Altivo

No, I'm not talking about pool toys here.

This week I spent $13 to buy an old Versalog slide rule off EBay. I've wanted one for years, in fact since they were actually still being made. That would be around 1969 or 1970, when I was still in college. (For any readers too young to remember what a slide rule is, it's a mechanical calculating tool that works on logarithms. The slide rule was used by engineers and scientists through much of the 19th and 20th century and many of our architectural monuments and mechanical achievements were based on slide rule estimates and calculations. This includes early space flight experiments as well as things like the Empire State building and the Golden Gate bridge. Though it looks crude in comparison to a modern digital computer, the slide rule is still a useful tool. Unfortunately they aren't made any more (other than as novelty items perhaps) and no one learns to use them.

Anyway, the Versalog I acquired still has the leather protective case with the name of a former owner inscribed under the flap. The rule was very dirty, but it cleaned up well and I realigned the scales and cursor so it is usable. Then some historic research. This rule was made in April of 1962, so it is 51 years old this month. It sold new for about $29.95, which was a lot of money back then. Versalog was the "Cadillac" of slide rules according to most of the guys in my undergraduate classes. In fact it is a very good tool, well made and precise, and built to last with very little maintenance.

After a discussion with Gary about the equivalence of that $29.95 price in modern dollars, I went to an online calculator to figure the actual inflation rate. It turns out that $30 in 1962 had the same purchasing power as $231 today. Now I understand much better why my dad was so protective of his "good" slide rule that he kept in his work brief case and wouldn't let me or my brothers touch, let alone use.

Today that $231 is enough to buy groceries for Gary and myself, plus the food for our two dogs and three horses, for about two weeks. Because the inflation calculator is based on the Consumer Product Index, I assume the $30 in 1962 would have gone about as far. A professional grade slide rule was a substantial purchase back then, much more than a pocket calculator, even a scientific one, is today. In fact, you can buy a low end tablet computer for $200 now.

I do intend to use the Versalog for radio and electronics type calculations. I'll be treating it with a great deal more respect in light of this new awareness. It is a pleasant tool to handle, with a nice heft to it. The slide and cursor operate smoothly now that it has been cleaned, It is more than sufficiently accurate for analog electronics. In fact, we used slide rules in my college physics and astronomy classes to calculate much more complex equations. I could use a calculator of course, or a computer, but I like the connection to historic principles and the awareness of mathematical concepts that a slide rule engenders. And... no batteries required. No charger, no solar panel, nothing but a steady hand and a sharp eye.

With a surfeit of detectives aboard our heroes head back to the spot where they made their unscheduled stop the day before.

Latest draft here.

Word count: 17818

It snowed this morning. Everything melted as soon as it touched the ground, but visibility was definitely restricted for about an hour. Now the temperature is hovering just above freezing with more snow showers expected tomorrow.

I guess the markets took another nosedive on news from the Eurozone. Too bad. At this point the bankers have already stolen everything we have, so the value of those "averages" just represents the unhappiness of rich people who might have to give up one of their yachts or something. I'm at the point where investment bankers jumping to their deaths wouldn't bother me a bit. In fact, I'd stand around cheering to see who makes the biggest splat.

Something has to give. Neither politics nor finance are based on reality now. It's all a bunch of hot air.

So how much more garbage are Americans going to put up with before they start burning bankers at the stake or tearing down bank buildings brick by brick?

Beleaguered Bank of America obviously doesn't yet realize that its problems are caused by its own dishonesty and mismanagement, not by its millions of small depositors. How much bonus are they paying those execs who came up with the idea of charging $5 per month for the privilege of using a debit card?

These are, of course, the same people who have been promoting debit cards relentlessly for years. Telling you that checks are passé and that a debit card is more secure and costs them less to process so they can pass the savings on to you. Now that they've finagled changes in banking regulations to take away almost every advantage of the paper check system (no more returned checks, no more security, no more guarantees, no more paper statements...) they want to start charging you for using their preferred alternative.

Note: I am not a B of A customer and never will be. However, I am, through no fault of my own, now a Chase customer. I have no better thoughts about Chase, and have already begun looking for a smaller, more honest, and less costly place to do my banking. I had an account at First National Bank of Chicago, one of so many years' standing that my account number has only seven digits. I have kept it through repeated buy-outs and mergers as the bank changed names and management nearly once a year in the 21st century. But the arrogance of the giant banks and their total lack of interest in the needs of non-millionaire customers has gone much too far and it is time for all of us to scrape the dust of their corrupt establishments from our sandals and go somewhere else.

