Things Not Understood Volume 107

If only life granted us unlimited, natural intelligence, or at least the chance to upgrade our aging internal CPUs. So much happens so fast, and we hear about it so fast, understanding anything is next to impossible. Lest you think otherwise, it’s not just politics, though that was an arena historically predictable. Liberals debated Conservatives, and both felt the world was ending when they lost an election. Sometimes they married each other. That still happens, but now candidates lie to get elected, never follow up on campaign promises, and get reelected next election, anyway. All bad things in a marriage, too. And no, it’s not just Trump. What in God’s name can disqualify a candidate in voters’ eyes, anymore?

Not all unable-to-be-understood things are bad for us. Whole milk is back as a school lunch item and beef is so good for us, it’s on top of the Food Pyramid. Suck on that, vegetarians.

Our national health department notes an epidemic in Africa and jumps at the chance to study it. How? By purposefully NOT giving a control group proven, life-saving vaccinations to see how they compare to the group that gets the vaccinations. Isn’t that just wrong? Or better yet, un-understandable?

Ai has the power to do what, again? Everything? Yup. It could write this post for me. Maybe it did. How would you know? It’s gotten so confusing there is a video on-line of researchers “abusing” Ai robots to see what happens. The robots learn to fight back and go all Scarface on the researchers. What’s not to understand? Why we abuse anything, why bullying a machine counts as abuse, how robots learned the martial arts moves it used, and did anyone get paid for this? Or get grant/taxpayer money? This story has a second depth of un-understanding (UU): It’s an Ai generated fake video. Why, again?

Quantum Mechanics (QM) and Quantum Entanglement (QE). The UU nature of these things is how fast we learn about them but how slow we use what we learn*. Like the Hydrogen engine. Or Cold Fusion. UU, all of them. In an age when a viral video circles the world in less than the time it takes to sneeze, why are not using clean burning Hydrogen Engines in our cars? Why has Cold Fusion not lowered Electric and heating bills?  Why did the Bills fire their coach and promote their General Manger? (Digression. Sorry.) QE has the power to revolutionize not only communications, but maybe the transport of materials, too. Think Star Trek transporter beams. And while we are at it, how can we send people into space and yet not have “space”, (homes), for people on earth? UU? Yes, yes. Maybe we’re going to space to find a place to send all the homeless?

Ah, who gives a crap, anyway. Not literally, of course because everyone craps. That’s easy to understand. But we appear to be—in this day and age—hurtling toward major changes while most of rest in our recliners. Oblivious.

A better word from self-proclaimed genius criminal mastermind, Vizzini**: “Inconceivable”.

More to the point, the response from the heroic Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Amen.

*Assuming there are no secret, government funded projects going on for defense purposes…which there probably are…

**Don’t make me name the movie. If you haven’t seen it, yet, why not? Inconceivable.

A Few of the Many Things I Don’t Understand

Why do things fall from my hands so easily? It was much easier to pick them up when I was younger, so why didn’t they fall, then?

With a population of 340 million people, why do 77 million voters keep saying they “represent all of America”? Don’t the other 263 million people matter?

Where DOES time go? I’ve never heard anyone answer.

Could there be more than one “soulmate” in someone’s life? Follow up question (FUQ): How could a man get married a THIRD time without learning his lesson after the second?

Why does a person who does something stupid work so hard to deny it? FUQ (Yes, I know what it sounds like. Stop giggling.): Is it because they are stupid?

Why do we elect popular people for Prom King and President? FUQ: Are females just not popular? Are smart, intelligent, experienced candidates persona non grata? Like the television show, “Survivor”, are they too much of a threat?

A baseball player for “the other New York Team” will make $51 million dollars per year to play baseball. Is it a coincidence it is same amount as the entire annual budget for the city in Upstate NY where I live? Definite FUQ up: Could the player adopt the city and support us?

When someone says, “be cool”, do they have a specific temperature in mind? FUQ: Be “chill”? I’ve never been able to agree on temperature with anyone I ever lived with so…

Why do conservatives whine so much about “Main Stream” and “Legacy Media”? Isn’t Fox News Legacy Media? Fox is definitely “main stream”. Okay, Fox is lame. FUQ: Do Fox viewers know Fox was designed to be biased. On purpose. To counter other bias. Another FUQ: Do two wrong bias’ make a right? Do they offset? Should we be watching the cartoon network for news?

Why are sports teams so insensitive? March Madness is here. I predict two teams will fight like cats and dogs during a hard-fought, entertaining, exhausting game and when it’s over,…hate each other. In the old days (OD), in the YMCA gyms, we fought like cats and dogs and then went out for beers. Ah, the OD.

When did money take over the world? At least the American world. There are more ways to make money without making anything, now. They call it passive income. In the OD if you couldn’t shoe a horse, sew up as wound, or kill another man before he killed you, you were out of luck. Now, if you put some horse-shoeing income in a tax-deferred account, invest it in ETF’s, and sell high and buy low…huh. Maybe that is productive work.

Why does the body fall apart, wither, and die? FUQ: Is there any way to guarantee our mind won’t leave us before the body does?

Sorry about those two…

Why do all the people in old photographs look so unhappy? Was it their nature or the inconvenience of having to stay immobile long enough for the film to work?

Life must have been hard in the real OD. Thinking of how hard it would be, for example, to wipe your butt with a Montgomery Ward Catalogue page. Or a leaf. Maybe they never went to the bathroom. Ken Burns could make a documentary about defecation and urination. FUQ: How many people have died over the course of history?

Enough. It’s sad to write about some things…