It's "Do you know... " time.

Do you know that 24 percent (pretend one-in-four) of Wall Street executives say illegal or unethical conduct may be necessary to be successful in finance... and, I add, become very rich at others' expense. We admire success.


A corollary to that might be 99 percent (pretend all) of those living below the poverty line say it may be necessary to beg, borrow or steal to survive. We should put those thieving paupers in jail just like Jean ValJean in Les Miserable.

Utopia?

Do you know that if you work in a high rise office building... or anywhere higher than the first floor, you live longer... GUARANTEED! A recent study, using the most accurate atomic clocks on earth, has confirmed Albert Einstein's theory that time runs faster the higher off the ground you are.  Says the study: for every floor above the ground, you gain in age about 90 billionths of a second over a lifetime.

That means, if you have spent... say 30 years in total hours working or living on the second floor, you will actually add about 50 billionths of a second to your life (assuming average rate of mortality, of course) over those poor land-hugging saps below. They could be merely 60 but you would be 60 PLUS 50 billionths of a second more. Ha ha to them!

So if that is you, what do you plan to do with all of your extra time?

Do you know that an Idaho man, still at large, tried to pass a counterfeit $1 bill?  If they catch him and the punishment fits the crime, he will do 20 minutes hard time in the Big House.

Do you know that there are 10 billion stars in the universe for every human being who has ever walked the earth, says Caleb Scharf, author of Gravity's Engines?
Amazingly, most cosmologists agree that number may be modest.

Do you know we (the taxpayers) own 14,000 vacant or unused buildings that cost us about $200 million a year in maintenance alone? It's my guess that when this real estate market turns around, we will make a killing!

So, what do you think of the title of my blog now?  It's Nuts out There!!! (with exclamation points!!!)

What is a comedian's most important asseTIMING!

 
In life, as in comedy, timing is everything. 

A costumed attendant working in the Canterbury Cathedral in Kent, England was approached by two tourists. "Are you a monk?" one of the women asked. 

"No," he explained, "I wear this robe as part of my job but I’m not a member of any religious order." 

"Then where are the monks?" asked the woman. 

The man replied, "Oh, there haven’t been any monks here since 1415." 

Hearing this, the woman looked at her watch and announced to her friend, "Betty, we missed the monks."

As the world speeds up, the pressure to act faster is pushing us all. Today, right or wrong, Twitter is the fastest way to reach anybody/everybody... and that is dangerous... unless we stick with known facts: #jones eating bacon & eggs NOW!, #roberto23 mmmm!

The Internet and social media push our "Fast" button. The news media--and you and me--have to be first, even if wrong. The Internet is always right, right? (A giant alligator consumed a Clydesdale horse, hooves and all, and the horse was found, still alive, in the dead gator's stomach. The photo proves it.)

Even the newly confirmed Higgs boson particle, which physicists say changes EVERYTHING we know about the universe, is faster. It exists only for a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a second! Hypothetical question: If a Higgs bosun particle is drowning, how long does it take for its entire life to flash before it?)

Malcolm Gladwell said in his bestseller Blink, first impressions are often right. But sometimes they are painfully wrong. A man I respect once told me, "If anyone ever asks for a decision now or never, choose never as the best answer of the moment."

Here's a 500-word story I wrote a while ago that speaks to timing. I kinda like it:

“A time machine?” Ray never really believed in stuff like that. “Get outta here, you crazy old fart!” And with that, the bummie in the train station walked away.

“Geeze. Never heard that one before.” Sometimes Ray had more patience. He even liked to ‘pull their chain,’ once in a while.  But when you just miss your train, you aren’t the same person for a minute or so. And Ray just hated to be late for anything.

“You live in this city all your life and nothing surprises you anymore. A time machine…” he smiled as his mind was already focusing on the next train to Grand Central.

There was a big commotion on the corner as Ray walked up to 42^nd Street… late. People were yelling and screaming… fist fights… police cars all over the place. “What’s going on,” Ray asked a man in a business suit with one sleeve ripped almost off as he ran past, giddy with delight.

“Some nutso over there was throwing out hundred-dollar bills by the bushel basket!” he hollered, holding up his fist full of money.  “I grabbed mine before some broad pushed me down me chasing her own c-notes!”

“Damn! Ten minutes earlier. I’d have been right there… if I hadn’t missed my train.”  

Ray almost never missed the 6:46, but the very next day, when he stopped to sip his coffee instead of slopping it down the front of his fresh white shirt, the doors closed in his face.

