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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| Few things in life feel better than nuclear revenge. So today's link is about the lengths (or heights) some people will go to for it. I mean, sure, it's nice to be able to forgive sometimes, too. But other times, you need to drive the point home that you're not a pushover. Most of these are spite houses / fences, but there are a few other cases of extreme -- and mostly legal and nondestructive -- payback as well. I won't go through all of them; you'll have to check out the link. 4. Stuart Semple's Black 3.0 This one's one of my favorites, mostly because I find feuds in the art world extremely amusing, and also because I want an outfit, preferably including a trenchcoat, made of the blackest black that ever blacked. The color war began when artist Sir Anish Kapoor acquired the exclusive rights to the world’s blackest substance at the time, Vantablack—and refused to share it with the artistic community. By all accounts, Kapoor acts like a massive douche. He's the artist (and I'm not denying he's a talented artist) responsible for The Bean  in Chicago. Since he's apparently gotten used to people calling it The Bean (or maybe he just backed off on public hatred of the name so people would leave him alone), we'll have to come up with another annoying nickname for it.Enter British artist Stuart Semple, who, angered at Kapoor’s selfishness, created the “pinkest pink” and made it available for anyone to use … except Kapoor. Purchasers were obliged to agree to a statement that read: “By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this paint will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.” Like I said. Art feuds. 18. A Spiteful Christmas Display When you're on the front lines in the War on Christmas... 19. The Hollensbury Spite House Constructed in 1830, what’s now known as the Hollensbury Spite House is just 7 feet wide and contains 350 square feet in its two stories, or “about as much space as a large outdoor billboard,” according to the Washington Post. I haven't seen this particular building, but 350 square feet in Alexandria? It's probably worth about 3 million dollars. 22. Castle of Spite For when you're extremely wealthy AND hostile. Anyway, most of these are interesting for one reason or another -- family drama, libertarians vs. City Hall, thwarted romance... all the stuff worthy of stories. I guess that to err is human, to forgive is divine, and to create something out of spite is deeply satisfying. |
| Maybe you thought you could stop thinking about "gratitude" because Thanksgiving is over. I'm no stranger to knocking out strings of words on a given topic in a few minutes. Hell, I do it every night. This reads like that. Only, presumably, these authors are getting paid, and I'm not. Is there anything more innocuous than gratitude? Puppies, maybe? It’s one of the few values endorsed by solemn religious leaders and vapid lifestyle gurus alike. I'm going to start using the phrase "weaponized adjectives" to describe this sort of blatant editorializing. Unlike other virtues, which require going against instinct (e.g., you feel afraid, but decide to act with courage anyway), with gratitude, you simply lean into it; something good happens, you feel good, and you need only recognize that warm and fuzzy sensation. No, if something good happens, I wait for the other shoe to drop. Yet there’s more to gratitude than commonly countenanced — higher and harder shades of it to reach for beyond its elementary-level start. “Advanced” gratitude retains delight in someone’s admirable qualities and small acts of service . . . even after the novel and noticeable becomes the ordinary and expected. If you say so. If elementary gratitude is instinctual; advanced gratitude is effortful. Whereas one is merely felt, the other is expressed. Some people say that we only appreciate the things that we have to work for. I happen to disagree. I appreciate more the things that are handed to me, because they're so hard to replace. If, in the kindergarten class of gratitude, the warm fuzzies of thankfulness are for the heart-lightening benefit of the individual alone, in post-graduate gratitude, they are used as a spur towards being better, doing better, giving back. And that's fine, but it doesn't go far enough. The next level, as far as I'm concerned at least, is being grateful not just for the good things that happen, but for the shitty things. I'll call this "transcendent" gratitude, so I can weaponize that adjective, and because that's the only thing I can think of beyond "advanced" in the limited time I have to do this entry. Say a tree falls on your house. That sucks, right? Especially if you're in it at the time. But if you survive, transcendent gratitude is being thankful for the opportunity to step outside your comfort zone, learn new things, figure out how to make an insurance claim, navigate the emergency room for the concussion it gave you, and how to get someone to fix it as quickly as possible -- all valuable life experiences. Or you loan a friend $5000. She doesn't pay it back. You should be grateful for that life lesson: don't lend money to friends -- or pick better friends -- or never trust her again. Or, in my case, all three. Or your car breaks down on US 50 in Nevada, with no cell service, 110F+ temperatures, and no help within 200 miles. Be grateful for the opportunity to practice all the skills you've prepared for just such an occasion. Now. I'm not saying I practice transcendental gratitude, at least not on a regular basis. Frankly, I'd rather give up and bitch about it. But bad shit happens, inevitably, and you can either bitch about it and give up, or be grateful for the learning experience. And see? I can knock out a monologue about gratitude in less than a half hour, too. |
| Yesterday, I managed to score a vaccine booster on a walk-in. Consequently, my arm is sore and I don't much feel like typing. So of course this one comes up at random. Now, I could cheat and just link to something fluffy instead, but no, I'll just present the link and try to keep my comments short. Oh, I don't know, I thought the chemistry between Kirk and Picard in that movie was... oh, you mean like the demographic concept. Never mind. The discovery that you can make money marketing merchandise to teen-agers dates from the early nineteen-forties, which is also when the term “youth culture” first appeared in print. There was a reason that those things happened when they did: high school. Back in 1910, most young people worked; only fourteen per cent of fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds were still in school. In 1940, though, that proportion was seventy-three per cent. A social space had opened up between dependency and adulthood, and a new demographic was born: “youth.” Contrary to The New Yorker's usual meandering style, the lede is actually useful and relevant. I think some people might be under the impression that high school has always been a big thing, that the way things are now is generally the way they've always been, at least since the Industrial Revolution. Why is it relevant? Because the concept of naming generational cohorts is primarily a marketing tool. The rate of high-school attendance kept growing. By 1955, eighty-four per cent of high-school-age Americans were in school. (The figure for Western Europe was sixteen per cent.) Then, between 1956 and 1969, college enrollment in the United States more than doubled, and “youth” grew from a four-year demographic to an eight-year one. Incidentally, a part of me rebels against the categorization of teenagers as "young adults" (again, for the purpose of marketing). I see "young adult," and I think very late teens, early 20s. But apparently they mean like 13 year olds. This only leads to more confusion. But I digress. To keep this market churning, and to give the consulting industry something to sell to firms trying to understand (i.e., increase the productivity of) their younger workers, we have invented a concept that allows “youth culture” to be redefined periodically. This is the concept of the generation. Like I said. And I've been trying to say stuff like this for years, to not much effect, mostly because I don't have the bones to express it properly. That's why TNY writers get paid and I don't, I guess. The new idea was that people born within a given period, usually thirty years, belong to a single generation. There is no sound basis in biology or anything else for this claim, but it gave European scientists and intellectuals a way to make sense of something they were obsessed with, social and cultural change. What causes change? Can we predict it? Can we prevent it? Maybe the reason societies change is that people change, every thirty years. Change, as I've noted, is generally a continuum. Though of course that continuum is punctuated by defining events. The theory also seems to require that a person born in 1965, the first year of Generation X, must have different values, tastes, and life experiences from a person born in 1964, the last year of the baby-boom generation (1946-64). Which I've been freakin' saying. Anyway, the article is long but worth a read if you care about this sort of thing. I try not to, but it's hard when all I see around me are assumptions made based on highly questionable generational stereotypes. Fortunately, as a Gen-Xer, I can turn to the rallying cry of my cohort: "Meh. Whatever." |
