Black Fridays

The term Black Friday is something I find hard to get my head around.  I know it has to do with black ink denoting profitability in ledgers, but to me Black Friday suggests one of those Wall Street Crash days of yore -- Black Thursday 1929, etc.

Last fall I discovered that there are Black Fridays in Europe -- where they don't even celebrate the American Thanksgiving.  I saw Black Friday signs posted in stores in Italy and in Spain.  I even took advantage of it in Barcelona.   I was in town for a few hours and it began to rain.  Didn't have a waterproof hat, so I ducked into the big El Corte Inglés department store and bought a nice English Barbour baseball cap at a discount.

Here in the States, it's a day I try to avoid shopping, much like the day after Christmas.  And to tell the truth, that day in Barcelona was Wednesday, the day before the Thanksgiving that they don't celebrate.  But the sales event was on, crowds weren't hectic, and I was able to keep my head dry.

The Joys of My Porsche 914

My one and only sports car was a new 1971 Porsche 914 that I drove from June 1971 to November 1974 while I was living in the Albany, New York area.

The good part was that it was a genuine sports car that had more civilized features than a ragtop MG, etc.  The gal who did my computer programming for the State planning agency was a purist who thought that a true sports car driver had to SUFFER.  You know the drill ... rag top, floppy side curtains ... so it was with initial reluctance that she bought a new Datsun 240Z coupe.

The 914 was fun to drive.  I liked the low driving position (but would hate it now).  A very slight steering wheel movement resulted in a noticeable turn.  Not tiring to drive on the several long trips I made in it.  The 4 cylinder version had the same gas tank the 914/6 required, so theoretical range approached 600 miles.

Not so fun at first was the very stiff gear shifter.  Over time either it loosened or my right arm got stronger.

My car got punished.  Someone rear-ended me at slow speed, and the rear trunk lid repair was not thorough -- leaked or wept slightly.  On the Thruway heading east from Buffalo once, the windshield took a rock.  The replacement's sealing was so-so and the surrounding chrome strip was loose in one corner ... had to screw it down.

A couple of years in, I was in the process of starting the car.  Stepped on the clutch and its cable snapped!  That's when I discovered that the angled floorboard behind it was made of plywood (I'm not kidding!).

There was an electrical item with cardboard covered tubes that failed somehow in the middle of Illinois and later gave some trouble.  If the motor died, a fix was giving the unit a whack.

The fuel pump was located in front of the left rear wheel well.  After a winter or two of road salt, its electrical lead corroded through and the car behaved like a vacuum cleaner when its cord gets pulled.   Same thing happened a year or so later.

The weight bias toward the rear could be dangerous in winter.  On a Delaware County country road with borderline snow/slush, the rear end broke away and I couldn't break its rhythm.  Eventually the rear and front traded places.  There was incoming traffic, but fortunately the car slid to the right into a snow bank.  I decided 914s were not winter-compatible.

By the fall of 1974 the sleeve over the exhaust system that provided heat had rusted through in places.  So my defogger only could defog about two inches worth at the bottom of the windshield.

This last was what prompted me to trade it in for a 1974 VW Dasher with front wheel drive for safer snow driving. I had it Zebart rust-proofed and was all set for another Albany winter.  A month or so after that, I was hired to work at the Washington State Budget Office's population unit and I went home to Puget Sound county.

Had the timing been slightly different I might have kept the 914 and put some money into restoring it because western Washington is pretty easy on cars unless one lives right by the ocean with its salt spray that can damage the paint.

Cross-posted at Car Style Critic.

Go to Hawaii and Jump the Shark

The expression "jumped the shark" pops up on the internet somewhat often.   It refers to the old "Happy Days" TV show episode where the Fonzie character is out surfing or waterskiing (I didn't see that ep) and hops over a large, nasty shark.  The point being, that was when Happy Days ran out of creative steam, ratings dwindled and then eventually was cancelled.  So when some person, political movement, fashion, hobby -- whatever -- visibly outlives its original inspiration and resorts to stunts or odd behavior to retain attention, the shark has been jumped and decline is inevitable.

Years before, back in the distant days when I watched TV shows, it had dawned on me that when the setting of the program shifted to Hawaii for an episode or two, that show had run out of ideas and was doomed.  There was more than one case of this, but that was 40 or so years ago and I can't cite examples: sorry.

I'm not sure if the folks running the programs realized what was happening in those terms.  It's possible a producer thought it was be fun to do a Hawaii-based episode as a treat or reward for the cast and the production workers.

Or maybe they did know that the end was nigh.

