Right Track - Higher taxes?

We are often lectured to by our ruling classes that we need to pay a little more.  Well, what we can never get a firm answer to is the question of exactly how much more?  That's always a little fuzzy around the edges.  Here is a five minute explanation about taxes that tells an interesting story.  http://www.prageruniversity.com/Economics/Lower-Taxes-Higher-Revenue.html

Tirade - Bureaucracy

We had a particularly nasty case of a bureaucracy over-reaching the other day.  A well known and well loved music teacher was suspended from her school in South Los Angeles.  Her crime?  She was escorting her choir on a trip to the east coast and called the White House to ask if she could bring the children along to sing for the president.  He agreed and after clearing it with the school principal she duly took her charges - who have in the past gone all over the world to perform - to Washington.  Unfortunately she failed to clear the event with the next layer of bureaucrats, and they subsequently suspended her.  She was the founder of this renowned choir over twenty years ago and is a much respected teacher.  No matter, the bureaucrats were outraged.  Come on People!



Music Track - Muller

No doubt like me you may wonder why nobody seems to compose music the way it used to be done years ago.  Are there no budding Mozarts or Beethovens around any more?  Well, this man is called Stadius Muller and he's into his eighties.  He lives in the Dutch Antilles in Curacao.  He used to be a specialist in security matters but now he composes and gives concerts.  This could be by Chopin I think; see how it sounds to you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh8tWPDcWW4

Doughnuts

A couple of times a week I go to a small doughnut shop to buy a coffee to go.  I've been tempted a few times to buy a doughnut to go with it but so far I've managed to resist the temptation.  I don't miss many things about England, but I do miss the occasional doughnut.  They're very different over there.  For a start they're smaller and much softer.  Rather like a soft, deflated tennis ball.  Also the most popular are covered in sugar and filled with runny jam.  I remember an occasion when we had some visiting bankers to see us in the conference room.  The girl in charge of such events had supplied a plate of such doughnuts.  Most of the bankers found them to be very difficult to eat delicately, and several of them had jam squirt over their ties.  It was rather amusing, but the order was given that in future we'd avoid such confections.

Time Bandit - Scuttled

The recent storm which came though on February 28/March 1st did little damage in our area.  However one casualty was the Time Bandit, which is our local pirate ship.  Those of you who visit Big Bear in the summer may well have traveled on it or at least seen it sailing around the lake.  It often fires its canon on its way back into port, but it's going to be a while before the gun fires again.  I talked to one of the owners and suggested that maybe a couple of hatches might have been left open, which she vigorously denied.  She assured me that it will soon be refloated using inflatable bags.  It is a 1/3 scale replica of a 16th century Spanish galleon.  It was originally made in the 60's and used in the 1981 the movie Time Bandit.  We hope to see it up and running again soon.

The Time Bandit on the blue waters of Big Bear Lake and not underneath them!

Video - Mont Blanc Ride

I'm grateful to my friend Kevin in the Marina for this wonderful ten minute video.  Ten minutes is a lot of time to invest in watching a video on a computer but I couldn't stop watching.  See what you think.  Here's the intro and the link.

“OK class, we're meeting in the Alps for a little fun.  The 'copter will take us to near the top of Mont Blanc at about 13,000 feet and we'll work our way down to around 3,000 feet in the valley below.

Our guide will be the red sail, and we'll all have yellow sails.  Try not to get ahead of the red sail, unless you know the up drafts and craig heights very well.  And try not to run into other sails.

The total flight will take about 10 minutes.  Great scenery.  You can probably get in another run before the end of the day if you're so inclined,and if you don’t hit the mountain, houses, power lines or lift cables and kill yourself!”