| I just wanted to share this link at some point, and today's the day it came up. I've always loved astronomy, and I found this informative. Also, it's timely right now, because there's a comet that you might consider viewing, if you don't mind the cold. How to Find the Best Stuff in the Night Sky From Absolutely Anywhere A beginner’s guide to admiring stars, planets, and satellites—no mountaintop or fancy gear required. My utter hatred of being cold is one thing that kept me from pursuing professional astronomy. As you'll see in this article, sky watching is better when you're cold, dry, and high up. I can handle dry and elevated. Cold repels me. There was a night many years ago when most of the planets were visible in just one quadrant of the sky. Just after sunset, one could view (if I recall correctly) every classical planet except Mars, between the horizon and the zenith. We went up to the Blue Ridge to get a nice view. And we froze our asses off, but got to see Jupiter's moons and Saturn's rings through a telescope. You’ll also want to figure out what’s going on with the lunar cycle, because the moon can either improve or obscure your view, depending on what you want to see. If you’re looking for the Milky Way, for instance, or faint, distant objects, your best bet is to wait for a moonless night. If you’re planning to look for something on the moon itself, though, you probably want to do so when it’s full. I'm going to quibble a bit about this one. When the moon is full, some of the central features can get washed out, because they're not casting shadows. It's like high noon here on Earth -- short shadows, which can make it difficult to see contours. There's a lot to see when the moon is in an intermediate phase, especially around the terminator. Without a telescope, the lunar terminator looks like a smooth curve (or line if it happens to be a half-moon). Thorough even binoculars, though, you start to make out details: some crater floors darken before the rims, and mountain tops can be visible even on the dark side. This page explains it better, and with helpful images.I don't really need to quote more of the article; it really is a good beginner's guide if you're even slightly interested in astronomy. Click through to the links for more information; there are apps there that can really help in locating night sky objects. I once spent a week up in the Rockies (cold, dry, high) with a professional astronomer, and we saw some really cool stuff. That was expensive, but as the article notes, you don't have to travel to get some nice views. One more personal note: when the eye doctor was talking about new lenses for my eyes (actual eye lenses, not glasses), he said something like, "...and with this kind, you can change focus to near or far, but the downside is that small lights can get halos around them. This isn't usually a problem unless your hobby is astronomy." Me: "Well, actually..." Still, the advantages of these lenses outweigh the disadvantages. I'll still probably be able to see stars and planets better than I do right now (I see blurry fireworks instead of lights). But it's likely my stargazing days are behind me. That's okay; I've seen what I can see. The only thing left on my list is viewing the planet Mercury. I have never seen it and known it for sure. It's possible that I mistook it for a star, as it tends to be near the horizon and small. The other visible planets are really obvious, once you know what you're looking for. So with this, it's my hope that more people will look up at night sometimes. There really is nothing else like it. |
| Long-ish article today, but I don't have a lot of commentary on it. Fun fact I just learned recently: "Tycoon" is a word of Japanese origin. I'm sure that was common knowledge, but I didn't know it until a week or so ago. Anyway, the article. When standing before one of these towering creatures, such as the T. rex skeleton named Sue in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, it is surprisingly difficult to distinguish which features are ancient and which ones are modern, where prehistory ends and imagination begins. It is impossible for readers of Jim Butcher to do so without shouting "Polka will never die!" If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the Dresden Files. The first dinosaur discoveries consisted of only a few bones and a handful of teeth. Before long, more complete skeletons began to be found, but the individual pieces were usually scattered about in a jumbled mess of material. My hypothesis, which is mine, is that dragons are dinosaurs. What I mean by that is, long ago, people stumbled upon dinosaur bones and, having no concept of deep time or evolution, concluded that they must be from some enormous living beast. Hence, dragons. The story scientists composed from similar bones may be more factual, but dragons are a part of the collective consciousness too. And that, I think, is part of what the article is about. I'm not going to quote much more from it, and I don't fully agree with it, but I found it to be a fascinating way to look at science, discovery, capitalism, and the stories we tell ourselves. |
| Another Cracked link today (I feel the need to warn people because I've heard reports that the site acts weirdly with some browsers, but I haven't experienced such a thing myself). Anyway, the topic for today is conspiracy "theories." I put "theories" in quotes because what most people think a theory is, isn't actually a theory. The common definition can be summed up as "guess." The scientific definition is a body of research that holds together and can be used to make predictions. The theory of gravity, for example, is remarkably good at predicting orbits and trajectories. Quantum theory is even more accurate. Neither of these are guesses; they're the result of centuries (gravity) or at least decades (quantum) of study, research, and experimentation. But for the sake of my failing eyesight, I'll leave off the quotes from now on. We all know what a conspiracy theory is. I just wanted to emphasize that not a single one of them is a true theory in the scientific sense. Now, I love hearing a good conspiracy theory. Who wouldn't want to hear about a secret Pentagon spaceship piloted exclusively by Sasquatches? (Short answer: they're leaving Earth because humans invented camera phones.) Why would they do that when they already have the ability to appear horribly blurred in every photo taken of them? And yet, I have a real problem with conspiracy theorists. For me, it’s sorta like Star Trek: love the stories, can’t stand the fan club. I get this. And just like any form of entertainment, I’ve noticed quite a few plot holes, and I have some questions. Because this is Cracked, get ready for a countdown. 8. “Just … Why?” Well, let’s throw that question right back at the conspiracy theorists: Why? What reasons do you have to believe these things? The best scientists are a lot like children (only better educated and slightly less prone to painting the walls with pasta): they never stop asking "Why?" A parent might stop the endless barrage of whys by saying something like, "Because that's just the way it is." Scientists, if they have parents, don't listen to that answer. Conspiracy theorists, however, have already decided the way things are and try to fit everything else to that. Accepting the ugly truth might go against their most deep-seated beliefs, so instead they latch on to a comfortable lie. And I get this, too. I don't think many people are entirely immune to it. For instance, I insist that I'm single because no one has figured out just how awesome I am, instead of me being fat, ugly, and sarcastic. 7. “Is This About You Being Right, Or Do You Just Wanna Make Other People Appear Wrong?” The further down the internet rabbit hole these people go, the more they uncover supposedly privileged information the infamous “they” don’t want anyone to know about, and that leads them to believe that they now know more than even the world’s foremost experts on the subject. But worse than that, it also makes them cocky enough to pick a fight with everyone they encounter online. And now, we witness the Dunning-Kruger Effect evolving into a Debate-Me-Bro. One of the core problems resulting from worldwide communication is that it's not as important to stand out in your own community, school, team, whatever -- you are now competing for attention with 7,899,999,999 other people (approximately). People want -- no, need -- to feel special. One way to do this in a crowded world is to decide you've figured out The Answer to something. Usually, you're wrong, but you'll never admit it. And no, I'm not immune to this fallacy, either. 6. “OK … What Are You Selling?” There is now a fourth reason conspiracy theories are so prevalent lately: It’s become a hugely profitable business model. The doomsayers used to be relegated to dark web bulletin boards and self-published manifestos, but now many of them have gone mainstream and built their own media empires. If it feels like conspiracy theories are getting crazier every day, it’s because they’re designed that way for a reason. Outrageous, inflammatory rhetoric generates clicks, and clicks boost ad revenue. Then the algorithms kick in and start suggesting similar content. Lather, rinse, repeat, and don’t forget to like, comment, share, subscribe, check out our Patreon, and buy our merch! Even a cynic like me often falls into the trap of thinking that people are usually sincere with their statements. We forget that, sometimes, people are only sincere about one thing: wanting money. This is kind of related to #7 above, the "standing out" part. 5. “You’ve Never Been In A Group Project, Have You?” Every human being is fallible, and if you think you’re an exception to that rule … there’s your flaw. Regardless of your talent, your training, or your confidence, there is always a chance you could mess something up. When multiple people work together, one person’s strengths might balance out some of the others' weaknesses, but everyone involved brings with them their own unique potential to completely screw the pooch. That is true of any group project, be it in a classroom or the workplace, and if the tiniest speck of shit hits the fan, people will hear about it … but that strangely never seems to happen in a conspiracy theory, does it? This brings up another issue that I don't think the writer covered. It's especially relevant to government conspiracy theories. The same people who are absolutely certain, in their own minds, that the government is capable of engineering vast projects (like, say, faking the moon landing) in near-total secrecy hold, simultaneously, the belief that everyone in the government is absolutely incompetent. This is the pinnacle of cognitive dissonance. 