The Vegetarian Story

There was this British survey of vegetarians, and a shocker.

What they generally say is that around one-third of British vegetarians admit that when they get drunk (at the pub or at home).....they eat meat.

You can imagine the shock as Nigel wakes up with a hangover in his living room.  He's a confirmed vegetarian....for a decade or more.  He had a few drinks too many last night.  He doesn't remember much after the pub.  And there on the floor of the apartment.....is this big pizza box.....there's two slices left.....and it's loaded with pork, beef, and chicken.  Nigel looks at the remains and realizes that he consumed a large pizza last night.....with meat products.

After a while, Nigel will start to get depressed and question himself.  This was the great 'walk' of his life.....his theme.....his quest to be different and pure.  He and the crowd that he hung around.....were dedicated vegetarians.  He starts to question his culture and diet.

Nigel will call his friend Monty and confess what he did.  Monty.....ever the stoic vegetarian listens to the story.  With silence and a long pause after Nigel has completed his story.....Monty confesses that he too.....has failed at pure vegetarianism.  He gets drunk two or three times a week and ends up with McDonalds burger wrappers on the floor the next morning.....maybe five or six wrappers.  Together, they weep over their confessions.

It becomes a burden that neither can really handle.....so they meet that evening at a local pub and talk over their pains and suffering....while sipping a stout ale.  Three hours will pass and the two vegetarians have consumed a fair amount of ale, and are fairly drunk.  They wobble out....fall down a couple of times....and make their way to the local pizza shop where they order the meat-lovers XXL pizza.  This becomes a routine......week after week....every Friday night....the two vegetarians gather, confess their sins, consume a vast amount of ale, and eat a meat-lovers pizza.

Across all of the UK, it's the same story.  Across Europe, it's the same story.  Across the US, it's probably the same story.

Alcohol.....is hindering society from being pure vegetarian.   Who would have guessed?

Rule of the Grammar Queens

There's this company.....Grammarly....which has a unique business angle.  They say or claim that they (as a private company) are the world's authority and leading automated proofreader.

In essence, they are a grammar-checker company, and someone (hard to imagine it not being English literature freaks or CEO).....to check the grammar of folks across the spectrum.

So, they say they've covered the 19 folks running for President and found that enthusiasts for Republicans make more grammatical screw-ups than enthusiasts for Democrats. Republican enthusiasts also use fewer unique words.....a key method that tells stories over your 'intelligence'.  And finally, there is this claim that Trump enthusiasts are the worst of the worst on grammar usage.

It's hard to imagine that 'grammar queens' have turned a business idea like this into something that actually pays a profit.

The idea that someone walks around and notes grammar usage of folks?  I've been around a number of folks who carried a listing of a thousand words to always throw into evaluations.....sparking them a bit and making a guy look 'special'.  After a while, I came to realize.....like a lot of Air Force people....that the words on an evaluation were pretty bogus and made the guy look often fabricated or phony.

What Grammar issues for the Hillary folks?  Well....they didn't say.  It might have been interesting to hear what the Obama grammar situation is for his folks, or if Al Gore enthusiasts were 'rocket-scientists'.   But they left that out of the whole story.

I'm guessing if you brought up this type of measurement with George Washington.....he probably would have started laughing, and noted the bulk of American residents were barely able to read and you'd best not worrying them over their position in life or their political status, or their usage of pseudo verbiage to attract attention.

Robbery in the Neighborhood

We had an unusual robbery in my region (here in Germany) over the weekend.  A grocery got robbed.....after hours.

If you've never been to Germany.....most buildings have a tile roof....not just houses, but most stores and regular buildings.  Tile roofs are an odd factor in construction.

Years ago....for twenty-odd minutes one afternoon....I stood and watched this crew put up a tile roof.  One guy on the ground would pile tiles on an escalator-like device and it'd go up to the roof and deliver the loose tiles to two big strong and husky guys.  The two guys would walk across the roof and simply pop the ceramic tiles into place.  No nails.  No glue.  No tar.  Just popping them onto a wood plank, and putting another tile on top of that.  A regular roof deal probably wouldn't take more than six hours for two guys to throw up into place.

So, we have this grocery in the nearby town.....four miles away....with a tile roof.

The break-in guy figured out that once you get on a roof.....you just slide your hand under a tile, and you can remove it.  Once he removes a dozen tiles and there's this opening. He slides in....gets past the false ceiling, and he can rob the place easily.

Cops won't say how much, but you can figure that he carried out booze, smokes and maybe some cash.

Here's the thing.....there's almost no way for the grocery guys to figure some protection against another robbery like this.  You could throw up sensors......but for a store like this?  You'd have to figure $20,000 spent on the sensors.  A security guard?  Well....for seven nights a week.....that's a cost item.  Leave a dog in the place?  Sanitation requirements would fall into play.

It'll be curious if this gets repeated several times and it's a gang with one smart roofer in the mix.

9-11 Observation

I sat and watched a video interview deal that a student team did on George Mason University (a significant university in Virginia).  The topic?  They walked around the university and asked dozens of college students why the US was attacked on 9-11.

The typical answer?  Most students said they didn't know the reason which triggered 9-11.  A handful commented that it was George Bush's fault, but they rendered a one-star explanation.  They then asked the students if there should be classes to talk more on 9-11....which almost all of them agreed that would be good thing.

So, the video in the end points out.....these were all people who were around age four when 9-11 occurred.  Their knowledge level is non-existent....of an event which occurred less than twenty years ago.

