Things You Won't Regret When You're Older

Last month I ran across a Buzzfeed article called 27 Things You Won't Regret When You're Older. I thought it was an intriguing topic, but that 27 is an awfully large number of things to deal with all at once. Here's my pared-down version of that list, with the usual commentary:

Turning Off Your Phone When You're At Dinner. Mealtime should be a chance to enjoy the company of whomever you're with ... not a time to spend hunched over the phone. Of course, when Agnes and I eat at home by ourselves, we're almost always reading, so I guess I shouldn't talk too loudly.

Waking Up Early and Getting Stuff Done. One of the things I inherited from my father is an internal clock that gets me up at the crack of dawn. I am absolutely a morning person, and think the morning is the very best part of the day. As I get older, I find that I enjoy sleeping in on weekends ... but to me, "sleeping in" is pretty much anything after about 6 AM.

Not Going to Your High School Reunion. I disagree with this one. The caption in the original article said, "Unless you had the very best time in high school, don’t bother. You’ll keep in touch with the people who mattered, and you won’t with the ones who didn’t. No awkward dance party will change that." Once we leave high school, we spread to the four winds and lose touch with each other, and time gives us a perspective that helps us to make friends we missed the first time around. Of course, you still run into some of those ass clowns that made your life hell, but they're fewer than you remember ... and time usually hasn't been good to them, heh, heh, heh.

Telling Your Family How Much They Mean to You As Often As You Can. You'll be dead for a long, long time ... you need to share the love before it's too late.

Keeping a Photo Album Filled with Your Favorite Moments. I've got a great collection of pictures on my iPad that's the equivalent of the stereotypical pushy grandparents' photo album. It's not just pictures of the children and grandchildren, but of moments from my life that mean something to me. Just the thing when you run across an old friend and need a way to organize many years of catching up.

And ...

Expressing Yourself Creatively in Some Way. Everybody should be creative. Agnes makes quilts, does cross-stitching, works in stained glass, does beautiful matting and framing, and does amazing things with PhotoShop. I blog, enjoy photography, and write world-class letters*. We dance together and collaborate on cooking mean gourmet meals. If you can't be creative, you're nothing more than a sponge sucking up oxygen that could be better used growing trees.

What about you? What are the things you don't think you'll regret when you grow up? Leave a comment.

Have a good day. Life's too short for regrets.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* He said, modestly.

Past Exonerative

If you aren't a person with a degree in linguistics, the uses of the passive and active voice probably aren't something you spend too much time thinking about. But that's why you have me.

The difference between the active and passive voices involves the identification of who or what performs the action being described, as in this simple example:

"Mary won the Nobel Prize for Physics" is a sentence in the active voice. It's clear that Mary won something, and what that something was. On the other hand, "The Nobel Prize for Physics was won by Mary" is a sentence in the passive voice. In this version of the sentence, we're stressing the importance of the prize by putting it up front, before mention of Mary.

Most of the time, the active voice is preferable, because it clearly denotes who took what action. But sometimes, particularly in the worlds of politics, news reporting, and the avoidance of lawsuits, we don't always want to specify who did what. Consider this example:

I made a mistake (active voice).
Mistakes were made (passive voice).

In the second sentence above, who was responsible for the mistake? We don't know. Use of the passive voice in this case allows the speaker to admit that something went wrong without admitting who was responsible. For this reason, use of the passive voice in admitting wrongdoing has been called the "past exonerative tense," and is much beloved of politicians and celebrities who find it necessary to sort of apologize for something without actually doing so.

I thought about the whole passive voice thing yesterday when I read this article in the Washington Post: The Curious Grammar of Police Shootings. The article, by Washington Post blogger Radley Balko, looks at the way in which police departments report incidents in which their officers shot people - whether on purpose or by accident. It's fascinating.

First of all, Mr Balko points out that in police news releases, police officers never actually shoot anyone. There is, instead, an "officer-involved shooting." He notes that in many reports, the actions of the alleged criminal are presented in the active voice, while those of the police officers involved are presented in the passive ("When the suspect continued to advance on the officer while refusing to comply with his repeated commands, an officer-involved shooting occurred"). 

