Grateful For Our Grid

In India, more than half the country has lost power as three different electrical grids have failed.

More than 600 million people — 600 million! — have been affected by the power outages.  That’s about two times the entire population of the United States.  Imagine the chaos if our entire country were suddenly to lose power.  Then, imagine that occurring in a smaller geographic region, where the density of people is much, much greater than is found here.  Then, think of thousands of cars trying to navigate through crowds of hundreds of thousands of pedestrians without traffic lights, subways and trains that have stopped running, hospitals without power, and food spoiling in withering heat.  Successfully imagine all that, and you still probably couldn’t grasp the current conditions in Delhi.

Interestingly, India has one of the lowest per capita rates of electricity usage in the world, and significant parts of the country are not wholly electrified.  Even so, its power grid simply is not capable of supporting the growing demand.

It makes me appreciate our power grid in this country, where outages usually occur only after devastating storms and service is typically restored within hours.  It also makes me wish that some of that stimulus money the federal government shelled out a few years ago had been spent on our power systems, rather than on unnecessary road improvements or other make-work, “shovel ready” projects.

In The Valley Of The Wind Turbines

Along I-65, about halfway between Indianapolis and Gary, Indiana, are rolling farm fields that also feature gigantic wind turbines.  The turbines have been planted, like crops, on both sides of the highway, running in rows in all directions, as far as the eye can see.  When all of the turbines are lazily spinning as they were today, their enormous blades slashing the summer air, it makes for quite a sight.

Saving The Trevi Fountain

If you’ve been to Rome, you’ve likely seen the Trevi Fountain.  It is a magnificent attraction, with its depiction of Neptune and sea horses and other sea creatures atop craggy rocks.  When we visited Rome during a very hot summer some years ago, the Trevi Fountain was a delightful place to sit, enjoy the spray of the cool water, and appreciate the beauty while taking a break from sightseeing.

Unfortunately, the Trevi Fountain is badly in need of repair.  Earlier this year, some pieces of the 250-year-old fountain — commissioned by one of those civic-minded Popes, Clement XII — broke off.  Fortunately, an Italian mineral water company, Acqua Claudia, has agreed to foot the $250,000 cost of the immediately needed restorations.  Whether funding will be located for the more long-term repair work on the fountain that is desperately needed is another question.

The condition of the Trevi Fountain is  symptomatic of a larger problem in countries with significant cultural sites.  Italy, Greece, and Spain, to name just a few, are terribly cash-strapped.  It’s hard to believe that such countries, which reap huge economic benefits from tourism, would neglect the sites that attract those tourists in the first place, but paying to maintain crumbling monuments, old buildings, fountains, and churches, is pushing budgets to the limit.

I hope that other companies step up, as Acqua Claudia has, to help the Italian government maintain Italy’s many irreplaceable architectural and artistic landmarks.  Generations to come should have the chance to see the Trevi Fountain in all its glory, rather than a heap of dust and rubble.

Mary Poppins And Dr. House

We recently inherited an umbrella stand, and an eclectic collection of umbrellas and canes, from Kish’s Mom.  We have frilly, polka-dotted umbrellas and sober black umbrellas, umbrellas with bone handles and umbrellas that could easily be hurled, javelin-like, at an approaching foe.  We have rattan canes, and riotously colored canes, and canes with sturdy black handles that are all business.

Whenever I look at this umbrella stand and its contents, I inevitably think about England’s most famous nanny and Princeton-Plainsboro’s irascible diagnostic genius —  two very mismatched fictional characters whose signature accoutrements nevertheless fit quite comfortably together.

 

Garbage, Our Leading Economic Indicator

Amidst the durable goods orders, and factory output analyses and aging inventory evaluations that typically are the focus of the dismal science, there lurks an economic indicator that is highly accurate and smelly, too — garbage.

A study has concluded that, of the 21 categories of items shipped by rail, the one that has the highest correlation to Gross Domestic Product is garbage.  Trash has an 82 percent correlation to economic growth.  The correlation is logical, and obvious, because the more people produce and purchase, the more they throw out.  So, if you want to assess how the economy is doing, keep an eye on the volume of refuse collected by your friendly neighborhood garbagemen.

