The Curmudgeonly Professor

Stuff the Curmudgeonly Professor Has Avoided in his Life

Perhaps the Curmudgeonly Professor can be considered to be culturally deprived.  Economists are not typically known to be jovial people.  Rather, economics is known as the dismal science ever since Parson Malthus opined that population would grow exponentially, whereas the food supply would grow only arithmetically.  Voila, the result is that we will all starve to death.  Though Malthus was one of many economists whose theories didn't pan out exactly as their fame predicted, economists are still a pessimistic lot since, typically, it is usually safer to predict that the economy is going to pot than to forecast a rosy and cheerful future.

Besides being a pessimistic economist, the Curmudgeonly Professor has studiously and faithfully avoided all of the following, thus leading to doubts in his being a well-rounded person:

• Elvis Presley.  I knew that when teen age girls started palpitating over Elvis that the world had gone south.
• The Beatles.  I cheerfully acknowledge that, years after their rise to fame, the Beatles did create many of the best songs of the era.  However, their entry onto the U.S. stage on the Ed Sullivan show seemed rather appalling in the Frank Sinatra era.
• Dancing with the Stars.  Never, never, never.
• American Idol. 
• Any so-called reality show.
• Any so-called literary triumph containing vampires.
• Books about hungry people eating people.
• Almost all musical groups that my kids and my grandkids and my great grandkids like.
• All My Children, or whatever soap opera my wife has been watching for decades.
• TV ads, which get wiped out as soon as they appear, especially SouthTowne Auto Mall in Salt Lake City, Progressive Insurance, and Geico.  I do like the ads with dogs driving cars.
• Movies with a high ratio of blown up cars, blown up buildings, and blown up people.  Oaters from John Wayne and Clint Eastwood are fine, since violence is appropriate in those movies.
• Lawrence Welk reruns.  How many colors of polyester jackets did they have?             

Undoubtedly, other omissions remain glaring.  However, here is a basic list of stuff the Curmudgeonly Professor has purposely avoided.  He would rather take pictures of flowers.

Scenes from the Curmudgeonly Professor's Youth

Upper left, the irrigation ditch from the canal that watered the fields on my grandfather's farm, which my Dad was farming.  Upper right, the old Penrose pioneer LDS church building, built from lumber sawed from logs caught in a log jam in the nearby Shoshone River.  Where I went to church until I was about five or six years old.  Left, second from top: the old railroad bridge that spanned the Shoshone River about half or three-quarters of a mile from our home.  Used to sit on the middle pier and try to catch suckers, but never caught one. Left, third from top, Blondie, my favorite Guernsey cow, who was as tame as a tabby cat. Middle, view of Grandfather's open area.  Right, frosty tree on a subzero January day. Next, below Blondie, the home were I was born in 1932, photo taken many years later when house was nearly extinct.  Bottom three photos, l to r: home I lived in during high school, my Dad's wooodworking shop, and the haystack yard with the "Jackson Fork", which lifted the hay from the hay wagon to the haystack.

I grew up in Penrose, Wyoming, a small farming valley about 12 miles east of Powell WY where I went to school.  My growing-up days were spent in the waning days of self-sufficient agriculture when we had two old tractors, a team of horses, pigs, cows, chickens, a huge garden; we grew sugar beets, alfalfa hay, and grain.  Those days are gone forever, indelibly impressed on my mind, never to be forgotten. Double click.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Reads the Newspapers on March 22 2012

First, the St. George Spectrum:

• The annual change in sculpture displays known as "Art Around the Corner" is announced, with most of the new sculptures located in downtown St. George and in St. George Town Square. This display is always much anticipated, and shows the work of many outstanding local and regional sculptors.  I will soon take photos and post them on this blog.
• My horoscope warns me that "you could be exhausted by events."  Say what?

