The Precious Penny

I frequently visit our local McDonalds to buy the senior coffee for my wife and myself. The total, including tax comes to $1.07.  The last few times I went there, I gave the girl a dollar and a dime and she gave me a nickel in change.  Maybe they ran out of pennies, or possibly the restaurant decided to give me a break.  I don’t know which is true, or if there is some other reason why I didn’t get the three pennies in change.

The poor little penny is in danger of becoming extinct, and yet I believe it is one of the most precious coins we have in our treasury.  There are a lot of people who think that it is time to retire the penny and make the nickel the smallest denomination coin.  That would be a huge mistake.

There is an expression, “See a penny, pick it up, and all day long you’ll have good luck.”  I know several people who will pick up a penny and consider it a good luck sign.  But most people—this was proven by the late Andy Rooney of 60 Minutes fame—will not stoop to pick up even several pennies.  Of course, the end of that little saying goes, “See a penny, let it lay, and you’ll have bad luck all day.”

I guess if you are superstitious and lazy, you could make a case for getting rid of those nasty pennies so that you wouldn’t be subject to the bad luck that goes with seeing and ignoring a fallen penny.

That doesn’t seem to be the reason most detractors give for deminting pennies.  The reasons usually given are that the penny takes up too much room in pockets or purses and it has no real value anymore.  What can you buy for a penny these days?

Okay, let’s look at what might change if there were no more of those little copper pennies in our metal currency.

First and foremost, all transactions for cash would have to be rounded off to the nearest 5 cents. My own opinion is that cash transactions would be rounded up instead of down, as no business owner would want to lose some of the price. 

Since there might be some resentment against the rounding up of totals, it might be necessary to make certain that when you get the bill for an item or a service you check to make cure it was rounded off to the nearest five cents before you get it.  It is easy to program calculators or cash registers to round off.

Then there is the question of taxes.  If your tax is 8%, and buy an item for $1.00, your total should be $1.08.  If your bill shows a rounded up amount of $1.10, who gets the extra 2 cents?  The business? The government? 

One of my pet peeves is the pricing of items to one penny, or one dollar below the next plateau--$19.99, or $2599.  Without the precious penny that would no longer be possible.  Even the idiotic pricing of gasoline with that weird 9/10 of a penny would cease, but that would be a good thing since it is a form of fraud that has been allowed for decades.   I don’t know how many people fall for those mind games when they consider a purchase, but I suspect that most of us do.

If you don’t believe me, try this: When you see the price of gasoline is $3.68 and 9/10ths on the big sign at the gas station, do you round it off to $3.68 or $3.69? If you chose $3.68, you are likely to round all prices down instead of up. $19.99 might easily be thought of as $19, not $20, and $2599 could become $2500 in your price calculation.

If the penny goes out of circulation, we will be paying more for everything, and that can add up over time to some serious money.

 Let’s never get rid of the penny. They’re precious!

Wakulla Springs State Park

Last week I related to you our trip to Fort Morgan at the mouth of Mobile Bay. This week I will introduce you to another site we visited on our Gulf Coast trip, one with lots of wildlife and a rich history.

We’ve probably all heard of the springs of Florida; Silver Springs, Tarpon Springs and the one in St. Augustine called The Fountain of Youth.  However, I had never heard of the Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park until very recently.  I found it on a map while preplanning our trip and I’m glad I did.

Located about 30 miles south of Tallahassee, Wakulla Springs is a little difficult to find, but it is worth the effort. The park features a very nice lodge, a freshwater swimming beach and cruises on glass-bottom boats along the river formed by the springs.

On the river cruise you are likely to see all manner of wildlife, including mullet fish which will jump up to five feet out of the water, alligators, manatees and fishing birds like the pelican, heron, cormorant, ibis and anhinga.  Even the bald eagle is a visitor to the park, plus some other exotic birds you might see on any given day.

Anhingas (called snake birds, due to their similarity to water snakes when they swim half submerged in the river) and cormorants share cypress debris to spot their prey

The manatees were the first I’ve ever seen in nature.  They are very shy, so it is difficult to get a picture of one.  They appear as a large tan shape several feet below the surface. The river has several of them and we saw 6-8 on our 45-minute cruise.

Aside from the wildlife, the park has a history too. Several of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films were shot there, as was the horror film, Creature From the Black Lagoon.  If you are old enough to recall Tarzan diving into the water from a projecting tree trunk, that trunk is still there, though it has shrunk over the decades since the films were made. Now it’s a perfect perch for the birds to spot their prey in the water.

