Parochial School

Central New York is Parochial.  What does that mean?

The word "parochial" has two meanings. The one that most people think of relates to Catholic schools. But a second meaning refers to people who are more concerned with the local area rather than things affecting the more general area or the world at large.   It is not a compliment.

I never realized until I left Central New York how parochial it was. It wasn't until we bought a vacation home in the Finger Lakes Region and I realized how the word parochial really applied to the local people. You would tell people that you were born in Ro-chester and lived in Sy-racuse and they would give you a glazed look as if they were far off countries that could only be accessed by Steamboat - and event then, only after many day's journey. In reality they were less than an hour or two away by car, and easily accessible by interstate highways (as opposed to, say, Ithaca, which cannot be reached except by farm roads).

And yet people would tell you that they've never been to the far-off lands of Bu-ffalo or Al-bany much less New Yawk City. They lived within a few hours so these destinations and never bothered to investigate them in their whole lives.

And sad to say, when I was a New Yorker growing up, my life was pretty much the same way. We pretty much stayed within a 20 to 30 mile radius of our home and rarely ventured beyond those boundaries.

We left Rochester, New York when I was 5 years old and moved to Lake Forest, Illinois. We then moved to Syracuse in 1968. That was only three years later, and you would think my parents would have reconnected with their friends in Rochester, which was only about a hour-and-a-half drive on the New York State Thruway.

But such was not the case.  I recall we went back to Rochester once to visit some old friends and that was about it.  An hour-and-a-half seems to be the limit of friendship, at least by automobile.   For the next eighteen years I lived in central New York, I don't think I visited Rochester more than once in my life.

And the same was true for the rest of Central New York. I never visited Ithaca, New York, even though it was only a little more than an hour drive from our home, until I moved back and purchased a home in the region. I never visited Jamestown, New York until maybe twelve years ago, and then only to purchase a photocopier I bought on Craigslist.

There's a beautiful State Park in Western New York called Letchworth State Park. They call it the "Grand Canyon of the East Coast" and is quite impressive, albeit a canyon on a much smaller scale. Nevertheless, the first time I visited this park was... two weeks ago.

What the hell took so long?

The long and the short answer is the New York State is a very parochial area. People tend to stay in their own areas and not venture out very far. People from other states and other countries actually see more of New York than its own citizens do.

The few that do venture beyond their own homes often go to the same places over and over again. When we visit various state parks and RV parks, we run into people who often stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve so they can reserve the same campsite online, again and again, year after year. They've been to the Adirondacks many a time, but always to the same campground and always to the same site. They've never seen the rest of it.

Like I said, I never realized how parochial Central New York was until I moved back there. When we moved back to Cayuga Lake, about 20 miles north of Ithaca, people thought we lived in some outlier region that can only be reached by spacecraft. We told them we lived 20 miles away and they thought that was a lifetime.  They would not come to visit, because it was "too far away".  Meanwhile, friends from Virginia or Georgia had no problem making the drive.

We went to open a bank account with Bank of America on the Ithaca Commons. We met the bank manager, a young man in his 30s. He told us without embarrassment that he had never left Tompkins County other than to visit Orlando once by airplane - and he didn't think much of that. His experience of the world was very limited and he seemed rather proud of it.  And yet he was a bank manager.

And maybe that right there is a difference - be proud of being parochial. Granted, there a lot of people who cannot travel in this world because of their economic situation.  People have to work for a living and they'll get only two weeks of vacation a year and can't travel far from their homes. You can't blame them for not being a world traveler or not even exploring much of their own country.  Poverty and parochialism go hand in hand.

But others seem to take almost a perverse pride and not having seen anything else other than their own hometown, even though they have the opportunity to travel.  I feel sorry for them because they're missing out on so much. Cars have wheels, airplanes have wings. There's no point in not exploring what little of this planet there is to explore, while you still can.

