Arctic Blast

The news media are agog over the approaching arctic blast, polar vortex, or whatever it’s called today. (In the long ago days of my youth, it was called winter.) As I write this, the temperature is 42°F in my central Virginia city. Tonight’s low is supposed to be 10°F. Some say this proves that global warming isn’t real. Are we to believe cold weather in winter disproves global warming? Okay then, next Tuesday, six days from now, the temperature is forecast to be 70°F. If cold weather proves global warming is false, then shouldn’t warm weather prove global warming is real? But people have very selective memories. Someone will say, “Look, a snowball! Where is this global warming thing?” They’ll remember that snowball. But suppose a week later they go to the shopping center and see people wearing shorts and T-shirts in the dead of winter. That they won’t remember.

This tendency to remember (and believe) only evidence that supports our previous beliefs is a well known phenomenon. It’s called confirmation bias. Many people will say, “This proves I was right.” But few people will say, “This proves I was wrong.”

When I was younger, winters were brutally cold. I had a ski jacket and wore it often. I also had a heavy parka with a hood and I wore it, too. I haven’t needed either of them in many years. I have a lighter weight coat that I wear perhaps 3 or 4 times in a winter. The rest of the winter I wear a light jacket or just a hoodie.

When I moved into my house 16 years ago, lawn mowing season began in May. After a few years, I had to start mowing in April. Last year I had to start mowing in March. Warm weather begins earlier with each passing year.

This winter may have a few days of extraordinarily cold weather for parts of North America, but the southern hemisphere has summer now and they’re baking in record-breaking heat. Why isn’t this reported more broadly so that people will have a balanced view of what is happening to our planet? I’m guessing the news media know all about confirmation bias and the uselessness of trying to inform people who have made up their minds and don’t want to be confused by facts.

Paycheck

In 1986 I moved to Roanoke, Virginia. After bumming around from budget motel to budget motel for a few nights, I found a little motel that rented by the week, and I settled there for a while. It had some amenities: weekly maid service (clean the apartment and bathroom, fresh towels and washcloths, fresh sheets on the bed), cable TV and HBO, a kitchenette with a small fridge and a stove for cooking meals, and it was less than a hundred feet from a pancake house that served breakfast and lunch. It was in the center of town and close to every place I wanted to go. For a single person who wasn’t picky about lodgings (other than they had to be clean) it was fairly perfect. I lived there for a couple of years. I found out that the maid who cleaned the rooms was being paid $8/hour. I was a little surprised because 8 dollars didn’t seem like a lot for that job, considering the manual labor involved.

But what is 8 dollars in 1986 dollars worth today? According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s inflation calculator, $8 in June, 1986, was equivalent to $18.35 in December of 2018.

But let’s look at it differently. Suppose your job pays you $10/hour. What was that $10 worth in 1986? The answer: about $4.50.

The cost of living increases every year. But paychecks often don’t keep up. This probably isn’t news to many of you. But it’s something to think about, because the hole that workers are sliding into starts as a gentle slope that gets ever deeper as time goes by. What pay were you earning when you started your current job, and what pay are you earning now? Remember that when it comes to your job and your paycheck, no one is going to look out for you except you.

Arctic Blast and Global Warming

An Arctic blast hit town yesterday. This morning’s temperature in my central Virginia city was 17°F. The weather people said it felt like 2°F (minus 17°C). It has been colder here. I’ve seen nights (not this winter) where the actual temperature—not the “feels-like” temperature—has been 2°. Tonight’s low is supposed to be 13°. I’m burning the crap out of dead dinosaurs—or whatever the heck number 2 fuel oil is made of.

Donald Trump, who is apparently now a climatologist in addition to businessman and president, says this cold weather proves global warming isn’t real. To people who think similar thoughts, I would point out that in the southern hemisphere it is the middle of summer. Australia is experiencing a searing heat wave. They’ve recently recorded 5 of the 10 hottest days ever recorded there. A town in Australia just recorded the highest nighttime “low” temperature ever recorded on that continent. I read a headline this morning that announced massive animal deaths and melting roads in Australia.

