The Curmudgeonly Professor

A Few of the Great Mysteries of Life

The Curmudgeonly Professor is plagued, annoyed, and irritated at the following mysteries and unsolved questions:

1. Why do clothes turn wrong side out in the washer? Now that I have become a laundry expert during my wife's health issues, I am befuddled enterely about why shirts and pants turn themselves wrong side out when they come out of the washer.
2. How do socks manage to totally disappear (split infinitive) in the wash? I am still waiting a month later for two odd socks from $3 a pair socks to show up.
3. Why, when you aim something at a waste basket does the item take an independent trajectory of its own and wander far from the waste basket? I watched my doctor aim something at his office waste basket a couple of months ago, then watched as the item took a totally foreign course, and the doctor muttered something unintelligible under his breath, walked across the room, and placed the offending item in his waste basket.
4. Why does a vacuum cleaner merely reorganize carpet boogers (little doodads of lint and goodies spread around the carpet) rather than pick them up, leaving you to see them all remaining after you have put the vacuum cleaner away. The same can be said for crumbs in sinks (sink boogers).
5. Why does 90% of the population remain totally ignorant of economics (not to mention Congress)?
6. Why do computers cause so much consternation and misery? Computers have replaced stubborn cows on the farm where I grew up as being more than equal in grief. I just sent my HP into the factory and paid $270 to repair the touch panel internet icon. I got the computer back yesterday, but the stupid thing blocked a bunch of my internet sites as "invalid certificates." I called HP this morning and was told it would cost me $49 to talk to their exalted experts, to which I strenuously objected, having just coughed up $270 to get it fixed and then they screwed it up, and then they wanted me to pay more. Finally, I got some advice on how to fix it, all of which didn't work. Further perusal of Google led me to the little gem that said: check your current date on your computer. If the date is not current, change to current date and your certificates will be valid, whatever that meant. I did, and it worked, no thanks to anyone else.
7. Why do so few people seem to care about the facts when they start spewing forth their distorted wisdom?

This list merely provides a beginning to the areas of ignorance causing misery and grief to the Curmudgeonly Professor. Despite having a Ph.D., two master's degrees, and a bachelor's degree (in agriculture, no less), the Curmudgeonly Professor's brain cells have processed and retained very little information of lasting value. He is hoping for advice and help from his learned and competent readers from around the globe. Have a nice day. Is there anything you don't know that is troubling you? Let us know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Important Things I Learned Today: The Curmudgeonly Professor Advances in Knowledge

Here are the most important increments to knowledge gained by the Curmudgeonly Professor today:

1. The sweet potato fries at Fargo Burgers  on West Sunset near Santa Clara are even better sprinkled with cinnamon sprinkles and dipped in warm marshmallow sauce.  No kidding.
2. Grocery shopping is hard work.  I don't know how the checkers have the stamina to keep going hour after hour and keep a cheerful disposition.  I usually ask them how they're doing.
3. For all practical purposes, the basketball season is over.  Much as I love the Utah Jazz, their imploded team still has strong individual performances but cannot close out a win.  Maybe next year.  Meanwhile, the Wiz picked up their second (2nd) road win of the year in SLake last night against the hapless Jazz.
4. I have one pathetic little red tulip blooming in my front flower space.
5. I had to replace my American Express card one more time since some idiot lost it.  I've had an AmEx card since 1965.

That about exhausts any learning possibilities for the day.  I hope your day was just as edifying and growth-promoting.

Five Reasons Why You Should Proofread Every Linne and Page You Type

Too many people assume they are correctly eyeballning every word, phrase and senntence that they type, and that they never make errxors, so they never proofread.  Wrong!  Wrong!  Wrongg!  A term I learned in graduate school is this one:  Every unproofread word and page could be, and often is, plagued with miosspelled words and errors.  So hear are five reasons everyone: secretaries, lawyers, business persons, trash collecktors, and anyone else who types or writes a word or a page or a book should proofread:  (More than once: else why do printed books still have errorss in them?)

1. Errors are embarrassing.  The reader knows yyou didn't doublecheck, that you don't know how to spell, and that you were too lazzy to fix stuff before you finished it and sent it outt.
2. Errpors cost money to fix.
3. Mistakes take up wasted timme, postage, telephone calls, and such, and cause headaches, stomach crampps, cussing, bewilderment, bad thoughts, delays, wrong information, and general consternation and havoc.
4. Mistakes can actually cause extremely serious problems, misinterpretations, legal actions, much expense to correct, and extgreme and irate anger.
5. Proofreading is the most efficient use of time you can make.  Knowing that every word, every page, every document, every letter, every form is typed exactly correct means you never have to worry about causing the multitude of problems that errors can instigate.