My only regret in life is not to have seen more of the world than I have. And with each passing year it seems that more and more of the world is too dangerous to travel to, or even outright inaccessible. Of course, this virus thing has put a wrench in many a plan for world travel. But this is only a temporary measure.

Civil Wars, terrorism, violence, criminality, despotic governments, these things may prevent you from traveling overseas. But there are still plenty of places you can go to and see. The biggest obstacle often isn't a virus or a corrupt government, but the lack of willpower and initiative by people to see what little of the planet they can.

I mentioned before the 20-something young couple I knew who actually hitchhiked around the world twice, on very little money.  I was very impressed with their courage in doing this, particularly at such a young age. But then again is probably best to do such things at such a young age, when you have the energy and time. It gets harder as you get older.

On the other hand, when I meet people who have never visited more than one or two states in the United States, of which they are a native citizen, I feel sad.  We have been to 49 of the 50 states, excluding Hawaii.  We've been to all the Canadian provinces except The Unexplored Territories and The Disputed Lands, neither of which have roads. Some day perhaps I'll go to Hawaii, although everything I hear about the place makes it sound like a giant tourist trap. A giant tourist trap with homeless people.   Not high on my list.

But eventually I hope to visit even there, perhaps as a stop on the way to someplace else, perhaps Australia or New Zealand.  Maybe a few years from now, God willing, after this virus thing is done and over with.

I'll try.  To not try or even want to try, I just don't understand that.

CoVid Campers

A lot of people are buying campers and tents and going camping.   That's fine, but what they are doing while camping, isn't.

We are at a campground on Lake Ontario and the place is packed.  Many of the campers are first-timers with brand-new rigs.  They seem to be handling them OK, but it is interesting how people are handling themselves.

Apparently just as vacation calories don't count, camping virus exposure doesn't count either.  We are seeing an utter lack of social distancing and people gathering for large parties.   This will not end well.  Last night, we walked around the campground and came upon a party of at least 40 people, young and old, families with children, all congregating around a group of campers and in the road, all being merely feet from one another and nary a mask in sight.  In fact, not many masks in sight in the entire campground.

This is kind of odd, because other campgrounds we've been to have been just the opposite, with very strict restrictions as to how many people can be in the pool at a given time and so on and so forth.  Those campgrounds were already feeling the heat from local health inspectors, as in one incident, as I reported, a former employee called the health department to make allegations about too many people in the pool and people congregating, etc., merely as an act of revenge.

It sort of illustrates how these regulations are enforced unevenly and how the entire thing depends on people acting with some common sense.  Oh, wait, that's a bad plan - no one has an common sense anymore.    But I guess also that at a beautiful campground on the beach, watching the sun set, you get lost in the moment and forget about masks and such - it happens.   For a brief instant, you forget about viruses and recessions and elections and other nonsense, and you want to pretend life has gone back to the way it was before - before the Russians convinced us, via Facebook, to go at each others' throats.

Some hear reports like this and want an even more heavy-handed approach.   A fellow camper tells me a hairdresser was fined $10,000 and her cosmetology license revoked permanently for cutting hair during the pandemic.  Sounds rather drastic, and I suspect she'll be moving away from New York pretty soon.   Maybe set up shop in Alabama - if she can learn to cut big hair and beehive hairdos and such.

It will be interesting to see what happens a year from now with all these new CoVid campers.  I suspect quite a few will be disenchanted with the RV lifestyle - paying $50 a night to be parked chock-a-block next to some yahoos who play "Freebird" all night long.   It can be like that, or - once in a great while - it can be camped at a pristine mountain lake, with your kayak dipped in the water.

Either way, though, I suspect you will see a lot of lightly used campers for sale in the spring of 2021.  It isn't for everyone.  On the other hand, I think the cruise industry should be alarmed.  People who used to go on cruises might decide they like RVing better - and never go back.

