End of an Era

Happy Trails to You, Until We Meet Again - The Happiest Trails

HAPPY TRAILS TO YOU — THE END OF AN ERA

The young guns may not understand the meaning of this, but you will.

The Roy Rogers Museum in Branson, MO has closed its doors forever.

The contents of the museum were sold at a public auction.

Roy Rogers told his son, if the museum ever operates at a loss, close it, and sell the contents. He complied.

Here is a partial listing of some of the items that were sold at auction:

Roy's 1964 Bonneville (Pontiac) sold for $254,500. It was estimated to sell between 100 and 150 thousand dollars.

His script book from the January 14,1953 episode of "This Is Your Life" sold for $10,000 (EST. $800-$1,000).

A collection of signed baseballs (Pete Rose, Duke Snider, and other greats) sold for $3,750.

A collection of signed bats (Yogi Berra, Enos Slaughter, Bob Feller, and others) sold for $2,750.

Trigger ’s saddle and bridle sold for $386,500.

One of many of Roy’s shirts sold for $16,250 and one of his many cowboy hats sold for $17,500.

One set of boot spurs sold for $10,625. (He never used a set of spurs on Trigger).

His set of dinnerware plates and silverware sold for $11,875.

The Bible they used at the dinner table every night sold for $8,750.

One of several of his guitars sold for $27,500.

Nellybelle (the Jeep) sold for $116,500.

Bullet (stuffed) sold for $35,000 (EST. 10-15K). He was their real pet.

Dale’s parade saddle, estimated to sell between 20-30K, sold for $104,500.

One of many pairs of Roy’s boots sold for $21,250.

Trigger (stuffed) sold for $266,500.

Do you remember the 1938 movie The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland? Well, Olivia rode Trigger in that movie. Trigger was bred on a farm co-owned by Bing Crosby.
Roy bought Trigger on a time payment plan for $2,500. Roy and Trigger made 188 movies together. Trigger even outdid Bob Hope by winning an Oscar in the movie Son of Paleface in 1953.

It is extremely sad to see this era lost forever. Despite the fact that Gene and Roy’s movies, as well as those of other great characters, can be bought or rented for viewing.

Today's kids would rather spend their time playing video games. Today it takes a very special pair of parents to raise their kids with the right values and morals.

These were the great heroes of our childhood, and they did teach us right from wrong, and how to have and show respect for each other and the animals that share this earth.

You and I were born at the right time. We were able to grow up with these great people even if we never met them. In their own way they taught us patriotism and honor.

We learned that lying and cheating were bad, and that sex wasn't as important as love. We learned how to suffer through disappointment and failure and work through it.

Our lives were drug free. THANKS BE TO GOD. So, it's good-bye to Roy and Dale, Gene and Hoppy (Hopalong Cassidy), the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Farewell to Sky King (and Penny) and Superman and (Dragnet) Sgt Friday.

Thanks to Capt. Kangaroo, Mr. Rogers, and Capt. Noah and all those people whose lives touched ours, and made them better.

Happy Trails! It was a great ride through our childhood.

P.S. Don't send this to anyone under 60... they just wouldn’t understand.

Freedom

 

Progress

 

It's All About YOUR Future

 I enlisted into the military, not because I wanted to go fight in the Vietnam War, but because I dropped out of college and could not find a job because I did not have my military obligation behind me...  so, I decided...  what the hell...  I might as well get that behind me.  Had I not enlisted, I would have been drafted in the Army/Marines and sent to Vietnam.

Fortunately, I used the GI BIll to pay for my college education which included Graduate School.  I earned a BA and an MBA using my own money and the GI Bill and had NO STUDENT LOAD DEBT.

Had I not gone into the military, I would have continued to work while attended college and graduated with NO STUDENT LOAD DEBT.

Either way...   NO STUDENT LOAN debt...

Working full time and going to school full time is not easy but it can be done.

Does it make you appreciate your education more?  NOT SURE...  But, it makes you appreciate the fact that you DID IT ON YOUR OWN.

Would I recommend a college education?  NO!!!

WHY?

1. It costs too much
2. It is not worth the return on investment
3. Very little knowledge is retained
4. What you learn in college is not really used in the real world

Are the TRADES better?

Not necessarily...  it depends on what you want to do.

Trades might include:

• Welding
• Electrical
• Plumbing
• Heating/Air
• Construction
• Mechanic

And, while they pay high wages now, it still might not be what you really want to do...  plus, it can be dirty work.

