Ode to Brexit

The UK’s Poet Laureate is appointed with "an expectation that the holder will write verse for significant national occasions."

If Brexit isn’t a “significant national occasion,” I don’t know what is, so let’s order up an ode. Hey, Carol Ann Duffy – you can’t hide any longer -- step up and versify.

Jobs for Paul Ryan in 2019

• Writing a monthly column on the Austrian School of Economics for Guns and Ammo magazine.
• Chief ethics officer for Wells Fargo bank.
• Head of emissions testing for Volkswagen.
• Senior advisor on the theology of Ayn Rand to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

More Stories I Never Started Reading*

Hard of hearing? Pornhub Now Provides Audio Description for its Adult Films

The porn streaming site's latest initiative aims to give the visually impaired a helping hand by offering professional narration to accompany its most popular videos. https://www.cnet.com/news/pornhub-now-provides-audio-description-for-its-adult-films/

 Can Google Automate Your Break-Up?

Popular Science - http://www.popsci.com/can-google-smart-reply-handle-your-break-up

*Inspired by The New Yorker’s “Stories We Never Finished Reading”

More Google Translate Fun

Sometimes I read Bulgarian easily and sometimes I struggle. When the worst happens, Google Translate is always good for a laugh.

• The original:  Едно от най-разпространените оплаквания на руските туристи с деца на почивка в Черна гора е невъзможността да се хапне без пушачи на съседните маси.
• Google Translate's Version:  One of the most widespread complaints of Russian tourists with children on holiday in Montenegro is the inability to eat non-smokers at the neighboring masses.*

Seems kind of harsh, don't you think? I mean, shouldn't the Russian tourists warn the non-smokers before letting their children eat them? Also, non-smokers have a notoriously bland taste...shouldn't the kids get some hot sauce? And what kind of masses are these? Is this some kind of heretical ritual? Is  Roald Dahl the premier of Montenegro? 

* As you've already guessed, the correct translation is "the inability to eat without smokers at neighboring tables."

Technology's Breakthrough Thursday?

Three apparently amazing developments appeared in the science news on April 6, 2017. In reading these remember the key words “15” and “%.” That’s how much I understand on average of the science I read. Still, these articles seem very clear.

Double The Capacity from Solar Cells

The use of solar energy has been held back because of the low efficiency of solar cells. The best panels return only about a third of the sun’s energy as electricity and most are far below that. The low efficiency means that you need a lot of surface area to get a usable amount of electricity, and that’s not feasible in a lot of cases.

Four Months Without News (and counting)

Not exactly bliss, but…

At the beginning of March, 2017 I’d gone a full four months without reading any news.

I’ve discovered ignorance is easy; a little more of it and I might become a Republican. By default, not by choice of course.

My biggest problem has been the technology sites. For some reason, they can’t seem to let the political stuff alone. For example, the fact that Dumb Donald uses twitter seems to be reason enough to report on his electronic drool.

It’s On You, Bishop

As tens of millions of Americans prepare to face a bleak future with no health insurance, the nation's Catholic Bishops will speak out in opposition, bemoaning the pain and suffering to come.

Crocodile tears.

No group is more responsible for the unfolding moral disaster than these bishops.

America’s Catholic bishops have consistently valued the unborn over the living. And they’ve consistently ignored the deeply immoral character of the political party that supports their crusade against abortion.

The inevitability of moral priorities doesn’t mean that there can’t be multiple things out in front. The Church could say, strongly and firmly, that opposing abortion doesn’t provide a free pass to ignore basic morality. It could, but it doesn’t.

The bishops are wishy washy on basic human rights, vague on murder (capital punishment), and more. They only speak with ferocity when the issue is abortion.

They sanction Catholic politicians who support choice, but say nothing at all about Republican Catholics who speak out strongly in favor of the death penalty and actively seek to deprive the poor of health and dignity.

Every once in a while, a Bishop will get the courage to argue against one of those Republican budgets that savages the poor in order to provide tax cuts for the richest. When that happens, the Speaker of the House or some such leader will respond that this isn’t the Church’s business, this is politics not morality.

