tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83068328789266229352012-02-16T06:56:32.069-05:00A free ranging conversation between two lovable old coots who wish the world would just calm down already.M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.comBlogger211100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-91413355089693844552007-07-31T00:54:00.000-05:002007-07-31T01:05:04.161-05:00

Someone sent me a copy of the following: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf4gOS8aoFkIt tells how blind we all have been to not have recognized that we could just run our industries and transportation with salt water. "Incredible," was the comment of the fellow who sent it. This is what I sent back:What's incredible is that the other engineers expressed amazement about any of this. There are a lot

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-80068397544519926322007-06-22T19:35:00.001-05:002007-06-22T19:50:39.710-05:00

I had to write an article about the famous and attractive ladies of the Eroica Trio, who play classical music, and there wasn't much new to say about them except to observe that in March they'd they'd begun a blog, and it had all of two postings in it for the entire year. I should take a lesson already; one per month is sort of sparse. This morning I was wasting time on Yahoo Answers and got an

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-14862283262513045912007-05-27T01:06:00.000-05:002007-05-27T01:37:57.262-05:00

I suppose if I'm serious about this thing I oughta add to it now and again. It's been six weeks or so. I am beginning to think that I can write better political articles than the stuff I've been reading lately. Much of it is so mean-spirited that it's more destructive to its readers and their spirits than anything, and it's unnecessary. I suppose that I have a different perspective on politics

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-58477657738787549902007-04-07T20:54:00.001-05:002007-04-07T20:54:31.743-05:00

A funny thing happened on the way to the checkout register...My wife is a big Mark Martin fan. For those of you who aren't steeped in the Southern tradition that is North American Stock Car Auto Racing, or NASCAR, Mark Martin is a rather likeable, down to Earth race car driver who was sponsored by Valvoline for quite a few years. Several years ago his contract was up, whereupon he got picked up

D Typinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968893626790476244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-77124272847246111892007-04-04T21:47:00.000-05:002007-04-14T12:50:22.935-05:00

This is a post from Yahoo Answers, which I've been fooling with instead of working on my column. The kids who ask these things are generally quite young, and many live in English-speaking nations quite different from ours, e.g. Malaysia. Thus I try to be reasonably respectful when giving answers. Reasonably. How do people know when someone is a Jew?They have black Jews, like Sammy Davis Jr. and

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-60139835515293064962007-04-02T23:13:00.000-05:002007-04-14T12:55:59.761-05:00

A fellow I know who reads a lot about national affairs sent me an article about immigration featuring a speech given by a fellow named Victor Hansen Davis and Dick Lamm, the governor of Colorado at the time. I really don't wish to quote it, because it's pretty violent and distasteful in some subtle ways, so I'll see if I can find a URL for it...Well, I suppose that it was a widely-circulated

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-40838327741424177642007-03-24T21:46:00.000-05:002007-03-25T05:30:39.010-05:00

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-76692268763766987412007-03-24T14:22:00.000-05:002007-03-24T14:58:02.540-05:00

"But you can't get there from here!"Harlan heard it before. They just didn't - couldn't - believe him. Not that he blamed them, of course. He had a hard time believing it himself."Look, Mister Harlan… unless you have some evidence, some sort of proof, I'm afraid we're simply not interested. If you have such evidence, please bring it before the board. Feel free to schedule an appointment through

D Typinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968893626790476244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-18618748440288441382007-03-19T19:04:00.000-05:002007-03-19T19:36:02.755-05:00

Predicting the future is a tricky business.For example, what person a hundred years ago could have predicted the issues we have to deal with now? Even if a few folks managed to get it close to right – science fiction authors, most likely – few cared for such predictions, and even fewer believed them.Just look at the changes wrought by mankind in the last century...It all happened so fast. Or at

D Typinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968893626790476244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-17374030952582785122007-03-07T21:11:00.000-05:002007-03-07T21:23:57.327-05:00

Cats don't worry about stray asteroids.That may seem self evident given a cat's general indifference to everything - save, of course, the odd piece of fuzz under the couch that Must Be Hunted To Extinction.You know how it is. You buy a twenty dollar cat toy and the poor guy sniffs at it for an hour or two, then turns up his whiskers at it - or worse, pretends it isn't there in the first place. It

D Typinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968893626790476244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-40372197651242846032007-03-06T20:33:00.000-05:002007-03-06T21:48:27.012-05:00

It has finally thawed out enough to think about Outside and so yesterday, trapped here by the guy who was working on the furnace all day, I at last turned my attention to the garden, which has been growing worse over the seven years we've lived here.I originally dug it out of a perfectly innocent lawn in back of the house, and at about twenty feet square it's already bigger than we'd need if we