I had two special secretaries during my work career, each of which worked for me for at least six years.  Each of them asked me if I had any suggestions or directions for them when they started.  I told both of them to remember that "any unchecked, unproofread page or typed information is wrong."  I imagine a minor mistake or two might have been found, but I don't remember them.  The first secretary typed thousands of pages of research monographs and technical tables.  The second one was our departmental secretary and received the all-university award for outstanding secretary on the BYU campus at the age of 26, to the great consternation of the hundreds of senior staff in a large university.  A simple rule.  When obeyed meticulously, this rule leads to profound and outstanding results.  And those who follow this rule can sleep soundly at nights.

 

Five Words or Phrases that should be Banned

Here are the Curmudgeonly Professor's nominations for five words and phrases that should be banned:

1. You know.  Inserted after every sentence.  Even Hillary Clinton was doing so during the last election, you know.
2. To be honest.  I've been lying up till now.  Now I'll be honest, but how will you know, to be honest?
3. Like.  Like this, like that, like something else, inserted during every brain wave, thought, and utterance, like.
4. That's what it's all about.  Egregious use of two indefinite antecedents, never knowing what either that or it is all about, and that's what it's all about.
5. Sweet. Nauseous.
6. Enjoy.  Sorry, this is a sixth word, so enjoy.

Of course, you know, to be honest, like, a plethora of other egregious words and phrases are roaming around out there, indiscriminately and overly used by vocabulary-starved folks, so we may have to add to this list as time goes by, so enjoy.  Sweet!  And that's what it's all about.

Living in Password Hell

Don't bother to tell the Curmudgeonly Professor that there are ways to organize and download or upload or whatever the plethora of passwords that provide entry into the glorious world of the internet and beyond.  I must look into these more efficient methods one of these first days if I ever get around to it.  For now, I have six 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of plain white paper with passwords scrawled in all directions, corrected, redlined, x'd out, written sideways, upside down, in a half dozen colors of ball point ink.  These pages are now battered, covered with grease spots, soaked with wrinkles from spilled soda pop.  When some inconsiderate website which has provided unrestricted entry for awhile pops up with a "enter password" command, I usually try the two or three most common combinations to see if something will work.  The computer imperiously tells me "you are stupid.  We have no record of this combination of user name, password, and ID, and furthermore we will block your entry until you shape up and apply for a new magic word."  Then I begin searching through my six pages of notes, trying to decide which of several passwords and user names I might have for, say, Yahoo, Facebook, Windows Live, Amazon, or whatever.  If I have not crossed out the defunct passwords, I continue to work my way through them in sequence until something works.  Or, if it doesn't, I send in a whine to the site and ask to reset my password.  I usually reset it to the same one I had before.

Of course, passwords are no laughing matter.  Some idiot hacked my MSN email account two years ago and I have never recovered.  Who knows how many people kept emailing me at that address, wondering if I were deceased or had just chucked my computer in a fit of anger in the Santa Clara River to watch it float down to Lake Mead.  At least it saved me answering a lot of emails and my life has seemed to continue on in the same confused state in which it originally reposed.

I really do plan to sort out and rewrite my six pages of passwords into some coherent list.  But then I am overwhelmed with the thought that I will just have to change many of them as time goes along and the new list won't look any better than the last one.  Meanwhile, I dwell in Password Hell.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Seven Things To Do Today

Here are 7 things you should do today:

1. Get off your rear end and move around every 15-20 minutes unless you want to keep getting more defunct, get phlebitis, weigh more, get Type 2 diabetes, atrial fib, etc. etc.
2. Skip Letterman and Leno. Same tired, weak, off-color stuff.
3. Drink lots of water, quit drinking soda, both diet and undiet.
4. Speak kindly to someone you were about ready to curse.
5. Be thankful for your blessings.
6. Quit texting, emailing, iPadding, etc., divorce yourself for 24 hours from internet dependency and then join a 12 step recovery program.
7. Say your prayers.  You may need them.

There.  You have saved $30 and hours of time and you will feel better tonight, tomorrow, and the next week and month.

