Selective Psychosis?

October 30, 2021

 

A woman who claimed that postpartum psychosis (worse than postpartum depression) caused her to kill her two infant daughters was released from prison after 32 years. She was apparently a model prisoner (no major violations) and all-around good citizen. She feels remorse, shame and responsibility for her acts, according to her lawyer.

 

What puzzled me, though, was that her psychosis didn’t lead her to kill her son, born in the years between the births of the two girls.

 

Is It All Greek to Them?

October 23, 2021

Another year, another case of alcohol poisoning at a college fraternity. (Mizzou this time, in case anyone is interested. But it could happen anywhere.)

And yet, these organizations are allowed to flourish on college campuses. Apparently, college administrators can’t figure out how to stop this sort of thing from happening. So let me help them.

Are all fraternities bad? No.

Are frat parties dangerous? Yes.

 

Is allowing the Greek system license to continually flout the law, causing injury and death through negligence or outright hazing, an insane course of action?

Absolutely.

 

Should, therefore, all Greek activities be held only in university buildings, with permission and adult supervision?

 

Yes.

They're Foxy Enough to Deal with It

October 24, 2021

 

Actually, Fox News could still find a way to put their own peculiar spin on the weather, I suppose.*

“The Democrats caused a heat wave this week by insisting on repairing infrastructure. We all know—except when we don’t want to—that more concrete leads to more radiated heat, and less water absorption. So, when you’re too hot today, thank a Democrat.”

Hey, it could happen.

*See the previous post, “Weathering the Science Challenge”

Weathering the Science Challenge

October 24, 2021

 

Fox News is starting a weather app—Fox Weather, to be precise.

It’s intriguing—OK, hilarious—because the company has blatantly rejected basic science for so long.

 

Are they only going to report the weather that their viewers want to hear?

 

 

Granting a Favor He Didn't Ask For

October 16, 2021

Apparently unconcerned with weighty matters such as rioting in the Capitol, the death of thousands because politicians fight against vaccines and masks, and the latest economic issues, two Missouri lawmakers are trying to get Ulysses S Grant promoted posthumously to General of the Armies.

He’s waited this long; even if he cared, he could wait a little longer. Anything to distract the masses, I guess.

The Showboat State

October 19, 2021

 

Missouri’s state nickname is, “The Show-Me State.” It means that people won't just believe anything you tell them. You have to prove it to them.

(That was from a time before gullible people believed that an election was stolen, a deadly disease was a hoax, and a horse de-wormer could protect them from that mythical disease.)

But now that we have an Attorney General who sued China for spreading COVID-19; a senator who tried to overturn the presidential election by holding up the certification; and a governor who is suing the reporter who brought to light a dangerous flaw in a state website,

I think we can change the nickname.

Now we can be the Showboat State.

 

Don't Embarrass the Governor

October 19, 2021

Don’t blame Governor Parson. He was probably embarrassed. And you know how it is when somebody embarrasses you.

If somebody says, “Boy, your presentation sure tanked, didn’t it?” you might, in the heat of the moment, snap back, “Yeah, well you’re a smug jerk. And your tie is ugly.”

So, when a reporter pointed out that a state website was leaving teachers’ Social Security numbers vulnerable, the governor got embarrassed. (Note: The story was held until the state had had time to fix the flaw, so that unscrupulous people couldn’t yell, “Yippee!” and avail themselves of that treasure trove.)

But the governor didn’t fire back in the heat of the moment. He filed a lawsuit and sent out press releases disparaging the reporter and the newspaper that printed the story. He accused the reporter of hacking. (Hacking implies somebody had to access the information illegally. The numbers were right there.)

That isn’t the heat of the moment.

That’s being a jerk.


And he might want to check his tie, as well.

(I just looked at today’s paper, and in the editorial cartoon, the governor is wearing an ugly tie. But I didn’t get the idea from that, I swear.)

Did He Actually Read the Book?

