by Peter Rodman
This was a good name. What the department did was to give services to society--pay money to people who didn't have any, watch out for abused children, lock criminals in jail, and drive ambulances (or was that someone else?)
We kept that name for years, but after much analysis it became apparent that names had to change. The Health Department and the Department of Social Services had to combine, then pull apart and make three departments where there used to be two.
Those departments are Health and Human Services (which services humans rather than society or the community) Human Assistance (which assists humans) and a third department that has such a great name that not only can no one remember what the department is supposed to do, no one can even remember the name!
The State of California calls its Welfare Department the Department of Social Services because of all the services they provide society like running the State Fair and putting out forest fires (or is that someone else?) But when the State writes Welfare laws the state calls all the county welfare departments "CWDs" or "County Welfare Departments."
How thoughtless. Don't they know Sacramento County has a Department of Human Assistance, San Joaquin County has a Human Services Agency, and El Dorado is one of the few counties still calling itself a Welfare Department? Is the State trying to humiliate the Counties or is it just trying to keep a firm grip on the armadillo's tail?
Ask The Computer Expert!
Dear Computer Expert,
I have a pocket cellular phone, but I really miss having my fax with me. Is there something you can suggest? --Alfred Braincancer
Dear Mr. Braincancer,
There is a wonderful new product for people just like you. They're called "Faxpants," and they're just what they sound like. When you put your phone in the special holster, your pants can receive fax transmissions. They can be mail-ordered for $499.99 from the Acme Co., Avenue of the Americas, Taiwan, CA, but I recommend finding a local distributor. Some people discover the style of underwear they like can cause misfeeds, and others discover they don't much care for the sensation of a fax slowly creeping down their pants leg. Best to try on a pair before dropping $500.
Dear Mr. Expert,
Every once in a while my computer locks up and I have to do a warm boot. Lately it hasn't worked, my reset button doesn't do anything and I have to turn my computer off and start over. What's going on? --Befuddled
Dear Befuddled,
I've been getting more and more complaints like yours. The problem began last November, and no one's found an answer yet. It seems to have been caused by Bill Clinton's election, and it's unlikely anything will change as long as the Democrats control both the Congress and the White House.
Dear So-called Expert,
I hate computers, they're intrusive and obnoxious. I'd like to move somewhere where there are no computers. Can you help me? --Escapist
Dear Escapist,
I don't know of any place computers don't reach. It's unfortunate that you find living in this century so difficult; most people find that resisting the way the world progresses is futile. Oh, by the way, your bank balance is now zero, all of your credit cards are overdrawn (including two you didn't know you had), and your long-distance phone bill is just topping $10,000 for this month.
Dear Mr. Computer,
I'm just starting in business and can't afford a fax, but I'd like to give the impression I've got it all together. What can I do? --Office Manager
Dear Office,
Try putting a sheet of waxed paper on the face of your document, then making a copy on a regular copy machine. The result looks just like a fax.
Dear Computer Expert,
I use my computer a lot, and at times it slows down. Really, really, slow: like it's unable to pass data. What's my problem and how can I fix it? --Roadblocked
Dear Blocked,
Computers are such wonderful machines that we sometimes forget they need care. What's happening to your machine is common. You don't say so, but I'm willing to bet you do much of your work through your fax card, or your modem, or simply within your machine's memory. In other words, you don't make hard copies of anything.
A computer, like any animal, needs roughage or it gets "plugged-up" and "unable to pass data." You'll find that if you do a screen dump to your printer after every few hours of work, the problem will work itself out.
Dear Expert sir,
I'll be moving soon and I threw away the cartons my computer came in. What suggestions can you give me to protect my baby? --Off to Tulsa
Dear Bonehead,
Why'd you do a stupid thing like throw away the boxes? Always save the boxes! I've still got the boxes from my VIC20, and that thing died ten years ago.
Okay, here's what you do. Use soft things to protect the computer. Put the bread and eggs in the bag first, then the CPU on top of them. In another bag put leaf lettuce and fresh spinach, and maybe bananas and tomatoes, then the monitor on top of that. If you have any more questions, ask the bagger at your local supermarket. Idiot.
New Frontiers of Medical Worry
People live so much longer today that they are able to get sick and even die of diseases that our great-great- grandparents wouldn't even have considered illnesses. Prehistoric folks lived to about the age of 26; gingivitis wasn't much of a concern to them. Carpeltunnel Syndrome didn't disable too many 19th century coal miners.
Not only are people living longer, science is getting more nosey. Researchers are simply finding more things to get us sick.
Take, for instance, smoke hairs. On still, moonless summer nights diesel smoke from trains, trucks, buses, and yes, even luxury sedans drifts slowly in the air. Usually the smoke disperses, but on dark nights with no breeze something different happens.
Scientists have found that the carbon atoms in the diesel fumes form hydrogen bonds to make a lacy web in the air. This web floats on the night currents until it pushes up against your window screen, where it squeezes through the screen's pores to form long, slender strands: smoke hairs.
These smoke hairs drift in the darkness until they reach your face, where the moisture from your breathing causes them to warp and twist, seeming to crawl towards your mouth and nose.
