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I’m wrapping up my patent application for an LED system that can be imbedded in the rear window of your car.

The device will come in handy at those times, four or five times a day, when a fellow Long Island motorist appears intent on driving his or her SUV up your, er, tailpipe.

The system will come equipped with various pre-loaded messages designed to shoo away the offending follower. “I brake for tailgaters,” for example, or, “Two car lengths back, please.”

It will also allow users to add their own friendly warnings, such as, “I have a 9 mm Glock on the seat right next to me, pal, and I’m about to make the rest of your drive home very interesting.”

The invention stems from almost 10 years of research on the driving habits of Long Islanders. Several times a day, when a fellow motorist gets close enough to scare me,

I jot down the gender and estimated age of the driver, vehicle make and any other pertinent information, such as the number of dead insects on their grill.

Example from June 29, 2001: “Twenty-something woman in minivan, two kids in back, appeared distracted by large birthday balloon and what was either a walrus or a bull terrier needing serious dental work.”

From March 9, 2004: “Yeah and @&%$#* you, too.”

Rear-end collisions are the most common form of auto accident in America, according to the National Safety Council. Each year, more than 2.5 million tailgaters slam into the back of the car in front of them, causing millions of dollars of damage and many, many calls from all those attorneys who advertise on the cover of the phone book.

Face it, the medical term “soft tissue injury” would not even exist without tailgating.

The New York State Police say tailgating is one of the most common forms of aggressive driving, which they define as operating a motor vehicle “in a selfish, bold or pushy manner.” It is so prevalent here that the state inaugurated its aggressive driving prevention program with workshops on Long Island.

If someone is tailgating you, state troopers recommend you remain calm, keep your own distance from any vehicle in front of you and, if possible, change lanes.

“If you cannot change lanes and an aggressive driver is behind you,” the troopers recommend, “maintain the proper speed and do not respond with hostile gestures.”

Well, I guess that eliminates the Glock.

I plan to publish my completed study in June but I thought I’d reveal a few of its findings in advance.

l A majority of tailgaters are young people suffering from the misperception that they are good drivers and/or will live forever. The second largest group, however, is the elderly. If you are tailgated by a senior citizen, try slowing down to 8 mph. They won’t back off, but they’ll appreciate your driving at their speed.

l Tailgaters overwhelmingly drive vans or SUVs. I believe their aggressive driving stems from the sense of invulnerability they get from an oversized vehicle. So, if you look in your rear-view mirror and all you see are the letters R-E-M-M-U-H, pull over immediately.

l The vast majority of tailgaters were also engaged in some other activity, including using a cell phone, whacking a child, applying makeup, smoking or sipping a drink. Many were doing all of those things at once.

A small number of underachievers were merely driving and chewing gum.

l People driving BMWs do not engage in other activities while driving. They just sit behind the wheel and look superior.

l Rubbernecking – that is, gawking at a crash other than the one you are about to cause – is responsible for 18 percent of all rear-end accidents. Meteor strikes and rubbernecking are the only known reasons eight lanes of highway traffic ever come to a complete halt.

l Two percent of rear-end collisions are caused by people reading a newspaper while driving. Given all the layoffs at Newsday, I think we should grant these drivers special dispensation.

l In addition to tailgating, many Long Islanders illegally seize the right of way and make a left turn in front of you when the signal turns green. The legal term for these drivers is “assholes.”

l A true fact: If you lined up all the Toyota Camrys ever built, they would stretch the entire circumference of the equator. And a guy from Massapequa would try to pass them all.

l Also true: When the end of the world arrives, God will ease the long line into heaven by installing “merge left” signs. Those who refuse to merge until they reach the front of the line will be banished into the darkness for all time.

In other words, all New Yorkers are going to hell.

I’m off to clean the Glock.

As you read this, I’m attending my company’s annual journalism conference in Scottsdale.

Each year, we haul in our editors and publishers from across the country and subject them to three days of seminars on such topics as finding the conflict in news stories and dealing with the flood of former Tribune employees in our markets.

My favorite session this year: “Deer in the Headlines: How to go from blank stare to brilliance.”

You may argue that the newspaper industry is on life support, and it may be. Either way, headline writing has been a dying art for a long time.

That’s due in part to the post-Watergate metamorphosis of our industry from craft to profession. We have too many suits, frankly, and not enough wordsmiths. More recently, the buyouts and build-downs have accelerated the atrophy of the industry’s literary soul.

Seems to me journalists are younger and less-experienced today and there are far fewer old salts to show the way.

Old salts, after all, are expensive.

Technology is also a factor. With desktop publishing, you can crank out a perfectly mediocre headline and then bump up size and spacing to make it fit in a jiffy. Gone are the halcyon days of character-counting lead type, assigning two points for a capital M or W, one for most lowercase letters and a half for an f or l or t.

The headline on this column, pilfered from the checkout rack’s Weekly World News, counts to 47.5.

You had time for literary achievement when you counted characters, space for well-spun alliteration or a little clever wordplay. No more. In the wide world of the Web you write to maximize search-engine hits.

There’s money, but no art, in that.

The first clever headline that topped my byline was by Jim Arnold, a graying cynic of a copy editor – that may be redundant – who kept a collection of what he called “thin books” in his desk drawer. If a new book sounded like it was BS, Jim would cut off the covers and paste them together, creating a pageless “thin” edition he thought more indicative of the author’s effort.

I remember one was “The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan,” by James Hume.

Anyway, my little story was about a suspicious package found stuffed in a public mail box. Fearing it was a bomb, police used a small explosive to blow it open … and found dirty clothes a college kid was mailing home for washing.

Arnold wrote: “Suspected bomb turns out to be duds.”

Clay Sherman was another legendary “rim rat,” so called because in the old days copy editors worked at a horseshoe-shaped desk called the rim.

One day, Clay was assigned headline duties on the weekly hunting column, a piece about a man named Montgomery who took his stepson hunting for the first time. The kid managed to bag a deer, and his stepfather insisted they clean it on the spot, roast a piece and eat it together in the time-honored hunter’s rite.

Clay’s headline: “Montgomery ward sears roebuck.”

“You wait a whole career for an opportunity like that,” he told me.

Another favorite from the period: “What a friend we have in cheeses,” on a travel piece about Gruyère.

Tabloids took headline writing to its highest form. Invented by the British in the 1890s – the word originally was a patented name for a compressed pill – tabloids are smaller, but louder, than their traditional broadsheet brethren. With limited space and a rushing commuter readership, the tabs had to rely on wit – OK, and sex and sensationalism – to push product.

So when police discovered a body, missing the head, in a strip club, the New York Post trumpeted, “Headless torso in topless bar.” When dashing John F. Kennedy Jr. failed the bar exam, the tabs announced, “The hunk flunks!”

President Ford’s decision not to bail out financially struggling New York City in 1975 prompted the classic Daily News screamer, “Ford to City: Drop dead.”

When the Senate narrowly failed to convict President Clinton in the Lewinsky sex scandal, the News called it “Close, but no cigar.” And when a meteor missed the Earth in 1998, the Post playfully told readers to “Kiss your asteroid goodbye.”

A memorable News wordplay from 1980: “Somoza slain by bazooka.”

Who could walk past that on a rack?

The golden age of tabloid headlines is behind us, I fear. The Spitzer affair was the perfect opportunity for headline writers to take their, ahem, socks off, but alas the New York tabloids let us down.

“Pay for luv gov,” was the Daily News’ best effort. “Ho no,” rejoined the Post.

You can buy copies of either issue on eBay for less than a buck.

A decade ago, one of them surely would have written “Loose lips sink Spitz.”

Spring sprang earlier again this year.

By “spring,” I mean the start of the growing season, the springing forth of vegetation for which the season is named, after the Old English word “springan.”

Using satellite images dating back to the 1980s, scientists have determined that nature is bursting out ever earlier – a full eight hours sooner this year than last, or about the average working day of a person not really trying to get ahead.

This phenomenon is why the cherry trees in Washington are blooming right now, a month earlier than 30 years ago. It’s why woodpeckers in North Carolina are laying eggs a week sooner than 20 years past, and why robins arrive back in the Midwest several days ahead of their schedule from just one decade ago.

Globally, the growing season starts everywhere about 10 days sooner than it did in 1980, as much as two weeks earlier in places north of 45 degrees north latitude, such as Maine and Idaho.

The people at Jiffy Fries are thrilled.

The likely culprit is climate change, although scientists are not sure. It will take many years of study, and many more tenured positions, to establish it with certainty. In the interim, the lab coats worry that some animals won’t be able to adapt as fast as the speed-up in vegetation, throwing off migration and breeding habits.

“What we’re really concerned about is this tearing apart of communities – some species are going to be changing, and some are not,” says Terry Root, an ecologist at Stanford’s Center for Environmental Science and Policy.

I echo Dr. Root’s concern. At the current rate, it will take a short three years to accelerate the growing season by a full day. In just 500 years, Canada geese could be heading north just as the Monarch butterfly takes wing for Mexico.

Note to self: If you’re around, stock up on windshield fluid.

Stanford scientists have been examining 41 giant grids, each about 150 miles wide and 150 miles long, and have looked at hundreds of species of birds, animals and plants. About 130 show significant changes in springtime activity.

Still to be studied: How an earlier season will affect the filming of all those spring-break videos by the folks at “Girls Gone Wild.”

This quick start to the growing season coincides with assorted planetary changes that are making spring – we’re talking about the season now – start sooner as well.

Back when I was in grade school, spring always started on March 21. This year, the vernal equinox arrived March 20, and by 2016 the season will kick off sometime on March 19.

Why? The problem is our Gregorian calendar, which attempts to measure a year as one full orbit of Earth around the sun. The planet’s shaky elliptical orbit and the gravitational pull of other planets all combine to make the science of calendar printing something less than perfect.

That’s why the venerable Gregorian has to be adjusted with leap years and further tinkered with in century years not divisible by 400, such as 1700 and 2100.

For very patient readers: There are also adjustments for millennium years divisible by 4,000. Enjoy.

According to space.com, these fluctuations mean that spring is being reduced by one minute a year, with the extra time going to summer. I believe it was incorporated into Alex Rodriguez’s contract. Winter is already the shortest season and it, too, is getting shorter. By the year 3500, scientists predict, winter will last just 88.71 days.

Let’s hope they get that indoor ski mountain built by then!

And while I’m venting, what’s up with Easter in March? Am I the only one who finds it hard to celebrate the resurrection when you’re still nursing a St. Patrick’s Day hangover?

I thought not.

Turns out Christians have no one but themselves to blame for this one.

Early believers in Christ disagreed over when the resurrection should be celebrated. Some held that it should be on a Sunday, the day the Scriptures say he rose, while others pushed for a celebration on Passover – which is pegged to the full moon – regardless of the day of the week it fell on.

It became known as the Quartodecimian Controversy because in the Jewish lunar calendar Passover is always celebrated on the date of Nisan 14. (Quartus plus decimus. It’s very old math.)

The debate wasn’t resolved until 325, when a church council decided on the following compromise: Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

The same council voted in meatless Fridays and banned recreational sex, I think.

Anyway, thanks to planetary alignment, we celebrated Easter on March 23 this year, but will have to wait until April 24 in 2011.

Of course, if spring gets any earlier, we’ll be following the ham with pumpkin pie. I can’t wait to try a turkey Peep.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows. Health-care reform, apparently, more so.

First there was Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich teaming up to doctor the system, then a pack of

9-11 rescue workers boarding Michael Moore’s “Sicko” flotilla to Cuba.

Now, the traditionally conservative National Federation of Independent Businesses, the nation’s largest small-business group, has joined forces with the Service Employees International Union to push for some form of universal care.

Other members of the so-called Divided We Fail coalition: AARP, the 39 million-member “seniors” group, and the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs from the country’s largest businesses.

The NFIB in bed with organized labor and big business? Say it ain’t so.

Fueling the group’s philosophical flip are an estimated 27 million small-business owners, employees and family members without health-care coverage, more than half of the almost 50 million Americans who are uninsured.

And the numbers are getting worse. Health-care premiums have jumped 129 percent in the last eight years, according to the NFIB, and the number of small businesses that offer coverage has slipped, from 58 percent in 1997 to 47 percent last year.

“Something has to be done to address the system’s problems,” says Mike Elmendorf, NFIB’s New York director. “If it means crossing philosophical lines to focus everyone’s attention, we’re ready to do it.”

The words can’t come easily to Elmendorf, who spent a dozen years in the administration of Republican George Pataki and grew up in a family of small-business people.

Unions have helped make ours the second-most expensive state in which to do business – topped by only Hawaii – and abuse and waste in New York’s social programs are legendary. New York’s Medicaid costs are No. 1 in the nation, higher than those in Florida and Texas combined.

The costs are fingernails on the chalkboard for any fiscal conservative. But with all three presidential candidates pushing health reform this election year, the iron has never been hotter.

I should point out here that the NFIB is not proposing a government-run system. Rather, the group wants to drive down cost and waste in the system to make it affordable for all businesses, injecting such improvements as portability, which would allow workers to keep their coverage while moving from job to job, especially to other parts of the country.

In addition to the fraud and legislative largesse, there are government-ordered fees that need repealing. New York, for example, charges an 8.95 percent “sales” tax on health care services. There’s also a nifty little charge called the Covered Lives Assessment, which was levied back in 1997 to help support students taking graduate-level medical courses.

In classic New York style, the assessment was quietly shifted to the general fund and now accounts for almost $1 billion in state spending. Just before resigning, Gov. Eliot Spitzer had proposed increasing the assessment by $140 million, a 22 percent hike.

These fees and assessments – hidden taxes, really – increase New York health-care premiums by an estimated $2 billion annually. Nationally, government requirements add $1,000 or more a year to your health insurance bill.

Large companies that can afford to be self insured avoid many of such charges, one of the great disparities between big business and the mom and pops, Elmendorf says. So the NFIB is pushing for changes that would even the score for employers of all sizes. Its plan would allow small businesses to pool risks and insure across state lines, turning the country into one big – and much more competitive – market.

The group also supports a couple of other familiar themes, including medical liability reform and tax-code changes that would allow businesses to get full deductions on their health-care contributions, as individuals currently can.

The coalition with labor and big business is not as wacky as you might think. The trades have seen their benefits erode over the years, pretty much in lock step with the steep increase in costs. And a global economy means large U.S. companies must compete head-on with foreign firms that often pay no health costs at all.

The NFIB plan most closely mirrors the reforms being pushed by Sen. John McCain, especially in the areas of tax exemptions and buying coverage across state lines. McCain, however, stops short of calling for universal coverage.

Reform plans being stumped by Clinton and fellow Democratic hopeful Sen. Barack Obama call for some form of mandated coverage, an anathema to the NFIB.

That difference aside – and it’s a significant one – both sides of the aisle seem to agree that expanding access to affordable health care is at, or very near, the top of the list. Could this be the tipping point for real, bipartisan change?

Let’s hope. Our current health system guarantees care for some – the indigent, the elderly and those in public service – but it leaves the rest of us to our own devices.

Bedfellows ought to do better.

The Trudge Report, my new newsletter for treadmill enthusiasts, is mailing this week. It’s full of training techniques, word on the latest workout fashions and heart-healthy recipe tips on how to make tilapia actually taste like something.

Here’s a sampling from the popular “Ask Dr. Trudge” feature:

Dear Dr. Trudge: I heard somewhere that if you work out a lot, your body gets kind of addicted to it, and you feel a buzz. Is this true, and where can I buy a couple of grams? BTW, Floral Park

Dear BTW: Often called “runner’s high,” the rush you mention is caused by the release of chemicals from your pituitary gland. Known as endorphins, these chemicals produce a reaction that is essentially the opposite of eating turkey: Instead of wanting to curl up on the sofa, you feel ready for a Sarbanes-Oxley audit.

Endorphins are released in large quantities during a vigorous workout. You can get a similar endorphin rush from orgasms or eating really hot chilis. But not on the treadmill, please.

Dear Dr. Trudge: When I crank the incline up on my treadmill, I get this burning sensation at the top of the back of my thigh. Is this something to worry about? JHM, Lake Success

Dear JHM: First, check to see if your machine is on fire. No? OK, you’re feeling muscle “burn” in your hamstring.

There are actually three hamstring muscles in your leg, all originating from the ischial tuberosity, perhaps better known as the “lower butt area.” The biceps femoris also has a second portion that’s called the “small head,” but let’s not get into that here.

The sensation you feel is from over-exertion, possibly even a slight tear. Back off on the incline and build back up gradually.

Dear Dr. Trudge: I’ve increased my tread time to an hour a day, but I’m getting serious chafing on my inner thighs. What do you suggest? MFM, Patchogue

Dear MFM: Stop wearing your corduroy shorts inside out!

Seriously, I recommend a pair made of micro-fiber synthetics by Under Armor or any of the other major manufacturers. You want flat-lock seams to avoid abrasion and a gusseted crotch if you can find one.

To treat the current chafe, get yourself a tub of Udderly Smooth teat cream, originally designed for calving cows but available for humans at most drugstores. Apply liberally and massage gently into the sensitive area. As the label warns, do not use on parts affected by cow pox.

Another effective chafe product is Boudreaux’s Butt Paste, developed for diaper rash by a Louisiana pediatrician named Pappy Talbot and compounded by George Boudreaux, his local pharmacist. Boudreaux liked the product so much he sold his drugstore and started pushing the paste from a touring RV called the Butt Mobile. Long used by major sports stars, the paste is now available at Wal-Mart, Target and Walgreens.

Ask for it in hushed tones.

Dear Dr. Trudge: What’s your view on dietary fiber? BFM, Mineola

Dear BFM: I’ll skip the obvious one-liner there. Dietary fiber is important, so make sure you work such things as green beans and broccoli into your diet. The new Kellogg’s All Bran Fiber Bar offers 40 percent of your daily requirement for colon blow in just 120 calories. A great breakfast on the run.

And remember, your body burns 25 percent of its calories processing food, so don’t skip meals. You’ll be missing a great opportunity to jack up your metabolism.

Dear Dr. Trudge: I’m trying to tread every day, but it’s so boring. How do you amuse yourself during your work outs? BGK, Hauppauge

Dear BGK: I use an iPod Shuffle loaded with my favorite upbeat music – the Bee Gees, the O’Jays, Kate Bush, Neil Diamond and Earth, Wind & Fire, to name but a few. I arrange the brisk-beat stuff in 60-minute blocks, then add cool-down music such as Jefferson Starship’s “Miracles.”

Dear Dr. Trudge: Neil Diamond? RPF, Copiague

Dear RPF: Believe it or not, “Cracklin’ Rosie” has a perfect 3.8 mph back beat.

Or if you prefer the rhythm of the written word, try audio books. LibriVox.org is dedicated to recording anything in the public domain for easy, and free, download to your iPod or MP3 player. Sweat to “War and Peace.” Jog to “The Divine Comedy.” Try to cool down to “Tropic of Cancer.”

Hey, and write back if you figure out what “Ulysses” is all about.

The Trudge Report is just one of the many projects I’ve been working on since my decision to lead a healthy life at least until I can find someone willing to sell me life insurance. In addition to the newsletter, I’m working on a Mediterranean diet cookbook titled, “Scarborough Fare: How to cook with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.”

I’m also trying to grow chickpeas and learn French. Being healthy, it turns out, gives you all sorts of energy. Who knew?

By the way, I was joking about being able to get tilapia to taste like anything. You can’t.

The Democrats have their best chance ever to win the perennially Republican-controlled state Senate this year, and they’re counting on the unions to hit the streets hard come autumn.

One payback for the trades is a new version of the law governing industrial development agencies, the various state and local boards that award tax-advantaged bonds and tax abatements to businesses that move to or promise to grow within their jurisdictions.

The version being considered in Albany would require firms receiving IDA incentives to pay their construction workers “prevailing wage,” essentially the same rate as union workers, whether they’re members of the trades or not.

This is not big news in and of itself. The Assembly has repeatedly tacked a prevailing wage clause on the IDA authorization bill over the years, only to have it snuffed each time by the Senate Republicans. What’s different this session is that Gov. Eliot Spitzer has taken the lead in pushing the measure, and there is some chance it might pass given the GOP’s perilous hold on the Senate.

Or, Republicans will be forced to deal away their opposition in exchange for union help in holding onto seats.

Prevailing wages were invented by Congress back in the 1930s to prevent construction firms from squeezing worker pay to win government building jobs. Many states quickly followed suit, New York among them, and today only 18 don’t have rules on workers’ pay for government construction.

Liberal thought argues that companies receiving tax breaks and other hand outs paid for by the public should give something back for the public good. More conservative thought counters that the companies are already giving something by adding vacant land to the tax rolls, increasing sales and creating jobs – predominantly on their own dime.

It’s a fine example of the philosophical divide, and if it were being argued anywhere but the aisles of Albany, I’d feel better about it. Either way, this is simply a horrible time to be considering raising the cost of doing business in New York.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a recession brewing, and we have a problem with corporate flight and brain drain. Job growth has slowed to a halt. The state’s overall finances are in trouble and the upstate economy’s only chance for survival could be seceding to Canada.

Wall Street, which accounts for about one-fifth of state revenues, is shedding workers at a pace that tops the foreclosure rate. And Long Island, the longtime golden goose, is having trouble laying.

A study by the Center for Governmental Research argues compellingly, if statistically, against prevailing wages in New York. The study, released in January, compared the cost of a sample construction job at current market rates to one done at prevailing-wage rates. It also paralleled the cost of the same job in a number of non-New York cities, including Tampa, Cleveland, Raleigh, Scranton and Austin.

Construction costs on Long Island would increase by more than 50 percent with prevailing wages, the study found, and jump more than 150 percent when compared to the other cities.

The battle for the Senate aside, any local IDA could pass prevailing wage rules without help from the state. Most of the Long Island boards already have union pay rules in place for projects that get tax-exempt bonds, usually not-for-profit and manufacturing sites.

The trades, understandably, would like to expand that. No surprise, then, that the Suffolk Legislature has appointed two union members to the county’s seven-member IDA panel, more than any local board.

The issue appears to be front and center with Legislator John M. Kennedy, who represents parts of Smithtown, including the Hauppauge Industrial Park. Kennedy, son of the late trades union chief Jack Kennedy, is a Republican in the style of Paul Tonna – as in, just barely – and has argued that IDA projects should pay prevailing wages.

A former electrical union worker, Kennedy is also an attorney with a master’s degree in business administration and a record of public service spanning the Cohalan, LoGrande, Halpin and Gaffney administrations.

With supporters of Kennedy’s stature, it’s no stretch to believe there will come a day when the county changes its IDA rules to require prevailing wages. You have to guess there would be an immediate dip in the number of companies requesting IDA assistance as a result. Suffolk, after all, is home to mostly small businesses, and the increased construction costs will persuade many firms to go without government assistance.

Or go somewhere else. North Carolina springs to mind.

The question isn’t what’s fair, merely what we can afford. Non-union carpenter’s wages and benefits would jump more than 135 percent on Long Island under prevailing wages, according to the CGR study. Wages and benefits for a non-union Long Island electrician – already the best-paid trade in the state – would almost double.

I hear the North Carolina visitor’s bureau is staffing a second shift.

We could set aside a moment of silence for Irv Hansen, but silence doesn’t really fit the man.

If you didn’t know Irv, it means you never attended a Long Island Association event or the myriad other meets-and-greets and networkers at which he held court for the last dozen years, ostensibly as the guy on the ground for LIA chief Matt Crosson.

I remember Irv as a gently formal man, gravelly voiced and always wanting a minute or two on a number of familiar themes. Many times it was how Ray Damadian got screwed on the patent for the MRI machine and, ultimately, a piece of the Nobel prize in medicine.

Irv could wear you out on World War II, as well, and his days with the Army Air Corps in Trinidad and Tobago, where he contracted a tropical disease that cost him a third of his weight and most of his hair. Oh, and Harvard, where he had studied before the war and later attended officer training school with Robert S. McNamara and Eugene Zuckert, among others.

McNamara, of course, went on to run Ford Motor Co. – he’s the guy who killed the Edsel – although people my age remember him best as the secretary of defense during Vietnam, where he killed a lot more than cars.

Zuckert later served as secretary of the Air Force and was a key player in integrating the armed forces for Harry Truman.

But old Irv topped them all, as the story goes, graduating first among almost 2,000 cadets. Years before, he’d used the same mix of smarts and moxie to make Eagle Scout, the youngest to do so in New Jersey history through most of the last century, another oft-told tale.

Then there was the one about 8-year-old Irv taking apart the family sedan and reassembling it, having carefully placed the parts in proper order on the lawn in front of the family chicken farm in Ramsey, N.J.

But I’ve never tired of the stories about Irv’s work on early computers at Harvard. Before the war, Irv had trained on the punch-card calculators pioneered by Herman Hollerith. In computer lore, Hollerith is an almost mythic figure. He had worked on the 1880 U.S. census, and as the next national head count approached, Hollerith worried that, with the U.S. population swelling to an estimated 62 million people, it might take more than the meager 10 years allotted.

His solution was an automated system that read data from punched cards by pushing metal spikes through the holes and into small containers of mercury, completing an electrical circuit. (Workers, it’s said, occasionally got a day off by pouring mercury in the spittoon and claiming they’d spit it up.)

The card reader helped complete the national tally of 1890 in an astounding three months, and Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Co. quickly expanded enough to earn a new name: International Business Machines.

Irv, shipped home to recover from that hair-razing tropical malaise, ended up back at Harvard and was put to work on the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, a 51-foot-long, five-ton behemoth that is generally hailed as the first – and, clearly, largest – programmable electromechanical calculator built.

Called the ASCC Mark I, the machine had been conceived back in the 1930s by Howard Aiken, a Harvard graduate student in theoretical physics. IBM agreed to build it at its labs in Endicott, N.Y., but wartime demands slowed the project and it was early 1944 before the machine was completed, dismantled – it had more than 750,000 parts – and then reassembled at Harvard.

It was used for a variety of military projects and, after the war, turned over to the college, which ran it until a better model – yes, the Mark II – came along in 1947.

Development of the ASCC Mark I is often heralded as the dawn of the computer age, although there are many rival claims, including a machine devised in 1937 in the basement of the physics department at Iowa State University.

Irv was something of a human computer – he could add or multiply large numbers in his head at ridiculously fast speeds – so I’ve always liked the idea that he worked on one of the machines that led to the development of the modern computer and, eventually, this information superhighway we’re all barreling down.

The problem with the story is there’s no proof it’s true.

I’ve scoured a half-dozen books and hundreds of on-line articles for some reference to Irv’s computer work, but have found zip. Like me, Irv’s son, Richard, has never been able to confirm his dad’s involvement with the ASCC.

Not that it matters, really. Irv lived a long, rich life – he died at 92 – and had a clear impact on the place he lived, our Long Island. Having rubbed shoulders with Howard Hughes and Jimmy Doolittle, he didn’t need to add in Aiken.

Still, he told his Harvard stories with such color and passion that I don’t doubt they’re true.

Besides, Eagle Scouts don’t lie.

One of the storms that have buffeted the North Shore lately snapped off a 40-foot chunk of maple tree and sent it crashing into my back yard.

By the grace of God, and my recent clean living, the treetop landed perfectly parallel to the house, missing roof, deck and stylish tumbled-stone patio.

The dog was not out at the time.

I’m especially thankful for the near miss because there is a solid chance, had I needed to file a claim, that my home insurer would have dropped me like egg in an Asian soup.

There’s a lot of that going around lately. In the past couple of weeks alone, State Farm has joined Allstate, MetLife and other national firms in canceling hundreds of Long Island home policies. No claim necessary. Any of us might be next.

Their motivation is fear: Meteorologists are warning that Long Island could be hit by a storm similar to the one that’s known as The Great Hurricane of 1938, which killed 50 and destroyed thousands of buildings.

That was back in the days before they even named hurricanes, a time when the National Weather Service went by the much less important sounding moniker of “U.S. Weather Bureau.” It had no satellites, radar or off-shore weather buoys. Weather Bureau staffers, in fact, pretty much could only look at a storm and say, “Hey, Bob, that one there’s pretty big. Might even be a Great one.”

Long Island, of course, was much less populated in 1938 and many of the homes that were here, I’m guessing, were significantly less valuable, having not yet benefited from the inflationary effects of the Carter Administration. Today, a storm that matched the intensity of 1938 could cause a gazillion dollars of damage – possibly a gazillion point one if you include Shirley.

Clearly, the insurance firms have some exposure, I understand that. What I don’t get, and maybe it’s just me, but isn’t that what insurance companies do for a living? Sell us financial shelter against the day something untoward happens to our roof or the basement floods?

Face it, we buy insurance because we know, deep down, that something bad could happen to us at any time. The market is filled with car, home, life, boat, business, health, vision, pet and dental insurance because we know life is always out there in the bullpen, warming up to throw us a wicked curve.

We not only understand Murphy’s Law, we increasingly suspect Murphy sold insurance.

For the insurance companies to get out before something bad actually happens just isn’t right. To cut and run before the storm hits or the boiler blows just isn’t, well … insurancey.

You may borrow that word, President Bush.

As far as I can tell, this is all perfectly legal. Insurance companies can apparently limit their exposure whenever they want, even when customers are doing nothing worse than paying their bills on time, as Sen. Chuck Schumer complained in a terse letter to State Farm CEO Edward Rust Jr. last week.

And Chuck is not known for terse.

Unlike auto coverage, where you need a string of three or four pretty good rear-enders to get dropped – as my daughter managed last year – the home insurers can uninsure you for little more than unpainted siding.

“I hate split-levels with those really tall columns in the front,” Mr. Rust Jr. could decide at any moment. “Cancel all of Copiague.”

So what’s a homeowner to do? Well, there’s always the prayer thing. If God were to space these hurricanes a little further apart, say every 500 years instead of 70, our descendents could all have a serious laugh at State Farm’s expense.

Hah! You lost 430 years of premiums! How’s that feel, Mr. Rust XXXIIVI?

That would be a good one. If God has a sense of humor – and I know sometimes we wonder – he’ll make the change right now. Face it, God, 500 years is nothing on your time continuum. And this could be a ribbing for the ages. This could make the salt thing at Sodom look like a knock-knock joke.

But let’s not focus too much on the Sodom-izing.

Without divine intervention we are, sadly, left with Murphy. For additional guidance, I turned to Eric O’Reilly, vice president of operations at Trade-Winds Environmental Restoration in Holtsville. Trade-Winds has helped clean up after some of the nation’s biggest disasters, including the World Trade Center terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. The firm has a 70,000-square-foot facility filled with a collection of recovery equipment so esoteric that it’s been featured on cable television’s Modern Marvels. The Discovery Channel has been calling, too.

My favorite: A giant freeze-drying machine that vaporizes moisture out of wet documents at 127 degrees below zero. O’Reilly can dry out a milk crate-sized box of soggy papers for as little as $150 – a wise investment if they happen to be employment records or, say, bank signature cards.

The best solution, of course, is prevention. Have a disaster plan. Back-up all your systems. Store paperwork in plastic boxes, O’Reilly recommends, and keep them up off the floor.

And remember, if flooding does occur, you can always soak up standing water with old State Farm policies.

A man’s home is his castle, but his car, we all know, is something more.

So when auto loan delinquencies start pushing past home foreclosures, as they have in the past few months, economists should take heed. Bad things are brewing.

For the full story, I checked in with two pals, Skip Herr and Jeff Stein, proprietors of the Bohemia-based Crossland Group. Crossland is one of a handful of Long Island firms specializing in the “self-help collection of collateral” allowed for in the fine print of auto-loan contracts.

They’re repo guys.

Make that professional repossession specialists, actually, not to be confused with the one-truck tow jockeys – and there still are some – who don’t bother much with insurance or other legal niceties. Professionals like Crossland have their own national association and even a Web-zine, American Repossessor.

Recent blog entry: South Carolina woman draws a gun on Rent-A-Center worker trying to repossess her furniture.

Herr once owned a collections business, while Stein was a vice president at Marine Midland Bank before it was scooped up by HSBC. They launched Crossland 20 years ago and have expanded it steadily, building a gilded reputation with lenders and outlasting competitors. Business has doubled since I last chatted with them.

While the repossession business is good when the economy is bad, it’s best when times are good and lenders loosen credit standards.

“The world is filled with people who go in for a Hyundai and come out with a Cadillac,” Stein likes to say.

The most profitable market follows a long economic expansion that is hit with a sudden downturn. Like, well, now.

Crossland is averaging about 100 cars a week these days, many of them high-end vehicles like BMW 5 and 7 series. The pair has also seen an increase in repossessions from professionals, including a growing number of doctors and lawyers. They believe divorce is a factor there.

“We just brought in our first Bentley two weeks ago,” Stein says.

There are also increasing numbers of expensive toys, including ATVs and big-sticker motorcycles. But you see plenty of Hondas in the storage lot, too, plus Toyotas and Fords and other affordable models. There has been a surge in subprime lending in the auto business as well, and the partners increasingly are asked to haul in vehicles financed with interest rates as high as 23.9 percent, many on weekly payment plans.

In a recent bit of poetic justice, Crossland repossessed the cars of several former employees of a notable, and now bankrupt, Long Island subprime mortgage lender.

The partners said they have also seen a growing number of high-end autos that were financed using fake IDs or stolen identities. They’ve also noticed a jump in the number of people who just don’t bother to turn their leased car back in at the end of the contract period.

The financing arms of the automakers – they’re called “captive lenders” in the trade – represent most of Crossland’s business today, with credit unions at No. 2. Banks are no longer big players, having been forced out by the automakers’ zero percent financing programs.

The “captives” provide steady business, but they have squeezed the average rate per repossession and cut back on storage fees and charges for, say, tracking down a car that isn’t at the address provided. Still, 2007 was Crossland’s best year ever and they’ve had to open yards in Staten Island, Brooklyn and Yonkers to keep up with demand.

“We’re not bitching,” Herr says. “In fact, we haven’t bitched in years.”

Lenders usually call in Crossland when a customer is 60 to 90 days behind on payment. A growing number of cars are picked up at impound lots, having been hauled in for illegal parking or unpaid tickets and never claimed. The rest are snatched from driveways and curbs. The best time to repossess: Sunday night after 10 p.m.

Repossessed vehicles are held for a couple of days to allow owners time to reclaim personal property and, less frequently, catch up on payments and retake possession. That leads to the rare lawsuit from people who claim their auto was damaged during storage, or that personal items are missing.

“To hear them tell it, one in every 10 has the Hope Diamond in it,” Herr says.

They did once repossess a car with the urned ashes of the owner’s sister on the back seat.

After the storage period, the cars are shipped out to auction houses for resale, allowing the lenders to reclaim whatever they can. The same goes for boats and other items, although lenders will occasionally ask Crossland to get the best price they can for the repossessed. Their most notable sale: the leased equipment from a proctologist’s clinic, including one slightly used proctoscope.

“It took awhile to get rid of that,” Stein concedes.