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| Whoopie Sling on the left, eye sling on the right |
Campers use whoopie slings for hanging their hammocks and arborists use both slings and eyes for hoisting their trees. Of course, the size (and strength) of the rope varies with the application. I started using 7/64" Amsteel I bought on eBay for use around the boat. This rope is very thin and light, perfect for hammock-hanging whoopie slings because it weighs almost nothing. The idea is to fasten slings on either end of the hammock to trees, then adjust the slings to fit. Once weight (or tension) is applied, the sling will not move because one end of the rope passes inside a section of the rope like a Chinese puzzle, forming a loop. Due to the nature of the braid, when tension is applied, the loop becomes rigid, but without tension, the loop is easily adjustable.
I learned to use a piece of thin wire to pull one end of the rope inside of itself, forming a fixed loop on one end and an adjustable loop on the other. The first whoopie sling took me about two hours, and the tenth took less than half an hour. I made them and sold them on eBay until I was out of the 7/64" material.
Then, I wanted to replace the lower lifelines on Sunrise. The old ones were made of 1/4" nylon 3-strand rope, which was degraded in many places from chafing. I bought some cheap 5/32" Amsteel on eBay for the lifelines, but then I was asked for a whoopie sling out of the 5/32" rope and the customer was willing to pay extra, so I was back in the sling business. In order to not be overwhelmed, I kept raising the price until I reached $16, but I ran out of material. I still needed rope for the lifelines, but when I went to buy more, I found that the previous eBay prices were exceptionally low, and I ended up buying some 3/16" Amsteel (much better for lifelines) for 75 cents a foot, more than three times the previous price! I did sell one 3/16" whoopie sling for a higher price, but that was to an arborist. On the other hand, the new lifelines are exceptional!
In retrospect, 1/8" Amsteel might be the best choice for whoopie slings. It is still fairly inexpensive (36 cents/foot), very strong (almost one ton safe working load), and easy to work with (12 strand braid and sized so my splicing tools fit), but it weighs slightly more than 7/64". I have sold several so far.
I can leave my cottage industry behind, though, because on Monday, 8/11, I go to work for the Apalachicola Maritime Museum! It is a part-time, minimum wage job, funded by a Department of Labor program for us older people, but I will still end up with enough extra cash to be able to live and maintain my boat-maintenance habit--I need a new anchor. On the job, I will be a mate on the museum tour boats, man the front desk to greet people (like a Wallmart greeter), book tours, write for the newsletter, and help curate the museum.
That leaves memes. I have noticed that the US media, including Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, has settled on the narrative that the massive influx of Central American children at the border is the result of Obama's limited amnesty for the Dreamers, children who came to America with their parents at a young age. Thus, immigrant children can also expect amnesty. Unscrupulous 'coyotes' have sold this fantasy to parents in order to make money. The conclusion of this narrative is that the cause of the migration is greed on the part of the coyotes and delusion on the part of the parents. All Obama has to do to end the problem is to inform Central America that no such amnesty is available.
Of course, there is probably a grain of truth in this idea. Coyotes will make money. The 2008 Anti-Trafficking Law does provide some protection of child migrants. Perhaps the Dreamers policy did get wrongly interpreted. Nevertheless, there is ample evidence that conditions in Central America are driving the children to flee their homeland. See Running For Their Lives--The Child Migrant Crisis. Ignoring root the causes of immigration problems allows the administration and legislators to apply band-aid, symptomatic solutions that are both cruel and inhumane. True solutions, of course, such as ending CAFTA and NAFTA, the War On Drugs, and support for right-wing kleptocracies in Mexico and Central America are out of the question.
Next to consider is the Ukraine. It has been well documented that the US State Department and NGOs such as the NED were instrumental in causing the coup that literally chased Former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych out of office to exile in Russia. It is also known that many of the people forming the new Kiev government are extreme nationalists with a decided Russian-hating, neo-nazi, fascist bent. Kiev lost Crimea and fomented civil war in Eastern Ukraine precisely because of its dedication to the EU bankers with their austerity programs and US militarists with their NATO, new Cold War, program. Putin's rejection of this government is entirely rational in terms of both protecting the Russian state and supporting ethnic Russians who want nothing to do with Kiev. Yet, Putin is reviled in the US press (and maybe the European), as the warmonger fomenting violence in Eastern Ukraine and he has been both blamed and punished for all the ills in the Ukraine (even the Daily Show adopts this meme). Putin is certainly not so wonderful a leader, but all this mess in Ukraine is the direct result of US and EU meddling, not Russian.
There are many more instances of American propaganda, memes that distort our understanding of the world, too many to easily recount. There are many people like my neighbor, Al, who constantly proclaim that the US has done more 'good' in the world than any other country in history. I am sure that the people in Iran appreciate the goodness of the CIA when it unseated Mossadegh and installed the Shah in 1953. Then there was the goodness of the Jimmy Carter policy to support the mujaheddin in Afghanistan that so threatened the Afghan government that they appealed to the Soviet Union to send troops for support. Not to leave a good stone unturned, the CIA continued to support the mujaheddin with (good) arms to fight the (bad) Russians, a bit that leads directly to Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, and the goodness of 9/11. Although the litany of American policy blunders is much to long to list completely, the upshot is that none of these efforts ever, ever, has a good result and most cause humanitarian disasters. The list continues today with Obama's good policies of drone assassinations and public spying, which only broadens Al Franken's condemnation of Stupid White Men to include any brand of stupid American. I should really point out to neighbor Al, who hates Obama, that white men do not have a monopoly on stupidity.