“This is getting to be a habit.”

On 42^nd  …finally, through the crowd, he saw the back of Madonna’s head as she got into her limo with some guy. When Ray heard she was looking for her biggest fan on the street to take on-stage that night for a special song she wrote, he shook his head. No one was a bigger Madonna fan than Ray. Knew the words to every song she ever wrote, sang or danced to. That should have been him.

“Twice! Just two times I miss my train and I’m odd man out. I never miss my train!”

Ray was five minutes early the next day. He wasn’t going to miss his 6:46 and let life pass him by again. “You let grass grow under your feet and you miss all the stuff that coulda been yours. Not today!” he vowed. “Not today.”

And he was right.

An ambulance and three police cars were screaming to the scene. “What’s going on?” asked a woman who was late arriving because she had just missed the 6:46.

“Guy just got crushed by a piano that flew off that truck when it was smashed by a semi. Poor bastard! He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  
Maybe Groucho Marx said it best: “Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.”

The purpose of this post? I just thought it was time.

This proves the end may be near for us humans... either way you look at it.

Let's face it... the next big technological breakthrough to affect our lives is artificial intelligence, or AI as we humans in the know call it. AI uses all that has been invented, discovered, learned, evolved and advanced since the first moment of human thought, to create a machine that actually thinks like a human... and boy, are we screwed.

Leave it to Google to advance into the future... its team of its geniuses created an 'artificial brain.' They strung together 16,000 computer processors to give it a brain-style 'neural network' with more than a billion connections! Is that WOW or not? Then they (figuratively) sat it down in front of a computer, fed it 10 million YouTube videos and said, "Go to it, you big, beautiful, more than human machine" (loosely paraphrased)... show us what the smarter than human machine can do.

And it did! It found:

CAT PICTURES... thousands and thousands of cat pictures. (True story.)

So that gives us just two conclusions... either we presume 'the brain' knows what we do all the time... or it is the predictor of what we would do if we were as smart as it is.

I see lose-lose no matter which way we look at it.

Well, lest I get left behind, here goes:

 

Arrg!  I accidentally got duckies in the picture. Oh well, I'm human. Oh no! It's happening already.

Remember this really great joke?

Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos

Sorry about the repeat, but it sets up a neat story about Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon Books. Here's that story again... but better:

In the olden (pre-Google) days, a guy rushing for his train in Grand Central Station in NYC is running late. He stops a stoop-shouldered, bedraggled little man huffing and puffing as he struggles to carry two enormous suitcases.

"Hey friend," asks our commuter, "can you tell me what time it is?"

The man stops, grateful to be able to put his monstrously heavy suitcases on the floor and rest. As he wipes sweat from his brow, he looks as his watch and tells the harried commuter, "It is exactly 5:17.26 1/2 pm on the 365,276th day, 4th hour, 38th minute and 52 1/2 second past the birth of Christ, a Thursday in leap year 0, when the sun warmed the day to 82 degrees fahrenheit or 27.777778 celcius."

"Wow!" said the commuter who was literally stopped in his tracks. "Your watch told you all of that?"

"Oh," says the watch owner, "my watch will tell you anything you would ever want to know. Is Elvis alive? Is O.J. Simpson the real killer? When will the Cubs win the pennant? Anything, really.

 "WOW! I've GOT to have one! Where can I buy a watch like that?"

"You can't," says the little man. "You see, I invented this watch and it knows EVERYTHING... but it is one of a kind and it is mine."

"But I'll give you anything for that watch," says the commuter.  "ANYTHING! I must have that watch."

After 5 minutes of intense haggling, the commuter convinces the watch inventor--with the help of $2 million dollars--to sell him the watch. Happily, he straps it on his wrist, says "Thank you so much," and starts to run in hopes of catching his train.

"Wait... WAIT," hollers the watchmaker, pointing to the enormous suitcases sitting on the floor, "Don't you want the batteries?"

See? It is better the second time... oh, sorry.

 

So how does that have anything to do with Jeff Bezos? Eerily, quit a lot. You see, Bezos is much more that Amazon, Zappos or on-line shopping. He has other stuff that has almost nothing to do with his $18.4 billion net worth (#26 on the Billionaire list, just ahead of Scrooge McDuck, I think).  

One of those other ventures--the one that triggered this joke lead-in-- is Bezos' $42 million, 200-foot-tall, "10,000 Year Clock" that he is building deep inside a mountain on the property he owns in Texas, not far from his commercial rocket-launch site. (Yeah, really.)  

