The other day I heard a commercial on the radio for a securities investment firm. It closed with the announcer cautioning, “Investment in securities involves the risk of loss.”
If investing in securities involves the risk of loss, why do we call them “securities?”
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I have been watching gasoline pump prices rise during the summer and have yet to hear anybody comment on a key supply-and-demand contribution to their rise.
It occurred to me as I drove along the newly-resurfaced street between gas stations on Ellis Boulevard to ask: How much petroleum is under our tires instead of in our gas tanks at this time of year?
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On a related note: When I was growing up on a small farm in central Illinois, there was an annual event (or maybe it was every couple of years event, memory isn’t clear) that we used to dread. Road-oiling.
We knew it was coming when the county road department came by our house and ground up the old surface into little pieces which would be rolled smooth or used to fill in potholes. Then a few days later, a truck would creep past our house spraying a very thick coat of hot road oil on the surface. Another truck would spread sand on top of the gooey surface. For the next sevcral days, cars and trucks would also creep down the road as the new surface hardened. But it was impossible to avoid the oil splattering onto the car or the truck—or the whitewall tires that were part of the automobile.
One positive that came out of that operation is that cars and trucks got a new undersealing to protect against the rusting salt that was spread on those same roads in the winter.
If often seemed that the crews didn’t re-oil the road past our place until the start of school—and the bus drivers undoubtedly cursed the practice as they cleaned the goop off the buses. And I’m sure the school didn’t appreciate all the tar that was spread into the school from the shoes of students who had to step on that surface to get on the bus.
This enlightening observation came one day on the way back from Columbia when 63 drops down to the flood plain and the ball diamonds and the turf farms and there was so much dust from the gravel side roads blowing across the highway as to make driving a tad bit more dangerous.
Gravel or oil? I choose gravel. I helped my father clean the splattered oil off our cars enough times to appreciate dust.
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I was on the Whitten Expressway in Jefferson City and in the lane to my left was a dump truck hauling an empty trailer. Written in regular-pickup truck-size letters on the rear gate of the truck was, “Stay back 300 feet.”
I thought, “What an I supposed to be doing? Wearing binoculars instead of my glasses so I can read something on a truck a football field away telling me not to get any closer?
And how would you pass such a vehicle? Or is a 50 mph truck a rolling roadblock—albeit a safe one.
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Back in the Arab Oil Embargo times of the 1970s, I recall when the 55 mph speed limit became a standard. Not only would it save petroleum, we were told, it would save lives.
I remember thinking, “If saving lives was the goal, why not set the limit at zero. Parked cars don’t cause fatalities.
Unless, I suppose, somebody opens the door as a bicyclist is going past.
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We went to Kansas City for a meeting a few days ago. The shortest trip, timewise, was on Highway 50. It’s four lanes from Jefferson City to California, two lanes to Sedalia and four from there to Kansas City. It’s also four lanes east to Linn although it doesn’t become four lanes again until the highway funnels traffic onto I-44.
We took 50. And most of the time we didn’t have a lot of traffic.
We wonder if the Transportation Department has considered looking at two more lanes for those stretches of 50 as it launches its aggressive expansion of I-70, which already requires great courage and patience to use. If the department hasn’t, we hope it doesn’t say anything that would make Highway 50 an alternate cross-state route while 70 is torn apart during the next several years.