October 5, 2021

 

Josh Hawley, who tossed around the word “Orwellian” when somebody didn’t want to publish his book, hasn’t said a word about the Texas law that rewards people for turning in strangers who’ve been involved with abortion procedures.

Maybe 1984 was too advanced for the Yale Law grad.

 

Are Young Men Being Marginalized?

October 8, 2021

 

Kathleen Parker wrote a column about how today’s young men aren’t going to college because society is making them feel unnecessary, as young women become more empowered.

I hate to break it to the fairly job-secure Washington Post columnist, but not all young women are empowered yet. Does she remember the name Harvey Weinstein? Furthermore, are we to feel sorry that young men are now facing the obstacles that the ancestors of these young women had to overcome? Are they giving up on pursuing an education and a good career that easily?

I have nothing against these particular young men; but the thought that they may have to overcome alleged societal marginalization because they’re male doesn’t make me want to weep for them, either.

Perhaps they should try to do what women did: Find ways to cope with society’s mis-evaluation of their abilities and usefulness. Maybe someday everyone will be considered worthy of respect.

Raising Consciousness

October 10, 2021

 

In “Let’s Make It Real” (October 10, 2021) I said that it would be nice if the executives from Raising Cane’s were to actually live on the salaries of the workers they were pitching in for.

It wasn’t just snark. If they could feel what it was like to live with the financial pressure of a low-paying job—how it affects a person’s mood and outlook on life—they might realize that relieving people from some of that pressure would actually make them better workers, as stress tends to have a negative effect on attitude and work output.

 

Just a thought.

Let's Make It Real

 October 8, 2021

Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers is putting corporate workers into the trenches to fill vacant positions and keep the restaurants running.

It’s a good strategy. It not only keeps the business going,but it reminds corporate execs of what the day-to-day grind is like for the restaurant workers. Who knows, they may even find ways of improving operations.

You know what would make it really meaningful? Having to live on the restaurant workers’ salaries.

He Was Civic-Minded

October 6, 2021

 

A man in Turkey was wandering in a forest after an evening of drinking, when he came across a search party. Being public-spirited, he joined the search. 

 

Hours later, when he heard people calling his name, he responded—and found that the person they were searching for was him.

  

Stop Wracking Your Brain

October 8, 2021

Time for another installment of “Grammar mistakes that drive me crazy”.

Do you rack your brain, or do you wrack it?

Well, that depends: Are you straining it, trying to think of something,

Or are you turning it into a shipwreck?

The rack was an instrument of torture; so racking your brain means you’re really stretching it to think of something.

A wrack is a shipwreck.

’Nough said.

(Except this: You’ll see seasoned writers, New York Times bestselling writers, even, use “wrack” instead of “rack.” Don’t fall for it!)

Things I Learned from Comic Books

 October 7, 2021

I haven’t looked at a comic book in over 20 years. The last time I got nostalgic and picked one up, I was perturbed at the violence and the sexualized costumes. (In the old comics, women’s costumes were form-fitting, but they covered everything.)

When I was growing up, comics actually taught me things. I learned that white dwarf stars are extremely dense and heavy. (I don’t remember why Superman grabbed 2 fistfuls of the dense matter, but I do remember that it was a tough slog for him.)

I learned about the Mona Lisa from a Batman comic.

When Lois Lane got framed for murder, I learned that lie detectors measure heart rate and respiration; so that when Superman hooked up a robot to the lie detector and the lie detector said that the robot was lying, Superman was able to prove that it was rigged.

From one Jimmy Olsen comic, I learned about the Egyptian god Anubis; that at the time of the Revolutionary War, shoes weren’t made for left feet and right feet—they were just made; and that legend had it that clocks were set at 8:20 to commemorate the time of Lincoln’s death. (The legend is bogus, by the way, but it stuck with me.)

There’s a lot more that I learned, but those are just a few examples.

