Most modern music is wasted on me. To my ear, too many singers are interchangeable and too often their talents are fine-tuned by computers. The best of the lot have always been those whose voices are so distinct that you recognize them instantly. These are the people who defined eras: Jolson, Crosby, Sinatra, Presley, and Cash. On the female side, Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, Dolly, and Reba.

When Columbia Pictures decided to make a biopic of Al Jolson in 1945, Jolson was too old (59) to play himself, but there was no doubt he had to sing for himself; the same for Sinatra. When his daughter Tina produced a two-part biopic of her father for CBS in 1992, the soundtrack was pure Frank with the exception of a few early tracks that were damaged from the 78rpm masters. (They were recreated by Canadian actor Tom Burlinson.)

This brings me to two recently released movies, I Am Woman and The United States vs Billie Holiday. Forget all the political aspects of these two projects and concentrate on the talents involved.

Helen Reddy was a real star in the 1970s. She placed eight singles in the number one slot on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, six of them consecutively. Her voice, though, is not heard in the Netflix production, nor is that of the actress that plays her. Instead, it belongs to another Australian, Chelsea Cullen.

Billie Holiday is an altogether different story. She has been portrayed on both film and stage by women with much more vocal talent than she had. Whether it’s Diana Ross, Audra McDonald or the star of the current flick, Andra Day, their voices are much more pleasant than “Lady Day’s.” Don’t get me wrong, Holiday’s voice was distinctive. But in the same way dragging an injured cat on a rope down a gravel road is distinctive. She remains, for me, an unacquired taste.

Still, there are quality recordings of both women so why not use them? If the talent is worth bringing their story to the screen, why not bring as much of the real thing with them?

When you take a census of the Israelite people according to their enrollment, each shall pay the LORD a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled. (Ex. 30:12)

The questions spring out of the text: Why on earth is some kind of ransom needed because a census is being taken? What possible connection could there be between numbered in a census and being stricken with a plague?! The verse seems quite odd – though there is a rational and lovely explanation if we just read more carefully.

Let’s start by parsing the words a bit more carefully. For starters, the Hebrew for the word “ransom” is actually the very same word, “kopher,” that is used in the Torah to describe the protective layer or buffer between Noah’s Ark and the waters of the flood just on the other side – as well as the buffer we grow between ourselves and G-d on the eponymous Yom Kippur. In all cases, this buffer protects life against strong forces which otherwise would kill us merely because of proximity.

So, the Torah is describing some kind of protection racket! We have to protect our souls because we have been involved in the census?! Have we really gone any distance toward answering the question of why a ransom must be paid?

Actually, we have. And here is why: In Judaism, numbers of people do not matter. Each person has a soul on loan from G-d, so for a finite time only, we are capable of touching the infinite. Each and every one of us. And, for every person, there is a unique opportunity. No two people are supposed to lead the same lives. So being “one of two” is a way of diminishing our potential to touch the divine. It is a denial of what makes each person special: not our quantity, but our quality.

The Torah makes it clear that human life by itself has no ultimate value. What matters is not the fact that we are biologically alive; what matters are the choices we make. Or as Gandalf put it: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

So being involved in a census is dehumanizing, relegating a human soul to a mere equivalence. Considering any two people to be equivalent to each other is a threat to the unique quality of each person. Such an equivalence threatens our identities, our potential contributions to the world.

People are not numbers. We are all individual souls. So when we cease being individuals and we merely become numbers, then we endanger the purpose of our existence. Being part of a census denies our humanity. And all of that means that we have less of a reason to live: hence the plague. The plague is the means of culling out those who no longer have a purpose in life, who have been relegated to being nothing more than “one of many.”

So why does paying protection money save us from being deemed irrelevant and thus suitable for an early death? The answer is found in the purpose of those funds: they are used for the building of the tabernacle, G-d’s own home within the people. This was a unique and holy project, one that called for community-wide involvement and contribution. This means there is another lesson as well: we are allowed to put aside our unique qualities when doing so serves a much higher purpose, a holy and universal goal such as building G-d’s house.

This is also the lesson behind the uniforms worn by the priests: when serving they were to subsume their personalities and quirks, hide anything that made them stand out from other priests and then serve as functionaries. Priests were not free to improvise or add stylistic flair: when serving in the tabernacle, they had to do everything by the book.

