One year ago today: June 10, 2013, a nothing day
(which usually indicates something big is pending).
Five years ago today: June 10, 2009, before the bakery . . .
Ten years ago today: June 10, 2004, Ocean Reef Club.
MORNING
Here is a bizarre structure over at Gulfstream. It appears to be a building shaped like an ancient armored fish. You can see the weird iron frame at center. Just below it is the shell of, well, something. It reminds me of the overlapping scales of prehistoric boney fish. I hope it is a restaurant, to be exact, a seafood restaurant. I didn’t have time to stop and find out. We shall revisit this. It will certainly be a unique shape of building.
Once Outlook installs itself on any one of your computers, it infects all your others and converts all your Hotmail accounts to Outlook. Next you receive a request to accept this code. If you ignore it, the request becomes insistence. Finally, you are locked out of your e-mail unless you provide them with what they want. Can’t say I did not warn everyone, but anyone who believes MicroSoft is concerned with your privacy has shit for brains. The next step is the Google-like insistence that all your “accounts” be brought under one log-on ID number which they will tell you whether you like it or not.
The writer’s meeting was a disappointment. I understood I am probably the closest thing in that room to a non-fiction author, but the room is utterly dominated by fiction writers. What does this mean to those of us whose material fact-based? Essentially it means that anything you write will be examined by persons with a “fiction-writer’s mentality”. They lose the ability to grasp that non-fiction is fact, in particular, verifiable fact. It’s annoying as hell, but they try to pick it apart in the same manner as they would the fiction they are used to.
I’ll repeat for it for the benefit of those in that room who missed the class back in grade four. Non-fiction means fact. They have words for people who argue about facts. The first such word is “uneducated”, but that would be mean-spirited so I won’t say it. However, all writing falls into two broad categories, fiction or non-fiction and they are mutually exclusive. Where there is any doubt or overlap, the work is fiction. I found out, during the question period, that most of the fiction authors were not interested verifying sources, but only in contradicting them. They appear to live in a fantasy world where two plus two equals four only because fools have been conditioned to believe it so.
What was it like? Well, have you ever been cross-examined by a lawyer who admittedly did not have any knowledge of the subject material? He cannot offer any contradictory evidence or call any opposing witnesses. His only hope of “winning” is to trip you up on semantics to make a big deal out of your choice of words. Since you have facts and he does not, he must find fault with your presentation. For that, he does not need to know the facts.
Essentially, the room tonight are saying you can't argue with the “fact” that you (and not they) could be totally mistaken. Why, it is a good thing they arrived on the scene in just enough time to set you right about that. The surer you are of your facts, the worse you could be totally mistaken. Fun, or what? I am learning a lot about what to eliminate in my writing from this class. I was not surprised to learn none of them have ever been published.
NOON
Here is a picture of a zero cholesterol breakfast. This serves a purpose, because what I’m going to say next is much harder to digest. This concerns a topic brought up at the writer's club on which I have a strong opinion--the rights of children. One of the authors this evening gave an account of two families with a collective 17 children who moved in together due to dire finances. The eldest daughter of one family insisted she have her own bedroom.
Reasonable people understand that there are certain rights that belong to the child, not the parents, and the parents have no business bargaining away rights that belong to others. First among those child’s rights are the hope for a better future. Was she promised a private room? Was she more deserving than the others? Did she have a rightful claim to her own room? Was she previously accustomed to her own room? For all we know, like myself, she built her own room at her own expense. The child is not responsible for the situation of the family, the parents are.
But now, we get to the unspoken element--some might say the unspeakable. This daughter may have had a desperate need to be separated from the other children. That is, the other children may very well have been nothing but hoodlums and gossips with whom constant or enforced association spelled moral destruction. Until this aspect is examined in intricate detail, I cannot abide with those who blame the child—at all. Furthermore, every child has the right to some privacy and refuge if only for self-introspection, self-examination, or even ordinary peace and quiet at a fixed time of day.
Ah, I hear some say the only reason I feel strongly about this issue is because I myself was raised in a concentration-camp style madhouse. But that isn’t so. I have many other reasons besides that one. An interesting curve here is that all the non-Europeans in the room were in complete agreement with my statement. Some went so far as to declare they had always felt the same but had never heard anyone so absolutely defend a child’s rights.
