Category Archives: Essays

Electronics for Dummies

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Or, “Oh for simpler days.”

When I was 8, I had a big brother for a very brief time. He was 14, and awesome in the 1950’s “Homer Price” sort of way. He built his own ham radio equipment, had all the soldering tools and an oscilloscope, and had a cool slingshot, and did really neat things at Hallowe’en, and I worshiped him. I regret sincerely that that particular domestic situation didn’t last.

But it was thinking about radios that got me going.

This image appeared over at Teresa Burritt’s Frog Blog, and I got all misty. I remember looking at all of brother’s electronic bits and pieces, and was fascinated by the pretty stripes on the resistors – at 8, I would not have been able to grasp the concepts of resistance, nor appreciate the mnemonic power of  “Bad Boys Rape Our Good Girls But Violet Gives Willingly”. Then a career got in the way, and then technology exploded by several orders of magnitude, and now I’d be about as useful repairing a circuit board as an Australopithecus with a Rolls-Royce jet engine.

But there’s something about going back to basics.

When my son was 12 or thereabouts, a “build your own radio” project happened. I don’t’ recall if he asked me, or I did it just to show him how it was done, or it was some scout thing or other – but a radio got built out of some junk, and it worked.

This was pretty much the design. A toilet paper roll, some copper wire, a headset, a germanium diode, and some assorted junk from around the house, and we were able to listen to KSL and some other local AM stations. I don’t even know if ours had a condenser on it, and I couldn’t tell you why it would be needed or not – I’m still that ignorant.

Life is full of choices, and every choice has prices and benefits. There are so many things on my bucket list, I don’t know if I’ll ever get to all of them. But understanding enough about electronics to be able to do repair work on my little Conn Theaterette organ is one of them.

This one’s not mine, but it looks just the same. All component parts, tubes, you name it. With the spec sheets and my trusty voltmeter, I should be able to keep the thing in top running condition… if I only understood the basics. Which I don’t. Not having studied my Agrippa. Hey, Macarena! Wait, there goes the ADD thing again…

But the point is, I could still learn. Nowadays, circuit boards and electronic parts are so cheap to manufacture that nobody bothers to repair things any more – you just throw it away, and buy a new one. But the principles on which they are built are no different. This voltage in, that voltage out – watts, ohms, condensers, capacitors – they’re all still there, just tiny. And, there are things out there to help.

While things like this are still to be had on eBay,

I think a kit like this would be a good place to start,

along with something like this:

And the parts are out there. With audiophiles becoming more and more numerous, the manufacture of vintage tubes has experienced a resurgence. Folks like me may never be able to tell the difference, but there are people who swear by component sound over microcircuitry, just like some folks will never give up their vinyl.

So hope is not lost. I’ve got too much on my plate now to think about it, but this blog entry will be a good reminder for me when things calm down a little.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

 

The Thunder Mountain Monument

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Driving from the Great Salt Lake valley to the Bay Area last year, I chanced to look left as I passed Imlay, Nevada and something I had seen several times out of the corner of my eye on previous trips caught my attention. This time I decided to stop. What I found both shocked and astonished me.

There in the middle of the Nevada desert, at 40° 39’36.35″ N, 118° 07’56.13″ W, sits the Thunder Mountain Monument, a testament to the bizarre vision of David Van Zant, who self-identified as a Creek Indian and began calling himself Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder.

The Thunder Mountain Main House

Main House, Rear Side

Images on the Compound

There is an official Thunder Mountain Website which has a wealth of pictures and information about Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder and his son, Dan Van Zant, who is now the owner and official steward for the monument, but what it lacks is an information sheet which was posted near the entrance. I took the liberty of scanning this and converting it to text, and I present it below, because to me it says more about the spirit behind the monument than anything else I have seen. With the exception of a few spelling corrections, the document is exactly as I first saw it at the monument.

Thunder Mountain Indian Monument

1. What is it?

The most frequently asked question travelers stopped by the sheer oddity of this conglomeration of junk secured by cement is: “What is this?”

This is a very good question as Thunder Mountain is odd and strange looking. This question is the best question anyone could ask, as the answer is the reason for its existence. Why would anyone spend their retirement years working from daylight to dark seven days a week to build what many view as blight on the landscape?

