tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50755817660465192232024-03-29T04:14:56.608-05:00For ExamplePhilip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-79510655585532007162013-06-24T17:20:00.000-05:002013-06-24T17:20:21.353-05:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The people of West, Texas are outraged that FEMA declined to pay for repairing the damage to the town's infrastructure that was caused by the huge explosion that occurred a few months ago at the West Fertilizer Company's plant there. What I want to know is, why isn't West Fertilizer Company responsible for paying? Why should taxpayers be responsible?</div>
Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com101tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-72477751148946809492013-05-04T11:21:00.000-05:002013-05-04T11:21:44.557-05:00Medicare Doesn’t Cover Dental Care<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Medicare
doesn’t cover dental care.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There have
been countless debates and discussions about medical care; yet no one ever
mentions dental care, as though that were not important to your overall
health.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last June an M. D. (dermatologist)
did a biopsy of my skin at suspicious looking place on my right forearm, and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Medicare covered the procedure, whereas next
week an oral surgeon (D.D.S. and M. D.) will do a biopsy of a suspicious
looking place in the roof of my mouth, but Medicare will not cover the
procedure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, does that make any
sense?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">My
initial visit with the oral surgeon cost me $85, not covered by Medicare, and
the biopsy will cost me $406.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if
the biopsy shows the suspicious area is malignant and I have to have a laser
procedure or whatever to get rid of it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I don’t think Medicare will cover that either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(As an aside, I don’t understand why the oral
surgeon couldn’t have just gone ahead on the first visit and gotten rid of the
whole suspicious area then and there, under the assumption that it was
malignant, and thereby saved me some money).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">What is ironical is that yesterday while I was
on hold on the telephone waiting to talk to a Medicare representative, I was
informed by a recording that I am currently eligible for coverage under Medicare
for cardiac screening, colon-and-rectal cancer screening, prostate cancer
screening, diabetes screening, osteoporosis screening, a flu shot, and an annual
examination by my primary care doctor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>BUT NOT FOR ORAL CANCER SCREENING!</span></div>
Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-70456496215098031152013-03-30T19:51:00.001-05:002013-03-30T19:51:38.800-05:00Gay Marriage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Here is my
prediction:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Supreme Court will
overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as
being between one man and one woman. The Court will uphold California’s
Proposition 8, which defines marriage as being between one man and one
woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The decision on DOMA will be
based on the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment, whereas the decision on Prop 8 will be
based on the 10<sup>th</sup> Amendment.</span></div>
Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-50725988317091096192013-02-09T20:10:00.001-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.124-05:00The Beans Is Gonna Come Up.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">This is a story my mom used to tell me when I was a child. She told in her inimitable south Georgia dialect.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">You
know, I found that you can learn something most anytime.
One of the most important lessons I ever learned in my whole life I
learned when I was six years old.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">One
morning I was a sittin’ at the table eating breakfast when Pa came in from the
high field where he had already been plowin’ and he said, “Louise, how would you
like to help me today?” And I looked up at him because I ain’t never helped Pa before. Why, I’d helped
Ma around the house. But mostly it was things like dustin’ the chair legs or
looking after the baby or sweeping the front steps-----I ain’t never helped Pa
before. And I was ten feet tall. I said, “Yes, sir.” </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Well, we started off after breakfast across the backyard
over the fields to the high field. I was
havin’ to step pretty lively to keep up with him. We got over there and there
was all these nice rows that Pa had already planted. And he said, “today I’m a
gonna show you how to plant beans.” And then he took a bag that he’d been
carrying on his back, and put it over on my shoulder. And it was full of beans.
He said,” Now I want you to take five beans, and drop ‘em right there in that
row, pat it down with your hands, and step on it.” I done that.</span><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And he said,”
move over about a foot and take five more beans and put them down in the hole
and do the same thing.” So I took about five more beans out, down ‘em down in
the hole, And I patted it down with my hands, and I stepped on it, and he said,
“That’s good. Now do it again.” So I done the same thing again, and he said,
“You got it just right. Now you just keep on until you plant all these beans.”</span><br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And then he turned around and started back toward the
house. I looked at him and said, “You not gonna stay here with me?” and he
said, “No, why I need to stay here with you for? You know how to do it.” He
went right on back. Lord! I ain’t never been so proud in my life! Why whenever
I helped Ma, she was right there with me all the time. And she’d say, “Now just
look at that living room that I asked you to dust! You ain’t done nothing
except wipe the tops of things. Squat down and look at the rungs of that chair
and see all that dust!” Or she’d say, “ Louise, I told you to sweep the whole
yard and all you’ve done is just sweep right there in the middle. Now go back
out there and sweep in the corners so it looks like something.” Or she’d say,
“Stop pinchin’ that baby! I know good and well you’re doing that just so you
don’t have to look after him.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">But here was Pa a telling me that I knew how to do
something just as good as he did. And I was on cloud nine. Well, I went along like he told me---I took
five beans, put ‘em in the hole, patted
‘em down, and I stepped on it---and I moved over about a foot----took five more
beans, put ‘em down in the hole, and I patted it down and I stepped on it---And
then I took five more beans, put ‘em in a hole, patted ‘em down and then I
stepped on it----And that went on for about a half a row.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And then the sun had begun to shine down and it was hot
and I was a beginnin’ to sweat and that bag was a cuttin’ in to my shoulder
where the dirt was a getting between the strap and my skin. And the dirt was
getting on my face. And it was running down all to the sweat on to my
clothes. And that bag was getting
heavier, heavier, and heavier.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And I started puttin’ six little beans in a hole, and
pattin ‘em down, and a little farther down, I stared puttin’ seven and eight little
beans in a hole and pattin’ them down. And by the end of that row I was puttin’
half a hand full of beans in a hole and pattin’ them down. And by the time I got the end of that third
row, I just took that whole bag full of beans and emptied them all in that row,
And I patted ‘em down and I stomped on ‘em just like that and then I turned and
went back to the house.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Well,
Pa was a sittin’ on the porch smokin’ his pipe, and he took his pipe out of his
mouth and he said, “You all done plantin’?” And I said, “Yes, sir” There was a
sort of a hard lump down in the bottom of my stomach and I thought that he was
a gonna ask me about it, But he didn’t say no more. That hard lump of guilt
stayed there a few days—kind of bothered me, but then I began to forget all
about it and it went away.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And
I hadn’t thought no more about them beans until about three weeks later. One day Pa came a stomppin’ up on the porch
at lunchtime and I could tell by the way he hit that porch that he was mad at
somebody. He come in and sat down, and when he started sayin the blessing I
thought that he was a mad at the Lord. But when lunch was over, he said, “Come
here, Louise” And I knowed it wasn’t the Lord he was mad at.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">He
said, “Come with me” And we started back over toward that high field so fast I
was a havin’ to run. When we got there,
he just pointed. Well, it was easy
enough to see what he was talking about. Cause right there at the beginnin’ of
the row, there was five of the nicest bean plants on every hill. And we went on
a little bit farther down and it was six bean plants on a hill, a little
farther down it was seven or eight beans on hill, and then it got to be a dozen
or so beans in a hill, and when you got over to the end of that third row,
there was a whole jungle of bean plants.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">And
all of a sudden, that guilt that I thought had already dissolved and gone away,
begun to come back, And it started growin’
and swellin’ and it got all mixed up with a little self pity and a little re-morse and a little bit of what else
it found down there and all of a sudden it just come a bustin’ out of my eyes
and you ain’t never heard so much squallin’ in all the days of your life.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Well,
Pa he didn’t say anything, he just reached over and pulled me up against that
big old farmer leg of his, and he let me squall it out till he could talk some
sense to me, Then he said, “Louise, there’s just one thing I want you to learn
from this. No matter where you go, or what you do, the beans will always come
up.” And do you know I found out later that he got that from the greatest
teacher who ever lived. Because it was Jesus Christ himself who said,” What you
sow, you gonna reap” The beans is gonna come up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-28574175631252060452013-02-08T18:25:00.000-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.115-05:00Pledge of Allegiance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">There
have been three versions of the Pledge of Allegiance since it was first written.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The original version titled “Salute to the
Flag” and written by Francis Bellamy in 1892, read “I pledge allegiance to my
flag and to the republic for which it stands:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Version
two, as established by the National Flag Conferences of 1923 and 1924 read:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>one nation indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Version
three, which stands today, is “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America and to the republic for which it stands:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>one nation under God, indivisible, with
liberty and justice for all.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
version was signed into law by President Eisenhower in 1954.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At that time the “cold war” was raging
between the U. S. and the Soviet Union, and the words were incorporated to
emphasize that the Soviets were “Godless communists”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">In
my opinion, the current version is the worst of the three and does a lot to
support the maxim of Occam’s Razor; that is to say, the simplest solution is
usually the best solution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the
words, “under God” were added to the pledge in 1954, chaos (not to mention
controversy) followed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people said
“one nation under God”, with no pause between “nation” and “under”, as the new
version read, while other people said, “one nation, under God” with a pause at
the comma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still other people said something
in between.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever since the words “under
God” were added to the pledge, every public recitation of it has been a hash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a result, a lot of people don’t know
really what it says and don’t really give a you-know-what.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Moreover,
the pledge as it now exists is an insult to Americans who are atheists. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not an atheist, but under the First Amendment
to the U. S. Constitution, Congress “shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-37979782048537360152013-01-18T10:21:00.000-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.119-05:00My Engineering Courses<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here are links to the three continuing education courses for Professional Engineers that I have written. Actually, they are links to the course Overviews, but once in an Overview, you can download the course material for free. If you have enjoyed any of my blog posts, I think you might enjoy reading these courses. You have to purchase a course only if you want to take the quiz and get credit from the State:<br />
<br />
Introduction to Water Towers -- <a href="http://www.pdhengineer.com/Course%20Web/Environmental%20Courses/EN-1007.htm">http://www.pdhengineer.com/Course%20Web/Environmental%20Courses/EN-1007.htm</a><br />
<br />
Case Studiees of Three Explosions and a Chemical Accident -- <a href="http://www.pdhengineer.com/Course%20Web/Failure%20Investigation%20Courses/F-3002.htm">http://www.pdhengineer.com/Course%20Web/Failure%20Investigation%20Courses/F-3002.htm</a><br />
<br />
Anatomy of a Waste Water Tank Explosion -- <a href="http://www.pdhengineer.com/Course%20Web/Failure%20Investigation%20Courses/F-1002.htm">http://www.pdhengineer.com/Course%20Web/Failure%20Investigation%20Courses/F-1002.htm</a></div>
Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-30436643531780321432012-11-13T16:59:00.000-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.117-05:00My Life As an Engineering Course Writer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I
was kind of forced into retirement, fired you might say, on the last day of the
month of my 65<sup>th</sup> birthday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
continued to do some work for my former employer on a contract basis from time
to time, but after awhile the work died out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Following more than 18 months without any work, I decided to declare
myself as an “Inactive” Professional Engineer (P. E.) to the Texas Board of
Professional Engineers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This meant that
I could not legally practice as a P. E., but on the other hand I wouldn’t have
to keep taking those infernal Continuing Education Program Professional
Development Hour (PDH) courses for a cost of anywhere from about $300 a year to
ten times that amount.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Then
in March 2012, lo’ and behold, a job opportunity came along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It involved a carbon-dioxide fatality at a
McDonald’s restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had already
worked on several accidents involving carbon dioxide, in particular on a morbidly
similar case involving double carbon-dioxide fatalities at another McDonald’s
restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one else in my former
employer’s company knew much about carbon dioxide, and that’s why I caught the
assignment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I told the attorney on
the case that I was not an active P. E. and that, as such, I could not work for
him until I got reactivated, he told me to get reactivated in a hurry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I
figured that the quickest way to get reactivated was by taking online courses,
and I was right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After some searching on
the Internet, I found this website called </span><a href="http://www.pdhengineer.com/"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: blue;">www.pdhengineer.com</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">, the pdh
standing for Professional Development Hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I took several of their courses, and somewhere along the way, I decided,
“I can write this kind of stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve
been doing it for 40 years”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, I
thought, judging from the absence of any comments on my blog postings, apparently
hardly anyone ever reads them, so why not write courses that some engineer might
actually pay for?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After, if he (or she)
is an engineer, then he (or she) will have to get their PDH’s somewhere, so I
have somewhat of a semi-captive audience of potential clients. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Consequently,
I applied to the website to be an author.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I qualified, naturally, and I wrote a little course worth one PDH titled
“Introduction to Water Towers”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
course is not about water cooling towers but rather about elevated tanks of
potable water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was in May of 2012.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next I wrote a course worth three PDH titled “Case
Studies of Three Explosions and a Chemical Accident”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Catchy title.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I wanted to call it “Boom, Boom, Boom, Splash!”, but the website editor
wouldn’t approve of that title.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
am about to publish another course worth one PDH titled “Anatomy of a Waste
Water Tank Explosion”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought it
would be pretty cool to say “anatomy” instead of “analysis” or “study” or
something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far, I have sold five copies
of the water tower course and six copies of the explosion &c course, and I
have made $181.51 in royalties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It
is always a thrill when I open my email and see one from the website course
Administrator with a message saying that someone (presumably an engineer, but not
necessarily; it could be you) had purchased one of my courses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is all part of my get-rich-slow scheme.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-35631323492927485162012-09-09T17:16:00.001-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.118-05:00Presidential Elections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<h2 style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"><u><span style="font-size: small;">Background Information<o:p></o:p></span></u></span></b></h2>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">When the House elected John Quincy Adams
in 1825, the political party system was in a state of flux, and no particular
party was especially strong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact,
none of the Presidential contenders at the time even had any distinct party
designation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Andrew Jackson won far more
popular votes, as well as more electoral votes, than any other candidate, but
he did not win a majority of either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Consequently, the election defaulted to the House, which, as stipulated
by the Constitution, had to choose a President from the top three electoral
vote winners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Henry Clay was fourth
place in electoral votes won and, therefore, was eliminated from the Electoral
College<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The President of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country></st1:place> is not actually
elected directly by the citizenry, but rather by a relatively small group of
people known as electors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each state, as
well as Washington, D. C., which is not a state, chooses its own new set of
electors every time there is a Presidential election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The electors from all the various states (and
from Washington, D. C.) are referred to collectively as the Electoral College,
although it obviously is not a college in the normal or conventional sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, the electors from all the different
states (and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place>,
D. C.) never even convene all together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Instead, in December following any
Presidential election, on a day set by law, the electors from each state
assemble, usually in their respective state capitals, and cast their votes for
President (and Vice President).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either
by custom or, in a few states, by law, the electors usually, but not always,
vote for their respective political party's choices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">For several years after the Constitution
became effective as the supreme law of the land in 1788, most of the electors
were chosen by the state legislatures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thus, the general citizenry did not really have any influence in
electing the President, except in the sense that the people elected their state
legislators, who in turn chose state electors, who in turn elected the
President.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">After about 1800, more and more states
began choosing their electors in popular elections, and today all the states
(and Washington, D. C.) choose their electors by popular vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Thus, an American citizen who votes on
Election Day does not actually vote for any Presidential or Vice-Presidential
candidate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, the citizen, whether
knowingly or not, votes for a slate of potential electors selected by the
political party that nominated the candidates favored by the voting citizen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Moreover, the slates of potential electors
voted on are not selected by any national political party entity, but rather by
the political party factions within the particular state in which the voting
citizen resides, under the rules established by the particular state
legislature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every political party in
every state (and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place>,
D. C.), independent of all the other states, may select a slate of potential
Presidential electors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Thus, each state (and Washington, D. C.)
