Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:37:56 +0000, Larry wrote:

Certainly a different type of farming than that of New Zealand.
Seasonal snowfalls do sometimes cause a few problems in some parts of
the high country in the South Island but the stock - sheep and beef
cattle - is still left outside. In the rest of the country the grass
still grows in the winter, albeit less prolifically than in the flush
of spring and autumn - we don't experience a "fall" as the leaves of
the native trees stay on - much more sensible. I suppose that is why
New Zealand butter and cheddar cheese is able to be sold here in
Trinidad - low cost of production.

It sounds terribly romantic to have such snowfalls, to be able to ice
skate, ski and make snowmen outside your back door and feed the cows
in a barn, but the romance obviously pales to the farmer. If we want
snow, we have to drive several hours to the mountains, and only for a
couple of months of the year. My youngest son had to wait to get to
Afyon in central Turkey at the age of ten in order to make his first
snowman. Still, it was a beautiful setting. It was in the grounds of
the great mosque there which, with its 15th century spirally tiled
onion domed minaret is a work of art in itself. I had gone in to pray
and they (owner and son) played in the snow outside. I was amazed at
the locals who took off their shoes and socks to wash their feet in
the freezing water of the fountain before prayer and who walked
barefooted on the ice to the door. Still, they were used to it. The
streets were covered in solid ice. Difficult to drive and walk. The
housewives were putting the ashes from their fires on the snow in a
line so that people could more safely walk. Magical to us though. No
other tourists - apparently wrong season.

Did the power lines break because of the weight of the snow or due to
the copper becoming brittle with the intense cold? N ever seen such a
thing.

cheers
Jerry Attrick


Peter Hendra wrote in
:

As the winters are mild in God's
own we never used silos but stored bailed hay in open sided barns,
grew feed crops for "break feeding" in the winter such as green maize,

I've spread manure across snow behind the tractor when it was -40F on a
COLD winter's morning. We had a canvas tarp on both sides of the old
John Deere's engine compartment so the "cooling" air from the fan behind
the radiator would blow in your face to keep your hands from freezing to
the steering wheel. The tractor I drove was of WW2 vintage when gasoline
was strictly rationed. It ran on kerosene, not gasoline, even though it
had spark plugs. To start it, you built a fire under the carburetter
(Did I still spell that right in Queen's English?) and boiled the
kerosene to vaporize it for consumption before the exhaust manifold was
hot enough to keep it boiling when the engine was hot. Then, you opened
both cylinder petcocks to relieve the pressure so you could rock the big
flywheel back and forth, finally building up enough momentum in the heavy
flywheel to shove it over the TDC of the piston, praying THIS time was a
charm and it would fire! After several tries, she'd come to life making
an awful racket with fire spewing out those petcocks until you got around
to quickly close them and raise the compression back up to ??
5:1??...hee hee. Once started, it would be left running all day until
you were completely done with it and parked it back INSIDE the barn with
the WARM cows to keep it from freezing solid until spring...ready to
start it at 5AM once the milking was almost done.

If the power went down, we also had a leather belt-driven alternator,
about 8KW, that would run off the old John Deere's outer clutch housing,
which spun the belt (and anything else that caught it) when you engaged
the big clutch lever, even in neutral. When the snow brought the power
lines down, that tractor powered the whole farm for a week, 24 hours a
day pulling on that belt.

I can still hear that rhythmic John Deere 2-cylinder thumping, 50 years
later....(c;

I'm pushing 62 in January. Just like the rest of the "almost
Altzheimers" patients, I can remember that tractor.....Now, if I could
just remember where the damned truck keys are located....(c;


Larry

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:03:24 +0000, Larry wrote:



I have a picture of Mark Twain, one of Nikola Tesla's favorite friends,
holding a lit flourescent tube in his hand in Tesla's workshop with no
wires....(c; The picture is on the net.

Larry

Would you be so kind as to post or send the URL to my email address?
He is one person who I would really like to have met. When he was
broke, he undertook a speaking tour of the world in order to improve
his finances and pay off his debts. He came down this way (actually
'down there' as I'm about to leave Trinidad) and talked to packed
houses. I'm only 59 and missed him by a few years.

What I admire is his cynicism - not the current negative view of the
term as a sneering deprication but the original - one who sees what
is, not what should be. Hemingway wrote that all American literature
starts with Mark Twain. I can see why someone like Tesler would enjoy
his friendship.

Peter

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Apr 29, 9:54 pm, Peter Hendra wrote:
On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:03:24 +0000, Larry wrote:

I have a picture of Mark Twain, one of Nikola Tesla's favorite friends,
holding a lit flourescent tube in his hand in Tesla's workshop with no
wires....(c; The picture is on the net.

Larry

Would you be so kind as to post or send the URL to my email address?
He is one person who I would really like to have met. When he was
broke, he undertook a speaking tour of the world in order to improve
his finances and pay off his debts. He came down this way (actually
'down there' as I'm about to leave Trinidad) and talked to packed
houses. I'm only 59 and missed him by a few years.

What I admire is his cynicism - not the current negative view of the
term as a sneering deprication but the original - one who sees what
is, not what should be. Hemingway wrote that all American literature
starts with Mark Twain. I can see why someone like Tesler would enjoy
his friendship.

Peter

It is not a flourescent tube, Twain is arching a gap.
Here is the close-up: http://www.twainquotes.com/teslalab.jpg

Larry has the long shot with Telsa in the bkgd, it's hard to tell in
the picture.

Ever read Telsa Queen Bee rants?

Joe

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Apr 29, 9:54 pm, Peter Hendra wrote:
On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:03:24 +0000, Larry wrote:

I have a picture of Mark Twain, one of Nikola Tesla's favorite friends,
holding a lit flourescent tube in his hand in Tesla's workshop with no
wires....(c; The picture is on the net.

Larry

Would you be so kind as to post or send the URL to my email address?
He is one person who I would really like to have met. When he was
broke, he undertook a speaking tour of the world in order to improve
his finances and pay off his debts. He came down this way (actually
'down there' as I'm about to leave Trinidad) and talked to packed
houses. I'm only 59 and missed him by a few years.

What I admire is his cynicism - not the current negative view of the
term as a sneering deprication but the original - one who sees what
is, not what should be. Hemingway wrote that all American literature
starts with Mark Twain. I can see why someone like Tesler would enjoy
his friendship.