And every time the Republicans push back, the Bishop’s voice immediately disappears. The Republicans can do this, Bishop, because they own you.

Talking to Comcast Support

Now, I know that with a title like this you’d expect the author to be Steven King.

It wasn’t that bad. Sort of.

My problem occurred when I tried to add a second wireless router to my house to get better speed on the 4^th floor – a problem since the primary router and the cable modem are on the 2nd floor. I connected the two routers via an Ethernet cable (connecting them wirelessly is a bad idea) and configured the secondary router as required so it wouldn’t conflict with its primary sibling.

This all worked well for a day or so until the network speeds dropped to almost nothing. Even the Amazon Echo Dots were gasping for bandwidth. “Can’t…talk…can’t…”  Poor Alexa.

Anyway, I tried lots of things, including new equipment. But the same thing happened. Finally, I decided the problem must be with Comcast rather than in the house. But I actually had no idea why.

So I started an Xfinity chat. If you didn’t know already, Comcast likes to be called Xfinity. Not surprising since Comcast has won America’s most hated company award for the last  -- I don’t know how many years. Ever since they began giving the award, I guess.

Changing your name is a good way to make people forget who you really are, so I can’t blame them. I mean, it worked for Whitey Bulger.

Boom Times for Barbed Wire

Introduction:  Walls, Both Physical and Emotional, Are Proliferating

Keeping migrants out of your country is hard work.

In 2015, Hungary strung up some barbed wire and called it a wall. As a result, the migrant wave was pushed back, leaving people stranded in Serbia.

Serbia had no choice but to follow with its own wall, and therefore so did Bulgaria.

Greece would build a wall through the Aegean Sea if it knew how (perhaps Donald Trump will lend his engineering expertise).

There’s a crisis out there, and the wave of would-be migrants crossing from Turkey into Europe has left the EU’s leaders in panic mode. That’s perfectly reasonable, but the problem isn’t going to go away and some serious planning for the long term has to begin soon.

We Need to Rethink Why People Are Hostile to Migrants

Opposition to migration in the EU is obviously related to the volume of migrants as well as to fears that some in a predominantly Islamic group will support terrorism. But we’ll make a serious mistake if we think these factors alone explain popular hostility to immigration.

School Reform -- Oprah in, Education Colleges Out

It’s time to completely rethink America’s effort to help children from low-income and disadvantaged communities succeed in education.

A key first step would be to eliminate the preeminent role of education school faculty – “educationists.” Some are capable and should stay involved, but viewed as a group, they’ve failed badly.

Their most recent disaster is the collapse of the Common Core. The fundamental ideas behind this effort were very good (and still are), but the project’s calamitous execution reveals deeply flawed thinking.

Education schools have attempted to deflect concerns about their history of faddishness by focusing on observable results:  i.e. “data.”

Unfortunately, the educationist emphasis on statistics has itself become a new fad, where simply getting numbers becomes the goal. This isn’t surprising, because education as a discipline has always wanted to be thought of as a “hard” science – more physics than sociology.  

In the case of the Common Core,  educationists pushed to test students on the new curriculum before teachers and students had a reasonable chance to master the material. Why? They wanted “baseline data” to more effectively compare before and after.

Only an educationist would be surprised when a wave of “failing” scores resulted in parental and school outrage. Educationists worship at the Temple of Excel and can’t see the people for the statistics.

Inappropriately Articulated Ailments

One of the dangers of getting older is that you acquire an increasing number of ailments. Each of these contains intrinsic dangers, of course, but there is one nasty side effect you can avoid if you make a strong and determined effort:  deciding that your affliction is interesting.

It works like this. Your doctor encourages you to read about your disease or condition so that you can “better manage your care.” A reasonable approach, but a truly dangerous one. You’d be much smarter if you just blindly followed her orders.

