Category: Commentaries

Off the Grid at Diamond Valley Lake

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries2 Comments

Yesterday I loaded up my mountain bike and went to Hemet to ride around Diamond Valley Lake, one of the largest reservoirs in Southern California.

About 15 minutes after I left my house I needed to get gas. At the pump, as I was trying to pay, I realized I didn’t have my phone with me. I had forgotten it at home.

After a moment of panic I realized that I also had my wallet and I could just pay the old fashioned way with a credit card. Then, while the pump was filling up my truck, I wondered if I should go back home and get the phone. It would add another 30 minutes to my travels, so I decided I was fine without it. I had some cash with me, and what would I need the phone for?

I felt oddly naked stepping back into the car knowing I was “off the grid.” As the day progressed I realized how dependent I was on my phone.

  1. I didn’t have my playlists, so there was no music to play in the car. That is not such a big deal, as I mostly drive with silence anyway. But suddenly, when I couldn’t have any music, I craved some.
  2. I realized that I usually used Google Maps to find the marina at the lake, and I was not sure which exit to take off of I-215. I did recognize the exit when I got there, but I was a little nervous.
  3. Then I got on my bike at the trailhead. The road around the lake is over 22 miles long, much of it a rutted dirt road. It was a cold and drizzly day, so there was nobody out there. I realized as I was riding that in the event that my bike broke down (like a flat tire) I could be 10 miles away from the nearest soul and I would likely have to walk that far, pushing a bike, to get back, worst case, since I had no phone to call for help. I felt exposed.
  4. On the drive back there was a terrible traffic jam on the freeway. I was stuck. Since I didn’t have Google Maps, I could not tell how far the traffic jam would go. I was annoyed being in traffic with no information.
  5. I thought about pulling off and getting some lunch along the way, and thus give the traffic some time to clear up, but without a phone with my Kindle books to read, being alone in a restaurant with nothing to do but eat, seemed like a boring proposition, so I passed.
  6. I kept wanting to call my wife and let her know that I’d be back much later, due to the bad traffic, but I had no phone to call her.

All the points above are fairly benign, nothing bad happened, but it was really strange to be spending the day off the grid.

I think I need to do that more often. On purpose next time. I’ll bring a book.

Eve of Destruction – by Barry McGuire – Take Two

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Feelings, Racism, Religion2 Comments

I was about to write a post about the song Eve of Destruction today, but when I checked, I had done just that in 2014. So I don’t have to do it again. However, it’s now been a full 60 years since that song first came out. In 1965, our parents and grandparents worried about the state of the world. They thought it was going to end.

Today, it rings truer than ever – again. There are frightening parallels today to what we worried about then. It gives me hope, since the world didn’t actually end up blowing up in 1965, it’s likely that we get through 2025 also, and one time look back on this crazy part of history.

Here are the lyrics with my commentary in blue:

The eastern world it is exploding
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’

It’s still the eastern world, Israel, Gaza, Iran, Ukraine, India, Pakistan, Thailand that are exploding, with violence flarin’ and bullets loadin’. 

You’re old enough to kill but not for votin’

We’re still old enough to kill but not for votin’ today.

You don’t believe in war but whats that gun you’re totin’?
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’

But you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction

Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?

Today we have fears that the United States becomes an autocracy after the likes of Russia. Our highest level of government seems completely corrupt and focused on gaining permanent power, while hurting millions of its citizens. We have seen this playbook before. 

If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy, it’s bound to scare you boy

Yes, that button is still there, and now we have one apparently not-right-in-his-head man threatening to push that button. It’s bound to scare me, boy!

And you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction

Yeah my blood’s so mad feels like coagulating
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’

My blood’s mad today, just like it was for our grandparents in 1965. I see the pain, I see the damage, and I have started not watching or reading the news anymore, since it just makes my blood coagulate and I feel powerless. I’m sitting here contemplatin’, writing blog posts that go nowhere and help no one. 

I can’t twist the truth it knows no regulation

The truth is being twisted today like it was in 1965. 