Peter

PS: Telsa was a fool. Brilliant, but lacking in seeing what is, and
fighting for what will never be. It cost him billions.

Joe

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

"Don White" wrote in news:escZh.29371$PV3.313547
@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca:

Yeah, yeah...and you walked 20 miles to school...uphill both ways!



Nope. I lived behind the school property for most of high school. The
elementary school was the old one about a half mile away. The farm was on
the edge of the town.

Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On 2007-04-29 21:37:56 -0400, Larry said:

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

As the winters are mild in God's
own we never used silos but stored bailed hay in open sided barns,
grew feed crops for "break feeding" in the winter such as green maize,


I've spread manure across snow behind the tractor when it was -40F on a
COLD winter's morning. We had a canvas tarp on both sides of the old
John Deere's engine compartment so the "cooling" air from the fan behind
the radiator would blow in your face to keep your hands from freezing to
the steering wheel. The tractor I drove was of WW2 vintage when gasoline
was strictly rationed. It ran on kerosene, not gasoline, even though it
had spark plugs. To start it, you built a fire under the carburetter
(Did I still spell that right in Queen's English?) and boiled the
kerosene to vaporize it for consumption before the exhaust manifold was
hot enough to keep it boiling when the engine was hot. Then, you opened
both cylinder petcocks to relieve the pressure so you could rock the big
flywheel back and forth, finally building up enough momentum in the heavy
flywheel to shove it over the TDC of the piston, praying THIS time was a
charm and it would fire! After several tries, she'd come to life making
an awful racket with fire spewing out those petcocks until you got around
to quickly close them and raise the compression back up to ??
5:1??...hee hee. Once started, it would be left running all day until
you were completely done with it and parked it back INSIDE the barn with
the WARM cows to keep it from freezing solid until spring...ready to
start it at 5AM once the milking was almost done.

Ah yes, cold winter mornings. I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin --
didn't have electric milkers so we milked by hand. When it's 30 or 40
below zero, it's really hard to get the fingers working to strip a cow!
And mucked out the milking parlor with pitchforks and shovels . . .
piled the manure on the "manure pile" which was frozen solid until
springtime. (Oh the smell of a Wisconsin farm in the springtime!)

We'd park the tractor (and the cars) on a hill so that we could start
it in the morning by rolling it down the hill and popping the clutch.
The tractor usually started, but the cars didn't, so after Dad started
the tractor we'd be towing the cars down the road with the tractor and
a log chain to start them. I was 38 before I'd buy a car with an
automatic transmission -- how was one to start THAT in the wintertime?
I remember driving the milk to the cheese factory in back of the old
pick-up in those old fashioned cans . . . I was 12 and wasn't allowed
to drive on the highway. But farm kids driving milk to the cheese
factory in the morning was evidently allowed. I never got stopped,
anyway.


If the power went down, we also had a leather belt-driven alternator,
about 8KW, that would run off the old John Deere's outer clutch housing,
which spun the belt (and anything else that caught it) when you engaged
the big clutch lever, even in neutral. When the snow brought the power
lines down, that tractor powered the whole farm for a week, 24 hours a
day pulling on that belt.

We never worried about the power going down because we didn't have
power. We lived on Great-Granddad's farm, and he grew up without
electricity and didn't figure he needed it in his 80s! Didn't believe
in indoor plumbing, either. When GGD died, my folks put in plumbing
and electricity before the next winter, but I was in college by then.


I can still hear that rhythmic John Deere 2-cylinder thumping, 50 years
later....(c;

I'm pushing 62 in January. Just like the rest of the "almost
Altzheimers" patients, I can remember that tractor.....Now, if I could
just remember where the damned truck keys are located....(c;

I'm 51 -- I left the farm the minute I graduated from high school, and
haven't looked back. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Ruby
--
Ruby Vee

Focusing on the negative only gives it more power -- Chinese fortune cookie

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:37:56 +0000, Larry wrote:

Certainly a different type of farming than that of New Zealand.
Seasonal snowfalls do sometimes cause a few problems in some parts of
the high country in the South Island but the stock - sheep and beef
cattle - is still left outside. In the rest of the country the grass
still grows in the winter, albeit less prolifically than in the flush
of spring and autumn - we don't experience a "fall" as the leaves of
the native trees stay on - much more sensible. I suppose that is why
New Zealand butter and cheddar cheese is able to be sold here in
Trinidad - low cost of production.

NZ sounds like South Carolina. We rarely get any snow at all and only
once or twice in a lifetime is there snow to close the place down. In
1973, the last snow storm in SC, the state was shut down for nearly a
week! Some trees shed in the fall here. Others shed in the spring with
the new growth pushing the very hard Southern Oak leaves out of their
sockets just in time for the flowers to bloom, then fall out in massive
flower storms to clog every port on every car they blow into...a real
mess.

SC farmers are, mostly, way too lazy to dairy farm. There are few dairy
farms across the state. They raise cash crops like soybeans, tobacco,
stuff that is nearly plant-and-forget-until-harvest, except for a few bug
sprayings, mostly from airplanes. The rich outer sea islands have very
fertile ground for vegetable crops, melons, we even have a historic TEA
plantation, the only one inside the USA, right here in Charleston. We
used to be famous, back in the plantation days, for rice. The place is
covered with abandoned rice paddies, now grown over with weeds just
itching to clog a prop if you get out of the channel.

It sounds terribly romantic to have such snowfalls, to be able to ice
skate, ski and make snowmen outside your back door and feed the cows
in a barn, but the romance obviously pales to the farmer. If we want
snow, we have to drive several hours to the mountains, and only for a
couple of months of the year. My youngest son had to wait to get to
Afyon in central Turkey at the age of ten in order to make his first
snowman. Still, it was a beautiful setting. It was in the grounds of
the great mosque there which, with its 15th century spirally tiled
onion domed minaret is a work of art in itself. I had gone in to pray
and they (owner and son) played in the snow outside. I was amazed at
the locals who took off their shoes and socks to wash their feet in
the freezing water of the fountain before prayer and who walked
barefooted on the ice to the door. Still, they were used to it. The
streets were covered in solid ice. Difficult to drive and walk. The
housewives were putting the ashes from their fires on the snow in a
line so that people could more safely walk. Magical to us though. No
other tourists - apparently wrong season.