Such an odd coincidence that Bank of America's website suddenly became unreachable the day after their unilateral announcement, isn't it? They insist that it wasn't hackers, but all descriptions of the problem have DDOS written all over them in my opinion. They deserve worse than that, but the fact is, their customers don't deserve it. Whoever you are out there, interfering with B of A's network connections, you're hurting the innocent far more than you harm the guilty. Choose a different means of attack. An organized bank run would serve them right. Take your money out of the failing and corrupt institution and put it somewhere smaller where you can actually talk to a real person. (And not get charged for the privilege.) Or put it in a sock and bury it in your back yard, where it will earn every bit as much interest as Bank of America is likely to give you. And last time I checked, there are no service charges for using an old sock.

They're at it again. Last week wasn't enough, apparently.

So the markets drop like a ton of bricks while the radio is full of frantic advertisements trying to get you to "buy gold now" or "invest safely in bla-bla-bla." Folks, there are no such investments that are safe. All of that stuff is like pouring money into a casino. The house (in this case, the brokerages and agents) always wins, even as you lose. I think we've had quite enough of bankers walking away with millions of dollars in cash while our savings are frittered away uselessly. Just say no.

Bury your money in an old sock if you have to. It can't be any more risky than letting those guys have it.

Oh, and the latest news about inflation? Consumer prices rose half a percent in July. That's even after the government did everything they could to disguise the truth, fiddling and diddling with the figures and the way they are measured and calculated. Half a percent. Continued over the length of a year, that's an inflation rate of 6% which is NOT small and certainly is not a case of "no inflation" which is what Bernanke keeps lying to us about. There certainly is inflation, and even if it isn't enough to hurt millionaires, it is becoming quite painful for us ordinary folks.

All the answer we are getting is "Let them eat cake." Someone really is asking for very ugly things to start happening right here in the US.

Air conditioning is out. Probably a wire chewed by rodents again. They get into the housing of the outdoor compressor and wreak havoc. Everything we've tried for keeping them out has achieved nothing.

It becomes clear that the repeated claims that "the recession is over" have been wishful thinking. Looking at the figures for the past two years, things look just flat. Consumer prices are creeping upward, with the exception of real estate, of course. Median incomes are declining. Unemployment is at the highest it has been since the 1960s, with only 58% of US adults employed full time. The weekly and monthly dithering about unemployment claims is misleading, both because it is based on a lot of conjecture about "who is looking for work" and the reporting methods are dubious. However, looking at those figures for the past two years, the "growth" in jobs has failed to keep up the the growth in population. This is not real growth, but just wishful thinking.

The rosiest pictures are being painted by the folks who stand to gain the most if Americans start risking their money in the stock markets again: the financial bankers and the brokers. Talk about letting a fox guard the henhouse!

Well, as much as we ever are here in the hinterlands. Our power mains came back on at about 4 am, between 20 and 21 hours after they went out. At the height of the outage, the power utility says that there were between 800 and 900 thousand customers without power. At the 24 hour mark, there were still 350 thousand off line, and now at the 36 hour mark, it stands at 300 thousand. They say they will not have power completely restored to all customers until Saturday or later.

Commonwealth Edison has been deferring maintenance on its lines, poles, and distribution system for many decades. They do no inspections, no preventive maintenance, and no improvements until or unless a failure occurs. Their profitability continues to rise, since after all they have a captive market. An incentive to allow customers to "choose their own provider" is a thinly veiled scam, since CE remains the physical provider who gets to charge for billing and distribution, and can raise those rates at will since the state legislature lacks the guts to say "no."

Meanwhile they lobbied the legislature into approving an arrangement to make taxpayers (who may not even be CE customers) foot most of the bill for major improvements to their distribution network. They could have done this themselves just by planning ahead and reinvesting a portion of their huge annual profits into those improvements, but why bother when they can buy a few lawmakers for cheap and get them to pay for it with tax money? Fortunately the governor announced that he will veto this legislation, at least "for now."

