Trends In Entertainment

Do you think you can learn something by looking into entertainment?  I think that your can and that is what this blog is all about.  Read on.

There are at least three types of entertainment that I am going to look into.  Here are my groups:
(1)  Spectator, not an active participant.
(2)  Playing games invented by humans
(3)  Doing something as an individual
I will go into each of these groups in more detail, plus, try to show how they have changed over time and in most cases for the worse.

If you look around today, you will see a lot of situations where a person sits in a very comfortable seat and watches or listens to some kind of paid profession who "entertains" them.  When you watch TV or a football game, it is this kind of entertainment.  The person has no real participation in the process.  In most cases the person or group who are doing the entertaining could care less about the person watching other than how much they paid.  It has been my observation over the past 75 years that we have a lot higher percentage of this kind of passive entertainment today.  Remember that if you have "more" of something, then you have to have less of something else.

The next group are the human invented games.  I remember from a diary of the uncle who accompanied Pocahontas to England that Pocahontas was amazed at how much time English ladies spend "playing games".  It must have seem very foreign to Pocahontas compared to how she had lived in the New World.  We are talking about games like golf or bridge card games.  Again, I can tell you that we spend a lot less time "playing" these games than we did many years go.  Computer games , being the exception, are perfect examples of human invented games and are among the worst since they require little physical participation. I don't know why that is, but it is significant and we need to see if we can figure out exactly why.

The next group are those things that we do as individuals that are basic to being humans.  We are talking about things like hunting and fishing.  This could be called "work", but those who do it say that they are doing it for fun.  It could be quilting or doing some other kind of art, but it is "doing" rather than just sitting and watching the world go by and feeling good.  At one time, this was the largest of the groups, but it is being cut into by the "just sit" and be entertained group.  Personal computers are part of that first group.  It may look like the individuals are active in some way, but it is still a "just sit" and be entertained.

My position on all this is that we are all part of some kind of experiment that is changing what the human race had done for thousands of years.  If we had been doing these things for thousands of years, we have to accept that we must have been doing something right.  Any time we have a situation like this, we need to think twice before we casually change to some thing else.  We seem to be changing in a very fast and serious way without even thinking about the consequences.  It is kind of like when Spock came out with his book on how to raise kids when he had "zero" experience or proof that he was right or better.  You might not agree with me, but I can assure you that these casual changes will have a "big" impact on us humans and the human race of the future.

PS--I might be a cave man, because I get my greatest pleasure out of the third group.  I don't need a paid professional to entertain me and make me happy.  I could say the same about computers.  I don't just read things, I write down what I think.  Blogging is group three.

Moonshine And Global Warming

As I pointed out in a prior blog, I am trying to make Slivovitz from wild plums like they do in Serbia.  If this is not done right, you can go blind or even die.  That is what this blog is about.

Did you ever hear about people who drink Moonshine going blind?  Well, it can happen if the "cut" is not correct.  Most people don't know that when wine, beer and whiskey are made by the fermentation of sugars, there are poisons produced in the process.  This is one reason that some people get head aches when they drink wine or other alcoholic drinks.  In beer and wine which are low in alcohol are also low in these toxic components, but that may not be true with stronger drinks like whiskey.  It is even possible to concentrate these toxic components using a still.  Why am I going into all this?  Read on!

The global warming people are in love with ethanol in our gasoline.  Some want us to use even higher percentages of ethanol.  Like most things that appear as "good" just might have a "bad" side.  That is the case with ethanol.  Just like the moonshiners, the big companies who make ethanol from corn also make the same components that make you go blind or kill you.  Did you ever hear exactly how these big companies dispose of the toxic by products of making ethanol?  I have not.  Compared to moonshiners, these big companies who make ethanol for our gasoline produce millions of times as much of these toxic components.  It would seem that some of these tree hugger global warming people would be asking about this toxic by product material.

Here are some of the components that are produced from corn when it is fermented and what temperature that they are produced:

*  Acetone--------------------134 f
*  Wood Alcohol-------------147 f
*  Ethyl Acetate--------------171 f
*  Ethanol---------------------172 f
*  Rubbing Alcohol----------180 f
*  Propanol--------------------207 f

The reason for this blog is to wake you up about the hidden dangers of our rush to ethanol as the savior of the human race.

