Does it really mean anything?

I have not been posting lately for a particular reason. I've been asking myself if it really matters . Who changes their lives just because someone was voted into office (other than the newly elected officeholders and their staffs, of course). I bet even the Virginia Tech students who returned this year are still doing the same things as before the shootings.

I've started to always refer to September 11th as The Terrorist Attacks. I believe we have been refering to the tragedies that day just as another date on the calendar for so long that it has dulled the memory. My parent's generation always called a similar tragedy they suffered as The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor, not December 7th.

Anyway, getting back to my original point. Politicians, all elected officials, have very little power over our lives. And they have absolutely no real power, and that pisses them off. they naturally want to control us regardless of party affiliation. That is why our tax system is set up the way it is, that's the reason why our laws are written the way they are, that's the reason for government! They want to control you, simple as that. They can't . . . unless YOU let them.

Florida

Today I am in the beautiful state of Florida. Nope, no political spiel today. Just gotta wonder why I never get here in the Winter . . . Also, I just completed another class towards my Bachelor's degree. Yippee!!!

756. I bid 800.

San Francisco Giants right fielder Barry Bonds on occasion, about once every four at bats, hits a baseball. Tuesday night he hit his 756th home run of his career. This puts him in first place as the leading home run hitter in Major League Baseball. Congratulations, Barry, er, Mr. Bonds. You have my highest regard for your achievement, and, no, I do not believe it "deserves" an asterisk* You've truly earned this.

Some want to accuse you of being juiced, being loaded on steroids to make you a more powerful hitter. I ask those who state this, when was he tested positive? Ever since MLB started banning certain performance-enhancing chemicals, such as Andro and steroids, Bonds never tested positive. Not once. Accusations are one thing, proof is another. If he was using steroids before it was banned but stopped afterwards he must still be given the full honors the greatest baseball player deserves. One cannot be found guilty of a crime before it was illegal. In legal terms that is called ex post facto legislation, or in the case of MLB, regulation.

Steroids cannot make a person's hand-eye coordination better, and it certainly does not make the brain work faster in the split second it takes for a batter to make a swing/no swing decision. Barry Bonds is the oldest, most experienced person on the team. He has been educated well in the nuances of baseball by his father, the late, great Bobby Bonds, and by his godfather, Willy Mays. That education and his 21 years in the Big Show has made him the powerhouse of the game. Some want to look at his body size after Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa broke the single season home run record in 1998. Was it steroids? If so, were steroids specifically banned by MLB then? Could it be a better off-season training regimen that all veterans in every sport must do to keep some rookie from taking their job?

What we've been seeing over the last several years are baseball players being more fit with careers lasting much longer than when Barry entered the game. Pitchers are lasting twenty years or more when they typically had a career of ten years or less. Injuries that may have been career-ending a decade ago are now just putting players on the DL for a few weeks or months. Conditioning has improved on both the science side and on the players' side.

I hope Barry Bonds stays in the game past his 800th home run. I also hope that, when his name is placed on the ballot for the Hall of Fame, he is elected. Whatever allegations against Bonds should not keep him out unless it is proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he took steroids or other performance enhancing chemicals after they were banned.

I am not a fan of Barry Bonds nor of the Giants. I am a Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers fan (and any baseball fan knows about the rivalry between the Dodgers and the Giants, even when they were in New York), so do not call me a homer. However, if one wants to say that his record still deserves an *sterisk, then maybe it should be for the number of home runs he hit in Denver's Coors Field before the Rockies put in the humidor.

P.S.--As of this time Barry Bonds has a career 757 home runs, just 43 away from 800!

Minneapolis bridge disaster

Last Wednesday the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed for no obvious reason. The problems with disasters are the instant experts that make claims as to what happened. Much of this sounds like the black helicopter/alien abduction crowd. My position is let the investigation be completed in peace. Having said that I want to take a look at some of the assumptions already made.

The bridge was overloaded and could not hold the weight.
From what I understand the four-lane bridge was narrowed to one lane due to construction. Therefore, there were fewer vehicles and thus less weight on the span than when it is fully opened. As for the weight of the construction equipment their total weight was likely less than the total weight of the traffic when it is fully operational. The only question was the weight and concentration of the raw materials the construction company had on the bridge at that moment.

The vibrations of the traffic caused the bridge to collapse.
This one is easy. The traffic was at a standstill. Traffic induced vibrations were virtually nil. The bridge was also constructed so no part of it touched the river so the vibrations of the current could not be an effect.

Extreme temperature variations made the steel weak.
For forty years this bridge has gone through extreme temperature variations with no apparent damage. Sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures in the Winter to nearly one hundred degree heat in the Summer. Yes, all metals contract when cooled and expand when warmed. However, the southwest deserts have Summer temperature variations that encompass a 70-80 degree range daily! It is not uncommon in southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, west Texas to have mild frost on the bushes in the pre-dawn darkness then be 110+ within twelve hours. I used to live in the Mohave Desert in southern California and experienced it. My point is that the temperatures in the nineties last week were extreme only for humans and other sentient beings. Considering how hot one has to get steel to soften it, the temps probably were ineffective.

The ground shifted.
I give credence to this one. The anchor points were in the river's embankments. Considering that the ground there is naturally soft, else the river would not be able to cut a channel through it, the original builders had to anchor it in bedrock from the side. If that bedrock shifted cracked or weakened, the anchors could have moved.

In spite of my admonishment about letting the investigators do their work, I do have one possible theory that should be investigated. In recent years many states have switched from salt to magnesium-chloride for ice and snow mitigation. Mag-chloride has been shown to corrode wires on vehicles. If the state or city used mag-chloride on that highway it may have corroded the steel enough to weaken it.

In closing, I just want to say that I have not been able to post recently due to computer issues. They are finally resolved and I can blather on about the issues of the day. Yippee! :-)