has a slate of Democratic electors and a slate of Republican electors, and
possibly slates for third parties such as the Libertarians or other
parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, considering only the
Democrats and the Republicans, in every Presidential election, there are 102
different groups of potential electors -- a separate group for each party in
every one of the 50 states, as well as for Washington, D. C.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Winner-Take-All Rules<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">All of the potential electors chosen by
the party of the candidate who wins a plurality of a given state's popular
votes (more votes than any other candidate), but not necessarily a majority
(more than 50 percent), usually become that state's electors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, all the electors from any given state
will usually be from the same political party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><st1:state w:st="on">Maine</st1:state> and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Nebraska</st1:state></st1:place> are presently the only states where
electors can be from more than one party in any given election year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Therefore, a candidate usually must win
only a plurality of a state's popular votes to win all of the state's electoral
votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is true provided that all
the state's electors subsequently vote for their party's choice in the
following December.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Electoral Vote Splits<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">As said before, a state's electors usually
vote for the candidate of their party's choice, but not always.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the electors of a state do not all vote
the same way, this is called an electoral "spilt."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although there have been numerous splits in
the past, they have all been too insignificant to alter the course of any
election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, in the
Presidential election of 1976, which was won by Jimmy Carter, the state of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state></st1:place> cast seven of
its eight electoral votes for Carter's opponent Gerald Ford and one vote for
Ronald Reagan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was the only
electoral vote split in that election year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Number of Electors<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The United States Constitution decrees
that each individual state shall appoint, in such a manner as each individual
state legislature may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country></st1:place>
senators and representatives to which the state may be entitled in the United
States Congress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Every state is entitled to two
Senators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because there are 50 states in
the <st1:place w:st="on">Union</st1:place>, the total number of senators is
100.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Under the Constitution as originally
ratified, each state was entitled to a number of representatives not exceeding
one representative for every 30,000 "persons" living in the state,
but slaves were each counted as only 3/5 of a person, and native American
Indians were not counted at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fourteenth
amendment, however, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born
or naturalized in the United States, with all citizens counted equally with
respect to representation in the House of Representatives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">As the <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United
States</st1:country> population grew over time, the total number of
representatives for the whole <st1:place w:st="on">Union</st1:place> continued
to grow also.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever since 1929, however,
the total number of representatives for the Union as a whole has been fixed at
435, and the number entitled to any given state has been proportionate to that
state's population relative to the population of the Union as a whole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, the 50 states are collectively
entitled to 535 electors (as a result of there being a total of 100 senators
and 435 representatives).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Washington, D.
C., although not a state, has since 1961 has been entitled to three electors,
under the 23<sup>rd</sup> amendment to the Constitution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, the total number of electors for
the <st1:place w:st="on">Union</st1:place> as a whole is fixed at 538 (535 plus
3).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">After a national census is taken at the
turn of every decade, the number of representatives entitled to each of the
states is redetermined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consequently,
although the total numbers of representatives and electors is constant at 435
and 538, respectively, every ten years the numbers entitled to any given state
may change if significant shifts have occurred in the state's population
relative to that of the other states.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Every state is entitled to at least one
Representative, no matter how small the state population might be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, every state in the <st1:place w:st="on">Union</st1:place> is entitled to at least three electors: one due to
having at least one representative, and two more due to having two
senators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reapportionment after the 2000
census resulted in there currently (2008) being seven states (and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Washington</st1:city> <st1:state w:st="on">D.C.</st1:state></st1:place>)
that each have only three electoral votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state> has 55, which is far more
than any other state in the <st1:place w:st="on">Union</st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Number of Electoral Votes Needed To Win an
Election<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">As said before, only a plurality of a
given state's popular vote is generally sufficient to win all of the state's
electoral votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In sharp
contradistinction, a majority of all the electoral votes that could be cast
nationwide is needed to win the election by the Electoral College.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because there are 538 electors nationwide, an
Electoral College majority equates to 270 or more electoral votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the event that no candidate could win an
electoral vote majority, the United States Congress would determine the outcome
of the election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has happened only
twice in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country></st1:place>
history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Under the original Constitution, each
elector cast two electoral votes on the same ballot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The candidate with the greatest number of
votes, if that number constituted a majority, became President, and the
candidate in second place became Vice President.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 12<sup>th</sup> amendment, however,
ratified in 1804, changed the procedure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Under the revised rules, each elector casts one vote for President on
one ballot and one vote for Vice President on a separate ballot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A candidate who wins a majority of votes on
the Presidential ballot is elected President, and a candidate who wins a
majority of votes on the Vice-Presidential ballot is elected Vice President.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";"><o:p> </o:p></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Winning the Election without an Electoral
Vote Majority<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">In the event that no Presidential
candidate could win an electoral vote majority, the House of Representatives
would choose a President from the top three Presidential contenders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In analogous fashion, if no Vice-Presidential
candidate could win an electoral majority, the Senate would choose a Vice
President from the top two Vice-Presidential contenders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In both chambers of Congress (the House and
the Senate), each state would be entitled to only one vote, irrespective of the
state's population or its electoral vote entitlement. Thus, for example, <st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state> and <st1:state w:st="on">Wyoming</st1:state>
would each have one vote, despite <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">California</st1:state></st1:place>
being far more populous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Washington, D. C., because it is not a
state, would not be allowed to vote in this stage of an election,
notwithstanding that Washington, D. C.'s electoral vote (or abstinence from
voting) would have contributed to the election's having defaulted to the
Congress in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">For any candidate to be elected by the
House or Senate to the Presidency or Vice Presidency, respectively, at least two-thirds
of the states in the relevant chamber of Congress would have to vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is to say that two-thirds of the states
would constitute a quorum in either chamber.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Given that there are currently 50 states, a present-day quorum would
comprise at least 34 states.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">In addition, for any candidate to be
elected by the House or Senate to the Presidency or Vice Presidency,
respectively, a majority of all states would be necessary to a choice. Thus,
because there are 50 states, a candidate would have to win at least 26 state
votes in the relevant chamber to be elected.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Historical Rarities<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams
were the only two Presidents ever elected by the House of Representatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The House elected <st1:place w:st="on">Jefferson</st1:place>
in 1801, when most states still allowed their legislators to choose electors
and when the Electoral College still voted for President and Vice president on
the same ballot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jefferson and Aaron
Burr tied in electoral votes, and the House could not decide between the two
men until the 36th House ballot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
voting went on so long that there was concern that a President would not be
elected before inauguration day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
prolonged election was what led to the aforementioned 12<sup>th</sup> amendment
that changed the voting rules of the Electoral College.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Clay, being a stanch political rival of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city></st1:place>'s, threw his
support in the House to Adams, who, as a direct result of Clay's support, was
elected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, history recorded the
irony of the least successful Presidential candidate of the election of 1824
(Clay) having been ultimately responsible for determining who would be
President (Adams).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Criticism of the Electoral College<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">It is popular to criticize the Electoral
College process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many people argue that
it is an outmoded, unfair system, created when communications were slow and it
was unwieldy to base a Presidential election on the popular vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Critics of the Electoral College process argue
that under this system a candidate can be elected with less than a majority of
the popular votes cast and, even worse, can be elected with fewer popular votes
than another candidate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both of these statements
are true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, there have been
numerous Presidents elected with less than a majority of the popular vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The list includes, among others, Abraham
Lincoln, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Bill Clinton.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, neither John Quincy Adams,
Rutherford Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, nor George W. Bush (in his first election)
won the majority of the popular vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
fact, John Quincy Adams won the Presidency with less than 31 percent of the
popular vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Ironically, proponents of the Electoral
College often likewise cite such elections as reasons for keeping the Electoral
College, rather than for getting rid of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They argue that if every president had to win a majority of the popular
vote, runoff elections would frequently be required, thereby lengthening the
Presidential election process and potentially jeopardizing the nation's
security during the transition of power from one administration to the next.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Seldom recognized by the public is that
Electoral College, like the bicameral legislature, was the result of
compromises without which the Constitution would never have been adopted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The various states did not want to give up
their individual sovereignties; in particular, the small states did not want to
be pushed around by the larger states, and rural dwellers did not want to be
overwhelmed by the dense populations of the cities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The Senate was created as a result of
these opposing viewpoints. Every state has two senators, regardless of the
population or size of the state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the
other hand, the House was created to provide representation proportionate to a
state's population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Electoral
College embodies both aspects of the bicameral legislature in that every state
is entitled to a number of electors equal to the sum of the number of its
senators and representatives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">A powerful argument in favor of the
Electoral College process is that, despite its shortcomings, it guarantees that
nobody can be elected President absent support of the majority representation
of the people, which is not necessarily to say a majority of the popular vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country></st1:place>, notwithstanding
notions to the contrary, is not a democracy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Rather, it is a democratic republic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In a democracy everybody gets to vote on every issue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a democratic republic, people elect other
people to represent them on the issues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Thus, the people elect their state
legislators, who in turn select slates of potential state electors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, the people vote on whom among the
potential electors will be the actual electors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The electors in turn vote for President.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the election
defaults to the House of Representatives, the people elect the members of
which.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, in the House, no candidate
can win the Presidency without a majority of state votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, by whatever route a person is
elected President, the election is won by a majority vote of the persons who,
however indirectly, represent the majority of the voting public of the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country></st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Development of the Two-Party Political
System<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">For more than 165 years, two political
parties have dominated <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United
States</st1:country></st1:place> Presidential politics, although not
always the same two parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From about
1828 to the late 1850s, the two dominating parties were the Democrats and the
Whigs, with the Democrats having been much the stronger of the two
parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the 1860 to the present,
the two main parties have been the Democrats and the Republicans, with the
balance of power swinging back and forth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The two-party political system has become
so interwoven in our government that the power of the system is exceeded only
by the Constitution itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover,
the synergism of the two-party system together with the Constitution has
imparted to the office of President a mystique that probably was never
envisioned by the framers of the Constitution and that, most likely, has been
crucial to the long-term stability of our government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">This phenomenon is especially significant,
because the Constitution makes no mention whatsoever of political parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a matter of fact, George Washington, who
headed the Constitutional Convention, originally opposed their development, as
did many other political leaders of the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nevertheless, common interests inevitably brought different groups of
people together to form political parties, and had they not been formed, the
Constitution would probably have never come about, let alone have been so
enduring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Political parties did not just spring
forth from whole cloth, and it is difficult to pin down exactly when any given
