Dave's Journal, Feb2018
That's Venus, the planet, taken by the Japanese Venus Orbiter. Isn't that pretty ?
Went to my first meeting last night of deaf people with cochlear implants. Just getting the group started - 4 of us showed up plus 4 of the hospital audiology staff. It went well. We all have similar stories. I am the only one so far with the new small design; the others have had implants for at least 5 years. One lady, for at least 20 years.
Going to check out hearingloss.org and aldaboston.org websites for conferences and exhibits and stuff.
Also (God save the Queen) am going to get a Facebook account to read this new group's web page.
I like Canadians. They are pleasant, inoffensive people who don't take themselves too too seriously.
I like their prime minister, Justin Trudeau. Seems like a pleasant, inoffensive person who doesn't take himself too too seriously.
But this is getting silly, if not downright absurd.
Some lady, in a meeting, used the word "mankind", and he corrected her to use the word "peoplekind" because it is "more inclusive". The audience applauded.
Come on guys, cut the sh#t.
In the news: last week, some drunk driver caused an accident that killed a famous football player. The drunk turns out to be an illegal (or undocumented?) immigrant, and people are politicizing this event to support Washington's "deport the immigrants" policies.
No one brings up the fact that every year 10,265 people are killed by drunk drivers in the US. I don't have the legal statistics, but I'd wager my shoes that 99.9% of these deaths are caused by drunk US citizens.
Come on guys, cut the sh#t.
That is Elon Musk's personal car (a red Tesla, of course), and it is right now, out in space on its way to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (That is a dummy in the car.) This is not a joke! They are live streaming videos from the rocket onto Youtube. It will take months to get out there.
I am in awe. This guy is incredible.
YouTube live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2p55BmwmJM
That knob is 1" diameter.
Ocassionally, in the business world and in government, people are fired in groups and told "If you want your job back, apply for it". This kind of "cleans house" and "freshens up the team" and "gets rid of the deadbeats".
So .... regarding the topic of who should get deported from the US, I think we should extend this practice to citizenship. Instead of deporting "illegal" and "undocumented" people, every (let's say) 10 years, we revoked *everyone's* US citizenship and require everyone to reapply for it.
If you have been working steady, contributing to society, staying out of trouble, paying taxes, etc etc etc .... you get your license renewed for another 10 years.
If you have been leaching off the system, breaking laws, degrading society etc etc etc .... you get barged.
"Barged" - you get put on a garbage barge, tugged out to international waters, tattoo'd "REJECT" and declared an "outlaw". Should you ever show up back on US soil, the law does not protect you or ensure your safety.
New immigrants are simply put on "probation" for a few years, to see how they behave, then they fall in line with the rest of us and reapply as necessary.
Works for me.
Every now and then, I re-stumble on my digital copies of dad's old 8mm films. Still can't decide what exactly to do with them (the digital files - they are large).
I do like making little GIF clips just to stay in practice. There's mom, sometime around 1950 I think.
I am a very sloppy keeper of photos and films. Somewhere down here is every image I ever possessed, but don't ask me to find it. I kind of like the adventure of digging through files and boxes, even though I complain while doing it.
Shadow of the Thin Man [Dick Powell, Myrna Loy].
The two posh New Yorkers go to a wresting match, and Nora gets into it ....
They were magic in that series of films.
After the Sandy Hook School mass shooting, when we got over seeing a pile of dead school kids and our lives moved on, that pretty much killed any hope of stricter gun control laws. We've accepted mass shootings as a natural part of our society. All the "our hearts and prayers go out to ...." speeches and FB posting are just bullsh#t so we can tell ourselves that we care. This is what we've turned our country into, and what we ourselves have become.
Root beer is not on any health food diets. It's typically loaded with sugar and, of course, is gassy (if that's a problem? ).
I love the stuff, and locally we can easily get Dominion, IBC, Stuart's and Capt'n Eli's. I rank these in this order: OK, GOOD, REALLY GOOD, FABULOUS.
Capt'n Eli's is the sweetest. The only batch I ever made at home, I put in, by mistake, twice the amount of brown suger - and that's what Capt'n Eli's takes like.
Back a few years, I wrote a flash fiction page on the topic:
The World's Finest Keg of Root Beer.
I have 5 T&J DVD's and they still crack me up. The cartoonists must have laughed all day, making this stuff up.
A very much overlooked movie with a supreme perfomance by Val Kilmer (completely ignored by the gods of Hollywood). It has many of these short dramatic punchline scenes.
Well, I made it to 73 yesterday. Who'da thunk it? (and.... Thank you Great Spirit)
Birthday greetings came by text, email, Facebook (Deb "leaked" the news on FB) and birthday cards. It was really nice to get them all.
We went into Boston on a record warm, summer-like day. Got jammed up in a Red Line (the train) derailment (not our train). Train was SRO (never happens), sat in station a long while. Stuck forever in Cambridge, so we got off (Central Sq) and walked into Boston. Warm, but wicked windy going over the Mass Ave bridge. Walked up the Charles River, over to the Public Garden, sat on a bench and watched the busy busy world go about its busy-ness.
Had a very forgetable lunch on Charles St., then sat in the park again, until we trained back (derailment problem was solved by then).
All in all, a nice day, helped a lot by the weather.
Over the Mass Ave bridge.
Saw this weird little sign on Charles St. Had to pose with it.
Good idea, because psychotic mass killers won't (1) wear body armor (2) throw a bomb into the room (3) open the door and shoot the teacher first (4) spray the room with his AK-47 and run before the teacher realizes what happened and reacts (if she's still alive).
And when we see someone in the hall with an AR-15, we can safely assume it's not a psycho - it's a teacher - isn't it?
A teacher (no body armor) with a pistol (4" barrel, 8 shots) should definitely outgun a psycho with body armor and six 30-round clips for his machine gun. No problem.
Sorry. Can't stop now .....
Researchers found that those who drink moderate amounts of beer or wine, along with two cups of coffee, increase their chances to live a long life
A study out of the University of California-Irvine has revealed that consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol and coffee is linked to living a longer life.
The key word is "moderate," of course. The study, called "The 90+ Study," started in 2003 and examined "the oldest-old" age group - about 1,700 nonagenarians - to determine what is key to living to your 90th birthday and beyond.
The study has found, among other things, that people "who drank moderate amounts of alcohol or coffee lived longer than those who abstained," and that "people who were overweight in their 70s lived longer than normal or underweight people did."