When self-appointed climatologists use the weather to “disprove” global warming, they always conveniently ignore global temperatures and focus on the weather in North America, as if two things—North America and planet Earth—were synonymous.

Cold winter weather occurs on a regular basis in most of North America. It always has, as have sweltering summers. Do we have to wait until the ice caps are gone and our coastal cities are under water before we conclude that maybe the climatologists are onto something? Years ago, I visited Glacier National Park in Montana. In the mid-19th century there were an estimated 150 glaciers in the park. In 2010 there were 25 active glaciers. Scientists studying the park’s glaciers say that by 2030 no active glaciers will remain in the park.

Climate change deniers remind me of the character Sgt. Schultz on the old TV series “Hogan’s Heroes”. Whenever he was confronted by something he didn’t want to deal with, his go-to position was “I see nothing!” That stance might make us feel better in the short term, but in the long term it’s only going to make the problem more intractable—possibly irreversibly so. We’ve only got one planet. We have science and and logic and thousands of hard-working climatologists on our side. Let’s use those resources. There is no need to roll the dice on the future of our world.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

There exists a phenomenon I have observed for years but I never knew it had a name. It is the Dunning-Kruger effect.

There is an anti-science climate growing in this country. There are anti-vaxers who believe vaccinations are evil. There are climate-change deniers who believe that the thousands of climate scientists around the world have conspired to pull off a huge hoax. There is the anti-GMO food movement that has decided GMO foods are dangerous despite the many studies that have shown they are not. This anti-science climate extends all the way down to the ridiculous, such as flat-earth believers.

Why do so many people refuse to accept reality and logic? This is where the Dunning-Kruger effect comes in. According to Wikipedia,

In the field of psychology, the Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability have illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority comes from the inability of low-ability people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their competence or incompetence.

As Dunning stated: "If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent ... The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is."

Of course, the anti-science crowd would be the first to deny that there is even a thing like the Dunning-Kruger effect or, if there is, that it would ever apply to them. Their motto appears to be: “Don’t confuse me with facts … my mind is made up!” Like the proverbial ostrich with its head buried in the sand, they want to deny reality and substitute their own reality. This is not good. The solution is better science education in public schools. Perhaps we should throw in a few courses in Logic as well, as so many people seem unable to use logic.

I don’t know where this reality-denial phenomenon will take our country. But I know this: denying reality can never lead to a good outcome.

More Headlines

Headline: Chinese Scientist Who Created CRISPR Babies Could Face the Death Penalty.

CRISPR is a technology that involves gene-editing. At worst case, it might be unethical to modify the DNA of a yet-to-be-born baby. But the death penalty seems overly harsh. “Okay, Mister Scientist, you removed the DNA from this baby that was going to cause cystic fibrosis and an early death. For that, we’re going to kill you.” It’s harsh but it does sound like something that could happen in China. And only in China.

Headline: China lunar probe sheds light on the 'dark' side of the moon.

First, the moon doesn’t have a ‘dark’ side. It has a far side. All parts of the moon get sunlight at some point during the month, just as all parts of the earth get sunlight. Does the earth have a dark side?

Second, China put a toy on the moon. What person who is not paranoid is worried about this toy? I read a headline that stated China is going to “explore” the far side of the moon with this toy. Sure, if you call rolling about 100 yards on the moon “exploring” the moon. And if this toy fell into a crater loaded with gold nuggets, it couldn’t bring any of them back to earth. Let’s not create a space race out of nothing.

Headline: The Milky Way Will Collide With Another Galaxy and It’s Going to Look Awesome.

Who writes these articles? Billions of years from now, something is going to happen that, if you were around, which you assuredly won’t be, would look awesome. Maybe. If the Milky Way collided with another galaxy tomorrow, how would you know? You’d hear about it on the evening news. End of story.