Click here for Speed Riding Mont Blanc

Right Track - Crimea

I have to say that I feel rather sad for President Obama.  He's not had a lot of luck with his programs and apart from those wanting free stuff they've not been well received.  Now he's got a bad dose of schoolyard bully on his hands and the poor fellow just can't cope.  His Nemesis this time is Tsar Vladimir with his aggression in the Crimea.  As a devout liberal, Obama tends to view the world as he would like it to be and not as the way it is.  (To quote Dick Armey, an ex-speaker of the House: Conservatives believe it when they see it; but liberals see it when they  believe it!)  Remarks by the Secretary of State about illegal acts by the Russians aren't going to cut much ice with the bullies.  Sadly, there are shades here of that other European bully back about 75 years ago.  First there was the march into the Rhineland; then the Sudetenland; the annexation of Austria after a referendum no less! Then finally Poland. At that time we too had a liberal trying to appease the bully with words and diplomacy.  To quote the philosopher George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Tirade - Oscars

When I was quite small I would, like most children, break out of my natural shyness and act up.  The usual response of my parents was to tell me to stop showing off.  It was so ingrained in my youth I think that I developed a great dislike of the practice - good for my parents, who were like most of their ilk total novices in the art.  A few days ago I was in a local hostelry and on the big screen they had the annual nonsense of the Oscars.  Fortunately the sound was off.  But I was able to see out of the corner of my eye the dreary parade of over-dressed "celebrities" congratulating themselves on what has to be the ultimate showing off.  Perhaps this is why I never watch it or in this case hear it or have any interest in it.  I was able however able to pick out two of the three winners entirely due to the application of my "liberal guilt" system.  Come on People!

Music Track - Yardbirds

It's hard to realise that this is 50 years old!  It's currently being used in an advert for flowers, I think.  I remember wondering at the time why the lead singer is wearing sunglasses! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn6cxaKRwtk

Trains Part Two

When I was about ten I had a friend, Chris, who introduced me to a pretty amazing experience.  He took me down a steep embankment to the edge of the railway track about five miles from Watford Junction.  It was some 100 yards from the tunnel that took trains north toward Birmingham about 90 miles away.  At a few minutes after five each evening, the express would come through and Chris would lay some pennies on the rail and await the train.  We would crouch alongside the line and eventually hear a slight ticking on the rails, then a whispering followed by a full bodied murmur.  Finally in a gust of air and smoke the beast would roar out of the tunnel and thrash it's way past us, pulling its dozen carriages at about 70 m.p.h.  We would squat about three feet from the railway bed and that meant about six feet from the rail itself.  It was a terrifying experience but we were quite safe as long as we didn't move.  We were too scared to.  At best we never found more than half the pennies we had placed, but the ones we collected were pretty banged up and precious souvenirs for a long time.  I only went a couple of times with him.  My mother would have killed me had she known!

Wedding Photo

I don't often post jokey emails and other stuff on the blog as I'm sure we all get enough of them in our mailboxes.  But my friend Don in Orange County sent this to me and it's too good not to share.

I can't improve on his remarks which were: "Hopefully things went better on the honeymoon!"

Video - car crusher

Is it me or does this video make you feel a little sad. http://www.youtube.com/embed/sNOsIB5VMSQ  Most of us lavish quite a lot of time and attention on our cars, and even though we know that eventually they have to go to the happy parking lot elsewhere, this is tough to watch.  I'm grateful to my friend Keith in the desert for this instructive piece of video.

Sunday' Column - Nethercutt Museum

I do wish editors wouldn't cause errors with articles.  There is a whopper in the first paragraph of this week's piece on the Nethercutt Museum in Sylmar.  I checked my original copy and I'm glad to see it's not me that made it.  So why change it at all?*  Never mind, the place is a wonderful collection of vintage cars.

This is a 1938 Mercedes that was bought by an Englishman in Italy.  It was converted to right hand drive and then the war intervened.  The Englishman no doubt skedaddled back home sans auto!  Finally a GI picked it up and brought it to the USA in 1945.  Like all the other exhibits it's in pristine condition.  You can read the entire article - error and all - at http://www.sbsun.com/lifestyle/20140301/the-nethercutt-museum-has-elegant-vintage-automobiles
*After much whining, they subsequently rectified it!

Right Track - Sequestration

We don't hear a great deal about the awful effects of sequestration these days.  Somehow the nation has survived such draconian cuts.  However the recent budget talks agreed upon by both parties allowed cuts to our military's pensions.  Now how can that happen?  Also why is it that when the talk of serious cuts comes around it's always Social Security, and military cuts on the table.  It's never pay for our politicians or their pensions?  For your amuseument here are some of the pay scales.  Remember a one term in congress guarantees a pension for life!  My thanks to Don in Orange County for this example.