Subject index
List of Articles
Random Thoughts and Other Writings
Irregular Blog New
Picture of the day
Homonym Homilies
Interesting Links
Reader Weekly
26th Annual Brimson Sisu, August 23, 2008
The Oil Drum
Oil Industry Statistics from Gibson Consulting
Indiana Jones - Wikipedia
Harry Welty's Blog
Budgeteer News
The Bureau of the Public Debt: The Debt To the Penny
Census Bureau Population Estimate
The
Irregular Blog
of
Melvyn D. Magree
New blog spotof
Melvyn D. Magree
September 16, 2006
I've moved my blog to Blogger, http://www.magree.blogspot.com. I wanted to call it "Party of One" but there already is a "Party of One" blog. So, I called it "Irregular Blog" also. I have included a link from the new back to this page.
See you there!
I owe my soul to the government store
September 13, 2006
“Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go, I owe my soul to the government store.” (Adapted from Sixteen Tons by Merle Travis)
How deep are we in debt? How about on September 12, 2006 owing $8,534,633,344.894.82? This is from The Bureau of the Public Debt: The Debt To the Penny. Another day older and deeper in debt, how much deeper? From September 12, $3,467,916,190.43 deeper!
Is your mind boggled by all these digits? How about a public debt of over 8.5 trillion dollars? How about one day older and almost 3.5 billion dollars deeper in debt?
Well, we can’t look just at one day because the debt goes up and down as revenues and expenses vary. For example, the public debt dropped over 15 billion dollars in April 2006. But it was the only month in the last twelve months that the public debt went down. Could it been all those checks arriving shortly after April 15th?
Between September 7, 2006 and September 7, 2005 the public debt increased $582,462,295,744.72; that’s over one-half trillion dollars. That’s one-quarter what the debt was in April 1987. That increase is more than the debt was at the end of 1975.
Would you increase your family’s debt by over $4,000 per year? You might if you were buying a house or car, but you don’t buy those every year. But if you divide the estimated U.S. population of 299,701,029 on September 7 into the annual increase of the National Debt on that date and then multiply by an average family size of 2.3, you get $4,470.
Don’t attempt to duplicate these calculatons on a full or empty stomach and not in front of women and children.
I posted this also on Harry Welty's blogCatching up
September 11, 2006
I've been busy singing, getting ads placed for Harry Welty's bid for Congress, and clearing paths at our cabin.
The Swedish Singers sang at a funeral last Thursday and then had a practice in the evening. Our church choir practiced on Wednesday and sang on Sunday. In both cases I thought I did well for me, hitting high notes without undue strain. I also felt generally like I was part of the group rather than groping for the right note.
Civil society and civility reigns in America. I placed ads last week with a station owned by one of Harry's opponents, Rod Grams. I had been emailing his wife, Chris who is the station manager, for information which she supplied me readily. She said she wouldn't be in when I would call to discuss the final details, and told me to talk with her sales manager. When I called the sales manager was busy, but the receptionist answered all my questions and took my order. In some societies this kind of business is business and politics is politics would be very hard to find.
I've fallen way behind on maintaining paths and our cabin in Brimson. I finally cut the grass on one path with a weed whip on Friday. On Saturday I cut the brush on a "new" segment where we planted a line of white spruce. Some were practically hidden by the grass and brush that had grown up around them.
I also cut a couple of small trees but I goofed in preparing the chain saw. I filled the gas and oil, tightened the chain, and sharpened the chain. I cut down the two trees and started sawing one up in fireplace lengths. Then sparks started flying from where the chain goes around the drive gear. What the... I had forgotten to tighten the nuts that hold the chain housing. Of course, I couldn't find the one nut that had actually come off, not even with magnets. I called the lawn and garden store this morning to order a couple more. The store stocks these nuts! I guess I'm not alone in my carelessness.
I originally was going to write an entry titled "Honey, I can cut brush! Do you think I could be president?" I even asked my wife to take a picture for it.
September 6, 2006
Just for fun, I googled "melvyn" and "magree". I got 238 hits. I was shown less than 80 as being relevant at the beginning, but when I had looked at several the list was down to 48.
A few were from MacTech, a magazine for Macintosh programmers. They were from the early 90s when I had my own tiny software company.
Sometimes some references were hilariously wrong. The Plymouth City Council Minutes of January 17, 1995 refer to me as a she. I emailed the city administration that my wife of 46 years would be surprised to learn that I was a she.
