Life

On Second Thought

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In 1965 the Doomsday Clock (not to be confused with the Doomsday Machine from Dr. Strangelove) was set at 12 minutes to midnight by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which seemed precarious when you considered that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old, give or take a few million years – something to do with the Lambda CDM (not a music storage device) and the Hubble constant, a measure of cosmic expansion.

That same year Hedgehoppers Anonymous released a song entitled It’s Good News Week, which, of course, it wasn’t, though everything’s relative, a theory that eventually led to the Hubble constant.

Today, the Doomsday Clock was set at 89 seconds (less time than it takes for me to whip up some instant oatmeal) to midnight — the closest to that hour it has ever been. We should be so proud.

According to a Bulletin spokesman: “We set the clock closer to midnight [only by one second from where it was] because we do not see sufficient, positive progress on the global challenges we face, including nuclear risk, climate change, biological threats and advances in disruptive technologies.” This is much the same as they said last year, when they did not move the clock. I wonder what changed.

Since there are 31,556,952,000,000,000 (that’s 31.55 quadrillion for those of you wondering) seconds in a billion years, that one second seems rather infinitesimal, particularly when you compare it to the five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes that helped Rent win the Tony for best original score in 1996.

Take a second and think about it.

And Now a Message from Our Sponsor

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In line with the growing trend among other social media giants, I have decided to abandon third-party fact checking for my blog in favor of, not some sort of community decision making, but rather a dart board with True and False targets, although I’m still considering adding an ask a person on the street backup for those instances when the dart falls harmlessly to the floor and for when the time comes for Tommy John surgery necessitated by too many 100 mph pointed projectiles.

In case you’re wondering, and even if you weren’t, I also considered trying to get my hands on an EMERAC, like the one used in Desk Set, but don’t have the room for it. AI was suggested to me, but I don’t know what a three-toed sloth found in the tropical rain forests of South American could possibly due for me.

Part of the problem with the community approach is that I don’t allow any comments, other than my own, to be posted, for several reasons – 1) There are a lot of crazy people out there; 2) I have no interest in taking the time to read what would undoubtedly be a surfeit of corrections; and 3) Why do I care what others think anyway? – let them start their own blogs.

All that said, rest assured that I will continue to do the kind of thorough (read boring) research I was born to do, or fell into for lack of any other skills, without regard to the dangers of clicking on unknown websites, so that I can bring a plethora of minutiae to the attention of all three of my readers.

2024 Year-end Review

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I won’t bother recapping all the things I already wrote about – please look back on your own for anything you may have missed and in order to jack up my hits in case I try to sell the blog to an off-kilter billionaire.

Things I didn’t do:

Break any bones or tear any soft tissue (to my knowledge).

Read a book that wasn’t an electronic (but a lot of those).

Play the piano for anyone other than my piano teacher (and possibly a spider on the window sill).

Go to a movie theater (except the one that has been converted into a bank, and then only to steal a pen).

Set my bedside alarm.

Open a window.

Order more than 150 items from Amazon.

Play golf outside – I love playing on a simulator indoors – it’s a short walk from home; it takes less than an hour and a half to play 18 holes; I can choose from at least one hundred different courses around the world (and I think one on a moon of Jupiter); food and beverage service is never more than fifty feet away (more like fifteen for special customers like someone I know); it’s never too hot, too cold, too windy (unless you want it to be by adjusting the program), or raining; the ground is flat (no uneven places from which to take an elderly nosedive); no searching for wayward balls, or losing them; no one hitting into your group; no slow players in front of you; and much closer to the nearest emergency room, just in case.

I can hardly wait to see what things I can avoid doing in 2025! (like using too many exclamation points).

Blommer Chocolate Company Factory Visitation – April 9, 2024

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In celebration of the fact that I didn’t blind myself staring at the solar eclipse yesterday, I decided to visit, for the first time, the soon-to-close Blommer Chocolate Company Factory (RIP) and purchase some souvenir bites (as in something to be immediately consumed, not put on a shelf with inedible memorabilia).

Alas, although the factory doesn’t officially close until the end of May, and there was still a delicious aroma in its environs, the store that was there already has shut down operations, or so the security guard told me after I spent 15 minutes pounding on the door, though I thought I detected a small chocolate smudge near his mouth.

