Here is the most money I have spent in a liquor store at once in 22 years. I stuck to what I’ve tasted before, namely gin and Irish crème something or other. I spent the money for no better reason that I could afford it. Don’t go thinking I’m cheap, the reality is that I never drink at home or alone. Take that lamp in the background, for instance. That sumbitch cost me $1,610.
The feds have put Miami-Dade on the “rocket docket”. This is the extra funding required to move on the massive backlog of foreclosures that are terribly distorting the Florida market. And it is about time. They’ve already pushed through 3,300 of the immediate case load numbering over 56,000 properties. (Local banks are still holding back on twice as many.) Part of the problem is that under Florida law, it is not enough that the purchaser miss payments, which is dumb beyond belief. The foreclosing bank must prove they have the right to foreclose.This gives rise to the exasperating situation whereby a few lawyers can hold up the entire system by making the first few trials drag on until the banks become hesitant to throw good money after bad. Attention, deadbeats, here are some of the [trial-delaying] junk that no longer works: claiming a loan modification is in process, disputing the bank reps qualifications, claiming no remembrance of signing the mortgage, demanding proof if the mortgage was transferred. Such inane loopholes are slamming shut.
Reserves are in place and waiting in the chance that there will be any panic selling of silver in the next 48 hours. Should the superstitious decide on a final fling and dump, we’ll have stockpiles ready to cash in. Silver has exhibited two small plunges in two days that amount to less than a dollar. The point is, we are ready and waiting for anything like a sell-off.
Social Security is under the gun. I calculated back in 1981 it would not be there for me. Anyone with a calculator and a brain could have done the same. The wording of the original law was, I think, wrong. Instead of saying age 65, it meant and should have said “average life expectancy”. That expectancy was 65 when the program began. Only those who lived longer than average could expect anything. Tough as it seems, that is where we are headed. It is already unfair to people who live less than average, but that’s where the net dollar inputs are coming from. Like any government handout, it breeds insolence, dependency, and a false sense of entitlement.I remember in grade six and again in grade nine, our class was explicitly told that Social Security was not a retirement package. It was up to ourselves to provide for our own homes, educations, cars, and old-age income. Social Security was a compensation for being required to stop work at the arbitrary age of 65. It was never meant for anyone to try living off it. I suspect DC will opt for a Canadian style claw-back (those above a certain income level get the benefits, but must pay them back as taxes). DC may also lower the maximum income because they don’t dare touch the minimum side of things.
Music. The world from time to time needs reminding that most pro entertainers specialize in a single specific form of music. There are strong reasons for this. One just does not ask Taylor Swift to sing Russian folk ballads. Asking me to play hymns at church is akin to asking the choir to do some beer-drinking songs at the bar this Friday. For tips. It could, in theory, happen. But it is best not to even go there.
There is something I have rethought in the light of experience. In the two years I’ve been singing professionally, I am totally surprised with how easy it is. In terms of learning a musical instrument, singing is mere child’s play. You don’t have to keep much of a beat, or count, or change chords. I even more strongly question the worth of singing lessons than [I ever did] before. After you stay on key, so much emphasis is placed on individuality, it seems futile to learn to do it like anybody else. Mind you, I recognize singing like that has its own rewards, which have nothing to do with my motivations.
This gets me to wondering why singers have such big egos. Of all the things one can do on stage, singing is the easiest. Unless you have bouts of stage fright, but I have a theory on that, too. (There is no such thing as stage fright, but there is such a thing as not being prepared.) I’m finding those who play a musical instrument to accompany their singing (but only when both are done live and simultaneously) seem much more down to Earth than those who sing only. I can say first hand that learning an instrument is a humbling experience. Learning to sing is not.
There remains on more area to draw a thick black line. Hobby versus professional. Very few hobby musicians make it to the top. Have you ever heard any hit songs about how easy it is to become a performing star? That should tell people not to lump all musicians together. You don’t ask a street musician to perform a concert hall and you don’t ask BB King to sing at your pool party. I assure you, the world needs reminding of these facts from time to time.