party began or ended.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The earliest
political parties in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">America</st1:country></st1:place>
were probably the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These parties, however, were not really
political parties in exactly the same sense that parties are today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Present-day political parties debate how the
nation should be governed under a Constitution that has long since been
adopted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In clear contradistinction, the
fundamental issue that was originally disputed between the Federalist party and
the Anti-Federalist party was whether the Constitution should be adopted in the
first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Federalists favored
adoption, or ratification, of the Constitution, whereas the Anti-Federalists opposed
its ratification.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The opposing viewpoints from which the
Constitution emerged no doubt contributed to its longevity, as the endurance of
the Constitution rests in part on a great paradox.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On one hand, state loyalties prompted the framers
of the Constitution to leave many important powers to the states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, the framers deliberately
wrote the Constitution in such general terms that certain powers could be
retrieved from the states when the advance of industry and changes in
international relations made it necessary to wield these powers on a national
level.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">That the Constitution was ever adopted is
as amazing as it was fortunate for the American people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Revolution freed the American states from
English rule but did not forge a nation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Notwithstanding that the colonists from the various states had fought in
a common cause, they still thought of themselves not primarily as Americans,
but rather as citizens of individual states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This feeling was embodied in the loose form of government that existed
prior to the Constitution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Through most of the Revolution, the sole
document binding the states was the Declaration of Independence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although in 1775, Benjamin Franklin drafted
the first "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union," they did
not go into effect (after much debate and numerous changes) until March 1781,
only seven months before the British surrendered (at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Yorktown</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Virginia</st1:state></st1:place>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Articles gave the new government many
apparent powers but kept it weak in key areas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For example, Congress (which was then a single- chambered legislature)
could make war but could not levy taxes to pay for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many of the important Congressional powers
could be exercised only with the consent of nine of the thirteen states that
were then united.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, the Articles
could be amended only after Congress and every state legislature agreed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Many leading Americans wondered whether a
permanent union was particularly desirable and whether it was even plausible to
organize so much territory under one government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Frictions arose over interstate commerce,
regional interests, and opposing claims to the western domain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Nonetheless, the American states had
shared many common experiences and were facing common problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the very least, the states had a common
debt to pay off, inherited from the Revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As the bonds of the Articles continued to unravel, farseeing leaders
increased the pressure to provide a more stable system on government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet, many were loath to substitute an
altogether new document for the Articles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Consequently, when the states finally
agreed to hold the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, the avowed purpose was only
to amend the Articles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only after the
delegates convened did they decide to draft the Constitution, and even so it
was very controversial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the 55
delegates who took part in the deliberations, only 42 stayed to the end, and
only 39 signed the document that finally emerged in September 1987.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ratification by three-quarters (nine) of the
states was the final step required to make the Constitution effective.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The ratification process went along
smoothly at first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the number of
state ratifications passed the halfway mark, however, the Anti-Federalists
began to gain strength, and many and bitter controversies arose in the populace
and in the legislatures of the states that had not yet ratified the new
document.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It did not become effective
until June 21, 1788, when <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">New
Hampshire</st1:state></st1:place> became the ninth state to ratify the
document.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<st1:state w:st="on"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Virginia</span></st1:state><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";"> ratified it later the same month, and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state></st1:place> the month
after, but neither state was willing to do so until being promised that the
Constitution would be amended with the Bill of Rights, which is the name given
to the first ten amendments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:state w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:state> and <st1:state w:st="on">North Carolina</st1:state>
were both so hostile to the Constitution that they did not join the <st1:place w:st="on">Union</st1:place> until after the new government was already in
operation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">North Carolina</st1:state></st1:place> held out until November
1789.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:state></st1:place>, at the time considered as
having always been reluctant to participate in interstate efforts, held out
until May 1790.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even then, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Rhode Island</st1:state></st1:place>'s decision
to ratify the Constitution was made by a very narrow margin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Given that the Anti-Federalists opposed
the adoption of the Constitution, it is not surprising that the party died within
a few years after the Constitution was ratified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The issue of the Constitution, however, still
divided the country, and during the first years of the new government,
factional leaders worked to strengthen their positions and mobilize their
supporters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The Federalist party, being the political
party responsible for the new government's existence, at first enjoyed several
advantages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, they had a
clear program of strong central government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Further, they had control of the army and the willingness to use it; to
wit, the crushing of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, when 15,000 federal troops
subdued <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Pennsylvania</st1:state></st1:place>
farmers who protested a new tax on distilled spirits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most importantly, the Federalists had in
Alexander Hamilton a leader who was brilliant, resourceful, energetic, and
uncompromising.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">A democratic republic, however, does not
long tolerate only one party in power, especially a party of elitists, which is
exactly how many of the poorer, less well educated, and less fortunate people viewed
the Federalists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It did not take the
opposition very long to join ranks in support of Thomas Jefferson, an ardent
foe of <st1:city w:st="on">Hamilton</st1:city> and the strong central
government for which <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Hamilton</st1:city></st1:place>
stood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the early 1790s, as the power
of the Anti-Federalists waned, <st1:place w:st="on">Jefferson</st1:place> led
the formation of the Democratic-Republican party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was the first major political party born
under Constitutional rule.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The new party
wrested the White House from the Federalists in 1801, when the House of
Representatives, in that long-drawn out election that eventually led to the 12<sup>th</sup>
amendment, elected Jefferson President, after no candidate succeeded in winning
an electoral vote majority.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The decline of the Federalist party
probably began, in large part, with the <st1:place w:st="on">Louisiana Purchase</st1:place>
in 1803.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This enormous expansion of <st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country> territory helped destroy the
controlling influence of <st1:place w:st="on">New England</st1:place>, where
the strength of the Federalist party was rooted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The War of 1812 accelerated the process of
decline, and the Federalists were but a memory by about 1816.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the next eight years <st1:place w:st="on">Jefferson</st1:place>'s
Democratic-Republicans held sway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
period was the first and last time in our history to date during which the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country></st1:place>
operated under a one-party political system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was known as the "period of good feelings." Ironically, the
absence of a second party probably contributed to complacency on the part of
the Democratic-Republicans and, consequently, the demise of the party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, as said before, in the election of
1824, no major Presidential contender was affiliated with any major party, and
the result was the second and last time in our history to date that the
election defaulted to the House of Representatives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">When the House elected John Quincy Adams
over Andrew Jackson 1825, the outrage of <st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city>'s
supporters led to the formation of the Democratic party, which is the oldest
existing political party in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United
States</st1:country></st1:place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The short-lived (ten years) National Republican party was formed about
the same time, but never won the Presidency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Whig party was also formed about the same time and lasted until the
outbreak of the Civil war, but the Whigs never united sufficiently, and from
1828, when <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Jackson</st1:city></st1:place>
won the Presidency, until 1860, the Democrats beat the Whigs in all but two
elections (1840 and 1848).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Around 1854 the Republican party emerged,
and in 1860 Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican President.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Civil War put the Republicans solidly in
power, and, consequently, from 1860 through 1928 they won 14 of the 18 Presidential
elections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1932, however, during the
Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929, Franklin D.
Roosevelt won for the Democrats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Twenty-four years then passed before Dwight Eisenhower won for the
Republicans in 1952.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He served two terms
and retired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Democrats won the
Presidency in 1960 (John Kennedy), 1964 (Lyndon Johnson), and 1976 (Jimmy
Carter), but Republicans (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George
H. W. Bush) occupied the White House for 20 of the 24 years from 1969 until
1993, when Bill Clinton won for the Democrats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In 2000, George W. Bush, the son of George H. W. Bush, won and served
two terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incidentally, George W. Bush
is only one of two Presidents in history whose father was also a President, the
other being John Quincy Adams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
election of 2008, Republican candidate John McCain, a Senator and Vietnam War, lost
to Democrat Barack Obama, also a Senator and the first black person in history
to be elected President.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2008 also marked
the first time since 1960 when a Senator won the Presidency (the last one being
John Kennedy).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Thus, ever since its early history, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country></st1:place>
Presidential politics have been dominated by two political parties:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>first the Federalists and Anti-Federalists;
then the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans; next the Democrats and the
Whigs; and, most significantly, the Democrats and the Republicans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For more than 130 years, the Presidency has
shifted back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans for relatively
long periods of time on each swing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Excepting the elections of 1840 and 1848, either a Democrat or a
Republican has won every Presidential election since 1824.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Third Parties<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The two-party political system is so
entrenched in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">America</st1:country></st1:place>
today that all parties other than the Democrats and the Republicans are
referred to as "third parties."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are and have been numerous third parties in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">United States</st1:country></st1:place>, but no third party
candidate has ever won a Presidential election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, none has even come close to winning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">On the other hand, third parties
potentially can influence, and arguably have influenced, the outcomes of
Presidential elections, by drawing votes away from the candidates of the two
major parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, third parties
influence the positions and policies of the major parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By drawing public attention to various
issues, third parties often force major party candidates to modify their
positions, so as to prevent losing votes to the third party candidates.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Third parties are of several different
types, depending on their origins and objectives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some third parties are groups that have
broken away from major parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some
third parties are what are known as "single-issue" parties; for
example, the Prohibition Party, formed in 1869, opposes alcoholic
beverages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some third parties seek to
change the basic form of our government, for example, the Communist Party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some third parties support broad programs of
change and try to gain favor across a wide spectrum of the citizenry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This type of third party is the most likely
some day to displace either the Democrats or the Republicans as one of the
major two parties in the country. The most successful third-party candidates in
American history were Theodore Roosevelt, Robert LaFollette, and George Wallace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<st1:place w:st="on"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Roosevelt</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">, as a Republican, won the election of
1904, but in 1912 he ran as a candidate of the Progressive party, which
comprised a group that had broken away from the Republican party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the Progressive party nominee in 1912, <st1:place w:st="on">Roosevelt</st1:place> won more than 27 percent of the popular vote,
and he also won 88 electoral votes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">In 1924 the Progressive party nominee was
Robert LaFollette, who won almost 17 percent of the popular vote but only 13
electoral votes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">In contrast, George Wallace, a Governor of
Alabama, won less than 14 percent of the popular vote as an American
Independent nominee in 1968, but he carried five states and won 46 electoral
votes, second only to Theodore Roosevelt among the ranks of third-party
candidates.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">In 1992, a conservative <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:state w:st="on">Texas</st1:state></st1:place> billionaire and businessman, H. Ross
Perot, representing no political party, ran for President against incumbent
Republican George Bush and Democratic challenger Bill Clinton, then the
Governor of Arkansas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perot won more