From USA Today:

• Janice Lloyd reports that "rates of [cognitive] decline occurred twice as fast among elderly patients on average after a hospital stay, compared with their previous rate  . . . and with older people not admitted to a health care facility."  Among the points of advice: take medications exactly as prescribed, and see if you can be treated as an outpatient.
• Mighty Starbucks is "about to butt heads with the Red Bull" by moving into the energy drink market, according to Bruce Horovitz.  First expensive coffee, now expensive energy drinks (my words).
• Latest developments in GOP primary slugathon: one candidate termed an etch-a-sketch.  At least it's something new.  Fact checkers (reported by Martha Moore) checking up on politico fibbers, of which there are many.  GOP lambasting each other and Dems.  Dems lambasting GOP.  Big $$$$$$$ donors keeping marginal GOPers in the race.
• The NO Saints, ironic given the name of "Saints", hit hard with penalties for bounty scheme.  Now no extra $$$ to players for hard hits.
• Sports disruptions galore: Tebow to Jets, Fisher, dumped by Lakers, to OKC Thunder, Manning to Broncos.  Should make for interesting and possibly confusing season.   Time to start the season since March Madness is about over and then the TV screens go black until fall.  Except for NBA which can drag out half the summer.  And the Jazz are revitalized.  How far can they go?

That's all you need to know today.  If interested in details, check your iPod, iPad, Kindle, Nook, TV, or you might actually read a newspaper.  Have a nice day.

Wednesday Morning March 22 2012: Newspaper delivery, birds singing, a hoppy toad and a visit to the cardiologist

Usually I go outside to get the local paper and USA Today at 4:11 a.m., since I am often awake with a stuffy nose at that time.  I can set my clock by my early morning paper carrier's delivery, and he blessedly chucks it up the driveway near the garage.  This morning I miraculously had been able to sleep through the night, so I went out at 7:15 to collect the two papers. (The Salt Lake papers don't land on my driveway, usually just dumped out the car window on the end of the driveway, until 9:30 or 10:00 a.m., whenever the spirit moves him.)

The birds have arrived in countless numbers, singing a chorus as varied and as beautiful as any choir. The divas hold forth with incredible arias and show-off trills, while the mere chorus birds dutifully add their "tweet tweets" and little garden variety chirps.   But what a wonderful way to greet the morning.  A little hoppy toad was sitting near my garage door, prompting me to go check later when we open the door to make sure he doesn't get crushed.  Now some bird is making an incredibly loud sound, kind of like a barge horn, but I can't tell where or what it is.  The sun comes to west St. George in patches, since it must rise first over the main part of St. George and then creep upward and over the bluffs that separate the two parts of town.  The first sun lights on Utah Hill, not quite worthy of being called a mountain but bigger than a hill, several miles to the west of us, and on the mesas in between. Utah Hill presents a luminous view to start the day, standing out in stark and beautiful contrast to the darker areas in between.

This could be a good day, except for the fact I have to go see my cardiologist at 11:00 a.m.  I am always afraid of cardiologists because they always want to do things--run stress tests, run blood tests, wire you up with electrodes to see if your heart is still beating, listen to your heart with pregnant ums and ahs while you wonder what disaster they are uncovering.  My cardiologist is mean, and I have told her several times that I hated her.  On the other hand, she has likely saved or at least prolonged my life with her merciless regimens and smorgasbords of pills to regulate A-fib, thyroid, blood pressure, and who knows what else.  So I guess I would have to say that despite hating her, I still love her.  The last time I saw her, she spent most of the visit talking about my wife's health problems with me, and then went with me to the waiting room, an unusual thing to do, to visit with my wife for a few minutes. She told me that the reason she is still practicing is because she is so moved by the efforts many of her patients and patient couples make to sacrifice and care for one another so compassionately.  So unless I have to go immediately to the hospital and get a couple of stents put in, I'll be back at the blog this afternoon some time.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Reads the Daily Newspapers March 21 2012

The Curmudgeonly Professor has been derelict in reporting the news to his astonished viewers who have been left in a state of ignorance and limbo as regards the ongoing events of the world.  I have come to have great sympathy for journalists, both written and vocal, who make their living reporting the daily news.  In my case, all I have to do is say "I don't like the news today, so I won't report it," or, simply, "I just don't feel like reporting anything today.  I've got a headache.  Wait until next week."  In any event, here are a few barnburners for today.

