Foreign Food

Will sobrassada be the next ‘nduja? Did you know that salami is the plural of salame? To further confuse us, salame is a type of salumi.

By the way, if you don’t know how to pronounce ‘nduja, Wikipedia says it is pronounced like this: ‘ndu ja. Seriously. I think Wikipedia are not being as helpful here as they probably think they are.

But back to sobrassada (not to be confused with soppressata which is an Italian word for a food that is similar). Just when we were getting ‘nduja figured out, the Mallorcans are putting sobrassada on the charcuterie board. And for you sobrassada fans who think it should be spelled sobrasada, just know I’m using the Catalan spelling. Sobrasada is the Spanish spelling. I know, I know—Catalonia is technically part of Spain, at least it is as I type these words. Tomorrow? Who knows. Spain is complicated.

You may be wondering, “Why does ‘nduja start with an apostrophe?” Why indeed. I suppose because it can. Foreigners, you know—it’s like they write and speak a separate language.

LG

My LG smart phone bricked itself. In fact, it’s worse than that, because at least a brick has functionality; it serves a useful purpose. Now when I turn on the phone, the screen says “Downloading update … do not unplug cord.” It delivers this message whether or not a cord is plugged in. The message stays on the screen for as long as the phone remains on. I researched the issue and discovered that there is (supposedly) a way to restore the phone to its factory settings. So I followed the procedure. It didn’t work. The phone remained bricked.

I have an LG TV. The TV works fine, but the remote quit working. Not all the buttons on the remote—just the power button. The TV doesn’t have a power button on it. In fact, it has no buttons at all. Without a remote, one can’t operate the TV.

A friend who lives nearby had an LG TV. It went ka-blooey (figuratively) and he got rid of it, but he saved the remote. When I told him about my remote going bad, he gave me the remote to his defunct LG TV. It’s a different size and shape than the remote that came with my set, but it operates my TV just fine.

I have an LG computer monitor. So far it has performed well. No complaints. Well, there was that time the monitor made a fzzzt sound and the screen went to maximum white-out brightness. It took a couple minutes (turn the monitor off and on; reboot the computer) but then I discovered the problem was the monitor setting. I turned the brightness down and all was okay again.

I used to like LG but the shine is starting to get a wee bit tarnished.

The BFS

My small city has three tornado sirens. To say they’re loud would be an understatement. One siren is about 200 feet from my house. It’s deafening even with windows closed. I call it the BFS.

Let me explain how it works. The sky darkens with clouds. Rain begins to fall. Lightning flashes across the sky. The rain becomes heavy and turns into a gully-washer. The lightning intensifies and thunder rolls across the city. After a while the lightning and thunder fade away and the rain slows then stops. The sky becomes brighter. Then the siren sounds off.

Maybe it’s not a tornado siren. Maybe it’s a no-tornado siren. Or maybe it’s just the city’s way of saying, “Missed us again, Mother Nature. Nah-nah-nah.”

It’s probably not a good idea to taunt Mother Nature. Especially considering that the city has already been hit by tornadoes several times with loss of life. Whoever is throwing the switch on that missed-us-again siren is playing with fire. Dear city government: don’t say I didn’t give you a heads-up.

A Mystery Once Again

I’ve written about this kind of thing previously. In Go Figure I wrote about strange, unexplained sounds in my house. In House Ghost I wrote about a can of bathroom cleaner that was teleported. In Odd Stuff I wrote about a couple of odd incidents, including a flashlight being knocked off the fireplace mantle directly into a wicker basket that I had just placed on the floor below the mantle.

But now it’s time for another mysterious true story. Two nights ago I went to bed at my usual bedtime. I was sober. I had not taken a sleeping pill. Twice during the night I got up to use the bathroom. I experienced nothing unusual. That is, not until the next morning.

I awakened and reached for my phone. I usually keep it on the corner of the dresser beside my bed. A heavy, metal table lamp sits beside it. I didn’t find the phone, so I got up on one elbow to look for it. I noticed the shade on the lamp was knocked askew. The lamp had been moved from its usual location and placed on top of the phone.

I looked further around the room. The wastepaper basket had been turned over and was lying on its side. My pillow was on the floor on top of the wastepaper basket. The blanket on my bed was on the floor. What was going on? I set things aright and went about my morning.

At lunchtime I decided to make a sandwich, so I reached for a partially consumed bag of bread sitting atop the refrigerator. I untwisted the twist tie and opened the bag. I looked inside. All the slices of bread had large holes in the center of them. In fact, they were little more than crust.

I inspected the bag. There were no holes in it. I know for sure that the opening in the bag was securely closed with a twist tie. An ant couldn’t have gotten into that bag. And even if a mouse got in (without leaving a hole) it would have had to climb up the side of the refrigerator to get to the bag of bread. Can a mouse do that? And why would a mouse only eat the inner part of the bread and leave the crust untouched? Are mice that picky about their food?