than 17 percent of the popular vote, but his support was so widely dispersed
across the country that he did not carry a single state and, consequently, won
no electoral votes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He attracted votes
away from both of the major party candidates, and it was a matter of debate as
to whether he hurt Bush or Clinton more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Clinton</st1:city></st1:place>
won the election with an electoral landslide but only 43 percent of the popular
vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">It was generally agreed that Perot's 1992
candidacy pressured both the major parties into political concessions that
might otherwise not have been made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many
political analysts argued that Perot's showing was less indicative of support
for him than it was dissatisfaction with both Bush and Clinton.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">The result of Ross Perot's foray into
Presidential politics – 17 percent of the popular vote but no electoral votes –
clearly illustrates how deeply rooted the two-party political system is in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country -region="-region" w:st="on">America</st1:country></st1:place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This system, in conjunction with the
Electoral College process as changed by the 12th amendment in 1804, virtually
guarantees that nobody will be elected President who is not a nominee of one of
the two dominant parties, which for more than a century have been the
Republicans and the Democrats.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho";">Moreover, unless a third party candidate
can win enough electoral votes to throw the election into the Congress, it is a
virtual certainty that the President and Vice President during any given term
of office will always be nominees of the same party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is theoretically and legally possible to
be otherwise, but extremely unlikely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the unlikely event that the election did default to the Congress, the party
affiliation of the President and Vice president would likely depend on the
relative strength of the different parties in the House and the Senate,
respectively, on a state-by-state basis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That is to say, each state would have only one vote, irrespective of its
population.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-65265718234052809492012-03-11T20:31:00.001-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.129-05:00A Table for Four<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">A few years ago, Elaine and I took a short trip to Las Vegas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We stayed downtown, not on the Strip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know if it was the time of year or where we stayed, or what, but there were crowds of people everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Long lines were ubiquitous. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One morning we walked out of the hotel hoping to find somewhere we could get in for breakfast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We didn’t want to eat at the hotel, but we were definitely hungry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We walked around for about fifteen minutes, and then we sighted a casino that advertised a restaurant in the basement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We thought it was worth a try and went inside, but, no real surprise to us, there was a line of about a hundred people, mostly couples, and a few groups of three or four.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We sighed to ourselves and took our place at the back of the line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It continued to grow behind us, and it was moving slowly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">After a little while, the hostess called out that she had a table for four available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I instantly turned around to the couple behind us and asked, “Say, would y’all like to have breakfast with us?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were a little surprised, but nonetheless replied in the affirmative without delay, so I held up my hand and called out to the hostess that we were a party of four.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">You cannot imagine the indignation of several people in the line, when the hostess signaled for us to come on up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone cried out, “They weren’t together!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t even know each other.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another yelled, “Hey, that’s not fair!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so on, the rumbling continued, but the hostess just smiled at them and said something like we looked like a foursome to her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She took us right on in and seated us at a nicely located table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could swear that, as we were leaving the line to go eat, I heard someone else yell, “New foursome here!” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Ah, ha!)<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">We and our new companions introduced ourselves to each other and began talking just as easy as pie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We ordered our food, which turned out to be very tasty by the way, and we had a very satisfying conversation with this couple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am ashamed to say that we have forgotten their names, but I do remember that they lived in Waxahachie, Texas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had some fun laughing at the people who complained.</span></div>Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-6939977460952591862012-02-03T15:30:00.000-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.133-05:00Driving the Second Mile<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I think this problem was on my SAT exam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the “fly-fly” problem, it is easy, if you just think about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A man drives one mile at 30 miles per hour (mph).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How fast would he have to drive another mile, in order to average 60 mph for the whole two- mile stretch?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">A.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">60 mph<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">B.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">90 mph<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">C.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">120 mph<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">D.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">None of the Above<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">If you chose B, 90 mph, you would be wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know; 90 plus 30 equals 120, which divided by 2 is 60.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it doesn’t work that way. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider that 60 mph is a mile a minute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, for the man to average 60 mph for two miles, he would have to drive that distance in two minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he drives the first mile at 30 mph, thus taking up two minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consequently, in order to average 60 mph for the whole two miles, he would have to drive the second mile in no time at all, which is impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, the correct answer is D, “None of the Above”.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Now, suppose we make the problem a little bit harder by asking how fast the man would have to drive the second mile to average 45 mph for the two-mile stretch?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ironically, the reason this problem is harder is because it has a viable solution.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">We already know that the man used up two minutes driving the first mile at 30 mph.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, let’s figure out how much time it would take to average 45 mph for the whole two miles. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note that 45 miles per hour divided by 60 minutes per hour is 45/60 or 3/4 of a mile per minute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, 2 miles divided by 3/4 of a mile per minute is the same as 2 miles times 4/3 of a mile per minute, which equals 8/3 of a minute, or 2 and 2/3 minutes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[ 2÷3/4 = 2×4/3 = 8/3 ]<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Since the man used up two minutes driving the first mile, he only has 2/3 of a minute left to drive the second mile, in order to average 45 mph for both miles. Well, 1 mile divided by 2/3 of a minute is 1 mile times 3/2 of a minute, which is 1 and 1/2 miles per minute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[ 1÷2/3 = 1×3/2 = 3/2 ]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And 1.5 miles per minute is 90 mph.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, the answer is 90 mph, in order to average 45 mph for the two-mile stretch. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-40151849547479313942012-01-25T13:52:00.002-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.121-05:00How Far Does the Fly Fly?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Here’s another one of those problems that is tricky, only in that it seems to be difficult, yet it is easy as pie if you think about it in a certain way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t have to be a whiz in algebra to work this problem, but you do have to think clearly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the bayou problem, I don’t recall where I first saw it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Try to work it before you read my solution.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Two trains are heading toward each other on the same track, bound for a head-on collision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the trains are exactly two miles apart, a fly on the headlight of one train, which we will designate as train A, starts flying toward the other train, which we will designate as train B.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the fly reaches train B, he turns around and races back to train A.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he gets back to train A, he turns around and heads back to the train B again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back and forth he goes, flying ever shorter distances on each pass as the trains get closer and closer, until the trains collide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trains are going 30 mph, and the fly is going 60 mph.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question is, how far does the fly fly before he meets his maker?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">A typical engineer would probably make this problem much more difficult than it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, he might work out the distance-equals-rate-times-time thing and come up with a series of smaller and smaller distances and then take the sum of the series – not an easy thing to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, I am not a typical engineer, so I will take an altogether different, and far simpler, approach.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Since there are 60 minutes in an hour, 60 mph is a mile a minute, and 30 mph is a mile in two minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the trains are two miles apart at the beginning of our consideration, and since they are traveling toward each other at identical speeds, it is apparent that they will collide at the midpoint between them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, each train travels one mile before colliding, and at 30 mph, it takes them two minutes to travel that distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, the fly flies for the same amount of time as the trains do before they collide; that is to say that the fly also flies for two minutes before the collision occurs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the fly flies for two minutes at a speed of one mile per minute, the fly flies two miles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eureka! <o:p></o:p></span></div></div>Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-6910134628838013372012-01-21T11:27:00.003-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.131-05:00An Unforgettable Character<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">My father-in-law, who goes by his initials L. W., is one of the more unforgettable characters I have ever had the pleasure to meet. A World War II fighter pilot, he returned from the war and went into the lumber business. He eventually founded his own lumber company and became very successful. He is retired now.<br />
<br />
He sometimes has some unusual, or uncommon, opinions on things, often expressed with a dry sort of humour. For example, he once stated, “The only sustainable form of government is anarchy.” Another time, while lamenting the amount of taxes he had to pay, he said, “You know, poor folks really have it made.” <br />
<br />
He sometimes had strong opinions about other people’s priorities, too. For example, one time he told me disgustedly, “Heck, I know some people who are driving Cadillacs, yet they don’t even have good whiskey in the house.”<br />
<br />
He is not a very patient man. One evening a long time ago, when I was courting Elaine, we all drove over to visit a friend of his. “We” being L. W., his wife and Elaine’s mom Betty, Elaine and her identical twin sister Jane, and me. L. W.’s friend’s place was a ranch of sorts, and the approach to it was a dirt road. It was on that road at night that one of L. W.’s tires blew out. Elaine and Jane and Betty elected to walk the remaining distance to the ranch house, while L.W. and I were supposed to change the tire. <br />
<br />
L.W. opened the trunk and got out the jack, and we discovered that it was nothing like anything either of us had ever seen. It was dark, so I was holding the jack manual under the trunk-lid lights to read it, when I heard a distinctive whew, whew, whew, whew, … . It turned out to be the sound that a jack makes when it is flying through the air, after someone entirely out of patience flings it away. We had to walk to the ranch house and get the car towed the next day. Cell phones weren’t around in those days.<br />
<br />
The last car L. W. owned was a Mercedes, but when I first met him in 1965 he was driving Cadillacs, and he held all other cars, especially Ford’s, in disdain. I was reading a “Consumer Report” one night over at his house, and I came across an article on the repair frequency for different kinds of automobiles. After awhile, I announced to L. W. that he might like to read the article, because the data indicated that Fords needed repairs a lot less frequently than Caddies or Chevys or other GM automobiles. He scoffed and said, “That’s because anybody who would drive a Ford wouldn’t have sense enough to know when it needed repairing.”<br />
<br />
One time L. W. parked somewhere during some big event, and when he went to get his car afterwards, he couldn’t find it. He decided it was stolen and reported it to the police. A day or so later, he happened to be riding in a taxi by the same parking lot where, now, there were no events being held and the lot was empty. That is to say, nearly empty, as he saw his car all by itself way out in the middle of the lot. He immediately asked the cab driver to stop, and he got out right there and went to his car and drove off, headed for his country club to play golf. On the way there, though, he was stopped by the police for driving a stolen car. By the time he got things cleared up and got to the club, the word had somehow already gotten there ahead of him, and his friends kidded him to no end.<br />
<br />
One time one of his lumberyard truck drivers drove under a large freeway sign that was not high enough for the truck. The truck knocked the sign down, and L.W. was required to pay for it. So, he took the sign and had it modified at his lumber yard to make a big saw for his lumber mill. That was the kind of unexpected way he had of sometimes handling a problem.</div>Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-87958727167744417352012-01-21T10:57:00.001-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.154-05:00Will the Bayou Rise or Fall?This is a classic problem. Perhaps you have heard it before. I don't remember where I got it. You might want to try to work it before you read my solution. Anyway, Pierre and Budreaux were sitting in a boat on the bayou when Pierre suggested thowing the anchor overboard. Budreaux said that if Pierre did that the anchor would take up space at the bottom of the bayou, causing the level of the bayou to rise a bit. But Budreaux said, on the other hand, without the anchor the boat would float higher, so maybe the level would go down. Pierre replied that maybe these two opposing things would cancel each other out. What is the right answer? Will the level of the bayou rise or fall when the anchor is thrown overboard? <br />
<br />
<b>Archimedes said that a floating object will displace a volume of water equal to the weight of the object. <i></i></b> <br />
<br />
The density of water is 62.4 lb/cf <br />
Assume that a boat and its contents including an anchor weigh 1,000 lb <br />
Then the amount of water displaced is 1,000 lb divided by 62.4 lb/cf = 16.03 cf<br />
Assume the anchor weighs 50 lb <br />
Then the anchor accounts for 50 lb divided by 62.4 lb/cf = 0.80 cf<br />
of the volume of water displaced by the boat and its contents including the anchor. <br />
Assume the anchor is made of cast iron, having a specific gravity of 7.03 <br />
Then the density of the anchor is 7.03 * 62.4 lb/cf = 438.67 lb/cf<br />
And the volume of the anchor is 50 lb divided by 438.67 lb/cf = 0.114 cf<br />
<br />
<b>A sunken object displaces a volume of water equal to the volume of the sunken object. <i></i></b> <br />
<br />
When the anchor is thrown overboard it sinks, & the volume of water it displaces is 0.114 cf <br />
Without the anchor, the boat and its contents weigh 1,000 lb - 50.0 lb <br />
= 950.0 lb <br />
