I'm inclined to agree with Old Dog on this one, "panic" is the wrong word for it. "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" more accurately describes the government tactic in question. I still think, though, that it's more likely that the space aliens are covering up for the government than it is that the government is covering up for the space aliens. Unless the government and the space aliens are in it together! That would explain a lot of the strange things that the government keeps coming up with. I've had the feeling all along that Donald Trump is not of this world. That whole Trump-Russian thing might just be a red herring to keep us from finding out who he is really in collusion with.
Speaking of fake news, how about the big uproar over our government "losing" almost 1500 Mexican children? Turns out that the only reason they can't find them is that the guardians the government entrusted these kids to are refusing to answer their telephones, probably because they are illegals themselves. What I want to know is why the children weren't turned over to the Mexican authorities in the first place? They are here illegally, most of them through no fault of their own, and their parents are in jail because of it. You can't rightly put the kids in jail for what their parents did, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed to stay here.
I seem to remember that, some years ago, there was this little Cuban boy who's mother drowned trying to swim to shore after their refugee boat sank off the coast of Florida. The kid was rescued and he had relatives in Florida who were willing to claim him, but the courts ruled that he had to be sent back to Cuba to live with his estranged father. Why is it okay to turn an innocent child over to the evil Communists, but not okay to turn a bunch of them over to the Mexicans who, by some accounts, are really nice people who should be welcomed into our country with open arms?
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Look, up in the sky!
I don't know what to think about those UFO sightings.
I don't either but I think folks tend to stretch credibility when they discuss UFOs. Any talk of aliens is nonsense, in my opinion, but it would be cool if it was aliens as it would give us human beings a chance to get our shit together and rethink our priorities. An entity that can travel light-years across space should not be taken lightly, but I think that human beings and the planet Earth would be of minor consequence to such travelers.
The key word in UFO, I think, is unidentified, meaning that there is something flying around that we don't recognize. We know a lot about aerodynamics and power sources but we don't know everything and there is more than an even chance that some fringe scientist, somewhere, has cracked some of the mysteries of gravity and magnetism and has created something new. I think the government confiscated the papers of Nikola Tesla upon his death and maybe someone has finally made some sense of them and is out on some joyrides to rattle the yokels.
But why not make it public? Easy answer: it would be too disruptive to the economy and society. You can't tax free energy and the Buck Rogers style of personal transportation would make international borders pointless. This is all science fiction nonsense, of course, but I sometimes wonder if some of the early authors like Verne, Wells, Orwell, and Huxley weren't on to something.
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Governments thrive on panic.
I'm sorry but I don't buy that, Mr. Beagles. Panic is the last thing a government wants because they will then lose control; panic situations can lead to mob behavior, general strikes, and who knows what else. A stable society requires a balance between the government and the consent of the governed; I think that's the way it's supposed to be.
A more effective strategy for government is FUD, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Political statements these days seem to focus on the negative which keeps the citizenry in a constant state of insecurity. I'm probably wrong in my assessment but it's almost impossible to find the grains of truth hidden in all of the rhetoric, the fake news media notwithstanding.
And now it looks like the trade wars are escalating, with tariffs being imposed on our allies. I don't see how this will work to our advantage; maybe it's part of Trump's secret plan to get more trademarks for Ivanka.
I don't either but I think folks tend to stretch credibility when they discuss UFOs. Any talk of aliens is nonsense, in my opinion, but it would be cool if it was aliens as it would give us human beings a chance to get our shit together and rethink our priorities. An entity that can travel light-years across space should not be taken lightly, but I think that human beings and the planet Earth would be of minor consequence to such travelers.
The key word in UFO, I think, is unidentified, meaning that there is something flying around that we don't recognize. We know a lot about aerodynamics and power sources but we don't know everything and there is more than an even chance that some fringe scientist, somewhere, has cracked some of the mysteries of gravity and magnetism and has created something new. I think the government confiscated the papers of Nikola Tesla upon his death and maybe someone has finally made some sense of them and is out on some joyrides to rattle the yokels.
But why not make it public? Easy answer: it would be too disruptive to the economy and society. You can't tax free energy and the Buck Rogers style of personal transportation would make international borders pointless. This is all science fiction nonsense, of course, but I sometimes wonder if some of the early authors like Verne, Wells, Orwell, and Huxley weren't on to something.
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Governments thrive on panic.
I'm sorry but I don't buy that, Mr. Beagles. Panic is the last thing a government wants because they will then lose control; panic situations can lead to mob behavior, general strikes, and who knows what else. A stable society requires a balance between the government and the consent of the governed; I think that's the way it's supposed to be.
A more effective strategy for government is FUD, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Political statements these days seem to focus on the negative which keeps the citizenry in a constant state of insecurity. I'm probably wrong in my assessment but it's almost impossible to find the grains of truth hidden in all of the rhetoric, the fake news media notwithstanding.
And now it looks like the trade wars are escalating, with tariffs being imposed on our allies. I don't see how this will work to our advantage; maybe it's part of Trump's secret plan to get more trademarks for Ivanka.
give em hell Harry
Back from Missouri. Ate and drank of course and met up with some beer-drinking Champaign buddies and saw the home museum of Donald Hart Benton, and the Harry S Truman presidential library.
In the case Gorsuch ruled on the arbitrators referred to in the contract would all be selected by the company. The decision would always go the company's way.
I have to say that I wasn't aware that Memorial Day had previously been celebrated on Mondays. I guess that's because I never had a job with paid holidays until 1985. If you don't get the day off from work it's just another day. I liked holidays on Mondays because not only did you get a three day weekend, it was followed by a four day weekend, I suspect the reason they moved holidays to Mondays was because if it fell on a Tuesday or Thursday, a lot of people didn't show up for work on Mondays or Thursdays. What I don't get is MLK and Presidents Day in the middle of the winter, they should move them to July and August respectively.
How about that Harry? I guess the main things we remember about him are his holding up that Trib with the headline about Dewey defeating him, and of course, the atomic bomb. Some controversy about the latter, but I'm inclined to give him a pass, the war was still going on after all. Many more civilians were killed in fire bombings, but that atom bomb certainly got attention and ended the war quickly.
There were long halls of cases, blow ups of documents and photos of the time, memorabilia, explanatory texts, growing up a farm boy, trying to impress the upper-crust Bess, much was made of the love story between him and Bess, trying to impress her by making money so they wouldn't have to live on that farm in the middle of nowhere, but risky investments came a cropper. He was an artillery captain in WW I (not quite sure how he got that rank, he had been in the national guard and ?I guess he worked his way up), acquitted himself well and won her hand, but subsequent business ventures, most prominent among them that haberdashery, did not go well. It wasn't until the Pendergasts, needing a non-Irish, non-catholic soldier in their ranks made him a deal that his star began to rise. He kept himself fairly clean but did truck with political bosses.
He rose to senator, and when FDR looked like he wouldn't make it through his fourth term and Henry Wallace was kind of commie and kind of nuts, so Truman got to be veep and then prez. Then the atom bomb, the end of the hot war and the beginning of the cold war, Korea, the forgotten war, that McArthur affair, and then we liked Ike, and Harry was keeping a low profile in Independence Missouri until that book Plain Speaking came out and Nixon being prez people looked fondly on him.
In the case Gorsuch ruled on the arbitrators referred to in the contract would all be selected by the company. The decision would always go the company's way.
I have to say that I wasn't aware that Memorial Day had previously been celebrated on Mondays. I guess that's because I never had a job with paid holidays until 1985. If you don't get the day off from work it's just another day. I liked holidays on Mondays because not only did you get a three day weekend, it was followed by a four day weekend, I suspect the reason they moved holidays to Mondays was because if it fell on a Tuesday or Thursday, a lot of people didn't show up for work on Mondays or Thursdays. What I don't get is MLK and Presidents Day in the middle of the winter, they should move them to July and August respectively.
How about that Harry? I guess the main things we remember about him are his holding up that Trib with the headline about Dewey defeating him, and of course, the atomic bomb. Some controversy about the latter, but I'm inclined to give him a pass, the war was still going on after all. Many more civilians were killed in fire bombings, but that atom bomb certainly got attention and ended the war quickly.
There were long halls of cases, blow ups of documents and photos of the time, memorabilia, explanatory texts, growing up a farm boy, trying to impress the upper-crust Bess, much was made of the love story between him and Bess, trying to impress her by making money so they wouldn't have to live on that farm in the middle of nowhere, but risky investments came a cropper. He was an artillery captain in WW I (not quite sure how he got that rank, he had been in the national guard and ?I guess he worked his way up), acquitted himself well and won her hand, but subsequent business ventures, most prominent among them that haberdashery, did not go well. It wasn't until the Pendergasts, needing a non-Irish, non-catholic soldier in their ranks made him a deal that his star began to rise. He kept himself fairly clean but did truck with political bosses.
He rose to senator, and when FDR looked like he wouldn't make it through his fourth term and Henry Wallace was kind of commie and kind of nuts, so Truman got to be veep and then prez. Then the atom bomb, the end of the hot war and the beginning of the cold war, Korea, the forgotten war, that McArthur affair, and then we liked Ike, and Harry was keeping a low profile in Independence Missouri until that book Plain Speaking came out and Nixon being prez people looked fondly on him.
Monday, May 28, 2018
Good Guy With a Gun
I can understand the insurance industry being worried about arming teachers or other school staff. I agree that it would be better to have a police officer permanently assigned to each school. I understand that they are doing that all over the country now, calling them "resource officers". In some cases, one officer has to cover more than one school building, but that's still better than nothing. In this latest case the teacher wasn't even armed, but he was a former football player who was more than a match for the seventh grade shooter. One way or another, we need to start fighting back against those guys.
In our area, the tradition has long been that it's safe to plant your garden after Memorial Day, but that tradition dates back to when Memorial Day was always on May 30. A better rule of thumb is to plant anytime after June 1, and then be prepared to deal with frost anyway. Even if you don't get frost, anything planted before then is not likely to grow fast enough to make a difference. You can plant a row of peas, which are impervious to frost, on May 15, and then plant another row right alongside it on June 15, and they will both be mature at about the same time.
I don't know what to think about those UFO sightings. There used to be a government agency that investigated reports of UFOs, but it was discontinued back in the 50s or 60s. Some said that it was because the government didn't want people to know that there were space aliens among us because it would cause a panic, but I don't buy that. Governments thrive on panic. I think it's more likely that the space aliens are covering up for the government because they want to study us in our natural state. If people knew exactly what the government is up to, there would be a panic.
In our area, the tradition has long been that it's safe to plant your garden after Memorial Day, but that tradition dates back to when Memorial Day was always on May 30. A better rule of thumb is to plant anytime after June 1, and then be prepared to deal with frost anyway. Even if you don't get frost, anything planted before then is not likely to grow fast enough to make a difference. You can plant a row of peas, which are impervious to frost, on May 15, and then plant another row right alongside it on June 15, and they will both be mature at about the same time.
I don't know what to think about those UFO sightings. There used to be a government agency that investigated reports of UFOs, but it was discontinued back in the 50s or 60s. Some said that it was because the government didn't want people to know that there were space aliens among us because it would cause a panic, but I don't buy that. Governments thrive on panic. I think it's more likely that the space aliens are covering up for the government because they want to study us in our natural state. If people knew exactly what the government is up to, there would be a panic.
Memorial Day
Today is Memorial Day but it's only the 28th of May and not May 30th, the original day of observation. I liked it better the old way, when the week would be broken up by a day off but that's a minority opinion, I think. There's something about adjusting holidays to ensure a three day weekend that strikes me as wrong; it demeans the significance of the holiday. It's only a matter of time when Independence Day will be moved to the first Friday in July. Or if they're going to fiddle with the holidays, they should at least move them to a Thursday, like Thanksgiving, and give folks a four day weekend.
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The discussion of arbitration reminded me that it's much closer to home than I thought. You will find statements regarding arbitration buried within the many terms of service that you agree to with certain websites and software. I usually read all those agreements but not as closely as I should, but I agree to them anyway. I can't imagine any scenario where I would be involved in a legal dispute, which may be a foolish attitude on my part.
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We may never see armed teachers in the classroom after all. It's a can of worms regarding liability, and the insurance industry is in a tizzy, not really sure how to deal with the issue. Like many things, eventually it's all going to be about the money.
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And if things haven't seemed weird enough lately, there is an (alleged) leaked Pentagon report about a UFO stalking one of our aircraft carriers. But this happened almost fifteen years ago so it must not have meant much to anybody in charge. What a world, eh?
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The discussion of arbitration reminded me that it's much closer to home than I thought. You will find statements regarding arbitration buried within the many terms of service that you agree to with certain websites and software. I usually read all those agreements but not as closely as I should, but I agree to them anyway. I can't imagine any scenario where I would be involved in a legal dispute, which may be a foolish attitude on my part.
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We may never see armed teachers in the classroom after all. It's a can of worms regarding liability, and the insurance industry is in a tizzy, not really sure how to deal with the issue. Like many things, eventually it's all going to be about the money.
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And if things haven't seemed weird enough lately, there is an (alleged) leaked Pentagon report about a UFO stalking one of our aircraft carriers. But this happened almost fifteen years ago so it must not have meant much to anybody in charge. What a world, eh?
Friday, May 25, 2018
Arbitration
Arbitration doesn't necessarily have to be stacked in favor of the company, it depends how they choose the arbitrators. What we did at the paper mill was a list of arbitrators would be set up ahead of time, with half of them chosen by the company and half of them chosen by the union. Then their names would be listed in alphabetical order and, when a case came up, they would use the next arbitrator on the list. Some arbitrators had a reputation for favoring the companies, and some were known for favoring the unions, so a certain amount of luck was involved in the draw. Nevertheless, I think most of the arbitrators were pretty fair.
Arbitrators are a lot like a judges, but they can only hear cases that fall within their specialty which, in our case, was labor and contract law. Each side presents their case, witnesses are called and the other side gets to cross examine your witnesses. Written and oral arguments are presented, and the arbitrator renders his judgement in writing. It's a lot like a court proceeding. Real courts will usually not intervene in a labor dispute until all other avenues are exhausted, and they generally will not overturn an arbitrator's decision unless it violates the law.
The case we have been discussing seemed to me to be consistent with all this, except it doesn't appear that these guys were unionized, so the arbitration agreements in question were probably not negotiated contracts. They were likely required by the employers as a condition of employment, meaning that they won't hire you if you don't sign the agreement. Trying to overthrow them after the fact would seem to be difficult, since the employees signed them "voluntarily". There is another one like that called an "at will" agreement. An "at will" employee may be fired "with or without notice and with or without cause". I haven't heard of that one being tested in the courts, but it ought to be. I tell you, there is no future in working for a living in this country anymore. I think that, if I was a young kid starting out today, I would just be a bum.
Our local paper is pretty fair about the content of their editorial page. The editor himself mostly talks about local issues, and seems to follow the consensus of the people as he sees it. They have some local contributors, and they also feature guest columns and editorials that come in on the wire. If they print a conservative article one day, they usually print a liberal one the next day, although not necessarily on the same subject. I don't remember seeing one from Bloomberg before, but I assume it's the same Bloomberg that has their own cable channel which caters to financial interests. As such, you'd think they would be politically conservative, but maybe they try to be balanced about it like our local editor.
