Year: 2007

58,000 Years Old

or They Made Me An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse

Gnorm Visits His MumToday was the MMC’s bi-annual Driving Miss Daisys Event at the Elmcroft Assisted Living Center. We had 7 Miatas and a Sebring show up for caravan duty and we had 9 female residents go for a ride up and around Strom Thurmond Dam at Clarks Hill. Their combined ages were nowhere near 58,000, but that is the mile mark the Emperor passed on the trip. We could not have asked for a better day, it was around 70 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.

Afterwards all us Miata types went out for lunch. Some one suggested a semi-new Mediterranean restaurant up the road a piece in Evans, GA called Khalid’s Cafe. The service was leisurely (partly because the eleven of us overloaded their Saturday lunch staff), but definitely worth the wait. A return visit is in the offing for a Club meeting at a later date.Donna ordered up a bowl of Lentil Soup, a Greek Salad and Sprite to drink. I went for a Kufta Burger with Iced Tea to drink. We each had a piece of Baklawa for dessert. My mouth is watering just typing this.

Meal Cost: $23.86
Tip: $3.14
Spent Today: $27.00
Year to Date: $1135.58
Meals out, 61 of a possible 417.

Because of my affection for Rudy and Patti’s gnome Gnorm, they asked me to be his Godfather. I readily accepted and my first act was to volunteer to take him with Donna and I on our trip to the northwest starting next week. I sure hope Gnorm’s blue coat is waterproof…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 167

Welcome to Red Bank

My boss lives in Lexington, SC and when he found out I as taking pictures of all the Post Offices in SC he wanted to know if I had gotten the PO in Red Bank.I told him that Lexington has 4 Post Offices, but Red Bank doesn’t have one because it is a census-designated place not an actual incorporated city. He told me there was in fact a Post Office in Red Bank and he is sort of right. The largest Lexington PO is in the Red Bank area, but it is technically not the Red Bank Post Office according to the USPS.

Welcome to Red BankBecause there is not official governing body to pay for or erect a sign letting people when they are entering Red Bank it was left up to some enterprising individual(s) to do it. I’m not sure who is responsible, the citizens of Lexington putting down the Red Bankites or one of the 9,000 folks in CDP of Red Bank thumbing their noses at the Lexingtonians, but here it is, the unofficial Welcome To Red Bank sign. Photo credit to Bob Wilson’s wife. Bob was driving and left the car running in case they heard any banjo music.

I wonder what the one one the other side of town looks like?

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 166

Funeral For A Friend

or The King Is Dead

We went to Hilton Head Island today and spent a couple hours. It was not for fun. We got a phone call Monday night to tell us that our friend Jerry Horsman, AKA The Condo King, had died suddenly of a heart attack. Jerry was 71 years old, but he had the vitality and drive of a man half his age. When he “retired” 6 years ago from ASCO he didn’t kick back at all, he just had more time to manage condos and do more projects around the home.

I don’t remember how we got hooked up, but he owned a unit in the Hilton Head Beach and Tennis Resort that he rented out, managed several others and wanted a web presence. I was monkeying around doing a little HTMLing for a personal home page and told him I’d do up a basic page for him. Condos came and went, both owned and managed, over the years I was doing the web page, but there were at least two trips, sometimes three, a year to photograph different or remodeled units. Each time we went, Jerry would put us up in one of the units. As if that wasn’t enough payment for what little work it was for me, he also took Donna and I out to dinner at a nice restaurant (of which there are many on HHI) or sometime he and his wife Donna would cook us a great meal at their place.

While Hilton Head was not a place that Donna and I would have picked as a getaway place, over the years we really came to enjoy it and mostly because of our interaction with Jerry and his wife Donna. We won’t miss him as much as you will Donna, but our lives will be a little less bright from now on because Jerry is no longer with us.

Two Fer

We went down to Hilton Head with a couple that knew Jerry when Donna and I were still in grade school. Russ Schwalbert and his wife Jean lived on the same street as him in Mansfield, Ohio. Jerry’s kids baby sat Russ and Jean’s kids and they both worked for Thermo-Disc which moved to Aiken in the building that now houses ASCO in the late 70s. Jean just got a new Lexus ES350 and they offered to drive us down, so Donna and I got to ride in a very strange place, a back seat.