The oldest was from Time Magazine, Jan. 12, 1962. I wrote it when I was in graduate school at Case Institute of Technology (no, I can't get myself to say Case Western Reserve University).
Some are dead ends. One reference was a search of the Dayton Daily News. It was to an article I wrote in September last year about downtown Duluth. Of course, that would be one I haven't uploaded yet. However, when I tried the Daily News search for terms in the Google list, I found nothing. When I searched for my name, I found nothing. I guess the Dayton Daily News doesn't archive as thoroughly as Time Magazine.
Lawyers for newspapers might have field day searching for articles copyrighted by their clients. I found Star Tribune articles copied whole and verbatim on a couple of sites.
I searched for "Melvyn" and "Magree" as separate words rather than a phrase. Several hits were of word lists compiled by various universities. I wonder why Magree makes it to these; maybe by a web crawler. Others were like a reference to Melvyn Douglas in one review and a character who mispronounced "Mr. Magree" in another.
Darn, I'm not as famous as I thought I was.
Writers write but not about Harry
September 4, 2006
I first posted this in Harry Welty's blog, www.lincolndemocrat.com.
Well, that's not quite true. Bill Hanna of the Mesabi Daily News wrote an interesting article about Harry's campaign. It might even be reprinted in other Superior Publishing Corporation papers.
What inspired my headline for this entry were columns in two Duluth weeklies - Budgeteer News and Reader Weekly. Oops, Budgeteer is or was twice-weekly but I rarely see the mid-week edition.
Russ Young, "Oberstar should put more miles on in the 8th District", wrote a comparison between Oberstar and Grams. He led off commenting on a recent News Tribune letter to the editor about Oberstar using a PT Cruiser vs. Grams using an RV. He thought the comparison was simplistic. On the issues that Russ Young was concerned about he thought they were similar.
What differentiates the candidates for Young is that Grams is out meeting with Minnesotans while Oberstar supposedly only visited the state nine days in one 14-month period. Young concludes with
...perhaps Oberstar would be wise to invest in an RV as well, so he can be seen. Minnesotans need someone who will keep working for the state, and PT Cruisers just can't carry enough weight.
Marshall Stenersen wrote in the Reader Weekly, August 31, 2006, "You and I would be the only perfect candidates, and I'm not sure about you", about making election choices. For him the issue
...boils down to casting one's vote for the candidate who most clearly mirrors one's views, but who has little or not [sic] chance of winning, sitting an election out, or casting one's vote for someone who, although not one's ideal candidate, actually has a chance to prevail, and would be remarkedly better than his or her right-wing, reactionary opponent.
I wonder who says that a candidate has "no chance of winning." A newscaster, a pollster, a pundit outside the district, or this guy "everybody" as in "everybody knows"? If Stenerson shouldn't vote for a candidate without a chance, according to some he shouldn't vote for Becky Lourey. "Everybody" also knew that Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, and Jesse Ventura had "no chance of winning."
If we go by this advice we can save the expense and efforts of election campaigns. We'll just select the candidate "everybody" knows has the "best chance of winning."
I think the choices boil down to two - vote for the
candidate who best mirrors your views, or leave that office blank when
you cast your ballot. Not voting is not an option because
stay-at-homes are not officially counted in the results.
To .com or not to .com
September 4, 2006
I am thinking about getting a shorter URL for my
website. The current www.cpinternet.com/~mdmagree is really a
mouthful and hard to remember. I have selected a basic name, and
the big question is what ending to use. The most-popular and thus
most recognizable ending is ".com". Imagine my disappointment
when I found out the .com URL was in use. Not only was it in use,
but it was only a single, vulgar page with no reference to a person, a
company, or an email address. There are only two Google
references to it - the site itself and a list, in Portuguese, of URLs
which will expire in 2002.
I hope it expires again soon.
September 4, 2006
I added the picture of the day this morning, but it took far longer than it should have. Yeah, I dithered over which picture to use but that was nothing compared to getting it just so on the page. It was a bit small and seemed distorted. To make sure I had the right aspect ratio I used Netscape's image button to edit the image's properties.
If I clicked on "actual size", closed the property window, and then reopened the property window, the size was back to the same size as I had started with. I changed the "custom" dimensions. Same thing with using advanced editing. The only way I could change the dimensions was by dragging a corner of the image and watch the little counter. I was able to get the long dimension exact and only one pixel off on the short dimension. Enough!
