Five Dollar Cloyce

Back, oh, fifty or sixty years ago, me Grandpa Joe had several delivery drivers who worked for his welder rental business. One in particular, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, seemed to have a mental block about putting gas in his truck. And it drove me Pops crazy.

At the time you could fill up one of the trucks for around five bucks. Dad would give the drivers five dollar bills as necessary to put gas in their vehicles. Yet invariably Cloyce would return to the old barn on fumes, to triumphantly hand the five spot back to the old man proclaiming "I saved you five bucks, Bill!"

The trouble was that he wasn't really saving anybody anything. From a practical standpoint all it really meant was that on his next delivery Cloyce's first stop would be the gas station and not the job site. It would make more sense to gas up on the return from one trip, that job being done, than to take ten minutes before the next job simply to fill up the tank.

Cloyce did it constantly, and it irked me Pops every time. No amount of explanation could convince Cloyce that it was better to gas up today than add a complication to tomorrow, a complication which might easily snowball: you have to load the truck a few minutes earlier, then get to the gas station and it may be crowded, or the roads might be jammed, and so on. But all Cloyce could see what the he 'saved' five dollars today, not that he would just have to spend it tomorrow anyway.

Still, he saved me Pops a lot of Lincolns, one day at a time. If only Dad could have kept all those fivers, I suppose maybe he would have been rich.

Marty and Hank on Survival

The preacher man says it's the end of time,

and the Mississippi River she's a-goin' dry.

The interest is up and the stock market's down, 

and you'll only get mugged if you go downtown.

I like Country music. I like Hank Williams Jr, or simply Hank Jr. as we Country and Western mavens refer to him. I hope he'll forgive me the use of his song in a manner I'm not sure he would approve.

The italicized bit above are the first lines of Country Boy Can Survive, perhaps his signature song (although Family Tradition ranks, perhaps, higher with me). I use them because the world has apparently become something more of a dangerous place in recent days.

Or has it? There will be wars and rumors of wars, the Good Book reminds us. Exactly how afraid are we supposed to be of what may only be passing events?

Sure, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is bad. It's very bad indeed. But is it all that bad?

I don't mean to put down or belittle the event, and certainly not the suffering of the Ukrainian people. Yet what can we do about it anyway? There's really no way the average American, the average citizen anywhere truth be told, can affect it.

There will be wars and rumors of wars. Do your best to get your house in order, say a few prayers, urge our leaders and decision makers to act rationally (good luck with that) and live your life. The fear mongers, and they're all fear mongers, I don't care whether it's Fox News or CNN or your local paper or news outlet, or particularly the government, want your fear. Government above all is nourished by your fears. It preys on them, has them for food. 

Don't give it to them or anybody else. Take everything they say with a grain of salt. Your panic won't help any more than your fear. Indeed, it may feed the dragon all the more deeply, that he should grow more fierce and fiery. And out of control. I'm ready to argue that COVID demonstrated that.

There will be wars and rumors of wars. That's just how it is. The calmer you respond, the more peaceful your inner life is, the better you will handle them.

Cashless Convention

I believe that the oddest thing I had to deal with in Indianapolis recently has been the cashless nature of the concessions at the Indiana Convention Center. I did not like it.

I understand that there are myriad reasons for their having done it. I understand too that there are advantages to a person in using credit or debit. But I don't care a fig about any of that. I have the right to use cash. I should be able to.

This may not be anything more, I admit, than hard headedness. I want to give you four actual dollars for a cup of coffee and you should be willing to take it. And give me the coffee too of course. That's how, well, maybe not how but it is one way, one very legitimate way, for the economy to work. And I have the right to do business that way. Period. In fact I think we're more secure paying as we go, as cash transactions are untraceable. That does allow us a certain bit of freedom and anonymity, you know.

Or maybe I'm just being crotchety this morning.

Think Inside the Box

Another phrase of which I think little (here he goes again) is when we are told to think outside the box. The fact is that there's nothing outside the box to think about.

Oh, I know what they, the infamous they, mean. They mean for you to be innovative and creative. That's all well and good. We need innovation and creation. The trouble is that there's nothing you can innovate or create without using tools and concepts which preexist your changes or inventions.