The best (if I can use that adjective in this context) example Mr Balko cites is this one, taken from the description of an incident in Georgia by a local television station:

"... a deputy, who was not named, was approaching the property when a dog ran up to him. The deputy’s gun fired one shot, missing the dog and hitting the child. It was not clear if the gun was accidentally fired by the deputy."

As Mr Balko points out, guns don't usually go off without someone pulling a trigger. And note the use of the passive voice:

"It was not clear if the gun was actually fired by the deputy" says more or less the same thing as "It was not clear if the deputy actually fired the gun," but it doesn't sound as if the deputy actually did anything wrong.

The point here isn't to cast aspersions on police officers, but to point out how the language can be used obscure the truth and blur responsibility for one's actions. 

The past exonerative ... the official tense of Congress and the media.

You are passively wished by me a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Color Coding

Yesterday, Angel put up an interesting post that discussed the signals (perhaps unwitting, perhaps not) a woman sends when she wears red or pink clothing. The idea is that she may be advertising her sexual availability or her period of prime fertility by her choice of clothing color, in much the same way that some female animals change the color of their external genitalia to signal that they are in their fertile period ("in heat," as the common expression goes). I'm thinking that Chris deBurgh may have had a hot date in mind when he sang this song ...

The whole subject of color is interesting, and has applicability far beyond the examples Angel provided in her post. As I noted in the comment I left, red is often considered a "power color" (as in a man's wear of a red tie with a gray suit) that supposedly establishes dominance - possibly hinting at a willingness to spill blood*. Red also is the traditional color of warning and danger. It may have been no accident that the heroine of "Gone with the Wind" was named Scarlet.

Other colors send signals as well: for example, black often symbolizes mystery, death, or mourning in western cultures. White sends that message in China, while in western cultures white denotes purity or chastity. Consider this song by Uriah Heep ...

We use the symbology of color in every aspect of our lives. Boys tend to be associated with blue; girls with pink. Cowards are yellow. People are green with envy. When we are depressed, we're blue ...

... but when we're angry, we see red. When we're healthy, we're in the pink.

In religion, green is the color associated with Islam.

In politics, we've divided ourselves into red and blue factions

In my own case, being color-blind (actually, color-deficient) makes life interesting. I can usually tell colors apart with no trouble if they're different enough ... my problem is with distinguishing dark colors or pastels from each other. Dark Blue, dark brown, and black look pretty much the same to me, as do all pastel shades. I've told you before about how I always try to have Agnes check over my clothes each evening so I won't look too garish at work the next day. Unfortunately, she isn't always there to save me from myself.

A while back, we needed new protective covers for our iPads, and she sent me to the store to buy them. She wanted a red one, which I found successfully, but the bright yellow one I thought that I'd bought for myself turned out to be green, or so I'm told. It still looks pretty yellow to me.

Oh, well ... how about we wrap up this discussion of colors with a little something from Petula Clark?

Have a good day. Don't be blue. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* There's an old joke about two generals surveying the field before a major battle. The first general turns to his orderly and says, "Bring me my red shirt!" The other general asks him why he wants to wear a red shirt, and the first man explains that a red shirt will help hide the blood if he gets wounded, so that his men won't lose heart. The second general thinks about this, then turns to his orderly and says, "Bring me my brown pants!"

Ass Clown of the Month for July - Part 2

The best-laid plans ...

It was only a few days ago that I announced my plan to begin a new system for designating recipients of the Ass Clown of the Month Award, announcing the award recipients every other Friday, alternating with the Great Moments in Editing feature ...

... and here I am, already violating my new system. I would have liked to wait to make this announcement, but I really don't want two weeks to to pass before giving due dishonor to this amazingly well-qualified nominee, brought to my attention by my daughter, who was quick to notice the level of award-winning ass clownery represented by this - ready for this one? - elected official.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the second Ass Clown of the Month Award for July, 2014 is presented to

Kentucky State Senator Brandon Smith

In a speech last week condemning the Obama administration’s new Environmental Protection Agency carbon emission regulations, Senator Smith* (who also owns a mining company called Mohawk Energy) claimed that man-made climate change is scientifically implausible because Mars and Earth are exactly the same temperature. In his speech, Senator Smith said:

"As you [an official of the Kentucky Energy & Environment Cabinet] sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I won’t get into the debate about climate change but I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of."