But the rest of the time, individuality among priests was to be encouraged just as much as everyone else’s. Outside of very limited and special conditions, each person should offer a unique and valuable contribution. That is an integral part of the inherent value of each human soul.

We are not numbers. We are people.

[another @iwe and @susanquinn production]

When I was younger, I was a very serious athlete. Meaning, I took athletics very seriously. And I was pretty good at it. I’m in my high school’s athletic hall of fame for football and track, I still hold some records in Ohio for track even 35 years later, and I was a collegiate athlete as well. I was a good natural athlete, but I also worked really, really hard at it. When people asked what motivated me to work so hard, I always said that I just wanted to win. But even then, as an idiot jock teenager, I knew that wasn’t quite true. I enjoyed winning of course, but not that much, honestly. I expected to win, so when I won, I wasn’t overjoyed. I was more relieved, actually.

But I absolutely hated losing. Losing was a devastating event to me. I worked hard to avoid losing, because I just couldn’t stand it. If I was losing motivation in one of my endless solo workouts, sometimes I would imagine somebody beating me, and I would literally get nauseated, and I would work out harder. I’m not suggesting this is healthy, and I don’t recommend this approach to anyone. But I didn’t choose this approach. That’s just how I’m wired. It can’t be turned off. I’ve tried – I really have.

Anyway, one of my coaches in high school (Chet Pifer) was pretty much the opposite. He probably understood me, but I didn’t understand him. He didn’t care about losing, but he loved, loved, loved winning. We’d win a meaningless scrimmage against a nobody school, and he’d just be over the moon with joy. If we lost, he’d be excited about all the things we could work on in our next practice. So after a loss, I’d be sitting on the bus wishing I was dead, and Coach Pifer would be chattering excitedly about how things were really looking up, and if we’d just work on footwork and pursuit angles, we’d win the next one. My worst death glare wouldn’t shut him up. He was irrepressible. As you might imagine, Coach Pifer drove me crazy sometimes. But when he died some years ago, it hurt, because I felt like part of me had died. Or at least, a part of my personality that I wish I had.

What’s beautiful about Coach Pifer’s approach, is that it always works. When I was great, he wanted me to be greater. When I sucked, he wanted me to suck less. Either one was fine. He was equally excited about either possibility.

I could always be better. So from my perspective, I was never good enough, no matter how hard I worked. So I was miserable.

I could always be better. So Coach Pifer was always excited, just thrilled by the seemingly limitless potential.

Both approaches led to success. But my approach made me miserable, and Coach Pifer’s approach made him happy.

He loved people and he loved kids. We had a dominant track team, and he would never stop recruiting from our student body. My high school had about 1,300 students, and we’d have over 200 kids on the track team. Talent and work habits didn’t matter. He saw potential. In everyone. I mean, freakin’ everyone.

Pifer: “Hey Bastiat, I got Johnny Smith to come out for the team! He’s gonna be great! Help him out, kind of take him under your wing, you know?”

Me: “No.”

Pifer: “Aw, c’mon! Why not? He’s gonna be great. I’m thinking 2:05 in the 800.”

Me: “He’s a worthless dopehead. Don’t waste my time. He’ll wash out in 3 days. I’ve got work to do.”

Pifer: “You never know.”

Me: “Yes, I do know. He’s a dopehead.”

Pifer: “No. You don’t know. You never know. He could be great!” * Enthusiastic manic smile *

Me: “Look, Coach, I … uhhh … ok fine. I’ll show him around. Whatever.”

Pifer: “Great! You’ll see!”

So I show him around. After a few days, Johnny doesn’t show up to practice. I of course go to Coach Pifer to point out that his boy quit. Before I can say anything, he’s got another loser for me to ‘take under my wing.’

Drove me nuts. He really did.

But we won. And we won a lot. So we got along. He made me better, and I knew it. Even though he drove me absolutely nuts sometimes.

To be fair, every once in a while, one of those losers would end up helping the team. Maybe pick up a sixth in the mile or something. Every point helps. Every once in a while. Every once in a great while. But whatever. He didn’t care. He never stopped recruiting kids. He never stopped believing in kids. Which drove me crazy, until I realized that he never stopped believing in me, either.

