Bring back Clotheslines.

Today's Tids Issue 4,025

For Freshness:

Even the Tids were of simpler times, that is before the editor decided to pontificate more than educate and help cachinnate. But pontification is hard if you don’t know your punctuation. Commas, and colons and apostrophes can get in the way of common sense with result of non-sense. But worse, is that pontification in itself assumes that someone is actually more aware of life than others. And I certainly don’t believe that. So, I’m truncating, pontificating.

Let’s see, they use sun and wind for saving energy, but they throw washed clothes into energy consuming dryers. There was a time when the wind and the sun freshened clothes without additives that say “As Fresh As Outside”. The only energy consumed in those days was from snapping clothespins and flapping jaws over the fence at the neighbor next door. And when you dressed to start the morning, or slipped beneath the sheets after a long day, you lived the energy of nature. 

I worry about kids today thinking they know everything, simply because everything is so readily available on the Internet. Our future maybe loaded with more difficult employees, patients, children and friends.

The Question:

Triple Header! 1. The play Peter Pan opened in London in 1904 with a descriptive subtitle. What was that subtitle? 2. What was the name of the ship that Darwin used to sail around the world? 3. In 1927 a stunning show about the old south with music by Jerome Kern and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein opened on Broadway. Name it.

The Headlines:

--Stocks Open Higher.

--Snow and Severe Cold Hits Midwest and Northeast; Frigid Temps Dip Into Sunny South..

--China Halts Oil Product Exports To North Korea.

--Many Americans Rushing Out To Prepay Property Taxes To Beat New Law; Town Financial Managers Shout Alleluia.

--Suspicious Fruit Cake Halts Seattle Ferry; Say What?

--Bitcoin Roller-Coaster Continues.

--Defectors From NK Show Signs Of Radiation Exposure And Anthrax.

--Israel Transportation Minister Thinking Of Naming Jerusalem Train Station After trump.

Last night’s Kennedy Center Honor’s show looked a lot like the Democrat National Convention. I expected Bill Clinton to lead the singing of “All night Long.” While Streep and Hillary chortled and clapped together.

The left likes their opinions on climate change to go viral on the many social media outlets. They like the apparent innocence of digital devices as opposed to the ugly industrial behemoths of the past. But we know from experience, that many talk so much and know so little. For starters let’s consider that spam email generates emissions of 0.3 grams of carbon dioxide per message.  If you multiply that by the approximately 85 trillion spam messages in a year, you are essentially creating carbon emissions equal to driving a car around the world 1.8 million times. A Google search is estimated to be from 0.3 to 7 grams. Those are just for starters. Think of the total picture -- from sending endless selfies to damming tweets from Hollywood gossip columnists -- and you may be looking at an ecological disaster. Yes, all in digital land is not pure. Ponder that massive server farms require operating power and even more to air condition the sites. For cost purposes, companies are moving these giant facilities to China and India, where there is an even greater reliance on fossil fuel for power. You can get the picture in just this little Tidlet why groups like Greenpeace may be turning their eyes away from Captain Ahab to Tim Fox. And, I haven’t even gotten into the toxic problems of manufacturing, massive material consumption and disposing of billions of throw-away digital marvels.

When cats get together for an Internet discussion, it’s called a Pawed-cast.

Lawyers are already making money off of disgruntled bitcoin investors. Most of the people touting this phenomenon don’t give straight answers to simple questions looking for some sort of substance. It appears that if big banks get really interested in Cryptocurrency, they could replace BitCoins with a brand of their own. Talk about a confusing, potentially unstable marketplace.

If you don’t have a streaming service, it’s tough for Tv addicts to get through this week of repeats.

Old giant companies like GE and Westinghouse created and sold appliances primarily so they could increase electrical power consumption t which would in turn require pawer companies to buy more generation and distribution equipment – where the real money was. Companies like Verizon and  Amazon facilitate the sale of digital devices to make it easier for consumers to buy services – where the real money is.

Everything is the same it just looks different.

The Answer:

Ready. 1. The original longer name of the play Peter Pan was “Peter Pan”: The Boy who wouldn’t grow up”. 2. Darwin’s ship is a favorite of Snoopy – HMS Beagle. 3. In 1927, a rather great year in American cultural history, Sow boat started its long successful run on Broadway. It got people thinking as well as dancing and singing.

I think I’ll walk by the sea, today. The frozen cold on the salty water creates images not of man, but of a wonderment we cannot see.