There are two opposite points of view this situation leaves with me.   The first is that in my lifetime, I have seen countless situations of sexual and racial discrimination fall by the wayside.  Nowadays, you are hard pressed to find any discriminatory practices.  It's pleasing to see our nation make such progress.   In the opposite direction, I'm appalled to see a large company like Walgreens engaging in such an obvious and blatantly discriminatory practice.  When I asked a Walgreens manager about the policy, they said although it is a clearly discriminatory practice - it's currently not illegal.  In my view, each form of discrimination is (and has been) wrong - long before they became illegal.  It seems like companies like Walgreens are only interested in just barely being legal without the integrity to take the extra step to do what is "right" even though there may not be a legal REQUIREMENT to do the right thing.

I have noticed that the Post Office has a dress standard for their counter clerks that requires both men and women to wear a necktie, scarf, or similar collar device.  I see that as the right way to have a dress code.  For Walgreens to come up to speed would require that all the female employees to wear ties or a collar device like the Post Office clerks.  There's just too many female employees who are used to wearing tee shirts for that policy to be implemented.  My guess is that Walgreens will eventually eliminate the necktie requirement for all employees except management - and both male and female managers will be required to wear neckties or similar collar devices.

The next time you're in Walgreens, look around and see if the discriminatory practice is still in place.  You will either be able to catch a fleeting glimpse of one of the few remaining areas of discrimination in the nation - or you will see that an old conservative company has finally taken a step forward with the rest of the nation.

Started getting together all the information for this year's seed order.

Cut the greenhouse addition foundation pressure treated 2x6's to length.

The Centurion - A New Car
I would like to see an auto manufacturer evolve beyond the planned obsolescence of our current autos and do something new.  I would like to see a simple (cheap) car made whose design and parts aren't changed for ten years.  Rather like a modern Model T, this car would be designed for easy access for parts replacement.  Since the design would not change for 10 years, neither would its parts.  A lowered cost would be achieved because the same parts would fit any car made over a 10 year period.  The current trends are to change the look of the models to keep things new and fresh.  I think there is a market out there who would purchase a simple yet reliable auto - a dependable car you can take to work.  I think "Centurion" would be a good name for the car because it would seem like it was around for a century.

Gaia Entropy
You may have heard of the Gaia Theory - sometimes called the Mother Earth Theory.  It suggests that the life on earth itself has made changes to the chemistry of the atmosphere which better suits itself.  You may have also heard of Entropy - that property which has things going from a state of order to state of randomness or disorder.  My work on our 20 Acre Organic Farm has led me to believe there is a thing I call "Gaia Entropy."  This is the ability of living things to take something man made and to return it to its natural state.  In urban areas this property can be seen as grass starts to grow from sidewalks.  An abandoned city lot soon has scrub trees and bushes.  On the farm, it is much the same.  A plowed, bare field will invite the growth of weeds.  A field mowed this year will have brush growing on it next year.  An area seemingly devoid of life will have a thriving population of mice and rabbits 6 months later.  Look around and you will see what I'm writing about . . . and now you can refer to it by its proper name "Gaia Entropy."

Congressional Line Item Approval
From time to time there's a stir about the President having line item veto authority over a congressional bill.  I think we're missing the point here.  Rather than pondering the ability of the President to say "no" by line item, I would prefer that our focus go to having congress have Line Item Approval.  Currently, a senator or representative either votes "yes" or "no" on an entire proposal.   Almost every time, there are things in a bill they know are bad or wasteful (line items or addenda) - but they feel they must approve the bill anyway to get a few useful items approved.

My solution is to structure congressional bill approval the same way you and I vote.  We can either vote "straight party" or vote a "split ticket" where we vote for candidates of various parties in our ballot - we also vote on bond issues one item at a time.  I think congressional bills should be partitioned into incremental approval line items (the Transportation Bill comes quickly to mind).  A congressman could either approve/reject the bill in its entirety or go through and approve only those line items which are really a good utilization of taxpayer money.  I think this would help good things move quickly though both houses of congress.  Going by line item, the good things would not be held up by all sorts of controversial amendments.  Good things would get a quick "yes" from both houses.  Certainly our computer technology would support such an endeavor.

There are many side benefits from Congressional Line Item Approval.   Currently, vast amount of tax dollars are spent on who knows what while the congressmen can hide behind the one or two items buried in a bill they felt they had to get.  With Line Item Approval, a congressman would be accountable for every line item he approved/rejected - or would have to answer why he approved/rejected an entire bill rather than going line by line.  Special interest groups would have a decreased influence over the Washington crowd.  With better accountability and closer scrutiny to congressional approvals, I'm sure federal spending would drop significantly.

Yes, it would would be more work for congress to vote by line item.   It would also change the way they cast their votes (electronic rather than verbal).   If making congress more accountable for their decisions and getting better control over federal spending can be gained, isn't a little more work worth the effort?

I doubt that Washington would adopt Line Item Approval without one or more states taking the lead in successful implementation of the practice at the state level.  Maybe your state can take the lead in this worthwhile reform.  What are you waiting for?