It will be interesting to watch.  I suspect more than one cruise line will declare bankruptcy, which is one reason we are not taking advantage of the alarmingly low prices they are offering for 2021 cruises.  In bankruptcy court, you are just another one of a long line of creditors.   Ditto for your frequent cruiser points or whatever.  I suspect that maybe one of the weaker cruise lines may merge with one of the larger ones, or dissolve completely and the ships sold to other lines or scrapped.

We'll see.  Hard to survive for long with zero revenue.

Online Casinos? How Dumb Do You Have to Be?

Gambling in a casino is just idiotic.   Gambling online with a "casino" in some unknown foreign country is idiocy to the nth power.

I am getting a few SPAM messages lately from some online casino, claiming I have winnings to be paid out, or that I have been given bonus chips or whatnot.  Of course, they are already marked as SPAM and they get erased automatically.

But it got me to thinking, someone must be clicking on this shit, or they wouldn't be doing it.   Of course, like so many internet scams, you use a shotgun - sending out millions of these messages and hoping one-in-a-million responds.  And when they do, you tell them they've "won" but have to pay taxes via prepaid blue-dot credit cards or Bitcoin or Western Union or whatever sketchy payment method the scammers are using these days (which brings up the question, why would anyone "invest" in Bitcoin, when all it is, is a payment system for crooks?).

I suspect a lot of these "online casino" pitches are just variations on the old Nigerian Scam.  You've won money!  But to get it, you have to pay us first.  You pay, and then, no money.

There are, apparently, some "legitimate" online casinos, operated by Indian tribes or even brand-name casinos.   However, like any casino, they are a bad bet - quite literally.  Any casino or gambling parlor has to take in more money than they pay out - or they go bankrupt.   So if you keep throwing a dollar at a casino, you get back 90 cents, if that.   Once in a while, you "win" at gambling, and this feeds the adrenaline engine in your brain.   You remember the wins, your forget the losses.

But over time, if you keep converting a buck into ninety cents, eventually you have nothing left.  And no, you are not going to be the guy who "beats the casino" or beats the odds or has a "lucky streak" - anyone who believes that sort of nonsense deserves to lose all their money.

At some campgrounds we visit, they have a Bingo night, and usually the proceeds are for some charity.  The most you can lose is a few dollars, and you get to meet your neighbors, as it can be a very social event.   Unlike hard-core Bingo parlors (or some Catholic Churches) where women play eight cards at a time and the "no talking" rule is strictly enforced, campground Bingo is more about socialization.  It is probably the only scenario where gambling is indeed harmless fun.

But like church-lady Bingo, which is deadly serious, gamblers in casinos are not interested in socialization or partying.  Most are plopped in front of some sort of machine, grimly pushing buttons and losing money.  They got rid of the big levers on the slot machines, as they realized the half-second people spent pulling that lever was time they could be gambling.

In the James Bond movies, people gather around the card table to watch the action and it is a social scene.   Gather around a card table at a casino and you will be asked to leave.   I know this, as I tried to "watch" a Blackjack game once, and a very large man with an earpiece asked me to move on.   Throwing your money away is grim, serious business, and not fun. Well, that, and they don't want people to have cohorts help them cheat.

But what little social interaction there is to be had at a casino - and the low-cost buffet and the free drinks - is missing from online "gaming".   In a way, it is genius - you cut to the chase and cater to the compulsive gambler's need for intermittent rewards.

The funny thing is, when I was researching this online, I found a number of "articles" about how to "beat an online casino" which were little more than garbage from overseas text-farms.  This example is precious, not only in its poor use of English, but going on forever without saying anything at all:

A strategy is a plan that you prepare in advance to increase the chances of your success. If you want to get the maximum profit in gambling, you need to be very careful about your strategies and plans. You should create realistic goals for your success. Also, do not put that money on the bet that you cannot recover. There are several ways which will help you to beat a casino. In this article, we will discuss the most successful strategies that work most of the time and make you earn profit by applying those strategies. Gambling is when you place your money on games for skill or chances.