Now the amount of water displaced by the boat and its contents is 950.0 lb divided by 62.4 lb/cf<br />
= 15.22 cf <br />
Thus, the total volume of water displaced by the sunken anchor, plus the boat and its contents <br />
absent the anchor, is 0.114 cf + 15.22 cf = 15.34 cf <br />
Since the volume of water displaced by the boat and its contents including the anchor is <br />
16.03 cf, when the anchor is thrown overboard the total amount of water displaced <br />
decreases by 16.03 cf - 15.34 cf = 0.69 cf <br />
<b>causing the level of the lake to fall.<i></i></b> <br />
This actually should have been apparent ever since we noted that when the <br />
anchor is in the boat it accounts for 0.80 cf of water displacement, whereas when the anchor is <br />
sunken it displaces only 0.114 cf. Note that 0.80 cf - 0.114 cf <br />
= 0.69 cf, which is the same answer we got above,thus checking my answer.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-72715783475660116902012-01-17T17:54:00.006-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.152-05:00Presidential Rarities<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Presidents Who Were Elected by the House of Representatives<o:p></o:p></b><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The president of the United States is not elected by popular vote, but rather by a group of 538 people referred to collectively as the Electoral College.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the event that no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives decides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams were the only two presidents ever elected by the House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">When the House elected Jefferson in 1801, most states still allowed their legislators to choose electors, and the Electoral College still voted for president and vice president on the same ballot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied in electoral votes, and the House could not decide between the two men until the 36th ballot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The voting went on for so long that there was serious concern that a president would not be elected before inauguration day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This prolonged election was what led to the 12th Constitutional amendment, which changed the voting rules of the Electoral College.<o:p></o:p></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">When the House elected John Quincy Adams in 1825, Andrew Jackson had won far and away more popular votes, as well as more electoral votes, than any other candidate, but he did not win a majority of either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consequently, the election defaulted to the House, which, as stipulated by the Constitution, had to choose a president from the top three electoral vote winners.<o:p></o:p></div><br />
Henry Clay was fourth place in electoral votes won and, therefore, was eliminated from competition in the Electoral College vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clay, however, was a staunch political rival of Jackson's and threw his support in the House to Adams, who, as a direct result of Clay's support, was elected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, history recorded the irony of the least successful presidential candidate having been ultimately responsible for determining who would be president.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Presidents Who Won Fewer Popular Votes Than Their Nearest Opponent Won<o:p></o:p></b><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The quirkiness of the Electoral College system has resulted in the election of four presidents who lost the popular vote, yet won the election by a majority of the Electoral vote, or won in the House of Representatives in absence of winning a majority of the electoral vote. These four people were John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and George W. Bush.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<u>John Quincy Adams</u><br />
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In the election of 1824, Andrew Jackson received 43.12 % of the popular vote, but John Quincy Adams won the election with only 30.54 % of the popular vote, the lowest of any president in history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Guess who was elected with the second lowest percent of the popular vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Answer:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abraham Lincoln in 1860, with 39.87% Of the popular vote).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incidentally, to the best of my knowledge, this was the first year that any electors were chosen by popular vote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prior to that time, state legislatures chose them.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<u>Rutherford B. Hayes<o:p></o:p></u><br />
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In the election of 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes won the election with 47.87% of the popular vote, whereas Samuel J. Tilden lost with 51.01%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">This was one of the two most disputed presidential elections in American history, the other being the election of 2000.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Tilden won 184 electoral votes to Hayes's 165, with 20 electoral votes uncounted. These 20 electoral votes were in dispute in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, and each party reported its candidate had won the state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were double sets of returns from these three states. </span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Congress passed a law forming a 15-member Electoral Commission to settle the result. Five members came from each house of Congress, and they were joined by five members of the Supreme Court.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">As it turned out, the resulting committee was composed of seven Republicans, seven Democrats, and one independent, Supreme Court Justice David Davis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, just as the Electoral Commission Bill was passing Congress, the Legislature of Illinois elected Davis to the Senate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He promptly resigned as a Justice to take his Senate seat.<sup><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1876#cite_note-HarpWeek-3#cite_note-HarpWeek-3"></a></sup><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the remaining available justices were Republicans, so the four justices already selected chose Justice Joseph P. Bradley, who joined the other seven Republicans to result in an 8-7 vote in favor of Hayes, giving all 19 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, resulting in his 185-184 electoral vote victory. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">The returns accepted by the Commission placed Hayes's victory margin in South Carolina at 889 votes, making this the second-closest election in U.S. history, after the 2000 election. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, Tilden became the first presidential candidate in American history to lose in the electoral college, despite winning a majority of the popular vote.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<u><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Benjamin Harrison</span></u><u><o:p></o:p></u><br />
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In 1888, Benjamin Harrison won the presidency with 47.79% of the popular vote, whereas Grover Cleveland lost with 48.68 %. Cleveland, incidentally, was the only president in history to win two non-consecutive turns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harrison won the term in between.<o:p></o:p><br />
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<u><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">George W. Bush<o:p></o:p></span></u><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In 2000, George W. Bush, a Republican, </span>won the election with 47.87% of the popular vote, whereas Al Gore, a Democrat, lost with 48.68 %. <span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">This was the second of the two most disputed presidential elections in American history, the first being that of 1876 (Hayes versus Tilden).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Bush narrowly won with 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266 (with one elector abstaining in the official tally).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The election was noteworthy for a vitriolic controversy over the awarding of Florida's 25 electoral votes and its recount process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the closest election since 1876.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Supreme Court chose George W. Bush by a vote of 5-4.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Some people thought that the Supreme Court had no business getting involved, it being a State matter and not a Federal matter, since Article II, Section 1 states that “each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature may direct, a Number of Electors …”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These people believed that the Supreme Court should have left it to Florida to make the call.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem was that Florida appeared to be at an impasse, thus creating a risk that a president would not be chose in time for Inauguration Day.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Father and Son Presidents<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-size: small;">John Adams, our second president, was father to John Quincy Adams, who was our sixth president.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>George H. W. Bush, our 41<sup>st</sup> president, is father to George W. Bush, who was our 43<sup>rd</sup> president.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are the only two cases in history where a father and his son were both presidents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt were just fifth cousins.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div></div>Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-90171859844320829472011-12-06T17:25:00.000-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.155-05:00Carry-On RulesMy briefcase is not big at all; it is rather small as a matter of fact. It is actually a small, soft-sided, laptop case, so that tells you how big it is – or how small it is in this instance. Well, on a flight last week, I put my briefcase, which was the only carry-on bag I had, in the overhead bin above my seat. Some minutes later, an attendant ordered over the loudspeaker for everyone with big bags to put them in the overhead bins, and for everyone with small bags to put them under the seat in front of them. I ignored him, and after a minute or two, he came over to me and told me I would have to move my briefcase from the overhead bin and put it under the seat in front of me. I replied that since I had a valid ticket, I should be entitled to use as much overhead space as anyone else. I asked him why I, who was carrying a small bag, should have to be more uncomfortable than I otherwise would be, just so some other person could haul in a blimp of a bag and yet receive preference for the overhead bins.<br />
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He didn’t answer that. He just said, “You do know that you have to obey what the attendants say to do, or get thrown off the airplane, don’t you?” So, I gave up and said, okay, hand it down. But he let it go, and my briefcase stayed where it was. Elaine stated later that I would never win the “it’s not fair” argument (even though I apparently had won it on this one particular time), because the airlines decreed the policies, and they didn’t care about fair, and the attendants just did what they were told to do in order to keep their jobs. She said that I would be far more likely get my way by informing the attendants that I was an old man suffering from severe neuropathy and very poor blood circulation in my legs and that I needed to stretch them out, which a briefcase under the seat in front of me would prevent me from doing – all of which would be true.<br />
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Well, of course Elaine was right, generally speaking, but, my legs aside, I’ll tell you that this thing of the airlines giving people with big bags preference over people with small bags really bugs me. It got me to thinking, what if, for example, someone packed his small briefcase inside one of the largest allowable carry-on bags? He could put his briefcase in the bin above him without receiving any hassle from an attendant. Moreover, if a lot of other people started doing the same thing, the airlines might eventually adopt a fairer policy. One policy that would be fairer than the current one would be for the airlines just to reduce the maximum size of a carry-on bag that anyone is allowed to have and to diligently enforce that decision.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-27606286315668347732011-11-15T18:03:00.001-06:002013-04-13T16:39:49.114-05:00Yams and Sweet PotatoesYams and sweet potatoes taste more-or-less like each other, but they have little else in common. Sweet potatoes are botanically very distinct from yams. Sweet potatoes are members of the morning glory family, whereas yams are tubers of tropical vines that are closely related to lilies and grasses. Sweet potatoes are native to Central and South America, whereas yams are native to Africa and Asia. Sweet potatoes are dicotyledons; yams are monocotyledons. <br />
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If you live in North America, unless you specifically search for yams, you are probably eating sweet potatoes. It is not unlikely that you have never even tasted an actual yam. Yams are popular in Latin American and Caribbean markets; they are slowly becoming more common in U. S. markets.<br />
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Sweet potatoes are of two dominant types. One type has a thin, light yellow skin with pale yellow flesh that is not sweet, and it has a dry, crumbly texture. The second type is the one that is most often incorrectly called a yam. It has a thicker, dark orange-to-reddish skin with a vivid orange, sweet flesh and a moist texture. <br />
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Yams contain more natural sugar than sweet potatoes and thus are generally sweeter. However, yams are much starchier than sweet potatoes and not nearly as nutritious. Sweet potatoes are packed with vitamin A, which is considered critical in maintaining proper eye health. One sweet potato contains nearly eight times an adult's daily need of Vitamin A, and, because the vitamin is fat-soluble, the body can store it for later use. <br />
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Sweet potatoes contain several other vitamins and minerals in amounts not found in yams. Sweet potatoes contain significantly higher amounts of calcium, iron, and vitamin E, and twice as much protein per serving. Sweet potatoes are also strong sources of beta-carotene, manganese, and copper. Sweet potato varieties are classified as either “firm” or “soft”. When cooked, those in the firm category remain firm, whereas soft varieties, although actually firm when raw, become soft when cooked.<br />
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It is the soft varieties that are often (incorrectly) labeled as yams in the U. S. Firm varieties of sweet potatoes were produced in the U. S. before soft varieties. When soft varieties were first grown commercially, there was a need to differentiate between the two. African slaves called the soft sweet potatoes yams, because they resembled the yams in Africa. Thus, soft sweet potatoes were referred to as yams to distinguish them from the firm varieties of sweet potatoes. The U. S. Department of Agriculture requires sweet potatoes that are labeled as yams to also be labeled as sweet potatoes.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-6494353744673437142011-11-02T15:52:00.001-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.128-05:00HAZWOPER Heat<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
HAZWOPER is a government-invented acronym for HAZardous Waste OPerations & Emergency Response). To become federally “HAZWOPER-certified”, you must first take a 40-hour course. Thereafter, you must take annual 8-hour refresher courses to remain certified. By the time I retired, I had taken the original 40-hour course and 18 of the annual refresher courses.<br />
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The class instructor always handed out HAZWOPER Student Workbooks at the beginning of the course. The workbooks always contained a section on “Fires and Explosions”, which I considered to be one of my areas of expertise. That section of the workbook contained a fill-in-the-blank statement that said, “The degree of heat required to initiate combustion is called the: ____________.” The official workbook answer was “Ignition Temperature.” <br />
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I have always been somewhat demanding when it comes to accuracy in educational texts, and I’ll tell you that seeing that statement, “The degree of heat required to initiate combustion is called the “Ignition Temperature”, never failed to offend my scientific sensibilities. <b>This is because heat is not temperature.</b> Heat and temperature are two different things. Heat is a form of energy. Temperature is not. Temperature is merely a measure of the degree of “hotness”.<br />
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I give you this, from page 18 of <i>Introduction to Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics</i>, Third Edition, by J.M. Smith and H.C. Van Ness, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975: “One notable advance in the theory of heat was made by Joseph Black (1728-1799), a Spanish chemist and collaborator of James Watt. Prior to Black’s time, no distinction was made between heat and temperature.”<br />
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The first time I read this, I was astonished to learn that people had not always made this distinction. To me at the time, the distinction seemed obvious, although I knew that was probably because the knowledge of it had been around for more than two centuries. Things always seem easier after someone else has figured them out for you. The arrogance of humans is often manifested in feelings of superiority to those who came before us. For example, we might think we are smarter than the cave man was, but it may well be that if the cave man had not already figured out how to make fire, how to make tools and arms, etc., we would be living no better off than he did. To us accrue the benefits of all the advancements in knowledge that humankind has made throughout history. But I digress.<br />