Before going to Jerry’s service, which was to start at 1:00PM, we stopped in Bluffton for a little lunch. To be somewhat fair to Russ and Jean because they supplied the ride, we picked up the tab for lunch. It would have been easy to split because I got what Russ did and Jean ordered the same thing as Donna did. One slice of the special pizza for the guys, soup and salad for the ladies. Russ and I had iced tea, while Donna had a Sprite and Jean went for a water. Total bill$36.00, $31.48 with a tip of $4.52. Divide by two:

Meal Cost: $15.74
Tip: $2.26
Spent So Far Today: $18.00

We got back home at about the same time we would have had we gone to work. Donna had conveniently forgotten to take anything out of the freezer for dinner. We thought we were going to be much later and figured on a meal out anyway, so we headed out to try a new place in town, Jim’s Taste of New England. Lobstah Roll for her and Fish & Chips for me and we split a Garden Salad. We both washed the meal down with water.

Meal Cost: $28.16
Tip: $5.00
Spent This Meal: $33.16
Spent Today: $51.16
Year to Date: $1108.58
Meals out, 60 of a possible 411.

The Lobster Roll was good, but expensive and not nearly as stuffed as you would get in the northeast. The Fish & Chips consisted of one, albeit large, piece of fish and a bunch French Fries. The fries looked like they came from real potatoes, but didn’t really taste that way. Have they figured out a way to extrude an incredible simulation of a real potato? The cole slaw was delicious though and is probably the driving reason for a return visit, but we’ll probably try something different.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 166

Part Two – CO2 & Global Warming

Here is the second excerpt from an article by Jack Frampton called Science, Religion, Passion, Cohorts, and the Much-Heralded Doom of Planet Earth from the current (#21 June) issue of Winding Road and online auto mag. If you would like to read the whole thing all you have to do is “subscribe” by giving them your email address and downloading the 17Meg PDF file.

It has been observed that there is a direct correlation between higher levels of CO2 in the air beginning with the Industrial Revolution some 300 years ago and certain acceleration in Global Warming.

This ?discovery? begat the ?greenhouse effect? theory, which begat the whole Global Warming controversy.

Without asking just how reliable the Earth?s temperature gathering was 300 years ago, if one simply accepts that the one happened due to the other, again there is no scientific way to prove the theory.

It is clear that the Earth has gone through a series of warming and cooling cycles, from the heat and humidity of the dinosaur age to the Ice Age in a geological blink of an eye.

And though there are many theories about why one or the other happened, from volcanoes to smashing asteroids, nobody really knows.

In a court of law, the coincidence of warming and the Industrial Revolution?s CO2 would be termed circumstantial and perhaps inadmissible.

We read that there has been much concern in the Alps recently because they have had the warmest winter ?in 1300 years.? This is presented to us as more proof that the world is warming. It could prove instead that we?ve had a 1300-year cold snap. And if the Alps were really warmer 1300 years ago, a whole millennium before the Industrial Revolution and its CO2, what was the culprit then? Goat farts?

Another perfectly logical explanation for the Earth?s temperature fluctuations is solar activity, fluctuations in the energy radiated to Earth, which have warmed and cooled the planet.

Of course, CO2 aficionados poohpooh this suggestion as a theory with no scientific evidence. But, guys and gals, as we have demonstrated, you have no scientific evidence on your side either. Its either declare a draw, or its pistols at dawn.

So, class, let?s review. There are scientists and there is science. They are different.

Scientists are free to use any technology they want, but unless they can reproduce an outcome using the scientific method, it?s not science.

The Earth may or may not be warming long-term, but the Earth has seen this movie before.

And the sun, not CO2, may or may not be the largest influence on Earth?s climate, but nobody really knows.