Regardless, when a program had a Hawaii episode, the Grim Reaper of television was lurking in the wings.

Online Dating Services, Part 1

My wife died nearly two and a half years ago.  Because I enjoy companionship, I eventually decided to try out online dating services.

I hope this doesn't squeeze all the romance out of things, but I am dealing with a numbers game in seeking the appropriate woman.

Back in high school the girls were all single -- available to one degree or another (some were "going steady" and therefore not in the dating market).  College was largely similar, though some young women were already married while others were engaged.  Still others were "pinned" to a frat man (engaged-to-be-engaged was the concept, a serious form of going steady).  And there were some simply going steady.  Nevertheless, that left plenty of gals free for dating and relationship formation.

Note that these same situations applied to women seeking men.

Roll the calendar ahead more than a few decades and the availability situation changes.  By that point, aside from the very elderly, the majority of people are married.  There also are those currently divorced or widowed or never-married.  But the latter groups are probably a minority.  Worse, they are much harder to find in the real world than back in the days of high school and college.

Sitting in a Starbucks, gazing around the room, it's not easy to decide who might be available for a date.  Okay, eliminate those wearing wedding rings -- but some of the rest might be "steady" already or not interested.

Hence, on-line dating services.  The contacts displayed are vetted as being interested in finding a partner.  And there are many of them.

How that system actually works will be presented in the next post.

On the Road at Lot, Plus an Air Travel Note

Posting here has been sparse of late (yet again).

One reason is that my other two blogs take up most of my blogging time and energy.  Another is that I've been doing a lot of traveling the past few months: A cruise involving China and Japan in March, and a bus trip in Italy in May.  And I'll be taking a road trip to California in a few days.  Then things will calm down for the summer.

Speaking of travel, I booked a Mediterranean cruise for October from Rome and wanted to add a day or two on the French Riviera.  So I hopped on the Internet and checked out some one-way fares from Seattle to Nice.  At least two leading airlines quoted around $3,000 (!!!) to get me there coach class.  Then I tried Iceland Air, going as far as Paris.  A lot cheaper, but then I'd have to get from Paris to Nice by plane or rail, another expense.  Things were not looking good for my Riviera plan.

It suddenly dawned on me to see what might happen if I flew to Rome first and then round-trip to Nice from there.  Bingo!  I could do it for only a few hundred dollars on Alitalia.  Problem solved.

Now I wonder if a travel agent would have come to the same solution?  (I tend to use them if my proposed journey is something pretty new to me.  After that, I tend to do my own bookings totally or directly with a cruise line of bus tour company.)

On-Line Dating and Politics

My wife died a couple years ago.  Since I'm in need of a social life, I signed up with some on-line dating services for seniors.

They are useful in that you are sent a fairly large number of legitimate prospects, which means that you can play the sort of numbers game one does when screening job applicants.  That is, a certain percentage of cases clearly aren't likely to work well.

Evaluation factors can include age, appearance, hobbies, pets, preference for cites vs. nature, degree of interest in sporting activities, ditto regarding cultural activities, race, religion, health status, and several others.

Some dating sites include political leanings.  One selects an item from a range "Very Liberal" to "Very Conservative" with a "No Preference" option.  Or one can bypass this item.

The sites also allow members to write about themselves.

I've found that some women explicitly state that they do not want to meet with Trump supporters or conservatives.  So far I've seen none stating that they would refuse to meet up with a left-winger.  Perhaps that's because here in Puget Sound area politics are skewed Left.  Or maybe ladies on the right are more tolerant.

Granted, wide differences in political beliefs can be a barrier to forming good relationships.  But categorizing Trump supporters as strictly off-limits strikes me as being pretty intolerant for a political side that claims to favor tolerance.

Going to War Due to Time Constraints

World Wars 1 and 2 had many causes, some more salient than others.

One kind of cause had to do with a country opting for war because to delay would make fighting enemies in the future more risky.  This was a factor for Germany in 1914 and for Japan in 1941.

In Germany's case, a major potential enemy was the Russian Empire.  Russia was beaten by Japan in their 1904-05 war, but its military was recovering by 1914 and the country was rapidly industrializing.  German army staff planners feared that the Russians, who outnumbered Germans, would probably be considerably more formidable in just a few years.  This consideration helped push an already aggressive German Empire into war.

Japan's case is more complicated to explain.  In brief, the Japanese Empire had been at war with China for a few years.  The year before that conflict began, Japan renounced warship limitation treaties and began increasing the size of its navy.  America began building battleships again around that time, and orders for ships increased as the war in Europe wore on.

