Life Goes On--Blah! #261
By Hank Silverberg
The world right now is a complex place. There is war, political division, antisemitism, other forms of racism, and many more things to write about. But this week life got a bit complicated at home for the simplest of reasons. And it created a distraction from all those other more important things.
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| (The old oven died too young!) |
We installed this oven just eight years ago, and although it was not top-of-the-line, it wasn't cheap either. A discussion with a repairman turned up the heat so to speak, when he told us the part we needed to fix the oven was no longer available.
Frankly, we expected to get more than eight years out of an oven. The one we bought for our old house lasted 20 years and was still in good shape when we left.
So what is this section of column this week all about? It's about taking something as simple as an oven and turning into the bridge of the USS Enterprise, both the real Navy ship and the fictional TV Starship.
There are too many bells and whistles that are likely to break. And if the computer board goes down, the whole oven is kaput. If you have a late model car, you are probably worried about the same thing.
It got even worse when we went shopping to buy a new oven. My wife, as I have written before, is vision impaired. She has trouble reading all those light-up displays you see on everything from the presidential briefcase with the nuclear codes, to a simple kitchen appliance like a toaster oven.
It seems they don't make ANY oven that simply has an on/off, bake, broil, set the temperature button. They all light up in blue or orange with flat, hard-to-use touch pads that come complete with WiFi so you can use your phone app to bake cookies.
We did find one that had knobs and a dial which made it easier for the vision impaired to use like the old one, but the new one cost $1,100 on sale and will take a week to get here. It has almost as many bells, whistles, knobs and displays as a spacecraft, and it brought to mind a popular song by 60's Folk artists Peter, Paul and Mary:
"It went zip when it moved
And Bop when it stopped
And whirr when it stood still
I never knew just what it was And I guess I never will. "
The manufacturer of this oven might think it's a "Marvelous Toy" like in the song, but I predict it will be a royal pain in the neck. I suspect it will break not too long after the warranty runs out. A broken oven is not a major calamity if you are not a baker. But for us, this was not a good week.
Success or Failure?
It was not a good week for Elon Musk, either. In the middle of the heat he took for "liking" anti-semitic remarks on X, or whatever he calls it, his other adventure went a bit sour. When he's not destroying Twitter or Tesla, he builds rocket ships. This past week his company, SpaceX, tried to put another rocket into space. It didn't get there. The spaceship is designed to eventually carry astronauts back to the Moon and
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| (Just leaving the launch pad courtesy of SpaceX) |
This was the second failure with this rocket design for SpaceX.
SpaceX plans to spend more than $2 billion this year on the testing and retesting.
NASA is SpaceX's primary customer, and the company is supposed to play a huge role in the Artemis program to send men back to the Moon and onto Mars within in the next decade.
One must wonder if a private company can ever do what the government did in the 1960's and 70's, to safely send men to the Moon and get them home again. The U.S. is again faced with national security-type competition that predominated the space race of the mid-20th Century. China is trying to do the same thing. Someone needs to tell Musk to get his act together and spend less time ruining X and more time fixing SpaceX.
Food Insecurity!
Sugar is important to the world economy and the world's food chain. But word comes this week of skyrocketing sugar prices just about everywhere. The price of sugar is up 55% over the past two months, even though there is no shortage of the product right now.
Brazil is the biggest producer of sugar, but it may not be enough to help out in some areas like sub-Saharan Africa which teeters on the edge of famine frequently.
Sugar production in India is down by 8% this year with the month of August there the driest in over a century. As a result, India, the world's most populated nation, is now restricting sugar exports. And production in Thailand could be down as much as 84 million tons in 2024.
The next few months could turn the tide if the weather holds out. but growth in population could also strain sugar reserves. The USDA says there are less than 68 days of sugar in stockpiles to meet the world's needs, compared to 106 days at the outset of production decline in 2020.
For now the impact is mainly on the price of sugar and the products that include it. It's a small impact in the United States, but an economic disaster for many countries with struggling economies. like Nigeria. Prices for bread there went up 15% last year. and it could be worse before this year ends.
Dumbest Quote of The Week!
I have avoided using dumb quotes from 2024 presidential candidates in this part of my column because it's very early in the campaign. and there are likely to be a lot of them before next November. But this one is so dumb I had to put it here.
It comes from Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy. Now that everyone has learned to pronounce his name, what he says is getting some attention. He has been preaching the typical Republican mantra about reducing the size of the federal government. But his method for doing that is, to be polite, the dumbest thing I have ever heard a politician say.
Here's the quote from a post on X (still Twitter to most people) on how he would downsize:
“Here’s how: if your [Social Security number] ends in an odd number, you’re fired. That downsizes government by half. Absolutely *nothing* will break as a result.”
Then he said :
“Further firings can be executed with a chisel, but Step 1 needs to be an unrestrained chainsaw or else it just won’t happen/”
There are 2.25 million people working for the federal government in civilian roles. so that would mean 1.6 million would get fired.
How ridiculous is this suggestion? About 60% of the federal workforce are employed in the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security-- all departments Ramaswamy has vowed NOT to cut back. This candidate seems to be math challenged.
(Your comments and suggestions are welcome)
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