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To clearly understand the difference between heat and temperature, it is useful to imagine that you have a one-pound hunk of iron at a temperature of 1,000 degrees F, and you drop it into a tub containing a million pounds of water at 60 degrees F. What does your intuition tell you the final equilibrium temperature of the water will be? Not much more than 60 degrees F, right? This is because your one-pound hunk of iron, hot though it is at 1,000 degrees F, is much too small of a mass to significantly increase the temperature of a million pounds of water. But now imagine, instead, that you have a million-pound hunk of iron at a temperature of 100 degrees F, and you drop it into a million pounds of water at 60 degrees F. Now what do you think the final equilibrium temperature of the water will be? Common sense tells you that the final temperature of the water will be considerably higher than 60 degrees F, right? So, what this also tells you is that although a one-pound hunk of iron at 1,000 degrees F is a lot hotter than a million-pound hunk of iron at 100 degrees F, the latter contains much more heat.<br />
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I rest my case.<br />
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</div>Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-25495555384272800012011-10-11T15:29:00.002-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.112-05:00The Fruit Tree OrchardIn 1972, Elaine and I bought our very first house, in Rodeo, California. That’s across the bay from San Francisco. It was a small house, but it was a pretty house, and it was well built by the architect from whom we bought it. At the time, it was less than six months old, and the architect who built in it was living in it when he sold it to us. Elaine and I planned to live there for the next several years, so we bought gardening and landscaping books and spent hours and hours planning and reading. We planted decorative trees in front; for example, a flowering crabapple tree. We dedicated the large back yard to fruit trees. We planted trees for apples, peaches, plums, pears, nectarines, apricots, lemons and oranges, figs, cumquats, and I don’t know what all; I think even avocados. We also planted a vegetable garden, squash and tomatoes mainly.<br />
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I also designed and built, with the help of a friend of mine named Delbert, an elaborate multi-circuit sprinkler system that worked on timers. Next, Elaine and I planted the whole yard with Dichondra seeds and then pulled weeds by the thousands for months after they germinated. The end result was very satisfying, though. After we had lived there for about two years, things were beginning to look pretty nice, and we were feeling good about the result of our thousands of hours of hard work. But then late in 1974, I took a new job in El Paso, and we had to sell the house and move.<br />
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Eventually, after moving from El Paso to Washington, D. C. and then back to El Paso again, we wound up in Houston in 1985, and we have remained here ever since. For the last twenty years of my career, I was a private consultant, and on occasion I had to testify in court. In 1999, I had to go to San Francisco to testify in a trial. After the trial was over, I had the whole afternoon left before I had to return to Houston. I thought about driving out to see our first home, which I had not seen for twenty-five years, a quarter of a century. Then I thought again, and I said to myself that, given some of my past experiences in this sort of thing, no doubt the person who owned the house now, or maybe some owner before him, had long since uprooted or chopped down all the fruit trees that Elaine and I had planted with tender loving care so long ago. By going out there, all I would be doing is setting myself up for a major disappointment.<br />
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But I really did want to see the first house we had ever owned, and I eventually succumbed to my curiosity and drove out to Rodeo, while at the same time I was preparing myself for a bitter disappointment. When I got to the neighborhood, however, I immediately perked up when I saw that the flowering crabapple tree was still out there in front of the house. That was a good sign, the way I saw it. I drove up and down the street and around the neighborhood, before I finally got up the nerve to park the car at the street curb and go up and knock on the door.<br />
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A middle-aged man came to the door. I judged him to be probably my age plus or minus a few years. I said hello and told him my name and said that I was the original owner of his house, or well, almost the original owner. I said, for example, that I knew that the kitchen and dining rooms were on my left, the living room was right behind him, and the master bedroom was on the far right end at the back of the house. I told him he had a fireplace that opened out to the dining room on one side and the living-room on the other, which was unusual. I also told him that I knew he had a sundeck outside the master bedroom and a concrete patio running along the rest of the back of the house, and that the master bedroom, the living room, and the dining room all three opened out onto the sundeck or the patio through sliding glass doors. And, finally, I told him, unless some previous owner had cut them all down, he had an orchard of fruit trees in his back yard that my wife and I had planted a quarter of a century ago.<br />
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He grinned and stated that I had convinced him, and he asked me if I would like to see the back yard. Well, sure, of course! I said. I thought you’d never ask! I said. He invited me into the house, and nothing much that I could see had been changed in the kitchen, dining, and living room areas. Then he took me through one of the glass doors onto his patio and into the back yard. I was astonished. Indeed, I was surprised and delighted. No grass grew anywhere. That’s because all the fruit trees provided such dense shade. Most of them were bearing fruit, and the owner got a grocery bag and started picking plums and lemons and oranges and so on, and putting them in the bag, which he gave to me. I thanked the man for his kindness and took the bag home, where Elaine and I, at long last, got a taste of the fruits of our labors long-past.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-41965316626047181162011-10-11T15:04:00.010-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.122-05:00The Tree House and the Sky-RideWe lived in El Paso during two different time periods. During the first period, from roughly 1975 to 1979, we lived in an area that was called the Upper Valley, located outside the city limits. We lived on an acre of land that had previously been planted in cotton and alfalfa, and therefore was devoid of any trees or grass until we planted some. Our house was about six months old when we moved in. We bought it from another company employee who was quitting or being transferred to another location, I forget which.<br />
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Anyway, I should have said when I moved in, not when we moved in. You see, I moved to El Paso about two months before Elaine and Neal and Glen did, because although we had a buyer for our home in Rodeo, California, the sale had not yet gone through closing. I thought I got a pretty good deal on the Upper Valley house, but Elaine never particularly liked it. Let this be a lesson to all husbands: Do not ever, ever buy a house to live in, without first letting your wife inspect it.<br />
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Being young and active at that time, I was always involved in one project or another. In addition to my work for pay, that is. There was a huge cottonwood tree on the edge of our property adjacent to a county road that passed by. I decided that that tree desperately needed a well-built tree-house in it. The trunk of the tree divided into three main limbs about 15 feet off the ground. I designed a tree house with a cantilevered support for the fourth corner of the tree house floor, using two 4” X 6” X 15’ beams that I hauled up into the tree using ropes and pulleys, since I had nobody to help me, and that I secured to the tree with 60-penny nails.<br />
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Sixty-penny nails are six inches long and almost a quarter of an inch in diameter; technically, they are spikes. I got really good at driving nails. I learned how to hold the hammer near the end of the handle, and haul back like a major league baseball pitcher and let ‘r go, and I got to where I could drive a 60-penny nail in with two strokes, three maximum, the first to set the nail and the second, or third, sometimes, to drive it home. Before I got that good however, I smashed the you-know-what out of the end joint of my left little finger. Ever since then, it has been a little bit flattened-out and about half again as large as the end of my right little finger. Moreover, in the last few years I have developed a big ugly knot on the end joint of the left one.<br />
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I built the tree house floor out of Douglas fir, tongue-in-groove, 2” X 6” X 10’ planks. I got the wood from a retired and dismantled railroad caboose at a wrecking yard in Canutillo, New Mexico, located approximately 20 miles from where we lived. The tree house had one hundred square feet of floor space, ten feet by ten feet. I built side guardrails and benches around the inside, put up a roof, and also I built a window facing a telephone pole that stood out at the back end of my property, about 75 to 100 yards away, in slightly diagonal direction.<br />
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Then I built a sky-ride, as I called it then, but known as a zip-line nowadays, so I have been informed by my now-grownup children. I got enough ¼” steel cable to reach from the tree to the telephone pole. I attached one end of the cable to the tree, at a point about ten feet higher than the floor of the tree house. I attached the other end of the cable to the telephone pole, about six or eight feet off the ground.<br />
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Elaine’s sister, Jane, and my brother-in-law, Ricky, happened to be visiting on a weekend that I had planned to be working on the sky-ride, so I took Ricky with me to a local wrecking yard to look for some kind of wheel contraption suitable to install on the cable that would allow you to ride it down to the ground. After a couple of hours of searching, we found a slaughterhouse hook with a ball-bearing-swivel-pulley-wheel assembly, which henceforth I’ll just call the pulley. It was perfect. I immediately bought it and took it home and installed it on the cable.<br />
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Next, I attached a horizontal piece of pipe to the pulley to serve as a trapeze bar, and I made a string pull-back system, so that after you rode the cable down to the end, the next person in the tree house could pull the trapeze back up. Finally, I roto-tilled the ground near the telephone pole, from the pole back to about 20 feet up the line, so that when you rode the line down, you would have a soft landing. The more that you weighed, the farther out from the pole you touched down.<br />
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Neal and Glen really liked playing in the tree house and riding on the sky-ride. Neal would sometimes turn upside down and swivel round and round on the way down. Here he is in this picture.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXDU8a2pWkmqog7-JURo9BksTDpiY6AAAwbFZnHBbTCAE2adIek6-2AujlnptlQ_ZIFiX_dGQlY9yaIAnLrQS9mFDPAz-yICj-0cG8669EB1UpUsM9cqLuZrHQIgWqGMmu_wL0i5DWZhs/s1600/N.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 224px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5662329476500248770" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXDU8a2pWkmqog7-JURo9BksTDpiY6AAAwbFZnHBbTCAE2adIek6-2AujlnptlQ_ZIFiX_dGQlY9yaIAnLrQS9mFDPAz-yICj-0cG8669EB1UpUsM9cqLuZrHQIgWqGMmu_wL0i5DWZhs/s320/N.jpg" /></a><br />
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Glen was not heavy enough or tall enough at that time to touch down on the dirt with his feet at the end of the line before he slammed into the telephone pole, so some of us in the neighborhood would stand a few feet in front of the pole and catch him, more-or-less softly, before he hit it.<br />
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I must have worked at least five hundred hours to build that tree house and sky-ride, and I was really glad they were such a success. I was so happy that my children liked it. I had put my heart and soul (and little bit of my left little finger) into building them, and I was very proud of the result. To tell the honest truth, I myself thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the tree house of an evening and riding the sky-ride down from time to time.<br />
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Neighborhood kids liked the sky-ride so much that I had to lock it up when I wasn’t around. In about 1977, I met a French engineer named Herve (pronounced kind of like Airvay), with whom I worked for a couple of years. Herve had three daughters, all under the age of ten or twelve I think. One weekend afternoon, Herve and his family came out to visit and have a cookout or something like that. Herve’s daughters immediately started lobbying him to let them ride the sky-ride. After awhile he agreed to it, and his girls and my boys proceeded to have a blast! I can’t recall if Herve himself rode the sky-ride, but I know I did.<br />
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In August of 1977, one of my nephews, Howe, and his mom, Vicki, one of my sisters-in-law, came out from Georgia to visit us. Naturally, we did some fun and touristy things. For example, we went to Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands, New Mexico, and we went to a bull fight in Juarez, Mexico. However, whenever we were at home – da dum – we rode the sky-ride!<br />
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Here is a picture of Howe about to jump out of the tree house window.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYUEjXliY8ZODs9nEsqqIL5RSzr2rUgMw6T8vLkIYhN8DivVYSZ8mZY_rfRiJX0DmFKpcGqE4SzqF7dOzwJxasL8SO1vGH61OHg_qoEPk-j0hQMP7VZW25JqrL7WK2rvQH-lMC5jqbq20/s1600/H+1.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 225px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5662329616193545138" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYUEjXliY8ZODs9nEsqqIL5RSzr2rUgMw6T8vLkIYhN8DivVYSZ8mZY_rfRiJX0DmFKpcGqE4SzqF7dOzwJxasL8SO1vGH61OHg_qoEPk-j0hQMP7VZW25JqrL7WK2rvQH-lMC5jqbq20/s320/H+1.jpg" /></a><br />
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And, here he is going down:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOzhXM2B2ZgS7grjN1Rw0rHV_YDPy0eW68AexsR6BDY_3V4MQxiG4W55FO5mrDEU3H4qjBNL7kaba5QP6rbwshraHm2U3aYP-B0sr0ST9ZB_WALiUgeGhLUfeDnfK0WmUlleeIcDV-UFI/s1600/H+2.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 225px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5662329688956521938" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOzhXM2B2ZgS7grjN1Rw0rHV_YDPy0eW68AexsR6BDY_3V4MQxiG4W55FO5mrDEU3H4qjBNL7kaba5QP6rbwshraHm2U3aYP-B0sr0ST9ZB_WALiUgeGhLUfeDnfK0WmUlleeIcDV-UFI/s320/H+2.jpg" /></a><br />
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Sometimes, Neal and Howe would both ride the sky-ride down together, as they are about to do in this photograph.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqV5ZCHJVRHx2tOn2A8tG7jcLsuHKXOp889oaoKKTv3W4CDVY8U-WiQQ_SZNO9kGwVt91ae_gaMh-KAVlCAJTBZOGXsJ0SQowvAvgUeQ-thPOtuaPWjB9rnMZVLtuHr2sIp8lOOwHPZ4o/s1600/N+%2526+H.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 212px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5662333441303582322" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqV5ZCHJVRHx2tOn2A8tG7jcLsuHKXOp889oaoKKTv3W4CDVY8U-WiQQ_SZNO9kGwVt91ae_gaMh-KAVlCAJTBZOGXsJ0SQowvAvgUeQ-thPOtuaPWjB9rnMZVLtuHr2sIp8lOOwHPZ4o/s320/N+%2526+H.jpg" /></a><br />
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I think about that summer visit from time to time, and I wonder if Neal and Howe and Glen remember it the way I do. In early 1979, we had to move to Washington, D. C., and we had to sell the house (and the tree house!). By that time, Elaine and I had done a substantial amount of landscaping, and we had a slatted roof built over the patio that ran the whole length of the back of the house. This was the second time we had busted our butts for two or three years to landscape a home, only to have to move out right after we got it done. It kind of bummed us out, but at the time I believed that my career potential would improve significantly if I accepted the D. C. assignment. Having to leave the tree house behind especially stuck in my craw, though.<br />
