Fink Thast!

So, yesterday morning, fasting...

I was up, and chipper; I'd enjoyed a nice cuppa old-fashioned Red Chinese "white tea" (warm water) and was making ready for the shower (a/k/a "how can I be outta washcloths?")when Tam stepped into my room to comment on something stupid she'd heard the TV say; I turned to reply and all of a sudden, the floor dropped three feet straight down!

Except it didn't; it only felt that way, which I realized from the lack of sound effects and Tam "catlike reflexes" K's total non-reaction. I said something like "oh, no!" as my knees gave way and I sat down on the bed like a dropped marionette. The room started lurching this way and that, worse when I tried to sit up, and I started laughing.

'Cos crying would not have helped; my inner ear(?) had come unmoored from gravity. Turning my head, leaning, any rapid motion resulted in a frantic reach for the nearest grabbable large object -- walls, doorframes, the floor. I did my best to ride it out and in about 20 minutes, I could move if I wasn't too quick about it. Managed to shower by bracing myself in a corner. Things stayed kind of drifty 'til noon, fading off into what Og described yesterday as "the inevitable headache."

Hard to blame that on fasting (and my blood work, along about 1:15, was quite good on the tiny tabletop analyzer, fasting gluclose just where it should be, cholesterol not bad (my "good" cholesterol runs high-ish). Even my blood pressure was decent, which is quite an accomplishment considering my fairly dire "white coat syndrome" (my blood pressure is good at home, on multiple whachasphygopsychytacometers, and borderline hypertensive in nearly any clinical setting.

It was a nice day, too; until I lost a half-hour or more to my sense of balance being out of whack, I was seriously considering commuting on my motor scooter. With gas prices what they are, there's a whole lot more scootering and bicycling in my plans for this spring and summer.

--At least, there is if I can maintain a sense of which way is up!

BlogMeet!

Sunday! (Sunday, Sunday), 3:00 p.m. at the Broad Ripple Brew Pub!

...I was hoping to scout a different location but never had time. I'll be working from oh-dark-thirty 'til brunch that day, and likely reduced to monosyllabic grunts and grabbing at food by afternoon.

This & That

- Half-awake this morning, the TV announced, "The Indiana Pacers basketball team has picked up a new player at the very last minute..." and my first thought was, They've signed Payton Manning? (Tam, later: "I'll bet that sounded funnier inside your head." Fine. Fiiiine.)

- So, in our modern, post-privacy age (a/k/a New Paternalism), I've gotta take a little physical at work today -- height, weight, pulse rate, blood pressure and oxygenation and some basic blood work (cho-les-ter-ol, blood sugar, et cetera. And maybe you don't want that nice poppyseed bagel, either?). Which means I'm fasting until that 1 p.m. appointment. Mmmmm, baby, enjoying a nice cup of "white tea;" or as you may know it, warm water. Delightful. No Vitamin I on an empty stomach, either -- just risked a couple aspirin and a sugar-free antacid.

- Fringe Benefits Dep't: On the subject of ADA compliance, let me just say, as a somewhat clumsy person, that I like curb cuts -- and they mean that every block, there are three squares of actual decent sidewalk, instead of tilted, battered slabs. (OTOH, around Roseholme Cottage, many of the curved curbs at the corners are large lengths of what appears to be cut stone! I'd miss them.) In Indianapolis, you've got to add, "...where there are sidewalks." Outside of Downtown, they're kind of optional.

- On the subject of sidewalks -- wot izzit with yuppies and hipsters not using them when they're available? I keep seeing the silly ghits ambling down even busy roads, innocent of the heavy, hurtling machines passing within inches. Evolution in action?

Signs Of The Decline, Part Whatever

Heard On The News: "And don't be surprised if the pool is closed at the hotel you go to for Spring Break: today is the deadline for Federally-required pool lifts for the disabled!"

...In other words, if the crippled aren't happy, ain't no one gonna be happy. It appears that Uncle Sam is concerned persons of limited mobility might be missing out on participation in swim meets -- and no, I am not making that up.*

While there is no question that swimming, or even exercise in the water, can be of immense benefit (it was, for example, part of my Mom's physical therapy after some heart problems), I have my doubts that this Federal mandate on the leisure industry, already hard-hit by four years of recession, could hold up to any rational cost-benefit analysis. This isn't a ramp or lift to get access to the courthouse, public library or even the city pool, it's a flat mandate on "public accomodations and commercial facilities."

