Category Archives: General

Baseball, General

Driving Adventures with Jack

I decided to drive on down to Dallas for the annual Fantasy Baseball Draft. The draft was on Saturday so I decided to take Friday off, leave Thursday night from work, proceed down I-25 to Raton NM, catch US 87 East, stop in Amarillo to sleep, continue on to Dallas Friday, stay with a friend Friday night, draft Saturday morning/afternoon, head back to Amarillo Saturday evening, spend the night and then head on home via Raton Sunday.

It almost worked.

Thursday, a snow storm blew through the area but it cleared up by afternoon and I figured that Raton Pass would be cleared by the time I got there. And it was. It took a while getting through the pass since I was right behind the plow that was clearing it, but I reached Raton by 9 PM. From Raton, I would catch US 87 straight through to Amarillo. Except that the nice Police Officer said that US 87 was closed and wouldn’t be cleared until mid-morning (it is very windy in that part of NM and snow drifts tend to get very deep) and there were a lot of 18-wheelers parking by the side of the road, waiting for it to open. It was not going to be a good drive in the morning.

But, I remembered from the last time I fled Texas, back in 1992, that there was a way to get to I-40 from Raton without having to backtrack all the way to Albuquerque. So I headed on down to Springer, found a gas station that was still open, checked out their map and indeed found the route that backtracked my flight when I missed the US 87 turnoff in Amarillo in ’92 and ended up on I-40 heading to Albuquerque. (I realized, as I approached the New Mexico border, that I was on the wrong track and found the back road route to Raton on the map and got off at San Jon) This time, I was going in reverse. And rather than drive all night (like I did last time) I was going to find a place to sleep before I got to Amarillo. So, after zipping through the New Mexican night, I ended up in Tucumcari and got a room at a motel on Route 66. Awakening bright and late Friday morning I got on I-40 and headed east to Amarillo (about 2 hours away) where I once again almost found the right road to Dallas. I got off on US 87 South towards Lubbock, nagged by the thought that something wasn’t right. And before going too far I realized that I needed US 287 South to get to Dallas. So, I turned around, got back to I-40 and followed the signs to US 287 South and continued on for another 6 hours to Dallas, hitting the Metroplex just at rush-hour. I was immediately reminded why I fled Texas 13 years before.

I found my friend’s place, even though he had flown off to India several hours earlier, got on line to check the baseball web-pages and got to sleep early and slept soundly. The next morning I headed over to the draft, selected my team and then went to diner with some fellow owners. (Mr. Wok’s in Plano, very tasty Chinese) After dinner, I headed back to Amarillo. Got to Amarillo about 12:30, found a comfortable motel room for the night and slept as long as I wanted. About this time, time was springing forward, but that isn’t relevant to this tale. Sunday morning, I refueled, body and car, and carefully followed the US 87 and US 287 North signs out of town and started home. The drive home was rather uneventful. Texas has this annoying habit of having divided highways with 70MPH speed limits running into little towns every 30 miles where the speed limit through town is 35 MPH. And you know that these towns probably get most of their revenue from the suckers who don’t slow down.

So I was toodling along, minding the towns when they showed up and then suddenly noticed I was in Oklahoma (the roads were better). OK was not on my itinerary. I figured I would continue on to the next town, Boise City, and find out what happened. From previous trips I had this vague idea that Boise City was in New Mexico, maybe I was just going to take the long way around. I stopped at a station in Boise City, told the clerk I had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was apparently lost. She asked where was I supposed to be? Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, or Texas? because otherwise I was stuck in OK. I told her I was heading to Colorado and she suggested I stay on US 287 to Lamar, Colorado and then head over to Pueblo and I-25, or I could take this other highway over to Clayton, NM and catch US 87 there to Raton, NM and I-25. It was about the same distance either way. (Evidently, I missed the split of US 87 and US2 287 in Dumas or Dalhart many miles down the road and kept blindly following the US 287 signs. I couldn’t believe I had completely missed New Mexicio. Do you know how big that state is?