The artist cannot paint without a knowledge of the tools and practices of art. The inventor cannot invent without knowing the background of whatever field in which he is making something new. The atomic bomb wasn't made without making use of the existing laws of physics and the knowable rules of mathematics and mechanics. 

To be sure, a painting or the bomb didn't exist as such before their initial manufacture. Yet no one truly thought outside of any box in making them. They came about through the use of materials and intellect which were already there to be employed. So we can go ahead and throw thinking outside the box into the dust bin with all those other useless phrases which I rail so much about.

The Question

Is Putin Hitler? Up until today I didn't think so.

I'm still not sure I believe it. Whatever his intentions in Ukraine, the Russian leader surely isn't a megalomaniac, is he? Is he actually looking beyond Ukraine towards world dominance, and Ukraine is the first domino to fall?

That's the real question, in my mind. Answering that well and right is what we need to do. If all he's looking at is setting up a puppet in a border nation then we have little to worry about in the long term. If he's pushing the envelope in order to test Western resolve with an eye towards further conquest, our response must be much more harsh.

I am not looking forward to the next few days.

Blissful Ignorance

The older I get the happier I am to remain blissfully ignorant of certain things. This does not (I hope) include the very important things out there in the world, for there are surely issues and events both personal and public which we should naturally fret about. 

What I'm really concerned about is this: there's too much information out there, and the bulk of it is useless. It's time wasting and simply unnecessary to know. 

In the first place, human beings are quite able, indeed very ready and willing, to fritter away their lives as it is. Add in the tidal wave of information great and trivial which the modern world lays at our feet through the Internet and Twitter and Instagram and a great many other grams and we become, as the meme says, prisoners of our own device. We rarely if ever ask to what end.

What brought this little diatribe on is my own sloth. Rather than check what might actually be important emails this morning, or even seeing to the relatively minor act of getting on with a new blog, I clicked on a link to a piece about the 20 Beatles songs John Lennon hated. On hitting the third item (and corollary explanation) on the list I thought, "Why should I care which songs Lennon hated?"

I suppose that arguably it wasn't entirely a useless read, as it obviously led to my actually offering a new STTR this morning. Still, so Lennon hated some of the songs he wrote and performed. Big whoop. I can live a perfectly decent life without holding such thin knowledge. 

Bishop Fulton Sheen once said that ignorance is better than error. While he meant that for a greater cause than what I'm quoting him today, it still fits. It's okay to be ignorant of what doesn't mean beans in the first place.

Actual History

At one point I watched the History Channel with regularity, and even anticipation, because, well, history, and I like history. Even when it was ridiculed as The Hitler Channel, because the only history it seemed to care about was World War II, I still watched. World War II was compelling, wasnt' it?

Then came Oak Island and Ancient Aliens.

I ain't saying those are bad shows on the level of mere entertainment. But do they qualify as history? Not in my mind anyway. So I basically quit watching.

But this past weekend I caught a short series which they offered on Ulysses Grant. It wove reenactments in with historical commentary. And I thought it was entertaining and informative, exactly like history should be. Then they offered a similar treatment of Abraham Lincoln, during which were ads about an upcoming look at Theodore Roosevelt which appears interesting.

The old Rough Rider notwithstanding (my opinion of TR is ambivalent; I think he was too self important, quite honestly) I'm impressed to see the History Channel getting back to actual history and not speculative infotainment (ancient aliens? Come on) and might actually put it back in my TV viewing circle.

Weather Games

Obviously I can't speak for everybody everywhere, but winter had actually been kind of mild here in the D. That is, up until about the end of January.

The last three weeks have felt to me as though winter is acting like a kid towards the end of summer vacation. It saw its time coming to a close and thought, cripes, I gotta get all kinds of fun in the next few days.

We've had snow, rain, ice, freezing temperatures and high winds on a rotating basis. Now this coming week we're forecast to have almost spring like temperatures through Tuesday followed by intense cold after midweek. It looks like an icy Wednesday and more snow Friday.

Look, Winter, it's not our fault you got lazy and forgot the time. Kindly let Spring 2022 have her day, would you?

