2680 Perfect and not so perfect

Monday, November 30, 2009

However you choose to keep score in the game of life (possessions, sexual conquests, etc.) it will impress only others who keep score the same way.

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I am so tired of hearing "perfect storm" of whatever applied to everything. I hear "perfect storm of this", "perfect storm of that" at least five times every day! Hey folks, it's done. Over. Finished. No longer an interesting turn of phrase. It's just plain annoying.

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I am surprised by how many young people have never heard of the Bhopal Union Carbide disaster. It happened 25 years ago as of next Thursday, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that 35-year-olds don't know.

It was and still is the largest manufacturing disaster in written history. Different sources quote different numbers, but somewhere around 4,000 sleeping people were killed immediately by the gas leak, followed by another 11,000 over the next few weeks. Approximately 300,000 survivors were badly damaged, left with destroyed kidneys, livers, lungs, nervous systems, many eventually dying of their conditions. The luckiest ones were only blinded.

Since then, children born to survivors suffer birth defects in various degrees, everything from retardation, to microcephalus and other nerve damage, to paralysis. (These are poor people, with no insurance.) The enviromental damage has never been cleaned up - the water is poisoned.

Union Carbide has fought the lawsuits. The Indian government sued for a few billion. Union Carbide offered to settle for $350 million, the amount of their liability insurance. Quoting Wikipedia, "In 1989, a settlement was reached under which UCC agreed to pay US$470 million (the insurance sum, plus interest) in a full and final settlement of its civil and criminal liability." It was "take it or leave it, we'll fight this forever."

The movie "The Yes Men Save the World" (I watched it a few weeks ago) points out that Dow Chemical, who purchased Union Carbide in 2001, paid out several billion to four or five Texans injured in a chemical spill a few years ago, but feels no compulsion to honor UC's moral debts in India.

Boston.com's Big Picture set this week is Bhopal, twenty-five years later, but I'm not sure the choice of photo subjects was very effective. There's a surfeit of rusting tanks and machinery, and a dearth of human aftereffects, and that's the big story.

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Some of the comments on the photo set are interesting.

Commenter #17 points out that this kind of disaster occurs with distressing regularity in less developed areas, but not in this country, and so he wants to put the blame on lax governmental regulations, corrupt officials, and low work standards. In other words, it's India's fault.

Commenter #19 rejoins that corporations know that if they can get away with risking people's lives, it makes economic sense for them to do so, so they do. Union Carbide could have followed the same safety procedures they implement here, but they didn't, by choice.

I have to agree with commenter #19.

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BTW - Bhopal is not a tiny village out in the countryside somewhere. It's a city of 1.5 million.

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I am sitting here going slowly crazy.

I have some kind of minor condition where a repetitive motion at a certain speed can put me in a near trance. A rotating ceiling fan can make it very difficult for me to concentrate. Flashing sunlight between equidistant tree trunks along the road make my eyes lock.

A repeating sound has the opposite effect. I tense up, get mean, and want to explode.

Someone clicking a ballpoint pen, or doing that tap-rolling the fingernails on the table thing in a meeting is liable to find me at his throat. Ex#2 used to get something going with his nose where it clicked on every inhalation.

For some reason, this house amplifies some sounds. Maybe because it's set in bedrock on a ridge. Maybe just because it's high. Maybe it's that the west wall is mostly glass. The railroad tracks are at least two miles away, but sometimes you can "feel" the trains go by (and those are passenger trains, not freight). There was a bagpipe band that used to practice in (inside!) a firehouse 15 miles away as the crow flies, across the river, but I could hear them inside the house. Couldn't hear them outside, just inside.

Well, something is going "thrump thrump thrump" somewhere outside, at the rate of 90 thrumps per minute. Steady. No variation. No pause. For the past hour! I have a radio on here in the den, and one in the living room, and one in the kitchen, all tuned to NPR, and even with the volume up high I can still hear the thrumps. I went outside and I can barely hear it in the front of the house, and not at all in the back, where all the glass is. It seems to be coming from somewhere to the north.

Right now my back and jaw are tensed and I want to kill something!
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2679 Milk

Monday, November 30, 2009

He who controls the agenda controls the outcome.

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On "The Doctors" this morning they were talking about raw milk (as opposed to pasteurized). Proponents of raw say that pasteurizing milk destroys some of the nutrients, but studies have shown that proper pasteurization has very little effect on nutrients because the heating process is carefully controlled.

The opinion of the panel of doctors is that if you know the source of the milk, your own cow or a neighbor's cow, and you are sure that the udders were properly washed before milking, and are sure the milk is fresh, then drinking the raw milk is ok. But when you buy the raw milk in a supermarket or roadside stand, you really don't know the conditions of production or handling, and then it can be very dangerous. (And pregnant women should never drink raw milk, even from a known cow.)

That reminded me of a story. I don't think I've told it here yet.

When I was in high school, in a very economically depressed and sparsely populated mountainous area of Pennsylvania, the father of one of my best friends was the local bootlegger. That really was how he supported his family. His stills were up the mountain in the woods behind their house. He'd dump the used mash in the creek, which ran down the mountain and across a pasture. In the pasture was a herd of dairy cows. And the cows LOVED the mash.

Every so often the state inspector visited the dairy farm to certify the operation - and the farm usually failed because the cows were drunk. The school bus passed the farm, and we would often see the cows staggering around.

The dairy farmer didn't mind failing inspection, though, because even though he couldn't sell the milk commercially, the milk from his cows was famous and much sought after by mothers from miles around. It tasted good and kept kids quiet. He sold more milk "under the counter" and for higher prices than he would have gotten commercially.

That's milk from really contented cows.

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One year, as a joke, voters wrote in my friend's father's name in the election for county sheriff. He actually won! Which didn't surprise anyone - ya gotta know and love the people up there. Of course he didn't meet the criteria (like, oh, not having been convicted of the federal crime of bootlegging, for example), so he couldn't serve.
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2678 Overheard in the deli

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Death is an alternate existence.

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I made a quick stop at the deli around the corner this afternoon. There was no one there but the young man at the cash register and the counter girl. She said to him, "Yeah. I lost 35 to 0. At least it wasn't a complete shutout." And then louder, "Hey, Lori, you're pregnant!"

?

I walked out blinking.
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2677 Split or Dutch?

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The deepest despair is full of secret satisfactions.
-- Albert Speer, Spandau Diaries --

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A "discussion" broke out at lunch yesterday. When the bill arrived, one woman (the one who interrupts and hijacks conversations, and who is quickly becoming a great annoyance to me) figured her food came to (say) $12. She put (say) $14 on the pile, commenting that $2 should cover the tax and tip. This led to a discussion of how much the tax is, and that $2 wasn't going to be enough for both. It varies depending on the location, but generally the tax runs between 8.25% and 8.75%, and the usual tip for the kinds of places we go around here is a bit over 15%.

