3104 Questions

Monday, September 27, 2010

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.”
-- Joan D. Vinge --

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After paper was invented, how long did it take to invent paper airplanes? Is that why airplanes are called air planes? They're not really planes. Is it because paper airplanes, made from planes of paper, came first?

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Folks in the pre-electric pre-gaslight days are always shown heavily dressed. But cooking fires and even candlelight will heat a room. So what were summer evenings like indoors? Did the people roast, or was the climate much cooler then?

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I've seen many uniforms from the Civil War in museums in Gettysburg. They are tiny! I weighed 104 pounds when I lived in Gettysburg, and the uniforms looked too small for even me. Also, they were heavy wool. I can't imagine marching and fighting in the summer in heavy wool. I asked, and the guides said yes, the men were much smaller then, and yes, we were in a minor ice age then. It was colder.

But I keep hearing that many of the founding fathers were over 6 feet tall. Of course, they were the wealthier people, too. So were most people smaller than today because they were underfed?

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In movies and TV shows, when someone is shot or stabbed, they die neatly and quickly. Bam, down, done.

It really doesn't happen that way. If you stab someone in the torso, even if you hit the heart, they're going to be able to move for a while. It takes a long time to die from trauma. Even when the head is cut off, the head is alive for like five minutes.

What difference would it make to the story line if the truth were shown? Would it matter to murderers if they knew how difficult and messy it really is to kill someone? You know how in horror movies the scariest part is when the protagonist "kills" the villain, but he/she/it keeps coming back at them? That's what it's really like.

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There are lots of ways to decide who to vote for. You can do the research and vote for whomever you think will do what needs to be done, but that's work, and how many people are willing to do the research? I think we know the answer to that one.

You can vote a straight party line, if you think the party will do what's best for you. Again, it's work to decide whether the party will really represent you, or just themselves, and I suspect very few people really understand the issues.

You can vote for whomever you are told to vote for by people who you think did do the research. But how many people research those people? (There's a vicious smear campaign going on here by a group that spreads lies and simplistic half-truths and describes itself as a seniors' group. It turns out they are funded by the pharmaceutical industry.)

You can protest smear campaigns by voting against whomever had the nastiest dirtiest ads.

Me? I watch the signs put up along the roads before the primaries (registered as independent, I can't vote in party primaries) and then in November I vote against the people whose signs are still up a week after the primaries.

(Not really, but it does have an influence.... I figure anyone who doesn't take their signs down is more concerned about themselves than about us.)

I wonder how most people decide.
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