And it is, as so many things in life are, eerie. A joke that is perhaps 50-years-old becomes real-life in another time... another era. Nothing disappears, it just regenerates in a different form. While this sounds like it might be another joke, the story is real.

Bezos told The Wall Street Journal,  "It's like a grandfather clock on a grander scale. When it's finished, it will play an elaborate cukoo-like sequence for the anniversary of every year, decade, century, millennium and 10 millennia. 

"People who visit the clock when it is finished years from now will also be treated to a daily chime sequence that has been choreographed by musician Brian Eno (got that crossword fans), who serves on the project's board."

"The reason I'm doing it," says Bezos, "is that it is a symbol of long-term thinking, and the idea of long-term responsibility... We humans have become so technologically sophisticated that in certain ways we're dangerous to ourselves. It's going to be increasingly important over time for humanity to take a longer-term view of its future."

Impressive... in a vague, symbolic- sort-of way. And so is the 48-year-old Bezos. 

But if the watch batteries in my story took two enormously big suitcases, how big will the batteries need to be for this 10,000-year clock? Pretty darned small in today's world is my guess. The constant, of course, is the quest for knowledge, place and perspective.

Next joke: A horse walks into a bar... 

What could possibly be bigger than the internet?

In case you hadn't noticed, the number of unique IP  (Internet Protocol) addresses--the numerical label assigned to each computer, printer, etc. using the internet--has expanded from 12-digits to 32. This means we have just jumped from 4.3 billion device identifiers to 340 undecillion... or 340 trillion trillion trillion for the simple minded. That is because of all the watches, cars, eyeglasses and other devices that will soon be on the web-enabled market.

Speaking of watches: Guy rushing for his train in Grand Central Station in NYC is running late. He stops a person huffing and puffing as he struggles to carry two huge suitcases that seem to stretch his arms to the floor.

"Hey friend," asks our commuter, "can you tell me what time it is?"

The man stops, grateful to be able to put his monstrously heavy suitcases on the floor and rest. As he wipes sweat from his brow, he looks as his watch and tells the harried commuter, "It is exactly 5:17.26 1/2 pm on the 365,276th day, 4th hour, 38th minute and 52 1/2 second past the birth of Christ, a Thursday in leap year 0, when the sun warmed the day to 82 degrees Fahrenheit or 27.777778 Celcius."

"Wow!" said the commuter who was literally stopped in his tracks. "Your watch told you all of that? Where can I buy a watch like that"

"Oh," says the watch owner, "you can't. You see, I invented this watch and it does EVERYTHING... but it is one of a kind and it is mine."

"But I'll give you anything for that watch," says the commuter.  "I must have that watch."

After 5 minutes of intense haggling, the commuter convinces the watch inventor--with the help of $2 million dollars--to sell him the watch. Happily, he straps it on his wrist, says "Thank you so much," and starts to run in hopes of catching his train.

"Wait... WAIT," hollers the watchmaker, pointing to the enormous suitcases sitting on the floor, "Don't you want the batteries?"

So... what could possible be bigger than the internet? Well, there is something that makes 340 undecillion seem like a walk across the street... and no, it is not our national debt.

Cosmologist at work

Cosmology (not to be confused with cosmetology, which is quite different) is the academic discipline that seeks to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large. And cosmologists (not to be confused with cosmetologists) have come together to believe we are but one of billions and billions of universes, many of which are billions of times bigger than our own. I guess that puts the Empire State Building in its place.

Cosmetologist at work

Our Voyager 1 spacecraft,  launched from earth in 1977, is nearing the edge of our known universe where the million-mile-per-hour solar winds slows to about 250,000 miles per hour. (Take that, Katrina!) Both Voyagers 1 and 2 have enough electrical power and thruster fuel to operate at least until 2020. By that time, Voyager 1 will be 12.4 billion miles from the Sun and Voyager 2 will be 10.5 billion miles away. Eventually, the Voyagers will pass other stars. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis. In some 296,000 years, Voyager 2 will pass 4.3 light years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky . The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.

No, I really didn't understand it either... but you have to be impressed by the numbers. I once heard that if, on earth, the size of our planet was represented by a grain of sand, there would not be enough earth to depict, in scale, our solar system. Now eternity... that's yet another big deal!

Yeah, I am impressed by big numbers. So there.