I decided to try the Lamar way so I wouldn’t have to learn a new route sign from the one I had been following for the past 500 miles. Colorado wasn’t far beyond Boise City and I settled in for a long drive. Denver was 288 miles away, Lamar about 80. I haven’t been in that part of Colorado before, the Southeastern plains. There are actually towns below 4000 feet in that part of the state. (In Colorado, the town limit signs announce the town name and the elevation of the town, not the population as found in many other states. People in Colorado can get pretty prickly about their elevation. I live at 7200 feet, and I’m not in the mountains.)

I drove though a wind farm just south of Lamar. It was rather impressive seeing just the blades turning over the horizon of the ridge. As you proceeded, the tower and turbine slowly came into view. But, initially, just a couple of very large blades circled through the air above the ridge.

I got to Lamar and caught US 50 west to Pueblo, found NPR and listened to the Thomas Jefferson Hour to pass the time. I had thought briefly about staying on US 287 up to Limon and then catching US 24 back to the Springs, but I had been that way before and US 50 was new, so I toodled on. It was pretty anticlimatic after that. I-25 was I-25. Been there, done that. Got home about 3:30 MDT and started to catch up on all I missed while I was gone.

Next year, someone else can drive.

General

Robots

I have heard that the Army is considering Robots to take the place of soldiers in the battlefield. This strikes me as so wrong on so many levels.

    Second; it takes away the intelligence behind the trigger. A soldier can make some sort of determination to shoot or not to shoot based on the situation. Is that an enemy combatant? a civilian that wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time? a fellow soldier that got scrambled?
    Third; “War is Hell” has a real meaning. People are killing People. Will it now be “War is Heck”?
    Corollary to Third; what is the impact on our impressions of the “enemy”? they are now just targets for our toys to kill? Is it all a video game now? Is there any need to resolve our differences with other cultures and societies, since we aren’t really putting personal resources at risk? Not only do we not need to negotiate with anyone, they won’t have anyone to negotiate with.
    Fourth; Every hacker in the world will be working on ways to take over the robots. Once they are turned, they can be sent against the ones that deployed them. Or, they can be made to run amok in civilian centers with wonderful PR results. I’m sure there are a lot of other options that a “bad” robot could be used for as well.

I don’t object to using robots as bomb sniffers or bomb defusers or surveillance drones or any number of non-combatant purposes, but the very idea of a combatant robot gives me the willies. Talk about dehumanizing war.

General, Politics

Take Two Tablets

I enjoy reading Dahlia Lithwick’s pieces in Slate. She reviews the Supreme Court hearings. This latest one on the display of ‘religious’ symbols in a public place is a good example: Take Two Tablets – The Supreme Court picks through the rubble of its Ten Commandments jurisprudence. By Dahlia Lithwick

What caught my attention was a quote by Justice Scalia. I sure hope that there was some other context he was using.
_____________________

Scalia’s point here: “When someone walks by the commandments, they are not studying the text. They are acknowledging that the government derives its authority from God.”
_____________________

I can’t understand how any Supreme Court Justice could believe that the government derives its authority from God. From the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution of the United States, it is We, The People, that authorize the Government. The Government derives its authority from The People.

Can you even graduate from Law School without having that drummed into the very core of your being?

General, Politics

The numbers redux

The SSA withholding is 6.2 % for employee, matched by employer, for a total of 12.4% of income up to the magic cap, around $90K today. The Medicaid withholding is 1.45%, matched by employer, for a total of 2.9% with no cap. So, a total of 15.3% is withheld up to the cap and 2.9% thereafter.

Let’s see if that changes my numbers any. (how do I link back to an earlier post?)
”
Social Security Reform – For 2003 there was about 533.5 billion dollars collected from 156 million workers (plus employers).

