center. I taught him everything I knew; then he took it from there. He has videos of the same outing taken from his water proof video camera that straps to his head.


More James, this time at Mary Hill park about 40 miles east of the event center


When we began packing up our gear after our last evening at Mary Hill park we passed a native American family grilling their dinner. I made some cheery remarks like, "Mmmmmm, smells really good. This elicited some chuckles. Just a little later as we started loading our stuff a little girl from the family came over and invited us to join them and share their Bar B Q. I thanked her effusively and declined politely, explaining that we had to get back to Hood River. I didn't have much time to think. I figured we didn't have much to contribute and I didn't know how much they had to spare. Also dear wife had been excited all day about a restaurant in Hood River where she wanted to eat supper.

After we all got under way we each confessed that we wished we had accepted. I felt like an oaf for declining. If you only listen to the news you would think there is nothing but squabbling between native Americans and European Americans over who gets the salmon, what can't be built in native cemetaries, whether to dam a river, etc. In this un-newsworthy moment total strangers extended themselves and invited us to break bread with them because we appeared hungry. Truly for us Americans, notwithstanding diverse origins, there is much more that unites us than divides us. ...like food and family!

Fun on the beach at home in Olympia, WA

My son James is visiting us from Florida this week. Wednesday we gathered at our beach access on Eld Inlet of Puget Sound. Here are some pictures that we'll remember fondly because we plan to sell this nice family home and move to the Carolinas.

Wednesday was warm with no wind so we did Stand Up Paddling or SUPing as it is called. Here's James contemplating his first SUP.


Apparently we were very puzzling to the harbor seals because they usually popped up to investigate as you will see in the following pictures.


Here's my friend Rob doing his first SUP.


Wife Catherine has great balance and never even got her hair wet. I can't say the same for myself.


James and Catherine.


James and friend

The next day (Thursday) was very windy. No SUPing for us but James had a real "woo hoo" afternoon windsurfing. See our videos on his blog: SUP Windsurfing

Here's a glimpse of his fun on the water.

Great Day at Mt. Rainier

We went to Paradise visitors center at Mt. Rainier National Park yesterday. We took a hike to Panorama point. The flowers and mountain glaciers were spectacular.
The people are my sister Mary, her husband Tom, my wife Catherine, and me. Animal is a marmot. Click any picture to enlarge it.

Need a Couple of Bucks?

If you need a couple of bucks, just call on me. These fellows along with their doe friend accomplish much of the pruning that we need as we spiff up our house getting it ready to sell. We just need to supplement them with some giraffes for the high stuff.

Apologizing for Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Lately I have read about a group that wants to apologize to Japan for us dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This has been met by wide objections from Americans who protest, "Ha! They asked for it when they bombed Pearl Harbor first. They should be apologizing to us." Another objection centers on deterrent. "It wasn't nice, but we had to nuke 'em to save American lives." These may be persuasive arguments for why we should have done it in 1945, but they are not relevant to why we should not apologize in 2009. I am sympathetic to the apology supporters for reasons outlined below.

Reason 1: Japan's decision makers and those they commanded killed a bunch or our innocent people, but so did our retaliation. Even if necessary and justifiable, we killed a bunch of their innocent people in addition to (or instead of) their decision makers.

Reason 2: It has been 65 years and we have been friends and growing together as allies in world leadership all that time. Today there are adults living in both countries whose grandparents weren't even born when these horrific acts of war took place. Japan is not a current adversary with whom we have to talk tough for our national security.

Reason 3: What the heck is the harm in it for us? What if we apologize before they do? That only makes us look magnanimous in their eyes and the eyes of the global community.

I just looked up "apology" in www.dictionary.com. It is defined as "a written or spoken expression of one's regret, remorse, or sorrow for having insulted, failed, injured, or wronged another". I noted that there are two ORs and no ANDs in that definition. Surely most of us feel at least sorrow for the injury caused to at least the innocent children killed and maimed when we dropped the big ones. That strikes me as justification enough to offer the apology. I also note that nothing in the definition says those who offer the apology must feel or believe themselves to be the greater transgressors than the party to whom the apology is offered.