PS--As part of my making Slivovitz, I was reminded about how much Carbon Dioxide is produced by the fermenting wild plums.  My 25 gallon kettle vigorously boiled out Carbon Dioxide for more than 10 days.  That was a lot of Carbon Dioxide!  We all know that it is the Carbon Dioxide generated by making homebrew that often causes the bottles to burst.  Did you ever hear how the companies who make ethanol for our gasoline deal with all the Carbon Dioxide that they also produce as a by product?  I never have, but I have heard complaints about cows who have been fed corn farting Methane.  All these global warming nuts need to check out the facts and realize that the production of ethanol also produces a lot of Carbon Dioxide, which is a green  house gas.  For the record, the amount of Carbon Dioxide produced by fermenting corn is about the "same" as the amount the corn took out of the air in the first place.  Where is the big advantage?

PS--If the green nuts want to save the planet, they should take the corn and bury it in a land fill rather than let an ethanol company put all that Carbon Dioxide back into the air.

Obama's Regulations And The Economy

I have been listening to the debate over the roll of government regulations and the economy and have some of my own comments on the subject.  It is going to be difficult for me to explain my position and for you to clearly understand to understand so read slowly.

I am going to use a few abstractions to get my point across.  Think of the controls put on the economy by Obama as someone loading bricks onto you.  Your attitude about your load of bricks is less about how many you have on your back now compared to your thoughts about all of the bricks that will be placed onto you in the future.  As humans, we are affected more about what will or might in the future than they are about their current situation.  This is human nature.  Are you following that?

Next, look at what happens when you find out that no more bricks will be loaded onto your back.  At this point you take a big breath and get a significant positive change in your attitude.  This is the way we all act. Next, Trump starts taking the bricks or regulations off your back.  This makes you feel better too, but it is not as much as when you found out that no more bricks were going to be put on your back.

Now, look how what Trump has been doing is presented in the media and social discussions.  99% has been focused on the "elimination" of existing regulations and its impact on the economy.  Hardy any of the discussion has been devoted to the impact of stopping the growth of regulations when we all now realize from above that it is the stopping that has had the most impact.

Think of falling off a clif.  What if something stopped your fall in mid air?  What makes you feel the best?  The stopping of the falling or something that started pulling you back up?  It is clearly the stopping of the falling!  I hope that this short blog is helping to clear up your understanding of the impact of what Trump has been doing for the economy.

PS--No matter what Obama claims at this time, as long as he was in control, business was damaged by his presence and the concern that he would continue to force regulations on business.

Economic Index Challenge

I have been working on this for some time and now I am asking for your help.

We have all heard the economic concept of "climbing the economic ladder", but how do we quantify it?  My challenge for you is how to come up with some kind of simple index that measures this affect?

I have blogged before that individual people can climb the economic ladder and thus earn more even if the economy has "zero" growth.  Further, I have also blogged that when the economy grows the rate at which individuals climb the economic ladder increases, but by how much?  I think that you are starting to see the problem.  Remember that this can all happen while the current wage growth index shows "zero" gain.

Here is another point that we need to try to take into account.  As our economy has shifted from physical value added labor to intellectual value added labor, it appears to me that those upper jobs are much higher paid than similar upper jobs in the past.  How do we take that this into account?  Think of a person who started out as a truck driver and took night classes in computer programming and was promoted to a new job that paid twice what he was earning before.  There is a lot of this type of thing going on all the time and how do we take that into account in any proposed economic index?  In the past, before the shift to more of our economy based on intellect, the truck driver may have gotten promoted to being a dispatcher who only made a very small amount more than his old job.  I think this is a big deal and needs to be properly recognized.

Historically unions promoted workers who did the same job all their life and expected to earn more by doing the "same" job while getting paid more as he got older and older.  Do you see any logic in that concept?  That is how the old economic system worked.  Think about this.  What if our life expectancy went from 50 years to 80 years?  Further what if workers used to work at the same job for 30 years and later for 40 years?  The result would be that the products they produced would get less and less competitive!  Did you ever see an economic index that took this into account? In today's economy workers shift jobs much more frequently than they did in the past.  How about that?