This is a Monument to the suffering and plight of the American Indians. The next question is usually:

2. Why Did He Build It? (Thunder Mountain Monument)

The answer that I give everyone who asks this question is probably incomplete in that it can only be partially understood after gaining insight into the passion and motivation behind the artist who built this Monument.

Thunder Mountain Indian Monument was built by Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder as a Monument to the suffering and the plight of the American Indian at the hand of the White invaders. (Note: I emphasize invader and not settler). The Monument was built to be a reminder to all who visit of the price that was paid by a race of people who were marked for genocide in the name of ”Manifest Destiny.” Close inspection of the Monument will reveal over 200 sculptures that will depict Indians of all tribes, age, status and sex. You will see in side the double walls a sculpture of a settler that is shooting an Indian woman. You will see the cumulative years of agony and despair on the faces of the old Indian Chiefs. You will see the misery in the faces of the Indian little children. You will experience the arrogance on the part of the White Invader that they were a superior race predestined by their God to kill and destroy another race of human beings.  Many of the invaders as in the days of the great crusades in Europe justified their indiscriminate murders in the name of their God. The predominate justification for this wholesale genocide was “If these savages can’t be converted to Christianity then they need to die.”

White Man’s Trash:

The Monument is build from a collage of cast off items that would be described by white society as junk. This “junk” was collected in a radius of 50 miles of the Monument. In the Indian culture they utilized everything that was provide to them by the Great Spirit. What the Great Spirit provided Chief Rolling Thunder in building the Monument was “White Man’s Trash.” It should be noted that Chief Rolling Thunder didn’t have the money to buy materials so he used what he could find. The only material that was purchased was cement. Thunder is also making a strong ecological statement in that we are polluting our planet with cast away items. I find it ironic that the same people who would like to see Thunder Mountain destroyed, claiming that it is an eyesore, are the same people who polluted the landscape with their junk and trash. (White Man’s Trash)

  • Old car parts
  • Bottles
  • Windows made from car windows
  • Discarded typewriter
  • Much more

These critics were around when Thunder was building the Monument and they are still around today. These are also the same people who, instead of appreciating the powerful statement and the artwork, would vandalize and destroy.

More White Man’s Trash:

The Monument to the American Indians is intended to tell a story of their suffering in the wake of 400 years of persecution and genocide. The attitude of the white European invaders is also evidence of “White Man’s Trash.” This could also be described in a biblical manner as “The human condition” which, it is obvious, the early Christian invaders failed to recognize in themselves.

  • Hate
  • Attitude of superior intellect
  • Disrespect for human life
  • Arrogance

It is obvious that the White invaders’ attitude was that their religion was better and that they were doing the will of God. This is justification for their evil? (Read the book Manifest Destiny). This land that was provided to them by God and it was their right to take it by any means possible.

Genocide is White Man’s Trash:

I realize there are many people who will say “come on now, maybe the Indians got a raw deal but it wasn’t genocide.”
The definition of genocide is the systematic extermination of a race of people.

Just look at the similarities between Nazi and the White European invaders and judge for yourself.

  1. Both felt they were justified as superior human beings
  2. 6 Million Jew exterminated 12 Million Indians exterminated            .
  3. Both had concentration camps ( What would you call a Indian reservation)
  4. Jews and Indians were de-humanized
  5. Poison food was used on the Jew and the Indians
  6. Starvation was used to control
  7. Jews had their property confiscated as did the Indians
  8. Sterilization of Indian women
  9. Germ warfare was used on the Jews and the Indians (Indians were given blankets with smallpox which killed millions.) A quote from Colonel Henry Bouquet at Fort Pitt is: “You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians with smallpox by means of blanket, as well as to try every other method, that can serve to extirpate this execrable race!“
  10. Both the Nazis and the European invaders had slogans as justification for murder:
  • Nazis – “Nits Make Lice.”
  • European invader – “The only good injun is a dead injun.”

To call what was done to the American Indians anything less than genocide is like the Germans trying to deny the holocaust.

