Cop Car's Beat

Week in Review - 2/28/2020

Simple strokes for simple folks: Below is a photo of the most usual first sighting that I make each morning. As I sleep in the basement, I luxuriate in the sun streaming through the two windows nearest my bed, as modulated by the bushes (and blown leaves) just outside. (When I look out those windows I am facing southeast; thus the photo is of my bedroom wall to the southwest.) Occasionally, I am treated to the silhouette of a bird swooping across, or a turkey grazing along. All-in-all it is a lovely sight to which I open my eyes. The sun arises early enough these mornings that the sun from the second window alit on a mirror, so I photographed the illuminance from but one of the windows.

Data mining Mom & Dad's planner entries: As previously noted, I am gathering data from entries that my parents made in their planner books. For the past couple of days, I've been perusing their planner from 1977, at which time they would have been approximately 63- and 68-years old, respectively. My parents kept really busy. They had hundreds of friends and relatives whom they interacted with in one or another way, they did much yard work (keeping grass mowed in several of their neighbors' yards as well as their own), they were always painting or papering something in their house, and they were active in the church that Mom attended and the senior citizen's group that the church sponsored. They drove to several small towns 50-100 miles from their home in Kansas City MO to see Dad's mother or Mom's mother or sisters, or to attend funerals of old friends. As they were both from an area that was/is about 100 miles south of their KCMO home, most of the funerals were that far away.

Something that struck me was how much time they spent attending appointments with various physicians, hospitalized for something that would now be a walk-in procedure, or attending to friends and relatives who were hospitalized, in a nursing home, or ill. Mother, alone, kept seven appointments with various physicians, an appointment with her eye doctor, and had minor surgery that hospitalized her (in the facility shown, above) for two days in 1977. Wow! Of course, I knew about all of that at the time; but, I probably considered my parents to be "old" and thought that it went with the territory. It makes me wonder what our children think of Hunky Husband's and my statuses these days when we are a few years older than the 79.75 years that either of my parents reached.

Federal Income Taxes: This week we finalized the package of paperwork that we shall turn over to the guy who started preparing our tax returns last year. During our first 10 years of marriage (1958-1968), I kept our financial records and, thus, did our taxes. For the next several years, HH took over the tasking and, of course, during the years that we were apart, each of us did our own - continuing, as I recall, until HH retired. At that time, we started filing joint tax returns, again, and HH did them - with much grumbling, I must add. Last year, I was able to talk HH into having an H&R Block agent do our taxes. The office is conveniently located - a bit over a mile from our home - and, I wouldn't have to put up with HH's grumbling. (Over the years I had simplified my investments in an attempt to minimize the grumbling, but never totally succeeded!) We were both delighted with the results. It costs a pretty penny; but, HH avoids the aggravation and I don't have to listen to him grumble!

About a month ago, HH asked me to give him my tax-relevant records for 2019 and to help him sort his own records out. We are now ready to take the paperwork in and dump it on the preparer's desk, having obtained all the receipts and forms that we needed. We are supposed to perform the dumping operation on March 6. BTW: This year, I've helped HH figure out how/convinced him to simplify his own investments. Yay! It won't help us this year, but next year, our tax prep will be simpler and cheaper.

ADDITION OF 2/29/2020 - Early signs of spring

It is nearing a time of year when, instead of visiting the gym (as did I, this morning) so often, my exercise will be performed doing yard maintenance. Below is a branch of our azalea bush - planted in a sheltered spot on the southeast side of our house and the recipient of moisture from one of the drain spouts from the guttering around our roof. It thinks that spring is here. Note the many pin oak leaves around the bush. Our neighbors (at least a couple of them) gift us with leaves from their trees that they don't rake up in the fall/winter.

Below is one (of many) clump of iris that will be springing forth, shortly. This clump is on the northeast side of the house - near my basement escape window.

Next come a small number of the zillions of sedums that we have. This clump is near our front steps - on the northwest side of the house.

Finally, below is a photo of a clump of creeping phlox - progeny of plant starts that Bogie sent me 10-12 years ago. Note that nearly all of the leaves are from our own cottonwood tree - as they should be.

Joared knows

About a week ago, Joared of Along the Way posted REDHEAD AGING NATURALLY UP DATE . For her information, I sent her this selfie (below).

[The above photo shows Joared the color of this redhead's hair at age 81.]

[For comparison, the next photo is at age 41.]

From Slashdot.com

Fed Says Millennials Are Just Like Their Parents. Only Poorer (bloomberg.com) 215

Posted by msmash on Thursday November 29, 2018 @11:05AM from the closer-look dept.