Party of One is not the Mainstream
September 4, 2006
Last night we watched Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom with our daughter's family. It is the first time I have watched an Indiana Jones movie other than catching the last ten minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Well, it is a violent, improbable adventure that manages to garner lots of laughs. Dozens or hundreds meet violent deaths, often directly or indirectly at Indiana Jones' hands. That one person could have the energy to keep going against these odds is beyond belief. That a mine track would have so many humps seems terribly inefficient and that a dinky little car could stay on those tracks at those speeds defies physics. Why does anybody go downhill to escape a wall of water? And how do a large number of the bad guys get on both sides of a huge chasm so quickly?
All in all, it was a fun piece of escapism. And I didn't have any nightmares about it.
Get a real life, get away from your computer
September 3, 2006
Here I sit with my computer at my daughter's kitchen table. It's approaching five in the afternoon and I've been sitting here almost all the time since eight this morning. I have a sore butt and a stiff neck. The only time I moved my computer was for lunch and to do vocal practice downstairs in our room.
I can say that I'm not isolated. Conversations swirl around me and I do participate in them. But I probably say more mumbling to myself as something on my screen frustrates me.
Well, I did get a lot accomplished. I started the "Picture of the Day" and "Homonym Homilies" sections. I learned how to have a link open a new window; and I did it with the first Google hit on the subject. Wonders never cease! I also learned that when you copy a link in Netscape Composer, it turns relative links to abslolute links, links to the file on your computer, not in your web site.
I processed many of the 36 "unanswered" messages in my inbox, some over six weeks old. I now have only seven left, and some I can't do anything about until we get back to Duluth. I wrote a long letter to a former colleague from Univac Sweden. He forwarded a link to me on a history of Unisys. One of the chapters mentioned ALGOL, a computer language that I used heavily in my early computer days, spent some time maintaining, and unsuccessfully promoted as the language to write an operating system in.
I wrote a few other messages to friends. All of them I told about my work on this website and asked them to visit and click on the ads. I hope if any are reading this paragraph they like this blog enough to come back again.
One thing I did not do is use Freeway Express, a web design program that I downloaded as a free trial. See the next entry.
More powerful software tools are not always easier
September 3, 2006
I've been using Netscape Composer to update old pages and create new pages for this site. It is relatively simple and it is free. I wish that Netscape would get Version 8 out for the Mac. It does have several limitations in creating more complex pages, like trying to split one cell in a table without also splitting the cells in adjacent rows or columns. Also I have not found any way to work with common elements from one page to another. For example, I have to update every page with the links to "Picture of the Day" and "Homonym Homilies".
So, I have been looking around for alternatives to Netscape Composer. I've even been willing to spend money on a web design program, but not at the Dreamweaver level. The most promising mid-range program I found was Freeway Express and Freeway Pro from SoftPress. Not only did it have style sheets it has Master Documents. And rather than spring $100-300, I downloaded a 30-day trial version of Freeway Pro.
Then I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon trying to figure out how to do what I thought were simple things. I could draw text areas in patterns I wanted rather than fixed cells. I did not see how to make these relative to the page size. It seems difficult to get the cursor for text to blink in a text area. It wasn't until late afternoon that I found out how to convert text to a link. Well, I have 28 days more to learn about it. I hope I can persist and still get other things done.
My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts
September 2, 2006
I posted this yesterday on Harry Welty's blog. Harry is running as an independent for the 8th Congressional District seat in Minnesota. His campaign site is http://www.weltyforcongress.org
Yesterday I came up with the idea that George Bush is funding the terrorists with his war in Iraq. Why? Because the war requires a tremendous amount of oil. Where does the oil come from - states that fund terrorists, from government or private sources.
OK, let’s check the facts. The Oil Drum in a March 2006 post quotes from a now publicly-unavailable Reuters article that the U.S. military used 144 billion barrels in 2004 and, because of energy savings, less in 2005. However, Oil Industry Statistics from Gibson Consulting says that U.S. used 20 million barrels per day. Quick arithmetic says that the military uses in a year what the civilian society uses in seven days.
Oops, apples and oranges. The military uses billions per year and the country uses millions per day. Let’s try that arithmetic again. 144 billion divided by 365 gives over 394 million barrels per day! That’s over 19 times the usage by motorists and industry!