Unfortunately, the garbage indicator isn’t predicting good economic news — carloads of waste are way down.  We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed that the decline no longer accurately predicts economic activity and instead reflects that our neighbors have finally gotten serious about recycling and composting and other trash-minimizing activities.

Falling Asleep In The Noonday Sun

Yesterday afternoon I took my book and a glass of water with some lemon juice out to the back yard.  I plopped down on our outdoor furniture under one of our trees, balanced the water glass somewhat precariously on the cool grass, and began to read.

After some enjoyable reading, my eyelids grew heavy, as I knew they would.  I tried to fight the sleepiness by moving around, taking a few sips of the cold water, and squinting extra hard at the page before me.  But — as the Borg would say — resistance was futile.  My head nods became more and more pronounced.  After a few feeble attempts at staying awake, the buzz of the insects, the heaviness of the warm air, and the coolness of the sun-dappled shade finally got me, and I drifted off.

After a time the tweeting of the birds, the bark of a dog, or the cry of one of the neighborhood kids — I’m not sure which — caused me to slowly surface from my slumbers.  I’m not sure how long I dozed, but when I reached for my glass it was still cool and dotted with perspiration, and a tiny shard of ice cube floated on top.  I crunched the holdout ice cube with pleasure, stretched until my old bones cracked, and went back to reading.

What better way to celebrate the pleasures of summer than falling asleep in the noonday sun, stretched out in close proximity to nature, feeling the warmth on your face and the drowsiness overcoming you?

Follow The Leader

This summer, two swans and more than a dozen ducks call the pond at No. 5 North home.  They always approach when walkers tromp along the boardwalk, in hopes that the passersby might toss some bread crumbs into the water.

Yesterday, as Kish, Penny, Kasey, and I strolled past, the swans and the ducks had spotted a family at the other end of the boardwalk and were making a beeline in their direction, with the regal swan in the lead.

The Dark Knight Rises, In IMAX

Yesterday Kish and I went to see The Dark Knight Rises, in IMAX, at the Easton AMC Cinemas.

First, about IMAX:  I frankly don’t think it’s worth the extra money for standard Hollywood fare.  Before yesterday, the only IMAX movies I’d seen were nature-type movies about hiking on mountains or rafting through the Grand Canyon — movies where the spectacular scenery, on the huge screens, made for an overwhelmingly memorable experience.  Action-movie footage of Gotham City, car chases, and hand-to-hand combat just don’t have the same impact, no matter how loud the explosions might be.  IMAX gives you a bigger screen in a bigger theater, but I wasn’t able to appreciate any other material differences from your normal movie experience.

As for The Dark Knight Rises, the film is very, very long.  It has the standard elements of a seemingly indestructible, unbeatable villain and a plot that places Gotham City in mortal peril yet again, thereby allowing Batman and his comrades to show their superhero stuff.  Batman suffers mightily, as he always does, and speaks with that annoying growl when he wears his suit, and gets to use some new high-tech gadgets in the Battle Against Bane.

It’s a perfectly acceptable end to the Dark Knight trilogy, as characters and scenes from the prior two Dark Knight films make appearances.  Christian Bale has the Batman and Bruce Wayne characters down cold, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman play their enjoyable supporting roles well, and Gary Oldman is steady and unflappable as Commissioner Gordon.  My favorite characters were Anne Hathaway, as an untrustworthy cat burglar thief turned ally, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a cop trying to deal with the carnage.  It’s rare that you appreciate acting — as opposed to action — in a film like this, but Hathaway’s performance broke through the explosions and fistfights.  And I think Gordon-Levitt makes a very convincing, and believable, action movie hero.

All of that said, I found it impossible to watch the movie without thinking of the subtext now put on the film by the Aurora, Colorado shootings.  The Dark Knight Rises is a dark, violent movie where innocent people going about their business get shot and killed by masked bad guys.  How can you watch Bane’s crew kill people at the Gotham Stock Exchange, for example, without thinking of the people at the midnight show when James Holmes burst in and began firing?  For me and probably for many people, the grisly backdrop of the shootings make it impossible to enjoy the movie as it was intended — as escapist, superhero fare.

Cowman’s New Handle

For a decade, the mascot of the Ohio State Fair has been a spotted Holstein called, simply, “Cowman.”

