One year ago today: December 12, 2016, two possible responses.
Five years ago today: December 12, 2012, he beheaded people.
Nine years ago today: December 12, 2008, guard cat.
Random years ago today: December 12, 2015, silver prices tank.
Yeah, yeah, it was one of those days whose purpose was to let me know how easy it is for every little thing to go wrong. Top story is that the damage is my bass-playing right hand and the source is deep. What makes this so bloggable is they connected me to one of those same machines long before the Internet that I volunteered as a guinea pig back in the early 80s. I was just a kid out of school with a summer job that tensed up my shoulder blades so bad I could not sleep. It’s that electro-buzz machine and it cured me instantly back then. This time it I was not so lucky.
To make this into a nice day, I drove out to the Thrift store south of town. Found myself 13 DVD movies I’d never seen and this tool. We’ll get it polished up and find out the proper name, which I infer is something like a caliper. If you know, please leave a comment (they get read but not published) and if you know what it is for. I showed it to the local know-it-all and he says it is for measuring the inside diameter of tubing. Which makes sense. The inside diameter of youTube is around 0.5 nanometers. It seems to me much too well-made for such a task. The set screw has 60 threads the inch.
You might not relate to this, but the drive to the Thrift (maybe 14 miles) showed how heavily motorcycles influenced my car driving over the years. One trip is much like another to most so I’ll try to describe what I noticed. First, I took side roads, preferring tree-lined pavement with gentle curves. The mining roads in that area are prime examples. I found I was driving my motorcycle natural 55 mph. In a car you often have to hit bad potholes and rough patches. Cold as it was, I found for the first ten minutes of each leg, I’d roll down the window and drive with my arm on the sill.
And of course, no matter how remote a route you take, this is Florida and you’ll have some nobody playing past you at 80 mph to his nothing job. It is impossible to go for a totally relaxing drive in this state. Yet today brought back memories of my Cadillac and I found the drive to be a delight. The lady at the Thrift has taken a shine to me, so I was joking with her today. About why I could not sweep her off her feet, so we could run away together and start an exciting new life, raising her kids as my own. I told it was because I had no money. At least I hope she knows I was joking.
Most popular airplane, ever.
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[Author's note: the tool pictured above is a spring joint caliper or a spring joint divider. And it is used to get inside measurements, particularly diameters. Gee, I feel smarter already.]
How cold was it? Enough to get me inside and watching the old DVD “House of the Flying Daggers”, listed as a martial arts fireball. Same as the last time I tried to watch this, I get lost around half-way, I can’t keep track of who is betraying who any more. Everybody’s a spy. The theme of the secret society overthrowing the evil emperor warlord is at least as old as China. Their political history seems to consist of overthrowing the strongman in charge, with each replacement as despotic as the last.
China. The oldest civilization on Earth that has never experienced a single day of democracy. What a claim to fame that is.
That’s a couple thousand years without ever once producing a Jefferson, a Paine, or a Washington. One could argue this is the case for every race in the world except one, but that would bring on some nasty accusations. Trying to export democracy to these ancient peoples is futile, akin to planting crops they will never water. Europe remains the only location on Earth and in history that developed the concepts of human rights and democracy.
Furthermore, these freedoms were not brought about by revolution from the bottom up against the powers that be. It was from those at the top looking down and saying, “Those people are really bad off”. Then granting them rights, it is a process called compassion that to date has remained confined to Europeans. But not all Europeans, like, if you go too far south but careful, nobody wants to sound, you-know-what. Because for sure somebody will fling the accusation. See, I told you.
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