Hot Rod Fridge: Just before Thanksgiving, I noticed that the refrigerator in our garage was getting ominously noisy. It's over 27 years-old. The almond-colored General Electric 16 cubic-foot fridge with top freezer resided in our kitchen until we remodeled in 2006 and replaced it with a trendy stainless-steel front Frigidare. The out-of-style GE was banished to our garage, where it has given yeoman service for the past 10 years.

We called a repair guy, who carefully examined the ol' General and said that, even if he could get a new compressor for the 29 year-old fridge, he couldn't replace the Freon coolant which is now banned. And, if he modified the cooling system to use the latest unicorn-friendly refrigerant, the cost would exceed that of a new refrigerator.

So, we began a hunt for a new fridge. My wife went online and found a Sears Kenmore model that she liked. But I'm nervous about Sears; I fear that they will go bankrupt any day now, given that they have to haul around that boat-anchor acquisition known as K-Mart. Once upon a time, Sears & Roebuck was a powerhouse in the retail trade. Sears captured the title of largest retailer in the United States shortly after World War II. And remained undefeated champion until 1989, when big-boxer Walmart captured the title. Sears was once a great draw as a mall anchor store; today, it has become has become an real anchor, pulling down a mall's rep. I've written about Sears' woes before.

We decided to check out some other brands before considering Sears. We found two Whirlpool dealers in the Vancouver area. We crossed one off the list because we don't like them anymore - they used to be our go-to appliance place but we didn't like the way the repair people treated us recently. We hadn't heard of the other dealer but the firm had a good online reputation and opened at 8:00 am. I tried to access the website but a haughty message informed me that my browser was too ancient. Bad sign, since my browser is younger than our newest appliance. We drove to the address listed and found ourselves in the midst of a residential neighborhood. My wife phoned and got a "please leave a message" recording. This is how foolish businesses lose prospective customers.

Off to nearby Lowe's we went. The store was light on help but we eventually found a guy who knew refrigerators and we were lead to a special deal on an 18 cubic-foot Frigidaire which had a stainless-steel front (inexplicably, it was $300 less than the same model with a white painted front) and a 'Made in America' sticker on the door.

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Killing Babies: At last week's presidential debate, Hillary Clinton - who claims to be almost as concerned about "the children" as Helen 'But What About The Children?' Lovejoy on 'The Simpsons', responded to a question about Supreme Court appointees by pivoting to her views on abortion, which can be summarized as Abortions For All, Anytime. Partial birth abortion? No problem.

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The Price Of Fame: The McCallum Theatre of Palm Desert, CA just released its events of the 2016-17 season. Here are some observations:

• For $137 (best seats), you can be entertained by Bernadette Peters, Johnny Mathis or Itzhak Perlman. That seems pricey for Perlman, even though he is an accomplished violinist.

• $127 gets you seating for Michael Feinstein or The Beach Boys. For $10 less, you can witness a performance by Olivia Newton-John.

• For $125, you can see an ABBA tribute band ($125 a ticket for a #@$%&* tribute band?!?!) or have 'An Evening With Lucie Arnaz', whose main talent seems to be emerging from the right womb some 65 years ago. Well, she did appear in 'Fantasy Island' and 'Murder, She Wrote'. She apparently sings, dances and talks a lot about her mother, Lucille Ball.

• Speaking of tribute bands, for $110, you can waste your money to see a fake Neil Diamond. The guy should be called Neil Zircon.

• For $107, you can be entertained by Jay Leno (I've seen him perform; he's great) or listen to the Irish Tenors.

• For $97, you can sit there and watch Suzanne Somers perform. The 69 year-old has beaten cancer and has some unconventional views on medical subjects. She was on 'Dancing With The Stars' last year, so prepare for some hoofing.

For the same price, you can attend 'An Evening With George Takei'. Personally, I think I'd rather pay $97 not to have to see George Takei. Or you can be entertained with an acoustic performance by Foreigner. Or listen to John Cleese, whose 2015 autobiography was stupefyingly dull.

Or enjoy the pounding of Celtic Thunder. Or, if you couldn't get enough of the famous parent/untalented child thing with Lucie Arnaz, there's always Lorna Luft, belting out the songs of her mom, Judy Garland.

• For $87, you can live it up with the very talented song-stylist Steve Tyrell (his rendition of 'Sunny Side of the Street' is unforgettable), or enjoy the very-funny Rita Rudner, or take a chance with The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

• $77, you'll enjoy Herb Albert and his wife, Lani Hall, who was the original lead singer of Brazil 66.