Senior Imperial Japanese Navy officers were well aware that the USA could massively out-build Japan in all weapons categories, so renouncing limitation treaties was probably unwise while emotionally satisfying.  As 1941 wore on, the US imposed resource restrictions on Japan, oil and steel in particular, in an effort to persuade Japan to end its war with China.  Expansion-minded Japanese officers who dominated government policy at that time then had the choices of (1) acceding to American wishes, (2) waiting matters out while their petroleum reserves gradually depleted and America launched far more warships than Japan could, or (3) starting war soon while resources were at hand and America's ships were yet to be commissioned.  The third option was selected in the hope that Japan could quickly attain its conquest aims and that then America and Britain would agree to a peace treaty at that point rather than fight a bloody war to the finish.  But the war proved to be long and Japan was crushed by mid-1945.

When You Feel You're Really There

Sorry, but I forget the Web site that inspired this post.  What it did was present the idea of being someplace and thinking "Wow, I'm really here!"

I got that feeling many years ago during my Army days when I'd get a weekend pass and go into New York City.  Just seeing the skyline would trigger that reaction.

What does the triggering is strongly related to characteristics of the place and, usually, their fame.  Moreover, different aspects of the place will trigger different people.  And of course the person normally is primed for the reaction to the degree that the place is of passionate interest.  For example, for some folks viewing the Eiffel Tower yields the "Wow, I'm really in Paris!" reaction.  For me it's being along the Seine in the vicinity of the Ile de la Cité which happens to strike me as being even more Parisian than the tower.  Results vary.

Citing the Eiffel Tower suggests that being near a particularly famous structure or place is probably the most common source of the "Wow, I'm here!" reaction.  The "I'm really in Rome!" reaction is probably usually set off by viewing the Forum, Colosseum or St. Peter's.

On the other hand, I think that for places such as San Francisco or Seattle it's their overall settings that do the trick.  Which does not totally rule out being triggered by being at Fisherman's Wharf or seeing the Space Needle.  I suspect the general settings of Paris and Rome are far less likely to evoke strong, positive emotional reactions than the more focused sites noted above.

Regardless, the strong, positive emotional reaction is one of life's pleasures.

Whither National Geographic

The USA's National Geographic Society (Wikipedia entry here) has been abound since 1888, and its well-known magazine for almost that long.

I can remember as a child looking at my grandparents' copies.  My parents didn't get around to subscribing until I was perhaps college age.  By then, I found myself almost never reading through an entire article.  The one thing I always did enjoy in those days was their maps: I still have a number of them in my map collection, a few dating back to around 1920.

In the first 50 or so years of its existence the Society sponsored discovery expeditions along with commissioning reports about places known, but unlikely to be visited by most readers.  In the 1920s and 1930s such places would include Brittany and other parts of France.  To get there, a reader would have to take a long train ride to an East Coast port (if he didn't live near one) and then sail across the Atlantic on a steamship -- all this before getting to the target area (and having to retrace his steps getting home).  Most folks back then did not have the time and money for such travel, so the Geographic served as a handy proxy.

One of the few useful concepts I can recall from my sociology training was that organizations would usually try their damndest to continue existing after their original reason for existence had vanished.  So it seems to be for the Society.  By around 1960 there were no longer significant unexplored places on earth and comparatively fast, inexpensive jet air travel made overseas tourism practical for a much larger portion of the American population.  Ever since, the Society has pushed into new fields and seems to have thrived.

Alas, for me what the Society does and what its now-many publications show are not unique to it.  There are other sources of information covering the same topics.  Even worse, in my opinion, the Society has allowed itself to drift into supporting political positions that are corruptive of best scientific practice.  An example is "Climate Change," where research practices have tended to fall short of scientific method as exemplified by Karl Popper and Richard Feynman.

Irrational Brand Dislikes

Sometimes we are rational, sometimes not.

One of my irrationalities has to do with product brands.   For some reason there are brands that turn me off no matter if their products are measurably superior to those of other brands.

Let me give you some examples. Some of these might be brands that you are extremely fond of -- for whatever reasons you have.

I can't explain why, but one brand I don't care for is Nike.  I do own a Nike baseball cap with University of Washington colors and symbolism.  I bought it because I needed a show-my-loyalty garment for when I (rarely) attend Husky football games, and the Nike cap happened to be better looking than the alternatives.  (To show my dual-loyalty, I also usually wear a Penn sweatshirt to the game.)