 

 

Successful Housekeeping Methods I Learned from my Children and Grandchildren

I have always considered my children and grandchildren to be smart, capable and intelligent, so it is no surprise that they have come up with some ingenious methods of housekeeping, as follows:

1. Tyler, in his younger years, not sure now, simply sprayed necessary items of clothing with Febreze and stuck them in the dryer when in need.  When we visited his home a few years ago, my granddaughter warned us "Do NOT go in Tyler's room."  An enormous supply of old tennis shoes and miscellaneous athletic paraphernalia reposed there.
2. Recently, my daughter (Tyler's mom) visited and ironed a shirt for him.  To be efficient, Tyler simply unbuttons the top two buttons, loosens the tie but leaves it on the shirt, takes the shirt off, and then, presto, he is ready to put the whole thing back on again.
3. Courtney explained why she left the vacuum cleaner at the foot of the stairs for a week instead of taking it upstairs to use.  She said it wasn't because she was asked to vacuum, "it was the way she was asked."  Actually Courtney is a college grad and a professional wedding planner so you can see she is smart.
4. Caleb invented the no-dishwashing method of kitchen management.  Simply use all paper dishes and plastic utensils.  He claims he is now washing dishes.
5. The likelihood of getting teenagers (or older) to clean up their rooms is inversely proportionate to the number of times they are asked to do it.
6. Memo to my unmarried grandsons:  Girls (young women) have likely kept their rooms in a mess through their teen and college years.  However, when they marry, they become neatness freaks and will follow you around and criticize every article of clothing, every book or newspaper, power tool, pizza crust, empty pop can, popcorn kernel, that you strew around the house just as if they had been neat freaks all their whole beautiful entire lives thus far themselves.  This is a control technique, men, but trust me, you will lose so don't try to fight it.  Just pick up your junk and have a happy marriage.
7. I went to Lori's college apartment when she was getting ready to move but discovered I couldn't walk across the floor to get her stuff.  To reward her, she now has two little girls and twin boys.  What goes around comes around, so to speak.
8. Yelling, threatening, grounding, fining, imprisoning, starving, taking away TV and cell phones and any and all other punishment techniques will fail if you use them to get your brilliant, handsome, lovely child to clean up the toxic waste dump that his his or her room.
9. Isn't it interesting that people build megamansions for zillions of dollars and then their kids turn half of it into a challenge in junk and waste management.  Might as well live in a dump in the first place.
10. My daughters, Carolyn and Kim, showed an interesting contrast in their approach to room cleaning when young.  Carolyn would fuss and procrastinate all day Saturday until late in the day whereupon she would ultimately do a fine job and then leave with only a short time to be with her friends.  Kim, however, did a quick and questionable job on her room, was done almost immediately, and took off with the whole day to play.

Of course I love all of my children and grandchildren and I have many more tales to tell.  However, the Curmudeonly Professor is not a paragon of neatness and orderliness.  No, his desk, den, and surroundings have always been littered with books, newspapers, unanswered subscription reminders, book club mailers, to-do lists from years ago, computer software, unread computer and photography manuals, and such.  I am always impressed with creative slovenliness and messiness, some worked to an art form.  I just know, however, that if I clean stuff up, other more important activities will take up my time and the piles of junk will soon materialize once again.  So why bother in the first place?

A Tiny Slice of History: September 2, 1950

I have a cardboard box that I have used since high school to save my valued treasures.  I have hauled this box all over the United States on each of our various moves.  I don't know how many years, or decades, have gone by since I got the stuff out of the box and went through the items one by one, but it has been many years.  At the bottom of the box is a much battered page of newspaper from the Billings (MT) Gazette, dated September 2, 1950.  The page consists mostly of want ads, agricultural commodity reports, and daily comics. 

On that day in September 1950, I was 17 years old, soon to become 18 on September 17.  I had completed my freshman year of college at the University of Wyoming and had returned home to Penrose in northern Wyoming for the summer.  I was offered a job in the insurance department of the First National Bank in Powell, which was a step up from the job I had the previous summer at Earl's Super Service and Studebaker Garage right across the street, where I lubed cars, filled gas tanks, nearly pulled a gas pump over when the hose hooked on a car bumper, and learned to like ice cold bottled Coke out of the ice filled pop (never soda) chest.  At least that next summer of 1950 I could wear clean clothes to work.  My job was to type insurance policies.  If I made a mistake, the policy had to be voided and destroyed and a new one typed.  I learned to get pretty good at it.

Up until that summer, I had felt fortunate that I had been too young for World War II.  Then the world caved in once more when the Korean War started that summer.  My dad thought I should stay at the bank and make a career of banking, and was against my returning to Laramie to the University.  My bank president boss told me that I would likely get drafted soon anyway, and that I would be better off to go back to school in the meantime.  About this time in September, I went on a double date to go to the Powell Panther football game in Laurel, MT.  Then a few days later I decided that I would go back to school.  I quit my job at the bank, drove twelve miles home to Penrose, loaded up my car with what few things I had, and left as night was coming on to drive the 420 miles or so to Laramie by myself in the dark.