Maybe we have something here. First, realize the figures for the military are for all operations, from bases in California to ships patroling for pirates to the war in Iraq. Second, if the civilian population cuts its oil use in half, that would cut overall U.S reduce by less than three percent! Does this mean that the U.S. military is actually funding the terrorists?
I’m a bit skeptical about this; it just seems too implausible. Which figures are true? What is their true relationship to each other?
This is the problem with being a moderate. Not having an ideology which defines the world, it is difficult to find enough information to get the truth. I have done this entry from only two entries I found with Google. How many entries do I have to look at to get a correct answer?
Does and Bucks
September 1, 2006
Last weekend we saw a very large doe walk in front of our cabin in Brimson. We made some kind of noise from inside the cabin, and she looked at the front window for a long time. We made some move and she went a little farther away and then looked back at the window. Of course, when I finally took my digital camera off my belt, she moved on.
Because of her size, I wondered if she was really a buck. We concluded that bucks would already have antlers.
When we were back within the Duluth city limits but still on a 50mph highway I saw a tawny shape moving 45 degrees to my front and left. It was a buck galloping out of the brush and onto the highway. I managed to slow down a bit and he veered along the berm and back into the brush. Whew! I think he must have been an eight-pointer. He would have made quite a dent in the front end of our pickup truck.
OPW rides a bicycle too!
September 1, 2006
Don, one of my coffee shop buddies, observed that OPW also rides a bicycle. He said that on his neighborhood walks he comes to an intersection with a stop sign and a nearby "Share the road" sign. He regularly sees OPW whip past the stop sign on a bicycle and make a right turn onto the cross street.
Speaking of vehicles
August 30, 2006
Monday noon while coming back home on the bus I heard a honk and a big crunch in front of the bus. Then I saw a car with a big dent in its side turning the corner to the left side of the bus. Then I saw a police car put on its flashing lights and come toward the bus. Finally a pickup truck turned from the left lane of the cross street to join the other two vehicles. When the light turned green, the bus driver went on his way.
I guess that the first car assumed the cross street was two-way and made a left turn from the right lane without paying attention to any vehicles in the left lane. Is this a case of OPW or just inattentiveness? It doesn't help that this particular street changes back and forth along its length from one-way to two-way and back again to one-way. For Duluth readers, I'm speaking of 1st St.
OPW strikes again!
August 30, 2006
I drove back to that same parking lot this afternoon and found OPW had taken three parking places with a pickup truck. Fortunately, OPW left me four others, and I was able to fit my pickup truck nicely into only one.
What population growth?
August 30, 2006
Many people are concerned that the world population is growing too fast. From a casual observation I wonder if there is any population growth. After all, there is only one person in the world and I see him or her almost everyday. To avoid gender or grammar issues, let's call this person OPW.
My most recent observation of OPW was from inside a coffee shop. On one side there is a two-car wide drive from a back parking lot and the drive-thru window. It is clearly labeled with metal signs and an arrow on the pavement as being one-way to the front. On the front side, the parking lot is U-shaped with arrows on the pavement to show it is one-way and the spots in the center are angled toward the traffic flow. Pretty obvious to IPs (insignificant people) which way traffic should flow.
Every so often OPW comes whipping from the back parking lot past the blind corner and turns left into the out lane of the front parking lot. OPW comes at such a speed that any IP backing out would never have a chance. Of course, since there are no other people, OPW might come out the in lane. I wonder what would happen if another OPW was coming rapidly into the parking lot, either from the in lane or the out lane.
Sometimes OPW wants to go from the front lot to the back lot. OPW just whips around the building to the back despite a delivery truck parked facing forward and an IP pulling away from the drive-thru window.
OPW may also drive through one of the angled spots to the matched spot. Which direction do you think OPW will leave the spot?
What I have a hard time figuring out is where OPW gets all these different cars.
To bus or to shower
August 29, 2006
This noon I had to make a decision whether I wanted to take a shower at the fitness center or to catch a bus to get home to eat lunch. Even though I work out for two hours, I don't work out hard enough yet to sweat much. In fact, I barely have a sheen on my face.
