Duck Pawn, construction by John Bonanno

"Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses, for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea."—Isaac Newton

"Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements (and that is what gives the false suggestion of his being an experimental natural philosopher), but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation in Babylonia. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty - just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibniz. By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.

He did read the riddle of the heavens. And he believed that by the same powers of his introspective imagination he would read the riddle of the Godhead, the riddle of past and future events divinely fore-ordained, the riddle of the elements and their constitution from an original undifferentiated first matter, the riddle of health and of immortality. All would be revealed to him if only he could persevere to the end, uninterrupted, by himself, no one coming into the room, reading, copying, testing-all by himself, no interruption for God's sake, no disclosure, no discordant breakings in or criticism, with fear and shrinking as he assailed these half-ordained, half-forbidden things, creeping back into the bosom of the Godhead as into his mother's womb. 'Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone', not as Charles Lamb 'a fellow who believed nothing unless it was as clear as the three sides of a triangle'."- John Maynard Keynes, Posthumous Lecture "Newton The Man" delivered in 1946 to celebrate the war delayed tercentenary of Isaac Newton's 1643 birth

A Haiku by Yosa Buson, 1716-1783

Sound of a saw, poor people, winter midnight.

Happy Elvisday!

Above: Gladys, Elvis (with distinctive lip positioning already in place), and Vernon 1937

It is January 8, the birthday of the King of Rock and Roll and yours truly, who is also an advocate of making this day a national, yea, a world holiday.

"Elvis was a major hero of mine. I was actually stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something"-David Bowie

TCB: Things to do on this day....


Contemplate the life and work of Elvis Aaron Presley.
Listen to his music.
Sing along with the music.
Shake your hips.
Make girls scream because of your sexual magnetism.
Watch Blue Hawaii, or any other Elvis movie.

Blue Hawaii, the most esoteric of the Elvis films

Talk like Elvis.
Read my blog.

"Only thing worse than watching a bad movie is being in one"-Elvis Presley

"The first time that I appeared on stage, it scared me to death. I really didn’t know what all the yelling was about. I didn’t realize that my body was moving. It’s a natural thing to me. So to the manager backstage I said ‘What’d I do? What’d I do?’ And he said "Whatever it is, go back and do it again’." -Elvis Presley, 1972

"His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling aphrodisiac...It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people."-Frank Sinatra on Elvis ca 1950's

Enlightened Religion Around The World

"Why are the Christians claiming Allah?" asks businessman Rahim Ismail, 47, his face contorted in rage and disbelief. He shakes his head and raises his voice while waiting for a taxi along Jalan Tun Razak, a main thoroughfare in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital. "Everybody in the world knows Allah is the Muslim God and belong to Muslims. I cannot understand why the Christians want to claim Allah as their god," Rahim says as passers-by, mostly Muslims, gather around and nod in agreement.
The reason for their anger is a recent judgment by Malaysia's High Court that the word 'Allah' is not exclusive to Muslims. Judge Lau Bee Lan ruled that others, including Catholics who had been prohibited by the Home Ministry from using the word in their publications since 2007, can now use the term. She also rescinded the prohibition order freeing the Malay language-edition of the Catholic monthly The Herald to use Allah to denote the Christian god. After widespread protests, however, the judge granted a stay order on Jan. 7. The same day the government appealed to the higher Court of Appeal to overturn the ruling. The anger seemingly turned violent late Thursday night after masked men on motorcycles firebombed three churches in the city, gutting the ground floor of the Metro Tabernacle Church located in a commercial building in the Desa Melawati suburb of the capital.- The REST at Time.com January 8, 2010

I am amazed at the silly actions of all involved.
Why are Muslims upset at Christians using an old term for god that predates Muhammed?
Maybe the Christians cynically think they can suck in a few Muslims into their churches this way.
Islam is the dominant religion of Indonesia.
As for the Muslims, they only make me shake my head.
Do they really think they worship a different god?
Do they think the Christians' god (granted it is a complicated triune god) is apart from theirs? Why aren't they flattered that the Christians are coming around?
I continue to believe that it might be better for all involved if we adopted a social etiquette of keeping religion to ourselves, as difficult as that may be.
Didn't Jesus pronounce a much violated injunction against flaunting prayier in public? (Matthew 6:5-6:6)
Why not treat religious activities like masturbation?
Most everyone does it.
Most keep their activities in this area to themselves.
Whenever I get the urge to burn down a place of worship,
I just listen to Elvis and I'm sure to lose interest.

