Knowing to Vote No, NASA & Bieber Whoo Women,
Solar Power, Gridlock, and other views and reviews

Also, I certainly think it's positive that people are even talking about this issue because for so many years we've had a "don't ask, don't tell" mentality that obscures the reality that millions of people in our country are LGBT and there is no good reason for them to be hiding out.  If we can avoid talking about "those people" who want "special rights" and discuss how hard it is to be a gay person in our society, and by the way, how about your cousin Jerry, or your auntie Jan, or your colleague at the office who is gay?  We may find that some of those who plan to vote "yes" might reconsider based on some personal connection to a gay person.  It would be a great step forward to recast the conversation on the freedom to be gay in terms of the people who cross our paths each and every day in the course of ordinary living.

Hopes and Dreams:  Is the marriage amendment a civil rights issue?


A recent poll from Public Policy Polling shows 49% opposed to the amendment and 46% in favor. There are political action committees (PACs) on either side.

We Love to Be Free is available from Minnesota United, Electric Fetus, and at the CD Release concert at Patrick's Cabaret on October 21st at 7:30pm. All proceeds from the CD will be donated to Minnesotans United for All Families. More October events are at the Twin Cities Calendar.

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Music Associations: Beatles - All You Need Is Love & Frank Sinatra - Love and Marriage
Movie Association: Bananas (1971)  "I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham."







Grocery Review
The last Coca-Cola bottles
October 11, 2012 (10-11-12)

I buy Coca-Cola in glass bottles occasionally, especially as gifts for people in other parts of the country. We have bottled Coke. They don't. But not any more.

The Winona bottling plant of Coca-Cola, the last bottler in the country, bottled their last glass bottle on Tuesday. They'd been bottling Coca-Cola for 80 years. Yesterday I bought the second to the last carton of bottles in my store.

The Winona bottling plant stopped making bottled Coke due to the expense of system repairs out-waying demand. I wish they'd talked to me. The solution is to increase demand. Bottled Coca-Cola is rare in the United States. In some places, it's shipped in from Mexico. Sell the rareness, the nostalgia of it. Sell it in Mickey's Diner in St. Paul. Sell it in the 50's diner Johnny Rockets in the Mall of America. Use it where people want to impress old people. Or do they think we're running out of old people?

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Music Association: New Seekers - I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing





Grocery Review
Apple Cider Shortage
October 10, 2012

Recently I saw a gallon of apple cider on sale for $8. That was their wording "on sale."

Half the Minnesota crop was wiped out this spring by early blossoms triggered by warm weather only to be frozen by a quick frost.

Eight dollars is not a sale price for apple cider... not in Minnesota.

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Music Association: Osmonds - One Bad Apple










Highest Megapixel Camera
October 9, 2012

I have good cameras. Occasionally I am asked how many megapixels my cameras are.

It doesn't matter.

Okay, it matters, but so does the lens and sensor quality... and the photographer. When you think about the most outstanding photographs in history, the quality of the cameras taking the pictures isn't the first thing that springs to mind.

Taking pictures while traveling recently, a man asked if I would photograph him and his family. I agreed, and he handed me his camera. I took their picture, then took them to a different location, set them up for a better shot, and took another picture.

Which brings us to the highest, greatest, largest megapixel camera: the dark energy camera. In the time it took you to read this blog post (and longer) it takes a picture. It's a 570 megapixel camera with 74 sensors (CCDs - charge-coupled devices) mounted at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in mountainous Chile.

Does a Dark Energy Camera Matter?
After eight years of planning, the dark energy camera took its first picture on September 12th. The lab coat people will play with it for the next few months. Then the dark energy survey will begin in December as the camera and its astro-photographers will try to figure out why the expansion of the universe is speeding up.


This is an artist's rendering of a solar eruption. There are no pictures of dark energy (or dark matter for that matter).
Dark energy is the theoretical force that surrounds us and pushes us forward.

