Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

How will the world end? Well, there’s overpopulation and that might bring about an epidemic, or a cataclysmic nuclear war. There’s starvation, too,but that problem goes away inside of one growing season after percentage x (wherein x= just enough)of the population dies off, and we’re back to the old cycle.
There’s the possibility of a Gamma Ray Burst, which is scary as hell because scientists say we’d probably never even see it coming and it would wipe out all life on Earth instantly, so we wouldn’t even know if it was a gamma ray burst or the Vogons building an interstellar bypass, and that doesn’t seem fair at all.
There’s the possibility of a super-volcano, like Krakatoa or the one that wiped out ancient Crete or maybe Yellowstone. We could get hit by an asteroid, like the Chicxulub asteroid that messed up the dinosaurs so bad. Sure, we haven’t been hit by an asteroid that size for 65 million years but that just means it’s overdue and there’s no reason at all to think we’d fare better than the dinosaurs.
We could, I suppose, be invaded by evil aliens and slaughtered or eaten or sent to zoos on other planets like Billy Pilgrim and Montana Wildhack.
Up until about 5 minutes ago I thought that was the whole list. Then I read an article about methane concentrations that have been exposed due to them no longer being covered by ice year round, and they are starting to explode. There are thousands and thousand of the son of a bitches, all across Siberia and Canada. If they all blow (and there’s no reason to think they won’t, if some have), scientist say it will be the equivalent, as far as effect on the environment is concerned, of 12 years of automobile traffic. That will speed up global warming even more and the problem will continue to increase, spiraling out of control.
I don’t know the solution, but I suspect it may lie in the fact that methane is a gas – shouldn’t somebody be figuring out a way to harness, to harvest this resource?

It was a pleasant enough day on the personal front. Didn’t get even half of the things on my to-do-this-weekend list done, but a couple of them were key. We went to watch Isabel in a dance competition, which was kind of an interesting thing. The last two times we’ve seen one, they were in theaters, with stages, and nice plush seats. This time it was in a gymnasium, and I mean that in the English language sense, i.e. a sports hall, no a High School. I wouldn’t say the acoustics were worse, but it did seem louder. It seemed much more chaotic, but a large part of that was because the groups who weren’t performing were still on the floor, with their wildly different costumes, milling about. Previous events were probably equally chaotic, but it was not as visible. The snack stand sold hot dogs, and was doing a brisk business.

In the news, Bernie Sanders is going to introduce a Medicare for all bill. Not fuckhead Chuck Schumer, or botox Nancy Pelosi. Bernie Sanders. A Democrat, Patrick Welch (also from Vermont) will introduce the bill in the House. It doesn’t have much chance of passing, I suppose, with a Republican controlled congress, but you never know…they could outflank the Democrats, say “Hey, this Sanders plan makes sense, this way we’ll eliminate Obamacare and suddenly we’ll be popular” but I’m not holding my breath.
Still, Bernie’s making the effort and it would be totally humiliating for Hillary Clinton if Sanders managed to get the plan she said he’d ‘never, ever’ pass, passed. That’s motive for the Republicans as well.