If you do step on the slippery slope and start to read about whatever you have, you’ll likely soon find that your affliction is actually quite fascinating. It has a number of variations and an array of treatments with some recent, thought-provoking possibilities. And no one knows why people in Borneo never get it.  

Bring Back the Ignition Key

Now, I know you’re thinking the guy who wrote the title above has to be a geezer. I mean, old guys are always whining about how things were better in “their day.”

Well, you’ve got me. I’m over 70. And I actually know what you’re talking about. In the early years of this century, my 80-ish uncle, a very smart and well educated man, regularly lamented the breakup of AT&T. Put him in charge and he’d have brought back the rotary dial phone in a heartbeat. And only in black.

Anyway, I’m different (I hope) and the reason I’m thinking about this ignition key thing is a news story reporting that thieves can steal the code from your key fob when you lock your car and then, when you’re gone, drive your car away by clicking a couple of times on a special device that’s captured and retained your code. Since vehicles are now keyless, getting in means getting going.

Democrats! Be Fair to Trump!

Democrats should be held responsible for offering Trump the same respect and support the GOP provided to Clinton and Obama. Republicans may think this excessively harsh, but so be it. Fair is fair.

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Avoidance

My wife, an experienced mental health practitioner, thinks that my decision to stop reading the news (see:  A Year Without News?) is a bad idea because it constitutes “avoidance,” and in the world of professional psychology that’s always unhealthy.

I’m sure she’s right about avoidance in the emotional context. Suppressing a feeling is usually a mistake because the source of the conflict will come back and you’re better off doing something about it now rather than later when it will probably be worse.

Dear "Conservative Christian" Family Member

Here’s where I stand on the election.

If you were talking honestly and sincerely to a grandson about what Christian virtues of Donald Trump you would like him to emulate, I’m confident you couldn’t find any. Not one.* But you could find a dozen strongly un-Christian behaviors and traits you’d want an impressionable young man to reject. Of course, if you were talking to a granddaughter, it would be simpler. You’d simply advise her to stay as far away as possible from Trump and men like him.

The stories you and others cited about Hillary Clinton as serial murderer or tool of Iran have been thoroughly debunked as fabrications. These mostly came from a small town in Macedonia where people creating Facebook web ads discovered that American conservatives would click on anything anti-Clinton (and would further prove their gullibility by lingering on the site to buy fake Viagra, magic health pills, etc.). There's also strong evidence that Russia helped in this effort. 

If there was any substance to these phony news stories, Republican legislators would have investigated and Republican prosecutors would have indicted. But that hasn’t and won’t happen. Just like Trump’s unqualified statements that he had “absolute proof” that Obama wasn’t born in the US, the lies have served their purpose and will quickly fade back into the darkness they came from.

Hypocrisy is the common thread connecting conservative Republicans’ past and future.

A Year Without News?

Now seems like a good time to give up on the news. The wackos have won Washington and frankly, I don’t want to read about their campaign to trash American values, not to mention our economy.

I'm not saying the country is going to the dogs, because that would be unfair to dogs. Most canines I’ve encountered are smarter than the people taking over the federal government. More honest, too.

The bottom line is that the experience of continuing to read news wouldn’t be good for either my physical or mental health. So, I’m out. The plan is a year. We’ll see how it goes.

Ezekiel Elliott

Ezekiel Elliott isn’t the fastest back I’ve seen, nor is he the quickest (in the sense of change of direction). And he’s by no means the most powerful runner. He’s excellent in all those categories, but not in the elite group.

In fact, there are a number of active running backs who have the combination of all three of those abilities and are better than Elliott in two or three.

What sets Elliott apart, I’ve decided after watching him as a pro, is his burst. He has an amazing ability to accelerate over about a three stride stretch. He’s better than anyone I’ve seen in this.

Elliott’s burst explains why he often gets through the line untouched. It also explains why he can often turn the corner – an almost impossible task in the pros and even in high level college competition where defenders are simply too fast to outrun if they have an angle.

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He has the potential to be a great back over a reasonably long career – if Dallas gives him fewer carries.