Since the earliest times, the Jews have had formal education for their young males.  Even through the Dark Ages when Europe drifted aimlessly, the Jews continued to educate their young.  In addition to the schooling, the Jewish boys had at their disposal the grown men and elders.  Today, we would call this support group a mentoring network.  As the young boys grew up, many were successful - at least in comparison to non-Jewish boys.  This should come as no surprise in that an educated group with a mentoring network would do better than a non-educated group without a mentoring network.  The people through the ages could not see the education and mentoring - they could only see the religion.

I think the comparable success of the Jews has been the REAL issue.   If a religious group turned out to be LESS successful that those outside their religion, I doubt that there would be any concern - no threat, no envy, no need to conjure up reasons why that group was less successful.  But by and large, through the years, Jews have been successful.  It has been this success that has lead to envy, a perception of threat, a perception that for the non-Jewish to be successful, the Jews needed special treatment (the holocaust being the most extreme "treatment").   All the time, the religion of the Jews was not the source of their success - it was their education and mentoring.

I worked in the electric industry for over 20 years and for a time taught thermodynamics.  Rather than lifting maple syrup a bucket at a time, if water could be lifted - and not a bucket at a time, but continuously - the water could be allowed to fall and in the process generate electricity.  Leaving the trees, I think it is possible to lift water through capillary pressure alone.  Going back to thermodynamics, fundamental energy balance equations say you can never get "free energy."  I feel that's true - so for my capillary pressure pump to work, the temperature of the lifted water would have to drop - the loss in thermal energy would be traded for a gain in potential energy.  I think it should be possible to form capillary tubing in such a way that lifted water would cool.  The amount of water flowing through a particular capillary tube would be tiny - and the amount of lift might be small as well.  On the other hand, by making use of a large number of parallel tubes, and placing the incremental lifts in series, it should be possible to lift significant quantities of water high enough that electricity could be generated.  For free.  What would the capillary pressure pump look like?  With a large number of parallel capillary tubes placed end-to-end so their lifts would add in series - the capillary pressure pump might just look like a tree trunk.

I think I'm hungry for some pancakes.

My solution is "Lima Bean" welfare.  People on food stamps would be able to only get canned lima beans with their food stamps - nothing else.   Having something to eat, they certainly wouldn't starve.  On the other hand, I think they would soon grow tired of canned lima beans every day - and perhaps serve as an incentive to get some education, a better job, etc. so they could afford some better food.   I'm sure the cost to the taxpayers for a lima bean program would be far less than what we pay now.

Rainfall functions to serve two basic groups who want it different ways.  If I want to fill a reservoir or lake with water, I want to get the rain all at once - 2" of rain in a single day.  The ground can't soak it in fast enough, so a good portion runs into lakes and reservoirs.  On the other hand, farmers usually don't like 2" of rain all at once.  During the growing season, 2" of rain would be best as eight 1/4" rains over eight days.   In each case, our weather records would show that we got 2" of rain over a certain period of time, but how the rain is received makes a great difference in how useful (or harmful) it is to us humans.  By the way, farmers would generally like dry conditions in early spring to get seeds planted and then dry again in the fall to harvest crops.

Consider wind chill factors.  Using mathematical formulas we can express how a given temperature and wind feels to human skin.  We have taken the raw measure of temperature and have devised a way to make it more useful for us humans.   I think we should do the same for rainfall.  Have a measurement system that would let a farmer look back and know if it was a good growing season - let waterbody folks know if it was a good year for filling their waterbodies.  Our current system of measurements doesn't give enough useful information.

I have read several geology books and haven't seen anything about unusual sediment layers during a magnetic reversal event (like the unusual clay layer at the K-T boundary).  The lack of unusual sediments suggests to me that the earth's magnetic field doesn't go to zero during a magnetic reversal.  Instead, the magnetic field probably retains its strength and just quickly drifts to its new location (with "quick" being in relative geological time).  It must happen fast enough that that there aren't distinctive sideways (E-W) magnetic periods and yet I'm guessing it couldn't happen too fast either as a magnetic reversal would seem to indicate a change in the earth's massive interior.  It might be interesting to look closely at sediments during a magnetic reversal event to see if anything unusual is evident.  It might give us some clues to how the earth's atmosphere might respond to the next reversal event.

Shirley McLaine and Monarch Butterflies
There have been all sorts of late night comedy jokes about Shirley McClaine's claims that she has memories from her previous lives.  I think it's possible that Ms. McClaine's memories are genuine - but that they are being mis-interpreted.

In most texts, living things are said to have two forms of memory.   Acquired memory are the things we learn from experiences during our lifetime.   A second form of memory is called ancestral memory.  These are things we somehow know to do - but we weren't taught during our lifetime.  Birds know how to fly and feed themselves - we also use "instincts" to describe some behavior associated with ancestral memory.  My favorite example is the monarch butterfly.   The butterfly that remembers/knows the way to fly to Mexico is at least 3 generations after the ancestral butterfly that left Mexico the spring before.  We therefore have evidence that a simple butterfly can have ancestral memories that span at least three generations.

Back to Shirley McClaine.  I think the memories she may be experiencing may not be from previous lives SHE had - but the memories her ancestors had before they had their children.  It's not unusual to see that some family lines have some unique genetic characteristics.  Perhaps the McClaine family line has a genetic code that passes along ancestral memories with particular strength.   If a butterfly can demonstrate this trait, we should not be too surprised to find something similar in humans.