Senator Smith has obviously not checked his information with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which notes that the average temperature on Earth is 57 degrees Fahrenheit, while the average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees Fahrenheit ... a difference of 138 degrees. You can check out the current weather on Mars here**.

For his almost unbelievable example of scientific illiteracy and utter ignorance of the science of climate change, Kentucky State Senator Brandon Smith is designated as our second Ass Clown of the Month for July, 2014.

Have a good day. Be careful who you vote for.

Bilbo

* Does it surprise you that he's a Republican?

** Please pass the information to Senator Smith.

Poetry Sunday

I have often reflected that I've been a much better grandfather than I was a father. I didn't get to see my sons grow up, but that didn't mean that I didn't think about them all the time and wonder about their adventures and the advice I might have given them before it was too late and they had all the advice they needed. This poem by Micheal Milburn talks about some of the things I might have said if I'd had the chance ...

To My Son's Girlfriend

by Michael Milburn

I'm tempted to ask
what you see in him.
Although you probably
see the good that I see
I wonder if you realize
how much he is my handiwork,
or which of the qualities
you daydream about in class
are the ones that I take pride in,
his cordiality, for example,
or love of silliness.

It's uncomfortable for me
to think of anyone else
loving him the way I do,
possessing him in a way
that only his mother and I
have ever possessed him,
and I can't deny being jealous,
not so much reluctant
to share or relinquish him
as resolved to remind you
that he's been around
longer than your love,
under construction if you will,
and that each cute trait
or whatever occurs to you
when you hear his name
I feel proprietary about,
like a woodworker
who makes a table
intending to sell it
but prays that no buyer
will recognize its worth.


Those of you who have sons ... or daughters ... will understand.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

I don't know about you, but I'm ready for the cartoons after this past week ...

Employees cleaning out an unused storage room at the National Institutes of Health discovered six forgotten vials which proved to contain live smallpox vaccine; House Speaker John Boehner blamed the ongoing immigration crisis at the nation's southern border on President Obama and said that Republicans - who have yet to provide their own solution - are unlikely to provide the funds the president has requested to address the problem; a circuit court judge in Florida voided the state's congressional map, citing a "secret, organized campaign" by Republican operatives that "made a mockery of the Legislature's transparent and open process of redistricting;" a powerful earthquake struck off the northern coast of Japan, near the Fukushima nuclear power plant that was devastated by an earlier earthquake and tsunami; and a fireball spotted in the skies over Australia turned out to be a Russian rocket body that burned up on reentering the atmosphere.

In honor of our Congress ... the best that money can buy* ... today's collection of theme cartoons deals with clowns ...

So, a clown goes into a bar ...

My high school reunion was something like this ...

You have to clean up after your pet, right? ...

Clowns with auto trouble ...

And clowns with new car issues ...

And yet another take on the old lots-of-clowns-in-a-tiny-car joke ...

Jesters are clowns too, right? ...

I often feel this way when I have to shell out for tech support ...

We're Number ... uh ... never mind ...

Finally, for those of you who just can't stand separation from your smart phones ...

And so swirls another week down the drain of history. I hope this selection of cartoons has helped you recover from the misery of waiting in vain for Congress to do something besides point fingers and file stupid, grandstanding lawsuits. And since you'll have to keep on waiting, I'll be back next week with more cartoons. God knows you'll need them.

Have a good day and a great weekend. Come back tomorrow for Poetry Sunday.

Bilbo

* Which isn't saying a lot, is it?

