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A Thread for Random Musings


Old Man

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Re: A Thread for Random Musings

 

I'm getting a lot of double-takes today. Even more amusing are the people who notice something is different, but mention entirely the wrong thing. One of my co-workers -a guy I've been working with every day for several months- asked me "Are you wearing contacts?" Someone else asked if I had colored my hair.

 

The curious can see what I'm talking about here.

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Re: A Thread for Random Musings

 

I've been having a great deal of fun, today, watching people react to me. Even more amusing than the double-takes are the folks who know that something had changed, but couldn't put their finger on it. My Supervisor noticed the haircut, but she missed the absent beard. She thought I had colored my hair (I didn't). One of co-workers, a guy I've been working with for months, he asked "Did you get contact lenses?"

 

Yes, I do wear glasses, but most often, its when I've just arrived in the mornings and when I leave. I need them for driving, so I keep them off at work to keep my eyes from getting weaker. I also wear them at meetings so I can see what's on the projector. The glasses he remembers, but not the pony-tail and/or beard. A different co-worker didn't even recognize me! I first saw him, today, in the mail room. I said hello, and he said hello back, but the look on his face showed that he had no idea who I am. Not even the honkin' big Celtic Cross I wear on prominent display (partly visible in some of the pictures, and yes, I do wear it on the outside of my t-shirt at all times) was enough of a clue. I was tempted to lose the cross entirely, just to throw people off. I think many of the folks who did know it was me only knew because of the cross. The absence of the power of observation in people never ceases to amaze and disappoint me.

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Re: A Thread for Random Musings

 

If you have never seen What the Bleep Do We Know?' date=' you need to.[/quote']

 

Personally, I'd stay away from that movie, based upon what I've read.

 

IMDB.com has 46 pages of user comments (I haven't read all of them)...

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399877/

 

And the Wikipedia page:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Bleep_Do_We_Know!%3F

 

Though I am openminded enough to give it a shot if I had the movie in front of me and a couple of hours to kill. But if it sounds like mumbo-jumbo to me, I'll turn it off in a cold second. I once tried, a long, long time ago, to read Dianetics. I managed to get to page 3 before the urge to shout "Bull$hit!" became too strong.

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Re: A Thread for Random Musings

 

I gave three Algebra II classes a quiz to review for upcoming standardized tests. Out of 40 possible points, the averages were as follows:

 

Overall: 25

1st Period: 27

3rd Period: 28

4th Period: 17

 

Funny, because on of the students from 4th Period wrote on his quiz, "I'd probably do better if I'd come to class." I was tempted to write, "Gee, ya think?!"

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Re: A Thread for Random Musings

 

This is interesting - http://icasualties.org/oif/Dow.aspx'>http://icasualties.org/oif/Dow.aspx

 

I was a little surprised at the number of IED and other "hostile fire" attacks, IED is an explosive device, a booby-trap attack.

 

I also found it interesting, from the main page of the site at http://icasualties.org/oif/ that the disease rate where medical air transport was required was nearly 20,000 while we've been in Iraq, I wonder how that compares to other military engagements and normal military disease rates?

 

The site mentions, in its stats for "Iraqi Security Forces and Civilian Deaths" that "Iraqi deaths based on news reports . This is not a definitive count. Actual totals for Iraqi deaths are higher than the numbers recorded on this site." - but I wonder how true that is? After all, there have been instances found where news reports have been given of attacks and deaths only to find out if anyone actually followed up that nothing happened, that it was simply media manipulation by Iraqis who know how the American/Western press works. So I would almost wonder if there have been fewer deaths, though I grant that seems unlikely.

 

It's also interesting to me that despite a ton of noise to the contrary, the number of US deaths by years is quite consistent, which implies that things are neither getting better nor worse for our troops there - and also notes the media's lies and distortions in trying to paint that picture:

 

Year US Deaths US Wounded

2003 486 2408

2004 849 8002

2005 846 5947

2006 822 6389

2007 343 1568

Total 3346 24314

 

This was triggered by my annoyance at the insistence on calling the occupation a "war" and how that represents how soft we are now.