I mentioned that most of the dinner groups I belong to figure roughly 25% of the base bill to cover both tax and tip, so on that theory she should probably put in $3.

Well, she argued. She said things like "25%? That's a lot! It doesn't sound right!", "It doesn't sound fair!", and when she was asked to decide what was a good tip, and then add 8.5% tax, she angrily declared, several times, "I can't do math!"

The other women thought about it and agreed that 25% was right - 8.5% for tax leaves 16.5% for tip, and that works.

She snorted and declared, "You don't tip on the tax!" (Huh? How is that tipping on the tax?)

She insisted that the only fair way to handle it was to split the bill evenly between all the diners, "That way everyone knows how much they can expect to spend" (huh? how can you plan for that?), and wanted everyone to agree to either split the bill from now on, or insist on separate checks. The other women seemed a bit stunned, and inclined to give in to her. She's one of those very loud women that brook no disagreement.

Duh? Is she really that stupid?

I objected, pointing out that my tab is usually the highest at the table, because I often get multiple vegetable sides, and almost always doggie-bag half the meal, and I wouldn't want others to pay for my food. I'd feel restricted in my choices. And there are people with limited means who will come to the luncheon for the company, and order just a salad because that's all they feel they can afford. This idiot snorted and said "When you leave the house you should plan on $20, or just not come." (Note that she had objected to adding a dollar to the $14 she was willing to pay.)

Next luncheon, I'm going to suggest that she get a separate tab, or by God *I* will! She's really pissing me off with her blockheaded refusal to listen to reason. I don't understand how splitting the bill is "fair", but paying for your own order is "not fair".

Opinions?

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Heh heh. I just thought of a way to get at her. I'll order an appetizer or two, salad, steak entree, couple of sides, and dessert banquet for myself, and let them split it evenly. I'll put in my "share", then I'll distribute money to the other diners so they are out only for what they ordered, and not to her. I'll let her pay for part of my meal.

Yeah, won't work, but I can dream and plot and snicker, can't I?
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2676 Why not?

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Section 1.10.32 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum", written by Cicero in 45 BC: "One does not reject, dislike, or avoid pleasure itself because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful."

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Today was supposed to be a quiet day. Lunch at noon with the 50+ (age, not count) Professional Women's Meetup group at Foster's in Rhinebeck, then I planned to take Suzie to Valvoline for an oil transfusion, then home to shovel dust bunnies and crack a whip over paper piles. Or take a nap - whatever.

Instead, I met a Ms. O at lunch, and after lunch we did a bit of window shopping, some people watching on a bench in the middle of town (Rhinebeck is an overgrown but very ritzy touristy village - I think there's only one traffic light) where we talked about men and how complicated they make life, but they sure are nice to have around, then to her friend Ms. L's house in Rhinebeck for tea and brownies, then the three of us headed off to a festival in Rhinecliff.

Sinterklaas (Dutch Santa Claus) was to arrive by boat at the Rhinecliff Hudson River boat landing, with all kinds of dancing and drumming, to start off a week or two or whatever of festivals and displays and performances all around Rhinebeck and Rhinecliff. (I picked up a booklet describing what all is planned, but haven't read it yet.)

There are railroad tracks between Rhinecliff and the river, so pedestrians get to the landing by going up two+ flights, crossing, then back down. We must have crossed back and forth three times. Ms. L was cold (wind!) so we'd head for the Rhinecliff Hotel, then something interesting would start at the landing, so we'd go back, shake, stir, repeat. I got some exercise.

Sinterklaas turned out to be a statue of Santa mounted on a white horse, who arrived on a small sparkling winged boat, and was hoisted high and carried around the streets like a patron saint, to dancing, drumming, and cheers. (The Wikipedia link above mentions that he's supposed to arrive by boat from Spain. I guess Port Ewen, across the river, is Spain for a day.)

We then managed to get a table in the packed bar of the hotel, got some drinks, flirted randomly, managed to capture a man*, and then the four of us repaired to the dining area for dinner. I got home a little after nine. Pretty darn good for a nothing day.

*The "capture" was funny. Ms. O had been married for nearly 40 years, divorced recently and moved from Florida to here, and is just getting back into dating, and says she doesn't know how to flirt. She noticed three nice-looking men at the bar, pointed out that we were three women, so she asked me "How can we get them to join us?" She really liked the looks of the guy in the hunting jacket. I laughed and said, "You walk up to him and say, 'Would you care to join us?'" She caught his eye, crooked her finger, he came over, and she asked if he'd like to join us. By damn it really was that simple! By the end of dinner he was patting her arm when he spoke to her. Call me Cupid.

The pedestrian bridge, Rhinecliff Hotel in the background:


This is some of the "mummers", who made a lot of noise and generally raised hell. My comment - "looks like Mardi Gras".


Sinterklaas arrives. If you look carefully, you'll see him below the stars and flag.


O and L:

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2675 Darkness

Friday, November 27, 2009

What bothers me about God is that He hates arrogance so much,
but doesn't seem to mind cruelty.
-- Paraphrased from Elaine May and Mike Nichols (actress and director) --

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I went to a movie in Albany this afternoon, "Fantastic Mr. Fox". We got out of the movie about 5:30 or 6 pm and went to a pub for dinner. I cracked up when S. asked the waitress if the kitchen was still open. It was so dark, cold, and windy out that he thought it was 9 or 10 pm.

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I must be a little more depressed than I thought I was.

I do almost all my small dry goods shopping online these days. I have rules - if I find an item I want, if it's under $20 I'll just buy it. Between $20 and $30 I'll buy it if it's unique. If it's over $30 I think about whether I really want it, and if so I comparison shop, and by the time I've done that, I've often changed my mind.

When I'm depressed all bets are off. Somebody mentions a book or a CD or a movie, and I'm off to Amazon. Somebody mentions a lipstick, and I'm off to look it up. Switched mentions an application or a gadget, and I'm clicking on the link. Woot is my best friend. And so on.

Apparently I'm finding a lot of <$20 items, or a lot of unique items, or I'm depressed. I am finding "shipping confirmation" emails in my inbox, and I have no idea what they are for, no immediate memory of having bought whatever it is. Today's item was described as "Sequin high-neck black M". It took me a long while to figure out that it was a kurta I'd ordered a few days ago. This one:
It was $22 at this site: http://www.eastessence.com/products/Sequin_high_neck_top-104-17.html. I think it sneaked past because it's pretty unique. (I might hem it at mid-hip, about where the model's right ring finger is, depending on how it looks on me.)

Anyway, until I followed the link in the email, I wasn't sure what it referred to.

I may be doing this on purpose - buying little things and then forgetting what I bought - because then when surprises arrive in the mail or are dropped on the doorstep, it's like getting a present.