Score another one for the good guys. Could it be that the tide is turning?
https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAxOahp?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Arbitrators are a lot like a judges, but they can only hear cases that fall within their specialty which, in our case, was labor and contract law. Each side presents their case, witnesses are called and the other side gets to cross examine your witnesses. Written and oral arguments are presented, and the arbitrator renders his judgement in writing. It's a lot like a court proceeding. Real courts will usually not intervene in a labor dispute until all other avenues are exhausted, and they generally will not overturn an arbitrator's decision unless it violates the law.
The case we have been discussing seemed to me to be consistent with all this, except it doesn't appear that these guys were unionized, so the arbitration agreements in question were probably not negotiated contracts. They were likely required by the employers as a condition of employment, meaning that they won't hire you if you don't sign the agreement. Trying to overthrow them after the fact would seem to be difficult, since the employees signed them "voluntarily". There is another one like that called an "at will" agreement. An "at will" employee may be fired "with or without notice and with or without cause". I haven't heard of that one being tested in the courts, but it ought to be. I tell you, there is no future in working for a living in this country anymore. I think that, if I was a young kid starting out today, I would just be a bum.
Our local paper is pretty fair about the content of their editorial page. The editor himself mostly talks about local issues, and seems to follow the consensus of the people as he sees it. They have some local contributors, and they also feature guest columns and editorials that come in on the wire. If they print a conservative article one day, they usually print a liberal one the next day, although not necessarily on the same subject. I don't remember seeing one from Bloomberg before, but I assume it's the same Bloomberg that has their own cable channel which caters to financial interests. As such, you'd think they would be politically conservative, but maybe they try to be balanced about it like our local editor.
Score another one for the good guys. Could it be that the tide is turning?
https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAxOahp?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
going to missouri
I wondered about that union thing, but Beagles' subsequent explanation jibes with my understanding of the ruling. Normally a citizen when wronged has redress to the courts. Under these new contracts he does not, he has to submit to arbitration which is set up to rule in the employer's favor. If he feels that this is wrong he cannot get together with his fellows and have them all chip in to get a fancy lawyer, he has to do it mano a corporation, which is a lopsided battle. I read the article to see what they had to say, supposing that if it were published in a small-town paper it would be in favor of Gorsuch, but it comes from Blomberg, which I am not that familiar with and it seems pretty fair.
I think the way that knee thing works is that football poobahs can fine a team owner if his player takes the knee. I suppose the owner can enforce this by then fining the player, I guess this will provoke some lawsuit, but the judiciary is being stacked so that we know how that will go.
I went to a Costco a couple years ago and I was gobsmacked by the rampant materialism, all those stacks of stuff and those huge carts and the consumers I am pretty sure were slavering.
And now we have the investigation of the investigation, based on something one of the Foxies said and the prez picked up on. Switching between Fox and CNN is like going to two separate worlds. Remember the Benghazi investigation? That went on for four years, and in the end nothing. Now the Mueller investigation has gone on for about a year and many heads have rolled and yet now Trump has been
And how about that Kim Jong Un playing Trump like a drum? There is no way Un is giving up his nukes, and why would he make a deal with Trump who might change his mind the next day? Of course North Korea has welshed on plenty of deals itself, so I don't know.
I don't have much in the tank this morning. Leaving tomorrow morning for Missouri and I won't be back until Wednesday, and it appears that it is going to be hot, hot, hot. You gentleman will have to carry on.
I think the way that knee thing works is that football poobahs can fine a team owner if his player takes the knee. I suppose the owner can enforce this by then fining the player, I guess this will provoke some lawsuit, but the judiciary is being stacked so that we know how that will go.
I went to a Costco a couple years ago and I was gobsmacked by the rampant materialism, all those stacks of stuff and those huge carts and the consumers I am pretty sure were slavering.
And now we have the investigation of the investigation, based on something one of the Foxies said and the prez picked up on. Switching between Fox and CNN is like going to two separate worlds. Remember the Benghazi investigation? That went on for four years, and in the end nothing. Now the Mueller investigation has gone on for about a year and many heads have rolled and yet now Trump has been
And how about that Kim Jong Un playing Trump like a drum? There is no way Un is giving up his nukes, and why would he make a deal with Trump who might change his mind the next day? Of course North Korea has welshed on plenty of deals itself, so I don't know.
I don't have much in the tank this morning. Leaving tomorrow morning for Missouri and I won't be back until Wednesday, and it appears that it is going to be hot, hot, hot. You gentleman will have to carry on.
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Okay, Try This One
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-22/this-is-what-a-more-conservative-supreme-court-looks-like
I agree that my last source made for some dry reading, but it was all I could come up with at the moment. I was planning to see if I could find a more accessible article on Wiki but, as luck would have it, our local newspaper printed a guest editorial today that seems to sum it up pretty well. I was able to find it online. Aren't you proud of me?
Actually, my overly simplified interpretation of the court's ruling wasn't that far off the mark, considering that I didn't know what I was talking about which, of course, has never stopped me before. One error I made was the assumption that the labor agreement mentioned in the ruling was a union contract. Turns out they were talking about an individual employment contract which, apparently, some employers are requiring as a condition of employment these days. This contract says that legal disputes are to be settled by individual arbitration instead of collective legal action. Courts will generally uphold contracts like this unless they violate the law. Therefore, the case turned on the question of the legality of the contract. There were two different laws considered, one of which seems to say such contracts are legal, and another that seems to say they are illegal. The majority opinion gave more weight to the first law, while the minority opinion gave more weight to the second law. Neither law specifically mentions class action lawsuits, because they weren't in general use at the time the laws were passed.
These are the kinds of cases that make lawyers rich. Congress could fix this but, since most congressmen are lawyers, don't count on it.
This just in: https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAxLGxa?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
I agree that my last source made for some dry reading, but it was all I could come up with at the moment. I was planning to see if I could find a more accessible article on Wiki but, as luck would have it, our local newspaper printed a guest editorial today that seems to sum it up pretty well. I was able to find it online. Aren't you proud of me?
Actually, my overly simplified interpretation of the court's ruling wasn't that far off the mark, considering that I didn't know what I was talking about which, of course, has never stopped me before. One error I made was the assumption that the labor agreement mentioned in the ruling was a union contract. Turns out they were talking about an individual employment contract which, apparently, some employers are requiring as a condition of employment these days. This contract says that legal disputes are to be settled by individual arbitration instead of collective legal action. Courts will generally uphold contracts like this unless they violate the law. Therefore, the case turned on the question of the legality of the contract. There were two different laws considered, one of which seems to say such contracts are legal, and another that seems to say they are illegal. The majority opinion gave more weight to the first law, while the minority opinion gave more weight to the second law. Neither law specifically mentions class action lawsuits, because they weren't in general use at the time the laws were passed.
These are the kinds of cases that make lawyers rich. Congress could fix this but, since most congressmen are lawyers, don't count on it.
This just in: https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAxLGxa?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Getting kneed
I haven't been following that "taking a knee" very closely but I did read that the NFL owners have decided that any player that takes a knee will be fired, which sounds a bit extreme to me. Anyhow, suppose a player did get fired and then he points to his contract which says nothing about no knees. Can the rules be changed in the middle of a binding contract? Or suppose a whole team, in a display of solidarity, takes a knee before the game. Is the owner of the team going to fire the whole team and start from scratch? I don't think so; too much money is involved and professional sports is a very big business.
There is an aspect of taking a knee that no one has mentioned: it's a sign of submission or surrender and definitely not a sign of disrespect. If the players want to show disrespect they would simply turn their backs, wouldn't they?
I don't object to displays of patriotism but the link to professional sports strikes me as being phony and contrived. There was a time when the National Anthem wasn't played before a game and nobody seemed to mind. Maybe the government started twisting the NFL's arm and said, "Hey! You've been getting all kinds of sweetheart tax deals and subsidies and now we want a little taste; we'll even pay for it and provide flags, marching bands, and awesome fly-overs by the Blue Angels. What do you say?"
It also strikes me that the most vociferous and enthusiastic of those flag wavers are the least likely to have served in any of the Armed Forces. The veterans that I've known are usually quiet and reserved about their experiences and are not prone to a lot of flag waving but they are respectful. They had a job to do, they did it, and they keep their mouths shut. Unless they're at the VFW and getting liqoured up after the Friday Fish Fry, of course. But I haven't been so I don't know.
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Went to Costco for the first time today and what a temple of consumerism; you buy big or stay home. I can see it's appeal especially if you are raising a family and have storage space for all your goodies but I'm not and I don't. I went there because I needed a prescription filled and I read that they are the cheapest. You don't need a membership for the pharmacy or the Food Court, which I read was pretty good. The food is definitely cheap but I was not impressed; it's okay but I would not go out of my way for it. Costco loses money in the Food Court but it keeps the customers happy, allowing them to refuel after pushing around their big shopping carts throughout the vast expanse. And it is vast, maybe the biggest store I've been in. 'Murica!
There is an aspect of taking a knee that no one has mentioned: it's a sign of submission or surrender and definitely not a sign of disrespect. If the players want to show disrespect they would simply turn their backs, wouldn't they?
I don't object to displays of patriotism but the link to professional sports strikes me as being phony and contrived. There was a time when the National Anthem wasn't played before a game and nobody seemed to mind. Maybe the government started twisting the NFL's arm and said, "Hey! You've been getting all kinds of sweetheart tax deals and subsidies and now we want a little taste; we'll even pay for it and provide flags, marching bands, and awesome fly-overs by the Blue Angels. What do you say?"
It also strikes me that the most vociferous and enthusiastic of those flag wavers are the least likely to have served in any of the Armed Forces. The veterans that I've known are usually quiet and reserved about their experiences and are not prone to a lot of flag waving but they are respectful. They had a job to do, they did it, and they keep their mouths shut. Unless they're at the VFW and getting liqoured up after the Friday Fish Fry, of course. But I haven't been so I don't know.
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Went to Costco for the first time today and what a temple of consumerism; you buy big or stay home. I can see it's appeal especially if you are raising a family and have storage space for all your goodies but I'm not and I don't. I went there because I needed a prescription filled and I read that they are the cheapest. You don't need a membership for the pharmacy or the Food Court, which I read was pretty good. The food is definitely cheap but I was not impressed; it's okay but I would not go out of my way for it. Costco loses money in the Food Court but it keeps the customers happy, allowing them to refuel after pushing around their big shopping carts throughout the vast expanse. And it is vast, maybe the biggest store I've been in. 'Murica!
that knee thing
What Beagles sent was like 20 pages of pdf. I don't like pdf, too hard to navigate, and after a few minutes I gave up looking. It seems like he is speaking of the specifics of the case, but the ruling, the import, is that employees cannot take a class action suit against their employers, that is they cannot pool their money and hire a hotshot lawyer. They have to individually hire lawyers and those guys go up alone against the corporate legal artillery. Sounds like a raw deal to me. One of the reasons a lot of republicans, but not necessarily Trumpists, gave for backing Trump is that he would appoint conservative supreme court justices, and so he did. If Obama had been allowed to fill the vacancy that came up during his tenure, the decision would probably have gone another way.
I like it when words are spelled differently than they are pronounced. I'll wager the locals get to giggling when some tourist says Mackinack. How square, look at him wearing his big city hat and shoes and he doesn't even know how to say Mackinac.
So this taking the knee thing. At the time there had been a rash of cops shooting unarmed black kids, and the idea was that taking the knee was a protest against that. That seemed kind of stupid to me, what does the one thing have to do with the other? How does taking the knee do anything to keep another unarmed black kids from getting shot? On the other hand, as we like to say, it's a free country, what matters is does our team score more points than the other team.
And then along came the orangeman, and he decided that taking the knee was really about not backing the troops. Again they were just taking a knee, how does that harm the private in camp swampy, the star-bedecked general in his fancy office, the poor fool sent on some fool's errand deep in Africa?
But then this little battle brewed, some guys kneeled, some guys stood, some guys hid in the tunnel, most owners were agin kneeling and some were fer it. Again I don't believe this had any effect on kids getting shot or on the men in the armed forces. The whole thing actually was, of course, not about the kids or the army, it was about Trump. He is like a modern day Orange Midas, everything he touches becomes about him. If you kneeled you were agin him and if you stood you were fer him.
And now the owners, I would reckon all of them Trumpists, counting that wad that they got from the tax cut, and not putting any aside to hire more workers (see Harley Davidson), have decided that all the players, no matter how they feel about the kids, or the army, or Trump, have to stand or be fired.
You know I am not big on brass band patriotism and the idolatrous worship of the flag, the anthem, the eagle, whatever, but I suppose there is something stirring about seeing the heroes of Sunday standing with their helmets over their hearts, because, I don't know, they love their country. It is not so stirring when you realize they are doing that because they will be fired if they don't.
I like it when words are spelled differently than they are pronounced. I'll wager the locals get to giggling when some tourist says Mackinack. How square, look at him wearing his big city hat and shoes and he doesn't even know how to say Mackinac.
So this taking the knee thing. At the time there had been a rash of cops shooting unarmed black kids, and the idea was that taking the knee was a protest against that. That seemed kind of stupid to me, what does the one thing have to do with the other? How does taking the knee do anything to keep another unarmed black kids from getting shot? On the other hand, as we like to say, it's a free country, what matters is does our team score more points than the other team.
And then along came the orangeman, and he decided that taking the knee was really about not backing the troops. Again they were just taking a knee, how does that harm the private in camp swampy, the star-bedecked general in his fancy office, the poor fool sent on some fool's errand deep in Africa?
But then this little battle brewed, some guys kneeled, some guys stood, some guys hid in the tunnel, most owners were agin kneeling and some were fer it. Again I don't believe this had any effect on kids getting shot or on the men in the armed forces. The whole thing actually was, of course, not about the kids or the army, it was about Trump. He is like a modern day Orange Midas, everything he touches becomes about him. If you kneeled you were agin him and if you stood you were fer him.
And now the owners, I would reckon all of them Trumpists, counting that wad that they got from the tax cut, and not putting any aside to hire more workers (see Harley Davidson), have decided that all the players, no matter how they feel about the kids, or the army, or Trump, have to stand or be fired.
You know I am not big on brass band patriotism and the idolatrous worship of the flag, the anthem, the eagle, whatever, but I suppose there is something stirring about seeing the heroes of Sunday standing with their helmets over their hearts, because, I don't know, they love their country. It is not so stirring when you realize they are doing that because they will be fired if they don't.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
The (Amateur) Legal Beagle Reports
I heard mention of the recent Supreme Court ruling about class action lawsuits on the news the other day, but I didn't have enough information to render an informed opinion of my own, so I looked it up: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-285_q8l1.pdf
I didn't read the whole thing through but, near as I can tell, the litigants have a union contract that specifies how their arbitration proceedings are to work, and the plaintiffs wanted to do something different. The court ruled that they have to follow their union contract. What's wrong with that? The fact that the Chief Justice was recently appointed by President Trump is irrelevant.