That comes down to $3420 per worker/employer or $1710 per worker per year. (Employer matches an equal amount per worker to SSA)
”
Nope, I was looking at totals and not percent contributions. From What I hear, they are talking about up to 4% of the 6.2% contribution to a maximum of $1000. That doesn’t even seem to be worth the time or effort to manage. 4%/6.2%= 64.5%. So they will allow the average worker to divert 64.5% of $1710 to a private account or $1103 per year. But that’s over the $1000 limit. 58.5% would max out to $1000. 3.6% withholding diversion will meet that. So what will that do to the received SSA benefits 30-40 years down the road.

The Congress, in its infinite, partisan, wisdom, has already developed an answer to the “Private Account” It is called an Individual Retirement Account (IRA). The IRA is managed by the individual and money contributed now is non-taxable. The proceeds, when drawn out post 59.5 years old, are taxed when withdrawn (substantial penalty for early withdrawal.) The IRA can be passed on via inheritance. It belongs to the contributor. People are entitled to contribute up to $4000 a year now. That amount should grow with inflation.

So, why don’t we stop planning to downsize the SSA fund contributions with private accounts and promote IRAs? I think Congress, iiipw, can do things to promote the use of IRAs, like mandating automatic payroll deductions to IRA accounts UNLESS the employee opts out or requests a lower deduction (I think the base deduction should put the max allowable into the IRA over the course of the year.) And the Employee has to re-opt every year.

The main reason for this is to get people thinking about their retirement plans. SSA is a retirement supplement. People shouldn’t plan on surviving on it. And the way corporate America is going today, folks will be very lucky to have any retirement benefits unless they organize the benefits themselves. At least I didn’t have to worry about my company’s pension plan being sundered when it declared bankruptcy because it didn’t have one to sunder. (of course, my 401k funds took a hit when all that company-contributed stock went to $0, but that’s another story.)

Regarding the pending SSA cash-flow crunch that opponents of SS call a “crisis” there a couple of hard choices to make.

First, I think that contribution cap should disappear.

Second, benefits should be reduced to follow inflation and not income. (it’s a supplement, not a wage)

Third, the age to collect benefits needs to be raised to that age where life expectancy is, say, 10 years more. (If someone who reaches 65 can expect, on average, to live to 80, then 65 is too young to collect benefits. If someone who reaches 71 can expect to live to 81, then they can start collecting. This all depends on actuarial tables and averages and not on individuals, but SS is, effectively, an insurance program. Others can argue about the male/female life expectancy differences. I think when you get to that age it shouldn’t matter.)

Fourth; Stop using SSA money to cover government debt. Keep the SSA Trust fund as a separate account from the treasury general funds.

General

Jenny Turpish Slapped Me: Quizzes –

Jenny Turpish Slapped Me: Quizzes –

For people who like to take tests….

Sunny/Dark: 3/10
drY/Gross: 5/10
Traditional/Offbeat: 5/10
Active/Passive: 2/10
You are a SGT–Sunny Gross Traditional. This makes you a John Hughes.

Your sense of humor makes you the ultimate every-person, just a – I try not to trouble nobody. You’re laid back. Like la-a-a-aid back. You might be from the Midwest.

You enjoy the occasional weird or dark humor, and the right joke out of nowhere can really make you laugh out loud. In fact, the funniest stuff for you is the stuff that takes you off guard. If you can see it coming, you don’t want to see it arrive.

You probably don’t think this site is all that funny. So it’s weird that you’re here. I appreciate it, though. Maybe I’ll cut back on the ranting and say something nice for a change.

Of the 13825 people who have taken this quiz, 29.6 % are this type.

Your Active humor score of 2/10 means you are too shy shy. Hush hush, hide-away. You could really unload a can of whoop-ass hilarity on anyone — anyone receptive to humor at all — but the sneaky thing here is you don’t really care. You don’t feel the need to be the center of attention, so you hold the big guns in reserve until the right moment. In a world full of people who think they’re funnier than they are, you’re exactly as funny as you want to be. Um, regardless of whether anybody else ever takes notice.