Bountiful Biscuit Breakfast

Breakfast for two at Hardee’s. Biscuit & Gravy for her, a Sausage & Egg Biscuit for me. Water to drink for her and an OJ for me. We split an order of Hash Rounds. I have a local middle school discount card that let’s me get 2 Sausage & Egg Biscuits for $1.89, so to save money and get some use out of the ten bucks we paid for the card, I’ve bought two the last two times. The first time I was going to take the second biscuit to work and give it away, but as we sat and read the paper the biscuit started calling our names, so Donna and I split it. It was too much food, so we vowed to not eat the second biscuit this time. HA! Couldn’t do it. Today the second biscuit was devoured before we left the place. Next time we will resist.

Meal Cost: $5.18
Tip: None
Spent Today: $5.18
Year to Date: $1,057.42
Meals out, 58 of a possible 408.

Big Toe Update: A doctor’s visit on Monday netted me a ten day prescription for an antibiotic and an admonition to soak my foot 3 times a day in hot ass water with some epson salts. So far so good, I’m about half fixed.

Duck Update: Its tame and follows Mark around. He and his son will be making a small pond out of a big ol’ old heating duct hood from our old die casting department this weekend.

As Seen On TV!
Clarks Hill Lake Sunset A local morning weather shows pictures sent in by viewers as long as they are remotely weather related. I sent in the image on Gnorm from Friday’s post. Figuring he probably wouldn’t show that, I also included this one. It made the cut and was shown yesterday morning at 5:15 & 6:15. I had about a half dozen folks at work tell me they saw the picture.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 162

Part One – Scientists & Global Warming

This is an excerpt from an article by Jack Frampton called Science, Religion, Passion, Cohorts, and the Much-Heralded Doom of Planet Earth from the current (#21 June) issue of Winding Road and online auto mag. Tomorrow I’ll publish Part Two. If you would like to read the whole thing all you have to do is “subscribe” by giving them your email address and downloading the 17Meg PDF file.

Science is a process by which people seek to discover and describe a truth in the physical realm. It?s called the scientific method.

Scientists are a bunch of people specializing in various kinds of exploration using the scientific method to search for physical truths.

The problem here is that when it comes to the environment, the scientific method cannot be used.

The scientific method says that to declare something ?true,? one must create an experiment that replicates theoretical results, like proving E=mc2 by blowing up two perfectly good Japanese cities. Usually there is a control part of the experiment, which does not include a key ingredient of the theory. In the pharmaceutical business, when a drug is tested on one group of people, a similar group of people (the control group) is given a placebo (a sugar pill) to test the difference between getting the drug and not getting the drug. Or in the previous example, dropping a giant goose down pillow on two other perfectly good Japanese cities.

So to ?prove? the notion that A) the world is warming and B) CO2 is the culprit, one would have to take the Earth with its CO2 levels, create an Earth II with capped CO2 levels, let the two Earths spin in space together for a couple hundred years, and then compare the results.

If Earth II showed no temperature increase, and Earth I did, voil??CO2 would be the culprit. If Earth II showed the same temperature increase as Earth I, it would be back to the drawing board.

To date, we know of no Earth II being built. So the scientific method is off the table.

What is being used in our quest for the truth about Global Warming and CO2? Well, for the most part, computer models. And let us state here as clearly as possible that it may be scientists using computer models, but computer models are not science. They are a technological tool.

And while computer models are important technological tools, they are far from infallible. They require a whole list of assumptions that make them unreliable, especially when applied to something as complex as weather. All you have to do is watch the weather report on TV, and you will witness forecasters using three or four different computer models, each showing a different prediction, and then splitting the difference in their forecast. And this is for what?s going to happen tomorrow.

These same sorts of computer models promised us a disastrous 2006 hurricane season. Didn?t happen.

So for these scientists to use their computer models to tell us what will happen in thirty-five or fifty years is, if not mendacious, highly suspect. Remember, thirty years ago Time Magazine reported that scientists (probably the fathers of the current batch) were predicting a new Ice Age, and we were all going to die.

Once a scientist steps away from the cover of the scientific method and its demonstrable physical facts, he is just as liable to be as full of baloney as the guy who bends pipe down at Muffler King.