Invention idea

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Beta, the freshman physics major, was home over the weekend.  I gave her an idea that I’d certainly be willing to pay for… but she  says that’s "not her kind of physics."  So, if there are any other inventor-types out there…

I like the sound of cicadas on a summer night; I enjoy listening to rain on the leaves, or a soft breeze.   Nothing is more relaxing than the sound of a river in the mountains.  I abide the sounds of traffic when I’m in town, simply because I have to.  However, I should not have to abide the sounds emitting from some freak’s car with bass speakers the size of my chest freezer, creating a "thumpa-thumpa-thumpa" that I can feel through the soles of my feet in the parking lot, in my car on the road, or even inside my own home.

It’s illegal (we do have a noise ordinance), but evidently it’s not very well enforced.

I need a keychain-sized device that works as a kind of ray gun, emitting an electromagnetic pulse that will blow the  speakers of any vehicle within earshot.  As easy as clicking the door-lock button on my car’s remote, I would shut down these menacing thumpers permanently.

The idea came to me on Friday in the Kroger parking lot, but another such vehicle that rattled the windows just now got under my skin enough to throw the  idea to the blogosphere.

Afer all, this is Oak Ridge.  If anyone knows how to build such a thing, they’ll be here.

Hurricane Update

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The only communication I’ve had with my sister in Houston has been via text messages, but she left the airport this afternoon (where she spent the night at work, keeping their IT systems alive) to check on her husband and two sons.

In Kingwood, where they live (north-northeast Houston, just above Humble), there is no power, no phone service, and cell phones are out.  But her family is fine, and the house — the house that they just moved into in June — is okay.

After checking on everyone, she headed back to work.  

At least the temperatures have moderated to about 80 degrees — cool and comfortable by Houston standards — with the lack of air conditioning.

Gas Pains

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As hurricane Ike bears down on the east Texas coastline, pain is being felt across a much wider region.

My kid sister is riding out the storm at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, where she works as the IT/Telecom manager.  it’s one of those positions where she has to be on-site during emergencies.  Unfortunately, that means her husband and two children have to survive at home without her.

They’ll be okay; they’re Texas tough.

Here at home, the worst we’ve seen is gas prices going crazy.  This morning, gas was still $3.69, but by afternoon, the price had jumped to $3.99.  There have been rumors circulating that stations may run out of gas, which of course prompts everyone (or everyone else) to go fill up all their cars, thereby increasing the likelihood of a shortage.

There’s a better answer to this temporary gas crisis: just stay home. 

Other than going to the football game tonight, I’m thinking the "just stay home" strategy could work really well for me.  I have plenty of groceries; I can buy more beer on the way home from the game.  

I will not participate in the frenzy; it’s like people buying up all the milk, bread, and toilet paper when snow is forecast, as though they’ll never see a grocery store again.  This is crazy, and just rewards the gas merchants for spiking prices in advance of a potential problem.

A little sanity, please, if there’s any left in the pipeline.

Justice for all?

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I’ve been following the murder trial of Eric McLean (the "love triangle murder" where Eric shot his wife’s teenage lover), and have thought to myself how hard it would be to be on that jury.

There are volumes of news articles here (scroll down to the "McLean Files" blue box on the left, under the picture), but basically, the facts boil down to this:  West High School student teacher Erin McLean, age 29, was engaged in an affair with one of her students.  The pair flaunted the affair, tormented husband Eric McLean with degrading remarks and threats to take his children.

Eric McLean took a rifle from his father’s house, planning to commit suicide, two weeks before the shooting.  At one point, Eric McLean walked in on the pair having sex in his own house… but he didn’t kill anyone, even as the purloined rifle sat in the laundry room. 

Days later, as Erin McLean was retrieving her belongings to leave with Sean Powell, her teenage lover, Eric McLean went to Powell’s car with the rifle to scare him away.  Powell told McLean, "in two weeks, your kids will be calling me ‘Daddy’."  McLean says that Powell grabbed for the rifle, then he jerked it back and the rifle went off — shooting Powell in the face.

There’s a lot more, but it’s all covered by the media already.  WBIR has extensive coverage in addition to the News Sentinel.

To me, it seems like justifiable homicide (although I’m not sure there is such a thing in real life).  At worst, I could vote for voluntary manslaughter, but would recommend a suspended sentence and probation, along with mandatory counseling.

The one who really needs to be on trial here is Erin McLean — for statutory rape, abuse by an authority figure, spousal abuse, and generally being the worst kind of human being. 

WBIR is carrying video of the trial live online; watching Eric McLean testify yesterday, I can only conclude that he shot the wrong culprit.  Though Powell was no innocent victim, he’s not the one who intentionally pushed Scott McLean beyond the boundaries of grief and humiliation.  It was Erin.

