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    Up Until Now...Everything Was Okay
    Up Until Now...Everything Was Okay
    Up Until Now...Everything Was Okay
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    Up Until Now...Everything Was Okay

    By R.H. Karol

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    Does this makes sense to you?

    FOLKLORE: Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

    A Loaf of Bread is a Necessity.

    A Locomotive is an Invention.

    THEREFORE: A Loaf of Bread is the Mother of a Locomotive.

    Of course not. But lately, what in our society does make sense? Acclaimed engineer, artist, author, and professor R.H. Karol explains how we got hereand how to fix it!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateOct 12, 2010
    ISBN9781450259613
    Up Until Now...Everything Was Okay
    Author

    R.H. Karol

    R.H. Karol, PE, is an acclaimed engineer, author, educator, and sculptor. He has worked for Exxon, American Cyanamid, and his alma mater, Rutgers, where he taught Civil Engineering courses and was head of the universitys Continuing Engineering Studies Department He is now Professor Emeritus. While at Cyanamid, he developed materials and techniques for using chemicals to strengthen and impermeabilize soil and fractured rock. In practice, he has used those procedures on large projects such as the New York subway system and the King Talal Dam in Jordan. His book Chemical Grouting and Soil Stabilization remains the leader in this field. In a different area, his laminated sculptures have sold nationally for over four decades, and his current work can be seen at Galleria of Sculpture in Palm Beach, Florida, and on the internet. He has written four college textbooks and many technical articles, but this is his first foray into commentary.

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      Book preview

      Up Until Now...Everything Was Okay - R.H. Karol

      Dedication

      For all of us who are a little bit upset over how things turned out.

      Acknowledgements

      This book was written in spurts over an eight year period, as people and events triggered my indignation, disgust or funny bone. I need to thank my wife Joan and my son Michael for pointing out those rantings and ravings no longer timely or apropos. Those have been eliminated. I also need to thank my cousin Eleanor and my good friends Sally and Nat for reading and constructively commenting on the original manuscript.

      I especially thank my son Michael for his detailed editing to produce the final manuscript, and for his design of the front and back covers.

      I must also thank those individuals whose selfish, unthinking and downright stupid actions provided me with text materials. Hopefully, you will shape up and mend your ways, and thus stay out of the next edition.

      Finally, I must give heartfelt thanks to those prescient individuals who put a mute button on the TV control.

      Contents

      Dedication

      Acknowledgements

      Preface

      And the Slow Shall Lead Them

      Hearing Problems

      Dictionary for a New Age, I

      Pronunciation

      Idiomatic Expressions

      Dictionary for a New Age, II

      News Channels

      Money

      Clerks and Cashiers

      Salespeople

      Servers

      Lobbying for a Political Conscience

      Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

      Pork

      Cars and Drivers

      Cars and Trucks

      Television Commercials

      The Buck Stops Where?

      Dictionary for a New Age III

      Well, You Know…

      Dictionary for a New Age IV

      Possible Side Effects Are…

      Cost of Living

      Background Music

      Telephone Messages

      Addressing the Public

      Do You Still Beat Your Wife?

      Arts and Crafts

      The Golden Tin Rule

      Basketball and Other Exhibitions

      Debunking a Myth

      Hairdos and Don’ts

      Folk Lore

      The Movies

      Old Age Is Not for Sissies!

      Mail Solicitations

      Mail-in Rebates

      Gun Control

      Self-Policing

      The Final Word

      About the Author

      Preface

      There once was a little boy who was normal in every way, except that at the age of four years he had never spoken a word. One day at noon his mother served him soup. As he tasted it, he made a face and said very distinctly, "This soup is awful!" His mother was astounded. When she could finally speak, she said to him, How come you never spoke before, when you obviously can speak so well? He answered, Because up to now everything has been okay.

      Well, I’m not writing this book because up to now everything has been okay. All of us, I would guess, have found many things in normal living to make us annoyed or unhappy to a lesser or major degree. Although we often complain, we seldom go to the length of documenting those complaints. What prompted me to get into this much work were the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Listening to those buffoons in Washington turned me off so badly, that I decided to put my feelings into print.

      The original draft of this book contained many chapters dealing with Washington, D.C. and the indiscretions and incompetence of some of our elected inmates. This was cathartic for me, but I realized that others had already written volumes about these topics. Most of those chapters have been eliminated. So what follows is a sampling of less important annoyances—but those where corrections, nonetheless, would make life a little more pleasant—peppered with some tongue-in-cheek comments about life in general.

      When I hear people discuss a situation which should be changed for the better, someone will often interject, If you don’t like it here, go live elsewhere. This is a stupid response. Those of us who live in the United States know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is the best place to live. But we also know, if we are intellectually honest, that it isn’t perfect.

      History teaches us that nothing persists unchanged forever. Conditions and situations get better or worse in response to natural or artificial pressures. It follows logically that if we don’t make continuous efforts to improve our country, it will inevitably get worse. Thus, we should welcome and act on constructive criticism, instead of belittling the critic.

      The major changes that should or could be made for the good of the country are discussed daily in print, online, and on TV and radio. The pages that follow address, with several exceptions, minor problems, whose solution would be nice, but would probably not have a significant effect on world history.

      Still, all changes for the better, whether large or small, are worth consideration.

      —R.H. Karol

      Fall 2010

      And the Slow Shall Lead Them

      A lot of life can be related to the way automobiles travel on the road. On two-lane, winding highways, we have all experienced that the slowest car governs the speed.

      In life, the slowest person in the group similarly controls many events. A good example of that is the normal schoolroom, where progress is most often geared to those students who are having the greatest difficulty understanding the material being presented.

      Why is this so? Some say it is because we owe it to the slower students to permit them to develop their full potential. True, but what we are really doing is letting only the worst students

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