Indian Genocide Reminders:

All anyone needs to do is to read the account of just a few of the massacres:

  • Sand Creek Colorado 1864
  • Wounded Knee

3. How long did it take to build the Monument?

This is a frequently asked question and when my Father (Rolling Mountain Thunder) was asked this, he would often reply “It will never be finished. It is an ongoing work and after I’m gone someone else may finish it.” However, the work on the Monument started in 1968 and continued for 7 years until 1975. Work on the other buildings would continue from 1975 until 1983.

4. What happened in 1983 that made him stop building?

There was an arson fire that burned the 3 story Hostel and Indian school to the ground. This fire also destroyed two cabins, a 40′ by 60′ work shop, a visitor’s center bath house and an underground sweat house. The buildings standing today which were spared are:

  • The Main Monument Building
  • Round House
  • Chicken House

5. Did Rolling Thunder Build the Monument alone?

Thunder was the artist and the architect but he had a lot of help with the labor involved. His children and wife helped with the gathering of materials, the mixing and carrying of the cement. He also received some help from hippies that would stop and stay for a day or some times weeks. Two people stayed for as many as 5 years. I only recall the first names. One was a very quiet and hard-working young man named Dale. The other was an outgoing and friendly young girl of about 20. (I think she was called Tomat). Visitors were allowed to participate in the construction effort and Thunder would provide food for those who would work. He had some basic rules that if not followed would result in being asked to leave. The rules were:

  • Show respect one for another
  • No drugs allowed
  • No open sex
  • If you don’t work, you don’t eat

There are many stories about people who created problems and how Thunder dealt with these people.

6. Was Thunder a Spiritual or Religious Man?

This question is often asked after people have looked at the art work. It is obvious that Thunder had a deep belief in a higher power when you read some of the many writings scrawled on the walls and grounds.

Thunder didn’t like traditional organized religion and often had negative things to say about traditional Christian organizations.

This I believe is because he saw how the Indians were treated in the name of Christianity. Thunder had is own brand of spirituality and often referred to the Great Spirit or Mother Earth.

7. Can We See The Inside of The Monument?

The inside of the Monument is not open to the public at this time. This is due to the unsafe nature of the building. We have pictures of the inside of the Monument on our web site by Peggy Pontenot that will provide you with a sense of what is inside the Monument. Most of the art work is visible from the outside. Thunder and his family lived inside the Monument so it was never intended for visitors to come inside.

8. Who Owns Thunder Mountain Monument?

Often people think that the Monument is owned by the State of Nevada. Actually, Thunder Mountain is a State of Nevada Historical site but that is the only connection with the State of Nevada.

This property is owned by Thunder’s oldest son Daniel Van Zant, a 65 year old retired supermarket account executive from California.

9. Who Maintains The Monument?

The Monument is maintained through the free will donations of the visitors to the Monument and volunteers.

10. What Is The Future For Thunder Mountain Monument?

If you were to ask Rolling Mountain Thunder this question I would suspect his answer to be that it is in the hands of the Great Spirit. It is the hope and desire of the family of Thunder that the Monument is preserved and continues to be open to the general public. The family continues to investigate ways to accomplish this objective.

11. Where Can I Get More Information On Thunder Mountain?

You may learn more about Thunder Mountain by researching the Thunder Mountain website at www.thundermountainMonument.com

You may also contact Dan Van Zant with your questions.

Dan Van Zant
9570 Swede Creek Road
Palo Cedro, CA 96073
Email: dvanzant@frontier.com

Was Van Zant a Native American? There is no way of telling for certain at this point, but his spirit was in tune with the realities of history, and so to me his ancestry is irrelevant. The monument he created is rustic and crude in the extreme, yet it conveys a powerful sense of the indescribable indignity that was perpetrated upon the autochthones by the arriving Europeans. Whether they were settlers or invaders depends on which side you talk to; since the white man came rolling across the land in waves more numerous than the sands of the sea or the stars of the sky, they were the ones who wrote the histories, and we who dwell here now give very little thought to the plight of the surviving natives.

It is, when one looks at it from a human standpoint (and not seen through a lens of money, power, weapons, or “manifest destiny,”) an insult so great as to make it impossible to repair; what can be done about it, or what should be done about it at this point in history, is a bedeviling question, one which most inhabitants of this continent avoid answering by the convenient device of not bothering to think about it.

