An early run to the airport and this time there were at least a few people hanging around. Wallace is off for his hip operation and may not be back until nearly April. The high point of the day so far is checking out the new cell phone. There is a lot of nonsense built into the works but finally, an alarm clock. Meaning you’ll make your connection unless the battery goes dead. There is even a fake Sudoku puzzle for people that have to be entertained round the clock.Today’s trivia is parachutes. You jump, your main does not open, so you pull the emergency rip-cord and you’re safe. Or are you? It turns out this back up chute can allow you to hit the ground considerably faster, something like over twenty miles per hour. Ouch. My advice is to jettison anything you can. Watches, cameras, spare change and yes, the cell phone. Keep your safety gear because you are going to hit that ground with a wallop. A half-mile an hour less means fewer broken legs.
How about some sad news, for dieters that count calories anyway? Typing uses 138 calories per hour, riding a bike close to 500, and playing music seated uses 174. That means my daily expenditure is 1,478 calories minimum and double that several times a week. Despite a daily diet of 1,400 calories or less for the past five years, I have not lost a single pound in the long run. A lot of people could not survive on the little food that I eat, so there is something the “eat less exercise more” people are not telling you up front.
That application form I filled out last day had some curious questions, the most peculiar being whether or not you had a web site. (I do not.) It is a telling thing to see as a hiring criteria. What you put on facebook can fry your chances. Both sides of that issue seem negative to me, but remember I spent 15 years in corporation where everybody complained about the management. They just never did it on-line. Somehow, I don’t think we’ve heard the last of that subject. Meanwhile, follow my oldest advice never to publish anything controversial under your own name.
Years ago I got a gemologist certificate. It was fascinating geology and jewels don’t interest me. It was a letdown to learn most valuable gemstones consist of colored quartz. There was something about the fiery pressure needed to make diamond. Some outfit in Florida is producing colored diamonds at $3,000 per carat. By colored, think yellow, the least desirable color in natural diamonds and the reason many jewelry stores are painted light green. Some retired army type is using a pressure cooker and the finished merchandise is quite pretty. There has to be a tradeoff and given time, I’ll find it.
Here’s something. Upon finishing the book on Antarctica, I did some calculations concerning the comments of the author that women were not, in the early days, allowed on the expeditions. There was the usual grumbling by the men that “the officers would get them all”, but it is not clear if they were complaining about the officers or the quality of the women. In fact, the reason for no women was entirely economics.
You guys who marry young might want to pay attention here. The book does not state anything directly, you have to figure it out. The obvious point is that it just costs too much to have women on the crew. Nor is it an easy matter of simply setting up separate sleeping quarters, which should roughly double the cost. According to the statistics given and a little computing between the lines, the cost of having women present shoots up to five times the cost of the same number of men. Worse, if the men are removed, the cost of operating the facility with women only is seven times higher. I’m not touching that one. (But I will say personally that in this life I’ve met enough women who were not “like that” that I do not think they are all “like that”. Heck no, some would never go near quotation marks.)
Remember, at the South Pole, these would be single women without children, day care, maternity leave, soccer kids, career issues, or places to shop. One example is the radio phone system. One radio served forty men, but forty women require twelve radios. There is no explanation but go figure. Now tell me again about women in the armed forces. Again, I cannot explain the increased costs, I’m just totaling the numbers.
Let me take your mind off that and tell you about stupid men. All you have to do to convince yourself of how institutionally stupid men can be is help me cut and paste lyrics. I downloaded 120 sets of song words to match up with the MP3s. These men would be funny if they weren’t so pathetic. Except where the original words are available, I’m finding I have to go over each tune several times to catch the mistakes.
It is the caliber of the errors that dismays me. The guy writing out the words is bordering on mental retardation and does not possess a fraction of the minimal wherewithal. That’s “Lodi”, not “Load Eye” or “Low Die” and “tropical” is really just one word, honest. They’re like the New Age people who dropped out of my computer class. They can’t grasp the commands so they think it is all lies and make their own stuff up as they go along. Thinking nobody will notice. It is terrifying to consider there are such men out there operating heavy equipment and possibly with gun permits.
