Once Fall Begins...

September 23, 2018

Well, Labor Day has come and gone, and you know what that means:

Get your cranberry Jell-O and mincemeat before they’re gone. If you wait until Thanksgiving, you won’t have a prayer of getting your hands on any.

Give Your Kids a Fighting Chance

September 25, 2018


Once again sexual assault is making national headlines.


Sign your kids up for a self-defense class.

It doesn’t make girls less feminine, and it doesn’t turn people into killers. It makes them less vulnerable to attack; hence the name, Self-Defense. 

Our self-defense teacher gave us a special lesson on techniques to use when being pinned down during rape attempts. It was very useful, and I wish all girls were trained in those techniques.


A self-defense course won’t protect people from every assault, but it will at least give them an edge.


You can’t protect your kids from everything, but you can at least give them a fighting chance.

Making Healthy Choices

September 20, 2018

From the Innovative Uses Department:

A strip that was invented to test whether patients who were prescribed fentanyl were using it can now be used by heroin users to see if their heroin is cut with fentanyl.

There is a push from some groups to give the strips to drug users so that they can test the purity of their drugs before shooting up. Reaction is split between people who have seen it help heroin users modify their intake (if it has lots of fentanyl, they’ll use less), and those who have seen it do no good at all.

I’m just trying to wrap my head around the idea of giving people a way to test how pure their illegal drugs are.

Who Are You Calling a Millennial?

August 31, 2018

In a previous post I cited articles and columns that concluded that cooking is becoming a lost art among Millennials and Gen Xers. I had a couple of problems with the theory. Here’s one more:

The student cited as a non-cooker was living in New York, she was getting good money from a job, and was also supported by her parents. She does not sound representative of an entire generation. Nor even all New Yorkers. She sounds like a part of a subset of Millennial/Gen Xers/Gen Zers.

Do Midwestern Gen X’ers carry on this way? Do all New York Gen X’ers carry on this way? Are the people making the generalization perhaps focusing on a narrow section of the population?

The term “Millennials” is supposed to refer to an age group; but it seems to me that it often refers to what used to be called “Yuppies”: Young, upwardly mobile people. Not every Millennial/Gen Xer/Gen Zer has access to unlimited restaurant choices, or enough money to pay for them.

So when you’re throwing around the term “Millennials”, make sure you’re talking about everybody in the age bracket.

Otherwise, specify which subset you’re talking about.

Lost Art, or Over-Generalization?

July 25, 2018

The food columnist in the paper is worried that people are losing the art of cooking. His fears aren’t helped by an article published in the Harvard Business Review that said that fewer people say they like cooking than they did several years ago; and by a post on some website by a young woman in New York City who spends a ton of money on restaurants; and by a celebrity chef who says that Millennials, Gen X’ers and Gen Z’ers want good food and want it fast, so they aren’t cooking as much.

I e-mailed him to say that I thought that people would be more interested in cooking if recipes actually had ingredients that they recognized; that once people start having families, they’ll probably start cooking again, or they’ll go broke; and that people who immigrate to the U. S. will probably bring the home-cooking mentality with them, so that cooking will hang on a while longer. He was very nice about it, but remained unconvinced.

I also question the blanket assumption that all Millennials, Gen X’ers and Gen Z’ers are restaurant-hounds. But I’ve saved that for another post.

February 27, 2019

The columnist wrote today about cooking real food, with ingredients you have on hand. I like to think that I had a hand in it.

Name the National Anthem

September 18, 2018

I was at the church picnic the other day, and, it being September (although not September 11), the emcee was waxing patriotic and referring to dark times that the country has come through. Then someone performed a solo of “God Bless America.”

I was a little surprised when first one person, then more and more, started rising as she sang, but I thought, “Well, church, God, OK.” But then I saw people putting their hands over their hearts.

Folks, “God Bless America” is not the National Anthem.

A few years ago I referenced Isaac Asimov’s contention that no American knows all the verses of the National Anthem. But I thought we could all at least name it.

It Ain't Natural

September 18, 2018

I wrote about scientists trying to reduce methane emissions by feeding cows seaweed.

Because I didn’t want to be a spoilsport, I didn’t mention all the things that have gone wrong every time scientists mess with the natural order of things. Think rabbits in Australia; think kudzu in the southern U. S. And now…Bradford Pears.

Bradford Pears are pretty. But they have cross-pollinated with other pears and the offspring are reverting to Chinese Calley pears, which are thorny nightmares, which choke out native trees.

So before you start going crazy with the seaweed, Scientists…Think about how what you’re doing—possibly creating a demand for huge seaweed farms, and all the disruption that that could entail—could affect us all down the line.

There IS an Easy Answer

September 19, 2018

It looks like the Emmy Awards lost viewers this year. They actually did a good thing by keeping acceptance speeches short, so I thought I might actually last the course; but they had one fatal flaw.