Mint Cloyce

Me Pops was on a trip one time with an old friend; I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name. While in Philadelphia, they decided to take a tour of the US Mint there.

Miraculously, they were able to park within a block. But as they were climbing the steps to the Mint Cloyce remarked, "Bill, should I tell them at the door that I've got my pistol with me?"

Pops stopped in his tracks. After a second or two of thought he explained quickly and quietly, "Okay, Cloyce, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna stand here a minute and talk, pretend we're discussing an issue, act like we forgot something, and then we'll go back to the car. Then we're gonna leave your gun there."

"I don't go nowhere without my gun!" Cloyce responded indignantly.

"Then you ain't going to the US Mint!" Dad said firmly. They got back to the car and drove off.

What a waste of an ideal parking space too.

I Think, Therefore I Think Too Much

I think we worry too much. 

I think we overthink things too much.

I think we overanalyze too often.

I think I'll go to breakfast. There's no chance of me doing any of that there. 

Until I see the menu. Then all that thinking will interfere with simply ordering food. 

You know what I mean. There's just too many ways you can make an omelette. Or prepare eggs. Or have bacon or sausage of ham. Or white, wheat, or rye toast. Or coffee or orange juice. It's neverending.

Remembering P. J.

Political satirist P. J. O'Rourke passed away earlier this week. He was considered a libertarian conservative, which are my favorite types of libertarians and conservatives. He wasn't entirely a political commentator, having done car reviews and writing about fishing and other subjects.

But on his political wit he was known, and I found his wit inspired. "Giving Congress money is like giving teenage boys whiskey and car keys," he once opined. He called out a New York Times book reviewer for lamenting the 'anomie' caused by 'the anonymity of modern modern life'. The reviewer was reviewing a cookbook. P. J. found that hilarious, a profound overstatement, particularly considering how that worry could ever relate to a book full of food recipes. He remarked further in asking, who the hell knows what anomie means anyway?

It is the 'lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group' by the way. How a cookbook can even pretend to approach such profound failure is as foreign to me as it was to O'Rourke.

He argued that we ought to drill more oil. "Fat lot of good it did sitting in the ground for billions of years," he quipped. I like that attitude.

Ironically, in actively trying to pass himself off as a curmudgeon he was actually uproariously funny and, in fact, really one to look at the brighter side of things. One of his main themes was that life really isn't so bad as too many of us seem to think it is. The world on the whole, modern life, really isn't that terrible at all. If we look for and at the good about it.

I think that's what I like best about him. Godspeed, P. J.

The Monologue

Awhile back I had a very good customer, a good friend really, stop by for some cables and parts. And as is typical between us, we had good conversation. But an unusual thing happened.

I probably should not even write about it, as I can never do it justice. Too, it strikes me that relating the entire conversation, a soliloquy, really, would be rather indecent. It was one of those moments, rare but deep and trusting, that likely are unrelatable and maybe ought to stay private. Still, it struck me as too profound to keep silent. 

About halfway through our talk he began to take it over, not in any mean spirited or selfish manner but in more reflective tones. He began relating about things which had happened to him, things he had done or failed to do, some bad by his own admittance but some laudable, even things he had done only because they were the right things to do, or finally accepted that they were the right things to do. He was looking away from me and out the door of the old barn, studying the distance as he spoke of whatever came up. It was sort of a stream of consciousness, yet with direction. Eventually it occurred to me that he was reviewing his life.

There was a wispy look in his eyes, and he vaguely teared up when going over a detail or two, sometimes in sadness, sometimes in sublime happiness, sometimes in simple reflection. He was a tough guy, not one you'd expect to be prone to just thinking about stuff, and it initially seemed out of character but grew away from that. I have to say I became transfixed by it all. I quit trying to join in. I think he needed to go on; I don't think I should have interrupted. I'm not sure I had the right. 

When it was over he just shrugged and said he needed to get moving. As he walked out the door I said, a bit sheepishly for whatever reason, "Uh, you signed your check, but you didn't fill it out."

With a dismissive wave and without turning back he answered, "Ah, you'll fill it out right, Marty. You're a good man."