A heron poses on Tarzan’s diving log while looking for his next meal

Starting back in 2008, a team of archeologists began excavating a dig along the river that had yielded some artifacts common to ancient man.  By the time they had finished the dig they had uncovered enough to state that the site had been occupied for the past 15,000 years since the last Ice Age. That makes it one of the oldest continuously occupied “villages” in the worl

Mullet fish of Wakulla Springs.  These two were about 30 feet down, so they weren’t jumping as they are prone to do. (note the clarity of the water)

If you are up for a very relaxing and interesting tour, go spend a few hours or a few days at Wakulla Springs.  It is a neat place to get away from it all and converse with nature..

A History Lesson

Here is a quick quiz that I would wager very few will pass with all correct answers. After you read this column you will know all the answers plus a few that might amaze you.

1. Who was famous for this quote? “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
2. During what battle was the quote spoken?
3. In what war was the battle fought?
4. What event precipitated the quote?
5. What were the “torpedoes” mentioned in the quote

My wife and I recently went on what was planned as a five-day trip to the Gulf Coast.  We had never been along the gulf coasts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

We checked the weather before we left, and it looked fairly promising for the entire trip. However, we had rain both the first and second days, and by the time we arrived in Mobile for our second night hotel stay, there was a threat of t-storms and possible tornado activity for the next two days.

Unfortunately, our five-day trip turned into a three-day abbreviated one. However, all was not lost, as there were two really interesting places we visited between raindrops, and frankly, once you’ve seen one gulf resort, you’ve seen them all.

I’m going to tell you about both sites, but I’ll do it in reverse order and over two columns.

One destination was Fort Morgan.  Located at the entrance to Mobile Bay, the fort was originally built of brick in 1834.  Most of the brick is still there, and I swear there must be at least a million of them, though a lot of the newer gun batteries were built of concrete instead.  You can explore the fort in under two hours on a self-guided tour, and it is really quite interesting.

However, the event regarding Fort Morgan that I want to tell you about happened on August 5, 1864 out in Mobile Bay near the end of our Civil War.  It is a little different than the version I always thought I knew. 

On the date above, the Union Naval forces were engaging Confederate forces at harbor entrance just off Fort Morgan.  The confederates had strung naval mines out into the bay, but in those days they weren’t called mines.  They were known as torpedoes—that is important to the tale. After all, there were no submarines or motorized underwater missiles called torpedoes back in our Civil War. They weren’t invented and used until almost 50 years later in World War I.

A Union Monitor ship, the U.S.S. Tecumseh was attacking a Confederate ironclad, the C.S.S. Tennessee just off the western edge of the fort.  It struck a torpedo and was sunk in less than two minutes with a loss of about 90 sailors and her captain, Tunis Craven.  The sudden loss of the ship threw the Union forces into confusion and shock, causing a momentary lull in the battle.

That was when the commanding officer of the fleet, Admiral David G. Farragut issued his famous command, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”  This battle cry turned the tide of battle and the Union forces defeated the Confederates and sailed into Mobile Bay.

The actual command wasn’t quite that brief, but it sounds better that way.  The real one was “Damn the torpedoes!” then, “Four bells. Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!” It just doesn’t have that same ring to it when all those terms and names are added, does it?

Well, now you know the rest of the story and the answers to those five questions above.

If you are ever in the vicinity of Fort Morgan, it is well worth your time and money to visit it.  Afterwards you can, like we did, take the Fort Morgan Ferry from just outside the fort entrance across the mouth of Mobile Bay to Dauphin Island to continue your drive up to Mobile. Or, if you’re coming from the west you can take the ten-mile ferry trip in the other direction to get to Fort Morgan.

An Interesting Digraph

One of the most interesting consonant blends, known as a digraph, is the one formed by the letters (gh). The reason it is so interesting is that it is one of the most versatile digraphs in the English language.

The digraph (gh) can be pronounced as (f), as in tough, trough or enough.

It becomes completely silent in the words light, sight or thought, but then, when we add that letter (t) at the end to form (ght), it makes this a trigraph.  And then, if you add the letter (h) to the word trough (see above) to form another digraph (th), at the other end of the word (gh) becomes what are called ‘empty letters’ or ‘silent letters” in the word through, although it technically converts the (aw) sound in thought to an (oo) sound.