• For $67, you can see the mostly reconstituted New Christy Minstrels. Old Christy passed away some time ago.

• For $57, you can experience a performance by Asleep at the Wheel, a talented '40s-style Texas swing band.

To me, there doesn't seem to be a lot of correlation between ticket pricing and my idea of talent worth. I mean, for the price of an Itzhak Perlman performance, you could have two nights of entertainment: one with Asleep at the Wheel (I like them enough that I've got one of their albums), and another with Herb and Lani, two talented icons from the 1960s. And, instead of overpaying for faux ABBA, you can see the very real Rita Rudner and have a few cocktails afterward at a tony resort hotel bar. (posted 10/14/16, permalink)

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Why Trump Might Win - In One Sentence: David P. Goldman wrote: "A very large portion of the electorate (how large a portion we will discover next month) believes that its government is no longer legitimate, and that it has become the instrument of an entrenched rent-seeking oligarchy."

Yes, and when we complain, elites like Hillary refer to us as "deplorables."

Lawrence Summers, Bill Clinton's former Secretary of the Treasury, explained Brexit and The Rise of Donald Trump thusly, "It can hardly come as a great surprise that when economic growth falls short year after year, and when its beneficiaries are a small subset of the population, electorates turn surly." Indeed.

The economy isn't good - growing far slower than it used to. Here's a dismal graph that explains why people feel poorer:

America's per-capita GDP growth has been anemic for the entire Obama administration. The Census Bureau reported that American's incomes have dropped in 2016.

"(T)he typical American household's real (inflation-adjusted) income has taken a turn for the worse during this election year. In December 2015, the real median household income was $57,701 (in seasonally adjusted, August 2016 dollars). Eight months later, in August 2016 (the most recent tally available), that figure has dropped to $57,380. That's a decline of $321 across eight months.

Real median household income is also down since January 2000, it's down since November 2008 (the month Obama was elected), and it's down since January 2009 (the month he took office)."

More from Mr. Goldman: "Whoever wins, a very large part of the electorate - perhaps more than a third - will believe that the government lacks legitimacy. We have not had circumstances like this since the Civil War. If Trump loses, his voters will blame a corrupt oligarchy and its allied media for electing a criminal to the White House; if Clinton loses, the minority constituencies of the Democratic Party will respond as if the Klu Klux Klan had taken over Washington.

There has never been anything like this in the past century and a half of American history, and it is thankless to predict the outcome. Nonetheless I will: Trump will crush it. Clinton, the major media, the pollsters, and the mainstream Republican Party have badly misread the insurrectionist mood of the electorate."

I'm cautiously optimistic about a Trump victory next month. (posted 10/12/16, permalink)

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Systemic What?! I'm sick and tired of the Systemic Racism catchphrase - the one used by Hillary Clinton in the recent presidential debate. She said, "I want people, especially I want white people - I want white people to recognize that there is systemic racism."

Baloney. I would have responded, "Speak for yourself, toots. But count me out."

At The American Spectator, Daniel J. Flynn wrote about the shooting of gun-toting, black criminal Keith Scott in Charlotte. (Mr. Scott was no model citizen. He had a lengthy, violent criminal record with numerous charges and several convictions involving weapons offenses. These include an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon conviction in Texas that resulted in a prison sentence meted out in 2005 and completed in 2011. Furthermore, he was carrying a stolen gun when he was shot and killed during his confrontation with police. His wife had filed for a restraining order against him saying he was armed, violent and had threatened to kill her. He also hit her 8 year-old child several times with his fist.)

Flynn noted that "a black policeman working under a black police chief in a majority-minority city shot Keith Scott. Why blame whitey? Why not blame Zoroastrians or Aborigines or Legionnaires? This Rorschach test of a statement, seeing whites as the culprits in an event primarily involving two African Americans, surely says less about those spoken of than it does the speaker."

Of the ensuing multi-day Charlotte riots: "Cable networks show us scenes of young African-American males committing brutalities. They tell us, even after the mob knocked down a CNN correspondent on live TV and attempted to throw an unconscious WCNC photographer into a fire, that the troubles of these young African-American males stem from external forces (read: white people)."

U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger, a Republican whose district includes parts of Charlotte, was asked by the BBC what grievance the protesters have. He replied, "The grievance in their mind, the animus, the anger - they hate white people because white people are successful and they're not. It is a welfare state, we have spent trillions of dollars on welfare, but we've put people in bondage so that they can't be all that they're capable of being. America is a country of opportunity and freedom and liberty. It didn't become that way because of a great government who provided everything for everyone. No, the destiny of America, the freedom to come to this country - where they're still coming to our shores - is because they can take their work ethic, their hard effort and put up their capital and their risk and build out their lives."