'Cos, you know, the bastids been burnin' wheelchairs in effigy and standing at the pool gate with an ax-handle, right? [...crickets...]

Or could it be the money wasn't there? It still isn't; some of those pools (already a high-maintenance, high-risk amenity) will stay closed. As for the rest, you'll be paying more for your room and all that goes with it, even if you never dip a toe in or need a lift yourself; and if you decide to stay at Poolless Arms across the street 'cos their rooms are cheaper, and all your cash-strapped buddies do, too?

Why, then we get an outcome that may surprise the Feds: Complaint Hotel, Inc goes under for want of guests and nobody at all will be swimming. Remember kids, the 99% swim in polluted rivers and stagnant quarries, or not at all. Why do you think you're all better than them?

Claire, I think your clock's broke.
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* Would it have been too much damn work to start up a charity website where, if we were so minded, we could throw bucks into a fund to cover the cost of installin' this hardware at a series of hotels, motels and commercial-type pools to be determined by, I dunno, maybe a poll among disabled persons who would like to spend some quality time in the water? Did it really require the Federal bludgeon to accomplish this?

Busman's Holiday

Reading a 1922 article about RCA's "Radio Central" setup for global communications online, I encountered the following:

Diversion of a Radio Engineer.--In nearly all lines of business, when business hours are over, the individual seeks something totally different as a means of relaxation. While wandering around the radio station at Rocky Point, the author noticed a small aerial running from the Community House, where the engineers are quartered, to a small mast, some 150 feet away. On inquiring what this was, he was told that after watches, the engineers listen in on their own radio apparatus to the broadcasting stations and other types of radio traffic. One would think that after many hours spent on duty in the most powerful radio station of the world, the engineers would be glad to forget, at least for the time being, that such a business as radio existed.
At the receiving station at Riverhead, they go to an even greater extreme. About 200 yards from the receiving house, Mr. Tyrell and his associates have installed a complete amateur continuous wave station. All spare moments of the various operators of the receiving station are spent at their own amateur apparatus.

Some things never change. Did steam engineers build little tabletop engines in their free time, I wonder, or is this monomania a quirk of the RF trade? --If not, remind me never to live next door to a demolitions engineer!

(This will be crossposted at Retrotechnologist.)

It's A Very Fine Stationary Steam Engine

Some of my earliest jobs were at radio stations. The broadcast kind, that is. They were, even then, quite impressive; even little "coffeepot" daytime-only AM stations and 3 kW FMs in small towns had impressive-seeming studios, transmitters bigger than the biggest deluxe refrigerator (mostly empty inside!) and tall towers in large, empty fields.

It was a substantial investment in plant and infrastructure. Licenses changed hands at staggeringly high prices, each one a semi-monopoly.

--Licenses aside, it was even that way for "underground" radio: Indianapolis's own Radio Free Naptown, one of the longest-lasting radio pirates in the U.S., had extensive studios and a relatively sophisticated transmitter, despite operating a few big steps outside the law. They were well before my time, but still (in)famous when I got into the biz.

Fast-forward 40 years: I've been getting e-mail that RFN will be returning to the "air"... via internet.

It's legal. There's no worry the FCC will bust down the door, handcuffs and warrants in hand. It doesn't even require much in the way of equipment; the people running it may be traditionalists, with a room (or three) of analog equipment, but all it really takes to be a real radio station, available to millions and sounding as professional as any, is a computer or two, a decent 'net connection, and a microphone. You could do it from your desk, without any fuss, muss or bother, let alone much of anything to identify it as a "radio studio."

Right now -- and assuming you didn't download a podcast or a bunch of music to your Personal Device -- old-fashioned over-the-air radio is still the main way to reach you on the move; but satellite radio (SiriusXM) gets around that and increasingly, your telephone is a WiFi hotspot: how long do you think it will be before your car radio notices? (It already happened to tuners and receivers.)