A Facebook friend posted a post today which led to a lively discussion, it was all about spelling and grammar mistakes on social media (one of the responses misspelled grammar as grammer, and I almost did it just now), and it wasn’t your typical hahaha look at the stupid redneck couldn’t spell ‘socialism,’ which is actually kind of a hard word, when the President of the United States can’t spell ‘tap,’ kind of conversation.
It was a conversation of intelligent people sharing their own faux pas (Jesus, what is the plural of THAT) and speculating on the reasons for the profusion of errors – mind working faster than the fingers, spellcheck overstepping it’s bounds, etc…)
But, here’s the real reason and as soon as it occurred to me I realized it was the truth, which is basically how I test a theory. Not very scientific, I know, which is probably why I’m not a scientist, but here’s the thought, and you can take it for what it’s worth: we’re seeing more mistakes in print since everybody is writing far more that ever before. Sure, some bemoan the fact that nobody ever writes letters anymore (probably the same people who get nostalgic about typewriters and vinyl records). But, I remember those days. I would write maybe a couple of letters a week if I was traveling, maybe one every two weeks more like it if I wasn’t, and I’m sure the gaps were often longer than that. Now, I write several comments per day, maybe 20 or 30 but half of them are just ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘I really like this one,’ so say about 10 that have more than one paragraph and a semblance of a point, maybe a status update or two, and this blog. I send about 1,000 words a day out into the noosphere, and I know I’m not exceptional because I see a lot of friends post more than me.
So, let’s take me as a baseline, and multiply that by the couple of billion users of social media, and you have an absolute flood, a deluge of verbiage, a lot of which is written carelessly, while drunk, or high on something or another, or just fatigued.
So, I don’t think all the errors are a sign of our falling literacy, but rather of our nascent, emerging literacy. Keep on writing, folks.

It seems as if the movement to repeal and replace Obamacare with going back to the old way and what’s more give rich people a whole bunch more money, because why not, has been withdrawn.
I don’t want to gloat and snicker just yet because there is always the chance of some last minute trick, Republicans are good at the sleazy tricks. However, withdrawn is not postponed and it looks as if they’re going to have to go back to the old drawing board and write a bill which does not so blatantly leave old people to die, before they try to do it again.
Withdrawn means they didn’t even have close to the votes, it wasn’t even going to be a dramatic roll – call.
I’m not going to predict what happens next. Some days I think Republicans are just plain, ordinary, greedy politicians, in which case this will all go away as they focus on some other issue, and continue to prattle on about how Obamacare is ruining everybody’s lives. They will continue to threaten to repeal it, but those threats will gradually lesson both in frequency and in volume until they are as forgotten a piece of American history as the Know-Nothings.
However, the Republicans, as of the last couple of decades, have a habit of exposing themselves, without even much pressure, as being evil, twisted,misanthropic wretches. It’s like watching 6 year olds playing soccer; there are a lot of own goals. If that’s the side of their Jekyll and Hideness that comes up dominant in the next few weeks, then we’re in for a long fight.

“I’m President and you’re not,” Donald Trump said to a reporter from Time magazine today, as evidence that his presidency was going just fine, thank you very much. I’m president, therefore I must be doing a bang up job.
I’m not sure if that’s circular logic, begging the question, or just your basic, run of the mill, garden variety non -sequitur, but it’s sure as hell a logical fallacy of some sort, because it makes no damned sense at all.
First, there are approximately 300,000,000 Americans. Trump just said that none of us are fit to question him, because he’s President and we’re not. Neil de Grasse Tyson and Bill Nye are not President. Bob Dylan is not President. Oprah Winfrey is not President. Bernie Sanders, to Americas eternal discredit, is not President. Therefore Trump must be a better President than any of them could possibly be, because he is President.
American history is full of examples of Presidents who were terrible Presidents. Bush (both of them, actually. Senior usually gets a pass because Junior was such a ginormous bundle of alcoholic suck, but he’s the one who started all the Iraq shit), Reagan, Nixon, Johnson (yadda, yadda, yadda, EPA and Civil rights notwithstanding, the Viet Nam war killed a shitload of people and was the defining issue of those times), Hoover, Coolidge, Harding, Buchanan, and plenty of people would add their own favorites to this list, but it just goes to prove: being President does not make you a good President.
There are millions and millions, probably billions of people in this world who are doing a job which they are not the absolute best in the world at. Look at me. I’m obviously not the greatest writer in the world, but I would never say, to anybody, “I’m a writer, and you’re not.”
I think that for Trump (and, in this aspect, I think Hillary was exactly the same) the important thing was becoming President, that was the ultimate goal, and he’s not overly concerned with whether anybody thinks he’s a good President or not.
Which is fortunate for Donald Trump. Because he’s not.