Millennials, long presumed to have less interest in the nonstop consumption of goods that underpins the American economy, might not be that different after all, a new study from the Federal Reserve says. From a report: Their spending habits are a lot like the generations that came before them, they just have less money at this point in their lives, the Fed study found. The group born between 1981 and 1997 has fallen behind because many of them came of age during the financial crisis. "We find little evidence that millennial households have tastes and preference for consumption that are lower than those of earlier generations, once the effects of age, income, and a wide range of demographic characteristics are taken into account," wrote authors Christopher Kurz, Geng Li and Daniel J. Vine.

Their findings [PDF] are grounded in an analysis of spending, income, debt, net worth, and demographic factors among different generations. The conclusion that millennials aren't all that different also holds for the researchers' more granular examination of expenditures on cars, food, and housing. "It primarily is the differences in average age and then differences in average income that explain a large and important portion of the consumption wedge between millennials and other cohorts," they conclude. So much for the young folks favoring "experiences" over tangible goods.

Bogie didn't fall far from the tree

Few times in my life have I admitted that there was something within my household that I could not move from room-to-room to place it where I wanted it. Even during those years in which I've been happily married, I preferred to do such handling, alone - even, sometimes, to the extent of moving tall bookcases from downstairs to up or upstairs to down. I thought that Archimedes embodied the right principle that, in essence, a person could accomplish darned nearly any physical tasking. Sometimes that meant removing drawers from a large chest-of-drawers (a highboy that I bought in Albuquerque), tying the handles of the doors together, and gently tipping the chest about its shorter horizontal axis, end-over-end to get it where I wanted it. Only within the past five years have I made a concession to aging by "allowing" Hunky Husband to "help" me in moving heavy items, such as his 65-pound printer, downstairs. His job was to stabilize the printer on my back as I sat on the stairs and scooted down to the basement level one step at a time. I'm sure that we used that methodology, also, the last time I took a 6-foot-tall bookcase to the basement. Then there is Bogie.

For those who may not know, Bogie is HH's and my younger daughter - a blogger, and the one responsible for my taking up blogging over 15 years ago. About five years ago, she bought a different house. That house has provided her with something on which to lavish her "spare" time and money. It isn't the first house on which she has worked, but it has been the first house on which she has done everything herself. (To follow her trials and tribulations, one may go to her House Work postings.) In skimming through those postings, the reader will find that not only has Bogie done the heavy lifting, by herself; but, she has learned how to do all sorts of things in fixing up the house to please herself. However, yesterday she wrote of moving things around and recommended a product that has made doing so much easier for her. In Progress!, she recommends Magic Sliders®.

Like Bogie, I have no relationship with the Magic Sliders® folks and they don't know that my blog exists; but, I have used various of their products for at least 10-20 years and I agree with her that they are super! That said, I not only have them on hand and in use; but, about five or six years ago, from my late sister-in-law's catalogue (I don't recall the company's name), I ordered a set that is called ezmoves®. The set includes a pry bar and eight large (3"x5") sliders, as pictured, below. With this set I have "easily" moved a heavy chest-of-drawers, a smaller chest of drawers and vanity table, and a stock cabinet that HH's father had given us, years ago, when he closed a drugstore. (The chest is so tall that I have to tiptoe to see into the top two drawers and it is made of dense wood.)

 I don't know whether it is fortunate or unfortunate for her but Bogie has inherited a passion for independence from me. We just must do things our own way and for ourselves! She does great work!

Excerpts from recent Improbable Research postings

It took me a few years to retrain myself to leave one space following a period when inputting to a computer rather than two as we did in the old days when typing. At least one study shows that it, indeed, makes a difference to the reader.

Excerpt #1 - of interest to writers everywhere:

Ammo for Space Pedants: Are Two Spaces Better Than One?

April 28th, 2018

....

“The most recent edition of the American Psychological Association (APA) Manual states that two spaces should follow the punctuation at the end of a sentence. This is in contrast to the one-space requirement from previous editions. However, to date, there has been no empirical support for either convention. In the current study, participants performed (1) a typing task to assess spacing usage and (2) an eye-tracking experiment to assess the effect that punctuation spacing has on reading performance. Although comprehension was not affected by punctuation spacing, the eye movement record suggested that initial processing of the text was facilitated when periods were followed by two spaces, supporting the change made to the APA Manual.”

Elegant Friend and I were marveling, as we beheld a smoker the other day, that people continue to develop the vile habit.

Excerpt #2 - of interest to smokers and those who behold them:

Cigarettes That Are Visually Offputting (research study)

April 27th, 2018

A number of countries have passed laws which require cigarette manufacturers to show ‘denormalising’ images on their packaging. To take things a step further, why not make the cigarettes themselves more unappealing? This was the question tackled by a joint Australian – New Zealand research team in 2015.