Handful of senators don’t pass legislation

Senators don’t pass legislation but rather enable the would-be king wandering around the world with no clothes. 

And marches alone can’t bring integration

We’re marching, alright, we’re marching backwards, not just to 1965, but to 1935.

When human respect is disintegratin’

Human respect is definitely disintegratin’ if that human is brown or black or Asian or homosexual or intellectual or liberal or atheist.

This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’

I am not watching the news anymore because this whole crazy world is just too frustratin’. 

And you tell me
Over and over and over again my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama

There seems to be a lot more hate in Washington DC now than in Selma, Alabama.

There seems to be more hate in the United States than there is in China.

You may leave here for four days in space
But when you return it’s the same old place

Now we go into space for eight months at a time and when we come back it’s the same old place. We now go into space using one company’s private vehicles. 

The pounding of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next door neighbor but don’t forget to say grace

If your neighbor is an immigrant, or speaks Spanish, or Chinese, or is not Christian, feel free to hate. The government will support you. 

And tell me
Over and over and over and over again my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction
Mmm, no, no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction

No, I don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction. I think we’ll get through this too and come out wiser and healthier on the other side. Hang in there. 

Nuclear Waste at the Decommissioned San Onofre Power Plant

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Energy, Environmental Protection, Need to Know1 Comment

Anyone ever driving north on I-5 would have noticed that domes of the San Onofre nuclear power plant. Here is a quick snapshot out the moving car window.

It is now decommissioned, but there are still approximately 4,000 tons (nearly 3.6 million pounds) of spent nuclear fuel, over 3,963 fuel assemblies, stored at the site. These assemblies are used uranium fuel rods, which is high-level radioactive waste, that remains extremely hazardous even years after removal. Exposure without shielding can be fatal in a short time.

The waste is stored in thin-walled steel canisters, which are ½–⅝ inches thick, which is about the size of the diameter of a dime. The containers are vulnerable to chloride-induced stress-corrosion cracks due to salt air, and the cracks can’t be repaired or inspected effectively after the drums are stored. They are located about 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean, on a coastal bluff. The risk from sea-level rise, just regular normal erosion, tsunamis, and seismic activity, is high. If you ever lived near the Pacific and you had a barbeque unit on your porch, you will have noticed that the salty air reclaims those back to the earth in just a few years. They basically dissolve. Steel drums are not the same thing as barbeque units, but you get my idea.

Coastal permits allow up to approximately 136 canisters; the site received a 13-year permit extension through 2035, with annual reviews of structural and environmental health.

Regulatory agencies have repeatedly extended storage as there is no federal repository for high‑level waste. Nuclear Waste Policy Act (1982) mandated creation of a permanent site at Yucca Mountain, but that project was defunded in 2010. There is currently no plan for a permanent solution for nuclear waste in the United States.

Ultimately, high-level waste requires a deep geological repository, meaning it must be buried hundreds of meters underground in stable rock formations, with multiple natural and engineered barriers, and designed for containment over tens of thousands to a million years. No such U.S. facility exists yet. There is currently no plan for a permanent solution for nuclear waste in the United States.

Nine million people live within 50 miles of the San Onofre site. I am one of them. If just a single canister were to rupture, depending on the wind and weather conditions, and assuming our illustrious government were to take responsibility and actually warn us, 9 million people would potentially have to be evacuated – permanently.

Now that I made your day, let’s go back to focusing on what really matters in this country, like ostracizing transsexual people, cutting Medicaid, pardoning convicted criminals, and arresting and deporting non-white people.

Priorities of the Veterans Administration

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries1 Comment

Today I received an email from the Veterans Administration (VA) about two things:

It invited me to celebrate the Army’s 250th Birthday by attending a free festival and parade in Washington, D.C.

In the same email, it advised me of facts about erectile dysfunction and how to treat it.

I am not sure which one caught my eye first.

The Marks on Our Potatoes

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Nature3 Comments

In the winter, some of our red potatoes in the pantry got old and started sprouting, so we planted them in one of our planters. Last month, we had a harvest. It felt great digging with our bare hands into the soft soil and finding the potatoes, one at a time.

