Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Toroid Clip from a Clothespin


I've used this handy little holder for hanging onto a small toroid core, while looping the wire through it.

Essentially, start with an ordinary spring clothespin (about a buck a package at the 99c store, or even most supermarkets). Use a fresh one that hasn't lain out in the yard and started to rot; those fall apart.

I take a little X-Acto mini-miter saw and cut the angle opposite what the stock clothespin uses. I don't want to slip over a shirt on the clothesline, I want to have finger room around the tip of the jaws, with the flat holding the little core. I sand down the sawn edges with sandpaper or an emery board (away from the work area) to remove any splinters.

Now grab your core and put it into the jaws, so the center hole is mostly clear, and start counting turns, pulling each one just snug as you go. Remember, one time through the doughnut hole is one turn.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Gift Card for/from GIs idea-- (part of the truth and reconciliation)

Image: Windshield view of a busy Baghdad street (or any of several exotic spots).

Willy: D'ja see the eyes on that little kid as we bounced over his parents? Thought I'd s*** myself!

Joe: Yeah! We shoulda gone back and got the little f***er. Another five, six years, he'll be wirin'-up bombs!

Friday, November 13, 2009

[In response to a post 10-12-09 at Scam.com, in Political Chat, on Health Insurance]

Other countries; thanks, Spector567, for the NationMaster links. We need to start with facts, as good and to as many decimal places as we can get them. (Reminds me of the Heinlein quote.)

I'm told PBS' Frontline recently did a special called IIRC "Sick Around The World" [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/countries/models.html], noting that among others, Taiwan has a 'Medicare-for-All' system that sounds like a good model.

It's abundantly clear that the profit motive is a lousy way to take care of our health. When HMOs first arose, there was hope that costs would be reduced by preventive care; screenings, early treatment, nutrition counseling and education and so on. Didn't happen. Denial and cancellation was much easier to do, insulated from the rage of the sick customer's survivors.

As far as immigrants, I would much rather they were all (yes, like the GB-NHS, _every_ resident) treated out of our overall tax-supported system (in a _huge_ group, spreading the costs) than not treated at all, or waiting for a crisis at the ER, where the cost is the most, and likely finding that some disease epidemic has spread because of that lack of early treatment. This is called 'enlightened self-interest'. BTW, that immigrant is paying into the tax system also, even if not into his own account (perhaps with someone else's SS#), and certainly with the most regressive of taxes, sales taxes.

Invective ("liars, filth, vermin") and obscenity (well, you know which ones) that Power-One likes to use are not the path to a reasoned discussion toward problem-solving, just the usual bully tactics the Faux Noise crowd uses to shout down a conversation. Not interested, Bully-Bait.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Medicare Now

What part of 30% vs. 5% do some of you not understand?

That’s the difference in insurance vs. Medicare overhead, the 25% part that results in denied care and dropped policies, disastrous bankrupcies when there’s a medical emergency.

And all for a US system that WHO rates number 37 in the world.

Solution: Medicare eligibility age drops a year every year, and the cap is raised to cover it. Or just drop it to zero now, and get it over with. Pull the band-aid off all at once.

"Learning" from History

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." –George Santayana

Those who never learned anything of the history get to repeat it flat-footed.

Someday the classified reports from the ’80s will be available, about how we (the US CIA and our ‘off-the-shelf enterprises’) created the Mujahadeen (sp?) by emptying MidEast jails, to play against the Russians.

But then, I also like “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” –Aldous Huxley

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

A commenter at John Sherffius' editorial 'toon (Greetings from Los Angeles, postcard on fire) at GoComics.com, noted "Doesn't this place [LA] burn every year?"

My reply:

Usually small areas, and not all at once. Fire Season is here whenever it’s hot, dry, and there’s been a lot of fuel grown. Recently, climate change is bringing Mexico’s hurricanes to help (but not quite in time this week.)

Some of these canyons have been quietly growing for several years, and they are so steep, there’s no way for a ground crew of intrepid firefighters to get in there. Unless there’s homes or human artifacts like the Mt. Wilson observatory and broadcast complex in the path, letting them burn out is the way now.

For most of the past century, there had been vigorous suppression of any burn, until the big Yosemite fire showed that it was often nigh impossible to do anything. When whites first came to that spectacular country, you could “ride at a gallop through the forest and not knock your hat off”, because annually, undergrowth was burned off by lightning in smoky smoldering burns, and then quenched by associated rains. Since that big burn, prescribed burns are posted (at least in the Valley) during safer parts of the year, to avoid such a buildup of fuel.

