I have traveled around the world. Literally. And I have crossed hundreds of bridges in my travels.

Never, however, have I crossed a toll bridge that made it impossible to pay the toll. At least not until a recent visit to the San Francisco Bay Area. Every single lane was designated for FasTrak without a single lane devoted to paying in cash.

There are (or were) Bay Area bridges that imposed a toll on the inbound routes into San Francisco and the East Bay. Yet they let drivers get out of the city faster — to avoid traffic backups in town — by not stopping outbound vehicles at toll gates. I thought that the route from east to west across the San Mateo Bridge might just be an example of that.

It wasn’t.

The route cause
My original route would have taken me north along the coast. A car problem, though, sent me inland to a dealer for repair. The detour changed my direction from south-north to east-west, and that involved crossing a bridge (or driving an extra hundred miles around the bottom the bay). It was, clearly, an unplanned event.

A month after the end of my journey, Bay Area FasTrak sent me a bill. For the toll! Apparently, Bay Area planners decided that, in the environs of Silicon Valley, everyone is digital and everyone uses FasTrak. That includes visitors, apparently.

Not everybody knows that
According to the Bay Area FasTrak website, visitors can pay in advance online or pay in cash at various locations around the bay. They can, if they’re visiting from farther points and renting cars to get around, arrange payment with the rental company. That’s fine if you’re planning in advance and are really detailed about understanding local requirements. Like bridge tolls. If you’re simply passing through, the Bay Areas’s perspective is truly myopic.

It would be astronomically costly for Bay Area FasTrak to advertise in every city that sends travelers to San Francisco and its multitude of nearby towns and cities. It might also require some dealmaking to have airline and rail tickets imprinted with the toll payment information. But it’s also expensive to print and mail out as many as, I assume, tens of thousands of notices every year to non-Fastrak travelers who happen to cross a Bay Area bridge.

Tua culpa
I don’t mind paying the toll. I tried my best to do it when I made the trip across. It does, however bother me when I attempt to pay online and learn “Account and payment access will be unavailable on the website, through the telephone system, and at cash payment network locations due to planned system maintenance. Email inquiries via the FasTrak website will also be disabled during this time period.” Of course, no “time period” is given. 

I could pay by check and send it by mail, but that makes it costlier for me. I’d be paying for a stamp and taking the chance that, in Louis De Joy’s Postal Service, it might never be delivered, which would subject me to a penalty fee.

The other alternative is to ignore it. They had their chance to take my money, and they didn’t make it possible. Their bad, not mine. Or I could wait awhile and see whether their website or phone system get finished being “maintenanced.” One way or another, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Breville makes household appliances that are considered — by reviewers and consumers — to be very good. That’s not true about its customer support.

It is hard to comprehend, in the era of “the right to repair,” how a high-profile company can make it impossible to purchase essential parts. They’re not offered on the company’s website, through third parties, or even by independent after-market suppliers.

For example, Breville makes a burr coffee grinder called the Smart Grinder Pro that retails for $199. That’s not as ridiculously high as some Italian brands that specialize in espresso grinds, but it’s significantly higher than other all-purpose grinders — the ones that turn out a variety of options for everything from a coarse French press to an extra-fine espresso.

The Break Down
The Breville burr grinder has two components in its grind chamber that, according to owners who have posted comments and reviews on websites, are prone to failure — a felt washer and an impeller. Of course, Breville provides no instructions about replacing them if they do fail, and even ignores information about removing other grind chamber components to reach them.

That chamber contains four elements: the top burr grinder, the lower burr grinder, the impeller that moves grinds into a chute that leads to a collection cup, and the felt washer that fits under the impeller. Breville gives all sorts of instructions about removing the top grinder and using a brush to clean any clogs. It even suggests running uncooked rice through the device. It never suggests that problems might be related to the washer or impeller, and it doesn’t list those parts in any diagrams or parts lists.

The implication is that, if a problem can’t be resolved with brushes and rice, the grinder’s a goner. That’s hard to accept for an item that was cleaned once a week and that costs $200.

The felt washer can, with a bit of effort, be found on third party sites. It’s pricey at $7 (it’s probably worth 70¢), but it’s available. The impeller remains MIA.

Unresponsive
Email messages sent to Breville support; Stephen Krauss, the President of Breville Americas; and Aaron Wanek, the VP of Global Customer Care resulted in… nothing. No one responded with offers to provide the parts or guidance about where to obtain them.

This might be understandable — maybe — if the machine were very old or out of production. It’s not. It’s five years old and still available around the world.

What I’ll use while waiting for the felt washer to arrive (to see whether it solves the problem) is a Moulinex blade grinder. It’s not as precise as a burr grinder, but it works. And it’s 50 years old.

