“The best or nothing!” Gottlieb Daimler, a German engineer and industrialist from the 1920s, is credited with coining this phrase. Herr Daimler was a co-founder of a company that would one day become Mercedes-Benz, now renowned for the quality of its automobiles, and which, fittingly, adopted his mantra as its company motto.

Coincidentally, my father was also an engineer. An industrial engineer, at that. Thus he, too, appreciated well-designed and well-built products. However, being half-Scot, he tended to be pretty tight with a greenback. Thus, he sometimes seemed to be torn between paying a premium for merchandise of quality and saving a buck or two on the cheaper model. It was not uncommon for his Scottish heritage to prevail in such matters.

Continue “Das beste oder nichts!”

”˜Tis the season! Baseball season, that is. I know, I know, there are some of you out there who may not get too excited about this development. But, wait, don’t stop reading yet (I mean, really, what else do you have to do right now?).

When I was kid, baseball was still the national pastime. I must admit, however, that football has probably taken over that lofty characterization. Nevertheless, the opening of baseball season is as much a harbinger of spring in America as the appearance of a red-breasted robin on a Midwestern lawn or the return of the swallows to Capistrano in California.

Continue “Take your base!”

An interesting question, don’t you think? I suspect that most of us consider ourselves to fall in this category. One thing I have learned over the years, though, is that each of us tends to gravitate to others with backgrounds and interests similar to our own (birds of a feather and all). As a result, those particular persons with whom we come into contact on a regular basis seem, well, average, just like us. But let’s take a closer look at this average American “John/Jane Doe” and see how each of us actually compares:

Continue “Are you an average American?”

It seems as though all of us, including our duly elected public officials, are well advised to be on constant alert for a bill of goods. Here are just a few examples of some assertions that may fall into the category of being a crock, in no particular order:

Continue “Hoodwinked”

On a Sunday morning not long ago I read with interest an article in the Florida Times-Union of a movement here in Jacksonville called Operation Save Our Sons. The organization is designed to help 10-to-18 year-old boys develop better decision-making skills while helping their young fathers improve their parenting skills. It’s operated by the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville and was founded by Reverend John Guns, the church’s pastor. The thrust of the service is to encourage fathers and other men to whom these young lads look for guidance in selecting the right roads in life to be up to the task.

Speaking of roads, here are some interesting facts (that, hopefully, I have tricked you into reading about.  But, bear with me – I will come back to my point):

Continue “Forks in the road”