I admired the straightforward nature of the name.  The moniker told you everything you needed to know about the character.  It was just some guy — probably a teenager looking to make a few bucks during the summer break — walking around in a cheesy looking cow costume, getting his picture taken with Fair food-stoked kids at the behest of their doting parents.  Man + cow costume = Cowman.  Never mind that cows are, by definition, female, so that “Cowman” is a complete non sequitur.

This year the Fair organizers decided to have a Facebook contest to come up with a “better” name for Cowman.  The winning entry was “Butters.”  It’s not a bad name, with its dairy reference and its nod to South Park.  It’s definitely better than other possible options, like Elsie or Milkwad McCheese.  But I’ll miss the brutal simplicity of “Cowman.”  “Butters” just isn’t the same.

The Ohio State Fair is underway, incidentally, and runs through August 5.

The Monster Zinnias Of Cavendish Court

This year I planted multiple varieties of zinnias in our back beds.  One was called “State Fair Zinnias.”  Who could resist “State Fair Zinnias”?  But who would believe that State Fair Zinnias would turn out to be monstrously sized mutants that tower over our other flowers and sport enormous, block out the sun leaves and huge blooms?  These awesome beasts of the flower bed can easily exceed two feet in height before I trim them back.

I expected decent growth when I used potting soil with Scott’s Miracle-Gro in planting these flowers, but I never expected this.

The Aurora, Colorado Massacre And The Psychiatrist-Patient Privilege

Should the communications between a psychiatrist and her patient be privileged from disclosure to others, and are there instances when the psychiatrist should be obligated to report a potentially violent patient to the authorities?

The issue has arisen because news has leaked that James Holmes, the accused shooter in the Aurora, Colorado The Dark Knight Rises massacre, was seeing a psychiatrist.  It is reported that Holmes sent the psychiatrist, who is employed by the University of Colorado where Holmes had been a neuroscience student, a package of information that supposedly included a notebook that described a massacre.  Authorities seized a copy of the package, and Holmes’ defense lawyers are arguing that it should not be disclosed because it is a confidential communication between a patient and his psychotherapist.

Psychiatrist-patient communications are generally viewed as privileged, protected from disclosure, and not admissible as evidence in a trial.  The concept underlying the privilege is that we want psychiatric patients to be honest about their thoughts and impulses so they can be effectively treated; the argument is that if patient communications are routinely disclosed, patients will not be forthcoming when they talk to their psychiatrists and their treatment will suffer as a result.

However, the precise contours of the privilege are not clear, and even experts disagree about how it applies in specific circumstances.  It is generally accepted that if a patient communication contains a clear threat about committing an imminent violent act against the patient or others, the psychiatrist should alert the authorities.  But what is a clear threat of imminent action, as opposed to the delusional rantings of a disturbed individual who is undergoing treatment?  And if the communication is about past bad acts, should it always be privileged — even if it might help police solve crimes?

Horrible events like the Aurora shootings often produce unpredictable fallout that can touch and change different areas of the law.  In this case, one unexpected focus of attention might be the rules applicable to psychiatrists and their obligations to report the violent ravings of their patients.

The Economy Slows, And The Anxiety Grows

We got more bad economic news today.  The Commerce Department reported that the economy grew by 1.5 percent in the second quarter of 2012.

These figures are often revised, and perhaps this announcement will be modified in the future.  And 1.5 percent growth is better than flat-lining, or actual economic contraction, but that’s about the extent of the positive things you can say about this news.  Such economic growth is measly by any measure.  It’s not enough expansion to create real employment opportunities for the new people entering the job market — good luck finding work if you are someone who graduated from college this year — and it basically means that the economy is in a stall.  We’ll just have to hope that the stall ends with upward movement, and not a nose dive into new, double-dip recessionary territory.

I know some people think that Republicans are rooting for economic failure.  I’d like to think that isn’t the case — people are really suffering, and are growing increasingly worried — but I also think it is irrelevant.  Whether Republicans are hoping for economic failure or not, economic failure is what we currently have.  If there are rays of hope on the national horizon, outside of pockets of growth like the natural gas-fueled boom occurring in eastern Ohio, I haven’t seen them.