4. “Couldn’t They Accomplish The Same Goal Without Being So Cartoonishly Evil?” No one is gonna give a shit unless the stakes are ludicrously high and there are tons of A-list celebrities involved. If you were to tell people that there’s a cabal of Satanic child sex traffickers harvesting their victims’ adrenal glands to make psychedelic drugs, you’d get laughed out of that pitch meeting. But if you say Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey are attached to the project, that will get you some press. That’s why theories like QAnon make no damn sense. They wouldn’t have to go to that much trouble. If Oprah really was a Satanist, she wouldn’t need to hide it. She could just select The Necronomicon for her book club, and two weeks later soccer moms everywhere would be sacrificing virgins. I wrote a short story a while back about the scary influence Oprah has (or at least had; I don't keep up with that stuff). This is not a conspiracy theory; this is based on observational evidence. So yeah, drop in a celebrity or two and your idiotic ideas get spread around more widely. 3. “Does That Technology Even Exist?” One of the weirdest tropes in conspiracy theories is when they involve the use of outrageous technology that even Roland Emmerich would think is lazy writing, and that guy’s next movie is about the moon falling. I think that movie's already out by now. I wouldn't know. It's just about the stupidest thing involving the moon since the fake landing conspiracy theory. Speaking of which, the technology needed to fake that shit in 1969 would have been way more expensive and difficult to achieve than actually, you know, sending dudes to the moon. Not to mention the number of people involved; see above. 2. “How Do You Make A Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwich?” ... actually, I'm afraid you're going to have to go to the link to read this one. It will make sense, I promise. 1. “What Happens If You’re Right?” The one thing that all great conspiracy theories have in common is they all seem to be perpetually stuck in the middle act of the movie. The bad guys and their motivations have been established. We sorta have an idea of the magnitude of the threat we’re facing. If the story even has a hero, they're really not doing a great job saving the day so far. But let’s just assume the theories are correct and cut straight to the climactic showdown. Who do you think is gonna win? Also this. Taking the government conspiracy theories as an example, if you're right and they're secretly engaging in mind-control, what exactly do you think is going to happen? Hell, if you're right, and you're spreading such a conspiracy, you've already disappeared, quietly, and they've put a robot or clone in your place to walk back the shit you said. As the old saying goes, perhaps the greatest conspiracy is there is no conspiracy. That said, there have definitely been conspiracies. Like Tuskegee or the Roswell Incident - which was a cover-up, though not for space aliens but for secret US technology. So yes, sometimes there really is a conspiracy.But that doesn't mean that your pet theory holds any water. Or maybe -- just maybe -- They seed these conspiracy theories themselves to hide the real truth, which is that we're being farmed by lizard people from Hollow Earth. If you throw enough falsehoods out there, the truth will be concealed like a wolf wearing wool.. |
| I'm more than a little hung over right now, so I'm not going to have much commentary on this article. But read it anyway. It's a Cracked link, and I think it says a lot about the state of internet media right now that a dick joke site that evolved out of a juvenile magazine gets shit more right than more "serious" publications. "But Waltz, you're all about science! How can you post such a thing?" Well, like I said, it's worth reading. No one disbelieves science, but we’re all selective in our embrace of it. I “believe” in science, but I still consume alcohol and junk food, which science says are terrible for me. Doing something that's objectively bad for you isn't the same thing as doing things that are objectively bad for other people. For example, I don't care if you smoke. But lots of people care if you smoke in a crowded restaurant. Some “believers” in science believe in rather unscientific propositions, from the imminent triumph of transhumanism to Elon Musk not being full of shit. Transhumanism (feel free to look it up; I can't be arsed right now) is fantasy couched in scientific terms. Kind of like scientology. Here's the money shot, though: Science—actual science—isn’t something you believe in. Inertia and friction don’t need your belief to keep existing. A scientific theory, tested by an experiment, will either produce or fail to produce evidence, regardless of what you hope or believe will happen. If you actually believe in science, you should welcome reasonable questions and criticism and skepticism, because that’s how science moves forward. As I've noted before, science is often wrong. That's part of the deal. It's a feature, not a bug. Unlike with religion, you don't get "infallible" diktats intoned from on high; all you get is support or negation of your hypothesis. I'm okay with that. Everyone should be okay with that, but I get that some people aren't, and they want certainty. But there's no such thing as certainty. In the early days of COVID we were told not to wear masks. I gotta call this one out because a lot of the moron brigade loves to trot this out whenever the subject comes up. Yes, they told us not to wear masks. This wasn't because masks are ineffective, though (they are not). It was not because "science" said it wasn't transmissible by aerosol (it did not). It was because there weren't enough masks. It wasn't a scientific decision but a pragmatic one. Remember how people hoarded toilet paper back then? Imagine how much worse it would be with a run on something that people generally didn't use at the time. You have to take human stupidity and greed into account, or things get even worse. There’s a tendency to let “belief” in science slide into scientism, the idea that the scientific lens is always the best way of looking at the world and that scientists could, in theory, solve all of our political and ethical problems if we just got those dumb politicians and philosophers out of the way. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but philosophy and science are entirely separate ways to approach knowledge. And yet, philosophy has to be grounded in science... and science must be guided by philosophy. As an example of the latter, think of animal testing. We consider many forms of research on animals to be immoral. But that's a philosophical matter. Science itself is not moral, immoral, or amoral. It's also not a collection of facts; rather, it's an approach. I watched a thoroughly mediocre science fiction show on Amazon a while back. As part of the plot, a journalist and a scientist walk into a bar (yes, that could be a setup for a joke). The bar is having Trivia Night. The scientist is portrayed as absolutely confident that he will win the trivia contest, and he and the journalist bet each other. Thing is, scientists are 1) not automatically more intelligent than anyone else; 2) generally focused on one or two narrow fields of study and 3) entirely too immersed in said study to know, or care, who played Steve on Soaps of our Lives or who was the second-string wide receiver for the Raiders in 1997. The show's writers fell into a common trap: conflating intelligence with knowledge. All else being equal, I'd put all the money on the journalist in a trivia contest against a scientist. At best, that leads to bizarre assumptions about how knowledge works, like how the media loved to have Stephen Hawking—a theoretical physicist and cosmologist—issue ominous warnings about the threat of AI, aliens, and imminent human extinction. Hawking has been an ex-Hawking for a while now, and yet I still see articles about his prognostications. Yes, he was brilliant. No, none of his "warnings" should carry any more weight than that of your average science fiction writer. Even the smartest people in the world have their biases. People have to be engaged on an emotional level, regardless of how unpleasant that task can be, because otherwise we’re ignoring how they reached this point. To me, that's not just unpleasant, but absolutely disgusting. Still, on a basic level, I understand that it's impossible to reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. Okay, I guess I had more commentary on the article than I expected, hangover or not. Believe it or not, there's a lot more I'd like to say. I'm not going to, though. In case it's not obvious, however, I'm not saying "ignore science." Far from it. Neither is the writer. But I think we all need to watch the movie on a wider screen. |