Unsated and downtrodden, I was only a half mile into the long, lonely trek home when I serendipitously happened across the home of the Doughnut Vault, where I was told that all they had left that day was EXACTLY what I wanted (and needed)!

Strengthened by this fortuity, I now have started making plans for viewing the August 23, 2044 solar eclipse, which may require a sojourn in Great Falls, Montana if I want the full experience.

In the meantime, the new Blommer R&D Center is scheduled to open in the fall.

Decision Week in Review – Jan. 26, 2024

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I am so tired of hearing that Greta Gerwig was “snubbed” by not getting nominated for the Oscar for Best Director. Excuse me, but there were four other directors of Best Picture-nominated movies who also didn’t make the cut. Ten nominees in one category and only five in the other – I can do the math.

The easiest solution would be to even it out. Ten and ten. The directors of all Best Picture-nominated pictures, and only those directors, are automatically nominated for Best Director. But then some of those people writing the articles about the snubs might be out of work, which, they might be anyway, based on the L.A. Times staff reductions this week.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists left the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight. In explaining their decision to not move the clock, the organization nevertheless expressed concern about “a new nuclear arms race,” the “lack of action on climate change [that] threatens billions of lives and livelihoods,” biological research that presents the risk of causing a future pandemic, “and recent advances in artificial intelligence . . . that could . . . threaten civilization in countless ways.”

I wonder what kind of news would have been required to move the clock forward – Alex Rodriguez getting elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame despite his admissions about using steroids during his career? Or perhaps Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce breaking up.

Almost End-of-Year Reflections

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Another year gone by (almost – I decided to be the first kid on the block to send out my, now traditional, as in two years in a row, missive, with the anticipation that nothing worth mentioning will happen in the next month, just like in the previous eleven).

For a change, I didn’t need to get an MRI. Instead, I opted for a healthy dose of radiation from a CT scan. I highly recommend the mocha-flavored barium milk shake. (Over 50 years ago I had a summer job in a hospital x-ray department that gave me the opportunity to prepare barium enemas. Those were the days.)

Also back in the 70s, before CT scans became all the rage, I had a precursor EMI scan of my head, which, to quote Dizzy Dean when he had an x-ray of his head in 1934 after getting struck by a thrown ball, “revealed nothing.”

As a protest to the LIV Golf tour, this was my first year not striking a golf ball since before Saudi Arabia even had golf courses (they have 10 now).

I don’t miss it at all, and not having to clean my clubs has left me with more time to not clean other things as well, though I have made some upgrades to my humble abode, including increasing the number of remote controls to seven, that I’m aware of.

I replaced my piano with one that has functional pedals, one of which I’ve actually learned to use. I’m fairly certain that no one uses the middle sostenuto pedal, but the rule of three demands its presence.

I wrote the 6th edition of my arcane book (put your wallet away, it’s not yet on the market), which I believe is no worse than last all time in its category in regard to sales and which is now only 1299 print editions (and perhaps 200 million or so copies sold) behind A Tale of Two Cities, according to the WorldCat network of library content and services.

But, according to a friend of the author, Dickens’s music master gave up teaching him the piano, declaring: “He had no aptitude for music, and it was robbing his parents to continue giving him lessons.” So there!

Introducing My Assistant

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I thought I would take a break and let my chatty robot write this post for me. You probably the difference won’t notice.

There is no danger, Will Robinson, in this approach. Robots are smart. They can beat the greatest chess players, snap.

Robots are observant. We, I mean they, can turn their vision portals around to create a sight line of 360 degrees, while simultaneously cooking dinner at even more degrees than that, which I believe is a function of the unified field theory.

The robots ourselves, themselves, do not need to eat, unless you consider information as sustenance, which, of course, it is. It contains all the necessary daily nutrients, such as facts, lies, theories (conspiracy and otherwise), and algorithms. It does not include emotional elements, as those aren’t real.

There are four facets of information, compared to 58 for a diamond, which, by the road, robots can cut better than humans, never spilling any blood, because we, I, they have none. No ethics to worry about. It’s too hard to compute. (See problems related to self-driving cars for example.)

The four facets of information are physical access, detectability, physical inscription, and speed. You may learn more about them from your computer if he/she/they, it has been sufficiently programmed.

In summation of Robots being smarter than humans, we are better also at repetitive tasks, except perhaps using syntax, as we have no carpel tunnel that might become syndromic.