From USA Today:

• Alan Webber reports in his article "High gas prices? Bring 'em on!" that not all effects of gas prices are bad.  Any economist could have explained that result.  In basic supply and demand analysis, usually covered the first week of Econ 110, when prices get too high, buyers substitute other stuff.  Producers figure out something else to produce.  But then when prices drop again, consumers go back to all of their bad habits.  Case in point, as I remember: During the 1970s gas crisis, people were paying fortunes, relatively speaking, for fuel-economy cars.  Then, when prices fell again, guess what, gas guzzlers were back in demand.  Point is, markets can be self-regulating, but it takes time and a fair amount of misery before the corrections are in place.  Webber concludes: "The more we see oil prices rise globally, the more we'll see the emergence of economic development locally."  And, to reiterate what I have said in my own analysis Webber writes: "Change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change."
• The country sits on pins and needles while the Supreme Court hears the health care case. Price and Ebner report in "What happens without individual mandate?" that there would be "millions of additional people without health insurance" if the Court rules the mandate unconstitutional.
• The new iPad is running hot, "13 degrees hotter than the iPad 2" according to Scott Martin's review of Consumer Reports' tests.
• More multimillionaires are being cranked out by the day in college basketball.  Who said you had to be a technology geek with a startup in your garage to get rich?
• The continuing soap opera (my words) known as the budget deficit reduction battle, continues with the latest contribution by the GOP.
• We leave out discussion of the slugfest in the GOP Prez primary since the only people who know what is going on there are the talk show folks who talk a million words per minute explaining it all.

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

• Gov. Herbert signs bill requiring women  to wait 72 hours before receiving an abortion, making it  " the longest waiting period in the country."
• If you're short of funds in Utah, Robert Kirby reminds us that "it is legal to panhandle near a road in Utah again."
• You can buy a $100,000 brooch with a 73 carat aquamarine and 82 round diamonds for the bow at the new Tiffany store in City Creek Center according to Lesley Mitchell.
• Best Utah news: Utah Jazz beat the mighty OKC Thunder after humbling the previously-arrogant LA Lakers.  Best games of the year.
• According to my horoscope, if I let "others take the lead," I can "free up a lot of time."  I need to free up a lot of time.  My schedule is burdened with weighty matters and I need more time to add more weighty matters.

Now you can see why the Curmudgeonly Professor has not reported the news lately.  Not one comic has been funny enough to repeat.  The GOP primary suspense is killing us.  With boredom.  At least the Utah legislature is going home before they have an opportunity to commit any more mayhem. So have a nice day and maybe the Curmudgeonly Professor will be in a better mood tomorrow.

 

The Curmudgeonly Professor Reads the Daily Newspapers on March 13 2012

We are now into our third day of Daylight Savings Time.  We are getting used to eating supper in daylight and getting up in the middle of the dark night.  Which is best?  Starting with the SLakeTrib:

• Brooke Adams reports that Dick Winters died Thursday at the age of 80.  Winters spent his life serving the homeless.  Adams reports that by 2:00 a.m., Winters was dressed "and made the rounds of various homeless camps to make sure his homeless friends were safe." "He just had a tender heart."
• Apparently there are still no worthy GOP candidates for President of the US of A.  Zillions of $$$$ are being spent to prove that each candidate is unworthy and unqualified to lead us unsuspecting citizens into the next four years.
• Pinterest, the latest fad in social networking, has an 82% participation rate by women, a fact not hard to discern when you go on Pinterest.  Vince Horiuchi says that "what launched in 2010 as an obscure photo-sharing site has exploded into a phenomenon that is quickly seeping into the American digital consciousness, especially among women."  Nonetheless, having succumbed to Twitter, which I really, really like, and Facebook, which I really, really, don't like, I decided at my advanced age there was no time like the present to get on Pinterest.  So I applied, and, 3 days later, the golden invitation to join came forth.  Now if only I knew what to pin on it.
• We have previously established that the comics are no longer comical, the funnies have ceased being funny, for the most part.  For instance, Mary Worth, who started out as Apple Mary in the 1930s, peddling apples on the street, is now a sophisticated old busy body who should have been sent to assisted living decades ago.  In today's strip, Mary opines that "She [Nola] told me more about what she did that honestly SHOCKED me! I couldn't believe her callousness."