The city, the township, and the coast guard cutter are spelled "Mackinaw". The straits, the island, the bridge, and the county are spelled "Mackinac". Both spellings are pronounced "Mackinaw". Mackinaw City is not in Mackinac County, it straddles the border between Cheboygan and Emmet counties, while Mackinac County is in the Upper Peninsula. Mackinaw Township is in Cheboygan County, and contains part of Mackinaw City.
I didn't read the whole thing through but, near as I can tell, the litigants have a union contract that specifies how their arbitration proceedings are to work, and the plaintiffs wanted to do something different. The court ruled that they have to follow their union contract. What's wrong with that? The fact that the Chief Justice was recently appointed by President Trump is irrelevant.
The city, the township, and the coast guard cutter are spelled "Mackinaw". The straits, the island, the bridge, and the county are spelled "Mackinac". Both spellings are pronounced "Mackinaw". Mackinaw City is not in Mackinac County, it straddles the border between Cheboygan and Emmet counties, while Mackinac County is in the Upper Peninsula. Mackinaw Township is in Cheboygan County, and contains part of Mackinaw City.
the geometry of hats
If the dems take over the house I think they will have to pass a bill banning automatic weapons, and maybe it will get by the senate, but I am sure Trump will veto it. We're not going to do anything on mental health because that will cost money, and anyway people have been nuts since I reckon shortly after the dinosaurs died and we are not going to change that it in a few years. And you know it's not even nuts, it's a thing. The last two shootings the guys were school shooting fans.
Speaking of current events, how about that new supreme court judge that the Trumpians are so Trumped up about, deciding that if your employer does something to you and you want to sue, you can't join with other employees but have to sue him individually with whatever lawyer you can afford against the boss's mighty well-paid team?
Old Dog is right about me adding the Mackinac (is it Mackinac or Mackinaw, or both?) later to my original post. I think he is wrong about pranksters, but possibly it is an artifact of the practice of stitching together images, but the placing seems a bit too, I don't know, regular, for that, and I don't recall seeing squares like that in google maps before. Of course they are not really squares, they are as Ms Hradek taught me and Beagles, rectangles, and all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. Still I have seen rectangles called squares before and I think it's permissible, because rectangle is such a formal, and dare I say, square term. Outside of entomology I think it's okay to call them all bugs, and outside Euclid I think it's okay to call most rectangles squares.
As Ms Hradek also taught us, you multiply the diameter by pi to get the circumference, so what Old Dog is speaking of for hat size is the diameter, which I am sure he knew, but chose, for some reason to describe circumspectly. But then heads are really ovoid so the formula would be a little different. I am okay with calling some rectangles (not the really long ones) squares, but I am not equally libertine with calling ovals circles. Seems to me that the essence of a rectangle (shared by the square) is that it has four right (square) angles, but the essence of an oval is that the curve is at varying distances from the center, while the essence of the circle is that all points on the curve are equidistant from the center. There, I don't think Euclid could have said it any better.
Not to pick on Old Dog, well to pick on him a little, does his head vary in size from day to day so that he needs a tape measure to measure it every time he buys a new chapeau? And anyway there is a variance in the kinds of ovals heads may take on, so just knowing that one number is not going to give you all the information you need, and surely some heads are pointier than others. Seems to me the only way to really tell is to show up in person and jam the thing on your head and take a quick look in the mirror, and maybe give yourself a wink, you handsome devil you.
Speaking of current events, how about that new supreme court judge that the Trumpians are so Trumped up about, deciding that if your employer does something to you and you want to sue, you can't join with other employees but have to sue him individually with whatever lawyer you can afford against the boss's mighty well-paid team?
Old Dog is right about me adding the Mackinac (is it Mackinac or Mackinaw, or both?) later to my original post. I think he is wrong about pranksters, but possibly it is an artifact of the practice of stitching together images, but the placing seems a bit too, I don't know, regular, for that, and I don't recall seeing squares like that in google maps before. Of course they are not really squares, they are as Ms Hradek taught me and Beagles, rectangles, and all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. Still I have seen rectangles called squares before and I think it's permissible, because rectangle is such a formal, and dare I say, square term. Outside of entomology I think it's okay to call them all bugs, and outside Euclid I think it's okay to call most rectangles squares.
As Ms Hradek also taught us, you multiply the diameter by pi to get the circumference, so what Old Dog is speaking of for hat size is the diameter, which I am sure he knew, but chose, for some reason to describe circumspectly. But then heads are really ovoid so the formula would be a little different. I am okay with calling some rectangles (not the really long ones) squares, but I am not equally libertine with calling ovals circles. Seems to me that the essence of a rectangle (shared by the square) is that it has four right (square) angles, but the essence of an oval is that the curve is at varying distances from the center, while the essence of the circle is that all points on the curve are equidistant from the center. There, I don't think Euclid could have said it any better.
Not to pick on Old Dog, well to pick on him a little, does his head vary in size from day to day so that he needs a tape measure to measure it every time he buys a new chapeau? And anyway there is a variance in the kinds of ovals heads may take on, so just knowing that one number is not going to give you all the information you need, and surely some heads are pointier than others. Seems to me the only way to really tell is to show up in person and jam the thing on your head and take a quick look in the mirror, and maybe give yourself a wink, you handsome devil you.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
No Magic Bullet
I think that most of the school security guards are policemen or deputy sheriffs, at least that's what I have been seeing in the news media. Some of them are full time, some are part time, and some of them rotate between more than one school building. It's not a perfect solution, but I think it's a step in the right direction. That guy in Florida who "didn't do anything" was outside the building when the attack began, and he claimed that he didn't rush in because he thought the shots were coming from outside the building. I understand that he resigned under pressure, but that doesn't necessarily mean he was in the wrong. Maybe he just didn't want to spend the next several years arguing about it. I seem to remember that the most recent incident ended with the live capture of the shooter, unless there's been another one that I haven't heard about. There's been so many lately that I have a hard time keeping up with them.
I think we're going to see something done with gun control, probably after the Democrats take over Congress next year, but I would be surprised to see automatic firearms totally banned. They have become so popular that, if they try to ban them all, they are likely to have a revolution on their hands. The loopholes in the background check procedure need to be closed, and the antis will probably start with that. That in itself won't stop the shootings, but it's another step in the right direction.
More work needs to be done in the field of mental health, but I don't know how much good that will do. Let's face it, mental health is not an exact science like math. What one expert calls "mentally ill", another expert might call "socially deprived", or something like that. Maybe we are all crazy in our own way, but some of us are more dangerous than others.
Meanwhile, first responders have been upgrading their training programs and conducting simulated "active shooter" drills. Again, it's no magic bullet, but it can't do any harm. I remember when they used to conduct nuclear holocaust drills. They must have done some good because hardly anybody worries about that anymore.
I think we're going to see something done with gun control, probably after the Democrats take over Congress next year, but I would be surprised to see automatic firearms totally banned. They have become so popular that, if they try to ban them all, they are likely to have a revolution on their hands. The loopholes in the background check procedure need to be closed, and the antis will probably start with that. That in itself won't stop the shootings, but it's another step in the right direction.
More work needs to be done in the field of mental health, but I don't know how much good that will do. Let's face it, mental health is not an exact science like math. What one expert calls "mentally ill", another expert might call "socially deprived", or something like that. Maybe we are all crazy in our own way, but some of us are more dangerous than others.
Meanwhile, first responders have been upgrading their training programs and conducting simulated "active shooter" drills. Again, it's no magic bullet, but it can't do any harm. I remember when they used to conduct nuclear holocaust drills. They must have done some good because hardly anybody worries about that anymore.
Go Ogle
Jules Verne was quite the clever Frenchie. Nemo sounded like a Latin word to me, so I plugged it into Google Translate and, in English, it translates to "nobody." Clever, huh? Maybe it's time for me to read 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea again knowing that little bit of information. I read that book when I was a kid but didn't see the Disney movie until I was much older. In those days, if you missed a movie during it's first run, forget it, especially with Disney movies, unlike today when you can see anything anytime. But that submarine, the Nautilus. Wow! I thought every submarine should look like that, scary but luxuriously appointed on the inside with plenty of polished brass and mahogany furniture, nothing like the grim reality depicted in Das Boot.
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A check of older posts on the site revealed the Mackinac Bridge picture, which surprised me. I cut & paste the posts by you guys and it wasn't there when I grabbed that post. The last paragraph and the image weren't in my capture, which makes me think Uncle Ken added it after his initial post. I do that sometimes, thinking of something to add and then do a quick edit, hopefully before anyone notices.
Anyhow, I think those green squares aren't anything real but artefacts from the image stitching algorithms used to make the final image. If Google wanted to hide something they would have used Photoshop and done a better job it. That's something to think about; we take it for granted that everything we see on Google Earth is accurate but maybe there is a group of pranksters that add and delete stuff in the images, just to drive folks crazy trying to figure it out. I wouldn't put it past them but I probably would do it too, just to see if anyone notices.
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Another one of life's mysteries has been solved for me: men's hat sizes. I could never figure out where those numbers came from but now I know and it's shockingly simple. Take a measuring tape and measure, in inches, how big around your head is. Then divide by pi and you'll have your hat size. Now you can order your fancy chapeau on Amazon without any worries but I think it's different in Europe; they use centimeters and leave it at that, with no division by pi. Luckily I have a tape measure that uses both scales.
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And I don't get that style of singing that I think is big on American idol...
I'm with you on this one, Uncle Ken. I used to think I was a dinosaur regarding my musical sensibilities but now I realize I'm actually a fossil.
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A check of older posts on the site revealed the Mackinac Bridge picture, which surprised me. I cut & paste the posts by you guys and it wasn't there when I grabbed that post. The last paragraph and the image weren't in my capture, which makes me think Uncle Ken added it after his initial post. I do that sometimes, thinking of something to add and then do a quick edit, hopefully before anyone notices.
Anyhow, I think those green squares aren't anything real but artefacts from the image stitching algorithms used to make the final image. If Google wanted to hide something they would have used Photoshop and done a better job it. That's something to think about; we take it for granted that everything we see on Google Earth is accurate but maybe there is a group of pranksters that add and delete stuff in the images, just to drive folks crazy trying to figure it out. I wouldn't put it past them but I probably would do it too, just to see if anyone notices.
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Another one of life's mysteries has been solved for me: men's hat sizes. I could never figure out where those numbers came from but now I know and it's shockingly simple. Take a measuring tape and measure, in inches, how big around your head is. Then divide by pi and you'll have your hat size. Now you can order your fancy chapeau on Amazon without any worries but I think it's different in Europe; they use centimeters and leave it at that, with no division by pi. Luckily I have a tape measure that uses both scales.
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And I don't get that style of singing that I think is big on American idol...
I'm with you on this one, Uncle Ken. I used to think I was a dinosaur regarding my musical sensibilities but now I realize I'm actually a fossil.
American Idol solves America's problems
I'm pretty sure that I've never seen even a second of American Idol, not even channel surfing, not that I have ever done that either, it sounds so stupid, who does that anyway? A lot of people considering the exposure it gets in popular culture, well I don't get it.
And I don't get that style of singing that I think is big on American idol, judging by little excerpts I see from time to time, you know where the singer throws back their head and busts a gut holding some note for an impossibly long time. long enough to get me yawning I tell you. Divas I think they call them, don't care for that at all.
Kelly Clarkson is one of them, I've heard her name. I can't say if I know what genre she sings in but I assume it is glitter pop, something like that. Heard her name at the end of last night's network news. Network news follows a pattern, the first fifteen minutes is generally just straight news, and airs without commercials, then it gets spotty, more soft news, more commercials, and the last segment is always something oh, heartwarming, something to send us off with the feeling that there may be troubles aplenty but the human heart is plenty strong, and plenty of human hearts beating together will bring us a better tomorrow.
Something like that. I almost always change the channel before the news gets to that last segment, but sometimes, you know, the cats distract me, And so it came to pass last night, and there was Kelly Clarkson who had been asked to end her boffo concert with a prayer for the Texas kids and the Florida kids. but bold soul that she is, she decried no, there has been enough praying and I don't know, mylar balloons, the time has come for action. The thing to do was to go back home to your community and get active and do something to end this scourge.
But do what? Well gun control seems the most obvious, anymore it seems to center on no more automatic rifles and stricter controls on who gets a gun. The second option is the armed cop, teacher, volunteer, which doesn't have quite as good a ring, and then there is that mental illness thing where the solution is to solve crazy, and then there is that sick society thing, which folks, generally old folks, like to jaw on endlessly about, no matter what the situation is.
I think one of the big logical flaws is discussing these shootings individually. So that's what I'll do,. Florida had armed guards but they never did anything, and the shooter had an automatic rifle, so score one for gun control. Texas had armed guards who actually shot the guy, and he had his daddy's shotgun so you could call that a score for the armed guard set, though the gun control people might quibble that the armed guards didn't get him until he had killed ten, and doubtless he would have killed many more had he had an AR-15.
I suppose we could have both, but neither side seems to like that. The armed guard guys are generally gun nuts, and the gun control guys don't want what they see as their issue taken away by the armed guard guys.
I think Kelly Clarkson ended her little speech condemning those whose hearts are so dead that they don't see a solution. I think I am one of those guys
And I don't get that style of singing that I think is big on American idol, judging by little excerpts I see from time to time, you know where the singer throws back their head and busts a gut holding some note for an impossibly long time. long enough to get me yawning I tell you. Divas I think they call them, don't care for that at all.
Kelly Clarkson is one of them, I've heard her name. I can't say if I know what genre she sings in but I assume it is glitter pop, something like that. Heard her name at the end of last night's network news. Network news follows a pattern, the first fifteen minutes is generally just straight news, and airs without commercials, then it gets spotty, more soft news, more commercials, and the last segment is always something oh, heartwarming, something to send us off with the feeling that there may be troubles aplenty but the human heart is plenty strong, and plenty of human hearts beating together will bring us a better tomorrow.
Something like that. I almost always change the channel before the news gets to that last segment, but sometimes, you know, the cats distract me, And so it came to pass last night, and there was Kelly Clarkson who had been asked to end her boffo concert with a prayer for the Texas kids and the Florida kids. but bold soul that she is, she decried no, there has been enough praying and I don't know, mylar balloons, the time has come for action. The thing to do was to go back home to your community and get active and do something to end this scourge.
But do what? Well gun control seems the most obvious, anymore it seems to center on no more automatic rifles and stricter controls on who gets a gun. The second option is the armed cop, teacher, volunteer, which doesn't have quite as good a ring, and then there is that mental illness thing where the solution is to solve crazy, and then there is that sick society thing, which folks, generally old folks, like to jaw on endlessly about, no matter what the situation is.
I think one of the big logical flaws is discussing these shootings individually. So that's what I'll do,. Florida had armed guards but they never did anything, and the shooter had an automatic rifle, so score one for gun control. Texas had armed guards who actually shot the guy, and he had his daddy's shotgun so you could call that a score for the armed guard set, though the gun control people might quibble that the armed guards didn't get him until he had killed ten, and doubtless he would have killed many more had he had an AR-15.
