Barracks Story

In my twenty-two years in the Air Force.....I lived in six dorms (barracks might be appropriate to use as well).  I actually won't say nothing much negative about five of them.

The Barksdale AFB dorm (in Shreveport)?  This is a shot of the old dorm I lived in (renovation around 1984, after I left).  It was one of the worst places you can imagine before the renovation, and I actually stayed there for roughly two years.

It'd been built in the mid-1960s and was state-of-the art when it was built.  But from like 1981 to 1983....it was in terrible shape.

The cooling unit was no longer able to cool.  It was a shocker to survive the two summers I spent there with almost no cooling whatsoever.

The heating unit would only heat to a sufficient level (around 25-degrees).  Anything below that and it just subtracted from the general comfort of the room.  At some point, around minus-five degrees....the room temperature was around 32-degrees. Even the mini-heating unit I bought could barely add ten degrees onto the room, and it'd pop the circuit breaker after thirty minutes of use.

The cockroaches?  In the middle of the night, if you got up and turned on the light.....the one sink in the room would have around a dozen cockroaches scrambling around.  I'd keep a can of lighter fluid nearby and spray them with that.

Mice were a problem on the first floor....luckily, I lived on the third floor.

The water for the showers....if you didn't have a problem with water switching from mild-warm to extreme-cold in the winter months....it was Ok.

The ice storm in January of 1984?  It covered the fire escape entirely and made it impossible to use as an exit.

The natural gas leak in 1982?  It took two days for them to get the gas cleared out and make the dorm safe for usage.

It was the only barracks that I came eventually to hate with a passion.  If I hadn't had orders to leave in January of 1984....I would have said enough and just applied for quarters pay and moved off-base.

From what I can figure....they renovated the place in 1984.....again in the late 1990s, and finally tore the entire building down two or three years ago.

The Walter Scott Shooting

Typically, I strongly recommend a five-day waiting period before people get all hyperactive and think they know the entire episode to some chaotic event.  In this Walter Scott episode.....I can make three observations.

First, this is North Charleston.  Around the 2005/2006 period.....this was considered one of the most dangerous places in the US to walk around. Drugs, gangs, and chaos reigned.  It's a town of 105,000 residents and it was deep into serious trouble.  A decision was made by the city leadership after they saw strong hints of people vacating the area and escaping off to towns around it.  The decision was to build up their police department and get fairly enthusiastic about law enforcement.

The town might have been predominately white twenty-five years ago.....but as the crime escalation started to occur....'white-flight' had already started.  North Charleston had dealt various cards to regain stability and stop the chaos.  Sadly, this meant a higher chance of residents in town (more black than white) getting pulled over for questions or small traffic violations.  Walter Scott could have driven in hundreds of cities and never been pulled over in his entire life.  But North Charleston doesn't have those odds.

Second....Walter Scott was formerly married and owed around $18,000 on back-payments for child support.  Being a warehouse guy and fork-life operator.....he's making next to nothing.  The odds of him ever making enough to cover a regular monthly payment?  Zero.  It's nice that the legal system has invented child support payments.....but it only works if you make enough pay to cover yourself and the payments.

What the guy feared was that the cop would see some warrant for his arrest....arrest him.....and put his one job into jeopardy.  Without that one job.....he's one step away from street-life or living with relatives.  So, when he freaked out.....he had justification to freak out.

Third....I still can't understand the necessity of pulling a gun on a unarmed guy who was running the opposite direction.  If Walter Scott had shown a gun and started running.....maybe there's some justification (marginally, I admit).....but with no gun and running....there is zero justification.  What was the cop thinking in terms of a threat?  There is no threat.  This is the same type of mentality that you'd see when some cop comes to an enclosed yard.....enters....encounters a family dog....and shoots the dog with no logic or reason.

The charges?  It's between murder-in-the-2nd-degree or manslaughter.  In either case, I don't see the jury giving the guy more than fifteen years.  But I don't see this guy surviving in a state prison more than a year or two.  Some gang hit will occur, and this guy will never finish his 'trip' in the state prison.

The Newest Disorder?

For years.....I've been waiting on this to occur.

The British Daily Mail (one of my favorite newspapers) wrote up this piece on a new disorder affecting people.....Orthorexia Nervosa.  It's basically a healthy food disorder.

Yeah......it's when a person has zapped themselves mentally enough....that they crave only fruit and vegetables....no bread....no dairy products....no meats.  So when they get to some stage....they feel all negative and frustrated when they slip up need a piece of bread....negativity goes up in a massive sense.