It's the American way, of course. Soak the taxpayer to increase corporate profits that go into the pockets of a few wealthy individuals, and pretend it is all for the common good. If anyone questions it, just wave your cigar in the air and promise that it will "create jobs" and they'll shut up. It doesn't create jobs. At least, not permanent ones with real benefits like paid time off and health insurance. Instead it ultimately helps to eliminate jobs or ship them overseas, and further lines the pockets of a few executives and wealthy shareholders. When will Americans wise up and realize that they are being eaten alive by fat cats? Most seem as impervious to this realization as H. G. Wells' Eloi were immune to the realization that the Morlocks were using them as a food crop.

On this date exactly 100 years ago, a factory fire in a New York City high rise building took the lives of 146 workers. Most were young women, in their teens or early twenties, Jewish or Italian immigrants struggling to help their families. Factory work at that time was the sort of thing from which the term "sweatshop" is derived. A working day was ten or twelve hours long, and the work week was six days, though Saturday might be shortened a bit. A few places gave Jewish employees Saturday off but demanded that they work on Sunday to make up for it.

Anyway, the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was one such sweatshop. Employees operated sewing or cutting machines to make ladies' blouses ("shirtwaists") and occupied the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the building. It was a Saturday, between 4 and 5 pm, and the workers were just finishing up their day when a fire broke out. The exact cause was never determined, but it spread quickly through all three floors. In the panic, the outside fire escape collapsed, dumping many to their deaths. Two inside stairwells failed to save lives because the doors were kept locked. Ostensibly this was to keep union organizers from entering the shop, and to keep workers from leaving the area during the day. By the time a supervisor with the key was located, the stairwell thus opened was already filled with smoke and unusable. Some sought to escape the flames by jumping to their deaths from broken windows. Most suffocated or were trampled without ever getting to the roof or a window.

The city fire department arrived too late, and had no ladders to reach above the sixth floor in any case. The tragic aftermath left New York stunned and grieving for weeks, and some of the bodies were not officially identified until nearly a hundred years later, but were buried as "unknown" under a memorial to the workers who died that day.

It's a terrible story. The factory owners were fined for locking the stairwells (all of $75 or so) and ultimately a court awarded some money to the families of each identified victim, but nothing really large.

The emotional and political impact of this event, however, turned around legal attitudes toward unions and collective bargaining in the US. ILGWU, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, came into its own after that and was quickly followed by other worker negotiating groups and legal representative groups. Laws were passed recognizing the right of workers to join unions and to delegate negotiating rights to such unions. The courts eventually recognized the right of workers to bargain and to go on strike against an employer who violated contractual agreements or refused to negotiate in good faith.

For most of the 20th century, labor rights were accepted and recognized, though sometimes grudgingly. Workers received fair wages, profit sharing benefits, leave time with pay, and more reasonable work weeks. Yes, you can thank the labor unions for the concept of the "weekend." There was no such thing in the 19th century or earlier. (Just Sunday, which was often only a half day off to attend church.)

Now, on the hundredth anniversary of that ugly fire, we see politicians, employers, and even working voters trying to take away collective bargaining rights and void the contracts of public workers in an increasing number of states. They have forgotten the lessons of history, and seek to return to the old ways, when it was "every man for himself" and "dog eat dog" in the workplace, and employers could demand whatever they chose and kick an employee out without justification if she dared to question them. Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and New Hampshire are all trying to invalidate state employees' work agreements and bargaining rights.

OK, you assholes who voted for these tea party goons, sit there and feel smug about it. But guess what? When they're done stripping the public employees of their bargaining rights, benefits, and pensions, they won't stop there. Remember that the tea party doesn't stand for individual freedom from taxes so much as it stands for reduced regulation and taxation of corporate business. Private sector workers will be next, and no amount of union contract or representation will help. When they come for you, there will be no one left to complain. Just remember that when it happens, morons. You asked for it. You begged to be trampled into the mud and treated like manure for the benefit of capitalist profit that goes to the hyperwealthy and stays with them.

Economic recovery? There's no recovery. Sure retail sales are up. But did you check to see what's selling? Luxury goods, that's what. Nieman-Marcus is doing fine. Walmart is losing money because rich people don't shop there, and the rest of us can't afford to buy much. About 20% of the US population accounts for 70% or more of the discretionary spending. Those people are the wealthy, who have felt little pinch in this recession because they still got their million dollar bonuses and other perks, even after running their corporate asses right into the ground. These are the people the tea party really represents. They don't want to pay taxes. They don't want a government that might actually regulate their greed or business practices, or catch them in their frauds. They want to be able to rob their customers and employees with impunity. Think about this before you vote again for one of these so-called Republicans who are really nothing but carpet baggers. They haven't even as much heart as Ebenezer Scrooge had before he was visited by those three ghosts.