When I was young, in the 1950's, NY state had terrible snow storms from
the Great Lakes "Lake Effect" snows. It was frigid cold and the local
lake, Owasco Lake, ring finger of the upstate Finger Lakes region, froze
so solid you could drive a snowplow-equipped dump truck out in the middle
of it and plow the snow off the ice to make a car/motorcycle race
track...right in the middle of the lake. I spent many days with my
grandfather, sitting in his gas mantle lantern-heated ice fishing shack
on skis we towed out at 3AM to clean out the ice fishing holes and set
the "tip ups", an automatic snatching rig, spring loaded to set the hooks
of any fish that bit the little minnow wiggling on the hook below. The
holes were augered into the ice with a special gasoline powered auger
drill and the ice was about 1-2 ft thick, where the fish wintered in
warmer water on the bottom. That same lake, now that the sun has
increased in intensity in one of its pulsating cycles, hardly freezes
over and certainly not hard enough to drive on, any more. My time in the
1950's is during the 1940-1975 cooling period the Global Warming Business
has amnesia about....right when Americans drove these awful gasoline
beasts, heated their houses with gun oil furnaces and lit the lights with
coal-fired huge electric plants. So much for man-made global warming
nonsense. It was DEATHLY COLD! Of course, that wouldn't create massive
government grants to fight global warming, which is caused by the big
thermonuclear star 93M miles away....(sigh). Man can't stand it when HE
doesn't control everything.


Did the power lines break because of the weight of the snow or due to
the copper becoming brittle with the intense cold? N ever seen such a
thing.

Not exactly. What would happen some time is the powerlines were simply
bowled over by shifting snow several feet thick, sort of like a mini
glacier. At other times, overzealous snowplow crews put too much snow up
against them and they broke off at the base. Cars drove in snow canyons,
especially after the invention of the snow blowers mounted on heavy
trucks. In grade school (primary school) we got Mimeographed handouts
from the power company, New York State Electric and Gouge, warning us NOT
to touch any high voltage overhead power lines we could reach with a
stick if we stood on top of the snow banks the plows had piled up after a
big storm. The banks were THAT high! My grandparents had a lake house,
where they lived most of the time. It had a back door on the first
floor, for summer, and on the second floor, for sometimes in winter when
the first floor was "undersnow".

This snow mass, near the edges of spring, would also melt during the day,
freeze hard again at night, creating a layered cake of solid ice over
snow over solid ice over snow by spring. Any warm spell made a new ice
sheet of the snow piled up everywhere....great for walking or hunting
until it got unstable and you fell through it on every step, ripping your
skin open on the jagged ice edges of the hole your boot made.

Every spring, of course, there would be a sudden warm period, melting
vast fields of deep snow quite quickly. This caused every stream to
become a torrent, every river to flood like hell and the lake to
overflow, flooding the whole valley even with the flood gates running
wide open. My grandparents' lake house, of course, took this into
consideration. It was on pilings, as were all the others, to allow the
lake to just run under it at will until it drained away. You parked way
up the road where it was out of the water and rode the aluminum fishing
boat with 7.5hp Evinrude Sportwin outboard to the house. There were
cleats by the back door and all the neighbors would help each other move
their lake docks up to the back doors of the houses during floods to tie
boats up to...creating each house as an island...complete with power,
heat, water, etc....an inconvenience, not a catastrophy like New Orleans.
The flood waters were 0.01C so we didn't do much diving off the roof into
the lake water covering up the road....(c; You had two choices to visit
the neighbors...take the boat or use your waders...your choice.

As this melt subsided, a wonderful little silver fish called "S'melt"
started running up every creek out of the lake to spawn. You were only
allowed 4 buckets of S'melt per day catch limit with your dipnets. There
were MILLIONS of them in every little creek for a couple of weeks until
the eggs were laid for next year. S'melt are amazingly easy to cook and
eat, being just bigger than a minnow. Their entire body was what you
ate. All their organs were contained right below the head just forward
of their gills. You simply cut them behind the gills and threw them into
the deep fat fryer you'd find us kids staring into waiting to see them
float (done) a few seconds later. To eat them, you simply put them into
your mouth, tail sticking out, lightly bit down just ahead of the tail
and pull the tail out....complete with all their bones....too easy! I
could still eat a hundred....(c; A little lemon sauce to dip them in is
nice. I'm not sure if they still run like that, now. The old lake is so
polluted by the damned sewage plants the Federal bureaucrats forced on
all the little towns there are huge algae blooms and lots of lake
pollution. When I lived there, you could drink the lake water, and we
did! Not any more. Everyone used to have cesspools and septic tanks
with drainage fields in the fast draining gravel soils of the valley.
How stupid to change what worked for 300 years.

It was a fantastic place to grow up. When I call my old friends I grew
up with who never left the town, I always ask them, "What day was Summer
this year?"....(c;

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:03:24 +0000, Larry wrote:



I have a picture of Mark Twain, one of Nikola Tesla's favorite friends,
holding a lit flourescent tube in his hand in Tesla's workshop with no
wires....(c; The picture is on the net.

Larry

Would you be so kind as to post or send the URL to my email address?
He is one person who I would really like to have met. When he was
broke, he undertook a speaking tour of the world in order to improve
his finances and pay off his debts. He came down this way (actually
'down there' as I'm about to leave Trinidad) and talked to packed
houses. I'm only 59 and missed him by a few years.

What I admire is his cynicism - not the current negative view of the
term as a sneering deprication but the original - one who sees what
is, not what should be. Hemingway wrote that all American literature
starts with Mark Twain. I can see why someone like Tesler would enjoy
his friendship.

Peter


Just put:

Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla

into the Google search engine. It will find all the stories, over
186,000 of them, you can read. Click on "IMages" for hundreds of
pictures of the two together. It's a huge collection.



Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Ever read Telsa Queen Bee rants?

Joe

Hi Joe,

No. Educate me.

Peter

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

* Peter Hendra wrote, On 4/29/2007 10:10 PM:
....
As a general statement, during my childhood, only we Greeks in New
Zealand drank coffee - not espresso but the heat and wait for the mud
to settle type.

Was that Turkish style coffee? (ground very fine, boiled lightly in a
small pot, served in a small cup.) I've tried to reproduce this on my
own but its never palatable. I suppose I'll have to go to Greece or
Turkey to sample it made properly.

