Page 20 THE VILLADOM TIMES III • February 24, 2010 and told people in Brooklyn when to take out their recyclables. Cleverly concluding that this was the wrong Channel 4, I boldly seized the remote and got the one with the Olympic logo and constant commercials, I sensed that I had come to the right place. My wife arrived, looking suspiciously at the TV screen. I think she could not believe that I had actually tuned it in. Then the telephone rang. She picked it up. “Johnny says figure skating is on tonight,” she reported. I enjoy figure skating, but more to the point, this meant that the telephone worked again. Good news twice. Over-engineering contributes not only to problems with night-time entertainment, but to the overall problem of earning a living. I now have a digital camera, but I have a digital camera where the controls have far more sophistication than I need. I once got some photos that I wanted to illustrate an article for the newspaper, and found out that they were somehow a movie. I never asked the camera to make a movie, and when I found out that the video inside the camera could not be transposed into one usable still photograph, I was less than amused. Probably the camera control had slipped over into the video mode by itself. I deny that I was in any way responsible. However, I was stuck with a home movie of a perfectly nice couple of people I barely know that I couldn’t use to illustrate a story commending them for having done something useful. I did not need a still camera with a movie function any more than I needed a cellular phone that takes bad photographs. Who invents this stuff, and who approves it for production? Most of this stuff is harmless, if annoying, but there are cases where over-engineering can cause danger or death. One example, made in the U.S.A., was the early production model of the M-16 used in Vietnam. The United States entered the stage of serious involvement with the M-14 – an upgrade of the M-1 Garand used in World War II and Korea, but with a fully automatic capability. The trouble is that when you shoulder-fire a rifle fitted with 30.06 rifle cartridges on full-automatic, the recoil is so drastic that you tend to send a large part of the magazine into the clouds or the third story of buildings when you are aiming at the ground floor. The M-16, engineered around a whole new concept, was known as the “Mattie Mattel Space Gun” when it first appeared. The M-16 had a hollow plastic stock, most of the metal parts were alloys, and it weighed about half as much as a conventional military rifle like a Garand or a Springfield. The M-16 was ideally suited to full automatic, and combat being a nervous situation, it was most often used on full automatic. The Field First Sergeant, a John Wayne clone, showed us that he could fire one by holding it against the tip of his nose. The weapon was so short and so light that it was ill-suited to take a bayonet, and the plastic stock meant it was not even a very good club in a pinch. Unfortunately, while the early model M-16 was an ideal weapon for outer space, it was so fine-tuned in its mechanical tolerances that it reportedly jammed in jungle and swamp combat situations with terrifying regularity. Tales filtered back to us of guys who had been found knifed or strangled when their M-16s stopped working. I never saw this happen, and I cannot vouch for how true the tales were, but they had a chilling effect on people who may not have been happy with the Army in general or the war in particular. The sergeants hammered into our heads that this would not happen if we remembered to lubricate with colloidal graphite instead of the kind of oil you use on a sewing machine, and later phases of the M-16 did not have the same problem. But it was a scary thought that soldiers would be sent into battle with guns that jammed a lot. The Soviet AK-47, on the other hand, had an excellent reputation for reliability. Some friends found one still loaded, tied a rope around it, dragged it through a rifle paddy, then threw it in a mud hole and drove a Jeep over it. The mud turned to clay, but a few days later, the guys pulled it up by the rope, threw it back in the rice paddy to clear off the mud, and shook off the water. It still fired. This was also bad for morale. History has shown who had the best system, and few people were happier than I was to see the break-up of the Soviet Union. But the Russians often had the right idea about equipment to be used by rough guys in tough situations. (We used to be issued comic books with a good-looking female cartoon character called “Connie Rodd” telling us to remember to clean our weapons.) Stuff should be strong, sturdy, and simple if it is going to be relegated to non-experts on limited budgets. We could probably save a large chunk of the U.S. economy if we built TVs with simple dials that do not need a fussy remote, computers that process words and relay e-mail and do not do a whole lot else, telephones that never break down and don’t necessarily take photographs, and cars that stop when we put our foot down instead of reportedly using the pressure of our feet to generate electricity. That is what I think, and cavemen have spending money, too! Just when you thought nothing could save what’s left of the American automobile industry, the word is out that a roster of Toyotas are being recalled -- some due to faulty brakes. In a sense, this is good news. I drive a Ford Explorer because it is the cheapest reliable car I can fit into, so for once it looks like I know something