Bigfoot Did It

Need an excuse to explain a traffic accident you caused? There are all kinds and most police officers have heard them all, except one. Uh, I wouldn't recommend this one but it might be amusing for you read about it. According to the Moscow, Idaho town newspaper (That's Moscow, Idaho not Moscow, Russia), The Moscow-Pullman Daily News,   a  50-year-old woman from nearby Tensed was driving south on U.S. Highway 95 on Wednesday when she struck a deer near Potlatch. Nothing unusual about deer running across the highway and being hit by a car, you are thinking!

Right, but the woman told Sheriff's officials that she saw a Sasquatch (Bigfoot) chasing a deer on the side of the road while driving. She says she checked one of her mirrors to get a second look at the beast and when she looked up, the deer ran in front of her. She kept driving her damaged car to pick up her husband at work before reporting the incident at the sheriff's office after midnight.  The husband refuses to comment on the creature's (Bigfoot, not his creature wife) appearance.

Bigfoot made her do it. But the sheriff deputy who cited her with "reckless deer driving" (or whatever the charge would be in that case). He left Bigfoot out of the report by marking the incident as a vehicle versus deer collision, but did not report any evidence of Bigfoot. He's obviously a non believer. Maybe the driver should have reported a UFO instead. But then, when you are drinking heavily it's hard to think that preemptively.

Maybe it wasn't Bigfoot. It might have been a Hillary Clinton sighting since she is a monster and has been in hiding recently. Or maybe the woman saw the old movie classic, Harry and the Hendersons. In that one a driver crashes into Bigfoot and is able to make an entire b ad movie from the concept. No, I think alcohol was the monster that woman saw that night.

Changing The P.C. World

It's only three months into the new year, and as I am supposed to have faith in the future, today I'll mention a few of my hopes for changes in the politically correct world in which I am trapped. That is, in my dream I would like to see these politically correct things changed, for in their present state they are unfair, unrealistic or un American. And I mention just three today. I think all the senseless protests against the Trump election may have motivated me to strike out, not to protest march since I do not believe in that tactic, but to "protest rant" (I think I have coined a new, idiotic term) here.  So here I go with the first of just three changes (changes start first with small numbers) from PC to normality I would like to see in 2017.

I would like the media to stop calling illegal immigrants "immigrants" They are not. To be an immigrant one must have permission from the country he or she wants to enter and must be vetted for fitness to immigrate. Neither applies to people who break and enter into a country and claim to be "immigrants". The media likes to use the wrong term for illegal immigrants because by mixing that group with actual immigrants it confuses the public and eventually the public begins to think that an illegal immigrant is the same as a legal one. They are not. Good luck to Trump and his administration in stopping the mass invasion of illegals. I hope to see many deportations of illegals this year.

The second PC reform I dream of seeing is the change of  U.S. universities from liberal, in the bubble left, PC world insane asylums. No wonder so many of the young believe the nonsense of political correctness. The best educated of the young are brain washed at universities that are almost wholly the bastion of the far left. Name any professor in any American college or university and there is almost certainty that he or she is a far left, liberal Democrat practitioner of political correctness. The administration of those schools is even worse, practicing a reign of terror on any student or employee who is not a P.C. zealot. Is it any wonder kids are so out of touch with reality when they are brainwashed in nonsense at the country's colleges and universities? The PC view at universities is that most of the left would rather not hear what the other side has to say and would quite frankly chew off their own genitals in if they could shoot anyone who is in disagreement with them.

The third change would to erase the language of the PC world,  language which has changed words that are long time used and understood, but that are unsuitable to the PC agendas. By changing standard vocabulary into nebulous P.C. mush the P.C.ers  redefine terms to fit their own agenda. Once a term has been changed one only dares to use the older version, for he or she will likely be stoned to death with accusations that he or she must be a "racist" (another word the P.C. people have changed meaning of to now mean "anyone who does not accept P.C. belief").
Some common examples of language diversion P.C. people frequently use and demand that you use include: blind became 'visually impaired', short became 'vertically challenged', black or brown skinned people became 'people of color', sexual preference became 'sexual orientation', bums or hobos became 'the homeless', opponents of any PC belief became 'deniers',  a while male person became a 'white supremacist', little girls who are tomboys became 'non gender conforming', a critic became an 'unjust self-esteem reducer', wrong became an 'alternative answer', unemployed became 'non waged alternative operator'.