....

http://www.terroircoffee.com/

George Howell was the founder of Coffee Connection years ago, and more
recently created the Cup of Excellence program, where small farmers
are encouraged to produce the highest quality beans with country wide
competitions and small lot auctions based on the results.

Thanks. An interesting site.
I had heard of programmes like this in countries such as Costa Rica
where small famers are resisting growing Cocaine crops. They are being
encouraged to grow high quality, high value specialist coffee crops.
I know that I would pay extra if I knew that it was in a good cause.


The "Fair Trade" movement gets a lot of publicity today. Ordinary
small farmers get around $.65 a pound, whereas Fair Trade is paying
about double that to coops, which use some of the money to provide
basic services and schools. Starbucks gets mixed reviews for only
partially participating in the program, but to its credit, when the
bottom fell out of the market a few years ago, Starbucks insisted on
paying above market value, thus saving a lot farmers.

Fair Trade does have a few problems. There is absolutely no incentive
for any individual farmer to produce higher quality than the standard
set by the coop. Thus, it becomes both a price and quality ceiling,
not a floor. The "Cup of Excellence" program allows individual
farmers to get a serious premium - sometimes double the Fair Trade
level or even more. Of course, these farmers are only producing a
tiny quantity, sometimes 10 bags or less, so they have no impact on
the general market. If you want the best, you have to seek out the
small roasters that are looking for the best offerings each year.

Here's a list of vendors that purchased through the Cup of Excellence
program last year:
http://www.cupofexcellence.org/About...1/Default.aspx

And while I'm on a rant, the "Organic" movement is also a mixed
blessing. Its generally impossible for small farmers to be certified
organic, even though they don't generally use significant amounts of
nasty chemicals. Much of the organic is is from large plantations
that have been created by clear cutting rain forest. This is
especially true in Peru, so buying "Organic Blend" with "Peruvian and
other coffees" from Trader Joes just supporting clearcut agribusiness.

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

"Ruby Vee" wrote in message
news:200704300129538930-rubyvee3@comcastnet...
On 2007-04-29 21:37:56 -0400, Larry said:


Ah yes, cold winter mornings. I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin --
didn't have electric milkers so we milked by hand. When it's 30 or 40
below zero, it's really hard to get the fingers working to strip a cow!

Ya know, Ruby, if you didn't insist on dressing them up it'd be much easier
to milk them in the morning. :-D

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Ruby Vee wrote in news:200704300129538930-rubyvee3
@comcastnet:

I'm 51 -- I left the farm the minute I graduated from high school, and
haven't looked back. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!


We had all the "modern conveniences", like indoor plumbing and power.
Granny's butter churn was electric, but her cream separator was not. I
spent many hours cranking that damned handle just to get some buttermilk.

We weren't allowed to drive the little pickup truck, but driving down
mainstreet in a huge John Deere towing 4 wagons of hay was considered
"normal" and OK. Don't ask me why. I've left the John Deere running in
the Grand Union (supermarket) parking lot while I went in to fill the
grocery list for Her Majesty.

The only time I got busted by the cops was for running at full throttle
in road gear down Main St with the cylinder pressure relief petcocks open
so the blue flames were shooting out the sides of the John Deere "B"...
(c; The cops said I was makin' too much NOISE! I said, "Huh?" They
called my dad on me, resulting in a beating, of course.

Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On 2007-04-30 11:19:17 -0400, "KLC Lewis" said:

Ya know, Ruby, if you didn't insist on dressing them up it'd be much easier
to milk them in the morning. :-D

Cute!
--
Ruby Vee

Focusing on the negative only gives it more power -- Chinese fortune cookie

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Apr 30, 3:29 am, Peter Hendra wrote:
Ever read Telsa Queen Bee rants?

Joe

Hi Joe,

No. Educate me.

Peter

Colliers, January 30, 1926

The life of the bee will be the life of our race, says Nikola Tesla,
world-famed scientist.

A NEW sex order is coming--with the female as superior. You will
communicate instantly by simple vest-pocket equipment. Aircraft will
travel the skies, unmanned, driven and guided by radio. Enormous
power will be transmitted great distances without wires. Earthquakes
will become more and more frequent. Temperate zones will turn frigid
or torrid. And some of these awe-inspiring developments, says Tesla,
are not so very far off.


Mr. Tesla regards the emergence of woman as one of the most profound
portents for the future.

"It is clear to any trained observer," he says, "and even to the
sociologically untrained, that a new attitude toward sex
discrimination has come over the world through the centuries,
receiving an abrupt stimulus just before and after the World War.

"This struggle of the human female toward sex equality will end in a
new sex order, with the female as superior. The modern woman, who
anticipates in merely superficial phenomena the advancement of her
sex, is but a surface symptom of something deeper and more potent
fermenting in the bosom of the race.

"It is not in the shallow physical imitation of men that women will
assert first their equality and later their superiority, but in the
awakening of the intellect of women.

"Through countless generations, from the very beginning, the social
subservience of women resulted naturally in the partial atrophy or at
least the hereditary suspension of mental qualities which we now know
the female sex to be endowed with no less than men.

The Queen is the Center of Life

"BUT the female mind has demonstrated a capacity for all the mental
acquirements and achievements of men, and as generations ensue that
capacity will be expanded; the average woman will be as well educated
as the average man, and then better educated, for the dormant
faculties of her brain will be stimulated to an activity that will be
all the more intense and powerful because of centuries of repose.
Woman will ignore precedent and startle civilization with their
progress.

"The acquisition of new fields of endeavor by women, their gradual
usurpation of leadership, will dull and finally dissipate feminine
sensibilities, will choke the maternal instinct, so that marriage and
motherhood may become abhorrent and human civilization draw closer and
closer to the perfect civilization of the bee."

The significance of this lies in the principle dominating the economy
of the bee--the most highly organized and intelligently coordinated
system of any form of nonrational animal life--the all-governing
supremacy of the instinct for immortality which makes divinity out of
motherhood.

The center of all bee life is the queen. She dominates the hive, not
through hereditary right, for any egg may be hatched into a reigning
queen, but because she is the womb of this insect race.

We Can Only Sit and Wonder

THERE are the vast, desexualized armies of workers whose sole aim and
happiness in life is hard work. It is the perfection of communism, of
socialized, cooperative life wherein all things, including the young,
are the property and concern of all.