I suppose we could have both, but neither side seems to like that. The armed guard guys are generally gun nuts, and the gun control guys don't want what they see as their issue taken away by the armed guard guys.
I think Kelly Clarkson ended her little speech condemning those whose hearts are so dead that they don't see a solution. I think I am one of those guys
Monday, May 21, 2018
Another Tough Mother
Speaking of tough mothers, I caught this one with my trail camera a couple weeks ago. I saved the photo, even though it was of poor quality, because of the visible injury, which is something you don't see every day. It doesn't look like anything a bullet, arrow, or other animal would cause. Maybe she was hit by a car. Be that as it may, the deer looks pretty perky in the picture, so it doesn't seem to have slowed her down a lot. Indeed, I saw the same deer a week or so later and she seemed to be healing up nicely. She managed to dodge the camera that day, but I saw that she was accompanied by another smaller deer, probably last years fawn, which is why I called her a mother. Pregnant does generally go into seclusion this time of year when they are ready to drop their new fawns. They drive last year's fawns away, but will allow them to return if their new fawn doesn't survive, or after it is about a month old, whichever happens first.
I seem to remember that those Asian carp got into the Mississippi watershed when a major flood breached the levee that separated the river from a fish farm. These fish are vegetarians, and they were being raised to clean out excess weed growth in private ponds. In most jurisdictions, it is illegal to introduce a non native plant or animal species into the wild without a special permit, but carp don't know nothing about the law.
Points of Inaccessibility
The photos with the green rectangles are part of my posting, Oh Shit, Thursday 5/17. I believe that Blogspot has some odd way of denoting the dates so that the last posting receives the date and subsequent ones just have the time, makes it a little hard to search though.
I've long thought that the midwest was where God intended people to live, away from those frothy oceans and their storms, those bumpy mountains where it's too tilty to grow corn and soybeans, no earthquakes to speak of, except for that big 'un, by New Madrid, of which we do not speak, and plenty of water, but no flash floods like those hilly places have. We do get some twisters, but they don't kill all that many, and in this day where everybody has a movie camera on their phone we get all these fantastic videos. Oh and the cold, seems like we get considerable cold, like this morning, May 21, when it is like 50 degrees. I can see my spindly little tomato plants on the balcony shivering. But of course that just builds our character, unlike those spineless wretches on all sides of us.
Seems to me the worst invasive species are the bugs. We have the ash borer and the Japanese beetles, and now we have the stink bug: .https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/when-twenty-six-thousand-stinkbugs-invade-your-home Not only do they eat everything in their path, but they want to live in your house, covering your walls in a thick brown layer. Oh you can brush them off, but you have to be careful not to squish one because then they stink.
Point Nemo, can it actually be named for an annoying Disney movie? Sort of, it's named after the Jules Verne character upon whom that fish is surely named. And it turns out that Point Nemo is one of three oceanic Points of Inaccessibility, the other two being the north and south poles. There are also continental poles of inaccessibility, being the point furthest from any coast. The North American pole is in southwest South Dakota. Some people consider the Dakotas to be part of the midwest, but personally I am not allowing them in, too dry and to hilly.
The thing about Mother Nature is you think she is on your side by giving you stuff like if you are say a deer, faster feet, but then you look over your shoulder and she is giving the wolves sharper teeth. And as everybody knows, it 's not nice to fool with Mother Nature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijVijP-CDVI
I've long thought that the midwest was where God intended people to live, away from those frothy oceans and their storms, those bumpy mountains where it's too tilty to grow corn and soybeans, no earthquakes to speak of, except for that big 'un, by New Madrid, of which we do not speak, and plenty of water, but no flash floods like those hilly places have. We do get some twisters, but they don't kill all that many, and in this day where everybody has a movie camera on their phone we get all these fantastic videos. Oh and the cold, seems like we get considerable cold, like this morning, May 21, when it is like 50 degrees. I can see my spindly little tomato plants on the balcony shivering. But of course that just builds our character, unlike those spineless wretches on all sides of us.
Seems to me the worst invasive species are the bugs. We have the ash borer and the Japanese beetles, and now we have the stink bug: .https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/when-twenty-six-thousand-stinkbugs-invade-your-home Not only do they eat everything in their path, but they want to live in your house, covering your walls in a thick brown layer. Oh you can brush them off, but you have to be careful not to squish one because then they stink.
Point Nemo, can it actually be named for an annoying Disney movie? Sort of, it's named after the Jules Verne character upon whom that fish is surely named. And it turns out that Point Nemo is one of three oceanic Points of Inaccessibility, the other two being the north and south poles. There are also continental poles of inaccessibility, being the point furthest from any coast. The North American pole is in southwest South Dakota. Some people consider the Dakotas to be part of the midwest, but personally I am not allowing them in, too dry and to hilly.
The thing about Mother Nature is you think she is on your side by giving you stuff like if you are say a deer, faster feet, but then you look over your shoulder and she is giving the wolves sharper teeth. And as everybody knows, it 's not nice to fool with Mother Nature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijVijP-CDVI
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Nature on the move
Another thing that puzzles me is those rectangular green patches that appear in that photo of the Mackinac Bridge.
I must have missed something again. What photo are you talking about? The rectangular green patches sound intriguing.
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Nature is a tough mother.
No kidding! Have you seen the recent videos of that Hawaiian volcano event? Big cracks opening up in the ground and lava spewing out, shooting thirty feet or more into the air. Very liquid lava too, none of this slow and leisurely flow along the ground. This is not the kind of thing that a home owner can easily deal with and I don't think the volcanic activity will be ending any time soon. Not having to worry about the ground opening up beneath your feet and getting burnt to crisp by molten lava is another benefit of living in the Heartland, don't you think?
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I read one of those articles from the National Geographic site about plastic in the ocean; it's worse than I thought. And a few days ago I read that plastic particles were found in the water at Point Nemo, the most remote spot in the world's oceans. Point Nemo is in the South Pacific, a thousand miles from the nearest island and doesn't get much boat traffic. The plastic was found in water samples taken by sailors participating in the Volvo Ocean Race, which goes around the world. I don't think they found a lot, but even so, a little is too much in the most remote location on the planet.
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We have zebra mussels at this end of Lake Michigan and it was a hot topic a few years ago but not too much recently. Maybe the local fish have developed an appetite for them and they are no longer clogging water intake pipes. That would be nice. We have the round goby too but it hasn't been in the news lately as far as I know.
The biggest threat lately is the Bighead Asian Carp, a voracious critter that has been coming up through the rivers feeding Lake Michigan. They get pretty big and a passing boat will cause them to leap about five feet into the air. Keeping those carp out of the lake have been successful so far, but in time they will get there, I fear, and a lot of native species will be wiped out. They're supposed to be good eating though, which isn't much of a silver lining when you think about it.
The round goby, zebra mussels, and the Asian carp are all invasive species, the inevitable result of modern global trade. I read that they came from the bilge tanks of freighters. I'm not sure about that but I doubt they are discarded pets like those pythons and anacondas found in Florida.
We have a lot of invasive species in the US but I haven't heard much about invasive species from the US. The only one I've read about is the gray squirrel which is driving out Britain's beloved red squirrels. I don't know how they got there; squirrels seem to be unlikely stowaways. Maybe it's sabotage, an early effort to test the feasibility of getting snakes back into Ireland. Why anyone would want to do such a thing is beyond me but these are weird times and not much surprises me any more.
I must have missed something again. What photo are you talking about? The rectangular green patches sound intriguing.
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Nature is a tough mother.
No kidding! Have you seen the recent videos of that Hawaiian volcano event? Big cracks opening up in the ground and lava spewing out, shooting thirty feet or more into the air. Very liquid lava too, none of this slow and leisurely flow along the ground. This is not the kind of thing that a home owner can easily deal with and I don't think the volcanic activity will be ending any time soon. Not having to worry about the ground opening up beneath your feet and getting burnt to crisp by molten lava is another benefit of living in the Heartland, don't you think?
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I read one of those articles from the National Geographic site about plastic in the ocean; it's worse than I thought. And a few days ago I read that plastic particles were found in the water at Point Nemo, the most remote spot in the world's oceans. Point Nemo is in the South Pacific, a thousand miles from the nearest island and doesn't get much boat traffic. The plastic was found in water samples taken by sailors participating in the Volvo Ocean Race, which goes around the world. I don't think they found a lot, but even so, a little is too much in the most remote location on the planet.
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We have zebra mussels at this end of Lake Michigan and it was a hot topic a few years ago but not too much recently. Maybe the local fish have developed an appetite for them and they are no longer clogging water intake pipes. That would be nice. We have the round goby too but it hasn't been in the news lately as far as I know.
The biggest threat lately is the Bighead Asian Carp, a voracious critter that has been coming up through the rivers feeding Lake Michigan. They get pretty big and a passing boat will cause them to leap about five feet into the air. Keeping those carp out of the lake have been successful so far, but in time they will get there, I fear, and a lot of native species will be wiped out. They're supposed to be good eating though, which isn't much of a silver lining when you think about it.
The round goby, zebra mussels, and the Asian carp are all invasive species, the inevitable result of modern global trade. I read that they came from the bilge tanks of freighters. I'm not sure about that but I doubt they are discarded pets like those pythons and anacondas found in Florida.
We have a lot of invasive species in the US but I haven't heard much about invasive species from the US. The only one I've read about is the gray squirrel which is driving out Britain's beloved red squirrels. I don't know how they got there; squirrels seem to be unlikely stowaways. Maybe it's sabotage, an early effort to test the feasibility of getting snakes back into Ireland. Why anyone would want to do such a thing is beyond me but these are weird times and not much surprises me any more.
Friday, May 18, 2018
Designer Microbes
I understand that they are doing all kinds of things with genetic engineering these days. They already have developed a microbe that eats oil spills, unless perhaps Mother Nature has beat them to it. Remember when that undersea oil rig blew out in the Gulf of Mexico some years ago, and it took them months to shut it down? There was some talk about releasing a bunch of those oil eating microbes to help clean up the mess, until it was discovered that microbes of a similar type were already present in the Gulf. I don't know if they were designer microbes gone wild or if they had evolved naturally because of all the oil that already was there from previous spills. I remember reading something once that said, whenever a new food source evolves, something will evolve to take advantage of it.
That's also true when a new invasive species comes to town. The round goby is an invasive fish that has been present in out local waters for some time now. The don't grow very big, but people were worried that they would disrupt the food chain by competing with the native small fry. It wasn't long, however, that the larger fish learned that those gobies were good to eat. It is illegal to possess live round gobies or use them for bait, but I understand that somebody is making an artificial lure now that looks like one. There is some evidence that our native fish have developed a taste for zebra mussels as well. They'll never eat them all, but they seem to have thinned them out to the point that they are no longer causing problems, at least in our neighborhood.
Nature is a tough mother. She has survived meteor hits, climate changes, and mass extinctions, all before there were any humans on the planet. She was here before we got here, and she will still be here after we are gone. Too bad we won't be here to see it.
The reason I knew what was in that Venetian sack was that it hit the water right next to me and burst open on impact. Our gondola wasn't moving very fast, being propelled by a single gondolier with a rear mounted sweep oar. They had modern motorboats in Venice as well, and probably still do, but they mostly operate in the Grand Canal. The little branch canals are too narrow, and the bridges that cross them are too low to readily accommodate such craft.
That's also true when a new invasive species comes to town. The round goby is an invasive fish that has been present in out local waters for some time now. The don't grow very big, but people were worried that they would disrupt the food chain by competing with the native small fry. It wasn't long, however, that the larger fish learned that those gobies were good to eat. It is illegal to possess live round gobies or use them for bait, but I understand that somebody is making an artificial lure now that looks like one. There is some evidence that our native fish have developed a taste for zebra mussels as well. They'll never eat them all, but they seem to have thinned them out to the point that they are no longer causing problems, at least in our neighborhood.
Nature is a tough mother. She has survived meteor hits, climate changes, and mass extinctions, all before there were any humans on the planet. She was here before we got here, and she will still be here after we are gone. Too bad we won't be here to see it.
The reason I knew what was in that Venetian sack was that it hit the water right next to me and burst open on impact. Our gondola wasn't moving very fast, being propelled by a single gondolier with a rear mounted sweep oar. They had modern motorboats in Venice as well, and probably still do, but they mostly operate in the Grand Canal. The little branch canals are too narrow, and the bridges that cross them are too low to readily accommodate such craft.
Mother Fletcher
What's the difference between pass the salt and pass the fucking salt? In both cases the intention is clear. The latter sounds more like the salt requester is maybe in a hurry, or maybe he is kind of pissed off, likely at the requestee. If the requester is like an old salt, or a hippie, or just some guy, or gal, that has a fondness for that language, that interpretation is less applicable, like Old Dog asserts, it loses its impact.
You know watercolor painting is an arduous task. You dip your brush into the wet paint, but you can never be sure exactly what the ratio of paint to water on the brush is. Sometimes you might want a subtle highlight and what you get is a big dark blob, or you might want a big dark blob and what you get is a wet gruel. And sometimes the paint doesn't dry as quickly as you think it should and you brush your blue right next to the yellow which turns out to be still wet and the blue leaks right into the yellow, and once yellow goes green you can never get it back. Mother fucker!
I remember exclaiming that once when the teacher was away and I was surrounded by tender young beginners who were strangers to me. I realized right away that my outburst was out of bounds, but when I looked up nobody was looking my way. I thought to apologize, but it seemed like that would just bring more attention to it, so we all kept on painting away and none of us was worse for the experience as far as I could tell.
It's no big deal, when painting with grizzled water vets to hear damn or shit or in extreme cases, like blue seeping into yellow, fuck. I've taken of late to suddenly changing the cuss word to darn, or shucks, or fudge. And you know just because it's apparent that I have made that change I think the expletive has even more force. I guess it gives me a bit more satisfaction because I think what a clever guy am I. But then I think that all the time anyway.
I remember fifteen years ago reading an article about a guy who came across a plastic duck on an Oregon beach and tracked it to some boatload that sank in the South China Sea, and did further investigation and it turned out the sea is full of plastic. It seemed like an odd thing then, but since it has begun to seem like one of those menaces that may well do us in. If microbes, likely engineered by us, do develop a taste for plastic beads, how much more tasty will be all our plastic toys and then where will we be?
Booze has been a historic force in our government though I think it was in the form of bourbon rather than beer. Anymore I suspect that fewer of our pols, like those hard-drinking ink-stained wretches of yore, imbibe like they used to. I imagine they spend more time in the gym than the bar. You take one look at Paul Ryan and you know he is a teetotaler. How much more pleasant was the drinking, smoking, tanning, John Boehner.
I was expecting to hear some joke with the ducka you head thing. Egg shells and watermelon rinds would be much better than that awful plastic, and what a good eye on young Beagles to note the contents of a sack thrown from the second floor while on a moving vehicle in a faraway land. If Americans pollute less these days I'm sure our manufacturers will swiftly make up for that under the helmsmanship of the likes of Pruitt.