Visit this monument and you will find it impossible not to think about. On one of my previous trips across country, I returned home by way of a friend’s home in North Dakota, and took the opportunity to drop down and visit Devil’s Tower.

Devil’s Tower in the Sunrise

As I walked around the tower, feeling its walls and connecting with its massiveness, I was strongly impressed that I was on sacred ground; the many medicine bundles tied to tree branches around the base of the formation bear witness to the fact that it is still considered a holy place to many natives who still live in the area; the prayer bundles and flags represent the colors of the four cardinal directions as well as Mother Earth and Father Sky. In a very real sense, Thunder Mountain is also sacred ground, and it moved and pestered and disturbed me as I considered the message which can be read there by those with eyes to see and hearts to feel.

Medicine bundles

 

Medicine bundles

As Americans, the descendants of those who swept the natives off the land, we love movies like Dances with Wolves and Jeremiah Johnson, and we cluck our tongues with disapproval at the injustice, and then go home to our comfortable houses, never thinking again of the squalor, unemployment, alcoholism, despair, disenfranchisement and hopelessness that reigns supreme on the res. While some tribes have turned to operating casinos as a means of generating income, even that is a second-class enterprise, bringing with it the social ills associated with the gaming industry and of dubious benefit in the long run. By dint of army interventions, massacres, and an endless stream of broken treaties, the original inhabitants of North America (the South is another story altogether) were raped, and raped, and raped again.

Sunisup.tumblr.com posted a riveting animated gif file which shows the reduction in native landholdings over time, which I have brazenly stolen.

Quoted from the same blog:

“For those who do prefer dealing in numbers, here are some:

By 1881, Indian landholdings in the United States had plummeted to 156 million acres. By 1934, only about 50 million acres remained (an area the size of Idaho and Washington) as a result of the General Allotment Act* of 1887. During World War II, the government took 500,000 more acres for military use. Over one hundred tribes, bands, and Rancherias relinquished their lands under various acts of Congress during the termination era of the 1950s.
By 1955, the indigenous land base had shrunk to just 2.3 percent of its original size.

—In the Courts of the Conqueror by Walter Echo-Hawk”

The first and last frames of the animation, static for comparison:

Although an accurate census was impossible, reasonable estimates put the native population of the USA before the Europeans arrived in the vicinity of 12 million or more. by the 1800’s, that number was down 95% to around 250,000. The Jewish holocaust destroyed around 2/3 of the European population, and is universally regarded as genocide. Although the destruction of the United States indigenous population took 4 centuries to accomplish, the numbers are staggeringly worse, and yet many people still hesitate to use the word genocide to describe what took place here. Everyone laments the loss of thundering herds of bison numbered in the millions; no one seems to care about the human destruction that was taking place simultaneously.

The annexation of the land was ultimately the destruction of nations. The land was their mother, their father, their grocery store, their playground, and the source of their spiritual strength. Assimilation was impossible because of the nature of their culture. The white man didn’t even want the natives for labor, as they did the Africans – they just wanted them dead. In the end, that’s exactly what they got, and ceded to the remainder, for the most part, tiny patches of land barely capable of supporting a hunter-gatherer culture.

Early Indian Tribes, Culture Areas, and Linguistic Stocks (Click to enlarge)

Every tribe lost was a culture, and a language, and a way of looking at the universe. In the end, the losses to humanity were incalculable.

Moving Forward

While it’s fine to participate in intellectual exercises, the question remains: what is the right thing to do now, in the 21st century? The Indian fighters and mountain men are gone, the country has been claimed from coast to coast in the name of the crown, or of God, or of the Republic, those who are alive today are generations removed from the perpetrators of the genocide, and those who have been living here for hundreds of years also have rights. The best solution of all – something like Columbus and his crew’s arriving on Western shores, only to say “Oh, sorry! We didn’t know anyone was living here!” and going straight back home – is unfortunately not possible, except in the realm of Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch (a phenomenal read, if you’re interested).

We can’t go back; every white settler who has come here, and their descendants, can’t just pack up and go home, and give the land back to the tribes. Not being a sociologist, I’m not even sure what the right thing to do for the remainder of the once-numerous peoples might be. But I am sure of a few things.

