Impermanent

I've received some very nice comments about what I've done here in Knews Not News, and it has taught me the value of this kind of writing.  I wish I had the time to do it justice.  There certainly is a market for this.  But...

The options for continuing this blog are clear: rearrange my schedule to permit continuation, redesign on a different platform, more content, steady updating, guest posting, create a destination. All excellent suggestions and very appreciated.  But I unfortunately don't have that last critical element that is required for this blog:  hours 25 and 26 packed into a regular 24 hour day. 

I will be taking those suggestions, just not for this vehicle.  My other blog, Turning Springs, will utilize most of the suggestions I've received about this blog in the coming year.  And I'll continue to highlight some of the weirdness I encounter in my journey through life in a section of the Turning Springs updates called The Wind-Up.  So it's not all the way gone.

But, as Yogi Berra said,"It ain't over till it's over."  And Knews Not News is.  Thanks for reading.

Is This Working for You?

At the beginning of the year, one of the things I promised myself was to review Knews Not News to determine whether it was worth it to the readers to keep it going.

So do me a favor:  review some of the past posts and let me know if the snarkfest is working for you.  Bad or good, let me know in the comments for this post, but let me know soon.  I'll make the decision February 15th whether to adios this blog and save us all some time or keep pointing and scoffing.

Thanks!

We Knew We Weren't Alone

We here at Knews Not News were raised on certain rules in our formative years.  One of those rules was that honesty isn't just the best policy but the only policy in the majority of situations we would encounter in life.  If you're embarrassed or could be charged by a truthful account of your behavior, you're doing it wrong, whatever it is.  And it needs to be fixed.  ASAP.

Such a desire for decent behavior is a frequent motivator for many of our previous posts.  We know, much more money can be made acting like jerks, but it's our lance and we can point it where we want, thank you.  So we ride off again.  But on this issue we are not alone.

Al Lewis of the Wall Street Journal asks the question The Truth, Your Honor? in his column for November 13.  It's a question we have long demanded an answer to:  how do we stop any crime from happening over and over again if 1) there is no open and personally identified recognition of guilt and 2) the penalties/remedies provided are easily reached? 

It's a question we've often wondered while driving.  Someone who can afford an SUV roughly the size of a dump truck can afford a triple-digit speeding ticket much more easily than someone who makes considerably less money.  A setback like that can be met with a shrug instead of the questions "how am I going to make the rent?" or "what am I going to feed my children?"  It's an uneven burden, but we know the poor aren't going to get a pass from anything because they're poor.  No lobbyists, you know.  And we get that.  But the wrong-doer in traffic violations can at least be identified.

But not, as Mr. Lewis explains in the column linked above, if your crime is part of the 2008 ham-stringing of the United States economy. 

But they should be identified.  Someone, at some early point in this financial disaster, said, "Yes, let's do this" or "Okay, go ahead."  Someone did.  And it wasn't some communally designated flunky who can't even take their lunch without permission from a higher-up.  It was someone with a big office and a big paycheck and enough authority to set a plan in motion that earned millions of dollars for the company and wrecked the US economy and millions of lives in the process.   Someone took credit for this.  Someone got the big bonus for the increase in the bottom line.  And someone is protecting them, even while the US economy continues to founder.  We, including Mr. Lewis, we imagine, would like to know those names.  So we ask again, because no one in business or government will tell us.

Please. 

Are You Listening, Boat Anchor Manufacturers?

Check out this Des Moines Register article about how boat engines are being destroyed by using E15 gasoline in them (E15 is gasoline with 15% ethanol instead of the usual 10%).

So, let us get this straight...the government wants to offer a fuel that can't be put in small engines or any vehicle manufactured before 2001?  In order to placate the oil companies and the farmers?  Really?  How would this make sense to anyone but Congress (whose approval rating dropped to 9% last week because of stunts just like this)?

But, on the bright side, you could use your wrecked boat or car motor as an anchor.  Until the boat anchor industry wises up and starts chuckin' some cash around DC...