At a time when the lakes weren't connected it was all dry land under the current Mackinac bridge, well except for the river that ran between the two lakes whose bed is still at the bottom of the strait and that's what those NatGeo people were showing with their nifty high tech devices. I suspect those green squares are some kind of thing to like grow algae for profit or as some kind of experiment. But maybe I have said too much already.
You know watercolor painting is an arduous task. You dip your brush into the wet paint, but you can never be sure exactly what the ratio of paint to water on the brush is. Sometimes you might want a subtle highlight and what you get is a big dark blob, or you might want a big dark blob and what you get is a wet gruel. And sometimes the paint doesn't dry as quickly as you think it should and you brush your blue right next to the yellow which turns out to be still wet and the blue leaks right into the yellow, and once yellow goes green you can never get it back. Mother fucker!
I remember exclaiming that once when the teacher was away and I was surrounded by tender young beginners who were strangers to me. I realized right away that my outburst was out of bounds, but when I looked up nobody was looking my way. I thought to apologize, but it seemed like that would just bring more attention to it, so we all kept on painting away and none of us was worse for the experience as far as I could tell.
It's no big deal, when painting with grizzled water vets to hear damn or shit or in extreme cases, like blue seeping into yellow, fuck. I've taken of late to suddenly changing the cuss word to darn, or shucks, or fudge. And you know just because it's apparent that I have made that change I think the expletive has even more force. I guess it gives me a bit more satisfaction because I think what a clever guy am I. But then I think that all the time anyway.
I remember fifteen years ago reading an article about a guy who came across a plastic duck on an Oregon beach and tracked it to some boatload that sank in the South China Sea, and did further investigation and it turned out the sea is full of plastic. It seemed like an odd thing then, but since it has begun to seem like one of those menaces that may well do us in. If microbes, likely engineered by us, do develop a taste for plastic beads, how much more tasty will be all our plastic toys and then where will we be?
Booze has been a historic force in our government though I think it was in the form of bourbon rather than beer. Anymore I suspect that fewer of our pols, like those hard-drinking ink-stained wretches of yore, imbibe like they used to. I imagine they spend more time in the gym than the bar. You take one look at Paul Ryan and you know he is a teetotaler. How much more pleasant was the drinking, smoking, tanning, John Boehner.
I was expecting to hear some joke with the ducka you head thing. Egg shells and watermelon rinds would be much better than that awful plastic, and what a good eye on young Beagles to note the contents of a sack thrown from the second floor while on a moving vehicle in a faraway land. If Americans pollute less these days I'm sure our manufacturers will swiftly make up for that under the helmsmanship of the likes of Pruitt.
At a time when the lakes weren't connected it was all dry land under the current Mackinac bridge, well except for the river that ran between the two lakes whose bed is still at the bottom of the strait and that's what those NatGeo people were showing with their nifty high tech devices. I suspect those green squares are some kind of thing to like grow algae for profit or as some kind of experiment. But maybe I have said too much already.
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Duck-a You Head
In 1961 I went on a three week European tour with my family. It was one of those packaged group tours, so it was relatively affordable for us at the time. One of the cities we visited was Venice, Italy, which is not as nice a place as one might think. We were traveling on one of the back street canals in one of those famous gondolas when a woman leaned out of a second story window and shouted something in Italian, which none of us understood. The gondolier told us laconically, "That means duck-a you head." I don't know how that would have protected us from the paper grocery sack full of garbage that hit the water right next to me, since it came from directly above us, but we ducked out heads anyway. The sack split open when it hit, and I remember seeing egg shells and watermelon rinds floating by. I found out later that Venice is built on a tidal marsh, so anything dumped into the canals eventually floats out to sea.
I don't know if Venetians still dispose of their trash that way, but I understand that people in several Asian countries routinely toss their garbage into their rivers, or on the ground from whence it gets washed into the rivers by the monsoon rains. I learned this just today from this month's National Geographic which features a big spread about plastic pollution. Most plastic floats, and there are a few large "plastic patches" in the Pacific due to the prevailing circular ocean currents. Sunlight and wave action eventually break plastic down into tiny particles called "micro beads" that have been accumulating in the oceans for decades. I didn't know that they were also found in the Great Lakes, which is puzzling because we don't dump garbage into our waterways on nearly the scale that those Asian countries do. Furthermore, I don't think that Americans litter as much they used to do in our youth. So where is that plastic coming from?
Another thing that puzzles me is those rectangular green patches that appear in that photo of the Mackinac Bridge. They don't look like anything that should be there, so I wonder if they are some sort of photo effect deliberately placed here to block our view of something else. I'm not aware of any secret government activity in that vicinity but, if it was a secret, I don't suppose I would be aware of it. I do know that the water that flows under the Mackinac Bridge is not a river, it's the Straits of Mackinac, connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. There is a substantial current in the straits, but it reverses itself periodically depending on which way the wind is blowing. Wind and differences in the atmospheric pressure commonly cause the water in the Great Lakes to pile up on one shore or the other, but it's usually not as noticeable in our part of the lakes as it is in Lake Erie which, I believe, is the shallowest of the Great Lakes.
I don't know if Venetians still dispose of their trash that way, but I understand that people in several Asian countries routinely toss their garbage into their rivers, or on the ground from whence it gets washed into the rivers by the monsoon rains. I learned this just today from this month's National Geographic which features a big spread about plastic pollution. Most plastic floats, and there are a few large "plastic patches" in the Pacific due to the prevailing circular ocean currents. Sunlight and wave action eventually break plastic down into tiny particles called "micro beads" that have been accumulating in the oceans for decades. I didn't know that they were also found in the Great Lakes, which is puzzling because we don't dump garbage into our waterways on nearly the scale that those Asian countries do. Furthermore, I don't think that Americans litter as much they used to do in our youth. So where is that plastic coming from?
Another thing that puzzles me is those rectangular green patches that appear in that photo of the Mackinac Bridge. They don't look like anything that should be there, so I wonder if they are some sort of photo effect deliberately placed here to block our view of something else. I'm not aware of any secret government activity in that vicinity but, if it was a secret, I don't suppose I would be aware of it. I do know that the water that flows under the Mackinac Bridge is not a river, it's the Straits of Mackinac, connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. There is a substantial current in the straits, but it reverses itself periodically depending on which way the wind is blowing. Wind and differences in the atmospheric pressure commonly cause the water in the Great Lakes to pile up on one shore or the other, but it's usually not as noticeable in our part of the lakes as it is in Lake Erie which, I believe, is the shallowest of the Great Lakes.
!@#$%
The trouble with swearing is that if done too much it loses it's impact and the words are mere placeholders in a limited vocabulary. It becomes monotonous after a while and is a sign that the speaker doesn't really have anything to say. Curse words should be chosen carefully and used sparingly for maximum impact, I think. There are exceptions, like when you bang your little toe against a piece of furniture. I've read that a sudden outburst of profanity can lessen the sensation of pain. Don't know where I picked that up but it sounds true to me.
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Bad news, everyone. The pollution of plastics in the rivers, lakes, and oceans is well known, but now it is in beer.
It's not a lot but it's there and we are doomed unless we can find a way to get rid of the damn stuff. Microbes may eventually evolve to the point where they find bits of plastic to be tasty morsels but I'm not going to hold my breath.
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And speaking of beer, it is served in the Belgian Parliament; they have their own bar.
Free beer in Congress sounds like a good idea to me. Senate hearings wouldn't be so boring and we would all enjoy the ensuing lively debates.
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Bad news, everyone. The pollution of plastics in the rivers, lakes, and oceans is well known, but now it is in beer.
It's not a lot but it's there and we are doomed unless we can find a way to get rid of the damn stuff. Microbes may eventually evolve to the point where they find bits of plastic to be tasty morsels but I'm not going to hold my breath.
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And speaking of beer, it is served in the Belgian Parliament; they have their own bar.
Free beer in Congress sounds like a good idea to me. Senate hearings wouldn't be so boring and we would all enjoy the ensuing lively debates.
Oh shit
I think there was more of a difference in the way we spoke in a classroom and on the street than the presence of girls. There were grammar differences. We might well say we didn't have no bananas on the street, but we would never say that in the classroom.
You know that double negative thing is odd. Technically two negatives make a positive, like minus one times minus one equals positive one. But everybody knows if you say you don't have no bananas it doesn't mean that you actually have bananas. But if you put it in nice grammar, like, "It isn't true that we have no bananas," why then it does sound like you have bananas.
I wanted to talk about grammar, but maybe young Beagles didn't use no slang, since he was, as he has said, more like a little adult than a kid. I think Beagles is talking more about swearing than he is about grammar.
It's hard to remember when we first realized that there was such a thing as swearing. There is the trope in sitcoms where the very young child learns a swear word and then uses it all the time because it has an effect on the adults. Of course the kid is absolutely right, a word is just a combination of sounds and there is absolutely no reason why one combination should be considered fine and another will send you down the escalator to H E Double hockeysticks.
But some things are wrong, just because everybody thinks they are wrong, and that was especially true for swear words, Especially around the delicate sex, although I suspect anymore women swear about as much as men do.
But I remember maybe my second year in college, some girl called me up early in the morning and I was still sleepy and I was saying like we went to the fucking store and got some fucking cigarettes and,,, And then I stopped dead in my tracks, realizing what I was saying and I started apologizing profusely. A couple years later I was swearing profusely no matter who was around and if there were women they were swearing just as much.
That was my hippie days. We hippies loved swearing, it shocked the squares and showed how free we were
I used to have to make a conscious effort when I was back in Chicago with my parents not to swear, but as my peak hippie behavior began to fade I didn't have to make much effort, and anymore I don't swear that much. Not at all in formal situations around people I don't know, and more the less formal and the more familiar my company is.
But you know there is that moment sometimes, when you are about to say oh, shit, but then you realize maybe that is not fitting for present company, but then you say it anyway just to be a little daring, and it feels good.
On another subject last week I watched a NatGeo (I know Beagles is a fan of NatGeo) special on the great lakes. It was pretty good, though why everything they put on tv has to be dumbed down is beyond me. I was following along on Google Earth when they showed a river under the Mackinaw bridge. Sometimes in the past the great lakes were connected only by rivers and sometimes not at all.
When I Google Earthed the Mackinaw bridge I noticed there were square patches of green in the water on either side of the Mackinaw bridge. I wonder if Beagles knows anything about that.
You know that double negative thing is odd. Technically two negatives make a positive, like minus one times minus one equals positive one. But everybody knows if you say you don't have no bananas it doesn't mean that you actually have bananas. But if you put it in nice grammar, like, "It isn't true that we have no bananas," why then it does sound like you have bananas.
I wanted to talk about grammar, but maybe young Beagles didn't use no slang, since he was, as he has said, more like a little adult than a kid. I think Beagles is talking more about swearing than he is about grammar.
It's hard to remember when we first realized that there was such a thing as swearing. There is the trope in sitcoms where the very young child learns a swear word and then uses it all the time because it has an effect on the adults. Of course the kid is absolutely right, a word is just a combination of sounds and there is absolutely no reason why one combination should be considered fine and another will send you down the escalator to H E Double hockeysticks.
But some things are wrong, just because everybody thinks they are wrong, and that was especially true for swear words, Especially around the delicate sex, although I suspect anymore women swear about as much as men do.
But I remember maybe my second year in college, some girl called me up early in the morning and I was still sleepy and I was saying like we went to the fucking store and got some fucking cigarettes and,,, And then I stopped dead in my tracks, realizing what I was saying and I started apologizing profusely. A couple years later I was swearing profusely no matter who was around and if there were women they were swearing just as much.
That was my hippie days. We hippies loved swearing, it shocked the squares and showed how free we were
I used to have to make a conscious effort when I was back in Chicago with my parents not to swear, but as my peak hippie behavior began to fade I didn't have to make much effort, and anymore I don't swear that much. Not at all in formal situations around people I don't know, and more the less formal and the more familiar my company is.
But you know there is that moment sometimes, when you are about to say oh, shit, but then you realize maybe that is not fitting for present company, but then you say it anyway just to be a little daring, and it feels good.
On another subject last week I watched a NatGeo (I know Beagles is a fan of NatGeo) special on the great lakes. It was pretty good, though why everything they put on tv has to be dumbed down is beyond me. I was following along on Google Earth when they showed a river under the Mackinaw bridge. Sometimes in the past the great lakes were connected only by rivers and sometimes not at all.
When I Google Earthed the Mackinaw bridge I noticed there were square patches of green in the water on either side of the Mackinaw bridge. I wonder if Beagles knows anything about that.
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Just Us Guys
I had to think about it for minute, but I don't remember that I spoke differently in the classroom because it was the classroom, it was because I was in "mixed company". I do know that all of us guys spoke differently when we were among ourselves than we did when there were adults or girls around. At some point I noticed that male adults spoke differently when there were women and/or children around, probably when I became a male adult myself. Even then, the male adults of my generation spoke differently than the male adults of my father's generation, at least they did when male adults of my generation were around. I have always wondered how the girls, adult women, and adult men spoke when I wasn't around, but there's no way to know because I'm not around when I'm not around.
When the content of the Watergate tapes were made public, I was surprised at how many expletives were deleted, so maybe everybody speaks differently when they are among their own kind. To this day, a politician or other public figure gets in trouble now and then for saying something when they didn't know that the microphone was on. When one is a public figure, one should assume that the microphone is always on, just like, when anybody handles a firearm, they should always assume that it's loaded.
I seem to remember that there was a guy named Horace Mann who was largely responsible for the establishment of public schools in the U.S. I don't remember any of the details, but that might be a good place to start an internet search of the subject. Before that, I think that many kids learned to read and write from their parents. The rich kids surely got more eduication than the poor kids but, even out on the frontier, there were one room schoolhouses that were probably funded by local communities.
When the content of the Watergate tapes were made public, I was surprised at how many expletives were deleted, so maybe everybody speaks differently when they are among their own kind. To this day, a politician or other public figure gets in trouble now and then for saying something when they didn't know that the microphone was on. When one is a public figure, one should assume that the microphone is always on, just like, when anybody handles a firearm, they should always assume that it's loaded.
I seem to remember that there was a guy named Horace Mann who was largely responsible for the establishment of public schools in the U.S. I don't remember any of the details, but that might be a good place to start an internet search of the subject. Before that, I think that many kids learned to read and write from their parents. The rich kids surely got more eduication than the poor kids but, even out on the frontier, there were one room schoolhouses that were probably funded by local communities.
literacy in america
Universal schooling began in the US I'm guessing around the beginning of the civil war. Of course the upper crust was going to school all along, and they are the ones who make history. The unfortunate man with the hoe, since he doesn't know how to write, doesn't leave much of a record for us.
I remember when I was four years old and I used to watch my sister get ready to go to school, and then she'd be there all day, doing god knows what, sitting at a desk, I knew that, and not running around like a free kid having a good time. How terrible. Of course, as siblings do, I made fun of her, and one day she shot back, "Next month, you'll have to go too." I was taken aback. Could this be true? Well my sister said so, and she was older than me so she knew a lot, so it must be. Oh alas and alack.