The old, impressive, hardware/plant-heavy radio as I knew it, as you know it, it's really already dead. Those towers, in many places now using up valuable suburban real-estate, are only so many dinosaurs and the only reason for the deejays and talk-show hosts to show up at the building is so the Program Director can make sure they're not too intoxicated to do their jobs. It stumbles on, but it's ending; they're in the content business, not the sending-out-high-power-RF business and they're starting to realize it.

...And in the wings? The only thing in commercial RF with bigger towers and larger content-creating facilities than radio would be television. It takes some screamin'-costly hardware to pump a full 720p/1080i high-definion, 5.1-channel sound video of a wrecked school bus into your TV -- and that's all before the Cable Company or Satellite TV Provider lays hold of it.

It's already short-circuited; there are more channels feeding directly into the pay provider than transmitting in clear over the air, ten times as many in most places. The Big Four (4.5?) TV networks send you dozens of streams, only one of which is mediated by Your Local Stations. And sitting right next to my TV is a little purple box the size of a powder compact that isn't looking at a geosync bird or wired up to pay-by-month co-ax: it streams HD vid right off the 'net, in (almost!) real time. As the phone companies have got into the delivering-TV biz and cable companies into the delivering-data biz, it's all starting to merge.

Right now, the servers, editors, format reformatters and ingest hardware it takes to generate and massage TV content still take up way more than one PC; but it is shrinking all the time. "Smart" effects mean the the fancy news-studio settings you see are more and more generated inside a computer, with a bunch of special-blue or special-green painted walls and boxes standing in so Joe Anchorguy doesn't put his hand through a "wall" and the software has surfaces to map onto. Sooner or later, you'll be able to stream high-quality, professional-looking TV from your desk -- and when there's fat, fast wireless access everywhere, that live report from London or Karachi doesn't take any more hardware than a tablet and a high-zoot camera, either.

...Leaving those big buildings and tall towers no more than the boiler-houses, engine rooms and smokestacks of an outmoded technology. In a generation, they'll be eyesores; in another, they'll be quaint. Maybe they'll even restore one or two, and fire it up once a year for nostalgia's sake. (Also.)

For now, Local Super Live-Action News had better look lively; there's something meaner and leaner in the egg, and when it hatches, there's no tellin' what all it's gonna consume.

Miserable Morning

Woke up with a world-class headache and full sinuses; woke up again, an hour later, ditto, and again an hour after that -- when the alarm went off, which is kind of like cayenne pepper under the eyelids, only in my ears.

Staggered around making some kind of breakfast -- not cold cereal, there was stuff in the fridge wanted using -- and coffee and hey, got through it despite.

The wastebasket lid had popped at the hinges (it does that -- time for a repair, halfway to replacement), but no problem.... Until, food cooked, plates loaded, coffee brewed, I went to throw away the coffee-grounds-filled filter. It hung up on the lid, slipped, dumped a good handful of wet grounds on the floor, and more when I moved the lid aside.

...And the remainder, unbeknownst to me, was all over the hip black wastebasket's hip black lid, deep sable and sepia, where it was contained until I moved it to get the giant wet glob of a coffee filter in the basket. Then the stuff, way more than the original amount, spilled all down the side of the fridge (in the door seal) and under it, too.

Naturally, by then I had cats (to whom coffee grounds smell kinda...sexy) and, as the long stream of Genuinely Bad Words I was uttering continued, Tam (who corralled the cats).

Did not need this.

Think I got it all and the food wasn't even cold. Why, I've even taken Vitamin I. Now, if only it has the desired effect.

Never Read Comments On The Internet. Never Read Comments On The....

Tam (quoting a commenter at CNN): "'...The French motto, "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" inspired the U. S. Founding Fathers...'"

RX: "The French! They're making time run backwards! They must be stopped!"

...Sigh. Were it only that easy.

Recivilizing?

Tam's posting about the latest mess in Afghanistan -- and it's been a long-lasting mess, just ask Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Dr. Watson" -- got me to thinking.

It wasn't that long ago -- within living memory, if you lived somewhere where the food was reg'lar and the doctors weren't fictional -- that Afghanistan was well on the way to recovery from having been the chessboard of the Great Game, and looking like quite the modern nation. They were a-building their own future.

