Comments on: Love those Tatas

By: Tony Edwards

Tony Edwards — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:49:24 +0000

Stan and Jeff, my first car was a 1938 Hillman Minx convertible, which was very cold to drive across the south of England in early January, 1963. The main roads had not been swept, so there was a sort of clear path where the tyres went, with a snow-bank between them. I had a friend who was making the same trip and asked if I would stay with him as he was driving a Morgan three wheeler and was having to go slightly sideways all the time as his single rear wheel kept sliding off the central ridge of snow. Fortunately we both made it safely, but bloody cold was an understatement.

By: Evan Jones

Evan Jones — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 04:52:08 +0000

Christmas Eve, 1962, I remember my parents slowly driving up to Chappaqua (yes, that one). As we reached the foot of the driveway of my aunt and uncle’s house, we had to stop. The snow drifts were over my head. I was seven.

I got a Moustrap game for Christmas. (I still have it, and it still works.)

By: Evan Jones

Evan Jones — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 04:30:34 +0000

“Most self-described Liberals I know buy into the static view of the economy hook, line & sinker. . . . [o]ne of the primary solutions to many of mankind’s problems is the rapid accumulation of wealth by as many people as possible.”

One of those empirical issues. The statistics are there for all to see. Observable. Measurable. GWP. GDP. GDP per capita. Distribution curves. Individual economic mobility stats. Fact.

Nothing to do with value judgements. How anyone could possibly have arrived at the static economy conclusion in the first place is utterly baffling to me. Ossification of the brain?

(We can go into how incredibly wonderful the increasing gap between rich and poor is–for the poor– another time; that’s a slightly more advanced course. But it’s a glorious, devastating argument.)

Besides, being a bleeding-heart liberal can be very damn expensive. It would therefore seem somewhat counterproductive to be opposed on principle to the creation of wealth.

“Assuming, of course, that they then have the wisdom to use that wealth in a responsible way, as opposed to, say, lottery tickets, heh.”

We know that people tend to do that less if they are using money they actually earned.

By: New Car

New Car — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:52:40 +0000

[...] Love those Tatas [...]

By: Evan Jones

Evan Jones — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:31:12 +0000

Another aspect of the fact that all things are relative; I made $1.25/hour working part time after school, so it took 2 hours pay to fill up the Renault. I’m self-employed now, so it’s difficult to calculate my exact hourly wage, but, suffice it to say, it takes less than 2 hours pay to fill up my Toyota Highlander.

You impress me again, Stan. Folks are all too busy figuring inflation, yet they fail UTTERLY to consider hoe much more plain old wealth there is today.

I remember a late-1970′s Harlan Ellison story (Jefty is Five, IRRC) where he talks glowingly of how a Clark Bar was bigger and only cost a nickle–in the Great Depression! Hell, in 1935, you got a bowl of soup for a nickle. And you didn’t get the slice of bread with it because that cost 2-cents more and you just couldn’t afford it. Who the hell had a nickle to throw away on a candy bar in 1935?

And I bet under today’s health code it wouldn’t have been legal to feed that bowl soup (or that Clark bar) to a dog.

Anyone who buys that simplistic, ridiculous, destructive, sinful, envy-oriented, and profoundly incorrect Limited Pie theory about economics (i.e., if one person gains, another loses), I have a used AGW theory to sell them!

By: Stan Needham

Stan Needham — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:18:07 +0000

John, you’re probably right about the CPI. I just took a constant of 1.055 X .25 on my calculator and hit the equals key 47 times.

By: Stan Needham

Stan Needham — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:13:12 +0000

Remmit,

After the Blizzard of ’78 that blanketed the American midwest with up to 4 feet of snow and 25-30 foot drifts, there were piles of snow in shopping center parking lots that didn’t completely melt until the 4th of July. Which begs the question that I’ve asked before — who wants to go back to that?

