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I’ve written about life as a simulation before, but it came up in the news again recently so I want to add another thought to it.

It’s supposed to be an explanation of how life on this earth got started and continues, but it is limited in its explanation to this earth and what we can observe from here.

I’m reminded of the story of the world being supported by a turtle, but what supports the turtle? Of course, it’s turtles all the way down.

If we’re in a simulation, then someone must have started (and be running) the simulation.
No, silly, that person is also a simulation.
Ok, then who started that simulation.
Obviously, it’s simulations all the way down.

It’s just an existential version of kicking the can down the road.

I have an update to an old post about the trichotomy of features. This one pertains to ambitions of a person.

This one could have been called hobbies, but I already have one for hobbies. So I chose “ambition” instead, but it pertains in general to things people want to do. This is not for the ambitions themselves but rather for what the person needs in order to accomplish them.

Watching various Marvel movies and seeing who is in the credits, I am sometimes surprised. For example, I watched the first Thor movie thinking it was Ed O’Neill playing Dr. Erik Selvig and it wasn’t until the second movie that I matched the character with the actor. It turns out that it was not actually Al Bundy playing a scientist in the Thor movies. It was some guy named Stellan Skarsgard, who has been in some other movies too but I never saw those.

Ed O’Neill:

Stellan Skarsgard:

I had a slightly different problem with the Iron Man 2 movie. There I paid attention to the credits and was surprised to see the bad guy was played by Mickey Rourke. I said to myself “that is not the Mickey Rourke I remember.”

It turns out I was picturing Mickey Rooney

not Mickey Rourke.

And the other problem I had was early on in the Iron Man franchise because I had grown up hearing about Morton Downey Jr, so I had to stop and think about which Mr. Downey Jr. was playing Tony Stark so I didn’t accidentally say the wrong one.

For reference:

Robert Downey Jr.

Morton Downey Jr.

Certain words have a connotation of a level or degree of the idea. For example: worthless is worth-less, the quality is “worth” and the level or degree is low. Another example: eventful is event-full, the action is “event” and the level is high.

I like to take words at face value. And the same with suffixes. The suffix -less should mean less or lower, -some should be medium, and -ful (or -full) should mean more or higher.

And then, because English is so convoluted, a lot of words use those suffixes in the wrong way.

“Awesome” is the one I like for an example of how wrong it is. For this set of words, the quality of awe can have three modifiers to indicate little awe (unimpressive), much awe (impressive), or a moderate amount of awe (umm, pressive). In my world, these would be aweless, aweful, and awesome. But for some reason, “awesome” means full of awe, and “awful” does not mean full of awe, and no one uses “aweless”.

Other candidate: “ruthless” which means lacking ruth. If we take “ruth” to mean “pity”, then someone who is very compassionate should be called “ruthful”. And an average person could be ruthsome.

Another one: “winsome” which means a high level of attractive appearance. It should be “winful”, and someone ugly or mean could be called “winless”.

There are other words with the wrong suffix, but I’ll leave the rest of those as an exercise for the reader.

Except this last one, which doesn’t fix the category because it’s a prefix.

“Extraordinary” – technically, “extra” means outside of, like extraterrestrial. But my first thought is usually that it should mean “more ordinary”, like an extra helping of ordinariness. What I’d like to see is the use of its opposite “intraordinary”. And while we’re at it, how about some extramural sports in college?

I was inspired to write this after reading a column in World magazine. That column had referenced the quote “It takes a village to raise a child.” and what stuck with me from the column is what it takes to make a village.

What does it take to make a village? It takes families.

For a healthy village – one that would do a good job in helping to raise a child – you need healthy families. “Healthy” as in emotional and social health, not physical health. What happens if your village is full of dysfunctional families? You wouldn’t want your child raised by that village.

I connect this to the concept of herd immunity. “Herd immunity” in the realm of diseases and vaccinations has to do with if a large enough percentage of a population is immune to a disease then the disease won’t spread throughout the population.

If you replace “disease” with “dysfunction” and “physical health” with “societal health” then that’s the picture I was getting in my mind of what I wanted to convey. If most of the families in the village are traditional families then the children will be “immune” to a lot of problems that befall society (plenty of citations out there, here’s one).

People want to live in a good neighborhood, but if they’re not trying to be a good family and also good neighbors, then it’s not going to stay a good neighborhood. It’s like the saying about traffic: you’re not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic.

You could keep going with this concept: what does it take to make a good family? and then what does it take to make a good whatever that answer was? Etc.

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2019 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2019 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

Normally the baby names are released for Mother’s Day, but this year they blamed COVID-19 for a delay. They just published the 2019 names at the end of September, so now they are here on my site. Last year’s champion, Jackson is again the most popular boy’s name in the US but losing ground to Liam and Noah. Aiden is still losing popularity.
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again. It’s holding strong, but last year’s 3rd place winner – Emma – took a nosedive this year.

Some Stats

• The top 4 names for the boys are the same, spot #5 last year William dropped way down, allowing Lucas to move up.
• The top 6 names for the girls are the same as 2018, it’s just that Emma and Amelia switched spots, as did Ava and Isabella.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 2.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, but at number 4.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (269/1000 vs. 180/1000 alternates)
• Kayson once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 8.
• For the girls, Adaline, Madalyn and Layla are tied at 6 variations, and Amaya at lost one and is now at 5.
• Sophia is still the favorite for the girls, but the gap is closing. Spots 2 and 3 increased their count last year, so Sophia’s run at the top may have an end in sight. There’s still a lot of room between 1 and 2, so that end may be farther rather than closer.

2019 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Up until now, most of my YouTube watching has been things like car repair examples. And then my kids would borrow my phone and my YouTube recommendations switched over to Dude Perfect. That wave ended and now my phone and laptop recommend Minecraft videos to me.

But I’ve discovered a part of YouTube that I like watching for myself – Dry Bar Comedy.

Apparently they have an app too, as their videos all end with a plug for that. But I’m holding to my philosophy of not downloading any apps to my phone, so they’ll have to be content with my watching their videos on a website.

Side note: YouTube did something recently so that now I can watch videos only with my phone in landscape mode. YouTube never had a problem with portrait before, but something changed on their end because I know nothing changed on my end. At least there’s still a way for me to watch YouTube. Other sites, such as Vimeo, do not work at all on a stock iPhone 5s.

Back to Dry Bar Comedy: I appreciate their mission to provide clean comedy. They want it to be family friendly. But that doesn’t mean all the acts are good. I do believe all the comedians comply with the letter of the law – no profanity. But in my book there’s more to family-friendly content than avoiding certain words – there are certain topics as well. And most of the people on Dry Bar Comedy seem to fulfill the letter and the spirit of the law. To me, the spirit avoids things like potty humor.

There are some acts that cover some marital topics and are done well (funny and not vulgar) but may be a gray area. For example, those would be fine for a 40-year-old married guy to watch, but would he want to watch it with his kids? That’s a judgment call for each family. But at least with Dry Bar you have a much higher chance of finding something to watch with the family.

There are a variety of styles also. My favorite for style and content so far is Daniel Eachus. Also very good is Jeff Allen. Bob Smiley is funny but his style is a little too hyper for my tastes. And there was one guy who had some funny stuff but his style was distracting – he kept looking down and to the side as if he was reading some notes.

There was only one guy (Andy F) so far that I just stopped the video and went on to someone else. His first bit was amusing (British and Southern accents) but then he got into potty topics (with hoarders and cats) and I started thinking “that’s gross” rather than “that’s funny” so I decided not to waste my time with him since there are plenty other things to do that I wouldn’t regret watching.