Some Blog Site

Alpha had his school Christmas holiday program. While we were walking to the cafeteria/auditorium/cafetorium, we passed by display cases containing artwork from the various classes. I don’t know which grades did these turkeys, but apparently a number of students were handed line-drawing turkeys which they were supposed to color or otherwise decorate.

I wish I knew the story behind this.

• Did the child happen to glance at the stack of magazines in the art room, see Obama’s photo, and just decide that he would look good on a turkey?
• Did the child purposely put Obama’s head on a turkey body as a statement of how poorly he thought the government was being run?
• Or was the child thankful for Obama and trying to indicate that by associating him with Thanksgiving?
• Is the small picture to the right of Obama’s head a picture of a turkey with Obama’s head on it? Was that the inspiration for this art? From where did that come?

The world may never know.

I find the most interesting part to be the bicycle handlebars. Why a bicycle? Shouldn’t he be holding onto the handlebars? So many questions . . .

This page intentionally left blank.

That statement bothers me. The page was blank, before you put that statement on it. But now it is no longer blank, so you can’t have left it blank, because you printed words on it, so it’s not blank anymore, etc.

Here are my suggestions – things you could print on the page – for improving this fiasco:

• This is the only sentence on this page.
• This page was supposed to be blank, but we had to print this line.
• There is no meaningful content on this page.
• We felt like wasting paper, and this page is a result of that.
• Federal regulations require that there be no blank pages in any document.
• Nothing to see here; please turn to the next page.

To really improve it, how about this:

The following page is intentionally left blank.

And then you can have a truly blank page on the next page. Perfect!

Also, the statement really should have an “is” in there.

This page is intentionally blank.

That makes it a complete sentence.

“This page intentionally left blank” implies that the page was with blank, but then it left…on purpose too. They were together for such a long time. Now blank is lonely. Without the verb “is”, the only other word that could be a verb is “left”. If it is written as a sentence, then “left” must be the verb.

Or maybe blank is really a location. The page was there, at blank, but then it left, so it is no longer there. Got out of blank…left there in a hurry. I would expect that “blank” would then be a proper noun – the name of the place – so it should be “Blank”.

Last thought on this conundrum, this one regarding if you have both “is” and “left” together: maybe left is a direction.

This page is intentionally left blank.

All you need to do is find the page that is intentionally right blank and then you’ll have a matching pair.

What is the point of developing hand-eye coordination?

I was thinking about that while on vacation with my extended family. My nephew and I were playing Guitar Hero, and I thought “Why does it matter how good I get at this game? Sure, it’s fun to play, but why should I spend hours practicing pushing little plastic buttons?”

No, I don’t actually spend hours practicing Guitar Hero, as I don’t have the game. That was just a hypothetical question. And yes, it is fun to play and one can create lasting memories playing games with people. But it’s the interactions and relationships with people that really makes the memories, not the game itself.

It would be one thing to spend that time practicing a real guitar, a guitar that I could take places and entertain people. Come to think of it, it can be pretty entertaining watching some people play Guitar Hero. But I have no aspirations of becoming a singer/songwriter, so that’s why I don’t spend time on a real guitar.

For a long time, the best rationalization people had for spending timing gaming was that it develops hand-eye coordination. I suppose a minimum level of that skill is necessary, but after some point there can’t be much added benefit.

In your normal life, how much precision hand-eye coordination is required? Once you get the basics down, you should be good. Why not work on your walking skills or breathing skills?

Maybe someone wants to become a skilled surgeon – that would require good hand-eye coordination. What would be a better use of your time – staring at a screen and pressing pieces of plastic with your thumbs or maybe knitting or sewing something?

Playing something is one thing; practicing it is another. You should practice what you want to do. If watching a screen and pressing buttons very quickly is what you want to do, then go for it.

It seems the radio stations and I have differing ideas about the categories into which they put themselves.

Here are the standard categories:

• Pop
• Adult Contemporary / Soft Rock
• Alternative
• Classic Rock
• Oldies
• Classical

I always put them in approximate decades :

• Pop is current
• Alternative (alternative to what? real music?) is the 90s
• Soft Rock is the 80s
• Classic Rock is the 70s
• Oldies is the 60s and 50s
• Classical is everything else. Except Metal. That doesn’t fit in anywhere except the Hard Rock station. And it transcends decades.

The radio stations have slowly been moving songs between formats. They do it a song here and there and hope that no one will notice.