[The site above, www.eastessence.com, has lots of pretty kurti at more than reasonable prices.]

2674 She of the thundering feet

Friday, November 27, 2009

"One parent can support ten children,
but ten children cannot support one parent."
--- Rabbi Pinchas of Koretz --

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Miss Thunderfoot died at about 1:30 am, yesterday morning.

For ten days I'd been thinking every day that she wouldn't make it through the night. I haven't much left the house for the past week. She'd been alternating between a box on a heating pad in the kitchen during the day and a towel bed in the shower stall at night (a spot she chose), and Wednesday afternoon she disappeared. I couldn't find her in any of the usual places and she didn't answer when I called. About 5 pm, Jasper told me that something was wrong with the litter box, and I found that Thunder had collapsed in the litter.

I was sad that her last attempt to move had been to use the litter box. Such a good little girl.

I sat next to her that night. I didn't attempt to hold her - she never liked being touched anywhere but the top of her head, she loved strokes between her ears - so I sat on the floor next to the nest box in the kitchen and stroked her head as her breathing got slower and slower.

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When I moved in with Jay in 1994, I brought two dogs and a cat with me. Siddy Kitty (formally Obsidian) died three years later at age 20. Jay wanted to go get another cat immediately, but I told him, "No. That's not how cats work. You can keep your eye out for a cat, but the right one will come to you, reach out a claw and snag you. You don't choose cats. They choose you."

He watched the newspaper and called a few times for kittens, but they were always already spoken for. Obviously not the right kitties.

Then one day I saw an ad on the bulletin board in the grocery store, "found cat", with a photo. It was a small gray and white longhair. The guy who'd found her said he couldn't keep her. I waited a few days, and then called the number. I told him it wasn't my cat, but if her owners didn't claim her, I'd take her. It turned out the guy worked in the village pet shop, and I knew him. A few days later she came home with me, and when she saw Jay, she acted like she recognized him and was happy to be reunited with him. She wouldn't let me touch her, but she spent hours purring on his lap.

The pet shop guy, the vet, and I all thought at first that she was very young, because she was so small and had changeable eyes. Some days her eyes were white, some days palest blue, occasionally pastel green or yellow-tinted. But mostly white. That usually means young. Apparently not - her eyes never darkened, and she never grew any larger. She also showed no interest in any toys, not the jingly balls, or the catnip cigar, not even trailing strings. Now I think she must have been a few years old, maybe even fully mature. She'd been spayed, and she already knew about not scratching furniture.

Jay wanted to give her a regal feminine name, like Princess, or Lady, and he tried a few names, but they just didn't work. I told him, "No, that's not how cats work. You can think about names, but you don't name cats. Cats name themselves." She was very regal, and very feminine, quiet and ladylike, polite, but one thing that made us laugh was the way she'd run down the hall when she heard food. There's a thick plush carpet in the hall, over dense foam padding, and then an oriental rug on top. And yet, when she heard food, it sounded for all the world like a bowling ball on hardwood. Rumble rumble rumble. I still don't know how she did it. She became Miss Thunderfoot, and it fit her.

It also fit because both of our dogs were afraid of thunder, and they both respected her.

She'd obviously had a rough life. The pet shop guy said he found her outside the grocery store. She was rubbing at the legs of people going into and coming out of the store and meowing, obviously asking for food, begging to be taken home. He said he felt especially sorry for her because people were kicking her away.

She had some broken and badly healed bones. Her left front leg bent oddly inward at the wrist, and her right hip had a dent. Her ribs were rippled, like some had been broken.

She also had a bad skin condition. She had large wens, bumps, under the skin of her sides and back. They didn't grow, or drain, they were just there. The vet said they were probably filled with sebum, and he could cut and drain them, but they'd just come back. She didn't like them touched.

She had terrible fur. Her fur was ratty, thick and thin patches (my vet described her as "motheaten"). Her tail was ridiculous - long hair at the bottom and a few inches of the tip, then thin short hair, almost bald, in the middle few inches. She shed like no animal I'd ever seen. Jay used to say that if we saved three day's worth of shed fur, we could build a whole new cat. No exaggeration. It was hard to believe she could produce that much fur. It came out in chunks, everywhere she moved, everywhere she sat or lay. She'd be asleep for an hour, and when she got up there'd be two handfuls of fur left behind. The wens meant you couldn't get ahead of the fur by combing her, and there was no way to get a vaccuum cleaner within yards of her.

She loved Jay dearly. She was his shadow. In his last months she didn't leave his side. Her place was under the hospital bed, under his head. She'd tell me when he awoke during the night. It was several months after he died before she would allow me to touch her, and a year before she began sleeping on my bed at night.

I think I know what probably happened. Some couple had adopted a beautiful little long-haired gray tuxedo kitten, who grew into a quiet and polite little cat - a cat who was motheaten and no longer pretty, and who shed horribly all over the place. The male of the couple saw no problem and was good to the cat. The female got more and more frustrated at cleaning up after the sea of shedding. There were yells and kicks, and finally a furtive dropping off in the village. "Gee, I don't know where she is, Dear. Maybe she ran away...."

She came to the right place. I've never had a horror of dirt, hairballs, or dust bunnies, and there was a man here to love her.

She was a good little girl.
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2673 Proclamation

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Next to great joy, no state of mind is so frolicsome as great distress.
-- Henry James, A Most Extraordinary Case --

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Abraham Lincoln's proclamation establishing Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/source/sb2/sb2w.htm

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2672 Link to saying it

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

One who considers himself a victim of circumstance
is more often a prisoner of his own decisions.

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This post by a lawyer in Philadelphia expresses some of my own feelings, especially the quoted letter.

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Later edit - the comments on Field's post are starting to pile up. I found this one interesting:

Race Traitoress said...

@fn

"Thank goodness a bunch of Rastafarians didn't decide to blow up the World Trade Center. Because if they did, and George Bush was in power, Jamaica would be nothing but a memory."

It was a bunch of Saudis who took down the WTC, yet we didn't invade Saudi Arabia. If Rastafarians had been responsible, we'd have still gone into Iraq. That was the plan all along.

Yep. I agree.

2671 Nat'l Geo Photo Contest

Monday, November 23, 2009

Bumper sticker, 2003: I love my country, but I fear my government.

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Boston.com's photo set today is a selection of entries in the National Geographic photo contest. Some are breathtaking, many are amazing, almost all are beautiful. Number 8 will ruin Niagara Falls for you forever.
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2670 Veggies

Monday, November 23, 2009

Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.

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I want vegetables! Why is it so hard to get vegetables? I've been eating out a lot lately, and living mostly on doggy bags between outings, and I am veggie deprived. Restaurant meals seem to come with meat and starch, and that's about all. The last dinner was one pound (!!!) of steak (four days of meat), a mountain of fries, and five, that's 5!, lonely string beans on the plate. Yeah, there are salads, but they tend to be mostly lettuce, which doesn't count.

