Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak

Weak XLIX

3 December 2023

No. 5,627 (cartoon)

I pray things will get better.

You don’t have a prayer.

Good point!

4 December 2023

Old News

Everything written since 8 April 2000 is on the Internet, but much of recorded history before then is unrecorded, if such a thing is even possible. And so, I’m doing my part to contribute to the history of the last millennium by citing two of my favorite newspaper articles from the age of newspapers.

My enterprise was fraught with perilousity, for I was working from memory, not a fragile, brittle, yellowed old clipping. I can’t remember the publication, date, headline, or exact copy, but otherwise these are as true as the sky is blue.

First, here’s a brilliant one-sentence report from the war on drugs.

Bogotá—Six thousand kilograms of cocaine were burned today in front of high Columbian officials.

And then there was the time a journalist asked a police spokesperson if it was legal to drive barefoot.

“You’re not breaking the law by driving barefoot,” he replied, “but it’s obviously a bad idea.”

“Why is that?” the reporter asked.

“Now that I think about it,” the cop responded, “I guess there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Ah, the golden age of investigative journalism. If that seems like a long time ago, that’s because it was.

5 December 2023

More Tipping Points, But Not Enough

Here’s my favorite headline I spotted over my morning coffee: Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn.

Five catastrophic climate tipping points, that’s more like it! So many “final” tipping points have come and gone that I lost count, so presenting them in batches of five is a move in the right direction, albeit too little too late.

Douglas Adams knew the right number all along: forty-two.

C’mon, you lazy scientists; we need thirty-seven more tipping points and we need ’em in 1999. Get on it, schnell!

6 December 2023

Fertility Considerations

Another day, another science story: Trial shows more than ninety percent of women trying for baby lack essential nutrients.

Let’s go down the list:

Human egg?

Check!

Spermatozoa?

Check!

Let’s see; what are we missing here? I’m guessing that it must be either garlic, sriracha sauce, or vodka. And yet, I’m reasonably certain that I was conceived with only the first two ingredients, go figger ...

7 December 2023

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Japanese ships and planes attacked Pearl Harbor eighty-three years ago today, but no mention of it in the papers today since there’s so much new bloodshed to cover. It may be, as Frankin Roosevelt said, “a date which will live in infamy,” but not in living memory for much longer.

That’s the way history works, when it even works at all.

8 December 2023

Happy Hanukkah

Sophia invited me over for a Hanukkah celebration to be the token goy. I’m not religious, but I do loves me a nice little feast now and again.

She told me to mix my own cocktails, and I saw she had two cartons of Ceres juice at the bar, guava and mango. Both were certified to be kosher, but the mango juice carried a warning, “NOT FOR PASSOVER.”

“Why is it kosher but not for Passover?” I asked.

“Do I look like a Talmudic scholar?” she replied.

Having snarked her snark, she pointed out that the label said “flavored juice blend” and suggested that it had pork extract in it.

“But why would anyone add pig flavoring to fruit juice?” I continued.

“Again with the Talmud stuff!” she explained, then added, “because everything’s better when it tastes like bacon.”

Oy ...

My head hurts, no wonder those Talmud hombres have such a rough life of endless headaches ...

9 December 2023

Do Nomads Have Jails?

A long time ago a friend spent a few years in prison after being caught with marijuana. (Thirty-six thousand kilos, but that’s neither here nor there.) He guesstimated that perhaps only twenty percent of his fellow inmates should be locked up.

That raised an interesting question: how do nomads like Bedouins and indigenous groups such as the Kayapo and Yanomamo deal with the relatively tiny percentage of their community who should be incarcerated when they presumably don’t have jails?

That’s an interesting question, but I’ve done enough serious thinking for one day to even think about thinking about looking for an answer.

10 December 2023

The Difference Between Here and Here and Here

David Byrne had an interesting perspective on something about which I’ve been thinking without many useful words. (Wordlessly, in fact.)

Where is the difference between yourself here and here and here? Is there any continuous self? You could say you’ve retained memories from various parts of your life, but memories are very malleable. We reshape them every time we remember them. They’re not fixed. Every self you go through, you dredge something up and make it apply to whoever you are at that moment. It’s a hard thing for us to intuitively accept the idea of “self is an illusion.” It’s very Buddhist, but it’s also increasingly more scientific. It’s not just a spiritual concept. It’s also a kind of neural concept.

Am I the same person I was decades ago? My answer is obvious: yes and no. My learned friend Ted had a better answer in the form of a question: Is a bicycle the same bike after you’ve replaced all the parts one at a time?

The frame is the only part of the bike that can’t be replaced, so Ted’s answer is the same as mine: yes and no.

Coming next weak: more of the same.

Last Weak  |  Index  |  Next Weak
©2023 David Glenn Rinehart