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Weak XII

19 March 2023

No. 6,548 (cartoon)

I can see right through you.

I’m not invisible.

You’re not there.

20 March 2023

Another Day, Another Final Warning

I awoke to a familiar headline: Scientists deliver “final warning” on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late.

Yawn. How many “final” warnings has that been?

I’m (not really) sorry, but I’ve been waking up to the same alarm for decades: we humans have totally bollixed everything up, but we can still turn things around if we stop being so stupid and greedy and act responsibly starting in about three hours from now.

Anyone who knows anything about humans knows that ain’t gonna happen. We’re gonna get stooopider, greedier, and not making any plans after tomorrow’s breakfast.

I’d like to think this really is the final warning, but I’m sure that I’ll be hearing we’re about to experience an irreversible climate catastrophe until I’m on my deathbed. Oh well, at least I’ll have a foolproof exit strategy in place by then.

21 March 2023

Independia

Nithyananda Paramashivam is a self-proclaimed godman, one of those jobs that’s never advertised. He’s also a fugitive on the run from Indian authorities on charges of rape and—like Vladimir Putin—of kidnapping children. And to round out his résumé, he’s also the founder and leader of the United States of Kailasa.

Kailasa may or may not be a fictional state depending on your concept of reality. In any case, a couple of representatives from the Kailasan government have recently attended meetings of the United Nations. I think that’s a notable achievement given how difficult it is to start a country, especially when he hasn’t made a public appearance since he concocted the ersatz, landless nation four years ago.

The World Citizen Government, founded by Garry Davis in 1953, has been issuing passports for almost seventy years; the Slovenian art collective Neue Slowenische Kunst has been doing the same for almost forty years. The only other new conceptual country with which I’m at all familiar is Independia.

I’m probably the only person who’s ever heard about it, and that’s only because I founded it. Or at least I began the process. I selected a billion square fathoms in an unclaimed section of the Pacific Ocean and designed a sculpture to mark the center of the new submerged nation. I see I also created a flag or a logo, but the image files are so old I can’t view them without an ancient computer.

I eventually put Independia on hold; that sounds more positive than admitting I abandoned it. I should have known starting a country was not a good project for me since I never collaborate with anyone on my creative work.

22 March 2023

Thinking Planely

I ran across a timely headline in the Washington Post this morning: Think you can land a plane in an emergency? Pilots explain why you can’t.

The headline told me everything I needed to know (and already knew decades ago), but I read the article anyway since I thought it would make entertaining reading on today’s flight.

I was right.

Half the men in a recent survey thought they could land a passenger jet with a few helpful tips from ground control. That seems improbable at best, since almost none of them would even know how to operate a radio on a jet without training. (Hint: it’s different from a telephone.) And yet, the same guys who can’t figure out how to open the trunk of a new rental car hallucinate that they could navigate in three dimensions while learning about the difference between slats and flaps.

I took my usual precaution of drinking smuggled whisky while flying from yon to thither today. That way, should a flight attendant announce that everyone in the cockpit is dead and would someone be so kind as to land the plane, I’ll be able to decline because I’d legally have to wait twenty-four hours to go from bottle to throttle, and we’d probably run out of fuel by then.

I never worry about a safe landing, since it’s almost certain that everyone on my flight will arrive safely unless we’re all killed. Positive thinking, that’s me!

23 March 2023

Weighty Mammal Matters

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have published The Global Biomass of Wild Mammals, with more statistics than you can shake a narwhal tusk at. Here’s how much we weigh, in kilograms:

Domesticated mammals: six trillion three hundred billion
Humans: three trillion nine hundred billion
Marine mammals: four hundred million
Wild land mammals: two hundred and twenty million
Dogs: two hundred million
Cats: twenty million

The authors add that bats comprise two-thirds of wild mammals but only ten percent of said critters’ biomass.

“This is a wakeup call to humanity,” concluded lead author Ron Milo.

I concur with Milo. Rise and shine, humanity! There’s big grant money to be made guesstimating trivial, irrelevant data and publishing it!

I awoke and can smell the hypothetical coffee! I will soon be hitting up foundations for large amounts of money to calculate the total length of all mammal intestines, then we humans will know exactly [sic] how full of shit we are in the context of other species.

24 March 2023

New Dimensions in Tiling

I’m astounded that mathematicians at the University of Arkansas have discovered the first geometric shape that allows for aperiodic tiling. Who knew there were mathematics in Arkansas?!

The thirteen-sided structure can be repeated infinitely without repetition, and that’s great news for anyone with an infinite bathroom to tile. It makes me wonder, though: would there be room for anything else in a universe with an infinite bathroom?

When it comes to tiling, the discovery is small cookies compared to Dr. Clare Graham’s discovery some forty years ago. She was the researcher who first correctly answered the age-old question, “How many men does it take to tile a bathroom?”

The answer is easy to find in scientific journals, but I’ll repeat it here anyway: one (if you slice him thinly enough).

25 March 2023

From Rolling Fork to Loch Ness

I was gobsmacked when I saw the headline, “Supercell Tornado Annihilates Mississippi Town Killing Dozens.”

Hold everything; Mississippi is a real place?! I thought it was the code name for one of those Hollywood movie sets in some mosquito-infected, flea-bitten, sister-kissin’ southern state. I was more than skeptical until I read that the twisters leveled Rolling Fork, “where over twenty percent of the residents live[d] in trailers.” Tornados feed off trailer parks, so I had to admit that the news reports were scientifically credible.

If Mississippi really is really real, does that prove that the Loch Ness monster exists as well? Oh dear; I got me some real serious philosophical head-scratchin’ to do.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

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©2023 David Glenn Rinehart