My wife gets home today from a 5 day visit with her parents. I didn't complete all the chores I promised I'd complete. I shall apologize for not meeting my goal. I shall not say "I'm sorry I didn't get all my stuff done but YOU left the car lights on and killed the battery TWICE last week." I'll just tell her I'm sorry I didn't get all my stuff done and how great it is to see her. She knows she killed the battery twice. This is the way you need to act with those important to you to keep the relationship strong and healthy.

A Rain Barrel. Life is Good!

I just completed a rain barrel installation on our Edisto Beach house. Woohoo! This is the type of thing retired engineer curmudgeons like to do and talk about. It solves two problems. It intercepts the rain that pours off the front of my house and washes out the driveways, and it collects water for the plants. Our town water comes from wells and is so salty it's bad for the plants. Fortunately the town lets you draw free reverse osmosis drinking water from spigots at the town hall.

The white pipe is the overflow system. I drilled a bunch of 3/16" holes in the part that goes around the corner of the house to distribute the overflow water. OK, I paid a guy to install a gutter on the front of the house to catch the water. Fiddling around on the top of a jouncy 24 foot extension ladder is a good way for an amateur to end up dead.

The Model Airplane Family

As a child in Columbia, SC in the mid-50's, Owens Field was but a short bike ride from my home. I loved to go there and study the airplanes up close. I marveled when they defeated gravity as they took off or gently floated in for landings. The big airplanes were fascinating, but so were the model airplanes that hobbyists came to fly on weekends near the old Curtis Wright Hanger. Eventually at age 12, I built my own model, which was frankly a rather disastrous performer.

On Sunday afternoons an African American family frequently appeared to fly their models. That seemed a bit unusual to me in those Jim Crow days where everything was segregated. What I remember most about the family was that the model airplanes they built and flew were superb. They looked as if they should be carefully displayed in a museum rather than flown about over the hard asphalt. They were excellent replicas of actual aircraft including even spectacular multi-engine bombers. The whole family worked together to fuel them, start their engines, and set them into flight. They performed as well as they looked.

The family was as memorable as the airplanes they flew. They arrived in a late model Dodge that always gleamed from a recent wash and wax job. The family was always dressed as if for church. Even the young boys wore suits and ties. At the time, I wondered why they arrived so spotless and formally attired for an afternoon of play. Did they feel they needed to go the extra mile in appearance and decorum to assure being accepted among all the white people? Did they take just pride the fact that they far exceeded their comparatively advantaged neighbors in their craft? Did the parents feel resentment that they had to go to such lengths to demonstrate their competence and respectability? Were they encouraged and heartened by the acceptance and admiration shown to them by onlookers like myself? I suppose I shall never know.

Ten years after my idyllic Sunday afternoons of aviation admiration, I was designing real airplanes for Boeing in Seattle. My skills had improved since my first crash and burn model. I received tremendous support in improving those skills. In South Carolina I was allowed to go to good public schools and encouraged through my university years in a tough engineering curriculum. Those advantages were not available back then to the family with those fine models.

Over 40 years since I left South Carolina to seek my fortune in the great northwest, I have maneuvered myself back home. The other day I walked by the old Curtis Wright hanger at Owens field. It still sits there, windows broken and vines crawling over it. A cyclone fence surrounds the hanger and grass grows high from all the cracks in the asphalt around it. The carcass of an old B-25 bomber or something of that ilk sits like a ghost inside it. Jim Hamilton Blvd. and a skateboard park occupy the space where people flew the model airplanes. As I looked over that memorable space I wondered what became of the nice family with the perfect model airplanes. Are the parents all wizened and gray somewhere enjoying their golden years? Have the children grown up and realized their dreams? I sure hope so. I wish I could thank them for entertaining and inspiring me with those cool model airplanes.

Savannah River Stemmed point

I found a splendid large projectile point (arrowhead in layman terms) on the beach at Edisto Island where I have a so-called tourist rental house. I just looked down and there it was right on the surface of the sand. It's really a good one as you can see from the photos. The photo on the sand is just as it lay, before I first touched it.