Eric McLean’s only flaw was that he faithfully, desperately loved a woman who didn’t deserve the time of day.

I can only hope that the jury sees it thus.

Good Read

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Since everyone’s writing about politics these days, it was thoroughly refreshing when I stumbled across the print edition of a marvelous Nashville mommy blog.

Their police records (along with their bed sheets) are lily white. They think a ‘shake down’ is what you do at the end of Jazzercise class. And they’d sooner eat razor blades than a plate of homemade manicotti. But cross the Mommy Mafia and they’ll whack your social standing faster than you can utter the words ‘Cosa Nostra.’

The writing is excellent, the content hilarious.
*  *  *  *  *

I’m tempted to write to her, advice-column style, about a little neighbor boy who’s been rather un-neighborly lately.  He’s not actually a little boy, but a boomerang kid, who showed up on my doorstep last week to report that my dog had pooped — not the term he used — in his grandmother’s yard.  Granted, we do have a leash law, and Dog is supposed to remain in my yard at all times… but, accidents happen.  You know, kids leave the door open, a storm throws the breaker powering the radio fence, or the battery in Dog’s collar goes dead.  It doesn’t happen often, and most of the time, someone will simply call to let me know where he is.

I appreciate that; I don’t want Dog to be hit by a car.

I’ve always shown the same consideration to our other neighbors.  There’s a golden retriever nearby who’s so afraid of thunderstorms that he’ll run through his own invisible fence, and get into my car.  Yes, the golden retriever can open my car doors.  There’s  another who found a way out of his traditional fence, and I just took him into the house until his owner got home… he’s not used to being out, and I didn’t want him to get lost or hurt, either.  I’m quite fond of animals, and often judge people by the way they treat animals — their own, as well as others’.

After complaining in person last week, the little neighbor boy called the dogcatcher the next morning, before I’d had a chance to buy new batteries and get back home with them.  Fortunately, by the time the dogcatcher got to my house to leave a notice on Tuesday, new batteries were installed and Dog was where he belongs.

See, if I had a Mommy Mafia like the one described in Suburban Turmoil, maybe one of them could arrange a job offer for this kid peddling magazine subscriptions in Timbuctu.  Or feed him fruit gummies with perservatives and high-fructose corn syrup.  Or something.

Roth found guilty

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UT professor (emeritus) J. Reece Roth has been found guilty on 18 counts of violating the Arms Control Export Act.

I take no joy in this, as he was a technically gifted professor from whom my children will not have the opportunity to learn.  However, having grown up in a city where national security secrets are taken very seriously, I know that he exercised exceedingly poor judgment.  Although fully cognizant of the high proportion of foreign students in graduate school — especially in science, math, and engineering — I simply do not believe that he couldn’t find qualified US citizens among his grad students to do this work.

Maybe there was a little bit of ego involved.  Roth was an "honorary professor" at two Chinese universities, and was regarded as something of a plasma physics celebrity there.

In this country, we need to get far more serious about preparing our middle and high school students to pursue these challenging fields in college, so we can fill up the graduate programs with home-grown scientists and engineers.  I’m fully aware of the benefits of a diverse society, and that we need people educated in business, English lit, and all those other things… but right now, the odds are seriously against us in math and physical sciences.

Hopefully, this conviction will cause universities all over this nation — and especially at UT — to really take a hard look at work that has, or could have, national security implications.   That doesn’t mean don’t do it, but it means don’t involve foreign nationals in those projects.

And we’ve got to do a better job of preparing students to fill the void.

The Explorer Project

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We celebrated Labor Day by laboring.

The new engine is finally — after about three months’ effort — in the Explorer.  Three months is a stretch, I guess, since we were out of town for half of July, and HWTFM has been out of town on business a few more times before and since… but it’s been three months since we started rebuilding Beta’s Explorer.

I’m pretty sure that professional mechanics have a better method than sitting perched between the windshield and the engine compartment, but that was the only way that I could see to ensure that we got the engine properly lined up with the transmission.

Delta documented the event.

In the many months that the vehicle has sat idle in our driveway, spiders have been attracted from miles around.  Lying on my back under the truck to align the bell housing bolts with the engine last night, I watched several spiders busily spinning, covering their egg sacs then toting them away into the darkness.

The spiders seem more prolific this year.  I wonder what weather sign that predicts for Fall and Winter?

My hope is that it predicts there will soon be one less vehicle taking up space in my driveway.

Oak Ridge District Elections

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Since some folks decided that we need to study and perhaps revise the City Charter again (it was just done in 2004, and updated last month), I thought it would be worthwhile to really study the political history of Oak Ridge. 