...Which is about when the Great Game, all done up in shiny-red Marxism, snuck back in. Revolution, turmoil and the Soviet Army followed. A generation of kids growing up like wild animals resulted and what was about the only semblance of order amid the chaos?

Religion -- and not the watered-down, once-a-week kind, either. Nope, it was hard and fast, harsh and pervasive; it handed out its own version of justice in that exact manner; if you were lucky, some local strongman was running whatever else there was to run and for a long, long time, that was all there was.

Result? A generation just as willing to be "democratized" as they'd care to be kicked off a cliff. Last time 'round when they clawed their way up from the wreckage of war, they had a King and a civil framework to build on. This time, they're starting over from scratch.

Don't be too surprised if it doesn't look like small-town Kansas. Don't be too surprised if occasionally the effect goes the other way and one of our own goes feral.

It's The End! The End! Aaaargh!

Stansberry Associates has a new TEOTWAWKI vid out; they were pushin' it on the Ijit Tube this morning. I took a look.

Y'know how it's possible to be right in such a way that it looks like you're full of it? For instance, take a real figure, then say, "But if..." and outline a circumstance that's not gonna happen, like gummints suddenly having to pay the same kind of interest rate as you and me on previously-established debt, and then run with it as if it was the actual number? Yeah. Maybe not a real good way to go if the listener happens to be taking notes. They have a history of tellin' the truth a bit costumed; I'm assuming it's simply a bent for the dramatic.

But here's the thing: the sky really is falling. Uncle Sam's greenbacks are less and less obviously the Very Best Choice and their only saving grace so far is that everything else looks worse. The Euro is busy cuttin' itself off at the knees; Iceland's lookin' not Eurozonewards but West to the Loonie for their new monetary base. And the Fed, well, they have the Mint printing more U. $. Dollars just as quick as they can; more dollars chasing the same quantity of goods and services results in-- What is it called, class?

--It could be a whole lot worse than just your house payment turning into the cost of a case of booze; even if your pay chases within sounding distance of the rate of inflation (don't bank on it) and you own a very fine wheelbarrow, there could be worse in the wings. Right now, most international business is done in dollars. This helps keep our own homegrown currency as sound as -- gee, golly, as sound as the dollar. Everyone uses them; everyone has a vested interest in not lettin' 'em go lighter-than-hot-air and float away.

Alas, if way too many are out there, if the dear old $ gets inflated/devalued enough, no bank in the world will want to be left holding it when the music stops; no sheik or autocrat will price his $NATURAL RESOURCE in bucks if the value of 'em will evaporate before he can direct-dial Rolls-Royce or Bombardier.

There's still no serious contender for replacement; the next-most-traded currencies (Euro, Japanese Yen) aren't exactly in fighting form. But our old pals in Red China have been busy writing about the tottering dollar -- and wouldn't they just love to have banks of the world cherishing colorful Renminbi instead?

And what would that do to the price of all those colorful Chinese imports, from iPhones to Mall-Wart socks?

The punditry will no doubt advise sellin' short and buyin' gold. Me, I dunno; you can't eat it. Brass and lead and Parkerized or blued steel might be more-useful metals. And instead of stocks, we'd likely be better off with goats and chickens, with a garden and the distinctly non-1337 skills it takes to grow 'em up and turn 'em into food. Me, I'm thinking about getting the house re-insulated.

And we'll be wanting some expert advice before things fall apart. Me, I dunno from Wall Street -- I'm more interested in my street.

Omelette

Tie-dyed, freak-range, er, free-range eggs, whupped up with a dash of Worcestershire, poured out into a peppered, greased skillet, sprinkled with a mixture of crunched-up corn chips and Rice Chex mixed with all manner of spices (little cayenne, little cajun, some sesame and garlic, whatever) and then two cheeses (Emmenthaler and Provolone Picante). Fold when it's time, sprinkle with chives and cook 'til done; serve with a generous smear of pesto and hot sauce to taste.

Yum!

DST

Gah. Blargh. I'm still mostly asleep and the sun is way over the yardarm.

Knew I'd run up a sleep debt last week but this is annoying -- and the move to daylight time makes it look even worse.