Here is a picture of the planter, after we had reseeded it with carrots this time.

The harvest was amazing. We got at least 30 potatoes, a few of them small, but some of them full sized. Here are some of the larger ones:

Then I noticed that each potato had a mark on it. I can’t figure out how this happened. They were not smashed against the planter, and its walls are smooth. There are no features that would cause these repeatable marks. If you don’t see it, look at  this one closeup:

The marks are not the result of some tool that we used to get them out of the ground. We used our bare hands for every one of them.

I looked at red potatoes at the store and found no marks on any of them.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing these marks?

Thinking about the Powerball Lottery

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Visualizing3 Comments

I found a little article in Scientific American of April 2025: Is the Lottery Ever a Good Bet? – by Jack Murtagh.

It starts with this:

Here is a thought challenge for you: Let’s say I have chosen a particular moment in time from the past nine years. I am thinking of a specific (and totally random) year, month, day, hour, minute and second between April of 2016 and today. Could you guess it? No chance? You have a better chance of guessing a specific second from a nine-year span than you have of winning Powerball.

I thought that short quote was a very powerful visualization of the odds of the lottery.

Clearly, playing the lottery is never a good bet, but it’s not about winning. I know too many people in Germany who have spent their entire lives, since I was a child, buying that Lotto ticket every week, and they still do it now, even in their eighties. “One day I might win!”

The lottery is not about winning, it’s about dreaming. The dream of possibly winning gives people hope and encouragement, and a will to move forward, even in adversity.

It’s about the hope.

The State or Fate of Tourism in the United States

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product, Commentaries, Travels, TrumpLeave a comment

We have a lot of overseas friends in all five continents.

Here is a message we received today from a friend in Europe that we have traveled with quite a few times before:

As regards to travel to the U.S., this administration makes us feel unwelcome with a hostile undertone. I’ve canceled my upcoming Florida trip. Let me say that I am a big fan of transatlantic cooperation. I love the America I used to know, and I am aware that many/most Americans didn’t vote for this shit show, but until decency, truthfulness, reliability and democracy is restored, I’ll be on the fence watching.

This is not the only person I have received such comments from. We were both in Asia and Europe within the last six weeks, and everyone talks this way. On top of all that, the draconian cuts inflicted on the U.S. Park Service, causing uncertainty and lack of control at America’s National Parks, will result in massive lack of tourism this year. Our National Parks are one of the world’s most attractive sets of destinations, and people save for many years for a trip to Yellowstone, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon. Our National Park System is the best in the world. It brings in $55 billion in revenue a year and costs only $3 billion. The whole thing makes no sense to me. The only person who would order such a thing is someone who manages a casino, basically a money machine, to bankruptcy. Tourists right now don’t even know if they will be able to get into the park when they arrive. It’s just not worth it to a lot of foreigners.

The problem is that stability is not restored by rescinding an Executive Order. Decency is earned over years, or even decades. You don’t get a reputation of decency back just because you had an election. And reliability is destroyed for a generation, at least. The word of the United States mattered. Now, you cannot trust that word. Ask the Afghan interpreters who were abandoned or deported. Ask the foreign students with the wrong skin color who disappeared from their colleges this spring.

The summer tourist season will be adversely affected, and everyone and every company that feeds it will suffer this year.

 

United States GDP 50/50

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, EconomyLeave a comment

Here is where 50% of the GDP of the United States is generated. The orange spots are all the cities.

Remember the election map? Every one of these orange spots was on the blue map.  Every. One.  Of. Them.

Modern Slavery Is Now Worse Than Ever

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, China, Commentaries, SlaveryLeave a comment

Many years ago, in 2013, I wrote a post titled “What’s Your Slavery Footprint” where I said:

How many leather shoes are in your closet? How many gadgets do you own? Do you use coffee? Do you have jewels? Silver or gold?

Today I should be adding:

Do you use an electric or hybrid vehicle? Do you use a battery storage device?

