Author Archives: The Old Wolf

Happy Anniversary to me.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Wordpress

I am told that today is my 4th anniversary as a registered WordPress user, although I’ve only been keeping up this particular blog for just under a year now (I began on the 26th of April, 2012). I’ve appreciated the responses and input that I have gotten from my readers and look forward to continuing in the same vein, and perhaps even expanding my reach.

I have many  more essays percolating in the back of my mind, and will pour them out when they are ready. Actually, a lot of them are like cowboy coffee:

  1. Add 1 lb. coffee to a bucket of water.
  2. Set on the fire to boil.
  3. Toss in a horseshoe.
  4. When the horseshoe floats to the top, it’s ready.

Which reminds me of a poem that I have known for about 40 years. I will share with you here, for no other reason than that it occurred to me:

The Indispensable Man
(by Saxon White Kessinger)

Sometime when you’re feeling important;
Sometime when your ego’s in bloom;
Sometime when you take it for granted,
You’re the best qualified in the room:
Sometime when you feel that your going,
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions,
And see how they humble your soul.

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining,
Is a measure of how much you’ll be missed.
You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop, and you’ll find that in no time,
It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example,
Is to do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There’s no indispensable man.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

A very pleasing Logo.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Some time ago I posted about the Hitachi logo:

Hitachi Logo

 

This last week I happened across an English-based logo that pleased me just as much and for precisely the same reasons:

p-brane-ep-4fe86d84f3970

 

 

 

Others who are more savvy about modern music will recognize the logo for Plaid; It’s been about 4 years since I took a road trip with my youngest son, and that’s when I learned almost everything I know about current bands, so I have no idea who they are other than what I read. But I like their logo.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Easter Eggs of the Third Kind

Posted on by The Old Wolf

In the Udvar-Hazy extension of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, sits the model UFO that was used in filming “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

close encounters mothership

This is what it looked like in the film.

Close Encounters Model

And here is the model. This is one of my pictures – an official shot can be seen at the Smithsonian’s website.

The model was made by Columbia Pictures Corp. in 1977 from wood, plastic and metal; its dimensions are 63″ x 38″ and it weighs 400 lbs. It is a beauty to behold in its own right, but it gets even more fun when you start to pay closer attention.

The builders had a lot of fun putting this thing together; looking closely at the model, one can find tiny hidden smaller models which are not seen when the Mother Ship appears in the film. These models were added by the construction crew as internal “jokes.” They include a Volkswagen bus, a submarine, a tie fighter, the R2-D2 android, a U.S. mailbox, an aircraft, and a small cemetery plot.

I wasn’t able to get shots of all of the Easter eggs, but here are the ones I could get clean pictures of:

Close Encounters Model 2

R2-D2

Close Encounters Model 3

Airplanes

Close Encounters Model 4

Cemetery

Close Encounters Model 5

Tie Fighter

HPIM0701

VW Bus sandwiched in the gap. (This picture by Vincegamer over at the Cool Mini or Not forum)

Only R2-D2 was visible in the film itself:

1734.full

Little things like this make a film even more fun than it already is.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

This is not a world that works for everyone.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

According to an article by by David Cay Johnston posted at Taxanalysts.com, the average adjusted gross income for 90% of American wage earners grew only $59.00 from 1966 to 2011, while the top 1% of the top 1% saw income growth equaling $18.4 million dollars. Put that in a graph, and it looks like this:

Income Gain

Screw whole bunches of that.

From the article:

“In 2011 entry into the top 10 percent, where all the gains took place, required an adjusted gross income of at least $110,651. The top 1 percent started at $366,623.

The top 1 percent enjoyed 81 percent of all the increased income since 2009. Just over half of the gains went to the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and 39 percent of the gains went to the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent.

Ponder that last fact for a moment — the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, those making at least $7.97 million in 2011, enjoyed 39 percent of all the income gains in America. In a nation of 158.4 million households, just 15,837 of them received 39 cents out of every dollar of increased income.

That extreme concentration, however, is far from the most jaw-dropping figure that can be distilled from the new Saez-Piketty analysis. That requires a long-term comparison of those at or near the top with the bottom 90 percent.

In 2011 the average AGI of the vast majority fell to $30,437 per taxpayer, its lowest level since 1966 when measured in 2011 dollars. The vast majority averaged a mere $59 more in 2011 than in 1966. For the top 10 percent, by the same measures, average income rose by $116,071 to $254,864, an increase of 84 percent over 1966.

Plot those numbers on a chart, with one inch for $59, and the top 10 percent’s line would extend more than 163 feet.

Now compare the vast majority’s $59 with the top 1 percent, and that line extends for 884 feet. The top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, whose 2011 average income of $23.7 million was $18.4 million more per taxpayer than in 1966, would require a line nearly five miles long.”

These numbers show without equivocation that the rich truly are getting richer at mind-boggling speed, while the rest of us are getting poorer by the year. It almost makes me want to support forced redistribution of wealth, but even these disgusting statistics can’t quite get me there. But somehow the playing field needs to be leveled, because inequalities of this nature in the land of the free and the home of the brave will not long endure without some sort of massive social upheaval down the road.

I’m not an economist, so I don’t have the answers. I can only hope that there are people out there who still believe in a world that works for everyone, with no one left out, and who have the skills and insight to make a difference. For all of us.

The Old Wolf has spoken.