I don't recall any resistance. Your folks told you had to go and so you had to go. I reckon they were glad to have you out of their hair for six or seven hours, but they also, and I think this was universal, thought it was good for you. Nobody thought readin 'n writin' 'n 'rithmetic were bad for you, nobody thought you were being imbued with sinister ideas by the deep state. (Deep state, there is a term suddenly taking hold. In the sixties my revolutionary ilk just had the establishment, evil, but that was straightforward, unlike the sinister deep state).
I took a break here for internet research. I was looking for something like percent of Americans who were literate by decade, but I couldn't find anything like that, and I guess they didn't take statistics back then. I remember reading Andersonville, a slightly fictionalized story of a horrific southern prison for union soldiers some years ago, and at one point the greys capture a passel of blues and for some reason they ask who among them can read and write and all the union hands go up, and the rebs think they are all funning them because hardly any of the grey can.
Anyway, I had expected to see like 10 percent literate in, oh 1800, and maybe like 70 percent in 1870, but there was nothing that extreme. Instead indications are that Americans were always pretty literate. I remember Tocqueville commenting on being surprised at how knowledgeable the American in the street was.
Well this is all very interesting. When I was in edukashun skool they did teach us the history of public schools in America, but as always when in school, I wasn't paying attention. What I was more interested in than literacy was what effect just spending all those hours together in a classroom where you had to shut up and listen had on society, but surely that requires more actual facts.
Beagles' question about black kids speaking the same in the classroom as they do on the street is interesting. All kids speak differently in the classroom than on the street, but for the black kids I am sure that their classroom english was further from their street english than was the case for white kids. To some extent this good english/bad english thing is a class thing, with the english of the upper class seen as better than that of the lower class.
When I worked at the Chinese restaurant, there were these two older local women who were like managers and they would put up signs for the rules, and invariably there were misspelled words in them, and the waitresses, who were generally college students, would laugh at them. Oh part of it was just making fun of the establishment because these women were older, but part of it was classist.
I remember when I was four years old and I used to watch my sister get ready to go to school, and then she'd be there all day, doing god knows what, sitting at a desk, I knew that, and not running around like a free kid having a good time. How terrible. Of course, as siblings do, I made fun of her, and one day she shot back, "Next month, you'll have to go too." I was taken aback. Could this be true? Well my sister said so, and she was older than me so she knew a lot, so it must be. Oh alas and alack.
I don't recall any resistance. Your folks told you had to go and so you had to go. I reckon they were glad to have you out of their hair for six or seven hours, but they also, and I think this was universal, thought it was good for you. Nobody thought readin 'n writin' 'n 'rithmetic were bad for you, nobody thought you were being imbued with sinister ideas by the deep state. (Deep state, there is a term suddenly taking hold. In the sixties my revolutionary ilk just had the establishment, evil, but that was straightforward, unlike the sinister deep state).
I took a break here for internet research. I was looking for something like percent of Americans who were literate by decade, but I couldn't find anything like that, and I guess they didn't take statistics back then. I remember reading Andersonville, a slightly fictionalized story of a horrific southern prison for union soldiers some years ago, and at one point the greys capture a passel of blues and for some reason they ask who among them can read and write and all the union hands go up, and the rebs think they are all funning them because hardly any of the grey can.
Anyway, I had expected to see like 10 percent literate in, oh 1800, and maybe like 70 percent in 1870, but there was nothing that extreme. Instead indications are that Americans were always pretty literate. I remember Tocqueville commenting on being surprised at how knowledgeable the American in the street was.
Well this is all very interesting. When I was in edukashun skool they did teach us the history of public schools in America, but as always when in school, I wasn't paying attention. What I was more interested in than literacy was what effect just spending all those hours together in a classroom where you had to shut up and listen had on society, but surely that requires more actual facts.
Beagles' question about black kids speaking the same in the classroom as they do on the street is interesting. All kids speak differently in the classroom than on the street, but for the black kids I am sure that their classroom english was further from their street english than was the case for white kids. To some extent this good english/bad english thing is a class thing, with the english of the upper class seen as better than that of the lower class.
When I worked at the Chinese restaurant, there were these two older local women who were like managers and they would put up signs for the rules, and invariably there were misspelled words in them, and the waitresses, who were generally college students, would laugh at them. Oh part of it was just making fun of the establishment because these women were older, but part of it was classist.
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
The Beaglesonian Compact
As I said, my tractor is known in the trade as a compact tractor. The model number is B2601 if you want to look it up. I'm sure that Kubota has a website, or you could go to my dealer's website :
http://GINOPSALES.com You don't call a compact car a carette, so why would you call a compact tractor a tractorette? Furthermore, my tractor is not red, it's orange. I seem to remember that Allis Chalmers tractors used to be red, but I don't know if they still are, or if Allis Chalmers even still makes tractors under that name.
Trees grow tall like that when they grow close together because they are competing for the sunlight. I suppose, though, that the reason they are growing so close together is they have plenty of water, so they don't have to compete for that. Trees growing in a more arid environment do have to compete for water, which would cause them to grow farther apart. It also depends on the species of the tree. Fruit trees don't grow that tall, probably because they have been selectively bred not to. Who wants to climb a 50 foot ladder to pick fruit? There is also a number of dwarf fruit tree species that have been selectively bred to grow even shorter, and to mature faster as well. Then there are those Japanese banzai trees that are down right miniature. I seem to remember that they get that way by judicious pruning, but it seems like there should be more to it than that.
Uncle Ken: Do the Black kids in Chicago schools talk the same way in school as they do on the street? If not, does the teacher correct them when they lapse into their native tongue? I will admit that their way of conjugating the verb "to be" is more logical than ours: "I be, you be, he be, she be".
That makes more sense than, "I am, you are, he is, she is." Why do they call it "to be" when the word "be" isn't even in there?
http://GINOPSALES.com You don't call a compact car a carette, so why would you call a compact tractor a tractorette? Furthermore, my tractor is not red, it's orange. I seem to remember that Allis Chalmers tractors used to be red, but I don't know if they still are, or if Allis Chalmers even still makes tractors under that name.
Trees grow tall like that when they grow close together because they are competing for the sunlight. I suppose, though, that the reason they are growing so close together is they have plenty of water, so they don't have to compete for that. Trees growing in a more arid environment do have to compete for water, which would cause them to grow farther apart. It also depends on the species of the tree. Fruit trees don't grow that tall, probably because they have been selectively bred not to. Who wants to climb a 50 foot ladder to pick fruit? There is also a number of dwarf fruit tree species that have been selectively bred to grow even shorter, and to mature faster as well. Then there are those Japanese banzai trees that are down right miniature. I seem to remember that they get that way by judicious pruning, but it seems like there should be more to it than that.
Uncle Ken: Do the Black kids in Chicago schools talk the same way in school as they do on the street? If not, does the teacher correct them when they lapse into their native tongue? I will admit that their way of conjugating the verb "to be" is more logical than ours: "I be, you be, he be, she be".
That makes more sense than, "I am, you are, he is, she is." Why do they call it "to be" when the word "be" isn't even in there?
Words
How much has going to school changed us?
That strikes me as a fuzzy question; perhaps there should be a new field of study called quantum sociology. Any changes to us would have happened gradually without our being aware of them but an outside observer would notice a difference immediately. Let me give this topic a bit more thought as I suspect the waters will get deep and become a difficult slog.
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Once in a while Uncle Ken has invented new words and, not fully understanding the context or meaning, I voiced my objections but now I realize he had the right idea after all. The English language needs new words, or at least new suffixes. Take tractor, for instance. Originally, the word meant "something that pulls," from the Latin verb trahere, which is why the driver hauling a load to Walmart is operating a semi-tractor/trailer, half tractor, half trailer. Mention tractors at a truck stop and I doubt they will bring up Allis Chalmers or Oliver. Maybe they will, I don't know.
But what about the little guy Mr. Beagles recently acquired? It's a tractor for sure, but shouldn't there be a word for the smaller versions? In Spanish it might be tractorito or in Italian, tractorino but English seems to lack a good suffix for such a thing. The best example I can think of is -ette, like the word cigarette came from cigar but that sounds awfully French to me. Perhaps it's in the structure of the English language to prefer prefixes instead, like mini-, maxi-, and ultra-. But a mini-tractor just doesn't sound right to me.
That strikes me as a fuzzy question; perhaps there should be a new field of study called quantum sociology. Any changes to us would have happened gradually without our being aware of them but an outside observer would notice a difference immediately. Let me give this topic a bit more thought as I suspect the waters will get deep and become a difficult slog.
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Once in a while Uncle Ken has invented new words and, not fully understanding the context or meaning, I voiced my objections but now I realize he had the right idea after all. The English language needs new words, or at least new suffixes. Take tractor, for instance. Originally, the word meant "something that pulls," from the Latin verb trahere, which is why the driver hauling a load to Walmart is operating a semi-tractor/trailer, half tractor, half trailer. Mention tractors at a truck stop and I doubt they will bring up Allis Chalmers or Oliver. Maybe they will, I don't know.
But what about the little guy Mr. Beagles recently acquired? It's a tractor for sure, but shouldn't there be a word for the smaller versions? In Spanish it might be tractorito or in Italian, tractorino but English seems to lack a good suffix for such a thing. The best example I can think of is -ette, like the word cigarette came from cigar but that sounds awfully French to me. Perhaps it's in the structure of the English language to prefer prefixes instead, like mini-, maxi-, and ultra-. But a mini-tractor just doesn't sound right to me.
learning to write good
I kind of liked Car Talk, those Tappet brothers had a way with words. I guess Trac Talk is informative, but I don't see much humor in it. I did like the fact that the tractor is (while not a fire truck) fire truck red. And my my look at those tall trees. I suppose that's because you are in a swamp. The live oaks of arid Austin are rather short. I guess Tree Talk is not a barrel of monkeys either.
Speaking of a way with words, I took Old Dog's quiz last night. I think I did pretty well. I got about half on the first try, and three after one or two guesses, and three I had to give up on. If I had just been reading them in the paper I wouldn't have noticed that they were in error. Maybe block for bloc, I think that would have noticed that. It's interesting to see things with your school glasses, takes me back to diagramming sentences. My first semester of high school my English teacher diagrammed the whole Gettysburg address. Announcing that was impressive, but the actual deed proved to be exceedingly boring.
One of the peculiarities that gives me the most trouble is different forms of a verb for singular and plural,and for that matter, first, second, and third persons, but one thing at a time. I am, we are. He is, they are. A brother Karamazov is, the brothers Karamazov are, but the Brothers Karamazov Heating and Plumbing is, even though it is run by the brothers Karamazov who are.
In general the so-called rules of English are to help us communicate. If you tell me the Al Karamazov ran, I know it is in the past. If you tell me he runs, I know it is something he does from time to time and if you tell me he is running I know he is doing it right now, unless you add in the Moscow 500, then I know he will be running whenever that race is run..
But if you tell me Al Karamazov run, or the brothers Karamazov runs, that information is just as good as if I said it the right way. But oh it does sting, does it not? You can just feel that ruler across the knuckles, even though our civilized public school teachers were not allowed to do that. And, curious thing no adult native English speaker mixes up those verb forms, and those are the people that we learn the language from, so why is it necessary to teach that?
Well maybe because we are little kids when we learn that and sometimes little kids do mess up those verb forms. I was thinking well what would a person who didn't go to school talk like? Would he learn from other people who talked right or would he be saying "Al Karamazov run."? I don't know, in present day America we never run into people who haven't gone to school.
You know just two hundred years ago it wouldn't be difficult at all to find somebody who didn't go to school. How much has going to school changed us? Not just what we learned, but the whole social experiment?
Speaking of a way with words, I took Old Dog's quiz last night. I think I did pretty well. I got about half on the first try, and three after one or two guesses, and three I had to give up on. If I had just been reading them in the paper I wouldn't have noticed that they were in error. Maybe block for bloc, I think that would have noticed that. It's interesting to see things with your school glasses, takes me back to diagramming sentences. My first semester of high school my English teacher diagrammed the whole Gettysburg address. Announcing that was impressive, but the actual deed proved to be exceedingly boring.
One of the peculiarities that gives me the most trouble is different forms of a verb for singular and plural,and for that matter, first, second, and third persons, but one thing at a time. I am, we are. He is, they are. A brother Karamazov is, the brothers Karamazov are, but the Brothers Karamazov Heating and Plumbing is, even though it is run by the brothers Karamazov who are.
In general the so-called rules of English are to help us communicate. If you tell me the Al Karamazov ran, I know it is in the past. If you tell me he runs, I know it is something he does from time to time and if you tell me he is running I know he is doing it right now, unless you add in the Moscow 500, then I know he will be running whenever that race is run..
But if you tell me Al Karamazov run, or the brothers Karamazov runs, that information is just as good as if I said it the right way. But oh it does sting, does it not? You can just feel that ruler across the knuckles, even though our civilized public school teachers were not allowed to do that. And, curious thing no adult native English speaker mixes up those verb forms, and those are the people that we learn the language from, so why is it necessary to teach that?
Well maybe because we are little kids when we learn that and sometimes little kids do mess up those verb forms. I was thinking well what would a person who didn't go to school talk like? Would he learn from other people who talked right or would he be saying "Al Karamazov run."? I don't know, in present day America we never run into people who haven't gone to school.
You know just two hundred years ago it wouldn't be difficult at all to find somebody who didn't go to school. How much has going to school changed us? Not just what we learned, but the whole social experiment?
Monday, May 14, 2018
Tractor Talk
This unplanned photo was taken by the trail camera I've got set up on our septic drain field. The deer frequent it this time of year because they like the new green grass. If you guys are interested, I can take some close ups with my regular camera.
My new tractor is the same size as my old one, but it has a bigger engine and front end loader. My old attachments will fit on it. I have a back blade, brush mower, and a roto tiller. When I don't have one of those on, I leave my draw bar with a set of log tongs on the back. I use the front end loader to plow snow, which works better for my purposes than a regular snowplow. Both my old and new tractors are classified as compact tractors, bigger than a lawn tractor and smaller than a traditional farm tractor. I understand they also make a sub-compact tractor now, but I'm not familiar with it. Kubota was a pioneer in the field of small 4WD tractors way back in the 1950s. Other companies make them now, and Kubota makes big ones too, but that's how they started out. Kubotas are orange, and John Deers are still green. As far as I know, all the other brands have their own color schemes as well.
The only place you are likely to see a side mounted PTO driving a belt nowadays is at an antique tractor show. Modern PTOs consist of a male spine gear that plugs into a female socket on the end of the attachment's drive shaft. Most of them are rear mounted, mine has an additional one underneath that points forward, but I have never used it.
I am the proud owner of 88 acres of prime swamp land, but most of it is uncultivated. I bought it in 1986 for hunting and firewood cutting, and we built our current home on it in 2000. I use my tractor to haul firewood, plow snow, rough mowing, and working up the 1/3 acre rye field by my deer blind. That's not my deer blind in the picture. I originally built it for camping, then I tried raising pheasants in it one year, and now it sits forlorn out beyond the drain field awaiting some other productive use.
flattering the big orange dumbo
I'm reading a book now about how Nixon and Kissinger, those merry jokesters, destroyed Cambodia by entangling it in the Vietnam war, and one of the their strategies was the madman theory.where you acted like you were crazy so as to get things from your enemy. I think it was Kissinger's idea because he liked to look like the sane man next to the drunken, slavering, Dick Nixon.
