Occupation of Independence

  Do people still tell their kiddies about Santa?  (I am so out-of-touch with modern childhood!)  If they did, wouldn't the 3-year-old just whip out their smartphone and look up Santa on the internet?  Earlier in life I used to disapprove of the Santa Claus tradition.  It seemed like a bad policy for adults to teach children something that makes them distrust adults.  In fact the Santa tradition should be praised.  How many beliefs become unbelieved as easily as Santa?  How many beliefs and delusions only waste a couple years of your life? How many are imposed by The Rulers (parents and adults) with genuine affection  for The Ruled? You'd think that the moral of the story for children is that the Santa tradition is good practice at learning to disbelieve nonsense in general.  Apparently some children decide that the Santa tradition is the exception rather than the rule for the rest of your life. Thus they continue to believe in shibboleths such as phony pragmatism and busy-ness

 Snowstorms have made the news all over the world, recently.  It certainly has made for some entertaining videos, with cars stuck in the snow or sliding into other cars.  Apparently the world is full of people who expect too much from their all-wheel-drive or 4WD car or pickup. Why are people so insistent on driving in snowy weather?  After all, they accepted lockdowns during the Covid pandemic.  So why don't they go along with 'General Winter' when he locks them down for a day? Does somebody need to explain to these people that all-wheel or 4WD systems don't help you brake better on ice? Many recent trends in the automobile industry are hurting people's efforts to drive through snow.  Consider how low the ground clearance is on modern passenger cars (aka, sedans).  Driving through deep snow, the underbody of the car floats on top.  That means drag from the snow as well as less weight on the wheels and therefore less traction.  This is one more consequence of fuel-e

 When traveling down the Colorado River, there is an unusual pleasure to look forward to.  Rubble.  That's right, rubble.  By the time you hit Lake Mead you will be a slave of the Colorado River for the next month or two.  It doesn't start out well. Near Lake Mead the rocks are razor sharp.  Just reach down and touch the ground with your hand -- you almost need gloves.  These ghastly rocks destroyed my rear mountain bike tire once -- it half exploded.  This year I switched to an "enduro" rear tire with a heavier casing. When your dog goes out for a romp, the little fuzzball almost needs doggie hiking boots unless you stay in the arroyos.  Be sympathetic and avoid harsh surfaces. But further downstream, in central Arizona, the rubble takes the form of desert pavement.  And are you ever in the mood for it!  Desert pavement is not too sharp.  It can support the gigantic motorhomes that snowbirds "camp" with.  Of course desert pavement varies in its support or

 It has crept up on me how many people no longer say Farewell, So Long, or Goodbye.  Goodbye is supposedly a shortening of God Be With Ye.  In Spanish they used to say Vaya Con Dios, go with God.  Now the world says Be Safe.  What's with that?   I am suspicious that their real message is Be Afraid. It is ironic that I would be suspicious of 'Be Safe' because I have always been a bit of a safety nerd.  Shop class in high school gets the credit for this.  Working around all those tools required safety lectures to inherently reckless teenage boys.  But I didn't resent the emphasis on safety, even at that age.  In fact I adopted the idea that injuries are merely unprofessional and should be looked down on. Once an attitude like that is adopted, it can be applied to many important activities in life, with driving a car being the most obvious.  I was a "roadie" bicyclist for many years and never had a serious injury.  So many cyclists did get hurt. Lately the Twit