variety is the spice of life

 

I've always liked variety. For that reason, I will generally not have the same meals for breakfast or dinner two days in a row.

 

You'll remember that there was a time when you have any color you wanted on your model T- as long as you wanted it black

 

During the 1950's, you had a wide variety of colors to choose from, in some cases as many as 20, and some of those were two tones.

 

In the 1970's, the number of choices were fewer, but the color choices were more vibrant, and included colors like Plum Crazy, Lemon Twist, and Vitamin C Orange.

 

Today, color choices are more limited, and are largely black, white, and silver, with a smatter of blue and red variations.

 

Variety also makes society more interesting,

 

For the second day in a row, I am monitoring an ELD (English language learner) class. Although all of today's classes have Spanish as their first language, yesterday’s was much more diverse.

 

I took as quick survey of first languages, and this is what I found:

 

1 student spoke Swahili

6 spoke Spanish

5 spoke Arabic

1 spoke French

I spoke Farci

2 spoke Turkmen

1 spoke Kinyarwanda (which is spoken in Kenya)

 

There are people in society today who want to de-emphasize our differences. They call it eliminating DEI, and it is an absolutely stupid idea. Fortunately, there are some corporations and universities that are resisting. So far, companies like Costco have managed to avoid any penalties, but numerous colleges and universities have been threatened with funding cuts. The last time I checked, freedom of speech was still guaranteed by the first amendment.

 

There are also people who want to make English our official language, but I have already explained why that does not make any sense either.

 

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/09/should-english-be-americas-official.html

 

I admire people like Pete Buttigieg, who speaks 7 languages. Technically, that makes him a polyglot. The pope also speaks 7 (Spanish, Italian, English, Latin, Portuguese, and German) 

 

I have studied 6 languages, but can only carry on conversations in English. That's actually one more than Donald Trump, who can't even carry a conversation in English that makes any sense at all.

 

Variety is also one of the reasons why I continue to teach well past normal retirement ages. As a general rule, I do not know where I will be teaching for the day until after breakfast. In addition, after I take attendance, I have plenty of time to read books - and I get paid well for doing just that - which is why I read 74 books last year.

 

Our society is gradually becoming a place where minorities will be the majority – and that brings a smile to my face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I've got your number

 

I’ve got your number means understanding someone so well that you can predict their actions or know someone’s true nature or intentions. It’s an idiom—a phrase whose meaning isn’t deduced from the literal definitions of the words it contains.

This phrase came to mind the other day when I got a call from someone that I did not know in Aurora, Illinois. The odd thing is that the area code was 331, an area code that did not exist when we lived there. The new area code is actually an overlap to the existing area code of 630, and it became effective in 2007, about 3 years after we moved out of the area.

 The encounter with a new area code got me to wondering about the origins of area codes.

First of all, I dug into the origin of the North American Numbering Plan.

The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) divides the territories of its members into geographic numbering plan areas (NPAs). Each NPA is identified by one or more numbering plan area codes (NPA codes, or area codes), consisting of three digits that are prefixed to each local telephone number having seven digits. A numbering plan area with multiple area codes is called an overlay. Area codes are also assigned for non-geographic purposes. The rules for numbering NPAs do not permit the digits 0 and 1 in the leading position. Area codes with two identical trailing digits are easily recognizable codes (ERC). NPAs with 9 in the second position are reserved for future format expansion.

The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is an integrated telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Numbering Zone 1 and has the country code 1. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate in the NANP.

The concepts of the NANP were devised originally during the 1940s by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) for the Bell System and the independent telephone companies in North America in Operator Toll Dialing. The first task was to unify the diverse local telephone numbering plans that had been established during the preceding decades, with the goal to speed call completion times and decrease the costs for long-distance calling, by reducing manual labor by switchboard operators.

 Eventually, it prepared the continent for direct-dialing of long-distance calls by customers, first possible in 1951, which expanded across the nation during the decades following. AT&T continued to administer the continental numbering plan and the technical infrastructure until the end of the Bell System, when operation was delegated to the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA), a service that has been procured from the private sector by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States. Each participating country forms a regulatory authority that has plenary control of local numbering resources The FCC also serves as the U.S. regulator. Canadian numbering decisions are made by the Canadian Numbering Administration Consortium.