More needs to be done, in the name of humanity.

  • We who claimed this land are responsible for the reduced economic and educational and spiritual status of our natives, and we owe them a hell of a lot more than they’re getting. While things are far from perfect, much has been done over the last 5 decades to lift the African population from second-class status, but now, as then, the Native Americans continue to be relatively invisible on society’s radar, and that’s not right.
  • We need to educate a new generation of human beings from the cradle up: bold, ethical leaders who will work to build a world that works, in the words of R. Buckminster Fuller, “for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” This is not pie in the sky; it’s possible. It may take another 3 centuries to achieve, but it needs to happen, and if we do nothing now it never will. We owe it to those who have gone before, and we owe it to our posterity. Such a world is my most pressing dream, and the reason that I am working to establish The Academy of Greatness. If anyone is able to repair the damage to the indigenous population and other small populations who were oppressed or destroyed by a larger, it will be people like this.

Šuŋgmánitu Tȟaŋka Tanika (The Old Wolf) has spoken.

In Search of the Missing Malt

Posted on by The Old Wolf

“Malted Milk.” The phrase used to be as common as “Ice Cream Sundae.” Now, you’re lucky if you can find a place that even knows what that is.

Walk into Wendy’s and ask for a malt, and they’ll probably serve you a blank stare. Explain what it is you want, and they’ll say, “Oh, you mean a Frostie.”

No, I most definitely don’t. If I want a filet mignon, don’t offer me a hot dog, just because they’re both meat. Although in the case of the hot dog, that’s questionable.

No, a Frostie is an artificial abomination concocted in the frozen heart of Satan himself, and that goes for every fast food joint that serves something similar, so don’t think I’m picking on Wendy’s.

Some places still offer them – Dairy Queen is one – but I’ll have to be honest: I have not recently had a malt anywhere that I could distinguish from a shake. They must dispense the malt with a salt shaker.

Malt.

It’s a powdered mixture of malted barley, wheat flour, and whole milk, which is evaporated until it forms a powder. It comes in two versions, diastatic (used by bakers to create a good crust on dough) which contains enzymes that convert starch into sugar, and non-diastatic malt which is used for flavoring.

Flavoring, do you hear me? That means you use more than a smidgen.

You know how Peter and Walter Bishop, and Olivia Dunham, and Colonel Broyles1 work? Yeah, their weird shit-o-meter starts at 9.5.

With a good malt, you start with at least a tablespoon and work up from there.

To find a good malt nowadays, you have to find a roadside shop that’s run by old-school people, not a major chain. Their shakes and malts will be made with real ice cream, not that Mogg-accursed soft hqiz that probably has more chemicals in it than your average shampoo. No, real ice cream, scooped from a tub; real whole milk, lovely natural flavorings, whole fruit, perhaps some real whipped cream, and real malt. Lots of it. As much as you ask for. And it will be made in something like this,

not extruded into a cup like the ejecta of some spawn of Tophet.

If you’re fortunate enough to find one of these, check the thickness of the final product. If they’re knights of the old code, the spoon (a metal one, please) will stand up straight.

I know where one or two of these are. One is a tiny ice-cream shack in Broadway, Virginia. Another is Mel’s Drive-in on Lombard Street in San Francisco. The others… well, I’m not saying. You’ll enjoy the hunt more if you find one yourself.

But now you know what to look for.

The Old Wolf has spoken, and now he’s drooling.

1If you’re not familiar with Fringe, you’re missing out. More, I cannot say lest I spoil the fun. Go buy the DVD’s and enjoy the ride. This season (V) is the last, but not because it wasn’t popular with its fans.

Know what you’re eating

Posted on by The Old Wolf

According to an article at Nation of Change, in three months, Californians will vote on Prop 37, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, and the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association is teaming up with Monsanto (in my opinion, the most evil company on earth) to block its passage. Now, I’m not one for hyper-regulation and nanny-state laws, but this is one I can get behind. One of my Facebook friends pointed me to justlabelit.org, and there I expressed my support for a GMO-food labeling effort. Here’s what I wrote to the FDA:

“Dear Commissioner Hamburg,

Europe has long been ahead of us in labeling, and rejecting, genetically modified foods. I’m personally not sure whether I trust GMO’s or not – the bottom line is that they haven’t been around long enough, and sufficient research on long-term effects of human and animal consumption of GMO’s has not been done. That said, I want a choice. I want to know if the food I am eating has been genetically tweaked, or if animal products were raised with GMO feeds. Please require foods to be so labelled. Yes, it’s a complex issue. Yes, it will cause administrative headaches, and probably result in increased prices in some areas. To me, it would be worth it for the opportunity to protect my health. Thank you.”

Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a knee-jerk, technology-is-bad, save-Mother-Gaia response. I love science, it amazes me and blinds me on a regular basis. Scientists worldwide are examining the issues of using genetic manipulation to increase food yields, and asking all the right questions about long-term effects. In my case, it’s just a gut-level sense of hesitation about injecting GMO’s into the food supply before all the data are in. The human genome is just so mind-blowingly complex, and for all the amazing progress that’s been made in the area of genetic manipulation, we’ve barely scratched the surface. At this point it seems the pinnacle of incautiousness to be injecting unknown factors into the human system, where one wrong change could possibly cause an unforeseen cascade reaction thousands of times more complex than an elaborate domino fall.

So yeah – let’s keep doing the science. Let’s see what we can do to feed the world and raise the human condition. But in the meantime, let’s also have the courtesy to let consumers know what they’re eating, so that they have a choice. The fact that food producers and distributors are putting their economic interests before the health of those who consume their products is mightily disturbing, and I join my voice with those who oppose their callous greed.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The Incredible Increasing Traffic Ticket

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Found at Divine Caroline

That’s right, you’re not seeing things. A basic $200 fine for not having proof of insurance almost quadruples in Sacramento County, with much of California using the same tactics to fill empty coffers, and other states doing likewise. And you thought King Einon’s road tax was bad.

The Orange County Register explains in detail where the fees go, but that’s not likely to make you feel any better.

“Soaking traffic violators for the cost of state programs has a long history in California.

The first penalty assessment was set in 1953 at a rate of $1 for every $20 of base fine. In those days, for example, a $60 fine would be subject to a $3 penalty assessment, for a total due of $63. The extra $3 went to pay for drivers’ education programs in schools.

The legislature apparently found this funding source irresistible. Over the years, penalty assessments have grown to $26 for every $10 of base fine. Today, a $20 fine is increased by $52 in penalty assessments.

But wait – there’s more. After the penalty assessments are tacked on, there is a 20 percent surcharge, or another $4 on a $20 base fine. On top of that, there is a court security fee of $30, plus the conviction assessment of $35. And don’t forget the $1 night court fee, which you pay whether you go to night court or not.

All together, the penalty assessments, fees and surcharge jack up the cost of a $20 ticket to $142.”

So for the love of Mogg’s holy grandfather, be careful out there. The law of averages states that you’ll probably get pulled over by a revenue-hungry officer for something at some point, whether you did anything wrong or not, but be careful and don’t give them the excuse they’re looking for.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Toxic Hoses

Posted on by The Old Wolf

I love to garden. And when you’re out working in the hot sun, there’s little that’s more refreshing than getting cancer a cold drink from the garden hose.

Wait, what?

Needed a new hose the other day, so I trotted down to the local hardware store to pick one up. Found a good-quality, non-kinking hose, and when I got home and started unpacking it, I saw something that disturbed me. A lot.

I hadn’t noticed this little “advertencia” on the front at all – notice how it’s not terribly accentuated. On the back was a new sticker added:

Lead? Harmful chemicals? In my hose? Even if I didn’t drink from it – which is beyond stupid – what makes these people think I’d want to spray that water on my veggies?

So I took the infernal thing back, and went looking for a drinking-water safe hose. Turns out the only thing I could find was a flimsy little marine/camper hose, and all the thing does is kink, kink, kink – but at least the water it dispenses is safe for human consumption. Nothing else was for sale… no other options.

I had been meaning to post about this for a while, when today I came across this article from Time magazine, and I saw that other people were thinking about it as well.

