In (Faint) Praise of Dead Tree Papers

I was perusing my dead tree paper this AM, about two and a half pages from being done with it, when this article caught my eye:

Hyundai warns owners to park outside, recalls 180,000 SUVs

Hmm, says I to I. My Tucson is considered an SUV. Maybe I should have a look?

Hyundai is telling some SUV owners to park outdoors because an electrical short in a computer could cause vehicles to catch fire...
...recalling about 180,000 Tucson SUVs in the U.S. from 2019 through 2021 to fix the problem. The company says corrosion can cause a short circuit in defective anti-lock brake circuit boards that can cause a fire even if engines are off.

Let me see...2020 is between 2019 and 2021, right? Maybe I should read the whole thing? Concerned that I might have a potential car-be-que in my garage, I put off reading the rest of the paper until I could make an inquiry at the Hyundai website at the end of the article. They said they'd mail out recall notices to affected cars...sometime in October! Sheesh! Who wants to wait a month to see if you're driving a Roman candle?

So, I go to the website: "Enter your vin number to see if your vehicle is affected." Great! That should be right next to my desk, top file drawer in a folder marked Hyundai.


Okay. Not the first folder marked Hyundai. Probably this second one.






No. But in the vicinity of those two folders? Yes! Crumpled up in the hanging folder the first two were kept in. Note to self: a little housekeeping is required in those files!

Typed in the vin number...nada. My Hyundai is not affected by the recall. However, it IS 2020, if you should read "Local Blogger Dies in Fiery Conflagration", please contact a lawyer on my behalf!

In short, I would not have known of the potential recall except for its appearance in my local dead tree paper. Yes, the news is on the web, but only if I searched for it, and why would I search for it unless I had an inkling that my car would do a 'Mrs. O'Leary's cow' in my garage? Had my car been part of the recall, it might have been another month before I found out about it and then, maybe the hard way!

I have an almost daily discussion with myself whether or not the paper is worth what I'm paying for it.

Today, put one in the 'plus' column!

Woodsman Woodsman, Spare That Tree!

I got a letter from my Dead Tree Paper yesterday, and without even opening it, I was 99.9% certain what it was: another rate hike!
While I receive small enjoyment from holding yesterday's news in my hands, and occasionally catch a news item of interest that formerly escaped me, for the most part I hold a small discussion with myself daily as to whether or not a subscription is worth the money. On the days they print the liberal op eds, the scales tip a little heavier against.

I calculated the increase to be a hair over 30%, which would outpace inflation, so I decided to call and cancel my subscription. That was the first joy. The automated phone system does not have a "Press 3 to unsubscribe" option. It was convoluted, but I finally found the option I wanted and they placed me on hold. Terrible hold music. Long and terrible hold music. But, I was not deterred! I hung in there until a live operator picked up the phone. I told her I wished to cancel the paper. She asked me the reason and I told her it was the price hike. She asked if I wanted to see if she could do anything about it. Sure! What have I got to lose? Make me an offer.

She tried several compromise prices until she finally got to one that was the same as what I am paying now. "I can live with that", said I.
So, until they try to jack up my rate again, I shall continue with the dubious value that I receive from my Dead Tree Paper, but at least I have the comfort of knowing it could have been worse!

"Coarse"? It Used to be so Refined!

It's just not a golf "course" without "U"!

Letter to My Dead Tree Paper

There was an editorial in today's dead tree paper by Reuben Navarrette. You may have seen him on Fox where he is a sometime (empty headed) contributor. I'll link to his editorial when they post the column online. This was my response:

Reuben Navarrette: "Conservatives hate it when people toss around the word "racist" to end an argument when they seemingly don't have anything else to say" ...said no conservative ever! Aside from his infantile painting conservatives with a broad brush, my experience, and that of conservatives I know, is that we hate it when our liberal friends shout "racist" when they have nothing else to say. Reuben has more projection than a multiplex!

Then he tells us of his other "assumptions". You know what they say about the word "assume". What conservatives don't like, aside from the baseless slurs, is a devaluation of the language. If everything is "racist", then nothing is racist. Racist is a powerful word that denotes a terribly ignorant and sometimes violent mindset. Using it inappropriately or trivially or, in my experience, as most liberals do when they run out of arguments, cheapens the word and makes it less effective when referring to those who actually are.

