Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

BAM

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Naps are grand but I don’t like the idea of second sleep. I prefer to slam down into unconsciousness and have absolutely no interaction with the outside world for 855 contiguous minutes. I don’t want to wake for the (imaginary) dog barking or the ringing phone or to feed the wood stove. I don’t even want to have to get up to pee.

Cartoon Cat thanks to OCALIn the far reaches of history, before the advent of the electric light orchestra or Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist TV, most people slept in two separate phases, divided by an hour or more of wakefulness. Writers have long liked the uninterrupted time to write and crooks to steal. Field workers could awaken to have sex. Priests might use the time to pray.

Hmmm. Four hours of sleep. Hot weasel sex. Four more hours of sleep.

Yeah, that has a good ring to it.

I was particularly awake at 6 this morning, enough that I considered getting up after just 5-1/2 hours sleep. Shotgun fire woke me again at ten-to-seven and kept doing so for more than an hour. The 2012 Vermont Migratory Bird Hunting season for Ducks, Coots and Mergansers restarted at 6:50 this ayem. Somewhere in there I dreamed that I was feeding the (imaginary) dog who was romping across a chopped corn field.

Did you know that coots are medium-sized water birds with mostly black feathers except for their white forehead which gives rise to the expression “bald as a …” And the common merganser is a really big duck while the brant is a really small goose.

Duck Cartoon thanks to Luis TorresAs far as I can tell, duck hunting is like fishing from a boat except colder. You go out, motor across the lake burning a lot of gas, then sit around all day in a 4×6 room. You end up spending $500 per pound for something I don’t want to eat anyway.

Now deer hunting, on the other hand, means you get to take a tramp in the woods, shoot off as many as a few $1 cartridges, and stock your freezer for pennies a pound. Mmmm. Bambi steaks. Bamburgers. Bambighetti sauce. I understand deer hunting.

Tom Ripley’s father-in-law is a deer hunter. He keeps inviting me to deer camp.

“At the end of the season he shoots our Christmas tree,” Tom said. “BAM BAM. BAM BAM BAM. Then he calls everyone out to ‘see what I got.’ Of course that means everyone (else) gets to drag the tree back to camp.”

Duck hunting just got a lot more attractive.

Trash to Riches

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My garbage man has to buy a new truck.

Vermont has very little municipal trash collection, even in our small municipalities. Many Vermonters contract private haulers to collect and dump our trash; others, like my daughter, load up their dogs and plastic bags for the Saturday morning outing to the transfer station.

Freelance Editorial Art by Roy Doty: http://www.roydoty.com/posters-editorial/garbage-truck.htm Tom Ripley owns my garbage route. I like Tom. He’s friendly, always on time, and comes right up on the porch to pick up the trash cans. He even (usually) latches the storm door when he puts the cans back. He owns a couple of used garbage trucks that he bought at the state auction and usually has a couple-three pickups that he runs around his route every Sunday before church. Sadly, he’s leaving the business because Vermont says he has to buy a new truck.

Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT) moved us “towards universal recycling [to] advance Vermont into the next generation of solid waste management and keep more waste out of our landfills” with a new law he signed this year.

The mandate requires waste haulers to collect everything from yard waste to commercial food waste, and prohibits dumping any recyclable or compostable materials in landfills.

Did you know there is a U.S. Composting Council? Its executive director says that “Enacting the law over time will ensure its success on a number of levels.”

The timeline begins in 2014 when all mandated recyclables must be removed from the solid waste stream. In 2015 yard waste goes. Two years after that, in 2017 food waste must be gone.

The prohibition mandates that every hauler have compartmented trucks. And everyone is soooooo very pleased about how the law will be phased in to give haulers enough time to build the infrastructure.

Tom has to buy a new truck.

Of course by law, Tom won’t be allowed to charge extra for handling the recycled materials.

But wait! There’s more!

“If a facility collects mandated recyclables from a commercial hauler, the facility may charge a fee for the collection of those mandated recyclables.” — Act 148

Tom has to buy a new truck.

But wait! There’s more!

Food residuals can’t go in the waste stream any more. In fact, “uncontaminated material that is derived from processing or discarding of food and that is recyclable, in a manner consistent with section 6605k of this title” (i.e. preconsumer and postconsumer food scraps) must be source separated. — Act 148

I have to pick out the wilted lettuce. Tom has to buy a new truck.

“Mr. Ripley could use his old truck and just drive the route twice,” one regulator told me. Or four times if our regulatory friend could count.

That makes perfect Green sense.

It used to be that when government usurped private property by annexing your land or legislated you out of business, it was called a taking. Times change. I guess the Far Green figures that a mandated purchase like Tom’s new truck is just another tax.

Follow the money. Somebody’s getting rich on this but it sure ain’t Tom Ripley.

For the record, Act 148 does allow new “taxes on all nonrecyclable, nonbiodegradable products or packaging.”