| Well, look at that. Two touchy subjects in as many days. Before I get started, though, a brief rant: I just had to delete no fewer than 10 emails with a subject line beginning: "Tis the season..." This has got to stop. Yes, I let some businesses send me email because I actually, you know, do business with them. This might change if they can't come up with a more creative way to try to suck money out of people than overused, trite, cliché and lazy lines from annoying earworm Christmas carols. So it looks like I'm going to have to set up a filter like I did with Mother's Day: Anything with that subject goes directly to trash, unread and unnoticed. Sick of this shit. Anyway... I describe it as "touchy" because, often, population issues can be racist dogwhistles. As in "OMG not enough white people are having kids." I'm just going to state up front here that this is not how I'm using it, as if that's something I'd have to state. The U.S. fertility rate hit a record low in 2020 — just as it did in 2019, and 2018. Although the COVID-19 pandemic seems to have accelerated this decline, the drop has been underway for years. I gotta say, I was bracing myself for simpering "lockdown baby boom" stories, but as usual with my cynicism, I'm just glad I was wrong about that. When the fertility rate falls below replacement level, the population grows older and shrinks, which can slow economic growth and strain government budgets. Today’s babies are tomorrow’s workers and taxpayers: They’ll not only staff the hospitals and nursing homes we’ll use in old age but also sustain the economy by funding our pensions when we retire, paying the taxes that finance Social Security, Medicare, and many other government programs we’ll rely on, and buying the homes and stocks we invested in to build our savings. Maybe stop thinking about it as a fertility problem and start retooling the economy so it's not a fucking Ponzi scheme? In fact, low fertility poses some advantages: easing ecological pressures, preventing overcrowding and reducing the infrastructure costs that come with a growing population. Our economy isn't currently built to allow for a decrease in population. It's set up so that there must always be more and more people. And yet, this is unsustainable; the population cannot grow infinitely. Nor, as the article goes on to point out, is a continuous decrease in population sustainable in the long run. Averaging out to a steady state, that is, one where births and deaths are roughly equal, would be ideal... though we'd argue endlessly over where that level should be. Personally, I'd put it at maybe half of the current 8 billion (the article is mainly about US population, but I tend to take a more global perspective). There were fewer humans than that on Earth when I was born. But others will disagree with the number. So be it. Every time I mention that the population could be lower, though (mostly because every single environmental problem we face would be at least partly improved if there were fewer people), I get, "So why don't you start by killing yourself?" I wish I could understand the mindset behind that. But I don't. I'm not talking about removing people who are already here; I'm talking about not bringing more people into an overcrowded, overheated world. I mean, I understand that someone would want me gone, but for that reason? I simply don't get it. Later in the article, they talk about some ways to reduce the economic impact from having a smaller population. Then: Taken together, these findings suggest that we could ease the problems of a low-fertility society if we’re willing to invest in children’s education and better support women in the workforce. Welp, we're boned, in that case. Others point out that the problems of low fertility may get thornier when the overall size of the population begins to shrink. “What happens to mortgages in a country where real estate depreciates like a used car because the population is falling and we need fewer and fewer houses all the time? We’re totally unprepared for that,” said Lyman Stone, a demographer and research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, a conservative-leaning think tank. Oh no! The price of housing may decline! More people might actually be able to afford to have a place to live! Homelessness might decrease! The horror!!! And countries like the U.S., Canada and Australia rely on net immigration as well — and could probably continue doing so for decades if they choose to embrace it. Here's the thing about immigration (and now I'm shifting focus back to the US alone): When a kid is born, they are completely useless for about 20 years, sucking up resources while contributing nothing. Oh, sure, to the parents they're precious (sometimes), though it's not like the old days when you could put 'em to work on the farm. But from society's perspective, you invest in them for 20 years in the hope that they'll eventually become "productive." And sometimes they don't. An adult immigrant, however, can hit the ground running and contribute to the economy right away. To me the choice is clear: immigration is preferable from an economic standpoint. The only way it wouldn't be is if you're concerned about race or some nebulously-defined "culture" (In America? Come on) that's going to change over time anyway. |
| It's December now (ugh) and my participation in 30DBC last month gave me a chance to restock my Blog Fodder folder. I've got enough now for this month, and then some... assuming I'm able to blog every day this month. If I can just make it to the 13th, that will be two years of blogging every day. As my first surgery isn't until the 16th, that should be possible, though my vision has deteriorated to the point where it's hard to see what I'm typing. So if I do make it, it is likely that there will be more typos than usual. For now, though, randomly picked from the Fodder Folder, a rare (for me) hot-button issue to kick off the month: Joey Holz recalled first hearing complaints about a labor shortage last year when he called to donate convalescent plasma at a clinic near Fort Myers, Florida. Okay, I know what plasma is (it's not the same thing as the plasma I talked about a few days ago in "Life, The Universe, and Everything" ), but "convalescent plasma" is new to me. Apparently it's used as treatment for the 'rona -- blood plasma from people who survived their encounter with the virus. I mean, I knew they were using antibody treatments, but that's the first time I encountered that particular phrase. Great; I love learning new things, even though it turns out that does jack shit .However, that really has nothing to do with the story. Have the writers at Business Insider been taking lessons from The New Yorker? "The guy went on this rant about how he can't find help and he can't keep anybody in his medical facility because they all quit over the stimulus checks," Holz told Insider. "And I'm like, 'Your medical professionals quit over $1,200 checks? That's weird.'" As a former business owner, I would like to cordially invite any business owner to try to live off of stimulus checks and see if it makes you want to never work again. Hell, I'll even make it "stimulus checks plus your lowest-paid former worker's unemployment benefits." Over the next several months, the 37-year-old watched as a growing chorus of businesses said they couldn't find anyone to hire because of government stimulus money. I'm reminded of an old proverb: If you run into an asshole, you've run into an asshole. If everyone you run into is an asshole, you're the asshole. These business owners are assholes. He said he found it hard to believe that government money was keeping people out of the labor force, especially when the end of expanded federal unemployment benefits did not seem to trigger a surge in employment. All expanded benefits ended in September, but 26 states – including Florida – ended them early in June and July. "If this extra money that everyone's supposedly living off of stopped in June and it's now September, obviously, that's not what's stopping them," he said. Yeah, I remember some of these assholes going, "Boy, when the government turns off the firehose, them workers are gonna come begging." Well, the firegardenhose is turned off, and that didn't happen. Two weeks and 28 applications later, he had just nine email responses, one follow-up phone call, and one interview with a construction company that advertised a full-time job focused on site cleanup paying $10 an hour. When I was a kid, $10 an hour was above poverty level. This was about the same time when Cokes were a quarter each. Now? Now, it's a fucking joke. But Holz said the construction company instead tried to offer Florida's minimum wage of $8.65 to start, even though the wage was scheduled to increase to $10 an hour on September 30. He added that it wanted full-time availability, while scheduling only part time until Holz gained seniority. And that's an even funnier joke. I've been seeing a lot of reports of bait-and-switch like this, too: companies advertising like $20 an hour but then after the interview you find out that it's actually like $12 until some nebulous future time when you're off probation or whatever. Maybe. If they're not lying about that, too. In a Facebook post on September 29, which went viral on Twitter and Reddit as well, Holz said, "58 applications says y'all aren't desperate for workers, you just miss your slaves." Truer words cannot be written. By the end of September, Holz had sent out 60 applications, received 16 email responses, four follow-up phone calls, and the solitary interview. There might be any number of reasons for this, and it's hardly a scientific study (despite the inclusion of pie charts). But the guy in the story understands the limitations of his "experiment:" Holz acknowledged that his results may not be representative of the larger labor challenges in the country, since his search was local and targeted the most vocal critics of stimulus spending. Honestly, I'm just surprised that an outlet like Business Insider ran an article like this one instead of kissing business owner ass. And now, of course, people are freaking out about inflation. I don't want to delve too deeply into that quagmire, because I'm not actually an economist -- and even if I were, economists can't agree on inflation policies, either. The economic system, like the weather, is inherently chaotic: unpredictable past a certain point, and subject to wild swings based on the tiniest of inputs. But I will say this: anyone who didn't expect some inflation was fooling themselves. One other thing I'll say, though. I've been waiting for this. For too long, employers have had the bulk of the power in the working world. They got to dictate working conditions, salaries, benefits... all of which have been deteriorating for some time. I've been hoping to see more bargaining power returned to the employees and potential employees, and I feel like it's finally happening. In other words... |