Sigh, I do feel better to rant about this, but I sure hope I don't wake up from my non P.C. dream.

Why Women Live Longer

That old male saying (we say it behind the backs of the ladies) that women live longer than men because women cause us so much stress we give up and die, is now up front. That's because a science web site, IFL Science, reported that just two of the world's 53 living super centenarians (people 110 and older) are men. Hmmm It's obvious that we can just look at people we know and see that they age at a different rate. Some age much more dramatically than others.  But this statistical fact that 51 of the oldest 53 people are women may be significant.

But why is the longevity gap between women and men so big, and how long has this been the case? To help answer that an international team of researchers is investigating the life spans of men and women born between 1800 and 1935 in 13 developed nations. They've found that there used to be no difference in death ages of men and women. It seems that women's superior longevity only emerged recently. Something in modern lifestyles may be the reason.  I wonder if they are killing the men with those forced marches to the mall! The Saturday, "Let's go to the mall" line is enough to kill any man who wants to stay in front of his TV and watch football games.

Ok, I am hallucinating with that theory. But studies show that before 1840, death rates were very similar between men and women. Ever since those rates began to change in favor of the woman outliving the man.  In 1880 thanks in large part to improved diets, vaccinations, and better health care, female death rates have dropped 70% faster than male ones, and heart disease seems to be killing men at a much more rapid rate.

One theory is that men may be more biologically susceptible to cardiovascular health problems, and their different weight distribution could play a factor.  The researchers continue to study to see if the differences between male and female biology, genetics, and lifestyles are the answer. But ask any of the men around you and if they are candid they will give a more anecdotal answer to the question of why men die before women. They'll tell you it's because they want to.  I say (but not face to face with any women, because she would kill me right there if I did) those researchers should consider the "Nagging Factor" for the reason men don't live as long. After so many nags the male heart just gives in and decides that f death might be preferable.

After all, we won't have to go to the mall anymore if we choose death....

Crawfish

One thing I lament about moving from New Orleans to Oregon is the lower quality of food in Oregon compared to Louisiana. Oregon is not a food centered area, while Louisiana is. People in Oregon don't cook as much and have much less skill in their cooking. You get the idea. Oregon has many blessings, but the food here is not one of them. So when I look for fresh seafood in Portland it's hard to find. there is salmon and, well, that's about it. The rest is mostly frozen and shipped from Asia, not from the Oregon coast where seafood is available but not shipped to Portland. But I did get to eat beautiful crawfish in New Orleans  a couple of weeks ago when I visited at Mardi Gras.

I found one market here in Portland ( a Vietnamese market. The Vietnamese have a passion for food and have better groceries as a result) that occasionally has live blue crabs from the Gulf of Mexico and on rare occasions live crawfish that I believe are of local origin. That's it. The rest of the seafood sold here, apart from salmon, is the low quality frozen mess sold everywhere in grocery stores.  When fresh crawfish is not available I get my crawfish fix buying frozen crawfish tail meat packs at the only place in Portland that has it. Wal mart! Wow! I give a cheer for the 4 or 5 Wal mart outlets here that stock it (no doubt many of the customers are other transplanted Louisianians like me). I use the packs which contain the "crawfish fat' that flavors sauces to make crawfish etouffee, Crawfish Monica, crawfish lasagna, crawfish  fettuccini and a few other dishes that are a good fit with the crawfish tails.

When I have cooked crawfish dishes for the locals here they loved it, but still, Portland is like much of the U.S. in that crawfish are not considered as available dinner option. In New Orleans itself crawfish were also nearly ignored until the 1950's as "trash food" until the Cajuns just to the west of New Orleans migrated to the city and started cooking them in New Orleans. Two rivers near me out side of Portland teem with crawfish, yet few locals ever attempt to fish them. In Louisiana that would never be the case. During spring mating season in the Louisiana swamps crawfish spill out onto the roadway where locals wait to scoop them up.