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We lived in D. C. (actually, McLean, Virginia) for about three years, but after about two years there, I had to go back to El Paso on a business trip. When I got there, I couldn’t resist driving out to the Upper Valley for another look at the marvelous tree house and sky-ride that I had built and that the kids had universally loved. But when I drove by, I was stunned. I was so grossed out I almost ran off the road, because I saw that the people living there now had torn it all down! I was depressed and disappointed all the way home.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-21013436223616258652011-10-06T20:02:00.000-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.110-05:00Parking Lot EthicsWhen I arrived on campus to begin my freshman year at college, I desperately needed money. I was almost penniless. I had a scholarship that would pay for my tuition and dorm fees, but it wouldn’t provide anything for food and books and other stuff. I decided to go see the campus athletic director, to see if he might have a job for me. I don’t recall what inspired me to do this, but it turned out to be a brilliant idea. It just so happened – so the athletic director said – that he did have a little job for me if I wanted it. It was not a full-time job (which I didn’t want anyway), and it was not a permanent job, but I could have it until he said otherwise. The job was selling parking tickets for the home football games. <br /><br />He gave me a roll of 100 tickets for the first game, and he took me out to see a parking lot. It was a good lot, close to the stadium entrance. It was fenced off by itself, separate and apart from the main stadium parking lot, which was a whole heap bigger than this lot. I was supposed to arrive one hour prior to kickoff time and open the lot. Each ticket was to cost $1.00. He told me if I brought him back $100.00 and 100 ticket stubs on the Monday afternoon following the Saturday night game, he would pay me $5.00. I thought Wow! I can buy four or five meals with that! I thanked him sincerely and took the roll of tickets back to the dorm.<br /><br />Well, I got to the football stadium on Saturday night of the opening home game, an hour ahead of the scheduled kickoff time. I opened the parking lot and started selling the tickets. Now, you know, when you go somewhere like a movie, you typically buy a ticket at a ticket booth, and then you continue on into the theater and give your ticket to some gate-keeper, who tears the ticket up and gives you the stub. If you think that you might have to leave the movie in the middle and go out past the gate-keeper, then you had better keep the stub, or you won’t be able to get back in. At some places, they won’t let you back in period; for example, most live theaters, but that’s beside the point. In this particular operation, there was only me, and not a one of these hometown fans was likely to leave during the game. Consequently, most of the people driving through just dropped their ticket stubs on the ground within a couple of feet of me.<br /><br />Now, it might sound easy selling parking lot tickets, but there was more to it than I had previously given much thought to. I kept the roll of tickets in the left hip pocket of my sports coat. I kept the cash in my right pants pocket and my ticket stubs from people I had sold tickets to in the right hip pocket of my sports coat. After I had sold a number of tickets, I started picking up the ticket stubs that people had tossed, and I stuffed them in my left pants pocket. I don’t recall exactly what possessed me to do this, but it turned out to be an unwitting inspiration.<br /><br />After I had sold all the tickets on the roll, I was still looking at a long line of people who wanted to park, and there was still a lot of vacant space left in the lot. So, I started selling the prior patrons’ ticket stubs from my left pants pocket, and putting the cash into the left breast pocket of my sports coat. (Well, what the hell would you have done?) I kept selling the stubs over and over again like that, until a cop who was covering the lot walked over and told me it was all full now, which it was, and that the kickoff had already occurred (as if I cared!). I had sold something close to 500 tickets, and I was holding the first $100 in my right pants pocket and the remaining $400 or thereabouts in the left breast pocket of my sports coat. I was euphoric. $400 in little more than an hour’s work! (Little did I know at the time that that was the highest hourly rate I would ever make during my entire lifetime!) When I got to my seat in the stadium that my roommate was holding for me, along with our dates, he immediately sensed that something was up, but I gave him the mum’s-the-word sign, and I told him about it later on back at the dorm.<br /><br />On the following Monday afternoon, I reported to the athletic director as instructed, and I gave him his $100 and the 100 ticket stubs that I had kept in the right pocket of my sports coat. He said good job young fella, and gave me $5.00. He also gave me another roll of 100 tickets for the next game, with the same instructions as before. Well, I continued that gig for three or four home games, until one black Monday afternoon he told me he was sorry, but that one of his football players needed a job and he had to give preference to him. By that time I had made more than $1000 from that job, and my only regret was that it wouldn’t be more.<br /><br />Back at the dorm, my parking-lot caper became the subject of seemingly endless philosophical debates about the ethics of what I had done. Several of my dorm mates argued that it was highly unethical. I told them they were just envious. I said that if I had not resold the ticket stubs, all those people who had bought them would have had to find other parking places that would have been much farther from the stadium entrance and would have cost more besides.<br /><br />I also pointed out that most, if not all, of the people I sold tickets to, were avid hometown fans who had probably been parking there for years, so they no doubt knew how big the lot was. If I had closed the gate after selling only 100 tickets, they might have gotten angry; they might have even threatened me physically.<br /><br />Moreover, I had kept my bargain with the athletic director to a tee. His instructions had been quite specific. Each ticket was to cost $1.00. I was to bring him back $100.00 and 100 ticket stubs, and he would pay me $5.00. That’s exactly what happened.<br /><br />The athletic director had been there for a long time, and he must surely have known how many cars the lot would hold. Therefore, I figured that the way I “played the game”, so to speak, was the way it was apparently intended to be played. Nobody was cheated out of any money. Nobody paid for anything he didn’t get. I made some money on the deal, and if I could do it again, I would do it again.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-64229177233961395832011-09-19T15:44:00.002-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.127-05:00How's Your Tallywacker?When I was a little boy, there were only two or three other homes anywhere in sight. One of them was where Ben lived. His house was diagonally located from us, about two stone-throws away, on the other side of an alley that ran between his avenue and ours. Ben was about the age of my older brothers Lewis and Howe, I think somewhere in between them. My brothers and I spent a lot time at Ben’s, one reason being that he had a TV set. We watched stuff like “I Married Joan”, “The Life of Riley”, and “Dragnet”. Ben’s parents were very friendly. Sometimes I took care of their dog when they were away. Ben’s mom helped me get through the first grade on time, and Ben’s dad often kidded me one way or another in a friendly way. Ben, however, sometimes took shameful advantage of our age difference.<br /><br />For example, one afternoon when I went over to Ben’s, he greeted me by asking me how my tallywacker was. I had no idea what that meant. I was just an ignorant little kid, and I had never heard the word tallywacker before. Ben told me that asking someone about his tallywacker was just a friendly way of greeting him, kind of like asking how things were going for him. Well, that seemed like a good explanation, so with Ben’s encouragement, I practiced asking him how his tallywacker was for the next hour or so, until I had to go on home for supper.<br /><br />Now, Sunday midday dinner was always a big thing to the Whitmans. If it was summertime, we often would go to Radium Springs for a picnic and swimming. Otherwise, we would likely have a fried chicken dinner or roast beef dinner at home. Just outside and off to one side of our dining room window, there was a big Mimosa tree that we climbed on a lot. It was perfect for climbing, but that’s another story. Sometimes, Ben would come over to see us while we were still eating dinner, and when that happened, he would just sit outside in the tree until we were done and could come out and play. To get to the tree from Ben’s house, you had to walk right by the dining room window. On this particular day that I’m telling you about, maybe a couple of weeks after my visit at Ben’s that I just described, Ben came walking by the dining room window while we were at Sunday dinner. He waved at us and continued on toward the Mimosa tree, and I hollered out the open window to him, “Hey Ben, How’s your tallywacker?” My mom and dad instantly swiveled to focus di-rect!ly on Ben, and he looked like a deer caught in the headlights. You reap what you sow.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-70508371972881852562011-09-14T09:43:00.009-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.134-05:00A Splendid WeekendOn Thursday night, June 2nd, 2011, my little sister Marilyn and her man, a fellow named Ted, arrived at Hobby airport for a visit with us. I had not seen Marilyn for almost ten years, and I had never met Ted. I had already checked out all kinds of stuff the previous several days for places to take them while they were here. Unfortunately, there were not going to be any home baseball games or other sporting events or entertainment events of any particular interest, and I was kind of anxious about what we would do or talk about. Marilyn said don’t worry about that kind of stuff, that all they wanted to do was hang around with us for a few days.<br /><br />Well, we talked kind of late the night they arrived, and they were tired from their trip, so we got started a little bit late on Friday. We ate a Mexican lunch at a nearby Lupe' Tortilla’s restaurant and lazed around the house that afternoon. On Saturday morning, we decided to go see the Water Wall in the Galleria area. It is a romantic location where many couples get engaged and like to get their pictures taken. I realized that although I have lived in Houston for more than a quarter of a century, I had never been to the Water Wall before. It is pretty impressive.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgqDembF6lOn9xYSN-467N5K24eJfXmIHguaYpr37feTlb0vAhXFi9CcSoljsE258VqYAfTp-tVo9hmpIQbOYIJwNM29_FSokLo5hWjq8GyAabk3OdMtsvtaKDZmUfF4inp64s9RpzyIU/s1600/Williams+Water+Wall.bmp"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652226198326242434" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgqDembF6lOn9xYSN-467N5K24eJfXmIHguaYpr37feTlb0vAhXFi9CcSoljsE258VqYAfTp-tVo9hmpIQbOYIJwNM29_FSokLo5hWjq8GyAabk3OdMtsvtaKDZmUfF4inp64s9RpzyIU/s320/Williams+Water+Wall.bmp" /></a><br /><br />Afterward, Ted was admiring the nice landscaping with all the young live oak trees.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm8xl87lU8e_r5TN9t514Lr4nqpE-6OJhokR3E9vtJTgWbY8Py1x_e-nFw880GXggy4plztoppg7pZLXv6j3bX2wEgVxlUUXlnZomRzErhWVqiPuIJ2XBXEcJI-oT0r4j_NtzTGauRcd4/s1600/Water+Wall+Oaks.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm8xl87lU8e_r5TN9t514Lr4nqpE-6OJhokR3E9vtJTgWbY8Py1x_e-nFw880GXggy4plztoppg7pZLXv6j3bX2wEgVxlUUXlnZomRzErhWVqiPuIJ2XBXEcJI-oT0r4j_NtzTGauRcd4/s320/Water+Wall+Oaks.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652226705119918546" /></a><br /><br />I suggested that since he liked live oak trees, we ought to go to Beck's Prime restaurant on Westheimer and have hamburgers for lunch under The Tree (as I know it). I hold it in awe, because it is over 400 years old. We did just that. The weather was perfect for it, and our burgers were great.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN_MoNkYNRFAxoa5myRFYGwYWCWuxZ-jVunjvFGqnDPU4f3ZKSg2OLAaQnye6n49HsySkIeDz4vSOIvTU24phu557Ln1NoGGI6rZwQivAnjG0iMIeJA-jQN82ueagq_2AI7zNrT40YuPo/s1600/400-Year+Old+Live+Oak.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN_MoNkYNRFAxoa5myRFYGwYWCWuxZ-jVunjvFGqnDPU4f3ZKSg2OLAaQnye6n49HsySkIeDz4vSOIvTU24phu557Ln1NoGGI6rZwQivAnjG0iMIeJA-jQN82ueagq_2AI7zNrT40YuPo/s320/400-Year+Old+Live+Oak.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652227070710738754" /></a><br /><br />After lunch we drove through Memorial Park, which Ted really admired, especially noting that among all the other stuff -- golf course, baseball fields, volley ball courts, swimming pool, hiking trails, jogging trails, bike trails, soccer fields, tennis courts, picnic areas, arboretum, etc. -- they even had a croquet court. That seemed to really impress him. There were lots of joggers out.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXvAVOcKyazo-vqqWd-aH_OKsYUlZbVXaDUc4rfJPISOrOOk0fKyu-zoA02jDSnXH0LPZedWyRBXZUnO9gn64qm6bOuk5Tyl1VtIdNrfoAMIXiGXAHb6tiYqSc3B1jIS8YdRAk8S8piEQ/s1600/Memorial+Park+Joggers.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXvAVOcKyazo-vqqWd-aH_OKsYUlZbVXaDUc4rfJPISOrOOk0fKyu-zoA02jDSnXH0LPZedWyRBXZUnO9gn64qm6bOuk5Tyl1VtIdNrfoAMIXiGXAHb6tiYqSc3B1jIS8YdRAk8S8piEQ/s320/Memorial+Park+Joggers.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652227420677265938" /></a><br /><br />Then we went to the Beer Can House, a very weird place indeed. Some crazy old fart spent a good part of his life creating something so enormously tacky that it has become a favorite tourist attraction.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3-CRv-zooemx3o48h6uYIt4r1rhIwbDDZGuicnJMqrbdnAKYD6xe0_Ut1FYaZOI5EFFX_Vf46X5ZUvIAf45IO_-vIywIYtDEC9zDPa9L1YMoaGrucuUtHbeEYfpqSM4jaeBCxBfN3CzA/s1600/Beer+Can+House.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 258px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3-CRv-zooemx3o48h6uYIt4r1rhIwbDDZGuicnJMqrbdnAKYD6xe0_Ut1FYaZOI5EFFX_Vf46X5ZUvIAf45IO_-vIywIYtDEC9zDPa9L1YMoaGrucuUtHbeEYfpqSM4jaeBCxBfN3CzA/s320/Beer+Can+House.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652227680046325730" /></a><br /><br />Upon leaving the Beer Can House, we proceeded to a little park northwest of downtown, where Ted got some really good pictures of the downtown Houston skyline. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgnF4A-cLcX9Y9xeUvbKbuANZ07j6IXxG0KVecb6a2TtvgwuCFEmlHm1f6tWESXKU5hgysrPCE88y2zYsV_3IUd43Dc3aMWz_iadMfHq-2basrMYhyphenhyphenpjI_IRDIlFlSElVUxPHW9Pc34dI/s1600/Houston+Skyline.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgnF4A-cLcX9Y9xeUvbKbuANZ07j6IXxG0KVecb6a2TtvgwuCFEmlHm1f6tWESXKU5hgysrPCE88y2zYsV_3IUd43Dc3aMWz_iadMfHq-2basrMYhyphenhyphenpjI_IRDIlFlSElVUxPHW9Pc34dI/s320/Houston+Skyline.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652228011457713890" /></a><br /><br />Next, we rode the Main Street train from one middle to the other and back. It was way too crowded at the north end of the line near Minute Maid Park and Discovery Green to get on the train there. There was some kind of festival going on. Instead, we got on at the middle of the line and rode south to the end of the line, where we got off and got a good view of the Astrodome, an engineering marvel -- forlorn, ignored, and forgotten though it is these days.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV_i0efZV0VW-bY_tf7To5O-Szoc7yWe8MRakgVzfMsRphlOoUayiWc5SCJhPT752GBDnCfuBORRQjU-WzXEg4K39prUQgpYrB9kxewHdYE4k21AY6UGnhbyZDydfLW-7Div4hs_sFPVg/s1600/Houston+Main+Street+Train.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 220px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV_i0efZV0VW-bY_tf7To5O-Szoc7yWe8MRakgVzfMsRphlOoUayiWc5SCJhPT752GBDnCfuBORRQjU-WzXEg4K39prUQgpYrB9kxewHdYE4k21AY6UGnhbyZDydfLW-7Div4hs_sFPVg/s320/Houston+Main+Street+Train.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652228312135297058" /></a><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQK07LTfVAfpv84u-3D-MMqGSxGeJSXKIghxptDYnvcoX3nOmMCtxqPvDE7mDenM8Vw38rTMlfEfG-uyZ4V0qbq-WZOlGlV-gD_gAzSZ9cZIi3LIJ04MucxQlmdHSAcWvqBRX9TZghEI/s1600/Astrodome.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQK07LTfVAfpv84u-3D-MMqGSxGeJSXKIghxptDYnvcoX3nOmMCtxqPvDE7mDenM8Vw38rTMlfEfG-uyZ4V0qbq-WZOlGlV-gD_gAzSZ9cZIi3LIJ04MucxQlmdHSAcWvqBRX9TZghEI/s320/Astrodome.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652228462657796434" /></a><br /><br />We got back on the train and rode it all the way north to Minute Maid Park and south again to where we had parked. Throughout the whole time we kept wondering why nobody was collecting tickets. When we had first got on, Ted bought four tickets for $1.00 apiece. We observed that we could just as well not have bought them, since nobody ever asked for them, and, besides, how in the world did the City expect to make money on the rail line if nobody ever checked for tickets? Well, Elaine and I had lunch with some old friends of ours a few days after Marilyn and Ted left, and I brought up the question. My friend Barbara explained it this way: "The way they do it is, they randomly check people getting off, and if your ticket time has expired, they fine you $200." I said, "Oh… I see …" I hadn’t even noticed that our tickets were good for a limited period of time. <br /><br />On Sunday morning, Ted and I went back to Memorial Park to play croquet. There was one little problem. Although there was a gate at the croquet court right near a parking area, it was locked. Now, from east to west, there is an office or clubhouse, several tennis courts, and on the far west end is the croquet court. We had to walk through the clubhouse and out back and then down past all the tennis courts before we could get into the croquet court through a back gate. To me, it seemed like about 9,756 feet, and by the time we got to the court, I was already done in. Oh, by the way, did I mention that the temperature was 100 oF, and I was using a cane? Ted and I played one-half of one game before I collapsed from the heat. I sat down for awhile, but eventually I made it back to the car, with Ted’s help all the way, of course.<br /><br />We rescued the day by all four of us playing Budweiser Croquet after lunch inside the house. Marilyn won. Budweiser Croquet is where you use two cans of Budweiser beer for a wicket and one can for a stake, and you lay a course through your house or some part of it. I invented the game many years ago. Of course, you don’t have to use Budweiser, but that’s what I used the first time I ever played the game, so I call it Budweiser Croquet. You need large rooms and a carpeted floor to play it. I am fortunate in that I have a huge carpeted living room.<br /><br />Marilyn and Ted left on Monday, June 6th, and we were sad to see them go. I couldn’t recall many weekends in my life that were nearly as much fun as the one we had just spent with them. Ted is a good person, fun to be around, and I was pleased to see my little sister happy with him. I sure hope it’s not another ten years before I see her again.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-75077478893316606692011-08-25T20:14:00.001-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.153-05:00Nice GuyThere was this guy who got his overalls real greasy working on his car, so he put them into a bucket and soaked them with gasoline to loosen the grease. Later on, his wife retrieved the overalls from the bucket and threw them into the washing machine, as she was going to wash a load of darks. The warm water came on and made the gasoline vaporize, and when the timer switch switched to rinse, a spark ignited the vapor. The explosion killed the man’s wife, and it destroyed the utility room, the bathroom, and the kitchen. The widower sued his dead wife’s mom and dad, because they were the ones who gave the washing machine to them as an anniversary present.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-44275474243187685502011-08-18T19:20:00.000-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.123-05:00Dr. Dan and the BaghouseDan was my best friend and favorite coworker for several years in the 1990’s. We ate lunch together three or four times a week. I sometimes called him Dr. Dan, and for some reason he often called me Main Man.