Another brand I don't care for is The North Face.  That's because I don't like their logotype, rationally designed though it might be.  I suppose I might be missing out on some fine products.  But there are plenty of equally fine competing products, so I'm probably not losing if I never consider North Face.

Yet another garment brand is Under Armour.  I think there's something about the name that seems icky, though I can't explain to myself just why it seems icky.

As for automobiles, perhaps my most irrational avoidance target is Subaru.  But at least I do know why I have this "thing" about Subarus.  It's because of the 360 cc Subarus than Malcolm Bricklin first imported to the USA in the late 1960s.  Those cars were tiny, looking like motorized Dutch wooden shoes.  I thought they were ridiculous, and never got over the feeling even though full-size Subarus have interesting engineering features.

In contrast, there are some brands for which I have irrational positive preferences.  But that might be a topic for another post.

Ocean Cruise Strategies

I didn't go on cruise ships until eight or so years ago.  That's if you don't count crossing the Pacific Ocean twice when I was in the army deployed to Korea.  Since then, I've been on five and will take my sixth soon.

My take is that there are three main types of cruise ship passenger motivations.  Some people are there mostly for the onboard experience.  That might include dining, pass-time activities, entertainment, and visiting with fellow passengers.  A sub-group might be folks with mobility issues, where those are minimized by being onboard while taking a break from being at home.  The purest way to do this is to book passage on repositioning cruise (to or from Europe or Asia, depending on the time of year): very few stops en route.

Then there are those who cruise with the goal of visiting specific destinations, and are indifferent to shipboard activities.

Finally, there are those who like the whole package: shipboard things and ports-of-call.

I fall into the destination-oriented category, selecting cruises on the basis of how many ports-of-call are both interesting and new to me.  Given that my main interest is Europe, it doesn't take many cruises to exhaust its potential.

However, my upcoming cruise is in the Far East.  That's because Hong Kong and Shanghai have always interested me.  It also stops in northern China and southern Japan, so at least those areas will be new to me.

But once that's done, I'll probably mostly do bus tours.  That's because they pack much more viewing items per day than any cruise ship offers.

Your results probably vary.

Over-Examining the Past Through Present Eyes

The most recent Review section of the Wall Street Journal's weekend edition has a piece titled "An American Icon the Almost Wasn't" -- dealing with the Lincoln Memorial and its famous statue.

I found much of it interesting, while other parts bothered me.  Its writer, Harold Holzer, who works at New York City's Hunter College, spent far too much space regarding the lack of reference to Blacks and slavery in the quotations chiseled on the structure's walls.  Had he mentioned it once and let it go at that, it would have been fine in my opinion: his point would have been made.

These days the political left -- including most of non-science academia such as Holzer -- strikes me as being obsessed with race.  I suspect the overly-done virtue signaling Holzer did might have a means of self-protection from potential wrath from his peer group.  That is, Holzer was doing his best to demonstrate that he wasn't a racist to the detriment of what otherwise was a nice article.

Shifter to a broader perspective, it's probably nearly impossible to view the past free of current experience and points of view.  I think it's perfectly fine when a writer's stated goal is to compare and contrast, say, daily life in early Imperial Rome with daily life in today's San Francisco.  Also fine is placing a past case in the perspective of its history and its future.

What increasingly bothers me is when writers fail to try to place themselves in the context of their subject's times.  Which is not to say that Vlad the Impaler's or Those Jefferson's contexts justified all that they did.  But some care should be taken to explain those contexts that, just like present contexts, greatly influenced their attitudes and deeds.

After all, those in the future might well consider academic and political belief systems in present-day America as being being ridiculous or perhaps even ghastly.

Great Men

I'm sure its more complicated than that, but I have a dim memory of a Sophomore year English class teacher who said that Leo Tolstoy thought that the tide of history and other external factors were far more important than the deeds of people such as Napoleon.  This was in reference to Tolstoy's book War and Peace that we somehow had to read during the ten-week academic quarter.

I see little reason to deny that people are influenced by their times.  On the other hand, there are some people who are far more capable than most others in altering the direction of history significantly.  Culture, technology, all the rest of the package they might use or resist on their road to greatness because they can, while the rest of us cannot or do not.

What brings this to mind are two fairly recent biographies written by Andrew Roberts.  One is about Napoleon, the other deals with Churchill.

Note that I didn't write "Napoleon Bonaparte" and "Winston Churchill" in the previous sentence.  That's because I assume most readers know exactly who I'm referring to.  That's because they were great men.  One doesn't need to approve of what they did to agree that in several respects they were superior to most of their contemporaries.

