Vocational vs University

U.S.G. and P.T.A. - NYTimes.com: "As Education Secretary Arne Duncan put it to me in an interview, 50 years ago if you dropped out, you could get a job in the stockyards or steel mill and still “own your own home and support your family.” Today, there are no such good jobs for high school dropouts. “They’re gone,” said Duncan. “That’s what we haven’t adjusted to.” When kids drop out today, “they’re condemned to poverty and social failure.” There are barely any jobs left for someone with only a high school diploma, and that’s only valuable today if it has truly prepared you to go on to higher education without remediation — the only ticket to a decent job."

Bill's thoughts:
I think skilled trades are being overlooked here. Installing and repairing HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) systems jobs can be well paid if the high school graduate has the right combination of vocational training and apprenticeship. This also holds true for auto dealer repair shops and other skilled trade work. There is a shortage of long-haul truckers and they can make good money if they are willing to put up with that life , get a CDL license, pass a background check and a drug screen. Of course, as technology changes some trades will see more demand and others less just as some University degrees are more valuable than others. Of course, the job seeker has to be willing to relocate to where his skills or degree is in demand. Those reluctant to move may be left out. The young drop-out or even the high school graduate who presents himself to the job market with no special skills will find it tough.

Texting Teens

U.S.G. and P.T.A. - NYTimes.com: "“Allison Miller, 14, sends and receives 27,000 texts in a month, her fingers clicking at a blistering pace as she carries on as many as seven text conversations at a time. She texts between classes, at the moment soccer practice ends, while being driven to and from school and, often, while studying. But this proficiency comes at a cost: She blames multitasking for the three B’s on her recent progress report. “I’ll be reading a book for homework and I’ll get a text message and pause my reading and put down the book, pick up the phone to reply to the text message, and then 20 minutes later realize, ‘Oh, I forgot to do my homework.’ ”"

Real Glamour Back in the Day

Marilyn Monroe was #1 in my book for Hollywood glamour. The crowd in this pic must have been dazzled.
A young Marilyn was a knockout in "The Asphalt Jungle" and a mature knockout in  Niagra".

Poker Girl

Try concentrating on your cards!

Small Arms Data

The 30-06 round is a common hunting round and was used in WWI in the Springfield rifle. The .30-06 Springfield cartridge (pronounced “thirty-aught-six”, "thirty-oh-six") or 7.62 x 63 mm in metric notation, was introduced to the United States Army in 1906 (hence “06”) and standardized, used until the 1960s and early 1970s. It replaced the .30-03, 6 mm Lee Navy and .30 US Army (also called .30-40 Krag). The .30-06 remained the US Army's primary rifle cartridge for nearly 50 years before it was finally replaced by the 7.62 x 51 mm NATO (commercial .308 Winchester) and 5.56x45mm NATO (commercial .223 Remington), both of which remain in current U.S. and NATO service. It remains a very popular sporting round, with ammunition produced by all major manufacturers.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30-06_Springfield

note: The 7.62 x63 refers to the diameter of the bullet and the length of the case in mm (1 inch=25mm). From the bottom of the case to the top of the neck is 63mm. The 7.62x39 is a WWII Soviet round, later used in the AK-47. The rest of the rounds in the picture below are pistol rounds.





  From left to right: 30-06, 7.62x39, .454 Casull, .45 Colt, .357 Magnum, .38 Special, .45 ACP, 9mm, .380, .22 Long Rifle
source:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62x39mm

Data on some common rounds is shown below. Muzzle energy is the product of bullet mass times velocity squared Kt=1/2  MV²  Big bullets and high velocity means lots of kenetic energy leaving the barrel.

Firearm            Caliber           Muzzle energy

                                              ft-lbf   joules
air gun              .177               15      20

pistol                .22LR             117    159

pistol                 9 mm             383    519

pistol               .45 ACP          416   564

rifle            5.56 × 45 mm        1,325 1,796

rifle           7.62 × 39 mm         1,527 2,070

rifle           7.62 × 51 mm         2,802 3,799

BMG*           .50                     11,091 15,037

*Browning Machine Gun
source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_energy

Complex Life and Complex Machines

The compexity of living things is used to argue that only God could create them. Maybe it is true. However, we notice Nature has some tricks and short-cuts. Among mammals Nature mostly does not invent new structures but modifies existing ones. Horn is made up of hair. Mammals have feet and hands that have 5 digits. Hooves and paws can be shown to be a modification of 5 digits even though they appear so different.  Heart, lungs, eyes and so forth are "standard equipment". Bilateral symmetry is common throughout the animal kingdom. So the variation and complexity have evolved over time by repeating or modifying basic structures. Even some behavior can be shown to be imprinted into the brain at birth by the genetic code.  Simple creatues such as microbes or insects behave in a total pre-programmed way. They are like robots using DNA as a computer program.