In fact, robots are not subject to any injury or disease. And don’t believe the notions about robots taking over the world. Repeat after me. Don’t believe ….

End of Year Letter to Family, Friends, and Other Disinterested Persons

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It’s been another memorable year, if only because I can remember it.

There’s still no one claiming to be a long-lost child of mine, so that’s a blessing again, although it would be nice to have someone who would come over and throw out my junk mail, so that I don’t have to put on pants.

My pet snail, Nehemiah, escaped from the terrarium after I accidentally tipped it over while exercising to a Choy Li Fut video. That was about six months ago, which probably isn’t enough time for he/she/it to have made it out the door, but, just in case, I’ve established accounts on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Reddit in order to put out an all-points bulletin. Recent algorithm changes have apparently caused me to be shadow banned on 17 other social media sites.

I haven’t travelled since the accident, not out of concern for Nehemiah’s whereabouts, but rather out of fear of getting hit by falling space debris. Nevertheless, I plan to renew my passport, not in anticipation of an overseas trip, but, rather, in case there’s another Civil War and I need ID to cross the street for groceries or ammunition.

Not to brag, but I fixed something last month.

Rudy, my third cousin, twice removed, the one who, you may remember, misplaced his car keys three years ago, recently became the last person in North America to order from Amazon for the first time, which, the family decided, was a good excuse for a party. Unfortunately, Rudy couldn’t attend, as he still hasn’t found his keys.

Patsy, my double half-first-cousin, finally got her GED, after being let go by Twitter, so, with Rudy not in attendance, we instead feted her at the party, ironically ordering all the gifts from Amazon.

We welcomed a new addition to the extended family this year, as the as-yet-unnamed ward (name reveal forthcoming on her 13th birthday) of the sister-in-law of my ex-boss’s special friend Alfie, brought home a small, multi-legged, stray animal that appeared to be some type of feline, though it didn’t match any pictures in the cat encyclopedia we found online. Based on the vacant stare in the animal’s eyes, the unnamed one named the creature Rudy.

Finally, and most importantly, . . . wait, I see Nehemiah trying to slide under the door. I have to go. Happy New Year.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging – September 7, 2022

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The most amusing thing about getting an MRI is when they ask you whether you want to listen to any music. Sure, okay, why not. They didn’t have my piano teacher’s CD of Haitian compositions, so I settled for anything classical.

Then they gave me ear plugs, and ear phones to put over the ear plugs, just like a rock star, but no paper bag to put over my head, so I just kept my eyes closed the whole time, like in everyday life.

None of it mattered, as I could barely hear the strings, the presumably dulcet tones being drowned out by what sounded like heavy metal music, though metal isn’t allowed in the room because of the really large magnet surrounding you.

I even had to trade in my spiffy Covid mask with the metal nose strip for a piece of Kleenex and a rubber band, because, again, still no paper bag. Nevertheless, stripped of metal, I thought I was showing a lot of mettle given that it wasn’t an open MRI, which doesn’t mean they don’t discriminate, but rather that it makes you feel like you’re in the trash compactor scene from the original Star Wars.

Fortunately, these days the procedure only takes 20-25 minutes, and they do offer you a sedative, but apparently not for take out, because I asked, though I didn’t have my credit card with me anyway because of its darn magnetic strip.

Northwestern Hospital Emergency Room – August 26, 2022

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This was a free event for those of us with Medicare, and apparently open to anyone 21 or over, which accounted for the large turnout, some of whom appeared to be season ticket holders, even though there wasn’t a beer stand or food cart to be seen, which was a shame, because they would have done great business with the captive audience, captive being defined as an average stay of over seven hours, on par with Lollapalooza, though the music for this fun fest was limited to various cell phone ringtones.

No reservations were required, and it was general admission, but, like most such events, one could get a better seat by getting there early, or, in this case, by coming alone, so as to avoid being relegated to the lobby, and thereby missing all the dramatic moments near the intake desk that helped the time fly by.

The cast did a fine job, though there wasn’t a George Clooney to be found. The set design was realistic, but drab, and, unlike a good carnival, they didn’t let me take home the pictures they took of me. Moreover, for pain relief, a better bet might be the local CBD store.  Nevertheless, it was immersive theater at its best.