Napoleon is generally acknowledged as being a military genius, though he eventually began making military mistakes.  He had the sense to understand the political situation in France as the Revolution faded and was able to seize power while still a young man.  He also was an intellectual, widely read and interested in a variety of fields.  He didn't have to bring scholars along when he invaded Egypt, but did so.  One result of that was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the recognition of its importance.  Then there is the Code Napoleon, the basis for law in many parts of Europe.

Churchill's accomplishments were less wide-ranging than Napoleon's.  His greatest deed was altering the course of World War 2 by not seeking peace with Hitler after France fell, while shoring up the morale of the British public.  Otherwise, he was a prolific writer, a fearless soldier who killed men in battle, an adventurer newspaper correspondent, and a politician who held many of the most important British government positions at one time or another.

How many of us have anything near Napoleon's and Churchill's skill-sets?

Media Prepping for Mortality: Ginsburg and MacArthur

As I write this, I have absolutely no knowledge of the state of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's health.

Unfortunately, someone at Fox News goofed, airing a notice that she had died.  As noted here, the network apologized.  I haven't followed this matter other than being aware that it happened.  But I don't doubt that there were folks out there accusing the network of wishing she actually was dead.

Aside from the slip-up, the people at Fox were simply doing what larger journalistic organizations do: preparing for certain future events.  A newspaper such as The New York Times has probably hundreds of canned obituaries ready for use when needed.  When a famous person dies, they simply add a few sentences citing the date of death and perhaps some surrounding circumstances.

And if the person is well known such as Justice Ginsburg, headlines are prepared.  I know this from past experience.

In March of 1964 I was in Tokyo for a week's temporary duty at Stars & Stripes, the armed forces overseas daily newspaper.  At that time General Douglas MacArthur was in failing health, and a S&S staffer was walking across the newsroom with a dummy front page with two-plus inch type announcing "MACARTHUR DIES."

As it happened, he hung on for nearly another month, but that headline or something similar was eventually used.

A Modernism Hypothesis and Thoughts on Social Class

I recently came across this item on the Internet having to do with the idea that Modernism was a snobbish reaction to increasingly literate lower classes becoming aware of and appreciating the then-current art scene.  That is, the upper-class elite needed to protect its status by downgrading art that was becoming too popular and promoting new forms of art that were more difficult to understand in terms of everyday visual experience.

It's a cute hypothesis.  But not the whole explanation for the rise of Modernism, and probably a lesser factor than the reasons usually set forth in art history books and articles.

Nevertheless, there is truth that upper classes tend to defend their status in various ways, one of which is by contrasting their lifestyle with those of supposedly lesser groups.  Taste in art could be one such item in the contrast package, though hardly the dominant one.

As for the concept of "class," for a long time I've had difficulty with the term.  On the one hand, it's an easy word to capture normal societal differences in wealth, education, occupation, consumption patterns and so forth.  On the other hand, historically in Europe there were hereditary titles that elevated some families from the rest of the population.  This was not a rigid system such as Hindu castes.  Men could become ennobled by a king for various reasons including military performance, so the system was permeable.

A problem I have is that here in America where social class is of the permeable variety, some intellectuals and politicians use the word "class" to imply that American society is more socially rigid than it is.  Worse, those same intellectuals and politicians tend to promote conditions that lead to increased rigidity here.  An example of this?  The seemingly reasonable requirement for an educational attainment level for being considered for a job.  When too strictly applied, some people having considerable merit are denied the opportunity to demonstrate how they can perform.

Malta, Then and Now

Malta is interesting, even though it is a small place.  That's probably because of its strategic location in the Mediterranean Sea.  A fleet based there can dominate sea traffic passing between Gibraltar and Suez, not to mention many other routes crossing the gap between the Italian toe and Tunisia.

The islands have been inhabited since prehistoric times, conquered now and then (the local language is Arabic-based), and besieged when the Knights of St. John and when the British ruled.  Depending which aspects of Malta's history appeal to one's sense of history, it makes for a fine short-stay tourist destination.

I happen to be a military history buff, and many photos in my reference library's books show Royal Navy warships in Valletta's magnificent harbor.  So naturally that and old-town Valletta were the places in Malta I wanted to visit.

The day I was there in the Fall of 2017 it rained heavily.  I didn't even take my camera from its pouch.  A year later I returned and the weather was good and I took dozens of photos.  Alas, the Royal Navy is gone, but below is a then-and-now pairing looking towards the harbor entrance from Valletta.  The "then" photo might have been taken 1860-1880.