A Few Kind Words about Kindness

We tend to be a snarky bunch here at KNN.  We see a lot of bad news about a lot of if-not-bad-then-silly,-thoughtless,-or-avaricious people.  And it wears on us.  Frankly, all that grinding can cause sharp edges on anyone's psyche (and teeth).

Still, all too infrequently, we do find ourselves treated to our favorite part of human nature:  kindness.  A church in our region went out into the community on October 30th offering to do, well, whatever needed doing.  It sounded like it was too good to be true and, shrugging, we assumed it was.

We were completely and pleasantly wrong.  Those, like us, who availed themselves of the service found themselves treated to a crowd of people ranging in age from the very young to people of retirement age, doing whatever needed to be done, from lawn work to minor plumbing.  For us, it was days worth of work done in just a few hours.  They asked for no payment or any sort of recompense.  It was amazing.

But the thing that rendered us speechless was the response from young and old when we tried to thank them for all their hard work.  To a person, they thanked us for the opportunity to serve.  Every one.

As referred to above, we are a snarky bunch here, but we are not so far gone that kindness and extraordinary effort of that sort fails to effect us.  We dare not give the name of the church no matter how rightly they deserve their acknowledgement; kindness is the sort of thing that gets abused easily, and the people who practice it don't always count the costs they should, because it isn't in their nature to do so.

To be sure, though, there was one overwhelmed couple who so very appreciated what was done for us that it's hard to express.  So we close with this:  thank you, and through your generosity, we are reminded that the true benefit of kindness is not what was done for you, but that you will take up the practice of it elsewhere.  And we will.

What We Kept From the Last Three Months With No Posts

Good grief!  Will someone please grasp this year, as it is behaving like a two-year-old on a caffeine and sugar fueled tantrum, hold the blasted thing down, and staple it to the floor?  We much prefer our years to be gentler and quieter and we won't stand for this any more.  How can anyone hear us complain over all this ruckus?

So, some short posts so that we may clear our mental palates and physical notebooks:

Why didn't Wile E. Coyote just go buy a hot dog?

Many newspapers reported in July that the wealth gap was widening due to the recession.  Excuse me, Fourth Estate?  If ever there was an example of knews, this is it.

Justice without her blindfold is greed.

The IBM Selectric typewriter turned 50 in late July.  Who cares, you ask?  Why, we do, of course.  We miss the one we used to use.  There was something reassuringly mechanical about striking the keys, not like the anemic tap of a computer keyboard.  Although you can buy a keyboard with that sound to it, it's not the same, and we miss it.  Its example reminds us that it was a machine, designed to do a thing, and that was all it meant.  It was not a status symbol or a means of ignoring our fellow human beings or a success marker.  It was a tool that meant less than the work done with it and rightly so.

(And, while we're at it, we understand completely that the iPod changed the world of entertainment.  We also understand that it allows us to be served exclusively by our own desired music and video.  Did we really need a device that allows us to communicate less, and thereby know each other less?  Did we really need help with that?)

Being blind does not keep justice from also being vain.  (Evidently justice was on our minds a bit the past three months.) 

When prayer is the final realistic hope, society has failed.

Overheard at our day job:  when we run away from danger, we protect our internal organs.  Yes.  Quite.

Finally, read this article about Ford workers essentially becoming migrant workers.  Now, go get your copy of "The Grapes of Wrath" and re-read it. 

We'll be back on schedule soon.  Thanks for reading!

A Judge Judged

For those of you who've been following the Judge Mark Ciavarella case in Pennsylvania, there's been an entirely appropriate development.  Find it here.

He's the judge who was sentencing young men (sometimes without justifiable cause) to serve time at a local for-profit detention center in exchange for a kickback from the center's owners.  Though this won't make up for the suicides and wreckage made of these young mens' lives, it's more than the salutatory slap on the wrist KNN usually sees. 

Now, if someone would just take a similar stance on the 2008 Economic Collapse....