What a Waste of Time

I've been wasting time. Day after geezer day I've done nothing. As it turns out, the rest of the world has hurried along without me. Important things have gone on. And important people have reacted to those things. The "revolution" in the Middle East is at a beginning. Egypt, Iran, Libya. Oil prices are going up, economies are crashing. While all this is going on, I look outside and notice that the wind is blowing. And I wonder what the date is. Is February finally over? Is it even possible to "waste" time? As I use up time, I am using up my life. Is having time in my past better than having time in my future? If I could be twenty years old again would I want that, so that I could have more time?. If I waste time playing solitaire, is there something immoral about that? I could be doing something productive somewhere. Maybe helping someone? Is watching a football game on TV a better use of time than playing solitaire? Is watching a football game live in the stadium a better use of time than watching it on TV? Is one man's time more valuable than another's? If the president plays a game of solitaire surely he wastes more time than if I do. But if the president plays solitaire, the essence of the game of solitaire changes. It might become popular. Someone might report the results of the solitaire game in the media. Then when I play solitaire it might not be viewed by my peers in the same waste- of- time way. When we fault Nero for fiddling while Rome burned, we're not saying fiddling is a waste of time. Only in some situations. Yet we have the expression "fiddling around", which obviously came from that legend. There's a Chinese proverb about the humble man frying a fish. It asks the question whether his activity is any less important than any other. So it seems that the value of time is relative. It depends on who's spending the time. And what the activity is. And what activity is being neglected. All I want to do is play solitaire. Without feeling guilty. So I'll quote Bertrand Russell: "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." And finally, Ralph Waldo Emerson. "To fill the hour, that is happiness, and leave no crevice for repentance or approval".

Stately Pleasure

I feel a post coming here that will be disjointed if not scatterbrained. If you can't stand "stream of consciousness" surf on, and find continuity. I have been under the weather and spent a few days in bed. Yesterday I was up and about and considered myself well. I was sluggish and dull though. I chalked it up to the bed rest getting me way out of shape. Today I really feel fine and I am surprised at how much better I feel. A bigger surprise though is my judgment about yesterday as far as thinking I was well. Why didn't I know I wasn't well yet? I just assumed that the way I felt was to be expected after being sick. I didn't even know how my own body is supposed to feel when I'm OK. When I'm sick I lay in bed and sleep or watch TV. I watch old movies mostly. I don't have the energy to read. Reading is thinking. It's surprising how much energy it takes to think. So I read a bit today. That means I'm back. I was sitting here reading the introduction to "The Portable Atheist" by Hitchens when my wife walked in my room and said here is a present for you. She had bought me a new book called "How Pleasure Works". It's by a Yale psychologist named Paul Bloom. It's pretty interesting. He tries to figure out what gives us pleasure. And why. Is it an instinct? A survival tool? Pure sensory? Is pleasure happiness? Looking at a great painting is pleasurable. The great painting might be worth a million dollars. A perfect print copy of that painting might be worth next to nothing. He talks about "endowment value". This is where the longer you own something, the more valuable it becomes to you. This is where the pleasure hypothesis crosses into the hoarding syndrome. The author said that if someone offered him 100 bucks for his wedding ring he would say no of course. If they offered him $10,000 he would sell. What makes something valuable? Is there anything you own that you would not sell at any price? I can think of two things I would not sell. The sentimental value is ridiculously high. When I was four years old I was hospitalized with a nerve infection that was thought to be polio. My parents had three other young kids to worry about in addition to me. They couldn't sit with me all day and night at the hospital. My father was working long hours to support this family. The first night in the hospital my parents stayed until visiting hours were over and I remember not wanting them to leave and feeling scared and sorry for myself. My father gave me a teddy bear. My father was not a teddy bear kind of guy. My mom was the soft one, to make up for his harshness. I still have the teddy bear. And I would not give it up. I would like my son to keep it after I am gone. The other item was also a gift from my father. An airplane propeller. That came from the airplane that carried him on his first solo flight, in July of 1937. In a 40hp Taylor Cub which had the name "honeychild". The airplane was later in a minor crack up and the prop was dinged. At that time my father was instructing and the boss came by the desk my father was sitting at and set the propeller down on the desk and said something like "you'll want this". Then Pearl Harbor happened. I've got a couple of old guitars that I'll never get rid of, that have been in the family. But I would sell them if someone offered me ten times what they are worth. Dr. Bloom could not explain the pleasure of music in human development as far as natural selection. It is possible that music lovers got to reproduce because they cooperated with others more successfully and got more done. Or in general, skills and talents demonstrated by males can be selected by females for reproduction, and vice versa It's a mystery. Unlike pleasures in food or sex or warmth which have obvious payoffs in reproduction. Dr. Bloom seemed to discover that all of us are "essentialists", in that we always get our pleasure in the full "essence" of what we're eating, listening to, looking at, desiring as a mate. The pleasure is on a deeper level than one might think. We want the real thing. Not fakes, copies, forgeries, knock offs. Our brains are complicated, and so are our pleasures. My Ibuprofen is wearing off. It's time to seek pleasure. Take two pills, print the Post crossword puzzle, make some tea and curl up with my ill- mannered Beagle mix. Jake, the "teddy bear". LLITTY :::::+:::::