I shrewdly stayed out of the market...

Smartly chose NOT to buy IBM, Apple, Google, and a few other flash-in-the-pans. Too clever for that. I was waiting for the big one.

So call me a tycoon if you wish, (or a greater fool) I swam ahead of the tidal wave to buy one gazillion shares of Facebook... which is, so far, only a tad in the red (translation: an arm and a leg). But who couldn't be happier for Mark and Mindy... er, I mean Priscilla. If he can smile after loosing $6 billion (it would take the average person years to earn that much) then who am I to complain?  He can always fall back on Priscilla's income. She's a doctor, you know.

Always did say, "Buy high, sell low"... or is it the other way around? Us dyslexics thank our lucky rats and praise doG for being able to get it right. And thanks to Wiley Miller, creator of the Non Sequitur comic strip, for validating my retirement strategy... and offering more fun here.

                                                                  (Sign says "Take Advantage of my IPO!")

PS: The good news for all who bought Facebook... it probably will turn out great because I lied... I really didn't buy... just loved the cartoon... which means, you are golden because I'm what you call a negative indicator... my record of getting it wrong is near 100 %.

OK. If you are so smart, let's hear you use hoosegow in a sentence.

Don't you love that word? It's just fun enough to say without caring what it means. Words like anomolous, toupee, octopi, garibaldi and crotchety (a personal favorite)  just ripple off the tongue. Oh, I saw a hippopotamous the other day... it was hippopotamusing.

I could go on and on: orthogonalization, unctous, mysoginist, huffnagle, phlebotomist, wankle, fandango, oligopoly (no, not the game)...

But back to business... using hoosegow in a sentence:

"If I were younger, maybe I'd be spending time in the hoosegow." 'Big Hy' said that.

Well, if you knew what hoosegow is, then you are OLD! And maybe you watched too many of those black & white westerns starring Tom Mix or Roy Rogers or Gene Autry... and hoosegow would have been said by Gabby Hayes or Andy Devine or some other old but wise sidekick.

Hoosegow means slammer, stir, calaboose (another good one), pokey, can, clink, roach motel (you can check in but cannot check out)... get it?

"Big Hy"

Today's hero (and winner of my esteemed "Shinola" award) said hoosegow. He is 92-year-old Hyman Stachman, a World War II veteran who, according to the NYTimes, may be the most prolific bootlegger of Hollywood DVDs... and subsequently, their Enemy No. 1.

"Big Hy," as those who have received the benefits of his work affectionately referred to him, decided that he had to do something to keep busy after the death of his wife. So, having an affinity for those serving their country in far away places, decided that he could supply them with entertainment. "Big Hy" illegally copied more than 80,000 discs of movies a year  (The Hangover, Gran Torino, The Artist, Moneyball, The King's Speech, etc.)  for six years,  putting in 60-hour weeks dubbing, packaging and mailing them--over 4,000 boxes holding 84 discs--at his own expense ($11 per box), to the troops.

To be as 'clean' as possible, he kept none for himself.

And he was beloved. He received many, many letters of "Thanks, Big Hy... " you made a difference.

Then there is Rankin Paynter... a 77-year-old Kentuckian who earned another "Shinola." Rankin jumped at the opportunity to buy all the inventory of a local Kmart store that was closing. He turned the whole store into a 'blue-light special' paying  $200,000 for the everything in every size, color and style, which he donated to local charities for those in need. (Me? I would have kept all the Rollos for myself, but then I'm not Rankin.)

"We've all been put on this earth to help each other through," he said. "If I can help people through, I'm happy."

Isn't it a pleasure to read stuff like this? Blessings to you, Shinola winners. You make the world better, one starfish at a time.

If you are happy and you know it...

CLAP YOUR HANDS!

All over America, I can hear you. Yep, after languishing so long behind Australia, Norway and a lot of other Scandinavian countries that seem to do nothing but laugh and enjoy life (how dull is that?), we finally come in at NUMBER 3 in the most happy country contest!

Yep, we are still behind but I guess we showed Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada, Switzerland, and The Netherlands a thing or two.

This info comes from the Paris based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that, I think, uses an applause meter in making its momentous findings. Those Parisians are so darn clever.

I was wondering why we have, all of a sudden, become happier--in relation to everyone else, that is. Is it because we are the home of Facebook, or we have Saturday Night Live or Justin Bieber, or Jennifer Aniston is finally happy, or the Kardashians are getting it together, or a million other great reasons?  I'm guessing it is for all of those and more.