Then there are the virgin bees, the princess bees, the females which
are selected from the eggs of the queen when they are hatched and
preserved in case an unfruitful queen should bring disappointment to
the hive. And there are the male bees, few in number, unclean of
habit, tolerated only because they are necessary to mate with the
queen.

When the time is ripe for the queen to take her nuptial flight the
male bees are drilled and regimented. The queen passes the drones
which guard the gate of the hive, and the male bees follow her in
rustling array. Strongest of all the inhabitants of the hive, more
powerful than any of her subjects, the queen launches into the air,
spiraling upward and upward, the male bees following. Some of the
pursuers weaken and fail, drop out of the nuptial chase, but the queen
wings higher and higher until a point is reached in the far ether
where but one of the male bees remains. By the inflexible law of
natural selection he is the strongest, and he mates with the queen.
At the moment of marriage his body splits asunder and he perishes.

The queen returns to the hive, impregnated, carrying with her tens of
thousands of eggs--a future city of bees, and then begins the cycle of
reproduction, the concentration of the teeming life of the hive in
unceasing work for the birth of a new generation.

Imagination falters at the prospect of human analogy to this
mysterious and superbly dedicated civilization of the bee; but when we
consider how the human instinct for race perpetuation dominates life
in its normal and exaggerated and perverse manifestations, there is
ironic justice in the possibility that this instinct, with the
continuing intellectual advance of women, may be finally expressed
after the manner of the bee, though it will take centuries to break
down the habits and customs of peoples that bar the way to such a
simiply and scientifically ordered civilization.

We have seen a beginning of this in the United States. In Wisconsin
the sterilization of confirmed criminals and pre-marriage examination
of males is required by law, while the doctrine of eugenics is now
boldly preached where a few decades ago its advocacy was a statutory
offense.

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Hi Jeff,

Was that Turkish style coffee? (ground very fine, boiled lightly in a
small pot, served in a small cup.) I've tried to reproduce this on my
own but its never palatable. I suppose I'll have to go to Greece or
Turkey to sample it made properly.

Yes, the product is the same whether it be Greek or Turkish. At the
risk of being flamed in enternity by a legion of irate Greeks who
still remember bitterly the Turkish atrocities of the '23 war and
neglect to remember their equally horrific misdeeds of that same war,
much of what is so proudly kept as their culture today actually comes
from the Turks. All my relatives and 95% of the Greek population of
Australia would deem this statement sufficient to warrant my sudden
demise - I'm very serious. You should be aware that Crete in
particular, where my family originate from, was Turkish until 1912.
That famed Greek national dish - mousaka - is Seljuk Turkish in origin
in both the recipe and the word. Essentially the food is pretty much
the same apart from the more devout Turks not eating pork. Same with
the coffee. In fact, in Sydney, most Greek homes I have visited use
packets branded in Turkish.

You obviously like your coffee. In Australia and New Zealand we can
buy at a reasonable price, Espresso coffee machines that come standard
with a steam attachment for heating and frothing the milk for
cappucino. I don't mean the one I have on the boat in which the finely
ground coffee is but in a sealed sieve like funnel in between the
water which is heated to greated than boiling point which then erupts
through the funnel up into the top receptacle (I'd make a lousy
technical writer). I mean smaller versions of the cafe type that pump
the water to pressurise it. - I wrote all of these words so that I
could ask if these are not available in the land of the free.
...

http://www.terroircoffee.com/heers


cheers
Peter

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

When I was young, in the 1950's, NY state had terrible snow storms from
the Great Lakes "Lake Effect" snows.

Larry,
You paint a wonderful picture of growing up in such a completely
different environment that experienced in more temperate New Zealand
which is 1,000 miles or so long but which has temperate weather
inducing surrouinding seas. The original name for N.Z. was the Maori
one - Aotearoa - essentially "the land of the long white cloud" As I
read your writing I became aware that the mental imagery your words
provoked were from the movies that I had seen since childhood. They,
usually from the Disney studios, of course portrayed idyllic
situations with the ideal stereotype American (white of course) family
of the time. America was apparently a heaven on earth where everyone
had large cars, large houses, toboggans, ice skates, drive in movies
and every other desirable feature of modern life. The kitchens of
these houses were very middle class with all the conveniences and the
mothers never worked and were always supoportive and understanding
while the fathers had good jobs but sort of hovered within the
periphery of the family. Looking back, it seemed that American Mothers
were very much in control as were the young girl children of the boys.
I remember at eight years old when I lived in a Boy's home, when we
were in bed at night after seeing such a family at the 'pictures'. We
talked half into the night about how we were going to be fathers just
like that; we'd take our children fishing, camping in the woods and on
holidays around the country. I can't recall any thoughts of a wife in
the picture at all. Needless to say, I later acquired one, or rather,
she acquired me or took me off the streets depending upon who she is
talking with at the time.

We have in some of New Zealand's central North Island lakes, such as
lake Taupo, a small variety of smelt which is not fished (apart from
by poachers) as it provides food for Rainbow and Brown trout.

What used to be prolific was a small 25 - 30 mm (sorry inch to inch
and a quarter - tedious to say and to write) long young of a species
of primitive native trout - the galaxids, of which we have about 6 or
7 species. This fish spawns in the estuaries and the sea and migrates
en mass up the rivers as fry. They are eaten entire, being too small
to scale, fillet, gut and behead; normally mixed with a little beaten
egg to bind them into pattiies that are quickly fried in butter in a
hot skillet. Delicious with freshly squeezed lemon.

As young kids we would meet up to go fishing from the commercial
wharves of the capital, Wellington in the days before containers and
when kids and others could walk the wharves in the weekends. Try it
now and you will be stopped by security at the gate. . Depending upon
the season, we could catch fast running sea trout - the Kahawai, with
a spinner on the end of a piece of nylon - didn't have rods, couldn't
afford them. Most of the time we would use squeezed pieces of bread on
tiny hooks to catch sardines and pilchards which we would either cook
ourselves in an old frypan we kept hidden beneath the wooden wharf
structure or, if it was raining, take them to 'Charlie's' - an elderly
Chinese shopkeeper who sold Chinese dry goods and whose wife would
cook them for us out back while they told stories of old China. He was
a Kuomintang officer before the war. The way to clean and cook them I
taught my wife and son in Turkey a few years ago where these fish are
US$1 or 2 dollars a kilo in the markets and very fresh.

