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I’ve heard the response before for people complaining that they’re stuck in traffic: no, you’re not stuck in traffic – you are traffic.

My response to that response is something like this: But I’m not the slow traffic – it’s the slow guy in front that’s backing everyone up.

But I suppose the main point holds – people who are in traffic are also the traffic.

I was reminded about that the other day when I read some complaint about capitalism. The person was treating capitalism as if it were behaving badly, but that person was actually part of capitalism. If people don’t like what a company is doing, they don’t have to buy from that company. If people don’t like what capitalism is doing, they really have a problem with the general population.

And I don’t see that going away. Really any system put in place for any country or region will have problems because there are people involved. The problem is that people are naturally not good, and I think people who complain about the system are assuming that people are good and therefore the badness must come from the system.

With the way technology is progressing, someone might be tempted to setup a financial/governmental/societal system run by machines not people. But I don’t want that as the solution either – that setting is always the start of a dystopian novel or movie.

So what is the solution? I think there isn’t one that people can devise. Nothing is going to be perfect until God replaces this world.

Not so unusual: last month I ordered something online.
Quite unusual: it took a month to be delivered.

There has been a bit in the news recently about how slow the USPS is, due to more packages being shipped and lack of staffing due to COVID-19.

But my experience tells me that some of their problems are self-inflicted. I don’t know how typical my situation is, but if it happened to me I imagine it’s happening to others too.

When the package first shipped on Jan 25th, the tracking website gave an estimated delivery date. I forget exactly what it was, maybe 3-4 days out from there.

But then that date came and went, and the tracking page just said “In transit”.

After a couple of weeks of that, I submitted an inquiry via the USPS website form. I got a response the next day that said basically “Don’t worry, we still have your package and it will still be delivered. It’s in transit to the next stop.”

Which wasn’t helpful, because it had been in transit for a while, and didn’t seem to be getting any closer to me. At this point, the package had started from PA, went to AL, then IN, then AL, then MI, then back to AL. And it was sitting there for many days.

It seems my inquiry spurred some action, because the package then went back to PA. And then over to NJ, and then back to PA. And then nothing, so all that action was useless.

So I confirmed the seller had both tracking and insurance on the package, and I told him that it’s been almost a month and my parcel hasn’t arrived yet, so let’s get going on that insurance. He put in the claim on Feb 22, and magically the package found its way from PA to MI and to my mailbox in 2 days.

My purchase spent a month travelling the country. Nice little vacation at someone’s expense. Not sure whose expense, but I’m guessing USPS didn’t come out ahead on that deal.

So far, I’ve been attributing this mishap to incompetence. Were people scanning it wrong? I can understand going to a central distribution point and then out from there. And if they’re overworked, I can understand it sitting somewhere for a while. But PA to AL to IN to AL to MI to AL to PA to NJ to PA is neither of those situations.

The alternative to incompetence is malice or causing the problem intentionally. Maybe someone didn’t like the look of the box and sent it the wrong direction. But everyone at every location?

Once they were going to have to pay a chunk of money for their delay, there was no problem sending it the right way, so I know there was not problem with the shipping label.

Maybe their tracking system is broken, like the package didn’t actually go all those places. In which case the problem at USPS are not so much a personnel problem as an equipment problem. But if the equipment is bad and the package wasn’t where the tracking said it was, how did they find it so quickly?

‘Tis a puzzlement.

In summary: if you ship something via USPS and you care at all about it, make sure it’s insured. I hate to think how much longer my purchase would have been in limbo, taking the scenic route, had it not been insured.

I used to wonder how my wife could read essentially the same book over and over again. I mean, the books did have different titles and different authors, but if you summarized the plot in one or two sentences it could probably apply to all of them.

Then I started reading Joel C. Rosenberg books. They were interesting, I liked them, I kept reading, and then I realized how my wife could keep reading variations of the same book. And I don’t mean that in a bad way.

Here’s my summary of the books. Note that each series is meant to be read in order. And the title of this blog post is winter 2021, but I’ve been reading these since July 2020. It’s just in winter 2021 I finished all of them.

I started with the original series – The Last Jihad, alternatively known as the Bennett and McCoy series. This seems to be his earliest work, as the writing is slightly clunkier than his later series. But it was engaging, and educational in some spots. You will certainly come away with a better understanding of some of Ezekiel’s prophecies after the 3rd book.

What I also liked about this series was that it showed how the end times and the anti-Christ could happen from a geopolitical perspective. My exposure to end times stuff has been from the spiritual and theological angle. Not that these books discount or ignore that – indeed there is much scripture referenced in the later books – but the focus is different.

My comparison is that this series starts out like Tom Clancy and ends up more Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins.

Also, the series ends pretty conclusively, but not completely so. There could be another book after the 5th one, but it understandable why he ended it there.

I then read the next series available at our library: The Third Target, alternatively known as the J.B. Collins series. This series was different because it was Rosenberg’s foray into first-person perspective. It didn’t take much getting used to, but he didn’t go back to it for his other books so I think he didn’t care for it.