Their "advice" on how to win at Blackjack was to "learn the rules of Blackjack" - I never would have thought of that!  Of course, it was just a text-farm site, with generic words on it and lots and lots of sidebar ads.  Put enough junk like that on the internet and you might make a few dollars a month, which I am sure goes a long way in Bangalore.

Online gaming - another reason why I don't "feel sorry" for people and their problems.   Some idiot gambles away his life savings online and we're supposed to feel sorry for them?  Is this any different than boring man who confused investing with gambling and lost his 401(k) to options trading - and now blames the Federal Reserve for his woes?

It does test one's patience.

But is it any different that the protester who wants "Anarchy" so they don't have to pay back their student loans?   Why should we "feel sorry" for someone whose only goal in life is to elect a guy who will send them "free money"?

Maybe we need to let people like that just stew in their own juices - in a stew of their own making!

Who's Crazier? Donald Trump or Kanye West?

Tough call.  Looks like both have been hitting the fast-food buffet too often, though.

Worse that Trump's lies are the crazy shit he says.   Weird stuff that only idiots would believe - which may be why he says it.  His followers believe it.

So when he says we should delay the election, people wearing MAGA hats say, "shit yea!" because they believe a President is like a dictator and do whatever he wants.   Bernie Bros believe the same bullshit.

But it goes beyond that.  Granted, both Kanye and Trump are running for President of the United States.  Both say off-the-wall shit.  But only one is actually President of the United States.

And granted, a lot of this off-the-wall shit is by design and not even concocted by the Concoctor-In-Chief.   The "move election day" Tweet was carefully crafted to distract from poor economic news.  It is better to leave the voters scratching their heads than marching on Washington. The entire "Ducking" narrative is also an example of a Cheney-esque strategy to paint your opponent with your own weaknesses.

But other times, well, it is downright scary.   And we've been through this before with George W. Bush.  I recall listening to his speeches, and like a proud parent with a slightly dull child, being proud when he got through the whole thing without mispronouncing too many words.  Yea Georgie!  Good Boy!  Here's a Lollipop!  Wait a minute, we're invading who?   You got so caught up you forget what was actually being said.

Maybe this is the new Republican strategy, or maybe Republicans tend to be Asperger's.   Hard to say.  But confusing use of language is one hallmark.  The others seem to paint a picture of the President:

• lack of social awareness;
• lack of interest in socializing/making friends;
• difficulty making and sustaining friendships;
• inability to infer the thoughts, feelings, or emotions of others;
• either gazing too intently or avoiding eye contact;
• lack of changing facial expression, or use of exaggerated facial expressions;
• failure to respect interpersonal boundaries;
• stereotypical and repetitive motor patterns such as hand flapping or arm waving.

Or maybe Trump is just diabetic - that would explain his mood swings.  It is all-too-easy to diagnose these things from the armchair.

Trump's lies should concern us all.  But Trump's erratic behavior should scare us all to death.  Remember, this is a guy who can start World War III in a matter of minutes.   What a great going-away present to America, if he isn't re-elected.

Bronco versus Jeep - Two Different Approaches

If 95% of the vehicles you sell never go off-road, it is worth it to make them capable of being modified to handle the Rubicon trail?

Much ink has been spilled about the demise of Ford in recent years.   Ford, like GM and Fiat-Chrysler is making money on trucks and SUVs, but the car business is a loss-leader, which is why activist investors are clamoring for these companies to leave that sector.   That makes sense in the short-term, but in 2005, we saw what happened the last time that tactic was tried - gas shot up to $5 a gallon and suddenly the market for $50,000 pickup trucks evaporated overnight.