As a believer in Trump's razor, I don't believe he is adopting that strategy, and he's not really nuts he's more like a badly spoiled child with ADHD. Looking that up I discovered a quiz I can take to learn if I have ADHD, but that will have to wait along with Old Dog's editor quiz because I don't want to toss my morning away.
There has been some talk about how Trump's bluster has frightened the North Koreans to the conference table. Maybe so, who can tell? It seems more likely that they have seen a guy who they can twist around their little finger. It's hard to believe that they would give up their nukes and after Iran who can trust the US not to tear up an agreement just because.
And there is that talk about bullies being cowards, and there is that element in Trump's behavior, He never insults anybody to their face, except the press and that is when he has his howling mob around him. He makes nice at his conferences and then half the time tweets out his insults from his bed in the morning. He's done a lot of crap in the USA where he has his crowd of sycophants to cheer him on, but foreign policy, not much. There are his tariffs, but those seem to keep changing.
And Trump likes dictators. There is Putin of course, but he, in the elegant words of LBJ, has Trump's pecker in his pocket. But he also loves the kings of Saudi Arabia, and now the big-hatted guys of North Korea have learned how easy it is to flatter the big orange dumbo.
I do want to get to Old Dog's quiz, I did the first one just now, and it looks like they were just interested in grammar errors rather than style which makes it less interesting. Personally I thought the last line was inelegant and I might have added an as at the beginning, and in an interview sounded redundant. Where else would he have said it?
I'll see if I can get to that ADHD quiz too.
As a believer in Trump's razor, I don't believe he is adopting that strategy, and he's not really nuts he's more like a badly spoiled child with ADHD. Looking that up I discovered a quiz I can take to learn if I have ADHD, but that will have to wait along with Old Dog's editor quiz because I don't want to toss my morning away.
There has been some talk about how Trump's bluster has frightened the North Koreans to the conference table. Maybe so, who can tell? It seems more likely that they have seen a guy who they can twist around their little finger. It's hard to believe that they would give up their nukes and after Iran who can trust the US not to tear up an agreement just because.
And there is that talk about bullies being cowards, and there is that element in Trump's behavior, He never insults anybody to their face, except the press and that is when he has his howling mob around him. He makes nice at his conferences and then half the time tweets out his insults from his bed in the morning. He's done a lot of crap in the USA where he has his crowd of sycophants to cheer him on, but foreign policy, not much. There are his tariffs, but those seem to keep changing.
And Trump likes dictators. There is Putin of course, but he, in the elegant words of LBJ, has Trump's pecker in his pocket. But he also loves the kings of Saudi Arabia, and now the big-hatted guys of North Korea have learned how easy it is to flatter the big orange dumbo.
I do want to get to Old Dog's quiz, I did the first one just now, and it looks like they were just interested in grammar errors rather than style which makes it less interesting. Personally I thought the last line was inelegant and I might have added an as at the beginning, and in an interview sounded redundant. Where else would he have said it?
I'll see if I can get to that ADHD quiz too.
Sunday, May 13, 2018
What color is it?
Tell me more about the new tractor Mr. Beagles. I'm guessing it's a big garden tractor, as opposed to the type used on farms, simply because you don't have hundreds of acres to plow. At one time tractors were color-coded according to the manufacturer but I don't know if that's still true; I can't picture a blue John Deere.
But a tractor by itself is useless, it's the accessories that make the magic happen. I don't know if there are industry standards for the add-ons so you can use your old plow, mower, or whatever with the new tractor. Getting a new tractor is one thing but getting new versions of everything else would be a real burden.
One of the neatest tractor features that I recall is the power takeoff where you attach a big leather belt and run other machinery. It was weird to see a tractor in a heavily wooded area running a big saw to cut lumber. There's a lot you can run with the proper tractor, pumps, generator, all kinds of neat stuff. I miss seeing that kind of equipment in the city where you connect different machines together, following the engineering practice of Rube Goldberg.
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What's up with that Kim character in North Korea?
He may be a victim of Trump's strategy of bullshit and bluff. No one knows what he will do, including himself; everything is on the table and the first guy to blink loses. It would be funny if the stakes weren't so high. Not the best way to conduct foreign policy, I think.
Trump used to say that other nations were laughing at the US but they're not laughing now, especially in the European Union. Der Spiegel had a recent editorial that closed with these two lines: Clever resistance is necessary, as sad and absurd as that may sound. Resistance against America.
The worm is turning.
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I'm a sucker for online quizzes and tests, sometimes they're general knowledge, other times trivia, and once in a while I'm smarter than a fifth-grader. A different type of quiz showed up in the New York Times where you can test your copy editing skills, using copy that was published but later found lacking. Fellow Institute members may find it enlightening considering the amount of words being slung about. There are only twelve questions but some are real head-scratchers and make you think about the subtleties of the written word. I am not good editor but a little better than the average NYT reader, which is a scary thought. A lot of dummies must be reading the Times.
But a tractor by itself is useless, it's the accessories that make the magic happen. I don't know if there are industry standards for the add-ons so you can use your old plow, mower, or whatever with the new tractor. Getting a new tractor is one thing but getting new versions of everything else would be a real burden.
One of the neatest tractor features that I recall is the power takeoff where you attach a big leather belt and run other machinery. It was weird to see a tractor in a heavily wooded area running a big saw to cut lumber. There's a lot you can run with the proper tractor, pumps, generator, all kinds of neat stuff. I miss seeing that kind of equipment in the city where you connect different machines together, following the engineering practice of Rube Goldberg.
-----
What's up with that Kim character in North Korea?
He may be a victim of Trump's strategy of bullshit and bluff. No one knows what he will do, including himself; everything is on the table and the first guy to blink loses. It would be funny if the stakes weren't so high. Not the best way to conduct foreign policy, I think.
Trump used to say that other nations were laughing at the US but they're not laughing now, especially in the European Union. Der Spiegel had a recent editorial that closed with these two lines: Clever resistance is necessary, as sad and absurd as that may sound. Resistance against America.
The worm is turning.
-----
I'm a sucker for online quizzes and tests, sometimes they're general knowledge, other times trivia, and once in a while I'm smarter than a fifth-grader. A different type of quiz showed up in the New York Times where you can test your copy editing skills, using copy that was published but later found lacking. Fellow Institute members may find it enlightening considering the amount of words being slung about. There are only twelve questions but some are real head-scratchers and make you think about the subtleties of the written word. I am not good editor but a little better than the average NYT reader, which is a scary thought. A lot of dummies must be reading the Times.
Saturday, May 12, 2018
When it Rains, it Pours - Part 2
On Wednesday the guy came and fixed our furnace and the leak that had damaged it, or so we thought. It rained hard again Wednesday night, but not for as long as it did the last time, and the roof started leaking over the furnace again. We were able to divert the water with some old towels and keep it from getting into the furnace controls, so the furnace was not damaged this time. The guy came back on Thursday to fix the roof some more. He thinks it's really fixed this time, but we won't know for sure until the next hard rain. Right in the middle of this, a different guy delivered my new tractor and took the old one away. I met him on the county road so he wouldn't block the driveway for the plumbing, heating, and roofing guy, which was just as well because he would have had a hard time turning his big trailer around in our driveway anyway. It was a hectic day for us, but those two jobs are done now. I had some errands to run on Friday, I made bread today, and we are going to my grand daughter's for Mother's Day tomorrow, so I haven't had time to play with my new tractor yet. Maybe Monday.
I agree with Uncle Ken that consumers do not always act logically, and the advertisers try to take advantage of that. I suppose we could respond by boycotting the products that publish stupid ads, but that itself would be illogical. It might be a fine product that we want or need, so why should we deprive ourselves of it just to prove a point? The point would be lost anyway because we, the logical people, seem to be a small minority in the marketplace. The same thing might be said about the marketplace of ideas. People are going to believe what they want to believe, and we seem to be just spinning our wheels when we try to convince them otherwise. It's like that old saying, "My mind is already made up, don't confuse me with facts."
What's up with that Kim character in North Korea? Not long ago he was threatening to nuke us, and now he wants to play nice. Could it be that he is intimidated by Trump because he finally met somebody who is as unstable as he is?
I agree with Uncle Ken that consumers do not always act logically, and the advertisers try to take advantage of that. I suppose we could respond by boycotting the products that publish stupid ads, but that itself would be illogical. It might be a fine product that we want or need, so why should we deprive ourselves of it just to prove a point? The point would be lost anyway because we, the logical people, seem to be a small minority in the marketplace. The same thing might be said about the marketplace of ideas. People are going to believe what they want to believe, and we seem to be just spinning our wheels when we try to convince them otherwise. It's like that old saying, "My mind is already made up, don't confuse me with facts."
What's up with that Kim character in North Korea? Not long ago he was threatening to nuke us, and now he wants to play nice. Could it be that he is intimidated by Trump because he finally met somebody who is as unstable as he is?
Friday, May 11, 2018
marketplace of ideas 2
I actually got Maybe I am Lois, maybe I am, from Seinfeld. Jerry is a big fan of superman and he is thrilled when he acquires a girlfriend named Lois. Later in the episode he wins a race for her and she gets a Hawaii vacation out of it, and when she asks him if he will join her on the vacation, he folds his arms in front of him and says, "Maybe I will Lois, maybe I will." The line resonated strongly with me and now I know it must be from memories of the old tv show.
Much of economics is based on the idea of the consumer as a logical unit. Of course he will buy the cheaper better shoes, but then they realized that the consumer is not a logical unit. Maybe he will buy the crappier more expensive shoes because Michael Jordan endorsed them.
I never got that endorsement thing. All it means is that some company gave your hero some money to say nice things about your product because they think that you are so stupid that this will make you buy it. But sports is stupid, so you expect that sort of thing in that field, but after Tiger Woods got chased out of the house by his wife with a golf club (how come the makers of that golf club never had Mrs Woods endorse her golf club? Wives around the country could buy it and display it prominently to their potentially errant hubbies) I learned that insurance companies were dropping their sponsorship of him. Insurance companies? Would people buy insurance because the salesman was wearing a Tiger Woods hat?
I liked Old Dog article. Like Beagles points out, we don't sit down in front of the professor and his blackboard, we just pick up language. We pick up all sorts of things and don't even know we have them. The order of adjectives particularly interested me. Big old red wagon sounds fine, red big old wagon and old big red wagon, sound ok, but seem to have a slightly different meaning, and the other three sound like a robot said them.
Those grammar mavens that I have spoken of, sometimes spent a whole column about a sentence, if this rule is followed then it should be this, but if that rule is followed it should be that, so which rule should be followed, and generally they settled for something simply because it sounded better. Like there are probably a lot of times in your daily life when you should be saying whom instead of who, but if you do everybody will think there is something wrong with you.
Back to the marketplace of ideas, Old Dog recommends that we fight bad ideas using facts and not opinions, and this is my idea also, and part 2 of The Liberal Agenda, but it takes much longer to debunk a bad idea than to sprout a new one, and there is that curious finding where people exposed to a debunking of their idea believe in it even more strongly than before.
I've been avoiding the subject of social credit because I've found the definitions vague, but I think the gist of it is that more prominent people get more power. Seems to me that maybe we should give people with more learning a bigger boombox. A lot of people with a lot of learning are full of shit, but maybe it would average out.
Well we have a long weekend to consider it, if we so choose, for myself, maybe I will, Lois, maybe I will.
Much of economics is based on the idea of the consumer as a logical unit. Of course he will buy the cheaper better shoes, but then they realized that the consumer is not a logical unit. Maybe he will buy the crappier more expensive shoes because Michael Jordan endorsed them.
I never got that endorsement thing. All it means is that some company gave your hero some money to say nice things about your product because they think that you are so stupid that this will make you buy it. But sports is stupid, so you expect that sort of thing in that field, but after Tiger Woods got chased out of the house by his wife with a golf club (how come the makers of that golf club never had Mrs Woods endorse her golf club? Wives around the country could buy it and display it prominently to their potentially errant hubbies) I learned that insurance companies were dropping their sponsorship of him. Insurance companies? Would people buy insurance because the salesman was wearing a Tiger Woods hat?
I liked Old Dog article. Like Beagles points out, we don't sit down in front of the professor and his blackboard, we just pick up language. We pick up all sorts of things and don't even know we have them. The order of adjectives particularly interested me. Big old red wagon sounds fine, red big old wagon and old big red wagon, sound ok, but seem to have a slightly different meaning, and the other three sound like a robot said them.
Those grammar mavens that I have spoken of, sometimes spent a whole column about a sentence, if this rule is followed then it should be this, but if that rule is followed it should be that, so which rule should be followed, and generally they settled for something simply because it sounded better. Like there are probably a lot of times in your daily life when you should be saying whom instead of who, but if you do everybody will think there is something wrong with you.
Back to the marketplace of ideas, Old Dog recommends that we fight bad ideas using facts and not opinions, and this is my idea also, and part 2 of The Liberal Agenda, but it takes much longer to debunk a bad idea than to sprout a new one, and there is that curious finding where people exposed to a debunking of their idea believe in it even more strongly than before.
I've been avoiding the subject of social credit because I've found the definitions vague, but I think the gist of it is that more prominent people get more power. Seems to me that maybe we should give people with more learning a bigger boombox. A lot of people with a lot of learning are full of shit, but maybe it would average out.
Well we have a long weekend to consider it, if we so choose, for myself, maybe I will, Lois, maybe I will.
Thursday, May 10, 2018
Just Do It
Most of us did not learn to talk by learning the rules, we picked it up from hearing other people talk, and it just came to us naturally. Then we went to school and the teachers kept telling us we were doing it wrong. After awhile, we learned how to talk in such a way that the teacher wouldn't correct us. Then, a few years later, they tried to teach us the rules of grammar. I already knew how to talk by then, and I found the rules to be tedious and unnecessary. I also knew how to sing by the time anybody tried to teach me the rules of music theory, and I found that to be tedious as well.
There are basically two ways to shoot a gun, aiming and pointing, which is sometimes called "instinct shooting". Some people seem to be natural born instinct shooters, and some, myself included, are better aimers than pointers. My father was a pointer, and he was never able to teach me how to shoot because he couldn't put it into words, he just did it. It was in high school ROTC and, later, in the real army, that I finally learned how to shoot with reasonable accuracy. Pointing is the generally preferred technique for shooting a shotgun at a moving target, but I never mastered it, I aim a shotgun the same way I aim a rifle. Pointers generally do better on close range shots at moving targets, and aimers generally do better at longer range targets that are moving predictably or, better yet, not at all. To be a really good marksman, you should become proficient in both techniques. But who's got time for that?
I don't know about the "marketplace of ideas theory", I'll have to think about it. I'm pretty sure, though, that censorship is not the answer, that's been tried. It might work for awhile but, eventually, it pisses off enough people that you have a revolution on your hands.