The weather is againtoo hot, so I’ve been working on the eBike. The electrical connections have gone bad somehow and the problem has avoided diagnosis by elimination. The battery tests good on another engine, and another battery tests good on this bike. Conclusion: it is the combination of battery and wiring. Somehow, the poor design has allowed parts to wear in some fashion that isn’t apparent. Since the battery itself is held by gravity and a stupid little pin that jams most or the time, the pin has to go.Here is the dissection of the unit. The ad says the rating is 10 amp-hrs, but the two sealed lead acid packs [I’m pointing at] are only 2.1 amp-hours each. If the background looks rather fancy and expensive to be fooling around with sulfuric acid, it’s only the pool table at Jimbos. The connection problem has to be somewhere near that loosened red wire.
Hence, end of the world or not this Friday, I’m going to see if I can repair the connections by making them 3.2 mm longer than the originals. Later. Done. It was indeed a contact problem. It most resembled a couple of impacted molars which were about that hard to drill out and repair. For the extension caps I used a special government issue copper alloy fused with silver solder. Tomorrow I will devise some way to clamp the battery assembly in place since the alternative is waiting for the state to learn how to pave smooth roadways. At dawn, we ride!
ADDENDUM
After reading about mitochondrial DNA last day I thought to learn more. Most of it is dry, uninteresting study. But I do appreciate the efforts of scientists who make it interesting by any degree. Like James Burke, Bill Nye, Carl Sagan. By keeping it story-like they keep my attention. Here’s what I found out.
This non-helix DNA is inherited solely from the female parent and is thus useful for identification. It mutates but does not recombine like nuclear DNA. And it can rapidly reproduce copies of itself given the presence of the necessary basic ingredients. This led me to RNA, another type of nucleonic acid. It is single stranded (instead of double) and is therefore more robust and resistant to chemical, radioactive, and ultraviolet damage.
Like mitochondrial DNA, the RNA also resides outside the cell nucleus. It appears to perform tasks that nuclear DNA would dangerously expose itself if it left the comfy cell nucleus. This is about as deep as I care to study the topic. Enough to say I finally looked into it. But it has left me curious in a non-medical way. Take evolution for example.
It has often been pointed out (as a criticism of Darwin) what would be the outcome of a self-replicating molecule in the primordial ocean. That water was full of the chemicals of life so as to have the reputed consistency of chicken soup. In a matter of a few years or centuries at most, all of the available food would be used up, and that has not happened in 3.5 billion years. If the person doing the criticizing had actually read Darwin, they’d know he addressed that issue.
If new life could spontaneously generate in the seas, why is this not happening every day? Because life pollutes its own environment as to inhibit unchecked growth. Life produces bi-products. Any new life faces competition. Darwin pointed out “At the present day, such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.”
You see, DNA and RNA mutate. If that mutation is beneficial to the organism, it passes to succeeding generations, a process called survival of the fittest. Early on, life quickly evolved to live off any abundance of wastes produced by other life forms. In that sense, today’s flora with their waste oxygen and the fauna with their waste carbon dioxide co-exist by slowly poisoning each other in delicate balances.
I also learned the rate of mutations must itself be constant. Since only a tenth of a percent of DNA separates humans and chimpanzees, mutating has to be done carefully. Too rapid a rate and the sequences get “garbled”, too slow a rate and the species cannot adapt to the environment, which we know changes.
Mutations that were detrimental to survival are supposed die out in short order. It turns out that is the majority rule. However, this left an unargued case I could not quite define on my own, the situation where a mutation is neutral and therefore not “selected against”. What happens in the instance of a non-beneficial mutation that does not in itself impair the organism? I just learned that this type of mutant finds no existence-threatening obstacles and the defect is indeed passed on to its own offspring. (Aha, right there, that explains geeks, idiots, politicians, jocks, the DMV, fat women, and New Age music.)
This also jives with my theory that certain mutations of mankind do exist in defiance of natural selection. Mankind, I say, but not other species. They manage this through the counter-evolutionary tactic of mass breeding. It stands to reason that unattractive or ignorant people would not long survive if Nature took its course. But a trip to the beach, gymnasium, or polling station tells us otherwise. Anyone who has been to a sports arena since Roman times knows there are Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons among us.
And all of this because I read a week or so back that oxygen was dangerous. I find the research entrancing, but I have not read “The Origin of Species”. I tried but it was so incomprehensible for me that I finally read only the chapter on natural selection. However, I enjoyed the account of Darwin’s travels immensely, “The Voyage of the Beagle”.
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