Post #785: It’s time for the Ultimate Jeopardy Power Players Tournament.

Source:  New York Times.

We had to put up with the President bragging about passing his mental exam (“the duck says quack, the cow says _____”).  Now the Republicans are attacking the mental state of what’s-his-name, the Democratic Presidential candidate.  Pretty much every arm of the Republican propaganda apparatus today features a story on the mental decline of that old white guy running for President.

I say, it’s time to put up or shut up.  We need a person of unassailable stature to settle this once and for all.  We need the ultimate Jeopardy Power Players tournament: Presidential Jeopardy.

Alex Trebec, the host of Jeopardy, more-or-less single-handedly revived that show some years after the Art-Fleming-era Jeopardy went off the air.  And, to someone who has watched both, Trebec’s version of it is a substantial improvement over the Fleming era show. Not just for the production values, but for the rules governing the basic operation of the game.

We’ve had many variants on standard Jeopardy, including, most notably, Celebrity Jeopardy and Power Players Week.  So it’s not like the idea of Jeopardy tournament for Washington insiders is new.  I’m just suggesting they kick it up a notch.

If Mr. Trebec has one more show left in him, I say, let’s skip all the meaningless braggadocio and disinformation.  Let’s make it real.  What say we get an objective assessment of just how slow both of our Presidential candidates are.  On live TV.  For the entire world to watch.  One last round of Power Players Jeopardy.

Let’s make it a true daily double.

I’m going to miss Trebec-era Jeopardy.

Post #618: Blue skies, a followup

White Clouds in Blue Sky ca. 1996

My wife found the definitive article in the Washington Post.  I’m not crazy, the air is significantly cleaner now, thanks to lockdown.

That article also has links to research suggesting that long-term exposure to “PM2.5”-type air pollution (fine particulates) explains much of the variation in coronavirus death rates across the country.

As I noted in an earlier post, Italian research points vaguely in that same direction.  Wuhan had notoriously bad air pollution, as did the hardest-hit region of Italy (the Po Valley).  And air quality in New York is not so good.  And, to be honest, that doesn’t bode well for DC.

So the sky really is better-looking these days.  And if the Italian analysis is right, the reduction in particulates helps slow the spread of disease.  But our long-term exposure to particulates likely increases the mortality rate among those who fall ill.

 

Post #497: Lions Club Fund Raisers

This is the second of a series of articles on things unrelated to the Town of Vienna

This article is about another holiday tradition in my household.

Long-time residents of Vienna expect to see the Vienna Lions Club selling Christmas trees this time of year.  They set up in the parking lot of the former Safeway, next to where the Southern States used to be.  (Translation:  Walgreens).  I’m a late-in-the-season tree buyer, so sometimes I can get a tree there, and sometimes — as is the case this year — they’re sold out before I even think about buying a tree.

But my favorite Lions holiday tradition comes via the Fairfax Lions Club.  Around this time of the year, every year, they have an old-fashioned citrus sale.  By that I mean, they bring up a truckload of citrus from Florida and sell cartons of fruit right off the truck.  This one takes place where the Hechinger’s used to be, at Fairfax Circle.  (Translation:  Home Depot).  Theirs just ended, but they’ll have another on in the spring.  If you have an interest, you can sign up for an email reminder on their website, or you can attend a similar sale by the Falls Church/Annandale Lions on Saturday, December 21.

Putting aside that the purchase of citrus at these sales helps a worthy charity, I like the Fairfax Lions Club citrus sale for five reasons.

One, it’s a good deal on good fruit.  I paid more-or-less the same price for the two grapefruit pictured above.  The big one on the left is from the Lions, and weighs in at 17 ounces.  The smaller one on the right is from Giant Food, at just over 12 ounces.   So it’s analogous to buying your produce at the farmers’ market.  You get fresher, better produce, at a reasonable price, if you cut out the standard food distribution channels.

Two, it’s genuinely seasonal.  The timing of the sale reflects the timing of the peak citrus harvest.  In an era where there is no longer any seasonality to what’s available in the grocery store, that’s pleasantly quaint and reality-based.  You have a limited opportunity to buy fresh American citrus because … well, in fact, that’s when it ripens.  And that’s a throwback in an era when you’d be hard-pressed to name any item in the grocery store produce section that you cannot buy, in some form, 24/7/365.

Three, it doesn’t change, which I guess is the essence of a tradition.  Reliably, it’s two or three guys, selling boxes of fruit, off a truck.  No gimmicks, no apps, no ads, no glitz, no upsell.  Cash and carry.

Four, it’s part of a long-standing, area-wide tradition of wintertime citrus sales by charitable organizations.  In our area, charity citrus sales are so common this time of year that if you miss one, you’ve probably got another opportunity coming up.  So, e.g., the Falls Church/Annandale Lions are holding one on Saturday, December 21.  So you’ve missed the Fairfax Lions sale, but you could still pick up a box at the Falls Church/Annandale Lions sale.