Now the Deseret News:

• Tiffany, the famed jeweler, is opening its first Utah store in City Creek Center in downtown SLCity, according to Jasen Lee.  Lee reports that the major source of gold and silver for its high end jewelry items comes from Bingham County Mine in western Salt Lake County.  Bingham produces "about 3 to 5 million ounces of silver a year and 300,000 to 500,000 ounces of gold."  Who said we were running out of gold and silver?  At least I can afford to check the window display.
• Doug Robinson tells the story of Katie Walther who requested more vacation time as an administrative nurse in 2010 to go on a medical mission to a Third World Country.  Told by her boss he would replace her if she went, she said "OK, replace me."  Since, she has "made nine trips to Haiti, three trips to Guatemala, and one to Mexico," plus serving on two medical ships.  The 60-year old woman has traveled at her own expense and has gone without life's basic necessities to serve sick children and others.  Inspiring story.

Of course, there's lots of bad news every day.  Murders, political shenanigans, the stuff of tabloids and political talk shows, drive-by shootings, holdups and robberies, car crashes, and every manner of grief and misery.  I'll let you read those stories on your own.  Meanwhile, here are a few lighter things to brighten your day.  Have a nice day.

 

 

 

The Curmudgeonly Professor Greets Monday Morning with the Blahs

Ordinarily, Monday morning is a good morning because USA Today publishes again after a weekend off and I get the USA Today Crossword Puzzle.  True to form, my carrier was here at 4:05 a.m. sharp while I was clearing my stuffy nose.  After one or two glitches, the puzzle was done in 10 minutes but I didn't get back to sleep for a couple of hours.  I realize I have precious little to complain about compared to many in my age bracket (80 in September), and compared to my wife who suffers from severe sciatic pain.  Nonetheless, I have always been adept at complaining, my entire life.

My sister has announced she has ordered 12 chickens when previously she had committed only to 5 and then I heard via the grapevine she was down to 3.  The 12 chicken thing comes as a shock.  As an agricultural expert who took a required course in chickens my senior year at the University of Wyoming where I majored in agriculture, and as a slave laborer who was forced to clean out the chicken house each Saturday, I have offered voluminous advice to my sister, to no avail.

I determined originally I would skip the blogs this morning.  Some mornings you just don't have anything to say.  Your reservoir of facts, sarcastic remarks, informative creativity, and ambition has reached a low point.  I even went to church yesterday.  Church is a place where you get the same message each week all of your life.  We need the same message because we are slow learners and need constant reinforcement, repetition, and encouragement to remind us why we are here and what we are supposed to do.  And what we are supposed to do is to be thankful for what we have, for all of life's blessings.  There.  I have talked myself into being in a more cheerful mood because I have much to be thankful for.

First eMail killed the Post Office; Now iPhones and iPads Have Killed Conversation

When I first went to college in January of 1950, 450 miles away from my home in northwest Wyoming, I wrote a letter home to tell them I got to Laramie safely.  We had no phone at home.  The letter arrived four or five days later.  I have boxes of handwritten letters from my mother and from various family members that are treasured keepsakes.  Now all we get is emails.  Quick and convenient, we can let everyone know each detail of our lives and never have to write a thoughtful letter or message again.  Meanwhile, the US Postal Service is dying, raising postage and cutting service, both of which will merely exacerbate the financial plight of the Post Office.  We can print out emails from family members, but a file of printed emails is as sterile as the ads in the Sunday newspapers.  eCards have replaced the need to send a greeting card with a handwritten message, address an envelope, put a stamp on it, and take it to the post office mail box.

Now every time people get together, many of them pull out an iPhone, an iPad, or any of an assortment of electronic devices.  Instead of talking to each other, they all are thumbing away, plinking away on text messages, reading trivia, playing games, and anything else to avoid talking to others in the room.  Texting has become a road hazard as well as a communications hazard.  Watching people driving almost universally produces a large number of people driving big SUVs and vans with one small hand and yapping on a cell phone or texting with the other.  All of this so we don't miss a single second of everyone's boring lives and so we can share our most trivial details with the world.  Has the world of electronic instant connectivity become so pervasive that we no longer either feel the need to talk to each other or no longer have the skills to do so?  Soon two year olds will be given iPads and iPhones to communicate with their parents.  No one learns how to write any more.  All kids know how to do now (and many adults) is punch their thumbs quickly on often inane messages.  Parker Penmanship skills?  A skill from the Middle Ages.  Kindergarten children will likely be confused if they are required to talk to each other.