Ass Clown of the Month for July - Part 1

As you saw last month, my usual plan of designating an Ass Clown of the Month was derailed by the unusually large number of candidates for the award, which led me to name not just one, but two Ass Clowns of the Month for June. At the suggestion of my old friend, regular reader, and fellow blogger Gonzo Dave, I have decided to revamp the award system and go to a bi-monthly award, alternating on Fridays with the Great Moments in Editing feature. I think this is a good plan that will give more opportunities to dishonor deserving ass clowns while still leaving the option to provide spot awards as needed (and boy, does it sometimes look as if it's needed).

With this in mind, I call for a roll of drums and a 21-raspberry salute to our first Ass Clown of the Month for July, 2014 -

The United States Supreme Court

Because of some of its more recent decisions which have essentially delivered our electoral system to the highest bidder (Citizens United and McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission), confirmed that the right to harass and berate women seeking medical attention is more important than those women's right to privacy and safety (McCullen v Coakley), and granted personhood and religious rights to corporations (Hobby Lobby), the Supreme Court has clearly shown that the rights of big business and the interests of corporations are more important than those of individuals, and that it unconstitutionally supports the intrusion of specific religious beliefs into the law. This, of course, comes on the heels of past decisions which expanded the power of eminent domain to include protection of business interests over private property (Kelo v City of New London) and struck down laws attempting to control the proliferation of guns on the streets of Washington, DC (District of Columbia v Heller).

Because of its incredible ability to deliver bizarre decisions cloaked in incomprehensible legal rhetoric and questionable constitutional backing*, the US Supreme Court is awarded the first Ass Clown of the Month award for July of 2014.

Have a good day. Come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday ... you'll need it.

Bilbo

* At least in my humble opinion.

Are You Going to Wear That?

I do not lay claim to being a paragon of male fashion. Like most men, I'm comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt, hate to wear a tie unless I have to, and - because I'm pretty color-blind - my clothes don't always match. Agnes usually vets my wardrobe for me each evening when I set out my clothes for work, and I've grown accustomed to the arch of an eyebrow and the accompanying question, "Are you going to wear that?"

I generally take her advice, because she has a far better sense of style than I, and because she can tell colors apart that I can't, but there are some things I'm just not willing to compromise on. Like socks.

When I was on active duty in the Air Force and wore a uniform every day, I never had to worry about matching colors ... every day was blue shirt, blue pants, blue tie, black socks, and black shoes. Heaven on earth for a guy with defective color vision. But let me tell you about the socks ...

Agnes's mother enjoyed knitting, and made a lot of great things for us. For me, she made socks. Lots of socks. For the whole time I was in the Air Force, about twice a year she'd send me a big box full of beautiful, hand-knitted, black wool socks, suitable for wear with my uniform, and with anything else that wasn't ... say ... brown. I almost never had to buy socks.

When I retired from the Air Force and began working in the civilian economy, Mom suddenly realized that there were now new horizons of sartorial possibility. I could wear things other than blue, which meant that I could wear socks other than black. And so it was that the boxes began arriving with some very ... interesting ... socks.

I believe that she scoured the stores of her town in search of the wildest, most garish yarns she could find. I started getting socks that were blue with yellow flashes, red shot with blue and green, green with red and purple highlights, and just about anything else you can imagine. None of them came close to matching anything in my wardrobe. So I figured, what the heck?, and decided that I'd just wear whatever socks came out of the drawer first, regardless of whatever else I was wearing.

I quickly became known as "the guy with the socks." People I met at conferences might not remember my name, but they remembered I was "the guy with the socks," and I got used to people walking up to me and asking to see my socks. It was fame of a sort.

One time I had to make a formal presentation of a project I'd been working on to a murder board of retired senior generals. For the occasion, I wore my best double-vested sober gray suit with power tie, black shoes, and the loudest socks I had ... which was saying something. They were bright red, shot with bolts of yellow and orange, and were hard to look at without squinting.

I spent all morning presenting my project and answering questions from the assembled demigods, and eventually we broke for lunch. As we were walking through the halls of the Pentagon to the dining room, the chairman of the panel - a retired four-star general - fell back to walk next to me. He threw an arm around my shoulders, leaned in close, and whispered, "Bilbo, I've just got to ask you ... where did you get those damn socks?"

