While I certainly hope that, somehow, Hurricane Milton fails to “live up” to expectations as a destructive storm, I wonder if all of the people who have moved to Florida in recent decades understand that more than 40 percent of all hurricanes that have hit the US have hit Florida. Obviously, that is the most of any state.
In second place, but far back at 21 percent, is Texas. North Carolina is third at 19 percent.
No offense intended to people reading this from Florida, although I suspect many of them have far more important things to do at present whether or not they have evacuated, but I have never understood the fascination with Florida as a place to live. (A friend of mine recently described Florida as a place people go to hide or to die.) OK, it is usually warm and without severe winter weather. It doesn’t snow in the Sahara Desert, but I wouldn’t want to live there, either.
Florida is not Hawaii. Maybe people think Florida is a Hawaii analogue that’s closer to where they live now and a place that’s more affordable.
Consider that two-thirds of Floridians (66%) were not born there. Only Nevada has a higher percentage of residents (74%) who were born out-of-state.
From 1970 to 2020 the US population grew by 63 percent. In the same period Florida’s population grew by 217 percent.
I hope Milton is a dud, but wonder why people would put themselves in harm’s way. Yes, like everything else every place in the US has pluses and minuses. Yes, people have different priorities. I am puzzled, though, that people don’t seem to understand the frequency and destructive power of severe tropical weather. Maybe some who move there do understand and accept that as the “price” for living in Florida. Excessively steep price, in my opinion.
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This Why Evolution Is True post is about the recently awarded Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Physics. The Chemistry prize, something with which blog/book author Jerry Coyne is familiar, went to three people (two Americans, one Brit) for “both designing proteins and predicting their three-dimensional structure simply from the sequence of amino acids—an endeavor that had largely defied previous attempts.” Coyne writes, “Now you can feed the AA sequence into a computer and, lo, get the structure. And the 3D structure is immensely important in understanding protein function and figuring out how to modify proteins (and hence DNA) to act in different ways.”
I will refrain from publishing the data on how Jews have been awarded an unbelievably disproportionate percentage of Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Medicine and Physics given their tiny percentage of the world population. Again, far too much of the world has shown it has no moral compass.
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I have begun to re-read Fins by William Knoedelseder. The book is about Harley Earl, General Motors and the US automobile industry. Hey, when you have a triple-digit number of books about cars they tend to get read.
Earl was hired by GM in 1927, the same year that Ford abruptly stopped producing the Model T. Alfred Sloan–long-time President, Chairman and CEO of GM–had realized, before hiring Earl, “that, as the automobile business entered its fourth decade, looks were as important to the average buyer as mechanics and price, if not more.”
I am tempted to publish a long excerpt from Fins that showed Henry Ford’s insane stubbornness about the Model T, but will refrain. In my opinion, despite the fact that the Model A and Flathead V-8 were popular, Ford’s reputation as an automobile savant never really recovered from the debacle of having to just halt Model T production while its successor was being developed. Once again, from Fins,
Henry’s almost irrational refusal to update his car became fodder for newspaper cartoonists and humorists. America’s most popular humorist, Will Rogers, poked fun at him. “Ford could be elected President,” Rogers quipped, “He’d only have to make one speech: ‘Voters, if I am elected I will change the front.’”
As every regular reader knows, I am not a fan of Henry Ford in any way. As Disaffected Musings readers also know, I often write about the power of adaptability and flexibility. Change is a constant (probably the only constant) and people must adjust when circumstances change.
My favorite car wearing a Ford badge is one I will almost certainly never be able to afford. Lo and behold,
This is an example of the most recent generation of the Ford GT, which was produced from 2016 to 2022. It was a member of my Ultimate Garage 3.0.
I wonder if Ford will ever produce another version of this car. Sadly, I suspect if they do it will be a hybrid or “full” electric vehicle. Yes, I can understand if some readers think I am being inflexible in my disdain for electrified vehicles. I would answer that the change is not organic, but is being forced upon us by government.
#WonderingOnWednesday