Which didn’t help at the time, because I didn’t figure that out until after he was dead. But it helps now. We became great friends later in life, which I’m eternally grateful for.

Despite our differences, I think Coach Pifer and I both went into athletics because we had no other choice. We both felt a visceral need to compete. At something. And we didn’t feel whole unless we were competing. It almost didn’t matter what it was. We’d both compete at anything. Whatever. But we needed it, like a drug.

But I’m fascinated by our different viewpoints. He loved winning. I hated losing.

I prefer his approach. I would choose it, given the choice. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given the choice. At least, I don’t think I was. But for what it’s worth, I’m a great admirer of Coach Pifer and his view of the world. Now I have extremely athletic kids, who are scholarship athletes at major Division I schools, and I’ve tried to teach them Coach Pifer’s way, and steer them away from mine. With mixed results. But I hope they learn his way, eventually.

I never got to tell him that. He died young. After helping countless kids in countless different ways, he died young. It’s not fair.

I learned a lot from him. Eventually. But I was a thick-skulled, arrogant teenager. Which made me a slow learner.

But I think we all have a lot to learn from Coach Pifer. Always try to get better. Enjoy the good times. Ignore the bad times. Believe in one another, even if there’s no reason to do so. Welcome anyone and everyone into your family, even if there’s no reason to do so. Find joy in the process. In every little step along the way. Ignore losses. Enjoy wins. Rejoice in the competition itself. And always try to get better. Always, always, always try to get better.

It’s beautiful, really.

My way was miserable. His way was beautiful. I chose my way.

Or, perhaps, I had no choice. That’s just how I’m wired, I guess. But I was blessed to learn from his way. Or, try to learn, at least. Eventually.

Thanks, Coach. Thanks for putting up with me, even when I was at my worst. And thanks for teaching me about joy. Even if I didn’t listen at the time. I was busy. I’m sorry for being such a twit at times. I’m sure I drove you nuts sometimes, too. But you believed in me. Just like you believed in everybody else. It’s beautiful, really.

I learned a lot from you. Eventually.

Rest in peace, my friend.

Hot off the presses. Governor Abbot is ordering the state to open. Other states I am hearing are doing the same.

This nightmare is coming to an end!

The last five years I’ve managed a small power plant in Missouri for a local municipal utility. The original section of the plant was built in 1928 and has been added onto in two separate additions, most recently in 1976. The plant houses nine dual fuel (diesel and natural gas) generators, ranging from a 1946 model to 1976.

Our utility is part of the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) and purchases its energy from the SPP Integrated Market in addition to contracts with other power providers. Being older engines, our units are rarely economical “in the market”. We maintain the plant because, in order to participate in SPP, each utility must maintain a level of “firm capacity” to “back up” its energy needs; and these units are an affordable way of meeting our requirements. If a disaster struck, the plant could also provide some form of emergency power supply.

Outside a few maintenance runs here or there or the occasional high price market day, our generators sit idle. The newest, most efficient units may run 75 hours a year, the oldest 25. In September of 2020, we ran all nine units together for one full hour, the first time that had been done in anybody’s memory.

This brings us to Winter Storm Uri. It was probably the Thursday prior to Valentine’s Day that things started to heat up. The cold temperatures were already pushing down into the middle of the country and forecasts of increased demands in natural gas began pushing prices up. As the cold and ice swept across Oklahoma and Texas, pipelines, gas wells, and gas power plants not built for such weather failed. Within a couple of days, the gas price went from ~$3/MMBtu to $300/MMBtu (even more in some areas). This unbelievable increase led to a subsequent increase in market energy prices. To make matters worse, coal power plants also froze solid (including one of our contract units) and wind production tumbled.

We had been notified of the gas increases that Friday and was being urged by our marketers to be prepared to run our plant. Fortunately for us, we had been sitting on over half a million gallons of diesel which literally overnight became one of the most economical fuel sources on the market (on straight diesel our units are roughly $175/MWh, the SPP market averaged $17 all of 2020). I was hesitant if not terrified. We weren’t staffed nor ready to generate like they were insinuating we may have to. With temperatures forecasted as low as the negative teens, something was going to break; either the plant or our employees.