Well, today, these trucks are topping $100,000 and Ford has taken the lead in slathering technology into these vehicles.  I ran into a friend with a three-year-old BMW 7-series and we were comparing notes on his car's features compared to our now five-year-old F150.   Turns out, BMW doesn't even offer some of the bells and whistles, three years ago, that Ford offered five years back.  Self-parking, for example (which works, and is handy for a parade float like the F-150) wasn't an option on the 7-series.

But overall, the Ford is more tech-heavy that the BMW.  The all-aluminum body, for example, or the twin-turbocharged, direct-injection V-6 with a ten-speed transmission (offered as of 2017) are on a par with Bavaria's best, and perhaps better.  Throw in the fact that Ford sells more F150s in a month than BMW sells cars in a year, and you can guess which is more reliable and cost-effective in the long-term.

Ford invested in technology to comply with Obama-era EPA mileage requirements which were somewhat extreme. Making CAFE averages equal to today's Prius mileage was something of a stretch, and pretty much mandated that each car company offer an electric car or cars in their lineups, so as to offset the lower mileage of their gasoline offerings.   Product cycles are measured in years, and products coming out today, such as the electric Mustang, were designed in a different era.  Today, everyone is talking the new Bronco, while few are talking about the e-Stang.

Jalopnik did a good article comparing the new Bronco to the old Jeep.  It is an interesting contrast in styles, and Ford wants to make "Bronco" a brand like Jeep is.  In fact, the new Bronco is two vehicles, the main Bronco and a "sport" model that is more akin to a Jeep Patriot or Compass - a car-based platform not really intended for off-road use.  It is a smart move, as evidenced by how many Compasses Jeep sells or sold.

I wrote about Jeeps before and why they are a poor vehicle choice for most Americans.  If you buy one to commute to work, you will find it noisy, uncomfortable, and cramped.  They get poor gas mileage and have sad little tow ratings (2000 lbs - hardly enough to tow a pop-up!).   If you are an off-road enthusiast, however, and don't mind dropping another ten to twenty grand (for starters) you can morph a Jeep into a real rock-climber or mud-bogger.  Doing so, however, makes it even worse for daily driving - the tire noise alone will drive you nuts (and those big sticky soft tires last maybe 15,000 miles on dry pavement).

The truth is, people buy Jeeps as image vehicles.  They want to project the image of rough-and-rugged adventure, as if they are going to go off every weekend to some remote lake and go camping, or perhaps climb some amazing rock trail.   But even a "Rubicon" Jeep with "trail rated" on the side of it is suited for little more than the occasional logging trail, and statistically speaking, 90% or more of Jeeps never go off-road.

Because of their primitive construction - which has largely remained unchanged since 1945, other than to finally ditch leaf springs for coils (that whole rollover controversy - remember?) Jeeps are pretty easy to modify for off-road action.  With two live Dana axles, front and rear, they can be easily lifted and modified to handle oversized tires.  So for the hard-core off-road set, the Jeep is a winner not in spite of its crudeness, but because of it.

Our old 1988 Toyota 4x4 pickup was one of the first with independent front suspension.  Instead of a live axle up front, it had half-shafts and CV joints - like a front-wheel-drive car, and what most car-based AWD mini-utes have today.  The advantage was in the ride and handling, but the off-road hard-core dismissed independent front suspension (IFS) because it was harder to mod.  The old live-axle design - on leaf springs no less - was easy to jack up.  Just put lift blocks under the springs and maybe a drop pitman arm on the steering box (on a Jeep,anyway) and you're good to go.   Well, that and new shocks.

Independent front suspension?  A little harder - you have to lift the front end with drop spindles or new control arms, and the angles of the CV joints will become more extreme - leading to their early demise.

So it was interesting to me that Ford chose an independent front suspension design for its new Bronco - the "real" one, not just the "sport" model.   IFS is used in the new Ranger, too, and replaced the "Twin I-beam front suspension" of yore in the old F150's.  Our two-wheel-drive F150 has the same suspension as the 4x4 - there is just a blank space behind the front spindles where the half-shafts were supposed to go.  Saves on parts cost and ease of assembly.