There was no explaining any of it except, perhaps, for a mischievous poltergeist. But if that’s the case, at least the poltergeist gives me occasional fodder for my blog.

It Might Be A Kludge

I’m an engineer. Or used to be, but once an engineer, always an engineer. It’s a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world. And the two recent MAX 8 airliner crashes got me to thinking.

Engineers have a word they sometimes use: kludge (or kluge). It’s pronounced like ‘klooj’. Here’s how Wikipedia defines it:

A kludge or kluge is a workaround or quick-and-dirty solution that is clumsy, inelegant, inefficient, difficult to extend and hard to maintain. This term is used in diverse fields such as computer science, aerospace engineering, Internet slang, evolutionary neuroscience, and government.

Jackson W. Granholm, in his 1962 article "How to Design a Kludge", defined it this way:

‘An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole’; a machine, system, or program that has been improvised or 'bodged' together; a hastily improvised and poorly thought-out solution to a fault or 'bug'. ...

Back to the airliners. When Boeing designed the MAX, they started with a model 737. One of the changes they made was to install bigger engines. Ground clearance was already limited, so the engineers redesigned the engine attachment pylons, moving the engines forward and higher. This gave the engines more ground clearance, but it also had the unfortunate side-effect of causing the jet’s nose to pitch up under certain conditions. This nose-up condition could cause an aerodynamic stall, in which the wings no longer generate enough lift to keep the plane in the air. So, problem.

Engineers addressed this problem by adding to the flight-control software something called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). When MCAS detects a nose-up condition, it takes over the flight controls and pushes the nose down. The current working theory about the two crashes is that, due to a faulty sensor, MCAS pushed the nose down when it wasn’t supposed to and flew the plane into the earth.

To my engineer’s eyes, it looks like Boeing engineers created a problem when they moved the engines, and in order to compensate they installed a “fix” that came with its own potential problem. If MCAS isn’t a kludge, I think it skirts the definition uncomfortably closely. That’s my opinion, of course. I’m sure Boeing would vehemently deny that it was anything like a kludge. And yet two MAX airliners have crashed within about five months.

To be fair to the Boeing engineers, MCAS can be turned off from the cockpit. If the air crews had done that, the crashes could probably have been avoided. But the crews were apparently not aware of why the plane kept nosing down, or not aware that they could turn off MCAS, or both.

Crowned

This is how a snowball gets bigger and bigger as it rolls down a hill.

Last week I developed a toothache during the night. When morning arrived I phoned my dentist and was able to see him the same day. He took x-rays, tapped on some teeth, and decided the problem was tooth #19. He said it needed an extraction or a root canal. I opted for a root canal because I’d like to keep as many of my teeth as possible. The dentist said that because of the nature of the tooth, he didn’t want to do the root canal. He said I needed a specialist. So his “people” made an appointment for me with an endodontist. The short visit with the dentist cost a mere $98.10—pretty much what I expected. I don’t think you can sneeze in a doctor’s office without paying a hundred or so dollars.

I went to the appointment with the endodontist. She was a very nice young Indian woman (why are so many doctors from India?) and I have nothing but nice things to say about her. She diagnosed (correctly) that the problem was tooth #18, the tooth adjacent to #19. After the root canal procedure, she told me to get a crown on the tooth “as soon as possible”. Her “people” spoke with my dentist’s “people” and I suddenly had an appointment just a few days away. Cost of the root canal: $1175.40.

Today I got a temporary crown on the tooth. I’ll get the permanent crown in eight days. Apparently it is made in California and then sent to Virginia by Pony Express—hence, the week delay. As I was leaving the dentist’s office I stopped to pay the bill for the crown: $1530.90.

So I started with a toothache and $2804.40 later I’m more or less exactly where I was before I got the toothache. That’s life.

But wait, it gets better. The dentist informed me that the tooth adjacent to the just-crowned tooth also needs a crown. And oh yeah, there’s a tooth on the other side of my mouth that needs a crown. Why don’t I just leave my wallet at the dentist’s office? He’s getting more use of it than I’m getting.

Pineapple Express

As I watched the nightly news, I saw a story about a weather event that brought heavy rain to parts of California which, in turn, caused destructive mudslides. The reporter said this kind of weather event, which comes off the Pacific Ocean, is called a Pineapple Express. I had never heard of a weather event called a Pineapple Express, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

Pineapple Express is a non-technical term for a meteorological phenomenon characterized by a strong and persistent flow of atmospheric moisture and associated with heavy precipitation from the waters adjacent to the Hawaiian Islands and extending to any location along the Pacific coast of North America.

That was quite a mouthful of words. I think the writer could easily have broken that into 2 or 3 sentences. But I’m picky about those things because I’m a writer and always have been (though never as a profession). If I had possessed a piece of chalk when I was in my mother’s womb, I would have written “VW was here” on the inside of it.