You should try it sometime. it is simple and they taste delicious.
Such simple expertise also impresses the women - almost as good as
dragging a wooly mammoth back to the cave.

NOTE: This is a tip for CRUISING BOAT people who may espy these small
fish in a foreign or not so foreign fish market and ponder the cooking
of them. Got it in there Larry.

Take the fish in one hand, grasp the head with the other and pull down
and towards the stomach. This will rip off the head and eviscerate the
poor creature in one motion. Then, hold the fish in one hand, ventral
surface up and push the thumbnail of the other hand beneath the
backbone from the now headless end until it has lifted off completely
and you are left with two fillets held together by the caudal peduncle
(forgive me - the biologist you know) - the base of the tail. Stack
them on a plate and when you have sufficient - half a dozen fish will
suffice for an entree portion, wash them gently, dredge them lightly
in seasoned (salt and pepper and a little chilli if you wish) flour
and lay in hot olive oil. Cook several at a time - quickly - and turn
them over when golden. Again (damn, I am copiously salivating doglike
at the moment) serve with a little sprig of parsley and squeezed
lemon.

Sounds more difficult than it is but the results are more than worth
it. Your are not required to beat your chest when you present them to
your woman, but.... if it helps.

It is sometimes not good to revisit your childhood haunts. They always
change and get smaller. They exist far better as memories.

Looking back now, there were usually the three of us who were also
friends at school; me a Greek Moslem, Michael an Italian Catholic who
later joined the Jesuits and another Peter who was Chinese and a pagan
who used chopsticks at that. I can't remember it ever mattering then
and we are still close friends over 50 years later. Perhaps life was
simpler then. Michael's Dad was a commercial fisherman who taught us
to caulk boats - his, and to repair nets - his. He made me promise
that if I ever went to Italy I would light a candle for him in the
church on the island of Stromboli - his origin. We made a long detour
from the Straits of Messina to the Aeolian Islands just to do so. I
sought the assistance of the young priest who gave me a candle
(normally two Euros), explained how to light it and place it in the
sand box, and left to wait with my owner and son, not before advising
that I could pray in any manner I wished and advising the general
direction of Mecca without my asking. Afterwards, we were invited into
his home for lunch. I shall never forget that priest.

cheers
Peter

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

Larry,
You paint a wonderful picture of growing up in such a completely
different environment that experienced in more temperate New Zealand
which is 1,000 miles or so long but which has temperate weather
inducing surrouinding seas. The original name for N.Z. was the Maori
one - Aotearoa - essentially "the land of the long white cloud" As I
read your writing I became aware that the mental imagery your words
provoked were from the movies that I had seen since childhood. They,
usually from the Disney studios, of course portrayed idyllic
situations with the ideal stereotype American (white of course) family
of the time. America was apparently a heaven on earth where everyone
had large cars, large houses, toboggans, ice skates, drive in movies
and every other desirable feature of modern life. The kitchens of
these houses were very middle class with all the conveniences and the
mothers never worked and were always supoportive and understanding
while the fathers had good jobs but sort of hovered within the
periphery of the family. Looking back, it seemed that American Mothers
were very much in control as were the young girl children of the boys.
I remember at eight years old when I lived in a Boy's home, when we
were in bed at night after seeing such a family at the 'pictures'. We


If you want to see a little piece of that world in the USA, you need look
no further than the Lustron Corporation, who created those middle class
American homes of enameled steel around 1950 for several years. Lustron
homes have a real cult following, today, and are still as nice a house as
they were in 1949.
http://lustron.org/

Returning GIs met very short housing markets unable to sell them a home
on their new GI Bill guarantees. Lustron built whole tracts of houses,
almost overnight with their prefabricated cities.

The people pictured in the Lustron movie and ads are just the people you
are talking about...(c; Mom stayed at HOME and ran the household and
children. Dad worked and his meager salary supported them all, in their
new $7000 Lustron home. His $900 new Chevy sedan got him to work just
fine....

Then, the money mongers decided to ruin my country......
Moms all work, now trying to make ends meet. The US Dollar is WORTHLESS.
It's all gone and won't ever return....

Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Tue, 01 May 2007 02:22:21 +0000, Larry wrote:

Fascinating, and i am getting an education to boot.

The sad thing about this type of picturing the "typical American
family" is that many people believed that it was the norm and thus
expected it.

When I taught high school science for a couple of years, a colleague
who taught social studies (in N.Z. - other countries and society) set
an assignment for his 14 year old boys and girls to make a collage
from newspaper and magazine pictures - or any pictures, of their
future in ten or so years time.

The boys of course had cars and motorbikes. Most of the girls had
collages combining expenive, unaffordable homes, candlelight dining as
in the Lustron picture, loving family scenes and such as pictures of
them waving off hubby to work in his equally unaffordable to most
sports car whilst standing at the door in an evening gown complete
with diamond earings and impractical (for cleaning the house and
washing the nappies, that is) hairstyles. All the men were muscular
and handsome and all the women were fashion models - not a pot belly,
sagging boob or unslightly stretchmark in sight.

Is it any wonder that, with the reality of stretching the meagre
budgets of the newly wed, kids screaming in the middle of the night
from illnesses etc, wife finding that she has to work, husband
realising that the GT40 is beyond his reach etc., etc., that reality
sets in, romance and hope die a little and our divorce rate is close
to 50%. I don't know what the figures for the U.S. are but I remember
that a survey taken in Dallas, Texas a few years ago gave the figure
of above 90% to financial reasons being the primary cause of Marital
breakdowns.

Now if only people bought a BOAT to live aboard instead of a house,
perhaps they might stay together longer due to the requirement on the
sea for shared responsibility. - Had to think on that one.

Peter

The people pictured in the Lustron movie and ads are just the people you
are talking about...(c; Mom stayed at HOME and ran the household and
children. Dad worked and his meager salary supported them all, in their
new $7000 Lustron home. His $900 new Chevy sedan got him to work just
fine....

Then, the money mongers decided to ruin my country......
Moms all work, now trying to make ends meet. The US Dollar is WORTHLESS.
It's all gone and won't ever return....

Larry

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Hi Peter and Larry,

Peter Hendra wrote:
On Tue, 01 May 2007 02:22:21 +0000, Larry wrote:

Fascinating, and i am getting an education to boot.