I didn't have any idea of it's origin but I had visions of it being real old, like made during cowboy times or maybe even pre-colonial times. My sister recently met an eminent archaeologist whose specialty is Native American archaeology. I sent him the two photos here and he identified it as a "Savanna River Stemmed point". He said it was chert, likely quarried near Allendale, SC and stained dark by a long rest in the marsh mud for about 4000 years. That puts it in the transition from the Middle Archaic to the Late Archaic cultural period of Native American prehistory. Dang! 4000 years! Here I sit holding this thing in my hand looking at all the little edges chipped away by some guy around the same time the biblical Abraham was about to cut his son's throat in a sacrifice commanded by God. (For those without a religious background, at the last minute God said, "Just kiddin'; I was just pullin' your chain to test your loyalty.")

Anyhow, holding this thing sends chills up my spine. It's like a voice from the past. I wish it could really tell me its whole story. Did it have a short useful life before it was lost? Or maybe it was lost and found for several cycles of life. Did it ever stick in a deer, a bison, a man? Wow!

Explanation of the Economy

Many people are disturbed by something called "the economy", which is always misunderstood but clearly accepted as being caput at the moment. I shall explain how it works. In a nutshell the economy is an abstraction. It is neither a particle nor a wave. It is the other thing, a system. Right now it is a flawed system.

There are two kinds of economic systems. One is called microeconomics and the other is called macroeconomics. Microeconomics is where you have a maximum of two islands and two products, usually coconuts that grow best on one and clams that grow best on the other. There is a strong and logic-based science that guides the people on these islands toward certain mutually beneficial agreements that make all the islanders better off. These agreements involve the clever practice of trading some of what one island has for some of what the other island has.

The science of microeconomics breaks down when the two products are not both food, but something else such as guns and butter. It also breaks down when a bully owns all the canoes, or when somebody eats the cow that makes the butter. Then it is no longer microeconomics but macroeconomics, sometimes called politics. These aberrations that degrade microeconomics into macroeconomics are accelerated by a special invention, the IOU (pronounced "I owe you") also known as money. Money pretty much drives the nail into the coffin for microeconomics.

Since we are stuck with macroeconomics, here's how it works. It works on greed. Do not be intimidated by the negative connotation this word has in normal parlance; it is a good thing in macroeconomics. If it were not for greed, we would all have starved to death when we finished eating all the clams and coconuts. The greed is that everyone wants the money and performs conniving manipulations to get it, sometimes even resorting to work.

The macroeconomic engine runs on hot air exchanged between two opposing greed driven groups. The first group (called the Haves) worships the earth's first man, Adam Smith, and his only begotten son, Will Rogers, who described the trickle down theory. The second group worships Adam's wife, Eve, who was thrown off the coconut island for eating a coconut from a tree designated by God as his own tree. Eve scraped by on a sandbar with nothing but sand and seaweed to eat. The followers of Eve are called Have-nots and they espouse a theory called the soak-up theory.

The hot air happens when the preaching starts. The Haves start preaching the trickle down theory which reckons that if you designate some money (like in a stimulus package) and give it to them it will trickle down to the Have-nots, creating jobs and income on the way. The Have-nots preach the soak-up theory which reckons if you give all the money to them it will soak up to the Haves, again creating jobs and income on the way. As long as one side has hotter air than the other, the engine will be driven by a law of physics called the Carnot cycle. (Named for Eve's son Sadi Carnot who was half brother to Will.) There is a physical limit to the Carnot cycle's efficiency. Not all of the flowing hot air can create jobs and income. A certain percentage of it turns into entropy which is a lot of hot air floating away in all different directions.

So why has the economy gone caput? Simple! The Haves' aggregate greed slowly caught up to the have-not's aggregate greed even though the Haves were greatly outnumbered by the Have-nots. This destroyed the temperature gradient and the macroeconomic engine ground to a halt. What can you and I do about it? Our best bet is to go back to an island and eat coconuts and clams while something called the market sorts itself out.