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Music Associations: Paul Simon - Kodachrome & REM - Camera  "If I'm to be your camera, then who will be your face?"










Literal Problems in the Littoral Zone
October 8, 2012

What if someone, who had never served in the military, became the Secretary of the Navy. Could that cause any trouble?

What if a new fleet of ships were built in the middle of the country. Could that cause any problems?

I have a knack for speedreading, which comes in handy when reading internal government documents, whose main purpose always seems to be to fight insomnia. But speedreading without any sort of analytical tricks would mean I would fall fast asleep. The trick that keeps me awake is that government programs... all government programs... have built in absurdities. Guaranteed. Now, the absurdities aren't going to be in the diagrams or even spelled out, but they are there.

So, I was reading a TIME magazine article Big Bucks, Little Bang this morning on the U.S. fleet of coastal ships started in 2002. They are called Littoral Combat Ships (LCS). Littoral means coastal. They are fast ships without needing to be fast, substituting speed for armor, weapons, (small) size, and cost-effectiveness. They also have interchangeable mission modules that take weeks to replace. They are double the original cost, and the whole set (fleet) will cost upwards of $40 billion, if people are stupid enough to let them continue.

The Time article missed some key points.

Have you ever noticed those speed limit signs in harbors? Every harbor has them. I was in some harbors this weekend. Even the gulls flew slower in harbor. That's the best way to explain coastal littoral ships not having to be overly fast -- think harbor speed limits. (Wake up.)

Fast doesn't help in rough seas. Fast doesn't help in coastal littoral waters. Fast is for calm, open seas.

The Time article never mentioned the contractors or their locations. I figured the most absurd place to build a ship, especially a coastal littoral ship would be the middle of the country. The Congressional Research summary says it right away -- Wisconsin. Nobody knows ocean vessels like Wisconsin.

Now would be a good time to unload that submarine you have parked in North Dakota.

Whose bright idea was this?!? Gordon England had never been in the military but was made the Secretary of the Navy in 2002. It was Gordo who said the ships should be fast. Since he was Secretary of the Navy, people actually listened.

Gordo was replaced in 2006 with another guy who had never been in the Navy, Donald Winter. Both were defense industry people. But then, so is the author of the Time magazine article, John Sayen, who never mentions the hull cracking (as long as 18 inches) and corrosion (inaccessible water jet cone assemblies). Sayen also mistakenly designates the USS Independence LSC-2; it is LCS-2.

I don't like waste. The Littoral Combat Ship program is waste.

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Music Associations: Hues Corporation - Rock the Boat & Dido - White Flag  "I will go down with this ship."
Speaking of going down with this ship, Iran has removed their elite Qods Force brigade from Syria. Sad news for Assad.










Star Power
October 7, 2012

Here's what an interstellar nursery, the birthing chamber of stars, looks like. This is the elephant's trunk nebula in the IC1396 cluster in Cepheus.



A big picture looking back in TIME at thousands of galaxies in the constellation Formax is at Space Telescope.

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Music Associations: The Guess Who - Star Baby & Fleetwood Mac - Tusk







Solar Power Dances For You
October 5, 2012

Yesterday, I mentioned that currently (rimshot) solar power is expensive. Well, what a difference 24 hours makes.

Today, solar power only costs a dollar. That's right one dollar. (While supplies last.) Dollar Tree stores are selling dancing pumpkins, skeletons, and witches -- each for only one dollar.

Here's what Mister Pumpkin-head looks like.

It almost makes it okay that we've lost half of the Great Barrier Reef in the past three decades.

Not lost like it's missing, lost like it's gone. The Great Barrier Reef is not as great as it was.

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Music Association: Orleans - Dance With Me








Power Gridlock
October 4, 2012

Xcel Energy announced that it would no longer support its solar rewards program for its solar customers. The Minnesota Commerce Department said, "Oh, yes you will."