We started and ran a few units on Saturday to hedge some costs. After the market cleared on Saturday we couldn’t believe the prices for Sunday: over $3000/MWh around the clock! (As I write this, prices are in the $20s). We started units back up on Valentine’s Day morning and didn’t shut down until the following Friday once temperatures warmed back up and wind production rebounded. On two separate occasions, we ran all 9 units, one for 15 hours straight and the other for 21. Our oldest unit ran the longest continuous run at 77.6 hours. We burned just over 217,000 gallons of diesel that week, more than we had burned in any year since 2001 (which was an abnormally large year itself). More generation in that one week than every year since 2013. To top it off: no major breakdowns.

We were astonished and exhausted. We had borrowed two other ex-plant employees from other departments to help work overnight. Our Maintenance Foreman and I put in several 15+ hour days. We learned things we would have never been able to learn had it not been for that. I never want to do it again though.

Even with our generation, we weren’t able to avoid blackouts. Tuesday morning the 16th, SPP issued an EEA 3, their highest level of alarm. At an EEA 3, the generation in SPP is not enough to meet demand and load must be shed, the first time in their 80 year history. We were contacted by our area coordinator to shed load at approximately 7 AM and our rolling blackouts lasted for about two and a half hours. I had the unfortunate task of opening and closing the breakers, with nine generators roaring in the background, and a control room full of managers and operators frantically trying to come up with a blackout plan and communicate with priority customers ahead of the outages. It was one of the most hectic situations I’ve been a part of.

Now the nightmare is behind us but there is still a lot to figure out. Many communities and utilities across the central United States are hurting but mine is not one of them. I’ve seen stories of area utilities burning through an entire year’s budget that week in fuel purchases alone. Some have already declared bankruptcy. We still have to wait to see how the financials will pan out but we have good reason to believe we’ll come out feeling very good about ourselves and how we were able to serve our customers.

Below is a video we put together last year about the plant:

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Porsche Taycan: the most up to date technology can now be yours! (actual photo of 1955 Desoto lever gear shift.)

Net-zero emissions by the entire U.S. would reduce global temperatures by 0.1 degrees by 2100, using the Environmental Protection Agency climate model under assumptions consistent with the modern peer-reviewed literature on the temperature effects of reduced GHG emissions. (The entire Paris agreement: 0.17 degrees.)

This appeared in National Review and was written by Benjamin Zycher on the impact of Minnesota’s EV mandates. I can attest to the other salient point he makes in the article, electricity from wind and solar won’t work. You need to burn or react something and get dirty if you expect to have a grid to power all those EV’s. And just about anything you burn or react releases stuff. A little stuff, spread out, is OK. A lot of stuff, whether concentrated and belching from smokestacks or sealed in lead canisters, either needs to be scrubbed, accepted, or buried deep under former Senator Harry Reid’s house.

I recently went shopping for a new, spiffy, really (no, I mean really) fast sports car. Porsche’s Taycan Turbo S, was spec-d out at around $186,000 +, +, +. Tax credit or no, that is a lot of money to go 0-60 in 2.4 seconds. Am I right? Though Porsche claims their car has 750 horsepower, and we all know horses eat up a lot of hay — imagine how much 750 can eat.

And what’s with the Turbo? Turbo means there is a compressor forcing fuel and air into the combustion cylinders to improve the performance of the oil-fired motor. Excuse me, Mr. Porsche, are you pulling my leg to trick me into thinking there is still a beast of an engine in there? Ok, ok. I get it. That whole horsepower rating relates back to the time when car companies needed to trick the first auto buyers into purchasing a Hupmobile. So, pretending there are horses inside or a turbo still strapped onto an electric motor is old hat for car company advertising (deception?). But the Taycan has almost no internal force or stress since it relies upon two ‘extremely efficient’ electric motors similar to my Cuisinart or my Hamilton Beach blender. Just listen to the engine; you can’t hear it. And thus, one encounters the most serious problem for EV’s (not to mention the name “EV”) – more on that later.

