Really Good Quotes

Here’s Grammie’s article from this time last year.

Greetings Quotaholics:

As a writer for RGQ one sometimes has a hard time settling on a source article for ones assignment. This happens every so often. Sometimes it’s due to a genuine dearth of suitable material on which to base ones writing. Sometimes there is a veritable plethora of material from which to choose and the problem is making up ones mind. Sometimes you find a subject which fires your imagination and you’re sure will generate a multitude of responses and there results nary a nibble. Sometimes you write about something you are not so sure many will care about and are shocked by the responses. Then there is today.

I’ve been having a FB discussion with a dear friend in Arkansas over what is pretty much a local issue and which I wasn’t sure would appeal to most RGQers. However my opinions have become quite provincial in my dotage and I am not entirely unbiased so maybe you all can help settle this debate. This is a real friend from meat-space, not just a FB friend. She lives in an Arkansas county that is “dry.” That is, they aren’t allowed to sell liquor, beer or wine there. As a resident of that county that likes to drink, she is forced to travel to the beer woods, an anonymous little liquor store just outside the county line for her alcoholic needs. Not calling her an alcoholic, btw, but she is fond of her box o’ wine…and tequila…and rum…but I digress.

There has been a concerted effort over many years, and especially recently, to overturn in some (any) way, shape or form the county wide booze ban. Numerous attempts to open bars as well as attempts by various restaurants and stores to be able to sell beer and wine have been killed before they could see the light of day.

However, recently the ptb better known as the ABC board (Alcohol Beverage Control) have decided to grant a permit to sell beer and wine at a members only organization called the Anglers Club. This permit is set to take effect after the Memorial Day holiday. Sounds like a club where fishermen could go to tell tall tales about the ones that got away, perhaps on the same par as the 19th Hole at a golf course. I wonder how exclusive the club would be? Would it just be open to good ol’ boys and their close friends, or would anyone willing to fork over $5- to $10- at the door for a membership card be admitted, like they do in Utah. Any Utahns out there? Bring me up to date here.

My friend, meanwhile, is trying to figure out if she is eligible to join the club and is all for loosening the liquor laws. Like many others in her county, she feels that local businesses are being hurt by the prohibition. Summer festivals in the county seat are suffering low turn out and lack of taxable revenue because of it. Plus, she feels that the citizens of the county are looking like backwards country bumpkins in the eyes of fellow Arkansawnsans…Arkansians…Arkies…Arkansans? Yet this is the same person that, when she moved there several years ago, couldn’t quit singing the praises of the friendly neighborhood Mayberry RFD qualities of the place in which she had found to live. She was delighted to find bluegrass musicians and musical festivals abounding in the summertime. There are people picking and grinning in the town square and on many street corners come a mellow summer evening, in addition to the scheduled concerts. Yet, she is horrified when talk around town turns to developing this sleepy little town into another Branson, Missouri which I feel is sure to follow if booze is legalized.

Then there is the other side of the debate which feels, and perhaps rightly so, that any liberalization of the ordinances against liquor consumption would cause all hell to break loose. By all hell, I do mean Hell, in the biblical sense. This part of Arkansas is firmly in the Bible Belt, and if you’ve never been there then it’s hard to explain. This teensy weensy quaint little town is the county seat with a population of about 2700 people. That is pretty near the population of the whole county. It’s pretty amazing on the drive into town, from her place in the Ozarks, you see that there is a church about every three hundred feet or so it seems. Come Sundays, take the same drive into town and these churches are jam-packed and you wonder where do all these people come from? The town doesn’t seem big enough to hold all of them. There is also a large Mennonite population which for the most part remains under the radar. It is this entire God-fearing part of the population that powers the anti-booze drive.

Now as a person who used to drink but does not now do so, I have been trying to point out to my friend that the quality of life that she so enjoys will most likely suffer immensely if the liquor bomb goes off. Statistics show that crime rates rise exponentially where liquor abounds. Taxes would most surely rise, if only to support the increased need for police officers to deal with unruly drunks and their collateral damage. My friend already complains about the increased traffic and lack of parking when the summer festival season is open. The quality of life she now finds so enjoyable in this little corner of the 1950’s is sure to change and, I fear, not for the best. But like I said, I used to drink but do not now do so. I may be a little biased on this issue. I don’t understand persons dependence on an artificial substance to have a good time.