Here are a few gleanings from that battered page from the Billings Gazette of September 2, 1950:

• Musial of St. Louis led National League batting at .358, and led NL hits with 162.
• The best pitcher in the NL in early September was Maglie of NY at 13-3, .813
• Kiner of Pittsburgh led home runs at 40, and Ennis of Philly led RBIs with 112.
• In the American League, DiMaggio of Boston led runs with 115 and ranked 3d in hits, tied with Rizzuto of NY with 165.
• The draft situation was getting so serious that the NFL was considering raising the player limit from 32 to 35, running the risk that 4 or 5 players could get drafted the same day.
• Film star Ginger Rogers teamed with Francis X. Shields in the mixed doubles of the national tennis championships.
• In the butter and egg commodity markets, 93 score AA butter wholesaled for 62 cents, while eggs rated extras wholesaled for 44 cents.
• Russett potatoes were going for $3.50 to $3.80 per cwt.
• The Dow Jones Industrial average was 219.
• The Photo Center in Billings was advertising photo developing of 8 exp. rolls enlarged and deckled for 40 cents with extra jumbo prints at 5 cents each.
• Want ads were showing preference for men above draft age.
• Year around employment available for cattle camp.  No drinkers.
• Pinsetters wanted for bowling alley in Cody WY, pay 10 cents per line.
• Comics included Blondie, Dick Tracy, Moon Mullins, Gasoline Alley, Henry, The Gumps, and Orphan Annie.

Is it possible that sixty years have gone by since I put that page of newspaper in the bottom of my box, and that I have never gotten it out or thrown it away for six decades?  Time has a tendency to pay tricks on us. That one battered page brought back a flood of memories as I left my bank job, drove to Laramie so I could register the next day for classes, and began my sophomore year of school, uneasy about my future and the future of my classmates, many of whom had already left for the Korean War.  I remember it was rainy and cold in Laramie that fall, and that I was able to room with some students in a prefab room built for students who were working at the University of Wyoming Dairy Farm.  I can still recall some of the conversations I had with my friends that rainy fall as we talked far into the night, wondering about what the future had in store for us.

Looking at the Benefits and Costs of Social Media and Electronic Information Transmission

Looking back a few years ago, I remember when our academic department plunked an ungainly little hunk of electronic wizardry called an Apple computer on my desk and told us to go forth into the Promised Land.  Apparently, we were expected to become more brilliant, less opinionated, more productive, and crank out a plethora of journal articles that no one would ever read or understand.  This ugly little doodad probably had 54 MB or some such teensy capacity, which might have got you through a thank you note to grandma for sending you 20 bucks for your birthday.

The Curmudgeonly Professor is no expert on electronic media, or any other media, for that matter.  But he has kept track of what has happened during the technological revolution in data and information transmission.  Beginning with punch cards, card sorters, and huge rooms full of primitive computer tubes, and leading up to the current world-in-the-palm-of-your-hand society we live in today, the whole transition has come upon us in two or three decades.  Children born in the past decade or so have no idea that everyone in history wasn't born with a Blackberry in their chubby little fists and a cell phone with which to text Mommy when it was time to be dried off.

The U.S. Postal Service was probably the first major institution to feel the impact of the communication revolution as the wave of faxes and then emails left the government's mail deliveries more and more limited to "junk"mail and bills, except for those still afraid of or angry at computers.  Electronic bill paying, which is not only easier but infinitely more accurate than licking a bunch of stamps and taking your handwritten checks to the mail box, has wiped out another chunk of mail.  The Postal Service, suffering with bleeding deficits, followed the reverse logic of defying the Laws of Supply and Demand by beginning a long series of rate hikes.  Many of these hikes were, of course, inevitable as inflation and higher costs mandated them.  But the hopes of gaining revenue and remaining solvent were more often dashed than not as higher postage rates drove more and more people to electronic information transmission.  Higher postage, before the era of electronic transmission of newspapers, probably did as much as anything to drive down newspaper subscriptions as I canceled my subscriptions to the Washington Post, the New York Times, and several other papers which cheap postal rates had made possible to read.  For over ten years I wrote a weekly economics column for a New York international investment service that I transmitted by the ancient method of Telex.

Now hand-held devices are ubiquitous, a word my granddaughters will appreciate and which they have, hopefully, already added to their vocabulary as members of the We Know What's What Society.  Go to the grocery store and watch mommies with a brood of kiddies trying to wheel the cart with a yowling offspring while dangerously negotiating the corners while yapping on a cell phone.  Sit in a waiting room and be pummeled with the personal affairs of those who find it necessary to convey the most dreary details of their personal lives to the public.  Drive down the road and forget the pleas for sanity in driving by limiting and avoiding use of texting and cell phones as many drivers are glued to their little electronic goodies.  Go to the movies and be annoyed with flashing lights of cell phones and texters.  Apparently the first thing three year olds learn is how to move their thumbs in rapid-fire sequence to let the entire world know of their personal trials and tribulations.  My recent visit to my old college campus revealed students simultaneously wired to iPods and either yapping on cell phones or texting or all three, or maybe even four or five, depending on their electronic degree of wizardry.