There are basically two ways to shoot a gun, aiming and pointing, which is sometimes called "instinct shooting". Some people seem to be natural born instinct shooters, and some, myself included, are better aimers than pointers. My father was a pointer, and he was never able to teach me how to shoot because he couldn't put it into words, he just did it. It was in high school ROTC and, later, in the real army, that I finally learned how to shoot with reasonable accuracy. Pointing is the generally preferred technique for shooting a shotgun at a moving target, but I never mastered it, I aim a shotgun the same way I aim a rifle. Pointers generally do better on close range shots at moving targets, and aimers generally do better at longer range targets that are moving predictably or, better yet, not at all. To be a really good marksman, you should become proficient in both techniques. But who's got time for that?
I don't know about the "marketplace of ideas theory", I'll have to think about it. I'm pretty sure, though, that censorship is not the answer, that's been tried. It might work for awhile but, eventually, it pisses off enough people that you have a revolution on your hands.
Another shorty
Maybe I am Lois, maybe I am.
When I read that line I heard it in the voice of George Reeves, from the old Superman TV show, as the inscrutable Clark Kent. I'll leave it at that.
But Uncle Ken was talking about the marketplace of ideas, an idea with much merit with one serious flaw. Some good ideas may not be popular and will fail in the marketplace just as many mediocre products thrive in the commercial and cultural landscapes. The marketplace has become a flea market, overrun with useless crap. The response to the "popcorn of crazy ideas" should not be a stifling blanket but an effort to prove them wrong, using facts and not opinions. But that's just my opinion.
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It's funny how one thing can lead to another. While I was reading about clocks I started thinking about the way we say tick-tock and not tock-tick, and I stumbled on a new (to me) set of rules in the English language. These are rules we use everyday without knowing them, something we picked up along the way; I don't recall ever being taught them formally. What do you guys think? Now I wonder what else we know without knowing we know it. Did I intuitively know the earth was round because otherwise all the water would fall off?
When I read that line I heard it in the voice of George Reeves, from the old Superman TV show, as the inscrutable Clark Kent. I'll leave it at that.
But Uncle Ken was talking about the marketplace of ideas, an idea with much merit with one serious flaw. Some good ideas may not be popular and will fail in the marketplace just as many mediocre products thrive in the commercial and cultural landscapes. The marketplace has become a flea market, overrun with useless crap. The response to the "popcorn of crazy ideas" should not be a stifling blanket but an effort to prove them wrong, using facts and not opinions. But that's just my opinion.
-----
It's funny how one thing can lead to another. While I was reading about clocks I started thinking about the way we say tick-tock and not tock-tick, and I stumbled on a new (to me) set of rules in the English language. These are rules we use everyday without knowing them, something we picked up along the way; I don't recall ever being taught them formally. What do you guys think? Now I wonder what else we know without knowing we know it. Did I intuitively know the earth was round because otherwise all the water would fall off?
the marketplace of ideas
Galileo? I was thinking it was Copernicus who said the earth was round, but now I recall that what he said was that the earth moved around the sun. He didn't quite come out and say that, fearing being burned at the stake, but he presented it as a plausible theory, much simpler than all the epicycles that were used to try to explain how the sun revolved around the earth, using Occam's razor as it was.
But I don't think that there were similar problems with the idea that the earth was round. I think only landlubbers thought that because people living by the oceans noted that when a ship sailed to sea, first the body of the ship disappeared beneath the horizon and then the sail.
Back in the old days, not that old, the time of, well the time before everybody had a computer on their desk or a smart phone in their pocket if you wanted to publish a book you had to get the acceptance of the publisher who wouldn't truck with some wild theory about chemtrails. If you wanted to get on tv you had similar problems. The establishment controlled the media, which was bad in that it could be stifling, but it did keep stupid ideas out, but now we have crazy sites and you-tube.
I don't hear the term much anymore, but there used to be talk of the marketplace of ideas. It was kind of like a capitalism idea of ideas. In a system where you have a free press (marketplace) all ideas will compete with each other and good ideas, ideas closer to the truth, that when you used them to make predictions those predictions would be true more often than predictions made using bad (further from the truth) ideas. And just as the maker of expensive crappy shoes was driven out of business by the maker of cheap good shoes, the bad ideas would wither away and we would have nothing but good ideas.
This is pretty much how it worked with the enlightenment, and it seemed to be working back in the days before the computer on the desk or in the pocket, but anymore it seems to have come a cropper. Maybe the marketplace of ideas should not be so free, maybe the stifling blanket of the establishment is needed to keep out the crazier ideas that sprout and destroy clean commerce ideawise.
I came across the term marketplace of ideas when reading a book about Nixon by Gary Wills. He was using it in reference to the way communism was stifled by things like banning communist speakers from college campuses. The idea behind that was that communists didn't believe in a free press (there was no free press in Russia) therefore it shouldn't be allowed to compete in the marketplace of ideas because if it won, it would ban the marketplace.
Of course that seemed terribly wrong to me at the time, but am I not calling for something like that in wishing that the stifling, but soft, blanket of the establishment be laid down now over the popcorn of crazy ideas to keep stuff like chemtrails out?
Maybe I am Lois, maybe I am.
But I don't think that there were similar problems with the idea that the earth was round. I think only landlubbers thought that because people living by the oceans noted that when a ship sailed to sea, first the body of the ship disappeared beneath the horizon and then the sail.
Back in the old days, not that old, the time of, well the time before everybody had a computer on their desk or a smart phone in their pocket if you wanted to publish a book you had to get the acceptance of the publisher who wouldn't truck with some wild theory about chemtrails. If you wanted to get on tv you had similar problems. The establishment controlled the media, which was bad in that it could be stifling, but it did keep stupid ideas out, but now we have crazy sites and you-tube.
I don't hear the term much anymore, but there used to be talk of the marketplace of ideas. It was kind of like a capitalism idea of ideas. In a system where you have a free press (marketplace) all ideas will compete with each other and good ideas, ideas closer to the truth, that when you used them to make predictions those predictions would be true more often than predictions made using bad (further from the truth) ideas. And just as the maker of expensive crappy shoes was driven out of business by the maker of cheap good shoes, the bad ideas would wither away and we would have nothing but good ideas.
This is pretty much how it worked with the enlightenment, and it seemed to be working back in the days before the computer on the desk or in the pocket, but anymore it seems to have come a cropper. Maybe the marketplace of ideas should not be so free, maybe the stifling blanket of the establishment is needed to keep out the crazier ideas that sprout and destroy clean commerce ideawise.
I came across the term marketplace of ideas when reading a book about Nixon by Gary Wills. He was using it in reference to the way communism was stifled by things like banning communist speakers from college campuses. The idea behind that was that communists didn't believe in a free press (there was no free press in Russia) therefore it shouldn't be allowed to compete in the marketplace of ideas because if it won, it would ban the marketplace.
Of course that seemed terribly wrong to me at the time, but am I not calling for something like that in wishing that the stifling, but soft, blanket of the establishment be laid down now over the popcorn of crazy ideas to keep stuff like chemtrails out?
Maybe I am Lois, maybe I am.
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
The Flat Earth Theory
The reason we believe the Earth is round is that everybody we know says that it is. If we lived in the days when everybody said the Earth was flat, we would likely believe that. If we met somebody like Galileo, we would probably judge him to be a heretic at first but, if we had the patience to listen to his round Earth theory and think about it for awhile, we might become convinced that he was right. Then we would have had to decide whether or not to support him publically or to keep our mouths shut about it if we knew what was good for us. Lucky for us that we live in a more enlightened age when they no longer burn people at the stake for saying something unpopular. The downside is that everybody else can say what they want, whether or not they know what they are talking about, and we have to judge the validity of their statements for ourselves. All things considered, I would rather be alive now than then.
Sometime after I graduated from high school, I started preferring to print in all caps rather than to write cursive. I don't remember why, maybe it was because of all the forms I had to fill out for the army and various prospective employers afterwards. I considered buying a typewriter when I started putting some of my stories together after the paper mill closed down, but I never got around to it. My daughter gave me her old laptop in 2000, suggesting that I could write my stories on that, which I did. When it came time to print them up, I couldn't find a printer that was compatible with that old laptop, so I bought a new desktop and a printer to match. I'm still only a two finger typist, but I can't think much faster than that anyway.
Sometime after I graduated from high school, I started preferring to print in all caps rather than to write cursive. I don't remember why, maybe it was because of all the forms I had to fill out for the army and various prospective employers afterwards. I considered buying a typewriter when I started putting some of my stories together after the paper mill closed down, but I never got around to it. My daughter gave me her old laptop in 2000, suggesting that I could write my stories on that, which I did. When it came time to print them up, I couldn't find a printer that was compatible with that old laptop, so I bought a new desktop and a printer to match. I'm still only a two finger typist, but I can't think much faster than that anyway.
Palmer Penmanship, footnotes, and boot camp
I read Old Dog's article and remain unconvinced. It was just the opinion of some muckety muck in England and there was no study attached. I guess I will concede that kids have an easier time reading analog clocks, so why not replace them with digital clocks, but the idea that kids in general cannot learn to read analog clocks seems a bit farfetched, I mean it's not that hard, surely they figure out more difficult things in their consarn social media.
My mind races ahead of my typing. I have this construct in my mind, if A and B, then C, and I race through typing A and B, but sometimes I don't remember what C is, and I have to pause and read the whole thing through to reacquaint myself with C. I don't know how many of those dreaded green Palmer Penmanship pages I had to go through because my handwriting was so crappy, and it was still crappy afterwards. When I write notes to myself I print them, but even my printing is so crappy that I cannot read them.
Yeah chemtrails, that was actually what she wrote on the piece of paper, but it was about contrails right? And yeah, you would think if she had even high school science she could see it for the crap it is. But then I have a friend who is a high school science teacher and he believes in them. Actually he never wanted to be a science teacher, he got pushed into that slot because English teachers are a dime a dozen, and I don't think he ever really liked or understood science. He taught it like here are these facts, stack them in your head, he never understood science as a way of thinking.
Which is, as Beagles says, to take everything with a grain of salt, which is to say, be skeptical of everything. It doesn't mean that all things said have a grain of truth in them as many of them have no truth whatsoever. And the secret here it so be skeptical of everything, not just the stuff that you already believe in. You have to accept that what you believe may be wrong. Common sense tells you that the world is flat, but when facts prove it's wrong you have to accept that and not just call the round-earthers liars.
Early in my subbing days I discovered to my joy that the scientific method was widely taught in grade school science, but I soon learned that it was taught like everything else, Just four steps to memorize, and nothing much to be discussed here.
Double spacing is just something that Old Dog and myself got into our heads at an early age. I'm trying to remember when. I never took typing in school, but I remember typing term papers because I remember there were all those complicated rules for footnotes. Actually the footnotes and their arcane and rigid rules took precedence over any content the papers might have. I didn't question it at the time, but now I have to cry out Why? Why? Why? I guess it was the equivalent of some of the crappy things you have to do in boot camp, that have nothing to do with combat, but they just make you do it because they can. That's just my assumption of course, but I am sure the dawgs will become quite loquacious when discussing boot camp.
There was no boot camp for being a CO, but at some point during my sojourn in bucolic southern Illinois, I bought a portable typewriter and took a book out of the library and taught myself to touch-type and that's when I picked up the double space habit.
My mind races ahead of my typing. I have this construct in my mind, if A and B, then C, and I race through typing A and B, but sometimes I don't remember what C is, and I have to pause and read the whole thing through to reacquaint myself with C. I don't know how many of those dreaded green Palmer Penmanship pages I had to go through because my handwriting was so crappy, and it was still crappy afterwards. When I write notes to myself I print them, but even my printing is so crappy that I cannot read them.
Yeah chemtrails, that was actually what she wrote on the piece of paper, but it was about contrails right? And yeah, you would think if she had even high school science she could see it for the crap it is. But then I have a friend who is a high school science teacher and he believes in them. Actually he never wanted to be a science teacher, he got pushed into that slot because English teachers are a dime a dozen, and I don't think he ever really liked or understood science. He taught it like here are these facts, stack them in your head, he never understood science as a way of thinking.
Which is, as Beagles says, to take everything with a grain of salt, which is to say, be skeptical of everything. It doesn't mean that all things said have a grain of truth in them as many of them have no truth whatsoever. And the secret here it so be skeptical of everything, not just the stuff that you already believe in. You have to accept that what you believe may be wrong. Common sense tells you that the world is flat, but when facts prove it's wrong you have to accept that and not just call the round-earthers liars.
Early in my subbing days I discovered to my joy that the scientific method was widely taught in grade school science, but I soon learned that it was taught like everything else, Just four steps to memorize, and nothing much to be discussed here.
Double spacing is just something that Old Dog and myself got into our heads at an early age. I'm trying to remember when. I never took typing in school, but I remember typing term papers because I remember there were all those complicated rules for footnotes. Actually the footnotes and their arcane and rigid rules took precedence over any content the papers might have. I didn't question it at the time, but now I have to cry out Why? Why? Why? I guess it was the equivalent of some of the crappy things you have to do in boot camp, that have nothing to do with combat, but they just make you do it because they can. That's just my assumption of course, but I am sure the dawgs will become quite loquacious when discussing boot camp.
There was no boot camp for being a CO, but at some point during my sojourn in bucolic southern Illinois, I bought a portable typewriter and took a book out of the library and taught myself to touch-type and that's when I picked up the double space habit.
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
Take it With a Grain of Salt
I don't know where that expression came from. I mean, what has salt got to do with it? Nevertheless, I think that most people know that it means to believe that something might be true, or at least have some truth in it, but maybe not. When you think about it, there is not much in this world of which you can be absolutely certain, the best you can hope for is to be reasonably certain. Another way to look at it is that it's only important to believe something if you plan to take some sort of action because of it. If you're not going to do anything about it, it doesn't really matter if you believe it or not. Of course it's fun to speculate about things and discuss them with your friends, but the world is not going to come to an end if one of you fails to convince the other. Some of the stuff you hear is propaganda, whoever originated it hopes to convince you to either do something or not do something, but other stuff is just put out there for entertainment, and it doesn't take much to entertain some people.
I still maintain that some people don't even make a distinction between truth and falsehood, between fantasy and reality, it's all the same to them. I'm not sure what motivates them. Maybe it just comes natural to them, or maybe it's a skill to be learned. I can understand somebody lying for some defined purpose, but I don't understand people lying when there's nothing in it for them. I've always believed that it's easier to tell the truth than to lie because then you don't have to remember what you said and worry about contradicting yourself. I suppose, though, if you don't care if you contradict yourself, it doesn't matter.
I think I like the idea of double spacing between sentences. Now if I can only remember to do it.
I still maintain that some people don't even make a distinction between truth and falsehood, between fantasy and reality, it's all the same to them. I'm not sure what motivates them. Maybe it just comes natural to them, or maybe it's a skill to be learned. I can understand somebody lying for some defined purpose, but I don't understand people lying when there's nothing in it for them. I've always believed that it's easier to tell the truth than to lie because then you don't have to remember what you said and worry about contradicting yourself. I suppose, though, if you don't care if you contradict yourself, it doesn't matter.
I think I like the idea of double spacing between sentences. Now if I can only remember to do it.
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