You could work in a bank.

You could work as a chef.

You could work as a waiter/waitress.

You could work as a truck driver.

You could manage a restaurant/hotel.

You could be a pilot.

You could join the armed forces.

NOTE:  if you joined the armed forces, I would recommend the air force...

There is also going to a Community College and earing an Associates Degree in 2 years...  not as costly...  and if you are in TN, those 2 years are FREE...

• Dental Assistant
• Paralegal
• Nurse
• Pharmacy Technician
• Massage Therapist
• Physical Therapist
• Business/Accounting

There is a local franchise restaurant near where I live called PERKINS...  The owner of the local restaurant started out as a bus boy, became a cook, then a waiter, then assistant manager, then manager, then purchased the franchise...  The only education that he had was high school.

A neighbor of mine is a legal Mexican immigrant who is now a US citizen who quit high school and learned the trade of making cabinets on the job.  From there he went into building homes and a few years later, got his building license, formed a crew and started building houses.  Over the years, he purchased several house and started renting them out.  His rental income has allowed him to retire at the age of 55.

Don't just go to college and acquire debt because someone told you that a white collar job is the best job to have...  First of all, that is not true and very misleading.  Second, it is your life not their life...  as a result, you should decide what you want to do.

FINALLY, if you simply want to find a way to become wealthy and you don't care what you do, then perhaps you should think about moving south and joining the Mexican Drug Cartels.

All wealthy people, except those who simply inherited the wealth, had to pay their dues for 10-20 years before they could claim they were BILLIONAIRES...

Beliefs

 

Knives

 

Fetish

 

Chinese Wingship

The South China Morning Post claims that China's new ground-effect "wingship" has just completed 30 sea trials. According to the state-run media company, the new vehicle could be used to airdrop supplies on islands and beaches and conduct quick search and rescue missions.

The "wingship," which seems to be an example of a ground-effect vehicle or wing-in-ground-effect craft, combines an air-cushioned vehicle and an aircraft that glides close to the ground. From the images in the article, it has a propeller engine that allows it to travel over the water's surface, and its wings allow it to fly and support itself in the air.

A ground effect vehicle (GEV) uses the "ground effect," which is the decrease in aerodynamic drag that an object experiences when it approaches a surface to achieve lift and boost efficiency. This air cushion between the surface and the object reduces drag and enables the object to gain lift at lower speeds.

One famous example of this kind of vehicle was the Soviet-era ekranoplan which could travel only a few meters above the water's surface and had a massive, 70-meter-long wing. The vehicle, built for military applications such as moving people and equipment over water, could move at speeds up to 400 km/h.

According to a report from Science and Technology Daily on Monday, the new Chinese vehicle can travel for six hours continuously at speeds of up to 150 mph (240 kph). The vehicle reportedly has a total takeoff weight of 4.5 tonnes and a passenger capacity of up to 12.  READ MORE...

Disappearing Cities

 

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

Life is just a Cage

"The sun don't shine on the same dog's ass every day..." is an East TN expression that I have grown to like as it applies to so many Liberals of which I have become aware in the Washington, DC area of this country...  representing us in Congress or in the WHITE HOUSE.

The sad thing is that our votes put them there...  and, I cannot imagine that there are that many Democrats who really believe in a weak military, illegal immigration, unregulated crime and violence in our major cities, and the WOKENESS that seems to be flowing through our society like the BLACK PLAGUE...  Pun intended.

We are on the verge of change and most old people need to frigging get out of the way and let change happen, even if we older people perceive that this change is NOT FOR THE BETTER.

Our Democratic Republic was nothing more than an experiment that NO OTHER country had ever tried before.  We grew incredibly strong, incredibly fast and tried to control the world because we believed our way of life was the best for everybody.

WE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG...

• Some people want to be controlled by a dictator
• Some people want to be controlled by a communist country
• Some people want to be controlled by Arabs who believe in SHARIA LAW
• Some people want to be controlled by an inherently corrupt government
• Some people just do not want the responsibility of having FREEDOMS as they have no self discipline
• Some people want to keep their childish mentalities
• Some people enjoy living without anything but their spiritual faith and guidance

Net worth is not always an accurate measurement of WEALTH or being WEALTHY.  Financial Liquidity is a measure of WEALTH.  If you have a liquidity of $5 million or more, then you are WEALTHY and governments will leave you alone once they realize you have hidden your money away from them.  If you try to arrest them, the odds are they will be informed will enough time to leave the country.