Not to mention the worlds of Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, email, and other information transmission methods.  Students who don't have time to study apparently have plenty of time to Twitter, Tweet, write on people's walls, tag them in photos, post photos from their cell phones, keep track of their true love moment by moment, let mommy know second by second what they are doing and ask mommy what they should wear on a date tonight, vent their spleens, vote "like" for whatever they like, and, in general, spend a lot of unproductive time doing unproductive things.

The electronic world does have its pluses.  I was reading an article about how texting has opened up the world for deaf people.  I had never thought of this as a wonderful benefit as deaf people have a way to communicate.  Constructive information does get transmitted.  The best of Twitter entries and the best of blogs convey an enormous amount of helpful and constructive information, once you sort out the reliability factor and know who you can trust and who is just full of hot air.  The sense of world community becomes ever more possible.  I am continually amazed at the increasing numbers of foreign visitors to this blog from all over the world.  There is something to be said about the benefits of "keeping in touch" as I reflect on the fact that when I first left for college in 1950 it took a week for my parents to get a letter from me saying we had arived safely in Laramie since we had no phone at home.

The main complaints about all this wonderful world seem to center on trivialization and on marginalizing daily life, on using electronic media to spread propaganda and misinformation more quickly and more widely than ever possible before, on the time wasted that could have been put to more productive uses, and on being "over-connected" in a way that robs us of our own independence and personal responsibility.

No matter how much the critics carp and no matter how much snobs look down their librarian reading glasses perched on the ends of their noses and vow their own anti-electronic-media purity, the world will never be the same again.  The ability to shop for anything and everything for those with or without transportation; the ability to send warnings of real dangers and to communicate in times of critical need; the ability to ask Google any question one can think of; the ability to store an entire technical library in the palm of one's hand--social and economic historians will fill many tomes full of scientific evidence and tidbits about the ongoing electronic revolution.  The capacity to accomplish much good, to convey critical information to masses of people, will accelerate as innovators find new ways to move beyond the powerful elementary questions like "What are you thinking" or some such that have fired social media like Twitter and Facebook.

So like it or not, we will not escape this revolution.  But like all revolutions that evolve over time, tomorrow's social media and electronic information transmission methods will differ from those of today.  Just as the Palm Pilot died a relatively quick and inglorious death, and faxes gave way to emails, and the Post Office continues to raise rates to try and bail itself out of a hole while digging itself in even deeper, and cell phones became multi-purpose electronic miracles, the chances are we will all be going around with earbuds in our ears, cell phones in our pockets and purses or on our ears, Blackberries and iPads and Nooks and Kindles and any one of dozens of other miracles of modern technology. I am just ticked off that I had to do my doctoral dissertation in 1963 on an IBM 650 computer using dozens of boxes of punch cards and that my wife had to retype my dissertation a half dozen times when some committee member told me to change something on page 10 which necessitated, of course, retyping the whole blasted thing.  Such is life.  We will all benefit when we are willing to take the best and most useful from today's technology and use these marvels in ways that benefit all of us and move away from trivializing and marginalizing and maybe, even, read a book.  Imagine!

One thing about it, since this post is a tad longer than the 140 character limit on Twitter, I am guaranteed that no one will ever read it.  But at least I had some practice writing again.

Should We Read E-Newspapers or Paper Newspapers?

At 4:00 a.m. I opened the door to pick up my newspapers as I was roaming the house waiting for my stuffy nose to clear.  Ordinarily our faithful paper deliverer has them chucked right up by my door by 4:00 a.m. or, at the most, 5 after.  Not taking into account that today is Labor Day, I realized that she might be a tad later this morning, which was fine by me.

During my wait for the papers, I began serious meditation exercises on whether it is best to read e-newspapers or paper newspapers.  Personally, I read both.  When we lived in the east, I always loved Sundays after church when we could pick up the Sunday NYTimes and Washington Post.  The Sunday Times probably weighed about 30 pounds and required 10 trees per issue to produce, and the Post maybe about half that much.  Then I was assured of a full afternoon of going through the papers, section by section without the encumbrance of a computer, an iPad, an iPod, a Blackberry, or a myriad other itty-bitty electronic formats that would digest 30 pounds of NYTimes and display it for me in e-ink.  I tried an e subscription to USA Today and decided I liked paper better.