The NANP divides the territories of its members into numbering plan areas (NPAs) which are encoded numerically with a three-digit telephone number prefix, commonly termed the area code. Each telephone is assigned a seven-digit telephone number unique only within its respective numbering plan area. The telephone number consists of a three-digit central office (or exchange) code and a four-digit station number. The combination of an area code and the telephone number serves as a destination routing address in the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The North American Numbering Plan conforms with International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Recommendation E.164, which establishes an international numbering framework.

From the Bell System's beginnings in 1876 and throughout the first part of the 20th century, telephone networks grew from essentially local or regional telephone systems. These systems expanded by growing their subscriber bases, as well as enlarging their service areas by implementing additional local exchanges that were interconnected with tie trunks. It was the responsibility of each local administration to devise telephone numbering plans that accommodated the local requirements and growth. 

As a result, the North American telephone service industry developed into an unorganized set of many differing local numbering systems. The diversity impeded the efficient operation and interconnection of exchanges into a nationwide system for long-distance telephone communication. By the 1940s, the Bell System set out to unify the various existing numbering plans to provide a unified, systematic concept for routing telephone calls across the nation, and to provide efficient long-distance service that eventually did not require the involvement of switchboard operators.

In October 1947, AT&T published the first nationwide numbering plan in coordination with the independent telephone operators. The plan divided most of North America into eighty-six numbering plan areas (NPAs). Each NPA was assigned a unique three-digit code, typically termed NPA code or simply area code. These codes were first used in Operator Toll Dialing by long-distance operators in establishing calls via trunks between toll offices. The goal of automatic service required additional technical advances in the latest generation of toll-switching systems, completed by the early 1950s, and installation of new toll-switching systems in most numbering plan areas. The first customer-dialed direct call using an area code was made on November 10, 1951, from Englewood, New Jersey, to Alameda, California. Direct distance dialing (DDD) was introduced subsequently across the country. By the early 1960s, DDD had become commonplace in cities and most towns in the United States and Canada. By 1967, the number of assigned area codes had grown to 129.

The status of the network of the 1960s was reflected by a new name used in technical documentation: North American Integrated Network. By 1975, the numbering plan was referred to as the North American Numbering Plan, resulting in the well-known initialism NANP, as other countries sought or considered joining the standardization.

 A complete list of all of the area codes can be found at the link below:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_Numbering_Plan_area_codes

Today, there are over 999 area codes in use, a huge change from my childhood, when NON existed. For the record, our “area code” was “Prospect”, which apparently still functioned until the early 1950’s.

A few years after I was born, we still had a party line, and rotary dial phones were still in use until sometime in the early 1990’s.

The only question that I have for you know is this:

“Can you hear me now”?

Verizon Wireless - Can You Hear Me Now? Commercial (2002)

 

the genius of Doonesbury

 

 

Although Doonesbury comics are now limited to Sundays, Garry Trudeau’s talent for coming up with obscure facts continues to amaze me, and the strip of 3/16/2025 is no exception.

https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2025/03/16

Who remembers that the Clinton administration eliminated 426, 000 jobs, consolidated 800 agencies, and eliminated 640,000 pages of rules?

Those facts don’t exactly spring to mind, do they?

Surprisingly, those facts are actually true.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-trump-federal-workers/

Context

According to testimony from Elaine Karmarck, the director of Clinton's initiative, it eliminated 426,200 federal roles between January 1993 and September 2000.

Looking back on the 1990s, it's strange to imagine a time when a presidential campaign was won on a promise to balance the federal budget. Bill Clinton did it, too — the U.S. federal budget had a surplus between 1998 and 2001, the only time there's been a surplus since 1970. (The government's debt is $36.22 trillion at the time of writing). 

In January and February 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump began giving Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) increasing control over government services in an effort to eliminate federal government programs and dramatically slash spending. 

Some media outlets claimed Trump and Musk's methodology was unprecedented. In response, social media posts appeared pointing back to a Clinton-era initiative that "oversaw the termination of 377,000 federal employees," as evidence that Trump and Musk had simply "learned from the master."