I don't know about that. Oh, of course I made out the check right. But I remember thinking that he was the good man that day.

Being Grandpappy

I spent last weekend with the Ohio Cosgriffs, in part to be a grandpappy. Yes, I'm Grandpappy. I chose it because it's different, and vaguely southern. 

Me Granddaughter got a job waitressing at a Bob Evans, so of course I had to go bug her there. Knowing they don't have alcohol, when she asked us what we would like to drink I said, "Bud Light."

"I'm sorry, we don't have beer here."

"Oh. Well, can I see the wine list?"

With a twinkle in her eye and small, wry smile, she asked, "Have you been practicing this?"

I. Love. It. She's adult enough to throw it back at it you in the spirit of the jest. "Of course I have!" I answered.

In the end I asked for coffee, and she kept my cup full the whole meal. Looking over the menu I decided on an entree which came with two sides. When she came to take our orders she dutifully asked what I would like for them. "Fried okra," I began.

"I'm sorry, we don't have fried okra."

I knew that, of course, having looked. Still, I kept on. "How about asparagus tips?"

"Did you practice this too?"

"Nope. This part is entirely ad-libbed." But then I ordered seriously (no point pushing too far as she was working) and tipped her well as grandpas should. And I made it a point to tell her later that I was impressed and proud of her, having seen and heard how well she interacted with other customers. Because grandpas should do that too.

You Can't Beat the Classics

There are movies, and then there are great movies. One great movie is Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

My son and I watched it Sunday. It is an epic of the silent film era, and now considered a standard in science fiction. Originally released in 1927 to rather bland reviews, it has overcome that rank evil and achieved classic status. I can't say enough about it. When it ended, I was left speechless.

Indeed I didn't want it to end. The sets were remarkable. Many scenes were no less than spectacular. The cinematography was awe inspiring. Much of the special effects rank with the best modern CGI can offer. The actress who played the female lead, Brigette Helm, absolutely nailed her complex character. I should say characters, and I will let that hang as something of a tease.

I don't want to get into the story; even the lamest spoilers would simply be immoral. It's so good you must see it for yourself. I've never watched a silent film in its entirety before, but now I hope to find more as spectacular.

You really can say a lot without words. Metropolis does it very, very well.

Grandpa Joe's Money Advice

I've said before that me Grandpa Joe, for whatever faults he had, did have some good ideas. One was when he told me Pops, as Pops had then just paid off his mortgage, that he he ought to put the amount he had been paying on his mortgage away every month afterwards. He had already been budgeting it, so without the monthly bill he should use it to create savings. "I always regretted that I didn't take his advice," me Pops lamented more than once.

I'm trying in my own little way to take Joe's advice to heart. I cancelled my second phone line about a year and a half ago, but the next month after began putting the 'cell phone' money back. It was, just like Joe reflected, a thing I was in the habit of doing it anyway. It was only a matter of, so to speak, paying myself instead of the phone people.

I have a little money in the sock now that is steadily accumulating. If I can stay disciplined about it, it'll be a tidy sum in the next few years.

Grandpa did have his moments, to be sure.

Algorithm by McDonald's

I fully understand that the Internet is driven by algorithms. I know that an awful lot, indeed probably more than we realize, of our personal information is out there in the ether. There's no need for this to be too much of a concern, really. Quite a bit of it is public knowledge anyway; my birthday is a matter of public record, me Great Grandpa James once said. For some things, there simply is no point in worrying about who knows them.

Still, when I opened up Facebook yesterday to find an ad about how 61 year olds can earn an easy $75 McDonald's gift card well, I was a tad shocked. I know they know (and they know that I know that they know, and you can keep it going from there) how old I am. But as I have never ordered McD's online, have they made a connection I am not aware of (or, yes, forgot about, as I am 61) between myself and the Golden Arches? It concerns me just a bit.

Any way you slice it, that gift card better get here soon. I'm hungry.

Wither Protests?

The Canadian truckers strike is certainly disruptive. We cannot deny that. It does seem though to have upset our progressive brethren. They are rather in a snit over it in fact.

