Nickled and Dimed to Death

Last week I wrote about the precious penny, so this week I’m going to go bigger and write about nickels and dimes.  But I want to start where I left off with some of my reminiscences about how things used to be when prices went up.

There was a time when we got angry about the jump in food and energy prices, say when gasoline went up two cents a gallon, or a pound of ground beef went from $1.98 up to $2.01. 

Well, those days are now long gone.  Today we see the prices of most commodities going up five to ten percent almost every time we go shopping.  The days of penny increases are gone.  Of course, the title of this column, “Nickeled and Dimed to Death,” is a metaphor for that cost creep phenomenon.

I love licorice, and we buy black Twizzlers about once every two weeks.  When we started buying them at Wal-Mart about three years ago, they cost $1.50.  Then they jumped up to $1.68, and now they’re priced at $1.88 for the same package. We pay it, but we are not happy about it.

There is another change that we see only if we really closely examine the products that we buy.  This one is even worse!  While the prices are going up, the quantity is going down.  Here are some of the examples.

Coffee, which used to come in one-pound bags or cans has gone to 13.5 ounces and increased in price at the same time.  Sugar used to come in five- or ten-pound bags, but now the smaller bags are reduced to four-pounds and they are priced at about one-half the cost for the ten-pound bag

Produce is also subject to wild price swings, mostly upward.  Some of the fruits and veggies are priced by the unit instead of by weight.  If a cucumber is priced at $1.00 then all of them should be approximately the same size. But no, the size varies widely.

On our recent trip to the produce department, Iceberg lettuce was priced at $1.50 per head, while cabbage was priced at $.64 per pound.  I weighed two different sized heads of lettuce and the difference was over 4 ounces while the price was exactly the same for either head. The cabbage heads also varied in weight, but the difference was accounted for in the price per pound.

I wrote a column back in May of 2006 about gouging at the pump, and I was critical of people for whining about the price of gasoline.  We had just completed a 1,600-mile trip and paid an average of $2.82 for a gallon of gas.  I also stated that the price was pretty close to the cost in October of 2003 - $2.68 per gallon.

I certainly cannot boast of a static price between then and now.  I’d love to see gas at $3.00 again, but I doubt that I will.

However, the price of gasoline is only a minor issue, because it affects personal driving, mostly for pleasure.  The real fly in the ointment is diesel, the fuel that powers 95 percent of our commercial vehicles.  It is priced even higher than gasoline, generally 10-15% higher per gallon.  That fuel is what really drives the prices up, because most of our retail products and food are transported by diesel-powered eighteen-wheelers.

 What really rankles is that all of this is taking place while we are told that there is little or no inflation.  How can that be true when our costs keep going up every week?

All of this gradual creep—and we are seeing it mostly in the price of gasoline—is part of a policy called incrementalism.  It has been used in politics just about forever, and it is a very effective means of gradually implementing changes that would be unthinkable if done overnight.

So, who is responsible for the incrementalism we are experiencing?  Some will say it is “those greedy Wall Street speculators.”  Others will counter that it is being caused by “big oil” since prices are somewhat driven by transportation cost of the products we buy.

Still others blame politicians who want to drive the cost of energy—especially fossil fuel energy—up to make alternative energy sources more attractive. To remain neutral I leave it to you to figure out who those politicians are.

Whoever is to blame—and I tend to place the blame with all three—there is good reason to think carefully and listen to all the political propaganda prior to the November election.  It is my studied opinion that prices will continue to rise for all commodities until we resolve our energy issues, and the current alternative energy sources, solar, wind and battery/electric are not the answer.

Regardless of what the present spin on energy is, the truth is that we have far more fossil fuel (oil and natural gas) than we are being told, and it is plenty to keep us at full power for decades if not centuries. I’ve seen credible estimates that put our domestic petroleum reserves at a 250-year supply at today’s usage.

One of the best quick fixes that could be started immediately is conversion of the big trucks from diesel to gas.  No, not gasoline, but natural gas.  We have an abundance of it, and I understand that engine conversion is not as difficult or as costly as you would think. Some trucking companies have already begun to convert due to the high cost of diesel. 

One thing is for sure… Nothing will change very soon, but the current mantra, “We can’t drill our way out” is certainly no answer.  That was also said 30 years ago, and where would we be if we had at least started to drill more way back then?

Something must be done, and soon.

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.