I finished today ten minutes before the bus would arrive almost at the door of the fitness center. But if I showered I would just miss the bus and would have to wait a half-hour for the next one. Then I would have to decide to go hungry for another half-hour or grab a sandwich in the cafeteria. Of course, if I got involved in a newspaper as I ate, then I might miss another bus.
So I gave up on the shower and got the next bus.
I prefer to take public transportation when I can, but I don't like fine-tuning my schedule around bus schedules. I grew up spoiled in the days of the streetcars. I don't remember the schedules but I would bet the main lines were either ten or fifteen minutes apart, no greater than twenty during the day. The only time I remember seemingly long waits was when I was 10 or 11 and being downtown alone waiting for a streetcar; when you have to go to the toilet, every second is an eternity.
Think of us, ride the bus
August 28, 2006
This is the slogan that is painted on Duluth Transit Authority (DTA) buses. As gas hovers under $3/gallon, many people are thinking of riding the bus. According to one driver, he had to turn passengers away on one trip because his bus was packed. But at other times the buses only have a few passengers, like two or three.
The Duluth News Tribune encouraged people with an editorial in Sunday's paper - "Our View: $3-per-gallon gas is good enough reason to take a bus". As an irregular bus rider, I can think of many reasons not to take the bus. In many cases I would prefer to take the bus, but it is just too inconvenient.
Today I left the downtown library in a hurry to catch a bus home, but I saw it pull away while I was still in the library. Drat! It would be a half-hour to the next one. Fortunately, I live about three blocks from another two lines. Checking the schedule I would only have to wait fifteen minutes. Better yet for me, another bus that would normally leave at the same time as mine was late, and so I only had a five-minute delay, plus the extra five-minute walk. But this situation doesn't always hold.
With a half hour between buses during office hours it is often quicker to just hop in the car to go downtown, to the Mall area, and many other destinations. Sometimes one can even be back before a second bus comes.
On weekends it's worse; buses are an hour apart. Why even bother if you have a car? And it is even worse on weekend evenings; there are no buses. So thousands of cars descend on the DECC for any event, whether a hockey game or a symphony concert.
The new fare cards are convenient but they're not. It's really great not to have to go out with a pocket full of change. Just stick a card in the slot; the fare box deducts the fare from the card and prints the amount left on the card. The inconvenience is that there are only two places to buy the cards in Duluth - at the little booth in the Transit Center and at the bus stop in Miller Hill Mall.
I haven't checked lately, but I have a hunch that only a couple of members of the Transit Authority actually ride the bus.
Well, I'll keep taking the bus downtown and to the SMDC Fitness Center, as long as it easier than finding a place to park. After six and on weekends, parking is easier than taking the bus.
To view or not to view
August 27, 2006
It's a nice day in Brimson. It's partly sunny in the low 70's and here I sit looking at a computer screen below a framed Geological Survey map of the area. All the windows are behind me or to the side. I just finished a bit of research for Harry Welty's Congressional campaign and was going to go for our "ritual" walk. However, my wife just went out to visit a friend and so that will have to wait.
Part of the reason I'm sitting here is that I had made up my mind not to do any work this weekend at our cabin. I spent a good part of yesterday at the Brimson Sisu as cashier at the Brimson Area Volunteer Fire Department booth. The other part is that I am fired up about Harry's campaign, and as "Official Loose Cannon" I keep coming up with ideas to research and pass on. One of today's little tasks I set for myself was to find where to send press releases to the Associated Press (A).
I also have hanging over my head all the little glitches in my web site. One way I'm doing that is to use a new page template (like this one) for all my articles. With my current understanding of Netscape 7.2 it is slow going. I've only redone two articles so far, the most recently published in the Reader Weekly; see List of Articles.
I did finish my latest article ("Sticks and stones...") except for finding some Arabic words I saw in an article in the Atlantic Monthly. The full text is not available online to non-subscribers, but I do have a paper copy at our house in Duluth. I'll try to get that info into the article this evening and send it to the Reader Weekly.
Squirrels and terrorists
August 27, 2006
While I was outside cleaning a mouse trap, I heard rifle shots across the road. It was our neighbor shooting the red squirrels that get in under his roof. I don't know why he bothers, the squirrels on our property will have room to overflow onto his property.
It is not unlike the U.S. and Israel shooting and bombing "terrorists" in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. The result is that real terrorists will move in, either to replace actual terrorists or with the support of the angered populace.
©2006, 2007 Melvyn D. Magree