A set of potentially unpleasant cigarette designs were experimentally tested – of which the most effectively off-putting was found to be this one :

“The stick featuring the ‘minutes of life lost’ graphic was markedly less appealing and less likely to be chosen than all other sticks tested. “

Friday and Saturday, while Hunky Husband was in Junction City KS teaching some advanced courses in disaster response, I scurried about, accomplishing things that I don't tackle when HH is at home. One such project was hanging a rather heavy mirror in my bedroom. The mirror had previously hung over the back of the bar in our previous home, in a "landscape orientation". In my bedroom, it was to hang in a "portrait orientation". That change meant that I needed to install a new hanging wire.

Fortunately, the mirror had originated as one of the two mirrors that hung over our two double dressers in our shared bedroom of that house; thus, the factory-installed support fittings had been installed to accommodate either orientation (on our dressers, no wires were used, but brackets and posts had attached the mirrors to the dressers.) I used "heavy duty" braided wire, strung through the hanging fittings such that the wire formed a continuous loop. Cutting either end of the wire to leave an excess inch, I wound the ends, around the wire to provide "locking" of the ends together, by friction. I did think about the sufficiency of friction to bear the load, but decided it would suffice.

Excerpt #3 - of interest to heavy picture/mirror hangers, or anyone who wears clothing made from fibers:

A physics discovery: Why Clothes Don’t Fall Apart

April 24th, 2018

....

In his celebrated Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, Galileo identified a fascinating puzzle in the mechanics of ropes…. From a modern perspective, we would say that the mechanical integrity of ropes derives from frictional contacts between fibers, and Galileo’s rope problem is but one exemplar of a host of related frictional phenomena in fiber assemblies, of which perhaps the canonical case is the ‘staple’ yarn.

The problem of how staple yarns transmit tension is addressed within abstract models in which the Amontons–Coulomb friction laws yield a linear programing (LP) problem for the tensions in the fiber elements. We find there is a percolation transition such that above the percolation threshold the transmitted tension is in principle unbounded. We determine that the mean slack in the LP constraints is a suitable order parameter to characterize this supercritical state. We argue the mechanism is generic, and in practical terms, it corresponds to a switch from a ductile to a brittle failure mode accompanied by a significant increase in mechanical strength.

For all that's holey

Stu (of Eunoia) commented about the previous posting, including an observation by his better half SWMBO that while the video showed a two-hole punch configuration being used for target sheets, we in the USA actually use a three-hole punch configuration. Well...to say that we use a three-hole punch configuration for binding our loose papers together is a bit of an overstatement: Although the three-hole configuration is, by far, the most-used, we use several configurations.

Unfortunately, I no longer use a two-hole configuration, myself, so I have given away my two-hole punch; but, here is a photo of one that I stole (the photo, not the punch) off of eBaby or Amazon.

Officemate Heavy Duty 2-Hole Punch, Padded Handle, Black, 50-Sheet Capacity (90082)

Not only are two-hole punch configurations used in fastening papers within a soft-cover file folder, but heavier duty uses abound (photo, below, of one).

What I, personally, use these days

Within 10 feet of where I sit at this computer, I gathered up four punches (photo, below) that I use, regularly. They comprise two one-hole punches, one three-hole punch, and one seven-hole punch. I trust that you can see enough to tell the configuration of each item. I'm not sure what Hunky Husband hides in his office; but, he does have an electric-driven three-hole punch that will accept about 30 sheets of paper at one time.

The punches are used to help me keep various papers in various binders. One (photo, below) of the several shelves full of binders is also within 10 feet of my current position.

Most of my three-ring binders fall into one of two types (photos, below): 1) D-ring or 2) O-ring.

 

There is another configuration - again, that I no longer use - used for two- and three-hole punched papers. It is a post and sleeve configuration where the front and back of the binder are not joined other than when the three (or two) sleeves of one part are slipped over the three (or two) posts of the other part (or vice versa). This configuration is used with industrial-weight binders for reference materials such as aircraft maintenance manuals. The photo, below, was stolen from Bindertek. It shows a binder that is open to 90-degrees.

3 Ring Heavy Duty 98086 Archival Binder - Our Highest Capacity Binder Holds 1250 Sheets

Below are photos of a couple of the other binders that I use. I've used a seven-ring binder since the late 1980s and have about 15-20 of them in the house. The six-ring binder was my father's and is kept for sentimental reasons. I've never owned a six-hole punch, but use the one-hole punches to put the holes where I want them.

That's the trivia for the day. The treatment has been far from exhaustive but gives an idea of how diverse are our options when it comes to keeping loose papers together.

P.S. It just occurred to me that, in high school, we all used the two-hole/two-ring configuration.

P.P.S. At the Little Airplane Company, we used a drill-press to make holes in 100-200 pages at a time. We could set up to give us the hole configuration desired.