Touring the Valley: concepts

Showing posts with label concepts. Show all posts

Random Thoughts

Prophecies of Apocalypse (ca. 1861), Raphael’s Almanac

Wastefulness, destruction, and vandalism are not traditional conservative values.

Rudeness and vulgarity are not traditional conservative values.

Many who label themselves conservative are the kind of people their genuinely conservative predecessors would have found disgusting.

Once upon a time, the world could count on America to be American. No matter who the president was, or who got elected to Congress, we knew who our allies were, and they could count on us. We knew who the bad guys were, and we were on the side of the good guys. And then...

Here's an idea for a law that will never pass. Require the top executives of industrial corporations to drink the water where they dump their chemicals.

I am so tired of women's stroke and heart attack symptoms being labeled "atypical". No! Women are half the human population. Our health issues are a normal part of human life. Our symptoms are typical. Start calling men's symptoms atypical, because they aren't the same as those of normal women.

Terrorists want the population to be frightened, uncertain, and constantly on edge. It's working. Millions of seniors and disabled people are terrified of losing their financial support; whole communities fear that their neighbors will be disappeared; anyone with investments is on edge, expecting a crash any day now; people in general are outraged to see history purged from government websites; veterans are losing their jobs or expecting to lose them; families are stunned to see parks closed; and everyone is reeling from rising prices, the threat of government-sponsored identity theft, despair over the end of medical research, and the realization that we are now ruled by a regime that defiantly ignores the will of the people and would gladly see us all die.

Random Thoughts

After a while, there were so many mass shootings, the news media lost interest in reporting them. I expect that's going to happen with plane crashes, too.

I'm so tired of all the entities that want me to download their app just so I can shop / read the article / get past the popup. I don't need 5,000 stupid apps all over my phone!

King Charles I of England believed in the "divine right of kings", meaning he thought God want him to rule. When he was put on trial for treason and other crimes, he claimed that no court had jurisdiction over him. He was found guilty and executed.

I miss the days when U.S. presidents used to at least pretend to have dignity.

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” - John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961

Firing large numbers of people doesn't just affect the fired workers. It doesn't just affect their families. It affects all the small businesses around their homes and workplaces. Fire 500 people, and that's 500 people who don't need to get anything drycleaned any more, 500 people who aren't stopping for coffee on the way to work, who aren't going to that little deli for lunch, who won't impulsively stop to buy flowers on the way home, 500 people who aren't able to pay for daycare now, who won't go to the car wash every week, who can no longer afford the farmer's market on the weekend, who won't be replacing the old couch after all, who start cutting their own hair instead of going to the salon, who decide to cut back on Christmas presents this year.

When I was a kid, I learned not to give bullies what they want. If you comply with them, they come back for more. If not, they go away.

Random Thoughts

"The Deadly Sins Dominated by Death" (1904), James Ensor

I don't want it to make me stronger.
I don't want it to make me a better person.
I just want it to leave me alone.

What if we could actually love each other as well as we promised we would?

Nothing ruins a lovely Saturday afternoon like realizing it's Thursday.

When your only tool is a sledgehammer, everything looks like a demolition project.

I still think love is better than hate, even though hate is more profitable.

In junior high, my friend Jeannie was baffled when the math teacher said "show your work". Jeannie had a natural talent for math, and didn't have to work hard at the stuff we did in 8th grade. She would look at a problem and understand it in her head. No calculations needed, apparently. Some teachers suspected her of cheating. (As if she'd be foolish enough to copy a lesser person's answers). I showed her what I did, working it out on paper the way we were taught back in 3rd grade. "Oh, they want us to do it the hard way!" she said.

Thousands of businesses perform internal audits on a regular basis. They do NOT shut down the business while the audit is happening.

Random Thoughts

Charles Babbage's Brain (1909), V. Horsley

Law enforcement should not be afraid to pursue a case against criminals, out of fear that political hacks who don't like the outcome will punish them for enforcing the law.

Sometimes I feel an urge to water the artificial plants. I resist it.

Whether a person is making sandwiches, putting electrical wiring in your home, or investigating crime, it's better to have someone who knows what to do and does it well, without worrying about being fired for political reasons.

I'm baffled and annoyed by the vast numbers of people who write "pun intended" or "no pun intended" when there truly is no pun (or joke of any kind).

If you have to use lies to promote your cause, your cause isn't worth promoting.