Maybe the rankings were just from a show of hands? Hey America, if you are happier than last time we asked, raise your hands--which they actually do to vote in Appenzell, Switzerland, as they have done for the last 700 years--then get those hands up.

Get your act together America... we have two spots to climb before we reach the top. So smile every chance you get and, of course, laugh at all my jokes.

Test joke: Guy goes to the doctor and the doctor says, sadly, "You only have six weeks to live."

 Guy takes this very hard... "Doctor, doctor," he pleads, "isn't there anything I can do?"

"Well," says the doc, "you could take two or three mud baths a day."

"Oh, doctor... will that cure me?"

"No, but it will help you get used to the dirt."

So... are we gaining or loosing? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

Oh America, you are so helpless!

Even more proof we humans are doomed! (scroll down to see last post and catch up on the panic.)

So, I think I made my case (scroll down to previous post) that there is a conspiracy underway to eliminate humans altogether. Today's most aggressive trend is to eliminate jockeys. Why? Because it is a dangerous profession and those who know horses say jockeys only add 10 percent to the horse's effort. Oh yeah. You want the truth? YOU WANT THE TRUTH? YOU COULDN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

None-the-less, and calmly stated--panic is the last thing we need-- more proof in the continuing saga to eliminate humans altogether (Those damn aliens!) If these secret photos don't spell the end to jockeys, I don't know what does.

Can't you just see Simba riding atop the next Derby winner?

Or Michael Jackson... so now we are using the dead against us too.

Or the Aliens themselves.

See what I mean... secret alien jockey training camp

Nah... to obvious when bears can do the job just as well.

I think I made my point.

So be on the lookout for all the ways we humans are being s-l-o-w-l-y being eliminated. Next thing you know, someone will be trying to make a car that drives itself.

Oh shit!

PROOF! "They" are trying to get rid of us... or, more calmly stated: Robots are taking over the world!

If you read Seabiscuit... or saw the movie, you know the hell some jockeys have to go through--even discounting the riding injuries or deaths--just to keep their dangerous jobs. Now a Wall Street Journal feature asks, "Do Horse Races Really Need Jockeys?" Hmm? I think there may be more to this story than meets the eye.

Don't you see what's happening here folks?

No more jockeys, huh? 

Before that, it was automated telephone answering trees that eliminated operators: "Please listen carefully as some of our menu choices have recently changed."

Then it was Watson, IBM's foray into IA (Artificial Intelligence), where machine beat man at Jeopardy. (Just between you and me, I think Alec Trebek is a robot too... or Canadian.)

So, if we don't need jockeys, don't need operators, don't need contestants...  are we humans slowly being phased out by our jealous alternative universe, aliens, or a mysterious super power? I wouldn't put it passed them. Zap! We're gone... and they (whoever "they" is) step in and enjoy our television shows, fully stocked Walmarts and all the fast food "their" (little) hearts' desire. Boy, have "they" got it good.

OK. We all know about the telephone trees and Watson on Jeopardy. Now proof positive... the elimination of human jockeys is being tested as we talk... right under our noses!

Ooops! Excuse me. Bad example.

 

So do you get the picture? Unless we step in and stop this RIGHT NOW, I'm afraid we are gone in the long haul... unless... UNLESS we can talk some sense into them.

Remember Space Odyssey 2001... I think we can reason with them.

 

Oh, yeah. I forgot.

Just when we discover that the Mayan calendar goes beyond 2012 (Whew to that!), we have to worry about those damn robots. Oh well... as my mom used to say, "Into each life a little rain must fall."

Buy low, sell high... or is it the other way around? I always get this confused.

I bought a bass boat once because I thought I liked to fish. I found that I did... only just 'sort of. ' So I decided to sell.

A few years back, when I wanted a bass boat so bad I could just 'taste it,' I drove a hard bargain. The guy wanted $4500 for this gem... said it was worth every penny and a lot more. "Hasn't sunk once," was his big claim.

I, smiling knowingly, countered: "Ever fish around icebergs?"

He, unsmiling, started to walk slowly back to his car, and said... nothing.

I, playing cool as always and looking quite un-anxious as I ran after him waving my arms in the air, said, in a high-pitched voice breaking with emotion, "I'll give you $4400 and not a penny more."

He turned to me and, crossing his arms across his chest, which I know is a sign of faked confidence, said, "$4495."