If you have not have crawfish but are reluctant to try them, consider them as being "little lobsters". They are easy to cook and adaptable to many foods (crawfish bread, for instance, is divine). Those packs of frozen, cooked, peeled tails with fat included are a little bit of gold for me.

Dancing On The Graves Of Reality

From the "this must be the end of civilization" department comes news of cell phone nuts exceeding even their definition of bad taste. Officials at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and Poland's Auschwitz Memorial are asking 'Pokemon Go' creator Niantic to take their  game sites off the locations where players can hunt cartoon creatures in the latest idiotic, trendy reality app Pokemon Go, saying it dishonors Holocaust victims. I am not kidding. They are playing a game on their phones while on the grounds of memorials to millions slaughtered because of their religion.

It's another case of society escaping into cell phones and believing that reality lies there rather than what they see before themselves off line. My limited understanding of cell phone games gives me only this understanding, that players in the Pokemon Go game try to capture digital Pokemon characters, which appear hovering over the player's real world surroundings. Sort of merging the real environment with the virtual. Well, at least the cell nuts acknowledge there is a non virtual reality. That's an improvement.

Since Pokemon Go first appeared it has given cell phone nuts a new place to hide from reality. More adults (I think they can be called adults?) Pokemon Go has more users than does other trendy apps like Instagram and Snapchat. But playing a cell phone game while on the grounds of a concentration camp like Auschwitz is not just disrespectful to the dead, but also pathological.  Both memorial sites have Niantic Labs to stop allowing Pokemon Go to use its site in the game. That they would even have to do so is sick. But then cell phones and other electronic devices are making many of us into social degenerates.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of The Simon Wiesenthal Center, said while he recognizes the potential for good virtual reality may bring, playing games on phones while in the museum is outrageous impudence. "This can't be another chapter, it can't be another scavenger hunt. That's a desecration of the memory of the victims and it's a cheapening of the history," Cooper said of using the Holocaust Memorial Museum for gaming. But can a cell addict understand that? I doubt many can because their entirety is centered around amusing themselves with their gadgets.

Dancing on the graves of those victims of mass murder. Now that's a reality I'll never understand.

Dying For Cremation

That unpleasant question that eventually hits everybody reared its head in general the other day when Catholics were alerted to it.. "Do I want to buried or cremated when I die"? It used to be that cremation was prohibited by the Catholic Church. But in 1963 the church said it was ok, if not preferable. It permitted cremation only if that choice is not a reflection of doubt or disbelief about Catholic teachings about death, resurrection, and rebirth to eternal life. After cremation was allowed, the Church still required that cremation be carried out only after the actual body was present at the funeral Mass. Ashes were not allowed to substitute for the body at the funeral Mass. Ok , this is a little too technical.

Today it has loosened even more and this week Pope Francis established guidelines for Catholics who want to be cremated, saying their remains must be stored in a sacred, church approved place and may not be divvied up or kept at home. Gee, it's almost not worth dying if you are Catholic. I think the lifting of cremation rules is a reflection of how that religion and all religions in the west are becoming more and more secular. Strict religious doctrine doesn't fly much anymore in the increasingly secular west.

Cremation has been with humans since the stone age I checked on cremation rates worldwide and found some interesting states. China cremates more people each year than any other country, reporting 4,534,000 cremations out of 9,348,453 deaths (a 48.50% rate). But Japan cremates almost everyone, rate of 99.85%. I suspect the lack of land to bury people and the religious practice there accounts for that. Canada cremates 68.4% and the United states 46.4%. I think Canada and the U.S have such an increasing cremation rate because their religions now allow it, because people move so much in those countries that the traditional "burial plot' is no longer there and because cremation is much cheaper than burial.

At this point in my life I think it's ok to just drive my dead body into the ground with a croquet mallet. There's no dignity in death anyway. If I ever am cremated my ashes will be harmless. Supposedly, human cremans (Yep! That's the word for it.) contain harmless minerals that are absorbed into the soil a few days after their release. They pose no threat to humans or to the environment.  Of course, I won't guarantee my remains will stop ranting about cell phones and other human idiocies.