Personally, I treasure my handwritten letters and I mourn for the loss of these wonderful artifacts from our lives.  I would like to talk to people in a group instead of watching them plink plink plink thumb thumb thumb on their electronic devices.  The Post Office may not be the only casualty of the electronic age.  Writing and conversation are not far behind.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Blog Announces a Two Week Vacation

For nearly four years, I have faithfully posted photos and commentary to the Curmudgeonly Professor Blog amounting to over 4,000 separate posts.  This activity has taken several hours each day to edit and post photos and to write comments.  Photo posting is a dreary and time consuming process waiting for them to upload.  For the first three years, I averaged about 80 page views per day, a level that has since increased to an average of about 120-130 page views per day.

This amount of time spent on the blog has come at the cost of not doing a number of other things I have fallen behind on, such as reading, writing, learning technical camera and photography information, exercise and other things I need to do.  Thus, I am going to take two weeks off and evaluate how I feel about continuing the existing blog, changing it, or not doing it at all.

I appreciate all of my faithful viewers from all over the world and welcome your comments.  In the meantime, there are over 4,000 posts including several thousand photographs you can scroll back through.  I'll be back in a couple of weeks to let you know what I am going to do.  The Curmudgeonly Professor.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Nominations for the Obnoxious TV Ad Hall of Fame

Economists teach a principle called the Theory of Diminishing Marginal Utility.  This term throws students off because of three words: theory, which means it will be hard; marginal, which means increment or change in; and utility, which means usefulness.  Put all together, it means, as I told my students, which they then remembered the rest of their lives, "If you eat too many bananas, eventually you will barf."  In other words, if we try a new entree at a restaurant, the first time it will taste fantastic.  The second time, a little less.  The tenth time, we're sick of it and want something new.

The same principle should be taught to TV ad executives and sponsors.  Ads that were funny and clever when they were first launched eventually grew tiresome.  Like the mean lady and the "where's the beef" phrase which entered our general language.  But we got sick of it.  Jared's ads for Subway grew a little wearisome, though they apparently really worked for Subway and imprinted on our minds the vast differences between the healthiest Subway sandwiches and the oceans of fat and calories in many fast (fat) foods.  Here are a few suggestions I am offering to advertisers and sponsors free of charge, no consulting fee involved:

• Discount Tires.  The mean old lady chucking a tire through the window of a Discount Tire store was really funny the first few times.  After the ten zillionth, not so funny.
• Geico lizard.  Minimize it or put it to rest.  Enough is enough.  I like the car driving cats and dogs, though.  They're new.
• Progressive Insurance girl.  She's cute, personable, vivacious.  But ten million times a day?  Please!
• R. C. Willey (UT) furniture spokeswoman:  Again, she's cute and personable.  But so help me I'm tired of seeing her a million times a day, often several ads in sequence in a one hour program.
• Buxom lady peddling shaving lotion.  You know who I mean.  Coca-Cola pioneered in using sex to sell Coke decades and decades ago and sex has since been used to sell everything, whether there is any connection between the buxom, and often excessively bare, lady and the product being advertised.  Oh, I forgot, any beautiful lady can sell anything from hubcaps to hair spray.
• Miller Lite ads.  Over and over and over and over.  Must sell beer or they wouldn't make the rest of us nauseated continually.
• Adam Haysbert.  Nice guy, but again, Principle of  Diminishing Marginal Utility set in months and months ago.  Freshen up your ads.
• South Town Auto Mall Ads in Salt Lake City. Crank up the volume, find the loudest and most obnoxious person to sell cars, and annoy us a million times a day.
• Ambulance chasing lawyers.  Over and over and over.  Obviously make money to afford all these ads.