I buy vegetables at the grocery store, but most things I want don't come in small quantities. I'm so tired of throwing out 3/4 of the head of cabbage, most of the bunch of carrots, 80% of the stalk of celery, half the bag of baby spinach, when they shrivel and die. Lately even the things that I used to be able to buy in small quantities, like loose string beans or broccoli spears, aren't sold loose anymore. They are in enormous bags. I suppose it has something to do with disease - they don't want people handling things that don't get peeled.

Frozen vegetables also come in "too much", never "just right". Yeah, I can open a bag and take out what I want, but a) it's not raw, and I want RAW, and b) if I don't finish off the bag quickly once opened, they get icky. I often end up throwing out half the bags.

Grocery store salad bars were wonderful, a boon to single people. I used to get a container, and fill it with a little bit of this, and a little of that, and I'd have two or three days of a variety of veggies to nibble on. Throw in a chunk of cheese, and I was eating well.

Grocery store salad bars seem to be a thing of the past. I don't know whether they were considered to have too much waste, or whether it's the sanitary thing again. Now the stores that used to have salad bars have prepackaged containers of salad instead - mostly lettuce, with a few bits of this and that lying on top. No good at all.

I've been buying the stir-fry mixes and then eating it raw or steamed, and they were good and worked for a while, but lately they seem to be difficult to find, and have become mostly broccoli, which is ok once in a while, but not every day, and so again I end up throwing out half.

I want veggies, without waste. Something like 40% of households are singles living alone. Why has no one noticed us? Why does no one cater to us? Why is it so hard to put a few whatevers in a bag, next to the umpteen pound bags? Give us a choice?

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Later update: I went to the grocery store, stared balefully at the huge bunches, boxes, and bags of fresh vegetables, and then hit the frozen foods section. Lean Cuisine dinners, my plan B, include veggies.

This evening for dinner I am having LC butternut squash-stuffed ravioli, with lots of carrots, green beans, peas, walnuts, and summer squash in the sauce. I'll just shake off most of the sauce.
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2669 Saying Nothing

Sunday, November 22, 2009

"There is nothing wrong with having nothing to say ---
unless you insist on saying it."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --

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The quotation above is rather apt. I don't seem to have much of anything to say these days. Maybe it's a sort of depression (I HATE winter), a seasonal affective disorder that won't be fixed with a light bar. It happens every year at about this time. At least this year I've been getting out to movies and dinners, but lately I've been thinking I've been doing too much of that, and I feel more like staying home and hibernating.

Sigh.

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At least four times in the past two days I have read or heard highly educated people, people who should know better, express disdain for something by saying, "I could care less."

If they thought for two seconds about what they said, they'd know it should be "I couldn't care less."
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2668 Bridges. One crossed, one burned.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

The author of The Starr Evidence, a compilation of Clinton/Lewinsky testimony,
is Wall Street Journal reporter Phil Kuntz.
I can't believe that name is real.
Especially in that context.
But it is.

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I was supposed to go to a dance recital this evening, it's been on my calendar for many weeks, but it's too late now to get washed and dressed and out the door. Phooey.

I found a message on my phone late this afternoon from a friend with whom I haven't talked in a while. We've lately had a prickly relationship, but she had called to invite me to go to dinner then dancing with her this evening. I was going to have to turn her down, because of the recital, but given that she might be a bit sensitive about being turned down I thought about it a while before I called her.

As it turned out, she'd changed her mind because she was tired from other events of her day, so I didn't have to say anything. Which is just as well because I really don't want to start ramming around with her again anyway, and I might otherwise have had to invite her to my thing.

She was in a good mood, so I let her talk. We were on the phone for over an hour and a half. Didn't feel that long at the time, and I wasn't watching the clock. And so now it's too late for me to do my thing.

Oh well. Shrug. Now I'm tired, too, so I guess it's ok. May have dodged a bullet, so it might be worth it. I just wish there was something worthwhile on TV.
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2667 Things that go boom.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Ignorance is not knowing something you should know.
Nescience [ne'-she-ence] is not knowing something you should not be expected to know.
If someone calls you ignorant, correct them. You are probably nescient.

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It's been a while since I visited here. Miss Thunderfoot is still alive, and I don't understand how. She drinks water, sleeps in the nest box in the kitchen (I put a heating pad under it), and occasionally wanders the house. She is no longer interested in milk, nibbles a tiny bit off the top of canned cat food, and other than that I'm pretty sure she has eaten nothing else in the past ten days. She has refused tuna fish, tuna can water, baby food, pureed peas (an old favorite), and cantaloupe. She hasn't asked for food. It doesn't seem to interest her. The vet has nothing to recommend other than putting her to sleep, but after a horrendous experience twenty years ago, I swore I'd never do that again.

So, we wait.

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Remember the excitement in September of 2008, when some physicists were worried that the Large Hadron Collider at Cern would create a black hole that would eat Earth? Remember how we heard nothing else after it was turned on? Well, there was a faulty electrical connection that instantly fried the works, and it has taken the past 13 months to repair it.

They'll be turning it on again this weekend.

I'm hoping for another barbecue.

There are photos of the insides at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/11/large_hadron_collider_ready_to.html. It all seems so very ridiculous to me, so much money, time, effort, materials, expended simply to satisfy curiosity. I can think of so many better things to do.

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I once had a coworker at The Company who is now (probably still) working at Cern. He was the most arrogant person I'd ever met. The man didn't just speak - he made pronouncements, in a very loud voice. He not only didn't listen to others, he didn't care what anyone else had to say on any topic. He wasn't exactly nasty, he simply didn't consider anyone else in the world worthy of his consideration.

For a long time after he left, he sent email "reports from Cern", all about what he was working on and how exciting it all was. I don't know how I ended up on his email list.

I think part of my hoping for catastrophic failure has a lot to do with my feelings about him.
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2666 Why are we being "dumbed down"?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Definition: Apophasis - mentioning something you won't mention,
such as "I won't even mention his arrogance!"

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Someone from some third country asked on an "answers" forum why Americans in general compare so unfavorably to Canadians. He described Americans as unhealthy, inconsiderate, not generally very bright or aware, and interested only in celebrities and fast food. He got a lot of responses describing him as an ass and worse, and bragging that the US is "the best in the world!", describing Canadians as lazy and "We can whip their butts!", and shortly after I typed in my response, his question was taken down.

On that site, questions and responses can be flagged as obscene or spam, and apparently the powers don't bother to check - so if someone gets pissed at you, they can have your entry removed, and too many of those reports will get you banned. I think that's what happened here, which pisses ME off, because it was an observation with merit, and "why?" is always a valid question.