Ol' Remus at The Woodpile Report concluded, "What's going on here is obvious, even to blacks. Whites just plain don't give a damn about their alleged problems any more. Hispanics and Asians never did. It's over. Expect outrage."

Here's my take: America is, indeed, a land of opportunity. But it's not my fault that three generations of African-Americans have failed to take advantage of it. There used to be many black entrepreneurs and black business owners, but their number slowed to a trickle in the 1970s. Business owners in black neighborhoods saw conditions deteriorating and crime on the rise. Those with reasonably portable businesses moved away. Other storefront retailers either closed up shop or sold their companies. Local blacks were unable or unwilling to buy these establishments, so hard-working Asians - mostly Koreans - moved in. Blacks grumbled and cursed.

Small mom-and-pop motels were purchased on the cheap by East Asians (mostly Indians and Pakistanis). Entire families worked hard at such places, keeping them tidy, functional and profitable. Neighborhood blacks were resentful but had a more than equal opportunity to buy such properties, given the widely-available Small Business Administration minority preference loan programss.

In Portland, Oregon, boat people (Vietnam refugees who fled communism after the war), went into low-investment, labor-intensive businesses such as janitorial services. I know of a local black-owned janitorial business which had gotten fat and lazy from Minority Preference jobs offered by federal and state agencies. Soon the Vietnamese businesses discovered the Minority Preference clause and beat the slothful black business at its own game. HA! Who knew irony carried a mop and bucket?

Roger Simon wrote that Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs "convinced, and then reassured, black people that they were victims, taught them that being a victim and playing a victim was the way to go always and forever. And then it repeated the point ad infinitum from its debut in 1964 until now - a conveniently easy to compute fifty years - as it all became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Great Society and similar policies screwed black people to the wall. It was racist to the core without knowing it." But they did get free Obamaphones.

This great rip in the nation's social fabric was initiated by Lyndon B. Johnson when he decided that the governmint should "help the poor." Black economics professor Walter Williams has written, "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, what Jim Crow couldn't do, what the harshest racism couldn't do. And that is to destroy the black family." Which destroyed black motivation.

Over fifty years ago, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued an alarming report on the breakdown of the black family in urban ghettos. Recently, black conservative Thomas Sowell wrote that there is a general assumption that "whatever social problems exist in ghetto communities as being caused by the sins or negligence of whites, whether racism in general or a "legacy of slavery" in particular. Like most emotionally powerful visions, it is seldom, if ever, subjected to the test of evidence."

There is little if any systemic racism among white people. We're just tired of blacks blaming whites for self-created problems. (posted 9/28/16, permalink)

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Science Is All Wet: An article in The Daily Mail proclaimed that all those warnings to "keep hydrated" are "hogwash."

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People Will Buy Any Kind Of Crap: Consider this bobble head of Amelia Earhart, the aviation pioneer who perished in 1937 when her Lockheed Model 10 Electra went down in the central Pacific during an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe.

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Post-Industrial Job Woes: An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, profiles Philadelphia's current jobs picture, suggesting that is reflective of many large American cities, struggling in a post-industrial environment. Once prosperous factory towns are now desolate and half-abandoned. Two examples: Detroit, MI and Camden, NJ.

"Overall, Philadelphia, the nation's fifth-most-populous city, notched a 14.3% decline in median income from 2000 to 2014 on an inflation-adjusted basis, a drop that exceeded the 10.4% nationwide decrease." Any income gains in Philadelphia over the past 15 years have clustered around the flourishing, trendy parts of center city.

As with other metro areas, "Philadelphia's job mix has changed since 2000. Manufacturing accounts for less than 4% of jobs, down from 7%, and government positions make up 14% of the total, down from 16%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The largely low-wage hospitality sector accounts for 9.4%, up from 7.7%. Education and health have grown from about 25% of city jobs to about 31%. The professional and business services sector including law firms has edged up as well."

In the Oxford Circle section of Northeast Philly, there is the large Cardone Industries plant, where workers earn $15 to $20 per hourly plus benefits remanufacturing used auto parts. Cardone is a rare and admirable Philadelphia success story in the manufacturing sector. It was started by Michael Cardone, Jr. in 1970, remanufacturing windshield wiper motors with six employees. The closely-held company has grown into the largest privately-held automotive parts remanufacturer in the world. Headquartered in Philadelphia, Cardone now employs over 5,000 employees with additional facilities in California, Texas, Mexico and Canada.