But wait. When BLM and Antifa were protesting by, you know, disrupting the lives of others, that was okay. Because of course protests are supposed to be disruptive.

Well, good for the goose, good for the gander. Turnabout is fair play. So the Canadian truckers are disruptive. 

Good for them. That means they have protesting down pat.

Pithy Pity Party

What do you do when you're sitting up in bed at 1:30 in the morning? You watch Get Smart on TV. It was the episode where Max saves the day despite himself.

You also play internet poker for millions of fake chips. Then, I might add, you find yourself upset when you lose a hundred million fake chips on a bad beat. I mean, it took me months to build that mountain of worthless cyber cash.

And I doubt that any one of you have any pity for me.

Taking a Chance

Well, I've gone and done it. I've contracted with a publishers service to help me improve my book sales. It's a bit of a shot in the dark, and certainly a leap of faith. But I figure you gotta try something, and why should I expect someone else to pay for my writing if I'm not willing to invest in it? 

They will soon have a website up and running and increase my social media presence. I can walk away at any time, and it leaves me the ability to write while they handle the promotional end. It seems to me worth the risk.

Here's hoping. I'll keep you-all informed as things develop. Wish me luck!

Gross Cloyce

Nowadays the operators of drain snakes are taught never to handle the rotating steel cable because of the threat of serious injury. But that wasn't always the case. 

Time out of mind, drain cleaners opened sewers by shoving the spinning cable into the line by hand. The real old timers actually did it bare handed, would you believe it? They handled the greasy black cables, the greasy black coming from the sewer sludge, without gloves. One old plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, took it to a new level. 

To tell it true, Cloyce was a top notch sewer man. Still, his personal habits left something to be desired. He did not for example wash his hands while working. He allowed all that greasy gook to build up on his paws while unclogging those drains all day.

When lunch came, typically an oily sardine sandwich, he would find a place to park his van and eat. With horribly dirty hands. Cloyce would hold his sandwich by a corner, and eat around it until all that would be left was that corner held by slick, black, greasy fingers.

Cloyce would then throw away that part. He wasn't that gross.

The Lady in Line

I found myself in line yesterday at a Dollar General behind a woman with a full shopping cart, and there was only one cash register open. I knew this would delay me, but so it goes. She got there first and that's that. 

That didn't annoy me so much, really. What annoyed me was when she began placing her items before the cashier for scanning. "I want to stop at $30," the shopper told the young woman.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You filled your shopping cart as you browsed about the store, obviously speeding past the amount you could afford. You couldn't have kept a basic running count as you put things into the basket? You couldn't decide before you were at the checkout what items you wanted? 

It was rude and inconsiderate. The thing is, though, I ended up feeling kind of sorry for the woman. Judging by her speech and actions, I'm not sure how responsible for herself she really was. I was left with the impression that she honestly didn't understand the result of what she was doing. 

It left me unsure what to think. I believe we make a mistake to completely absolve folks of such behavior lest personal responsibility be thrown overboard. Yet I don't know how responsible such persons are for themselves. Demanding too much when they perhaps can't help themselves may be too strident. Yet expecting nothing at all of them seems to me an affront to their dignity on another level. It amounts to pandering, to treating them as beyond hope of being better people. 

I'm just thinking out loud here. But they're thoughts I do think we do need to think.

Detroit Snowmaggedon 2022

I wasn't going to say anything. I weren't. I was jes' gonna let it drop. But sometimes, y'know, a feller cain't help hisself.

Last week on February 2 were were supposed to have a blizzard for the generations here in the D. Accuweather was calling for 1 to 2 feet of snow as late as the wee hours of that Wednesday morning. And what did we get?

Not two foot of snow, that's fer sure. Not even one foot so far as I could tell.

According to Click On Detroit from Detroit's Channel 4, no one anywhere near Detroit had anything like a foot of powder. Most of the City and suburbs were between 3 and 6 inches. You have to go to Flint, hardly in the Detroit area, to even sniff at a foot of accumulation. where there was an 11 inch snowfall. Yet all the way up until the morning of Wednesday, February 2, we were supposed to be absolutely slammed.