Thinking about the least common denominator in society, how likely is it that people are going to read these notices? I mean, I just barely happened to see them. I might have hucked the hose wrapping into the trash without a second thought, and I’ll bet most people do. And everybody drinks from a hose… I mean, sheesh – it’s what we do.

The irresponsibility of this is mind-boggling. I talked about it with my hardware store (they carry stuff from the DoIt suppliers, and that little font change is because otherwise it looks like “Dolt,” which based on the overall quality of that brand may actually be more appropriate) and they told me that’s all they can get. From where I sit, these products don’t belong on shelves anywhere. You can’t tell me that modern technology can’t manufacture a durable, kink-proof hose that’s not full of carcinogenic chemicals… it seems like sheer laziness and gross insouciance to me.

So if you weren’t aware of this, at least read the labels carefully the next time you bring home a garden hose, especially if you have little ones who will be playing in the garden. Do your research – there are choices out there. I sincerely doubt this is a matter of enough national importance to get our lawmakers to take time to look at, but that’s a shame – because they should – it’s a crime to market something so ubiquitously that you know is going to make people sick.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

You will breastfeed, and you will like it.

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Once again, RoboCop Bloomberg is on the rampage. His NYC campaign “Latch On NYC” is designed to increase the incidence of breastfeeding in New York hospitals.

Pause for breath here.

Breastfeeding is good. In fact, it’s pretty certain that it has significant benefits over bottle feeding. La Leche League has been encouraging new moms for decades, the research is out there, and I don’t need to recap it for you here. But the plain truth is, there are some moms that just can’t, for any number of valid reasons – and it’s not the job of the government, at any level – federal, state, or municipal – to get their collective noses that far into people’s personal choices.

There’s no question that formula manufacturers love giving free samples in hospitals – it’s advertising, plain and simple, and a lot of doctors and nurses and healthcare professionals have a bone to pick with that. But it’s a separate issue: hospitals should not be legislated into locking their formula up just because Hizzoner has a bee in his bonnet. This is way the hqiz out of the purview of any governmental organization, just like some of his other initiatives; our country doesn’t need nanny-state laws.

So yeah, breast-feed your baby if you can; it’s good for the baby, and it’s good for you. But don’t let what Mayor Bloomberg thinks drive your choice – that one is up to you and your family alone.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Huîtres Variées

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Earlier this month, I posted a brief reflection on John Howard Griffin. Often my mind floats back to his seminal book Black Like Me, nudged there by something I see, or hear, or smell – the language of the book is simple but evocative, and I have read it so often that many paragraphs are always close to the surface of my memory.

One such bit comes to mind when I think of New Orleans, which I have never visited but once, briefly, of an early morning while driving from Los Angeles to Key West in the summer of 1972. I stopped in at a little greasy spoon for breakfast, somewhere close to Interstate 10, possibly in the midst of the area destroyed by Katrina, but far from the French Quarter, which I know of only by hearsay and the Disney-esque reproductions that one sees from time to time.

Griffin wrote, “At Broussard’s, I had supper in a superb courtyard under the stars – huîtres variées, green salad, white wine and coffee; the same meal I had there in past years. I saw everything – the lanterns, the trees, the candlelit tables, the little fountain, as though I were looking through a fine camera lens. Surrounded by elegant waiters, elegant people and elegant food, I thought of other parts of town wher I would live in days to come. Was there a place in new Orleans where a Negro could buy huîtres variées?“1

While I speak fluent French, I have never encountered that phrase except in Griffin’s book. I began to wonder what huîtres variées were, because I love seafood (drooling now at the thought of oyster stew and steamed clams at Joseph’s Original Cap’n Cat Clam Bar in Franklinville, NJ, or a huge plate of mixed shellfish eaten at a lakeside restaurant in Torcy, France) and because I would love to try them in honor of Griffin’s life and work. Yet the only hits on the Internet lead back to the book itself or are oblique references; no restaurant seemed to offer the specific dish, except an old menu from Ben Gross restaurant in 1966, horribly misspelled as huîtres variées cheaudes et frôids, and the Grand Hôtel de Maubeuge, on the French border close to Belgium.

I had more luck when I looked up Broussard’s – they’re still there, and it does look like a lovely place to dine.

Copyright photo viewable here.