More trouble than they're worth. For whatever reason, when my card was renewed this time they completely changed the card number. This means I have to go around to a dozen places that have it on file and correct the card number, etc. It also means I no longer have the number memorized and it will take me a while to correct that. It's been the same for at least eight years, now it's completely different.

I suppose next they'll insist on changing my bank account number. That one's been the same for more than 25 years, I'm sure.

Gloomy all day, still heavy overcast, thunderstorms expected again after midnight and for most of tomorrow and tomorrow night, apparently. Things could be floating here soon.

On the bright side, daffodils are popping up, six inches tall in some areas. No flowers just yet, but soon I'm sure. A few crocuses are open already. We're going to plant some peas and lettuce this week, I think.

What you expect more on a Monday? Too bad, that's all there is tonight.

There is nothing rational about it. Price of unleaded climbed to $2.87 in Harvard about three weeks ago and there it sits. The new station associated with the supermarket in town is selling for $2.79 but they are undoubtedly eager to attract new customers.

Friday when I left work, those were the prices. Got to Woodstock to have dinner with Gary, and the price there was $2.82 at several stations. Woodstock is often a nickel lower than Harvard, so I wasn't too surprised, though I'd hoped to see it lower still.

Today I went to Marengo for groceries, and the price at the Marathon along the way was $2.71. Too low to pass up, and I was down to a half so I stopped and filled the tank. Went to the supermarket, got my groceries, and on the way home less than an hour later, the same Marathon station had lowered its price another two cents to $2.69. I fully expect that the price in Harvard on Monday will still be $2.87, because those guys are the first to raise prices and the absolute last to lower them. That's why I don't buy gas in Harvard, even though I pass their stations every day, twice a day. Once again, that's a difference of 16 cents per gallon, over a distance of only 15 miles, and 11 cents per gallon between Marengo and Woodstock, which is only nine miles.

Thinking of going with Gary to an Irish "session" tomorrow, or what was supposed to be a session though it may not be in fact. Lots of other stuff I should be doing, but I'm in a bad mood over a couple of things I don't want to mention specifically, and having trouble keeping focus.

Fog was forming at sunset. Too dark out to tell now, but I'll bet we have heavy fog come morning.

I received a mail order catalog this week from Jameco Electronics, a California-based supplier of computer parts and various electronic bits that are used by both computer and radio experimenters. I've used them for years because they accept small orders without tacking on a huge service fee, unlike many of the other companies who stock what I want. This catalog, however, looks very different on the outside. Instead of featuring some kind of parts display on the cover, it has a full page black and white photo taken by Dorothea Lange in 1933, showing a soup kitchen line on San Francisco's waterfront at the height of the Great Depression.

Sure enough, where there's usually a brief sales talk on page one pushing some new item, they credit the photo (title: "White Angel Breadline") and go on to say that like most of us, their company has felt the economic impact of this recession. The surprise, and something that seems unusual for many American corporations, is that they committed to avoiding lay offs among their employees if at all possible, and have so far succeeded. How? By cutting the salaries of top management, which certainly seems an appropriate first step to me. Those are the people who can best afford to take a major cut, and should be willing to do so to show their commitment to the company's goals and support for the employees who keep their operations going.

I have no reason to think they are just making this up. If true, then I have one more reason to continue to give them my business over others who may have slightly lower prices, but have shown less visible concern for the integrity of their operations and the security of their employees.

Alas, the opposite seems to be true of many libraries in our consortium. Most are trapped in a budget process that is controlled by their city government, and small towns are really feeling a pinch now as they lose tax revenues but still have to provide police, fire, and other services to the same size population. Unfortunately, many of them seem to be viewing their libraries as dispensible. So far, I can knock on wood for Harvard, which has not gone so far as to view the library tax funds as an unprotected source they can plunder at will.

Gloomy, drizzly weather. Supposed to be worse tomorrow, though we are still expecting a hay delivery in the morning. We hope to get it unloaded right away and send the empty wagon back. I expect about 150 bales. We will need three more loads that size before we feel secure for the winter.