Crawling Like a Baby

My son is working through a therapy called, "Neurological Reorganization."  When I was in elementary school, the whole school did some of the same stuff, and the program had been around since the 1940s.  To get him to be more motivated, I did everything with him, including lying on my belly on the kitchen floor, and crawling.  We began the program when I'd been having a lot of low back pain, and even rolling over in bed was agony.  Getting down on my front on the kitchen floor looked like a huge sacrifice of my dignity, as well as a lot more pain.  For the first week, my knees and elbows grew bruises and (when I crawled on the carpet) blisters.  Then I got smarter, and put on knee and elbow pads.

One morning found myself without back pain - and rejoiced that I had found something I could do with my son that helped me out, as well.  We laughed at one another, listened to goofy CDs of Bill Cosby, Terry Foy, and others, and played games of hiding small cat toys around the house.  I felt my waistline beginning to come back into the shape I remembered fondly from photographs...but had not seen for four or five years.

As we crawled on the wooden floor of the kitchen, I thought about the motions my body made, and how the core muscles were being used to slide, lift and propel my body forward, but without much weight resting on my spine.  The twisting of the torso and the alternating arm/leg movements were a decent workout, and I worked up a sweat.  If nothing else, it was 40 minutes of exercise I could get at home, while doing things with my child.  The mouse-eye perspective of my cabinets and floor gave me some inspiration to collect the pet fur and drips more often.

For about a week, our schedule seemed way too hectic for me to get my crawling in before breakfast, and with my 51-year-old body, I just don't want to lie on my tummy after eating.  One weekend vigorous gardening and the next Monday morning, I woke up with a sore back again.

I'm back at crawling again, even with my nearing-teen-age child asking me to not be in the same room, or not do my work-out at the same time he does.  (Sigh.  He's getting to THAT age.)  I miss a day now and then, but getting my old bones down on the floor looks a lot better after knowing what it does for me.  This core-body work-out needs no special equipment and you don't need to leave home.   For us, NR is now a family exercise.

Ethanol in gasoline, not such a hot idea?

I'm all in favor of weaning America off foreign petroleum, but the following is not the way to do it. The EPA and the state of Minnesota in separate but related stupidities have decreed we will have 15% Ethanol (E15) in our gasoline (EPA) and 20% Ethanol (E20) in our gasoline (Minnesota, starting August 2013) -- both before the testing results of what that would do to automobiles came in.

Well, the test results are now in, and it's a crap shoot for car owners -- CRC final report for project CM-136-09-1B, Intermediate-Level Ethanol Blends Engine Durability Study (PDF).

Those cars older than 2001 stand a good chance of fuel system damage from the lower 15% version. We here in Minnesota will be seeing this version in our pumps very soon, if I understand the Minnesota statute correctly (I may not, since it's very obtuse: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=239.791). The rest of the country is likely to see E15 as a result of the EPA ruling, as well.

For cars newer than 2001, some may be ok with 15%, while others the manufacturers (e.g. Ford) specifically disclaim warranty if used with 15%, while others specifically label their gasoline caps to say NO gasoline with more than 10% ethanol.

20% ethanol is, of course, even worse than 15% as far as risk of damage to fuel systems and engine metals (CRC testing showed damaged valves, for example).

While the Minnesota statute is obtuse in its many subdivisions and references to federal law, and numerous special interest exceptions (ATVs, airplanes, boats, etc.), one thing is clear. The law was not written using science, engineering, or with the purpose of reducing air pollution or dependence on foreign oil. It was instead written with one purpose, political payback. It benefits Minnesota corn growers and ethanol industry members who helped elect former governor Tim Pawlenty and the legislators who pushed the law. This is made obvious in that decisions regarding expiration of the law are based on determinations made by the commissioner of agriculture.

Ed Welsh, Oneida County Legislator (New York) and Central Region General Manager for AAA New York, has written a good editorial about the ethanol situation and the CRC study results.  It's very worth reading. My favorite passage says:

If we examine how the federal government mandates certain products we would find that it occurs in one of three ways. In no particular order, the first is to subsidize it , the second is to protect it from competition and third is to require its use. Corn Ethanol as used in our gasoline has the remarkable distinction as perhaps the only product that enjoys all three.

Ask yourself, who would purposely buy fuel that’s more costly, gets worse mileage and increases carbon emissions? Due to government mandate, the answer is: All of us!

Start saving money for car repairs now, folks.

The real reason gasoline is so expensive

This article was eye opening for me. I knew there were a number of reasons our gasoline was nearly $4 a gallon, and always seeming to get more expensive over the years. But I had forgotten that "[c]artels, by definition, exist to maximize the profits of their members." And OPEC members are exactly that, a cartel. For the most part, OPEC countries don't export anything of significance, other than oil. According to the linked article, every time we fill up, we are sending 35 cents per gallon to the "fund" to save the Saudi Arabian king from having unhappy citizens storm the palace -- that is, he is using the "extra" money to pay them off through billions of dollars of spending since the Arab Spring got his attention.

The only way around this is to stop using so much petroleum.  OPEC sits on 80% of the world's reserves. As long as we keep using petroleum, we will keep paying oil monarchs to stay on their thrones.