This was my response, written with little thought, off the top of my head, but still material for further rumination:

I agree with your assessment (the comparison of Americans to Canadians). The blame can be laid in many areas: our educational system, economic system, political system, social mores, virtually everywhere. I think it all stems from the concept that "all men are created equal", which is true, that all people start out equal, and deserve the same opportunities. But in practice, it has become an attitude that the opinions of all are equal, and that all deserve the same consideration - that the village idiot's opinion is as valuable as that of an intelligent, educated, successful person. We don't recognize our betters, let alone respect them. (Intelligence is a disadvantage. Our educational system has deteriorated because we no longer demand excellence of either students or teachers.)

This attitude is encouraged by advertisers and exploited by politicians. The result is an unrealistic sense of entitlement. It explodes into all areas. Many of us know that certain things are bad for us, but others like those things, want those things, and therefore think they deserve those things - and there are those who laugh up their sleeves and give it to them, because they can make a lot of money on their stupidity. Economically speaking, stupidity is GOOD. Politically speaking, stupidity is GOOD (look at the last election, the way herds of stupid people were manipulated).

Stupidity is encouraged, stupidity is spreading, because those who know how to work it can profit from it. We are encouraged to think we are so very wonderful, because it's profitable, and it makes it easy to control the herd. But other countries laugh at us, and China is well on the way to outpacing us economically. Most Americans are not aware of how little we are intellectually respected (beyond our military power) because they refuse to look beyond their own affairs.

When I travel, I pretend to be Canadian, because the arrogance, crudeness, discourtesy, insensitivity, and loudness of other American tourists embarrass me.
.

2665 Pigeon Impossible

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

-------------------

This is good. Very well done. I giggled at the end.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEjUAnPc2VA]
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2664 Singles mingle

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Fundamentalists, whether Muslim, Christian, or Jew,
hate to love
and love to hate.

------------------------

Last Sunday I went to a play (a local theater group, "Twelve Angry Men") with a singles group. After the play, six of us went out for an early dinner. It was a very long dinner, three hours, because everything that could possibly go wrong with our orders and the tab and the serving did, culminating in the waitress losing a credit card. It just plain disappeared.

The manager "comp'ed" the meal, and promised a thorough search of the restaurant including the garbage. (And I hope it was the waitress who was assigned the latter task.) The woman whose card it was accepted that. I'd have insisted on a signed admission that they lost the card, and that the restaurant would be responsible for any costs associated with the loss of the card.

All the delays meant a lot of time for talking, and talk they did. I'd always tried to steer clear of single's groups in general because they get pretty inbred. After a while, everybody has dated everybody else. A majority of the conversation Sunday evening was who was currently dating whom, who was sleeping with whom, who dressed inappropriately, who doesn't follow the social conventions (Agh! I often don't, I think, because I'm never quite sure what they are!), who takes liberties, and so on. The men were just as into the gossip as the women.

It was enlightening. I will tread very lightly with this bunch.
.

2663 Time.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Men must be careful to never mistake human justice
for divine justice.

----------------------------

Mac fans should read this: Mac http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/15digi.html?_r=4. The corporate culture is changing.

--------------------

Miss Thunderfoot is very weak. She's skin and bones and wobbles when she walks. She's been on the special kidney failure diet for a while, but she has stopped eating both the canned and dry food. Yesterday she moved out of the den and into the kitchen, I don't know why. I fixed a nest box for her, and Jasper has been pretty good about not terrorizing her even though she's in his territory. I've been giving her milk yesterday and today. I know milk is very bad for kidney failure, but she's so thin, and I know she has to be hungry, and she dearly loves a bowl of warm milk, so I see no point in not giving it to her. She laps it up and tries to purr.

I see no point in trying to delay the inevitable. I'd rather just try to make it easier on her.

I thought she wouldn't make it through last night. She'd been barely moving for days, and then yesterday she wandered the house like she was searching for something until she finally settled in the kitchen. She sat in front of the refrigerator and called for milk, exactly the way she used to ask Jay for milk, nine years ago. That was their special thing. I weaned her off milk treats after he died, which wasn't that hard because she never asked me for milk. I wonder if now, when the end is near, if she's thinking of Jay when she asks for milk. If maybe it was Jay she was searching for yesterday. She was HIS cat, and his last six months, when he was in the hospital bed in our bedroom, she pretty much lived under his bed.

Humans and animals in a final illness often have a burst of apparent improvement before the end. I've seen it over and over. It's like the mind/body finally accepts what's happening and decides it's ok, and stops sending "illness signals". Every once in a while someone will say "Dad got out of bed today, and started working in the garden!", or "Mom is in the kitchen cooking up a storm!", and I think, "Uh oh."

I was supposed to go to a movie last night, but I canceled. My first daughter, my mother, my husband, and all my cats and dogs have died in my arms, so I wanted to be home for her if it was her time.


.

2662 Feeling blah

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Albert Einstein: A problem cannot be solved at the same level
at which it was created.

--------------------------------

I was supposed to have quite a busy day today. I had signed up with a Meetup singles group, for a walk at a beautiful and scenic local park, followed by drinks and then dinner at the Beekman Arms. I love that park, and I'll always leap at a meal at the Beekman.

However, it rained, so the walk was canceled. And the Beekman is very busy on weekends, and when the group had grown to more than 40 people signed up, the drinks and dinner was moved to another restaurant, which happened to be one I don't like.

I went ahead and set my hair, did my face, got dressed, and then decided I don't feel all that well. I feel achy and generally blah. (That's been happening disturbingly often lately.) I went to the website and canceled, pleading illness. Well, I didn't notice until AFTER I'd canceled that a horde of people had also canceled. It's down from the original 40-ish to somewhat fewer than 15, and ALL of them said they weren't feeling well. Either there's a lot of illness going around, or my excuse now sounds suspicious.

The organizer has a perfect right to be pissed.

Sigh.

I did go to the doctor's office today. I have that distinctive odor to my urine again, and I checked with the sticks you piddle on, and the stick said positive (a little light pink, and a lot of deep purple), so I called this morning and they saw me this afternoon. However, the urine test at the doctor's office didn't show anything (too dilute?), so they're going to culture it. They're starting the antibiotic anyway.

I never have any of the usual symptoms of a UTI beyond the odor. No urgency, no burning, no abdominal pain. The doctor pounded on my back and pressed on my abdomen, and nothing. Of course, the internet scared me. The tiredness and body aches I've had lately say kidney failure. But my blood cell counts are fine, and I have no edema anywhere, so probably not.

But there sure is something going on. I wish I knew what.

---------------------------

Sort of a side issue, possibly related, I look at photographs of me from two years ago, and compare them to this year's photos, and I've aged a lot. My face has gotten remarkably saggy in just two years. I have a very drawn look. The Man has also noticeably aged.
.

2661 Garlic?

Friday, November 13, 2009

For a true scientist, being wrong is just as interesting as being right.