Broussard’s courtyard by day

The dinner menu at one point offered oysters as a specialty:

Definitely oysters, and prepared in various ways. So if I were a betting man, I’d say that Griffin had something like the Gulf Oyster 2-2-2, and simply chose to give it a French name, or else back in 1961 they had something similar on the menu. Sadly, the dinner menu has changed somewhat and these are no longer featured. Perhaps a seasonal change? I’ll have to keep my eyes open in the spring and summer.

Unless someone can dig up a menu from Broussard’s of that era, we may never know. What I do know is this: I gotta get me down to New Orleans.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

1Griffin, John Howard, Black Like Me, Signet Books, 1960, p. 11

What it was like when I scraped my knee

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Happened all the time. Skating, climbing trees, those deadly playground implements of destruction. And depending on what was in mom’s medicine cabinet (or even worse, if I was visiting my cousins in the country,) the cure was often worse than the injury.

Mom used Mercurochrome, until I begged her to start using Bactine™ (“Psst! Goes the Bactine™, and down go the mean old germs,” said the TV commercial, and I was all over anything that was pain-free.)

But Aunt June, for all her sweet kindness, was a closet sadist: she used merthiolate in her home, and woe unto the child who came in with a cut.

The chart below shows my impressions as a child of what various remedies were like; the pain scale images are from the inimitable Hyperbole and a Half.

Nowadays, I just wash an owie with soap and water (yeah, it stings a bit, but suck it up), slather on some Neosporin™ or other antibiotic cream, and call it good. But as a kid, my pain threshold was  lot lower. Sucks to be a kid.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

On occasion I stumble across things on Facebook or reddit or elsewhere that are relevant and which deserve to be shared. Here is one such example:

Alternate Pain Scale 1

The Old Wolf has edited.

Use Strong Passwords!

Posted on by The Old Wolf

The incidence of email hijacking is on the rise – spammers have discovered that many email accounts are child’s play to get into. Once done, the victim’s entire address book is scarfed up and used to send out spam, phishing solicitations or malware.

First of all, I hope these wastes of human cytoplasm find themselves buried beneath 7 kilometers of burning camel ejecta in Bolgia 11 of the Eighth Circle of Hell (also called Malebolge, reserved for those who perpetrate fraud.) Students of Dante will remind me that there are only 10 Bolgias. I just created a new one for cybercriminals, so there.

Now that I have that off my chest…

Use strong passwords!

Eset.com published a list of the 25 most common passwords, which I reproduce below:

  1. password
  2. 123456
  3. 12345678
  4. 1234
  5. qwerty
  6. 12345
  7. dragon
  8. pussy
  9. baseball
  10. football
  11. letmein
  12. monkey
  13. 696969
  14. abc123
  15. mustang
  16. michael
  17. shadow
  18. master
  19. jennifer
  20. 111111
  21. 2000
  22. jordan
  23. superman
  24. harley
  25. 1234567

I won’t go into a Freudian analysis of this list, although that topic would be rife with opportunities for sarcasm; however, each of these passwords would be cracked instantly by the average scammer.

Simply adding a few numbers or special characters changes the landscape radically; below is a table of variations on “password”, along with the time required for the average desktop PC to crack it1:

password instantly
password1234 37 years
Password1234 25,000 years
password 1234 333,000 years
Password!1234 26 million years
 Password 1234 51 million years
P@ssword 1234  465 million years
 This Password Is Mine  5 sextillion years

So here are some simple rules about creating passwords that you can use to keep your private accounts safe from hackers:

  • Never use a dictionary word
  • Capital letters are good
  • Special characters are good2.
  • Combinations of capital letters are even better
  • Adding spaces is best of all (see footnote). A sequence of random words, such as “wolf aardvark tapioca wellsfargo” would take 633 decillion years to crack (that’s 633,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.)

So use some common sense with passwords. Try the most secure option within the limitations of whatever website or application you are using, and you’ll most likely be safe from even the most determined of hackers.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Edit: Related article – 10,000 Top Passwords

1 These figures are calculated over at “How Secure is my Password“. Check it out – it will tell you instantly how strong your password is.
2 If allowed – some system administrators – even financial institutions, if you can believe it – only allow letters and numbers, which insanity irritates me beyond measure.