Now let’s talk about that speed. You can go into hyper-speed in any electric car for a wee bit and then all that dead-weight battery either depletes or melts (not really, but the Taycan can’t go 0-60 at 2.4 seconds a hundred times, so that limits the number of 22 second round-trips to the grocery store). Further, it is either the third or fourth fastest street car – following the Porsche 918 ($845,000) and the Lamborghini Huracán ($281,000, excl. taxes, transportation, and psychiatrist fees), maybe a Bugatti, … and just about any Tesla if you drop the car from a C-130 cargo plane at 10,000 feet and the vehicle reaches terminal velocity before smacking into the ground. I don’t know about you, but ‘ol James Madison thinks that $186,000 is a ton of money for the third or fourth fastest street car. What will I do if’s my neighbor buys a gasoline-burning Huracán and shames me?

Batteries, even those made with slave-mined cobalt (Hey, don’t get so upset, cobalt is mined by children, not adult slaves. Just don’t tell Amal Clooney that George is supporting child slavery.) and the environment-raping lithium, are a dreamer’s world away in terms of replacing that old fossil of fuels, fossil fuel. There are laws of physics and chemistry, you know. And those laws say, you can’t take too many buzzing electrons away for very long. So the Taycan has around a 200-mile range, maybe more (or less on a cold day). Its range is not that great when exploring the great American plain or trying to make a hop from say, Albany to Florida, to avoid the snow (or the nosy press reporters seeking comment about your sexual harassment charges).

And I read in the WSJ about a man who traveled from Florida to Colorado in 58 hours in a Tesla versus 30 hours by his old gas banger because he had to recharge. Whoa! 28 hours downtime to recharge. That’s a lot of rest stops. Even James Madison who clocks in at nearly 270 years old and sometimes needs to stop (to see a man about a horse) does not have to make that many pit stops. Not to mention finding recharging stations in that Corn, Wheat, or Cattle Country, wherever the heck that is? That must explain why the Taycan brags it has the shortest recharge time, if you can find the right recharger and there is not a line. Dear Porsche, don’t make the recharge time shorter than the average bathroom break.

So vanity aside, and I am deeply vain, this whole electric thingy is not fully thought through. Not to mention, the Taycan gear shift lever … forward, reverse, and park … is located on the dashboard and looks like a flip switch … just like grandpa’s 1955 DeSoto. And nothing says whoop, whoop, like a DeSoto. But the real shocker is a Taycan only has two gears. My Black and Decker, kitchen Crush Master has 10 speeds! 10 speeds Porsche! That is eight speeds more, and for $185,975 less.

Which brings me back to the fatal flaw of electric vehicles: they are a kitchen appliance. Who sits around their house wearing a $1,200 Ferrari jacket, $18,000 Porsche Design watch, and $500 Lamborghini sunglasses and thinks, “Oh, I want a hand-stitched leather coat emblazoned with Mr. Coffee’s logo on it?”

Years ago, my wife Dolly told me that women don’t want personal gifts from their husbands that come with an electric plug. And so I say, “Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, … electric is fun, but don’t quit your day job.” Those electric motors don’t roar. It’s like flying faster in space – you can’t hear, see, or feel it – unless you plan to take us to warp speed.

For the devout: What do you see as the “end game” of the world? This seems like a simple question, but I think it may not be.

Among Christians, is there a shared belief in a Second Coming, and is it what every Christian prays for? Do Christians even pray for it, if grace is supposed to come regardless of merit? You can see I am genuinely lost here.

For Jews, you might think it is simpler: Jews generally pray for the coming of the Messiah. Except when they don’t. There is a mixture of differing goals: the coming of Messiah is not clearly distinct from the Third Temple or even the resurrection of the dead. Speaking for myself, I focus on the Torah, which has no Messiah at all: my desired end state is a world in which Jews both perform all the commandments, and seek to understand the meaning behind all of them. I have no expectation of an “end” state to the world since it is not in the text. Instead, I see a continual process, but few specific products.

And for Muslims, I understand there are some visions of a global caliphate, a single politico-religious entity. Is such a caliphate run by a prophet? A philosopher-king? And am I entirely off-base on this?

If you believe in an end-of-time or some kind of “Finish Line” for the world, what do you think are its main features?