about cars. True enough, the Ford blew its engine, despite good routine maintenance, when I was about 1,000 miles over the warranty, and I once had three flats in 10 days when the valves on the newlyinstalled tires degraded, probably after a couple of decades in the warehouse, but neither of these circumstances was as jarring or as outright dangerous as a brake failure at a critical moment. Brake failure by sabotage is a favorite assassination technique. Having the people who sold you the car build this sort of thing into the vehicle is not encouraging. Rumor has it that the problem with brakes that don’t stop the car has to do with some form of over-engineering: either the failure occurs because the anti-locking device was too sophisticated, or some of the faulty cars tried to recover the energy exerted in pushing the brake to revitalize the car’s storage battery. If that is true, it is a classic case of over-engineering: techno-guys try to make something that is theoretically excellent but so complicated that it either fails mechanically or cannot be operated by anybody who is not a genius or an obsessive tinkerer. Many of us have had this problem. When the new TV reception came in, my son, who has a patent pending on an invention of classic simplicity, arrived and set up an indoor aerial and a converter box so my wife and I can at least watch PBS on Saturday night, which is about the only TV we watch, except for classical music concerts and the nature and science shows. For some months, all was well. Then the Olympics started! We put in a call to find out how to see Channel 4 so we could watch what was going on in Vancouver and so I could marvel at the wisdom of all these philosophers who explain that a gold medal is better than a silver medal which is better than a bronze medal. When I tried to switch back from Channel 4 to Channel 13, it didn’t work. “Call Johnny,” my wife advised. She knows the limits of my electronic sophistication. I picked up the telephone. The line was dead. This has happened before. Shortly after our telephone supplier acknowledged that we did not owe them $2,400 because they had made a mistake on the bill and the Board of Public Utilities and Better Business Bureau knew all about it, the telephone started to fail about once a month, sometimes for several hours, sometimes for several days. My wife claims that, because Custer was killed by Indians, the government is responding to my book, “Custer Survivor,” by tapping our telephone to see if I was in any way responsible. Devoted as I am to seeing that my wife gets to watch the Olympics, I dared to tangle with the controls and, incredibly, pushed the right couple of buttons and got one of the adjuncts of Channel 4, which showed a slushy urban street Over-engineering: Just give me a brake! Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: After a year of total control of all levels of government by the Democratic Party, the American people are repulsed and are rejecting its policies and politicians. Those who espouse big government, limited personal freedoms, and out-of-control spending are overwhelmingly rejected. Most recent public opinion polls show that 40 percent of Americans consider themselves conservative and only 20 percent consider themselves liberal in their political ideology. Even the mainstream liberal Washington Post’s latest survey showed that a clear majority of Americans want smaller government and more personal freedoms and individual responsibilities. The results of the last three statewide elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts have affirmed the Republican Party idea and ideals of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and robust national security and defense. The electorate has repudiated Democratic candidates and has elected Republicans. Even in Bergen County, the two Republican freeholder candidates defeated the two Democrat candidates running for reelection, despite being heavily out-spent. The people are yearning to reclaim their liberties and government. It is under this political climate that the USR Republican Municipal County Committee had met to discuss and plan on how to continue and expand this movement toward political conservatism and winning elections. On the local front, there are two council seats up for election this coming November, and the committee unanimously endorsed Debbie Viola for one of the seats. The committee is soliciting interested parties for the second council seat. Anyone who is interested may send his or her letter of interest and resume to: Armand C. del Rosario, Chairman USR Republican Municipal County Committee, 56 Echo Ridge Road, Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. Wants more Republicans in power Get involved. Be part of the movement and join us in reclaiming our government -- one level at a time. Armand C. del Rosario Upper Saddle River It is the policy of the Villadom TIMES to have a signed copy of letters to the editor in our files. Please fax a signed copy to (201) 670-4745 or drop a signed copy in the mail to Villadom Times, P.O. Box 96, Midland Park, NJ 07432. Signed letters may also be dropped off at our office located at 333 Godwin Avenue in Midland Park. Thank you. The Villadom TIMES Welcomes Your Press Releases & Photos Email to: editorial@villadom.com. Or mail to: PO Box 96, Midland Park, NJ 07432 (only quality photo prints can be used) Press releases & photos must be received by WEDNESDAY prior to publication. 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