March 14, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: March 14, 2023, at 6:00AM.
Five years ago today: March 14, 2019, Percy something.
Nine years ago today: March 14, 2015, even borderline ‘tards . . . .
Random years ago today: March 14, 2008, does it ever show.

          Oh, has the secretary over at the insurance company gotten a little bent out of shape. From what I gather, she is not educated enough to follow even mild “legalese”. Too bad, all correspondence from here is filtered through three parties for correctness, tone, and factual presentation. If I didn’t say, it appears the use of the word “unbefitting” that caused a minor chain of events. I applied the term to expectations on their part that I would accept any financial loss resulting from clerical errors that “originated within their office”.

          Another bright and early morning, the beautiful spring weather is hold out. I got in breakfast at the Waffle House as I did not want to get the crew up so early again. My damn clock was out another hour the last four days, it did not get switched to daylight savings. Nobody noticed or said anything, that’s how surrounded I am by helpful, alert people. By noon, I’m at the library and writing letters. I had intended to have the Reb order up some supplies from Hacktronics, now they would not arrive in time.

          I did find an electronics supply house in Nashville, be they don’t carry any of the good stuff. Items like LEDs and trim pots (variable capacitors) are special orders that take a week. So order them yourselves when you find stores like this that do not stock regular normal wares you would associate with their store name. It’s another sign of the downfall of the American way, stores always out of your size, your color, or your brand.
          I can tell you how to make a million. Open a store across from Wal*Mart that sells ONLY size 8-1/2 shoes. Or same the Harbor Freight selling ONLY 5/8ths inch sockets. You know it is not an ordinary stockout, since the surrounding shelfs are piles with the ones you don’t want. This picture shows a specialty non-sparking 5/8ths impact socket that lists for around $650.

          I see Bernie Sanders is pushing for the 32-hour work week without a thought of the consequences, but at his age, just getting the votes is enough, I suppose. I saw some pictures from Iceland and folks, that society is truly going down the tubes. The purest race is now hopelessly contaminated. How about the claim that millennials can’t do things like sew on a button because Boomers “failed to teach them”? Or the whistleblower at Boeing who was found dead. India has succeeded in blocking videos of an assassination that took place in Canada, another nail in the censorship coffin.

Picture of the day.
Bean Station park opening.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

          Did you catch the article in Wired about the Canadian guy sued for $20 million for operating a web page with pirated obituaries. You heard me, stolen death notices. For openers, I did not know that obits could be copyrighted (they can be) but that it would be such a serious problem. It was interesting to read the defense where the defendant claimed the purpose of the obits was to spread public knowledge of the event and that his re-wording of text was enough to avoid intellectual property laws. I could agree with him up to a point—the point at which he began making money off the operation.
          Turns out it is such a lucrative business that chains of funeral homes are hiring lawyers. The pirates are doing everything from selling fake flower and wreath ads and pocketing the cash to posting A.I. generated videos of the deceased for sale. The minute you make money off it, that's infringement. Am I the only one who notices all the newspapers in Tennessee aimed at the non-White population all have no puzzle page? [Insert snarky comment here.] You remember that laser radar combo mentioned infrequently in this blog? Somebody has been aiming them from drones overflying the pre-Columbian jungle ruins. I’ve only a casual interest in artifacts, but let me mention a few things about this radar.

          Many sources call it “lidar”, because rather than radio wavelengths, it operates on a much higher frequency similar to light waves. Contrary to popular thought, this does not “penetrate” anything, but works on a much simpler principle. Then you shoot an old radar beam at leaves, it breaks up and you get either no blips or countless blips because the waves and leaves are around the same size. There are two ways to counter this, and one is by making the waves more powerful, the classic approach. The way lidar works is by making the beams small enough to fit through the gaps between the leaves, figuratively speaking.

          What happens is enough of the beam gets through and then reflected back for today’s more powerful computers to assemble a recognizable image. And they are finding almost every hill and mound on the Caribbean side is some kind of temple or reservoir. For those who can’t wait for me to find time to publish my hand-written blogs, I toured the area in and around Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula back in the 80s. Back when it was free, and untouched, and well away from governments turning then into tourist traps. I saw many of the mounds and remarked they were out of place. And developed a theory that the interior spaces of these temples or pyramids, whatever they are, had a similar shape to the rooms inside Polynesian grass huts.
          I further surmised it as possible that Polynesians lived all over the area and build the structures of stone instead of bamboo because of frequent earthquakes. In the future there will be a radar that lives better images, but for now lidar is only used to reconstruct likenesses of the terrain, as shown in this sample I lifted from NPR. So’s the people who do such things know to dig in the right place.

          Have you heard of “money dysmorphia”? It’s the term making the rounds for when you feel your income is “inadequate” to others around you. I don’t have it because I learned long ago that spending more money does not increase my enjoyment due to a simple reason. My activities generally require learning, study, or an enhanced level of academic input, none of which carry a price tag. The current phase got my eye because it is misleading. Huh? You see, in my day it was called feeling broke. You could blame being born that way on others, but staying that way was your own fault. This is America.
          But with the new dysmorphia, it is always somebody else’s fault. Felling like you don’t make the grade? Why it is the fault of (let me check to make sure I get this right) Instagram, “bold glamour”, and getting their financial advice from TikTok. Makes sense. To the current crop, everything is always somebody else’s fault and you can take credit courses on how to think like that.

ADDENDUM
          Tell you what, I originally erased today’s addendum, but here’s some first-hand knowledge you won’t find on other blogs. Tourists don’t do what I do or learn what I learn, it’s what makes them tourists. Take a good look at this photo, there’s a tourist now. Okay, now the part you love about this blog.

          See the roped off area? That’s as close as you get without paying admission. I know this is a recent picture for lots of reasons. Now look at the staircase on the far left. It is unrestored. Them Spanish carted off most of the exterior stone blocks to build their Catholic churches. The center and right side have been restored, each of four staircases has 91 steps, the 365th step is the small temple structure on top. The staircase on the right has two serpent heads at the bottom, which is the side of the pyramid facing exactly North.
          How do I know? The rising sun on the Spring equinox struck the “step” pattern along the corner of the pyramid dead center is in this photo causing a zig-zag shadow to slither down the stone banister. On the other side of that far stone snake head is a tiny doorway cut into the base of the pyramid. There are actually a number of pyramids here, a new layer was added every 52 years. This doorway tunnels to the center pyramid, then up that path to a smaller version of the temple visible today.
          And in that tiny room—don’t do this is you have claustrophobia, there is pardon me, there was a carved jaguar with jade eyes. It is shaped like a small sacrificial alter. The tunnel is tiny, you must crawl on hands and knees. You cannot turn around until you get inside the room at the top. Panic, and you will most likely die. Fat people won't fit, even it they still allowed access. There is no picture of the jaguar (in this blog) because I can’t find the true likeness. What's on-line are all fakes. Not the original, which I saw with my own eyes.


Last Laugh