Goodbye Columbus

My other blog is "General Aviation Informal". Back two years ago I started this blog "Lloyd Lou" because I promised not to tell "airline stories" on my general aviation blog. Two years have gone by and I haven't posted one airline story. On either blog. I don't feel like telling "hero" stories. I don't have any anyway. I probably have quite a few "there I was" stories. And I could make up a lot more. But I'm not going to. When I first fell in love with flying and airplanes, I never had a plan of being a professional pilot. I just liked flying. I knew I would love flying before my first ride. My first ride was in a Piper Cub off Deep Creek Airport on the western shore of the Chesapeake. That airport is long gone now. That ride was everything I expected and more. I wasn't just hooked. I was stung. I was 14 years old or so. From then on I was always figuring out a way to get another ride. Ride followed ride. As a high school senior I applied for a scholarship for a Private License. I had the written test passed. An Airman medical. And a recommendation from a member of the US Congress. In the summer of 66 I got my first airman certificate. Then I started finding ways to rent airplanes. In college I started renting Cubs at the College Park Airport. At some point I had over 200 flight hours. In those days if you had 200 hours you simply went and got your commercial license. It was quite simple compared to today. I had to take some lessons on how to pass the flight test, and that was a struggle to afford and I simply had to save up for each lesson. I got the Commercial. But not to be a professional pilot. Just because it was a cool flying thing to do. Like getting a black belt, or a degree in something. And it was easy, except for the money. I always admired the instructors who taught me. They actually got paid to fly. I wound up giving a lot of rides to folks at the College Park Airport. And I would play instructor by letting them take the controls. I even filled in as an instructor a few times at College Park even though I did not have an Instructors Rating. When I went to the FAA to get an Instructors Rating I found out I did not know as much as I thought I did. Each time I went up to Baltimore to take a check ride for my "CFI" (Certified Flight Instructor) rating I was given an "oral". And I was sent home because I didn't know enough. For months I was "mad" at the FAA guys for being such sticklers! Finally, after talking to my dad, who was a pilot back in the thirties, whom I wasn't getting along with very well; and another mentor from College Park who was an old instructor, it finally dawned on me. The more I was learning, the more there was to learn. I stopped worrying about getting the rating. There was this one textbook that the feds kept referring to. I thought it was a bit mundane. I practically memorized that book word for word. I could literally quote paragraphs from it. And I had become a bit humbled. I had finished my degree at the University of Maryland and was working at College Park Airport as a line boy pumping gas and washing airplanes and mowing grass and degreasing the bellies of airplanes. The old mentor at College Park told me that if I went to Baltimore again I would pass the CFI exam. So I did. And he was right. I passed. So now I could do what I loved and pay my meager bills. I flew and flew and flew. I flew 2000 hours in less than two years. Finally I burned out and ran away from home. I wondered across the country and back. I wound up in Cumberland instructing again. But I was also training in the twin engine airplanes and flying co-pilot on the small town commuter flights into Baltimore. Then came 4 years in General Aviation that I couldn't describe in a hundred blog posts. Thru my twenties. Learning as I went. Single Pilot IFR. Twin Engine. Freight. Air Mail. Bank Work. I still never thought of myself as a professional pilot. I just wanted to fly the planes. By myself mostly. For fun. Then came turbine Beaches with two pilots. Then finally DC-3's also with two pilots. An airplane so large, the pilots could not load their own freight. This was good. We went to eat and drink coffee while the aircraft was loaded. That made me start to think maybe I was a professional pilot. Also on the DC-3 I started to get paid a bit more. $25K per year was a lot for 1977. I wanted to buy a condo, but I didn't live anywhere except a suitcase. All of my contemporaries wanted to get hired by the major airlines. I just never thought about it. It sounded like no fun at all. When my co workers found out I had a college degree, they could not believe I wasn't applying. There were schools and seminars about how to apply for an airline job. I never went to one. But I did fill out a few applications. By hand. Everybody was typing them. My General Aviation Career was coming to an end. My co pilot and I had taken our girlfriends with us on the DC-3 run one night and had quite a party. A few nights later we were on the Port Columbus run and when we woke at the hotel we were told to call the boss. We did and we were both fired. The contractor had insisted that we be fired or the contract would be given to another company. The good news was that the boss was sending his own personal aircraft out to Port Columbus. That plane would bring our replacement crew. Also we would receive our paychecks up to date. And severance pay. And the boss's pilot was told to fly us to any place we wanted in the eastern US. We both chose Philadelphia International where our cars had been sitting for months. I was burned out and so happy to be fired and paid and going home. But where was "home"? At Philly, we got our cars started. Kep headed for New Hampshire and I headed for DC. With no plan I found myself driving to my parents house. The house I grew up in. I wasn't really on good terms there. My mom came to the door and smiled and invited me in. She told me I had some mail and a letter from Delta Airlines. She fixed me some food and I opened the letter from Delta. It had teletype authorizations to pass ride to and from Atlanta and an invitation to a two day interview process for employment at Delta Airlines. I told my mom I would like to stay a few days. I would sleep for a long time. Then work on my car. Then go out and buy a three piece suit. I was tired. I knew I was changing gears. The next time I would see Port Columbus would be two years later. In the right seat of a DC-9. With a layover at the airport Sheraton. Where my General Aviation career had begun to end.

