One year ago today: December 17, 2014, a nothing day.
Five years ago today: December 17, 2010, rusting away to nothing . . .
Nine years ago today: December 17, 2006, the scrabble game.
Random years ago today: December 17, 2002, a penthouse?
MORNING
The [new hot water] tank is not tested yet, but I get at least four minutes of hot water, and that’s all I need. If there’s more, fine. There was a scathing review on the Berlkee music academy posted this morning, which I read with great interest. There always was something pretentious about their guitar players in particular. I’ve often said you cannot learn to act or think by studying how it was done in the past, and this new critique echoed that plus plenty more.
Let’s just say I’m okay with learning others besides myself found Berklee to be synonymous with “fat head” and “guitar wanker”. Then again, to me any type of music training is a channelization of thinking away from originality. I can instantly tell when a guitar player is school-taught. It is too consistently patternized to ever amount to much, though it must happen sometimes.
The bakery has a firm offer [to purchase], so my four years of excellent retirement coffee and great company may be drawing to an end. This could happen as soon as Xmas Day, and I see the preparations are already underway. I had an interesting conversation with some idiot there this morning who moved the parking pylon and pulled into the loading zone. I walked next door and told him to move.
I think the guy must have been Canadian. He followed me out the door and stared talking like I gave a damn who he was or that he didn’t like my approach. Weird. I turned around and told him, look pal, I just saved you from a $175 tow charge, so thank me or shut up. Christ, these foreigners are a strange lot.
NOON
Hmmm, I’ve received some offers, but that is not the point. Whenever I give out personal information, it is traceable. What I have here is offers to participate in other medical studies. I could sure use the money, but as I look at the source, what sets me apart from the other candidates? Anybody? I know, I know. As with Amgen, I am the only subject they have ever found in the state of Florida who has been 100% drug-free for life. If that is the case, and I’ll be making the phone calls shortly, I think I want more money to even consider anything.
But defeating the best efforts of numbskull is an important everyday activity for me, so I believe the location of the lecture I’d like to attend is 265 Aragon Avenue, in Coral Gables. It begins at 7:00 or 8:00 depending on which version you believe. That’s where I had to save JZ from the clutches of the Virgin Mary. That’s another story.
I’m considering the trip by sidecar because the speaker is a physicist, Lisa Randall. Of course, they they’ll be hawking her $30 book containing information I’m already familiar with. I’d go there to meet Lisa, and maybe the coffee. The topic includes the extinction of dinosaurs and the lithium layer, so I don’t imagine there will be all that great a turnout. I’m thinking on it.
NIGHT
Here’s something I found interesting, if only because the concept has crossed my mind. I called them “soldering tongs”, but the proper name seems to be “resistive heating elements”. Looks like battery clamps to me. I decided afterall to go see the book presentation. What a mistake, I wish I’d stayed home and watched a good movie. Ah, some are thinking, what could go wrong at a book signing. Everything.
Problem, I lost my place in line. While I had not expected the astrophysicists of south Florida to be a well-represented contingent, the place was swamped by, well, by people who, well, look like they mistook it for a dog show. Who takes screaming two-year-olds to a physics book report? Apparently, in that part of town, if it is free, they all do. Then, it was a Coral Gables district, where the worst sort of business management has prevailed. Books & Books would, if they could figure out how, charge you for standing still and breathing the air.
Then, the location of the lecture room. It is an open doorway to the hall that leads to the only bathroom in the joint. It was fine when they opened the door when the two flute players were on, but next came the calypso band. Every time the door swing open, the steel drums washed out the speaker. And that speaker was Lisa Randall, who does not have a strong voice to start with. Worse, she clearly hasn’t a clue about microphone dynamics. She was either eating the mic, or leaning back so far her own voice was louder.
To compound matters, she had the annoying habit of leaning toward the mic at the beginning of her sentences, then backing off. So most of what you heard was, “Now listen closely . . .”, type of thing. As for the lecture material itself—very poor. She did not say one thing that I had not heard thirty or forty years ago. And she teaches this stuff? Physics is not like social working, you actually have to know what is going on. There have been a few new twists in those many decades since my courses, but those can nearly always be attributed to better measuring devices, not better brains.
For example, Pluto no longer being a planet. I contended that since I was a child, for it does not orbit on the ecliptic. New measuring instruments found dozens of objects the size and type as Pluto that were definitely not planets. Therefore, it was reject Pluto, or include them all. I never heard that viewpoint before she said it. But ahem, that is her field, and it was not, repeat not, her discovery; it was due to improved equipment.
There she is, in the green dress. This blurry picture is the best I was able to get, but at least proves I was there. Instead of some place I should have been. With a nice coffee and a good crossword puzzle.
My interest (in attending that meeting) relates to my theory that Lake Okeechobee is an impact crater, not to be confused to mean a meteor crater. It could have been anything or possibly nothing, like in Arizona or Tunguska. Poof, no impact material. I was there with my notebook and pencil (not a computer, it should be duly noted), but could not hear the ends of her sentences. However, I’m sure she said that dark matter cannot react with normal matter. Only the front row center could really hear what she was saying. During the question period, she had plenty of time for the “How-come-you’re-so-smart-and-I’m-so-dumb” type questions, but she sloughed me off when I asked her for the name of any source of earth impact information. She walked past me like I wasn’t there.
Ah, some of you are thinking. Am I saying that Dr. Randall ignored a question from the only man in the entire room carrying a notebook and a pencil? You know, now that you put it that way, that is exactly what she did. Not only is she that way, I’m pretty sure I heard most of what she had to say on-line recently, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. But I will.
Conclusion. She is a well-educated little old lady playing a figurehead role. She will make a discovery or breakthrough when I build a robot—and I’ve only been trying for a few years. Up close, she is all pancake makeup (she’s 54) and speaks with little authority or the natural inquisitiveness normally associated with the scientific mind. I should have stayed home and watched that movie.
ADDENDUM
Remember the shoe store that went tits up? The one so highly recommended by Theresa? Well, I wore that pair of dress shoes to the talk, you know, in case Lisa Randall wanted to jump my bones. I was also the only man in the room wearing a tie. Anyway, the shoes came apart almost instantly as I change gears on the sidecar. The best thing I can say about this “book event” was that I can claim I drove as sidecar to Coral Gables on December 17, 2015, and the rest of the world did not.
Now some could say I’m the one just no good at discerning quality. That I am the one who chose the wrong shoe and the wrong woman. Really? In both cases? Before you judge me, let me explain to you the “idiot/genius” theory. I call it the “Jury Box Education”. Some random member of the public deemed incompetent to make wise choices in the marketplace for herself is called upon to make wise choices for others. Some “peer” who is incapable of making simple correct decisions with the objects that lay within her own experience is instantly deemed infinitely capable of errorless flash judgment when it comes to the experience of others. Well, no wonder some people love jury duty.
But I was talking about the way most people judge others
Last Laugh
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