Then I thought, what if we all quit taking paper papers?  The green folks would be thrilled because we would save all of those trees.  But then consider, during this economic slowdown, so to speak, what would happen to the market value of goods and services produced domestically (GDP)?  First, the loggers would be laid off.  Then the log truckers.  Then the paper and pulp mills would have to cut back.  The paper haulers would be next to starve.  The printing presses would crank to a minimal output of newspapers.  The ink and chemical makers would die.  And how about my faithful paper delivering lady?  My sister Judy delivered the daily O in Olympia WA for over 20 years, wearing out a set of brake linings every two weeks or so as she screeched to a daily halt in front of dozens of rural paper delivery boxes.  What about the gas and car repair folks who keep the paper delivery people going?  And then there are the trash and recycling people.  Granted, we would like to diminish trash and such, but then how many of these people would lose their jobs?  The green folks could all get hired to go out and replant forests since a lot of the wood going to pulp needs cleaned out of the forests anyway.

Now look at the e-newspaper producers.  All they have to worry about is whether readers have a multitude of electronic devices to read their e-paper.  Newspaper companies wouldn't have to pay a penny for any of these electronic marvels.  And since most people who subscribe to e-stuff already have a half dozen e-readers anyway, the net impact on GDP could, horror upon horrors, actually be negative!  So the new e-paper revolution could proceed unabated out of, literally, thin air called e-ink.

So think about it.  If you are serious about stimulating the economy, which choice is economically most critical?  Would you feel right about putting all of those people and companies out of work as you snooze through the e-edition of your newspaper?  And do you think it would be fun to do the NY Times crossword puzzle on your e-reader?  Total incomes could conceivably decline, followed by declines in spending, employment, tax revenue, and increases in the federal deficit.  Congress would have something else to do, and the bloviators could bloviate anew about how X or Y Political party has caused another mess.

But such is the price of economic progress.  There are still a few harness makers around, but not many.  Only a precious few buggy makers.  No makers of mechanical calculators, engineering slide rules, and only a few suppliers of coal stoves.  The unemployed and displaced people resulting from this electronic revolution will all have to go back to school, receive unemployment benefits, move in with parents and grandparents, lose their houses, declare bankruptcy, get food stamps, and join the Tea Party, whatever that is.  Meanwhile, some 18 year old kid will invent another electronic marvel that will keep everyone occupied full time Twittering, Tweeting, Texting, Facebooking, Blogging, mini-blogging,MySpacing, while twiddling with their iPads, iPods, Blackberries, Droids, and other electronic marvels.  Truth is, no one will have time to work anyway.  Stay tuned for latest developments.  One would only hope that somewhere everyone would take an e-economics course to cut down the gross levels of economic ignorance that are responsible for much of the economic dilemma we face today.  The end.  For now.

The Curmudgeonly Professor in the Third Grade At Eastside Grade School in Powell WY

Since my birthday was September 17, and since I got kicked out of the second grade for fabricating stories on "What I Did Over Saturday and Sunday," the egregious Monday morning exercise that was getting boring, I was at least one and mostly two years younger than my third grade classmates.  So with those clues, find me in the picture.  My sister Louise, third from right, top row, taught me to read before I went to school since she was a year ahead, so grade school was mostly coloring inside the lines and otherwise boring, boring.  Today I would have been diagnosed with ADD and given pills to make me behave and calm me down.  The love of my third grade life is in the second row in the dark patterned dress, but by seventh grade she betrayed me.  My senior annual co-editor is on the far left, top row.  We still stay in touch.  My college freshman roommate at the sheep barn at the University of Wyoming stock farm is second from left, top row.  We stay in touch.  He became a Lt. Col. in the Army, while I flunked the physical during the Korean War.  The girl who caused me embarrassment that lasted for ages is far left in the second row.  She and others tied me to a tree during recess and then she kissed me.  I never could wash that kiss off.  I saw her many years later and asked if she remembered doing this infamous deed and, of course, she did (remember).  Our teacher encouraged writing fantasies and make belief stuff, whereas my 100 year old second grade teacher frowned mightily on such invention and wanted the straight scoop on what we did over Saturday and Sunday. Such was my third grade education, having lasted in the second grade six weeks, which was a year too long.

Are the Print Media a Dying Relic of the Past?

News comes today, not intending a partial pun, that Salt Lake City's Deseret News is paring its staff in big chunks, changing its leadership, moving its office, and going in new directions to try and salvage whatever can be salvaged in today's spreading print media demise.  My grandfather, who had a 3d grade education, became self educated and subscribed to a wide variety of magazines and newspapers.  His favorites were National Geographic and the Deseret News, which he received by mail at his farm in northwestern Wyoming.  Our grandparents faithfully saved the "funny papers" from the DNews, so I was a DNews reader beginning in the 1930s.