"This year, the closely-held company said its brakes division will move to Mexico, claiming 1,350 of the facility's roughly 2,200 jobs by May 2018. Spokesman Kevin Feeley said the company must compete with rivals and expects to add hundreds of higher-paying jobs locally in its electronics division over time."

The Journal article taps into two populist truths:

1. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. As to the rich get richer part, a different Wall Street Journal article proclaims that there are now 2,475 billionaires in the world.

But, as newly-created jobs are touted by politicians and government PR types, the fact is too many are "low-wage hospitality sector" jobs such as housekeepers, busboys, clerks and the like. There are a select number of legal and accounting white collar jobs that are growing. Unfortunately, everything in between is shrinking, leading to the "shrinking middle class" meme.

2. Manufacturing is departing to lower wage countries. Cardone is simply one of many examples. Consider this:

In the 1950s, iron and steel were the biggest industries in Pennsylvania, followed by industrial and electrical machinery (think of Westinghouse making all those big electrical transformers used worldwide). Also mentioned - and Philadelphia was a big contributor - were shipbuilding, hatmaking, textiles and the brewing of beer.

Today, Pennsylvania's largest employer is Wal-Mart, followed by the U.S. Postal Service, the City of Philadelphia and the School District of Philadelphia.

Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council said that, over a recent five-year period, the U.S. has lost 5.2 million manufacturing jobs - down from 17.9 million to 12.7 million. Of 5.2 million jobs lost, 800,000 were held by engineers and scientists - people critical to innovation and new product development.

Furthermore, it should be noted that imports from China - mostly manufactured goods - have increased from $15.2 billion in 1990 to $483,2 billion in 2015.

With proper incentivization, I believe that jobs can be brought back to the U.S. Let's make America great again. (posted 8/24/16, permalink)

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See EU Later: Great Britain's voters firmly demanded that the country divorce itself from the European Union last week. Prime Minister David Cameron, who vigorously supported staying in the EU, announced his intention to resign. The UK will use the $16.3 billion it's been giving away to the Boys in Belgium each year to fund its own social and economic programs. The UK will take control of its own affairs.

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Them Versus Us: Do you get the feeling that, more than ever, we're in a 'them vs. us' nation?

Recently, the Zman wrote, "Thirty years ago, most Americans felt they could, to some degree, relate to the people who ruled over them. The politicians did not tool around in armored vehicles or have armed men in mirrored sunglasses guarding them. The so-called “public servants” were not highly compensated, even if they did not work very hard. The members of the commentariat were few in number and they worked hard to present themselves as normal people. There was a gap, for sure, but it did not feel like a huge gap."

Then the Clintons showed up and, as Donald Trump said, they "turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form for themselves. They've made hundreds of millions of dollars selling access, selling favors, selling government contracts, and I mean hundreds of millions of dollars."

The Clinton Foundation is a money exchange where wealthy foreigners can use their currency to buy influence. Now you know why Hillary has giant, Captain Kangaroo-like pockets sewed on the jackets of her pantsuits. They're full of five-hundred euro notes.

"A lot has changed and today it feels to most people like we have been colonized by pod people from another planet. They sort of look like us and make familiar noises, but they are not us. They are alien. Every day they say things that suggest they are just visiting our planet. President Obama makes the sort of "gaffes" a person makes when they have been trained to sound like a person, but maybe did not pay strict attention in human class. Hillary Clinton often sounds like a stroke victim learning to talk again."

Ya know, maybe the reason Hillary wears such awful clothes is that people won't think she looks so bad in an orange jumpsuit. As to Obama, those who watch television quickly realized that, without his teleprompter, he stammers like a second grader. This is the end result of affirmative action.

The Zman noted, "A normal person at a Trump rally is set upon by a mob and our so-called betters howl with approval. All those lectures we used to hear from the ruling class about free speech and protest being the highest form of patriotism suddenly ring a little hollow. So-called conservatives care more about democracy in Iraq than in America. The liberals care more about the foreign invaders than the safety of Americans."

"This great divide that has opened up between the ruling classes and the people is largely the result of globalism. The source of the great fortunes is no longer tied to countries or cultures. Global money bankrolls government and the petty royalty that lives off government. The result is the people in charge have divorced themselves from the people over whom they rule. The Cloud People define themselves by their opposition to and essential difference from the Dirt People."