I say again, for the umpteenth time, and so much so that even I'm becoming sick of it, this is another reason why I don't automatically trust 'experts'. It is why I cannot trust science because it's science or government because it's government (for from where did most weather projections come from but The scientfic-governmental complex?). They can't tell me, within scant hours of the snow arriving, how much to expect. But that Miami will be underwater in 2100 due to bizarre weather or climate change or global warming or whatever the damn concept is labeled these days is to be taken as an absolute fact.

I don't believe you. Until you can be closer to the truth closer to home, I cannot believe you. You can't tell me what to expect in modern times, when the event is right around the corner. Don't tell me you are certain of things 78 years off. That's not being a scientist. But it might be a charlatan.

A Hole in the...Leg?

Well, the X-rays and MRI I had recently showed that I have ankle tendonitis. Take Aleve, stay off it as much as possible, ice the area, and so on and so on. That I get; that I can handle.

What intrigues me are what else was found via the medical procedures. It seems I have holes at the base of each leg bone, the tibia and the fibula, right where they come into the ankle joint.

After eliminating the dangerous possibilities which the condition may have suggested (and there is nothing dangerous, I am assured) the orthopedic specialist called them 'benign deformities' and nothing more. We would likely have never even known they were there without having had the X-rays and MRI.

So I have a hole in my leg. Beats a hole in the by a fair margin I suppose.

Joe's No

For as cantankerous as he could be, there were many axioms of me Grandpa Joe's which were rather profound in their own right. One was that, almost always, if you had to have an answer right now, this very moment, the answer is no.

I believe that part of the point was that he, personally, wasn't going to be rushed into anything. If Joe Cosgriff was going to do something it would be on his time and his way. Never mind, God love him, that when he wanted his way he didn't mind putting the rush on you. But to be fair, that typically involved work issues around the Shop. It was his Shop, so his rules. I get that; I even have a certain respect for it.

Yet beyond either of those points, there's something to be said for never (or almost never) being pressured into making a choice. It invites rash, unreflective thought processes. Yes, sometimes a decision must be made now, whenever there's a true emergency situation. We simply must do the best we can in such circumstances. Still, be honest: how often are we really facing that type of case?

Rushing into decisions is precisely what gets us into trouble. I will, yes, I will, use the recent COVID hysteria as an example. We were pressed into accepting extreme rules and extreme revisions in our lives, both personal and business. Panic overruled a rational thought process, and panic rarely affords us wise decision making. But something had to be done now, dammit.

What are we today because of that attitude? We have ruined lives, ruined businesses, and ruined friendships even. I know I've been unfriended by several on Facebook because of COVID rendering calm, clear thought into the abyss. And where are we at? Exactly where cooler heads way back in early 2020 when this all began predicted we would be: in a world where nothing we did had any actual affect on the virus or its spread. In a world where the virus was never so bad as the presumed experts within the scientific governmental complex insisted we would be. We aren't dying in record numbers. If we had, en masse, said no, we won't do it, we'd have avoided all sorts of calamity.

If someone has to have a decision now the answer should be no. Me Grandpa Joe said so, and I'm with him. 

The Very Serious Doctor

My doctor is a good doctor. He is also a very serious doctor in fact. That's fine, of course, and laudable. Yet it sets him up where he can't seem to take jokes.

As a result of the MRI I had done this past Monday to analyze the ankle pain I've been having, he called to tell me that the results indicated acute tendonitis. That's not so bad. His instructions were to stay off my feet as much as possible for a couple weeks, and to take Aleve, as it is the best over the counter medication for my condition. He advised me, "Take it twice daily, with food."

"Oh, okay. You mean with potato chips or chocolate cake, then?" I was asked, clearly believing the joke was obvious.

"What? Oh, no, no, no," he responded after a reflective pause. "Take it with your breakfast, with something like oatmeal or cereal, then again with your dinner. Eat something substantial with each tablet." He was completely serious. I could see it over the phone.

I agreed to follow his advice. Maybe I should take it more seriously anyway.

Once Upon a Time, in a Snowstorm Long Ago

It's winter, and we're dealing with a snowstorm here in Detroit. While outside making my third pass at shoveling snow, I see a guy stuck sideways on the street. Well, I'd appreciate help in similar need, so when I'm done with my walk I go to help.