My conversation with a Nazi prisoner of war

Who let Dr. Strangelove back onto the set? I'm speaking of Dick Cheney of course. (Yes I know. I promised a Nazi and I'm talking about a different brutish thug. I'll get to the actual Nazi a little further down.) So anyway I was watching TV the other night and up rolls Dick in front of the cameras, raving on about how much danger we're in. This supposed danger is because we might move Guantanamo detainees onto the US mainland, release some for repatriation, and stop torturing the others. Gad! We voted this guy's party and their failed policies out of office. Why doesn't he just shut up, get with his cronies and play golf or, better yet, go on a hunting trip.

OK, now for the Nazi story. I'll get back to Dr. Strangelove's ideas again later. Long ago, 23 years after WW II to be precise, I was hitching from Newcastle, England to London. I was picked up by a lorry (British English for a big truck). The driver right away heard my southern accent and asked if I was from the United States, Australia, or some other English speaking country. I told him the United States and he said, "Oh, I've only been to the United States once and that was only to Columbia, South Carolina." I said, "You're kidding; that's my home town. How did you end up there and only there?" He told me he was a German soldier in WW II. He was captured and ended up being held at Fort Jackson.

This led me to a thousand questions for Heinz (not his real name, which I long ago forgot) about his capture and detention at Fort Jackson. He said one of the first things that happened after his capture by the US military was that a kind American soldier came along giving each detainee an apple for a snack. As he relaxed and started relating his experiences it sounded more like a comedy romp than anything else. It reminded me of the TV series "Hogan's Heros" except with the roles reversed.

I asked him if he ever tried to escape. He said, "Yes, I escaped twice." I asked him how far he got. He said he only went as far as Columbia for a night on the town then sneaked back into the fort. Once he even asked a Columbia policeman for directions. The policeman inquired about his accent and he told him he was a Polish refugee. The policeman wished him well and sent him on his way with directions.

After the war he was released. By then he thought America was great and he didn't want to go back to Germany. He wasn't allowed to remain in America, but he managed to settle in England and build his life there.

I have since learned that German prisoners of war were also sent out to assist my wife's relatives on farms in Wisconsin and probably elsewhere too.

My purpose in relating this story is that sooner or later we have to release prisoners of war. Oh yes, I know that some Americans would like to just shoot them all. It ain't gonna happen, thankfully. There are many Americans who would like to at least keep them in high security incarceration forever in Guantanamo (No wait; we're closing that) or in Charleston's Navy brig (What? The locals are afraid to house them there?) Well, maybe in the federal penitentiary in Kansas (Oh? The locals don't want them there either?) Golly, where? Wherever we stash them it will cost a lot of money every year they are held but American taxpayers just love to pay taxes for the government to do stuff, don't they? Of course they don't!

My point is this. It seems like we always end up having to release prisoners of war sooner or later. When we release them we would like them to be sufficiently mollified that they don't resume or begin a life committed by rage to killing us. For an inside look at how we're actually doing it, read Chaplain James Yee's book For God and Country. I didn't find reference to waterboarding and dogs as we heard of in Abu Ghraib but the relentless sensory deprivation, humiliating harassment, and endless insults to their religion and values seem unlikely to change their hearts toward loving the USA. Would you feel safe releasing prisoners who had been abused repeatedly, had their sacred religious text mocked and vandalized, been shackled and taunted for hours (sometimes daily for extended periods) in interrogations seemingly aimed more at revenge than information recovery. Or, would your rather be releasing people whom our military had treated humanely like Heinz, provided with facilities for worshiping according to their faith, and even shown random acts of kindness.