After wiping away the tear running down my cheek, I stilled my beating heart and reacted calmly to show him that I had won this battle. "I'll take it... please."

(Note to reader: Always be polite. I learned that early-on from a cartoon series called 'Goofus and Gallant' in my Boy's Life Magazine.

A few weeks ago, I thought... "pay-back time" as I posted my little-used bass boat on Craig's list for just $3000--depreciation, you know. I couldn't adopt his old ploy. My bass boat had actually sunk... twice.. with no loss of life I'm happy to report. And no, I was not fishing among icebergs! No more questions.

Very soon, my first 'fish  ; -)' came knocking... and I s-l-o-w-l-y started 'reeling him in.'

"Hmm... " he said eying my boat as he walked around it while scratching his chin. "Ever sink?"

"Been in the water ever since I bought it," I truthfully said.

"Hmm... " he said some more.

Well, I won't bore you with details of the intense interaction and class 'A' salesmanship I threw at him. Needless to say, he was comfortably in the palm of my hand. (He later confessed to me that I had him at Titanic.) This, subsequently, brought about my second happiest boating moment... I sold it on the spot. Best $2000 (every sucker needs a break) I ever earned.

This entire shrewdness on my part, not counting a repair here or there or here or there or here or there, netted me enough to easily pay for all my worms. And what true fisherman wouldn't be happy to figure it only cost about $500 per pound per fish?

OK. Truth is, I had to sell... I just couldn't afford to catch more fish.

So what am I going to do with my windfall? Well, I did see this sculpture I might buy. Memo to self: Be cool. Act like you don't want it... then POUNCE! (It's called 'Walking Man' by some guy... Alberto Giacometti.) Rumor has it that it recently sold for $104.3 million... but I think I can get it from that guy (who is probably suffering from buyer's remorse) for a lot less than that. It just might fill the hole in my heart from the loss of my bass boat.

Proof: Art is fashion and fashion is art

I was here last week (in Louisville, KY) and enjoyed a good art show on a beautiful day. Though the show was not judged or juried,  there were, as you would guess, many wonderful things to enjoy.

I found my favorite where I would least expect it to be... in the stall of a creative artist who uses odd scrap material in fun ways that come out, as you can see, not clunky at all. Well, if you have the talent and imagination, any medium is fair game to enthrall.

So, as one might say in Paris (disclaimer to avoid confusion: Louisville is not Paris): Voila!

If you look closely, you will see that the material is... er, license plates... Kentucky license plates to be exact. And the artist is a talented local, Joel Pinkerton.

This really neat 'piece' is full size, perhaps a six in my imaged eye, with a beautiful contour and style that would look nicely in place on an attractive (tough-skinned) blond... with an appropriate, large brimmed Kentucky Derby hat, of course, (like the one Paris--not Louisville--Hilton is wearing) at the first of horse racing's Triple Crown races this weekend. But that's another story.

 Kentucky Derby-ish type Hat

 

 

 

 

I do think this fits Sophia Loren's ideal: A woman's dress should be like a barbed wire fence: serving it's purpose without obstructing the view.

And it offers a ready-made, slightly modified, pick-up line:  Are you from Tennessee Kentucky because you are the only ten I see. (Hmm... didn't work for me either.)



And while I am talking fashion and art,  It's my darlin , a Seattle street fashion blog is one of my favorites because I love Seattle and I love trendy. (Aside: the Seattle Times has just picked this up for it's Sunday magazine.)
      

"You can fool some of the people all of the time... "

... Or, "There is a sucker born every minute." Either way, I guess I fit in both categories because, for the fifth or sixth time in my life, I paid my money to visit a Ripley's Believe it or Not museum... this one in St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the United States. So I could also say,  "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

I just keep doing what got me here in the first place...  becoming expert in all the things that don't matter, remembering all the stuff that doesn't count, saying "Gee whiz, look at that," at almost everything that is amazing and in general, stumbling through life reasonably content that I can handle myself at any Trivial Pursuit challenge.

Hmm... on second thought, who wouldn't want to know how many legs an elephant has? Obviously, an elephant has four... er, six... I mean eight legs, one trunk and no tail... approximately. Reminds me of an old joke: What is the difference between a saloon and an elephant's fart? One is a bar room and the other is a BARROOM! (I just threw that joke in so you wouldn't feel reading this post is a just waste of time. I like to call it 'value added.')