Am I jaded? The simple answer is “yes.” Every shiny new thing seems to be a less shiny older thing that’s been repackaged, renamed, or re-purposed. So, no, I ain’t gettin’ too excited.

Personalization? It’s been around since before Noah learned the length of a cubit. It just wasn’t automated, digitized, and distributed in multiple media. When the guy who ran the General Store in Colonial Williamsburg noticed that Mrs. Harrison preferred patterned fabrics, he’d send her a note when patterned textiles arrived in the shop. The Renaissance cabinet maker didn’t build things on spec. He built them to order, sized to fit a particular purpose or space.

Content marketing? Take some collateral (brochures, how-to guides, spec sheets, videos, sales aids, and anything else used to market and sell in place of face-to-face discussions) and make it available in print (for the past 150 years) or online (for the past 30, give or take), and tailor it for specific individuals involved in the buying process. Old process. New name.

SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW WE’RE STUPID
Artificial intelligence? It’s been standard in government for years, though it’s reached new heights in 2021 in places like the Florida governor’s mansion and the Texas legislature. 

Yet A.I. that’s related to computer analysis isn’t all that new either. In the early ’90s, A.I. was already proving itself at companies like American Express, Dun & Bradstreet, and Swiss Bank whose A.I. systems were reducing errors, increasing productivity, and providing solutions in seconds, rather than hours, days, or weeks. The difference today is that the programming technologies have caught up with the business intent and can capture knowledge and detect patterns that used to take programmers ages to accomplish.

WAS STILL IS
Podcasts? They used to call them radio. Of course, you had to tune in at a scheduled time on a specific station, and now you can listen to the audio whenever and wherever you want (if you have the right equipment: computer, tablet, smartphone). The problem is that, while radio shows needed discipline to fit the information into a limited time, podcasts (the business kind) tend to be lazy journalism. Too much chit chat, not enough focused interviewing skill that keeps the participants focused on the subject, and discussions that can ramble on for… ever.

Podcasts that offer serialized stories, whether fictional or true, are radio, too. Just digitally available on demand.

Email? Oh, deJoy of not having to rely on the Postal Service. It’s eminently adaptable — automatically and manually — saves a fortune on production and printing and postage, and can arrive anywhere outside autocracies in seconds. But, c’mon, it’s mail. It’s Pheidippides in bits and bytes (and without the threat of death for showing up with bad news).

NEARLY AS OLD AS CIVILIZATION
Video? It’s theater, speeches, product demos, pictures from a trip to Carpathia all transformed onto digitized visual media. Yes, there are things that you can do with computers and special effects that enhance things to the point of disbelief (pick any Marvel super hero movie) or real danger (vaccines will lead to a zombie apocalypse), but it hasn’t been new since Thomas Edison and the Lumières.

Media have evolved and, with their evolution, they have influenced our perceptions. As Marshall McLuhan phrased it, “the medium is the massage” that manipulates us on sensory levels. That puts the modern equivalencies of all the earlier approaches in a category of “new is different”; not necessarily “new is better.”

YOU ARE NOT ME AND THAT’S A GOOD THING
People still learn differently. Some prefer to read about things, others to hear about them, some want to see words and pictures or just pictures or maybe walkthrough demonstrations. That’s why we need so many distinct approaches. We just shouldn’t view them as brand spankin’ new. Consider them upgrades or enhancements or “new and improved” — things that, unlike Athena, did not spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus. 

These babies have been around since the dawn of civilization. They’re just learning new abilities to adapt to the times.

There are too many articles to count about diversity and inclusion. Most of them are delusional.

They talk about ensuring equal representation for women, for people of different races, for different nationalities and culture, and for LGBTQ individuals. That’s the way it should be.

Yet take a look at the images that accompany those stories. Everybody’s young. There’s no gray hair, no wrinkles, nothing that identifies the organizations as inclusive of people over 50… or even 40. The ideal seems to be female, Black, Asian, White, male, disabled, and transgender employees who are all much younger than 40.

There are even regular annual features titled “40 Under 40” (though, to be fair, Campaign Magazine has run “40 Over 40” for the past five years, but it’s an outlier… and British… while Fortune Magazine has been running its “40 Under 40” since 2009), and this year I encountered “The Queer 50” which, if I were homosexual or bi-sexual, I wouldn’t consider a flattering description. (Personally, I think it’s time for a more neutral descriptor — if there’s a need for one at all — to distinguish between people who prefer partners of the same and those who opt for people of the opposite gender; perhaps straight and curved, though I’m certain that that’s sure to raise somebody’s hackles.)

A PEEK AT PEAKING
Mathematicians tend to peak young. So do computer scientists. Yet writers get better with age, as do researchers, historians, lawyers, doctors, and accountants (even the honest ones). I’d assume that HR professionals learn more as time goes by about how to identify the right personalities for particular positions, and CEOs who’ve weathered several turnarounds are valued for their insights and guidance.