Has Orthorexia Nervosa made it into the DSM-5.....the handbook/manual that mental health folks use to identify disorders?  The simple answer is no.  This would require a fair amount of surveys, polls and analysis....which is probably several years away from establishing absolute facts.  So, it's a discussed item around mental health experts who have started to see folks who complain about this nervous condition or frustrations surrounding their diet agenda.

Here in Germany, I'd take a guess that one in a hundred folks are already slipping into this disorder.  If you survey the dozen-odd state-run networks....there's probably twenty hours a week of nutritional news or shows.  Some simply key in on how to eat healthy.....cutting out some grease or fat.  But you could see after a while some efforts to maximize on eating healthy.  It'd only take a year or two for someone to repeat their daily habits over and over....reaching the point where it's a food disorder.

The curious thing....no one has said how you treat the disorder.  Teaching people how to eat an unhealthy menu of food?  Forcing people to eat two slices of bacon?  It's hard to say how you'd find some way of treating such a person.

Bottom line?  You might be so successful in life at extending yourself and making yourself believe in good nutrition....that you might harm yourself with frustrations and negativity over such a diet.

Short Essay on Gender-free Bathroom Story

I noticed some big news group talked up the newest thing in the White House.....a gender-free bathroom.  This is one of those new fangled bathrooms where males, females, or transgender folks can attend to their personal business.

I sat and thought about it.  I also have a gender-free bathroom in my present house.  You can open the door.....go do your business....wash up....flush....and then spray a bit (the guy-rule that my wife enforces).

I also go one step further.....it's a gender-free and paw-free bathroom.....meaning that two Maine Coons can also do their business as well.  To be honest, I've had a gender-free bathroom for years....every since I got married.  In the days prior to that.....I lived in the barracks where we had a open bathroom.....which means forty guys could use it at one time, if necessary.

This gender-free bathroom thing appears to be a hot topic.  Folks marvel at the new and complex nature of this....yet never seem to ask any questions.  It's like some alien species arrived last week and everyone jumped to toss in a new type bathroom situation.

In the old days.....if you stopped off at some gas station....you'd find that they had only one bathroom (the typical solution) and you got a key to walk over to the gender-free bathroom.  It was one single stall with one single wash basin.  You did your business quickly, and left (hopefully flushing).  End of the discussion.  Today?  Business operations have multiple stalls and things appear to be slightly more complicated.

The odd question to ask the White House?  It'd be interesting to note if it has a sensor and are counting 'users'.  In an entire year.....is there anyone using the gender-free bathroom?  And if they are using it.....are there any problems or complaints?

An Amusing Fracking Story

CNBC did a report up today.....talking up the idea that fracking has caused massive radon build-ups in Pennsylvania houses (800,000 of them presently are mentioned in the news item).  They use statistical data collected by Johns Hopkins to state their point.  These are homes which were measured back in the late 1980s and again in the last five years. "Bad-boy" fracking.....obviously has to be the cause.

Sometimes.....you get the impression that a good story ought to be able to stand, and this would work good....if they hadn't put the date into the storyline.  The data collection started in 1987.

If you go back to the 1980s....some people were starting to talk in public forums and to building/renovation crews about selling people on better insulation and high-standard door/windows.  The deal spoken by environmentalists was that we were allowing precious cooled or heated air to escape a house.

Naturally, the gimmick here was to spend several thousand and buy some insulation protection.  What happens after you spend the money?  Your house gets insulated, and air doesn't escape.  That also includes radon which might be in the house.....so you have radon build-up.  Shocker.....?

Unless you also went out and put in an exhaust fan.....to help several times a week to 'flush' the house.....you were were going to collect and develop a substantial radon problem.

The 300,000 homes that CNBC talked about with big issues which lead back to fracking?  No.....they lead back to the investment made fifteen to twenty years ago.....to better insulated homes.  It's not rocket science to figure the consequence here.

The Thing with Rand Paul

Rand Paul is an enigma.  He is unexplainable.

He wants a balanced budget....lower taxes....and control over government spending.....which generally gets people in the heartland all pepped up and enthusiastic.  He's against subsidizing energy companies.....but he's willing to offer them tax breaks for innovation. He hates TSA and says he would eliminate them.....but he never says how.  He says that American's privacy rights are threatened....but never says how he's solve this.  He says he's for plain old-fashion marriage, but it's same type statement that President Obama had before his conversion to being 'open'.  He opposes all possible gun control, period.....which usually gets him support from the NRA crowd.