No longer is dead Uncle Otto's ashes kept in an urn on the fireplace mantel. In recent years, people have turned ashes into synthetic diamonds, tattoo ink, sent them into space, used them in vinyl records, in Teddy Bears, inside hour glasses, in pencils, portraits, stained glass, even fireworks (for those who want to out out with a bang). Gee, kind of makes you want to die sooner rather than later.

In Flight Mysteries

I just learned another useless fact. This time it's about airplane windows. Have you ever wondered why those windows are always round? In the early days of commercial airline flight they were as square as your home's windows (or my blockhead). Here's the answer to my question. Sharp corners are natural weak spots where stress concentrates, weakened further by air pressure. When subjected to repeated pressurization, four corners on a square window spell disaster. Curved windowpanes, on the other hand, which have no focal point, distribute that stress, reducing the likelihood of cracks or breaks. Circular shapes are also stronger and resist deformation, and can thus survive the extreme differences in pressure between the inside and outside of the aircraft.

I read that on line so it has to be right (told you I was a blockhead). No, seriously, it is true. I verified that at several respectable web sites. But this airline window thing has me wondering about some other  air mysteries that I never did track down. Can a passenger open an airplane exit in flight? I think they can in Hollywood films. But the pressure inside the cabin makes it impossible to open the doors or emergency hatches of an airplane that is in flight. I must say there have been times when I wanted to try. Sometimes the passenger sitting next to me behaved so badly or in a disgusting way I would have preferred an early deplaning via the emergency exit. I suspect any passengers who sat next to a politician had the same feelings.

Another mystery is whether they dump the WC waste in flight? You can relax and look upward now. No human waste will hit you in the face because the waste tanks were flushed while in flight. Birds rule the waste dump thing. The explanation for that question is that the ground crew disposes of the excrement after the plane lands. Even if the pilot and flight attendants wanted to empty a tank mid flight, they couldn't, as the valve is located on the outside of the plane, and can only be opened by the ground crew. But wait! Waste not, want not.

Waste can accidentally seep out of the tanks in a malfunctioning aircraft. This happens when a sewage tank or drain tube develops a leak, usually resulting in what air travel experts refer to as “blue ice", which is what you get when the blue waste treatment liquid from a plane toilet is exposed to freezing temperatures at high altitude. Better stop looking upward. I think that I am going to take  a train on my next trip.

On Multitasking

There's an advantage to being an old fart. As an old fart I am so disconnected to the new culture that I can observe and evaluate it more objectively. That is...if I can understand it enough to do so.  One thing I see as a huge problem is multitasking. Multitasking probably was born from the cell phone, which has a platform that almost forces the user to multi task. Ask any employer how much he hates workers multitasking, part work duties and part social media nonsense. Estimates from some say that as much as 25% of work time is being used by multitaskers logging onto social media sites.
Doing multiple tasks simultaneously is reflective of diminished focus of the person. That's harmless when one is at home and using media for personal leisure tasks. They simply are wasting time, something old farts like me do too, albeit m not with technology and not in such depth. At work or with students in school this multitasking usually results in the employee or student producing poor work quality compared to someone who is doing only one thing. Multitasking is a time waster since you'll need to switch from task to task, and may require constant reminder of what to do. In most situations, little work is completed since the individual who multitasks is constantly on the move towards the next item on their list, resulting in low productivity.

To be fair, there is nothing wrong in doing multitasking when it is controlled and focused. But too much of multitasking of activities reduces concentration. It makes us are in hurry to finish the and we miss some things we would not miss if we were doing one thing at a time. If you think you do better when you multitask then think about these people multitasking a task involving you; your surgeon operating on your brain is multitasking while he operates on you, the pilot flying the plane on which you are a passenger is logged on to Face book as he lands the plane,  the construction crew repairing a bridge does it with cell phones in hand and  turned on to their favorite web sites, soldiers in battle multitasking during an enemy siege, your 16 year old son multitasking as he cuts wood with a rotor saw...