The blame toward Bush?  You could have a laugh over the answer given.  The same guy would give similar answers over the banking crisis, the housing market collapse, and various oil tanker accidents....in my humble opinion.  A smart guy in the background ought to quickly jump up and note that Bush was responsible for the Nazis coming to power, the riots in Detroit in the late 1960s, the trigger to causing the Vietnam War, and helped to send the iceberg into the path of the Titanic.

"Person of Interest"

Around the Christmas holidays of 2011, I had to do a trans-Atlantic flight, which means eight or nine hours in a cramped plane and the only entertainment is the video offering.  I sat and saw some five episode deal of a new CBS show....Person of Interest.  After viewing the original show, and the next four episodes....I had an interest in it.  For the remainder of the 2011 season, I probably watched a total of a dozen episodes.  After that, I just didn't have time to view it.

This past six weeks....I've been using Netflix and caught up with all the episodes of the first three seasons.  A fourth season was done for last year, and CBS has agreed to produce roughly a dozen episodes for what they believe is the final year.

After watching the sixty-six-odd episodes....I'm at a point where I'm keenly into the series.  On several levels....they've screwed up and accidentally produced a five-star series loaded with mistakes.  Viewership isn't where it should be and CBS thinks they are doing a good thing to let the series wrap up the ending.  There's talk that Netflix or Amazon might be in the background.....ready to pick up the series and run it for a season or two.  Maybe if huge numbers come up for Person of Interest over the final dozen episodes.....CBS might wake up and carry it for another season or two.

The big screw-ups?

1.  The name doesn't work.  It should have been "Man and Machine" or "Man in a Suit".  Person of Interest has zero appeal.

2.  The use of music within the video?  For the first season, they marginally did a good job on this.  For a couple of season two episodes....they did a five-star job and the rest fell between a two-star and four-star.  They should have hired some smart guys to gear music to the scenes.

3.  A lot of this storyline is about Artificial Intelligence (A-I).  For a large segment of the audience....they needed a real introduction to the science.  I think somewhere in the middle of season two, they woke up and did some explanations but they wasted tons of opportunities.

One of the big problems with the series is that you have to watch each single episode because they are laying down bits and pieces of secondary stories.   If you missed two or three episodes from season one, and two episodes from season two.....you'd be in hurt-status for grasping season three.

So, I'm kinda hoping that the series survives the short season, and someone picks it up.

Stonehenge II?

If you drive for roughly two hours west of London.....you will eventually reach Durrington....a small town with only one significant feature....Stonehenge.

I made the trip twenty-odd years ago.  You come over the top of some hill....and you look down to the right of the road, on a very low-grade slope, and you can see the stone monument off in the distance.  But you typically think of....at least in my case.....it's all a big cow-field.  Just open farm land with grass growing.

My little group spent about 90 minutes at Stonehenge.....walking the circle.  Once you've been there....you realize there's no reason much to return.

Well, this week....some researchers noted that they've found more to the whole Stonehenge thing.....except a much bigger site.

Around two miles from the current site....is this mostly buried site, with around ninety big stones (all buried, of course). They note the depth of the stones to be at least three feet under surface.

So, there are some basic facts, and then a lot of mystery.

They calculate that this was Stonehenge II (to have occurred after the original smaller episode).  They also calculate that this all occurred around 4,500 years ago (2500BC).  They also calculate that some of the buried stones are fifteen feet tall.

Purpose?  Unknown.

What folks have come to say is that Stonehenge I (the smaller site) was developed as a mystic ritual site and people were told far and wide that if you made a walk (like the Catholic Saint James Way from the center of Europe to the far west end of Portugal)....that some higher power would help in your life, cure ills, bring good luck, and and lift your outcome in life.

It's believed that a large assortment of people in Europe would find their way to Stonehenge.....bringing sick relatives with them, and believed that the mystic charm of the site would do something.

Why was Stonehenge II (the new site) buried?  No one is sure if it was buried intentionally (three feet of dirt is a lot).  There's no flood area there, and there's no possibility of landslides to disrupt site.  There's no possibility of a volcano being involved (as in Crete's case).  So you are left with the idea that some guys put a lot of effort into burying the site.

I would take a humble guess that some event occurred....of a pretty harsh and negative nature.  Enough people were standing there and believed that the Stonehenge II site was 'cursed', and they decided that it was best to bury it and never walk those grounds again.  A disease?  A plague?  Who knows?  The fact that thousands made the journey from Europe to Stonehenge I....meant hundreds probably had a disease and passed it along via the trail to Stonehenge. It was only a period of time before a large segment of visitors would arrive and be seriously ill while visiting the original site.

So, I'd suggest to the research guys.....broaden the search pattern slightly and look for a burial ground within a couple of miles of the second and newer site.  Once you find a large assortment of burials....look for clues.

The Hillary Oath?

A journalist (Salena Zito of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) showed up at the Hillary Clinton speech in Cleveland.....but to be given access to the event....she had to sign a loyalty oath (as were the hundreds of others who wanted entry).

This oath?

Well....it's an odd deal.  You just say that you are committed to Hillary....offer up some help like a backyard bar-b-q or coffee meeting with other concerned Hillary folks, and then hand this into the team that runs her campaign.

Might someone lie on the loyalty oath?  Well......yeah.  That's one of the dozen-odd problems with such oaths.

You can always dump your loyalty.....in fact, from day to day or hour to hour.

A comical political theme?  Well, if you get desperate enough....you might turn to the idea of a oath.