But I’m onto them. They can’t sneak it past me.

I’ve noticed that the songs that were once considered Classic Rock are now played by the Oldies station. Songs that were Alternative are now Soft Rock. Songs that were Soft Rock are now Classic Rock. And no one plays Oldies anymore. I mean, when was the last time you heard How Much is that Doggy in the Window?

I’m thinking the radio stations’ formats are defined by relative decades, not absolute decades. So the Oldies station plays songs that are 40-some years old, the Classic Rock station plays songs that are 30-some years old, Soft Rock songs are 20-some years old, Alternative are 10-some years old, and Pop (if they still call it that…what is it? “today’s hits”?) is 0-9 years old.

I don’t want to switch formats. I don’t want to become an Oldies person.

They should keep things stable. Then when an audience no longer exists, the station should switch formats to a new style.

That’s the way generational naming works. Baby Boomers aren’t just people in their 50s and 60s. And Generation X isn’t just people in their 30s. No, they are defined by being born in a particular range of years.

And that’s how songs should be.

On an unrelated note: I could tell I am officially old because I referred to the 21-year-old guy who won the poker championship in Las Vegas last week as “that kid”. I think, technically, 21 means he is a man, not a kid. But you know those youngsters these days…

by Pocus

I saw something today that didn’t look quite right.

I was just driving (actually, I was stopped at a stoplight) and I saw alongside me a Ford Focus with a trailer hitch. I had my camera with me, so I snapped a snappy snap.

I had to take a picture, because who in his right mind would use a Focus to haul anything? Here’s another shot, closer this time.

Once I got home, I checked my extensive resources (i.e. Google) and found out that the Focus can tow up to 2000 lbs. That’s a whole ton! Who’d a thunk it? But the tongue weight is limited to 200 lbs. So I couldn’t step on the hitch if anything is being towed.

I know I can tell when there’s extra weight in my Buick (no diet jokes please). Throw several 40-lb bags of salt in there, and the 200 horsepower seems rather sluggish, not to mention the braking. The Focus is somewhere around 140 hp, and is only 2500 lbs. Almost doubling the weight that a car’s engine and brakes handle has to have significant effects on the vehicle’s performance.

I’m sure there’s some good reason for putting a trailer hitch on a Focus, but it sure looked odd.

During one of the many interactions that occur on a family vacation, a relative had to apologize to me. I am keeping it vague, because I don’t remember which niece or nephew it was, or even what the infraction was.

Somebody did something innocuous such as run into me because he wasn’t watching where he was going, but that happens a lot when there are 13 mobile children in one house for a week. I didn’t think much of whatever happened, but that child’s father saw it and then told the child to apologize to me. The child apologized rather well, considering how some apologies can go, but I was momentarily (that’s for a moment, not in a moment) stymied about how to respond.

It shouldn’t be that hard to respond to an apology. My normal without-thinking reply is “That’s okay“. But just before I was going to say that, my brain stopped me. I couldn’t say that, because that phrase implies that the infraction was not worth an apology. “That’s okay” really means “You shouldn’t have bothered apologizing because I wasn’t bothered by what you did”, at least in my mind it does.

In this case it was true, but I wanted to reinforce the father’s lesson he was trying to teach his child. And I thought that “That’s okay” would undermine that lesson. In trying to help my relative, I had to abandon my casual response and actually had to think about what reply to give.

What I said at that point was “Thank you for apologizing“, but I think “I accept your apology” or “I forgive you” (not “That’s okay; I forgive you” but a simple “I forgive you”) would also work. I didn’t want to keep the child and father waiting too long for me to say something, so “Thank you” was it.

Also, “Apology accepted” and “You’re forgiven” are true, but less direct than they should be. They may have been fine for a while, but in today’s society of weasely apologies (“mistakes were made”) I think I’m leaning toward putting pronouns in there: I accept, I forgive. Maybe that will encourage pronouns (and active voice) in the apologies.

I heard a conversation today, and I will share part of it with you.

Person 1: “Do you have any more surprises coming up?”
Person 2: “No, none that we know about.”

Two things: Yes, they were serious and no, I was not one of the people.

I find that concept to be related to another popular concept at work, the “what don’t we know about this issue” concept. It’s too easy to answer “I don’t know” to that phrase, but after thinking about it for a second, I do know. It’s everything. Because there is an infinite amount of stuff that we don’t know, about any topic, so it could be a very long process to detail what is not known.