Now I know what my conservative Republican friends are thinking. (Yes I do have some; I live in South Carolina after all.) They're thinking, "That naïve lilly-livered liberal has really lost it now. Sure, just give them some fresh cut flowers in a vase with orange juice and toast and hummus at breakfast and they'll be singing the Star Spangled Banner. Yeah, right…NOT!" No, I realize that we have already done irreparable damage with abuse of many existing detainees. Moreover not all the new ones we capture will completely forget their raging determination to do us ill, even with the most humane treatment. Anyone released must be evaluated by an intelligent process and cleared of criminal charges of war crimes by an open system of justice consistent with our own laws and the agreements that we have within the international community. I simply believe we will end up with a heck of a lot more detainees that we can eventually safely release and repatriate if we incarcerate them legally and humanely rather than listening to Dr. Strangelove who (incredibly) is still telling us to torture them.

Postscript on safety: Why are we so terrified of transferring the Guantanamo detainees to the mainland? We already intentionally release into this country unrepentant murderers and rapists every day when their sentences are up. Most of us even have lovable friends who (whether we know it or not) have DUI convictions. These drunk friends and fellow Americans slaughter 17,000 Americans per year, far more than the sum of American deaths in the twin towers destruction and the entire Iraq war.

Image of Virgin Mary Has Appeared in My Underpants

The Virgin Mary has appeared in my underpants! When I cast them upon the floor before my shower this morning I saw the amazing likeness. This is not faked! If I lie, I pray Satan will turn me into a pillar of salt or, worse yet, a Republican. At first I thought it was Mother Teresa but then I realized it was actually the Virgin Mary. Not the romanticized child face from Michelangelo's imagination in his Pieta, but the real Virgin Mary at a later age. Look at this image. Is this not the worried face of a woman whose eldest son at age, say, 33 is still unmarried, neglecting his day job, growing his hair a foot long, and running around claiming it's all fine because he's on some kind of self-devised spiritual quest?

I do not know why the Virgin Mary has appeared to me. I think it may be to reassure me that my house will sell. My cousin told me that if I buried a statue of St. Joseph in my yard upside down it would make the house sell. I could not find such a statue. In good faith, I went to garden shops but they only had statues of St. Francis and various naked cherubs frolicking in bird baths. Now I am thinking that if Saint Joseph is good, his wife would be ten times better. I think I shall bury my underpants in the yard upside down... unless someone out there wants to purchase this priceless religious relic for $400. Oh, the image is no longer visible because I am currently wearing the relic. You can even purchase the underpants along with the house in which this miracle occurred for $420,000. May God bless you!

Charles Krauthammer you've got your head up - uhh- in the sand!

An opinion piece by Washington Post columnist Dr. Charles Krauthammer appeared in The (Charleston, SC) Post and Courier titled "We owe Muslims no apology". That is quite an incendiary title. I infer that "we" means all Americans. The title and article offend me for several reasons.

According to the US State department, two to three million of "we" Americans are Muslims, making it the third largest religious affiliation in America after Christianity and Judaism. I have worked with Muslims. My best friend when I was a young man was an Egyptian Muslim. He saw me through a lengthy slump when I was unemployed and dumped by my girlfriend. He and his wife eventually introduced me to the fabulous woman to whom I have been married for thirty two years. I attended his funeral and burial in a large Islamic section of an old Seattle cemetery. We non-Muslims were welcomed there with kindness and appreciation by the Muslim community. All my direct experiences with Muslims strongly support former President Bush's often repeated assertion that "Islam is a Peaceful Religion."

So what about Dr. Krauthammer's claim that we don't owe Muslims an apology? We have been sticking our American nose into Middle Eastern countries and insinuating ourselves into their political conflicts and civil wars for a long time. Our noble humanitarian mission usually synchronizes better with American economic interests and majority religious beliefs than with neutral peacekeeping. Many Muslim civilians have been killed by Americans and other Middle Eastern groups armed and funded by Americans.

I know first hand of one Muslim who deserves a gigantic apology. I had the privilege of meeting Chaplain James Yee's Palestinian wife when Chaplain Yee was a prisoner in the Charleston Navy Brig. He was there on trumped up charges stemming from his kindness to Guantanamo detainees to whom he ministered as a US Army Islamic Chaplain. I learned first hand of the FBI's terrifying intrusion into Mrs. Yee's home and their refusal to tell her where he was or of what he was accused. Chaplain Yee was cleared of all charges.

