A Mockery of Good Design
Sam Aurelius Milam III
I have a friend who recently paid the local Ford dealer more than $600 to replace the fuel pump in his car.  It took the people at the dealer more than an hour, and the use of a computer, just to diagnose the problem.  Things used to be very different.
When I was young, you didn't need a computer to decide that you needed a new fuel pump.  If the engine faltered under a condition of high fuel demand, then you replaced the fuel filter.  That took about 10 minutes and cost a couple of dollars.  The only tools needed were a nut driver to remove the hose clamps.  If your luck was really bad and the hoses were secured with the phoney kind of hose clamps, then you'd have to buy one of those fancy pairs of pliers to remove the phoney clamps.  If that didn't fix the problem, then you replaced the fuel pump.  That required a ratchet, a socket, maybe an extension, and the same nut driver that you used to replace the fuel filter.  The new fuel pump cost about $15.  The whole job took 40 minutes.
My friend had to pay $600 for a job that should have cost less then $50, even at today's prices, because the nitwits who designed his car were nincompoops.  The car has a level of complexity akin to that of the Space Shuttle.  Everything on the car is controlled by a computer or by some sort of interlock.  You can't even take the car out of gear and push it out of a garage unless it has the key in the ignition and, even then, it has to be a special key.  The spare key that they'll make for you down at the hardware store won't work.  The key has to have a special little module attached to it or the ignition switch won't recognize it, and nothing works.
The car is absurdly complex.  I suppose that I shouldn't advocate that the designers be punished merely for making a mockery of car design but it sure would be satisfying to at least see them forced to pay the repair costs of all the crappy cars that they've designed.  As for the people who enable the sale of such automotive rubbish by buying it, they're already being punished every time they take their cars to be repaired.  I wouldn't have such a car as a gift.

A White Man's Notes
Sam Aurelius Milam III
Whiners — If a woman doesn't want to be called a stunt man, a chairman, and so forth, then she shouldn't apply for the job.
One Woman Two Votes — If unwelcome sexual advances by men are an abuse of women and if unwelcome intrusions by women into male-only situations are a prerogative of women, then we've learned an important lesson about so-called gender equality.  We've learned that there isn't any such thing.

Frontiersman  1510 North 22nd Drive Show Low, Arizona  85901          The U.S. government has consumed far more of our resources on the so-called war on terrorism, probably sacrificed far more of our lives, and certainly destroyed far more of our liberty than would have been the case if it had, instead, adopted a strat- egy of simply cleaning up after terrorist attacks.

Buck Hunter Shoots Off His Mouth
Dear Buck
Which do you prefer, the flute, the piccolo, or the recorder?

You know you're in California when ....
Original Source Unknown.  Forwarded by David, of Idaho Falls, Idaho.

•		A man gets on the bus in full leather regalia and crotchless chaps and you don't even notice.
•		You pass an elementary school playground and the children are all busy with their cells or pagers.
•		Your car insurance costs as much as your house payment.
•		You have to leave the big company meeting early because Billy Lanks himself is teaching the 4:00 PM Tae Bo class.
•		You can't remember ... is pot illegal?