Here in Altadena, we’ve watched night after night as the burn front creeps and leaps across our lovely foothills, and our friends and neighbors a few blocks uphill have (in some cases against all sense) ignored or obeyed evacuation orders.

The moonrise the past few nights, and sunrise, have been quite orange, and the days tinged orange, a strong smell of smoke and ash deposits on everything.

Now if we can just get the Forest Service to get together some native seeds for re-seeding these areas, instead of the fast-growing imports (read fuel) they have been using to avoid erosion and mudslides once the rains come… It helps, but keeps the cycle going; Sigh (cough, cough).

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Distracted Driving

CHP claims texting/phoning/driving is quite equivalent to DUI, in lack of attention. People with separate microphones on their radios, however, are almost as safe as unencumbered drivers snerk. de WA6DZS.

Wanna Be a Writer? (About half do)

Robert A. Heinlein once gave a commencement address at Annapolis; it was summarized in an Analog editorial, but you can find the thing elsewhere (Google’s your friend). It’s also quoted as a 1947 essay titled “On the Writing of Speculative Fiction” in several places.

These five steps each cut the wannabe writing population by IIRC about half, and that’s why there are, of the ~250m population of the US at the time, only a couple thousand full-time writers. (Paraphrasing):

1.  Write it down.  (Head-notes are like air guitar; nice, but there's no there there.)

2.  Finish it.  (Then it's real.  See #1.)

3.  DON’T change, except by an editor’s request.  (Editing has changed; you may have to fix something yourself, once it's done.)

4.  Actually be brave and send it out; you’ll get rejections.  (Grow  a thick skin;  then you're a writer.)

5.  KEEP sending it out until it sells. Then you’re a published writer.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

That's Covered Too

I heard Mr. Waxman is willing to have a Single Payer bill voted on the floor, though he doesn't believe it would pass.

A simple Single Payer system, with appropriate audits, where Everybody is covered, This is covered, That too.

Business big and small will save enough to pay for their share of it, and cut their overhead on maintaining the dysfunctional insurance plans. I'm ready.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Doctor's Incentive

Just heard a story (from our traveling teacher/storyteller friend from Tinian) about Chinese medicine, back to about 3000-4000BC; the village doctor got paid as long as you were well. It was a tiny stipend, from everybody in the village. When you got sick, your payment stopped until you were well again.

Does that strike you as an *incentive*?

Monday, July 13, 2009


Finally starting to read John Kenneth Galbraith’s The New Industrial State (3d Ed., ‘78); it’s about the largest corporations and their needs, not the “market” at all. Also hearing fascinating interviews with his son lately.
Meanwhile, find your talents, develop them, help as many people as possible with them. Bucky Fuller found (in Critical Path) that his rewards came from unexpected quarters when he did that.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

A Re- De- pression?

There is an awful lot of howling about our being in a global recession or maybe even a (*GASP*) depression for the past year, while the bankers, who control the flow of currency, have given themselves huge bonuses for their (heck-of-a-job-Brownie) performance.

It makes me recall the stories about the Great Depression of the 1930s, of course, and the fact that it was a Clinical Depression (though the term wasn't used at the time). People discouraged by a downturn and tightening of credit, and often complete failure of their banks, fell into a funk and quite a few chickened out and jumped out the window, or found other ways to shuffle off this mortal coil. That's happening now to (we hope) not quite as many.

It also reminds me of the story Alan Watts told about the carpenters showing up at the job one morning and being told they couldn't start work, since they had run out of inches!

If there is no currency, there can be no commerce, right? Wrong! There is barter, there is our parent's concept of the Victory Garden, many ways to repair, recycle, re-use and re-purpose what we already have.

FDR said "...the only thing we have to fear, is Fear Itself!" And we must pull together and get through this, perhaps better than we did before.

A number of nice big national and international projects that will benefit the entire planet (which has shrunk to about a half-hour of transit time from/to anywhere) would sure be nice. I know! How about going back to the Moon and on to Mars? The last time we went to the Moon, people screamed about the expenditure, but y'know what? Not a penny, not a nickel, was spent on the Moon. It was all spent here! Let's get serious about refining silicon into photovoltaic (solar) cells, and get off the oil needle. Wind generators are already cheaper than the filthy oil and coal alternative. The combination, spread out over our planet, with a robust power grid to deliver the power from sources to destinations, will do a lot.

There's a lot we can do to make our nest better, and our great-grandkids more secure and comfy, so let's get to it! Think globally, act locally, etc...