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-55777545232150305152007-02-26T01:22:00.000-05:002007-02-26T02:02:37.185-05:00

There is renewed hope for The Beloved 1964 Econoline Van. I have been feeling guilty about it ever since I essentially abandoned thing for my equally-beloved 1996 Geo Metro, which transports me in five times the comfort at about nineteen times the gas mileage, which gives you an idea of the delights of the Econoline. Yet it was my principal form of transport since I bought it in 1980 from

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com68tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-19811213647717592582007-02-22T10:52:00.000-05:002007-02-22T21:57:11.543-05:00

My journalism career has lately taken me into a couple of local schools. Every kid seems to drive a car to high school these days: the parking lots are huge, and full, with shiny little trucks with vanity plates. I park in one of the favored 'vistors' spots.WELCOME.ALL VISITORS MUST REGISTER AT THE OFFICEYOU PERVERTsays the sign pasted to the glass front door.Schools are big, with long hallways.

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-66527923093069534202007-02-19T16:05:00.001-05:002007-02-19T16:26:49.405-05:00

It says on my resume, posted somewhere in a dusty corner of http://www.mkinsler.com, that I taught for a time at a truly hard-luck trade school in Pittsburgh known as Gateway Technical Institute. To their credit, they'd kept it going for years, and they did good training in refrigeration and other trades; perhaps including the electronics I taught. Like most such operations, it was owned by a

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-35092486698997017742007-02-18T22:45:00.000-05:002007-02-18T22:47:27.378-05:00

My mother says that her father used to write endlessly, sitting at a card table atop which was perched his ancient Smith-Corona manual office typewriter. She said that he couldn't see constantly changing those sheets of paper, so at one point he tried a roll of shelf paper and just kept on typing. Charles C. Goldman was quite a man, and he would have rejoiced in the Internet.M Kinsler

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-71827239582148069982007-02-18T18:55:00.000-05:002007-02-18T22:44:33.575-05:00

The problem is that the newspaper business appears to be going south. At the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, they've cut back the newspaper staff, and I'm afraid that the features they run, like my stuff, will be going with it. And so it's off to this new, odd, format, where successive postings are upside-down and you have no idea if anyone has or ever will look at it.I am going to try flailing away at

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-45105170552906501282007-02-16T21:56:00.000-05:002007-02-16T23:10:14.704-05:00

I'm not completely sorry to say that I have reached Level 2 on Yahoo! Answers, one of the strangest bits of information exchange I've come across in my weary years. Because Yahoo Answers, and I refuse to use that damn exclamation point in their dumb name any further, is a fascinating bit of sociology.The first question really got me. It has the casual grammar and punctuation customary to this

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-27716149808064433982007-02-14T22:27:00.000-05:002007-02-14T23:40:05.243-05:00

It's been a good few days to think about energy policy. Not only was our electric power, and thus the heat, off for seven hours last night, but it's Valentine's Day today and Herself has decided to burn her red candle. It's there on the dining room table, where it just finished presiding over the mostly ceremonial supper I make every year.It is a bright red candle, not scented or anything, and I

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-86560096234735981362007-02-07T20:16:00.000-05:002007-02-07T21:20:03.256-05:00

Well, I thought "oughta" was spelled "oughtta." Google, however, disagrees: 3 million hits for "oughta," but only a thenth that for my version. Oh well, outvoted by the collective wisdom of humanity. I guess that's not such a bad thing.Tecumseh, however, reminds me of lawnmowers. If you have to ask why, then you've never experienced the pleasure of trying to pull start a two-stroke engine that's

D Typinskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03968893626790476244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-59928146999882211332007-02-07T16:26:00.000-05:002007-02-07T16:29:11.331-05:00

And I spelled 'Tecumseh' wrong. And I might have done it once again. I'll have to check to see how the family spelled it. Eddie Tecumseh, who used to run a water-softener business down in New Marshfield, never spelled it the same twice.

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8306832878926622935.post-72402336574190734932007-02-07T15:42:00.000-05:002007-02-07T15:58:34.033-05:00

The other guy is one Dave Typinski, who lives in Florida. Every time they have one of their trademark weather cataclysms down there I check in with him to see if he's been blown out to sea, yet. I don't know where he lives in Florida, exactly: I know that it's a Florida-shaped state, and it's got Miami at the bottom and Cuba down below that, seething, and Cape Canaveral somewhere on the edge.I,

M Kinslerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618355992301482106noreply@blogger.com0