A Christmas Gift

December 30, 2021

 

I got an unexpected gift this Christmas.

I found the album of Christmas music that we listened to when I was a kid,

And whose music I have tried and failed to replicate with other albums for decades,

 

And it sounded exactly the same as I remembered it.

                                                                                               

How many things remembered and re-encountered are truly as good as you thought they were?

 

It was indeed a gift.

 

It's Football, not Sci-Fi

December 30, 2021

 

When I read that Hawaii’s coach was blaming his team members’ leaving on a “transfer portal”, I wondered if they were going through a wormhole, or at least using a teleporter.

Turns out it’s just a fancy way of saying they’re looking into options for playing elsewhere.

 

Well, it sounded fun.

 

 

He's Going to Need It

December 30, 2021

 

New York’s incoming mayor has a detailed plan to help fight COVID.

That’s swell, considering he’s being sworn in in Times Square, just after the ball drops, among a crowd of thousands of New Year’s revelers.

 

Inflating the Administration's Responsibility

December 15, 2021

 

I’m amazed at people who are blaming inflation on the current administration.

Once people started buying more, after pandemic restrictions eased and people went back into the workforce, there were fewer goods available.

Fewer goods means higher prices. Remember how people grabbed toilet paper and hand sanitizer and prices went up because there was less to go around? Or think of a spring that gets really compressed: When the pressure’s off, it sproings back higher than normal before it goes back to its resting level.

Yes, the administration can try putting policies in play that will mitigate the effects; but to say that the current president is responsible for causing inflation defies the basic economics lessons people (should have) learned in high school.

Religiously Avoiding Oversight

December 30, 2021




The abuse of the “Separation of church and state” concept is breathtaking.


I find it to be annoying enough that churches don’t pay taxes. I don’t see why they shouldn’t pay taxes. I just don’t.


But what’s really bringing on this rant is the SLLLOWWW progress being made in Missouri in holding religious schools accountable for delivering good educations; and, worse, recent headlines about the physical and sexual abuse perpetrated on religious boarding-school students, because the schools are purportedly not supposed to be held to secular licensing laws and oversight.


Horse-hockey. If you are dealing with children, you should be held accountable to state and federal standards of care. Period.

Put a Period to that Sentence

 December 30, 2021

Last July, I wrote about Joshua Williams, who was sentenced to 8 years for participation in the Ferguson riots. He committed vandalism, but didn't kill anybody. Prosecutors asked for 15 years, but he got 8.

Lately I've been reading about other sentences handed down: Almost 4 years for a man involved in one of the most violent attacks on police during the Capitol riot; 10 years for a member of a notorious drug gang.

To the best of my knowledge, Joshua Williams is still doing time for smashing a window, stealing some chips, and setting a trash can on fire.

How Would He Do "2020"?

 December 30, 2021

I got my day off to a great start this morning. The movie “2012” was playing on cable, and I found it before the good disaster scenes got going. I love that movie. Plot-wise not so great, but special-effects wise: Terrific.

It’s by Roland Emmerich, the king of disaster movies. He did “Independence Day”, about space aliens trying to take over the planet. Although I love “2012” I have to say that space aliens taking over the planet seems way more believable than the Yellowstone volcano blowing up and the people standing right next to it not going deaf. A minor caveat, though.

This guy is so great at disaster flicks, I wonder how he’d do “2020–The Movie”.