I have a personal story about doing business with (or trying to do business with) an automaker.
Personal Narrative
Instinctive Lout, Instinctive Hero
British drunkenness is not a pleasant story. I can remember years ago reading for some class or other of gin and the 18th century. Hogarth portrays a world little different from the ghetto of the crack whores a decade or two ago. Alcohol may seem fun, but it doesn’t always look all that good.
One of the numerous reasons I got fed up with running a business in the notorious strip across from our local university were the tiresome drunks. Wedged between bars, our copy shop gave us a front row seat on – well, on a guy pissing on the window with such glazed over eyes that his only reason was probably the most primitive – nature called. The night guy complained to me the next day- he’d tried to place himself between the window and the young girls working with him; he knew animals – he’d just gotten his PhD. in ag – and he knew the world – he’d just returned from a Peace Corps tour in Africa; he wasn’t shocked but he was angry. Thirteen years of locking up late at night and walking out into the cool night air to see two drunks “helping” an equally drunken girl into a car, of seeing evidence that many had relieved themselves in the bushes and in the gutter around us didn’t make me sad to sell. Yes, drunken man is not noble man; he does show us how vulgar and selfish our instincts can be – and why it is a good thing they are restrained. Then there was the guy whose intentions were clearly dishonorable toward another of my workers as she moved toward her car; since he was falling down, tangled in the pants he was trying to get off, she found him less threatening than disgusting. Man can be loutish. (And if drunks dominate here, I don’t remember the druggies on the Drag in Austin being any prizes, either.)
What England did in the Victorian years is Himmelfarb territory – and it is a remarkable century in terms of restraint and duty and productivity. For instance, the number of crimes that were punished by hanging went down, but the police became respected and so were women. (The few crimes more punished at the end of the century than the beginning were against women.) Those gin-soaked mothers became the hands that rocked the cradle. As both the Chicagoboyz and Dalyrmple note our culture can encourage or discourage. But we also need models. The manliness of firefighters asking for last rites as they went into the burning towers or of the Iraqi man throwing himself on the suicide bomber headed toward his mosque – these are in my head and I’m thankful for them.
But if our species demonstrates an instinctive & eternal vulgarity, an ugly & base self that seeks oblivion in drinks or drugs or mob violence, we also long for consciousness, our heroism instinctive, too.
Kaus critiques the Mumbai responses, but if the tragedy demonstrated failings in law enforcement, it also showed us what man could be. A&L often links to cynical academia, but this time it found virtue. Michael Pollock’s “Heroes at the Taj” concludes:
It is much easier to destroy than to build, yet somehow humanity has managed to build far more than it has ever destroyed. Likewise, in a period of crisis, it is much easier to find faults and failings rather than to celebrate the good deeds. It is now time to commemorate our heroes.
Cooking Hotdogs: A Memoir
A friend of mine and I did the same thing when we were kids. I don’t remember if we used instructions from an old DIY book of children’s science projects or if our science teacher told us how to do it. We drove two large nails through a board. (The details are fuzzy in my memory, but I think we took a lamp cord, stripped the ends, and wrapped each end around the base of a nail before driving the nails through the board.) Then we pushed the ends of a hotdog onto the points of the nails so that it formed a bridge between them, stood back and plugged the lamp cord into a wall socket. The hotdog was cooked in a few seconds. One of us ate it, then we repeated the process with additional hotdogs. It was fun. We were careful and didn’t electrocute ourselves.
A few observations:
-They don’t make kids’ DIY science books like they used to. Or science teachers.
-I would not attempt this as an adult. OTOH, I don’t need to since I’ve already satisfied my curiosity.
-There’s a lot to be said for trying stuff. The trick is to know how far you can push it without getting hurt. Sometimes the only way to learn how far you can push things is to try them. Sometimes you try things and find out that they really aren’t very risky.
-Risk perception is very much a cultural construct. Our culture has changed substantially even during my lifetime. We are now generally more risk-averse and expect less individual responsibility.
-Don’t try this at home, at least not without a circuit breaker.
Post Election Thoughts
This morning I woke up, showered, and drove to work. It seemed like any other day. The convenience store where I always stop to pick up vitamin fortified water had a familiar song playing on the radio:
I logged on, checked email – yep, tons as always. Then I logged in to Chicago Boyz to organize some pixels with some personal thoughts this day after the election. I look forward to checking out this post in four years.
Western Medicine and Number Gut Follow Up
The past few years my mother had been feeling fatigued. The condition kept getting worse and she finally went to a doctor. To make a long story short, the mitral valve on her heart was compromised, and the heart was not able to fully function.
Yesterday she had open heart surgery. Everything went great. The didn’t know until they opened her up if they were going to be able to repair the valve or replace it. They prefer to repair it, but in this case it was damaged too much. It was replaced with a valve made of tissue from a pig. Really! She will be walking through the hospital hallways TODAY (albeit very slowly), a mere 24 hours after the surgery. I am simply amazed at this.
As a joke my dad is going to purchase a small pig trough and place it in their bedroom for my mom to see when she gets home from the hospital. That is how my family rolls – we always make jokes in tough or stressful situations. I think the hard Midwest winters darken our sense of humor.
As an interesting aside, the valve was damaged not because of a genetic defect, but from disease (this was good news for me). The doctor proposed that my mother had rheumatic fever as a child and that this was the cause of the valve being compromised.
It has been a stressful week for me, as there was a 1%-2% (between one and two percent) chance that my mother could have died on the operating table. We are very thankful that everything went well.
Over the last week I have been thinking of Shannon’s posts about parents that don’t give their children vaccines because of quack science, and people not having any sort of decent number gut.