What - you don't think the government sees the public as Dirt People? Then please explain how the State Department gets the idea that it can announce that it will take 75 years to review and release the documents related to Hillary's e-mail abuse. The bureaucrats truly think we're slack-jawed, drooling morons.

"Over the last few decades as this has evolved, it was one big party for the government class. No matter which party won the election, the money still poured into the Imperial Capital to finance the petty royalty that lives in the suburbs around the city. Six of the ten richest counties in America are connected to DC. Two are outside the financial capital of the world, New York City. Good times or bad, the last three decades has seen their wealth and prosperity grow.

For the people in charge, particularly the commentariat, the American people have become the Umman Manda. These were people who poured south into Mesopotamia in the second century BC. The name, depending upon the source, means "the horde from who knows where" or, and my favorite, "the scourge of the gods." To the people peeking at us through the windows of their car services and telescopes, the public is just a formless mass of savages that threaten the established order. It's why they hate what's happening. It's why they will stop at nothing to end it."

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have tapped into the 'them vs. us' anger. Visit D.C. and, when you're not in the 'dangerous don't go out at night' part of the city, you see the elite, living in gated norther Virginia compounds or in protected city high rises, feeding at the trough of the gummint and transported here-and-about in fancy armored vehicles. (posted 6/15/16, permalink)

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Don't forget that, the word in Title IX (cited as the source for the mandate) is sex, not "gender identity." Sex is a physical, immutable characteristic.

William Katz of Urgent Agenda wrote: "There is, of course, no public input permitted. This is dictatorial government, seeking to impose an ideological solution consistent with the agenda of the hard left. The public be damned. Women who innocently walk into restrooms be damned. This is the way you will live your lives, peasants!

It is frightening. It is things like this that partially explain the rise of Donald Trump." Speaking of regulations ...

Back in 2007, I was volunteering at the local chapter of a nonprofit. We received the following communication from the organization's headquarters:

"As a recipient of Federal financial assistance, per the Executive Order 13166 entitled, "Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency", (your chapter) must take reasonable steps to ensure that qualified individuals with limited English proficiency have meaningful access to programs, services and information that (your chapter) provides. These individuals may request language assistance services (with a two-week advance notice) from (your chapter) if their lack of English fluency prevents them from benefiting from (your chapter's) programs or services."

This is a typical unfunded mandate ... we had almost no one proficient in foreign languages. We had always been chronically underfunded and have no spare money to hire translators. The only way we could do so would be to cut services.

I did a little research and found that these demands were some bureaucrat's interpretation of an order signed by Bill Clinton in 2000.

The Executive Order covers all "federally conducted programs and activities." Anything a federal agency does falls within the scope of federally conducted programs or activities. All of the over ninety agencies are responsible for developing and implementing "federally conducted plans" to ensure that persons who are LEP (Limited English Proficiency) have meaningful access to federal programs and activities."

We were not a federal agency, rather, a nonprofit corporation. Nevertheless, some unidentified mid-level drone at DOJ has since decided that this order will now apply to us.

In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a Policy Guidance Document, 'Enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - National Origin Discrimination Against Persons With Limited English Proficiency'. This LEP Guidance sets forth the compliance standards that "recipients of Federal financial assistance must follow to ensure that their programs and activities normally provided in English are accessible to LEP persons and thus do not discriminate on the basis of national origin in violation of Title VI's prohibition against national origin discrimination."

As originally written, national origin discrimination meant that you can't discriminate against Poles, Irish, Mexicans, etc. Sounds reasonable. But it has been reinterpreted to mean that you cannot give preference to, say, a Mexican proficient in English over one who speaks only Spanish. That's just nuts.

I have written before that the United States has too many laws/rules/orders. Everyone who owns a small business already knows this. The solution to this problem does not lie with Republicans or Democrats; both have an abysmal record on this score.

We need a hero - a political leader who will step up to the plate and ruthlessly simplify and streamline our government. Maybe someone with the initials DT. (posted 5/17/16, permalink)

Boaty McBoatface decisively won the poll gaining 124,109 votes while the name Sir David Attenborough received a mere 11,000 votes.

I liked Boaty. It was the people's choice and, if Pee-wee's Playhouse had a yacht, it would have been named Boaty McBoatface.

Speaking of Pee-wee, have you ever wondered if Greg Gutfeld is his older brother?