I push, hard, and we get nowhere. A neighbor comes to help too, and we begin rocking the car back and forth for 15 minutes; nothing. I fall forward - hard - twice. Nothing. My shoulder is killing me now. But you help folks, right?

We finally get the guy out into the two track which currently serves as Avery Avenue. He drives 50 feet down the street and parks. He was only trying to move his car closer to his front stoop.

You are bloody kidding me. In the first major storm of the season in Detroit, me and a neighbor work our tails off so that you can get your car two houses closer to home in circumstances where NOTHING WAS GOING TO HAPPEN TO IT.

I ought to send him my chiropractor's bill.

The Wrong Side of the History

The list of useless words and phrases I've discovered over the years is growing almost exponentially as time goes by. I'm here today to register another such phrase: being on The Right Side of History.

The main problem with the veracity of that idea is history hasn't actually happened yet. We do not know, nor can we possibly know, how what we do today will affect tomorrow. Until history plays out, we simply cannot have any rational idea of exactly how right (or how wrong, yes) history will prove to be. Our grandchildren, not us poor souls debating among ourselves in 2022, will understand the right and wrong of it better than we possibly can. We might make useful, educated guesses on what is to come. Indeed, we have to try. But no one knows what the future brings. Anyone who asserts they are on the right side of history are guilty of hubris, for history does not yet exist and they are not fortune tellers.

I will let pass with limited comment that the phrase is really only meant by our liberal friends to call our conservative friends shallow and stupid. We are not on the 'right' side of history so far as they are concerned simply because we disagree with them. But we will be charitable today and leave it at that, because, in fairness, the hollowness of the remark applies generally.

In that sense, I will point out that the use of the phrase is inherently dismissive, and therefore arrogant when employed by any user. It is indeed no more than calling your opponent stupid and ignorant, or worse. The form is the same as the argumentum ab auctoritate, the argument from authority. Because we (and we could anybody, I remind you) believe X is true, you are wrong to think it is not. 

How about we avoid all manner of insult and explain why a proposition is true? I'm not ready to believe scientists, whoever they may be and whatever they may say, merely because they're scientists. They're as human as anybody, and could be wrong. They are subject to personal prejudices exactly as the rest of us are. As such, they need to show me, they are obliged to show me, why their science is right. I then have the right (in fact very nearly a duty) to raise objections which, if valid, the scientist must be able to refute on clear scientific and/or philosophic grounds. Otherwise, all we're actually dealing in is scientism, the idea that science is right because, well, science.

That's simply not a valid argument. In the end, the right side of history is being put today on the wrong side of the equation. The side it belongs on is simply the x variable our algebra teachers tried vainly to get us to consider ages ago.

Impressions on an MRI

Yesterday morning, as I related to one and all, I had an MRI of my foot done. Although I have had an MRI before, it was of my head. It showed nothing.

There: I beat every one of you to the punchline.

The main difference with a foot exam is that I wasn't put all the way into the machine. That actually felt more odd than when I was slipped into the unit head first back in 2016. I was surrounded by the thing then. With my foot, I was aimed in backwards, so to speak, so that the top half of me was outside. It gave me the vague feeling of being swallowed up. Then too, the ceiling above where I lay had a tranquil landscape for me to gaze upon. Unfortunately it caused me to feel like I was experiencing Edward G. Robinson's dying scene from Soylent Green. I have felt more mentally comfortable.

On top of that, the television in the men's change room (I had to put on a hospital gown for the procedure) had a readout in the upper corner which claimed that it was Saturday, August 18, at 8:17 AM. That too made me less than confident in the proceedings.

Physically, I felt as though I were swaying mildly all through the MRI. The tech said that might have been a side affect of the procedure, as the MRI was set at one and a half times the pull of the Earth's gravity. That, she said, can throw off the patient's equilibrium. 

Perhaps. But it made it that much harder to keep my damn foot immobile for the 40 minutes or so the exam took. 

Ah well. She told me, the tech, that is, that they got a good solid look at the ankle. So come on now, Doc, let me know what ails me.