It's true that during his presidency, Clinton reduced the federal government's workforce by more than 377,000 employees as part of an initiative called the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (initially called the National Performance Review, or NPR). However, there's a key difference between how Clinton's NPR cut jobs and what Trump and Musk are trying.

In March 1993, just two months into his presidency, Clinton announced the creation of the National Performance Review, led by his Vice President, Al Gore. Its goal, according to Clinton's announcement, was "to make the entire Federal Government both less expensive and more efficient, and to change the culture of our national bureaucracy away from complacency and entitlement toward initiative and empowerment."

The review lasted six months, and made 384 recommendations to improve the federal bureaucracy. The implementation of those policies took a lot longer, and some required legislation to be passed through Congress. For instance, in 1994, Clinton signed a bill that offered federal workers buyouts of up to $25,000 in an effort to reduce the workforce by 272,000 employees. According to an April 1995 statement from Clinton, the buyouts were largely offered to management positions in an effort to "reduce the layers of bureaucracy and micromanagement that were tying Government in knots." That statement said that about 70 of the buyouts in non-Department of Defense agencies went to managers and other individuals "at higher grade levels."

The initiative continued to make recommendations for government reform. According to a 1999 article on an archived version of NPR's website, it reduced the federal workforce by 351,000 between 1993 and 1998. An archived FAQ page from 2000 said 377,000 jobs were cut between 1993 and 1999. In a 2013 appearance before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former National Performance Review leader Elaine Karmarck said the agency cut 426,200 jobs by September 2000. 

But the buyouts offered by Clinton's NPR and Trump and Musk's Department of Government Efficiency are not the same. Clinton's buyout plan had overwhelming bipartisan support from Congress, and the law was signed after a review period. Meanwhile, Trump and Musk offered the buyouts just one week into Trump's term, with no review process. 

Federal employee labor unions have sued, questioning the legality of the buyout, and a federal judge has temporarily blocked the offer in order to review the lawsuit.

According to the Presidential Greatness Survey, Bill Clinton is rated #12.

Obama was ranked #7, and Biden was ranked #14  

Donald Trump is rated #45, and Trump #47 will be rated even lower.

https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/FEB24-Presidential-Greatness-White-Paper-2024.pdf

I just finished reading Trudeau’s latest book about Trump, titled “Day One Dictator”. It’s the most recent of 38 paperbacks, including YUGE! 30 years of Doonesbury on Trump (which I have also read).

Although 90% of the Doonesbury comic strips are not political, he has been covering Trump since 1987 – and he saw Trump’s candidacy as early as 1999.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/garry-trudeau-doonesbury-trump-cartoon_n_57e925dbe4b0e80b1ba2ecdc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the devil and the deep blue sea

 

 

As you are aware, enough Senate Democrats voted to pass the budget that had been designed by the House Republicans so that the government could continue to be funded past midnight last night. For now, the government will stay funded until September 30, when another round of negotiations will begin again.

 

Since Republicans control the White House and both chambers of congress, the only tool that the Democrats could have used to pass a more agreeable bill was the filibuster, but Senator Schumer elected not to use it, and Heather Cox Richardson explains why:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-14-2025

Today the Senate passed a stopgap measure from the House of Representatives to fund the government for six months through September 30. The measure is necessary because the Republican-dominated House has been unable to pass the appropriations bills necessary to fund the government in 2025. Congress has kept the government open by agreeing to pass a series of continuing resolutions, or CRs, that fund the government at the levels of the previous budget. The most recent continuing resolution to keep the government funded expired at midnight last night.

The Republicans in the House passed a new measure to replace it on Tuesday and then left town, forcing the Senate either to pass it or to kill it and leave the government unfunded.

The new measure is not a so-called clean CR that simply extends previous funding. Instead, the Republican majority passed it without input from Democrats and with a number of poison pills added. The measure increases defense spending by about $6 billion from the previous year, cuts about $13 billion from nondefense spending, and cuts $20 billion in funding for the Internal Revenue Service. It forces Washington, D.C., to cut $1 billion from its budget, protects President Donald Trump’s ability to raise or lower tariffs as he wishes, and gives him considerable leeway in deciding where money goes.

