Observations

 1.  Who is Neil Young?

Well....not anyone who has been on the top 100 music charts for at least thirty years.  

Should we mention that by leaving Spotify....that contract deal was paying him around $750k a year, it'll take a while to find a new service, and they probably will offer only half that amount?

2.  If your politician (mayor, governor, House Member, Senator) says they won't meet you face-to-face, if you are non-vax.....does your opinion radically change?

3.  Trump's chatter that he will re-instate the military folks who've been kicked out for refusing the vax?

It puts the Pentagon in a lousy position....if this occurs....what about back-pay?  The discharge just up and disappearing entirely?  

4.  This attempt to re-make the Robin Hood story into a different gender/ethnic character?

Canadian TV company at work.  Maybe it'll make it through a dozen episodes of production, but I doubt if it survives the first year.

5.  If you got Shingles....should you read up on vitamin D, and be tested?

Yes....there's a fair amount of studies out there and you might want to understand the relationship to vitamin D shortfalls.

6.  If the Russians invade the Ukraine, and US troops are captured......just how will President Biden handle the POW crisis?  

When in the Presence of a 5th-Grade 'Kid'

 

It's kinda like when you are engaged in a conversation with a 5th-grade know-it-all kid who wants to explain evolution, IP addresses, the way that water-towers function, orbits of satellites, mercury thermometers, string theory, Wi-Fi, Pi, or cryptocurrency.  After a while, you tell the fifth-grade kid to scram.

Maybe fifty years ago...some idiot politician could say something and six months later....we'd just forget about what the guy said.  

Today, all this gibberish that was said in 2019/2020....is just laying there.  You pick up a piece and then you remember.....oh yeah, he did say that crap two years ago.

The truth is....if the 5th-grade kid would just limit himself and talk over Gilligan's Island and what the castaways should have done, it'd be OK.  If the kid would just discuss fumes put off by scented candles for three lousy minutes.....it'd be OK.  If the kid would just limit himself to discussing the starting pitchers of the Braves....I'd be willing to sit and talk about their upcoming season pitching staff.

But if you got a 80-year old talkative guy who is acting like a 5th-grader and just jabbering away with nonsense....well....you'd like to ask him to get off the porch, and just go home.  

This Trump-DeSantis-Dem 2024 Scenario?

 This past weekend, I read this lengthily piece on the idea that Trump might skip the GOP primary entirely....run as an independent, and he'd be pitted against DeSantis (the likely Republican primary winner) and some Democratic player (likely to be Joe Biden or Mayor-Pete, or Governor Newsom of California).

After a fair amount of pondering, I just grinned....it's a remarkable fantasy.

There are four issues to this:

1.  For the news media.....it's utter disaster for them to paint both Trump and DeSantis as 'evil' or destructive.  Basically, it'd be proving the point that the news groups are corrupted and can't be trusted.

2.  The odds that none of the three would cross the 270-line for the Electoral College?  I'd say it's a 99-percent case.  So the House would receive the situation in 2024, and have three candidates to pick from....from fifty different state groups.  You could screw up the state by state votes in a hundred ways, and it wouldn't matter....it'd be a House delegation that mattered in the end. 

Countering any illegal vote activity?  It'd break that whole fantasy apart.  

The fact that more than half of the House Republicans will owe their position/winning....to Trump in 2022, and stand by him?  I think in some weird way....this would be an interesting thing to watch unfold.

3.  Trump wasting time or capital on the primary system which is screwed up (most of us would admit that)?  It'd give him six months to avoid stress and waste of funds.

4.  Making January of 2025 a heightened state of conflict....with far-left groups arriving in DC and threatening civil conflict?  More than likely.  In the midst of this early January 2025 violence?  Well...President Joe Biden.  

I really doubt this scenario but it is an intriguing discussion.  

The Thing About Hiking

 There are about a thousand problems with the information, stories and relative facts given by the Bible that I have.  

So this is one of the problems.....when the day comes that Moses takes his crew across the Red Sea.  From that day (or evening), there's this space of forty years discussed before they reach the 'promised' land.

This geographic area just east of the Red Sea?  Well....in today's world, before you reach the border of Israel....it's an area of 450 km long and 200 km wide.  If you were walking....at least in a straight line, you'd reach the 'promised' land in six days (depending on your pace and breaks).

For some general comparison, it'd be like putting on the tennis shoes and hiking from North Alabama to Nashville.  

Using the basic idea of 40 km a day (25 miles) as your objective, then this Moses hike consumed 146,000 km.  

Just walking from north Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina?  Well.....that's about 8,500 miles (give or take).