Here is another.  What if you worked in the textile industry and the textile industry declined and jobs were eliminated?  How would a compensation index recognize this?  What if the rate of change increased as it is now doing, how would that change be reflected in an index?

My objective is to better understand economics and to change the types of indexes that we use to better understand our current economic situation.  That is why I am asking for your help with this challenge.

Taking A Knee In The NFL

Since almost everyone else has put their two cents into this debate, why not me?

It all started with a washed up 49'ers quarter back and it has grown to most of the NFL football teams.  Why did he do that?  You need to look behind the curtain to find out.  Did you ever hear of Harry Edwards?  He is a Black athlete from San Jose State who was instrumental in the "Black Fist" episode at the Mexico Olympic games.  He was hired by the 49'ers as some kind of social counselor for their football players.  It is my opinion that Harry had something to do with Kaepernick taking the knee during the National Anthem.  Keep an eye on both of these people.

As an observer, I have been wondering why the football players are doing this.  Does anyone know why they are taking a knee?  A better question might be to ask them "how" the USA needs to change for these football players to stop taking a knee?  Further, we need to ask "who" needs to change?  If these football players feel that "I" need to change, then exactly what am I doing wrong?  I am at a total loss about this whole thing other than many football players just don't like me!

So far, all we have gotten is a bunch of mumbo jumbo as reasons for the taking a knee and I don't see how we can make any needed changes on such a soft and weak basis.  We need specifics on an individual basis since all of our laws are based on "individuals".  You don't put groups of people in jail, we only put individuals in jail.  Even duck hunters know better than to just shoot into a flock of ducks.  They know that if you want to eat duck for dinner that you need to aim at individual ducks.  How could it be any simpler.  Look at digging a ditch.  You don't excavate all the soil in one shovel full.  You dig the ditch one shovel full at a time and you keep this up for a while, you end up with an excavated ditch.  If football players have a problem, it needs to be solved one player at a time and the "who" if they have broken the law needs to be called to account.

We need to start thinking more in terms of "individuals" and stop all this group thing!  

The Brewmaster Takes On Slivovitz

As if homebrewing was not a big enough challenge, I have taken on Slivovitz.  Don't know what that is?  Read on.

Several years ago I was visiting friends in Hungary and was introduced to "Plum Brandy".  A neighbor of my friend was picking plums from his tree to make this drink.  Later at a party, the host asked us all to have a shot of his "Plum Brandy".  It was a little hot on the tung, but tasted good.  Since then I have learned that what I was tasting was "Slivovitz" which is a common drink in that area.

For some reason, the weather was just right in my area this year and we have a bumper crop of wild plums.  All the wild plum trees are loaded down with ripe fruit.  When I discovered this, I knew that I had to try my hand at making Slivovitz.  I started out by picking about 26 gallons of these wild plums.  I picked most off  the ground since the trees have thorns and grow in dense thickets.  When the plums are ripe, the slightest breeze will cause them to drop on the ground, so you know that these are ripe and full of sugar.

I started off by washing all my fruit and putting them into my 25 gallon homebrew kettle.  The kettle was rounded up with fruit, but it quickly cooked down so that I had at least 20 gallons of juice and pulp.  Because the fruits have so much pectin, I add an enzyme once the juice was cool that cancels out the pectin and makes the juice thinner and easier to strain.  The enzyme is called "pectolase" and I ordered it from Amazon.

After letting the enzyme work for about 4 hours, I added the yeast.  I also added 10 pounds of sugar to make sure that the batch produced enough alcohol since I planned to hold back a gallon or so of fermented juice (wine) to be enjoyed later.  As of this writing, the batch is still fermenting vigorously and should be ready to distill in about a week.

Now for the distillation.  A friend loaned me his reflux still that I plan to use.  It will attach to a 15 gallon beer keg which I plan to use for the still.  I am concerned that a reflux still produces too pure of alcohol and thus may be more like vodka than Slivovitz.  I know that traditional Slivovitz must contain a lot of "bad" stuff or it would not burn ones mouth so much. I am all set up and just waiting for the fermentation to be complete.  I will update this blog if I am still alive after distilling the Slivovitz.