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<br />Dan has a Ph. D. in Geography. He was once a Professor at Columbia University. He is from Long Island, and he is from a family of commercial fishermen. His brothers are commercial fishermen. Dan is the first person in his family ever to get a college degree. He was also the first person in our company to become a Certified Industrial Hygienist, no small feat. Dan is a really smart guy, and he is kind of professorial in his demeanor, if you know what I mean.
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<br />Dan got a job assignment that pertained to a lead foundry in Mexico. The foundry baghouse had burned down, and Dan was involved because of the resulting lead contamination. Environmental work was what Dan mostly did. He came to me wanting to know all about baghouses.
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<br />I explained that a baghouse was a contraption that cleaned the air by capturing airborne particulates such as coal dust, lead dust, or sawdust. It is essentially a container of giant tube socks, or bags, which are hanging upside down; that is to say, hanging with the open ends at the bottom. Some baghouses are shaped like vertical cylinders; others are box-like. Airborne emissions that contain particulates are blown upward through the socks. The socks catch the particulates but let the air escape through to the atmosphere. In fact, the only way the air can escape to the atmosphere is through the socks.
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<br />Every so often a motor turns on and shakes the socks to knock the particulates loose, by rotating a cam geared to the sock assembly. Alternatively, a sudden puff of air is blown through the socks in the downward direction. The loosened particulates fall to the bottom of the baghouse. They are physically removed from there and disposed of. Baghouses are used in places like foundries, lumber mills, water treatment plants, and etcetera. We found pictures, diagrams, and illustrations of baghouses, but Dan wanted to see one up close in person.
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<br />Well, I knew of a place with a baghouse. My father-in-law, a very smart man called L. W., owned a lumber yard. Indeed, he had founded it and nurtured it and grown it into a very successful operation over the years. I asked him, could we please come out and see his baghouse? Of course, we could. When we got out there, we saw that it was of the cylinder variety. We discovered that the door to get inside of it was on the cylinder wall about thirty feet up. It was accessible from a little platform that you could get to by a ladder welded onto the outer wall of the cylinder. The bottom rung of the ladder, however, was about fifteen feet up. That was no problem for L.W.. He got one of his employees to bring over a fork lift, and I stood on a pallet lifted by the tongs. When I was up high enough to get on the ladder, I started climbing. Eventually I got to the door. I tried to turn the knob one way and then the other, to no avail, and I shook it and rattled it and did all the things you do with a door knob before you conclude that it is really locked. Well, it was really locked, and while L.W. was trying to remember where the key to it was, a swarm of angry wasps came after me from their nest under the guardrail.
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<br />I never descended a ladder so fast in my life, but I got stung nonetheless, a couple of times at least. Dan and L.W. were laughing too hard to be of any help. Finally, I managed to find a smoker on the premises, and I bummed a couple of cigarettes from him. I got the tobacco out of the cigarette papers and spit on it and applied the moistened tobacco to the places where I had been stung. After a little while the hurting began to subside, because, you know, the tobacco leaches the poison out. The wasp incident pretty much ended our day. Dan did not get to see inside the baghouse, and that was a big disappointment.
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<br />A few months passed. One Saturday morning I got a telephone call at home. It was Dan. He was in Sulphur, Louisiana, at a water treatment plant there. The plant used quicklime in the treatment process. The quicklime was stored in dry form, as a very fine, white powder, or dust. It turns out that while the plant’s quicklime storage tank was being refilled, there was an explosion. The roof of the tank was blown out and peeled back just like the lid on a can of peas when you open it. Quicklime was blown all over the neighborhood, up to a mile away. Dan said it looked like there had been a snow storm. Dan had been called in to assess the environmental damage and devise a remediation plan. After he got there, though, the plant manager asked him if he would also be able to determine the cause of the explosion. Dan said, oh no, sir, that he didn’t do anything at all like that. Dan told him that he would need to get me over there to figure that out.
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<br />I drove over to Sulphur, and when I got there, I had never seen anything like it. Everything was white! The quicklime tank was elevated maybe twenty feet off the ground and had a funnel-shaped bottom draw-off. The quicklime supply man stated that he had hooked the loose end of his truck hose into the tank bottom draw-off and turned on his blower. That’s how they refilled their quicklime tanks; they blew the quicklime in from the supply trucks. They had been doing it this way for years.
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<br />I always do a lot of walking around and looking when I investigate explosions. And I do a lot of thinking about how the process works. Now, it goes without saying that if you fill a tank with dry quicklime by blowing it into the tank, you have to let the air escape or you’ll blow the roof off. Which is what happened here. Therefore, the tank venting system had to have been blocked, and the air couldn’t escape. It also goes without saying that you can’t just let the air blow through the tank without capturing the quicklime, or you’ll just wind up blowing all the quicklime from the supply truck into the atmosphere. And what do you need to capture the quicklime? Yes, a baghouse. I reasoned that there had to have been a baghouse, which would have likely been on the roof of the tank. It must have been plugged up, and it must have been blown off the roof.
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<br />So, I knew what I was looking for, but I did not know exactly what this one looked like. In my walking around, I spotted what looked like an outhouse or one of those portable potties you see around construction sites, but it was a good bit larger. It was about fifty yards from the tank, and it looked suspiciously out of place for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on. I began to get that tingle I sometimes get when I know I have figured something out and am about to prove it.
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<br />Sure enough, when I walked over to the “outhouse” and opened the door, I saw that it was a baghouse. As I expected, all the socks were so jammed packed with quicklime that no air could possibly get through them. They looked like giant, white sausages about to burst out of their skins. I concluded that the motor that shakes the socks out every so often must have failed. After that happened, the socks gradually filled up completely. And then when the supply man hooked up his hose and started his blower, he blew the tank roof off, along with the baghouse that was installed on it. It looked to me like quicklime had gotten inside the motor and clogged it up, causing it to fail. I could check that later.
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<br />I was excited, and I couldn’t wait to show Dan, but I closed the baghouse door and maintained a calm demeanor. “Dr. Dan” I called across the plant yard. “Can you come here just a minute? I want to ask you something.” Dan walked over. I was barely able to stifle my excitement as I opened the baghouse door and asked him, “Do you know what this is?” Dan stood there for a minute looking without seeing. Then the scales fell from his eyes; he was suddenly stunned, and he couldn’t even speak for a few seconds. Then all he could do was gasp, “A BAGHOUSE! A BAGHOUSE!” You found a BAGHOUSE!” Dr. Dan had finally gotten to see a baghouse. He was thrilled, and so was I.
<br />Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5075581766046519223.post-63781822180036842232011-07-30T06:14:00.001-05:002013-04-13T16:39:49.125-05:00A Crazy JobIt was a crazy job from the get-go, and the only one I’ve ever done that had to be coordinated with the phases of the moon. Barbara had gotten this assignment to reconstruct a highway accident and videotape it on the accident site. She had data on the vehicles involved, speeds and distances, and so on, from the police report and depositions and whatnot. Here’s how it all happened to the best of my recollection.<br /><br />A man was attempting to change a left tire, on the narrow shoulder of a two-lane blacktop at night, and he had his butt hanging out into the road. He was at the bottom of a hill. It was a clear night, but there was no moon at the time. An eighteen-wheeler came over the hill on the same side of the road and clipped him. <br /><br />The man who was hit was from a road-service outfit. He had driven a two-ton flatbed truck to the site and parked off the road in front of the guy with the flat tire. That guy was driving a gray, 1974 International Harvester Scout and was hauling a two-wheel dolly behind him, with a red, 1966 Mustang on top of it. The left tire on the dolly developed a flat, and the man called the road-service outfit for help.<br /><br />I first got involved in this job by calculating some stuff for Barbara. Then she asked me to go find a ’66 Mustang somewhere, and do it in a hurry. She also asked for help with the logistics of getting everything on the accident site at the right time. In less than two weeks, she had to have everything – a flatbed truck and driver, a ‘74 Scout, a two-wheeled dolly, a ’66 Mustang, an eighteen-wheeler and driver, plus a video crew – on some road up somewhere up in the tri-state area. This whole re-creation of the accident had to be timed so there was no moon when we did it. Scott had earlier spotted a ’74 Scout in the same parking garage we used, and he promised to locate the owner and try to make some kind of deal with him. I went to Bob, our CEO, and asked him for $5,000 from petty cash. I told him that if I was lucky enough to find a ’66 Mustang, I would likely have to offer cash on the spot to get it, and I figured I’d have to pay $4,000 to $5,000 for it. He grumbled at me, but he saw my point, and I got the $5,000.<br /><br />Then I enlisted Dan to help me. He got a lot of car ads and a city map, and I drove. We were in my almost brand new bright red, 1992, five-on-the-floor Camaro, with a five-liter engine. I really liked that car. We nearly covered the city looking for a ’66 Mustang, and it was getting late on the second or third day when we finally came up on this old boy’s house somewhere in the far east part of Houston . He had almost finished restoring a ’66 Mustang. The interior panels for the doors still needed to be installed, but other than that, it was pretty cool. It ran really well, and he had painted it a nice looking metallic gold.<br /><br />I asked him what he would sell it for, and he said $4,500. With no hesitation at all, I whipped out a stack of $100 bills and peeled off 45 of them, one by one, counting them off out loud as I placed each one into his open hand. He looked kind of dumbfounded but handed over the car title and registration, and we had our ’66 Mustang. We drove it directly to an Earl Scheib paint shop and instructed them to give the car a new red paint job as soon as possible. It was still tacky the next morning, but we deemed it good enough to go. We were in a hurry.<br /><br />Meanwhile, throughout all this we had to keep calling around talking to truck rental outfits for a two-wheeled dolly, a flatbed truck and driver, and an eighteen-wheeler and driver. We didn’t have cell phones back then, or the Internet. Scott had managed to reach the Scout owner and had bought it from him. It had to be repainted too, so back to Earl Scheib. Then, Scott, who was the video man for Barbara, said the new coats of paint were too shiny, and made the painters do another coat and dust them up while they were still tacky. Boy, those guys hated to have to do that, especially to the Mustang.<br /><br />Anyway, we finally got everything flanged up just in time. I had arranged for a flatbed truck and driver to come to the Earl Scheib paint shop. The Mustang and the Scout would be loaded onto the flatbed (it had a ramp). The flatbed driver was hauling a two-wheeled dolly. He would drive up to the site, a two-day drive, and we would fly up there and drive out to meet him. Barbara had arranged to have all the video equipment transported to the site. Meanwhile, I had arranged for an eighteen-wheeler and driver to meet us there too. We had just got the Scout and the Mustang onto the flatbed, and I was filling out papers with the driver, when an Earl Scheib employee stepped outside and yelled, was one of us Philip? It seems I had a phone call. Or maybe it was Scott who got the call, whatever. It was from Barbara. She told us the case had just settled, and the client wanted us to stop work. The timing was perfect, because we were all ready to head home for supper.Philip Whitmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12118550326045800125noreply@blogger.com2