Sunday 31 January 2016

Book Review: Drinking in America

(Our Secret History) by Susan Cheever.

It is a 273 page book which you could read over in about a week.

It's a long discussion over our drinking habits.....from 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived, on up to today.

You see....we were a fairly hard-drinking crowd from day one.  If you read through Cheever's book....you come to realize this list of priorities that existed with the crowd who landed there at Plymouth Rock.

Most of us have been led to believe shelter, firewood, hunting, fishing.....all would have been priority number one.  It wasn't.  Brewing beer was the first and absolute priority.  On board the Mayflower?  Passengers stayed mostly lit up and blitzed....even the women.

Most of us would also say that these were hand-picked individuals for this enormous task of landing on the coast of the US and making something out of nothing.  Other than religious enthusiasm and a passion for alcohol consumption....there was nothing remarkable about their resumes.

Cheever covers the different periods,and how our habits changed.....intensified....and were part of our success (and failure). Drunk guys do stupid things....even taking orders to go and do something really risky and dangerous.  Drunk guys win revolutions, take on overwhelming odds with British Army regulars, and face fierce Indians in combat.

Cheever comes to the period after the Civil War and discusses the industrial revolution going on in America and how safety/accidents were now part of the failures of the nation.....when you inject drunk workers into the scenario.

For anyone who has an interest in the Revolutionary War period....the early 1800s....the Pilgrims period....and the Civil War.....I'd note this book as mandatory reading.  It will influence your perception of your ancestors and the type of lives that they actually led.

There's a great two page piece over George Washington's distillery operations and how successful his 'brand' became in the local region.

Cheever writes in a method that makes it easy to follow and keeps your interest high.  It's probably not a book I'd endorse for high school kids because it'd beg a lot of questions over how history has been written for our general consumption.  But if you have a keen interest in history....I'd put this on the top twenty "must-read" books for a history enthusiast.

Wednesday 27 January 2016

The Air Force Weapon Story

It got brought up this week over an item that the US Air Force put out....which was a friendly reminder from Air Force Headquarters to each base.....qualified airmen may carry firearms on base.

Some people felt this meant some change, and that it was a big flip for the Air Force.

Well....there's been this standard policy on the books where a wing commander has the authority to grant airmen permission to openly carry or conceal firearms. It typically fell into two categories....you got a request from some NCO to drive upon the base with a pistol in his possession in the vehicle.  The pistol would remain in the vehicle, and not be carried into the building.  The second category, which as far as I knew from the 1990s.....rarely was given approval.....the carrying and concealment of firearms....meaning you could come on base, and walk into your building....with the weapon in your possession.

This topic gets picked up for various debates and conversations.

In Louisiana when I was stationed there in the 1980s....there were guys who'd come onto work on a Friday....and have their hunting weapons in the truck.....anticipation of getting off early and leaving for an entire weekend of hunting.

None of these guys ever asked permission....at least as far as I knew....and simply were going to be lucky if the SP's ever stopped the vehicle for an inspection.  If they were stopped, their gimmick was to say they were on the way to Armory on base....to deposit their guns until the end of the day (something that was totally legal).

From the three year period that I was stationed in Tucson....there just wasn't much of a need to haul a weapon around because it was relatively safe throughout the city and the base (at least we felt that way).

A change in perception by people and their safety factor?  I'm pretty well convinced that people generally don't feel safe today.  They look more closely at where they shop....where they stop at an ATM machine....where they buy gas.....where their kids go to school....and read the local crime stories in their newspaper.

What will happen with this suggestion?  It's simply a reminder that this option occurs, and some Colonel or one-star General will discuss it at some meeting.

There are a thousand things which require a waiver on a typical Air Force installation.  Some can be granted by a mere Captain....some go all the way to a full-bird Colonel.

I was briefly assigned to Bitburg Air Base years ago, and came to a point where I was briefly going to own three vehicles.  You would think that it really wouldn't matter for this 90-day period that I'd have three vehicles....but the Air Force Headquarters in Europe had this regulation.  It said you were limited to vehicles unless you got a waiver signed by the Wing Commander.

I remember looking at the idiot Captain telling me this and asking if this were really necessary for the Wing Commander to sign this.  "Yes" was the only answer.  So I asked for the template.....it was a two-line simple letter that simply said I was buying a third vehicle and there would be a period where such an event was necessary.  I took the note up to the Wing Commander's office.....his secretary stamped his name onto the bottom....he walked up and she had like six such letters for the day of the same variety, and he signed all six in 30 seconds.

After this event, it made me wonder how many times a month that each Wing Commander had to sign a hundred-odd waivers like that, and how many times was this guy signing something for the sake of signing it.

So you look at this....would the Wing Commander just glance at some stack of fifteen-odd requests for some NCO, officer or airman to bring a gun on base and just sign it.....or get all fearful and invent a dozen reasons to question this waiver?  It's hard to say.

You can imagine a work environment like a typical base.....where every single military individual has qualified with the M-16 rifle as a minimum, and twenty-percent have qualified for the M9 pistol.  They all passed gun safety classes (some twenty times over) and the Air Force will proudly tell Senators that their guys are prepared for a firefight at any installation.  Would the same commanders be happy knowing that 2,000 individuals are on base.....with a pistol on themselves?  I have doubts.