I'm caught on the fence. I know the key components of solar energy -- solar cells and batteries -- will improve, and the more they are used, the faster they will improve. Solar energy is only slightly less expensive than political pundits with cranks, but solar power is not cheap compared to coal, nuclear, or wind.

Speaking of Xcel's nuclear power plants in Minnesota, now is as good a time as any to thank Xcel and its Minnesota nuclear power plants for providing good, clean power for the state. Two of the three nuclear plants were shut down for maintenance and inspection issues earlier this year, and I barely heard anything about what happened in a no-news-is-good-news sort of way. Thank you, Xcel Energy.

I have many solar gadgets, but I haven't gotten around to putting solar panels on the roof. The landlord might get mad.

Without the solar panels and with the Commerce Dept.'s mandate, my power bills will continue to subsidize (power) the solar games of others.

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Music Associations: Sheryl Crow - Soak Up The Sun & Eddy Grant - Electric Avenue






American Dream
Gridlock
October 3, 2012

Sometimes getting what you want is not getting anything at all.

I've seen the charts and graphs that show most Americans hating Congress more than BP during the oil spill and that this 112th Congress has done less than any other Congress in 65 years. 

A recent Reason-Rupe survey asked, "Would you like to see Congress pass more laws, fewer laws, or about what it’s doing now?"


So the 112th Congress has done very little and most people want it to do less?!?

Another way of describing a gridlock is a balance of power.  I've heard from people who view a do-nothing Congress as an ideal.  It's like the Henry David Thoreau quote, "The government that governs best, governs least."

Polls show people favor term limits on Congress:

Tonight the Presidential candidates will debate. Both will make assumptions that the 113th Congress in 2013 will be busier for them than it has been in recent years.

But most Americans want a busy Congress about as much as they want Justin Bieber tickets.

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Music Association: Billy Preston - Nothing From Nothing







Behind the Scenes
Ticket Manifest Destiny
October 2, 2012

One of the missions of the Twin Cities Calendar is to make known concerts and events in the Twin Cities so that people can go to events that interest them and have a good time. Naturally, that assumes tickets will be available.

Justin Bieber will be at the Target Center in Minneapolis on October 20th. Months ago, that event was added to the Twin Cities Calendar.  But last month, this news from Nashville appeared...



The Fan Freedom Project says they received the Justin Bieber ticket manifest from Channel 5 WTVF Nashville for the 14,000 seats in Nashville's Bridgestone Arena. The document is actually the hold instructions.

The hold instructions list the seats that are being held for a particular purpose. A ticket manifest is an inventory list provided by the ticket printer verifying the number of tickets printed and price breakdown of the tickets. A ticket manifest is nearly an advanced sales report, which reports ticket sales prior to the start of the event. The box office statement is the overall profit or loss wrap-up, itemizing the tickets (sold or otherwise) and expenses for the event.

The Bieber - Nashville hold instructions list tickets held for a variety of American Express credit cards (blue, centurion, gold, & platinum), the Justin Bieber fan club (Bieber Fever) to increase club memberships, tickets held for Bieber's company, held for impaired fans (hearing, visual, mobility) -- imagine hearing Mr. Bieber's music while reading that part about hearing impaired fans, held for AEG (entertainment conglomerate), Creative Artists Agency (publicists), Def Jam, record label, marketing, gifts, auctions, VIP Meet & Greet, diamond VIP, emerald VIP, sapphire VIP, and platinum exchange. When it's all tallied, 42% were held for American Express, 21% for his fan club, 20% for venue & artist, 10% for VIP, leaving only 7% for anyone else.

Bieber is scalping his own tickets.

It's enough to make Bieber fans sick.

Even Justin Bieber is sick about it.

He threw up twice on stage in Glendale, Arizona on Saturday, making some wonder if he has Bieber Fever and making others wonder which seats are the good seats.

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Music Association: Eddie Money - Two Tickets For Paradise










How You Live
May Save Your Life
October 1, 2012


I was recently thinking about getting stitches.

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Music Association: Scotty McCreery - Write Your Number On My Hand