Headline: Let's Make Tomatoes Spicy With Genetic Engineering, Scientists Proclaim

A lot of people are opposed to genetic engineering, but if there is just one time that it will be used, I want it to be used to make tomatoes taste like tomatoes again. Are any of my readers old enough to remember how tomatoes tasted back when they still had taste? Scientists have identified 19 chemicals that have been bred out of tomatoes. Not intentionally, of course. Losing taste was a side effect of selective breeding intended to make tomatoes that would withstand the rigors of shipping, that would all ripen at the same time for harvesting, and other traits that growers favored. But the result is the tasteless fruit (yes, tomato is a fruit) that we have today.

Headline: The 2019 'Super Blood Wolf Moon' Total Lunar Eclipse, What It Means And How It Affects You

Super Blood Wolf Moon? Blood. Wolf. Moon. Is someone trying to give us all nightmares? I’m going to pretend I didn’t read that headline.

And my favorite headline today: Astronaut Accidentally Dials 911 from the International Space Station

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

“Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

“What is your location, sir?”

“Two hundred fifty miles straight up.”

It’s nice to know that even an astronaut can be a doofus. It’s also a little unsettling. Isn’t somebody supposed to screen these people?

Assorted Facts

Guess how many prescription drugs have been recalled during the past 12 months. Go ahead, guess.

Eighty.

Does that sound like a high number? Then guess how many recalls there have been for everything the FDA regulates. Hint: it’s way more than 80.

In fact, 1349 items have been recalled or withdrawn from the market or have had safety alerts. A number that big makes me wonder how many things haven’t been recalled that should have been recalled. I know there is something out there that is biding its time, waiting for the opportunity to bite me on the ass. Take that, lowly human!

Do any Buffy fans read this blog? It has been 22 years since the show’s debut and 15 years since it ended, but who can forget Buffy-bot’s classic line, “That’ll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo!” I encountered that word again today, so I finally had to look it up. It’s a real thing. Who knew? And no, I’m not going to enlighten you.

But I will say this. The word appears only once in the entire 7 years (144 episodes) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That makes it a hapax legomenon, which is also a real thing. (I challenge my readers to say hapax legomenon aloud five times as fast as possible.) The plural of hapax legomenon is hapax legomena. There are also dis legomenon, tris legomenon, and tetrakis legomenon, but I think by now I’ve made my point. In my entire life I’ve never had to use the term hapax legomenon, and I’ve already used it (singular and plural forms) five times in this paragraph.

There is a rather extensive reddit thread about Buffy-bot’s marzipan line. In fact, the redditor makes the case that “the depth, power, and intricacy of the symbolism in this single line is almost unparalleled in the series.” If he is saying that Joss Whedon is a script genius, he’ll get no argument from me.

In other news, the US government is partially shut down, TSA agents are calling in sick so they can go to a job that provides them a paycheck, the Yellow Vests are burning down France, the DJIA closed up 747 points on Friday, which sounds great until you consider that it is still down about 3500 points from 3 months ago, and the president is threatening to pardon himself for crimes he says he didn’t commit.

There you have it: all the facts that are fit to blog about. Till next time, loyal readers.

Observations

Job Titles

Job titles were once very straightforward. You had a job and your job title stated what you did. Like sales clerk. Or stocker. But in modern times, job titles have become increasingly obscure, to what end I’m not sure. What is an “achievement coach”? If I decide to be an achievement coach, what will I be doing? How about “fitness influencer”? What does a fitness influencer do for eight hours a day? I’ve decided that jobs like these are so mundane that the holder of that job needs to obfuscate what they do so as to avoid embarrassment.

My last job title was “Senior Engineer, Electronic Systems”. That may sound a bit pretentious, but it described my job. I designed electronic systems from the schematic to the finished circuit board. Or end-to-end, as they say today.

My current job title is “Blogger”. Just kidding—that word is far too mundane. I’ve decided I’m an “Information Commentator and Opinion Agent.” So much better than “blogger”. But it pays the same: zero.

Monkey Business

There is a population of wild monkeys in Florida that is growing out of control and they carry a form of herpes that is deadly to humans. (Why is it always Florida that gets the herpes-monkeys and 15-foot pythons and giant lizards and walking catfish, to mention a few of Florida’s many weird and often deadly creatures?)