I do understand her wish for some progress on this point, and I can even sympathize with her to a certain extent. It would be nice if the courts were open more than the once a month it takes for the circuit judge to make his rounds. A low cost health clinic could conceivably be funded, if only partly, by liquor taxes. Yet the trip back in time that one takes when one visits this sleepy hollow could cease to be possible.

What about you, dear readers? Am I just being an uptight former drinker? Do you think loosening the liquor laws could benefit this community or hurt it? Any of you ever have any experience with living in “dry” towns or counties? Is this really an issue of booze vs. no booze, or is it all about a persons freedom of choice?

GrammieSammie

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.
~Harold Wilson~

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
~Arnold Bennett~

I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.
~George Carlin~

Comment On This Article

Isn’t it worth $1 a month to you to keep RGQ going?  Please click the link and direct your contribution to keep RGQ going.

The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do for themselves.  - Abraham Lincoln

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.  - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Undivided Attention
[Thanks dEE]

A businessman who needed millions of dollars to clinch an important deal went to church to pray for the money. By chance he knelt next to a man who was praying for $100 to pay an urgent debt. The businessman took out his wallet and pressed $100 into the other man’s hand. Overjoyed, the man got up and left the church.The businessman then closed his eyes and prayed, “And now, Lord, that I have your undivided attention …. “

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

There are two kinds of worries - those you can do something about and those you can’t. Don’t spend any time on the latter. – all from  Duke Ellington, American composer, pianist, and bandleader who died on this day in 1974

Speak right up!

How Flies Fly

Sometimes, to get a quick sunbath, I just lay a pad down on the gravel outside my back door. After some time, my neck will complain about the contortions to read, and I’ll give up and just stare at the gravel under my nose. It is very nice, as gravel goes, with great variety from many places the glacier had been. Quite a few lumps of rock even sparkle. Then there are the little plants trying to get going, so I pick at those, disturbing the forming soil. This reveals a new world of ants, beetles, millipedes, and so on. With the close-up view, I notice that there are some insects that completely dwarf others, like house cats to horses. There are bugs that wouldn’t make a mouthful for a housefly still running around with some notions about habitat, food, mating, and so on in their teensy-weensy heads. I’m assured that even the tiniest of these, who might dine well on a single algae cell, are bedeviled by microbes, and they by viruses. The mind boggles.

Fortunately, there’s a very passionate fellow who has been trying to understand how flies fly. For many years, engineers were famously unable to explain how bees could lift so much with such small wings, but the problem extended all across the insect world. At that scale, air is considerably different to deal with, but it was eventually discovered that those simple little wings were being flapped very precisely, to take advantage of tiny little vortexes forming around them. They can also react to threats far faster than even Bruce Lee. It does not seem too strange that a tiny computer might be fast, but how can it be so smart?

When I was programming a primitive computer, I made a mistake one day, and found that the display was alternately showing two different bits of data, without any buttons being pushed. This was actually a fine feature, not a bug, and it had come about without the usual several lines of code I’d expect to write. It was even something that I never would have thought of trying, let alone perfecting so elegantly. It seems that insect flight has had many such happy moments in the development history. Most insects have four wings, but on the housefly, the after pair have been reduced to odd little stumps. Looking like unfortunate ballast, they actually work much like a flywheel to enable wild evasive action, and also react directly on the few “smart” muscles that aim the true wings.

Perhaps the simplest “brain” is the mere dozen neurons that run the chewing muscles on a crab. They manage to produce quite a few different motions, just by being upset by one control input or another. The same nerve cells can be re-programmed on the fly (no pun intended) for several different tasks, just as a computer can play music in it’s spare time while flashing two adverts, keeping track of the mouse, and waiting for you to hit another key. Like old code that has been worked over by many developers, none of whom left notes, the system is incredibly byzantine, but extremely effective. Someone once programmed a computer to design a radio antenna, which is somewhat of a black art, and what it drew was totally bizarre, but remarkably effective. Perhaps it had never heard of wires and tubes as standard design elements. In organic life, some features are probably counterproductive, but there’s no way to change them now. At one time, it made sense for the nerve that goes to the mammalian larynx to branch off from the one that went to the heart. Then, the heart wound up on the far side of the larynx by quite a bit, but the nerve still makes that detour, even in Giraffes. So, when a geek tells you that he is speaking from his heart, he really means it.

