Who remembers the Alar scare? When the news broke panicked mothers rushed to schools to pull apples out of their child's lunch. The FDA had pulled Alar's registration but allowed all remaining stocks on hand to be used. Unfortunately most orchards had already been sprayed and with the panic no one was buying. Many farmers lost their orchards.

Maybe I'm wrong but I though an internal combustion engine was basically an air pump. Getting the air in and out in an efficient manner produced more power. I flipped the air cleaner cover on my 68 327 Impala because it allowed more air to the air cleaner than the one and a quarter inch hole on the side snout. It had nothing to do with the sweet moan from the spread bore carburetor at full throttle.

One of the best sounding exhaust I ever heard was on a ten wheel flat bed truck with a big block V-8. The owner had simply welded a three ft section of six inch black pipe to each exhaust pipe in place of a traditional muffler.

My wife just started nursing school. Tonight she is going to practice doing a bed bath on me. I hope she wears her naughty nurse outfit ;)

She has been helping take care of her invalid mother for almost ten years so she knows how. She just needs a male patient and figured I would enjoy it. Out of the fifteen students in her class, one is male.

Take your first sentence to it's logical conclusion. Ban all things pertaining to fossil fuels. Most people do nothing productive, they can all stay home. Many of those now unemployed can then start work on the all renewable infrastructure. It will require a North Korean style totalitarian government because the sacrifice and deprivation of a carbon free existence will be intolerable to all but a few of the population. Of course those few will gleefully man the guard towers and put aside their fear of guns.

Sadly taxes are such a fact of modern life not paying one is now considered a subsidy, from Wikipedia, "Subsidies come in various forms including: direct (cash grants, interest-free loans) and indirect (tax breaks." Pay up sucker.

After years of my business breaking even, meaning no profit but no loses either, I had to sell some land to repay the loans I had been living off of. This triggered a large capital gains tax. I shifted expenses forward to cancel that out. The next year with less expenses I made a large paper profit and had to pay the Social Security and income tax on that profit that wouldn't have be due on the capital gains.

The smart me thought me knew what he was doing and the lazy me didn't take the few minutes to figure it both ways the first time. This cost me $50,000 in penalties and interest when I couldn't pay it. A CPA would have saved me more than $25.

I have a straight A daughter who almost had a nervous break down trying to be perfect. I also have a mostly A and B son who confided to me he never bothered to study for a test until he started law school. Both now have successful careers so I guess they achieved balance.

Remember the nightly news with Walter Cronkite? There was always a teletype running in the background to let you know it was a news show.

Until everyone gos to war against climate change nothing will happen. In 1941 the US was at war. There was a real threat of invasion yet there was still the need for a military draft because many men wouldn't volunteer to fight. Until everyone is forcibly drafted into the warming war, few are willing to suffer the consequences.

There will be food rationing, travel restrictions, and many deaths, remember, this is war. Until the politicians declare war and institute the draft most will be conscientious objectors.

I was a maintenance tech at a produce packing plant where we received bulk semi loads of potatoes. We weighed the trucks in and out to calculate the delivery weight. One guy was HUGE! I made sure I watched the digital scale readout as he got out of his truck to get his scale ticket. He was over 600 lbs. He took his papers and then climbed the stairs to the second story office.

As a mental exercise two years ago I took the time to calculate what my investment would have been worth if my yearly SS contribution was put in the stock market starting with my first paycheck in 1970. Most of my life I made less then forty thousand a year. It would have been six-hundred and fifty thousand. For gold it would have been the same. I calculated Apple stock and almost got sick. Most people probably use up that much in Medicare but that is another discussion.

Are restaurant licenses limited? Do they cost a million dollars each? Would you be happy if your town decided that five restaurants was enough? Or if one of them had to be in the part of town that wasn't safe after dark? Would prices be cheaper if the wait time was always two hours? Nothing wrong with safety regulations. I don't think social engineering and guaranteed profits are right.

You may be suffering from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Short winter days mean less sunlight. Look up light therapy. I suffer from the opposite problem. On long summer days it gets dark so late I can't get enough sleep before it gets bright again. I tried blacking out the windows but them my wife gets depressed.

The real world need for sponges is far greater than the need for people who have been taught how to learn but can't prove it. If you're teaching someone how to learn how can you know if you have succeeded? How does someone prove that they can learn without actually answering any questions? How can a student prove he can retain knowledge without retaining any?

My first day at school was in 1958. With pop quizzes and weekly progress tests in all 5 classes I imagine we spent a cumulative 1 hour a day in testing. Without testing how do you know if a child is learning? I took a semester of college classes in 1997. Each class was four hours a week with the fourth hour spent in testing.

My exposure to today's education system is a daughter who teaches college English and a son in his junior year of college. From what I see even though actual education spending has doubled or even tripled over the last fifty years the education system in more about teachers pay and students rights with little thought given to actually educating the average student.

It seems like the US education system is following the US police and military systems in being totally out of control, self serving, and doing more harm than good while also being hideously expensive. The end of the world might not be televised but it will be online, I'll be watching.