 

Probably what bugs me the most is had we never gone in there, we'd be in a much stronger position to deal with the nut-job in Iran, including keeping assassination open as a play.

 

Of course, beyond Hussein, there's the real issue of loss of bases in Saudi Arabia. From a pure geopoltical perspective, I wonder what other options were realistically open besides forceful establishment thereof. By the time the occupation ends and we leave the people in Iraq to kill each other off and, in the best case scenario, get maybe a new strongman to run the country who's no worse to our interests than Hussein, the Arabians will probably reestablish leasing to us anyway, so the time there will have served its purpose from that perspective, though generally having left a clear demonstration of what a weak nation the US is and a shattered Iraq where radical fundamentalism has now grown into a much more potent force than ever.

 

A 50 year occupation scenario at 1,000 deaths per year, if it were to manifest in the Westernization of a key Arabian power would have been worthwhile, but I knew we'd never tolerate that, as we have no ability to embrace such key long-term political goals at that cost, even if they are key strategic wins. I have been a little surprised, though, that Bush has stuck it out there, I thought he would have slowly caved by now; I can't tell if his/the adminstrations' reasons are more wrong than right or vice-versa, despite the rather staggering (even if half-predictable) incompetence of the occupation.

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Re: A Thread for Random Musings

 

It was just occurring to me that there was a certain profundity to the final episode of Buffy. I have long-maintained that many criticize the last season or two simply because we don't like to see that a show about maturation is going to, in the end, highlight how people don't always turn out alright and some people don't really make it, and that this manifested in favorite characters becoming less desirable (though no doubt the Willow actress was phoning it in by then). Regardless of whether my critique of those last couple seasons is wrong or right, the show is roundly indicated as being about growing up (even Whedon made that comment himself); if you think about the last show, where so many become Slayers, there's also the message that no matter how special you were when you were younger, you become a small fish in the big pond of life, and that perhaps it's only when we realize and accept that that we have truly matured.

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Re: A Thread for Random Musings

 

I'm strangely uninterested in seeing Spiderman 3. Maybe part of it is that I really am getting sick of Dunst. But it's got nothing to do with the black suit storyline, as I never saw it originally, anyway (nor was I specifically familiar with the story #2 was based on, though I did know the story from #1).

 

Maybe some of it is that while I really enjoyed the first couple and thought they were very well done and with a heroic message, they didn't really leave me wanting more, or at least not after the 2nd for sure. I think in part it's because they're fairly "surface level" if you will, the messages being not so nuanced or deep that they require much more thought, and while they have some nice eye candy, too, we've seen it, time for something new/different on that front as well. In other words, they were neither thought-provoking nor self-sustaining on an action level - to me, of course.

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Re: A Thread for Random Musings

 

It's funny how we call American football "football" when the foot is only fairly rarely used in connection with the ball.

 

And despite working with a sportswear company that has a rich history in soccer, I only just now looked around to find that the term "soccer" derived from Association Football (apparently "association" got abbreviated to "socco" (strangely, to me), and ended up coined as "soccer").

 

And I thought soccer was a lot older than American football, but not really, they both have roughly contemporaneous histories in the grand scheme of things and basically are among those sports that developed in more detail in the 19th century just in time to get popularized by an equally-developing mass media. It's interesting how sports have come and gone in terms of rules details and so on, and none or few of our contemporary team sports have particularly deep (more than 200 or 300 years) histories. Whereas so many individual sports haven't changed all that much in some cases over a couple thousand years.

 

PS - I recognize of course all these team sports have roots going back several hundred years, but not in the form we really know them, the rules and processes changed dramatically over time, never getting fixed into rigid institutions, which they have now developed into.

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Re: A Thread for Random Musings

 

Poor Star is determined to catch a bug at the top of the patio door outside. She's not allowed outside and we had to shut the door as she will destroy the screen. She won't give up though..........

 

Jump,

 

"Mew, mew !"

 

Jump,

 

"Mew, Mew !"

 

Etc.

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