Archive for April, 2020
Minnesota Nice
Minnesota Nice
Minnesota is noted for two things. It is “The Land 10,000 Lakes” and the people are “NICE.” We can’t take much credit for the 10,000 lakes, actually 11,000 plus lakes with an area of five acres or more. Or that the state has more shoreline than any other state. They were here long before current Minnesota residents were enjoying them.
“Minnesota Nice” is something else and harder to understand, but the word is out, Minnesota has a lot of nice people. Is it because the native people, who thought Minnesota was their home, before the Europeans arrived were nice? We really don’t know because when the Europeans cleared the land to put it to better use, they also cleared out the native people who had naively thought this was their home. That was not nice. However, Minnesota people evolved from being a little rough around the edges to becoming nice. What is strange is that people who move here from other places, like Wisconsin, become nice also. Even people from other countries. Minnesota has the country’s largest populations of recent immigrant Hmong and Somali people and they are nice. Maybe they are a little weird, having immigrated from countries where they had never seen snow to one of the coldest climates in the lower forty-eight, but they are nice.
Whatever the cause or reason, if we practice what we are accused of being, Minnesota Nice will be real.
Deficits Matter
Deficits Have Consequences
In 2010 I published a book, PushBack; Deficit Triggers Hyperinflation Terrorism. The story begins in 2033. The deficit is the trigger that causes the dollar to lose its value, the Chinese and Saudis stop buying U.S. bonds, printing presses generate fake dollars to pay U.S bills. This results in hyperinflation, and the United States is no longer united and shatters into eight separate independent regional governments.
At the time I did not really believe that scenario would play out as described. I was using it as a lead into a story that depicts a historic act of terrorism by good guys. I have always thought the terms, War on Terrorism and the Defeat of Terrorism were misnomers. How can a noun be defeated? There are good and bad terrorist, depending on your perspective.
Today, when normal trillion-dollar deficits are ballooning because of the covid-19, I am beginning to wonder if the PushBack scenario is a real possibility. It is necessary for the federal government to take bold financial steps to counteract the corvid-19. That is not the problem. The potential problem is, will future administrations do what is necessary to bring the deficits under control when the current crises is over, or will they add to the problem. Time will tell.
PushBack is available from Amazon books.
MICROSOFT WORD UPDATES
I’m now going through that period of frustration when trying to adapt to a Microsoft Word major update. Word becomes more complex and clunky with every update. There are no alternatives. I loved Word Perfect which has many features that Microsoft has not tried to or not able to duplicate. Microsoft has a monopoly and does whatever it wants. I harbor the suspicion that Microsoft Word designers love to make life miserable for Word users. They release updates that are full of errors and unforeseen disastrous consequences, expecting users will report the errors they find and unforeseen consequences that they experience. Then Microsoft will make updates to fix the problems as they become known and generate new problems in the process. Users have become inured to Microsoft’s methods and have no alternative but to accept it as normal.
The latest update incorporates OneDrive as an ambiguous part of Word, again likely enabling Microsoft to monopolize a large share of the cloud market. OneDrive allows many devises and sites to be synced together. It also has meant changes in the way Word stores and saves data. So, Word users need to learn how this effects the way the new Word works. After a few disastrous episodes I’m slowly learning how to handle the new monster. In a couple of years, I will become comfortable with the new Word, and then Microsoft will come out with a major update and the cycle will be repeated.
COLD WAR STORIES
What to do During a Pandemic
Being a widower and living alone, this can be a challenge. Some possibilities, watch TV, socialize on the web, read some books, outdoor activities well separated from other humans, trying or creating new recipes.
Or, publish a book.
Well OK, I had been working on it before the pandemic and it just so happened to get published during the pandemic. That was April 6, 2020. We were then and are in a lock-down. shelter in place. That means your home. If you do leave your home, don’t get closer that six feet from another person. The lock-down has been extended to May 4, in Minnesota and there is no guarantee the lock down will be lifted then.
So why not read a book, one that was published during the pandemic. The name of the book is Cold War Stories. There are seven short stories which average six thousand words per story. All of the stories are fiction and relate to the Cold War in some way.
During the period of the Cold War (1947 until 1991) many of the resources of the United States were devoted to the Cold War. Though a nebulous form of war, there were major conflicts supported by the Cold War’s leading antagonist, The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. There was a clear beginning, ending and a winner of the Cold War. The United States being clearly the winner. The book’s author spent most of his adult working life serving in the armed forces or working on government contracts associated with the cold war as an engineer. The books short stories are fictional based on incidents, observations, experiences and conversations the author had during the Cold War period.
As an incentive, free copies of the e-book version of the Cold War Stories will be given away free during a five-day period starting April 30 through May 4. Just go to Amazon books, search the authors name or the name of the book and have it downloaded to the device you use for reading e-books.
Alfred Wellnitz Books 