Today I was contacted by one of the people who found my 2013 post about slavery and she sent me a comprehensive article by Arnold Mutinda about modern slavery. The details presented are amazing and the facts put in front of us astounding. Here is the link:

What Is Modern Slavery: A Comprehensive Research

One of the gravest offenders is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the biggest contributor to the phenomenon is the infamous cobalt mining in the country. Congo produces over 70% of the world’s cobalt. China controls around 75% of the global cobalt production and around 90% of China’s cobalt comes from the DRC.

Congolese miners are often children, abducted by militia and forced to work in the mines, digging tunnels by hand without securing them using beams. Miners sometimes get buried alive. They often work 12-hour shifts with only one break, six days in a row.

In 2016 , the provincial governor of Kolwezi confirmed that children worked in the cobalt mines but that the government was “too poor” to address the issue. Of course, conditions like this are ripe for abuse by the industrialized nations where markets and profits count above everything else, and where human rights are viewed by the prevailing governments as secondary objectives at best. This counts for China, and unfortunately also the United States.

As a consumer I am pretty powerless. I am writing this post on a set of gadgets that use many microchips and batteries, which consume rare earth minerals, lithium and cobalt from the DRC. There is a hybrid car in my garage with a lithium-based battery. By doing this, I am abusing some child in the Congo. Make no mistake about it, I am NOT providing a livelihood or income to the child miner. I am using up the child until he or she can no longer work and becomes expendable.

Living the “the first world” and listening to “America First” soundbites all day long, it is easy to forget that we are building our lifestyles on the backs of the poor of the rest of the world.

Slaves are worse off than just the poor. They are nothing but tools. I urge you to read What is Modern Slavery and make up your own mind.

Also, there is a category selector in this blog where you can select “Slavery” and it shows you a plethora of posts I wrote over the years about slavery, including book reviews, movie reviews, article references and general opinion pieces.

Tariffs – And Our Dependence on Chinese Products

On By Norbert HauptIn China, Commentaries, EconomyLeave a comment

In the 1990, one of my colleagues, a software engineer, was adamant about boycotting Chinese products. At the time she said that the Chinese were using child and slave labor in their factories, and she considered it her duty to not buy Chinese products. I always respected her for that, and in those years I started looking at “Made in …” labels on products.

Much has changed over the last three decades since. I am currently working on a number of projects. For parts, equipment and tools, I go to Amazon, since I can’t find most of the stuff I need, at least in the sizes and configurations required, in local stores. Just in the last couple of weeks, I have bought garden hoses, pumps, AC to DC converters, angle brackets, shelves, shelf brackets, trash bags, a belt sanding machine and a few other odds and ends.

I am checking the labels, and every product I have bought from Amazon is made in China. Every single one of them. Whether that be electronics, hardware, household items, no matter what, it’s made in China. Our entire consumer economy seems to be based on manufacturing in China.

I realize that this is not a current or recent trend. Thirty years ago, before Amazon existed, one of the statistics I remember reading, was that 80% of all goods sold at Walmart were made in China. At the time, Walmart was the main supplier to the American middle class. This trend of outsourcing our manufacturing to China has been going on for decades and we haven’t done anything to stop it – probably the opposite is true.

I don’t think Trump’s tariffs will work. If you need a drill, and nobody in the United States builds a drill, and they all come from China, you’re going to have to buy that one, and pay the tariff. It does not create an incentive to build the drill here. And even if we turned this trend around now, it would take at least several more decades before we’d see tangible results, and we’d purchase products from Amazon that were made in the USA.

I admit that I am not offering any solution here, I am just making an observation of facts that we should all be aware of. We have created a problem for ourselves that simple slogans like Make America Great Again are not going to solve. It will take much more effort, require creativity, and many years of persistent policy action.

Pacifica – Let’s Create a New Nation – Take Two

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Geography, Political4 Comments

I ran across this Facebook post today. One would never think of remapping North America, but when the incoming President of the United States threatens Canada,  Greenland, Panama and what other countries he might come up with next, this kind of thing is inevitable.