The sad thing about this type of picturing the "typical American
family" is that many people believed that it was the norm and thus
expected it.

When I taught high school science for a couple of years, a colleague
who taught social studies (in N.Z. - other countries and society) set
an assignment for his 14 year old boys and girls to make a collage
from newspaper and magazine pictures - or any pictures, of their
future in ten or so years time.

The boys of course had cars and motorbikes. Most of the girls had
collages combining expenive, unaffordable homes, candlelight dining as
in the Lustron picture, loving family scenes and such as pictures of
them waving off hubby to work in his equally unaffordable to most
sports car whilst standing at the door in an evening gown complete
with diamond earings and impractical (for cleaning the house and
washing the nappies, that is) hairstyles. All the men were muscular
and handsome and all the women were fashion models - not a pot belly,
sagging boob or unslightly stretchmark in sight.

The major change in civilization that led to these
unrealistic fantasies of life in the youngsters
was the rise of mass visual media--photography,
magazines, movies, and then television. The
people making their living selling mass media
quickly figured out that glamor attracted an
audience, and that no one was interested in the
realistic mundane parts of life. Advertisers also
needed to attract eyeballs to their product so
featured the beautiful people enjoying their products.

The result was a generation of children raised
with unrealistic expectations of life, and, as
they became older, the vague feeling that they
were failing at life because they did not have the
lifestyle portrayed and expected.

Is it any wonder that, with the reality of stretching the meagre
budgets of the newly wed, kids screaming in the middle of the night
from illnesses etc, wife finding that she has to work, husband
realising that the GT40 is beyond his reach etc., etc., that reality
sets in, romance and hope die a little and our divorce rate is close
to 50%. I don't know what the figures for the U.S. are but I remember
that a survey taken in Dallas, Texas a few years ago gave the figure
of above 90% to financial reasons being the primary cause of Marital
breakdowns.

It is said that 50% of the marriages end in
divorce, but I have noticed that there are a lot
of people around that have been married only once
and are devoted to their mates. At the same time,
there are a fewer number that have been married
four or five times. This would suggest that the
statistics are skewed by a small percentage of
people who have many marriage failures.

To illustrate, consider five siblings. Four of
them have long term marriages with committed
mates, but one is married four times with each
marriage ending in divorce. In this case, you
have eight marriages, with four ending in divorce
for your "50% of marriages end in divorce"
statistic, but it doesn't show the real picture.


Now if only people bought a BOAT to live aboard instead of a house,
perhaps they might stay together longer due to the requirement on the
sea for shared responsibility. - Had to think on that one.

I wonder what the statistics for divorce are among
liveaboard cruisers. I've heard that a lot of
marriages end under the strain of one party being
an avid sailor with dreams of seeing the world,
while the other is a reluctant participant.
Oddly, it seems that either sex is equally likely
to get the wanderlust.


Peter

The people pictured in the Lustron movie and ads are just the people you
are talking about...(c; Mom stayed at HOME and ran the household and
children. Dad worked and his meager salary supported them all, in their
new $7000 Lustron home. His $900 new Chevy sedan got him to work just
fine....

Then, the money mongers decided to ruin my country......
Moms all work, now trying to make ends meet. The US Dollar is WORTHLESS.
It's all gone and won't ever return....
Larry

Larry,

The US$ isn't at all worthless. You should do
some foreign travel to get a feel for what people
in other countries are having to put up with.

We just got back from the UK, where we were paying
0.92 UKP per liter for "petrol". That is the
equivalent of almost $8 per gallon. Whenever we
travel outside the USA, I like to check out real
estate, grocery, transportation, fuel etc prices
to get a feel for the cost of living. On this
trip my wife and I both came back with the
distinct feeling that we in the USA still have
things very good compared to the UK, but most of
us don't know it.

Don W.

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

On Tue, 01 May 2007 10:43:13 -0500, Don W
wrote:

Hi Don,
You provide food for thought. I know that many of the full-time
cruisers of post 40 years old that we have met are onto their second
marriages and that we, on our first, are noticably in the minority. I
cannot give you figures but it has struck us like that. Both partners
want to see the world in most cases and like the lifestyle. Some even
met because of the boat.

I wonder what the statistics for divorce are among
liveaboard cruisers. I've heard that a lot of
marriages end under the strain of one party being
an avid sailor with dreams of seeing the world,
while the other is a reluctant participant.
Oddly, it seems that either sex is equally likely
to get the wanderlust.


Larry,

The US$ isn't at all worthless. You should do
some foreign travel to get a feel for what people
in other countries are having to put up with.

We just got back from the UK, where we were paying
0.92 UKP per liter for "petrol". That is the
equivalent of almost $8 per gallon. Whenever we
travel outside the USA, I like to check out real
estate, grocery, transportation, fuel etc prices
to get a feel for the cost of living. On this
trip my wife and I both came back with the
distinct feeling that we in the USA still have
things very good compared to the UK, but most of
us don't know it.

Don W.

I would agree. you should buy diesel in Europe where we were paying
over 1 Euro per litre a couple of years back. In traveling through the
Med., I tried to compare not just prices (expensive) but what the
avergae earnings would buy in real terms between countries I was on
familiar terms with such as Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia. In
Spain (we never made it to Northern Europe) I came to the realisation
that the average person was far better off and had a higher standard
of living in both Australia and New Zealand. When I took car and home
ownership per capita and the amount of income directed to that as well
as other non-discretionary spending, I gained the belief that the
average citizen of Malaysia, a developing country, was better off than
those in Spain, southern Italy and Greece. This was by no means a
strict academic exercise. It was fueled by my own curiosity. Anyone
could drive a bus through my methodology.

In my travels to the US, I have always been impressed with how cheap
many things were. Larry, you may not be as well off as you once were,
but you still have it better than many other developed nations.

You want to know where your dollar has gone? - to China as it has done
many times over the centuries - US/China trade deficit 30:1 in China's
favour. Ever wondered why Spain, with its vast empire and the tons of
gold and silver and other wealth that was brought back from the new
world, does not seem to have profited by it?

During the time of their empire their king was none as "The silver
King" in the east as Spain shipped hugh quantities of the stuff east
to pay for consumables such as silks, spices and porcelain. It wasn't
invested in capital works that could create further wealth; most was
spent on consumer goods - and they didn't have an adverising industry

cheers

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

Now if only people bought a BOAT to live aboard instead of a house,
perhaps they might stay together longer due to the requirement on the
sea for shared responsibility. - Had to think on that one.