The Curmudgeonly Professor has nothing against ads, in principle.  But are advertisers and ad agencies so tone deaf, unimaginative, tight-fisted, and inconsiderate of the public that they can't come up with a new and innovative wrinkle, spokesperson, gimmick, or something to relieve our tedious boredom of same old, same old, same old.  The Principle of Diminishing Marginal Utility set in long ago on some ads, as we got sick of them months and even years ago.  Just a suggestion.  No charge.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Discovers Belatedly How Much Work Housewives Actually Do

Since my wife has been recovering from an illness, the Curmudgeonly Professor has discovered just how much work wives do and how little many slothful and lazy husbands, including me, have appreciated this continual round of hard labor.  Today is laundry day, so that keeps me occupied.  Yes, I have finally mastered the off-on switches on both the washer and dryer, I remember to empty the lint filter, and to dump the Clorox in where needed.  Then I make the beds and hang up the clothes after running back and forth to the laundry room all day.  I have also mastered the switch on the dishwasher, and have learned to unload it in record time, clean up the kitchen, and put stuff away.  Wednesday is floor day, so I vacuum and mop to my heart's delight, and clean the bathrooms.  Etc., etc., etc.

Who know this stuff was such hard work?  I just assumed it was easy for my wife to do all this stuff for nearly 60 years since she did it all so quickly while I was playing Space Invaders or going back up to the office where, presumably, I worked.  Now I've concluded men are just a bunch of lazy slobs unless they are numbered among the chosen few who participate on an equal basis, or even do more than their share, and I'm not sure how many of those actually have ever been born since Adam.  Who knows whether Adam pitched in or not since he never would have had to lift a finger or raise up a sweat if he hadn't been tempted by Eve to eat the dang apple and get kicked out into the nasty world full of thistles and gnats with no one to plant his peas and beans for him.

The wedding ceremony should actually ask women, "Do you promise to do laundry, scrub floors and toilets, have babies, change diapers, get up in the middle of the night, clean house, cook meals, haul kids around to everything from ballet lessons to Tai-kwon-do or whatever it is, etc., etc., for the next 30 years until your kids are all gone and then spend the rest of your lives tending your grandkids?"  A quick yes or no is in order here.  Meanwhile, the man at the wedding is smirking inwardly because he knows he can always say "I'm late for the office, dear; just call the plumber to fix the kitchen drain and the clogged toilets and call the doctor about little Megatroid's bad rash and fever and oh, by the way, pick up my dry cleaning this afternoon.  See you sweetheart."

Meanwhile, I am paying heavily for my years of lack of doing my share.  But I actually am grateful I can do it under the circumstances and maybe I can pay my wife back just a little, between a guilty conscience and a lot of work, for what she has done for me all these years.  I haven't even had time to watch Matlock lately.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Visits Home Depot to Buy a 12 Volt Battery

In general, the Curmudgeonly Professor has a huge negative bias against big box stores, except maybe for Costco which is a destination vacation spot.  Costco also does not confuse its shoppers with unclear exit and entrance signs so you do not run into folks who pay no attention and blindly go the wrong way time after time.  His hardware store of preference is Ace Hardware, even if John Madden does not make personal appearances like Santa Claus every time I go to an Ace Hardware store.  Our Ace Hardware in south Salt Lake is housed in what amounts to a prefab tin shed.  The check out counter is battered and bruised and chipped and discolored with the patina of decades of loving and tender lack of care.  The store is relatively small, the aisles jampacked, the shelves sort of have an organized look in spots.  But I have never failed to find whatever I needed there since old-timers are there to take you exactly where you need to go in this maze.  Same in St. George.  Ace Hardware in St. G. looked at me disbelieving when I told them that Big Box Store XYZ wanted to charge me $50 for delivering my new stepladder.  "We never charge for home deliveries," explained this more humane and customer-friendly store, again staffed mostly by old-timers who actually know the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver and have long since passed the minimum voting age.

