RANDOM THOUGHTS #88
Steve Cole muses: Just
thinking to himself.
1. In a recent conversation, the old adage came up that the best solution is a time machine to go back and tell the people who made the decision that they were wrong. This led me to think about what would happen if there really were a time machine and we really could send someone back to tell people in the past about the wrong decisions they made. Who would decide what was wrong? Could you believe someone from the future with friendly advise that might be self-serving to his political faction? Who would control the time machine? Would President Obama decide that electing Reagan in 1980 was wrong? Would President Bush decide that electing Jimmy Carter in 1976 was wrong? Would everybody agree that FDR creating social security was wrong? Would anybody disagree that the European welfare state was a bad idea? Could someone tell Paramount that canceling Star Trek TOS after the third season was wrong? Could I go tell the creators of LOST to just not bother if they were going to end it the way they did? It gets worse. Every time some agency in the future decides to change the past, a time-quake is going to move forward to your time with unpredictable results. What happens if the decision-making body gets it wrong and destroys the country by accident? Would those decision-makers wake up in prison under a dictatorial government or foreign (or alien) occupation?
2. I love Bigfoot, and I really hope he's real. I'm unable, however, to accept any of the evidence as convincing. (We really need a body, dead or alive. I'm concerned, however, that anybody who shoots a Bigfoot is actually shooting some joker in a monkey suit.) It seems to me that the Bigfoot researchers are too interested in selling books. (Do they sell books to fund research or do they sell books so they do not have to go get real jobs?) The researchers just seem so very willing to accept more or less anything as evidence, from video footage that could be anything (or a hoax) to footprints (so easily faked) or strange noises in the night or merely the fact that the area they're looking around in is the kind of place Sasquatch would hang out if there were such things. The researchers talk about Bigfoot behavior as if it was an established scientific body of knowledge, not a bunch of legends, lore, and wishful thinking. It seems that a lot of eyewitnesses just want their time on television. When you tell a roomful of Bigfoot fans that you're going to a particular place that night to listen for Bigfoot howls, it is any mystery why you always hear some? If I won the lottery and funded a Bigfoot hunt, would the Bigfoot researchers show up because they think they finally have a legitimate chance to find him, or because they all get a paid vacation from their real life jobs? (It was shocking to see the pop-up windows on reruns of Finding Bigfoot which totally refuted whatever the guy on screen said.) I would think if you wanted to find Bigfoot (and if he's out there) that you could do so. You'd just get some hikers and backpackers to go hang a couple of hundred trail cameras around a hotspot area and sooner or later you'd get lucky.
3. AMC raised its rates and our local cable provider announced they would drop AMC. In response, AMC ran ads asking people in Amarillo to call the cable company and demand that AMC be kept (and did not mention the rate increase in the ads). The cable company eventually settled with AMC, but I never heard what they agreed to pay.
4. I read O'Reilly's book KILLING LINCOLN and found it, well, pretty light in weight, more like an article in a history magazine than a serious work of scholarly research. It's not really so much a history book as a spy novel, and some of the mysteries it brings up were long since settled (but the actual information was left out). I guess if it gets more people interested in history, that's all right, but I really wonder if Bill didn't just do it for the million dollars.
1. In a recent conversation, the old adage came up that the best solution is a time machine to go back and tell the people who made the decision that they were wrong. This led me to think about what would happen if there really were a time machine and we really could send someone back to tell people in the past about the wrong decisions they made. Who would decide what was wrong? Could you believe someone from the future with friendly advise that might be self-serving to his political faction? Who would control the time machine? Would President Obama decide that electing Reagan in 1980 was wrong? Would President Bush decide that electing Jimmy Carter in 1976 was wrong? Would everybody agree that FDR creating social security was wrong? Would anybody disagree that the European welfare state was a bad idea? Could someone tell Paramount that canceling Star Trek TOS after the third season was wrong? Could I go tell the creators of LOST to just not bother if they were going to end it the way they did? It gets worse. Every time some agency in the future decides to change the past, a time-quake is going to move forward to your time with unpredictable results. What happens if the decision-making body gets it wrong and destroys the country by accident? Would those decision-makers wake up in prison under a dictatorial government or foreign (or alien) occupation?
2. I love Bigfoot, and I really hope he's real. I'm unable, however, to accept any of the evidence as convincing. (We really need a body, dead or alive. I'm concerned, however, that anybody who shoots a Bigfoot is actually shooting some joker in a monkey suit.) It seems to me that the Bigfoot researchers are too interested in selling books. (Do they sell books to fund research or do they sell books so they do not have to go get real jobs?) The researchers just seem so very willing to accept more or less anything as evidence, from video footage that could be anything (or a hoax) to footprints (so easily faked) or strange noises in the night or merely the fact that the area they're looking around in is the kind of place Sasquatch would hang out if there were such things. The researchers talk about Bigfoot behavior as if it was an established scientific body of knowledge, not a bunch of legends, lore, and wishful thinking. It seems that a lot of eyewitnesses just want their time on television. When you tell a roomful of Bigfoot fans that you're going to a particular place that night to listen for Bigfoot howls, it is any mystery why you always hear some? If I won the lottery and funded a Bigfoot hunt, would the Bigfoot researchers show up because they think they finally have a legitimate chance to find him, or because they all get a paid vacation from their real life jobs? (It was shocking to see the pop-up windows on reruns of Finding Bigfoot which totally refuted whatever the guy on screen said.) I would think if you wanted to find Bigfoot (and if he's out there) that you could do so. You'd just get some hikers and backpackers to go hang a couple of hundred trail cameras around a hotspot area and sooner or later you'd get lucky.
3. AMC raised its rates and our local cable provider announced they would drop AMC. In response, AMC ran ads asking people in Amarillo to call the cable company and demand that AMC be kept (and did not mention the rate increase in the ads). The cable company eventually settled with AMC, but I never heard what they agreed to pay.
4. I read O'Reilly's book KILLING LINCOLN and found it, well, pretty light in weight, more like an article in a history magazine than a serious work of scholarly research. It's not really so much a history book as a spy novel, and some of the mysteries it brings up were long since settled (but the actual information was left out). I guess if it gets more people interested in history, that's all right, but I really wonder if Bill didn't just do it for the million dollars.
5. Lady Gaga does a song called EDGE OF GLORY which I really
like. It's not just a good beat (always a requirement if you want me
to like a song) but it could be anything you wanted, from someone
putting their feelings on the line and asking if their love is
returned, to the gold-mining guys in Alaska, to a soldier wondering if
he'll be a hero or a zero in his first battle, to a businessman
wondering if his new product is really going to be a hit. We're all
waiting for the moment of truth.
6. We heard about THE HUNGER GAMES on business
television, and it sounded intriguing. Leanna downloaded it to her
Kindle, read a couple of chapters, and went to bed. I picked it up,
read a few pages, then finished the entire book at 4:39am. Cannot
really say that I enjoyed it, but I found it compelling and impossible
to put down. Same with book 2. And Book 3.
7. I was watching
the GOLD RUSH aftershow, and they were joking about "gold mining
for dummies." Given how many people watch GOLD RUSH (the #1 rated
cable show) I would think that you could sell a hundred thousand
copies of Gold Mining for Dummies, even if only two or three of those
readers actually tried to do it. Illustrating the book with photos of
the Hoffman's and stories of their mistakes would give a great
tie-in and make money for everybody.
8. I got my Cavalry & Armor Journal (a
US Army publication) and the feature story was "Enabling
Operational Adaptability" so I knew the republic was doomed. Then
I found an article containing the term "disciplined initiative"
and cried.
posted by Federation Commander at 8:38 AM
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