First of all, what did districts look like in Oak Ridge?  Not surprisingly, they looked a lot like our current precinct structure… except that we had a couple extra precincts then that we don’t have now, and we’ve added a couple that we didn’t have back then.  "Elm Grove" is now part of Glenwood, "Linden" is split between Robertsville and West Hills, and Oak Hills is now its own precinct — the city’s largest.  Hendrix Creek is made up of neighborhoods that didn’t exist back then, as is Lawnville (Rarity Ridge).  Cedar Hill was later split between Glenwood and Pine Valley, I think.

If that’s as clear as mud, perhaps a map would help.

Council members were elected only in the districts they represented from 1959 to 1974.  From 1975 to 1986,  council members were nominated by district (required to live in the district), but were elected at-large by voters citywide.

A couple of things caught my attention from those years: in the earliest phase, some candidates were elected to make decisions affecting the whole city with only a minimum number of votes — one with as few as 117, and quite a few with less than 200.  In the second phase, where district representatives were elected at-large, sometimes the candidate who won his or her district did not win the confidence of voters throughout the city, and someone else was elected to represent that district.

Presently, we don’t have districts.  Candidates run at-large, and the top three or four vote getters (depending on which cycle of staggered terms we’re in) are elected.  All are elected at-large, all represent all citizens.  On a positive note, if I call one city council member and don’t feel like my concern was given fair consideration, I can pick up the phone and call another one.  And another.  We get to pick the one we like best, not necessarily the one who lives closest.

Obviously, I think the present system works best.  I don’t see how makng it easier to elect someone with fewer votes could possibly be a good thing for Oak Ridge.  But I do remain interested in why some people feel unrepresented, and exactly what they would like our representatives to do differently.

Cool Find

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I got a new phone today, mainly so that I could give my old one (but still working, thank you) to Gamma, whose phone was smashed in an unfortunate fall on a frozen lake last Winter.  It still makes and receives calls, but there’s no screen, and therefore no missed calls notice, no texting, etc.

Alpha needed a new one too, so we just spent half the afternoon in the cell phone store.  But, we lucked out and got a college kid working with us, and he was gracious enough to share a wonderful secret:  ringtones from Myxer.  The kind you can have sent to your phone in a media message and save to your phone, absolutely free.

Sure, I knew how to download ringtones on my phone for a small fee — except that you had to also have network service enabled ($10/month per phone) or pay the network charge at about $1.50 per minute.  Because I have teenagers, and a limited budget for cell phones, I have the network service disabled.  They can still send and receive texts — unlimited texting, even — but they can’t send pictures, browse the ringtones or games shop, and stuff like that.

Today is the first time I’ve found a way to expand the ringtones offering without the risk of forking over a lot of the green stuff.  So, in light of the good mood, I thought I’d share the love.

I’ve still got the Rolling Stones as my primary ringtone, but can flip over to Clapton or Heart with a couple of thumbstrokes.  Love it.

Oak Ridge Pity Center

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I have to admit, the name fits.

The story about impending "physical activity" at the former Oak Ridge Mall is not one to get excited about; they’re going to drill a geothermal test loop.  They want to find out it it’s possible to more efficiently heat and cool that empty shell?  What could be more efficient that having it locked up, as it is now?

The real story here is not the storyline, nor the editorial that follows.  The story is that people — whether the people commenting online, or the editorial staff themselves — are blaming the city leadership for the fact that our city center is empty, forcing many Oak Ridgers to Knoxville to shop. 

Folks, the mall is privately owned.  Every time our city leadership has attempted to do anything to bring in fresh retail opportunities, citizens fire up a petition and hold a referendum to quash any government involvement in potential progress. 

Don’t blame our City Council; they’ve tried, but been stopped by referendum every time.  If you signed one of those petitions, or voted "no" in a referendum, look in the mirror for the leader who failed to fix our city’s biggest problem.

Next in the blame line are the few remaining anchors on the site, who’ve exercised their rights to say NO to potential new businesses who might increase competition to their stores.  But, with no competition, there’s also nothing to draw traffic, nothing to entice those stores to carry better lines of merchandise (we tend to get the cast-offs that didn’t sell elsewhere), no synergy.

It would make just as much sense to blame the Oak Ridger.  After all, when the paper was locally owned, we had a vibrant shopping center.  The owner, publisher and editor lived here, shopped here, and helped set an example.  Today, none of those are true.  Therefore, it must be the newspaper’s fault, right?

No.  It’s our own fault.  The fault of the citizens who signed to govern by referendum.

If you’re going to throw someone out, that’s where you need to look.