When the (gh) digraph is at the front of a word it always takes the form of a hard (g), as in ghetto or ghastly.  In this instance (h) becomes a silent letter, but it serves the purpose to let you know that the (g) sound is the guttural one.

This digraph (gh) can also become a vowel pronounced as (o), as in Edinburgh.

Just when you think you’ve seen them all, here’s another one.  The (gh) in the word slough can be pronounced as either (ff) or not at all—the “empty letters” (oo) sound again. If you pronounce it (sloff), you’re referring to a coating or skin being cast off, but when you pronounce it, (sloo), you’re indicating a shallow and muddy inlet from the sea.

There are hundreds of words that use the (gh) digraph in one form or another, and in each case there is no rhyme or reason for the way it is pronounced or not pronounced.

Is it any wonder that English is called one of the hardest languages to learn?

A National Disgrace

I want to warn you up front that children should not read this column.  It has terms and descriptions that are adult in nature.  If you are squeamish about sexual material, then maybe you should quit here too. However, in my defense, this was broadcast on national radio stations without censorship.

If you don’t receive my Daily Dose of Humor messages, then I will include a link from one I sent out last week that might also apply to this column. If you did see it, you might still want to review it for another laugh.

I suspect that many of you either do not have the Neal Boortz Show on your local radio stations, or else you choose not to listen to the show.  Therefore, you most likely missed his rant on a Medicare “goody” that has cost the American taxpayer a quarter of a billion dollars so far.

What could this item be that has cost so much and has questionable benefit and virtually no curative value?  How come we have to foot the bill for something that is, at best, a frivolous device?  Can you guess what it is?

I’ll give you a clue: It can only be used by men and the effects are very short-lived.

Okay I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.  This gadget is called a “penis pump.” It has been on the approved Medicare list for ten years, and its use has nothing to do with urination.  That’s right, it is a sexual aid.

Medicare does not allow reimbursement for sexual enhancement drugs like Viagra or Levitra under the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, but for some unknown reason, the penis pump is allowed under Part B; this despite the fact that it has the exact same use.

In 2002, when the pump was first introduced—I suspect it was an offshoot of the oft-told tale of the Hoover experience of adventurous and obviously lonely males—the cost to Medicare was $11 million.  In 2011, the Medicare cost was in excess of $47 million.

I won’t include the online link, but you should know that these devices come in several versions and cost between $25 and $50 plus shipping.  I don’t know whether your local Walgreen or CVS stock them, and I don’t much care whether or not they do.  However, if Rite Aid had them, I think that would be kind of funny.  Anyway, I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask about them.

Just for fun, I used my calculator to divide $47 million by $25 and came up with a total possible number of units sold of 10 million in 2011 alone.  Now that’s a lot of needy men, and that is only the ones who don’t pay for those drugs that Medicare doesn’t allow.  If we can believe that even more males use those drugs than use the pumps, I estimate that possibly half or more of our American men are afflicted with erectile dysfunction, ED for short.

I won’t bother to editorialize about ED, though I do wonder why the ads always picture the couple sitting in separate bathtubs, don’t you?  But I do think that our Medicare system is severely broken and in need of reform.  I hope that someone in Washington has the courage to do something about it soon.

As to this deficiency in the male of our species, there are so many cute things that could be said, but I’ll spare you my humorous take on it.  I’ve already said too much but guys, if you keep it up you might yet save Medicare.

Fracking Forum

I’m sure you know what the word “fracking” means unless you’ve been sleeping like Rip Van Winkle for the past twenty or so years.  It is a fairly recent invented word that refers to the process of hydraulic fracturing of deep layers of rock to extract the oil and gas from those subterranean deposits.

I could try to explain what the process entails, but I encourage you instead to take a few minutes to watch a very good video presentation of fracking from Voyager Corporation, a company that performs this process.

Hardly a day goes by when something doesn’t come to my Inbox about the perils of fracking.  There is a lot of secrecy about the chemicals used along with the 95% water-and-sand base that is pumped down into the rock to form the cracks and allow gas and oil to flow back up the pipes.

Many unsubstantiated and unproved reports have been made about contamination of the aquifers and drinking water supplies caused by fracking.  I even watched an episode of the television program CSI, where a rancher’s well water was supposedly set afire at the spigot due to gas contamination.  Fracking was said to be the culprit. Several states have banned the process—New York is one—due to the perceived hazard.