This series came to a definite conclusion – no chance for another book. Well, I suppose there always could be, but it would be a stretch for this one. This was a little darker than the other series, probably the same amount of violence but a little more depravity to contrast the bad people from the good people.

Next up: The Kremlin Conspiracy, alternatively known as the Marcus Ryker series. This one was back to third person perspective like the original series, but centered around Russia rather than Israel and not much in the way of end-times prophecies. Mostly just military action. The third book ended well enough, but there were a couple of question left unresolved. Then a couple weeks after I finished the series (and was halfway through the next), I saw that Mr. Rosenberg had a fourth book coming out for this series.

Finally: The Twelfth Imam, alternatively known as the David Shirazi series. This was more in the spirit of the original series, but focused on Iran and surrounding countries. And not the standard end times settings, but a possibility of what could happen. This series ended fairly well; I’m not expecting any surprise fourth book for this one.

Basically, if you like any of JCR’s fiction books you’ll like them all. But you can’t just pick a book at random and read it, you need to read them as a series. You can pick a series at random and read it – there’s no overlap or crosstalk at all between series.

And you may be wondering why I’m reviewing only this one guy’s books in this blog post. No ulterior motives – his books are the only books I’ve been reading for the last few months. But now that I’ve read all the fiction series he has, I’m adrift in looking for what to read next. Browsing through the library, I happened upon a Jules Verne book I hadn’t read yet, so I’m in the middle of that. I’ll try to include that in my next reading update.

The recent Super Bowls have had awful logos, but someone finally noticed and fixed it for next year. Or maybe they got a new designer – one who cared about readability and meaning.

In case you’re not familiar with how they name Super Bowls, they use Roman numerals. Not sure why, but it’s their thing.

So Super Bowl 54 is really Super Bowl LIV. And here’s the logo:

See how it has the L and the I and the V?

But that’s wrong – that’s actually the logo for Super Bowl LV.

You see, they like to put the image of the Lombardi trophy in the Super Bowl logo also, and it is mostly shaped like an “I”.

It would make sense for me if they did that on purpose, but they’re putting a thing that looks like an “I” where an “I” should be for Roman numerals, but they don’t want it to actually be an “I”.

That’s not how logos are supposed to work.

And here’s Super Bowl LIV, in case you’re wondering:

To me, that looks like Super Bowl LIIV. And that’s even worse because it’s not valid Roman numerals.

But, fret no more – they fixed it for Super Bowl LVI. Someone finally realized they shouldn’t have the numbers be the same size and color as the trophy if they didn’t want the trophy to actually be a number.

Different colors, overlapping instead of in line – no confusion. Much better. Give that new designer a raise.

In case you’re wondering, it’s been bad for the last few years. Super Bowl 50 and before were fine, but they used this bad style of logo for 51-55. I should have written about this before; I would have had an annual item going.

Side note: I am disappointed that Super Bowl LV was not held in Las Vegas.

Another side note: maybe it’s just the fact that they both prefer goatees and berets, but Bruce Arians and Jamie Hyneman remind me of each other.

Who decides what groups of things are called?

I saw one of those lists of odd names for groups of animals, like a clowder of kittens, and wondered why that name stuck.

And what does one have to do to propose a name for a group of things when that group doesn’t have a specific name yet. I’ve tried to find an animal that doesn’t have a collective noun, but everyone has already thought of all the animals I could think of.

Let me know if you can not find a certain animal that a website somewhere doesn’t already have or propose a collective noun.

Then I noticed that there are terms only for living things. I thought there might be an opportunity to name a group of something not living. But what non-living things gather in groups?

Clouds! – clouds can gather in groups, maybe. Certainly not intentionally, but the wind might corral them in one place sometimes. Alas, a quick search on the interwebs informed me that “a billow of clouds” has been proposed.

Dust bunnies also gather in groups, but I figured they’d be called “a colony” because regular bunnies already use that term.

Other things that gather in groups are N64 game cartridges, cereal boxes, comic books, and pillows.

I supposed one could create and propose group names for each of those items, plus countless other inanimate objects. The only one that I was inspired to name was for pillows. In keeping with the spirit of some of the other collective terms (a blessing of unicorns, an intrusion of cockroaches, a flamboyance of flamingoes, etc.), I am proposing that a group of pillows be called a “puddle”.

No real reason, that was just the term that popped into my head. After “pile”, but “pile” was not really memorable.

There you go – a group of pillows is called a puddle.

So let it be written.

No blog post this week. I’m busy preparing for the Super Bowl.

Not really much for me to prepare though. Really this week has been about battening down the hatches for the bitter winter weather moving in, plus getting started on taxes (CARES act stuff plus some unemployment is making this a fun year for taxes), plus lack of inspiration (I have ideas, just not able to get them together). Everything’s conspiring together to make this a week without what I consider a real blog post.

I was very tempted to call it Fall Fotos, but I didn’t. And now that’s in your head anyway.

Here are some pictures I liked, to represent what things can be like around here in the fall. The first two are around my property and the last 4 are at a park.