Stupid dictators have tried to control the wealthy and all of them have failed miserably.

There are more people than you realize that have a liquidity of $5 million or more living in the USA...  These people believe in liberal governments as long as they don't try to take their money.

Most of you middle class workers made these people millionaires because of the things that you buy like:

• computers
• tablets
• cell phone
• cinema tickets
• automobiles
• tickets to concerts
• tickets to professional sports
• alcohol and tobacco
• ILLEGAL DRUGS
• clothes and shoes
• cosmetics

NOTE: did you know the first black female millionaire in the USA sold cosmetics door to door...

A vast majority of Americans want to be kept in a cage like a Labrador Retriever who appears to want as much freedom as it can get, when it reality, it comfortable with the security of a cage.  They only have freedom because we gave it to them...  they are not good at handling their freedom.

People remain in the lower classes financially, even though they bitch about it, because they feel comfortable there.  They have no desire to think for themselves or take responsibility for their actions or lack of actions.

Death is the great equilizer...  We all die, regardless of how much money we have or how much control we have or how big our cage is.  Death always has the last word.

Wishes

 

Is There Really a Multiverse?

• 
  
  The notion of parallel universes leapt out of the pages of fiction into scientific journals in the 1990s. Many scientists claim that mega-millions of other universes, each with its own laws of physics, lie out there, beyond our visual horizon. They are collectively known as the multiverse.
• The trouble is that no possible astronomical observations can ever see those other universes. The arguments are indirect at best. And even if the multiverse exists, it leaves the deep mysteries of nature unexplained.

In the past decade an extraordinary claim has captivated cosmologists: that the expanding universe we see around us is not the only one; that billions of other universes are out there, too. There is not one universe—there is a multiverse. 

In Scientific American articles and books such as Brian Greene’s latest, The Hidden Reality, leading scientists have spoken of a super-Copernican revolution. In this view, not only is our planet one among many, but even our entire universe is insignificant on the cosmic scale of things. It is just one of countless universes, each doing its own thing.

The word “multiverse” has different meanings. Astronomers are able to see out to a distance of about 42 billion light-years, our cosmic visual horizon. We have no reason to suspect the universe stops there. Beyond it could be many—even infinitely many—domains much like the one we see. 

Each has a different initial distribution of matter, but the same laws of physics operate in all. Nearly all cosmologists today (including me) accept this type of multiverse, which Max Tegmark calls “level 1.” Yet some go further. They suggest completely different kinds of universes, with different physics, different histories, maybe different numbers of spatial dimensions. 

Most will be sterile, although some will be teeming with life. A chief proponent of this “level 2” multiverse is Alexander Vilenkin, who paints a dramatic picture of an infinite set of universes with an infinite number of galaxies, an infinite number of planets and an infinite number of people with your name who are reading this article.

Similar claims have been made since antiquity by many cultures. What is new is the assertion that the multiverse is a scientific theory, with all that implies about being mathematically rigorous and experimentally testable. I am skeptical about this claim. 

I do not believe the existence of those other universes has been proved—or ever could be. Proponents of the multiverse, as well as greatly enlarging our conception of physical reality, are implicitly redefining what is meant by “science.”  READ MORE...

Intelligent or Smart?

 

Moon Base

 

How I Enjoyed My LIfe

I was never in a high paying job, but I always made more than I needed, even when I worked for $2 and $10/hour.  Remember, when I was working for $2/hour, gasoline was on $0.18/gallon and hamburgers were $0.15 each, and cigarettes were $0.25/pack.  Rent was between $75 to $125/month or 1-2 days pay for a 1-bedroom apartment.

For the 45 years that I worked, I always brought my lunch except for once or twice a month.  This saved me $25 to $50 each week...  or $1,250 to $2,500 each year.  Over a 40 year career that is $50,000 to $100,000....   JUST FOR LUNCH...

Can you imagine what you would save, if you gave up cigarettes, alcohol, buying new clothes each year to stay in fashion, or a new car every 3-5 years?

Speaking of cars...  I don't buy new cars.  I buy cars that are a year old that have been leased with low mileage.  I typically save thousands of dollars.  My 2015 Venza was a leased car that I drove to Ohio to purchase that only had 5,000 on the odometer.  It was a fully loaded Venza on top of that with a moon roof.  I saved over $10,000 and paid cash for the car so there would be no debt.  