---------------------

I've been taking a (supposedly, I don't know) odorless garlic supplement for the past few weeks, as an experiment.

Also for the past few weeks, I've been freezing, as soon as the sun goes down, regardless of the inside or outside temperature, and no matter what I'm wearing. I am neither flushed nor pale. I doubt that it's a brain perception thing, because boosting the thermostat to 78 fixes the problem.

This evening it finally occurred to me to wonder if there might be a connection.

Jay had been very sensitive to everything in the onion/garlic/leek families. He'd eat the stuff, but then he'd "throw off heat" for the next eight to twelve hours. His internal temperature remained normal, but he'd complain of feeling hot, and you could feel the heat flowing off him. No sweat, no flushing, just BTUs radiating. Feed the man onions and you'd get a space heater. (Dilated capillaries doesn't explain it, because he didn't flush.)

Cue internet search.

The folk wisdom has lots to say about beneficial effects, but nothing to say about body temperature except that it's supposed to cause sweating, which will lower a fever. Nope. That's not what happened to Jay or me.

Science has provided several controlled studies which have pretty much verified none of the folk claims (beyond the anti-insect, anti-fungal effects), and also says nothing about people feeling hot or cold. Interestingly, folk wisdom says garlic lowers cholesterol, and a few clinical studies have shown that it does in fact lower cholesterol and triglycerides, BUT, and here's the interesting part, it lowers LDL but does not affect HDL. Um, that's not very helpful....

So, I am freezing, even when the house temperature is 77. At 78 I'm ok. I don't know why. Nothing mentions a temperature effect, neither my freeze nor Jay's swelter.
.

2660 Beatified, not beautified.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Intelligence does not automatically convey knowledge.

------------------------

It's easy to tell it's heating season. I just brushed my hair, and now I have a 3-foot-wide halo around my head.
.

2659 Strange Searches and a Wordle

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Don Bender, letter in Mensa Bulletin:
"It is not statistically (or logically!) valid to examine facts,
create a hypothesis that fits those facts,
and then cite those same facts as proof that the hypothesis must be true."

People do this all the time, especially gossips, and it drives me crazy!

---------------------------------

I've been getting a lot of hits from Google searches lately, which is not unusual. What is unusual is that the search arguments that are getting people here do not exist in this blog! I've never used those words. That's downright scary. The second odd thing is that suddenly I'm getting a lot of "direct" hits from Mountain View, Ca. That's where Google lives.

Anyone else seeing the same pattern? Or do I need a tinfoil hat?

------------------------------

I made a word cloud at http://www.wordle.net/ for the past few weeks of this blog:
(If you want to read the smallest words, click on the Wordle, then on the new screen, use "Ctrl" and "+" at the same time to enlarge it. "Ctrl" and "-" will reduce it. Or you can go to http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1325217/Untitled and see it huge and clear.)

It looks like a shoeprint.

What I especially like about it is that the big words are positive in connotation (to me, anyway), and the negative words are small. I'm pleased to find that although those things are in my blog because they're in my life, they are not very important. That pleases me.

On the other hand, "Jay" has been getting smaller and smaller as time passes. That's sad.
.

2658 Yesterday and Today

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

"Kneeling is not a position of strength,
and begging is not an effective tactic."
-- Clarence Thomas --

---------------------------------

I went to a movie last night, "The Men Who Stare at Goats". Having seen the promos, I was looking forward to it. It was a bit disappointing. It started out really good, with an interesting premise, and absolutely outrageous statements delivered by a deadpan George Clooney (he's very good at that). I must have said a half dozen times to myself "The Man will love this...." But then it died. Just petered away. It was like the writer and director lost interest.

After the movie, seven of us went to an Albany pub for dinner and drinks.

Today I got a call for Habitat for Humanity. I'm a volunteer, but they haven't done any projects in this area since the houses I worked on a few years (two? three?) ago. I've been a little frustrated by that, and I guess that's how I found myself agreeing to fund raising. Of all the things I like doing least in this world, fund raising is at the bottom. I can't ask people for money. I would happily tape a house full of sheetrock and paint all the ceilings before that. Sigh.

I was supposed to go to dinner this evening, but I'd have to leave before 5, and when I looked up at the clock it was 5 pm, and I wasn't washed or dressed yet. I called and canceled.

Just as well. I still have to straighten out a few medical insurance snafus. It looks like the lab double-billed the insurance company for the last two blood tests. Same date, same procedures, same charges, but different invoice numbers. Even weirder, the insurance company allowed and paid different amounts on the second submissions from the first. Also, the lab is dunning me (Overdue! Collection agency!) on some invoices that I have no record of, neither a bill from them nor an explanation of benefits from the insurance company. I need to get the ducks in line (or as The Man laughs, get the ducks in a bag) before I make some calls tomorrow.
.

2657 On the way....

Monday, November 9, 2009

Ad for Norwegian Cruise Line: "Most of the Earth is covered by water.
And most of the water is covered by Norwegians."

-------------------------

I haven't been paying attention to my investments, not since the mini-crash, when 25% disappeared overnight. I figured all checking would do is upset me, so I just sat back and let it ride. I figured either everything would recover, or it wouldn't, and there was nothing I could do to make any difference.

Today I checked. My stock portfolios are back to where they were in the summer of 2008. Jobs will take a bit longer to come back, but they will.

Lookin' good.
.

2656 I'm not ill?

Monday, November 9, 2009

Gaston Bachelard, scientist and philosopher:
Even a minor event in the life of a child
is an event of that child's world
and thus a world event.

------------------------

I don't understand what's going on with my body. I've been going in and out of hot spots in my throat, body aches, sneezing, powerful headaches, not all at the same time - things take turns - and so on for the past two months, but it's all very brief, alternating with feeling fine.

Yesterday I wanted to go to an Arabic dinner (for charity), but I had no energy whatsoever. The temperature outside was 67, and 74 in the house, but by late afternoon I was freezing. I put on a hooded sweatshirt over a turtleneck, but that didn't help my hands and nose, and by early evening I had the hood up and my hands tucked into the pockets.

By the time I went to bed, my body ached and I had that heavy wheezy feeling in the chest and the dry feeling in the back of my nose and throat. I took my temperature, and it was 100.2. I was sure I was going to be very sick today. I wished I had paid the bills and deposited the latest checks, because I knew it wouldn't get done for a while. I wondered if I'd be capable of calling 911 if it came to that.

I woke up several times during the night, freezing and feeling awful.

I woke this morning a little before 8, and was surprised to find that I feel fine. More energy than I've had in a long time. There's a lingering pain in the top front of my right shoulder, like it's been bruised, but that's all. Even my sinuses feel good, dry and empty.

I wish I knew what's going on.
.

2655 Great minds....

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Mario Cuomo's mother: The two rules for success:
1) Figure out exactly what you want to do.
2) Do it.