Dr. Krauthammer argues that we not only have not harmed Muslims, we have done them a long list of big favors. One example he cites was the military campaign for the liberation of Iraq. Give me a break! This liberation began with a vicious shock and awe bombing assault, precipitated a civil war, destroyed priceless antiquities, and has taken the lives of well over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians. Surveys of Iraqi citizens reveal that virtually all of them feel less secure now than before we liberated them.

The audacity that Dr. Krauthammer shows in his commentary is beyond belief. How would we respond to a title claiming "we" owe Jews or Christians no apology? All of the big three religions have at various times and places defamed the others, spilled innocent blood, violated their rights, or seized their land. The sooner we all quit keeping score and start apologizing the better off we will be.

Here is an afterword for those readers who can't see past the fact that Osama Bin Laden is a Muslim. Yes of course he is and he is arguably the most evil man of the twenty first century. Several Popes of the fifteenth and sixteenth century were notorious war-mongering fornicating torturers. They were Christians. You shouldn't tarnish a whole religion by the excesses of their most notorious intolerant leaders.

Octuplets: Are you kidding?!

This source of intellectual commentary usually eschews popular tabloid fodder like, "Greed Crazed Fertility Doctor Assists Single Mother in Having Fourteen Children". But, that's exactly what this post is about. It was too tempting to pass up. By now we've all read about the woman who had octuplets and (Oh yeah) already had six other children. It turns out she was single and living with her mother.

I don't know much about this mother of octuplets. It is kind of being kept hush hush but apparently her own mother has said her daughter is obsessed with having babies. For goodness sake; there are over six billion people on this planet eating it up and heating it up. Why should we not be aghast that a woman wants to have fourteen children by extraordinary methods? OK, I don't know the whole story. Maybe she is an Olympic athlete with an IQ of 180, the beauty of Cleopatra, and assets of 20 million bucks to birth her exceptional babies, raise them, and educate them. Maybe her genes are just so fabulous they need to be spread for the betterment of the human race. But, I doubt it.

This blessed multiple birth event has led to some criticism of the fertility medical practitioner community. They have responded with "Who us? Why should we question a woman's personal choice about what to do with her body and her life?" I don't buy that. Doctors see all kinds of people. Many are mentally disturbed, poorly educated, suffering from various obsessions, and incapable of acting in their own best interest. Johnny's Rants believes unequivocally that doctors have absolute responsibility to not exploit these people by cutting on their bodies, impregnating them, or anything else that takes away their money and/or alters their mind or body in a way contrary to their best interest. See also my sensitive essay on exploitive cosmetic elective surgery, Coping with Cleavage.

Greedy plastic surgeons exploiting persons of low self-esteem may be the poster child of the medical profession sliding from Hippocratic ethics to gutter grubbing. However, exploitive fertility doctors can take it to another level. Making babies grow inside women with insufficient means of supporting them is not only a violation of the mothers' wellbeing but also the wellbeing of the babies and the tax payers who will have to pick up the tab for a lot of food, shelter, medical care and public education. I read one article that alleged that just the prenatal care, birthing, and postnatal care of these octuplets is costing $400,000 PER BABY. If I help a vulnerable woman make babies by personally donating sperm cells (you know in the traditional manner between the sheets) the law will hold me financially responsible for helping to support the resulting babies. Why should we not also hold a fertility doctor financially responsible for his complicity in making babies with a woman obviously unable to sufficiently support those babies through their upbringing and education to independent adults?!

Putting the Toilet Seat Down; NOT!

There is a humanitarian crisis in East Africa and Gaza. There is a collapsing world economy; there are brazen pirate attacks on the high seas which are getting higher by the day because of global warming. Accordingly I intend to address the issue that I know is foremost on the mind of all Americans, LEAVING THE TOILET SEAT UP. Sadly it seems to be the toughest issue in the gender equality quest.