Call me jaded (or judgmental or, for all I care, Ishmael), but when a company that claims to be expert at managing retirement finances doesn’t have anyone of retirement age on the staff, it doesn’t make me trust their expertise. When ad agencies represent clients who 

• sell drugs for age-related conditions
• manage retirement communities
• offer reverse mortgages
• or provide investments that lower risk for retirees

and don’t have anyone of retirement age on their creative staff, something’s wrong. 

NO REFLECTION
When TV shows and movies have lots of kids and parents and either no grandparents in regular or recurring roles or no grandparents at all, I wonder what world that is. Maybe that’s why “Everybody Loves Raymond” endured and why “Modern Family” seems normal… mostly. 

This isn’t to suggest that “Superman” have children and resurrect his parents in a new “Superman: The Spanx Years,” but it might be funny (or a subtle examination of human fallibility and the power of imagination). At least Superman has a vulnerability, which makes him almost like a human with arthritis or irregular heartbeats. 

THE DISCOMFORT ZONE
There is sure to be some level of discomfort in shifting the calculus — from older people guiding younger ones to younger people hiring their elders. There are psychological ramifications that might range from “telling mom and dad what to do” to “feeling that they’ll think they know better” to “believing that ‘the chemistry’s not right’” and the like. Get over it. That can happen with anyone.

What can’t happen with just anyone is the perspective of experience. It’s been said (about multiple industries) that “Our most valuable assets go down in the elevator and out the door every night,” and those people take with them a degree of knowledge that’s unique — to themselves, to the company, to its clients and customers, and among their colleagues. 

Someone trained to work on modern cars who relies on computers that analyze problems and offer solutions won’t be very much help to the person who drives a classic ’56 T-bird. The person who’s mastered Photoshop masking inside out might not know what to do when the power fails and there isn’t any amberlith and X-Acto knives. The spreadsheet whiz who’s mastered the pivot table might not finish the what-ifs by the deadline if they have to do them manually when Excel won’t boot up.

Shaw said that youth is wasted on the young. So is diversity and inclusion that’s restricted by age.

The Bill of Rights contains no amendment granting people the right to be stupid. Unfortunately, millions of Americans are insisting there is.

They want to be stupid about science, medicine, religion, guns, and the restrictions of the Constitution itself. They’re Constistupiditists, attempting to convince those “other” people that the "Consties" have Constitutional protections you don’t and that you don’t have protections you do. It’s the underbelly of idiocy that drags along the soil of ineptitude.

A brief history of bias
America is rife with past examples. There’s America’s “peculiar institution” that insisted that the people we enslaved were inferior — mentally if not physically. We’ve made a market in bias against the Irish, Italians, Jews, Asians, and just about anybody born somewhere else. 

In the 20th Century, after running through the usual ethnic victims, there was the vituperative hatred of Father Coughlin. The Catholic “radio priest” couldn’t seem to remember — in the midst of his venomous condemnation of Jews — that Jesus just so happened to be Jewish. 

McCarthyism thrived on willful ignorance. The junior senator from Wisconsin made claims (like today’s) with no basis in fact against people who were guilty of nothing. People whose behavior was permitted. By the Constitution. 

The John Birch Society joined in on the fun of a political kakistocracy. Back then they hated Russians. Today’s heirs apparently think that Russia has the right idea: no opposition, no dissent, no choice, and no room for intelligent thought.

Looking back...wards
After having defeated Nazis in Germany, George Lincoln Rockwell still rose his stiff armed salute with a swastika armband and persuaded too many Americans that Adolf was right about the whole master race thing. In a sense, he was the ideological godfather of modern white supremacists. It wasn’t the Klan. That crowd was at least smart enough to wear a mask.

Another George (Wallace) had the sense to understand that racism was, well… stupid. Strom Thurmond did not, at least not until he had to admit he had a daughter whose mother was Black. 

Nixon, who should have had the wiles to work around the perceptions that he knew he should avoid, was almost clinically moronic. What made things worse was that the people he relied on were even less insightful than he was. It’s too bad he was allowed to resign. It was a “for the good of the country” maneuver that set a pattern for tolerance of unConstitutional behavior. It was, yes, stupid.

Trickle me, Gonzo
Reagan? Oh, God. He was the best snake oil salesman the White House has ever let in. Nothing that he said or did helped the people that he said he was helping. And they weren’t smart enough to see that his actions helped the wealthy, not them. The “Great Communicator” was, in fact, a great deceiver. 

All the highly vocal men in Congress who went after Bill Clinton for his lies about sex with an intern turned out to have committed far greater sins of the flesh. At least they didn’t have the gall to claim “I wasn’t really that into her.” Just brainless enough to have opened their mouths after previously opening their flies.