Over 7 years later, I only have 80,000 on the odometer.  This car was purchased the year I retired, so I don't drive that much anymore.  A perfect investment.  I plan to keep it another 5 years or until I turn 80 years old...  I will pay cash for my next car as well.

Thirty-five (35) years ago, I quit smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and buying things that I really did not need.  Can you imagine the amount of savings I have acquired over these last 35 years in addition to not buying lunch at work?

When I moved over to TN from NC in 1990 and met my second wife in 1993 and married her in 1998, we went somewhere every weekend until we both retired in 2015.  When we retired, we went on a week's vacation every month just because we could and we still were able to save money.

HOW DID WE DO THIS?

1. We drove instead of buying airline tickets
2. We used Delta frequent flyer points
3. We did not stay in the best hotels
4. We did not eat in the best restaurants
5. We book our time between weekends when the rates were cheaper

NOTE:  we have an American Express Delta credit card that we charge everything we can on from mortagage payments to utilities to tires, clothes, food, etc.  Each dollar gives us 1 point.  We still have 300,000 of unused Delta frequent flyer points to use someday.  We pay the credit card off before any interest is charged.

For the last 30 years, my second wife and I have lived a frugal lifestyle while not giving up anything that we wanted to do.  We are living no different financially than when we were both working, earning collectively almost $100,000 each year.

We have enough money saved to pay our bills for the next 30 years knowing that we will be blessed if we live another 20.

 

Invisible Dark Matter

Some of the tendrils of the cosmic web as visualized by the Evolution and Assembly of Galaxies 

and their Environments (EAGLE) Project. (Image credit: EAGLE Project)

Light produced just 380,000 years after the Big Bang was warped by the universe's dark matter exactly the way Einstein predicted it would be.

Astronomers have made the most detailed map ever of mysterious dark matter using the universe’s very first light, and the "groundbreaking" image has possibly proved Einstein right yet again.


The new image, made using 14 billion-year-old light from the turbulent aftermath of the Big Bang, shows the enormous matter tendrils that formed not long after the universe exploded into being. It turns out the shapes of these tendrils are remarkably similar to those predicted using Einstein's theory of general relativity.

The new result contradicts previous dark matter maps that suggested the cosmic web — the gigantic network of crisscrossing celestial superhighways paved with hydrogen gas and dark matter that spans the universe — is less clumpy than Einstein's theory predicted. The astronomers presented their findings April 11 at the Future Science with CMB x LSS conference at Japan's Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics.  READ MORE...

Gas Emissions

 

Sometimes

 

Brick 'n' Mortar Schools Are Going Away

 Some of you can only learn, if you have an teacher, instructor, or professor SPOON FEED you what you need to know...  and yet, you will need to be teaching yourself something for the rest of your life simply because technology changes our society and lifestyles.

Most schools are NON PROFITS, but even so, they are allowed to generate as much money as they can as long as they do not pay their board members a salary.

Conseuently, more and more schools are being managed by those Presidents who have some sort of a business background or experience.

One of the best ways to increase revenue and reduce costs is to remove the actual school buildings and put all the classes ONLINE.  Schools still have to hire professors for the classes and course designers and graphics specialists but it is still cheaper than a building, dorms, and a cafeteria.

COVID taught many educational administrators that buildings were no longer necessary and while that is a bitter pill to swallow, once it is mixed with the waters of profits, it becomes much easier.

ONLINE learning is filled with opportunities for students to cheat or get someone else to take the class for them.  There is no way of telling if a student has an open textbook during the exam or not.  There is no way of telling if that student is actually doing the work or not.  

Online classes are labor intensive with lots of reading and writing but does nothing to prove that knowledge has been transfered.  

Group projects are difficult to monitor to ensure everyone is working.  Meeting are difficult as students can be from all over the world, therefore meeting times will not be convenient to all.

I would not be surprised to hear in the next 3-5 years, that there will be no need for college at all.  Students find their own way to teach themselves a subject or many subjects...  Then, they must show up in person to take an online compentency test in order to acquire their degree.

This is the process for IT certifications and it works exceptionally well.

This same process could be used for:

• Doctors
• Surgeons
• Lawyers
• Dentists
• CPAs
• Engineers
• Pilots
• Teachers

Isn't it also interesting to note that these are the same jobs that will be replaced by AI/ROBOTS?