Striking That Delicate Balance In Naming Toilet Paper

During a recent stay at a hotel I noticed that the spare roll of toilet paper in the bathroom was an institutional brand called Subtle Touch.  It made me think of the challenges involved in naming toilet paper.

Toilet paper, of course, has a crucial hygienic purpose that involves a tender area.  The name should indicate that it can get that important job done, but with an appropriate nod toward comfort.  Equally important, the name should suggest that duality without straying too far in one direction or the other.

Consider Lava hand cleaner, for example. The ’60s commercial for Lava featured a square-fingered man’s hand stained with God knows what — grease?  oil?  the entrails of animals? — being washed with the product, which was made with pumice.  The man’s hands came out clean and as pink as a monkey’s butt, but the ad probably scared off most people in the hand soap market.  Lava might appeal to car mechanics and slaughterhouse workers who wanted to be spic and span for the dinner table, but having our skin abraded by stone dust whenever we lathered up was too much for the rest of us.

I’m not sure Subtle Touch really hits the proper mark on the toilet paper-naming spectrum.  Who wants subtlety, given the essential function of toilet paper?  Other potential toilet paper names that would stray too far toward the comfort end of the spectrum:  Angel’s Breath, Seaside Breeze, and Wispy Wonder.  On the other hand, I doubt that many people would be tempted to buy toilet paper called Scour Power!, Scrubbington’s, or Rump Blaster.

There’s a delicate balance to be struck.  Come to think of it, Delicate Balance would be a pretty good name for this very special product.

A New Weather Name, Awfully Late In The Game

Until a month ago, when severe thunderstorms and strong wind gusts devastated electric power service to most of Columbus, I’d never heard of a “derecho.”

It turns out that a derecho is a line of thunderstorms that produces widespread, damaging “straight line” winds.  Today, when another black, gusty thunderstorm cell rolled through town, people were talking about derechos again.  (Whether Columbusites are pronouncing the word correctly is another question.)

Isn’t it kind of late in human history to be coming up with new names for weather?  I’ve lived in the Midwest for most of my life, and severe thunderstorms are not uncommon during the summer months.  Until now, they’ve just been called severe thunderstorms, which seems like a more than adequate descriptive phrase.  Why not stick with that, rather than coming up with an unpronounceable, unknown term?

And while we’re at it, why do new weather systems always get Spanish-sounding names?  First El Nino, then La Nina, now derecho.  It sounds like the name of John Wayne’s ranch in The Sons of Katie Elder, or perhaps the moniker for a new Taco Bell faux Mexican concoction.  A derecho probably would involve browned meat, smoked bacon, Velveeta cheese, habanero sauce, and ranch dressing, sprinkled with crushed Doritos and wrapped in a soft taco shell.

No doubt some college student would drive hundreds of miles, through countless severe thunderstorm cells, to give it a try.

Calling With Another Update On That GM Investment

Hello, Mr. Webner.  It’s one of your friendly securities analysts at the Treasury Department.  Hot enough for you?  Ha, ha!

What?  Oh, no!

Yes, Mr. Webner.  It’s me again.  Time for you to get another update on that GM investment.  This time, I’ve got good news and bad news.  Which would you rather hear first?

The bad news, I suppose.

Well, I’m sorry to say that GM’s stock price has hit another new low.  GM has lost more than one-third of its market value since it went public less than two years ago.  We’re shocked.  We thought those great commercials with likable folks talking about how smart they were to buy Chevy Volts would really cause a boom in sales.

So, how much have we lost?

Between the plummeting value of our GM stock and the tax breaks we’ve given the company to try to help it recover from decades of mismanagement, bad decisions, and short-sighted labor contracts, we’re out $35 billion.

$35 billion?!?!  But I thought my Senator was boasting about what a smart move it was to bail out GM?

He’s saying it saved jobs, Mr. Webner.  They just happen to be jobs that have been heavily subsidized by your tax dollars.

Wait — you said you had bad news and good news.  What’s the good news?

Oh, yes!  Right now, it looks like President Obama, the Democrat-controlled Senate, and the Republican-controlled House won’t be able to agree on an extension of the Bush era tax cuts.  So, after the end of the year everyone’s taxes will probably increase, and we’ll have even more of your money to invest!

Click.