Some Arcane Little Factoids...

I was just rummaging through my vast store of knowledge the other day.  Accumulated over a career shooting pool for money, playing a spook for the Army, selling stuff to people, and racing cars for fun.  And I thought you might get a kick out of some of the more interesting tidbits I dredged up:

     -  Did you know that the very largest and longest living thing on Earth...is the Great Barrier Reef?  The one that encircles the north end of Australia?  It's more than 2,570 miles long!  And I've dived on it.  With great pleasure.  It was awe inspiring.  In fact, I met a grouper the size of a Volkswagen whilst diving there, and he and I became fast friends.

I think it was a he.  I don't want to mis-prounoun him/her/it/they...

     -  Did you know that if you gave a guy $0.01 cent per day for their labor, and then you doubled it every day thereafter, as in 2 cents, 4 cents, 8 cents, etc., you'd go broke before his 30th day of employment?  Don't believe me?  You'd owe that employee $5,368,709.12 at sundown on day number 30.  A 31 day month would kill you.  Do the math...

     -  And I discovered a way to stop unwanted conversations on airplane trips.  You know, where you're crammed in your seat for hours, and cannot get away?  When they ask what you do for a living, just say:  "I specialized in animal husbandry, until they caught me at it."  Crickets.

Like that one?  Here's another, no charge:  "I'm a retired shepherd."  Trust me, all efforts to start a conversation after that will stop dead in their tracks...

     -  Did you know that the Wagon Trains West that started in 1836 had their beginnings at Independence, Missouri?  Yep, close to where I was born and raised.  I'm somewhat of an expert on the Old West, so here's a factoid you might enjoy.  After giving the "Wagons, Ho!" signal, these trains, consisting of up to 100 Conistogas, made no more than 20 - 25 miles a day.  And often less.*  So an 1,800 mile journey to their new "promised land" was a 7 or 8 month commitment.  And many were buried along the way.  But some decided they'd had enough before the journey's end and threw a flag on the play.  And that's why there's a town every 20 miles all across the Fruited Plain West.  Check it out if you doubt me...  

     -  Did you know that more than 55% of all our property taxes collected by counties and states across the land, go to building, staffing, maintaining and operating our schools?  So we'd have twice as much money if we'd just stop having kids?  Or twice as much if we simply left our kids go unschooled, maybe.  Or get twice as much for our money if we had twice as many kids?  Or, there'd be twice as many of them for the Gubmint to try and corrupt, once we had them?

BTW, from what I hear about our plunging National Reproduction Rate, we'll likely cease to exist early in the next Century.  Assuming we haven't gone up in a poof of smoke first...

     -  Did you know that SUV's are ugly?  Yes, yes they are.  They are stubby 6,000 pound pickup trucks with a new suit of clothes, and are as aerodynamic as a brick.  I come from an era where car makers competed with each other via their automobile's looks.  On their beauty!  Cars were rolling art!  Designed from scratch on a clean sheet of paper by the likes of Raymond Loewey, and Virgil Exner, and Harley Earle.  And the engineers were then told to stuff their cars inside it.  Or find a new job...  

And now we're being sold big, heavy, plodding, wasteful lumps of metal.  For $60,000 or $70,000, or even more.  A car is the 2nd biggest purchase you're likely to make, right behind your house.  Why buy something ugly when you can get a nice zoomy sedan?  If you need a 4' by 8' sheet of plywood from Home Depot, borrow your friend's truck.  He's probably not using it.  Unless you're a soccer mom, you don't need all that room anyway!  

    -  Do you know that there's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over?

     -  Do you know that in spite of our being told to call the cops when we're in danger ("You don't need no stinkin' guns!), the average police response time from 911 call to arrival, across our 50 Biggest and Bluest cities, is...wait for it...31 minutes?  More than 15% slower than just a year ago?  Probably because they have 15% fewer cops.  Or maybe just because they can?

And did you know that more than 41% of all our households have a gun, loaded and at the ready?  At least one?  And that our citizens are buyiing 3,500,000 new guns a month?  More than 25% are Black, and more than 61% are women?  And that the FBI tells us we have more than 525 million guns in circulation?  And if every household had a gun, there would be no more crime?

Imagine what the response time to a 911 call would be if there were no crime?

     -  And I'll close with a prediction.  I predict there's no way on Earth Americans will go into the voting booth come November and pull the handle for Kamala Harris.  Forget her policies, or past statements, or her part in our current economic disaster.  They won't vote for her because they would never want to hear that ear-splitting, soul-crushing cackle for 1,460 days.

So in fairness to our new recently Selected and Coronated Co-President, I hereby annoint her as our...

              "Cackler-in-Chief."

Stay tuned, Fellow Patriots, if God's willing and the creek don't rise, I'll be sharing other arcane stuff with you over the coming days/weeks and maybe months...

*  If you're interested, visit Oakley, Kansas.  You can still see the wheel ruts from hundreds of wagon trains about 6 miles north of town.  From 170 years ago.  Foot-deep ruts still visible in the prairie.  If you find yourself on I-70 with nothing to do, it's worth a visit.  And yes, the town's named after Annie...