If Cheney was Tweedle Dum, poor Dubya was Tweedle Dumber. Instead of accepting the world’s willing help to eliminate the threat from Al Qaeda and terrorism, he listened to neocon nincompoops and put us even further in harm’s way. Apparently, too many of his cronies ate the yellow cake.

The highest low point
By the time Mr. Trump stumbled into the Executive Mansion, H. L. Mencken was proved right after nearly a century.

    …All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the
    notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office  
​    represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain
    folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
                                                                                                                                                                               [Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920]

Those plain folks are now — thanks to decades of descent in the quality of education, the lack of compromise in politics, the belief that facts are optional, and the assurances that “there are good people on both sides” — the prevailing idiocracy. They all have the right to be stupid, but the rest of us should never be so stupid that we ever admit that they’re right.

As Will Rogers observed (close to 100 years ago), we have the best Congress money can buy. The Supreme Court — in Citizens United and McCutcheon — seems to believe that, too.

Yet, at its heart, though corporate financial support of candidates may ensure access if those candidates are elected, the primary objective is stability. More than favorable laws (which may help companies while endangering the public), businesses want to know what to expect. With that knowledge, they can plan their strategies and tactics for the future… with or without restrictive regulations.

Insurrection, anarchy, sedition… they’re the most extreme causes of instability. So, naturally, businesses don’t like them.

In 2021, however, following a developing trend over the past decade, corporations recognize that consumers expect more than good products and services. Young consumers, especially, want to feel that those corporations are not harming the environment, not contributing to social inequity, and not being part of the problem. With clear outrage among the general public and with elected officials condemning incitement that led to the attack on the Capitol, CEOs are both among the affected and aware of the bottom line impact of neutrality.

Removing or suspending political contributions, however, is only one weapon, but it’s not the most important. If CEOs truly want to ensure stability by lessening the adversarial relationship between liberals and conservatives, whites and non-whites, white supremacists and BLM supporters, and members of Congress, they have to stop supporting the merchants of mendacity. They have to stop advertising on Fox News and Sinclair stations, on talk radio that traffics in untruths, and on websites that promote disproved conspiracies.

If money talks, this is the best speech that a CEO can make.

We are officially a nation of nincompoops. Thank you, Ronald Reagan.

It’s taken awhile for the reduction in education spending, which Reagan initiated at the federal level, to reveal its deleterious effects. Yet the United States’ level of educational achievement in science, math, and language skills now ranks below more than twenty other countries. We are, in act, not smarter than a fifth grader.

A downward spiral
We used to be the envy of the world, and our universities still draw thousands of students from abroad. Those attendees, however, are often here because they didn’t make the cut “over there” where competition is often so fierce that applicants suffer from multiple psychological maladies — before, during, and after the entrance exams.

Republicans have tried on multiple occasions to eliminate (or further emasculate and eviscerate) the Department of Education. The latest Cabinet secretary may have achieved a new high in lowness. Fortunately, the ineptitude of Betsy DeVos is on its way out. What is unfortunate is that she’s given cover to countless members of the idiocracy who are further encouraged in their ignorance by Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, and the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his misleading legion of radio and online companions.

Without the rigors of high quality education, American students have lost the analytical skills that help them determine fact from fiction or, at the very least, a healthy skepticism about claims that “just don’t seem right.” Any current conspiracy theory would be quickly dismissed in the 1960s, an era when Americans watched “The G. E. College Bowl” and knew the answers.

The profit of propaganda
Today, to our national detriment, the most brazenly outrageous claims are given credence by people who aren’t smart enough to know they’re stupid. Senator Ron Johnson is a standout in this cretinous crowd. Or by broadcast “personalities” who, as long as they can profit from the spread of disinformation, seem determined to do so. Confront them, and they’ll claim to be expressing opinions, not fact, and providing entertainment, not news. 

Our allies look at us in horror as political partisans try to turn a loss into a victory, judicial decisions into temporary obstacles, and reality into a distortion field of absolute nonsense. It is in this mindset of myopic arrogance that the State of Texas has sued four other states in the U. S. Supreme Court, claiming that the election results in those states were obtained through unconstitutional means. 

Illogical losing
If the Dallas Cowboys lose the next Super Bowl they play in, will Texas claim they really won and sue the winning team? Or will they go further to assert that the victor’s earlier triumphs were illegally obtained and, therefore, the winner wasn’t qualified to play against the Cowboys?

That’s the approach the Lonestar State is taking. It’s the approach that Republicans have backed. And it’s the surest sign that, from one end of the political spectrum at least, we’re not only not the bright shining light on the hill any more (and Reagan helped reduce it to the wattage of a night light), we’re a nation of grifters.