I don't know of any married couples who just love the boat so much,
especially after living aboard it for a length of time. She might SAY
she loves the boat, but you see that longing in her eye if you look
close...for SHORE! Sure, there are exceptions, probably 10% of the
liveaboard women in a boat this afternoon. Men's interests and women's
interests are just different.....that's reality.

Cruising a hardware store, I'll see some man loading his cart with stuff
the wife is handing him that needs doing at home. My standard comment
is:

"NEVER bring a woman to a hardware store!"

Boy, did he screw up! He'll be painting and sanding for months! All he
wanted to do was to look for more tools....(c; He's never even BEEN to
the paint department, before!



Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Don W wrote in news:ScJZh.2579
:

The
people making their living selling mass media
quickly figured out that glamor attracted an
audience, and that no one was interested in the
realistic mundane parts of life.

I think that phenomenon is quite recent. Let's look back at some of the
old TV families.....

"The Honeymooners" hardly had enough money from Ralph's bus paycheck to
make the rent payments on that tenement apartment they lived in over the
sewer rat. These people were all very poor!

Desi and Lucy Ricardo - nice home, middle class, unglamourous life, even
more unglamourous neighbors. They started in an apartment over Fred and
Ethel, remember? Movie - "The Long, Long Trailer" was hardly glamourous.
My parents lived in one just like it, a "New Moon" brand...(c;

Ozzie and Harriet also lived a pretty middle-class existance. No
pretentious mansion, even though Ozzie was a big band leader and Harriet
a very successful singer....not to mention Ricky's Rock band. The TV
show was about middle-class Americans.

The Dick Van Dyke Show - again, very middle class TV comedy writers,
nothing glamourous about house or lifestyle.

later, there were many others, "Three's Company", a bit far fetched with
a young guy living with two supermodels and no sex for my dirty mind.
"Seinfeld", lived in a small apartment. "Cheers", hell they lived in the
bar!

The drug dealer lifestyle of the 90s and 2000s is where the glamour went
berserk....big cars, big whores, big boobs, big everything. Totally
unreality.

Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Don W wrote in news:ScJZh.2579
:

We just got back from the UK, where we were paying
0.92 UKP per liter for "petrol". That is the
equivalent of almost $8 per gallon. Whenever we
travel outside the USA, I like to check out real
estate, grocery, transportation, fuel etc prices
to get a feel for the cost of living. On this
trip my wife and I both came back with the
distinct feeling that we in the USA still have
things very good compared to the UK, but most of
us don't know it.


Yeah, but you have to factor in other costs in both places....

In the UK, you don't have to pay $850/month for health insurance. You
pay for it at that gas pump, $8/gallon....and everyplace else as VAT.
Visiting a doctor doesn't require $500 plus $56/pill (including the
doctor's kickback for writing the prescription), like it does in the USA.

The price of fuel is, therefore, tied to the price of medical health.
You'd have to look at the whole cost of living in the US and UK for X
months under the SAME conditions to compare these prices. Looking at the
bigger picture, I don't think it costs more to live in the UK than the
USA, especially if you get sick! A friend of mine spent a week, just one
week, at Roper Hospital in Charleston, SC, after a minor heart attack.
They inserted a stint. SO FAR, and the billing is not complete, just the
HOSPITAL bill is over $US70,000! He hasn't said what the staff of
mostly-unnecessary doctors various bills comes to. People outside the
USA don't get to see the "visit scam", as I call it, where every doctor
associated with the hospital comes to your room to "say hi" every day
putting $250-500 onto your medical bill EVERY visit. I sat in my dying
father's room and every one of them poking his head through that door was
told, "No visit scams. You're not going to be paid just sticking your
head in here." I put a stop to it, that time.

$8/gallon looks awful. But, most of that is the taxes used (skimmed?)
and SOME tiny bit actually goes to provide socialist services Americans
have been brainwashed to abhor. If it were $8/gallon and no services,
like we Americans get from our Illuminati government, I'd say that
sucked.

Larry
--

Ping Larry: Sintered Bronze
 

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

In my travels to the US, I have always been impressed with how cheap
many things were. Larry, you may not be as well off as you once were,
but you still have it better than many other developed nations.



Like I said in my other thread, sort of backwards from this. American
prices look cheaper, on face value, but one must also know that this
price for those pants includes NO SERVICES from any government, something
Europeans, Australians and New Zealanders just take for granted. A week
in a hospital bed can cost you from $US10,000 to $100,000. We pay in two
ways.....Our employers use several hundred dollars a month of money they
could be paying their employees and buy "medical insurance" for the
employees. This is not free..no more free than socialized medicine
elsewhere. It is money hidden from our paychecks, which are smaller as a
result. It's done this way to transfer the tax benefits to the Employer
as it's made to look like an expense to the company.

Many things in America have changed, drastically, in just the past 10
years. Our highways are a good example. They WERE beautiful! The grass
was mowed, the trees were kept trimmed, the roads were kept paved, no
holes lasted over a week. America used the tax money collected to keep
them that way. That is no longer the case. America charges 16c/gallon
Federal plus a state tax that varies by state. In SC that's 14c/gallon.
This money USED to be used for road maintenance and improvements. Now,
in reality, the roads are just going back to the forest. The pavement is
left for 20-30 years between repaving, until there is hardly paving
left...unless, of course, it leads up to some politician's home or other
influential person. The trees hang over the road surface from the ground
to the overhead...dragging on the top and sides of my stepvan truck
nearly everywhere I go. Our roads are now in awful shape. That's just
an example of the lack of REAL services US governments at all levels
DELIVER to the people for that tax load. Every year the tax goes up, the
services go down.

We still have it "better" than, say, Haiti, for instance. But, alas, we
are converging at some point. America is bankrupt.
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Every dime of Federal Income Tax we pay, a terrible load on us, goes to
INTEREST to the Illuminati Bankers who created this debt to enrich
themselves.

Here's our current reality.....
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zsZO6G7df...elated&search=
Watch the whole movie. Notice it's NOT a conspiracy theory by a nut. Mr
Russo is a famous producer of movies like "The Rose"...a businessman who
loves his country. He presents FACTS, not fantasy.


Larry
--