And so it ends.   PROMPT November 30th Wow, it's the end of the month! With Thanksgiving behind us (here in the States), and Christmas on the horizon, what, if any, are your Christmas traditions? If you have no holiday traditions, do you have any plans for this month? As we careen into December, I think it's of the utmost importance to remember the real reason for the season: Axial tilt. As the Earth orbits the Sun, the axis stays pointing in the same direction (roughly toward Polaris) (or away from it, depending on your perspective), which changes the apparent path of the Sun across the sky. In summer (assuming a location outside the Tropics), the Sun climbs higher, baking us with more direct rays for a longer stretch of time, while in winter, that bastard can barely get out of bed, and things cool down. And I'm still not sure which is worse: burning under the pitiless gaze of the accursed daystar, or freezing from its absence. Okay, I'm going to go with "freezing is worse" because I'd rather be too hot than too cold. In any case, axial tilt is the reason for the season, and, relative to the Sun, it'll be at its most tilted in about three weeks: The solstice this year (winter for me, summer for the folks hanging upside-down) will occur on December 21 at 10:59 am EST. Why it couldn't wait another minute for a nice, even 11:00 is beyond me. And now I'm tired of coddling the Down Under, so everything else here is going to be presented from an unashamed Northern Hemisphere perspective. I always celebrate that moment, because it marks the point when days begin to gradually get longer, when the light begins to conquer the dark. Not that there's anything wrong with dark, per se; it's just that, as I noted, less sunlight means lower temperatures, and fuck lower temperatures. Unfortunately, as weather tends to lag astronomy, the winter solstice isn't usually the coldest day. Obviously that's going to vary from year to year, but on average, around here, that doesn't occur until close to the end of January. Still, I'll take my victories where I can, which in this case means appreciating the solstice. And then, once I'm done appreciating the solstice, I remember that the next two months are going to be utter hell. The only month I hate worse than January is February. But at least for one moment, I can believe that, as they put it on an episode of Doctor Who, we're halfway out of the dark. As for other things in December, well, that remains to be seen. Literally. This is the month when I'm supposed to get my eyes worked on. I dread the operation, so I try to focus (pun intended) on the expected result instead. That's hard for me. I've never been one to endure temporary hardship for longer-term benefit. They do one eye, and then a week later, the other eye. Supposedly it has a solid success rate. I'm still absolutely not looking forward (pun also intended) to having them screw around with my eyeballs. Other things? In the Before Time, I used to go to California every year in December. Travel's a bitch now, though, because a lot of people are infected with weapons-grade ignorance. Perhaps I'll be able to do that again one day, but this year is not that day. Rather than inflict my presence on those who don't want me around (which as far as I can tell is everybody), a couple of years ago, I began a new tradition for myself on Christmas Day, a day which otherwise holds little significance for me: I walk over to the drafthouse cinema, get drunk, and watch a movie before staggering home. This year, I don't know if I'll be able to do that or not; my second surgery is scheduled for the 23rd. Probably I'll be able to. Unless they botch it, in which case my movie-watching days are over. Hey, it's important to expect the worst, so I can only be pleasantly surprised. For anyone else who's made it this far through 30DBC, thanks for reading. But I'm on a roll and I don't expect to stop blogging, so tune in next month for a whole lot more of the usual -- and maybe some things unusual. |
| If you don't have regrets, you're doing it wrong. PROMPT November 29th Imagine for a moment that you are near the end of your life. What do you want to have done that would make you feel satisfied? What do you mean, "imagine?" Everyone has some regrets, I think. Not necessarily the mind-consuming ones like "Oh, I shouldn't have jumped off that cliff, plunging me into a lifetime of pain," but little things, like "I really should have asked her out," or "Damn, I should have had the lasagna instead." Nothing wrong with having regrets; I just think it's counterproductive to dwell on them for too long. Like, one thing I wish I'd done when I could was see the Roger Waters version of Pink Floyd in concert (or any Pink Floyd, really). Or Led Zeppelin. Both of those eras ended when I was in high school, though, so it's not like I had a whole lot of agency in the matter. But I don't live my life thinking every day about how awesome that would have been. Besides, I have seen other performers that I like, and I'd rather remember those than the might-have-beens. But with the use of the future perfect in the prompt, I think the intent is: what do I want to do between now and my inevitable embarrassing demise that would make me feel satisfied before I kick it? Well, other than having a romantic interlude with Halle Berry, which ain't gonna happen; or maybe finding the Fountain of Youth, which is marginally more likely... really, not much. Some traveling, if things would fucking settle down. I've done much of what I'd set out to do, and I'm fine with what few regrets I have. (Occasionally you'll see me making references to having lived my life toiling in the regrettium mines of Regrettistan, but that's for humorous effect and not to be taken seriously.) So, no, I'm good. I'm pretty damn satisfied. Smug, even. Yes, I'm insufferable (you think that's bad, try having beers with me). It's not like there aren't things I still want to do, but that would be the case even if I lived until the heat death of the Universe. And no, I have no reason to believe I'm actually near the end of my life. But I have no reason not to believe it, either. |
| If you can write about something, is it really intangible? PROMPT November 28th Hopefully a little change of pace tonight. Write about something intangible: faith, magic, energy, power, or creativity. Just choose one topic, and write about it. Well, sure, I suppose it's still intangible if you can write about it. Consider a hole, for example. A hole is defined by its surroundings. You can't meaningfully point at a spot in mid-air and go, "That's a hole." It's a thing, but it's not a thing, at the same time. Thinking about it too hard makes your head hurt. I guess, though, I'm limited to one of those five topics in the prompt, which is too bad, because I've been mulling over a rant about the abstract concept known as "freedom." I guess that one can wait. So let's talk about energy. As far as I can tell, energy has two distinct, separate definitions: 1) The capacity to do work; 2) The capacity to do work. The first definition is physical. That is, it comes from physics. "Work," in this context, is force exerted over some distance. (Energy is also equivalent to mass, per Einstein's well-known formula). For example, the force required to move your car over a flat surface for, say, a mile, can be computed, and that force is (usually) supplied by energy produced by the car's engine, be it internal combustion or electric. Unless said engine isn't working, in which case it's supplied by your muscles and cuss words. This kind of energy has several modes, such as: kinetic, potential, thermal, chemical, nuclear, etc. The important thing to know about energy is that it requires a gradient in order to perform the work. Solar energy works because the Earth's surface is cooler than that of the sun. Well, usually; may not apply in Phoenix in July. Even though it can be measured and quantified, it's still intangible. A hydroelectric dam doesn't only have water, fish, and dead mobsters behind it; it also stores potential energy, though it's not like you can see or touch such energy. When the water passes through a turbine, it does work on the turbine, which converts (some of) that potential energy, by means of kinetic energy, into electrical energy. The second definition is physical. In this case, by "physical," I mean related to your body. Isn't English wonderful? And "work," in this case, is what one commonly gets paid to do (or receive some other form of compensation for), such as digging a ditch, writing an essay, or fixing the turbine in a hydroelectric plant. At