I like this headline: 25 Ways Florida Could Kill You. I don’t know how they managed to narrow down the list to only 25.

There Was Nothing Interesting on the Telly

In England, two men stole a parked bus and took it for a joyride. A jolly good time, what? Stealing a bus is dumb enough, but the men also video-recorded themselves joyriding in the bus and then posted the video to Facebook. I’ve observed that this self-posting of criminal activity is an increasing trend. People record themselves committing a felony and then post the video to Facebook or another social media website. Their next stop: the slammer. What a surprise.

Assault with a … Banana?

Police in Des Moines, Iowa, say a man assaulted a convenience store clerk with a banana. He chased her around the store, throwing various fruits at her and causing $1000 in damage. It could have been worse. He could have assaulted her with a mango. That would’ve hurt. Anyway, the crime happened on New Year’s day, so perhaps we can write it off to there being too much brandy in the egg nog.

It’s The Flippin’ Wall, Again

I would pay money to not hear the word wall spoken in the news ever again. I think Trump could raise a lot of money by setting up a gofundme page. “Donate 5 billion dollars for a border wall and you won’t hear me utter another word about the wall.” But of course, that promise would last only until the money was gone.

What Trump is doing now is called bait-and-switch. Trump campaigned on the promise that Mexico would pay for the wall. He got his base excited about a wall. When Mexico said, “Not one peso for a wall,” Trump changed his message. He now wants American taxpayers to pay billions for the wall and then, at a mysterious time known as “later”, Mexico will repay us “in some manner” yet to be determined. That’s like a store advertising a bargain-priced TV but when you get to the store they just happen to be “sold out” of the bargain TVs but they will be happy to show you another, more expensive TV that has more bells and whistles and comes with a new and improved finance plan.

I question if a wall will be effective at keeping illegal immigrants out of the US, given that almost half of illegal immigrants do not enter the country illegally. They enter legally on a visa and then overstay their visa—they don’t leave the US. And I question if a 2000 mile (3200 km) border wall can be built for $5 billion dollars. I’ve seen estimates as high as $70 billion.

As General George S. Patton said, “Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.” A border wall is a type of fixed fortification. But okay, go ahead and build the wall. Just don’t ask me to pay for it, Donald, because I think it’s nothing more than a political boondoggle.

New Year 2019

I stayed up on New Year’s Eve and watched the ball drop in Times Square. It wasn’t because I wanted to; I simply wasn’t sleepy. Suddenly it was midnight and I decided to resort to chemical help, so I swallowed an Ambien. I don’t like taking Ambien, it makes me do strange things sometimes. But I wanted so badly to feel sleepy. For days I had not been able to sleep before 5AM.

I went to bed and to sleep. I slept soundly and was in the middle of a long dream when I awakened with a crash. I had rolled off the bed onto the hardwood floor, still clutching the blankets which were now mostly under me.

This is my problem with sleeping pills. I have never rolled off the bed in my sleep. Now, I take an Ambien and I roll off the bed. Coincidence? Maybe, but I don’t buy it. Weird stuff happens too often when I take Ambien.

For example, I’ve found things broken in the house, such as boxes crushed, and it happened while I was “asleep” after taking Ambien. One night I took an Ambien and went to sleep, and the next day I remembered that Daylight Saving time had ended and I hadn’t set the clocks. So I went around the house to change all the clocks, and found that all the clocks in the house had been correctly set to the new time. I had no memory of doing it. I had even set the clock on my VCR (remember VCRs?) during the night, and that requires turning on the TV and navigating a set of menus to set the time. Yet, I was apparently asleep at the time.

So rolling off the bed doesn’t surprise me; it scares me. Because, what’s going to happen the next time I take Ambien? Do I need to get a safety belt for my mattress? And is rolling off the bed on the first morning of the year a harbinger of what 2019 holds in store for me?

To be fair, I acknowledge that millions of people take Ambien without problems. But for a small number of us: problems.