Honestly, I would rather live in California and be part of Canada than to live in a pseudo-theocracy or oligarchy – whatever the right wing is now trying to drive our country to be. Nobody in this country would have thought this way a few years ago, but when the President, who is supposed to be a uniter of the people, drives people apart, this is almost inevitable.

Ironically, it reminds me of a post I wrote over four years ago, called: Pacifica – Let’s Create a New Nation.

My point then was tongue in cheek, but now I am not so sure. Since the statistics have changed since then, I thought I should refresh the numbers and re-publish a current post here.

In the age of Trump, where he continuously slams and attacks California, Oregon and Mexico, and where he is starting to pick fights with Canada, I think we should take a different approach.

I think we should form a new nation, called Pacifica. Some people have called the California secession the Calexit. We should invite Oregon and Washington to join us.

Then, for good measure, we should also invite Baja California and British Columbia to join us too. There is a good chance they might be interested. This would be the map of the new nation Pacifica:

We would have six states, named from north to south:

  • Columbia – we would drop the “British” part.
  • Washington – the current Washington State
  • Oregon – the current Oregon State
  • Jefferson – that would be what is now California north of the Bay Area
  • California – Bay Area to the Mexican border
  • Baja – current Baja California and Baja California Sur.

Our capital could remain Sacramento (in Jefferson State), but could also be Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington.

We would be the most diverse people in the world, with significant Asian and Latino populations.

To make the economic case, this is a chart of the current population and GDP of the component states:

Pacifica would be the 4th largest economy in the world with a $5.4 trillion economy, with a GDP per capita of $87,708. It would be one of the leading industrialized nations in the world.

Many of the leading tech companies, and the largest and most valuable companies in the world would be in Pacifica, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook) and Boeing. A few years ago I listed Tesla and SpaceX here, but they have seemingly moved their headquarters to Texas, even though much of the manufacturing and engineering is still done in California. Silicon Valley would be right in the heart of Pacifica.

Alaska and Hawaii would always be welcome to join Pacifica if they so chose.

We would have great forests in the north in Columbia, thousands of miles of pristine beachfront property in Baja to fuel a real estate boom on the peninsula never seen before (I sound like Trump here…) Tourists from all over the world would flock to Pacifica’s southern peninsula for vacations in the sun.

Given our massive economy, great weather, and enormous natural resources, we would have an unprecedented economic boom, and with a population of only about 62 million in our large country, we would welcome immigration.

Refugees coming into Pacifica through the deserts of the Southwest from Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and Mexico, would always be welcome, and we’d issue guest worker visas for them if they wanted to get jobs in Pacifica. We’d have a guest worker program that would provide a path to citizenship within five years of residency.

I am ready to start drafting the constitution!

 

Viewership of Liberal Stations Craters

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Political1 Comment

MSNBC Viewership Craters 38%, CNN 27%, While Fox News Audience Jumps 41% Post-Election

I know, because I am one of the people who stopped watching MSNBC after the election. There are two main reasons:

  1. Watching the “news” and the goings on with the government transition now is depressing. Rather than creating anger and frustration, I have decided that I have no direct impact or influence, so I’d rather be a bystander and watch only from a distance.
  2. I have come to the conclusion that I live in a news bubble. I am obviously not getting “fed” what’s really going on in the country. It’s time to change that. I am not going to turn to Fox News, I don’t need that either, but I am going to research and get my actual news from more reliable sources.

I assume there are millions of people like me out there, dealing with the same thing.

Mother Nature at Work

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Religion1 Comment

I just watched a safari video on Facebook. A buffalo mom just gave birth to a calf in the grass in the savannah. The slime from the afterbirth was still hanging from her rear. The calf was in the grass, trying to get up. A pack of lions attacked her from all sides. They were trying to carry away the calf but the mother fiercely defended it. As she attacked the lions with her horns, she repeatedly tripped over her half, which was struggling to get on its feet while being hit by the mother’s hooves and being bitten by lions, trying to pick it up. After a minute or so of fierce battle, the lions eventually got hold of the calf and started jumping on the back of the mother. Eventually five or six lions brought her down, one latched on to her throat and they all remained still, waiting for her to die. One of the lions dragged away the limp body of the newborn calf. This is when I could not watch anymore and I flipped away from the video.