So these folks would have hiked on with Moses at least four times the round-trip from Alaska to Argentina.

People just accepting that?  No....even in these days....after about a hundred days....someone in the group would have asked where the map was and if there was some clear understanding about the end-point.

So the story has to be a bit manufactured...suggesting that maybe Moses lacked a map, and that forty years might have been just stated for dramatic effect.  Maybe the five to ten days of hiking felt like forty years....at least in the minds of some folks.  

If Covid Had Arrived in 1971?

 I grew up in a highly rural environment of Alabama in the late 1960s/early 1970s.  If you had approached me in the 7th grade....saying this terrible virus was threatening everyone, and you wanted me to attend school wearing a mask....I would have sat there for a while and contemplated the landscape.

We had an awful lot of farting that would occur in the winter months, with windows closed and a serious fume problem brewing between 9 AM and 10 AM.  I might have welcomed the mask mandate to some degree....lessening the fart 'fog' effect.

We had comedian or two in the class....who would have worn the mask for a full hour and collapsed on the floor a few minutes before 'break'....claiming a lack of oxygen.  After forty of these fainting spells....this would have gotten onto the nerves of teachers.

We would have had sound problems when teachers quizzed Karl or Marvin, and their muffled response (intentionally done) would have sounded like South Park's Kenny McCormick.  After five or six back-and-forths with the teacher telling Karl that his response is not understood....the teacher would moved onto Marvin, and repeated the same game.

Kids mask-kissing in the hall at break-time?  That would have been a quick rule creation....that mask-kissing was forbidden.

We would have had a sub bus-driver every couple of months.  It would have been some farmer....with minimum patience for kids, and a heavy foot for the braking. 

Sub-teachers would have appeared, with minimum background or experience.  

Within six months, the school would have admitted the whole thing is a failure and virus ban-rules be discarded.  

When You Dissolve a Legend

 As a kid (rural Alabama in the late 1960s/early 1970s).....I was fascinated with comic books.  About 90-percent of my collection (into the hundreds) were DC comics.....9-percent were Marvel (I just didn't get in Ironman or Thor that much)....with 1-percent being Archie/Sad Sack/Secret Hearts 'crap'.  

In an era of marginal science fiction....comics were the only real escape (in my mind).

About seven months ago....DC Comics decided that they needed a reboot on Superman.  So they went to his 'son', who happens to be a climate activist/asylum supporter and dating a male reporter for the Daily Planet.  This guy also liked women, so he was bisexual (at least the intent was to make you think this).

What happened to sales of the issue?  It dropped like a rock (number 17 on the sales list for the month).  They sold around 68,000 copies since July on that first introduction issue.  Cost of an average monthly comic today?  $4 roughly (more or less).  So after you figure the book shop 'take'....the comic guys generally made around $200k for that one monthly issue (half of that is ink, paper, and shipping cost).  

Total failure for the bisexual son of Superman who is a environmentalist?  I won't say that.....just that they seem to have decided that a lesser audience is a better audience.  Once you tell the story team that there are zero bonusses for the year and no pay advancements....about half of them will plan a review of their resume for future employment elsewhere.

How far will this trend go?  In today's world, with comics running $4 each...a kid might be more picky about what they are going to pick up and read.    The days where my mom would hand me $1, and I bought eight comics on a grocery trip (12 cents each in the 1960s) are long gone.  No mom is going to hand $32 to a kid to buy eight comics, and that kid is going to be awful picky about what he's buying/reading.  If he's not fighting aliens, Lex Luthor, or hunting down time-travel bandits....it's probably not worth reading.  

Slow-Joe Rules Coming?

 I noticed yesterday....a long piece discussed by Mayor-Pete (our transportation guru for the government).

So, there's a new federal agenda being pursued...slower speed limits and expanding bike lanes.

It's basically 5-billion dollars for projects that center on slowing traffic, building bike/bus lanes, building more overpasses, and improving lighting.  

How fast will the money be spent/'gifted-out'?  I would take a guess that every penny will be gone by the end of 2022.  

For those small towns of 500 folks who never had street lights?  Some mayor will figure out the paperwork....acquire $150,000 and put forty street lamps....which no one in the town really desired or come to appreciate.

The slower speed deal?  I'll bet over 10-percent of the 5-billion is spent on studies alone.  Some 300-page report will tell you what you could have guessed....that slower speeds lessen accident rates, but also create more tension/stress....adding another twenty minutes onto your daily journey to work.

The bulk of this going to urbanization and its issues?  Yeah.  It wouldn't surprise me if more than half of the money goes to twenty of the biggest cities in America.