In the end, they endorsed my project, but I never knew whether it was because of the excellence of my analysis (which, of course, it was), or because they had to get away from my shrieking socks.

I'll take success where I can get it.

Have a good day. Wear what you want. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo, aka "The Guy with the Socks"

Bilbo's Plan for Peace in the Middle East

There's an old joke about a man who finds a bottle on the beach, rubs it, and releases a genie who gives him one wish. The fellow thinks for a moment, then says, "I've always wanted to go to Hawaii, but I don't like to fly and I hate ships. I'd like you to build a bridge to Hawaii for me." The genie looks at him in amazement. "Are you nuts?," he asked. Do you know how much concrete and steel I'd have to come up with to build a bridge like that? How much asphalt? I'm sorry, it can't be done. Pick something else." The man thinks for a moment and says, "Teach me how to understand women." The genie looks him in the eye and says, "Would you like two lanes on that bridge, or four?"

Yes, Dear Readers, some things are just about impossible: things like responsible, statesmanlike behavior in Congress; a decent American-built car; gentle and forgiving jihadists; reasonable and accommodating Chinese real estate claims in the South China Sea ... and peace in the Middle East.

You may recall that I have already published a comprehensive, workable plan for immigration reform, one that was ignored by every elected official to whom I offered it. But I am undeterred in my desire to improve the world, and so I have decided to offer yet another brilliant plan - this one to achieve peace in the Middle East.

It's actually very simple, and there are only three steps:

1. Build a wall 150 feet high and 75 feet thick around the entire Middle East (Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Syria, Oman, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, and anything ending in "-stan").

2. Fill the area thus enclosed up to the top with sand.

3. Start over.

Of course, I may need to track down that genie to get a little construction help, but my plan is still more likely to work than any other.

I'm available at any time to fly to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

Have a good day. What's your plan? More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Point Shaving of an Entirely Different Sort

Yesterday I was in a bit of a funk, being completely overwhelmed by my outrage at our political classes, and felt the need to engage in a full-scale rant of the sort I haven't done for a while. But now that I've gotten it out of my system, perhaps we can move on to other, more interesting (if offbeat) things.

You may be familiar with the concept of "point shaving," the system of cheating on sporting events in which, in exchange for a bribe, one or more players agree to ensure that their team will not "cover the point spread" - that is, that the team will run up a score that is outside the margin predicted by the oddsmakers. The gambler then wagers against the bribed team and is guaranteed to win.

Point shaving as such doesn't matter very much to me, as I never bet on sporting events, but I ran across an article the other day that brings a whole new meaning to the term "point shaving" - University Offers Female Students Extra Credit for Not Shaving Their Armpits.

It seems that Arizona State University professor Breanne Fahs, who teaches Women and Gender Studies, challenged her students to explore the differences in gender expectations by having her female students stop shaving their legs and underarms for the ten-week term, and keep a journal which documented the reactions they received. Male students in the class got a somewhat different assignment: they were to shave their entire body from the neck down and keep a similar journal. The point was to allow the
students to reflect on gender inequality as reflected in how society reacts to women with body hair and men without. Both the male and female students received extra credit if they shaved (or didn't) and maintained the journal. This picture accompanied an article on the program from the Arizona State University newspaper.

Now, I personally don't have an issue with whether women shave or not. I think hairy arms on a woman can be very sexy, and I never cared one way or the other about leg and underarm shaving ... probably a reflection of going to college in the late 60's and early 70's when many coeds burned their bras or stopped shaving as a perceived act of rebellion against male standards of beauty. I also lived in Europe in the late 70's and early 80's, when it was very unusual to find a woman who bothered to shave*. But I found the reactions to the story about Professor Fahs' class to be interesting ... men tended to get hysterical at the very idea that a woman would choose not to shave, and the trolls came out in force to fulminate that a lack of female depillation clearly heralded the end of civilization as we know it.

Have a good day. Shave if you want to. Or not. It's all the same to me.

Bilbo

* The situation is much different now, with most European women - at least in Western Europe - just as likely to shave as American women.