I don't know if Mr. Navarrette is actually confused over the word or is merely trying the old liberal "accuse your opponents of the things you are actually doing". Worked pretty well up 'til now for Hillary's RussiaGate.

Conservatives are tired of having to defend themselves against baseless charges of racism. I have often said that there is a special place in Hell for people who falsely accuse others of being racist. It is character assassination and promotes racial strife.

I am not sure what poppy field may have inspired Navarrette to imagine that conservatives want a "monopoly" on any words at all. We'd just like for you to use them correctly.

As to Tucker Carlson, as far as I can tell, is doing what Rush Limbaugh used to say was 'illustrating absurdity by being absurd'. Often when Carlson says something is "racist", he's doing it tongue in cheek, using the same (erroneous) standard that liberals have used for years. In other words, (pay attention here Reuben, this has obviously gone over your head), he is pressing his liberals guest to admit that what he is calling racist, isn't, and therefore by extension, what they have been calling racist isn't either.

Seen in that light, conservatives like Carlson are not trying to get a monopoly on "racism", but to dismantle the monopoly that exists on the Left, by pointing out the absurdity of their ineffectual arguments.

The Elephant's Graveyard Revisited

When I was a lad, and the Earth was young, there were rumors of a so called "elephant's graveyard". Legend had it, that when an elephant realized it was about to die, it instinctively went to the place where all the other elephants went to die, because elephants are excellent diagnosticians and have built in GPS.

The discovery of the elephant's graveyard would then yield a bountiful supply of ivory to whomever found it and untold riches when it was sold. The rumors undoubtedly started when an explorer with all the scientific acumen of say an Al Gore, stumbled upon a number of dead elephants and deduced that all elephants must therefore make their way to the graveyard before they died. This must have happened because...here they are!*

I bring this up because someone left a plastic bag full of elephant bones on my front step. Well, not really anything so useful, it was what we old timers call a "telephone book". It took me about a week to even open the bag, since I really had little interest in the content.

Back in the olden days, phone books from large cities could be used as booster chairs for young tots or to demonstrate great strength, as someone tore it in half. Consider the phonebook as Google 1.0. You might have to manually scan hundreds of pages to find the number you were looking for. Business listings and advertisements were printed on a different color paper, hence the "yellow pages". 'Let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages!

 (Bonus points if you heard the jingle in your head!)

I got to thinking how these things simply appeared at my house on an annual basis. After a year of flipping past hundreds of pages to find the one you wanted, the books got pretty worn and dogeared. The upgrade was fairly simple, slightly less frustrating than Windows, as you would scan the old book with your Mark I eyeballs looking for any numbers or notes in the margins. These you would transfer to the new book via a wireless, wooden/graphite interface device (pencil).

Then it occurred to me that this annual migration of Dead Tree Phonebooks to my house might not be random. I remembered that a Dead Tree Newspaper beaches itself on my driveway on a daily basis. I have an affinity for solid wood furniture, my house is filled with maple, oak and walnut, with a tasteful bit of pine thrown in. I have shelves full of Dead Tree Books. Stacks of books litter the floor. Periodically, corrugated cardboard boxes full of hardback and paperback books find their way to my front door from as far away as the Amazon! They say 'like calls to like', and then it hit me:

My house is the Dead Tree Graveyard!

I don't say this to brag, or that men in pith helmets would seek out such a mythical location, but I write this to see if this experience of mine is unique. Maybe you can relate?




*Sum underlying logic and reasoning of Desmond Morris' The Naked Ape

It's Not the Speed, It's the Sudden Stops!

From my local dead tree newspaper:

Stockton: "...Police said the driver of a silver Volkswagen was traveling...at a high rate of speed and did not slow for stopped traffic in front of him. The VW crashed into the back of a stopped SUV...The man in the VW was transported to a hospital, where he died as a result of his injuries..."

On the other hand, he got great gas mileage!

Flint Water Crisis Redux

You may recall last month,  Letter to the Editor, My Dead Tree Newspaper . The paper, to their credit, published it, and I gave it no more thought. Yesterday, not one, but two writers took exception with the facts as I presented them. So I sat down to document my sources, and the finished product was a little over two thousand characters larger than the maximum they would accept. After some meat-axe editing, I finally pared it down to size, but it was missing some of the flavor, detail and more truncated quotes that  I will try to reconstruct here.