This And That
The wildly unsafe USPS LLV
...with a Grumman aluminum body and multiple blind spots.
If you value your life....Do not drive faster than 35!
Photograph from Wikipedia

Mailman Talk
The heater fan in my LLV ("Long Life Vehicle" or, the typical postal truck) stopped working consistently three or four weeks ago. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn't. I reported the situation one morning to our VMF (Vehicle Maintenance Facility) on a USPS vehicle repair tag 4570 since it is very uncomfortable driving around all day with the window open delivering mail in the Maine winter without a heater.
After "casing" up my route that day I checked to see if my truck had been fixed and found the repair tag with my keys in the anointed holding place. The tag was endorsed "OK". I loaded my truck and drove off to deliver the route. After a few minutes the heater fan stopped working again. Evidently the mechanic had checked the fan and decided that since it worked when he checked it there was no problem. Maybe he didn't understand the word 'intermittent' which I had written on the 4570 to describe the situation.
I soon found that by wiggling the fan switch several hundred times the fan might consent to start again. This went on for the rest of the day. After long thought I determined that I would describe the fan as "sometimes works" instead of "works intermittently" on my next vehicle repair tag 4570.
It happened to be Friday and I was off for the weekend. I was in a hurry to get out of work and forgot to write up the vehicle for repair again. (I am one of those lucky letter carriers with a business route with a scheduled day off on Saturday. I have lots of seniority.)
I blithely returned to work Monday and continued to forget that I had a sketchy heater fan in my truck. I worked that day without much heat. That night I filled out my second tag 4570 and contemplated filling out a Postal Form 1767 "Report of Hazard, Unsafe Condition or Practice" which releases the Demons Of Hell (extra work) on your supervisor. I decided to wait and see if they could fix the fan. Of course that morning the fan worked for a few minutes and stopped. I returned to the office and told my supervisor I needed a different truck until my truck was fixed and babbled about filling out the dreaded PS Form 1767. My supervisor (not a bad guy by the way) told me to drive my truck across the street to the VMF and ask them to repair it, which is what I did.
The mechanic who looked at my truck that morning wrote on the repair tag that he couldn't isolate the problem since the heater sometimes worked. Now let me say that the mechanics at the VMF are generally good guys who try their best. Having said that (Don't you love Curb Your Enthusiasm?), here is the solution I was presented to resolve the fact that I had heat 15% of the day (a high estimate). The facility supervisor looked at the fan and noticed that by wiggling the wires into the fan housing it would activate the recalcitrant fan. He said just do that. He also said that when it just refuses to work at all no matter what just drive back on in and they would give me tip top service.
OK, I thought, I'm game. I'll try that.
And you know what? It worked pretty well for a couple of weeks. I only had to jiggle the wires two or three times a day to make the fan work. I didn't think too much about electrical shock hazard. How much juice does the heater fan take anyway?
Last week the wire jiggling routine stopped impressing the fan. I went into a bit of a rage and struck the fan housing with a handy dandy blunt object which I shall not name, which is found in the possession of every letter carrier. The fan worked magnificently all the rest of the day. Now I find a maintenance routine of two whacks a day keeps the thing in line, and resolves a little anger problem I sometimes experience. I thought I should communicate this idiosyncrasy to anyone who uses my truck when I am not working so I made a little sign and put it on the dashboard:
"The heater fan doesn't always work. The VMF said that since the problem is intermittant they can't fix it. I have found that if you beat the fan housing with a blunt instrument, it will work for a while. If it doesn't work, go back to the VMF for repairs."

P.S.
written January 20, 2010
Great Success!
Finally, last week, after making a royal pain in the ass of myself, they replaced the heater fan.
The "smash the fan housing with a blunt instrument" trick ceased to work very well anymore. Maybe smashing the fan housing isn't a good solution to the "fan doesn't work" problem. Maybe smashing the fan housing broke the damn thing enough so that they finally had to fix it. I don't care. Not my problem any more. Oh, one more thing, that handy dandy blunt instrument that every letter carrier has to carry around is one of the most durable pains in the ass ever designed.

Quote of the Day
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." Dr. Samuel Johnson, from Boswell's Life of Johnson