Finally, this may soon be a thing of the past.  Ultimately, charity citrus sales are driven by the productivity of the Florida citrus industry.  But Florida citrus groves are being destroyed by “citrus greening”, a plant disease that only showed up in the US in 2005.

In fact, I was surprised to see the Lions selling this year at a reasonable price.  I buy red grapefruit from the Lions.  Here’s the recent trend in Florida red grapefruit harvest, using data as published by the USDA.  To me, that chart says, better get it while you can.  So for now, I’m thankful that I can continue this tradition for one more year.

 

Post #399: There will be coffee and doughnut in the staff room.

My wife used to email me that line, as a joke, on the anniversary of my  company’s founding.

The joke being “doughnut” (singular), because there was only one employee — me.

I got an email a while back, from a fellow who thought the articles on this website needed by-lines.  I scratched my head a bit at that.  Why should I add my name to the start of every article?  I never wrote him back.

This has now come up again, and I finally get it.  Some people seem to think there’s a team of writers turning out these postings on savemaple.org. 

To which my reply is doughnut (singular).

Savemple.org is blissfully free of team building exercises, staff meetings, performance reviews, consensus forming … and guest writers.  I write everything on this website.  Full stop.  If I can ever convince anyone to do a guest article, you’ll see a by-line. 

If somebody mentions something that I think is worth writing up, sure, I’ll do that.  Happy to steal an idea from any source.  But the research and writeup is solely mine.

And that’s the last you’ll hear of my annual doughnut.

Post 312: Tooting my own horn

I recently received a comment about this website to the effect of “nobody knows who I am or what I have done”.  And my immediate response was “that’s fine by me”.

I’m not here to toot my own horn.  I scorn people who are full of themselves but short on substance.  I loathe individuals who would use public forums to stroke their egos.  And so I try to lean in the other direction when possible.

That said, my wife has convinced me that there may be value in explaining a) what I have accomplished so far, with this website, and b) why I am capable of doing the difficult technical analyses that you may see posted here.

This will be the one and only time I do this.  And, in hindsight, I have fewer concrete accomplishments than I thought (or I have forgotten some), so this has been a good reality check for me.  Click the links if you care to read the writeup.

1:  Timely posting of recordings of Town of Vienna public meetings.

2:  Solid garage walls for MAC projects adjacent to neighborhoods.

3:  Wall behind the Wawa.

4:  Parking for Sunrise (a near miss).

5:  Increased public awareness of MAC zoning and its implications.

6:  Countered disinformation with objective analysis.

Brief biography.

 

Continue reading Post 312: Tooting my own horn

Post #271: This Wednesday, in Vienna: Talk to the Board of Supervisors candidates about schools and other issues.

Thanks to ViennaVotes (Shelley Ebert), this Wednesday (5/15/2019),  in the Vienna Community Center, from 6PM to about 9PM, you have the chance to meet the next Fairfax County Board of Supervisors member from the Hunter Mill District.  An invitation for this event is posted on this Facebook page.

All five Democratic candidates for County Board of Supervisors for the Hunter Mill district will be there.  Because Democrats dominate this seat, you should realize two things:

  1. One of these five people is likely to be your next representative on the County Board of Supervisors, and
  2. That’s likely to be determined in the June 11 Democratic primary, not in the general election.

There will probably be a Republican challenger to the Democratic candidate, but that challenger faces an uphill battle.  Democrats have held this seat in 11 of the past 13 elections.  Democrat Martha V. Pennino was the Board of Supervisors member from this district for 24 years prior to 1991.  In 1991, Republican Robert B. Dix Jr. narrowly defeated her, ran unopposed in 1995, and (after some scandals) was defeated by Democrat Catherine Hudgins in 1999.  Hudgins has held that seat since, winning by almost a 2-to-1 margin in 2003, and running unopposed in 2007, 2011, and 2015.

The Board of Supervisors controls a lot of things that directly affect qualify of life here in Fairfax County.  And, accordingly, this is likely to be a wide-ranging discussion.  So please understand, this is going to be about more than just (say) schools or taxes.  Development and growth have already come out as a key issues, particularly for the Reston area.  There, a proposal to increase allowable housing density was recently suspended.

This is advertised as an “informal debate”.  From 6:30 to 8:30, candidates will answer a series of questions about how they would treat Vienna if they were the next Board of Supervisors member.  In addition, some candidates will be present for a half-hour before (6 PM) and after (9 PM) to talk to Vienna citizens.  You won’t be able to ask questions during the debate portion of the event, but you should have the opportunity to talk to the candidates. Continue reading Post #271: This Wednesday, in Vienna: Talk to the Board of Supervisors candidates about schools and other issues.