Smoke hairs are so delicate that even light as faint as moonlight is enough to disperse the atoms. It took years to even prove they existed. It will take even longer to investigate the harm they're doing you.
All scientists know so far is how you can tell if you are surrounded by smoke hairs in your home. The warning signs are: a "funny" taste in your mouth and coughing up odd-colored mucus in the morning, and a sense of invisible things "popping" in front of your eyes when you suddenly turn on a light in the middle of the night.
Smoke hairs we can at least recognize as a possible threat. What about a disease of such subtle and devious symptoms that the victim is lulled into a false sense of wellbeing? Such a disease is the Feelgood Disease-- Gladosis.
Researchers have isolated the bacterium causing Gladosis and named it E. bucoli. It is related to the food poisoning bacterium E. coli recently in the news, but instead of stomach cramps, nausea and death, Gladosis gives its victims a sense of cheerfulness, energy and good health. Victims are active and generally pleasant to be around, which helps spread the disease. They are fond of saying, "Howdy," "Okie-doke," and "You betcha."
Gladosis is highly infectious; one victim can quickly "cheer up" a roomful of normal people just by being present. Luckily most people's immune systems fight off the disease soon after the source of the infection has left the room.
Unfortunately, once the disease becomes established in a person that person is doomed feel good until dying a lingering death--sometimes decades later. Because Gladosis is a bacterium, it can be treated with antibiotics, but the huge doses needed to kill the bug often cause stomach cramps, nausea and death in the patient.
This brings us to the the most devious disease of all; a sickness so subtle that it hasn't even been
identified yet. "How, then, do we know it exists?" you ask.
Sherlock Holmes said, "When you eliminate all the possibilities, whatever is left--however improbable--is the solution," or something like that. It isn't necessary to be too accurate when quoting people who don't exist.
Using Holmes' logic, since we have a range of diseases, we must have a full range, with no gaps. We have diseases that make us die quickly and slowly; diseases that make us very ill, but not die; diseases that make us a little sick, and even a disease that makes us feel good. Doesn't it make sense that there is also a disease that doesn't affect us at all?
No fever, no aches, no euphoria: just normal everyday life is the only symptom. The infected are impossible to distinguish from the healthy or even the cured. How many people with this disease die every day and are mistakenly diagnosed as croaking of "natural causes?" We can't know.
If we don't know who has the disease, how can we ever detect it and treat it? after all, we don't even know if we're looking for a bacterium, a virus, or a protozoan yet. Only research can tell, and researchers tell us that the kind of technology needed to crack this nut will be expensive. As one scientist estimated, "It'll take more bucks than you'll ever see, wiseguy."
The frontiers of medical research are exciting and baffling. The work requires us to throw out our old ideas of disease and embrace threats our grandparents never dreamed of. Imagine your old granddad's reaction to diseases like Smoke Hairs, Gladosis and the Symptomless Disease. The mere idea would probably give him the ague.
A Bucket of Warm Spit
My father fled the Air Force in 1966 when he was threatened with a third tour of duty at Guam. After eighteen years he was pretty sick of the military anyway, and after two tours, tired of Guam, lonely for his family in California, gagging on rice three meals a day, and unable to find much sense in the work he was doing on Guam.
So he turned down the promotion to Chief Master Sergeant, took his wife and five kids and walked, rather than go back to Guam. Much later he talked to me about it.
"We'd maintain, fuel, and reload the B-52s every day. Every day the damn planes took off, dropped their bombs, came back, and did it again. There was always a fishing boat five miles offshore at the end of the runway. A fishing boat with fifty antennas on it. We knew when the B-52s took off, the enemy knew when the B-52s took off, hell, the only people who didn't know we were coming were the poor bastards out farming with their water buffaloes. The whole operation was about as useful as a bucket of warm spit."
We talked about Guam around the time I'd retired from my Viet Nam War fighting. Not that I went to Viet Nam; I had scholarships and a student deferment. I gave up the deferment and went into the pool when my lottery number was high enough that I didn't have to worry about being drafted.
I didn't consider our soldiers my enemy, though it's possible the soldiers considered me part of their enemy. I thought we were working for the same purpose: to get the War over with. They fought the War by fighting the enemy; I fought the War by fighting war.
At first I marched, and chanted, and held signs. Some folks loved doing that, they got something out of it, maybe they thought it accomplished something. It didn't take me long to figure out that if public opinion was going to end the War, it wouldn't happen because some nice young man was holding a sign expressing his opinion that the War was wrong. No one cared about my opinion.
If public opinion would end the War, it would be because the public's opinion was that it was wrong. So I started writing for the daily college newspaper. I wrote a fair amount of junk, but also managed to cover important speakers, protests, and to do some investigative stories on war-related investments.
The more anti-war stuff I wrote, the more stuff got sent my way: allegedly stolen classified papers, articles from European and Australian sources that never made it into U.S. newspapers, and press packets from Communist news agencies.