Awards shows—or, as I like to call them, the Who Can Show the Most Cleavage Without Actually Falling Out of the Dress shows—have one thing in common:

They aren’t funny.

I’ve got to assume that they put talented writers on the job; but it seems like the very act of writing for an awards show turns the comedy-writers’ brains to mush.

So if you want people to watch awards shows: Make them entertaining, not lame.

The End

The 2018 Ig Nobels

September 18, 2018

OK, it’s time for my favorite science prizes, the Ig Nobels.

The highlights:

Wine experts can detect, by smell, a single fly in a glass of wine.

A pediatrician from Japan won a prize for his self-colonoscopy study. He’d rather you not try it at home, though.

Getting your aggression out on a virtual voodoo doll can actually help reduce workplace stress. Thankfully, actual voodoo was not used in the study.

That's One Way to Reduce Emissions

August 31, 2018

A study is testing whether feeding seaweed to cattle will reduce those pesky methane emissions from cattle that contribute so much to global warming.

There are many obstacles to overcome, but the initial study indicated that the bovine methane emissions could be reduced by 30%.

I’m not going to go into any more detail, I just thought I’d pass the news along.

Growing Pains

September 13, 2018

Several states are allowing or considering allowing the gender designation of X on birth certificates and drivers licenses.

Imagine the All Points Bulletins that police will have to come up with.

“Suspect is Caucasian, has brown hair, brown eyes and female characteristics.”

“Suspect is blonde with a five-o’clock shadow…”

I am very glad that I am not an official who has to navigate these tricky waters.

The Updates are Back

September 7, 2018

The e-mail updates on blog posts stopped in May, but they’re back again.

If you only read the blog when you get an e-mail update, you’ve missed quite a few posts; 

so if you want to, you can access the blog through this e-mail and go back and read what you’ve missed.

Why I Like Talking to God

September 6, 2018

Why I like talking to God:

You Never Have to Lie

We lie to our parents and our friends and ourselves. But you don’t have to lie to God: He already knows the truth. So you can say,

      “I hit my brother just because I was mad, not because he started it.”

       “Yes, I did cheat on the test.”

      “I told myself that I was trying to help a co-worker, but I was really just pointing out her shortcomings to the boss.”

      “I told myself that I didn’t invite my wife to the office function because she hates them; but I really just wanted to flirt with a co-worker.” Etc.

Owning up to what’s really going on, whether you’re talking to God or just being honest with yourself, helps clarify life. And helps you understand why your co-worker is being somewhat hostile. And why your wife went out dancing the night of the office party.

God Doesn’t Blab

There’s a saying: Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.

I’m sure that there are some completely discreet people in the world. I’ve never met one.

But if you tell God, it really won’t go any further.

So get it off your chest.

     “I’m angry. I don’t even know what I’m angry about, I’m just angry.”

     “I wish the co-worker who keeps trying to sabotage me would fall off a cliff—or at least go somewhere else.”

     “I hate my crooked nose. I pretend like I’m cool with it, but I hate it.”

     “Yes, I did ding that car and not leave a note.”

     “I want my kid to go to college, but I don’t want to pay a fortune for it. But if I suggest a less expensive school she might think I don’t have her best interests at heart.”

     “I like flirting with that cute guy at work, even though we’re both married.”

So yak away. No need to lie, and no worries about your confidences going any further. It’s quite freeing.

Mea Culpa, and Apologies to the Post-Dispatch

September 6, 2018

Well, nuts. I did write to the paper asking if nobody else had written in about the hypocritical archbishop, and they responded by directing me to a letter that they had printed on August 22^nd, written by someone who had stated my position, but more eloquently.

My apologies to the Post-Dispatch.

(This refers to the entry “A Strange Reticence”, posted September 5, 2018.)

A Strange Reticence

September 5, 2018

The archbishop of St. Louis is offering full cooperation into investigations of sexual abuse by priests. This is the same guy who impeded, stonewalled, and outright lied when he was in charge of investigating cases in Minnesota. More out of spite than from any real desire to do good, I sent a letter to the paper pointing this out.

It wasn’t a very impressive letter—two sentences, and a link to the Post-Dispatch’s own article from a few years ago. So I wasn’t surprised that the paper didn’t print it; what does surprise me is that they haven’t printed any others like it, either. I can’t be the only person who remembers this, and I would have bet that other people would write in to point out the complete turnaround in the archbishop’s behavior.

So what’s the deal, Post-Dispatch? Are you trying to keep things on an even keel, so that the archbishop will continue to cooperate? Or is the entire region suffering from collective amnesia?

September 6, 2018

Well, nuts. I did write to the paper, and they responded by directing me to a letter that they had printed on August 22^nd written by someone who had stated my position, but more eloquently.

My apologies to the Post-Dispatch.

Since blog updates aren’t e-mailed out like the regular posts, I’m going to put this in a separate post as well, to make sure that people who saw the incorrect post get this correction.