If you went down the list of twenty-five topics that the normal heartland guy would support and how they would answer a question over issues.....Rand Paul gives the same exact answer.

So, why is Rand Paul considered a 'nut'?

It's when you get to the 2nd twenty-five hot topics of Republican Conservatives and the fringe side of the Republican enthusiasm.....that you start to see Rand Paul angle to get the right spot on each of the next twenty-five topics.   He wants to fit into the perfect square.

For an engineer.....the perfect square is measured and it's absolutely precise.  If you say you are within 1/1,000th of an inch of the perfect specifications to the square.....that's the gimmick of Rand Paul.  He really wants to fit that neat and tidy square.

If someone said that lawn landscaping had now moved to topic number 46 on the Conservative scale of important things.....Rand Paul would come out tomorrow with a three-point agenda on land landscaping....offering up tax incentives for a better lawn, recommended advice on cutting range for the mower, and a government program to offer free grass seed to the needy.   It's that simple.

The heartland candidate?  Yeah.  He's the guy who wants to take around twelve percent of the vote in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Texas, etc.  He's the all-in-one type candidate that fits the perfect square and people comment on that. The remaining eighty-two percent of voters?  They'd rather not vote for the guy.....there's just something that's not real or convincing about Rand Paul.

Oddly, you can find Democrats in the south who say that they could almost support Rand Paul because he's got the right position on twenty of their top priorities.

The perfect square?  There is such a thing....but it's usually not what people are walking into Home Depot or Lowes to buy.

What Rand Paul is after....is mostly votes.  He ties up an election and makes things a bit more difficult for the top two or three guys in the primary.  He's making them pay attention to him and his fifty-odd topics.  If you want the perfect conservative.....he's the solution.  At some point in the decision process...you make the decision that you don't want the perfect conservative, and then you start to question your whole priority system.

The odds of the top guy wanting Rand Paul for VP or some cabinet post?  Zero chance.  It'll never happen.  So, Rand is mostly there for the theater side of the conservative vote.  He gives the audience the best act possible, and that small group feel that he might actually deliver on these fifty-odd values that they've worked themselves into.

The news media tries to side with this view and get the small crowd all pumped up.  It's fake stories and a comical sort of perception that he might actually deliver what he's talking about.  Then later.....you figure out that the news media lied to you and you go back to reality.

That's the plain and simple truth with Rand Paul.

On the Subject of Water

“This executive order is done under emergency power. It has the force of law. Very unusual. It’s requiring action and changes in behavior from the Oregon border all the way to the Mexican border. It affects lawns. It affects people’s — how long they stay in the shower....how businesses use water."

-- Governor Brown of California

For those who haven't heard.....California has a serious water shortage.  It's been building up for over one-hundred years.

You can go back to the 1910 period and find people who were staking out a negative position on reservoirs and use of mountain runoff water.

Population growth?  It continued on, continuing a gradual growth, and today sits at around forty million residents.

The desalination plants?   The folks in Santa Barbara are cranking up their plant.  Water cost?  If you compare it against the regular water.....it's fifteen times the cost.  You can imagine your water bill.....if it was one hundred dollars a year under the old system.....it'll run fifteen-hundred under the new system.  I should add as well....after you filter out the salt.....it gets dumped out in the process back into the local waters.  So if you had one-hundred percent salt water along your coast before.....it'll probably at least three-hundred percent salt water afterwards.  You can already expect legal cases to occur with environmentalists trying to shut the operation down, and regular people unable to afford water.

But we come to the subject of monitoring shower usage.  I'm guessing someone will want to install a meter on showers or tubs within a home, and start to check your usage.  I'm an old military guy who knew how to take a simple 90-second shower.

You can imagine the training videos that California will have to put out.....trying to teach people to shift from the six-minute shower to the 90-second shower.  Use this type of soap....dash yourself for twenty seconds to wet everything down....etc.  Some idiot might even make a special shower attachment which only throws 10-second spurts of water of you and then ten seconds of nothing. People will be buzzing at the office....chatting over their ten-second method or a twenty-second method....creating fake enthusiasm over this whole bogus situation.

Bottom line?  California has had a hundred years to work on their water situation, and at this point.....they are still one-hundred years behind.  And when the water bill comes for the month, and you spent $450 on water.....you will finally make the decision to pack up and leave.