House Democrats stood virtually united against the measure—only Jared Golden of Maine voted yes—and initially, Republican defectors on the far right who oppose levels of funding that add to the deficit appeared likely to kill it. But Trump signed on to the bill and urged Republicans to support it. In the end, on the Republican side, only Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) voted against it.

Like the House, the Senate is dominated by Republicans, who hold 53 seats, but the institution of the filibuster, which requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate to end it, gave Democrats room to stop the measure from coming to a vote. Whether they should do so or not became a heated fight over the past three days. To vote on the measure itself, Republicans needed 60 votes to end the potential for a filibuster. To get to 60 votes, Republicans would need some Democrats to agree to move on to a vote that would require a simple majority.

The struggle within the Democratic Party over how to proceed says a lot about the larger political struggle in the United States.

House Democrats took a strong stand against enabling the Trump Republicans, calling for Democratic senators to maintain the filibuster and try to force the Republicans to negotiate for a one-month continuing resolution that would give Congress time to negotiate a bipartisan bill to fund the government.

But Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he would support advancing the spending bill. He argued that permitting the Republicans to shut down the government would not only hurt people. It would also give Trump and his sidekick billionaire Elon Musk full control over government spending, he said, because under a shutdown, the administration gets to determine which functions of the government are essential and which are not.

(As a reminder, the last two government shutdowns that Trump caused cost the economy $11 billion).

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/report-estimates-shutdown-cost-economy-11-billion-billion/story?id=60677289

In an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday, Schumer noted that Musk has said he was looking forward to a government shutdown. Jake Lahut, Leah Feiger, and Vittoria Elliott reported in Wired on Tuesday that Musk wanted a government shutdown because it would make it easier to get rid of hundreds of thousands of government workers. During a shutdown, the executive branch determines which workers are essential and which are not, and as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo highlights, Trump has issued an executive order calling for the government to stabilize at the skeleton crew that a government shutdown would call essential. Yesterday was the government-imposed deadline for agencies to submit plans to slash their budgets with a second wave of mass layoffs, so at least part of a plan is already in place.

Schumer said that Trump and the Republicans were forcing Democrats into a choice between a bad bill and a shutdown that would hand even more power to Trump. “[T]he Republican bill is a terrible option,” he wrote. “It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address this country’s needs. But…Trump and Elon Musk want a shutdown. We should not give them one. The risk of allowing the president to take even more power via a government shutdown is a much worse path.”

There appeared to be evidence this morning that Trump and Musk wanted a shutdown when before the vote had taken place, Trump publicly congratulated Schumer for voting to fund the government, seemingly goading him into voting against it. “[R]eally good and smart move by Senator Schumer,” he posted.

But as Schumer and a few of his colleagues contemplated allowing the Republicans to pass their funding measure, a number of Democrats called on them to resist the Trump administration and its congressional enablers. House Democrats urged their Senate colleagues to take a stand against the destruction Trump and Musk are wreaking and to maintain a filibuster. At the forefront, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) mobilized her large following to stop Schumer and those like him from deciding to “completely roll over and give up on protecting the Constitution.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the former speaker of the House, backed Ocasio-Cortez, issuing a statement calling the choice between a shutdown and the proposed bill a “false choice.” She called instead for fighting the Republican bill and praised the House Democrats who had voted against the measure. “Democratic senators should listen to the women,” she wrote, who have called for a short-term extension and a negotiated bipartisan agreement. “America has experienced a Trump shutdown before—but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse. Democrats must not buy into this false choice. We must fight back for a better way. Listen to the women, For The People.”

In the end, Schumer voted to move the measure forward. Joining him were Democratic senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Gary Peters of Michigan, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Independent Angus King of Maine. One Republican—Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky—voted against moving the measure forward.

Once freed from the filibuster, Senate Republicans passed the bill by a vote of 54 to 46, with New Hampshire’s Shaheen and Maine’s King joining the Republican majority and Republican Rand Paul voting against.

And so, the government will not shut down.  But today’s struggle within the Democratic Party shows a split between those who lead an opposition party devoted to keeping the government functioning, and a number of Democrats who are stepping into the position of leading the resistance to MAGA as it tries to destroy the American government. Praise for those resisters shows the popular demand for leaders who will stand up to Trump and Musk.

