Tsetse Fly

Do you ever look back at past demons in your life? You know those things that used to trouble you but now maybe seem ridiculous.  For many it was the monster that was either under you bed or in the attic.  I remember a couple of demons I had that make me laugh now.

One of my demons for awhile was the dreaded tsetse fly.  I saw a film in school about how the tsetse would give people sleeping disease and mess up the animals as well.  I am not sure if I was drifting off when the said it was only in Africa or I just assumed the flies in Africa could fly to southern Minnesota.  I do know the effect was a short, but intense fear of all flies for awhile.  The film we saw showed people who were essentially turned into zombies after the fly bit them and I most definitely wanted to avoid this horrid end.   So I avoided flies as much as I could for a stretch.

I also remember another incident involving an alien.  There was a stretch growing up – maybe in the mid to early seventies where UFO’s were being sighted with regularity.  I think it was right after streaking was big but before bicentennial fever took over.  Anyway, with very regular reports of UFOs and abductions in the news, a relatively young kid was naturally fearful when going out by himself at dark.  About this same time I started a morning paper route.  I’d wake up before six in the morning and deliver about 12 StarTribune newspapers over about a two mile route (I’d hate to calculate my wage for that gig). 

Anyway, one morning I am picking up my bundle of papers and I look back at our garage window and there were three lights looking back at me.  As I stared at the eyes and nose of an alien in our garage, I was paralyzed with fear.  As I moved the eyes seemed to follow me.  I don’t know how long it took me to figure out that the eyes were a by-product of the street light and a pine tree but I am pretty sure people got their paper late that morning.

I grew out of these fears and others but think about to what extent I’ve replaced them with other fears that may be an equal waste of energy.  Maybe the larger question is for all of us, what is it we should fear if we have faith.  Should we really fear losing money in the stock market or having enough money to retire or not achieving career advancement?  If we are, as Christians, striving to be more Christ like, maybe the question is what would Jesus fear?  Perhaps this is an unfair question given we are not divine, but I tend to think many of us fear or worry too much about things that don’t matter. 

Constrained Maximization

Given the finite quantity of fossil fuels, I am amazed at how inefficient we are at some things.  As I child, I always thought it would be so much more efficient if we only had 15 different types of cars and trucks.  You could work to perfect models and minimize maintenance and maximize efficiency.  The different types of spare parts, mechanics, and dealerships would be far less and it would make selecting a car so much easier. 

I realize that limiting the type of cars runs against to our capitalistic culture and economy.  I also realize that if there were not sufficient competition, the limited car theory, would lead to fewer jobs, crappier cars, and a smaller economy.  However, if you could insure competition, there would be such a huge savings in the use non-renewable resources.

We don’t have enough oil to go around and so you’d think we would become collectively outraged at things that waste oil and resources but I think we are a long way from that point.  We don’t scoff at the person forever driving around an inefficient vehicle like a big truck without any passengers or payload.  No one is apparently appalled at NASCAR’s wasting gas by having extemely inefficient cars run around and around.

One thing that has started bothering me more and more is the amount of waste in packaging.  Maybe as Halloween creeps closer and I see more and more candy circulating in small bags, and begin to wonder more and more if there isn’t a better way.  There are ten M&M’s in a little bag, that is part of a bigger bag, that was part of a box, that was stacked on a pallet.  What if we just sold M&M’s in bulk?  You bring your own vessel (bag, glass jar, M&M dispenser) to the store and fill it up and you only pay for the M&Ms and not the added paper/plastic/printing/cardboard/wood necessary in the bite-sized Halloween packing version.  You’d have to think it’d be way cheaper and there would be a lot energy saved in the process.

My problems with packaging do not stop with M&Ms – there is cheese (or I should say a cheese product) wrapped in plastic individually, there are chewy granola bars packed in a wrapper that is too big and put in a box that’s way to big all to make us feel like we are getting more for our money when if fact we are getting less, and there are boxes of ¾ full cereal.