Then there is the guy from Pennsylvania who managed to eat his way through a 15-lb hamburger  in just 4 hours 39 minutes... believe it or not! Or that guy with a candle growing out of his head, or Robert Wadlow, the tallest person ever, at 8'-11"... or Chandra Bahadur Dangi, just 22 inches short. All I can tell you is that I know who I want on MY basketball team.

But the thing that always gets me is the tunnel optical illusion... you know, the one where the walls and ceiling revolve around you as you walk through on a floor that does not move. If you can keep from feeling you the one being rotated, then you can probably do a better ballet pirouette 'on pointe' than me too.

I guess I have proved my point. Ripley's is just one amazing thing after another... kind of like a good wax museum, right? (And doesn't everyone have their picture taken as the Pope canonizes them... or standing beside Angelina Jolee? )... everyone... anyone?

 OK, I'll just sign my name and be out of here.

Mamma's House Rules

... And mamma is always right!

One last, important thing my mom taught me about living (and I learned it--a little bit)... in any hardship, richer or poorer, through gout and shingles, broken bones and old age, sad or disappointed... she would always shrug her shoulders, remind herself of what she had to be thankful for and say:

"Into each life, a little rain must fall."

Life Immortal and Death... on the Titanic and Otherwise

It was the biggest ocean liner ever built, at the time... and it was UNSINKABLE! Oh yeah? Well, who's fault was that anyway? The Captain's, of course, because they always get the blame.

May we have a word, Captain Smith?

Glug, glug, glug. (I know... not funny.)

But current science has pointed to God, of all people... or rather the cosmos. (Same difference, yes?)

It has been 100 years, to the month (time flies, doesn't it?) since that tragedy. But just recently, experts have determined a cosmic convergence was actually a co-conspirator. On January 4, 1912, the sun and the moon were in perfect alignment. But what made this even more gravitationally effective is that the moon, in its oscillating orbit, was closer to the earth than any time in the last 1,400 years. As icing on the cake, the earth was at its closest annual proximity to the sun. The tides were exceptional. Ya follow?

The rising sea, it is now theorized, allowed older bergs that had been grounded in the shallow waters off Labrador and Newfoundland, to float loose and enter the busy shipping lanes acting like natural land mines. 1,517 people lost their lives that night.


Now, on to immortality, or, as Buzz Lightyear might say, "To infinity and beyond."  Have you read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot? Here's a review called Eternal Life by Lisa Margonelli that is a great synopsis:

"From the very beginning there was something uncanny about the cancer cells on Henrietta Lacks’s cervix. Even before killing Lacks herself in 1951, they took on a life of their own. Removed during a biopsy and cultured without her permission, the HeLa cells (named from the first two letters of her first and last names) reproduced boisterously in a lab at Johns Hopkins — the first human cells ever to do so. HeLa became an instant biological celebrity, traveling to research labs all over the world. Meanwhile Lacks, a vivacious 31-year-old African-American who had once been a tobacco farmer, tended her five children and endured scarring radiation treatments in the hospital’s “colored” ward.

"After Henrietta Lacks’s death, HeLa went viral, so to speak, becoming the godmother of virology and then biotech, benefiting practically anyone who’s ever taken a pill stronger than aspirin. Scientists have grown some 50 million metric tons of her cells, and you can get some for yourself simply by calling an 800 number. HeLa has helped build thousands of careers, not to mention more than 60,000 scientific studies, with nearly 10 more being published every day, revealing the secrets of everything from aging and cancer to mosquito mating and the cellular effects of working in sewers.

"HeLa is so outrageously robust that if one cell lands in a petri dish, it proceeds to take over. And so, like any good celebrity, HeLa had a scandal: In 1966 it became clear that HeLa had contaminated hundreds of cell lines, destroying research as far away as Russia. By 1973, when Lacks’s children were shocked to learn that their mother’s cells were still alive, HeLa had already been to outer space."

If this sounds interesting to you, it is worth your time. We not only owe Henrietta for much more than we realize, her cells are the closest thing to immortality that we have... so far. 

Yet another example of  the awsome power of one.

And finally, The Supreme Court has the task of determining if a baby, conceived by deposited sperm cells 18 months after the death of the father, would be considered eligible for Social Security.  In other words, is their life after death? Does posthumous conception count ? Uncle Sam will soon tell us.

There are some things that make sense... then there is the real world

Natural gas is abundant in Colorado... ask anyone who has eaten beans with a friend who just happens to have a lighter. But enough of that. I mean the the natural gas kind that comes from the ground.

