If you ever wanted a scale with an opinion, this one is for you. Currently the display says “UH-OH”, you must be getting heavier. If you continue gaining weight, the scale will just make a disgusted face and possibly puke. Cut out from the sales flier.
You may be able to read this billboard now, but the only way you can do it from your car is if you crash right into it. Too bad that would be after “the bad things happen”. This one is located at the merge of I-35 and 71 HWY.
This one required a second look to decipher. Does it actually say “Our 4 little ones?”. I guess this pattern would work up to and including 9 little ones.
Recent post by Scott Adams described his vision for the future of public transportation in the new economy.
Suppose the government enacted laws that made it legal for anyone to be a taxi driver in his own car without a special taxi license. And suppose the income was non-taxable. The result would be cheap taxis and high availability. Every time you wanted to run an errand, and had an extra minute, you could choose to pick up a rider and cut your own driving expense in half. Technology will make it easy to match amateur taxi drivers with riders. And the market would keep prices low.
This is very similar to the system that existed for years (and still alive an well) in the USSR and countries that followed it. In addition to pretty well developed system of public transportation and state-owned taxis, a person could just stand on the street, raise a hand and flag down a private car. Both sides benefited equally: a passenger received a semic0mfortable ride for a price comparable to a cab (general price/distance ratio was common knowledge) and a driver made some extra money without making any extra effort. Some people liked it so much that they made it into a part-time job. Others just picked up passengers on the way home or wherever.
Imagine yourself standing somewhere on the Lenin Street (each city had one of these), you raise your hand and soon one of these beauties stops to pick you up:
Soviet Union had its own “Big 3”: GAZ, AutoVAZ, and AZLK; ZAZ in Ukraine produced some of the ugliest and the most unreliable even by the Soviet standards vehicles. Due to the shortage of cars and years-long waiting lists people were happy to get anything with wheels. Sometimes, when at the end of the month autoworkers were rushing to fulfil quotas so they can get their bonus, a lucky buyer would find a bucket of uninstalled parts inside his new vehicle. Despite these cars being 20-30 behind the rest of the automotive world when they came off assembly line, many of them are still on the road closing in on 40 years. Soviet people invented ingenious ways of keeping them going and they turned out relatively easy to fix and maintain.
With a new wave of revolutions in the Middle East, certain historic parallels come to mind. In the last 50 years many countries experienced revolutions, some were violent and others peaceful; some turned out to be successful and others failed or brought about a slew of unintended consequences. We remember the most dramatic ones, or maybe the ones some of us witnessed in person; others were forgotten or drowned in the stream of worthless entertainment news. Whatever happens in the Middle East, the odds for the positive outcome are not very good.
In 1968 the Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to prevent it from straying away from the Comminist party line. The Life Magazine covered the events in the issue headlined “Czechoslovakia:Death of the Bright Young Freedom”. I don’t remember this subject being covered in our school history books; if it was, the official version would have likely be completely removed from reality. The only time anyone mentioned it to me was when my Father talked about someone he knew who was serving in the military in 1968 and was deployed to Czechoslovakia.
This was originally written on my FB page where I post pictures and links almost daily and which you immediately should follow. I remembered about the stool samples when I was writing this post about the Soviet medicine of my day.
*Warning: please don’t eat while reading this.
Soviet kids had to be healthy whether they wanted it or not. And healthy meant parasite-free. So once in a while, my school (and I imagine all the other schools in the area) put out a call for stool samples. By a certain deadline every child had to submit a matchbox full of you-know-what, tightly wrapped and marked with the name of a producer.
At that time (and maybe still) the Soviet toilets (in places with indoor plumbing but not in public restrooms) were different from the American model we are all used to. Instead of a small pool of water ready to accept your deposits, it was more like a vase with hardly any water at all. When done, a person would pull a chain and a waterfall coming down from the high-mounted tank (if the water was on that day) would flush the stuff down through the hole located in the front part of the toilet.
That technical aside was necessary to explain that at least our parents didn’t have to fish for floating crap, it was all right there, nice and piled. Clearly no 8- or 9- or even 12-year-old wants to have anything to do with putting their own crap in a small box, so that somber duty had to be fulfilled by our parents. Many years later, as a parent myself, I’ve done many disgusting things and touched some substances that would make a grown man gag (and they did). But even after thousands of diapers changed I am still not sure I could go ahead and do what my mom had to do. This is something that would make you think twice about having a child.
The next day, the matchbox was proudly delivered and submitted to school, securely wrapped in multiple layers of paper and plastic (we didn’t have zip-locks or any bags of that nature) and tied with a string, with my name proudly scribbled on it like a designer brand. To this day I have no idea if anyone did anything with those nuggets. You can imagine that a school with 800 or a thousand kids can produce enough crap to fertilize a small organic beet farm. (Note to self: submit this idea to the school district as an extra source of income in light of recent school budget cuts by Governor Brownback.)
I always imagined that a lab in lower circles of socialized healthcare hell, populated by medical school dropouts, dimly lit and smelling worse than a meatpacking plant on a summer day, did nothing else but unwrapped the packages and examined the contents for parasite eggs and the signs of dinners past.But in reality I think they just threw these boxes away and faked the results. After all, sooner or later the parasites show their ugly heads, if you know what I mean.
Epilogue: When we came to the United States we had to pass some medical tests (in addition to the overpriced testing we were required to do in Moscow before we left). Then we received a mail-in stool sample kit, which consisted of some Popsicle sticks and cardboard envelopes. I was tempted to send my stuff in a box, but reconsidered and just threw the kits away.
They would have to pry a stool sample out of my……….
Some photos depicting student activities in Springfield, MO in 1939.
Toy train…
A view of a children playing during class.
…and the real thing.
A view of a class learning about trains first hand at a railroad station.
A view of a class field trip to the local stockyard
Now that’s tough, even I had a cot when I was a kid.
A view of children in school taking a nap in the middle of the day.
This must be the other side of the tracks.
A view of a class doing an exercise in practical carpentry.
This kid grew up to invent the overhead projector.
A view of child giving a presentation in school.
Something tells me the old guy is not an actor.
A view of a class learning about slums by visiting the local slum area.A view of a class field trip to a farm to study the soil.A view of the Springfield sewage disposal plant.
Before the air-conditioning the government meetings were brief and to the point.
A view of a sixth grade class attending a town meeting during a lesson on government.Continue reading →
