Harley Sachs

Features Harley Sachs The Upper Peninsula got hit by an unseasonal gale last week: wind gusts to 50 miles an hour and waves on Lake Superior building to 15 feet. No surprise that a tree took down the power grid to remind us how dependent we have become on electricity. There we sat by candlelight, staring at a black TV screen. Fortunately, my son-in-law Charles had just given us a wind-up radio so we could tune in to the local generator-powered radio station for the latest reports.
What? A radio you wind up like an old alarm clock? Yes!

Other Opinions Harley Sachs At first I thought it unlikely that after so many months of campaigning, the voices of electioneers could get even more strident. Unfortunately, it’s getting even more nasty and personal. A woman wrote to our local paper complaining that three of her yard signs for George Bush were stolen, which is against the law. I was given a yard sign, too, by a local party activist, and now it, too, has disappeared. Let’s analyze that action.

Features Harley Sachs Imagine this: you’re running behind schedule and stuck in traffic. If only you could control those traffic lights, turning them all green as you approach, you could roll forward without interruption. Well, you can, but you’d better not.

Features Harley Sachs Marlow Foods Limited, the British makers, call it Quorn ?, a “Mycoprotein, a nutritious member of the fungi family,” that is low in fat, cholesterol-free and has high quality protein and dietary fiber. The detractors call it mold. Quorn is one of the latest instances of totally manufactured food to hit the US market.

Features Harley Sachs The human species, though lacking the tooth and claw of predators, is the dominant critter on earth, but in spite of its intelligence has some fatal flaws. Humans cannot hear very low or very high frequency sounds as whales or dogs can. They cannot see distance as eagles or at night as cats. To humans, ultraviolet and x-ray wave lengths are invisible. Yet in spite of those limitations humans are so overloaded with sensory signals that as a defense mechanism they categorize and pigeonhole. People are categorized as black or white, politically left or right. Yet there are “rainbow” people of multiples races, and independent voters.

Features Harley Sachs Everywhere you go now in the city you see people with one hand up to the side of their face like they have an ear ache, except they’re talking into their palm. I have seen people do this while driving their cars, even while driving their cars with stick shifts while going around a corner, which anyone who has ever driven a car with a five-speed manual transmission knows requires two feet on the pedals, a hand on the steering wheel, and a hand on the gear shift. This demands dexterity worthy of a Chinese juggler at the circus.