Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Friday, August 24, 2012

Life on the Mississippi

Sam Lynch, who is in training to be a towboat pilot, used a tricky maneuver to get his boat and the 20 barges it was pushing down the Mississippi River.

He brought the boat into the beginning of a curve, then backed it out a little bit so the current would slowly take the barges downstream and the boat would straighten up behind.

It was all designed to keep the barges safely within the deepest part of the river, which is near historic low levels as the drought that has gripped the nation is making navigation of the formerly wide Mississippi treacherous.
This will hit you, to some degree, right in the wallet. One of the keys to our nation's economic power has been the river system, which makes shipping large quantities of stuff around much of the country as cheap as possible. Normally, one tugboat can move a few freight-trains's (or a shitload of trucks) worth of cargo. In other words, the efficiency of river barges can't be beat.

Less cargo per tug means that the shipping costs go up. These costs get passed along.

1 comment:

w3ski said...

Of course with the drought, there is less stuff to move.
Another price increase.
Lovely days to wake up for, aren't they.
w3ski