On the other hand, the term made me recall the 2008 stoner action-comedy film titled Pineapple Express. Most people think it’s hilarious. IMDb rates it 7 out of 10. I tried to watch it but got bored after five minutes. Maybe you have to be stoned to enjoy it. Don’t let that discourage you from watching it. As the saying goes, your mileage may vary. You can watch the movie on Amazon. I may even take another whack at watching it.

Pineapple Express is also a popular strain of marijuana. It’s a hybrid of Trainwreck and Hawaiian. Leafly says,

“The smell is likened to fresh apple and mango, with a taste of pineapple, pine, and cedar.”

Allbud says,

“Pineapple Express is chosen to treat a lot of medical problems including anxiety and stress. However, it is even more effective at curing the symptoms of chronic depression at the same time. If you are suffering from mild pains and aches, you should look no further.”

Sounds great to me. Where can I legally buy some? Not in Virginia.

Then there’s a company named Pineapple Express. Their website, which at this time has only one page, says, “We deliver” (but you have to be 21+). What they deliver is not made clear but it likely has something to do with weed. There’s another company named Pineapple Express Delivery, but that company is in Canada and appears to deliver only within Canada. Of course, cannabis is legal everywhere in Canada. That’s why the Canadian flag has an image of a marijuana leaf on it. I’m kidding—it’s actually a maple leaf.

I’ve given you, my reader, more than enough to ponder, so I’m wrapping this up. I’ll be back when I have another hour to kill.

The Blackface Incidents

The governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, recently stepped into a pile of metaphorical poo when it became known that he might have worn blackface in his 1984 medical school yearbook page. I say “might” because at first the governor apologized and then he said he was not in the photo. The state’s attorney general, Mark Herring, followed in the governor’s footsteps and admitted to wearing blackface at a college party in 1980 when he was 19.

What the governor might have done 35 years ago and what the attorney general admits doing almost 40 years ago were not crimes. They were, however, in bad taste and indicative of, as Herring put it, “ignorance and glib attitudes.”

Ralph Northam, who may have been racist at age 25, is now 59 years old. Mark Herring, who may have been racist at age 19, is now 57. The question we need to ask ourselves is, how long should we hold people culpable for the stupid attitudes of their youth?

Life, if properly lived, is a journey to a better version of ourselves. When we’re young, we are influenced by family and friends. But as we live our lives we encounter new experiences, a diversity of people, and a multiplicity of attitudes. We learn and we grow. We become different people. The question we should ask is, who are these men now? We can’t find the answer by looking backward 40 years to their youth.

Thaw

A week ago I wrote about “the Arctic blast”, that shot of Arctic air that hit Canada and the northern US due to a wobbly polar vortex. For a few days the high temperatures in central Virginia were around freezing. Then it began to warm up. Yesterday’s high was 75°. The forecasters said it would be cooler today and, sure enough, today’s high is only 74°. Brrr, someone build a fire! A week ago people were, as expected, asking, “Where’s the global warming?” Answer: it’s right here, right now.

The reality is that we’re experiencing our “January thaw” this first week of February. The Arctic blast delayed it, but now it’s here. The thaw usually lasts about a week and then cold weather returns. When I say “cold” I’m talking about high temperatures in the 40s or 50s, so don’t picture snow. March is only three weeks away and I’ve got my fingers crossed that Virginia has seen its last snow for this winter. Yet, snow certainly isn’t out of the picture. I’ve seen snow fall when fruit trees were blossoming. I’ve seen heavy, wet snow in late winter break all the branches off numerous Bradford Pear Trees, which must have the weakest branches in all of nature.

These warm temperatures almost tempt me to go outside and across the street to the park. I’m almost tempted to walk around the park. But that sounds too much like exercise, so I’d rather just open a nearby window and smell the outside air and hear the outside sounds and feel the air on my skin. And while I’m doing that I’ll close my eyes and imagine I’m walking around the park. The nice thing about imaginary exercise is that I can lean back, relax, and sip vodka on the rocks while I’m doing it. Real exercise can’t come close to that.

In a way, I’ll be glad when the thaw is over and cold temperatures return. I won’t have to worry about whether I should go to the park and get exercise. I won’t feel guilt while sitting at my computer and getting buzzed. I won’t feel bad about telling myself that I’ll get real exercise when spring gets here, at which point I’ll invent a new set of excuses for being lazy.

It’s cloudy now, and it looks like the skies are threatening rain. That’s too bad, because I had just decided to take a walk around the park, and now I can’t. If it rains on me, I’ll catch a cold, which will turn into pneumonia, which will kill me. I’d really like to exercise but I don’t want to die, so therefore I can’t exercise. So disappointed.

But one of these days I really will get some exercise. Really. It’s on my to-do list.

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.