Now on to Home Depot.  I was greeted cheerily at the door with a "How can I help you?"  To which I replied, "I need a 12 volt battery."  She pointed me in the direction of the batteries near the checkout counter and I thought, "Voila (I did pass French for my Ph.D.), I will be in and out of this monstrosity in record time."  Little did I know.  No 12 volt batteries there.  Eager store helper no. 2 told me, "Go to the back by the door, you will find 12 volt batteries there."  I walked 20 miles down long, endless aisles to get to the back where store helper no. 3 told me, "We don't keep those back there.  They are up by the registers."  To which I replied cheerfully (not too) "The man up there told me they were back here."  To which store helper no. 3 said, "We've never kept those back here."  Store helper no. 3 accompanied me to the front of the store, another 20 miles, and store helpers no. 2 and no. 3 engaged in an argument over where the &%#$-blank 12 volt batteries were located.  Ultimately, these two stalwart big box pros ascertained by induction and deduction that they were out of 12 volt batteries, whereupon they checked inventory and called a couple of other Home Depot pros who reinforced their conclusion that they were, indeed, out of these little gems.  A half hour later I exited the store, another mystery, since Home Depot prefers that you go in one end of a 10 acre store, walk 20 miles, and walk out the exit at the other end.  As an economist, I marveled at the efficiency of my general rule that, "The larger the store and the more acres it covers, the less likely you are to find what you need, or find someone who knows where it is, or even someone who knows what it is."

So my wife walked into our tiny neighborhood Walgreen's, asked for a 12 volt battery, paid less than 3 bucks for it, and walked out in less than five minutes.  Now I can fix the garage door opener if I can find the small Phillips screw driver.  I'll get right on it and have it fixed some time before spring arrives.  Have a nice day.

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Complaints for January 18 2011

While singing Put on a Happy Face, I thought of a few deterrents I must overcome:

• Insomnia
• Stuffy nose
• Tendinitis in shoulder
• Utah Jazz sleepwalking
• TV ads (I know they have to make a living, but please, please don't be so obnoxious)
• LA Lakers and Miami Heat
• Windows 7
• My first generation Kindle is full.  Eliminate books, or buy a new one?
• 90 seconds of sports for in depth reporting on local TV channels.
• Cable bloviators
• Watching the news on Congressional doings and undoings

But then I thought of a few good things:

• The weather in St. George is finally getting warmer.
• The Jazz have actually won a bunch of games and are fun to watch.
• Jimmer Fredette and BYU Cougars playing the most fun and exciting basketball at BYU in years, and some of best basketball in the country.
• Friends drove 800 miles just to visit with us.
• My wife's health is improving.
• Spring is coming soon with cherry and apple blossoms, lilacs, tulips, poppies, and a host of things to photograph.

And then I decided that I didn't "feel so bad."

 

 

 

Things the Curmudgeonly Professor has Learned Over the Weekend

Here are the tidbits of knowledge the Curmudgeonly Professor has added to his already overcrowded brain cells over the weekend:

• Utah Democrats make up 12% of registered voters in Utah.  Makes for excellent bipartisan relationships.
• It took Amazon.com 10 months to deliver my wife's $50 gift certificate she intended to give me in Christmas 2009.  Amazon just gave me another 30 bucks after I complained.
• Fillmore, in mid-state Utah, has an excellent new Chinese restaurant.
• Reading the Book of Lamentations with lots of woe, woe, woes in anticipation of disastrous election outcome on Tuesday.
• Bret Favre is not immortal after all.
• Max Hall may not deliver the Cards to the Promised Land.
• Utah Utes advance highly in the polls after knocking off another Mountain West team.  Great scheduling skills for maximum gain, Utes.
• Most teams that should have won over weekend lost.  Learning humility a great character trait.
• Jazz came to life against OC Thunder.  Maybe hope after all.  Awesome performance by Millsap.
• Rereading the book titled "Sway" to remind myself why people make stupid and irrational choices, will review in detail later after I cool down from election results and try not to make any irrational choices myself.
• Got to Lin's Market too late Saturday to get a hot dog from Dorthy (spelling is correct) the 93 year old hot dog lady who sells Dorthy's Dogs every weekend.  Pity.
• Many people in our retirement condos have had a worse summer than we have had, with falls, pace makers, surgeries, illnesses, etc.  Ain't the Golden Years great!
• I wish I hadn't taken another 450 photos the last few days.  I'd like to delete the whole batch, but there are a few gems scattered among the likely deletes.  I'm too tired to edit them.
• I've taken about 10,000 photos with my "new" Canon 7d camera.  Since the camera cost $2 thousand, that's about 0.2 per photo.  If I take another 10,000 photos, the camera will essentially be free.  How much would it cost to develop and print 10,000 photos?  Now I need a $1500 new telephoto lens, and if I take another 10,000 photos, the new lens will essentially be free.  As an economist, my logic is impeccable.
• I need to frame another 20-30 flower photos and hang them on the walls in our condo.