Two writers have taken umbrage at my letter regarding the Flint water crisis. One said, "The local government did not cause the problem." And muttered about the lack of "safeguards in place". The other said my "assertion the city council of Flint was responsible for the water switch was in error." Error? I don't do errors! (Okay! I didn't say that!) What I had said in the original article was: "The decision to change water supplies to save money was the result of the Democrat controlled city council of Flint, deciding they could save money if they transitioned to a different supplier."

So many facts, so little time! I suppose we could start with the Flint city council Resolution 130165.2, passed March 25, 2013. Emergency manager Ed Kurtz, approved this, on resolution 2013EM041, four days later.

According to the Huffington Post:

"It all started with a decision to change Flint's water source. For decades, Flint bought its water from the Detroit Water And Sewerage Department. (DWST) In 2013, the Flint city council voted to join the Karegnondi Water Authority, (KWA) a new system that would pump water from Lake Huron."

Former Move-On editor Angie Aker:

"Trying to peel some money away in the budget for other things, the city council in Flint, Michigan, set off a chain of events in March 2013 that had devastating effects. The council voted 7-1 to pass a resolution to stop buying water from Detroit and join a new initiative piping in water directly from Lake Huron. "

The operative word in each account is "voted". Some choose to split hairs. They say, "Well, they never specifically voted to use the Flint River." Except they did. The resolution states "...plus two units from the Flint River." To split a different hair, "But they never voted to make it their primary source." Which is true, but irrelevant.

The Detroit Free Press:

"For reasons that are unclear, Flint and Detroit did not agree on an interim price for Flint to continue receiving Detroit water while the pipeline was being built. Kurtz and his state-appointed successor, Darnell Earley, signed orders for contracts in June and November 2013, respectively, to prepare the Flint water treatment plant to take Flint River water."

And then, the kicker:

"Experts have also said that taking drinking water from the Flint River wouldn't necessarily have been a problem, had it been treated properly...The state Department of Environmental Quality failed to require the addition of needed corrosion control chemicals as part of the treatment process..."

Operative word: "failed". The safeguards in place to monitor water quality were the Michigan State Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the federal EPA. I've read numerous accounts and no one seems to be exactly sure what negotiations took place between Flint and DWSD or how they broke down in the year following the council's decision. According to the Detroit Free Press, the choice to use Flint River water wasn't a bad decision, if the water was treated properly. But it was the council vote that set the chain of events in motion. Understand, I don't blame them for the problem. The implementation of their decision was done by two different emergency managers. I don't blame them, either. The fact that they were appointed by a Republican governor makes blaming him a real (partisan) stretch.

If blame is to be placed, let's start with whomever was in charge of the city water treatment plant and the Michigan DEQ. Ignorance or incompetence (or both) resulted in lead contaminated water. Once the problem was discovered, and became known by Obama's EPA, someone there delayed notifying Flint residents and taking necessary action to fix the problem.That person is far more culpable for the sorry state of Flint's water supply than its governor!

It was cheaper to take water from the Flint, but the "penny pinching" wasn't by the governor. It was the city council who wanted more money for other projects. It wasn't to poison children. It was the unintended consequence of the change. Incompetence, not malice, by water treatment facilities, which failed to adequately treat Flint River water, and by state and national water quality agencies which failed in their oversight, resulted in lead contamination in the water. Period.

It is blatant demagoguery to suggest anything else.

Update: Just came across this from Politifact Feb 2016:

"...two state agencies he (Gov. Synder) oversaw -- the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Health and Human Services -- contributed significantly to the problem.

Officials at those agencies were warned early and repeatedly by Miguel Del Toral, an official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, that they were putting Flint residents at risk by not instituting anti-corrosion safeguards for Flint River water. Agency officials also initially dismissed warnings from Virginia Tech researchers and Flint pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, even after being prodded on the question by a senior Snyder aide."

"...as long ago as 2010, the EPA expressed concern that "dramatic budget cuts" at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality were having a "significant impact" on its water program. The governor at the time? Democrat Jennifer Granholm.