 Essentially, the Democrats had a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

 

 bettween the devils and the deep blue sea - Search Images

 

Assuming that Trump does not die in office, there are steps that can be taken to correct that mistakes that the Trump administration if taking:

1)    Since there is little that Congress can do, the best option at this point is the courts, who have reversed some of the most egregious policies that Trump has put in place.

2)   Protests by individual citizens are starting to have an effect, making it nearly impossible for Republican representative to hold townhall meetings.

3)   As our relationships with our allies continue to deteriorate, NATO counties will take a more active role in keeping the world safe, as exemplified by their commitment to continue to support Ukraine.

4)   Trump’s on and off again tariffs have caused chaos in the economy, rattling the stock market and consumers, which will make the 2026 midterms a disaster for the Republican party.

5)   The states that are controlled by the Democratic party are taking steps to reverse the damage that is being done to our country.

 

We’re all getting tired of reading about the daily stupidity of the Trump administration, which is the reason that Lawrence O’Donnell felt compelled to take da week off from MSNBC to that he would not go crazy.

If there are times that you feel that there is no hope, consider the words that Margaret Mead said many years ago:

“Never doubt that that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”

(If you are interested to read what else Margaret Mead had to say, click on the link below:

https://www.azquotes.com/author/9917-Margaret_Mead

 

 

 

Beware of the ides of March

 

You don’t have to be a history buff to know that the ides of March was not a good day for Julius Caesar.

Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator, was assassinated on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC by a group of senators during a Senate session at the Curia of Pompey, located within Rome's Theatre of Pompey. The conspirators, numbering between 60 and 70 individuals and led by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, stabbed Caesar approximately 23 times. They justified the act as a preemptive defense of the Roman Republic, asserting that Caesar's accumulation of lifelong political authority—including his perpetual dictatorship and other honors—threatened republican traditions.

The assassination failed to achieve its immediate objective of restoring the Republic's institutions. Instead, it precipitated Caesar's posthumous deification, triggered the Liberators' Civil War (43–42 BC) between his supporters and the conspirators, and contributed to the collapse of the Republic. These events ultimately culminated in the rise of the Roman Empire under Augustus Caesar, marking the beginning of the Principate era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Julius_Caesar

You may have heard the phrase “beware the Ides of March,” but what is an Ides and what’s there to fear?

The Ides is actually a day that comes about every month, not just in March—according to the ancient Roman calendar, at least. The Romans tracked time much differently than we do now, with months divided into groupings of days counted before certain named days: the Kalends at the beginning of the month, the Ides at the middle, and the Nones between them. In a 31-day month such as March, the Kalends was day 1, with days 2–6 being counted as simply “before the Nones.” The Nones fell on day 7, with days 8–14 “before the Ides” and the 15th as the Ides. Afterward the days were counted as “before the Kalends” of the next month. In shorter months these days were shifted accordingly.

You have probably heard of the Ides of March, however, because it is the day Roman statesman Julius Caesar was assassinated. The immortal words “Beware the Ides of March” are uttered in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to the leader by a fortune-teller. Other bad things have happened on March 15, of course, but there’s probably no reason to beware March’s Ides more than the Ides of any other month. Having said that, though, there ARE people who are more cautious on March 15 than they would be otherwise, just as there are people who are more cautious on Friday the 13^th.

 

I’m not one of them.

In 2025, the only month that has a Friday the 13^th is in June. 2024 had two months that had the date, and 2023 also had two months with the date. 2026 will have three.

https://days.to/when-is/friday-the-13th/2025

 On our honeymoon, our car was hit by the deer on Friday the 13^th. Shortly after we settled into our first apartment, we acquired a black car, and we lived a short distance form Highway 13in West St. Paul, Minnesota.

Although I buy a Fantasy 5 ticket 6 days o week, and the Pick 3 times a week, I rarely buy a Powerball ticket unless the jackpot gets to over $500 million, which is a rare occurrence. The odds of winning the jackpot are roughly 1 in 300,000,000, which is why I play infrequently.

Tomorrow night’s jackpot is $378 million. Since it’s the ides of March, it’s probably a good time to buy a ticket.