No doubt the commonality of design and parts reduces cost (even though IFS is a more costly design) as the Bronco can go down the same assembly line as the Ranger and share the same architecture.   But perhaps it is an admission by Ford that most buyers are not going to go rock-crawling with these vehicles, but instead just want the rugged 4x4 look - the tail fins of our era.

Oddly enough, the Bronco comes from the factory with (optional) 35 inch (!!) tires, so it has that "off-road" look available from the factory.  The Jeep, in contrast, has almost ridiculously tiny tires - but then again, they realize that the serious off-roaders will immediately drive over to the off-road shop for a new suspension, wheels and tire package.

The Bronco, like the Jeep is also available in a four-door model - both being another admission that it is style that sells, not practicality.   The short wheelbase of the two-door Jeep is by design - to allow it to climb over obstacles and not "hang up" or "high center" on the frame.   Going to four doors, well, it is just a styled grocery-getter, which is why Jeep offers (or offered) the four-door model in a two-wheel drive version.  It was the poser Jeep.

It remains to be seen whose marketing model works best.   I think the Bronco will force Fiat-Chrysler to up their game, as their basic design really hasn't changed (under the sheetmetal) in over a decade.   But IFS on a Jeep?  The hard core would revolt.  Ford isn't weighed down with the burden of a fanbase to appease, and can start with a clean slate.

I suspect in terms of riding comfort, handling, technology and whatnot, the Bronco will win hands-down over the Jeep, for daily driving and occasional off-road.   Of course, it will cost a lot more as well, which is again, why I was no big fan of the Jeep (which are now topping thirty grand!).   You pay a lot of money and get...  a steel box with a drive train from before the war.

Getting back to the demise of Ford, however, I think you need to look at the technology of the products they are offering.  I am quite pleased with the 3.5 twin-turbo "ecoboost" (which is now in a second, improved generation) and I hear the same from most other owners (of which there are a lot, as it is the most popular vehicle in America).  You put your foot into it, and she lets out a rough growl and propels you forward with aplomb - even when towing 5,000 lbs of trailer.  GM and Chrysler seem to be stuck in the past with their older V-8 designs.

Oh, and the gas mileage is startling, for such a large vehicle.   We've gotten up to 17 mpg - towing a trailer.  Almost 30 on the highway (with a tailwind, at 60 mph).  But it averages 20-22 mpg, and that is pretty astounding, again, for a parade float.

That being said, the cost of developing all this new technology is such that GM and Ford shared development costs for their new line of 9- and 10-speed transmissions.  Buy a Ford or a Chevy, it's going to have the same damn transmission in it.   Interesting thought, because in the early 1970's was when GM decided that development costs for engines were such that it no longer made sense for each division to have its own engine design (and people were outraged, although I don't know why).

One part at a time, the various divisions of GM basically merged and today, well, we have Chevy, GMC, Buick, and Cadilliac - and they all pretty much share components.  How long will it be before GM and Ford are badge-engineering each other's products?

Speaking of GM, they too, are seeing the wild profits Fiat-Chrysler is making selling empty steel boxes and want in on this Jeep thing as well.  So a new "Hummer" is coming out soon - something more Jeep-like (which was in the cards before the last recession, but was cancelled along with the rest of the Hummer brand) and in electric mode, too.   So pretty soon, we will be awash in a sea of Jeep-like vehicles, and the question will remain, how many of such vehicles can the market absorb?  And will there be enough sales to pay back the development costs?

Fiat-Chrysler has had a real money-maker on its hands with the Jeep brand, and had the field to itself, for a long time.  That is all about to change.   And if sales of Jeeps decline - siphoned off by Bronco and Hummer - will Fiat-Chrysler have the cash to invest in a redesign of the Jeep to stay current?

Fascinating questions - I don't have the answers.    It will be fun to watch, though.  But I would not count Ford out of the picture just yet.