One final issue I have with wasting resources is mailing.  I was at the cable store last week and there was a guy in there mad because the cable company sent him what amounted to junk mail.  He was arguing it was a waste and he doesn’t want to pay for it.  The customer service rep insisted he wasn’t paying for it.  He countered by asking who is paying for it then?  The ensuing heated conversation highlighted an inability of the customer service rep to understand consumers pay all the costs for what a company does even though it might not be itemized on their bill.

I remember this conversation as I went through my mail and pushed most of it into the throw away without opening pile.  Sure, my credit card company isn’t charging me the $1 it costs me to send an offer for something, but I am certainly paying for it one way or another.  Obviously, the credit card companies must make more than it costs but this can only mean they are charging too much.

Chainsaw happiness by default

Back when I started high school, it was encouraged that you take a typing class so that you were equipped to effectively complete all the papers you would have complete during the remainder of your academic career.  I heeded to the pressure and took typing class.  I regret it somewhat because it was the lowest grade I ever received and I probably could have more efficiently picked up the skills by spending time practicing by myself. 

There are several lasting memories from that class.  One is that our grade was based on how fast we could accurately type and on how accurately we reformatted/typed a lengthy paper.  I did okay with typing speed but no so great with accuracy.  I wasn’t alone. As the end of class approached, I should have done what many students did, and dropped the class.  They picked up the typing skills but didn’t wreck their GPA in the process.

The second vivid memory I have from the class is that the standard page margins were one inch on the top and left, three-quarters of and inch on the right, and a half inch on the bottom.  I am not sure how are why these were the standards, but that’s what they were.

Now leap forward several decades and what is the norm?  Well according to Bill Gates and his Microsoft programming lackeys, the answer is 1.25 on the left and about an inch the rest of the way around the page.  I guess I will have to admit it is a little easier to read a page with shorter lines.  But compare the global cost of additional paper with the nearly insignificant benefit of greater ease in readying and, as any salvation economist who is worth his salt would tell you, there are telltale signs of a conspiracy.

Where is Microsoft based?  Washington.  Where do they harvest a ton of trees?  Washington.  I think the only reasonable conclusion is that some lumberjacks called Bill one day and very subtly hinted that they have sharpened axes and chainsaws and know where his family lives.  Bill quickly concluded supporting the paper industry by making a change to the default page margins was probably a good thing to do.

Insofar as I am fairly certain lumberjacks do not read this blog, I am encouraging you to change the default margins on your word processor and do your part in decreasing paper consumption.

 

Contrived One-Man Conversations

I was driving down the road the other day and caught myself having a conversation with a person (a real person I know) who wasn’t in my car.  It was all in my head.  As I thought about it more and more I realized I do this all the time.  I started wondering if other people do the same thing.  Do you have a conversation with someone you know even though they aren’t there?

To be clear it’s typically not so much a conversation as it is a diatribe.  It’s me talking about something and assembling comments meant to be provocative, funny, or maybe absolutely outlandish about something.  I suppose when you get right down to it, it’s a lot like a blog, but you don’t type the brain traffic, you only run it through this imaginary conversation.

So is this out of the norm?  Am I dysfunctionally coping with the tension between needing social interaction and my introverted tendencies by having contrived conversations in solitude?  I do often like being alone.  When I drive, I rarely play music when I am in the car and don’t listen to the music when it’s playing.  I’ll listen to people talking on the radio but typically get turned off by whoever is speaking before too long and then lapse in my version of a conversation.

Is this unhealthy?  My imaginary friends and family don’t seem to mind.  At least they don’t argue with me when they are hypothetically conversing with me.  Maybe I should try to make the conversations real and use some of the cell phone minutes that go wasted in any given month.  The problem with this is my contributions to any given dialogue are typically so uninteresting, I am fairly certain that before long, no one with caller ID would answer my calls.

Anyway, all you people out there that I am giving an imaginary speech to, let me know if you think I am going off the deep-end.  Or I guess maybe arrange some sort of intervention with a qualified mental health care provider.  If you don’t think it’s a problem – well I’ll just talk to you later – at least in my mind I will anyway.