I’m no expert on fracking and I won’t pretend to know for a certainty how dangerous the process is, so this column is more a forum for airing ideas about it.  So here goes…

I searched for the answer to the questions, “How deep is the average water well?” and, “What is the average depth of an aquifer?”  I found that most wells are 100-200 feet deep, while aquifers (permeable water-bearing sandstone) can be 500 to 1,000 feet below ground.

Since ground water contamination is the main source of opposition to fracking, I wanted to learn how deep hydraulic fracturing takes place.  I learned that most of it is done at the 5,000 to 10,000 foot level, a mile or more beneath the aquifers and up to two miles below the average drinking water wells.  In my opinion the case for contamination is pretty weak.  But then, I’m not an expert, so what do I know?

So next I wanted to learn how deep the vast network of gas, oil and ethanol pipelines are buried.  Natural gas and ethanol must be transported via pipelines so there has to be a huge infrastructure of these lines throughout the country.  Petroleum can be shipped or transported by tanker truck or rail tank cars, but it is much more economical to pipe it.

I discovered that those huge pipes are mostly within 20 feet of the surface, and most are only buried 3-5 feet below ground.  But wait, that is between the level where drinking water is found and the surface where people live and use it. Wouldn’t that provide much more risk than fracking?  After all, those pipes have been in place for decades, and they must be subject to corrosion and leaks.  There is no concrete barrier around them like there is in the fracking process either.

The latest controversy is over the Keystone XL pipeline that is supposed to bring oil from Canada to the refineries in the United States.  Even this one is being held up and has to be rerouted to avoid the Ogallala aquifer in Nebraska.  But then the Ogallala aquifer is huge, and it extends above and below Nebraska. And it has literally thousands of miles of pipeline running through it already. Check out this video from a Canadian television network about the proposed pipeline.

Before I leave this sensitive topic, I have to point out that the long awaited and oh, so controversial drilling in the ANWR region of Alaska would be 100 percent fracking, since that’s the only way to extract that gas and oil.  Not only is the region a tundra wasteland—those beautiful mountains and lakes that you see in the anti-drill propaganda are not even close to the drill sites—but there are no people living up there, and even the caribou don’t go that far north. If they ever do stray up there, the risk of contamination of the water supply is vastly overstated.  The fact is that all the water up there is frozen anyway.

I regret that I’ve probably disillusioned or angered some of you environmentalists out there, but I cannot support a ban on the extraction of our own natural gas and petroleum to the great advantage of people who seem to be our perpetual enemies. If you care to get in on the forum with your own ideas, feel free to log in and post away.

Roadside Emergency

I have published a column at least twice regarding what tools and equipment you should have in your vehicle for emergencies.  One emergency I specifically named is that of a vehicle plunging into deep water either through driving on a flooded highway or through an accident that sends the vehicle into a body of water.

Now I want to revert to that advice, because I have a real-life story about what happened to a family in Utah when that very event happened.  It has a happy ending, so you don’t have to decide whether to read on or not.

On the last day of 2011, a car did go off Highway 89 near Logan, Utah and landed upside down in an icy river. The driver was able to escape, but three children, two nine-year-old girls and a four-year-old boy were trapped inside the upside down car.

An off-duty police officer dove into the river and used his gun to shoot out one of the side windows.  Then he used his pocketknife to cut seat belts and rescue the children. Luckily, all four victims survived the accident.

The Ogden Accident brought to mind my column and also got me thinking about the circumstances that ensued in that accident; specifically how fortunate it was that that cop, armed with a gun and a knife, was one of the first to come upon the scene.

How very different the outcome would have been had there not been anyone armed with those particular tools (weapons) to rescue those kids!

With all the security procedures we are currently subject to at airports, and in some respects at all public locations, what are the chances that anyone will have the proper tools to perform the task that officer Chris Willden did?  I’d answer slim to none.

It just happened that last week I was with a group of men and we needed a knife to cut some plastic.  Not one of us had a pocketknife, and we wound up using a nail clipper to do the job.  A pocketknife used to be standard equipment in every guy’s pocket, but I don’t even know where my Swiss Army knife is anymore.  I took it out of my pocket years ago when I was taking a trip by air, and I never put it back in there.

If ever there was a reminder or a first call for you to purchase one of those emergency survival tools that looks like a pair of pliers, or a car tool that contains a belt cutter, flashlight, hammer and emergency beacon, this is it. You can purchase them online for less than $10.  I only provided one link, but there are several available, and if you have Auto parts stores in your neighborhood, they probably carry one too for less than $20. In fact, I saw one at my local Walmart yesterday morning.