All Bullies Great and Small

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“I don’t recall this happening here before, a picket outside the home of a political contributor,” reporter Stewart Ledbetter said on WPTZ.

protestBurlington’s Lenore Broughton is a wealthy Vermonter and the sole contributor to the new Vermonters First SuperPAC. Her group is running an anti-ShumlinCare TV ad campaign. A small group of political activists who favor the single-payer plan marched through the hill section of Burlington, ending up at Broughton’s home; she was out of town. Tayt Brooks, Vermonters First’s executive director, called the picketing a “bullying tactic.”

Erm. No.

It is only bullying when Repugs (the power structure) do it to Dems (the professional victims) so Mr. Brooks probably can’t claim bullying.

It is a popular tactic of the left. See, any disagreement with the one true path is not deserving of American protections because it would ruin their perfect hairdos.

Mayor Thomas Menino (D-Boston) and Rahm Emanuel (D-Chicago), for example, tried to bully the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain straight out of business because its president, Dan Cathy, supports “the biblical definition of the family unit.” Even the liberal Chicago Sun-Times and the Boston Globe strongly criticized that “anti-conservative bullying.”

Meanwhile, vandals spray painted some Romney signs in Greensboro, NC, last week. The red paint formed the well-known circle crossed by a diagonal line across the candidate’s name. Reports say Obama “community organizers” were in the neighborhood at the time. That kind of personal vandalism may be becoming more prevalent by Democrats.

I’m thinking that, particularly in the anti-Lenore Broughton case, there’s a fine line between free speech/right of assembly and attempt at suppression of same. The marchers were definitely trying to stop her from expressing herself.

That’s the story I’d take to the public and, since she has the bucks, I’d make sure the news video footage (or better, jerky cellphone video) makes it into an ad and over to the network news desks with the copy that this is how the left tries to quash democracy.

Federal, state, or locally, we will get exactly what we vote for in 22 days. Let’s be careful out there.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that almost 70% of students believe it is not safe “to hold unpopular views on campus.” An example quoted merely to amplify the point about bullying turns out to have distracted us from that issue. The discussion centered on whether the numbers were accurate rather than who was the bully. It’s a good question which we will take up separately next week.

Readin’ and Writin’ and Lousy ‘Rithmetic

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“Show-me-your-papers!”

Christopher Kieras of Seymour, Connecticut, may have fibbed about his residency when he enrolled his daughter in an elementary school in Westport. That’s what the school district said when they sued Mr. Kieras back in June to recover $27,911 in tuition. Actually, the district which investigates more than 30 student residency cases each school year wants to recoup triple the tuition as damages.

familiesonlinemagazine.comIt seems the Kieras’ daughter is an illegal alien in Westport.

Oh. Sorry. An undocumented child.

Meanwhile, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that Alabama public schools can’t check the citizenship status of new students. That’s unconstitutional, the federal appeals court said.

Judges said fear of the law “significantly deters undocumented children from enrolling in and attending school ….”

Say what?

If the results in Westport and other Connecticut towns are any indicator, illegal aliens darned well should be afraid. After all, if we don’t let kids from the next town into our local schools, we certainly can’t let kids from the next country!

Oh. Wait. We really don’t let kids from the next town into our local schools but kids from the next country get a free hall pass.

Connecticut’s neighboring Weston school district now requires deeds or lease records, or statements from landlords. Here in Vermont, residents have to declare their homestead on their income tax returns — the form includes a box for school district, too. The Weston school district (and the Vermont Department of Taxes) better watch out that the American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t take us all to task over the Connecticut version of “show-me-your-papers.”

“Nobody quarrels with wanting the best for your children,” school district attorney Catherine S. Nietzel said, “but it’s not fair for people who do pay taxes and part of those taxes are used for schools.” OK, nobody but the ACLU. And the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Imagine that.

Chips

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The colloquial name for an integrated circuit or a microprocessor
A deep fried or dried slice of banana
A shot in golf
Deep fried and salted corn, potato, or tortilla slices
A small, striped tamias animated by Walt Disney
The son of Hi and Lois
A casino token
A type of climbing hold
The fundamental unit of transmission in CDMA
Small chunks of chocolate, used for making chocolate-chip cookies. And brownies. And cakes. And fudge bars. And cupcakes. And ice cream. And bread pudding. And muffins…
<slap>
The potato pieces known as french fries.

I bought potatoes Saturday for 20 cents per pound. These 1970s-90s prices courtesy of a “Saturday Only” sale at our grocery store. But I got home to find a huge bag of potato chips on the counter. Apparently SWMBO found it on sale, too.

potatoes$3 per pound.

The starchy tuber is the world’s fourth-largest food crop; the annual diet of an average global citizen includes about 73 pounds of potato. We think of Ireland and Idaho when we think of potatoes but a third of the world’s taters grow (and are eaten) in China and India.

I know why we have whole potatoes. I like them mashed and baked and fried and in soups and stews. I’m not sure why we have chips. They taste wonderful but I have to run instead of walk in the morning after I eat any and I have to skip dessert.

I hate to run. I really like dessert. Especially dessert with chocolate chips.

The National Health Service in the UK does not count potatoes towards the five portions of the fruit and vegetables diet.

Waiter? I think I’ll have the potato chips and the chocolate chip cookies with my sandwich for lunch.