-----------------------------

Wow! Dilbert's strip today addresses my comments about the luncheon yesterday, even to the "hijacking" reference. Cool. I guess I'm not the only person it bugs.
[From http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-11-08/]
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2654 Love at first sight?

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Me: To define a career goal is to define your limits.

-------------------

When I was younger, I was often asked if I believed in love at first sight. It seemed to be one of those topics that turned up a lot. Either nobody wonders about it any more, or my social circles have changed away from those concerns.

Or maybe everybody else has given up and is afraid to think about it. I don't know.

Oddly, I still want to explore the topic.

I don't believe in love at first sight, but only because of the word "love". Real love grows with time and understanding. I absolutely do believe in a strong reciprocal instant attraction, a "click", a magnetism, a chemical reaction, a lightning bolt. A sudden infatuation. In my experience, it's been a powerful indicator that there's the possibility of something lasting there. It really is at first sight, before even meeting or speaking.

It's when you look up and see someone, and maybe your eyes meet, and you both know instantly that there's some kind of soul connection.

It has happened to me several times, and although some of them didn't work out, most did, and the connection was real. What's really funny is that in most cases, the guy wasn't "my type".

The first: John. I had transferred into a new school in first grade. I was smaller than everyone else, and shy. On the first day, the boy sitting in front of me turned around, circled my wrist with his fingers, and said, "She's tiny!" Our eyes met, and I've been in love with him ever since. Until I moved to Canada at the end of fourth grade, he was my in-school companion and protector. I still think about him. I've tried to find him on the internet, but he has a very common name, and it's next to impossible.

The second: Obie. I lived on a military base during high school. Obie's father transferred in during December of my junior year. Obie was a senior. He had a deep Louisiana bayou accent, and was kind of awkward and funny-looking, and WAY too religious, but the first time our eyes met, we knew we had something special. We were like brother and sister (we argued and fought constantly, but there was deep respect and affection) for the next fifteen years, by phone and letter, until he died in an automobile accident. Thirty-four years gone, and I still love and miss him.

The third: Jay. I walked into a friend's office at The Company, and there was a man sitting, intent, at her computer, and as I walked in he froze, staring at the screen, and said "Oops", and I fell in love. I hadn't even seen his face. All I had was a 3/4 rear view, and I fell in love with a patch of softly curled hair behind his left ear. He was newly married. We were no more than best friends for the next eight years, when his limping marriage finally fell apart. Everyone else knew how we felt about each other before we did.

The fourth: I went to a Mensa gathering near Boston three years ago, looked up, and met the eyes of a guy across the room, and knew. Again, he was not someone I would consciously choose. He was ten years older than I, bald, with the body of a past bodybuilder. Not my type. But he fascinated me. During the weekend I did not attempt to talk with him alone, but every time I looked toward him, he was looking at me, and he did make a point of sitting or standing near me several times, like he was hoping I would say something (shy much?). I was impressed with his contributions to table conversation. When I got home, I looked him up. He's married. I still wonder.

The fifth: The Man. Another Mensa gathering. First sight across a wide round table kicked me in the gut. If I made a list of all I want in a man, The Man would be 180 degrees off on almost every item except the body. I think his body is perfect, but I didn't see that at first, across the table. All the rest is 180 off. (Well, not all, but some things are pretty basic. He says I also diverge wildly from his usual taste in women.) He fascinated me at first sight, and I'm still fascinated.

If nothing else, the example of The Man proves that it's not a shallow "oh, he's perfect" thing, and it's not pheremones. Jay proves it's not the eyes or face. John and Obie show that it's not a sexual attraction. It really does feel like a "Fate" thing. A soul match thing. That doesn't mean happy ever after, but it's a very good start.

Notice that my first two husbands and the other fifty or so guys I've dated or flirted with didn't make the list. I've found that any guy who has to "grow on me" eventually turns into a fungus.
.

2653 Half sick

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Education does not produce intelligence;
knowledge does not convey the means to use it intelligently.

-------------------------

I almost didn't go to the movie last night because all afternoon I felt yucky, and by evening I was sure I had a fever. I took my temperature, and it was 98.6. So I went to the movie.

Today the back of my nose feels dry, and I have a hot spot on a tonsil, but I've had that several times over the past two months and nothing ever came of it, so I went to lunch anyway.

I'm beginning to worry that maybe I'm a flu carrier - I'm fighting off infection constantly without ever getting actively sick - and maybe I'm spreading it everywhere I go. Like Typhoid Mary. Swine Silk? I haven't heard of anyone I've come into contact with getting sick, though.

I heard on the news that a pet cat has been diagnosed with H1N1. Some reporters are getting all excited that maybe this means that the virus is mutating faster than they thought, and therefore the vaccine would be useless. The CDC shrugs it off, on the theory that many diseases are shared with pets, it doesn't require mutation, not a big deal.

I am a bit worried because dogs and cats have a higher body temperature than humans (100.5 to 102.5), and pathogens usually multiply within only a narrow temperature range, and that's why we share few diseases with our pets. It's also why we get fevers and chills - the higher and lower temperatures are designed to make our bodies inhospitable to the pathogens. So the worrisome part is that if the virus is happy with cat temperatures, then if I get it, a fever isn't going to help a whole lot.

------------------------

I went to lunch in Pawling today, with an over-50 professional women's Meetup group. There were seven of us. I liked the bunch, even the one women I'd met before, the one who takes over conversations. I don't think she's at all aware she does it.

Like, one woman will be talking about the time she blah blah, and she'll say one word that kicks off a thought in the other woman's head, and the other woman will loudly interrupt the middle of a sentence with, "Oh, yeah, that's like when I blah blah blah", and the first woman never does get to finish her story.

That really bugs me.

I have a way to handle it. I look at the second woman, listen until she seems to be finished, and then with no comment or reaction to her story, as if it had no import, I turn back to the first woman, and prompt her, "You were saying..."

Unfortunately, I seem to be one of the few who even notices. Everyone else usually takes off from the second woman, allowing her to have completely hijacked the topic.

------------------------

Some people are upset that some large corporations have received the flu vaccine, while hospitals, clinics, and doctor's offices are still waiting. The way some news outlets are presenting it, they make it sound like the administration is showing favoritism to Wall Street firms, who already got handouts.

Those reports, calculated to fan flames, to discredit others, really piss me off.

First of all, the handouts began during the past administration, remember? This administration has been trying to stem the handout tide. For example, CIT was allowed to go bankrupt (filed last Sunday) after begging in vain for federal assistance for many months.

Second, corporations getting flu vaccines early is nothing new! I don't know when it started, but it's been going on for at least 35 years that I know of. When I worked for The Company, any time the seasonal flu looked like it might be especially widespread or nasty, The Company got the vaccine. Lots of it. Early. And they gave it to anyone who wanted it, not just high risk people.