If you don't think Boaty McBoatface is a sufficiently classy name for a ship, just close your eyes and imagine Thurston Howell III saying it. (posted 5/11/16, permalink)

Michelle Malkin wrote that "after 15 years of hapless homeland security theater and bipartisan pandering to terror-coddling "Islamophobia" shriekers, I'm so, so sick of noble gesture paraphernalia. I'm sick of preening celebrities who tell me to "PrayForTheWorld" and celebrate diversity while indiscriminate floods of Muslim refugees across Europe and America corrode the pillars of peace and freedom.

I'm sick of Silicon Valley moguls who pretend to champion free speech while muzzling the speech of those who use the Internet to criticize the very open door immigration policies that fertilized European and American soil for jihadists."

Me, too. Let's do whatever it takes to kill ISIS or any other radical Islamic group - bombing, waterboarding, you name it. I'm tired of seeing us play by the rules of political correctness. Look what that did for Belgium, which - because of its open borders policy and generous welfare for the 'downtrodden' - now has a population with 25% unassimilated, pissed-off and disaffected Muslims.

And while I'm on the subject of inappropriate memorialization, I am offended by the use (misuse) of teddy bears and other stuffed animals as Universal Grieving Appliances.

An article written many years ago by Matt Taibbi of the NY Press, there were some memorable quotes:

"It can be exhausting at times, following these endless, media-fueled orgies of adult grief that surround whichever gruesome random catastrophe is currently dominating the headlines."

"None of this resembles the behavior of people with either real problems or real interests in life. It may be that life in America has become so grim and constricting and sexually repressed that mawkish public displays of canned grief are the only socially acceptable avenues people have left for acting out - so that when the opportunity arises for people to weep on camera or erect garish public shrines of rainbow balloons and plush animals, they jump on it, like a newly-released convict on an unlucky call girl."

"A real victim in all of this has been the teddy bear, which has been forced into the role of the national symbol of this madness. Teddy bears didn't deserve this."

Then there are those roadside shrines found at the scene of fatal vehicular accidents around here. Woe betide you if someone happens to expire on or near your property. Your front lawn will be hijacked by mourners who build makeshift shrines to the deceased, always involving items like Mylar balloons, heart-shaped trinkets, stuffed animals and other carnival-like, tasteless crap.

Ironically, since most of these accidents involve alcohol, one would expect these shrines to include altars made of empty wine bottles, or photos of the deceased mounted on discarded point-of-purchase displays for malt liquors or a smattering of various Budweiser souvenirs spelling out something maudlin like: We Luv U. "But noooooooooo," to quote the late John Belushi.

Memorials belong in cemeteries. If you felt strongly about someone who died, take up a collection to buy them a nice headstone, instead of invading personal property to construct some insipid cenotaph from detritus. (posted 3/28/16, permalink)

Perhaps this year's Faraday Future will be the Tucker of the 21st Century.

The 2016 show is full of drones (including a $40 mini-drone from Mota which is no bigger than a large paperclip), 3D printers, robots, virtual reality devices and more smart devices than in a 2050 Sharper Image catalog. The show covers 2.4 million square feet of space across several convention centers, including the sprawling Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo. The Consumer Technology Association hosts CES and its members represent $285 billion in U.S. industry revenue.

There are nine car makers at CES, some of them introducing driverless cars and electric vehicles. Only nine? So much for CES turning into a car show. Of course, consolidation means there are fewer auto makers these days; DeSoto, Mercury and Pontiac don't have booths here. But McLaren was there showing its electronic goodies at JVC/Kenwood's stand. One of the exhibitors, Mercedes-Benz, is supposedly developing four Tesla fighters, all of which ride on a new EVA platform. Two sedans and two crossovers will begin arriving in 2018.

Mercedes also unveiled the cockpit of the 2017 E-Class at the show. It "heralds an all new era in digitalization – with high-resolution visualizations and animations, touch-sensitive control and also smartphone integration with capacitive aerial coupling and wireless charging." Does that "aerial coupling" thing make you a member of the Mile High Club?

It could easily be called an appliance show: Samsung is peddling a $5,000 smart fridge. It comes "complete with sensors, cameras, smart capabilities and a huge touch screen display. It also takes a picture of what's inside your fridge every time you close the door - meaning you'll always be up to date on how much milk and bread you have left."

Or, you could just keep your existing refrigerator and use a pencil and paper to make a supermarket shopping list, a proven system which has worked for almost 100 years.

Last year, tech giant Apple announced that it might begin producing cars in 2019. My grandmother used to keep apples in her refrigerator. Circle of Life. (posted 1/8/16, permalink)