It is painful to admit that you were deceived and betrayed, that your loyalty was misplaced. A common reaction is denial - you just don't want to believe it. You look for other explanations for the things that have happened. You feel anxious, wary, confused. When you finally have to face the truth, you may feel incapacitated by depression. You may react with rage. You feel that you can't trust anyone at all, ever again.

Random Thoughts

Image from an alchemical manuscript by an unknown author, ca. 1725

Sadists will not protect us.

It's amazing to see how many infectious disease specialists and Constitutional scholars have suddenly become aviation experts.

I want an app like Shazam, but for faces.

We are the descendants of the survivors.

Even the Twilight Zone never had an episode when all the criminals were turned loose and all the law enforcers were fired.

If I had marched into US government offices with some buddies and taken over the computer system, my friends and I would be sitting in jail right now.

Random Thoughts

Illustration: "Dante and Beatrice before the Light." (ca 1450), Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia

I knew some guys who had a garage band, but they didn't have a garage, so they rehearsed in someone's living room. They couldn't think of a name for the band, so they jokingly called themselves the Living Room Four. I misunderstood, thinking they had said Living Room Floor. I still think they should have used that name.

One of my high school teachers told us that the best way to improve our writing was to write something every day. I write every day. I don't know if my writing is getting better, but it is getting easier.

There were things I worried about in elementary school. I worried about failing an arithmetic test. I worried about wetting my pants. I worried that lunch in the cafeteria would be disgusting. I didn't worry that my friends and their families would be dragged from their homes and sent to another country.

In college, I took a class called Journalism 101. The teacher was adamant about knowing how to ask good questions at a press conference. Nobody in the White House press corps ever took that class.

Random Thoughts

Illustration: "Hospice for the Incurable" (ca 1764), Anonymous

A lot of parking facilities are designed with no awareness that, once a car is parked, the occupants need to get out and walk somewhere.

The WWII generation believed the U.S. could and should be a force for good in the world. That belief carried over into the Cold War and justified, in some minds, questionable things that were done to "fight communism". But eventually the belief in supporting "the greater good" was replaced by "greed is good", whereby affluence was widely perceived as proof of moral superiority. Eventually, the goal of having an affluent society that benefited nearly everyone was abandoned, and affluent individuals who benefitted no one but themselves became role models.

Most people aren't as funny as they think they are. Some are unintentionally funny. Many aren't funny at all.

No doubt, corporate executives do important work. They have to wear suits, go to meetings, have lunch with important people, attend banquets, and, um, make decisions. I was working for a big corporation at one time. My boss, the head of the department, needed back surgery, so he was absent for a few weeks. The company just kept rolling along, as everyone else kept on working as usual. Then one day it was time for the department head to make some decisions about how products would be allocated to various distributors in the region. He was still absent! So his assistant and I sat in his office, went through the list, and made the choices. There was no disaster or failure, and no more complaints than usual. Eventually, the boss came back to work, feeling better, and we all just kept on doing what we did.

Random Thoughts

Illustration: The Effects of Chloroform on the Human Body (1912) by Richard Tennant Cooper

Being young is great, but it's not sustainable.

Even if our government had the power to rename the Gulf of Mexico - what a waste of resources that would be. The expense and time-waste of reprinting maps, changing signs, retraining meteorologists to use the new name, etc.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with the plumber who was unclogging the toilet in our vacation rental. He said he used to work for a big hotel. They were using low-flow toilets, and they to deal with clogged toilets daily, at least a dozen per week. When the hotel weas refurbished, they replaced all the toilets. The new ones were also low-flow, but of a different design that flushed more efficiently. They went from a dozen clogs per week to less than 5 per month.

I've seen this effect in my house. When we had to replace a toilet, the one we bought had a promotional sign and video claiming it had the power to flush a bucket of golf balls. I happen to own a bucket of golf balls, and I don't plan to flush them. Even so, it is obvious that this one is powerful. The design matters more than the amount of water. I've seen high-volume toilets that could barely flush a single sheet of toilet paper, and new low-volume models that could do whatever was needed.

I used to be funnier, but the times have worn me down.

I will speak up in defense of paper maps. When we took our big trip around the country, we didn't use paper maps for navigation, but we used them to get the "big picture". We would spread out a map of a region or state (or the entire country) and say: We're going from here to there. What cities and points of interest are on the way? What are the potential side trips? Where will we want to stop for the night? Where are the rivers and mountain ranges? That's information you don't get from the GPS device in your car or phone.

Once upon a time, each U.S. president saw himself as serving or leading ALL citizens, not just small factions of extreme loyalists.