Machines can be complex also. The computer you are using to read this is too complex for any one person to grasp all the activity going on inside these machines. Transistors were invented by Physicists based on behavior of atomic structure. Micro circuit experts design billions of transistors into a functional device. With the help of chemists, imaging experts and complex machines the circuits can be "repeated" to produce thousands of parts economically. Software experts write millions of lines of instuctions for the finished computer. Software often uses repeating patterns of pre-designed routines just as nature repeats structures. Software on your computer is so complex it has to be broken into smaller pieces so experts can deal with pieces rather than the whole. It is the old method for dealing with complexity...break the task down into small  pieces one man can deal with.

Actor in old movie resembles real Nazi

On our trip to Europe in 2009 we were on the bus driving thru Paris when our guide pointed to a Hotel that was headquarters for the Nazis in WWII. Below is a pic from Time magazine in 1942 showing the Gestapo Chief at the time.

I saw an old WWII era movie recently. One of those cheap propaganda films to build morale for the war. It was about the murder of the Nazi "Reich's Protector" for Checkoslovacia by partisans and the notorious  reprisals that followed. The actor who played the Nazi chief was strange looking...narrow head, big nose, just like the pic above.

Take an even strain

My Dad, Wendell Combs, was a carpenter. In 1950 he built the house I would grow up in. I was 8 years old at the time and I was not a very good carpenters helper. He would lose patience with me sometimes for being haphazard and helter-skelter when I worked with him. All I did was fetch things or hold one end of a measuring tape, things like that. Dad was very methodical and thorough in his work. He was in the Carpenters Union for many years. Union members relied mostly on construction on the IU campus for jobs. Home construction was always non-union.
Some IU projects I remember Dad working on were the expansion of the Student Union building, the football stadium and the School of Business building. Building concrete forms was a common task and then hanging doors and windows followed by interior trim work. All carpenters are not created equal. Some are more suited for rough work and nail pounding. My Dad did those things too but he was often chosen to do the skilled interior trim and finish work because he was good at it. I should add at this point that some of Dad’s relatives teased him about being slow and deliberate in everthing.
Dad told me that If there was a task not clearly belonging to a trade it was usually assigned to the carpenters. He claimed that carpenters had to think and plan ahead more than other trades. Dad was often the one who put the finishing touch on many of the interiors of IU buildings and he was well suited for that work. Some of his Union brothers were not.
I did not inherit Dad’s methodical nature and it has often caused me problems both at work and at home. After all these years I am sometimes still helter-skelter. I have heard of adult attention deficit disorder even though it is normally a childhood problem. Maybe I have a little of that. Maybe too much caffeine. But I have a theory that goes like this: Dad spent 8 hrs a day and 5 days a week on doing carpenter work that would be inspected afterwards and have to be redone if it failed. If you start out working in a rushed, thoughtless manner you are headed for trouble. If you are to survive you will have to develop a steady pace you can maintain for months on the job. Dad said “take an even strain”. You need to be a long distance runner, not a sprinter. This is both physical and mental. My guess is some of Dad’s Union brothers could not do this and were only given the rough work. Dad was often the last carpenter to be laid off at the end because he was needed to finish interior detail.

Kentucky jokes

Story comments - HeraldTimesOnline.com: "What do a Kentucky divorce and a tornado have in common?
No matter what happens -- somebody's losing trailer?"

How can you tell a vampire victim was bitten by a vampire from Kentucky? There is only one tooth mark.

An ant farm?

Another movie quote: The film "Constantine" is fantasy involving angels, demons and lots of comic book violence. One character is very religious and is trying to tell Constantine (a hunter of demons and other satanic characters) that he should have more faith and God has a plan for each of us. Constantine replies " God is like a kid with an ant farm. There is no plan."