A number of major city dailies have already "bit the dust."  Want ad revenue has diminished because of the internet.  Amazon announced that ebooks sold 180 copies for every 100 print copies, and that Amazon expected that ebook paperback books would outsell print paperback books in a few short months.  The character of magazines has been sharply altered, typically without much fanfare, but with obvious intent to appeal to more readers.  The tidbit-multiple news section-format of the weekly news magazines of a half century ago has given way to portfolios of photos and articles on timely issues.  Network local news proograms are similarly sufffering.  I have weaned myself away from the 10:00 clock news for some time now as I have tired of the focus on drive-by shootings, traffic accidents, home fires, and about 10 minutes of ads out of a total of 30 minutes of "news."  I got tired of waiting for 27 1/2 minutes to get, maybe, 120 seconds of sports news at the end of the program.  The nature of major network news programs, following in the honored footsteps of television news giants, is obviously also shifting.  There just isn't much incentive to follow regular local and national network news, or newspapers, when we have already seen the latest details on the internet hours before.

Kodak almost died a complete death when it failed to anticipate the digital revolution and hung on to film far too long.  Textbook publishers are clinging to their monopoly positions in marketing $150-300 textbooks in the face of the ebook revolution.  And why would you want to cart a dozen books around with you, let alone 3,500 books, when you can load them all on your ebook reader and have access to technical information about medicine, engineering, economic forecasting, or any other subject, when you are away from home and libraries and need to know something?

The print media are in about the same phase of their storied existence as were the harness industry, the film and film camera industries, and numerous other industries that shot themselves in the foot by stubbornly clinging to tradition and failing to ride new waves.  Think : auto industry.  Libraries full of shelves of print journals.  Law libraries full of tomes.  Research is now done with one question to a major search engine like Google instead of sending research assistants off to the library and, beginning with the card catalogue, search for the volumes in the stacks, copy information by hand before the Xerox machine, and, hours later, showing up at the office with an often incomplete set of references.

We are just now trying to catch the vision of what a comprehensive digitized society we are now in, and the incredible level of digitizing we will soon see as the transcript of the world will be reduced to thumbnail size storage cards.  No more concerns about the vast library of Alexandria.  We may not like to give up our daily print papers, our weekly magazines, our 10:00 p.m. news, our written letters to our children and parents, our privacy.  But we will be whittled away into shavings of the past unless we ride this wave and see what our incredible future is going to be.  The other day I took back a two-year old phone system to Costco, with no receipt.  Costco looked me up on their computer.  It didn't matter which of many Costco stores I may have purchased it from.  Costco has a record of every roll of toilet paper you ever bought from them.  And five minutes later I had my money back and went and bought a new phone.  We cannot even imagine what we have in store.  But those with vision, inventiveness, and a genius for asking simple questions of vital importance to all of us and figuring out simple ways to answer them for the benefit of all society, are about to take us on an exhilarating ride.  You may as well prepare yourself for it.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Rant on Disasters, Calamities, Fear and our Loving Attachment to Such Negative Thoughts (You Can Easily Skip This Post).

The 1970s and 1980s were rife with economic catastrophizers (is that a word?).  Popular books selling in large numbers included "Small is Beautiful," "Spaceship Earth," (if my memory is anywhere near correct) and many similar titles.  The idea was rampant once more that Parson Malthus had been resurrected from the grave and was stalking the earth with his basic thesis that population grew geometrically and resources to feed people grew only arithmetically.  Thus, we were doomed.  Billions more people would be reduced to starvation and penury.  While it is true that countless millions do face daily starvation, the general proposition that all of us would soon be eating our shoe leather has not come to pass.  Instead, in countries like the U.S., we have eaten so much pizza, pasta, fast food, and everything else that we have become a nation with a problematic population of fatties.  Not everyone in the U.S. has access to this bounteous food supply.  Nonetheless, we have not run out of food, in the aggregate.  Just as the world of economic soothsayers and philosophizers overlooked the role of technology when Parson Malthus first became famous, so have we underestimated the role of technology in the modern world.

Similarly, disaster books about economics sell well.  Books that promise how you can safely survive the next stupendous, inevitable, soon-to-arrive, world of market and economy total collapse, sell extremely well.  Books that detail economic progress and continued development and policy-solving analysis get a ho-hum buyers' market.

Why do we like to go around scared all of the time?  We're a nation of fraidy cats.  We're afraid of Democrats.  We're afraid of Republicans.  We use fear as a major political tactic because it works, and works with a vengeance.  Just think up the worst that might, but may not actually even be likely to happen, and you can stir up votes by the ziillions.  We've also become a political environment of unbridled prevarication as the boogey-men and image makers have become skilled in knowing how to frighten the electorate into an Elm Street Halloween Night frenzy of fear.  Facts have often taken a back seat.  I learned when I studied economic forecasting that what people think is going to happen will typically outweigh what can logically be expected to happen.  Even in retrospect, we overlook objective evidence on what has actually happened and paint dark and dreary pictures of failure that wither in the light of facts and rational analysis.