(Had the internet been around in my childhood, I probably would have looked up a lot of those references and learned even more. Who knows what kids today might learn?)

 

I haven’t looked at a comic book lately; but I wonder if kids are learning anything from them. I wonder if they’re even suitable for kids.

 

Do You Have a Plan B?

October 3, 2021

 

I try not to get involved in Facebook silliness, and I try not to speak for the Lord (that is, put words in His mouth). But I did kind of lose it the other day when someone posted a meme that said that when vaccines were mandated for healthcare workers, 70,000 of them quit. “What does that tell you?” said the meme. One person commented that the virus had a 99.8% recovery rate, but people were too busy hiding behind their masks to care.

Since I know that the poster is a sincere—honestly—Christian, I assumed that her friend who made the comment also claimed to be Christian.

So I was intrigued. It was kind of like the inverse of the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Instead of leaving the 99 sheep to look for a lost one, these people would turn their backs on that .2 percent—all 700,000+ and counting, in the US alone—just because they didn’t want to wear masks. It seemed like a clear example of “What WOULDN’T Jesus Do?”

 

I wanted to say, “I don’t know what admission to Heaven looks like in your mind. But if it’s the scenario with Jesus separating the sheep from the goats, you might want to have a backup plan.”

 

One Thing Leads to Another

(This post is actually the origin of “You Get What You Pay For: Low-Wage Locale vs. Qualified Workers”, posted Sept. 15^th . This is the wordy version.)

 

May 28, 2021

 

You know how you get the germ of an idea, and one thing leads to another, and pretty soon you’ve got a whole scenario in your head?

 

There was a company whose Accounts Payable department was not getting discounts for early bill payment because goods in the warehouse weren’t being entered as Received in the computer system. If the accounting department doesn’t see that the goods are received, they won’t pay the invoices; and money that could have been saved by early payment was being tossed away. 

I thought that either they needed more help unloading and doing quality control checks, or the procedures might need streamlining. I was betting on the former, but couldn’t rule out the latter, either.

So then I started wondering how the company was trying to recruit more workers. Were they going with Indeed.com, or the DOL website, or Manpower, Inc., or doing something else?

Then I started wondering about the workers themselves. The state where the warehouses were located had a dismal record for public school education. Did the business locate its plants there because labor was cheap? If so, they weren’t increasing the tax base much, which meant that education wasn’t being funded, which in turn led to…a substandard labor pool to draw from.

So, then I started thinking that maybe I could convince somebody in the company to actually visit the plants, and the cities they’re located in, and look around. Start by looking at whether the plants need more staff; then look at procedures; then look at the quality of the staff they’ve got, and the quality of the labor pool they could draw from if they needed to replace the current staff; then work with school and civic leaders to invest in local education…

By the time I got done with the scenario in my head, the company was a Public Benefactor, schools were humming along nicely, and the prospects of young people had improved dramatically.

 

All because some invoices at company headquarters in another state weren’t getting paid very fast.

 

So far, the scenario is still in my head, but I’m hoping to get it into somebody else’s fairly soon.

 

I Heard It on NPR

September 27, 2021

 

I’ve found out some interesting things from listening to National Public Radio. (I’d hear a lot more, but I generally only tune in when all the other radio stations in my car are playing lousy music.)

 

New medications for humans used to be tested only on male rats, so their different effects on females were never taken into account. You may ask yourself, “Why?” I ask myself, “Who took the time to separate the sexes?” Also, of course, “Why?”

 

There is an annual convention for vacuum cleaner aficionados. At least one working vacuum is 80 years old. Many of the owners do their own repairs, but there are specialty shops that do repairs as well.

 

Plants are not as passive as we used to believe. In addition to standard protection devices like thorns, spines, or a bitter taste, there’s a more focused one: Some plants, when being bothered by a predator, emit pheromones that attract predators of their predators. Just because they can’t move doesn’t mean they’re not sneaky.

 

 

This concludes my “Boy, that’s fascinating!” segment.