times, you may get the feeling of having low energy, and at these times, you just wanna lie in bed and not do any work. In reality, your body continues to chug along, using its (mostly) chemical energy (first definition) to do fun things like keep your organs functioning. When that process stops, it's called "death," and at times of low energy that can look pretty good -- fortunately, though, at those same times, we lack the energy to stop our energy. Confusingly, you also don't want to play at such times -- "play" being the vernacular opposite of "work." This unfortunately does not have a corresponding definition in physics. There's an old, really bad joke, which was featured (spoiler alert) in Ghostbusters:Afterlife: "Why should you never trust atoms? Because they make up everything." Now, I've never let the facts get in the way of a good joke -- or a bad one (especially a bad one). But as the joke was told by a certified nerd, I winced. Not because the joke was so bad (it was) or because it is so old (it is), but because a nerd should know better. Atoms don't make up everything. The sun, for example, doesn't have many atoms in it. It's so hot that the electrons are stripped from the nuclei, and what you have is a bunch of free-floating protons/neutrons and electrons. And an "atom" is defined as nucleus plus electrons. Physicists call this phase of matter a "plasma." As the Sun contains the vast majority of the mass in the Solar System (according to Wiki, 99.86% ), atoms don't make up everything.Also, dark matter isn't atoms (as far as we know), and it makes up something like 85% of the matter in the universe. But okay, here on Earth, the vast majority of matter is composed of atoms. (If it seems like I'm using "matter" and "mass" interchangeably, it's because I am, because I can.) Still, going back to that equation I mentioned earlier, all of those (roughly) 1.3*1050 atoms can, in theory, be converted to an unimaginably large amount of energy. Doing so, however, would ruin your day. Hell, they'd probably see the explosion in the Andromeda Galaxy oh, two and a half million years or so from now. The point being that atoms don't make up everything -- but energy does. So much for being intangible, I guess. |
| Well, this one has all the potential for disaster. PROMPT November 27th Things have progressed well in your town/city with the Pandemic. So well that you've been allowed to return to the office instead of working from home. Your co-worker Karly, is sneezing and coughing and refuses to wear a mask. Who do you call, or do you let it slide. Tell us why you would act that way. I'm going to weasel out of this with "insufficient data." Well, not really. This is already a highly hypothetical situation, as I haven't worked in an office in over ten years (I worked from a home office for a while before I retired). Enhancing the hypotheticalness of it is the idea that I would be "allowed" to return to the office. No, given a choice, I'd keep working from home. If we're talking about my actual career here, and not something fictional (to continue the hypotheticality), there's no reason for me to be in an office 95% of the time. I know some people who would rather work in an office than from home, and that's fine too, but we're talking about Me here. Karly's an asshole. But my response depends on a lot of factors unclear from the prompt. Am I still in charge? Probably not, if I'm not the one making the decision about working from home or in an office. Because if I were in charge, I'd fire her ass on the spot. (I live in a state where I can do that). Since I'm not in charge, though, there is a lot of missing information here. 1) Who else is in the office? If it's just me, I wouldn't be overly concerned about it. Assuming it's the 'rona and also assuming other things conforming to reality, being vaccinated means my chance of severe problems is probably less than the chance of me getting into an accident on the commute. Therefore, it's other people I'd be concerned about. And clients. 2) What is the company policy for shit like this? I'd want to follow that. If that means being a snitch, I'll be a snitch. 3) Is KarenKarly above, below, or equal to me in the corporate structure? It matters. Most likely, I'd just want to go back to working from home. It's my preference anyway. People are fucking crazy with this stuff these days, and they've turned it into a political issue, which I prefer to stay away from (most of the time). I've bitched about it before in here, and I see no need to repeat it, or go off on a tangent about it. I will say this, though: I definitely think less of people who are inconsiderate of others. I say that as someone who generally doesn't give a shit about too many other people, but I still don't do stuff that actively endangers them. It's like how I live an alcohol-positive lifestyle, but I'm very, very careful not to drive drunk. Drinking only affects me. Driving drunk can cock up someone else's day. I treat the unmasked and unvaccinated like a smoker in a restaurant. That shit used to be acceptable; it no longer is, because of studies about the effects of second-hand smoke. Same thing. Actually, I'd rather be around second-hand smoke; it's safer. Though I do understand there are legitimate reasons to not get vaccinated; "I don't wanna" isn't one, and neither is "it's against my religion." And that's all I'm going to say about it. Today. |
| Well, its been a while since I've done a free-form entry. PROMPT November 26th Today is Thanksgiving here in the United States. I know this is the prompt for tomorrow, but I'm going to give you something to be thankful for. The prompt for tonight is to be yourself. Write whatever is on your mind. Provide your own prompt, so-to-speak. I look forward to reading your posts! I woke up Thanksgiving morning to find a fraud alert on my principal credit card. Apparently someone had gotten my digits and paid their utility bill, signed up for Apple Pay (I'm an Android user), and racked up hundreds of dollars in charges at Carhartt's and some place called Ice Bling (which cracked me up). All in the space of less than 24 hours. Nothing to be thankful for, right? Well... This is why I use a credit card and not a debit card. Quick call to the issuing bank, five-minute hold time -- and not a single one of those charges are my responsibility. Debit cards just don't provide the same level of protection (if there are any out there that do, I'm not aware of them). And you might not think it'll happen to you, but it will, eventually -- someone will skim off a gas pump (not what happened here because I don't use that card for gas and anyway, I haven't bought any since July), or a waiter will help themselves to an extra tip, or there's a website breach somewhere. Doesn't matter how. So this is where my optimistic cynicism comes in: I take precautions, but I also expect them to fail at some point, so I have plans for when that happens. There is a measure of inconvenience involved. It won't be until sometime next week before I get the new card, with a new account number and whatnot, in the mail, so I get to go the entirety of Buy Shit Weekend without my main credit card. Whatever; I don't buy much anyway, and besides, I have other credit cards for precisely this reason (and also because some of them offer extra rewards for certain types of purchases). I will also have to change all of the accounts that autodraw from it, like Uber and Netflix. Pain in the ass, but it's not like I had anything else planned for the weekend. "But Waltz, don't you pay more in interest charges than you get in cash back?" Well, no, see, if you treat your credit card like a debit card, never spending more than you have cash to cover it, and pay the balance in full every month, turns out they don't charge interest. I haven't paid a penny in interest or fees on a credit card in decades; rather, they pay me. I mentioned sometime last month how I feel about thieves. They all suck (and that includes the banks with the interest some of them charge people who don't pay their balances in full). And in this case, who eats the fraudulent charges? The issuing bank or the CC company, I don't remember which. They expect this to happen, so they charge merchants accordingly. In the end we all pay, so yeah, fuck that thief, but it doesn't directly affect me. So all in all, nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Therefore, don't mistake this for a plea for sympathy or a complaint; it's just that nothing else of note happened yesterday and I thought I'd point out exactly why credit cards are better than debit cards, if they're used properly. One other thing I did yesterday was go see a movie, as I'd planned. So here's a review.   One-Sentence Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Although this movie won't make a lot of sense if you're not a fan of the original Ghostbusters, I think the three people who aren't won't bother with this one, anyway; and while I'm glad I saw it in the theater and parts of it are a lot of fun, the movie suffers from several missteps in pacing and editing, with some real head-scratcher shortcuts. Rating: 3/5 |
| I have to admit I've been dreading this one all month. PROMPT November 25th We all have something to be thankful about. In the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving today. Tell us what you are most thankful for. It's not that I'm not thankful. It's that I have a visceral aversion to talking about it. Even right now, it's difficult. I've written and then deleted several sentences already, because none of them seemed quite right to me. And the temptation is definitely there to turn the prompt to something humorous. I'm going to go ahead and give in to that urge by linking to a special Thanksgiving poem I wrote a few years ago:
Well. Now that that's out of the way, what am I actually most thankful for? Despite the poem's title and content, I've never been with a hooker or done blow (that's cocaine, for anyone not used to US slang). Alcohol, yes, sure, but is it really what I'm most thankful for? I'm in a pretty good place in life. Not without problems, of course; everyone has problems. But overall, things are pretty good for me right now. There's a downside to that, though, which is that it gives me no incentive to try to improve my situation further, because any move I make to improve could backfire and make things worse. So while I'm thankful for all the beneficial things in my life, that wouldn't be the top of the list. I suppose when it comes right down to it, the thing I'm most thankful for is existence itself. That may be a kind of cop-out -- after all, if I didn't exist, I wouldn't be here to experience gratitude. But I think that, by itself, is enough reason to be thankful. And it's not just my existence I'm talking about, either. No one can exist without reference to what's around them: air, water, sunlight, people, whatever. I'm not doing anything for Thanksgiving this year. Well, not exactly. It's traditional to eat turkey, so I bought a frozen turkey pie to eat later. And nothing goes with turkey as perfectly as Beaujolais Nouveau, a delicious red wine that gets shipped here every year from France just in time for Thanksgiving (so thanks for that, France). So yeah, I'm going to be a cliché single person, eat the pie, and drink the bottle of wine. Probably while watching TV shows. Some might consider that pathetic. I do not. It is far less stressful than having to deal with other people. After that, I'll go out to see a movie, because I can. Existence? Maybe I spoke too soon. I think what I should be most thankful for is not having to abide by others' schedules and preferences. I get to do exactly what I want to today, not what other people think I should do. And for that, I am truly grateful. |
| I want to say I respect all of my former teachers. PROMPT November 24th In a previous prompt, I asked you to write about your best, or favorite teacher. Tonight write about your darkest teacher. I want to say I respect all my former teachers, but I can't. I know I've spoken before about a 7th or 8th grade science teacher who was absolutely certain that it is rotation that causes gravity; that if the Earth weren't spinning, nothing would stay stuck to it. (This is a different issue from if the Earth were to suddenly stop spinning, which would be Bad for other reasons). But okay, everyone is wrong about something, and most of us refuse to consider corrections. In this particular case, I could have forgiven it if it had been, say, an English teacher. But science? No. Just to be clear, it's mass that produces gravity, not spin. I'm pretty sure she got confused from reading science fiction stories that featured spinning spaceships or whatever, which generate something akin to gravity on the inside as a result of their rotaion. Still, apart from that blind spot, I don't think she was a terrible teacher. In the same school, though, I once had a Nazi for a teacher for a whole year. Now, keep in mind that this was a very long time ago (though not quite so long ago as WWII), so I don't remember a lot of details. It's mostly just the impression that I'm left with at this much later date. She was pretty old then, so I doubt she's still around, but just in case, I'm going to call her Fraulein Braun instead of whatever her real name was. Most years, through elementary and middle school, teachers would be eager for the class to learn about something other than mainstream US Protestantism (the majority representation in a public school in rural Virginia), so anyone from a different culture was always encouraged to enlighten the class about their traditions. Like, they'd make me go up to the board and talk about Hanukkah every damn December. I got pretty good at drawing menorahs and dreidels with chalk. Anyway, other people talked about their experiences too. One guy was a Native American. Occasionally we'd have exchange students and such, from other countries. Not F. Braun, though. Such things were suppressed. The other thing I remember clearly is going to the principal's office far more often than usual that year. Which was remarkable, as the principal already had a special chair with my name on it; it just got a lot more use that year. She wasn't too overt about it, though. Couldn't be, I suppose, or she'd have been fired. It was a more subtle attitude, though it was obvious that the white kids got more of her help. I don't know if she fudged grades or anything; I didn't care as long as I didn't fail. I also can't recall a thing about what we learned that year. I think I was too busy trying to keep the teacher from remembering I existed. It's not like I hadn't already figured out that bigotry existed, by that time, so F. Braun didn't destroy my innocence or anything of that sort. It's just unfortunate that such people had positions of authority over a diverse group of students. |
| I don't really have a favorite joke. Jokes depend on circumstances, context, and audience. PROMPT November 23rd In your blog today, tell us your favorite joke. It can be long, short, it does not matter. What makes this particular joke your favorite one? C'mon, show us your sense of humor! While I don't have a favorite joke, there are a few I remember from the days, pre-internet, when it was important to remember jokes because you couldn't just look them up by Googling the punch line. Of those few, a couple stick out because they elicit the best responses from the audience. Sometimes that response is hearty laughter, and that's fine. But sometimes, it's... well, let's just say I make sure they're not holding anything lethal when I tell them. There are a few versions of this one circulating. I'm not going to look any of them up, but I'll tell it my way. Also, I'm pretty sure I've typed it in here before, but I can't be arsed to look that up, either. Likely I told it differently before. That's how jokes are supposed to work, you know; there's not one "official" version, but they mutate over time. So this scientist was working hard, researching a way to vastly extend the lifespan of marine mammals. One of the important ingredients in the serum was extract of mynah bird. One day, while at a critical stage in the serum's development, testing it on his pet dolphin, he ran out of mynah bird extract. So he set out to the pet store to replenish his supply. While he was gone, though, there was a problem at the city zoo; some of the big cats escaped. The biggest cat of all ended up wandering around until he curled up on this scientist's doorstep. So he comes home, bag full of mynah birds in hand, but stops up short when he sees the King of the Beasts, right there on his doorstep, sleeping soundly. "Oh man," the guy thinks to himself. "Oh, no, what am I going to do? I have to get inside. I'm at a critical stage in my experiments! There's no other way into the house, and I sure don't want to wake him up." So he thinks about it for a few seconds, then starts sneaking up to the sleeping beast, ninja-like, tiptoeing as quietly as he possibly could. He gets one foot over the animal when suddenly a dozen cops appear out of nowhere, guns drawn. "Freeze, mister!" they call. "You're under arrest... ...for transporting mynahs across sedate lions for immortal porpoises!" And that's why I need to make sure there's nothing sharp or heavy in the vicinity when I tell it. That's also why it's one of my favorite jokes: I get to laugh at the audience's pain, and pain makes the best humor. Regarding the title, gelotology is the study of laughter. Not to be confused with Jellotology. In fact, I don't know how to pronounce the G. I'm going to go ahead and assume it's a hard G like in gif, not a soft G like in Georgia. |
| It's been said that everyone has a superpower. PROMPT November 22nd You have found that you can do something no one else can do. What is this special talent you have? Would it be considered a 'Super Power'? If you could have chosen this special ability, what would it be? Still, the idea that "no one else can do" what you do is farfetched. The world population is damn near 8 billion now, which is a number you can hear bandied around a lot, but we don't really have a grasp on it. If you counted to 8 billion, one number per second, it would take you just over 250 years. If someone describes you as "one in a million," then they're saying that there are 8,000 people just like you in the world. Some few people manage to stand out, for whatever reason. Jeff Bezos' superpower seems to be amassing wealth (obviously, supervillains have powers too; I mean, shit, the guy even looks like Lex Luthor). But other people are almost as wealthy. I remember reading about someone who scaled Mount Everest without support oxygen. But other people can do that, too. Some free-divers can hold their breath for minutes -- again, not unique, even if there's one who holds the record. And those people who go ice swimming? Having anti-freeze in your veins is basically superhuman. It's not unreasonable to believe that we all have some extraordinary quality or ability, but it is unreasonable to expect that no one else has the same power. I had a friend who thought my superpower was punning. While true, I'm certainly not the only punster in the world, and yes, the others annoy me just as much as I annoy you. Besides, I make an effort to tone it down, like how Clark Kent has to tone down his handshakes so people don't find out he's Superman. But I think my actual superpower is drinking. Not quantity, though. A lot