The reason (sounds like an excuse to me) is that the country is weakened if commerce stops, so it's important to keep the workforce on its feet.

So nobody's showing any more favoritism than has been shown in the past. It's just that it suits people to throw mud this year.

I don't like it when people throw mud. Especially mud that they may have had a hand in creating, or that they ignored until an innocent target came along. We used to call those people bullies.
.

2652 Fellini in Woodstock

Friday, November 6, 2009

A lot of people you hire with good paper education
can't actually do the work you hire them for.
They learn while doing the job or they don't learn at all.

-------------------------------

I watched a Frederico Fellini film, "Amarcord" (1974) this evening, with six other people, strangers, in Woodstock, in an ordinary living room, on a huge screen, something like maybe 6' by 12'.

There was no real story, no cohesive plot, no apparent point to be made, but it was good nonetheless. There were glimpses of many lives in a village in Italy over the course of a year, circa 1920s or 30s.

One had the sense that these same stories, the archetypes, had been repeating in different combinations and variations for as long as the village had existed. My comment was that I wished I were an English composition teacher. I would assign each student a character, show them the film, and then ask that they write their character's backstory. The town slut, Volpine(?), would have been an interesting study, for example. Or the leonine school teacher, what is her life like? Or the old count and the ancient countess.

Gee, there were twenty or more movies in this one 2-hour film....

I spent most of the evening with a 70-pound dog in my lap. Which was good, because the host had turned the heat off during the movie because the blower made too much noise, and otherwise I would have frozen. I had a cold draft hitting my right side. There's ice outside tonight. 28 degrees F.
.

2651 Numb

Thursday, November 6, 2009

You can chill with the owls at night,
or you can fly with the eagles in the morning,
but likely not both.

---------------------------

I was driving to a dinner in Southern Columbia County this evening, and changed the radio station, right into the middle of what appeared to be an interview. A guy was saying he had reached into the refrigerator for a beer, and he couldn't tell if the beer was cold or warm. Then he said he was worried and didn't know what to do because he didn't have insurance.

I got all upset for him. If your hands have gone so numb that you can't tell if a can is cold or warm, that's serious! He should see a doctor or go to the hospital immediately, insurance or not.

Then the story continued. It turned out to be insurance against warm beer he was talking about (?!), and it was a Coors commercial. The mountains on Coors cans turn blue when the beer is cold.

Cute. But does anyone really think that's a selling point? Is anyone going to switch beers for that? Yeah, maybe a single can, just to see it change. But if people switch to Coors because they can tell it's cold by the blue mountains, it's not their hands that are numb, it's their HEADS!
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2650 A certain lack of focus

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Science is neither a method nor a body of knowledge.
It is a body of changing, learned opinion, aspiring to be true.
There are certain facts about nature and history;
our grasp of those facts is constantly changing.
-- George Santayana --

---------------------------------

Dinner with Mensans last night. I screwed up figuring my portion of the bill, had to apologize this morning to others who contributed more money to cover the bill, and I feel like an idiot, especially after thinking that my neighbor at dinner was a bit of an idiot.

Because there were six of us, the tip, $23, had automatically been added to the tab, and the woman sitting next to me said, several times, that rather than figure out individual portions of the tip, we should just split it, at $3 each. I pointed out, several times, that 6 times $3 is not $23.

We do have a couple of gossips in the group, who will talk about anyone who isn't there. I often wonder what they say about me. Anyway, (I'll call her Prof) Prof came up. Prof is a thorn in the side to some of the group. They wish she'd go away. They don't know how to deal with her. In the middle of the latest complaints, she walked in. She wasn't on the list of expected attendees. She'd been at the Vassar campus across the street and just decided to drop in.

She has a doctorate in something like biochemistry. She comments knowledgeably on a variety of topics. She's a really nice person, not a nasty bone in her body, relentlessly cheerful and chatty, and wants to do her part for the group. However, she's mentally somewhere off in left field, and she doesn't seem to "get it". Ever.

Prof schedules lectures, and panel discussions, and documentary movie nights, and wonders why nobody from the group goes to them. All the group seems to be interested in is food, games, and field trips, and she doesn't get it. I feel sorry for her, because she keeps on trying.

Anyway, she was talking last night about how she has hit several deer, three I think, in the past three years, and how she's afraid of hitting another. Also about sliding on slick roads, and a few other accidents. (She used to wear very thick glasses, and wears none now after having had laser eye surgery a few years ago. I think she's still half blind and doesn't realize it.) So she "never drives over 45 mph", and always 5-10 mph under the speed limit everywhere.

A few minutes later, she was complaining about tailgaters. People are always climbing on her tail. She hates how their headlights behind her make it even harder to see deer on the side of the road.

She really doesn't get it.

Nobody else paid any attention to her last night. She'd be talking and someone else would interrupt as if she wasn't speaking, start up another topic, and everyone would turn away from her. Since she was next to me and I felt sorry for the way people were treating her, I did pay attention to her. And then something occurred to me. I noticed that she ordered an appetizer without realizing it was not an entree. The deer thing. The getting lost driving. The dividing the tip thing. Some other stuff.

Like when she schedules events in the newsletter or online group, she ALWAYS gets the date wrong (right day of the week but wrong number, or vice-versa), or leaves out something important, like the time, or the location. Always! Every. single. time. without exception.

Others think she's stupidly oblivious. I think she's too smart, and her problem is not stupidity, but a lack of focus leading to obliviousness. She's scattered. Not an ADD-type thing, just no focus. Every thought is a skim across the top, without ripples, without focus.

Her mind works like flat stones skipping across a frozen pond.

I wonder if her near blindness through most of her life contributed? She spend most of the past 50 years with her nose 2 inches from a book page. Can straining to focus in one area contribute to a lack of focus everywhere else?
.

2649 Trivial trivia

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Preserve wildlife - pickle a squirrel.

-------------------

There is a trivia "contest" on-line at http://www.trivialpursuitexperiment.com/

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The way it's set up, you identify yourself as male or female, and a tally is kept for one of the two gender-composed teams.

It's kind of fun, but I got a bit annoyed because when you get a question wrong, they don't tell you what the correct answer was, and because a few of the "correct" answers were WRONG!

For example, there was a question about how many different types of twins there are. The choices offered were something like one, two, three, and some large number. "One" is of course obviously wrong. I suspect they wanted "two": identical (one egg, one sperm, then split) and fraternal (two eggs, two sperm). The large number is wrong because although there are many other designations (conjoined, parasitic, mirror, superfecundate, etc) they are all subsets of the basic one/two eggs with split/no split.

I answered "three", because doctors have recently recognized a third rare type - semi-identical (one egg, fertilized by two sperm, then split).

Of course, they declared me wrong.

Hey! Is this a trivia contest or what! I am penalized because I know trivia?
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