I never knew Manatees could be so sexy

Just read Bob Burgess's little book Naughty Mermaids. He's dived with them in their winter river quarters and his book includes pictures. Manatees love to be tickled and scratched. He got kissed by a Manatee and they are quite amorous. I can see why people love to play with them in the rivers. The Manatee is an endangered species because they are often struck by boat propellers. Naughty Mermaids was a deal, only 99 cents, and fun to read.

Why novel writing is such fun.

Some people who write novels plot them out in intricatre detail, a story board like a comic book or movie, scene by scene. I think that's boring, for it's like paint by the numbers. It's all laid out with no ssupence for the author.
Some of my novels, eg. "The Mystery Club Solves a Murder" and "Ben Zakkai's Coffoin" and "Murder in the Keweenaw" began as dreams. The dream provided the situation and in order to find out what happened next I have to write it. (I woke up too soon to reach the climax of the dream/story). Each scene in a long story begins with a situation. Something happens, and that sets up a new situation. This page-turner structure is a bit like the old Perils of Pauline serial in the movies. I guess I learned how to do it with with an old pen pal. He would write a chapter and end with a cliff hanger, then hand it back to me for the solution and I had to make it a genre story of his choice and use a specific word. Later I had a radio show where I took three words on the air and made up a story for the radio listeners, using those three words.
So I start with a situation. I try to write a complete scene every morning when I sit down to write. This may be 800-1000 words, a good chunk of writing for a single session.. But when I complete that scene I may not know what comes next and to find out, I have to return to the project the next morning to see what happens next. It's like experiencing my own soap opera. And it is huge fun. My rhythm for this generally runs about 55,000 to 60,000 words, perfect length for ereaders. That's how I wrote "White Slave." The situation: Ed Sutherland fell overboard from the yacht Miss Chief at the end of "The Mystery Club Solves a Murder." So what if he didn't drown? I had to write the book to find out what happened to him and how he survived. Fun fun fun. I set the book up for the Kindle at only 99 cents as a loss leader introducgtion to my other work.

Tri-Met and health care costs

I'm a so-called Ride Ambassador for Portland's public transportation system called Tri-Met,. There are big changes coming which include increased fares, reduced service, and a new streetcar line. Ending this Fall will be the so-called free rail zone in which people could ride the light rail or the streetcar for free in the downtown area. Other aspects of management or mismanagement aside, the heavy bufrden of the health insurance has Tri-Met in a bind. Years ago when the system was flush management foolishly set up lifetime health coverage for employees after they had worked for ten years. I know of no other company that does this.
Historically, health insurance was introduced during World War II when there was wagfe and price fixing. Employers like Kaiser shipbuilding set up a health plan to retain workers, and Kaiser Permanente remains as a major local health provider even though there is no longer any Kaiser shipbuilding. The point is, employer provided health insurance is a relative new invention.
It doesn't work that way in European socialist countries. I have small pensions in Denmark and Sweden for years worked abroad and I get the tax returns every year. In Denmark the income tax has an 8% health tax, just as we have social security tax in this country. Everybody is covered and it's a single payer system. No employer is dictated to by a health insurance company that says you can't hire a diabetic, or a smoker, because they are expensive in the health care department. In this country the employer's group health plan dictates who can or cannot be hired.
It's time we took the burden of looking for and administering health insurance off the backs of employers.
One disturbing fact that has recently emerged is that in the USA there is less upward mobility than there is in Denmarkand Sweden where I have worked. That anybody can be successful and rise out of poverty to become a CEO or the President is a myth here. Once in poverty in the USA you are stuck.
Our form of greed capitalism is out of control, so the 99 percent are stuck and the 1% super wealthy don't care. They have brainwashed the American public into thinking that socialism equals communism and that a so-called "nanny state" is a failure. The failure is here.
No system is perfect and there will always be someone who games the system to exploit the loopholes, but what is a country for? Its people? Or an oligarchy? I'm for the people.
In Denmark and Sweden college is free, paid for out of the taxes, and there are apprenticeship programs for people who do not seek an academic career. I went to college in both countries. I have had a student debt, but in the USA the current generation of young people is in despair over the high cost of college. They acquire debt they will never pay off to get degrees that do not lead to a career or a job. Colleges, to boot enrollment, have dummied down and offer silly courses like "Interpersonal Relations."
I guess it has to get a lot worse before people cry out "Enough!" and change things.

Now I'll get off my soap box and go get breakfast... Thanks for reading this.

I'm always looking for leads to good stories. Also stories that the mainstream ignores. For instance, the reason the Russians stand by Assad in Syria may be because there are 50,000 Russians in the country, many of them brides of Syrian students who studied in Russia. If Assad's secular government goes, it may be replaced by Islamists, and that could be tough on those Russian wives. But to a happier story:

The NEw York Times had a piece about a car that runs on water, and I sent this to my editor at Northern Express:

MS#1677watercar/672  words

August 7, 2012

Reply to:

Harley L. Sachs

Apt. 328

2545 SW Terwilliger Blvd.

Portland, OR 97201

503 299 4328

A Car Powered by Water?!

a column by

Harley L. Sachs

Imagine running your car on DiHydrogen Oxide, or HHO, commonly known as water. The theory of HHO gas is that water is broken down into its two gassy components, hydrogen and oxygen. When those ignite they produce a huge amount of heat energy. In my chemistry class Professor Schmidt brought out a balloon filled with two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Using a long pole with a gas flame at the end, he touched the balloon. The loud explosion was so powerful it knocked the chalk off the blackboard.