There is this woman, says a reporter, "who has so much natural gas in her water supply that she can turn on a faucet, flick a lighter and watch flames shoot up from the sink (so she) tells authorities that she fears for her life. See," says the reporter, "this is the problem with Americans today. All they do is whine, whine, whine. Even more egregious is that the woman is being billed for several cubic feet of natural gas every time she brushes her teeth."

 In a small Italian village near Naples, the mayor has decreed that, because his village has no cemetery--and is feuding with a neighboring village that does, it is against the law to die in Falciano del Massico. "Unfortunately," said the mayor, "two elderly citizens disobeyed." Put your troubled mind at ease, the city won't prosecute. Those law-breakers however, still have to answer to 'a Higher Power.' However, if this thing works, just think of the tourism implications. Take that Lourdes.

Today's puzzler: Tell me the 10-letter name that includes the letters zkzkwrys. No, it really is a name. Hint: the two missing letters are vowels... and the y does not go at the end. Another hint: be 'un'hooked on phonics. Final hint: the name is pronounced shashefski. Yep. Duke Basketball coach Mike Kryzewski is the one that even the best spell-checker programs always underline in red. Some call him "Coach K," even though the "K"sounds like a "shu." (Is that what they teach at Duke?) UNC and NCState fans, in their moments of disgust, refer to him as 'The Mole." I wonder where they get that?


Meanwhile, the mayor of Buford, Wyo. has decided to sell the town between Cheyenne and Laramie  to the highest bidder. How do the Bufordians feel about that? Well, it is unanimously okay. The town only has a population of one... His Honor.

And finally, all it takes is a little gall and you can (try) to get away with anything:

• An accused murderer is suing the couple he held hostage while hiding in their home. He wants his victims to pay him $235,000. He says they breached their oral contract to stay put by escaping as he slept, "resulting in my being shot in the back by authorities."
• The two thieves who stole an Oregon man's car and later crashed it while driving drunk, are suing the owner. They say they wouldn't have been injured if they weren't driving his car. Well, they are right, you know.
• A New York City convict is asking $1 million from prison officials because they had no green jumpsuits to fit his size 7X, 400-pound body. Says he suffered emotional damage by spending eight months in jail wearing the same T-shirt and sweat pants--washed occasionally, I presume. Otherwise, give him the money. 

Here's what I think about that:

Thinking... thinking... thinking. Hmm: 

 I think records are made to be broken... but come on now! A recent scientific study seemed to show the speed of light--186,000 miles per second-- a physical absolute proven in 1905 by Albert E (=mc2) Einstein, is a wrong! Like the four-minute-mile, Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak or Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game, some records seem made to stand, forever out of reach... until proven they aren't.

Well, take that Einstein... the speed of light record is no more... or is it? Tests did show an atom-like particle called a neutrino was a few feet per second faster than what was believed to be the physical speed limit. Was Einstein disgraced? Absolutely not! When the test figures were checked, it seems the geniuses who thought they were smarter than Einstein had forgotten to carry the 2 in their addition of data. So the winner and still champ is... ta dah... Albert "the incredible" Einstein. Nice goin' Al.

I also think...

... that slavery is a terrible scar on mankind. But when a group seeking to free the whales at Sea World filed suit on the whale's behalf, claiming constitutional protection against slavery, a mean-spirited judge said the 13th amendment applies only to humans. (Can Sea World be so bad when it has a playground for children called Shamu’s Happy Harbor?)

Still thinking...

I think that it is incredible that we have finally reached Lake Vostok, a never-before seen freshwater lake that lies 2.2 miles below the glacial surface of Antarctica. This treasure is expected to provide many clues about long ago life on earth. I think it is even more incredible that it took a the scientists 10 years of continual drilling to reach the lake. Sounds exactly like my dentist when I was a kid.

And...

I think is is amazing that a Masai warrior with a smartphone on Google has access to more information than the president of the United States did just 15 years ago. What does that tell us about Bill Clinton?

 
But then...

I think the Florida senate is crazy. By a 37-1 margin, it voted to legalize no-hands bike riding. Don't they realize how dangerous that could be? (Oh, hey... I get it now.)




 And finally...

I think congratulations are in order to us, the world. We are making real progress in better ways to kill more people. The pros at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have invented a bullet that directs itself to a target like a tiny guided missile. While flying through the air, it can make as many as 30 corrections a second to kill someone more than a mile away. Now that's progress!