One photo bothered me. It came from Hanoi and showed a room with beds all blown to hell. The walls of the room bristled with what looked like porcupine quills. The caption said the quills were plastic shrapnel from an anti-personnel bomb dropped on the orphanage. The plastic was x-ray transparent--to be removed, the surgeons had to enlarge and follow the wound to the shrapnel.
I wanted to run the photo, regardless of the source. My editor said "No, it doesn't matter if it's real--if the readers think we've been taken for fools, we'll never get our credibility back." So it didn't run.
Years later a footnote in a volume of the Pentagon Papers mentioned how many tons of those bombs were dropped on North Vietnamese from B-52s. According to that book, everything from outside sources that the newspaper killed as being too outlandish, was true. Either we didn't believe it when we got the story, or we killed it because we thought the readers wouldn't believe it.
When I gave up protesting and started writing, it was in the belief that "If they knew what was really going on, they'd stop it in a week." At the end of three years I gave up newswriting. My best effort was about as useful as a bucket of warm spit.
A couple of years later, the Viet Nam War ended. The United States backed its way out of the jungle to Saigon, backed its way through the streets of Saigon to the American Embassy, and backed its way up the stairs to the roof of the American Embassy, where it took the helicopter home. I still don't know why.
Why did the war end? What happened? Did enough of our guys die and get mangled? Did we kill enough of them to make our point? Had the press enlightened the public? Was it the peace talks? Because of students dying in protests? Because the victorious People's Army overthrew the invading oppressors? No.
The war ended when someone who had the power ordered the soldiers out. Just as it started when someone with the power ordered the soldiers in. The rest was just warm spit.
Mark Your Calendars for No-Cone Day!
The City of Sacramento Public Works Department has announced that on Thursday, April 28th, 2011, traffic will move freely in the entire downtown area. There will be no road--or even single-lane--closures in the area bounded by the Capitol City freeway, Interstate 5 and the American River. Thus, that day has been dubbed, "No-Cone Day" on the assumption that there will be no orange cones (conus traficus var. orangus) to be found anywhere in the target area.
This day was made possible as the result of a 19 month project by the City to record all possible street closures on one database. The need for that project became apparent when crews transporting a construction crane to a building site (the site itself closed four city blocks) found only one available road to the site, due to existing construction and traffic calming obstructions.
While the crane moved slowly down the road, oblivious city crews closed and excavated the road in its path for sewer renovation, and a cable company sealed off the crane's retreat by digging up the road behind it for a new fiber-optics cable. The crane sat in the road for two days until it could reach its destination.
As the city added scheduled and proposed projects to the computer it began to look as if several dates might be cone-free, but as more and more projects were added, only April 28th 2011 remained. Over the months, utilities and developers approached the city with their plans, and it became the unspoken custom to keep April 28th clear of construction; all projects had to end by then and no new excavations could begin until the 29th.
'This means that the State Capitol expansion project and all proposed high-rises will be completed by then, as will storm drain and curb remodeling, the Desert Storm, Mayaguez, and Grenada Veteran's Memorials in Capitol Park, and the re-re-re-(re-?)renovation of K Street into the K Street Auto Mall.
No gas, electric, telephone, cable TV or water lines are scheduled to be installed, repaired, or replaced on April 28th. There will be no slurry-sealing or repaving projects in progress, nor are there any road striping or parking meter replacements scheduled. The tree-trimmers are scheduled to work in the south area of the city, out of downtown. No block part
ies, fun runs, demonstrations or parades will be issued permits that day.
Barring an earthquake or other natural disaster that may close roads, on April 28, 2011 people should just be able to drive downtown. That's the good news. The computer is predicting a few other things.
traffic calming
City and auto industry computer projections predict that by the fall of 2003 85% of all traffic in the city will be sport utility vehicles. SUVs have a special attraction to downtown commuters in light of traffic calming efforts. A large enough SUV can simply drop into 4-wheeled drive and go over the diversion barriers, planters, and traffic circles. Engineers fear that making the barriers bigger would have the twofold effect of giving the city a tank-trap atmosphere reminiscent of the K Street Mall in the 1970s (two renovations ago,) and of diverting traffic from roadways altogether, and up onto sidewalks and lawns.
Rather than escalate a losing battle, the city has decided to allow the barriers to gradually be reduced to shreds, splinters and gravel by collisions, then removed over time by street sweeping machines. This effectively ends the "Berkeley Method" of traffic control.
Engineers now will use the "New York Method" (sometimes also called the "Pennsylvania Method") of randomly placed inverted speed bumps to slow traffic. Inverted speed bumps, or potholes, as they are commonly called, are especially effective against SUVs with their high centers of gravity, stiff suspensions, poor view of the road directly in front of the hood, and drivers on cellular telephones drinking hot coffee. Potholes also provide considerable temporary water storage during sudden downpours by holding, then gradually releasing rainwater after the strain on the storm drain system has passed.
traffic narcolepsy
If April 28th 2011 has been found to be the only day when no streets will be closed, it stands to reason that every other day until then will have closures of some sort. It also stands to reason that on some days the cumulative effects of road and lane closures will be much worse than on other days.