So what if that energy could be harnessed in an automobile engine? . "HHO gas" got its name from physicist^[ Ruggero Santilli, who claimed that his HHO gas was "a new form of water". Historically, HHO gas has worked for torches used in working with platinum and other uses requiring small quantities. The lime light once used in theaters used HHO but was discarded as too dangerous.  For torches or limelight, yes, but the quantities produced by electrolysis of water into its component gasses is too small to run a car engine. 

Nonetheless, as reported in the New York Times and other newspapers, a Pakistani engineer Waqar Ahmad claims to have done it and demonstrated his water-powered car to parliament. “By the grace of Allah, I have managed to make a formula that converts less voltage into more energy,” the professed inventor, Agha Waqar Ahmad, is quoted as saying. The inventor got a degree in physics but is currently an unemployed policeman.

He attaches a kit to an ordinary car engine to make the conversion.

It’s true that you can run an internal combustion engine on hydrogen, but that is a different critter. That hydrogen wasn’t generated in a kit attached to an ordinary engine with a tank of water.

After seeing Ahmad’s demonstration, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of the country’s nuclear weapons program  told a television reporter “I have investigated the matter, and there is no fraud involved.”

 It’s taken seriously by Pakistanis but debunked by scientists around the world. Agha Ahmad doesn’t care. He says he ran his Suzuki   for 250 miles on 10 liters of water.

If this is a hoax, it won’t be the first. A person called Ramar Pillai  once claimed to convert water to fuel and persuaded the Prime Minister, but  turned out to be a hoax.

The story emerges at a time when Pakistan is desperate for energy, a time that seems to correspond to what the British call the silly season. The news has precipitated a howl of laughter from doubters who say it’s a hoax and impossible. In that spirit, someone produced a fake video of a cleric who said he had a car that runs on “pious deeds.”

Such chaos is apparently typical in Pakistan where there’s been a flood of people with dubious college degrees ever since it was announced that all parliamentarians had to have degrees. It’s further complicated because of the conflicts between religious parties. Pakistan’s genuine Nobel laureate, for instance, was virtually ignored because he belonged to a minority sect. That kind of prejudice is not unknown in the United States, too.

Politics and religion aside, the scientific reason for the skepticism is that though the burning of hydrogen produces a lot of energy, electrolysis to extract the gasses in the first place takes even more energy than it puts out. It reminds me of the hypothetical hydrosphere which I reported on in this paper some time ago. That, if it worked, would have been a perpetual motion machine.

Any high school physics student can figure out that you can’t get more energy out than you put in. Even an electrical transformer is less than 100% efficient and it has no moving parts with energy sapping friction. It is amazing that the story of a car that runs on water would be so widely reported and turn up in the New York Times, presumably without tongue in cheek.

What next? Heavier than air vehicles that fly?  Duh.

Have some fun! print this label, cut it out, address it, and tape it to a plastic bottle.



……………………………………………
Mail to:

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Dr. Sachs’s Dehydrated Water
100% organic. Free of herbicides, pesticides,
matricides, fratricides, and suicides. Guaranteed
free of additives, minerals, caffeine, sugar, fluoride,
chlorine, high fructose corn syrup, gluten, whey,
nuts, and other foreign substances. No artificial or
natural coloring or flavoring. Sodium free. Safe for
low or high potassium diets, Non allergenic.
Dr. Sachs’s Dehydrated Water is 100% pure!
Satisfaction guaranteed.
Copyright © 2011 Dr. Harley Sachs.
This product may be reconstituted by adding beer,
whisky, or any liquids to create the beverage of your
choice.
Visit www.hu.mtu.edu/~hlsachs

It's August 5, 2012 and I am pumped! Yesterday at the Willamette Writers conference in Portland I "pitched" Patzi Gil's film script adaptation  of my novel, "Betrayal" to two film producers. Normally, I'm told, producers seldom take any scripts at the pitch sessions, but both of them took Patzi's complete film script. They are interested. Of course, if a film is made of "Betrayal" people will want to see the sequel, "Retribution" in which Irwin Glass finally gets his own back. You can read the reviews at Amazon.com and both books are combined in a special bargain bundle for the Kindle and the Nook.  If you feel flushed you can order the custom printed paperback from lulu.com. I don't call this kind of book "print on demand" which is so uncool. I call these "custom printed" which is what they are. If you get a custom printed copy of a Harley Sachs book it is going to be a rare book, like one of the twelve copies of Walden Pond that survived when he burned the rest of his privately printed, now classic  book.  One of those rare copies of Walden Pond is worth a fortune now, and if you hang on to one my my custom printed, rare books, for a hundred years, you, too, can make a tron of money. I promise. Of course, I won't be around a hundred years from now, but you can dream. I have currently over thirty books available for custom printing, some of which are so unnoticed that nobody ever buys one, so you can be the first. Think of it. My number one reader!
Let's hope one of the roughly five producers who are considering Patzi's film script for a movie actually makes it. If you want an advance idea of what the story is about, you can download the book and its sequel for your Kindle or Nook.
If you haven't a Kindle or a Nook, consider that the Kindle, unlike the Nook, has a text to speech feature. You can get the gadget to read the book aloud to you through its own speakers or through plug in ear buds. Amazing technology.

Looking for an independent film maker

Visit www.hu.mtu.edu/~hlsachs and check out "Betrayal" for which Patzi Gil has done the film script. Shopping film scripts is not my area of expertise, but as an oft published author I have a long track record,a freelance since 1957. My books are listed at Amazon.com. What I'm looking for is anyone interested in the film script for "Betrayal." I'm in Portland at 503 299 4328. --Harley L. Sachs