Sunday 24 January 2016

Lessons From a Blizzard

I sat yesterday watching CNN's blizzard coverage.  They were interviewing this family stuck on the interstate in Kentucky...had been there twelve hours in a drift on the road, and no idea when help would come to pull them out.  Trucks all around them.....same position.  They got to some point in the telephone interview where the host of CNN asked the lady (she was with the husband and kids) if they knew about this approaching blizzard.  The lady stated....well....yeah, but they were intending to make it to the very next exit and get off there.  I just sat there....shaking my head.

Over the past decade or two.....I've come to note that weather folks now give an enormous amount of warning....sometimes now two days ahead of a blizzard.  They put a red screen.....winter weather warning.....telling folks that at 6PM on Tuesday.....it'll hit.  Naturally, this being Sunday evening....you've got time to plan and get your act straight.

Then.....folks start to get stupid.  Well....let's just see how bad this will go.  Then they proceed to continue driving past 2PM when they should have gotten off the interstate and found a hotel....had supper at some greasy spoon operation, and just accepted what was going to come.

But folks just aren't willing to accept that.  So they push on....to 6PM when the flurries start coming down, and there around 7PM....when there's an inch on the ground....they start thinking in about an hour....they will stop.  At that point, it's too late.

I don't have much sympathy for folks anymore.....when you get 36 to 48 hours warning and start start to challenge common sense.....it's plain stupid.

My guess is that the lady, husband and kids were still in the car....at the 24-hour point, and might even be still there now at the 48-hour point.  Maybe cops did eventually come by and offer up some bottles of water....but you kinda have to just sit there and worry about bathroom business and how you'd do it in a blizzard.

Maybe after an episode like this.....people will learn.

Thursday 21 January 2016

The Ninth Planet Deal

I probably wasted an hour reading upon the talk yesterday of the new 'discovery' of the ninth planet.

So, onto real facts.  No one can absolutely confirm this discovery.  What they've done is pour the data into a computer, and with simulation protocols....it concludes that such a planet exists, it's size is related to Neptune, and it rotates about every 15,000 to 20,000 years through our system.  Their chatter so far indicates that it was a planet that survived in our system, and then got "bumped".

It's orbit when approaching this area?  Between Saturn and Jupiter.

The odds of this being a perfect orbit and repeating orbit path each time it enters our chunk of the universe?  Well....that's not yet possible to say.  All of this.....is simply theory.

With theory.....you can't name the planet, so it will continue to be called "Planet X".  To be honest, it might still be another 1,000 years before we even get to some point of identifying it, the proven path, and then naming the thing.

A big deal?  For the planet scientists....this is like the 4th of July.  It'll keep them hyped up for months and working on some new theory to explain how the crash occurred and how the spiral turned into some orbit.  For the second part of this orbit to occur....it has to slung from another sun-like point (yet to really be identified).

But here's the other part of this story.  Who says that we are only talking about one single Planet X?  Could there be other planets that got bumped and they are on some 40,000 year orbit?  Well....you just don't know.

Wednesday 20 January 2016

A Brief Essay on the First Amendment

The Dailycaller put up a piece today.....refering to column written by a Duke University student newspaper.

Normally, I probably would have just skipped it.

But this circled around what he perceived (a grad student)....over America's 'obsession with the First Amendment'.  He coined the phrase....that it (the First Amendment) was more or less an expression of white supremacy.

What he wanted to suggest was limits on free speech....in effect....restrictions.  Censoring critical speech or hate-speech....would be a much better effort for society to benefit.

It's one of those do-gooder type things you see in Germany now.  Facebook has been dragged into such German government meetings and told that it needs to limit free speech....eliminate hate-speech, and that someone could easily determine what was good-speech and hate-speech.

I admire the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

It is simplistic in nature.

I kinda doubt that you could walk into a room of a hundred grad students today....challenge them with a weekend project to write the text for a new modern version of the First Amendment, and get a simplistic three-line piece of text that is that clear.

Most would write some ten-page amendment which allowed certain things.....forbid certain things....and tried to make end-all-make-all statement.

We are at some threshold of society, where people attend four to eight years of some university operation, getting a certificate of sorts.....then returning to the world with the brightness of a 7-watt light-bulb that you would depend upon to light up some arena.

The white supremacy angle?  If you asked the guy to explain the history to America from 1492 to 1776.....it'd revolve around eight lines of information, with Columbus noted two or three times.  Beyond that....he would be unable to note the effect of French, Spanish, Dutch, and English settlements upon the land mass.  He'd also be unable to project the effect of the Roman Empire upon the four cultural groups mentioned and the thousand years prior to 1492.

To be honest....I am worried about speech in America.  It's just that I'm not worried about free speech, hate speech, critical speech, derogatory speech, criticism speech, or fake intellectual speech. I'm worried about stupid speech....where you say something without much value and pretend it has merit.
My humble advice for the grad student....if Duke did charge $120,000 for the past six-odd years of education....you might want to review what you got and maybe ask for a refund.  You may not have gotten the best or wisest commentary from the professors.