of other people can, and do, drink way more than I do, and I'm really not interested in competing at that, because I usually drink more for the taste than to achieve an altered state (that's just a side effect). No, my superpower is being able to drink multiple different drinks, in any order. There's a saying people have: "Beer before liquor, never been sicker; liquor before beer, you're in the clear." I had to look it up just now, though, because I can never get it right -- and the reason I can never get it right is it doesn't apply to me. It's not that I never get sick or hung over; far from it. It's because the order in which I drink things appears to be irrelevant to the intensity of the effect. Now, maybe the saying is bullshit in general; I don't know. It's possible that there's a psychosomatic effect involved, too, kind of like the placebo effect, where if you believe it, it becomes true. And as I said, I'm under no illusion that I'm the only one who can do this. But it's a useful talent, anyway. Still. If I could have chosen a superpower, it would have been total recall. Not of life experiences; there are some I'm glad to have mostly forgotten. But of books, movies, music, etc. Many's the time I've remembered how much I liked or disliked a unit of entertainment, but when pressed, I couldn't come up with a single thing to support my reaction. It would be nice to be able to say more than just "Yeah, I read that, I don't remember what happened or who the characters were, but I didn't like it." I know, I know, this is probably incompatible with the drinking thing, but as I already have two superpowers, it would be greedy of me to want three. Or, you know. Being rich would be a nice superpower to have. I solemnly swear I'd use the money better than Bezos does. |
| Music certainly has the capacity to provoke emotion in me. It's one reason I started this blog, and one interpretation of the title. PROMPT November 21st Tonight/today, listen to this beautiful song. Where does your mind go when listening to this? What emotions surface as you experience the music? If you've seen the movie (Return To Me), tell us how this affected you. Has it changed you at all? This one, however, doesn't do much for me. Oh, I don't dislike it, not at all. It's technically brilliant, and the particular version linked above is especially well done. Where does your mind go when listening to this? There was a particular musical style, popular mainly pre-Beatles, that featured the "crooner." Frank Sinatra was probably the most famous of these, but also Dean Martin, who originally sang the song in question. Maybe Sammy Davis Jr. Almost all of them ended up in Vegas. A few years ago, I got to see one of them, Wayne Newton, perform there. Amazing vocal talent. You'd never know it from listening to him speak; his ordinary voice is kind of raspy and undisciplined, but as soon as he starts to sing, it's like magic. Anyway, Tony Bennett was certainly in that illustrious company. People nowadays dismiss it as "lounge" singing, but it's a legitimate art form. So much of music these days emanates from talentless hacks whose only draw is their looks, or maybe their dance moves (not that dance doesn't require talent, but I'm talking about the music itself). Hell, even their songs are autotuned so they don't have to work on their voice, only their display. Me, I prefer to hear songs by people who can actually sing, even if they flub a note or two from time to time; that's part of the charm. Don't get me wrong. I'm not ragging on "damn kids these days and their music." Some contemporary music is remarkable. There was plenty of talentless tripe when I was growing up, too (but without autotune); it just tends to be forgotten, much as many of today's acts will be forgotten. Anyway, the point is, I believe that, as with movies, it's very helpful to have a sense of historical context when considering music, be it jazz from the WW2 era, folk from the early 20th century, disco from the 70s... or lounge singers from the 50s. What emotions surface as you experience the music? None, really. I have an appreciation for the talent involved, but the songwriting doesn't move me. I especially appreciate the spirit of international cooperation displayed; music has, as I've noted before, the capacity to bring people together. Mostly, because it's a couple of old guys who are excellent singers, it made me miss Leonard Cohen. Now that's music that affects me emotionally. If you've seen the movie (Return To Me), tell us how this affected you. Not only have I not seen that movie, I didn't even know that the movie existed until I saw this prompt. So of course I read the Cliff's Notes versionWikipedia page. There's no way to get the emotional impact of a movie from reading the plot synopsis (which I didn't mind doing, despite spoilers, because it's in a genre I tend to avoid anyway), but I was surprised to find some really big names involved. Surprised, because as you all know, I'm a movie fan, though my participation has waxed and waned over the years. I've always especially liked Minnie Driver as an actor, and of course David Duchovny is David Duchovny. No desire to see it, though. The plot seems trite and way too mushy, like many romantic comedies. To each their own, of course. Has it changed you at all? I guess you could say yes, because I now know that something (the movie) exists that I didn't know existed before a couple of hours ago. I suppose it's possible I did know the movie, but forgot about it. Still, I hope no one interprets this entry as "that song sucks and the movie looks like it sucks too." That's not my intention. It's kind of like with beer. I like certain styles of beer. Other people like certain other styles of beer. But that diversity is awesome, because it keeps beer companies in business. Likewise, different genres of movies and music keep people making movies and music; I'm always going to prefer some to others, while other people will have different preferences. What a boring world this would be if we all liked the same stuff. |
| Don't we have enough crazy conspiracy "theories" in the world already? PROMPT November 20th In your blog tonight/today, write about a story you've been told, or use a newscast story and CREATE a conspiracy theory. Tell us why you chose this subject, and of course, provide 'evidence' that your theory could be rooted in truth. Earth is flat, the moon landing never happened, JFK was assassinated so Johnson could take office, 9/11 was an inside job, the Holocaust never happened, aliens built the pyramids, and Santa Claus isn't real. While planning for the 2017 solar eclipse trip, I noticed that the path of totality crossed Yellowstone, so I got an idea. Other people start crazy just-barely-plausible rumors that get repeated as fact (such as the one where you can only balance an egg on its small end on the equinoxes -- sorry if you bought that one, but it's utter tripe), why not start one of my own? So I started putting out there that during the eclipse, the combined gravity of the sun and moon would be just enough to trigger the Yellowstone Supervolcano. I felt dirty doing it, though. It's complete nonsense couched in semi-plausible astronomical language. True, an eclipse can only happen during a conjunction, and during conjunctions (eclipse or not) ocean tides are measurably higher. But there's no way it could be strong enough to trigger a supervolcano, at least not particularly during an eclipse. The gravitational effect isn't significantly different than during any new moon (or full moon for that matter). Unfortunately (actually, fortunately), I don't have nearly enough influence online for that to catch on, and it didn't "go viral." But... that's not really a conspiracy theory; that's just more spreading bullshit, and I've since sworn off that particular method of trolling. So. This is one I've been knocking around in my head for a while: Consider PETA. Buncha loonies, trying to move the center by being so extreme that "middle ground" gives more rights to animals. But what if, at the top, they're not actually animal rights activists, but instead have a more honest motive? Like money. See, everything about PETA starts to make perfect sense if you accept that it's being directed by business interests -- specifically, companies such as soybean growers and fake fur manufacturers. If they can push veganism more into the mainstream, we'll need more soybeans, right? For tofu and other disgusting concoctions. And the fake fur thing is obvious; I mean, hardly anyone wears fur anymore anyway, but they still need to grow their business, right? I'm sure you can think of other business interests that would be aided by such a shift. Why do I choose this subject? Well, I like animals -- some of them are delicious. And PETA is, shamefully, based here in Virginia. Also it was simply the first thing that came to mind after my failed attempt at eclipse fearmongering. As for more evidence, well, consider that PETA operates an animal shelter with an abnormally high kill rate. Does that sound like an organization that truly believes animals have the same rights as humans? So there must be another agenda at work. We don't eat dogs or cats (usually), so they're not competing with the tofu industry; therefore, it doesn't matter to the organization if they're alive or not.Still, I have to admit I miss their naked protests. Those always made me hungry, and I'd have to go out and get a big thick juicy steak whenever I saw one. Anyway, I should note that I have not one single shred of evidence that business interests are behind their craziness. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least if I turned out to be right. |
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