All this, of course, was being witnessed by safari tourists in Jeeps from various angles.

Mother nature at work.

Some weeks ago I saw a safari photograph of a leopard carrying a dead monkey in its mouth, walking toward the camera. Obviously, it had just killed the monkey and was carrying it away, perhaps to feed its young. The gruesome part was this: On the belly of the dead mother monkey hung a baby monkey, very much alive, terror on its face, but hanging on.

Mother nature at work.

Sometimes when I am alone for lunch I will choose to just pick up a  simple meal from KFC – fried  chicken. As I eat the “breast and wing” I realize that someone or something had to die, just so I could have lunch. One life, one lunch.

Mother nature at work.

Then I came to thinking: Christians believe that God made the world. They call it intelligent design. If I were to design a world, and I had all the tools of the universe at my disposal, I think I’d design a world where something didn’t have to die for something else to eat. We call it the food chain. Many animals are designed to eat other animals. In the ocean, in the skies, on the savannahs, even outside my own driveway, when the coyotes catch a rabbit or when the owl nabs a gopher.

I think I’d come up with a better plan, where the beasts of the world would not have to eat each other. I’d design food that does not experience terror and does not have to run to survive. I’d design animals. And I’d design food. What we have in our world is not very intelligent design, and it’s definitely not compassionate design.

Rather, it’s mother nature at work.

Musings about the Eclipse on April 8, 2024

On By Norbert HauptIn Astronomy, CommentariesLeave a comment

When I reported my experience with the solar eclipse in August 2017 in this post, I made this statement at the end:

But I was a different person. I had seen an eclipse. It was too short. I wanted another one. How dare they be so rare!

The next eclipse in the U.S. will be on April 8, 2024, and I will be there. There is no way I will miss that. It will arch up from Texas to Maine, and Chautauqua, one of my favorite places in New York, will be right in the path. And I will be there.

Then, the next coast to coast eclipse will be in 2045. I will be 89 years old. I will be there too.

I have seen a total eclipse, and things are different now.

We planned the trip for the 2024 eclipse for several years. We were going to go to central Texas, since I believed we’d have the best chance of clear skies at that time of the year. We were going to make it a road trip, so we bought our trailer last year. One other couple joined us, and our little caravan left San Diego on April 4th. We spent the first night in Picacho Peak, Arizona, the second in Deming, New Mexico, the third in Pecos, Texas and we finally arrived in the very tiny hamlet of Millersview, Texas on April 7th, where we camped in a funky campground literally “in the middle of nowhere.”

The plan was to camp there and then drive down a couple of hours into the path of totality. Our goal was Lampasas, Texas. However, when we researched the weather the night before, it predicted clouds and rain on April 8th in large swaths of central Texas. We settled on the town of Llano, Texas as our best chance.

It was a two-hour drive to Llano, and the skies were mostly cloudy with occasional holes for the sun to peek through. We had several hours to wait. Llano is a very idyllic Texas town, and it was full of visitors. There is a river, and a park, and hundreds of people decided to view the event there. It reminded me very much of our experience seven years ago in Idaho Falls. A small town, many visitors, a park by the river, and an eclipse.

As the partial eclipse started, we saw the sun sometimes, but often it was shrouded by clouds. It was disheartening to imagine that so many people had come so far just to experience the darkness and not see the sun and moon themselves. But we got very lucky. About five minutes before the scheduled totality, the sky opened up and was clear for the next 15 minutes. Llano, with 4 minutes and 20 seconds of totality, had one of the longest duration totalities in the country. We saw the whole event in all its glory, and it took my breath away again.

I am not a photographer, and there are thousands of photos on the Internet by much better photographers, so I spare you my very bad shots. Here we are waiting for it to happen:

But here is the more important picture. Our grandsons saw the eclipse from their home in Denver, where it was obviously only partial. They were not with us, but in my heart they were: