Clickbait

I was visiting a news website, and on one web page there was a list of headlines containing sensational phrasing. I am listing 10 curiosity-inducing headlines here.

1. Huge … discovery stuns scientists
2. Shocking discovery … floors scientists
3. Scientists stunned …
4. Astonishing … discovery stuns scientists
5. Incredible story will blow your mind
6. Shocking report
7. Huge discovery … stuns scientists
8. This common food may kill your dog
9. Huge discovery … shocks scientists
10. Scientists shocked by huge … discovery

I think it’s safe to say that no scientists were shocked, stunned, or astonished. No minds were blown. So what’s going on?

These overly hyped headlines are called “clickbait”. Their purpose is to induce us to click them. Let’s remove the hype and look at the gist of these stories.

1. Huge discovery stuns scientists: Construction workers in China found fossilized dinosaur eggs. (Not the first time.)
2. Shocking discovery floors scientists: A star system 40 light years away has planets that might be able to support life. This is not to say that said planets do support life. That is unknown.
3. Scientists stunned: A new species of octopus was discovered.
4. Astonishing discovery stuns scientists: Researchers at the University of Liverpool found a “double whirlpool (eddy)” in the Tasman Sea. Until now it was only theoretical.
5. Incredible story will blow your mind: The followers of a dead Bulgarian “seer” claim some of her predictions have come true. Another story on the same web page suggests she was a “total fraud”.
6. Shocking report: A Russian man wearing virtual reality goggles slipped and fell onto a glass table, cut himself, and died. (Why is this international news?)
7. Huge discovery stuns scientists — Hurricanes damage coral reefs. (Who would’ve guessed?)
8. This common food may kill your dog — It’s chocolate, of course. Feed your dog dog food.
9. Huge discovery shocks scientists — The recent total solar eclipse produced a “bow wave” effect in the atmosphere — a miniscule effect likely useful to no one.
10. Scientists shocked by huge discovery — scientists at Oxford think Mars’ water has merged with rocks in the planet’s mantle.

As can be seen, the stories are very ordinary. The only thing sensational about these stories is the clickbait headline that lures you in.

Clickbait is hard to resist. Even when you know it’s bait, you’re tempted to click through to the very mundane content. But when we click on clickbait, we’re asking for more of it. The headline writers are waving a candy bar under our noses and saying, “Go ahead — grab it!” But the candy bar is an illusion. It’s not real. Yet we fall for the trick over and over, even though we know it’s a trick.

Maybe someone will invent a browser plug-in that eliminates clickbait from a web page before we see it. And maybe someone will invent a browser plug-in that banishes fake news stories before we see them. And maybe there will be a million dollars in my checking account tomorrow morning. If I’m going to dream, I might as well dream big.

Jimi Hendrix

The song of the day is All Along the Watchtower originally from the 1967 album John Wesley Harding by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. The song has been covered by numerous artists and is strongly identified with Jimi Hendrix, who released his version on his 1968 album Electric Ladyland six months after Dylan’s recording.

Slammin’ Donnie-T

The phrase “President Trump slams” is wearing thin. After reading today’s news and seeing, once again, another headline about yet another presidential slam, I decided to view the recent targets of Trump’s wrath. I went to Google and searched for the phrase “Trump slams” and Google found 11,700,000 results. Of course, many of those are duplicate slams, but still. Either Trump needs to take a chill pill (or two) every morning, or certain journalists need to learn how to use a thesaurus.

I know Trump loves to criticize and attack — it seems to be his favorite pastime. Or perhaps it’s a tactic, or a strategy, or a means to an end. Or possibly, Trump is just mean and ill-tempered, and scathing criticism is the only way he can express a negative opinion. Whatever the cause, in my mind his caustic behavior has earned him the nickname Slammin’ Donnie-T.

Here are portions of real headlines from recent news stories.

Trump slams Vanity Fair
Trump slams FBI, Obamacare
Trump slams 'bogus' Russian dossier
Trump slams Justice Department
Trump slams China
Trump slams 'disgraceful verdict'
Trump slams 'crooked' Hillary
Trump slams U.S. Courts
Trump slams San Juan mayor
Trump slams acting FBI chief — and his wife
Trump slams Snoop Dogg
Trump slams Anna Wintour
Trump slams Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
Trump slams Iran
Trump slams NFL
Trump slams Democrats
Trump slams Nordstrom
Trump slams 'Fake Media'
Trump slams Republican Ed Gillespie
Trump slams Sen. Bob Corker
Trump slams Facebook
Trump slams Kathy Griffin
Trump slams New York Times
Trump slams Sen. Al Franken
Trump slams Canada's practices
Trump slams Bowe Bergdahl's sentence
Trump slams Sen. Richard Blumenthal
Trump slams GOP Establishment
Trump slams UCLA player's dad
Trump slams 'SNL' writer
Trump slams Madonna
Trump slams Michael Moore's Broadway play
Trump slams Press as "Frankly Disgusting"
Trump slams Chicago Yet Again
Trump slams London mayor
Trump slams NBC News
Trump slams ABC News
Trump slams CNN
Trump slams Malcolm Turnbull (Australian PM)
Trump slams Arizona's two senators (McCain and Flake)
Trump slams special counsel appointment
Trump slams Congresswoman Frederica Wilson
Trump slams Republican Lawmakers
Trump slams Mueller probe
Trump slams Colin Kaepernick
Trump slams Cowboys
Trump slams Chelsea Manning
Trump slams Loser Pope Francis
Trump slams Judge Roy Moore's Democrat Opponent
Trump slams intelligence officials

Trump has “slammed” Senators, Congresspersons, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, his own intelligence agencies, the FBI, the Justice Department, the court system (both local and Federal), major news outlets,  and many others. His obsessions and pronouncements span the range from issues of national importance down to such trivialities as the opinions of singers and rappers. And in what bizarre world does a football player taking a knee during the anthem take precedence over matters such as international relations and the threat of nuclear war? One wonders (okay, I wonder) if there is anything too inconsequential to become the target of a public tirade by our president.

And for goodness’ sake, Mr. Trump, stop putting all your thoughts on Twitter. That is what diaries are for.

Creedence Clearwater Revival

The song of the day is Suzie Q performed here by late 1960s - early 1970s rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival (Tom Fogerty, Doug Clifford, Stu Cook and John Fogerty). The song was originally recorded in 1957 by Dale Hawkins and has been covered by many bands and singers. The song is the only CCR Top 40 hit that was not written by John Fogarty. The full-length album version can be heard here.

Lump of Coal

This Christmas, Santa left me a couple lumps of coal. My microwave oven died. It was the second microwave to die in my kitchen. The first one, an 1100 watt Sharp, died several years ago. I left it in place on its stand because it was too heavy for me to lift without serious risk of back injury. I switched to another oven I had owned for many years — a 900 watt Sharp — and that is the oven that just died. Like the first oven, this one is too heavy for me to lift without straining something. It will continue to sit where it sits.

I’ll have to buy another oven. I don’t have a place to put it, what with the other two ovens occupying both of the available microwave oven stands. I’ll have to clear some counter space beside the toaster.

Losing my microwave oven threw me back to those long-ago days in which our ancestors cooked without using microwaves. I can envision them now, in their modest prairie homes, cooking food with nothing more sophisticated than a glass-top stove with a self-cleaning oven for baking and broiling — and, of course, a small toaster oven for quick snacks like cinnamon toast and jalapeño poppers. Wait, did our ancestors eat jalapeño poppers? No, I don’t think so. They probably stuck to simple things they could find on the prairie, like pizza and snickerdoodles.

I have two toaster ovens; one is in the kitchen, and one sits on end beside my TV chair so I’ll have a place to put my remote control, mobile phone, rocks glass, tablet computer, and other such twenty-first century necessities. That arrangement was intended to be temporary until I could buy a small table, but I keep forgetting to order one from the table store. So there the toaster oven sits, serving a function that its makers would never have imagined. It’s in its box, of course. Drape a bath towel over the box and it looks like a fuzzy, box-shaped table — not a toaster oven.

(I just made a “sticky note” to remind me to order a table. Now if only I had something to remind me to look at my sticky notes.)

So I’ve been cooking for several days without benefit of microwave energy. I’m now in the process of re-seasoning my cast iron skillet. There are some foods that are really suited to being cooked in cast iron. When I was a boy, cast iron skillets were all we used. I cooked many a breakfast of bacon and eggs in a cast iron skillet. I even learned how to cook an egg sunny side down without turning it over.

So that’s the lump of coal Santa left me. That, and — did I mention that some mechanical doodad in my heating system is failing? That’s the other, probably much more expensive, lump of coal that lies in my future. But if that’s the worst that happens, I’ll be well off. Knock on wood.

Merry Christmas 2017

The song for this Christmas day is O Come, All Ye Faithful performed by Pentatonix. The song (originally written in Latin as Adeste Fideles) is the lead track on the a cappella group’s 2016 album A Pentatonix Christmas. Pentatonix gives the song an upbeat remake. Around the 2:30 mark, the band is joined by OneVoice, the award-winning a cappella group from Briarcrest Christian School.

Slices of Life

Why do people make a face when I mention I had a ketchup sandwich for breakfast? It’s a healthy meal — I use whole wheat bread.

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Why do people look puzzled when I tell them my passions are photography, writing, and fox hunting?

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A quote spoken by Sherlock Holmes on the TV show Elementary:

“Marriage is an unnatural arrangement forcing its participants into an unhealthy monogamy — an accretion of petty fights and resentful compromises which, like Chinese water torture, slowly transforms both parties into howling neurotic versions of their former selves.”

The quote resonates with me because it’s what I’ve most often observed. I decided long ago to never stick a toe into that murky water, lest a lurking shark bites off my foot.

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There is an afterlife. When you die, you will meet an angel and the angel will ask you, “What have you done with your life to be worthy?”

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I was reading an article in The New York Times. The article was written by Meghan Austin, and this is the last paragraph:

Even so, I didn’t regret any of it. Love often doesn’t arrive at the right time or in the right person. It makes us do ridiculous and stupid things. But without it, life is just a series of unremarkable events, one after the other.

I like that last sentence, even though it’s not true. With or without love, life holds remarkable events.

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The only job I was fired from was drugstore delivery driver. I was 16. To this day I remember the delivery car. It was a Renault Dauphine. I can’t describe how bad this car was. A Time magazine article says of the Dauphine:

“It was, in fact, a rickety, paper-thin scandal of a car that, if you stood beside it, you could actually hear rusting. Its most salient feature was its slowness, a rate of acceleration you could measure with a calendar. It took the drivers at Road and Track 32 seconds to reach 60 mph, which would put the Dauphine at a severe disadvantage in any drag race involving farm equipment.”

This car had a badly worn clutch. It slipped so badly you could let out the clutch without pressing the gas pedal and still not stall the engine. One night I was making a delivery when the clutch finally expired. I was “driving while 16” so of course I was at fault. I was fired. Sacked. Dismissed. Terminated. Oh well. As a wise man said, “Shit happens.”

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No doubt, you’ve heard and read many times that you should forgive those who have wronged you. Why?

Negative emotions have negative effects on the body and soul. Feelings of anger and bitterness don’t hurt the target of those feelings, they hurt the person holding those feelings. To be a whole person, a healed person, one must let go of negative feelings. Cast them out.

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A good idea can withstand imperfections on the part of those implementing it. A bad idea is impervious to the best execution.

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Americans used to tackle big projects straightforwardly, unhesitatingly, as though we all knew and agreed there was no challenge big enough to defeat us. The P-51 Mustang, arguably the best fighter plane of World War 2, was designed and a prototype rolled out in 102 days. The Empire State Building, the world’s tallest building for 40 years, was built in less than 16 months. Hoover Dam, the largest dam ever built at the time, was constructed in 5 years — a project that required diverting the Colorado River around the construction site. America put its first artificial satellite, the 18 pound Explorer I, into earth orbit in 1958. Only 11 years later, American astronauts walked on the moon. We used to get big stuff done. What changed?

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“Before you act, listen.
  Before you react, think.
  Before you spend, earn.
  Before you criticize, wait.
  Before you pray, forgive.
  Before you quit, try.”
— William Arthur Ward

The Sundays

The song of the day is Wild Horses, first released on the 1971 album Sticky Fingers by English rock band The Rolling Stones. This cover version is performed by English alternative rock band The Sundays and appeared on their 1992 album Blind. A lyrics video can be viewed here. A live performance cover of the song by Garbage can be viewed here.

Tis the Season

I drove to Wally World to pick up a few grocery items. I needed only eggs, but who goes through the checkout with only a dozen eggs? So I picked up a few other items I don’t need now but will surely use. Eventually. The checkout girl was young. I’m not. She was also black. I’m not that, either. The name printed on her tag was “Nadeea.” So I greeted her.

“Hi, Nadeea”

“Hi.”

“Can I call you shawty?”

She laughed. “I think I prefer my real name.”

“Ok, Nadeea,” I said.

“You’re only the second person to pronounce my name right,” she said.

“The first was your Mom?”

“Okay, you’re the third. Most people want to pronounce it like it’s spelled ‘Nadia’.”

“The double-e is a giveaway,” I said.

It must be a tiresome job — ringing up groceries for 8 hours. It only takes a few seconds to be nice to someone and maybe break the tedium. Of course, there are a few people who seem to enjoy their misery and refuse to accept someone being nice to them. I don’t encounter those people often. When I do, I try not to allow them to ruin my mood. Ironically, it’s often the Christmas season when people seem to be at their most irritable. Maybe it’s the hoards of shoppers, the extra traffic, and the packed parking lots. And that’s on top of the usual holiday angst: what should I buy for so-and-so, what meals should I prepare, do I have enough gift-wrapping paper, and so on.

I’ve heard old-timers say Christmas used to be a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus, sing carols, and “roast chestnuts by an open fire”. On those long ago Christmases, family would come together for no other reason than to enjoy each others’ company. And they would watch movies like “Miracle on 34th Street” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

But enough about olden days that may or may not have existed. Now we live in modern times and we don’t have to indulge in old-fashioned foolishness. We have online shopping, Christmas sales at Thanksgiving, and aluminum Christmas trees that can be pink or blue or silver or even green. Or all of those colors, depending on how the tree is programmed. (“Hey sweetheart, have you seen the remote for the tree?”) We don’t need an open fire — for a “low, low price” we can have the illusion of flames dancing over plastic logs inside of a plastic stove.

Perhaps Nietzsche misspoke when he declared, “God is dead.” Maybe he meant to say that the somebody who was dead was — but no, I dare not continue that thought. There are too many young children for whom Christmas has not yet lost its magic and who know that Santa sees all. I would not want to disillusion them. They’ll learn the truth soon enough.

Cracker

The song of the day is Good Life from the 1998 album Gentleman's Blues by rock band Cracker. A live performance can be viewed here.

Billing Purgatory

All I want to do is pay a medical bill. Why does it have to be so difficult? I bet a lot of people would like to know the answer to that.

One thing that is nice about having a personal blog is that it allows the blogger, on occasion, to “vent” his frustration to the world. “Look at what the bastards are putting me through!” (Result: I feel a little better.)

One thing that is bad about having a personal blog is that it allows the blogger to “vent” his frustration to the world instead of writing an article that is creative and interesting. (Result: you feel a little worse.)

But while this article may seem like venting, that’s not its purpose. The purpose of this article is to document. Just in case. Because you never know how things will turn out.

Fatboy Slim

The song of the day is Praise You from the 1998 album You've Come a Long Way, Baby by English DJ, musician, and producer Fatboy Slim (Norman Quentin Cook). The music video was directed by Spike Jonze with Roman Coppola, and Jones starred in the film under the pseudonym Richard Koufey. The video was shot “guerilla style” without permission from the property owners and in front of puzzled onlookers. It features a fictional dance group called “The Torrance Community Dance Group”, and the video’s intro describes it as "A Torrance Public Film Production". The film was shot in front of a theater and at one point a theater employee turns off their portable stereo.

Questions

This blog post is an automatic transcription from the last part of my recent webcast in which people ask me questions. After reading the answers, I hope some of you feel enlightened. I am happy to answer any question, as long as I know the answer.

[webcast in progress…]

What makes you smile?
People. Sometimes. And sometimes people make me sad.

What food would you never eat?
Anything with tentacles, especially if it’s moving. And okra.
(I admit I have eaten pickled jellyfish. And alligator. And I’ve even eaten okra — but I was young and didn’t know better.)

Is the Universe a simulation running on a very advanced supercomputer built by a race of beings a million years more advanced than humans?
Yes.

How can I fry the perfect egg?
You can’t, you have to buy it already fried on the grill in a beer bar.

How can I fry the perfect hamburger?
See answer to previous question.

Is there life on Mars?
Yes, but only on Saturday nights after midnight. (Wink, wink.)

Have you ever eaten pickled pigs’ feet?
I have, and they were delicious. But I was five years old and didn’t really understand what I was eating. My granny could have fed me pickled scorpion lips and I would have been okay with it.

Do we have free will?
Yes, at the library. But it’s on VHS. Oh wait, what? Ah — I thought you were talking about that movie “Free Willy”, the one about the killer whale. Never mind. (Sorry — apparently I had no choice but to write that answer.)

Is the future just as real as the past?
Yes. For example, I know I’ll be buzzed at 1 AM, even though I haven’t opened the vodka yet. How can I know that, unless the future has already happened? And if the future has already happened, it has to be real. That’s just logic.

Scientists are talking about reviving wooly mammoths. Is that wise?
Well, yeah. Think of how much wool we could get from one mammoth. Those suckers are huge.

Okay, fans, time is almost up. I have about 30 seconds left — time for one last question.

What is the secret to an ordinary guy picking up a beautiful woman?
It’s not a secret. The answer is well known. Books have been written about it. The one thing you must do to make a beautiful woman fall for you is

[…webcast terminated]

Bo Talks & Sarah Hyland

The song of the day is 2017's Know U Anymore by pop artist Bo Talks featuring actress and singer Sarah Hyland.

Snowflake Generation

I’ve heard people refer to some of today’s youth as “snowflakes.” Not all young people, by any means. But a significant number.

What’s a snowflake? Snowflake is slang for someone who believes they are as unique and special as a snowflake, overly sensitive, incapable of dealing with opinions different from their own.

Of course, it’s the snowflakes’ parents who are at fault. They created these snowflakes. Would you like the recipe? Here it is: in any argument or disagreement between your child and another person, always side with your child.

If disruptive behavior at school is a problem, tell the child it’s okay to express his feelings, and if the teacher doesn’t like it, that is the teacher’s problem.

If a school security officer admonishes the child to settle down or leave the class, and the child refuses to do either, so that the security officer has to drag the uncooperative kid out of class, take your child’s side and complain to the authorities that the security officer overreacted. Threaten litigation.

If your children are running around inside a restaurant, whooping and hollering, and other customers complain, well how dare they complain! Your kids are just being kids, and if some customers don’t like screaming kids in the restaurant, those people can leave. There are other restaurants in the world.

If your child is kicking the back of the seat in front of him, don’t make the child stop. Let your child know it is the person complaining about his seat being kicked who is the problem. That person should do the right thing and move to another seat.

What do these responses to misbehavior teach the child? I suspect the child learns he is always right in everything he thinks and does. I suspect the child learns that anyone who thinks differently from the child is wrong.

The child grows into a young adult who one day finds himself among other people who think very differently and who hold contrary opinions about many subjects. The young adult does what he has been taught is appropriate — he acts out, refusing to accept the notion that he might be wrong. After all, he’s never been wrong before, so how can he be wrong now? To accept the notion that he might be wrong would go against everything he has learned about himself and how the world works. It would make him question his own identity — and the ego can’t allow that to happen. The ego will go to extreme lengths to defend and support its identity. If everything you thought you knew is one day brought into question, then what is reality? The ego rigidly rejects the possibility of being wrong, even when the evidence of being wrong is blatantly obvious to others.

And so the world adds another snowflake to the Snowflake Generation. Feel sorry for them, for they are the ones who will suffer the consequences of their parents’ indulgences.

Small Blessings

I had gotten out of bed late. I knew the stores would be crowded with holiday shoppers at that time of day, but I drove to Walmart anyway. I wanted to pick up a prescription my doctor had sent them the previous day. When I reached the pharmacy, I was told the medicine was out of stock and to come back in two days.

As I was already in the store, I decided to pick up some grocery items. The grocery aisles were busy, but not nearly as busy as the rest of the store. I had noticed on entering the store that the checkout lanes were chock full of shoppers with heavily loaded carts. As I began shopping I resigned myself to standing in a long queue at the checkout. I loaded my cart with more food than I usually purchase (if I had to wait in a queue, I would make it worth my time) and headed to the checkout lanes. I pushed my cart past lane after lane looking for a short queue, but every lane had several shoppers with loaded carts. I turned and pushed my cart back the other way, and lo-and-behold, there was an open checkout lane. Where did that come from?! I would have sworn it wasn’t there thirty seconds earlier.

I entered the checkout lane and as I began placing my grocery items on the conveyor belt, I said to the checkout girl, “God is smiling on me today. All the other lanes are crowded and your lane is open.” The girl answered with some banality. I put item after item onto the conveyor belt, until at last I got to the loaf of bread, which had magically gotten beneath the other items, and was therefore squished.

I handed it to the checkout girl, and she held it up and said, “Oh, your bread is smooshed.”

“I’ll have to replace that loaf,” I told her, and she set the bread aside.

I emptied my cart and she rang up all the items, and when she got to the last item I told her, “Go ahead and ring up the bread. I smooshed it so I’ll buy it. The store shouldn’t have to pay for my mistake.”

“You sure?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, “I’ll take it.”

She reached for the loaf of bread, and then she exclaimed, “Look at the bread — it’s popped back up! It’s not smooshed any longer. It popped back up. That is crazy!” I looked at the loaf and indeed, it was no longer squished.

The girl put the bread in a plastic bag, and as she handed me the bag she reiterated, “That is crazy!”

“I told you,” I replied, “God is smiling on me today.”

Sometimes God smiles on us in a big way and we call it a miracle. Sometimes God smiles on us in a small way and we call it a blessing, or a fluke, or a lucky break. When God smiles on you, always smile back. And say “thanks.”

Timeless Wisdom

The following quotation was pointed out to me by a fellow blogger who goes by the sobriquet don Rafael. I immediately recalled the adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” True wisdom is timeless.

That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us. Because of these changes I am not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide what to hold on to and what to discard. How to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old.

“But it is not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery.

“They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.

“At this critical moment in our history we will certainly lose the trust and respect of the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country…

“Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.

“It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult.

— Queen Elizabeth II, excerpt from her Christmas broadcast, 1957

Still More Quotes

Previous quotations: Random Quotes, More Quotes

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

— Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

The strongest of all warriors are these two - Time and Patience.

— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

— Oscar Wilde

The cleverest of all is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

— Dostoyevsky

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

— Shakespeare, As You Like It

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

— Cicero

Though it be honest, it is never good
To bring bad news. Give to a gracious message
An host of tongues, but let ill tidings tell
Themselves when they be felt.

— Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (Cleopatra speaking)

Nature Hath Framed Strange Fellows in Her Time

— Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

The omission is the most powerful form of lie, and it is the duty of the historian to ensure that those lies do not creep into the history books.

— George Orwell

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

— George Orwell, 1984

Four legs good, two legs bad.

— George Orwell, Animal Farm

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

— George Orwell, London Tribune

At the head of all understanding is realizing what is and what cannot be and the consoling of what is not in our power to change.

― Solomon ibn Gabirol

The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.

― Solomon ibn Gabirol

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

— Aristotle

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

— Lyndon B. Johnson

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.

— François de La Rochefoucauld

Beastie-Burger

Are you kidding me? I know there are burger fanatics who love a challenge, but seriously — are you kidding me?! Sorry, but I have to draw the line at using wieners as a condiment on burgers — especially in addition to the heaping pile of glop inside that bun. I don’t know for sure, but there’s probably a ground beef patty in there — somewhere.

Movie Captions

These are actual movie captions for people who apparently have trouble understanding spoken English but can comprehend written English. Good luck, movie-goers.

No way. You do ‘em.

You do something — I’m not going first.

There is no bench 15. Maybe he meant bench 007.

I’ll give you ten million dollars if you do in pause right now.

Keep acting like children and permainkan will serve you right.

Path, I said. Path, path! Are you listening?

She? She who? The movie had no female actors.

Yes you will!

Good thinking. We’ll bet them later.

After 12 hours does it turn into a pumpkin?

Are those amphibians our frogs or their frogs?



Lookin’ strap, dude! Lookin’ mighty strap.

Did we just win a rope?

Just to be safe, you’d better menyanderaku even if it doesn’t happen.

Damn straight, way!

Is that near Elbonia?

No, you tell pengemudimu…

If we remain in pososi, how can we keep moving? It has to be one or the other.

The Day After

As was foretold by the Prophecies (my prophecy in yesterday’s blog post) the day dawned sunny and bright after 24 hours of snowfall. It’s also 28°F.

At this time of year, high temperatures are typically in the mid-40s and lows are in the mid-20s. I probably won’t leave the house today. I would have to walk through snow to reach my garage, and I don’t have any galoshes to slip over my running shoes. Were I to walk through snow, it would get on my shoes, then melt, and because the running shoes are porous, I would quickly have cold, wet socks. But I’ll get by. Because today is Sunday, and that means Sunday football.

One thing that always strikes me about the day after a snowfall is how quiet it is. There’s not a sound in my house. It is very silent. For one thing, there is very little auto traffic on my street. There are very few pedestrians. The animals are hibernating, holed up in their nests and burrows, just as I’m holed up in my house.

If you saw yesterday’s blog post (“The First Snow of Winter”) you will recall how gray and dismal the day looked in my photo (see it here) . Contrast that with today’s photo (click/touch image to enlarge):

What a difference a day makes! One almost feels like going out and joining the throngs of Christmas shoppers clogging the stores, and happily navigating the Christmas shopping traffic sure to be jamming the roads, and going into the stores to spend big bucks on useless crap that will be used for one day before it’s put away forever.

I’m kidding! This beautiful day makes me want to do none of those things.

And here’s a coincidence — I went outside for 15 seconds to snap the photo above and I ran into a friend who happened to be driving past. What are the odds? As I stepped onto my front porch to take this photo, my pal Butch drove up and stopped to shout from his car, “You’re taking a picture? What are you going to do with it?” I told him he’d have to read my blog to find out. And here it is, Butch. May your holidays be happy!

And that goes for all of you out there in Cyberspace. May your holidays be happy!

What’s In a Name?

I think I need to buy a better camera. I want one of those cameras that comes with a built-in telephone. I have one now, and the phone part works fine, but the camera part could be a little better quality.

I like the fact that today’s cameras can run various kinds of apps. For instance, I can ask my camera to find the closest Chinese restaurant, and it only takes the camera a few seconds to respond.

My camera also has a GPS that can give me turn-by-turn driving directions. My camera allows me to send and receive text messages and emails. It allows me to surf the World Wide Web.

I know what you’re thinking: “He’s talking about his cell phone as if it were a camera.”

Sure I am, because it is a camera. Why should we call it a cell phone? The reason we do that is historical. Originally, mobile phones were just that and nothing more. Then they got smaller and came with some simple games and the ability to text. A camera was added. A computer chip and an operating system were added. Apps were added. The “smart phone” was born. We call those gadgets “phones” because we need to call them something, and phone is as good as anything else. Smart phones are just little computers with a lot of features added, such as GPS, camera, email, web browser, the ability to shoot and play back video, and, of course, a phone. We still call them phones when clearly they are much more than phones.

They could have started out as cameras that slowly gained these other functions. Would we have called them “smart cameras"? Would we call them cameras if they could make phone calls? Why not?

The development of words is interesting. A word can gain a life of it’s own. You want to take a picture so you grab your phone when you go out. It can do a hundred other things, but we call it a phone.

When I go out to take a photo or shoot some video, I grab my camera. And while I’m out, I may use my camera to place a phone call. Because I have a full-featured smart camera with a built-in phone. I mean, what’s in a name?

First Snow of Winter

About two weeks ago I was in my backyard one afternoon. The sun was low in the western sky when I happened to look up and see a V-formation of geese flying south just above the treetops. A week later I was again in my backyard and I saw another flock of geese fly over my yard, headed south. No doubt their thoughts were, “Let’s get the heck out of here and head for warmer climes. Bad weather is on the way.”

The geese were right. Yesterday, Friday, around 5 PM snow began falling. It’s now 3 PM Saturday and snow is still falling. It’s a light snowfall so there’s only a couple of inches on the ground.

I walked out to my front porch, held up my phone, and snapped a photo. I was aiming for the park across the street, but I got some neighbors’ homes, too. I came inside and sat down at my PC. The photo was already uploaded to Google Photos. What a convenience!

The day is as gray as it looks. Of course, light snow is falling and that helps reduce color and contrast. You can see the mailman’s tracks in my yard. I thought I could do better. I decided to shoot another photo but this time zoomed in on the park.

Better, but still not good. I decided to try for a photo of the park but this time shoot it above the neighbor’s car. So I went outside one more time.

Third time’s the charm. I got my photo of the park. Well, part of the park. I think the photo is good but not great. It’s probably as good as one can get with a cheap camera phone in snowy weather. The thing mounted on top of the leftmost pole is the BFS (Big Freakin’ Siren). The city uses it to warn of tornadoes and other impending dangerous weather. It is loud! It could wake the dead. (Not that you want the dead to be walking about, looking through your windows, and going ‘Boo!’ to neighborhood kids.)

Tomorrow will probably be sunny. The day after a snowfall is always sunny — with one exception. If another snowfall is on the way, the sun may not come out until that impending storm passes. I want sunshine, so I’ll cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Enya

The song of the day is Only Time from the 2000 album A Day Without Rain by Irish singer-songwriter and musician Enya (Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin).

Persevere

Computers have always interested me, so of course there came a time when I wanted to learn more about them. And I did. This was before home computers, before the IBM PC, before anyone had ever heard of a little company called Microsoft.

I began by teaching myself how to code in assembly language for the MOS Technology 6502 processor. When the Osborne One became available I bought one and taught myself to write assembly language for the Osborne’s Zilog Z80 processor, and I learned how to write programs that could run under the Osborne’s CP/M operating system. I spent a lot of hours writing various programs in Z80 assembly language.

Eventually, I got a job designing data acquisition computers (and the analog sensor boards used to acquire data). I designed and built a computer board using the Motorola 68302 processor. Of course, the first thing I had to do after building the board was to write the communications code the processor would have to execute in order that I could talk to the board. I wrote that code in 68302 assembly language — a computer language I had never used. But I had a manual on the CPU and it explained the processor well enough. Bringing online a new, untested computer board running new, untested software was an interesting experience. If the board doesn’t work, is there a problem in the hardware? Or is there a mistake in the code? Or both? I got lucky — my new board worked flawlessly and so did my communications code. Sometimes I surprise myself. Did I build that?!

Eventually, I moved up to high level languages. I taught myself how to write code for languages like C and C# and Visual Basic .Net (pronounced dot-net). I taught myself how to create programs for the Windows operating system. I wrote some Pascal code for program installers — and I don’t even know how to code in Pascal. But by looking at and studying Pascal code, I was able to figure out just enough to accomplish what I needed the installers to do.

It’s amazing what a person can learn to do by himself (or herself). For years I designed data acquisition computers for a living, using know-how that I acquired by reading data manuals and experimenting at home. People think it’s easy, as if I have special abilities or a knack for computers. I’ll never forget what a friend who ran a robotics company said to me long ago. “People think it comes easy to me, but they don’t see the long hours I spend at home reading, studying, re-reading, again and again in order to pound that knowledge into my brain.”

It’s like telling a pianist,”Of course you play beautifully. You have a special talent for playing the piano. I could never play that well.” Such a remark would be moderately insulting, because the speaker is dismissive of the tremendous number of hours the pianist has spent in music lessons and practice sessions. Most goals are attainable, providing one is willing to put in the hours and do the work.

American inventor Thomas Edison put it this way: “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Edison meant that skill or expertise is largely the result of much hard work. I couldn’t agree more.

Sheryl Crow

The song of the day is My Favorite Mistake from the 1998 album The Globe Sessions by singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow.

The Illusion of Time

According to the equations of relativity that were developed by Albert Einstein — which have been verified many times — if you and I are traveling at different velocities, then something that happened in my past can happen in your future and something that happened in your past can happen in my future. For ordinary, real-world events and velocities, the effect is tiny and would take a very sensitive instrument to detect. However, that isn’t the point. The fact that it happens at all is the point. If something in my past can happen in your future, and vice versa, it means that the past has to be real and the future has to be real. It doesn’t matter whether it happens a day into your future or a microsecond into your future — either way it happens in your future. That means the past isn’t the “dead past”; it exists. And the future isn’t imaginary; it exists, too.

According to a group of esteemed physicists, time is an illusion — a human construct. Our illusion of time is due to the fact that our brain contains memories. Without memories, our lives would seem to be a series of “nows” with no past and therefore no future. These physicists insist the past and the future are as real as the present. They exist now, but we can only perceive the present. We can’t visit the past and we can’t visit the future, but that fact doesn’t make them any less real than the now.

We experience the “now” as, instant by instant, our consciousness moves through 4-dimensional spacetime. We have the illusion that the past is over and done with, and the future is yet to be. But no. The past and the future are as real as the now, and they exist in the same way that the now exists. The fact that we can no longer experience the past and cannot yet experience the future does not make them unreal or imaginary. It just makes them inaccessible.

None of this surprises me. I’ve often maintained that reality is not only stranger than we know, it’s stranger than we can know. In the universe of intelligent beings, we’re babies. We left our caves and invented civilization only a few thousand years ago. Perhaps if humans survive another hundred thousand years, we might evolve brains that have a chance at understanding reality more fully than we do now. If a denizen of that far-off time could visit us to explain reality, he would have as much success as we would have at explaining quantum physics to a troglodyte. We live in ignorance, clueless about all the things we don’t know.

More Quotes

Once again, here are some quotes I’ve run across that I thought were worth keeping. Previous quotations: Random Quotes

Imagine that you meet a madman, who claims that he is a fish and that we are all fish. Are you going to argue with him? Are you going to undress in front of him and show him that you don't have fins?”
— Milan Kundera

To kill that particular monster [time] is the most ordinary and legitimate occupation of each person.”
— Baudelaire

Three percent exceeds 2 percent by 50 percent, not by 1 percent.”
— Edward Denison

Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save, they just stand there shining.”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?”
— Louise Bogan, Journey Around My Room, The Autobiography of Louise Bogan

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.”
— British economist John Maynard Keynes in a letter to Duncan Grant.

The sun even shines on a dog’s ass some days.” — Bart (George Carlin)
Greenie (Stephen Root): “You gettin’ a dog?”
— Jersey Girl, 2004

Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the disheveled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
— William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.”
— François de La Rochefoucauld

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

Children and animals have a hard time in this world.”
— Alice Hammond

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Man in the Arena, excerpt from the speech "Citizenship In A Republic", delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910

America

The song of the day is Ventura Highway from the 1972 album Homecoming by America (Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek, and Gerry Beckley). The group, formed in 1970, continues to record and tour. Peek left the group in 1977 and died in 2011.

Day Off

I would have written today’s blog post yesterday and published it just after midnight, as I have been doing of late. But I didn’t, and I have an excuse — three of them, actually.

First, there was the Big 12 Championship game.

Second, there was the SEC Championship game.

Third, there was the ACC Championship game.

The Big 12 game didn’t interest me a lot. The day outside was cold and gray. There wasn’t much on TV other than college football. I should say, “on my TV”, because I’m sure cable and satellite TV were airing about a zillion programs, but I have good old-fashioned antenna TV — TV the way God intended it to be. So I watched Oklahoma beat TCU 41-17.

Then the SEC Championship came on, and that was a game that I expected to be good. The matchup was Georgia versus Auburn. Last month, Auburn hammered Georgia 40-17, so things didn’t exactly look promising for Georgia’s prospects. On the other hand, Georgia was looking for payback, and they found it. Georgia beat Auburn 28-7 to move into the #2 spot in college football.

The ACC Championship game was the game I was most interested in seeing. My alma mater is an ACC team, so I’m a bit more familiar with what is happening in that conference. The game pitted Clemson against Miami. Miami is the Coastal division champ, while Clemson is the Atlantic division champ, as well as being the #1 team in the country. I wanted to see Clemson win, mainly to put Miami in its place. I felt those Miami players were getting big heads, what with the ridiculous, giant, gold-plated turnover chains the coach has been handing out. Plus, Miami earned its top rank in the Coastal division without having played any really good teams. Prior to the championship game, Miami had played only two top-25 teams: Virginia Tech, which ended its season ranked #22, and Notre Dame, which ended ranked #15. I knew Miami was outmatched, but in college football anything can happen on any given day. Case in point: Miami’s only loss (until the Clemson game) was to unranked Pittsburg, and it was a home game for Miami.

Clemson rolled over Miami — final score: Clemson 38, Miami 3. Miami’s 3 points came at the end of the game when they were playing Clemson’s backups. I wasn’t surprised to see Clemson win, but I was surprised at how easily they won. I’m sure Clemson players wouldn’t call it easy, but they made it look that way. The next stop for Clemson is the CFP (playoff), where teams are selected according to an arcane formula that no one understands. It’s a system that makes the NFL playoffs look positively simple.

Modern Music

This post is social commentary. R-rated for language. Skip this post if you’re easily offended.

Weekend Feeling

Friday night. Cathy goes off the clock and sits down with me and we actually have a conversation for an hour, maybe longer. I've known Cathy for a long time, and she rarely speaks to me, so I'm fairly amazed at this sudden friendliness. Is it an omen? If it is, what could it mean? I have a funny feeling, and I can't quite put a name to it. Regardless, I enjoy her company.

Saturday night. Terry clocks out and I tell her, "Join me and I'll buy you a beer."

"I'm going to Mac and Maggie’s," she replies. "Do you want to join me?" So we go and sit at the bar and talk for an hour and drink a few beers. I have a good time. But when I leave, I have that funny feeling again. And tonight, I know what it is.

It's the feeling you have when you're out of place, when you're with someone who is with you for lack of anything better to do. It's the feeling you have when you're with someone who would rather be somewhere else, if only they had somewhere else to be. I ask myself, "What am I doing here?" I can’t help but wonder if the woman I’m with is asking the same question.

Maybe it’s all in my head. I really don’t know.

Home Depot

I contracted with a home improvement store to refurbish my kitchen: new sink and countertops, new cabinets, new floor covering. The store made me pay in advance, but I decided that since they were a national chain, it would be okay. Two installers — a cabinet installer and a plumber — came and ripped out the old stuff. Then they left. “We have another job today,” they said, “but we’ll be back.” A couple of weeks went by and they didn’t return. I had to go to the store and complain before they would come back. When they did come back, they worked an hour and left again. Once again, about two weeks passed and they didn’t show. I went to the store and complained. Each time I complained, the installers would return and work an hour. A job that should have taken half a day, or maybe a day, took about two months to complete. And there were problems.

They installed the kitchen sink crooked, with the left side noticeably higher than the right side. They said the sink was as level as they could get it. Then they left for lunch. When they returned, I said to one of the installers — the plumber — “Try to get the sink so it’s not crooked. It looks half-assed right now.” The plumber picked up his tools and told me, “I refuse to be cursed at,” and walked out leaving his job half done. A plumber who can’t stand to hear the word ass? No way. He was looking for an excuse to quit the job. After all, he had his money.

I went to the store to discuss the situation, and I discovered that he had told the store manager that I had cursed at him. I told the store manager exactly what happened. That’s when I found out that the store had a list of approved contractors, and the plumber wasn’t on the list. The plumber and the cabinet installer were pals and the cabinet installer had subcontracted the plumbing work to his unapproved buddy.

The new floor covering, which was installed by a third-party subcontractor, was installed incorrectly and bubbles formed under the vinyl. I asked the store to fix it. They didn’t want to, but they eventually agreed to replace the vinyl if I paid for the labor. So that is what happened.

It seems to me that everyone has stories like this. You contract people to do a job, they demand payment upfront, they do half the job and disappear, and the half they actually do turns out to be done wrong. You really can’t trust anyone. More accurately, you can trust some people, but it’s hard to know who those people are.

Flight of Fancy

I went to Google News and clicked the Science topic. The top story was about a man — a “flat-Earther” — who has built a homemade scrap-metal rocket in which he plans to ride to an altitude of 1800 feet, at which point he can look around and declare Earth is flat. I’m not going to mention his name here, nor will I provide links to news articles about him, and there is a reason for that.

But first, what is the significance of 1800 feet? There are mountains taller than that. In fact, One World Trade Center in Manhattan is almost 1800 feet tall. Why build a rocket and go on a dangerous ride into the sky when a trip to the top of One World Trade Center will accomplish the same goal?

Because: publicity. Joining a gaggle of tourists riding elevators to the top of a tall building won’t get your picture on Google News. But it also won’t get you killed if the rocket explodes. Some people are willing to risk their lives to get publicity. And the news media are more than happy to oblige. “You’re going to risk your life riding on a homemade rocket? We’ll be there with cameras!”

Please, news media — don’t cover this kind of story. It only encourages crackpots to get themselves killed just to get their name in the news. But maybe that is what the news people secretly want to happen. It’s like an unspoken contract. The crackpot risks his life on a mission that won’t prove a thing (and everybody knows it) and in return the news media grants him free publicity. If he gets himself blown to little pieces in the sky, so much the better: more people will follow the story, and the rocket rider becomes a footnote in history. Man dies trying to prove Earth is flat. He may even get his own Wikipedia entry. Sadly for some, that’s worth dying for.

Hunter’s Checklist

I’m very tired of seeing headlines like these:

• Hunter Fatally Shot Woman He Thought Was A Deer
• Hunter Charged With Shooting Truck He Mistook For Deer

Tired, I tell you. I’ve seen headlines like these too many times.

So I’ve designed a “hunter’s checklist” visual aid. Attention deer hunters: print this page, clip out the checklist, and put it in your wallet. Before you shoot a deer, retrieve this visual aid and compare it carefully with the deer you are about to shoot. Make damn sure the deer looks like the top image — the one with antlers. If the deer looks like one of the other two images, don’t shoot it. After a while, you’ll probably find that you don’t need the checklist. You’ll be able to remember what a deer looks like.

That’s all there is to it. You’re welcome.

No Escape

Recently, I awoke from a nightmare. I rarely have true nightmares. Mostly, I have unpleasant dreams, especially the kind where I am looking for something and can’t find it. For example, I might be looking for my car. But I never find it, and the dream-search goes on and on, seemingly for hours. This dream was different. There was no single person or object to fear. Mostly, the dream consisted of a series of paranoia-inducing events.

As the dream progressed, my paranoia rose. The nightmare reached a point where I tried to run away from some nameless dread but only managed to fall down. I couldn’t escape. My fear level was one I haven’t felt in a long time: actual terror. But that is when I woke up.

It’s curious that a nightmare has the power to make us feel a kind of terror that we never experience when we’re awake. I think when we’re awake we have mental defenses against that kind of fear, but when we are sleeping our defenses are down and we can, under the right conditions, experience real terror. And there’s no way to end it, no way to get away from it. It builds and builds and we know it’s going to get us. The dream is in control, and when the dream wants to scare us, it knows exactly what to do.

Our dreaming mind taps into what we’re most afraid of — deep, subconscious fears that we’re usually not aware we have — and it plays with us, firing just the right neurons in just the right part of our brain to scare the bejesus out of us. It knows the weaknesses in our mental armor. At least in a scary movie, we’re aware that we’re watching a movie. But in a dream, it’s all real. Everything happening to us, and everything around us, is real. We’re trapped in our own fantasy world, a world that is in our heads.

If you have nightmares, it’s best to watch what you eat before bedtime. Ditch that late-night pizza, that sugary snack, that greasy bowl of chips or fries. Because once the nightmare starts, there is no escape. You’re in it to the end.

Russian Spam

"We eat ham, and jam and Spam a lot."
— from Monty Python’s Spamalot.

I received the following email. This is the lamest spam email I’ve seen lately, although I rarely open obvious spam emails so it’s possible I’ve missed lamer ones. This one claims to be from a “Cindy Franklin” and it has a link (not included here) to a Russian website.

Dear customer,

Propceia - 0.15$
Levitra - 1.63$
Ciali - 1.82$
Viarga - 0.56$

feel the energy of love! buuy viugra at our durgst0re !

Only one drug is spelled correctly. Viagra is not only misspelled but it’s misspelled two different ways. “Buy” — a word with only 3 letters — is misspelled. Drug, the thing they’re selling, is misspelled durg. Their “durgst0re” has the numeral 0 in place of the letter “o”. (“Hey, pick me up a couple of durgs while you’re out.”)

If I want to be picky, I could also point out that they put the dollar sign after the price instead of before the price; the last two sentences should begin with a capital letter; and there shouldn’t be a space between the end of a sentence and the punctuation mark following it.

You’re in Russia, you’re trying to get me to buy pharmaceuticals from Russia, and you send me an email with only 19 words and 5 of them have their spelling garbled?

Really? Does that actually work?

The email is composed so badly that I question if it’s not on purpose. Perhaps it was sent by the Russian government but they want to make it look totally amateurish so I won’t suspect they sent it. We live in a paranoia-inducing world, at least on the Internet.

Some people may click the link out of curiosity. That’s all it takes to get malware on your computer. Your computer then becomes part of a botnet — millions of zombie computers networked and controlled by Russian criminals (or Russia’s FSB).

Roger Whittaker

The song of the day is New World in the Morning from the 1971 album New World in the Morning by Kenyan/British singer-songwriter-musician Roger Whittaker.

Science 101

Some statements are verifiable, and some are not. Some are falsifiable, and some are not.

Consider the statement all swans are white. It is not verifiable, because in order to prove it is true we would have to observe all the swans on the planet. That is a practical impossibility, but even if we think we’ve done it, how can we prove we did it? How can we ever prove we didn’t miss a swan somewhere? We can’t. However, the statement is falsifiable, as all it takes to prove the statement is false is the discovery of one black swan.

Philosopher of science Karl Popper said that what is unfalsifiable is unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience.

Among today’s scientifically illiterate population, pseudoscience has found a convenient way to avoid categories such as verifiable and falsifiable. The scientifically illiterate avoid unpleasant truth by invoking dodgy explanations such as “fake science”, “hoax”, “conspiracy” and the like. Thus, a mountain of evidence pointing to an unmistakable conclusion that they find inconvenient is brushed away with a single unprovable excuse. And a total lack of evidence to support their pseudoscientific belief is also conveniently explained away as a “government cover-up”, a “vast conspiracy”, or a “whitewash”.

Science, one of the pillars of Western civilization that took us from the steam engine to the Moon rocket, is now declared unscientific. Many people today are rejecting science, sometimes to their chagrin. Many people can no longer discern the difference between the verifiable and the falsifiable, nor do they understand the significance of such distinctions. They refute the findings of science and give preference to what they want to believe. As a result, we have the global warming debate, the vaccination/autism hoax, space aliens helping ancient humans, astrology, homeopathy, intelligent design, and toxins everywhere, among other pseudoscience. Our society’s substantial and growing refusal to accept reality can only end in a bad way.

Trace Adkins

The song of the day is Wayfaring Stranger performed here by singer-songwriter-actor Trace Adkins (Tracy Darrell Adkins). The song is an old folk song that dates from the 19th century and has been recorded by many artists.

Hoax

Every once in a while conspiracy theorists bring up the planet Nibiru. This theory posits that a rogue planet called Planet X or Nibiru is going to either collide with Earth and destroy it, or it’s going to get into some special configuration with other planets that will cause devastating earthquakes all over the globe. Conspiracy nuts have predicted Earth’s destruction by Nibiru several times already, but when nothing happens they just change the date of the end of the world. There are people in great anxiety over this made-up planet. They believe the conspiracy nuts and refuse to believe reputable scientists.

I blame the decline of public education in American schools, and in particular the decline of scientific literacy, for the continual propagation of this and other fake news stories. It seems that society has become dumbed down to the point that many people are no longer capable of critical thinking. Today, you cannot create a conspiracy theory so absurd that no one will believe it.

We have a president who believes conspiracy theories and has invented  his own. IQs may not have changed, but ignorance of so many basic facts about reality has the same effect. A police officer who deals with people all day every day told me, “People are getting dumber and dumber.” He gets no argument from me.

In 2003, an early inventor of the Nibiru end-of-the-world hoax announced she had her dogs euthanized so they wouldn’t suffer when the last day arrived. In 1997, the Heaven’s Gate cult — 21 women and 18 men ranging in age from 26 to 72 — committed suicide so they could exit their earthly bodies and hitch a ride on a spaceship that was hidden in the tail of comet Hale-Bopp. They believed this ridiculous proposition because their leader, Marshall Applewhite, told them to believe it. How can people be that gullible? Why do intelligent people believe in nonsense? It happens because they don’t think critically when they hear or read something. They want to believe, and so they do.

Jim Jones ordered over 900 people to commit suicide, and they did. Charles Manson ordered his “family” to slaughter innocent people, and they did. David Koresh claimed to be the voice of God. His 76 followers believed him and followed him into destruction.

It’s hard to save people from themselves. Sometimes it’s impossible. People have to save themselves — by being skeptical, by being educated, by being rational. If they prefer not to think, then they will have earned the Darwin Award that will surely be bestowed upon them.

User Interface

I don’t mind if a company I deal with online, my bank for instance, changes their Web appearance (the user interface) because they’re adding features to their website pages. But I mind a lot when they change their user interface just for the sake of change. “Our new website looks more modern” is not something that is useful to me. Having to hunt for links I used to know second nature is a waste of my time. And when they tout their new website as more “streamlined” and easier to use, what they really mean is all the links I need are hidden in dropdown menus and other obscure locations, and I’ll spend three times as long finding the link I need.

A similar thing happens at brick-and-mortar stores. After a time, I learn the location of items I purchase frequently, then one day I walk into the store and everything is in a different location. All this does is annoy customers. In the end, I never buy anything I wasn’t intending to buy when I entered the store — I just spend more time finding what I want. And often I have to get a store employee to help me, and then I’m burning the employee’s time. And the end result? The employee might direct me to the correct location, or he might direct me to the wrong location. At that point I might decide “another time” and leave without making the purchase. I’m really skeptical that these inventory ‘resets’ help store profits.

Software programs have a user interface, too. I just upgraded Mozilla Firefox to the new version 57 called Firefox Quantum. It loads pages twice as fast, which is useful, but why change the user interface? Why move a ‘button’ from the right side of the program window to the left side of the window? Why make things look different? Is it to emphasize that it’s a new product “under the hood”? Frankly, I rarely think a new user interface is an improvement in any way. I think it just looks different and unfamiliar. What’s the point of that?

I have a suspicion that the webmaster and the software programmer merely want to justify their jobs. After all, they have to put something on their time sheets. “Our old user interface is boring. We need a complete redesign.” And that is how ‘make-work’ comes to be.

The Wendy’s Experience

I ate lunch today at my local Wendy’s restaurant. I do that from time to time, even though too often the experience falls short of satisfactory. Nevertheless, as I’ve done many times, I decided to give the place another chance.

I was the first and only person in line — for a while. Then customers began queuing up behind me. I waited for what seemed like ten minutes to place my order. It always takes me a while to place an order at Wendy’s, but today the wait seemed longer than usual. Finally the manager asked me if I had been waited on. I shook my head, and he yelled at someone to take my order.

A young woman appeared and asked, “For here or to go?”

I answered, “For here.”

The young woman took my order and I swiped my card. She placed the register tape on the counter for the next person to process. Then she asked me again, “For here or to go?” Again I answered, “For here.” She placed a tray on the counter.

The next worker looked at the tape and, with the tray right in front of her, asked me a third time, “For here or to go?” I tapped the counter and said, “This order is for inside.” A few minutes later I got my order.

I had ordered the spicy chicken sandwich and value fries. The fries looked different than the usual Wendy’s fries. I remembered Wendy’s fries as being thicker than usual fast-food fries, which is one of the things I liked about them. But these were skinny fries.

I went to the condiments counter to get ketchup. Instead of putting out packets of ketchup, Wendy’s uses a pump-machine; each time you press the pump handle, the machine squirts a little ketchup into a plastic cup. The machine was empty of ketchup, which did not surprise me. An empty ketchup machine is not unusual for that restaurant.

I assumed the kitchen workers had ketchup packets for to-go orders. I returned to the order-pickup counter and asked for ketchup. It took a minute or so to get their attention, but I finally got my ketchup.

I sat down at a table and prepared to eat my lunch. I tried a French fry. It wasn’t hot. Also, the fries had no salt on them. I stood up, walked to the condiments counter, got my salt, and returned to my table and sat down again.

I unwrapped the spicy chicken sandwich. It contained a piece of deep-fried breaded chicken floating in mayo inside a bun. It was tasty, but it was hard to keep the sandwich together because the mayo lubricated the bun so well that the bun slid around on the chicken.

At a table about 8 feet away sat a young couple with two small boys who may have been about 5 and 6 years old. Throughout my meal, the boys were constantly jumping up from their table to go running around the restaurant whooping and hollering. The man and woman ignored them. I guess they felt the boys were too young to be taught manners. I felt like I was at a children’s playground.

I ate half the fries, which after a couple minutes were cold and unappetizing. (Thin fries cool faster than thicker fries.) I also made a mental note that I should probably carry toothpicks with me to pin together slippery foods like bread and sandwich innards. Once again, I left Wendy’s feeling less than satisfied with the experience. This time, I probably won’t return.

I mention these things not because they are unusual but because they are so usual. I no longer eat at Burger King, even though I like their Whopper sandwich, for precisely the same reasons: food not hot, fries not salted, drink machine out of what I want, icemaker broken, kitchen slow. That BK doesn’t have a lot of business. The local Wendy’s isn’t usually busy, either. You know who has a ton of business every day? The local McDonald’s. The problem with McDonald’s is too many customers. Even so, the McDonald’s order-taking process and kitchen always seem to run efficiently. I have never left a McDonald’s restaurant vowing never to return.

My opinion is that the problems are partly related to the system the stores have in place (the work-flow from order-entry to delivery) and partly related to lack of effective management. For example, ordering food and paying can be a bottleneck, so McDonald’s runs multiple registers when they’re busy. Wendy’s runs one register.

Also, many young workers apparently fail to understand the importance of customer service and how it relates to their paychecks. Some hustle, while others amble about. Some greet you with a smile, while others act like waiting on you is a bother.

Wendy’s and other fast-food chains appear to give priority to the drive-through. People have told me, “If you want quick service at a fast-food place, use the drive-through.” What I see inside the store bears that out. My order-taker kept me (and all those in line behind me) waiting while she attended to the drive-through customers.

To be fair, fast-food restaurants are only as good as their manager and staff. Staff turnover is high and not all managers are effective managers. So the quality of the dining experience can rise and fall over time.

But the bottom line is: these are fixable problems. If one franchise can make it work, others can too. But instead, stores will tinker with the menu and run various specials in an effort to lure in customers, when what customers want is simple food delivered hot and quick. It just doesn’t seem like rocket science, yet so many fast-food restaurants drop the ball. As a result, they get enough low-expectation customers to remain in business, but not enough customers to flourish. The store fails to thrive and customers are dissatisfied. It’s lose-lose.

NaNoWriMo

November 30 is the last day of NaNoWriMo. Why wasn’t I informed of this? As Terry said to Charley in On The Waterfront, “I coulda been a contender.” Maybe next year.

The acronym stands for National Novel Writing Month. It began in July, 1999, with 21 participants. This year over 400,000 people signed up and committed to writing a 50,000 word novel in one month. A 50,000 word novel is a really short novel. The standard length for a novel is around 80,000 words.

It’s a formidable task, but I think I could write a novel in one month. There’s just one catch: no one, but no one, would read past the end of chapter one — if, indeed, they made it that far.

Writing a novel in a month is one thing. Writing a good novel in a month,  however, requires talent, imagination, and perseverance. Lately, I’ve been running low on all three. Writing a Reader’s Digest article in 30 days feels much more in my wheelhouse. I could title it, “How to write a novel in 30 days.”

I’m joking, of course. But there was someone who could have written such an article, and his name was Isaac Asimov. He wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. That is the equivalent of writing a full-length book every two weeks for 25 years. He wrote novels and he wrote science books on a wide variety of topics. If you look up the dictionary definition of the word prolific, there’s a picture of Isaac Asimov.

Without question, Asimov would have been the NaNoWriMo champ.

Sarah Brightman & Andrea Bocelli

The song of the day is 1995's Time To Say Goodbye by English soprano Sarah Brightman and Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. Time to Say Goodbye is based on the Italian song Con te partirò (I will leave with you). This video was recorded at a concert, "Sarah Brightman: In Concert", performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Paul Bateman. (Bocelli has been completely blind since age 12 following a football accident.)

Label Trickery

I ate a frozen fish dinner tonight. (It wasn’t frozen when I ate it, of course.) The name on the box was Hawaiian Garlic Salmon. I never even knew there was such a thing as Hawaiian garlic. Is the garlic grown in Hawaii? Or is the salmon grown in Hawaii? Or both?

The box’s nutrition label was one of those that, while perhaps truthful, was also somewhat deceptive. At the very least, it was intended to make it difficult to understand what the customer is getting.

If you’re a food shopper, you’ve probably seen nutrition labels that state the package contains 2½ servings. Or 3½ servings. Or 4½ servings. Who divides a package of food in such a way that two people get full servings and one person gets a half serving? No one! The purpose of the extra half serving is to make the calorie count a little smaller. If you’re counting calories and you pick up the can or package in the grocery store and read the nutrition label, you’ll see the per serving calorie count and think, “that’s not so bad.”

But the garlic salmon label went further. It stated the calorie count per serving was 236. But how many servings are in the box? And how large is a serving? Here’s what the nutrition label stated (in very fine print):

Serving size: 4 oz (about ⅔ of 1 Fillet)
Servings per container: about 3

Are there 3 fillets inside the box? You might assume 3 because there are 3 servings. (The number isn’t stated on the box.) In reality, there are 2 vacuum-packed sealed-in-plastic frozen fillets. Those two fillets are your three servings. But no one is likely to eat ⅔ of a fillet. Realistically, a serving is 1 fillet. At a glance, how many calories are in that fillet?

If you stop and think about it, you must increase the calorie count by 50%. Because 1 fillet is half again more than ⅔ of 1 fillet. Of course, in the store you don’t know how many fillets are in the box. But let’s suppose you have figured out the number of fillets by multiplying the serving size, ⅔ of 1 fillet, by the servings per container, 3. In the noisy store, with a shopping list in one hand and the frozen fish in the other hand, are you going to stop and do the math? Will you even notice the very fine print about a serving being ⅔ of a fillet?

If there are two frozen fillets vacuum-sealed in heavy plastic, why does the box say there are three servings? The food company is playing games. They’re obfuscating the facts.

There are many ways to deceive someone while being truthful. Suppose you ask me how much money I have in the bank and I tell you, “In all honesty, all my bank accounts added together total less than 4 million dollars.” You may leave thinking, “Wow. I didn’t know VirtualWayne had that much money in the bank,” and all the while I may have one bank account with 50 bucks in it. I told you the truth in a way that was intended to mislead you. Some of these giant food companies are doing a similar thing: they’re telling you the truth (supposedly) but they’re doing it in a way that is intended to mislead you — or at least make it difficult to figure out, on the spot, what you’re getting.

This pet peeve annoys me partly because it’s used so often, and partly because giant food companies think we’re too stupid to notice their little game. Well, giant food companies, this consumer is telling you that while we may buy your products, we buy them despite the misleading labels, not because of them. There is a well known saying, “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

We’re on to your little game, giant food companies. And as Queen Victoria said, “We are not amused.”