The moral to the story is that if we want to write a book and make money, write about a disaster.  Many topics abound.  The coming crash, always a winner.  The political failure of (fill in the blank).  The disastrous impact of (fill in the blank for any proposed or new piece of legislation).  By spending so much time criticizing, dissembling, and avoiding the facts, we escape from the hard work and reality of focusing on making the world in which we live a better place.

Books I Owned but Never Read, Like the Power of Positive Thinking

One reason the Curmudgeonly Professor is Curmudgeonly and deficient in knowledge is that he always bought and saved more books he should have read but never got around to reading.  Some of the most obvious candidates for this list of unread books are the following:

• The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale.  I bought this paperback in high school, intending to read it immediately, recognizing that positive thinking is, indeed, a more productive and sublime way to look at the world than is negative thinking, which I excel at.  I hauled this little paperback around with me through three graduate schools and five universities before I chucked it, recognizing that all I needed to know was "think positive" and that should cover it.  Alas.
• How to Overcome Procrastination.  Are you kidding?  Why would I read this polemic?  Aren't procrastinators more creative and productive since they don't waste time on stuff that doesn't need to be done anyway?
• How to Win Friends and Influence People.  Another paperback I bought in high school and carted around the United States for decades.  By the time I tossed it, I realized I had won very few friends since most people don't want to associate with liberal economists anyway, and that I had probably influenced very few people.   Most of the 20,000 plus students I had taught still hated economics for years after the class, indicating my lack of ability to influence them with the knowledge that economics is, by far and without question, the most important and significant course they will ever take.
• The manuals for a succession of cameras and computers.  Computer and software manuals are expensive and take up a lot of shelf space.  I just weeded out a bunch of big, fat, expensive manuals outdated with new versions of software.  I have a box of vintage cameras, carefully saving all of the manuals in case I want to read them and use any of them.  I remember well a sign at fall registration the first semester I attended the University of Michigan:  "When all else fails, read the instructions."  Amen to that.
• A dozen or more grammar and word usage manuals.  My goal was to become proficient in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and the like, having been but on probation by Miss Harkins in 12th grade English for chewing gum (a cardinal sin), rigging the pencil sharpener to the window blind, and flipping the ear of Jason who sat in front of me.  All I remember is that she thought all English grammar could be taught and learned with the sentence: "Earl shot the bear."  I can still see the diagram on the blackboard:  noun, subject, verb, predicate.  Which reminds me of this little ditty which Miss Harkins would have loved:  "Algy met the bear. The bear was bulgy.  The bulge was Algy."  Now I rely on the instinct method of grammar and punctuation: if it looks bad, fix it.  If you're not sure, don't mess it up.  No one expects a 77 year old retired economics professor to know how to read and write, let alone to use correct spelling and grammar.
• A half dozen speed reading books, including, I think, Evelyn Wood.  I always wanted to breeze through a book in 30 seconds flat, especially when I got around to reading War and Peace 20 years after my Master's thesis chairman told me to read it so I could learn how to write.  I read a few pages and tried a few tricks and went back to my more comfortable plodding methodology.  Besides, can you honestly say you have read War and Peace?  Mercy.  A plethora of Russians et. al. all ticked at each other with lots of shooting and an occasional ball (I know there was a ball because of Audrey Hepburn in the movie), but I read the whole thing.  I expected bells to ring and lights to flash when I finished the last page.  But no one cared.  I couldn't stand up in church or class and say, "I have finished reading War and Peace.  How many of you illiterates have done the same?"  To this day I don't remember anything about it except a batch of Russians and frequent wars.

The list could go on, as they say, ad infinitum, since I have thousands of books my heirs will have to cart out and find something to do with.  But space has been extinguished.  If you have a bunch of important books you never got around to reading, use the "think" method instigated by Professor Harold Hill in Music Man:  Put the book before you, or keep it in a prominent place, and Think, I mean really Think.  If you can turn a batch of tone-deaf school kids into a world-class band by this method who knows, you might, through osmosis and ESP, become a real scholar and absorb the essence of your unread books effortlessly.  I still, for example, remember that I am supposed to "think positively", don't put off till tomorrow what I should do today but most likely won't, and try not to offend others with my liberal philosophies so I can win over friends and influence people.  All of that, and I never read a word.  Happy reading.  What are your favorite unread books that might have turned your miserable life around and made you happy, wealthy, and influential, besides not being a pain in the neck?  I will elaborate further on more unread masterpieces in a future post.  Happy reading. 

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Green Leaves and Purple and White Pansies