Marionettes controlled by strings were popular in the courts of the French monarchy. When someone offered a bribe to the puppeteer to influence the performance, they were said to be “…pulling the strings of the puppeteer.” The use of behind the scenes influence is therefore called “pulling strings.”
Author Archives: RF_Alum
Global Warming Saves the Planet
I’ve been entertained by recent articles that the increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has prevented an ice age. Just guessing, but I predict most scientists and other citizens would vote for global warming if the choice was an ice age. Warming and increased carbon dioxide results in increased crop yields and more robust growth of trees while freezing results in poor or non-existent crop yields and people dying at higher rates from cold and starvation.
One explanation for why global warming has saved us is associated with something called the Milankovitch cycle. To avoid getting into tedious technical details, the cycle refers to how changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun changes, which also causes changes to the amount of sunlight received by the earth. (To state the obvious, the primary source of global warming is sunlight.) Citation needed (I admit that I copied the idea of using “citation needed” when an statement is made about an obvious fact from Randall Munroe’s excellent book “What If,” which I recently reviewed.)
To be “fair and balanced” there have been articles disputing the accuracy of claims that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been good. I was confused by articles that referred to sun spots causing aberrations instead of discussing the Milankovitch cycle, but then again, I’m not a trained climate expert.
I’ve noticed that there has been a scramble to explain why global temperatures didn’t continue to rise after 1998, even though 2014 might have broken that trend. One explanation is that the oceans are storing the excess heat. Now we have to consider something called Milankovitch cycles or sun spots.
I just checked the National Snow and Ice center’s report on Arctic sea ice, and the ice coverage for 2014 bounced around the average coverage for 2011-2012. It has recently just dipped slightly below that average line. Wasn’t the ice supposed to be gone by now?
For those new to this debate, I assure you I believe climate change is real as supported by the fact that the climate has always changed. Citation needed
In Cold Blood
World Wide Words explains that this expression defines the difference between someone who acts in the heat of passion and “hot blood” compared to “…a person whose blood is cold or cool, and therefore detached or uninvolved,” and therefore acts in cold blood.The term was first recorded in 1711.
Health Insurance Costs for Colorado Mountain Residents
There was a disturbing article in the Denver Post about the cost of health insurance in the Colorado high country. Health insurance premiums in one western Colorado region jumped 25.8 percent this year for people buying their own policies. That percentage increase sounds huge, but it seems small when quoting actual costs. One woman’s premium increased by more than $300 to $1828 per month, or nearly $22,000 per year. And it gets worse. The policy contains a $4,000 deductible for each her and her husband. Health care costs are significantly higher in the mountain communities compared to the metro areas and there are fewer insurers, which results in little if any competition.
Many people are obviously going to have to consider going uninsured, even though there are IRS penalties for being uninsured imposed by the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.” The Act required the creation of geographical ratings within each state, and the mountain areas are locked into a high rating. Federal approval is required to revise them. One person is paying $1,590 a month for health insurance while an identical plan in Denver would cost $851. People are being forced to consider moving to Utah or Denver. Some are actually wishing they were older so they can be on Medicare. One woman commented, “It’s the first time I’ve heard 60-year-olds saying they wished they were 65.”
I didn’t find a proposed solution to the problem for people who don’t want to move or somehow find a way to quickly become 65. The term “Affordable” is misplaced for some of our citizens.
The Man Behind the Rosenbergs Again
I recently decided to reread this book by retired KGB agent Alexander Feklisov with Sergei Kostin hoping to better understand why Americans were willing to spy for the Soviet Union during World War II. Communism and “the worker’s paradise” of the USSR was a lure during the crushing poverty created by the Great Depression. There was also the belief by some that Communism was the only viable protection from Fascism, although the mutual defense pact signed by Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union confused some of those people. Many of the people recruited by the Soviets were American Jews who were children of Russian immigrants. They were convinced that the United States should share any useful technology with the Soviet Union as an ally in the war against Hitler. Feklisov saw those people as “anti-Fascist activists” who were heroes and not spies. Feklisov managed large networks of American spies, and his book provides insight into their motivations.
Feklisov mentions that many U.S. politicians weren’t friendly to the Soviet Union. Harry Truman as a Senator expressed the point of view about the conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union, that “…if Germany is winning we must help Russia; if Russia was winning, the help should go to Germany.” The first prize for bluntness would go to the New York Daily News, which published a cartoon depicting the USSR and Germany as two snakes fighting each other. The caption read, ‘Let’s let them eat each other’.” Feklisov portrays FDR as being a moderate whose attitude toward the USSR, which was “…bearing the brunt of the war efforts, was favorable.” Continue reading
Big Shot
Charles Earle Funk, author of the book “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions,” explains that the expression refers to a person of importance. This slang is a recent, but it evolved from the nineteenth century term “a big gun.” That term resulted from the union of “a great gun” and a “big bug.”