my golfcart is gas powered

The automobile industry is in an interesting time right now. We are at the very beginning of the electric car era. I'm most fascinated by the people who don't want to give up the old paradigm that an electric car is not feasible. Way back before the EV-1, I used to make the argument that we put an electric car on the moon! So we ought to be able to make one that we can drive on the highway. So I've been waiting for a long time for the old paradigm to die. Don't get me wrong. I love cars and the ICE. Internal Combustion Engine. That acronym has become more popular lately. I have a little airplane with a "flat head" air cooled ICE. And wife and I just bought a new used car. A pretty Nissan which she loves. With an ICE. Now with the "Volt" and the "Leaf" and the going public of "Tesla" I was of the mind that as of say, the first of the year, the paradigm has shifted and the EV, Electric Vehicle, is here to stay. Mainstream use may be 10 to 20 years away, but the concept argument is over. But I just read a comment from someone who can't let the argument go. So maybe the paradigm has life for another ten or twenty years. The comment was in reference to the Chevy Volt. The Volt has been in the news recently. Of course! It is just coming out for sale this year. But there is another reason it has been in the news. Some folks are mad at GM about the Volt. They say GM lied about the Volt and told the public that the Volt was an EV. A purely electric vehicle. And GM "lied" because the Volt is in fact a hybrid! Here we go with the nay sayers grasping at straws. Anything to make an EV sound bad so it will just go away! And we can go back to the good ole days! I love this. Almost no one has even seen one of these Volts yet some are repeating the mantra again: "The Electric Vehicle is not feasible". First of all, the Volt is an EV, not a hybrid. Second, who cares if it is a hybrid. Hybrids move motor and battery technology forward. Third, criticizing each and every new electric car and pointing out it's shortcomings will not put the genie back in the bottle and make the world give up on electric cars. Let's say you are a nay sayer and don't want electric cars. Then let's say the Volt is a big dud. Too expensive and bad technology. The electric car will still be coming and you can't stop it. So sorry. One of the big reasons the electric car is the king for the future is China. The Chinese do not want to waste time building ICE cars. They will quickly shift to electric. For the same reason they are not going to string a bunch more telephone wires! They have cell phones! The only argument left to the nay sayers is basically what the comment I saw was saying: That if you compare an efficient deisel powered car to the EV, it may have the same or maybe even less net damage to the environment and itcosts a lot less than the EV. I'm not going to take the time here going into the many reasons why that argument is feeble. The most glaring flaw in the argument is that it is short sighted. There is an irony here in that the commenter/nay- sayer I refer to was commenting in reference to the Chevy Volt. The Chevy Volt actually demonstrates technology that reminds us of the biggest advantage of using an electric motor to drive the wheels of a car. The advantage of this is that once the electric motor is driving the wheels, the designer can use any power source that he wants to power that electric motor. Batteries. Deisel. Fuel cell. Nuclear. Solar. Coal. you name it. This concept is lost to the nay sayer. And the irony here is: The Chevy Volt uses an ICE (the engine the nay sayer says must be used in cars) to power the generator that powers the motor that drives the wheels! In a way, it's an ICE vehicle, more than a hybrid. OK my rant is done. Let me just say one more thing about the Volt. Why it ain't a hybrid. The on board ICE is not to charge the batteries. You charge the batteries at night from the wall and you drive on battery electric power only. It's an EV. The ICE kicks in when you need extra power such as a hill, or going faster than 60 mph, or if you run the battery down. The 1.4 liter ICE is connected to a constant speed generator. Not the wheels. It's an EV.