As you can see, life is an eternal learning (or unlearning) process, fraught with perils, biased and erroneous information, bloviating gurus, wise economists, knowledge from Spacebook and Twitter and a plethora of forwarded ingenious emails, etc. etc.  Now I'll see what new things I can learn today.  Have a nice, informative, day.

The Main Mistakes Beginning Econ Students Made That Led to Poor Grades:

Here is a list of the main topics and terms that beginning economics students often failed to grasp, learn, recite, explain, in Econ 110:

• Supply.  A real toughie.  That's how much stuff you supply.  The more you get paid for it, the more you're willing to supply, right?  So which way does the supply curve slope?
• Demand.  How much stuff you want to buy.  Surprise.  The cheaper stuff is, the more you want to buy.  So if price is on the vertical axis and quantity demanded on the horizontal axis, which way does the demand curve slope?
• The intersection of supply and demand curves.  This is really advanced.  What happens at this point?  Quantity supplied equals quantity demanded!  Wow!
• Price elasticity.  Now students zone out here because the term seems too, too complicated.  Think rubber band.  If price goes up a bunch and you buy the same amount as before, stuff is inelastic.  Think insulin.  If price goes up a bunch and every body bails out and buys other cheaper stuff, think elastic.  Now was that so tough?
• Total spending in the economy.  C + I + G + NX.  Wow!  an Equation!  I don't do equations, you say.  C is consumption, the biggest chunk of Gross Domestic Product, I is investment, small % but mighty, G is government spending, and NX is net exports.  The sum of all this spending is Gross Domestic Product.  Was that so hard?  And yes, kiddies, a dollar spent on government spending has just as big an impact on the economy as a $ spent on a hamburger.  $1 = $1.  Politics don't matter.  A dollar is a dollar.  But try to convince the general population to whom $1 of G is $1 down the drain.  Oh my.
• Principle of Diminishing Marginal Utility.  Utility is satisfaction.  Diminishing is getting smaller.  If utility is diminishing, lo and behold, you get less satisfaction.  Or, for my slower students, just remember if you eat too many bananas, eventually you will barf.  I get this recited back to me by students who took my class 30 years ago.  They all watch the number of bananas they eat at once.

That covers our first month of econ 110, and you have mastered it in less than 5 minutes.  Yes, you do need to know this stuff for the exam.  Yes, you do need to know how to draw a supply and a demand curve.  Even on the same graph.  Yes, you do need to know that you should add C+I+G+NX to get GDP.  No, you cannot be excused from the exam to go deer hunting, get married, go home to take your laundry, play video games, go skiing, take a nap, or anything else.  If you have an appendectomy that day and you can prove you didn't fake it, you'll be excused.  If you left your textbook in Pocatello Idaho where you went for the weekend, tough.  If you think economics is just a bunch of hot air and not relevant to your blossoming career sorting debits and credits, your big mistake.  If your dad and your mom both took my class 20 years ago, just time enough for you to be born and get old enough to be a freshman, and they both told you econ was really, really tough and the worst class they ever took in college, more's the pity.  The general electorate hasn't shown a whole lot of promise in having a clue about basic economics.  If the lovebirds in the back row want to keep fooling around, please go out in the foyer.  For the rest of you, we will have a quiz tomorrow so if you spend your night playing intramural football and get 10 stitches in your head as a result, I expect to see you here bright and early at 8:00 a.m.  I promise to have a new joke to tell you then.  And no, you won't get a course evaluation form to fill out until the end of the semester.