By: John Goetz

John Goetz — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:04:32 +0000

Hey Stan, I lived in SW Michigan in the late 70s and remember the winter of 77/78, not just because I had to take my driver’s test in the snow canyons that formed along the streets of St. Joe, but also because my friends and I were able to go cross-country skiing down I-94, which closed down. We got the brunt of the lake effect snow every winter, but that one was a gem.

I lived in South Bend in ’82 and also remember an incredible amount of snow. My roommate – who was from CT – decided as the winter wore on that it was time to “punish” the weather, so he went without a coat for a week in early April. He paid dearly with a case of bronchitis afterward.

OT, but interestingly enough, the inflation calculators out there – which I believe use total CPI and not core CPI – tell me that $0.25 in 1962 has $1.73 of buying power in 2008, or $1.72 in 2007.

By: Remmitt

Remmitt — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:25:18 +0000

Jeff, I am too young to remember 1963 (wasn’t around for another 10 years…). But I have heard my parents’ stories about the exceptionnaly thick snow cover (uncommon for the Netherlands), as well as a very long freezing period that started at the end of 1962. Cars and trucks were driving on the big “IJsselmeer” lake (“Southern Sea” until dammed from the Noth Sea), and my mother skated on the lake until the end of March. My grandfather told me that there was ice in the ground soil until the end of spring.

By: Jeff in Seattle

Jeff in Seattle — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:22:37 +0000

In Norther Virginia, two years in a row we had HUGE mid/late winter shows, the biggest I remember. In Jan of 95 if I recall correctly over two days we got 30 inches or more of snow. Could barely move in my Toyota 4×4 truck, kept bottoming out. The following year in Early march we got something similar.

By: Jeff in Seattle

Jeff in Seattle — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:18:04 +0000

Did you have a similar winter in the US? Any mainland Europeans in who remember theirs that year?

Hehe, not me, I was only 6 mos old.

By: Jeff Wood

Jeff Wood — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:18:24 +0000

Stan, many thanks.

By: Stan Needham

Stan Needham — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:13:10 +0000

Sorry, left off the link to the full report.

By: Stan Needham

Stan Needham — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:11:24 +0000

Jeff, we had a lot of snow in northern Indiana during the winter of 1962/63. 1977/78 and 1981/82 were the biggest snow years in my memory. Here’s an NOAA report that covers the last half of the 20th century. Table 5 is illustrative:

Table 5. Some Notable Periods of Continuous Snow Cover of at Least a Trace at South Bend, Indiana

Inclusive Dates Length of time (days) Comments

Nov. 23, 1950 – Feb. 18, 1951 88 On Jan. 19th no snow cover was reported
Dec. 31, 1957 – March 6, 1958 66 Deep snow cover; 15 to 23 inches
Dec. 6, 1958 – March 11, 1959 96 Deep snow cover; 15 to 25 inches
Jan. 18, 1960 – March 29, 1960 72 On Feb. 5th no snow cover was reported
Dec. 19, 1961 – March 18, 1962 90 On Jan. 6th no snow cover was reported
Dec. 5, 1962 – March 16, 1963 102 Fairly deep snow cover; 10 to 16 inches
Dec. 3, 1969 – March 1, 1970 89
Nov. 28, 1976 – Feb. 25, 1977 90 Deep snow cover; 15 to 27 inches
Nov. 25, 1977 – March 31, 1978 127 Dec. 18-20 no snow cover was reported
Record deep snow; 41″ on Jan. 30, 1978
Dec. 25, 1978 – March 13, 1979 79 Deep snow cover; 15 to 23 inches
Dec. 8, 1981 – March 17, 1982 100 Fairly deep snow cover; 10 to 17 inches

By: Jeff Wood

Jeff Wood — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:28:19 +0000

Stan, no-one forgets his first old banger.

I was intrigued by your reference to January 1963. Here in the UK the snow began to fall on Chistmas Eve 1962, a gentle, magical sight.

It kept coming. It was May before the Scottish Lowlands cleared.

Did you have a similar winter in the US? Any mainland Europeans in who remember theirs that year?