Recent Comments

1. about 21 hours ago on Non Sequitur

   Either that or one [or both] of them wasn’t a very good shot.

2. about 21 hours ago on Matt Davies

   Mencken was born in 1880 and died in 1956. He was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, and cultural critic. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements of the first half of the 20th century.

   Mencken was a very complex, opinionated person. He was an admirer of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and Jonathan Swift. He was an outspoken opponent of organized religion, theism, and representative democracy, which he viewed as a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors.

   He opposed the American entry into WW I and WW II. Ironic because he also approved of militarism: “War is a good thing,” he wrote, “because it is honest; it admits the central fact of human nature…. A nation too long at peace becomes a sort of gigantic old maid.”

3. 2 days ago on Matt Davies

   Needs one more word change: ‘handful of representatives’ instead of senators. Doesn’t scan as well, but is much more accurate.

4. 3 days ago on Non Sequitur

   But it really doesn’t. Many of our grade schools start at 8 am and get out a 3pm; others are actually on shifts because there are too many kids to go at the same time. And we now have lighted fields and indoor arenas for organized sports.

   Kids don’t play outside after school because they are going to babysitters/daycare/after-school activities because the parents are still at work. Maybe office workers still work “9 to 5” [although my office jobs tended to be more 8 to 5:30; but shops, factories, etc. have multiple shifts, many of which are rotating so workers work a couple of weeks on each [e.g., 8 hours 7 to 3; then 3 to 11; then 11 to 7]. And farmers and ranchers work with the sun because that is what their animals and crops do. And our circadian rhythms do as well. Circadian rhythm is our 24-hour internal clock that dictated multiple processes in the body, including alertness or sleepiness, appetite, energy level, and body temperature.

   The sun doesn’t shine for an extra hour just because we call it 8 instead of 7. But it is darker when we get up, meaning we get less light exposure in the morning and get more light exposure in the evenings. We go to bed and fall asleep later, which disrupts our typical sleep and work pattern and can lead to chronic sleep loss.

5. 3 days ago on Matt Davies

   Maybe if we had recognized the ‘dominos’ following the Russian revolution tand beyond, we wouldn’t have had the USSR, the Cold War, and the current situation.

   Maybe if we had noticed the ‘dominos’ in 1939, at least part of WWII might have been avoided.

6. 4 days ago on Non Sequitur

   That’s essentially why time zones were invented — the noon with sun directly overhead thing. People have always kept track of time by the local movement of the sun [moon and stars] and when we started moving long distances we realized that local-time “high noon” was different in different places. In 1883, there were over 144 different local times in North America.

   Sir Sanford Fleming, an engineer for Canadian railways, realized the problem when he missed a train in 1876. The expansion of rail systems meant that travelers could sometimes arrive at an earlier local time than the one they had left. There was also vast confusion involved with coordinating train schedules, leading to collisions and confusion. Fleming realized that having a standard time with hour variations would make it easier to move and transport goods by rail — and proposed a system that divided the globe into 24 time-zones, each spaced 15 degrees of longitude apart. In 1883, the major railroad companies began to operate on a coordinated system of four time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific In 1918, a 5th time zone was added: Alaskan.

   Daylight Savings Time has nothing do to with the time zones. It was used during WWI and WWII to save energy by having more [factory] work hours in daylight and was later implemented for economic reasons — to allow more shopping and leisure-entertainment time. But now that stores are open well into the night [and online shopping can be done anytime], there is really no good reason to keep flipping back and forth.

7. 5 days ago on Non Sequitur

   And look at GB today — still trying to maintain the mindset. The British/European culture of the Renaissance on was great if you were upperclass . It wasn’t so great for others. The haves [inherited wealth and titles, connections to royalty and the state religion] and the have-nots [servant class, working class, merchants] were rigidly defined. And, while it didn’t actually detail a “color” code, it was quite obvious that specific skin tones were not acceptable.

   The world has gained a lot from the scientific, philosophic, technological advances made during the last few centuries, but we sadly haven’t manage to advance much culturally.

8. 5 days ago on Non Sequitur

   And the customer can have any color he wants as long as it’s black.

9. 8 days ago on Non Sequitur

   In Vegas, you can get free drinks and cheap food [all-you-can-eat buffets] [unless you consider your table losses the cost].

10. 10 days ago on Non Sequitur

    We’ve had 50+ years of listening and watching ads to become mesmerized into believing that we HAVE to have this and that, HAVE to have the newest and the best. The home computer age just speeded up the process when Microsoft and Mac realized that new products didn’t have to work perfectly — just mostly. We wanted the newest and best and were willing to put up with a few glitches (which we and millions of other users would eventually help solve) and the ‘update’ was invented. Then, the iPhone and Androids came along and figured out how to package ‘updates’ so we had to actually buy brand new phones to get the newest and best.

    For some reason a line from an old Pete Seeger/Kingston Trio/Joan Baez/Bob Dylan/Peter, Paul, and Mary song keeps running through my head: "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn. [Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Pete Seeger, 1955]