NIGHT
What did I really learn today? More navigation. The addendum covers the technical part. This sudden push is because navigation has to be learned quickly or not at all. So while I am about to write a related topic, it is not part of “shooting the stars”. It is easy to say: early in the process you will find there is a tremendous demand for more accuracy. For me, this dispels the notion that the pretty tools you see on the navigator’s desk are a status symbol, at least not so much as I previously thought that. And those glossy precision-made brass instruments in the movies are a bargain compared to the national cost of losing a battleship on the high seas. Accuracy is never perfect.
Next priority quickly becomes ease of use. If the gizmo is ornery or unwieldy, it stays in the box doing nobody any good. Hence, you may spot the jenga-block screwed down behind the thumb-hole to form a bit of a pistol grip. Navigation has shown itself so complicated and fascinating that we held an extra club meeting this morning at the bakery. From that, another revelation. Some people catch on to better, that is, they naturally take better readings than others.
It is not a correlation of intelligence, skill, or effort. This suggests that there is a knack for navigation. Years back, I recall instances where the RAF acknowledged the pathfinder aircraft were crewed by specialists, which I took to mean those who sat through the extra courses to be moved up a pay grade or two. Nope, this is tricky business and I had no idea how easy it was to be an entire degree off. Strange, but those who take bad readings seem to be consistently off in the long run.
Did you see that report from Germany about the guy who was placed in an asylum for claiming her found evidence of massive international bank money laundering? Seven years later, they let him out. That spells, “Oops, sorry. You were right.” Hmmmm. Actually, banks symbolize my stance on privacy. To me, the bank, as long as they are certain as can be of your identity and account number, should keep absolutely no records other than your bank balance. They should not be concerned what business or job you have, they should have no opinion on the legality of what you do.
Mind you, if they suspect something, they should call the police. Not begin instituting their own controls that make life difficult for you. No way should a bank become involved in monitoring your affairs for a third part or sticking their noses into the how and why of your transactions. A bank should not be monitoring your spending habits and profiling your behavior. The sole focus of a bank should be to keep your money safe and your identity private. Laugh it you want, but that’s the way banks used to be and it was nice.
Here’s another trick of the bass-playing trade. Over the years I’ve told how I can make guitar players sound better than they really are. Well, I ain’t just making that up. Part of the way it works is what I’ll reveal now so listen up. When you fill in “the missing” beats on the bass, the guitar player, over time, gets lulled into playing an ever-weaker line. This is particularly true when he is strumming, as my style is a strong “rhythm bass”. I may have succeeded a little too well. No details, but let’s just say when some people can’t even tell what song it is until they hear the bass, I’m in my element.
ADDENDUM
Here’s the final production version of the angulator. Note snazzy grip hole that is the same size as I would cut for mounting an electronic printed circuit board. Do you think that is pure coincidence? Good, because nobody else thinks that. Anyway, read on for first official reading of an object in outer space with this device.
The idea is to create on this blank chart a depiction of the tiny part of the world that concerns you. The chart has five horizontal lines representing, I believe, about 300 miles which is the most you should travel without taking a new reading. How am I doing so far?
The tricky part is the vertical lines. They get closer together as you approach the poles, so you have to compensate. If you look in the lower right-hand corner of the chart, there is a curved graph that tells you how far apart to set your dividers for the area you are at.
The dividers in the picture are set for the east-west distances near Orlando. You may be able to see the details of my work if you enlarge the photo. I’ve further drawn two “meridians” in pencil, as this chart now represents accurate directions and distances for this area. It took me a half-hour to grasp each of these steps. I now have a greater appreciation for the grueling work this must have been for ancient cartographers.
The next surprise is how nobody wants to give me any of the charts to practice on. Not even on-line. Don’t tell me navigation is another one of the apprenticeship scams that grinds the student just to learn, but it already looks that way. I mean, the chart is a something to be provided to the beginner for free. Charge him the money after he buys the yacht.
I can’t stand the nonsense of making life rough for students. Thus, as soon as I find a free source of these charts, I will publish directions. Meanwhile, the best I can do is grey-scale rendering, on my nearly empty inkjet. At chart center, the circle is the compass rose, which I hope to study tomorrow, see what it does.
For the heck of it, I used the angulator to shoot the Moon, it was 42° off vertical at 21:29:15 and was 162° 30” from magnetic north. I haven’t a clue what all this means yet.
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