Ok it's a tip of the iceberg of examples, but you get the idea. Many human tasks are dangerous when done without full focus and attention. On the other hand, perhaps multi-tasking has become so essential to modern humans that it is impossible to avoid in part or whole. Maybe we should begin to define what is proper multitasking and what is not. As of yet, society has not set any parameters, any social sanctions about idiotic multitasking situations. That's because the love affair so many humans have with cell phones and other technology is still too strong to confront with reason.

When boredom with multitasking technology makes us evaluate it better, perhaps  more people will become single task humans again.

Playboy Is Nude Again

Maybe the world is drifting back to sanity again. After years of liberals gone too left and crazy, of political correctness and people with brain's so deadened from over exposure to mindless social media sites on mindless technology, the normality Gods are showing they have had enough of right being wrong and wrong being right.  How do I know this? The son of Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, tweeted Monday that Playboy magazine is ready to return to the content that made it famous for decades. The latest issue now hitting newsstands says “naked is normal” in an attempt to declare that getting rid of those naked women shots for "serious" articles was just plain wrong.

“I’ll be the first to admit the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but removing it entirely was a mistake,” said Hefner. "Nudity was never the problem, because nudity isn't a problem. Today, we’re taking our identity back and rediscovering who we are.” All those former subscribers who left the magazine when nude babes posing seductively were taken away from them would agree. Could this be a chink in the armor of political correctness, which in recent years declared girlie magazines to be degrading and objectifying. Maybe women will start burning their bras in protest of Playboy's return to its roots.

Perhaps this is one of those small trends by which we can see a new age in the culture, an age with less mindless political correctness and more boobs...or something.  Let's hope the first fold out isn't a celebrity edition, with Hillary Clinton posing. Oh well, she is so thoroughly forgotten it might give her the ego stroke she thought was bequeathed to her when she lost the presidential election. No matter to me if there is a "Crooked Hillary" centerfold. (I wonder if Hillary's anatomy is as crooked as is her ethics?) I never read those girlie magazines anyway.

Which Driver Age Is The Worst?

Every driver thinks he or she is the best auto navigator ever created.  I know I have my limitations, but I also look down on those "idiots" I encounter every day on the road. And I am tired of hearing the young ones declare oldies like me are the worst drivers of al. Alas! New data shows that oldies and the beginning teen driver is not the worst. Now there's evidence that millennials may be the most reckless people behind the wheel. I suspected it. According to a report released Wednesday by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, younger millennials, those hopelessly tech addicted people from age 19 to 24, are more likely than teens or drivers in any other age group to create havoc on the highway.

According to AAA (American Automobile Association) The are most guilty of the following:  exceeding the speed limit by 10 to 15 miles per hour, running a red light when they could have stopped., reading or send a text message while driving, and are high on marijuana while operating a car "Some of the drivers ages 19 to 24 believe that their dangerous driving behavior is acceptable," said David Yang, the AAA foundation's executive director. I suspect they either just don't care or are not aware of the threat they cause.

The number of people killed in crashes in 2015 - 35,092 - was a 7.2 percent increase over 2014, and crashes remain the leading cause of death among teen drivers. But the AAA study found that 88 percent of drivers 19 to 24 admitted that within the past 30 days they had sped, run a red light or texted while driving. Drivers in two age groups above theirs ranked behind that group in admitting to one of the three infractions, while 16- to 18-year-olds trailed those three groups, with 69 percent of them saying they had done so. All ages do that to a lesser extent. And we can't improve millennial driving by taking the one step that is most certain to do-taking away those goofy cell phones or installing a block on calls inside a car. Sigh...my daughter used to say I drove like "a grandma". Maybe that's not such a bad concept.

Comparing millennials with all other age groups, the AAA study found that they were:
- 1.6 times as likely to read a text message or email while driving.
- Nearly twice as likely to have typed and sent a text or email.
- 1.4 times as likely to have driven 10 mph above the speed limit in a neighborhood.
- More than twice as likely to speed in a school zone.
- Nearly half drove through a red light, compared with 36 percent of all drivers.
- Were more likely to admit to regularly or fairly often smoking pot within an hour of driving, with nearly 7 percent saying they do so.

Maybe I should get rid of my car  and just start taking the bus everywhere...