Obviously the best and most equitable solution to this gender war issue is to leave the seat as it was last used. For women, this will be the down position. For men after whizzing, this should be up as shown in the photograph at the right margin…or left or top, wherever BlogSpot puts the photo. The efficiency of this is obvious. Supposed the next necessary function in the toilet is the same act by a person of the same gender such as a male. Imagine if the male had put the seat down following the prior use; he would have to raise it again. These are unnecessary cycles of the seat. Scrink scrawnk; the hinges wear out.

I know my women readers will scream at this suggestion. First let me say that I am very sympathetic with essentially all women's issues such as the need for equal pay for equal work, having the word NO respected, maternity leave, getting better representation in upper management positions, etc. Neurologists have discovered that women actually have more neural connections between the left and right brain hemispheres making them better at multitasking and alliance-building networking, both key management skills. But on this important bathroom issue I have to ask my women friends, "Ladies! What's the big deal?" You just grab the seat between two fingers and put it down before sitting. Yeah yeah, I hear you. You are yelling, "Do you know what it feels like to think it's down when it's not and sit and fall through?!" Well yes I do because so many times I have been host to women or a guest in one's home only to hear a scream then see them come tearing out of the bathroom to grab me by the neck and deliver a scalding lecture on why I should put the toilet seat down after I use it.

Allow me to make a suggestion to my hundreds of women readers. Look before you sit! This should be a no brainer to a person of any gender sitting on anything. There could be a creepy spider on that toilet seat. I have a woman cousin in Florida who once approached the toilet to sit. Fortunately she looked and saw the large land crab that had entered the bowl from the sewerage system and was waiting with raised open claws. I have heard of sewer rats sloshing around in the bowl too. Even sitting places other than a toilet seat, like on a sofa with your pants on warrants a look. Anyone who has a house cat should know this. I don't have one but I learned fast when I visited a friend with a house cat. Anybody who has made it through junior high school where some jerk-head invariably puts a thumbtack in your seat when you come blazing into class late should learn and retain this important safety fact. LOOK BEFORE YOU SIT!

Ladies may I suggest you count your blessings if you have a loving wage-earning male whose only alleged sin is leaving the toilet seat up. There are much worse men. These are the ones that we men must also be wary of. They're the cabbage brains who leave the seat down BEFORE whizzing, sprinkling it with little yellow spots. When I was a little tyke I had trouble remembering to lift the seat before starting. My mother was so intent on training me to raise it before starting that she never even tried to confuse the issue by training me to lower it when I was done.

Now I must confess that there is one situation where a male should lower the toilet seat when he's done whizzing. That's when he's a guest in a lady's home and she requests it. It is her home after all. She has the right. My sister and sister in law will applaud this concession I'm sure. I am working hard to remember when I visit them.

I have a lot of sympathy for the extra hardship a woman faces because she has to sit for a number one. I have often railed with my women friends in support of more stalls in public women's restrooms where lines form because there is not sufficient capacity to accommodate the necessary extra privacy and time required for women to drop their drawers for a tinkle. However, in the quest for gender justice there is one behavior a man must never accede to. Some women actually try to require this behavior. This unmanly act is to sit to make water. I almost never use the term "p-word envy". It is an arrogant accusation usually levied by loser males who can't take it when a woman beats them at their own game. However, to the woman who has the audacity to suggest that males should always sit, I must say, "Madam, you suffer from p-word envy. Get over it."

T-mobile Hotspot at Home - NOT

This is a rant. Everyone should launch a rant when they are a victim of overhyped advertising for a product that doesn't measure up.

T-mobile had the greatest mobile phone idea in years. It's a cell phone that picks up WiFi signals and switches from cell towers to internet (without charging your minutes down) whenever you're in WiFi range. The only problem is it only works erratically.

My wife and I leaped at the idea and signed up for two phones. That was six months ago. We have two homes (We're snowbirds) and we travel a lot. Both our homes are in locations of zero to one bar signal strength so conventional cell service is hit or miss. Unfortunately T-mobile "hotspot at home" is NOT at home half the time. With either phone, no matter how close we are to a wireless router or what router it is, it fails to connect or drops the connection half the time. Often the calls are dropped in mid call. Johnny's Rants give T-mobile hotspot at home a big two thumbs down!