One fellow went around asking various expert entymologists about the best way to swat a fly. Most of them dismissed him, often saying it was a silly question, as if they had never been chastised by Feynman or any of the other curious stars of science. Eventually, he found one who thought it was a trivial question. You just use both hands, approaching the fly from two directions. Its brain generates two conflicting signals, and it just sits there until you are in range to move faster than it can react. That’s when you can understand the program used. “If one eye is seeing something getting bigger, go the other way, fast” has worked for millions of years, but a two-eye signal crashes the system. Moths usually navigate by keeping a constant bearing to the moon, so when a light bulb is brighter, they lock on to it and make tight circles. Similarly, my friend has a Cowbird gazing at it’s reflection in his window for hours every day, occasionally attacking his rival. Kittens and puppies can also be mighty upset by a mirror.

One of the branches of investigation into Artificial Intelligence has been in self-replicating patterns in computers. The game of “Life” is played on a grid, according to very simple rules, such as “turn on if 3 neighbors are on.” One of the early triumphs was the “glider gun-” a pattern that repeatedly emits other bits that drift away from it. Most patterns were boring, but a few generated amazingly complex behavior from almost nothing, like tiny organic life, generating patterns with a beauty all their own. How about your life? Have you discovered a simple rule behind what had seemed a big mystery?

Comment on this article

http://www.arcamax.com/currentnews/newsheadlines/s-1326255

Now here’s something to consider. Heroine is more popular in Florida than ever because pills are getting so hard to find. It seems like people who want to get high are going to do it, no matter what the gov’ment says. Our prisons are filled with people who either took or sold drugs. Our mental institutions are filled with people who should. (I just made that up).

If you read about some of the horrific crimes that have been committed under the influence of pharmaceudicals, you might take a dim view of drugs. I take a dim view myself, but not in the self righteous “you shouldn’t do it” way. My reactions are more pity for the addict, his family, and anyone else who is effected by his elicit activity.

Making drugs illegal hasn’t worked any better than that time in our history when we tried to prohibit the use of alcohol. People didn’t stop drinking. In fact, criminals had a hay day flouting the law by importing liquor from Canada, and making their own concoctions, dangerous or not.

I am not saying anyone anywhere should be allowed to sell drugs. I have seen too many commercials where the side effects take longer to describe then the benefits do to think we should all do our own prescribing. One of my clients died recently from a drug overdose, and there was nothing to indicate that he was trying to commit suicide.

What we need to do is eliminate the penalties for possession. If you have a drug for your own use, it isn’t likely that its illegality would deter you. It isn’t likely that a jail term will teach you anything, either. However, if you could be thrown in the hooscow for years for selling drugs without a license, it might take some of the fun out of dealing. resources we use confining users who don’t deal could be redirected to capturing those who do harm by providing.

As usual when I get going on this rant, I don’t claim to have all, or even the best answer. However, enough lives are ruined by drugs, and making possession illegal has done so little to curb their use that I can’t help but think there is a more effective way to address the problem. I do know for a fact that the best first step is to start the conversation. I hope those of you who have ideas will weigh in.

Comment On This Article

Odds and Ends - More Fun Facts…
According to market research firm NPD Fashionworld, fifty percent of all lingerie purchases are returned to the store. On EBay, there are an average of $680 worth of transactions each second. The Eiffel Tower shrinks 6 inches in winter. The first FAX machine was patented in 1843, 33 years before Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone. 72% of Americans sign their pets’ names on greeting cards they send out. In an effort to encourage the use of nuclear energy, the United States lent highly enriched uranium to countries all over the world between 1950 and 1988. Enough weapons-grade material to make 1,000 nuclear bombs has still not been returned by such countries as Pakistan, Iran, Israel and South Africa. Homing pigeons used roads where possible to help find their way home. In fact, some pigeons followed roads so closely that they actually flew around traffic circles before choosing the exit that led them home.

Limericks -
Thanks for the limericks - let’s try this line -

Next Line - I once met a gal named Marlene…

Hints:  Here’s a great new rhyming/composition tool.  http://www.writerhymes.com/
There’s also a great rhyming dictionary at http://www.rhymezone.com/
Limerick rules.  http://freespace.virgin.net/merrick.sheldon/limerickrules.htm 

Submit Opening Line
Submit Limerick

Questions? Comments? Want to contribute a joke or a quote or an image? Feel free to e-mail at reallygoodquotes@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you! We’ll even publish your comments, if they make any sense!

If you’d like to receive RGQ by email, please send a blank e-mail to reallygoodquotes-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

We can’t imagine why you’d want to, but if you choose to unsubscribe, please send a blank e-mail to reallygoodquotes-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. Should you choose to unsubscribe, please e-mail us and tell us why. We listen to what people say, even if they’re leaving us.